CORNELL 
 
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
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Cfce Jnternattonal C&eologtcal Lt&rarp. 
 
 HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 
 JUDAISM CHRISTIANITY MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE FOOT MOORE, D.D., LL.D., Litt.D. 
 
 Professor of the History of Religion in Harvard University. 
 
INItRNATIONAL I HEOLOGICAL LIBRARY 
 
 HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE FOOT MOORE, D.D., LL.D., Litt.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OP THE HISTORY OP RELIGION IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 II 
 
 JUDAISM CHRISTIANITY 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1919 
 
A^5<Z%7~\a 
 
 COPTHIGHT, 1919, BY 
 CHARLES SCKIBNEB'S SONS 
 
 Published May, 1919 
 
TO THE PARTNER IN ALL MY STUDIES 
 
"PREFACE 
 
 Various causes have delayed the completion of this vol- 
 ume far beyond what could have been foreseen when its 
 predecessor was issued in 1913. The author may be per- 
 mitted to hope that the book itself, at least, has profited by 
 the years he has had it in hand, if there is any virtue in 
 multa dies el multa litura . . . decies castigavit. 
 
 The three religions with which it deals are so intimately 
 related to one another that in a morphological classification 
 they might be regarded as three branches of monotheistic 
 religion in Western Asia and Europe. Christianity origi- 
 nated in a religious movement in Judaism and a Jewish 
 Messianic sect, and though it soon separated from the parent 
 stock, and in the Gentile world became a universal redemp- 
 tive religion, it was to its inheritance from Judaism that it 
 chiefly owed its religious and moral superiority. Moham- 
 medanism owes its existence to the impression Jewish and, 
 in smaller degree, Christian ideas made upon the mind of 
 the Arabian prophet. 
 
 Fundamental in all three is the idea of revealed religion: 
 God has made known to men by revelation in sacred books 
 his soleness, his character, and his will; and this revelation 
 is a law which he has imposed on men not only for ritual and 
 observance but for belief and conduct, thus making faith 
 and morals integral parts of a nomistic religion. All three 
 are in this sense to be described as dogmatic ethical reli- 
 gions. The Bible of the Jews is sacred Scripture to Chris- 
 tians; the Law and the Gospel are acknowledged as divine 
 revelation by Moslems, while in the New Testament and 
 the Koran, Christians and Moslems have their own peculiar 
 Scriptures, completing and in part superseding the former 
 revelations. The Scriptures of all three have the same doc- 
 
 vii 
 
V11I PREFACE 
 
 trine of creation by divine fiat, according to the first chap- 
 ter of Genesis; they have the same doctrine of the cata- 
 strophic end of the world, when the wrath of God is wreaked 
 in destruction on the heavens and the earth as well as on the 
 guilty race of men. All three are soteric religions, proposing 
 themselves as ways of salvation from the doom of all un- 
 saved souls at death and the judgment/ and each asserting 
 that it is the only way. 
 
 Each of them, conceiving itself as the one true religion, 
 attributes to itself finality, and believes itself destined to 
 universality. In them all the ideal of universality assumed 
 political forms. In Judaism, indeed, the dream of ruling 
 over the nations of the earth in the name of the Lord never 
 had a chance to translate itself into historical reality or 
 even into essay. But in Christianity and Islam the idea of 
 empire as the embodiment of religion dominated centuries 
 of history, and ruthless wars of conquest glorified themselves 
 as the victories of the faith. A further consequence of the 
 ideal of exclusive universality in Christendom was the prin- 
 ciple that a Christian state should not tolerate within it 
 any other religion than Christianity, nor any other kind of 
 Christianity than the one true kind. Religious liberty logi- 
 cally involves the secularisation of the state. 
 
 In modern times the expansion of both Christianity and 
 Islam has been by commerce, missions, and colonisation 
 rather than by conquest, but commerce and missions have 
 often been but steps to protection, occupation, and annexa- 
 tion by Christian states. The belief in ultimate universality 
 must persist as long as each believes itself the one true reli- 
 gion, and so long as it persists the religions must strive in 
 the ways of the time to achieve their universal destiny. 
 
 The three religions have never divided the world terri- 
 torially among them. In the countries conquered by the 
 Moslems were great numbers of Jews and Christians, and 
 under the protection accorded by the Koran to the " Book- 
 people" and the habitually tolerant rule of the caliphs there 
 1 This is true of Judaism from a time not long before our era. 
 
PREFACE IX 
 
 was much intellectual intercourse and exchange of influence. 
 Contact with Christian theology in Syria opened the eyes 
 of Moslems to some of the theological and ethical problems 
 of their own religion, gave them methods and ideas, and 
 introduced them to the source of both in Greek philosophy. 
 Out of much controversy a theology emerged which came 
 to be generally accepted as orthodox. Before long the Jews 
 constructed a rational and systematic exposition and de- 
 fence of their own faith on the pattern of the Moslem Kalam. 
 Jewish thinkers followed the Moslems into the field of phi- 
 losophy, also, and vied with their achievements in it. In 
 Spain, which in the twelfth century was the chief seat of 
 these pursuits, Christians also were drawn into them, and 
 the works of Arabic philosophy and theology translated into 
 Latin soon found their way into France and Italy. The 
 acquaintance with Aristotle and the Arab Aristotelians made 
 an epoch in European thought. The names of Avicenna 
 and Averroes, of Avempace (Ibn Bajja) and Algazel (al- 
 Ghazali), of Avicebron (Ibn Gabirol) and Maimonides, mul- 
 tiply on the pages of the schoolmen by the side of those of 
 the Fathers; the influence of these authors on Christian 
 theology was far-reaching. 
 
 In all these intellectual movements Greek philosophy — 
 understood or misunderstood — is at the bottom of the mat- 
 ter. The mysticism of all three religions is essentially Neo- 
 platonic, the scholasticism of all predominatingly Aristo- 
 telian. Even a dogmatic controversy like that on the 
 Trinity, which might seem by its subject to be exclusively 
 Christian, has a close counterpart in the hardly less acute 
 and protracted controversies among Moslems and Jews over 
 the reality and nature of the divine attributes; while the 
 doctrine of the Trinity was not infrequently conceived in 
 forms which are hardly distinguishable from Moslem attri- 
 bute theories, and not unrelated to them. 
 
 The resemblances are not superficial or fortuitous. They 
 are, on the contrary, a common element, derived from a 
 common source, shaped by the same philosophic influences, 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 and developed by interchange of ideas. On the other hand, 
 each of these religions has an individuality which is stronger 
 than all their affinities. Especially is this true of Christian- 
 ity, whose dogma of salvation through the incarnation, 
 death, and resurrection of Christ has no counterpart or anal- 
 ogy in either Judaism or Mohammedanism. This dogma 
 determined both the sacramental cultus of Christianity and 
 its ecclesiastical institutions, and drew both after it into 
 the sphere of dogma. 
 
 In the course of their history these religions have under- 
 gone many changes, and variations have arisen which depart 
 so widely from the primitive type or the prevailing trend of 
 development that they might almost be described as dis- 
 tinct species, descended from the same remote ancestor and 
 bearing the same generic name. This multifariousness 
 makes the presentation of the religions in the present vol- 
 ume peculiarly difficult. It is not merely that an intelligible 
 account of the variations is hard to give in small compass, 
 but that the narrator is tempted to involve himself in a 
 maze of digressions in which the thread of the history is 
 lost. This can only be avoided by treating them from the 
 point of view of the main movement and subordinating 
 them to it. 
 
 The historian of religion has to do more than exhibit the 
 facts impartially and in just proportion, trace the origin and 
 development of ideas and institutions, and define the forces, 
 internal and external, which were operative in this develop- 
 ment. He must endeavour to understand and appreciate 
 ways of thinking and feeling remote from his own, and help 
 his readers to a like apprehension. To do this, he must put 
 himself, as far as imagination can go, into the position and 
 attitude of those who formed and entertained these ideas; 
 he must learn to think other men's thoughts after them, as 
 they thought them, and to enter with sympathetic intelli- 
 gence into their feelings. Accuracy and impartiality with- 
 out imagination and sympathy can at best give no more 
 than historical materials, not history. How far the present 
 
PREFACE XI 
 
 volume realises this ideal others must judge; it has never 
 been absent from the author's mind. 
 
 Religions like those before us, which have sacred Scrip- 
 tures and other writings whose authority is recognized as 
 normative in matters of faith and practice, should be allowed 
 to present and interpret themselves in conformity with 
 these authoritative sources, and the same right belongs to 
 their divisions, and to religious movements and controver- 
 sies in them. In this as in the former volume it is pri- 
 marily the religion of intelligent and religious men that is 
 described. Where we are dependent on literary sources, it 
 is from the writings of such men that the best and most 
 authentic part of our knowledge is derived. Such men are 
 always the minority, but they are the true representatives 
 of their religion in any age, teachers and examples to their 
 fellows. No religion has ever succeeded in bringing all of 
 its adherents to its standards of right living, or within sight 
 of its intellectual and spiritual ideals; and in the highest 
 religions the gulf between the intellectual and moral leaders 
 and the superstitious and depraved sediment of society is 
 widest. But it is not from ignorance and superstition that 
 anything can be learned about a religion; at that end they 
 are all alike. 
 
 Writers on the history of religions often spend them- 
 selves on the beginnings as if they alone signified, and deal 
 cursorily with everything that came after. A study of the 
 origins of a religion can yield nothing but a knowledge of 
 the origins; the religion itself can be known only in its whole 
 history. It is the aim of the present volume, therefore, to 
 exhibit the development of the religions with which it deals 
 as completely as the limits of space permit, passing over 
 no important stage or movement. In the chapters on 
 Christianity the author has not purposed either a sketch 
 of the history of the church or a history of Christian doc- 
 trine, but an outline history of the religion itself from the 
 same point of view from which that of other religions is 
 written. It is indeed evident that only this point of view 
 
Xll PREFACE 
 
 and a corresponding method of treatment are a sufficient 
 reason for adding another to the innumerable books about 
 Christianity. 
 
 To what was said in the Preface to the first volume about 
 the spelling of foreign words, I have only to add that, in 
 Arabic proper names in which the article appears, both as- 
 similation and the liaison with a preceding inflection vowel 
 are neglected. 
 
 The index is constructed for the purpose of facilitating the 
 comparison of corresponding phenomena in different reli- 
 gions as well as of following the development of an idea, an 
 institution, or a rite, in any single religion. As illustrations 
 reference may be made to the index under the entries, 
 "Attributes," "Predestination." So far as the matter is 
 similar, the topical entries agree with those in the first vol- 
 ume, so that the comparison may be at will extended to the 
 religions discussed in it; see, for example, "Asceticism," 
 "Eschatology," etc. 
 
 Among the many books to which I am indebted, I should 
 make particular acknowledgment of my obligation through- 
 out the chapters on Christianity to Loofs, "Leitfaden der 
 Dogmengeschichte," and in the chapters on the Sequel of 
 Reformation and Modern Tendencies, to the informing and 
 suggestive treatment of the period by Troeltsch in "Die 
 Kultur der Gegenwart." It is hardly necessary for any 
 student of Mohammedanism in our day to confess how 
 much he owes to the learning and insight of Ignaz Goldziher. 
 
 Doctor H. A. Wolfson, Instructor in Jewish Literature and 
 Philosophy, was kind enough to look over' in proof the 
 chapters on mediaeval and modern Judaism, and Doctor 
 George La Piana, of Harvard University, did the same ser- 
 vice for the chapters on Christianity. To both of them I 
 am indebted for corrections and suggestions, as I am also 
 to Professor Charles C. Torrey, of Yale University, who 
 read the manuscript on Mohammedanism in an earlier 
 stage of the work, and to Professor William R. Arnold, of 
 Andover Theological Seminary, who read the same chapters 
 
PREFACE Xlll 
 
 in proof. Mr. Albert H. Moore, of Cambridge, who as- 
 sisted me in the first volume, has had a much larger share 
 in the second, in the preparation and revision of the manu- 
 script and correction of the proofs. The book owes not 
 a little to his constant critical scrutiny. 
 
 G. F. M. 
 
 Cambridge, Mass., May, 1919. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 JUDAISM 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. The Religion op Ancient Israel 1 
 
 II. The Age of the Prophets 13 
 
 III. School and Synagogue 51 
 
 IV. Mediaeval and Modern Judaism 81 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 V. The Apostolic Age 107 
 
 VI. Theology and Dogma 160 
 
 VII. Latin Theology. Monasticism 193 
 
 VIII. Institutions. Worship 211 
 
 IX. The Middle Ages 232 
 
 X. The Later Middle Ages 268 
 
 XI. The Protestant Reformation 296 
 
 XII. The Protestant Reformation. II 329 
 
 XIII. The Catholic Reformation 343 
 
 XIV. The Sequel of Reformation ...... 354 
 
 XV. Modern Tendencies . . .... 372 
 
 XV 
 
XVI CONTENTS 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVI. Mohammed 386 
 
 XVII. The Caliphate. Doctkinal Controversies . . 405 
 
 XVIII. The Partisans op Au 431 
 
 XIX. Mysticism and Philosophy 439 
 
 XX. Orthodox Theology 457 
 
 XXI. Creed, Worship, Morals 474 
 
 XXII. Extravagant Sects and Derivative Religions . 499 
 
 Literature 523 
 
 Index 531 
 
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 JUDAISM 
 
 THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ISRAEL 
 
 Israelite Tribes in Canaan — The Kingdom — Religion and Migration — 
 Nomadic and Agricultural Religion — Jehovah and the Baals — 
 Places and Modes of Worship— Festivals— Priests, Seers, Prophets 
 — National Religion — Temples and Images. 
 
 The great upheaval of the populations of Asia Minor and 
 Syria, of which the Hyksos invasion of Egypt was one 
 result, did not come to rest with the expulsion of the Hyk- 
 sos. 1 The Syrian wars of the early Eighteenth Dynasty 
 restored order under Egyptian supremacy in Palestine and 
 southern Syria, but in the decadence of that dynasty under 
 Amenophis III and IV, as we learn from the Amarna des- 
 patches, the country was again invaded by tribes of various 
 origin and from different quarters, while the Hittite power 
 in the north was becoming an increasing menace. In the 
 disorders which followed the death of Amenophis IV the 
 Syrian possessions of the empire were lost, and we get no 
 further glimpse of the situation in Palestine until the Syrian 
 campaigns of Seti I and Rameses II. Under Rameses' suc- 
 cessor, Merneptah, European sea-rovers from the coasts 
 and islands of the Mediterranean made their appearance in 
 the western delta in alliance with the Libyans, and in the 
 reign of Rameses III they threatened Egypt both on the 
 Libyan border and from the side of Syria. In the recoil of 
 this wave of invasion the Philistines were left behind on the 
 coast plain from Gaza northward to Dor. 
 i See Vol. I, pp. 178-180. 
 1 
 
JUDAISM 
 
 Among the tribes which in this dislocation of peoples suc- 
 ceeded in gaining a foothold in Palestine were those whom 
 we know under the collective name Israel. This name 
 occurs first in an inscription celebrating the devastations 
 which Merneptah had wrought in Palestine about 1225 B.C. 
 From their own traditions of the invasion and settlement it 
 appears that the centre of their strength was in the high- 
 lands south of the Great Plain. Kindred or allied tribes 
 were scattered in Galilee and east of the Jordan, while 
 another group settled in the south, where its principal mem- 
 ber gave its name to the highlands of Judah. It is probable 
 that these tribes had entered the country at different times 
 and by different routes. The walled cities were naturally 
 secure from their attacks unless by a stratagem or a lucky 
 coup de main, and under the protection of the fortresses the 
 Great Plain, the seaboard and adjacent foot-hills, and the 
 wide valleys running inward from the coast long remained 
 in the possession of the older inhabitants. The Israelites 
 in different parts of the land were thus separated from one 
 another, and a line of Canaanite strongholds, of which 
 Jerusalem, on the main road north and south, was the key, 
 interposed between Joseph and Judah. 
 
 When the period of convulsion following the collapse of 
 the Egyptian supremacy and the overrunning of the land 
 by invaders from all quarters was over, the Canaanites 
 recovered courage and resolved to be masters in their own 
 country. Meanwhile the increase of the Israelite popula- 
 tion in the central highlands constrained them to turn to 
 agriculture for a living, and they began to cast covetous 
 eyes on the fields of their neighbours. A struggle for the 
 possession of the Great Plain ensued, which is celebrated in 
 the triumphal ode of Deborah (Judges 5). In this poem 
 the unity of the tribes appears distinctly as a religious bond : 
 the conflict is the battle of Jehovah with the kings of Ca- 
 naan, and Israel's victory is the victory of Jehovah. 1 But 
 though the Israelites in the battle of Megiddo conquered 
 1 The collective name Israel does not occur in the poem. 
 
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ISRAEL 3 
 
 their freedom from Canaanite dominion, they did not gain 
 possession of the fortified cities along the plain. 
 
 In the eleventh century the Philistines, from their base 
 on the seaboard, subjected the interior. Their main object 
 was, of course, the flourishing Canaanite cities and their rich 
 territories, but the Israelite peasants also were made to pay 
 heavy taxes and submitted to humiliating conditions. This 
 crisis united the tribes in self-defence under the leadership of 
 the Benjamite, Saul, whom after his daring relief of Jabesh 
 Q^lead they acclaimed king. The conflict went on. Saul 
 fell in battle with the Philistines, but David succeeded in 
 achieving independence and establishing a Judaean kingdom. 
 After the death of Saul's feeble successor, the other tribes 
 also acknowledged David as king. He captured Jerusalem, 
 which till that time had been a Canaanite city, and made 
 his capital in this strategic position between the north and 
 the south. 
 
 His successor attempted to transform the kingdom, in 
 which the tribes preserved their organisation and a large 
 measure of autonomy, into a centralised monarchy whose 
 provinces were administered by governors appointed by the 
 crown, and this, together with the heavy exactions demanded 
 by Solomon's passion for building and the luxury of his 
 court, was more than the Israelites would bear. The king, 
 moreover, was a Judaean, and he was unwise enough to 
 make this conspicuous by special privileges to Judah. At 
 his death the double kingdom of Israel and Judah fell 
 asunder; the Israelite tribes chose a king of their own, while 
 Judah alone with its kindred clans held to the house of 
 David. 
 
 At the time of the struggle with the Canaanite city-kings 
 of the Great Plain celebrated in the Song of Deborah, Israel- 
 ite tribes were seated east of the Jordan from the head of 
 the Dead Sea northward to the Yarmuk (Reuben, Gilead) ; 
 in the hill country south of the Great Plain (Ephraim, Ben- 
 jamin, Machir), and in Galilee, from the edge of the Great 
 Plain to the Phoenician hinterland (Issachar, Zebulun, Naph- 
 
JUDAISM 
 
 tali, Asher, Dan). All these tribes owned Jehovah as their 
 god; 1 he fought for them, and overwhelmed their foes. This 
 god was not native to Canaan; his seat was a mountain in 
 the south, whence he came on the wings of the storm to 
 deliver his people (Judges 5, 4). One strand of the narra- 
 tive of their migrations calls his mountain Horeb, another 
 Sinai. At this mountain, after their escape from Egypt 
 under the lead of Moses, the tribes had sworn fealty to 
 Jehovah as their deliverer, and pledged themselves to wor- 
 ship him as they were there taught by Moses. So far all 
 the accounts of the Exodus concur, but on another very 
 important point they differ. According to one, which is by 
 various signs recognised as the tradition of the kingdom of 
 Israel, the tribes had not previously worshipped Jehovah, 
 or, as it is expressed, their fathers had not known him under 
 that name. Judaean sources, on the other hand, make all 
 the patriarchs worshippers of Jehovah, and carry back the 
 origin of this religion almost to the beginning of human his- 
 tory (Gen. 4, 26). This difference may be combined with 
 another: the patriarchal narratives as well as the genealogies 
 connect the Israelites on the one side with Aramaean tribes, 
 from the southern Lebanon eastward across the Euphrates 
 to Harran, and on the other with the nomads of the deserts 
 south of Palestine and in northwestern Arabia. The most 
 natural explanation is the fusion, after the establishment of 
 the kingdom, of northern and southern — Israelite and Ju- 
 daean — traditions. There are independent reasons for think- 
 ing that the tribes to whom the name Israel in the narrower 
 sense belonged were akin to their Aramaean neighbours, and 
 came from the northeast, while the clans which went to 
 make up Judah were of southern extraction. The latter 
 may well have known the holy places of Jehovah from im- 
 memorial times, while the Israelites proper only later adopted 
 his worship. 
 
 An ancient sanctuary of Jehovah to which great promi- 
 nence is given in the narratives of the Exodus is Kadesh, a 
 1 Hebrew Yahweh. 
 
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ISRAEL 5 
 
 small oasis with abundant springs of water in the desert 
 south of Palestine. In its vicinity the tribes, after leaving 
 Mount Horeb, are said to have encamped for a generation 
 before their entry into Canaan. There are traces, however, 
 of an independent tradition, presumably the oldest of all, 
 according to which, upon their escape from Egypt, they 
 made their way directly to Kadesh, which in this story must 
 have been the chief scene of the work of Moses. Beersheba, 
 farther north, on the borders of Canaan itself, is also a 
 famous holy place of Jehovah, associated especially with the 
 name of Abraham; in the time of the kingdoms it was a 
 favourite place of pilgrimage, particularly for worshippers 
 from Israel. In a similar way Beer-lahai-roi, in the same 
 region, is connected with the names of Isaac and Ishmael. 
 There were thus several spots in the region south of Pales- 
 tine at which Jehovah was worshipped by the nomads who 
 pastured their flocks thereabout. 
 
 In their further migrations the Israelite tribes carried 
 with them a portable sanctuary, a tent, sheltering a chest 
 in which were preserved — so, at least, it was believed in 
 later times — two stone tablets inscribed with the fundamen- 
 tal precepts of their religion. To this tent, which was 
 pitched outside the encampment, Moses resorted to consult 
 the oracle. When the Israelites entered Palestine, the chest 
 was deposited in a shrine at Shiloh, in the heart of the terri- 
 tory of Joseph. 
 
 In the religion of Israel in Canaan, as it appears in the 
 earliest sources, it is easy to distinguish certain elements 
 which are an inheritance from the nomadic stage, and others 
 that are as plainly adopted from the settled population of 
 the land, while much was doubtless common to both peo- 
 ples. Speaking generally, the nomadic elements are original 
 constituents of the religion of Jehovah, and the agricultural 
 rites are engrafted upon it. Of the former the most charac- 
 teristic is the festival called the Pesakh, translated, after a 
 questionable popular etymology, "Passover" (Exod. 12, 13). 
 This festival fell in the spring, on the night of the equinoc- 
 
6 JUDAISM 
 
 tial full moon. It was a family feast, though of course 
 many families might celebrate it at the same place. Each 
 household provided its own victim, a lamb or kid, which 
 was roasted, and eaten with a bitter salad. The meal was 
 consumed "hurriedly," what could not be devoured was 
 burned, not a scrap must be left over sunrise. In the ac- 
 count of the institution of the ritual in Exod. 12, the blood of 
 the victim is splashed upon the door-frame of each house to 
 keep out "the destroyer" who brought death into the homes 
 of the Egyptians; and although this feature disappears from 
 later laws — perhaps in consequence of the transfer of the 
 originally domestic festival to a fixed sanctuary — it can 
 hardly be doubted that it was one of the most important 
 parts of the observance. A spring festival, corresponding in 
 its main features to the Israelite Passover, was kept by the 
 Saracens of the Sinaitic Peninsula in the fourth century 
 A. D., and by the Arabs in Mohammed's time; the splash- 
 ing or smearing of blood on tents and houses, and on cattle 
 and human beings, for protection against disease and death 
 is common to-day in all those countries, among both Mos- 
 lems and Christians. 
 
 When the Israelites in their new seats learned from the 
 Canaanites not merely to grow grain — which even nomads 
 occasionally do — but to cultivate the vine, olive, and fig, 
 and to make oil and wine, they learned with the arts of agri- 
 culture the religious ceremonies without which their labours 
 would have been fruitless. Canaanite agriculture, as Hosea 
 recognised, led directly to the adoption of Canaanite cults: 
 Israel worshipped the gods of the land, who, as men thought, 
 gave the corn and wine and oil, the wool and flax. 
 
 The Canaanites formed a multitude of petty city-states, 
 which not even external pressure ever welded into a larger 
 unity. Each of these had its own god, who was distin- 
 guished from the rest only as the god of the particular com- 
 munity; in attributes and functions as well as in the worship 
 paid them they were essentially alike. The civilisation of 
 the inland Canaanites was agricultural, and the chief busi- 
 
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ISRAEL 7 
 
 ness of the local deities was therefore to give to their wor- 
 shippers bountiful increase of their fields and vineyards. 
 To these Baals, as the divine "proprietors" 1 of the city and 
 its fields, their offerings were made for protection and pros- 
 perity. Each city and town had its own place of worship, 
 often upon a hilltop, as the Canaanite name, "high places," 
 imports. 
 
 Jehovah and the Baals thus occupied in the beginning dis- 
 tinct spheres: Jehovah was the champion of Israel in war, 
 and it was he who gave the increase of his flocks to the 
 Israelite peasant as he had to his nomadic ancestors; the 
 Passover and the sacrifice of firstlings were parts of his 
 worship, and his name was probably pronounced when an 
 -Israelite cut the throat and spilled the blood of a sheep or a 
 goat killed for the entertainment of a guest, or to celebrate 
 by a feast some event in the life of the family or of the com- 
 munity. On the other hand, the Baals were the gods of the 
 soil, and in their honour the festivals of the husbandman's 
 year were kept. It is not to be supposed that in thus ac- 
 knowledging the powers which blessed their labours in the 
 field and vintage the Israelites thought that they were ignor- 
 ing their own god or depriving him of his due; agriculture 
 was not his calling. After the establishment of the king- 
 dom, when the Israelites were in complete possession of the 
 land which by right of conquest had become Jehovah's land, 
 so that he was not only the god of Israel but god of Israel's 
 inheritance, the worship of Jehovah superseded that of the 
 Baals in their own sanctuaries, preserving the established 
 ritual custom. 
 
 The Israelite places of worship were for the most part the 
 same high places at which the Canaanites had worshipped 
 before them, and the furnishing remained essentially the 
 same. The altar was a pile of rude stones — altars cut in the 
 living rock or built of cut stone such as the Canaanites 
 often used are forbidden— the upright stone and the wooden 
 post (massebah, asherah) stood by it. Sometimes there was 
 1 This is the meaning of the word ba'al. 
 
8 JUDAISM 
 
 also a hall for sacrificial feasts, but no temple as a house of 
 the god. At these local altars sacrifices were offered on 
 many occasions of domestic or communal life; there also 
 the annual festivals were held, at which thrice in the year 
 every man was required to "see the face" of Jehovah with 
 an offering in his hand. Worshippers frequented in greater 
 concourse at festival seasons the more famous sanctuaries, 
 such as Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba. 1 
 
 In private sacrifices the victim was commonly a sheep or 
 goat; the blood was dashed upon the altar or poured out at 
 its base, the fat of the inwards burned on the altar, 2 the flesh 
 boiled, and eaten by the offerer with his family and guests. 
 Communal sacrifices offered by the elders or heads of the 
 families of a town took the same form. On extraordinary 
 occasions the whole carcass of a victim was burned on the 
 altar. The burning of the fat was attended to by a priest, 
 at least at the greater high places, and he had a toll for his 
 service, which was at first, doubtless, fixed by local custom; 
 later the attempt was made to regulate it by more general 
 rules. 
 
 The three festivals to which reference has already been 
 made fell in the spring, in early summer, and in autumn, 
 respectively. The first was the celebration of the beginning 
 of the barley harvest, the characteristic feature of which was 
 the presentation of a first sheaf at the altar and the eating 
 of unleavened cakes of the new crop. This festival in its 
 original local form must have been movable, depending on 
 the ripening of the grain in the region and season; but it 
 was, at an early time, fixed to follow immediately the ob- 
 servance of the Passover at the vernal full moon. The end 
 of the wheat harvest also was marked by a festival, prob- 
 ably once kept when the reaping was actually completed, 
 but in the calendar set seven weeks after the beginning of 
 the barley harvest at the Passover. The greatest of all, 
 often called "the feast," by way of eminence, was the har- 
 
 1 See Encyclopaedia Biblica, " High Place." 
 
 2 The burning of the fat was a Canaanite, not a nomadic, custom. 
 
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ISRAEL 9 
 
 vest-home in the autumn after the fruits had been gathered 
 and the vintage was over. It was, indeed, primarily a vin- 
 tage festival, and the booths, from which its familiar name, 
 "tabernacles," is derived, were originally the temporary 
 shelters in the vineyards in which the owners lodged during 
 the season. A uniform date for the celebration, the full 
 moon of the seventh month, was perhaps not established 
 till after the centralisation of worship at Jerusalem had 
 detached it from its natural environment. 
 
 In early times the assistance of a priest was not necessary 
 to the offering of sacrifice. The most important function 
 of the priesthood was divination, which they practised by 
 means of a specific apparatus, apparently a form of divina- 
 tion by lot. They had also an expert knowledge of the 
 rules of clean and unclean and of the appropriate purifica- 
 tions and expiations. This knowledge, as well as the art of 
 manipulating the oracle, was transmitted by tradition in 
 certain families, but • these families formed no exclusive 
 caste, though at an early time "Levite" priests — whether 
 Levi be the name of a guild or a clan — were regarded as a 
 superior kind. The ancient customs of Israel, which were 
 •under the sanction of religion, fell naturally into their prov- 
 ince; they gave decisions on questions of customary law as 
 well as of ritual. The priesthoods of such sanctuaries as 
 Shiloh, Dan, Bethel, Gilgal, doubtless had much influence 
 in shaping custom and making it uniform throughout the 
 land, and in harmonising and consolidating tradition. 
 
 Besides the priests, with their divination by art, there 
 were men who practised natural divination. They were 
 called "seers," because they had the gift of second-sight, 
 and could tell, like Samuel, what had become of stray asses, 
 or had visionary premonitions of future events, as when the 
 same seer foresaw Saul's meeting with the band of prophets. 
 The visions of Amos (cc. 7-8) are examples of a somewhat 
 different kind. The prophets (nebi'im) whom Saul met 
 coming down from the high place, by whose contagious 
 enthusiasm he was carried away to the surprise and scandal 
 
10 JUDAISM 
 
 of his fellow townsmen, were companies of devotees, who 
 by music and other exercises wrought themselves up to a 
 pitch of religious excitement in which they acted like men 
 beside themselves and attributed their doings and sayings 
 to possession by the spirit of Jehovah. They were zealots 
 for Jehovah, and doubtless did much to fire patriotism in 
 the Philistine crisis, as they did in the long Syrian wars. 
 In the ninth century there were organised societies of such 
 devotees, living together under a superior, besides many 
 who do not appear to have been inmates of these establish- 
 ments. Ahab, on the eve of his fatal campaign against 
 Ramoth in Gilead, is said to have got together four hundred 
 of them, who with one voice predicted the success of the 
 expedition; only one, Micaiah ben Imlah, truly foresaw the 
 event, and declared that the others were inspired by a lying 
 spirit sent from Jehovah to lure the king to his doom. In 
 the stories of Elisha we find him in close association with 
 the organised prophetic societies, while Elijah stands apart 
 from them in solitary grandeur, and Micaiah dares to con- 
 tradict the unanimous herd — precursors in this of the 
 prophets of the opposition in following centuries whom we 
 call from the event the true prophets. 
 
 The wars of liberation waged with the Philistines, the 
 establishment of the kingdom, the subjugation of the Ca- 
 naanite cities, the conquest of neighbouring peoples, with the 
 exaltation of the national consciousness which accompanied 
 these struggles and successes, were revivals of the religion 
 of Israel. In peace men might own their dependence on 
 the gods of the soil, but in war Jehovah alone was their 
 reliance, nor did they trust him in vain. With the union 
 of the tribes in the nation his worship became the national 
 religion. Solomon built a temple in his capital, and installed 
 in it the ancient chest ("ark") of Jehovah, which, according 
 to tradition, had accompanied the tribes in their migrations 
 from the Mount of God, and after its recovery from the 
 Philistines had fallen into the hands of Judah. Jerusalem 
 had no historical association with the worship of Jehovah, 
 
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ISRAEL 11 
 
 but the king's temple became as such a national sanctuary. 
 When the short-lived union of Israel and Judah under the 
 same king came to an end, the kings of Israel built national 
 temples at Bethel and at Dan, and later in their capitals. 
 At the royal temples, where public sacrifices were offered 
 daily and the festivals were celebrated with much pomp, 
 a more elaborate liturgy was developed; priests of various 
 ranks and offices were multiplied, rich vestments were worn, 
 bands of musicians and singers adorned the service by their 
 art — all after the fashion of their neighbours. On great 
 occasions the kings themselves offered sacrifice in these 
 temples; the priests who ministered in them were appointed 
 by the kings and removed by them at will. Temples did not, 
 however, supplant the old high places in every city and 
 village, nor eclipse the fame of such ancient pilgrim shrines 
 as Beersheba and Gilgal. 
 
 Jeroboam is said to have set up in his new temples at 
 Bethel and Dan gilded images of Jehovah in the form of a 
 bull, and thus introduced idolatry into the public cultus. 
 Hosea speaks of the "calf" ii. e., the bull idol) of Samaria, 
 and it is not unlikely that other sanctuaries had similar 
 images. Hezekiah removed from the temple in Jerusalem 
 a copper serpent, believed to have been made by Moses, to 
 which down to his time incense was burned. Idols were, 
 however, not a regular, or perhaps a frequent, part of the 
 furniture of a sanctuary. As among the Phoenicians, the 
 old sacred stones and other aniconic seats of the deity — in 
 Jerusalem the ark— satisfied the need of the visible presence 
 of the god. The multitude of idols of which Hosea and 
 Isaiah speak were household images, probably of protecting 
 demons, or of functional divinities such as the goddess of 
 maternity represented in many clay figurines from Pales- 
 tinian excavations, rather than of the national god. Do- 
 mestic idols are mentioned repeatedly in legend and history, 
 as well as by the prophets, under the name "teraphim," but 
 little is known of them beyond the fact that they were not, 
 like the "graven images and molten images," picked up in 
 
12 JUDAISM 
 
 Canaan, but were in use among Israelites before the in- 
 vasion, as well as among their Aramaean kinsmen. The 
 earliest denunciations of idolatry are directed against the 
 "graven images and molten images" of the Canaanites, but 
 the bull images of Jehovah in the northern kingdom were 
 doubtless from the first condemned by conservatives as a 
 heathenish innovation. The story of the "golden calf" 
 at Horeb, conceived from the point of view of the eighth- 
 century prophets, expresses the abhorrence in which Jehovah 
 held this cult. 
 
 / 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 JUDAISM 
 THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Elijah— Jehovah or Baal— The Eighth Century— The New Prophecy: 
 Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Hosea— The End of the Kingdom of Israel- 
 Foreign Religions in Judah— The Reforms of Josiah— Deuteron- 
 omy— Fall of Judah— False Prophets and True— Predictions of 
 Restoration — Jeremiah and Ezekiel — Individualism in Religion — 
 Ezekiel's Idea of Holiness — Monotheism — National and Universal 
 Religion — The Persian Conquests — The History of Jewish Institu- 
 tions — Myths: the Deluge, the Lost Paradise, Cosmogony — Cultus: 
 Temple, Priests, Sacrifices — Purifications and Expiations — The Day 
 of Atonement — Conflicts over Intermarriage — The Samaritans and 
 their Temple — Theodicy in the Book of Job — Gnomic Poetry. 
 
 The northern kingdom was not only the stronger and 
 richer, but was in closer contact with civilised neighbours, 
 the Phoenicians and the Syrians; great lines of trade and 
 travel passed through its territory, while Judah lay to one 
 side. It is not strange, therefore, that Israel was in all 
 things the more progressive of the two states. Its popula- 
 tion contained a much larger alien element — Canaanite and 
 Aramaean— which was more easily absorbed than assimilated, 
 and it was in disposition as well as in situation more open 
 to foreign influences in culture and religion. It was inevi- 
 table that these tendencies should be opposed by social and 
 religious conservatism. 
 
 A crisis came in the reign of Ahab. The king was mar- 
 ried to a Phoenician princess, and built in his residence, 
 Samaria, a temple for her god, the Baal of Tyre, as Solomon 
 is said to have built a temple of the Phoenician Astarte for 
 one of his foreign wives. Some of the prophets of Jehovah 
 protested — probably not in words alone — and were punished 
 for their presumption; altars of Jehovah, which had perhaps 
 been the scene of popular demonstrations, were thrown 
 
 13 
 
14 JUDAISM 
 
 down by the order of the incensed queen. A three years' 
 drought and famine was interpreted as a manifestation of 
 Jehovah's jealousy. Elijah appears as the head of the 
 zealots, declaring that Jehovah tolerates no rival, no com- 
 promise; he will be sole Lord in his own land. The prophet 
 challenges the priests of Baal to an ordeal on Mount Car- 
 mel, in which they lose and are massacred by the people; 
 but the instigator of the deed is constrained to flee from 
 the vengeful wrath of Jezebel to Horeb, the ancient Mount 
 of God in the far-off south. It was not the first assertion 
 of the jealousy of Jehovah, but the issue had never before 
 been so dramatically joined: "If Jehovah be God, follow 
 him; but if Baal, then follow him !" 
 
 For the sins of Ahab and Jezebel Elijah pronounced the 
 doom of the dynasty; his successor, Elisha, saw that the 
 prediction was fulfilled by inciting a conspiracy among the 
 officers of the army. Jehu extirpated the house of Omri and 
 purged the land of the foreign religion by slaughtering the 
 priests of Baal with the worshipping congregation, and turn- 
 ing the temple into a public latrine. 
 
 The first half of the eighth century was a time of great 
 prosperity in both kingdoms. Under Jeroboam II in Israel 
 and Uzziah in Judah successful wars and commercial enter- 
 prises enriched the upper classes; they built great houses 
 and enlarged their landed estates, and lived in luxury. The 
 poor, under the same conditions, grew poorer. Bad years 
 threw the small peasant proprietors into debt, and, ruined 
 by usurious interest, they had to cede their ancestral acres 
 to the great landlords, sinking into dependence and often 
 into slavery. The rich and powerful are charged not only 
 with using their right ruthlessly, but with oppression and 
 the perversion of justice. Meanwhile religion was in a 
 flourishing state. The prosperity of the country was proof 
 that the national God was well-pleased with his people, and 
 those whom he had so signally favoured did not grudge him 
 a share of their gains; the sacrifices were more lavish, the 
 ritual more splendid than ever. 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 15 
 
 There were some, however, who did not take so compla- 
 cent a view of the times, upright and God-fearing men, who 
 were moved to indignation by the wrongs of the oppressed 
 and the decadence of morals, and believed that God must 
 be as indignant as they were at such doings. This was the 
 beginning of a new chapter in prophecy. The judicial mur- 
 der of Naboth had prompted Elijah to predict the ruin of 
 the house of Omri; the prophets of the eighth century foretell 
 the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah for the sins of 
 their people. Looking backward, the historian sees Assyria, 
 which had been stayed for half a century, about to begin 
 again its triumphant westward progress, before which the 
 petty kingdoms of western Syria must succumb. To the 
 prophets the Assyrian is the rod of God's anger for the de- 
 struction of the guilty nations. 
 
 Prophecy is one of the most remarkable phenomena in 
 the religion of Israel. Among some peoples, as in Egypt 
 and India, the priesthood was most influential in the 
 progress of religious thought; in Greece it was the poets and 
 philosophers; in Israel the prophets. A succession of men 
 of widely diverse genius, station, and circumstance, through 
 a period of two centuries or more, transformed a national 
 religion not externally different from that of their neighbours 
 into a unique ethical monotheism. Some of these prophets 
 committed their oracles to writing, the words of others were 
 collected and preserved by their disciples, and thus a new 
 and distinctive kind of literature arose. 
 
 The first prophet of this new type whose utterances are 
 preserved in the Old Testament is Amos, and he, as if con- 
 scious of the difference, disclaims the very name of prophet. 
 He is a plain herdsman, who, as he tended his flocks in the 
 wilderness of Judah, heard the call of God to announce the 
 coming judgment. In the astonished ears of the throng of 
 worshippers gathered at the royal sanctuary in Bethel on 
 some high festival he declared that a great catastrophe was 
 about to befall Israel. The Assyrian armies will overrun 
 the land from one end to the other; its defences will fall 
 
16 JUDAISM 
 
 before them, its palaces will be sacked, its temples dese- 
 crated. The city that set a thousand men in the field will 
 see but a hundred return; the death-wail will resound in 
 every street and lane, in every field and vineyard. The 
 pitiful remnant of the people will be carried captive to the 
 distant east. The prophet chants a dirge over the dead 
 nation: 
 
 "The virgin of Israel is fallen, she shall never rise again; 
 She lies prostrate upon her land, there is none to raise her up." 
 
 The cause of this irrevocable doom is the violence and 
 oppression, the fraud and corruption, that may be seen on 
 every hand. The rich and the great use their power and 
 wealth to rob their neighbours under the forms of law or 
 in cynical defiance of law. The poor are their defenceless 
 prey, whom they sell into slavery for a debt as small as the 
 price of a pair of shoes. 
 
 Their religion is abhorrent to Amos' soul. Men think 
 by hecatombs to buy the favour of God and bribe him to 
 condone the outrages which they perpetrate upon their 
 fellow men ! What God requires is not worship, but jus- 
 tice, uprightness, and kindness. "I hate, I spurn your 
 feasts; I take no pleasure in your great assemblies. Yea, if 
 you offer me your burnt offerings and oblations, I will not 
 accept them, and your sacrifices of fat cattle I will not look 
 at. Away from me with the uproar of your hymns, and the 
 music of your lyres let me not hear. But let justice flow like 
 water, and right like an unfailing stream." 
 
 The will of God for righteousness, as Amos understands 
 it, is written in the intelligence and conscience of all right- 
 thinking men. He calls the very Philistines to see with 
 horror and indignation the wrongs which are done in Israel. 
 And since there is for all men but one natural and universal 
 standard of right, Jehovah avenges transgressions of it not 
 only in Israel but among other nations. The book of Amos 
 begins with a series of oracles proclaiming the doom of sev- 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 17 
 
 eral neighbouring peoples by name, and the ground of the 
 judgment is in each case their ruthless trampling on the 
 rights of man — the atrocities of war, the enslaving of the 
 conquered, the violation of the tomb. The moral concep- 
 tion of God's character is the first step in the path which 
 led the Jews to monotheism. 
 
 When fifteen or twenty years later Isaiah appeared as a 
 prophet in Jerusalem it was with the same message and in 
 the same tone. He condemns social conditions in Judah 
 as sweepingly and scathingly as Amos in Israel, and as un- 
 qualifiedly predicts the approaching ruin of the kingdom. 
 The worship in the temple in Jerusalem is as odious to God 
 as that which Amos denounced at Bethel. 
 
 What do I care for your many sacrifices, says Jehovah. I am sated 
 with burnt offerings of rams and the fat of stall-fed beasts; the blood of 
 bulls and lambs and he-goats I have no pleasure in. . . . Your new- 
 moons and your annual feasts my soul hates; they have become a bur- 
 den to me that I am weary of bearing. When you spread out your 
 hands I will shut my eyes not to see you; yea, when you multiply 
 prayers I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood ! Wash you, 
 make you clean, take your evil doings out of my sight; leave off doing 
 evil, learn to do well; strive after justice, punish the oppressor, do jus- 
 tice to the orphan, defend the cause of the widow. 
 
 We have here a fundamental doctrine of prophecy: the 
 will of God is wholly moral. Worship for its own sake he 
 cares nothing about, but he cares everything for justice,- 
 fairness, and goodness among men. The nation in which 
 these do not prevail he will destroy. Hecatombs and pane- 
 gyrics cannot bring him to wink at wrong and oppression; 
 nor will he be softened by distressful prayers in the day of 
 calamity. Nothing will avail .but a thorough amendment 
 of the relations of individuals and social classes. 1 
 
 With this Isaiah joins a thought of God which had not 
 previously been uttered with the same intensity and itera- 
 
 1 See Amos 5, 21-24- Isaiah 1, 10-17; Micah 6, 6-8; Jer. 7 (especially 
 verses 21-23). 
 
18 JUDAISM 
 
 tion — God's immeasurable might and his lofty majesty. 
 Everything on earth that lifts itself on high before him 
 shall be abased; the towering mountains and the impreg- 
 nable fortresses, the arrogance of men in their pride of 
 power — all shall be laid low in the dust. The vain self- 
 exaltation of the creature is an affront to the majesty of 
 God. The greatness of God must fill man with the con- 
 sciousness of his own littleness, his power with the sense of 
 impotence. But while it dissipates vain self-confidence and 
 reliance on the arm of flesh, it is the ground of a surer confi- 
 dence. God rules among the nations, he makes them and 
 breaks them; they execute his will while they think they are 
 doing their own. Faith in him is the only stronghold: "If 
 you will not have faith, surely you shall not be established." 
 These, also, are ideas which enter into the Jewish concep- 
 tion of God and the substance of the Jewish religion. 
 
 Isaiah was a prominent figure in Jerusalem for forty years 
 or more, and gave counsel — not always accepted — to kings. 
 He witnessed the fulfilment of his own predictions as well as 
 those of Amos and Hosea in the fall of the kingdom of Israel 
 in 721, and saw Judah twenty years later brought to the 
 verge of ruin by Sennacherib. His contemporary, Micah, a 
 native of a town on the edge of the Judsean lowland, de- 
 nounces with the utmost vehemence the wrongs which the 
 country suffered at the hands of the unscrupulous pluto- 
 crats of the capital, and predicts that Jerusalem shall be 
 ploughed as a field, and the temple be like a lonely chapel in 
 the thick of the forest. 
 
 The fourth of the great prophets of the eighth century, 
 Hosea, was, unlike those whom we have hitherto considered, 
 a native of the northern kingdom. He began to prophesy 
 in the latter years of Jeroboam II, and in the disorders and 
 anarchy which followed Jeroboam's death he saw the begin- 
 ning of that precipitous decline which within a generation 
 brought Israel to its end. Since there is no allusion in the 
 book to the invasion by Tiglath-Pileser in 734, it is probable 
 that the prophet died before that date. Hosea paints his 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 19 
 
 time in the darkest colours: all classes of the community are 
 alike corrupt — king, nobles, priests, prophets, and people. 
 The cause of this universal moral corruption he finds in 
 religious defection. In Canaan Israel had adopted the 
 religion of Canaan, with all its Baals and its idolatrous and 
 licentious worship. He compares this apostasy from the 
 pure religion of Jehovah to the unfaithfulness of a wife who 
 leaves the husband of her youth to run after other loves. 
 The sin of Israel is, therefore, worse than a transgression of 
 God's righteous will, it is a wrong against his love. By its 
 very nature it makes the continuance of the union impossi- 
 ble; Jehovah will drive Israel out of his house (the land of 
 Canaan). But God's love is not extinguished even by 
 Israel's unfaithfulness. He will, as it were, lead Israel back 
 into the wilderness again, away from all her Canaanitish 
 seducers, that there, alone with him, she may return to the 
 love of her espousals in that golden age of Moses. Then, 
 restored to the favour of God, Israel shall enter upon a bet- 
 ter and lasting future. 1 
 
 In Amos the dominant idea of God is his inexorable 
 righteousness; in Hosea it is his inextinguishable love. All 
 that Amos' God demands of men is justice and fairness and 
 goodness to their fellows — a purely ethical definition of religa 
 ion. The moral demands of religion in Hosea are not a 
 whit less stringent, but he finds the source and spring of all 
 morality in love to God. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself" is the 
 formulation of Hosea's idea of true religion. 
 
 The predictions of the fall of the kingdom of Israel which 
 the contemporaries of Amos and Hosea received with in- 
 credulity were soon and signally fulfilled. In 734 Tiglath- 
 Pileser conquered the country, annexed Galilee and Gilead 
 to his new province of Damascus, and set a king of his own 
 choice on the throne in Samaria to rule over the remnant 
 of the kingdom. Ten years later a revolt brought the Assyr- 
 ian armies again upon the field. In 721 Samaria fell before 
 1 See Hosea 2, 16 ff. 
 
20 JUDAISM 
 
 Sargon, and the kingdom of Israel came to an end. Despite 
 this warning, Judah vainly attempted to shake off the Assyr- 
 ian yoke after the death of Sargon. Sennacherib devas- 
 tated the country, made over a large part of its territory 
 to his loyal vassals on the seaboard plain, carried away, 
 according to his own account, two hundred thousand cap- 
 tives, shut up Hezekiah in Jerusalem '" like a bird in a cage," 
 and reduced the city to the last extremity. At this junc- 
 ture he was constrained by an outbreak of pestilence in his 
 army to raise the siege and return to Assyria, and Judah 
 thus gained a respite of a century. Hezekiah's successor, 
 Manasseh, was wise enough to see that further resistance 
 to the great empire on the Tigris meant annihilation, and 
 during his long reign kept the peace and paid his tribute 
 punctually. 
 
 The disasters of the preceding half-century had shaken 
 the confidence of the peoples of Syria in themselves and in 
 their gods. Had any of the gods of the nations delivered 
 his land out of the power of the king of Assyria? The 
 breaking up of nationalities, with the dislocation and com- 
 mingling of peoples, had for one of its results a mixture of 
 religions such as on a larger scale followed the conquests of 
 Alexander. Foreign deities, new rites, strange and extrava- 
 gant expiations, were eagerly taken up. Judah did not 
 escape this tendency of the time. Altars were erected in 
 the courts of the temple and on the roof of the palace in 
 Jerusalem to the host of heaven; the horses and chariots of 
 the sun were stabled within the sacred precincts; offerings 
 were made to the moon and to the signs of the zodiac. The 
 worship of the queen of heaven (the planet Venus) was 
 especially cultivated by the masses. 
 
 Among the innovations of Manasseh was the sacrifice of 
 children, particularly the first-born, at a hearth, or fire-pit, 
 in the Valley of Hinnom, a little way below the temple. The 
 peculiar form of sacrifice is unquestionably foreign, probably 
 Phoenician, but the language of the prophets and of the 
 laws makes it plain that the victims were sacrificed by fire 
 
THE AGE OP THE PROPHETS 21 
 
 to Jehovah under the title "the king," 1 and that this was 
 held to be required by such old rules as "Thou shalt make 
 over to Jehovah everything that opens the womb," "The 
 first-born of thy sons shalt thou give unto me." The mo- 
 tive of the story of Abraham and Isaac is to show that the 
 faithful servant of Jehovah would obey without question 
 even the command to sacrifice an only son, but that God 
 has appointed a victim as a substitute. One of the few pro- 
 phetic utterances that may with probability be ascribed to 
 this period declares that God does not require human sacri- 
 fice: "With what offering shall I approach Jehovah, do 
 homage before the God on high? Shall I approach him 
 with burnt offerings of yearling calves? Does Jehovah de- 
 sire thousands of rams, myriad streams of oil ? Shall I give 
 my first-born for my transgression, my offspring for my own 
 sin ? He tells thee, O man ! What is good and what does 
 Jehovah demand of thee, but to deal justly, and love to do 
 good, and walk reverently with thy God?" 2 
 
 Through the brief reign of Manasseh's son, Amon, and 
 the minority of Josiah, who was but eight years old when 
 he succeeded to the throne, the religious situation was un- 
 changed. A few years after the accession of Josiah the 
 Scythians overran western Asia to the frontiers of Egypt. 
 The appearance of this plague upon the horizon gave occa- 
 sion to a fresh outburst of prophecy. Zephaniah and Jere- 
 miah pronounce the imminent, irrevocable doom of Judah. 
 The day of the Lord is at hand: "Neither their silver nor 
 their gold will avail to deliver them in the day of Jehovah's 
 fury. By the fire of his jealousy the whole land shall be 
 devoured; for he will make a full end, a dismayful end, of 
 all the inhabitants of the land." To the indictment which 
 the prophets of the eighth century brought against their 
 contemporaries, those of the seventh add the specific sins of 
 
 1 "Molech" is not the proper name of a foreign god, but a mispro- 
 nunciation of the epiclesis hcwnelek, "the king." See Encyclopaedia 
 Biblica, III, 3183 ff. 
 
 2Micah6, 6-8. 
 
22 JUDAISM 
 
 Manasseh's generation, the foreign religions and the child 
 sacrifices. The Scythian flood rolled back. Judah was not 
 overwhelmed, nor, so far as appears, even inundated by it; 
 but the terror those uncouth horsemen with their barbar- 
 ous speech and wild ways inspired was never forgotten; they 
 became in imagination the very type of the scourges of God, 
 and from Ezekiel on, in prophecy and apocalypse, the 
 hordes of Gog and Magog are the harbingers of the end of 
 the world. 
 
 In 621 B. C, in the course of some repairs in the temple, 
 a book was brought to light purporting to be the ancient 
 law of God. The reading of this book threw Josiah and his 
 counsellors into consternation, so different was its prescrip- 
 tion from their religion and that of their fathers as far back 
 as they knew. Convoking the elders of Judah and Jerusa- 
 lem in the temple, the king entered with them into a com- 
 pact to conform to the newly discovered law. Thereupon 
 he proceeded to destroy out of the temple every vestige of 
 alien cults and to desecrate the spot where children were 
 sacrificed to the divine king. The second part of the refor- 
 mation was far more radical. Josiah destroyed all the 
 sanctuaries of Jehovah himself in his realm, "from Geba 1 
 to Beersheba," pulling down the altars, smashing the stand- 
 ing stones, hewing in pieces the sacred posts, defiling the 
 sites, and carrying the priests off to Jerusalem, where they 
 were given their living from the revenues of the temple but 
 not permitted to officiate in sacrifice. Henceforth offerings 
 should be made and festivals kept only in Jerusalem. 
 
 The change he thus attempted to make in the religion 
 of his subjects was revolutionary. The whole religious life 
 of the people from time immemorial had centred around 
 these local altars. On great occasions men might make 
 pilgrimages to some more famous shrine or to Jerusalem 
 itself, but the obligatory offerings and the sacrifices which 
 were connected with every event in the life of the family or 
 community were brought to their own high places. Provi- 
 1 A little way north of Jerusalem. 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 23 
 
 sion was indeed made in the new law for celebrating the 
 annual festivals at Jerusalem; but, thus torn up and trans- 
 planted to a strange and perhaps distant sanctuary, they 
 necessarily lost their old character altogether. There is no 
 record of resistance to the king's edicts, but it is hardly 
 imaginable that they were carried through without opposi- 
 tion; the desecration of Jehovah's altars and the dishonour 
 done his priests must have been in the eyes of the common 
 man an appalling sacrilege and an act of outrageous tyranny. 1 
 The book which set all this going is in our hands in Deu- 
 teronomy. This book, though incorporating many older 
 laws, was composed in the seventh century, probably not 
 very long before its discovery in the temple, as the pro- 
 gramme of a reform such as it actually inspired. The relig- 
 ions and cults it combats are precisely those which flour- 
 ished under Manasseh and his successors, and are denounced 
 by Jeremiah and Ezekiel as the peculiar sins of the age. In 
 condemning the worship of foreign gods Deuteronomy fol- 
 lows in the footsteps of the prophets from Elijah on. Jeho- 
 vah will endure no rivals in his own land. The prohibition 
 of sacrifice to Jehovah himself anywhere but in Jerusalem, 
 on the contrary, was new. The worship at the high places 
 had, indeed, been attacked by earlier prophets; Hosea, espe- 
 cially, looked upon it as Canaanite heathenism, and in this 
 he was followed by Jeremiah. But in Deuteronomy there 
 is more than the objection to the character of the worship 
 and to its Canaanite origin. The reformers who framed the 
 laws against the high places felt an incongruity in the many 
 altars of the one God: "Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is 
 one Jehovah!" So long as there was a Jehovah of Beer- 
 sheba and a Jehovah of Hebron and a Jehovah of Jerusalem, 
 they were in the apprehension of the worshippers at these 
 shrines distinct. Thus, apart from all practical considera- 
 
 1 The attempt of Amenophis IV to make the worship of Aton the sole 
 religion of Egypt is a striking parallel. See Vol. I, pp. 181 f. The feel- 
 ing of the masses about Josiah's reforms and their consequences may be 
 seen in Jer. 44, 15 ff. 
 
24 JUDAISM 
 
 tions, the unity of the sanctuary seemed to be a corollary of 
 the unity of God. The moral standard of Deuteronomy is 
 very high. God demands not alone justice and fair-dealing, 
 but humanity and charity. The spirit of the book appears 
 most conspicuously in such Utopian legislation as the pro- 
 vision for a septennial cancellation of debts and the hu- 
 manitarian rules for the conduct of war. 
 
 Deuteronomy is an attempt to embody the ideals of the 
 prophets in principles and institutions by which the whole 
 religious, civil, and social life of the people should be gov- 
 erned. Even in form a large part of the book is prophetic, 
 precept and exhortation rather than statute. With the 
 additions of similar nature and spirit which were made to it 
 in the next generation, it represents more completely than 
 any other single book the outcome of the whole religious 
 development, down to the fall of the kingdom, and more 
 than any other book it influenced the subsequent develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Only a dozen years after Josiah reorganised religion in 
 his kingdom on the Deuteronomic model, he fell in battle 
 at Megiddo, and his short-lived reforms were borne to the 
 tomb with him. His defeat was the beginning of the end; 
 and as the catastrophe loomed nearer and more terrible, 
 the demoralisation became more general. The picture which 
 Jeremiah and Ezekiel draw of the political, social, and re- 
 ligious decadence is darker than ever. In desperation men 
 turned for refuge to foreign gods; idolatrous mysteries were 
 practised in secret in the chambers of the temple. 
 
 Two attempts to throw off the Babylonian yoke ended 
 disastrously. Nebuchadnezzar, who on the first occasion, 
 in 597, treated the conquered city leniently, after crushing 
 the second revolt, in 586, burned the temple and the palaces 
 and breached the fortifications. In the two deportations he 
 carried off to Babylonia the ruling classes, the higher priest- 
 hood, the well-to-do citizens, and the skilled artisans, follow- 
 ing the Assyrian policy of decapitating rebellious peoples. 
 Many others fled the land, some of them finding refuge in 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 25 
 
 Egypt. At every turn of events Jeremiah, and latterly 
 Ezekiel in his Babylonian exile, had foretold this outcome, 
 while the great body of the prophets had encouraged the 
 revolts, and up to the last moment proclaimed in the name 
 of the Lord that he would not suffer his holy city to be 
 taken and his temple desecrated by his foes. Their predic- 
 tions, falling in as they did with the wishes of their hearers, 
 found ready credence and applause, while Jeremiah was 
 thrust into a dungeon and put in peril of his life for his dis- 
 loyalty to his people and his blasphemy against God. The 
 event proved who was the true prophet, and gave divine 
 authentication to his words; and not to his only but to the 
 whole succession of ethical prophets, in distinction from 
 what we may call the national, or political, prophecy. A 
 new value thus attached to all their words, and their ora- 
 cles, which had been preserved in the small circle of their 
 disciples, were, we may well believe, sought out and studied 
 more than ever before. 
 
 In particular, predictions of a national restoration and a 
 future more glorious than the past, such as are found in 
 Hosea and in Isaiah, were highly prized. Jeremiah and 
 Ezekiel, also, foretold a restoration, though not in their 
 own time. The sins of generations were not to be expiated 
 in a day; but, above all, the prophetic teaching about the 
 character of God and his moral demands of men must sink 
 into the mind and conscience of the people; the restored 
 nation must be a righteous people whose God is the Lord. 
 Judgment itself, while it may constrain to amendment, has 
 no power to work an inner transformation; God himself 
 must be the author of such a change. He will purify the 
 people from all their uncleanness and idolatries: "A new 
 heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within 
 you; I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and 
 I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit 
 within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye 
 shall keep my ordinances, and do them" (Ezek. 36, 26/.). 
 When God makes a new covenant with his people: "I will 
 
26 JUDAISM 
 
 put my law in their inward parts, and in their hearts will I 
 write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my 
 people: and they shall teach no more every man his neigh- 
 bour and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord ! for 
 they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the 
 greatest of them, saith the Lord" (Jer. 31, 33 /.). The 
 character that is acceptable to God is itself the work of God. 
 In the dissolution of the nation and the dispersion of the 
 people in other countries, even the outward observances of 
 religion became less a matter of the custom of the com- 
 munity and more a matter of individual fidelity to the 
 religion of the fathers. Whether a man accepted the pro- 
 phetic conception of religion and gave it its consequence 
 in his own life could not be a matter of custom at all, but of 
 personal determination. Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in different 
 ways, give expression and impulse to the personal aspect of 
 religion. Jeremiah had stood alone against all the repre- 
 sentatives of the national religion — kings, priests, prophets, 
 and people — and in his own experience had learned that one 
 man in communion with God possesses the abiding reality 
 of religion, which would remain what it is though the nation 
 and all the institutions of religion should perish. The influ- 
 ence of Jeremiah is evident in many of the Psalms of relig- 
 ious experience, which make communion with God the one 
 all-sufficient good of the soul. Ezekiel emphasises the indi- 
 vidual element in religion from the side of the divine retri- 
 bution. The generation on which the judgment fell salved 
 their consciences with the proverb: "The fathers ate sour 
 grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." Not so ! 
 the prophet indignantly exclaims; God does not punish a 
 generation for the sins of its predecessors, nor a man for his 
 father's transgressions: "The man who sins shall die." 
 He develops this doctrine with a rigorous logic: The bad 
 son of a good father will not fare the better in God's judg- 
 ment for his father's virtues, nor the good son the worse 
 for his father's vices; every individual is judged by his own 
 character. The old notion of the solidarity of the nation 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 27 
 
 and the family are rejected as incompatible with the justice 
 of God. 
 
 Correspondingly, repentance, which in the older prophets 
 had been conceived as the return of the people to allegiance 
 and obedience, becomes individual. If a man who has been 
 guilty of the grossest sins against religion and morals turns 
 from his evil ways and does that which is lawful and right, 
 "he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his trans- 
 gressions that he hath committed shall be remembered 
 against him, by his righteousness that he hath done he shall 
 live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked ? saith 
 the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his 
 way and live?" 
 
 Ezekiel had the mind of a priest; sin presents itself to him 
 primarily as defilement, and the most heinous of sins is the 
 defilement of holy things, above all, the pollution of the 
 house of God and the profanation of his holy name. He 
 sees Jehovah, mounted on his cherub car, abandon his 
 temple and his land to escape from the midst of such 
 abominations. In the restoration, if Judah is to enjoy 
 the permanent favour of God, every precaution must be 
 taken to make the occurrence of such affronts to his holi- 
 ness impossible. This is the ruling idea in the plan for 
 the new city and temple and the project of a reformed 
 cultus which Ezekiel outlines in the last chapters of his book. 
 Solemn ceremonies at the beginning of each half-year are 
 prescribed for the purification — or, as it is expressed, the 
 expiation — of the temple by blood from the uncleanness by 
 which it may by inadvertence or error have been defiled. 
 The sacerdotal conception of holiness is throughout pushed 
 to its utmost consequence. A similar point of view is ex- 
 emplified in the collection of laws in Lev. 17-26, which, 
 from the recurrence of the motive, is often called the Law 
 of Holiness. Here, too, sin is defilement of the people and 
 the land, profanation of holy things or of the name of God. 
 The whole custom of Israel, of which its morals are a part, 
 is subsumed under the ritual category of holiness. The 
 
28 JUDAISM 
 
 motive for shunning all defilement from beasts and vermin 
 is: "Make yourselves holy, therefore, and be holy; for I am 
 holy," precisely the same motive that is urged for the ob- 
 servance of the fine compend of moral precepts in Lev. 19. 
 
 Earlier prophets and reformers, as we have seen, con- 
 tended against the worship of the Canaanite Baals and of 
 foreign gods from near and far: Jehovah was a jealous god, 
 and demanded of Israel an exclusive devotion. But what- 
 ever kind or degree of superiority they attributed to their 
 own god, they did not question that the gods of the nations 
 were the real and powerful deities their worshippers believed 
 them to be. The leaders of thought now went a long step 
 beyond this, to the assertion that Jehovah was the only 
 God. Additions to the book of Deuteronomy made in the 
 sixth century put this doctrine into the mouth of Moses: 
 "Jehovah is God in heaven above and upon the earth be- 
 neath; there is no other"; "Jehovah is God; there is none 
 beside him" (Deut. 4, 39; c$. 35). It was, however, the 
 unknown author of Isaiah 40 ff. — the theologian among 
 the prophets, as he has not inaptly been called — who made 
 monotheism the fundamental dogma of Judaism: "Thus 
 saith Jehovah, the king of Israel, and its deliverer, Jehovah 
 of Hosts, I am first, and I am last, and besides me there is 
 no god" (Isaiah 44, 6; cf. 43, 10/.; 45, 21). He created 
 and he sustains all things; 1 he alone foreknows what he has 
 foreordained. This doctrine of God is for the prophet the 
 corner-stone of faith. The maker and ruler of the universe 
 is the saviour of his people, whose promise of restoration is 
 now about to be fulfilled. Nothing is beyond his power, 
 nothing present or future is beyond his knowledge, nothing 
 can thwart his purpose of salvation. 
 
 The coincidence between the fall of Judah, which was in 
 the eyes of all the world the defeat of its god, and the rise 
 of a militant monotheism, averring that Jehovah is the 
 only god, is not such a paradox as to a superficial observa- 
 
 1 Creation was attributed to Jehovah much earlier (e. g. in Gen. 2) ; but 
 creation does not necessarily imply monotheism. 
 
THE AGE OP THE PROPHETS 29 
 
 tion It might seem. Long before the catastrophe Jeremiah 
 had foretold the event: for the incorrigible sins of the nation 
 Jehovah would visit them with fire and sword; the temple 
 in which they vainly confided should be desecrated and 
 destroyed. The Babylonians were the executioners of Jeho- 
 vah's judgment. Nebuchadnezzar was his servant. Not in 
 the might of his arms or his gods did the Babylonian king 
 gain the victory, but by the mandate of Israel's God, who 
 gave over the city and people into his hands. It was Jeho- 
 vah, not Bel, who triumphed in the fall of Judah. Therein 
 lay the hope of the future. If the Babylonians, like the 
 Assyrians before them, were only the rod in Jehovah's hand 
 to chastise a guilty people, he could break the rod when it 
 had served its purpose — he would break it when it exalted 
 itself against him ! He who set empires in motion for judg- 
 ment could use them as well for deliverance. The restora- 
 tion predicted by the same prophets whose foretelling of 
 doom had been so signally verified was believable only if 
 all the forces of history were controlled by one will, directed 
 by one purpose. 
 
 Jewish monotheism is not the outcome of attempts to 
 discover an ultimate principle or a supreme power in the 
 physical universe, nor of metaphysical speculations on the 
 nature of being, but results from the conception of history 
 as a moral order. The prophets of the eighth century, 
 when they declared that the national god punishes the 
 wrong-doing of Israel by the hand of other peoples, were 
 concerned with the application of the doctrine, not with its 
 implications; yet Amos, the first of them, proclaims the like 
 judgment of Jehovah on the neighbouring nations for the like 
 offending. Their successors, with a wider outlook, saw in 
 the great overturnings of their time — the Scythian terror, 
 the ruin of Assyria, the rise and fall of Babylon, the entrance 
 of Media and Persia on the stage of history — the same law 
 at work. Finally the principle is thought through to its 
 monotheistic consequence. The character of Jewish mono- 
 theism is determined by its genesis: it is an ethical theism. 
 
30 JUDAISM 
 
 Even more distinctive is its teleological character; it finds 
 in the history of the world not merely the judgment of the 
 world, but the working out through judgment of the divine 
 will for a good world which is the end of all God's ways 
 with man. 
 
 This monotheistic development had taken place in a 
 national religion; the God of Israel had become sole God. 
 A monotheistic national religion is, however, a contradic- 
 tion in terms, as thinkers were not long in discovering. If 
 there is but one God, how is it that the Jews alone know 
 and worship him, or, rather, how can it be that he has 
 made himself known to this little people only ? The answer 
 suggested in one of the additions to Deuteronomy, that 
 Jehovah portioned out the heavenly bodies to the several 
 nations of the earth to worship, reserving Israel for himself 
 (Deut. 4, 19), was inadmissible, for it made him the author 
 of heathenism. A more satisfactory solution was found 
 by the author of Isaiah 42, 1 ff. ; 49, 1 ff. Jehovah chose 
 Israel and revealed himself to it, to the end that Israel 
 should be the prophet of the true religion to enlighten the 
 Gentiles, that God's salvation may reach to the ends of the 
 earth. Thus the particularism of the national religion is 
 reconciled with the universality which is inherent in the 
 idea of monotheism. The ground is here laid, also, for the 
 Jewish propaganda of subsequent centuries, and its peculiar 
 character is determined. 
 
 Opposition to idolatry, public or domestic, as a foreign 
 invention, and particularly as borrowed from the religion 
 of the Canaanites, is very old; from this point of view it is 
 condemned by the earlier prophets and prohibited in the 
 oldest collections of laws. The monotheistic thinkers of 
 the sixth century reject it on the higher ground that it is 
 inconsistent with a true and worthy conception of the 
 nature of God to represent him in the likeness of man or 
 beast, or to recognise his visible form in sun, moon, or star 
 (Deut. 4, 15-19). The folly of idolatry is exposed with 
 trenchant sarcasm by the author of Isaiah 40 ff. From the 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 31 
 
 contemplation of the majesty of the God who "measured 
 the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven 
 with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a 
 measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the 
 hills in a balance," to whom all the nations are as noth- 
 ing, and vanity, he takes us into an idol maker's shop and 
 shows him making a god, outlining the figure with red chalk 
 on a block of wood, carving with sculptor's tools the like- 
 ness of a man, perhaps overlaying it with silver or gold, 
 fastening it in place with nails, or securing it with silver 
 chains. With pieces of the wood he cooks his dinner and 
 warms his hands, "and of the residue thereof he maketh a 
 god ! ... he falleth down unto it and worshippeth, and 
 prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my 
 god!" These utterances found many imitators in later 
 centuries; satire on idolatry is a genre of literature in which 
 the Jews developed a notable virtuosity, and their talent 
 for it was not the least of the causes of the universal dislike 
 entertained for them in a world in which it was good man- 
 ners to treat your neighbour's religion with outward respect. 
 In the sudden rise of Persia to ascendancy over Media 
 and the dazzling victories by which Cyrus wiped out the 
 kingdom of Lydia and subdued Asia Minor to the shores of 
 the iEgsean, the Jews saw a presage of deliverance. Baby- 
 lon's turn would come next ! They exulted over its impend- 
 ing, irretrievable ruin. Jehovah is mustering the host for 
 battle; it is he who stirs up the implacable Medes against 
 Babylon, "and Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty 
 of the Chaldean's pride, shall be as when God overthrew 
 Sodom and Gomorrah." x These vindictive expectations 
 were not realised; but in 538 the Babylonian Empire fell. 
 "Jehovah hath broken the staff of the wicked, the sceptre 
 of the rulers, that smote the peoples in wrath with a con- 
 tinual stroke, that ruled the nations in anger, with a perse- 
 cution that none restrained." 2 It was in accordance with 
 Cyrus' general policy towards the subject peoples that the 
 1 See Isaiah 13-14. 2 Isaiah 14, 5/. 
 
32 JUDAISM 
 
 Jews should be free to return to Palestine if they chose, and 
 to rebuild the temple; but it is certain that, though indi- 
 viduals came and went, there was no migration in mass 
 such as the Chronicler describes in Ezra 2, and a national 
 restoration entered as little into the plans of the Persians as 
 of the Babylonians. The conquest of Egypt in 525 only 
 enclosed Judsea more firmly in the iron ring of Persian 
 dominion. 
 
 The usurpation of the pretender Smerdis, the death of 
 Cambyses, and the rebellions which broke out at once in all 
 quarters, not only among the conquered nations but in the 
 Iranian homeland, and brought the empire to the verge of 
 dissolution, revived the hope of independence in the heart 
 of the Jews also. In Jerusalem the prophets Haggai and 
 Zechariah urged their countrymen on to the rebuilding of 
 the temple by predictions that God was even now overturn- 
 ing the kingdoms of the nations; they hailed in Zerubbabel, 
 a descendant of the old royal house, the future king of 
 Judah, and even, in symbolic act, set the crown upon his 
 head. The golden age was at hand ! Again expectation 
 was disappointed; Darius Hystaspis put down the revolts 
 everywhere, and re-established the empire more firmly than 
 ever. 
 
 Of the history of the two centuries that follow little is 
 known. The Jews were now widely dispersed. From 
 Babylonia, where they were both numerous and prosperous, 
 they spread into Persia, Media, and more remote eastern 
 and northern provinces. In the disasters of the first dec- 
 ades of the sixth century many of the inhabitants of Judaea 
 had sought refuge in Egypt from the armies of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar or migrated thither from the devastated land after 
 the fall of Jerusalem. Some of them, doubtless, returned 
 to Palestine when the acute distress was over, others re- 
 mained. They were found not only in the cities of Lower 
 Egypt, but far up the Nile; the presence of a Jewish military 
 colony at Elephantine in the fifth century is established by 
 recently discovered documents, and the colonists affirm that 
 
THE AGE OF THE PEOPHETS 33 
 
 their fathers were settled there before the Persian conquest. 
 Doubtless the cities of Syria also had Jewish denizens in 
 larger or smaller numbers, and the trade routes by land and 
 sea led more adventurous members of the race to the em- 
 poriums of Asia Minor and the Greek Islands. In all the 
 lands of their dispersion the Jews looked on Jerusalem as the 
 abode of the national God, the religious capital of the race. 
 
 The most important literary work of the first half of the 
 Persian period was a history of the origins of the Jewish 
 religious institutions, written with the purpose of showing 
 their antiquity. Thus, the Sabbath was ordained at the 
 creation and hallowed by God's own "example; the prohibi- 
 tion of blood was given to Noah at the same time with the 
 permission to eat animal food; circumcision was the seal of 
 the covenant with Abraham; sacrifices were instituted by 
 Moses at Sinai, and so on. It is characteristic of this work 
 that it does not prescribe, in the form of rule, how a thing 
 shall be done, but describes, as precedent and pattern, how 
 it was done in the first instance. Thus the detailed account 
 of the sacrifices at the dedication of the tabernacle consti- 
 tutes an epitome of the sacrificial ritual. The religious 
 standpoint of the writer is an elevated monotheism; anthro- 
 pomorphisms are avoided, with everything that might seem 
 unworthy of deity. This history of the sacred institutions 
 was presently combined with the older histories, and in the 
 convenient framework it furnished, the ritual and ceremonial 
 laws were inserted; in this way the Pentateuch took shape. 
 It was not, however, for a long time a finished book; novellw 
 continued to be added to the laws, some actual, some the 
 product of legal theorising; additions to the narrative also 
 were made. This growth apparently did not altogether 
 cease until the Greek time; but before it ceased the develop- 
 ment of unwritten tradition had become relatively more 
 important. 
 
 The first section (Gen. 1-11) of the great composite 
 work, which beginning with the creation carries the his- 
 tory to the fall of the kingdom of Judah in 586 B. C. (Gen- 
 
34 JUDAISM 
 
 2 Kings), comprises almost all that is connectedly pre- 
 served of Hebrew mythology: the creation of the world; 
 the lost paradise and the origin of suffering and death; the 
 great flood and the dispersion of nations. Some of these 
 myths received their literary form in the classical period of 
 Hebrew literature, probably in the ninth century B. C, 
 others as late as the Persian time. In the process of string- 
 ing them together into a continuous narrative, especially 
 where two versions of the same story were combined in one, 
 some changes were necessarily made, but in general the 
 compilers and editors show much skill in effecting their end 
 with the least possible violence to their sources. 
 
 Some of the myths are Palestinian; others are of foreign 
 origin, but adapted to a Palestinian environment and to 
 Jewish religious conceptions; while of others, still, it remains 
 doubtful in which of these classes they should be included. 
 The type of the second class is the deluge, the original of 
 which is the Babylonian myth of the great flood, now form- 
 ing an episode in the poem of Gilgamesh. 1 In Gen. 7-9 
 two variant forms of this story are combined, one taken 
 from an early pre-exilic source, the other from the history 
 of the sacred institutions, probably of the fifth century. 
 The agreement with the Babylonian myth is so pervasive 
 and minute as to suggest literary dependence; the discrep- 
 ancies between the two versions may in part go back to 
 variant Babylonian originals. But while the whole story is 
 borrowed, it is, by comparatively slight yet highly signifi- 
 cant changes, brought into harmony with the religion of 
 Israel. In place of the Babylonian hero, the deified Xisou- 
 thros, a Palestinian figure is chosen, Noah, the ancestor of 
 three races, who at the beginning of the Israelite kingdom 
 disputed with one another the possession of the land, rep- 
 resented by the names Shem (Israelites), Ham (Canaanites), 
 and Japhet (Philistines?). In the sequel of the flood the 
 three sons of Noah, as sole survivors, become the progenitors 
 of the races of mankind. 2 
 
 i See Vol. I, pp. 216 /. * See Gen. 10. 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 35 
 
 The most characteristic of the Hebrew myths is that of 
 the lost paradise. When the world was still without vege- 
 tation because there was no rain, God modelled a man of 
 earth and breathed life into him. For man's abode he 
 planted a garden in Eden ("Delight"), somewhere in the 
 east, in which, among all goodly trees, grew the tree of life, 
 whose fruit would make one who ate it live for ever. In 
 compassion on the man's solitary state God created all 
 kinds of beasts and birds, and let the man give them their 
 names; but no fit mate for him was found among them. So 
 God made a woman out of one of the man's ribs, as the 
 proverb says, "my very bone and flesh." There was one 
 tree of which God forbade them to eat on pain of death, 
 the "tree of knowing good and evil." The serpent, the 
 most astute of the creatures, persuaded the woman that 
 God had deceived them about this tree: its fruit, far from 
 being deadly, would give them godlike knowledge. They 
 ate, and the first-fruit of their dear-bought wisdom was the 
 shame of nakedness, to conceal which they made them 
 aprons of leaves. To the sense of shame fear was added 
 when they heard God walking in the garden in the cool of 
 the day, and they hid themselves among the trees. Brought 
 to account, the man blamed the woman and the woman 
 blamed the serpent. On all three God pronounced sen- 
 tence: man shall henceforth wring his living from a reluc- 
 tant earth in the sweat of his brow; woman shall bear chil- 
 dren in anguish and peril and be subjected to her husband 
 by desire; the serpent shall crawl on its belly and eat dust. 
 Forthwith, lest they should snatch immortality by robbing 
 the tree of life, the hapless pair were driven out of the gar- 
 den, and the way of return barred by a guardian demon 
 brandishing a flaming sword. 
 
 In this story, as in extended mythical narrations gener- 
 ally, motives of diverse origin appear to be combined. 
 Eden, for example, may have been, as in Ezekiel, the gar- 
 den of the gods, like the garden of the Hesperides in Greek 
 mythology with its dragon-guarded golden apples in the 
 
36 JUDAISM 
 
 far west; the account of creation may be taken from an 
 independent cosmogony; the description of the site of the 
 garden at the source of the four rivers seems to be a later 
 insertion. But from whatever source the setting may be 
 derived, the myth is concerned, not with cosmogony or 
 the abode of the gods, but with man and his lot on earth. 
 The question how man came to be subject to death, which 
 has always seemed an unnatural thing, or how he failed to 
 attain immortality, is the subject of many myths, of which 
 the Babylonian story of Adapa, who through a misunder- 
 standing did not taste the food of the gods that was offered 
 him, may serve as an example. 1 With this is joined in 
 the Hebrew myth the question why man must earn his 
 living by grievous toil and woman must suffer the pangs 
 of childbirth — two evils which do not appear to belong to 
 the nature of things, or, from a higher point of view, to the 
 plan of God in creation. We do not do full justice to the 
 answer when we read it, " Man toils and suffers and dies be- 
 cause he disobeyed the commandment of God." The na- 
 ture of the disobedience reveals an unexpected subtlety. 
 The forbidden fruit was the knowledge of good and evil, the 
 knowledge that distinguishes man from the beasts and 
 makes him like the gods. With fine insight, too, the author 
 unfolds the psychological consequences of dawning knowl- 
 edge, and hints at stages of civilisation marked by the 
 naked savage, the girdle of leaves, and the coats of skins. 
 
 To the setting and the incidental motives of this story 
 analogies more or less close can be found in plenty, but to 
 the myth as a whole or to its characteristic features no 
 parallel is known, 2 and there is no intrinsic reason for attrib- 
 uting it to a foreign origin. The conception of God and 
 
 1 See Vol. I, p. 218. 
 
 2 A seal in which two fully clothed figures are seated on opposite sideg 
 of a tree, while behind one of them is what appears to be a snake erect 
 on its tail, has been interpreted in the light of Gen. 3 as a Babylonian 
 picture of the temptation, and, solely on the strength of this dubious 
 circular interpretation, it has been affirmed that the Hebrew myth was 
 borrowed from the Babylonians. 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 37 
 
 the religious attitude in general are similar to those of the 
 oldest stratum of Israelite legends (e. g., Gen. 18), with 
 which the style of the narrative also connects it. 
 
 The story of Adam and Eve is followed by those of Cain 
 and Abel (Gen. 4, 1-15) and of Cain and his posterity 
 (4, 16-24). The latter has been recognised as a fragment 
 of Kenite legend, while the former is a Judsean setiological 
 myth, accounting by the not unfamiliar motive of the curse 
 of kindred blood for the reversion of their Kenite neighbours 
 from agriculture to the nomadic life and for the peculiar 
 tribal mark they wore. Neither of these has any connec- 
 tion with the expulsion from paradise, to which they are 
 joined only by a genealogical link. Other fragments of old 
 Hebrew mythology are the descent of the giant races from 
 the commerce of gods with women — a hint which Jewish 
 demonology made the most of — and the confusion of tongues 
 and dispersion of peoples as a consequence of the heaven- 
 storming ambitions of the builders of Babylon, with its 
 lofty temple tower. That Babylon was the scene of the 
 linguistic disaster is proved by the pun, Babel-babble, 
 which is, it must be confessed, rather neater in English 
 than in Hebrew. 
 
 The cosmogony (Gen. 1, 1-2, 4) forms the beginning of 
 the post-exilic history of the sacred institutions. The scheme 
 of six days' work in which the series of creative fiats is set 
 does not belong to the original, which more naturally falls 
 into eight or nine acts. The motive of the six-day scheme 
 is transparent — it gives the Sabbath the sanction of God's 
 own observance. In the beginning all was a waste of waters 
 enveloped in darkness. God first created light and divided 
 day from night; then he made the solid vault between the 
 waters of the celestial ocean and the lower waters; he gath- 
 ered the seas and let the land emerge; he caused the land 
 to produce the various forms of vegetation; he made the 
 heavenly bodies, the birds of the air, and the land animals, 
 wild and tame; last of all he created man, male and female, 
 in the image and likeness of God, to rule over all the crea- 
 
38 JUDAISM 
 
 tures in earth and sea and sky, with commission to multi- 
 ply and fill the earth and subdue it. As in other pictures of 
 a vegetarian golden age, fruit and grains are the only food 
 of man and beast. The order of creation is a natural prog- 
 ress; the one peculiar feature is the place occupied by the 
 heavenly bodies, which, as moving and therefore living 
 creatures, appear at the head of the animal kingdom in- 
 stead of immediately after the establishment of the firma- 
 ment. In this transposition a polemic motive may plausi- 
 bly be conjectured, a stroke aimed at the sun, moon, and 
 star worship of the heathen. As compared with the frank 
 anthropomorphism of the Garden of Eden, theological re- 
 flection is apparent throughout. In the place of a god who 
 plants trees and moulds man of earth, or refreshes himself 
 by a turn in the garden in the cool of the evening, is a god 
 who speaks, and it is done; he commands, and it stands forth. 
 
 The opinion has obtained considerable currency that in 
 this story of creation a Babylonian myth has been appro- 
 priated and recast to accommodate it to Jewish religious 
 and theological conceptions, as was done by two hands at 
 different times with the story of the flood. Thus far, how- 
 ever, no corresponding Babylonian cosmogony has been 
 recovered. In the poem on the combat of Marduk and 
 Tiamat the chapters which probably related Marduk's 
 creation of plants and animals are so badly mutilated that 
 a reconstruction is as yet impossible. 1 In the other remains 
 of Babylonian cosmogonies the coincidences with Gen. 1 
 are the mere commonplaces of creation myths, and do not 
 suffice to establish any connection between the two. 2 
 
 In the prophets and in poetry there are numerous allu- 
 sions to other myths, among which a victory of Jehovah 
 over a dragon, or sea-monster (Rahab), occurs with especial 
 frequency. The conflict was perhaps originally cosmo- 
 gonic, a counterpart of the battle of Marduk with the 
 chaos-monster Tiamat and her helpers (see Job 9, 13) ; but 
 if so, this association has receded completely into the back- 
 
 1 See Vol. I, pp. 209-213. 2 Cf. Vol. I, pp. 382 /. 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 39 
 
 ground. In some passages the reference is to the cleaving 
 of the Red Sea (Isaiah 51, 9/.; Psalm 74, 12-14; cf. Rahab 
 as an allegorical name for Egypt) ; in Isaiah 27, 1 the de- 
 struction of the dragon and Rahab is still to come, at the 
 beginning of the last times. 
 
 The forms of the Jewish cultus, while exhibiting some 
 peculiar features, did not in the main differ very widely 
 from those of other Syrian religions. The temple housed 
 no image or other material representation of the deity; the 
 sacred chest which in earlier times stood in the holy of 
 holies had disappeared even before the destruction of the 
 temple by Nebuchadnezzar. In later times the cella was 
 a dark and empty room which no one but the high priest 
 might enter, and he but once a year, on the Day of Atone- 
 ment. In the hall in front of the cella stood the table of 
 the god, on which loaves of bread and flagons of wine 1 were 
 kept from week's end to week's end; a candelabrum sup- 
 porting lamps kept always burning; and a stationary bra- 
 zier, or altar, for incense. The last is not included in the 
 oldest inventory, which provides only censers carried by 
 the priests. In the court before the temple was the great 
 altar for sacrifices, and around the court were rooms for 
 various uses of the temple service — magazines, stables, 
 kitchens, and the like. 
 
 At the head of the priesthood was a chief priest, whose 
 importance was much greater than that of his predecessors 
 in the days of the Judsean monarchy, because there was no 
 king over him. The local governor, when a native, had 
 only co-ordinate authority; and when, as commonly, a for- 
 eigner filled the office, the high priest was not only the 
 religious head of his people but in many ways their political 
 representative before the Persian administration. Like 
 other Syrian high priests, he customarily wore the purple 
 and the tiara of a ruler instead of sacerdotal vestments. 2 
 
 1 The present text prescribes the flagons but omits the wine. 
 
 2 The high priest assumed the sacerdotal functions of the king, and 
 with them the royal apparel. 
 
40 J ULIAlOiVl 
 
 The common priests were numerous; there were among 
 them several families, without, so far as appears, a corre- 
 sponding differentiation of function. The inferior minis- 
 try of the temple was performed by levites, who, according 
 to Ezekiel, were descendants of the old priests of the high 
 places; there were also musicians and singers, guards, door- 
 keepers, and menial servants. The relations of these classes 
 evidently changed in many ways in the course of the cen- 
 turies; fortunately it is not necessary for our purpose to 
 reconstruct this obscure history. 
 
 The public sacrifices, which in older times had been main- 
 tained by the king, were now supported chiefly by the peo- 
 ple through an annual tax of a third or a half shekel per 
 capita on the adult males. They consisted of a daily holo- 
 caust of a Iamb, morning and evening, with a portion of 
 flour mixed with oil and a libation of wine. On Sabbaths 
 and new moons, on the civil new year, and at the three 
 annual festivals, the number of victims was multiplied. 
 Private offerings were either prescribed or voluntary, and 
 were of various species which need not be more particularly 
 described here. 1 The victims were neat cattle, sheep, or 
 goats; turtle-doves or pigeons were in some cases permissi- 
 ble substitutes for the quadrupeds, an innovation made 
 necessary by the growth of urban population. The priests 
 dashed the blood against the altar, and burned the fat with 
 the appropriate oblation of meal or cakes; for this service 
 they took their toll in certain portions of the victims. 
 
 As in earlier times, the knowledge of the multifarious 
 rules of clean and unclean, and of the necessary purifica- 
 tions and expiations, was one of the chief functions of the 
 priesthood. Doubtless under their hands the old rules 
 were casuistically developed in particulars and brought 
 under general formulas; but at the bottom this whole side 
 of religion is a survival from a remote antiquity. Death is 
 of all things the most dangerous defilement, and at the 
 same time highly contagious. The dwelling in which a 
 1 See Encyclopaedia Biblica, "Sacrifice." 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 41 
 
 death has occurred, and all that is in it, and every person 
 who enters it are unclean for seven days, as is also every 
 one who touches a corpse or a grave. If a man who has 
 been exposed to such infection comes into the sanctuary 
 unpurified he pollutes the holy place and exposes himself 
 to be cut off by the outraged holiness of God. A peculiarly 
 potent disinfectant is demanded; it is not, as among the 
 Persians, cow's urine, 1 but water in which the ashes of a 
 red cow have been stirred. To obtain a store of the purify- 
 ing ashes a cow was burned whole, with certain woods and 
 herbs; all who assisted in the performance were rendered 
 unclean. With this liquid the habitation with its furniture 
 and utensils, and persons who had been in the house, or who 
 had touched the body, a bone, or a grave, were sprinkled on 
 the third day and again on the seventh; only after this 
 second disinfection might they associate with their fellow 
 men or take part in the worship of God. 
 
 Sexual functions, normal or abnormal, are unclean; child- 
 birth requires isolation for seven days and exclusion from 
 the sanctuary and from all contact with holy things for the 
 rest of forty days, if the child be a boy; for double these 
 periods in the case of a girl. At the end of this term a 
 yearling lamb is prescribed as a holocaust, with a dove or 
 pigeon as a sin offering; with this the priest "shall make 
 expiation for the mother, and she shall be clean." Various 
 diseases, also, are unclean, especially the whole class of skin 
 diseases included under the comprehensive name "leprosy." 
 The discrimination between innocent eruptions or inflamma- 
 tions and the leprosy was a difficult matter, and rules for 
 the guidance of the priests in their diagnosis were early 
 formulated. The leper was banished from the abodes of 
 men; he must go about with his garments rent, his hair 
 dishevelled, covering his lips, and warning men of his dan- 
 gerous presence by crying, "Unclean! Unclean!" In case 
 of recovery peculiar ceremonies of purification were de- 
 manded. A bird was killed over an earthen vessel contain- 
 1 Vol. I, p. 392. 
 
42 JUDAISM 
 
 ing fresh water, in such a manner that its blood mingled 
 with the water; the priest dipped cedar wood, wool dyed 
 crimson, and hyssop, together with a living bird, into the 
 vessel, sprinkled the bloody water upon the leper, and let 
 the living bird fly away, carrying off the contagion. In the 
 ritual as it now stands in Lev. 14 other sacrifices are com- 
 bined with this primitive discharge of the disease, and the 
 restored leper is anointed with blood and oil in a way rem- 
 iniscent of the consecration of priests. 
 
 Many kinds of animals, birds, and fishes are forbidden 
 as food. They are unclean, and whoever touches the carcass 
 of one of them contracts uncleanness; vessels, food, water, 
 are defiled by contact with them. Similar restrictions 
 exist abundantly in other religions, savage as well as civi- 
 lised. A comparison of the Jewish rules with those in the 
 Hindoo law books, and with the Zoroastrian Vendidad is 
 peculiarly instructive; there is the same underlying system 
 of ideas, with many striking agreements in particulars. 
 The comparison shows also that the Jews were not burdened 
 beyond other peoples with such interdictions and disinfec- 
 tions. 
 
 The priestly laws are largely concerned with rites of puri- 
 fication, by which men or things which have contracted un- 
 cleanness in the religious sense, and are thereby rendered 
 polluting to men and abominable to God, may be restored 
 to normal social and religious status. These rites origi- 
 nated in a time when no clear distinction was made between 
 "uncleanness" (infringement of a taboo), disease, and moral 
 wrong. As has been said of the Greeks, "evil of all kinds 
 was a physical infection that could be caught and trans- 
 planted." In the Jewish laws all these fall under the com- 
 prehensive name "sin," which is at bottom a ritual, not a 
 moral conception. Sin attaches physically to inanimate 
 objects, such as the stones of a new altar; it is removed by 
 physical means. The sin offering, in the technical use of 
 the term, is not an offering for sin, but for inadvertent 
 transgression of certain ceremonial prohibitions, or is de- 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 43 
 
 manded after childbirth, leprosy, the completion of a Naz- 
 arite vow, and the like, none of which involve sin, as we 
 understand the word. The result of the inclusion of the 
 moral in the sphere of the religious is that the physical 
 means efficacious in removing uncleanness are employed to 
 purify a man from moral defilement or to protect him 
 against the consequences of his wrong-doing. 
 
 Most of the expiations have a specified and limited appli- 
 cation, but there was one great annual piaculum for the 
 whole people, the Day of Atonement. In the ritual for this 
 day two elements may be distinguished. The high priest 
 first offers "sin offerings" to make expiation for himself and 
 his house and for the people; with the blood of these victims 
 he enters the adytum of the temple and sprinkles the blood 
 there, " to make expiation for the holy place, because of the 
 uncleanness of the children of Israel and because of their 
 transgressions, even all their sins." In the same manner 
 the temple and the altar are expiated. The second and 
 characteristic feature of the ceremony follows. The high 
 priest lays his hands on the head of a goat, and confesses 
 over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all 
 their transgressions; the sins of the people in the year past 
 having thus been laid upon its head, the scapegoat, bear- 
 ing all their iniquities, is led away into an uninhabited region 
 and there let go. In later times, at least, to make sure that 
 the goat with his burden of sin did not wander back to the 
 abodes of men, he was pushed over a precipice. The man 
 who led him into the wilderness was unclean for the rest of 
 the day. Such methods of ridding the community of evils 
 by loading them upon man or beast and driving the bearer 
 out or putting him to death are found among many peoples; 
 it is sufficient here to refer to the pharmakai at the Attic 
 Thargelia. 1 In the ritual in Leviticus lots are cast over two 
 goats; the one on which the lot "Jehovah's" falls is sacri- 
 ficed as a sin offering; the other, designated by lot as "Aza- 
 zel's," is sent away. The common opinion is that Azazel 
 1 Compare also Vol. I, pp. 105-107. 
 
44 JUDAISM 
 
 is the name of a demon of the desert, but the Septuagint 
 translators seem to have understood the word favourably, 
 as designating a being who does away evil (airoirofV7raio<}). 
 There can be little doubt that the name, which is of the 
 ordinary pattern for angels and demons, is a relatively late 
 element in the ritual. 
 
 The ritual and ceremonial laws were revised and expanded 
 in the Persian period; it is sometimes possible to recognise 
 successive stages in this process, and to distinguish with 
 some confidence between development in practice and para- 
 graphs that represent sacerdotal theories or desiderata. In 
 its main features, however, the priestly law embodies the 
 ancient custom of Israel from the days of the kingdom or 
 still more remote times. The observance of the rules of 
 clean and unclean, for example, must always have been an 
 important part of religion; infringement of them incurred 
 the mysterious dangers of the violated taboo. Similarly, 
 neglect to render to God the first-fruits and tithes or the 
 firstlings of the flock must always have been regarded as a 
 fraud on God, and likely to provoke retaliation. In this 
 respect there is no reason to think that the attitude of the 
 Jews in the fifth century differed from that of their fathers 
 in the seventh or the tenth. 
 
 If these things acquired an enhanced importance in the 
 eyes of the religiously minded part of the people, it was for 
 other reasons than the intrinsic valuation of the observances 
 themselves. In older times they had been the customary 
 law of the national religion, the demands of Jehovah as 
 defined in the tradition and decisions cf his priests. Now, 
 following the track of Deuteronomy and the Book of Origins, 
 they were set forth as a body of religious statutes delivered 
 by God to Moses for all time to come. They were, more- 
 over, from the point of view of monotheism, not the insti- 
 tutions of a national religion, but of the one true religion, 
 which was in idea and destiny universal. And, finally, the 
 welfare of the people and the fulfilment of all its hopes of 
 a future were dependent on its being a holy people in the 
 
THE AGE OP THE PROPHETS 45 
 
 sense and spirit of Ezekiel and the Law of Holiness, which 
 included not only religious fidelity and moral integrity, but 
 ritual purity. 
 
 It would be a mistake to imagine, however, that this in- 
 creased importance of the law in principle, or the elabora- 
 tion of ritual and rule, choked ethical and spiritual religion. 
 The literature of these centuries— the Psalms, Job, Prov- 
 erbs — prove, on the contrary, that the influence of the 
 prophetic teaching had never before been so wide-spread 
 or so deep as in this period. Nor does it appear that either 
 priests or people were excessively scrupulous in legal obser- 
 vances; the picture of the conditions in Jerusalem drawn by 
 the author of Malachi, or in the memoirs of Nehemiah, are 
 of quite the contrary implication. 
 
 One of the commonest and loudest complaints of those 
 who had the burden of the purity of religion on their 
 hearts in this age was the intermarriage of Jews with their 
 neighbours, to whom the reformers applied indiscriminately 
 the old name, "people of the land," with the new connota- 
 tion, "heathen." In early laws (e. g., Exod. 34, 15/.; Deut. 
 7, 3) connubium with the populations of Canaan is for- 
 bidden on the ground that it inevitably led to contamina- 
 tion of religion. Intermarriage between different peoples, 
 or even different ranks or classes of the same people, was 
 unlawful in many ancient nations, as at Athens and Sparta; 
 and all peoples who have highly developed rules of clean 
 and unclean necessarily regard outsiders who do not ob- 
 serve the same rules as unclean, and contact with them as 
 defiling; the ancient Egyptians, the Zoroastrians, modern 
 Hindoos, and Shiite Moslems, are pertinent examples. In 
 Jerusalem, especially among the upper classes, who had 
 most to gain by untrammelled intercourse with their neigh- 
 bours and by marriage alliances with them, laxity in these 
 matters was common; Nehemiah found even a son of the 
 high-priestly house married to a daughter of Sanballat, the 
 governor of Samaria. The reformers of the fifth century 
 were particularly zealous against these mixed marriages, 
 
46 JUDAISM 
 
 but it is doubtful whether their efforts had at the time 
 any large result. 
 
 Another point about which they were much concerned 
 was the observance of the Sabbath. In old times the weekly 
 Sabbath was the least of the holy days. As one of the dis- 
 tinctive observances which was not dependent on the tem- 
 ple and the sacrificial liturgy but could be kept anywhere, 
 the Sabbath gained increased importance in the dispersion; 
 abstention from labour on the seventh day was the con- 
 spicuous mark of a godly Jew, a silent profession of his 
 faith. In Judea this reason for an enhanced reverence for 
 the day did not exist, but even by older standards the 
 observance was very lax. According to Neh. 13, 15 ff., 
 labour in the fields and vineyards was not suspended, and 
 in the city the Sabbath had become a market-day. 
 
 In the Psalms which with reasonable probability may be 
 ascribed to the Persian period as well as in those of the 
 succeeding centuries, a note of discord and strife is often 
 struck. The poets voice the sentiments of those who 
 called themselves the pious (hasidim), or the righteous, the 
 upright — in their own estimate the truly religious part of 
 the people. They contrast themselves, not without satis- 
 faction, with the wicked, the proud, who act as though 
 there were no God, and perpetrate all manner of wrongs 
 on their fellow men. The wicked mocked the godly and 
 their scruples, plotted against them, persecuted them. 
 They were, consequently, enemies of God and his saints, and 
 the pious hated them with a zealous hatred and exulted in 
 the prospect of their speedy destruction. Even more vio- 
 lent are the denunciations in Isaiah 59; 57, 3-13; 65, 1-7; 
 66, 3, 17, 1 which charge them with undisguised heathenism, 
 revivals of ancient cults, and importation of foreign mys- 
 teries (cf. Ezek. 8). There is no warrant for supposing, as 
 many do, that these drastic utterances were aimed specifi- 
 cally at the Samaritans; they sound more as if the prophet 
 
 1 These utterances are now generally attributed to a Judsean prophet 
 and to the period under consideration. 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 47 
 
 had witnessed such abominations in his own neighbourhood; 
 but it must be admitted that the occasion which called 
 them forth is unknown. 
 
 The mention of the Samaritans brings us to another diffi- 
 cult question. According to Josephus, the temple on 
 Mount Gerizim was erected by Sanballat, the governor of 
 Samaria, for his son-in-law, Manasseh, a renegade brother 
 of the Jewish high priest Jaddua. These events occurred 
 under the last Persian king and at the beginning of Alex- 
 ander's rule in Syria. It is commonly assumed that Neh. 
 13, 28 refers to the same circumstance, and that Josephus 
 has erroneously introduced the story just a hundred years 
 too late. This combination is, however, very dubious, and 
 the intrinsic probability is on the side of the later date. 
 
 Whether it occurred in the fifth century or in the fourth, 
 the building of the temple on Gerizim was the occasion of 
 bitter animosity between the partisans of the two sanctu- 
 aries. It is a mistake to think that the Jews in the Persian 
 and Greek time looked upon Jerusalem as the only place 
 where acceptable sacrifice could be offered to God. The 
 Deuteronomic Law could reasonably be interpreted as apply- 
 ing to Palestine only, and was, in fact, so understood. The 
 Jewish military colony at Elephantine had a stately tem- 
 ple, erected, according to their own testimony, before the 
 Persian conquest; a regular priesthood ministered in it, and 
 sacrifices of all kinds were offered on its altar. When this 
 temple had been destroyed by a Persian local official at the 
 instigation of the Egyptian priests, the colonists appealed 
 to the high priest of Jerusalem, the Persian governor there, 
 and the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria, to use their 
 influence at the satrap's court to get them permission, to 
 rebuild. In the time of Antiochus IV the Jews in Lower 
 Egypt built a temple at Leontopolis, which stood till 72 
 A. D., two years after the fall of Jerusalem; its chief priest- 
 hood was of the old line of Jerusalem, and the legitimacy of 
 sacrifices there is acknowledged in a qualified way by the 
 rabbinical authorities of following centuries. In the account 
 
48 JUDAISM 
 
 of its foundation we learn incidentally that the Egyptian 
 Jews in Ptolemaic times had many other temples; nor is 
 there any reason to imagine that this was peculiar to Egypt. 
 
 Shechem, with its sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, was an 
 old Israelite holy place, and worship had probably been 
 offered there through all the centuries. But now for the 
 first time it entered into open rivalry with Jerusalem; its 
 temple was of the same pattern; its ritual doubtless con- 
 formed to the Jerusalem use; its high priest was of unim- 
 peachable legitimacy; in all probability he brought along 
 with him the Mosaic Law, the Pentateuch. If exclusive 
 claims were made for Jerusalem, a stronger case could be 
 made out for Gerizim. The law of the sole sanctuary in 
 Deut. 12 requires that the Israelites should bring their 
 sacrifices " to the place which Jehovah, your God, shall choose 
 out of all your tribes to put his name there." What place 
 was meant might be learned from Deut. 11, 29 /.; 27, 
 12/.; Josh. 8, 30 jf. — it was Gerizim. Jerusalem is not so 
 much as named in the Law; it had been a Canaanite city till 
 David's time. How embarrassing this argument was is 
 shown by the Jewish alterations of the text in all three of 
 the passages cited. It was not, therefore, the mere existence 
 of the temple at Shechem by the side of the temple in 
 Jerusalem, but the pretensions of Gerizim to be the sole 
 legitimate temple, which made the Jews hate the Samaritans 
 so implacably. 1 
 
 The greatest literary monument of the Persian or earlier 
 Greek time is the Book of Job, a dramatic poem on the- 
 odicy. The older vague belief that God favours the good 
 and visits his displeasure on the bad had hardened into a 
 doctrine of individual retribution, according to which God 
 in his justice requites to each good or evil exactly according 
 to desert. Experience contradicts this simple formula; the 
 good are not always prosperous and the bad do not always 
 come to grief. Job is a man of exemplary piety and virtue, 
 who in a moment is stripped of his possessions and his chil- 
 1 See John 4, 20. 
 
THE AGE OF THE PROPHETS 49 
 
 dren and smitten with a dire disease; but he does not mur- 
 mur or rebel— "shall we receive good at the hand of God 
 and shall we not receive evil?" His three friends come to 
 comfort him after their fashion. They represent the ortho- 
 dox view: such unheard-of inflictions must be the penalty 
 of great sin, the greater because hidden. They express 
 this conviction at first in insinuating phrases, but when they 
 cannot bring Job to own that he has deserved his lot, they 
 speak out with the frankness his obstinate self-righteousness 
 seems to warrant. Job will not belie his good conscience: 
 "God forbid! I will not own that you are right! Till I 
 die, I will not repudiate my integrity; I will hold fast my 
 uprightness, and not let it go; all my life my conscience 
 does not reproach me." He swears it by the God who has 
 taken his right from him and embittered his soul. What 
 his miserable comforters call the justice of God is tyrannous 
 injustice. Suddenly God, whom Job has alternately be- 
 sought and challenged to appear, answers out of the whirl- 
 wind, not to defend his government of the world or the 
 justice of his dealings with Job, but to overawe the bold 
 mortal who would presume to fathom the ways of the 
 Almighty; and Job is constrained to acknowledge his error 
 in talking of things beyond his understanding. In the 
 epilogue God justifies Job's words and censures those of the 
 friends. 
 
 The poet had no ready-made solution of the problem of 
 theodicy; but he refutes the cruel dogma that all suffering 
 is the proportioned penalty of sin. God's dealings with 
 men may be an inscrutable mystery; they need not be a 
 monstrous injustice unless we insist on regarding them as 
 consistently retributive. 
 
 In the fifth century fall also the beginnings of gnomic 
 poetry, which has its highest development in the succeed- 
 ing period. The aphorisms on the conduct of life which 
 we find in the Proverbs and in Ecclesiasticus are chiefly the 
 words of the "sages," a class of moralists, in part, at least, 
 professional teachers of youth— the Jewish sophists, we 
 
50 JUDAISM 
 
 might call them, if Plato had not given the word a bad 
 sound. The wisdom which they eulogise as the best thing 
 in the world is not philosophical theory, but the practical 
 maxims by which a sagacious man orders his life. They 
 appeal to prudential motives rather than to the highest 
 ethical principles; but they consistently affirm that morality 
 is the condition of success and happiness, and that religion 
 ("reverence for God") is the foundation of even worldly 
 wisdom. The counsels of the sages are wholesome, even if 
 homely. Warnings against the fascinations of strange 
 women, the serpent that lurks in the wine-cup, indolence, 
 hasty anger, gossip and slander, are common themes. In 
 Sirach we get a vivid picture of the life of the cities stirring 
 with the ferment of Greek civilisation. There is hardly any- 
 thing specifically Jewish in the moral precepts, nor do the 
 sages give themselves the least concern about ritual and 
 ceremonial; religion is with them not a matter of obser- 
 vances but a serious and reverent temper of mind towards 
 life and the moral order of the world. From reflections on 
 the excellency of wisdom in man some of these thinkers were 
 led to meditate on the wisdom of God, possessed by him 
 before the world, the first of his works, his sportive associate 
 in the creation (Prov. 8; cf. Job 28; Ecclus. 24; Wisd. 7). 
 Hellenistic Jewish philosophy, especially Philo, developed 
 these suggestive hints in its own way, making Wisdom an 
 intermediary between its ultramundane God and the world; 
 in Palestinian theology Wisdom is commonly identified with 
 the Law, i. e., with revealed religion (Deut. 4, 6; Ecclus. 24). 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 JUDAISM 
 
 SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 
 
 Alexander and his Successors — The Asmonseans — Rise of the Pharisees 
 — Doctrine of Retribution after Death, Resurrection, Immortality 
 — Essenes and Other Sects — Philo — The Synagogue — Popular Lit- 
 erature and Apocalypses — Wars with Rome — The Stronghold of 
 Judaism, the Law — Judaism as Revealed Religion — The Idea of 
 God — Angels and Demons — The Golden Age and the Last Judg- 
 ment — The Talmud. 
 
 The battle of Issos in 333 had made Alexander the mas- 
 ter of all western Syria. In the division of his empire 
 Palestine, after some vicissitudes, became part of the king- 
 dom of the Ptolemies in Egypt, and remained in their pos- 
 session, though not uncontested, until 198 B. C, when it 
 passed into the hands of the Seleucid kings. With the 
 conquests of Alexander began a new and wider dispersion 
 of the Jews; as soldiers, traders, and adventurers they were 
 to be found in all the new centres of politics and commerce 
 which sprang up everywhere in the East. In these cities, 
 where Greek was not only the language of administration 
 but the common language of intercourse among their poly- 
 glot inhabitants, the Jews in the course of a generation or 
 two exchanged their Aramaic vernacular for the new cos- 
 mopolitan speech. In Alexandria, where they formed from 
 the beginning a considerable part of the population, they 
 found it necessary early in the third century to provide 
 themselves with a Greek version of their sacred Law. In 
 Judea itself the upper classes made haste to acquire at 
 least a veneer of Hellenistic culture, and the unfavourable 
 influences of Hellenism are more apparent there than in the 
 dispersion itself. Particularly under the Seleucids, who in 
 
 51 
 
52 JUDAISM 
 
 their perennial financial embarrassment sold the office to 
 the highest bidder, the high priests strove to commend 
 themselves still further to their lords by an ostentatious 
 zeal for Greek manners and customs. One of them pur- 
 chased the privilege of establishing a gymnasium just below 
 the temple, and the young priests hurried through the ser- 
 vices to resort thither. The Greek hats in the streets and 
 the naked contests in the gymnasium were an equal scandal 
 to the godly. 
 
 During one of the campaigns of Antiochus IV in Egypt 
 the high priest Jason, whom he had deposed, took Jerusa- 
 lem by a coup de main, driving out the king's latest creature, 
 Menelaus. The adventure gave the king a not unwelcome 
 pretext for confiscating the public and private treasures in 
 the temple. As this did not put an end to agitation he, in 
 December, 168, erected an altar to Jupiter on the great 
 altar in the temple, and shortly after issued a sweeping 
 edict against the Jewish religion, whose observances he for- 
 bade under extreme penalties. 
 
 The result was a revolt headed by Judas Maccabseus, 
 who, favoured by the inefficiency of the Syrian commanders 
 and by Antiochus' absence in the East, succeeded after 
 three years in recovering possession of the temple and 
 restoring it to the worship of the national God, though the 
 castle in Jerusalem with a strong garrison remained in the 
 hands of the Syrians for twenty years longer. The religious 
 persecution ceased, but the struggle continued. The Asmo- 
 nseans, 1 encouraged by the weakness and disorders of the 
 kingdom, now aimed at nothing less than the independence 
 of Judah under their own rule, and this end, after many 
 turns of fortune, they achieved. Not content with this, 
 they waged aggressive war against their neighbours on all 
 sides, and for a brief time the territory over which they 
 reigned almost equalled in extent the kingdom of Solomon. 
 Later rulers of this house allied themselves with the old 
 aristocracy and with the neighbouring dynasties, and their 
 1 The family of Judas and his brothers. 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 53 
 
 character and conduct were not more pleasing to their pious 
 countrymen than those of the high priests they had super- 
 seded. Family dissensions, artfully fomented by the Idu- 
 maean Antipater, Herod's father, opened the way for Roman 
 intervention, and in 63 B. C. Pompey made an end of what 
 was left of the Jewish kingdom after eighty years of inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 The Maccabsean revolt was supported at the beginning by 
 the earnestly religious part of the people, who called them- 
 selves the pious; persecuted for the exercise of their relig- 
 ion, they took up arms against the persecutors. When 
 the persecution was at an end, the worship in the temple 
 restored, and a high priest of the legitimate line — though 
 personally an odious creature — installed by the king, they 
 had no further motive for continuing hostilities; and the 
 more distinctly the Maccabsean struggle assumed a political 
 form, the more completely they drew away from it. Out of 
 this unorganised class, or party, of the godly the Pharisees 
 arose, whose name is first heard in the time of Jonathan 
 (161-143 B. C). They called themselves by preference "as- 
 sociates," and formed societies, pledging themselves by mu- 
 tual agreement to a strict observance of the laws, in partic- 
 ular those concerning ceremonial purity and the religious 
 taxes, which were often neglected even by otherwise well- 
 meaning people. The actual members of these societies were 
 probably never very numerous; they included, however, 
 many scholars ("scribes"), and by their teaching and ex- 
 ample and their repute for learning and piety they exerted 
 a great influence among the people. 
 
 The learning of the scribes was not only in the Scripture 
 but in the traditions, the unwritten Law, which was in part 
 based upon interpretation of Scripture and in part embodied 
 custom that had grown up by the side of the Scripture. 
 The Pharisees employed the principle of tradition not 
 merely in the interest of a strict interpretation and obser- 
 vance of the Law, but to adapt its prescriptions to changing 
 circumstances. It is erroneous to regard them as an ultra- 
 
54 JUDAISM 
 
 conservative or reactionary party. On the contrary, they 
 were less inclined to a hard-and-fast literalness than the 
 priesthood or the sects. With the great body of the people 
 behind them, they constrained the rulers and the priests 
 to accept their interpretation of the Law, and boldly opposed 
 the worldly and corrupt conduct and measures of the later 
 Asmonaeans. Under Alexander Jannseus the conflict cul- 
 minated in open hostilities, in which much blood was shed. 
 His successor, Queen Alexandra, made her peace with them 
 by reaffirming their abrogated ordinances; and from that 
 time forth their power was so firmly established that even 
 Herod avoided coming to an open rupture with them. 
 
 It is in this period that the belief in the retribution after 
 death, the immortality of the soul, and the final judgment 
 became current. In older times the Jews had the same 
 notions about the survival of the dead which are found 
 among all races. The tomb was in some way the habita- 
 tion of the departed, and the strenuous prohibition of the 
 offering of food to the dead in laws of the seventh century 
 bears testimony to the persistence of the belief. By the 
 side of this conception there appears in the same age the 
 idea of a common abode of the dead, a vast cavern beneath 
 the earth, where the shades of all men are gathered. The 
 most vivid descriptions of this dismal place are in Isaiah 14 
 and Ezek. 32, 18 ff. The resemblance of the Hebrew Sheol 
 to the Homeric Hades and the Babylonian Aralu is obvious, 
 and it is not impossible, though it is by no means certain, 
 that Babylonian imagery may have contributed to these 
 prophetic pictures. The international character of the 
 prophetic Sheol should not be overlooked. In it are found 
 the nations which are the enemies of the Jews, with their 
 rulers. 
 
 The lot of the shades is miserable, deprived of life and 
 the joy of living, inhabiting the tomb or the dark recesses 
 of the earth. To be sent to this gloomy realm before one's 
 time is the extreme penalty of offending God. But while 
 death, and particularly premature death, is thus retributive, 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 55 
 
 there was no notion of retribution after death, except, per- 
 haps, in so far as the unburied dead have a worse lot. In 
 the nether world itself there is no separation of good and 
 bad; nor have the great of the earth a prospect of brighter 
 fortune in the company of the gods, as they have in Egypt 
 or in the Elysium of the Greeks. These early notions re- 
 mained substantially unchanged until the last centuries 
 before the Christian era; the problem of theodicy in Job is 
 so acute because there is no possibility of justification or 
 compensation after death. 
 
 There is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout 
 again. . . . But man dies and wastes away; man gives up the 
 ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea and the 
 river runs dry, so man lies down and rises not again; till the heav- 
 ens are no more they will not awake nor be roused out of their sleep. 
 —Job 14, 7-12. 
 
 From the fifth century on the Jews were in increasingly 
 close contact with three peoples who had much more defi- 
 nite ideas about the hereafter, the Egyptians, the Persians, 
 and the Greeks. Egyptian influence is as little to be dis- 
 covered in Jewish eschatology as in other sides of religion. 
 The case is very different, however, with the Persians and 
 the Greeks. 
 
 Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Persian Empire, taught 
 a judgment of individuals at death, in which each man's 
 destiny was determined by his religion, and by his thoughts, 
 words, and deeds in this life; the souls of the good being 
 admitted to the abode of infinite light and the presence of 
 God, while the wicked were hurled down to hell. When 
 the present age of the world is at an end there will be a 
 day of judgment for all mankind; the bodies of the dead 
 will be raised in a general resurrection, and, reunited with 
 their souls, will stand at the bar of God in the great assize. 
 In the end all evil will be destroyed for ever, and the world 
 will be renewed for the habitation of the righteous. 1 
 1 See Vol. I, pp. 375, 398 #. 
 
56 JUDAISM 
 
 The expectation of a great crisis in history by which the 
 heathen kingdoms which oppressed the Jews should be 
 overthrown and the Jewish state restored in more than its 
 pristine power and glory had been a favourite theme of 
 Jewish thought for centuries, and in apocalyptic prophecies, 
 such as those in Isaiah 24-27, this crisis is depicted with the 
 imagery of a judgment of the world in which the powers of 
 heaven as well as the nations of the earth are involved, and 
 the restoration brings a new heaven and a new earth. The 
 doctrine which extended the sphere of divine retribution for 
 the individual over another life could not but appear, when 
 once the idea was conceived, as a necessary implication of 
 God's justice and a welcome solution of the cruel problems 
 which the incongruity between men's deserts and their 
 fortunes upon this earth created. In the Book of Daniel 
 the notion of a resurrection appears in limited and pecu- 
 liarly Jewish form. The righteous — specifically, perhaps, 
 the martyrs of righteousness in the Seleucid persecution — 
 who sleep in the dust shall rise from their graves to share 
 in the blessedness of the golden age on earth now about to 
 be ushered in, while the wicked rise to shame and contempt, 
 or, as the words may also be interpreted, are an object 
 of shame and contempt because they do not rise. 
 
 The premises of the Jewish eschatology are therefore in 
 the religion itself, but the development of these premises 
 into a definite and articulated scheme must be attributed in 
 the first instance to Persian influence. In fact, the Pales- 
 tinian eschatology, as we find it in writings from the second 
 century B. C. on, corresponds entirely to the contemporary 
 Persian doctrine, except that place has to be made in it for 
 the Jewish national hope, the golden age on earth. It was 
 the Pharisees and those who followed their leading who 
 took up with conviction and enthusiasm these new ideas. 
 Among other classes they found less ready acceptance. 
 Jesus, son of Sirach, who may be taken as a representative 
 of the sages, ignores them; the author of Ecclesiastes refuses 
 them. The aristocracy of the priesthood, with the con- 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 57 
 
 servatism of worldly high churchmen, also rejected them, 
 and their following, the Sadducees, did the same; they stood 
 by the Scripture in its plain meaning, and would none of 
 the ingenious exegesis by which the Pharisees introduced 
 the resurrection into the Law. 
 
 Zoroastrianism was not, however, the only side from 
 which new notions about the hereafter came to the Jews 
 in that age. The Orphic sects, from the sixth century B. C, 
 had familiarised the Greeks with the idea of heaven and 
 hell and of a judgment of the dead. Plato presented the 
 same ideas in more refined and moral form, and gave to the 
 belief in the immortality of the rational soul the sanction of 
 his lofty philosophy. The immortality of the soul and the 
 retribution which awaited it at death were, in fact, part of 
 the common belief both of the educated and of the un- 
 learned. 1 In Hellenistic surroundings, as in Alexandria,^for 
 example, Jews, even without a scholastic acquaintance with 
 Greek philosophy, naturally picked up these ideas, and 
 found them fit so admirably into the framework of their 
 thought that they seemed to spring naturally out of 
 their own religion. The author of the Wisdom of Solomon 
 is the eloquent apologist of immortality in the common 
 Platonic form, and it seems probable that he accepted 
 also the Platonic corollary, the pre-existence of the soul. 
 From the point of view of Greek dualism, to which the 
 body with its senses is the great hindrance to the realisation 
 of the soul's true destiny, the reincarceration of the soul in 
 its bodily prison-house was the worst thing that could 
 happen to a man after death. Plato, with the Orphics, so 
 thought of the re-embodiment of the soul by transmigration, 
 and those Jews who opened their minds fully to Greek influ- 
 ences for this reason rejected the notion of resurrection. 
 It is instructive to compare 2 Maccabees, in which the 
 resurrection is the sustaining hope of the martyrs, with 
 4 Maccabees, which uses the martyr stories taken from 
 2 Maccabees, but effaces every mention of resurrection, 
 i See Vol. I, pp. 443 #., 504/. 
 
58 JUDAISM 
 
 substituting for it the Greek notion of the immortality of 
 the soul. 
 
 It is customary to follow the example of Josephus and 
 speak of the Pharisees as a Jewish sect. The term is hardly 
 exact. They were the representatives of the Puritan ten- 
 dency, or movement, which through them became domi- 
 nant in Judaism; they were also the school of tradition, 
 devoted to the development and promotion of the unwritten 
 Law. There were, however, several bodies to which the 
 term sect may with greater propriety be applied, because 
 they separated themselves more or less completely from the 
 mass of their fellow countrymen in religious matters. Of 
 these the Essenes are, through descriptions in Josephus and 
 Philo, the best known. The accounts in these authors do 
 not agree in all particulars, and it is quite possible that the 
 Essene communities did not all follow the same rule. They 
 were a celibate order, living in monasteries, where they had 
 all things in common and supported themselves by labour 
 in the fields. Their life was regulated by a strict rule, the 
 object of which was to unite a superlative degree of cere- 
 monial cleanness with the undisturbed cultivation of a 
 reflective piety. For admission to the order a prolonged 
 novitiate was required, and when the candidates were finally 
 admitted they bound themselves by the most solemn vows 
 to observe the rules of the order and to keep its secrets. 
 They had books of their own, which they carefully guarded 
 from the knowledge of outsiders. Such an institution has, 
 so far as we know, no antecedents in Judaism, 1 and foreign 
 influences are probably to be recognised in some of their 
 peculiar rites and customs. But our knowledge is too in- 
 definite to enable us to say with assurance what these influ- 
 ences were. 2 
 
 Similar in some respects to the Essenes were the Thera- 
 
 1 The prophetic societies of the ninth century present only superficial 
 resemblances. 
 
 2 The assertion that the Essenes were in some way connected with 
 Buddhism — though frequently made as positively as if it were a dem- 
 onstrated fact — is without any foundation. 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 59 
 
 peutae in Egypt, of whom Philo has written at length in 
 his treatise on "The Contemplative Life." They also were 
 withdrawn from the world to devote themselves to piety 
 and meditation on higher things; but while the Essenes 
 were a coenobite order, the Therapeutse, like the early 
 Christian ascetics in Egypt, lived in a colony of separate 
 huts and cells, assembling in a meeting-place only for their 
 Sabbath and festival observances. 
 
 Recently discovered manuscripts have revealed the ex- 
 istence of a dissenting sect of different character in the 
 region of Damascus. In some time of tribulation in Judea 
 a number of Jews, including priests and levites, migrated 
 to that country. There they subsequently bound them- 
 selves by covenant to observe the ordinances and interpre- 
 tations of the Law they received from a teacher who appeared 
 among them some years after the migration. Their organi- 
 sation seems to have been modelled on the encampment of 
 the Israelite tribes in the desert, each camp, as they called 
 their communities, being presided over by a supervisor, 
 while above these stood a supervisor of all the camps. In 
 their legal interpretation they were, like all the other sects 
 that we know anything about, more literal and, in general, 
 stricter than the scribes of Pharisaic leanings; this is pecu- 
 liarly apparent in the rigour of their Sabbath observance and 
 in the dietary laws. They expected the appearance in the 
 future of a Teacher of Righteousness sprung from Aaron 
 and Israel — a peculiar variation of what is commonly called 
 the Messianic hope. 
 
 While most of the Jews who were in any way influenced 
 by Greek philosophy were affected by it as by the atmos- 
 phere they lived in, there were some who became students 
 of philosophy in a more formal sense. Of these by far the 
 most important, and the only one of whose writings much is 
 preserved, is Philo, of Alexandria, who was born probably 
 ten or twenty years before the Christian era and died some 
 years after 40 A. D. Philo was not only learned in philoso- 
 phy, but was himself a thinker, if not of the first rank, at 
 
60 JUDAISM 
 
 least among the foremost in his own age. He owes most 
 to Plato, for whom he has the highest reverence, but is also 
 much influenced not only on the ethical but on the theologi- 
 cal side of his philosophy by Stoicism, and has from the 
 Pythagoreans his fondness for extracting wisdom from num- 
 bers. As a Jew, he accepts all the Scriptures as divine reve- 
 lation; among them the Pentateuch holds the first rank by 
 virtue of the comprehensiveness and profundity of the 
 truth which it contains. On the other hand, by reason he 
 is no less convinced of the truth of Greek philosophy. The 
 truth of philosophy and revelation is in substance one; it is 
 taught by the philosophers in abstract, intellectual form, 
 while in the Bible it is presented concretely for the common 
 mind. Yet although the substance of truth is the same, it 
 is clear that the form in which it is presented in philosophy 
 to the mind of intelligent and thoughtful men is higher than 
 the symbol or example, the precept or object-lesson, in the 
 Law. And since the truth in both is God's truth, it must 
 be God's will that men should not remain on the level of 
 the Bible, but proceed to the higher ground of philosophy, 
 from which point of view alone it is possible fully to under- 
 stand the biblical revelation. His task, therefore, as a 
 philosophical interpreter of the Scripture was to show how 
 in its own way it teaches the highest ethical and philosophi- 
 cal truth. 
 
 He accomplishes this by the application of the allegorical 
 method, which had been already developed and employed 
 with a somewhat similar end by the Stoics, and by this 
 means has no difficulty in discovering in the seemingly irra- 
 tional and trivial details of the ceremonial law the most 
 elevated and inspiring lessons, or in developing out of the 
 stories in Genesis a series of edifying psychological studies 
 in character. 
 
 Philo's conception of God and of the world reflects the 
 fundamental dualism of the Platonic philosophy. His 
 God, when he speaks as a philosopher, is a metaphysical 
 Absolute of whom nothing can be affirmed but that he is. 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 61 
 
 He is essentially nameless, and to predicate of him attri- 
 butes or actions would be to circumscribe him and reduce 
 him to the measure of finitude. The other pole of the uni- 
 verse is an eternal, inert, formless matter. This gulf be- 
 tween a God who by the very idea of godhead does nothing 
 and matter which by its definition cannot do anything is 
 the crux of Philo's metaphysics, as it was for the Neopla- 
 tonists who came after him and for the speculative Gnostics. 
 In Philo's solution the influence of both Platonism and of 
 Stoicism is recognisable. Between God and the material 
 world he interposes the logoi, which corresponded to the 
 Platonic ideas supposed immanent in God and to the Stoic 
 forces (Svvdfieis) , operative ideas immanent in matter. As 
 Plato comprehends all the ideas in the one supreme idea, 
 the Good, so does Philo find the unity of all the logoi in the 
 one Logos. His premises demand on the one side that the 
 Logos, as reason, should be eternally immanent in God, 
 and, on the other, that as implicated in this material world 
 it should be distinct from God. The vacillations and am- 
 biguities in Philo's treatment of this subject should not be 
 attributed to inability to think clearly, but, as so often in 
 theology, to the necessity of thinking ambiguously. 
 
 Philo's dualism has its further consequence in philosophic 
 alienation from the actual world. The soul of man can 
 find its true happiness only in rising above the world and 
 the body, ascending by reason or soaring in contemplation 
 to the world of ideas, or rapt in ecstasy to God. This sal- 
 vation by philosophy is by its very nature individualistic. 
 Men may further one another in the quest by high com- 
 muning, but the attainment must be solitary. It is easy 
 to see, therefore, why Philo, with all his attachment to his 
 people, has no interest in the national hope or the restoration 
 of independence; the rule of a Messianic king could not be 
 for him a religious end. The popular notions of retribution 
 after death — the resurrection of the body, a dramatic world 
 assize, a material heaven and hell — he ignores; the Platonic 
 parallels he doubtless took figuratively. 
 
62 JUDAISM 
 
 It is an error to take Philo as a representative of Helle- 
 nistic Judaism. He is a figure of great interest in himself, 
 but he had, so far as we know, no Jewish disciples, and we 
 find no trace of his influence in the subsequent development 
 of Judaism, or even of acquaintance with his writings, down 
 to the Middle Ages. His importance lies on the one hand 
 in his relation to the later schools of Greek philosophy, in 
 particular to Neoplatonism, and on the other in his influ- 
 ence on the development of Christian theology from the 
 Fourth Gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews on. 
 
 Conceiving Judaism as revealed religion, whose Scrip- 
 tures and tradition embodied the whole will of God for 
 man's whole life, the task of the religious leaders was to 
 educate the whole people in this religion. To this, besides 
 their conviction of the truth of religion and its vital impor- 
 tance to the individual, they had an impelling motive in 
 the belief that the fulfilment of the national hope, the 
 coming of the golden age when the reign of God should be 
 realised upon earth, depended upon the conformity of the 
 entire people to the revealed will of God. In the centuries 
 preceding the Christian era Judaism created in the syna- 
 gogue and the school institutions excellently adapted to 
 the accomplishment of this task. In all the lands of their 
 dispersion, wherever Jews were settled even in small num- . 
 bers, they had their synagogues, in which on the Sabbaths 
 and twice in the week besides, they gathered for prayer and 
 the study of the Scripture. The Pentateuch was divided 
 for this purpose into lessons in such a way that it was read 
 through in the course of three years. 1 In Palestine, and 
 doubtless in Babylonia, the lesson was read from the Hebrew 
 text and accompanied piecemeal by an interpretative trans- 
 lation in the Aramaic vernacular. Among the Greek- 
 speaking Jews the custom of reading the pericope directly 
 from the Greek translation seems to have been early estab- 
 lished. The reading from the Law was followed by a sec- 
 ond lesson chosen from the historical books and the proph- 
 1 Later, the custom of reading it through every year prevailed. 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 63 
 
 ets. How early these prophetic lessons were fixed in a 
 cycle corresponding to the Sabbath lessons from the Law is 
 uncertain; probably not till some time after the Christian 
 era. An exposition, or homily, based upon the lesson of 
 the day, or at least taking it as a point of departure, was 
 also customary. The services in the synagogue have often 
 been compared to the worship of the Protestant Churches. 
 There is, however, one notable difference: the synagogue 
 had no ministry. There was no class of men whose special 
 privilege or duty it was to read the lessons or to comment 
 upon them. Any one who was qualified to do it might 
 take part in the service in either way. Naturally the rabbis 
 or their disciples who were members of the congregation or 
 were present as visitors were preferred as preachers because 
 of their greater fitness for instructive and edifying discourse, 
 but their superior education and authority as teachers gave 
 them no prerogative right. 
 
 Schools for elementary instruction were common in Pal- 
 estine, in which boys learned to read in the Hebrew Bible, 
 and the meaning was explained to them more or less fully 
 by their teachers. In the higher schools the Law was me- 
 thodically studied, following the rotation of the weekly 
 synagogue lessons, and the unwritten Law was learned in 
 connection with these lessons. The students not only 
 memorised the traditions, but discussed with their teachers 
 their meaning and application, their relation to the written 
 Law and to other traditions. In striking contrast to the 
 contemporary religions, in which theological learning was 
 confined to the priesthood and often jealously guarded by 
 them as an esoteric wisdom, the scribes and rabbis did their 
 best to familiarise all classes of the community to the mea- 
 sure of their capacity, not merely with the form and cere- 
 monial, or with the national legend and history, but with 
 the higher lessons of religion and morals. 
 
 In the two or three centuries before the Christian era 
 and the first century after it, a popular religious literature 
 of considerable bulk and varied character was in circula- 
 
64 JUDAISM 
 
 tion. There were short stories, such as Esther, Ruth, 
 Judith, 3 Maccabees, Tobit, some originally written in 
 Hebrew or Aramaic, others in Greek. The primaeval and 
 patriarchal history was written over in a particular interest, 
 as in Jubilees; the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs 
 combine legend with moral lessons and predictions; there 
 are hymns, like the Psalms of Solomon. One of the most 
 abundant species of this literature are the apocalypses, 
 revelations of the last days of the present epoch of history, 
 the judgment, and the golden age to follow; they contain 
 also visions of the unseen world or visits to heaven and 
 hell, and disclose the mysteries of astronomy and mete- 
 orology. 
 
 The historical apocalypse is the successor of prophecy in 
 one of its aspects. The predictions of judgment assume, 
 in such transitional writings as Isaiah 24-27, Zech. 9-14, 
 and Joel, an increasingly supernatural form. Later authors 
 construct, out of ideas and imagery drawn from many 
 sources, composite pictures of the great crisis and the Mes- 
 sianic times; they set themselves to answer the question 
 how all this shall come about, and when. The Book of 
 Daniel is one of the oldest of these apocalypses, and sets a 
 pattern which its successors imitate and vary. The four 
 great empires, for example, successive representatives of 
 the kingdom of this world in its hostility to God and his 
 people, and the destruction of this power to make way for 
 the kingdom of the saints of the Most High, become a 
 standing scheme. Similarly, the computation of the time 
 when the rule of the heathen shall be overthrown and the 
 golden age begin, operating with a cycle of four hundred 
 and ninety years — seventy times seven, or, as in Enoch, ten 
 times forty-nine — is, from the second century B. C. on, a 
 recurring exercise in apocalyptic arithmetic. 
 
 The collection which goes under the name of Enoch con- 
 tains pieces of various origin and character, comprising 
 eschatology, cosmology, and angelic mythology. Jewish 
 apocalypses underlie the Revelation of John in the New 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 65 
 
 Testament. After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A. D., the 
 seers of 2 Esdras 1 and the Apocalypse of Baruch adapt the 
 traditional material and method to the new situation, and 
 discuss with the angelus interpres the burning question how 
 the goodness or the justice of God can be reconciled, not 
 merely with the ruin that has fallen on the Jews, but with 
 the damnation of the great mass of mankind. Hellenistic 
 Judaism created its counterpart to the apocalyptic literature 
 in the Sibylline Oracles, the pretended utterances of heathen 
 prophetesses. 
 
 Some of these writings are of sectarian origin, and more 
 or less plainly promote sectarian notions and interests; 
 others, without such a distinct tendency, are the work of 
 authors who were in the eyes of the learned uneducated 
 men, and fostered popular superstitions "and fanaticisms. 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that they found little favour 
 at any time in the eyes of the rabbis, and that in the sec- 
 ond century they were condemned in mass; they have been 
 preserved only in Christian hands. There can, however, 
 be no doubt that in certain circles or strata of Jewish society 
 these writings had in their time a great vogue, and repre- 
 sented beliefs widely current among the people, notwith- 
 standing the disapproval of scholars; nay, it is evident that 
 the contents of some of them were transmitted by under- 
 ground channels for centuries, to come to the surface again 
 in mediaeval Jewish literature. But their lasting influence 
 and importance were in Christianity, not in Judaism. 
 
 In the crises of Jewish history during these centuries— in 
 the persecution under Antiochus and the Maccabsean rising; 
 on the overthrow of the Asmonasan kingdom and the tak- 
 ing of Jerusalem by Pompey; in the days of the Parthian 
 inroad; when Caligula declared his purpose to set up his 
 image in the temple; during the war of 66-72 A. D.— the 
 chronic expectation of a great overturning flared up in a 
 fever of hope; old apocalypses were revived and recast to 
 fit the situation, and new ones were written. Even in 
 1 In the Latin Bible, 4 Esdras. 
 
66 JUDAISM 
 
 quieter times a comparatively trivial incident, some blunder 
 of the Roman administration, heedless as it was wont to be 
 of the prejudices and superstitions of subject peoples, suf- 
 ficed to set off an explosion. The words of enthusiasts who 
 read in the events of the times the signs of the end of the 
 world more than once rallied numbers under the banner of 
 insurrection. Such outbreaks were ruthlessly suppressed — 
 it was part of the routine of Roman provincial government; 
 the throngs that went out into the wilderness to see a 
 prophet or perchance more than a prophet melted away 
 and left no record behind; but one of these movements was 
 destined to be written large in the history of the world 
 under the name of Christianity. 1 
 
 In 66 A. D. the revolutionary party, in spite of the efforts 
 of the priests and the scribes to restrain it, precipitated a 
 conflict with Rome, which resulted in the taking of Jeru- 
 salem and the destruction of the temple in 70. Deeply as 
 the Jews in all lands felt this catastrophe, its actual effect 
 on the religion was not correspondingly great. Judaism 
 had long had its real sanctuary in the synagogue and the 
 schools of the Law; and if the outward institutes of atone- 
 ment ceased with the sacrifices, it had in repentance and 
 good works the reality of which sacrifice was only the sym- 
 bol. In other ways, however, the effect of the fall of Jeru- 
 salem was of notable importance. The great council (San- 
 hedrin), which had had large judicial and administrative 
 powers, came to an end. The priestly aristocracy, which 
 had held many seats in the council — if not always the 
 majority — and the Sadducean party which supported them, 
 therewith lost their whole influence. From that time on the 
 Sadducees were a sect in the proper meaning of the word, 
 and soon sunk out of notice, though not out of existence. 
 Through these changes the teachers of the Law, almost ex- 
 clusively of the Pharisaic party, acquired an undivided and 
 undisputed authority. Their schools, of which that at 
 Jamnia was for the moment the most celebrated, and the 
 1 See below, Chapter V. 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 67 
 
 rabbinical synods which were convened from time to time, 
 succeeded to the Sanhedrin. Their decisions might have 
 no civilly binding force, but they had a moral authority 
 which made other sanctions needless. 
 
 In the following generations the oral Law was gradually 
 formulated in these schools in "the shape in which it has 
 come down to us. A systematic codification of this Law 
 was begun by Akiba in the first decades of the second cen- 
 tury. In his school, also, a more rigorous interpretation of 
 the written Law prevailed, based on the principle that in 
 the word of God as it is contained in the Scripture no jot 
 or tittle is without significance — a principle which often led 
 to extremely strained exegesis. The Greek translation in 
 use was far too free for those who entertained such views 
 of Scripture, and, moreover, it had now become the Bible 
 of the Gentile Christians, from which they drew their proof 
 texts in controversy with the Jews. Under the influence of 
 Akiba a new and strictly literal Greek translation was 
 therefore made by the proselyte Aquila, and there was more 
 than one revision of the Septuagint intended to bring it 
 into closer accord with the original. The canon of Scrip- 
 ture and the standard Hebrew text were also fixed in this 
 period. 
 
 In 132 A. D. the Jews again rose in arms. Different rea- 
 sons are given for the outbreak. It is possible that a law 
 against emasculation was interpreted as prohibiting circum- 
 cision, but the emperor Hadrian's decision to erect a heathen 
 temple on the site of the ruined sanctuary in Jerusalem was 
 cause enough. Unlike the war under Nero, in which the 
 party of action carried the authorities off their feet, the 
 revolt under Hadrian had from the beginning the support 
 of many of the most eminent religious teachers. It found 
 an able leader in Simon bar Cozeba, who was hailed by 
 Rabbi Akiba as the "Star out of Jacob" foretold in the 
 prophecy of Balaam, and is for that reason called Bar 
 Cocheba. The struggle was long and bloody. The Jews 
 defended themselves with desperation, but in 135 the war 
 
68 JUDAISM 
 
 came to an end with the capture of Bether. As the rabbis 
 had been among the chief fomenters and supporters of the 
 war, to which they had given the character of a religious 
 uprising, it is not strange that the Romans, not purely in 
 retaliation but in self-defence, proscribed the rabbinical 
 schools as hotbeds of insurrection, and put various restric- 
 tions upon the exercise of the Jewish religion. Some of the 
 teachers defied the edicts and died as martyrs to the Law. 
 Quiet was gradually restored, and under Antoninus Pius 
 the oppressive edicts, the execution of which had already 
 been relaxed, were rescinded. 
 
 In the latter part of the second century there set in 
 among the Jews a reaction against everything foreign. The 
 age of missionary activity which had begun in the century 
 before our era came to an end; even the conversion of prose- 
 lytes was looked upon askance. Judaism, thrown on the 
 defensive, retreated into the stronghold of the Law, and con- 
 verted it into an impregnable fortress. When the schools 
 of the Law were restored after the war under Hadrian, Gali- 
 lee was the seat of the most celebrated. Here, about the 
 turn of the century, the Patriarch Judah gave the Mishna 
 the authoritative form in which it has come down to us, 
 and, backed by the patriarchal authority, it soon super- 
 seded the Mishna collections of other schools. Only one 
 of these, the Tosephta, has survived complete, while others 
 are known through the extensive quotations from them in 
 the Talmuds. Collections of religious and moral teachings 
 in the form of homilies or expositions of the Scripture les- 
 sons, which form the basis of the older Midrashim, were 
 also begun in this age. By the end, of the second century 
 Judaism had assumed the form which, with no substantial 
 change, it maintained until the revival of learning under 
 Moslem influence in the ninth and tenth centuries, and 
 which, indeed, in essentials, it still preserves. 
 
 The corner-stone of Judaism is the idea of revealed re- 
 ligion. God has not only made himself known to men, but 
 has declared to them his will for man's whole life. This 
 
School and synagogue 69 
 
 revelation the Jews possess in their Holy Scriptures and in 
 its complement, the unwritten Law. 1 There is no duty 
 towards God or man which is not either expressly or by 
 plain implication contained in this twofold revelation. The 
 study of God's law is therefore the first duty of every Jew, 
 for upon knowledge of God's will the keeping of it depends. 
 This study is the only rewarding labour; the acquisition of 
 this knowledge is the only abiding gain. But to bring the 
 fulness of blessing, the study must not be pursued to win 
 thereby reward or honour, but for its own sake. He who 
 studies a precept of the Law should think of himself as 
 receiving it immediately from God at Sinai. The Law is 
 the signal proof of God's peculiar love to Israel. It is a 
 universal blessing like the dew and the rain, a tree of life, 
 an elixir of life to him who fulfils it. It delivers him who 
 takes its words to heart from anxiety of war, famine, and 
 folly; it frees him from the oppression of rulers. It illu- 
 mines the understanding. Its promises sustain Israel 
 through the centuries of hope deferred. Love for the Law 
 and devotion to its study and observance, pride in the Law 
 as the wisest and best in the world, gratitude to God for 
 the gift of the Law — this is the prevailing note in all 
 periods. 
 
 The Jewish conception of God is derived from the Bible, 
 and from the purest and most exalted teachings of the 
 Bible, such as are found in Exod. 33/., Hosea, Deuteronomy, 
 Jeremiah, Isaiah 40-55, and the Psalms. Monotheism was 
 reached, as has been already observed, not from reflections 
 on the unity of nature or of being, but from the side of 
 God's moral rule in history, and it has therefore a more 
 consistently personal character than where the idea of 
 unity has been derived from physical or metaphysical 
 premises. God is supramundane; his abode is in heaven, he 
 is the Lord of heaven, the God of heaven; by metonomy, 
 the name Heaven itself is applied to him, as in the phrase, 
 "the kingdom (reign) of Heaven." But he is not extra- 
 
 1 The oral Law was revealed at Sinai no less than the written Law. 
 
70 JUDAISM 
 
 mundane, excluded from his world because he is infinitely 
 exalted above it. On the contrary, he is everywhere pres- 
 ent in the world, filling it as the soul fills the body. The 
 interest in such assertions is religious, not philosophical; 
 because God is everywhere he knows everything, and his 
 providence embraces all his creatures. Similarly, God's 
 almighty power is emphasised, not because it belongs to 
 the idea of God to be omnipotent, but because nothing can 
 defy his justice or thwart his purpose. He is the sole creator 
 and sustainer of the world, which he brought into being by 
 the word of his power according to a wise and unchanging 
 plan. The world and all that is in it was made for man as 
 the climax of creation; or, in a profounder conception, it 
 was made for the Law, that is for religion. Not only the 
 order of nature but the order of history is all of God's 
 making. History is interpreted by his moral will or his 
 revealed purpose. 
 
 The holiness of God is his godhead morally conceived, 
 the sum of moral perfections. Righteousness and loving- 
 kindness or, as commonly expressed, justice and mercy, are 
 his two fundamental attributes. His justice is man's assur- 
 ance that he will not use his almighty power tyrannously. 
 If God should transgress justice in but one act, the world 
 would go to pieces. His justice is not that of inexorable 
 law or of a more inexorable theological attribute, but of a 
 sovereign whose end is the best interest of the community 
 and of the individual. God knew beforehand that if he 
 executed justice according to the strict letter of the law, 
 none could stand. Consequently, he is long-suffering; he 
 gives warning, sends chastisements, teaches men the way of 
 repentance, and forgives the penitent; for forgiveness is his 
 supreme prerogative, and repentance was created before 
 the world — the plan of salvation was in existence before 
 sin. Justice and mercy are not contradictory elements in 
 his character, but complementary. He is just because he 
 is good, and good because he is just. But mercy is most 
 congruous with his nature, while justice is, as the prophet 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 71 
 
 said, "his strange work." In all this God is an example 
 to men, who are constantly exhorted to imitate his sym- 
 pathy, his long-suffering, his forgiving spirit. 
 
 God is the ruler of the world, the king of kings. He rules 
 in it without a rival. He can do his will in heaven and on 
 earth, and his will is a good world. The most characteristic 
 expression of this conception in Judaism is the "reign of 
 God," or as it is translated in our New Testament, "king- 
 dom of Heaven," the undisputed supremacy of God's will 
 in the world, as Jesus defines it in the prayer, "Thy will be 
 done on earth as it is done in heaven." And as this con- 
 summation is the end of God's ways in the world, so it must 
 be man's supreme desire and aspiration. A prayer is no 
 prayer which does not include the reign of God. 
 
 As king, God had long been imagined enthroned in heaven, 
 surrounded by ministers who deliver his messages on earth 
 and execute his commands. The latest books of the Old 
 Testament give to some of the angels personal names and 
 particular functions, by which they acquire a more distinct 
 individuality than the nameless messengers, or "agents," of 
 God in the older literature. Jewish angelology goes much 
 further. There are angels who preside over natural phe- 
 nomena, such as the motions of the stars, the rain and hail; 
 the nations have their angelic regents or champions; there 
 are guardian angels of individuals, and angels who record 
 men's deeds; the destroying angels, with God's commission, 
 bring death and disaster on earth and torment the souls of 
 the wicked in their prison-house. The angels form a hier- 
 archy with numerous ranks, the "angels of the presence" 
 holding the first place. This angelic mythology, it should 
 be observed, has a larger room in apocalypses, such as 
 Enoch, and in the popular literature, than in the rabbinical 
 teaching. The miscegenation of the sons of God with the 
 daughters of men in Gen. 6 grew into myths of fallen angels. 
 The names of these arch-sinners were known, and the evil 
 arts they taught mankind — from them women learned to 
 paint their eyes and wear jewelry, men to make armour and 
 
72 JUDAISM 
 
 weapons of war; magic and witchcraft were introduced by 
 them. 
 
 For more reflective minds the operations of God in crea- 
 tion and providence, in history and revelation, were medi- 
 ated, not by anthropomorphic agents such as angels, but 
 by qualities of God himself, his Wisdom, his Word, his 
 Power, to which objective existence was given. Their 
 activity could only be represented as that of intelligent 
 agents, and the effort to represent vividly of itself gave 
 more distinct personality to them. This fell in very well 
 with contemporary tendencies in Greek philosophy, and 
 was furthered by the coincidence, as clearly appears both 
 in Philo and in the Wisdom of Solomon. It is only in 
 Philo, however, under the exigencies of a transcendent idea 
 of God, that these personified qualities approximate hypo- 
 stasis, and become intermediate beings between God and 
 the world or God and man; and even in Philo this way of 
 thinking is not consistent. 
 
 The old beliefs about demons and their harmful doings 
 not only persisted, but underwent a development parallel 
 to that of angelology. It was a cosmopolitan age in super- 
 stition as well as in religion. Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia 
 all contributed to the composite demonology of Western 
 Asia and to the arts of dealing with demons; exorcism and 
 demonic magic flourished everywhere. The evil spirits, like 
 the good, formed a hierarchy of many ranks. At their head 
 was a "chief of the devils," who was sometimes the ring- 
 leader of the fallen angels, Azazel or Shemjaza (Shem hazai) ; 
 in other writings he is Beliar; in others still, the Satan, "the 
 adversary," of the Old Testament, or Mastema, a name of 
 the same significance. Demons were, as universally in pop- 
 ular belief, the authors of disease and death; in particu- 
 lar, as we see in the New Testament, mental and nervous 
 diseases were attributed to possession. But the sovereignty 
 of God was too firm a corner-stone of Judaism to permit its 
 religious teachers to cede to the devil a realm of his own; 1 
 
 1 It is only in the New Testament that he figures as the "god of this 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 73 
 
 and it is noteworthy that even in the sectarian literature 
 Beliar and his ilk gratify their ill-will to God and men by 
 tempting men to sin and so bringing upon them punishment, 
 rather than by themselves inflicting evils on mankind. 
 
 A fact of considerable significance in the history of Juda- 
 ism is the disuse of the proper name of the God of Israel, 
 Jehovah (Yahweh), in place of which either the appellative 
 God was employed, or a great variety of epithets, such as 
 the Lord of Heaven, the Most High, the Almighty, the 
 Holy One, the Merciful, the Power, the Presence, the Name, 
 the Place (omnipresent). In reading the Scriptures "the 
 Lord" was substituted for the unutterable name, as was 
 done in the Greek version as early as the third century 
 B. C. Several motives doubtless conspired to bring this 
 about. One was the apprehension that the holy name 
 might be uttered irreverently and profanely; another was 
 to prevent its use for magical purposes. 1 But besides these 
 there was a reason of which the Jews may not have been 
 clearly conscious — a proper name for God is needed only 
 to distinguish him from other gods; if there is but one God, 
 he needs no such distinction. 
 
 It has been frequently asserted in recent times that the 
 Jewish conception of God in this age was of a being so 
 exalted as to be remote and inaccessible, or, as it is some- 
 times expressed, a "transcendent" deity; and that the 
 immediateness and reality of religious communion were 
 correspondingly impaired. The whole temper of Jewish 
 piety is a refutation of this singular misjudgment. The 
 loftiest terms of human speech are employed to magnify 
 God — as they are in the Psalms, and in Christian liturgies 
 from the New Testament down — but the greatness of God 
 does not signify his aloofness, his holiness no longer means 
 his inaccessibility. "What great nation is there that has 
 gods as near to it as Jehovah our God is wherever we call 
 upon him?" is spoken from the heart of the Jew in the age 
 of the Mishna as truly as in that of the Deuteronomy. In 
 
 1 Here the good motive defeated itself; the "secret name" is the 
 omnipotent spell in magic. 
 
74 JUDAISM 
 
 later books of the Old Testament the title "king" is fre- 
 quently given to God, and, following this usage, he is ad- 
 dressed in the prayers of the synagogue as "our king." In 
 another sense he is the "king of the universe"; and, as in 
 the Old Testament, the sovereignty of God is the corner- 
 stone of redemption. 
 
 The characteristic note of Jewish piety in this age is the 
 thought of God as father — not the father of the people only, 
 as in the Old Testament, but of individuals. The name is 
 much more frequent in the liturgy and in the utterances of 
 Palestinian rabbis than in the popular writings, whether 
 Hebrew or Greek. The word expresses love, confidence, 
 and intimacy, and the relation is reflected in the quality of 
 obedience. The attitude of the Jew towards God is con- 
 trasted in this respect with that of the Gentile: the former 
 is like a son who serves his father gladly, saying, "If I 
 commit a fault against my father he will not be angry with 
 me, for he loves me"; the Gentile is like a foreign-born 
 slave who serves in fear, saying, " If I commit a fault against 
 my master he will be angry with me." Sinners whose con- 
 science makes them shrink from approaching God are en- 
 couraged, "Is it not your father in heaven to whom you 
 come?" In a time of deepest depression after the war 
 under Hadrian, when all other help and hope failed, a rabbi 
 exclaims: "Whom have we to lean upon? One only, our 
 father who is in heaven." The sovereignty of God and his 
 fatherhood are so far from conflicting that one of the most 
 familiar of the synagogue prayers begins, "Our Father, our 
 King." 
 
 The disastrous end of the Messianic uprising under Ha- 
 drian did not extinguish the faith in a golden age to come; 
 but, with the dear-bought wisdom of experience, the Jews 
 settled down to wait for God's time without trying to pre- 
 cipitate his intervention. The constant features of this ex- 
 pectation, amid many variations in imagery and order, are 
 the coming of a descendant of David to restore the kingdom 
 of Israel; the attempt of the enemies of Israel to prevent 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 75 
 
 the establishment of this kingdom, and their final over- 
 throw; the gathering of the Jews from all lands to Pales- 
 tine; an age of peace and prosperity under the wise and 
 just rule of the Messiah, when virtue and piety shall be 
 universal. 
 
 With this conception of the golden age derived from the 
 prophets are combined eschatological conceptions appro- 
 priated from Zoroastrian sources: the last judgment, when 
 the dead are raised to stand at the bar of God; the 
 sentence of the wicked to the fires of hell; 1 the renewal of 
 the earth to be the abode of the good, who lead in it a trans- 
 figured existence free from the infirmities of the flesh and 
 from the power of death. In the details of this eschatology 
 there is still greater diversity than in the form of the Mes- 
 sianic hope, and the two are often blended or confused. 
 In the more consistent representations, however, the final 
 judgment succeeds the golden age; the "days of the Mes- 
 siah" are a period of shorter or longer duration — forty 
 years, seventy, four hundred, or, as in the New Testament 
 Apocalypse, a thousand — intervening between the present 
 age and the end of the world. Between death and the 
 resurrection the souls of the righteous are in bliss and 
 those of the wicked in misery in their respective abodes. 
 
 The codification of the oral Law and the promulgation of 
 the Patriarch's Mishna in the beginning of the third cen- 
 tury brought to a conclusion the labours of the Tannaim, or 
 repeaters of tradition. Their successors found occupation 
 in the schools for centuries in the discussion of the Mishna, 
 debating the meaning, ground, and application of its pre- 
 scriptions, and reconciling apparent discrepancies or con- 
 tradictions in them. The reports of these discussions 
 formed a secondary body of legal tradition, which in the 
 course of centuries grew to vast proportions, and was in 
 turn codified in the two Talmuds, embodying, respectively, 
 the work of the Palestinian and of the Babylonian schools, 
 
 1 As in Zoroastrianism, these fires are expiatory and purgatorial, not 
 eternal. Akiba lets the torment last a year. 
 
76 JUDAISM 
 
 together with a great variety of other traditional lore. The 
 Babylonian Talmud was substantially complete by the end 
 of the fifth century; the Palestinian, perhaps three-quarters 
 of a century earlier. The decisions registered in the Tal- 
 muds, or the outcome of the debate as determined by cer- 
 tain principles, were invested with binding authority. In 
 the Middle Ages the Babylonian Talmud superseded its 
 rival even in Palestine, and became the final arbiter for 
 orthodox Jews everywhere. 
 
 In the last centuries of the existence of the temple, under 
 the influence of the Pharisees, features which had their 
 origin in the synagogue were engrafted upon the cultus. 
 Thus, at the daily morning holocaust the officiating priests 
 interrupted the sacrificial ritual to assemble in a chamber 
 off the court for prayer, the order including an opening 
 ascription of praise, the confession (Shema'; Deut. 6, 4 ff., 
 11, 15 ff.), the Ten Commandments, and two prayers (for 
 the people and for the divine acceptance of the offering), 
 closing with the priestly benediction. The chanting of 
 psalms in the temple ritual and the use made of them in the 
 prayers of the synagogue was another point of assimilation. 
 On the other hand, participation of the people in the wor- 
 ship of the temple was insured by the presence at all the 
 public sacrifices of representative delegations from different 
 parts of the land, each of which was in attendance for one 
 week in the half year. The delegation not only stood by 
 at the sacrifices, but gathered four times a day for reading 
 of the Scriptures and prayer, while the community at home 
 which they represented likewise gathered daily during their 
 week for a similar service in the synagogue. 
 
 After the destruction of the temple such features of the 
 cultus as admitted the transfer, e. g., the blowing of the 
 horn (shofar) at New Year's, the palm branches and goodly 
 fruit (lulab and etrog) at Tabernacles, were introduced into 
 the synagogue; the priestly benediction (Num. 6, 24-26) was 
 pronounced in the synagogues, with a difference in the mode, 
 before the fall of Jerusalem. 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 77 
 
 While the temple stood, the festivals were observed at 
 home and in the synagogues by those who could not go to 
 Jerusalem to take part in them; after its destruction these 
 services remained the only memorial of the vanished cultus. 
 The proper lessons for these seasons were passages of the 
 Law connected with the festivals. The same principle dom- 
 inated the subsequent growth of the liturgy; the word, in 
 lesson, prayer, psalms and hymns, must take the place of 
 the ancient ritual of sacrifice, which men could now offer 
 only thus in mind and heart. 
 
 The Passover, which had been primitively a family sacri- 
 fice, and even in Jerusalem had preserved at least the fiction 
 of the family group, resumed in domestic observance its 
 ancient character. The father, in answer to the questions 
 of a child, narrated the occasion of the institution and ex- 
 plained the peculiar features of the meal, such as the un- 
 leavened bread and the bitter salad. The synagogue services 
 of the week had appropriate lessons from the Pentateuch, 
 and similarly for the Feast of Weeks and Tabernacles. The 
 ancient agricultural association of the festivals fell into the 
 background when the Jews were scattered in many climes 
 and were chiefly city-dwellers. The memorial character 
 which is attached to some of them in the Bible itself pre- 
 vailed for all. Passover commemorates the deliverance from 
 Egypt, the prototype of the greater deliverance yet to come; 
 the Feast of Weeks celebrates the giving of the Law at Sinai, 
 which the chronologers fixed at that season. Tabernacles 
 had always had a peculiarly joyous character, which was 
 emphasised in the later temple liturgy by the festal proces- 
 sions and the new ceremonies of the water libation. It had 
 the same character in later Judaism; the illumination of 
 houses and synagogues was one of the features of the festi- 
 val. In the Middle Ages the closing (ninth) day was cele- 
 brated as the Joy of the Law, marking the end of the annual 
 cycle of readings from the Pentateuch, which then began 
 again at the beginning. 
 
 Two festivals, not in the biblical calendar, came in before 
 
78 JUDAISM 
 
 the Christian era. Purim celebrated the deliverance of the 
 Jews from the destruction Haman planned for them as nar- 
 rated in the Book of Esther, which was the Scripture read- 
 ing for the day. It had a national rather than a religious 
 character, and since there was no biblical prescription con- 
 cerning its observance, the merrymaking freely borrowed 
 forms from outside, and sometimes ran into excesses which 
 the graver heads among the rabbis disapproved. In imita- 
 tion of the example in Esther 9, 19, Purim is a season for 
 exchanging presents and making charitable gifts. The re- 
 establishment of sacrifice in the temple after its recovery by 
 Judas Maccabseus in 165 B. C. is commemorated by the 
 Feast of Dedication, beginning on the twenty-fifth of Kislev 
 and lasting eight days (1 Mace. 4, 59). In its general char- 
 acter it resembles Tabernacles, with which it shares the cus- 
 tom of illumination. 
 
 The civil year of the Jews began in the autumn, while the 
 festival cycle began in the spring. New Year's Day, the 
 first of Tishri, is thus in the ecclesiastical calendar the first 
 day of the seventh month. According to a widely accepted 
 view, the first of Tishri was the day on which God began 
 the creation of the world. The characteristic feature of the 
 ritual is the blowing of a horn (shofar) at certain points in 
 the liturgy of the day, a ceremony taken over, as we have 
 seen, from the temple. Next to the Day of Atonement, it 
 is the most solemn day in the Jewish year. For, probably 
 under the influence of Babylonian conceptions, it is believed 
 that on this day all mankind pass for judgment before God, 
 and in the books of destiny the fate of the righteous and 
 of the incorrigibly wicked is irrevocably decreed, while for 
 the mass of men, who do not belong to either of these 
 classes, an interval of ten days is granted for repentance 
 before the sealing of the verdict on the Day of Atonement. 
 The ten Penitential Days have, therefore, a most important 
 place in the religious thought and life of the Jews. 
 
 The Day of Atonement was the great expiation of Juda- 
 ism, when the sins of the people, solemnly confessed by the 
 
SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 79 
 
 high priest and laid upon the head of the scapegoat, were 
 borne away into the wilderness. The rabbis moralised this 
 ancient rite of riddance by teaching that the expiation 
 availed only for those who sincerely repented of their sins; 
 and after the rite itself ceased with the destruction of the 
 temple, repentance itself remained the sole condition of the 
 divine remission of sins. In the Day of Atonement, there- 
 fore, the penitential exercises of the preceding days culmi- 
 nate; confession of sin, sorrow for sin, prayer for the forgive- 
 ness of sin, dominate the whole liturgy of the day. The 
 ancient association is preserved by the lesson, Lev. 16, the 
 temple ritual for the Day of Atonement, and by a kind of 
 descriptive paraphrase of that chapter (the Abodah). The 
 liturgy was gradually expanded to such length, by multiplica- 
 tion, especially of poetical effusions, and repetition, that it 
 fills the entire day. 
 
 The constant element in the Jewish prayer-book for week- 
 days and Sabbaths, for use at home and in the synagogue, 
 contains prayers which were in use in the first century of 
 the Christian era or earlier. In the course of centuries the 
 liturgy has grown by accretion, and, with the services for 
 the feasts and fasts, the new moons and special Sabbaths, 
 has come to be voluminous and complicated. It would be 
 more exact to say "the liturgies," for there has never been 
 any uniformity; each country and region has had its own 
 development. Every great religious movement has written 
 itself somewhere into the liturgies. And, on the other hand, 
 probably no liturgy has ever impressed itself on the religious 
 life of a people so deeply as the Jewish. 
 
 The situation of the Jews under Roman dominion from 
 the time of Antoninus Pius to that of Constantine varied 
 with the disposition or caprice of the emperors; many bur- 
 dens and restrictions were imposed on them, but the most 
 stringent were not long enforced, and however irksome they 
 were, the Jewish religion itself was protected by law. The 
 triumph of Christianity made their position worse. Con- 
 stantine issued edicts forbidding conversions to Judaism 
 
80 JUDAISM 
 
 under penalty of death, and imposing the same penalty on 
 the Jewish party to a marriage between Jew and Christian. 
 His successors made still more oppressive laws. Great 
 bishops like Ambrose of Milan and Cyril of Alexandria 
 goaded the rulers or inflamed the mob against the Jews, 
 whose case became continually harder both in the East and 
 in the West. In the Persian Empire they fared better 
 on the whole; but the more zealous Zoroastrians among the 
 Sassanian kings persecuted Jews as well as Christians. 
 Under these adverse conditions it is not strange that learn- 
 ing and culture declined. Yet the Midrashim, or homiletic 
 catenas, and the corresponding matter in the Talmuds are 
 evidence that the moral and religious teaching of earlier 
 times was kept alive. The Palestinian schools died out 
 about 425 A. D., those in Babylonia were in full decadence 
 in the sixth century. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 JUDAISM 
 
 MEDLEVAL AND MODERN 
 
 The Moslem Renaissance — The Karaite Schism — Jewish Theology and 
 Ethics — Saadia — Bahya ibn Pakuda— Ibn Gabirol— Judah ha-Levi 
 — Aristotelianism: Maimonides — Mysticism: the Kabbala, Hasid- 
 ism — Modern Revival of Learning — Moses Mendelssohn — Reform 
 Movements — Zionism. 
 
 The Moslem conquests in the seventh century embraced 
 the countries in which by far the greater part of the Jews 
 were settled, and delivered them from the persecuting zeal 
 of Christians and Zoroastrians. In the Oriental renais- 
 sance under the caliphate the stirrings of the new intellec- 
 tual life were quickly felt by the Jews. One of its first 
 manifestations was a revolt against the authority of tradi- 
 tion, to which the completed codification of the Talmud 
 had given the character of finality, and the tyranny of its 
 official interpreters, whose opinions and decisions were 
 already beginning to constitute another body of actual law. 
 The leader of this movement was Anan ben David, a mem- 
 ber of. the family of the exilarchs, 1 himself learned in the 
 Talmud and the micrologic casuistry of the schools, whose 
 intellectual sterility and religious aridity had in his day 
 reached its nadir. It is said that the dangerous habit of 
 having opinions of his own cost him the succession to the 
 exilarchate, to which he had pretensions, and that this per- 
 sonal grievance threw him into open antagonism to the tra- 
 ditionists who had compassed his defeat. Whatever his 
 
 1 The exilarch (Resh Galutha), a hereditary prince of Davidic lineage, 
 was the civil head of Babylonian Jewry, as the Gaon, appointed by 
 him, was its religious and judicial head. 
 
 81 
 
82 JUDAISM 
 
 motives may have been, his declaration of independence 
 drew to his side many to whom emancipation from the do- 
 minion of the rabbinical authorities was welcome. They 
 formed a sect with an organisation of their own, and made 
 Anan their exilarch. 
 
 Over against the authority of the Talmudic tradition 
 Anan asserted the authority of Scripture and the right and 
 duty of private interpretation. "Diligently search the 
 written law," was his watchword. He did not reject tradi- 
 tions as such, but when he found them at variance with 
 Scripture he set them aside, in spite of great names and 
 immemorial prescription, and put the biblical rule, accord- 
 ing to his interpretation, in their place. To his successors 
 he seemed to have been unduly conservative, or to have 
 unconsciously brought over too much of the old leaven, 
 and they made more thorough work in purging out the 
 remnants of rabbinism. Compends of the laws and ob- 
 servances made by Anan, though differing in many particu- 
 lars from those of the great body of the Jews, were super- 
 seded by later ones of more radical character. 
 
 The sect, which had at first been called after its founder, 
 Ananites, is better known by the name Karaites, which 
 we might translate " Bible Jews." 1 In their rejection of 
 tradition as an authority concurrent with Scripture and 
 their assertion of the right of individual interpretation and 
 judgment, the Karaite movement has a partial resemblance 
 to the Protestant Reformation. "To investigate is a duty; 
 to err in investigation is no sin"; a man should bind himself 
 to no authorities, but examine and investigate for himself; 
 a son need not agree with his father nor a pupil with his 
 teacher if he has reasons for his dissent; if he is mistaken, 
 he has at least the reward of opening men's eyes and enlight- 
 ening them. 
 
 The appeal to Scripture led the Karaites to a kind of 
 study of the Bible that had long been neglected, the en- 
 
 1 From kara, "read." We call the sacred books "writings"; Jews 
 and Moslems call them "readings" (Mikra, Koran). 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN 83 
 
 deavour to find out what it really meant, and their oppo- 
 nents were constrained to meet them on the same ground. 
 They had the methods of Moslem interpreters of the Koran 
 as an example. It was the beginning of a new biblical 
 exegesis which later had a notable development in both 
 camps. The literal interpretation of the Pentateuch led 
 the Karaites, as it had led the Samaritans and certain older 
 Jewish sects, to greater strictness in various matters than 
 was the rule among the Rabbanites. Thus, levitical laws, 
 such as defilement by a dead body, were revived, which the 
 Rabbanites held to be no longer in force. 
 
 Persecution in Babylonia drove many Karaites to Pal- 
 estine and Egypt; Jerusalem became their intellectual cen- 
 tre until the Crusades, afterwards Constantinople. Before 
 the end of the ninth century the schism had grown to such 
 dimensions, and its leaders had become so aggressive, that 
 it was a serious menace to orthodox Judaism, and provoked 
 violent polemics; and although this crisis passed, Karaism 
 maintained itself for centuries, and produced a considerable 
 and by no means negligible literature, especially in the 
 interpretation of the Bible. Since the sixteenth century 
 it has greatly declined, and now numbers only a few thou- 
 sand adherents, chiefly in Turkey and Russia. 
 
 The theological controversies among the Moslems raised 
 many questions which were as pertinent in Judaism as in 
 Islam, and they soon became subjects of warm discussion 
 among Jewish thinkers. This came in the days when the 
 Mutazilites were at the height of their influence, 1 and both 
 their rationalistic method and a good deal of their doctrine 
 were appropriated by the Jews. The problem of the divine 
 attributes— how the existence of attributes can consist 
 with the unity of the godhead— first raised by them, con- 
 tinued for centuries to be one of the burning questions of 
 Jewish philosophy. The problem of the freedom of the 
 human will was also part of this inheritance, though, as 
 Judaism had no dogma of predestination, it did not present 
 'See below, pp. 417 jf. 
 
84 JUDAISM 
 
 to Jewish thinkers the same theological complication as to 
 Moslems. 
 
 The necessity of an exposition and justification of Jew- 
 ish belief and teaching led Saadia (d. 942) to write his "Be- 
 liefs and Dogmas." The author was born in Egypt in 892, 
 and was thoroughly versed not only in Jewish but in Arab 
 learning. In 928 he was called to be the head (Gaon) of 
 the academy at Sura, in Babylonia, which had fallen into 
 sad decadence. His uncompromising integrity soon brought 
 him into conflict with the exilarch, and he was for several 
 years kept out of his office. During this time he wrote at 
 Bagdad the book of which mention has just been made. 
 Saadia made an epoch in almost every branch of Jewish 
 learning. His translation of the Pentateuch and other 
 parts of the Bible into Arabic, which was then the vernacu- 
 lar of much the greater part of the Jews, is comparable in 
 importance to the Septuagint in the Hellenistic age; and 
 besides this translation, which is in fact and intention an 
 interpretation, he wrote commentaries in a new style on 
 several of the books. By his lexicon and grammar, modest 
 as these first steps were, he has a right to be regarded as 
 the initiator of Hebrew philology. In the controversy with 
 the Karaites he was the most redoubtable champion of 
 orthodox Judaism. The "Beliefs and Dogmas" (more 
 exactly, "rationally established tenets") is the beginning of 
 the philosophical treatment of Jewish theology. 
 
 The influence of the Moslem liberal theologians is evident 
 throughout. After an introduction, in which certain pre- 
 liminary questions are discussed, Saadia proceeds to develop 
 the cosmological argument for the existence of God, and 
 from this point of view discusses the nature of God, his 
 unity, attributes (life, power, wisdom), the commandments 
 of God (rational and positive), the revelation of God through 
 prophets and the nature of prophecy, the effects on the soul 
 of obedience and disobedience, freedom and ability, good 
 and ill desert, the nature and activities of the soul, soul and 
 body, the state of the soul after death, the resurrection, the 
 
MEDLEVAL AND MODERN 85 
 
 Messianic age, reward and punishment in the other life; 
 concluding with a chapter on ethics as a kind of appendix. 
 
 Saadia shows himself familiar with Greek philosophy, as 
 far as it was accessible to him in Arabic translations, and 
 with Christian as well as Moslem theology. In the first 
 chapter he states and criticises twelve theories of the origin 
 of the world held by different philosophers and religious 
 bodies. Under the head of the unity of God he combats 
 both dualistic theories (Zoroastrian, Manichaean), and the 
 Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the Person of Christ; 
 and in a later chapter controverts the Christian arguments 
 to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, particularly those 
 based on the interpretation of Dan. 9, 24-27. His discus- 
 sion of the Trinity avoids a polemic against vulgar poly- 
 theistic notions of the divine persons, and confines his criti- 
 cism to the Trinitarian doctrine of the theologians. Like 
 the Moslem controversialists, he finds the root of the error 
 in a misconception of the nature of the divine attributes 
 upon a false analogy drawn from the nature of man, which 
 gave them an existence of their own, beside, rather than in, 
 the essence of God. In the sequel he shows himself remark- 
 ably acquainted with the subtleties of Christological specu- 
 lation, in which he distinguishes four conflicting theories. 
 
 In the following centuries Jewish theology and philosophy 
 ran along with the movements of Moslem thought which are 
 to be described in a later chapter. The Neoplatonic ele- 
 ments in the composite Arab philosophy and in the Moslem 
 mystics made themselves felt in Judaism, also, in a greater 
 inwardness of religion and a mystical tor.e of piety. This 
 is strongly marked in Bahya ibn Pakuda's "Duties of the 
 Inner Man," written in Spain perhaps a century and a half 
 after Saadia, the first methodical treatment in Jewish liter- 
 ature of the religious and moral life — piety and ethics. 
 
 Outward, bodily actions, including the external obser- 
 vances of religion, have meaning and worth only as they 
 express what lies beneath them in the mind and heart; it is 
 only with this inner man that the author proposes to deal. 
 
86 JUDAISM 
 
 Both piety and ethics have their root in the recognition of 
 God and gratitude to him; man should therefore seek first 
 to know God truly and to revere him sincerely. God, as 
 he is in himself, is indeed beyond man's knowing; he is 
 the absolute One. What we can know about God is to be 
 learned from contemplation of nature — from which, indeed, 
 apart from revelation, we are aware of his existence — and 
 of ourselves; this, therefore, is the first of the duties of the 
 inner man. The argument from the created world to the 
 Creator runs on similar lines to Saadia's, as does also the 
 proof of God's unity. Different kinds of unity are to be 
 distinguished; the unity of God is a substantial unity, the 
 ultimate reality, the unchangeable ground of being. The 
 attributes of God — existence, unity, eternity — -are insepar- 
 able from the essence of God; they are, in truth, only nega- 
 tions of the opposites. Our inability to know God in himself 
 corresponds to our inability to know our own soul, whose 
 existence is nevertheless manifest in every thought and 
 act. 
 
 This foundation laid, the author goes on to treat suc- 
 cessively of the worship of God (in the heart and under 
 external forms), trust in God (providence, immortality), 
 single-mindedness in the service of God, humility, penitence, 
 self-examination, withdrawal from the world, love to God. 
 Love of God, which is the end of all moral and religious self- 
 discipline, is the longing of the soul for the source of its life, 
 in which alone is its rest and peace. As in the theological 
 part of the work Bahya is in general accord with Saadia 
 and the Moslem theologians, so in other parts the influence 
 of the Encyclopaedia of the Pure Brethren of Basra is demon- 
 strable. 1 Nor is his affinity to Ibn Gabirol and al-Ghazali 
 to be overlooked. 
 
 The "Duties of the Inner Man" has been one of the 
 great forces in moulding the religious life of the Jews. It is 
 still extensively used as a spiritual guide by all classes, cir- 
 culating in many editions, and frequently furnished with 
 1 See below, pp. 450 ff. 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN 8/ 
 
 a modern translation for the benefit of women and others 
 whose understanding may not reach to philosophical Hebrew. 
 
 Solomon ibn Gabirol (d. ca. 1058) is the most noteworthy 
 exponent of Neoplatonism among Jews or Moslems, though, 
 like the rest, his Neoplatonic ideas run into Aristotelian 
 moulds. God is for him the metaphysical Absolute. This 
 Absolute, or first substance, is at one pole; at the other is 
 the world of matter and form. The gulf is spanned by the 
 divine will, which thus assumes in his system the function df 
 the Logos in Philo's, mediating between the Absolute and 
 finite existence. Unlike Philo, however, Ibn Gabirol makes 
 no attempt to show that this high philosophy is allegori- 
 cally contained in the Bible; he develops his system in a 
 kind of religious fourth dimension, without reference to 
 Scripture or specifically Jewish beliefs. When the "Fons 
 Vitas" of "Avicebron" became known in Latin translation 
 to the schoolmen, it was not suspected that the author was 
 a Jew; the work was thought to be by some Moslem phi- 
 losopher. Through it a fresh current of Neoplatonism 
 flowed into scholastic channels; Duns Scotus was especially 
 influenced by it. Among the Jews Aristotle was in the 
 ascendant, and though Ibn Gabirol is one of the most highly 
 esteemed of the synagogue poets, and his great hymn, 
 " Kether Malkuth," x is permeated with the spirit of his 
 philosophy, his ideas made little impression on Jewish 
 thought, unless in the mystical circles in which the Kabbala 
 was cultivated. 
 
 The modified Arab Aristotelianism of al-Farabi and Avi- 
 cenna, which made room for emanation theories of Neo- 
 platonic extraction, became in the twelfth century the 
 dominant influence in Jewish religious philosophy. But 
 whatever the alloy of these composite philosophies, their 
 pretension was to be a loftier and purer religion for intel- 
 lectual men. They had in science and metaphysics the 
 truth of which positive religions were only an adumbration 
 for unphilosophical minds. Knowledge and speculative 
 1 "The Crown of Divine Sovereignty." 
 
88 JUDAISM 
 
 thinking were the way of intellectual salvation, the attain- 
 ment of the true end of man's being, to which neither the 
 implicit acceptance of hereditary beliefs nor the scrupulous 
 performance of moral and ceremonial prescriptions con- 
 duct man. In interpreting the Bible — or interpreting it 
 away~-by the principle that nothing in revelation can con- 
 tradict reason, they made reason the ultimate and inde- 
 feasible authority. 
 
 To this presumption of philosophy Judah ha-Levi strenu- 
 ously demurred. In his dialogue Kuzari (ca. 1140), a pious 
 king of the Khazars, in search of a more satisfactory religion 
 than that of his forefathers, invites a "philosopher" — that 
 is, an Arab Aristotelian — a Christian, and a Moslem, to 
 expound to him their respective doctrines. The king makes 
 pertinent objections to them in turn, and, since both Chris- 
 tianity and Mohammedanism are by their own admission 
 sprung from Judaism, he finally sends for a Jew, who con- 
 vinces him that Judaism is the best religion; in consequence, 
 he and his people embrace it. 1 
 
 So far from having the decisive word in questions of relig- 
 ion, Judah contends that philosophy has nothing to say 
 about such matters. In mathematics and logic, and in nat- 
 ural science based on observation, its results may be certain 
 or probable; but beyond that, in cosmic physics and in meta- 
 physics, it offers only conflicting and unverifiable hypothe- 
 ses. The fundamental truths of the Jewish religion — crea- 
 tion out of nothing, particular providence, the immortality 
 and destiny of the soul — are not discovered or demonstrated 
 by reasoning; they rest on the historic fact of a revelation 
 to Israel through prophets. The way to the highest knowl- 
 edge of God is not speculation, but simple and unquestion- 
 ing faith. 
 
 Judah's antipathy to philosophy is not the jealousy of 
 ignorance. His discussion of the problems of the divine 
 attributes and of the freedom of the will prove, on the con- 
 trary, that he was well instructed in philosophy and an 
 
 1 The conversion of the Khazars, a Turkish people, is a historical fact. 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN 89 
 
 acute thinker. Where the disputes of philosophers had 
 confused men and perplexed their faith, sounder reasoning 
 must clear up their intellectual difficulties. His attitude 
 towards the arrogant claims of the philosophers resembles 
 that of the great Moslem theologian, al-Ghazali, to whom, 
 indeed, Judah ha-Levi is greatly indebted. Like Ghazali, 
 also, he finds a ground of religious assurance in religious ex- 
 perience. The Neoplatonic strain in him is strong; it gives 
 its character to his mysticism, and from its doctrine of 
 emanation is derived one of the leading ideas of his work, 
 the influence of the divine Logos on a chosen part of man- 
 kind. 
 
 The Aristotelian period in Jewish theology begins with 
 Abraham ibn Daud (d. 1180), who on the basis of the Arab 
 Aristotelianism of Avicenna develops philosophically the 
 fundamental religious conceptions, and endeavours to 
 prove that philosophical theory and Scripture teaching are 
 in complete harmony, the difference being only that the 
 Bible presents these truths in popular form for the common 
 mind. 
 
 The greatest name among the Jewish Aristotelians, and 
 one of the greatest in the whole history of Judaism, is Moses 
 ben Maimon (Maimonides; d. 1294). Born in Cordova in 
 1135, he was forced to flee from Spain by the bigotry of the 
 Almohades, 1 and spent most of his life in Egypt, where he 
 was court physician to Saladin. His chief theological work 
 is the " Guide of the Perplexed," addressed to such as have 
 been led by philosophy to doubt whether revealed religion 
 can be reconciled with reason. Maimonides undertakes to 
 show that not only is there no contradiction between the 
 truths of reason and those of religion, but that the chief 
 doctrines of religion can be philosophically demonstrated, 
 and faith thus established on a rational foundation. In- 
 deed, if faith be not merely the assent of the lips but of 
 the intelligence, this is the only way to it. 
 
 Like all philosophic theologians, Maimonides was con- 
 i See below, pp. 470 #. 
 
90 JUDAISM 
 
 cerned above all things to preserve the idea of God in its 
 purity. To this it belongs that God is incorporeal, and in 
 all respects unlike his creatures. But the Bible ascribes to 
 him hands and feet, eyes and ears, besides human — all too 
 human — passions, and among Jews as well as Christians 
 and Moslems not only did the mass of simple people imagine 
 God as what has in modern times been called a "magnified 
 non-natural man," but there were teachers who made it a 
 criterion of orthodoxy to take the words of revelation to 
 the foot of the letter, and denounced the philosophers as 
 confessed unbelievers. The anthropomorphic controversy 
 was a perennial one. Maimonides applies to such expres- 
 sions in Scripture the same figurative exegesis which from 
 Philo's time on had been employed in all three religions. 
 
 He subjects the method of the Moslem theologians (Mu- 
 tikallimun) and their Jewish imitators to a searching criti- 
 cism, to show its complete inadequacy. Their argument for 
 the existence of God was invalid against the philosophers 
 who, with Aristotle, denied its major premise, namely, that 
 the world was created; and all their corollaries about the 
 unity and nature of God fell with it. The atomic theory to 
 which the leading Moslem theologians had addicted them- 
 selves in their endeavour to make God the sole cause in the 
 universe is false; its authors do not recognise that the 
 universe is an organism governed throughout by law. 
 
 Like Ibn Daud, Maimonides would prove the existence 
 of God by the Aristotelian arguments from motion to an 
 unmoved prime mover and from contingent to necessary ex- 
 istence. The prime mover — the ultimate reality — must be 
 incorporeal, absolute and simple unity. Simplicity implies 
 that there can be in it no change. Attributes which appear 
 to assert something of God are admissible only if it is under- 
 stood that they merely deny that there is any imperfection 
 in him; they cannot define the nature of his perfection, 
 which is beyond apprehension. Even the so-called relative 
 attributes, which express the relations between him and his 
 creatures — attributes, so to say, only from the human 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN 91 
 
 point of view — are inadmissible; for God is wholly unlike cre- 
 ated things, and analogy of relations is impossible. Against 
 the attributists Maimonides is hardly less zealous than 
 against the anthropomorphists. Those who ascribe to God 
 positive attributes have not a false idea of God; they have 
 none at all. Their God is made after the likeness of man. 
 
 Between God and the material universe Maimonides in- 
 terposes a series of emanations — immaterial intelligences — 
 down through the celestial spheres; the tenth and last of 
 these, the sekel ha-poel (actualising intelligence), 1 presides 
 over the sublunary sphere of mundane existence to which 
 man belongs. Into the details of this cosmology, which is 
 based on Avicenna, it is not necessary to go further here. 
 
 The sekel ha-poel might also be called the creative intelli- 
 gence in our sphere, since it imposes upon matter, which is 
 pure potentiality, the forms in union with which it becomes 
 actual in the real world. This is true not only of what we 
 call material things but of the human intellect, which in 
 itself is merely potential, a latent, or, in Maimonides' own 
 phrase, a material, intelligence. 2 The realisation of its pos- 
 sibilities through the operation of the "actualising intelli- 
 gence" makes the latent intelligence of man a real or "ac- 
 quired" intelligence; we might say, a system of intellectual 
 concepts, or ideas, which disengages itself from the lower 
 faculties of the soul and becomes a substantial, immaterial 
 existence — pure form, and therefore imperishable. In this 
 way Maimonides finds place for the immortality of the 
 soul, or, more accurately, a philosophical substitute for it. 
 The human soul is not by nature immortal; it is only capa- 
 ble of attaining immortality by philosophy, which is a 
 strait gate and a narrow way; and it is difficult to see how, 
 on Maimonides' nominalist premises, its individuality is to 
 be preserved. 
 
 In the same way he admits a limited providence. The 
 
 1 Aristotle's vovs iroa\Ti.Kbs in a new r61e. 
 
 2 "Material" is of course to be understood in the sense of the Aristo- 
 telian "matter." 
 
92 JUDAISM 
 
 Aristotelians denied God's knowledge of particulars and 
 his concern for them. Maimonides makes the human race 
 an exception in so far as in it God's providence extends to 
 individuals in degrees corresponding to their intellectual 
 and moral attainment; those who have made no such prog- 
 ress are, as their punishment, left subject to the forces 
 and laws of nature. 
 
 Prophecy, the highest stage of human attainment, is the 
 work of the "actualising intelligence," operating upon the 
 intellect and imagination of man; on the one side it is an 
 emanation from God, on the other a psychological process. 
 There are different kinds or degrees of prophecy, from 
 dreams up to vision in a state of exaltation, yet of clear con- 
 sciousness. All the visions and symbolical actions of the 
 prophets are purely subjective. Only in Moses, who is a 
 prophet sui generis, was the factor of imagination absent; he 
 stood on the higher plane of pure immaterial intelligence. 
 The discussion of the subject is one of the most interesting 
 and instructive parts of Maimonides' philosophy. 
 
 The greatest objection to Aristotelianism was the doc- 
 trine of the eternity of the material universe, or of the mat- 
 ter of which it is composed, which seemed to conflict squarely 
 with the biblical account of creation. Maimonides does not 
 think this objection insuperable. In fact, if the eternity of 
 the world were philosophically demonstrated, it would be 
 no more difficult to interpret what Scripture says about 
 creation than to explain its anthropomorphisms. But the 
 Aristotelian argument, based as it was upon astronomical 
 theories which the advance of science had abandoned, was 
 inconclusive. For the philosopher the eternity of the 
 world is an open question; and inasmuch as creation is an 
 admissible hypothesis, there is no reason for rejecting the 
 traditional doctrine and the common understanding of 
 Scripture. The end of God in creation is hidden in his in- 
 scrutable wisdom. Man errs when he imagines himself 
 that end. In this sublunary sphere, as an intelligent being, 
 
MEDLEVAL AND MODERN 93 
 
 he occupies the highest place; but compared with the vast 
 whole of the universe and with the intelligences that pre- 
 side over the celestial spheres, he is an insignificant crea- 
 ture. 
 
 Maimonides discusses the problem of freedom in relation 
 to universal law and to divine providence, and affirms man's 
 complete freedom. Inherited disposition and the circum- 
 stances of his life may make it more difficult for one man 
 to attain to intelligence and virtue than another; but he 
 has in his will the power to overcome these adverse condi- 
 tions. The notion that a man's character and destiny are 
 determined by his stars is combated on scientific and philo- 
 sophical grounds. On the much-debated question how the 
 freedom of man can consist with the prescience of God, 
 Maimonides holds that the difficulty arises from the assump- 
 tion that God's knowledge is comparable to men's. But a 
 knowledge that comprehends all in one intuition is not only 
 wholly unlike ours, but is altogether inconceivable by us. 
 If man were not free, if God interfered in any way with his 
 freedom, there would be an end of all morality, and there 
 would be no place for either law or prophecy. 
 
 The "Guide of the Perplexed," written in Arabic, was 
 immediately translated into Hebrew and before long into 
 Latin. It was widely read by Moslems and Christians as 
 well as by Jews. No other work of a mediaeval Jewish 
 author had so large and deep an influence. 
 
 The "Guide" is not Maimonides' only contribution to 
 theology. The first book of his great codification of Tal- 
 mudic law, "Mishneh Torah," or as it is more commonly 
 called, "Yad Hazakah," treats systematically the chief doc- 
 trines of religion. The "Eight Chapters," prefixed to his 
 commentary on the Mishnic "Sayings of the Fathers," con- 
 tain an outline of psychology and ethics. In the commen- 
 tary on the Mishna is also found a concise statement of 
 the fundamental articles of belief, which has become the 
 most widely accepted creed of orthodox Judaism, and as 
 
94 JUDAISM 
 
 such has a place in the prayer-books. The articles are in 
 brief: 
 
 I believe with perfect faith that God is; that he is one with a unique 
 unity; that he is incorporeal; that he is eternal; that to him alone 
 prayer is to be made; that all the words of the Prophets are true; that 
 Moses is the chief of the Prophets; 1 that the law given to Moses has 
 been transmitted without alteration; that this law will never be changed 
 or superseded; that God knows all the deeds and thoughts of men; that 
 he rewards the obedient and punishes transgressors; that the Messiah 
 will come; that there will be a resurrection of the dead. 
 
 The philosophical theology of Maimonides was violently 
 opposed. It was equally obnoxious to the traditionalists, 
 to the mystics, and to the representatives of the old theology 
 whose methods he had harshly criticised. Some zealots, 
 playing with fire, brought his works to the notice of the 
 Christian inquisition in Provence, and had the satisfaction 
 of seeing them condemned as heretical and publicly burned 
 at Montpellier and Paris, as those of Averroes, and even of 
 al-Ghazali, were burned by Moslem bigots. 
 
 The Aristotelianism of Maimonides, as has been remarked 
 above, is substantially that of Avicenna; with the works of 
 Averroes (d. 1204) he was not acquainted when he wrote 
 the "Guide." The most eminent Jewish Averroist was Levi 
 ben Gerson (d. 1344), who has also the distinction of being 
 the solitary realist among Jewish philosophers — the rest, 
 like their Moslem fellows, were nominalists. With Hasdai 
 Crescas (d. 1410) set in a tide of reaction against Aristotel- 
 ianism of every variety, and the general decadence of Jew- 
 ish intellectual activity. 
 
 In the centuries in which philosophy and theology were 
 coming more and more under the dominion of Arab Aristo- 
 telianism, the esoteric doctrines of the Kabbala ("Tradi- 
 tion") were growing and spreading. The origins of this 
 hidden wisdom are very remote. The Jewish Gnosticism 
 which flourished at the beginning of the Christian era, and 
 
 1 This and the two following articles are pointed against the claims 
 of Moslems and, in part, of Christians. 
 
MEDLEVAL AND MODERN 95 
 
 the theosophy which had its adepts in the same age even in 
 orthodox circles, are reckoned among its spiritual ancestors. 
 It revived, or sprang up anew, in Babylonia in the early 
 centuries of Moslem rule, and one of its products, the " Book 
 of Creation" (Sepher ha-Yesirah) , attributed to Abraham, 
 seemed of sufficient moment for Saadia to write a commen- 
 tary on it. From Babylonia it seems to have reached 
 Europe in the ninth century, and to have been handed down 
 in initiated circles, taking in time somewhat different forms 
 in different countries. The Neoplatonic elements which 
 were present in the Oriental Kabbala were reinforced in 
 Spain by deeper draughts from the fountainhead, and in 
 the measure in which Aristotelian rationalism gained the 
 upper hand in theology, the Neoplatonic mysticism found 
 refuge in the Kabbala, to which, in return, it gave a more 
 philosophical form. 
 
 These various streams flow together in the classical work 
 of the European Kabbala, the Zohar. This book, in form 
 a commentary on the Pentateuch, purporting to embody 
 the esoteric teachings of the great rabbi and saint, Simeon 
 ben Yohai (first half of the second century A. D.), is indeed 
 an encyclopaedia of kabbalistic doctrines and speculations, 
 and ultimately acquired canonical authority in mystical 
 circles comparable to that of Dionysius the Areopagite 
 among Christian mystics. In the catastrophe that befell 
 the Spanish Jews at the end of the fifteenth century, as has 
 happened over and over again in similar circumstances, men 
 in persecution and exile turned for spiritual refuge to mys- 
 ticism, and the study of the Kabbala, especially of its theo- 
 sophic and magical sides, was greatly stimulated, while the 
 scattering of its disciples expelled from Spain spread it in 
 the many lands of their new dispersion. Isaac Luria 
 (d. 1572, at Safed in Palestine) became the founder of the 
 modern school, which flourished in the sixteenth century 
 not only in the East but in Italy. It took root in Poland, 
 where in the seventeenth century it was expected that all 
 rabbis should be learned in the Kabbala as well as in the 
 
96 JUDAISM 
 
 Talmud, and in the eighteenth century was disseminated in 
 Germany by Polish teachers. Many Christian scholars, 
 also, from the time of Raymond Lull (d. 1315), particularly 
 in the sixteenth century, busied themselves with this esoteric 
 Judaism, in which some of them found proofs of the truth 
 of Christianity, some a profound symbolical theology, others 
 the secrets of natural philosophy, wbile its indirect influence 
 may be traced in the Christian mystics. 
 
 The metaphysics of the speculative Kabbala are ulti- 
 mately derived from Neoplatonic sources. God is the In- 
 finite, the Absolute, of which nothing can be affirmatively 
 predicated — neither attributes, will, intention, thought, 
 word, nor deed — and in which change is unthinkable. 
 Between this Absolute and the material world the Kabba- 
 lists, like their predecessors, interpose a series of emanations, 
 sometimes conceived in metaphysical, sometimes in more 
 mythological, form (the Sefirot, Adam Kadmon), and a 
 series of worlds. The soul of man is tripartite: the animal 
 soul, the moral nature, and the pure spiritual intelligence, in 
 itself incapable of good or evil. The goal of the last is to 
 return to God. As in the sphere of the will man may be 
 governed by fear of God or by love, so knowledge may be 
 reflective or intuitive; the path of the soul's ascent leads 
 from fear to love, from reflective knowledge to intuitive 
 knowledge; its goal is perfect love and pure contemplation. 
 Other features of the system, such as its solution of the 
 problem of evil and of the fall of man, cannot be touched 
 upon here. 
 
 By the side of the philosophy and ethics of the Kabbala 
 stands a practical Kabbala, with a fantastic mythology — 
 cosmogonic, angelic, eschatological — which has come down 
 in part from the Enoch books and cognate pre-Christian 
 literature, in part seems to be of Gnostic origin, with a 
 heterogeneous increment from subsequent generations and 
 various sources. The practical Kabbala is largely occu- 
 pied with the means of working the supernatural world, 
 warding off the assaults of demons, constraining angels to 
 
MEDLEVAL AND MODERN 97 
 
 do man's will, performing all manner of miracles. Among 
 these means, amulets, and particularly the magical power of 
 mythical names, have a great place. The history of relig- 
 ions affords many other examples of the pernicious affinity 
 between mysticism and magic — theosophy and theurgy. 
 For the attainment of the loftier ambitions of the soul the 
 practical Kabbala had recourse to ascetic exercises such as 
 have everywhere been employed in religions which propose 
 a like goal — self-inflicted privations, especially fasting, and 
 suffering of body and mind. 
 
 There is no doubt that the study of the Kabbala contrib- 
 uted to promote or confirm popular superstitions, but, on 
 the other hand, by the supremacy that it gave to the inward 
 knowledge of God, and by the high value it set on prayer, 
 it did much to keep alive the spiritual element in Judaism, 
 and to prevent its degenerating into an arid formalism of 
 Talmudic casuistry and of ritual observances. The re- 
 markable religious movement of the eighteenth century, 
 Hasidism, drew no small part of its inspiration from the 
 Kabbala. 
 
 The Kabbalists had done their share to revive the expec- 
 tations of the approaching advent of the Messiah; Luria, 
 among others, believed himself to be the Ephraimite Mes- 
 siah, the forerunner of the Davidic Messiah. Apocalyptic 
 calculations based on a passage in the Zohar made out 
 that the deliverance of Israel was to come in the year 1648; 
 another computation, which gained wide currency among 
 Christians, also, fixed on 1666. Shabbethai Zebi, the most 
 famous in the long catalogue of Messianic pretenders, gave 
 himself out for the designated deliverer, and found credence 
 not only with great masses of the unlearned in many lands, 
 but with some prominent rabbis. Neither his imprison- 
 ment by the sultan nor even his conversion to Mohamme- 
 danism, which he accepted to save his life (1666), sufficed 
 to destroy faith in him. Several of his followers made 
 similar claims for themselves, so that there was a succession 
 of Shabbethaian Messiahs in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 
98 JUDAISM 
 
 centuries, the last of whom, Jacob Frank, with many of his 
 dupes, publicly embraced Christianity (1759). 
 
 The ease with which these would-be Messiahs found be- 
 lievers, and the pathetic fidelity with which their followers 
 clung to them even after they were unmasked, are symptoms 
 of the prevailing unrest and of the dissatisfaction of multi- 
 tudes of Jews with their spiritual guides, the rabbis, who 
 were more and more absorbed in the futile casuistry of their 
 Talmudic studies, and, in the telling phrase of Baal Shem, 
 "through sheer study of the Law had no time to think 
 about God." This dissatisfaction found another expres- 
 sion in Hasidism. The founder of this movement, best 
 known by the name Baal Shem, which the people gave him 
 as a miracle-worker, was born about 1700 and died in 1760. 
 He was not a reformer bent on annulling the rabbinical law 
 or amending it; what he found fault with was not the ob- 
 servance or the study of the Law, but the spirit in which it 
 was done. His aim was to revive spiritual religion in the 
 hearts and lives of men. 1 
 
 The ruling idea of Hasidism is the indwelling of God in 
 nature and man. All things are pervaded by the divine 
 life; nothing is void of God, for if we could imagine such a 
 thing it would instantly fall into nothingness. God is in 
 every human thought; when a man speaks he should remem- 
 ber that the divine speaks through him. He who does not 
 see the world in the light of God separates the creation 
 from the Creator, and he who does not fully believe in this 
 universality of God's presence has never properly acknowl- 
 edged God's sovereignty, for he excludes God from a part 
 of the actual world. God did not make the world and then 
 leave it to itself; creation is a continuous process, a per- 
 petual manifestation of the goodness of God. Revelation 
 also is continuous, and the organ by which it is apprehended 
 is faith. It is not prophecies and visions alone that come 
 from heaven, but every utterance of man, if rightly under- 
 stood, conveys a word of God. 
 
 1 See on the following, Schechter, " Studies in Judaism," pp. 20 jf. 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN 99 
 
 Since God is in all, there is good, actual or potential, in 
 all. Every man should think humbly of himself and be 
 slow to think ill of another. He should try to recover the 
 erring and sinful by friendliness to them and prayer for 
 them. No man has sunk so low in sin as to be incapable 
 of raising himself to God. Sin is not positive but negative; 
 it is imperfection. With asceticism Baal Shem had no sym- 
 pathy; pleasures are manifestations of God's love, and, so 
 regarded, are spiritualised and ennobled. Eating and drink- 
 ing and sleeping, as well as study and worship, are the ser- 
 vice of God, which for the truly religious man includes all 
 life. The motive for fulfilling the ordinances of the Law is 
 not to accumulate merit by multiplying observances, but 
 to become one with God. The object of the whole Law is 
 that man should become a law to himself. Of all means of 
 spiritual attainment prayer is the most efficacious. The 
 essence of prayer is not petition, though that has its place, 
 but "cleaving" to God, a sense of oneness in which the con- 
 sciousness of separate existence is lost, and man finds him- 
 self in the eternal being of God. This state is accompanied 
 by an indescribable bliss, which is a necessary element of 
 the true worship of God. 
 
 This pantheistic mysticism contains little that is specifi- 
 cally Jewish, though it conserves the outward forms and 
 observances of Judaism. As in similar systems — in India, 
 for example — men who had attained to the heights of this 
 god-consciousness became to their fellows a kind of god- 
 men. What such a man intuitively perceives is divine 
 truth; his utterance of it has the authority of revelation. 
 He lives the divine life among men in its life-giving power — 
 Baal Shem is reported to have given to the words of Hab. 
 2, 4, the turn, "The righteous can make alive by his 
 faith." "He is a source of blessing and a foundation of 
 grace"; God's grace is bestowed upon those who love him, 
 while those who do not believe in him are apostates from 
 God. Besides all this, divine virtue resides in such holy 
 men; they can work miracles, exorcise evil spirits, lay ghosts, 
 
100 JUDAISM 
 
 and give many other tangible proofs of their supernatural 
 powers. Such men were called Zaddikim, "righteous men." 
 They enjoyed a reverence and devotion which would have 
 turned even heads not prepossessed by a belief in their 
 superiority to plain humanity. In the last half-century bet- 
 ter education and the influence of the movement for enlight- 
 enment (Haskalah) have drawn away many of the younger 
 generation from Hasidism, and its numbers and vitality are 
 declining. 
 
 The persecution of Jews in Spain and Portugal, and of 
 Jewish converts to Christianity (Maranos), whose Christi- 
 anity was in most cases a transparent disguise, led in the 
 sixteenth century to extensive emigration to Turkey, where 
 they enjoyed the protection of the law, and to those Chris- 
 tian countries in which they found at least comparative 
 toleration, especially to Italy, France, and the Netherlands. 
 In Amsterdam there was from the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century a flourishing Jewish community, which 
 counted among its rabbis some scholars of wide reputation. 
 The most famous name in the annals of Amsterdam Jewry 
 is Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632-77). His philosophy, 
 in which important elements derived from mediaeval Jewish 
 philosophers, especially Maimonides and Crescas, find a 
 place in a system which has its starting-point in Descartes, 
 proves him one of the most profound and original thinkers 
 of his race. Spinoza belongs, however, to the history of 
 European philosophy, and his influence on Jewish thought 
 has been relatively small. Excommunicated by the syna- 
 gogue, and with no inclination to exchange the bondage of 
 Jewish orthodoxy for that of the church, he lived out his 
 short life in solitary freedom, grinding optical glasses and 
 surveying all things "sub specie ceternitatis" — from the point 
 of view of the infinite and eternal. 
 
 In central Europe, after the middle of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, Jewish learning gradually decayed, and the revival of 
 letters and the Protestant reformation did little to improve 
 the situation. Insulated in their ghettos, even their speech 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN 101 
 
 was untouched by the development of literary High Ger- 
 man, and their antiquated German, mingled with Hebrew 
 words, was in the ears of their neighbours a barbarous jargon. 
 The reflux migration from Poland in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury and the revival of Talmudic studies by imported 
 Polish rabbis in the eighteenth did not make matters better 
 in this respect. That their intellectual isolation was a 
 greater evil than all the legal disabilities under which the 
 Jews suffered; that from this ghetto of the mind they alone 
 could liberate themselves; and that to accomplish this the 
 barrier of language must first of all be broken down— these 
 were the convictions which inspired Moses Mendelssohn 
 (1729-'86) to advocate and initiate a reform in education 
 which should prepare Jewish youth to appreciate and appro- 
 priate German culture. His own German translation of 
 the Pentateuch and other parts of the Bible, undertaken 
 originally for his children, contributed much to the end he 
 had at heart. The Free School in Berlin, founded at his 
 suggestion, was the first institution in Germany for the in- 
 struction of Jews not only in the Bible and Talmud but in 
 secular studies and modern languages. 
 
 Mendelssohn himself was the friend of Lessing, and 
 moved in the brilliant circle of writers and thinkers who 
 made the Berlin of Frederick the Great illustrious. His 
 philosophical writings were widely read and highly esteemed. 
 Intellectually a child of the "Aufklarung," he was a Jew to 
 the bottom of his heart, and adhered faithfully to the ancient 
 forms of his religion. In one of his latest works, entitled 
 "Jerusalem" (1783), these two sides of his character find 
 instructive expression. Like Leibniz he distinguishes eter- 
 nal necessary truths from contingent truths, such as phe- 
 nomena of nature or historical fact. The former are appre- 
 hended by reason alone, which God has bestowed on all 
 men; they are not communicated by supernatural revela- 
 tion, nor, in the nature of things, can miracles afford any 
 confirmation of them. Mendelssohn recognises no other 
 eternal truths than those which are not merely comprehen- 
 
102 JUDAISM 
 
 sible by human reason but discoverable and confirmable by 
 reason. Judaism is not revealed religion, if by religion be 
 meant a system of eternal truths, but revealed law; not 
 what man must think or believe, but what he must do. 
 Unlike Christianity, therefore, Judaism has no distinctive 
 dogmas, though Maimonides had been ill advised enough 
 to formulate articles of faith for it. Its eternal truths are 
 the truth of all human religion. The Law, on the other 
 hand, was revealed to Israel alone, which God had chosen 
 to be a priestly nation. Besides its religious and moral pre- 
 cepts, its ceremonial observances were a kind of symbolic 
 language inviting men to reflection on the profound lessons 
 which lay beneath the surface. This Law, written and oral, 
 in all its parts is perennially binding: "I do not see how 
 those who are born in the house of Jacob can at all consci- 
 entiously emancipate themselves from the Law." 
 
 The revolutionary era brought to the Jews in the chief 
 states of western Europe the more or less complete removal 
 of their civic disabilities; Jewish students began to frequent 
 the universities in numbers and to participate in the eager 
 intellectual life around them. The spirit of liberty was in 
 the air, often manifesting itself in revolt against authority 
 in every sphere. While the world about them was busy 
 overhauling everything that had come down from the past, 
 it is not to be wondered at that reform began to be broached 
 among the Jews also. The beginnings were made with 
 mild changes in the synagogue worship, the introduction of 
 a sermon and prayers in German, the singing of hymns in 
 the same language, sometimes with organ and choir, the 
 curtailment of the inordinately tedious service by dropping 
 some of the doggerel piyyutim ("poetries") with which the 
 German and Polish liturgy especially was overladen. These 
 innovations were vehemently opposed by the conservatives, 
 to whom they appeared little short of sacrilege. Insignifi- 
 cant as the specific issue may seem, they instinctively per- 
 ceived that behind it lay the question whether Judaism was 
 immutable in ritual as in doctrine, or was to adapt itself to 
 the changing notions and capricious tastes of the age. 
 
MEDLEVAL AND MODERN 103 
 
 While these controversies about organs and prayer-books 
 were going on, scholars, equipped not only with Jewish 
 learning but with the philological and historical training of 
 European universities, were engaged in critical investiga- 
 tions of Jewish literature, proving that it was the product of 
 a long and complex development, and represented different, 
 and sometimes conflicting, tendencies. The same methods 
 were before long applied to the sacred text itself with a like 
 result. Nowhere was the immutability, nowhere the final- 
 ity, to be discovered which the opponents of progress made 
 the characteristic of Judaism. 
 
 A more radical tendency was represented by the Frank- 
 fort Society of the Friends of Reform, who issued their 
 declaration of principles in 1843 in three articles: "First, 
 We recognise the possibility of unlimited development in 
 the Mosaic religion. Second, The collection of controver- 
 sies and prescriptions commonly designated by the name 
 Talmud possess for us no authority from either the doctrinal 
 or the practical standpoint. Third, A Messiah who is to 
 lead back the Israelites to the land of Palestine is neither 
 expected nor desired by us; we know no fatherland but that 
 to which we belong by birth or citizenship." The more 
 moderate reformers vied with the stanchest conservatives 
 in denouncing this "confession of unbelief," and the an- 
 tagonism was increased when the Frankfort society resolved 
 that circumcision was not indispensable. 
 
 Several conferences of rabbis were held between 1844 
 and 1846, but the differences were too radical to make it 
 possible to come to a common understanding. The revolu- 
 tion of 1848 diverted interest for a time into other channels; 
 the reaction which followed strengthened religious conserva- 
 tism among Jews as well as Christians. The reform move- 
 ment came to a standstill in Germany, where it has only in 
 the last few years begun to make headway again; but it 
 was taken up and carried forward in the United States, 
 whither several of its ablest exponents emigrated in the 
 fourth and fifth decades of the last century. The adherents 
 of reform in this country reject the authority of the Talmud 
 
104 JUDAISM 
 
 and the rabbinical codes; they put aside also the expecta- 
 tion of the coming of a Messiah, the return of the Jews to 
 Palestine, with the re-establishment of Jewish nationality 
 and sacrificial worship; they do not believe in the resurrec- 
 tion of the body, but in the immortality of the soul. The 
 dietary laws, biblical as well as rabbinical, which have their 
 reason in the ideal of exclusiveness, fall with that ideal. 
 Sabbath rest is understood as refraining from labour for 
 gain; all the casuistry about prohibited works and the legal 
 fictions by which the prohibitions are evaded are swept 
 away. While the effort is made to maintain historic con- 
 tinuity in the forms of worship, the ritual and the prayer- 
 book have been recast in conformity with the principles of 
 the reform. 
 
 The belief that the dispersion of the Jews among the 
 nations, their "exile," is an expiation of the sins of the 
 people, and that it is to end with the gathering of the Jews 
 from the ends of the earth to the Holy Land and the restora- 
 tion of their nationality, has been a cardinal article of ortho- 
 dox faith in all the centuries, and though the realisation 
 of this hope promised by so many would-be Messiahs was 
 repeatedly disappointed, the faith was unshaken. In the 
 Jewish "Aufklarung" of the Mendelssohnian age, indeed, 
 when, with the political emancipation the Jews became citi- 
 zens of European states and absorbed with avidity the in- 
 tellectual and aesthetic culture of their environment, many 
 cast aside these nationalist aspirations: Judaism was a relig- 
 ion with a mission to mankind which could only be ful- 
 filled by the dispersion of the people. It was historically 
 and actually the religion of a race, but none the less the 
 Jews were nationally and in culture Germans or Frenchmen 
 or Englishmen, as the case might be. This was also the 
 attitude of reformed Judaism. To the great masses of the 
 Jews, however, this renunciation of the national hope seemed 
 to be the pulling out of a corner-stone. 
 
 Numerous projects for the restoration of the Jews to Pal- 
 estine and for securing the autonomy of their settlements 
 
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN 105 
 
 there were put forth in the nineteenth century, some of 
 them by Christians of millenarian prepossessions, but with- 
 out considerable results. The movement received a great 
 impulse in the last decades of the century from the rise of 
 an aggressive anti-Semitism in European countries. Nation- 
 ality was conceived not in a political, but in a pseudo-ethno- 
 logical sense; "national culture" was the expression of the 
 genius of a race. The Jews were a foreign element in the 
 national body politic, socially unassimilable, a peril to the 
 purity of the national culture just in proportion to their 
 intellectual acuteness and their financial power. This an- 
 tipathy manifested itself in different ways, from otracisms 
 in clubs to wholesale massacres, connived at, if not insti- 
 gated, by the government; but everywhere it pressed home 
 upon the Jew the fact that he was a member of an alien 
 race. The idea that race is the true basis of nationality, 
 and consequently that each "race" ought to be a nation 
 for itself fell in with the immemorial belief of the Jews and 
 gave fresh energy to it. Zionism and anti-Semitism are, in 
 so far, only two aspects of the same phenomenon. 
 
 The appalling condition of the Jews in Russia in conse- 
 quence of economically ruinous laws and bloody pogroms, 
 and the hardly more tolerable state of their fellows in Rou- 
 mania, gave a practical turn to the movement. The only 
 hope for these distressed millions was emigration in mass; 
 and it is not strange that the eyes of many of them turned 
 to the land of their fathers. In western Europe, also, the 
 question could not fail to rise in the minds of philanthropists, 
 as well as of idealists : Was not the solution of the perennial 
 Jewish problem an autonomous Jewish state in Palestine 
 under Turkish suzerainty? When in 1896 a Viennese 
 journalist, Theodor Herzl (d. 1904), in his "Jewish State," 
 struck out a plan for the new exodus to the promised land, 
 his words found an instant and enthusiastic response in 
 many quarters. Opposed by liberals as a revival of an old 
 delusion; by hard-headed men of affairs as a visionary 
 scheme; by the ultraconservative, partly out of prejudice 
 
106 JUDAISM 
 
 against the origin of the movement, partly because in the 
 orthodox programme the advent of the Messiah should 
 precede the return to Palestine, Zionism spread rapidly. A 
 literature of pamphlets and periodicals was created, con- 
 gresses in which all shades of belief and unbelief met to- 
 gether were held, a programme and measures for carrying 
 it out were adopted, societies for the promotion of the cause 
 were formed in all countries; many who at first stood aloof 
 were swept into the current. 
 
 But when it came to realising these exalted ideals insu- 
 perable obstacles were encountered. The Sultan was polite, 
 but the expected concessions were not forthcoming; the 
 financiers did not respond as they were expected to. Stri- 
 dent discord, also, early made itself heard in the Zionist 
 counsels; the project of a Jewish colonial state in British 
 East Africa seemed to many nothing short of treason to 
 the enterprise. The revolution of 1908 and the subsequent 
 overturnings in the Turkish Empire seemed to put the 
 realisation of the original plan further beyond the horizon 
 of possibility than ever. The events of the present war, 
 especially the occupation of Palestine by the British army 
 and the prospects held out to the Jews of re-establishment 
 in the land of their fathers, have given a new turn to the 
 affair, the ultimate issue of which cannot at this moment 
 be foreseen. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THE APOSTOLIC AGE 
 
 Jesus and his Disciples— The Work in Galilee — Pilgrimage to Jeru- 
 salem and Death— The Teaching of Jesus— The Faith of his 
 Disciples — Beginnings of Gentile Christianity— Paul— The Gospel 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ — The Mystery of the Cross — The Law 
 and the Gospel — The Spirit of Christ — The Coming of the Lord 
 — Predestination — Angels and Demons — Influence of Paul — The 
 Epistle to the Hebrews — The Gospel of John — The Incarnate 
 Logos — The Knowledge of God and Eternal Life — Regeneration 
 — The Spiritual Gospel — The Revelation of John — The Millennium 
 and the Last Judgment — The Nazarenes and other Judaic Sects 
 — Early Christian Churches — Heresies — Marcion and the Gnostics 
 — The Consolidation of the Catholic Church. 
 
 The expectation of a great deliverance, in which by the 
 intervention of God the Jews should be liberated from the 
 dominion of the heathen, and of a golden age of righteous- 
 ness and peace and prosperity to follow the re-establishment 
 of independence, kept alive by the lessons from Scripture 
 which were read and expounded in the synagogues and by 
 revelations bearing the names of ancient worthies, gave 
 birth from time to time to prophets, who announced that 
 the great moment was come, and sometimes drew crowds 
 after them into the desert, where, according to a common 
 belief, the Messiah was to appear. In the year 28 or 29 of 
 our era such a prophet, named John, appeared in Judsea, 
 proclaiming that the reign of God 1 was at hand, the age in 
 which his sovereignty should be universally acknowledged 
 and his righteous will be supreme in the hearts and lives of 
 men. It was a common belief that in that age there would 
 
 1 This is the meaning of the phrase translated in the English versions, 
 "kingdom of Heaven" or "kingdom of God." 
 
 107 
 
108 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 be no place for sinners; it was to be ushered in by a judg- 
 ment in which they should perish. John urged his hearers 
 to prepare for the crisis by repenting of their sins and thus 
 securing God's forgiveness. 1 Of those who professed repen- 
 tance, he required a confession of their sins and an ablution 
 in the waters of the Jordan, which he seems to have treated 
 as a condition of remission. Hence the name, "John the 
 Baptiser." The multitudes that nocked to him and his 
 influence over them roused the suspicion of Herod Antipas, 
 who deemed it prudent to forestall a possible outbreak by 
 putting the leader to death. 2 The arrest of John dispersed 
 his following, but did not destroy their faith in his predic- 
 tion that a greater than he was about to appear, who would 
 winnow the chaff from the wheat, gathering the wheat into 
 his garner and burning the chaff in unquenchable fire. 
 
 Among those who resorted to John and were baptised by 
 him was Jesus, a young man from Nazareth in Lower Gali- 
 lee. His father, Joseph, was a carpenter, and Jesus had 
 been brought up to the trade. The names of four brothers 
 are known, and he had sisters married and living in Naza- 
 reth. Of education Jesus had no more than in those days 
 fell to the lot of youths of his class in a provincial town. 
 He may have learned to read the sacred books in Hebrew 
 in a school for boys such as were maintained in many places, 
 but his knowledge of the Scriptures was doubtless chiefly 
 gained from the reading and exposition of the lessons in the 
 synagogue. 3 Of the legal lore that was to be got only at the 
 feet of the rabbis he had none. His mother tongue was the 
 Aramaic vernacular of Galilee, a provincial dialect whose 
 slovenly pronunciation is the butt of rabbinical witticisms. 
 
 The religion in which he grew up was the orthodox Juda- 
 ism of his day, such as has been described in its own place. 4 
 The teaching of the synagogue made the people familiar, not 
 only with the words of the Law and the Prophets, but with 
 
 1 See above, pp. 70, 79, on the Jewish doctrine of repentance. 
 
 2 So Josephus reports the matter. 
 
 3 See above, pp. 62 /. < See pp. 68-74. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 109 
 
 the traditional interpretation of Scripture and with the doc- 
 trines and observances which the scribes founded on Scrip- 
 ture and tradition. The teachers, as a class, were of the 
 Pharisees, who were the recognised religious authorities. 
 Jesus' ideas and beliefs were formed under these influences; 
 the customs to which he was habituated from childhood 
 and the piety that was cultivated in the community about 
 him bore the same stamp. 
 
 After the arrest of John, Jesus returned to Galilee and 
 took up, as doubtless others did, the call to repentance, 
 "The appointed time is come; the reign of God draws near." 
 But he did not adopt John's prophetic style of speech or 
 life. The scene of his labours was not the desert, but the 
 populous towns about the northern end of the Lake of Gali- 
 lee, where he taught in the synagogues or discoursed to the 
 crowds that gathered to hear him on the hillsides or the 
 shore of the lake. He was commonly addressed with the 
 respectful title, "Rabbi," appropriated to religious teachers. 
 There was so little of the ascetic about him that his enemies 
 defamed him as a man overfond of good eating and drink- 
 ing and on terms of scandalous intimacy with disreputable, 
 characters. 
 
 Jesus soon gathered about him a group of disciples who 
 kept him closer company and went about with him from 
 place to place. Among them there was an inner circle of 
 intimacy, Simon (Peter), and the brothers, James and John, 
 sons of Zebedee. All of them were men of the common 
 people; several were fishermen, one was a toll-gatherer. 
 There was no scholar among them, and apparently none 
 otherwise of mark except the three just mentioned. 
 
 According to the oldest narrative (Mark 1, 21/.), Jesus' 
 first public appearance was in the synagogue in Capernaum, 
 where his words made an impression of authority unlike the 
 ordinary synagogue homilies with their dependence on tra- 
 dition. From Capernaum, accompanied by some of his 
 first disciples, he made a tour among the neighbouring vil- 
 lages, announcing the coming of the kingdom and teaching 
 
110 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 in their synagogues. Subsequent journeys took him farther 
 away; the Gospels speak vaguely of all Galilee, but, except 
 Nazareth, no place is named nor is any incident of these 
 tours recorded. Evidently most of his time was spent in 
 Capernaum and its vicinity, with occasional excursions to 
 the other side of the lake, where also, in the tetrarchy of 
 Philip, there was a considerable Jewish population. 
 
 The impression his message and teaching made was en- 
 hanced by the fame he soon acquired as an exorcist who 
 could expel the most obstinate demons and cure diseases 
 which defied the skill of the physicians. Wherever he went 
 this reputation preceded him; crowds gathered to be healed 
 or to see others restored to health, and listened to his words 
 with the respect inspired by such evidence of power. It 
 was not long, however, before voices were raised in criti- 
 cism of his disregard for rules of the unwritten Law about 
 which religious men, and especially teachers, were expected 
 to be peculiarly scrupulous. The Pharisees, who were a 
 kind of Jewish Puritans, saw with great concern the lax 
 observance of the Sabbath, the indifference of the common 
 people to the rules of religious cleanness, and their negli- 
 gence in the payment of taxes for the support of the clergy. 
 Their efforts to reform these abuses gave them an exagger- 
 ated importance in their eyes; punctiliousness in such mat- 
 ters became for them the criterion of piety — an error which 
 precisians seldom escape. The study of the twofold Law 
 in the schools had for many a similar result; the minutise of 
 the Law and the casuistry of the doctors acquired the facti- 
 tious value which microscopic points of learning always pos- 
 sess for the academic mind. 
 
 Jesus, while recognising the obligation of the Law and 
 the authority of the scribes as its interpreters, made small 
 account of many of their refinements of observance, and 
 thus seemed to encourage the masses in irreligiousness. 
 The most frequent conflict in the Gospels is over the keep- 
 ing of the Sabbath, about which the lawyers had created a 
 whole code of definitions and prescriptions. The Pharisees, 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 111 
 
 who made a principle of shunning contact with classes pre- 
 sumed to be ignorant or negligent of the strict rules of 
 cleanness, protested against his dining with publicans and 
 sinners, and complained that his disciples did not wash 
 their hands before meals, as the Pharisean rule required. 
 Jesus in his turn condemns the teachers of the Law who 
 set their traditions above the Scriptures, and even nullified 
 by their casuistry the commandments of God. 
 
 Such clashes with the Pharisees probably did not impair 
 Jesus' popularity with the common people, who had no love 
 for those "unco' guid," and could well enjoy seeing them 
 taken down; but they were the beginning of an antagonism 
 between him and the religious leaders, who used their great 
 influence against him. They not only combated his loose 
 teaching, but discredited his cures by attributing them to 
 magic — he cast out demons, not by the power of God but 
 by a compact with Beelzebul, the king of the demons. Herod 
 Antipas also manifested a suspicious interest in him; he is 
 said to have been persuaded that Jesus was the decapitated 
 John come to life again, and to have desired to set eyes on 
 him. Perhaps on this account, Jesus left the district where 
 he had hitherto laboured, and betook himself with his more 
 intimate followers to the region northeast of the Lake of 
 Galilee in the tetrarchy of Philip, and thence farther north 
 into the inland territory of the city of Tyre. 
 
 In proclaiming that the reign of God was at hand and in 
 his teaching about it Jesus said nothing of the Messiah, with 
 whose coming the beginning of the manifest rule of God in 
 his world was associated in the popular expectation; nor 
 had he either in public or in private done anything to sug- 
 gest that he thought of himself in that character. He was 
 the sower, who scattered the message of the kingdom broad- 
 cast; on most of his hearers it made no lasting impression, 
 but where the seed fell on good ground it bore corresponding 
 fruit. During their wandering in the north, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Csesarea Philippi, Jesus one day asked his dis- 
 ciples what men said about him. Some thought, they 
 
112 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 replied, that he was John the Baptist, some that he was 
 Elijah (the forerunner of the Messiah), others, more indefi- 
 nitely, one of the old prophets returned to earth. "But 
 who do you think I am?" "You are the Messiah," an- 
 swered Peter. It seems to have been the first time that 
 such an idea had been broached even in the inmost circle 
 of his companions, and Jesus enjoined them not to utter 
 this word to any one. 
 
 Not long after this they returned to Galilee without 
 publicity, and then, as the season of the Passover was 
 approaching, set out with the pilgrim company to go to 
 Jerusalem for the feast. The expectations with which his 
 followers drew near the city are exemplified by the attempt 
 of James and John to get from Jesus a promise that they 
 should occupy the seats of honour at his right and left, as 
 the first and second ministers in the kingdom. Jesus him- 
 self had a premonition that the great venture would have a 
 different outcome. He was going to present himself to his 
 people assembled at the feast. Would they recognise him 
 as one whom God had sent to inaugurate the reign of right- 
 eousness on earth? His experience with the religious lead- 
 ers in Galilee gave no reason to anticipate a favourable 
 reception in Jerusalem, where the power of the Pharisees 
 was much greater. And if he openly announced himself 
 the Messiah, he could hardly doubt that the chief priests 
 and their Sadducean supporters would join hands with the 
 Pharisees and doctors of the Law against him, to say noth- 
 ing of the Roman governor, always on the watch to quell 
 incipient demonstrations of religious fanaticism or political 
 insurgency. 
 
 Arrived upon the Mount of Olives, which overlooks Jeru- 
 salem from the east, a procession was formed with Jesus in 
 the middle riding on an ass borrowed in a neighbouring vil- 
 lage, the crowds chanting, as they began the descent, a 
 familiar line of a Psalm: "Hosanna ! blessed is he who comes 
 in the name of the Lord!" with improvised responses: 
 "Blessed is the, approaching kingdom of our father David," 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 113 
 
 or the like. The manner of Jesus' entry was symbolic of 
 the coming of the king as it was represented in a well-known 
 prophecy, 1 and was doubtless understood as, so to speak, 
 an acted prediction; but it was not an open Messianic 
 declaration. When his pilgrim escort were asked, "Who is 
 this?" they replied: "Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in 
 Galilee." 
 
 With prophetic zeal for God's house, Jesus purged the 
 temple of the traders and brokers who had stands in the 
 courts. The multitudes, who probably had their own 
 grievances against the licensed monopoly in sacrificial vic- 
 tims and the premium demanded by the money-changers, 
 were with the bold reformer, and the authorities did not ' 
 venture to interfere, however deeply they resented the inva- 
 sion of their prerogative. So Jesus came and went, and 
 spoke as he chose to the throngs in the court. The conflict 
 with the religious leaders, however, became more acute 
 every day; they tried to entrap him into compromising 
 utterances — for example, about the tribute to Caesar — and 
 he in his turn denounced them with increasing vehemence: 
 they would neither enter the kingdom of Heaven themselves 
 nor let others do so; their teaching was a perversion of the 
 Law, and their religious profession a sham. To his disciples 
 in private he spoke of the doom of the city which rejected 
 its day of opportunity, and of the coming of the Son of Man 
 in judgment. 
 
 The authorities were not unreasonably apprehensive of 
 what might come of all this. The concourse at the feast 
 was an explosive mass which a spark might set off, and 
 nothing more likely to do it than a prophet or a Messianic 
 pretender. In such an event it would be like Pilate to hold 
 them responsible for not preventing it. They hesitated to 
 lay hands on Jesus, however, lest they should provoke the 
 disturbance they feared, until one of his disciples offered to 
 guide them to him by night in a lonely place outside the 
 city where he would have only a few friends with him. 
 
 1 Zech. 9, 9. 
 
1 14 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Thus Jesus was arrested and conducted to the residence of 
 the high priest. Even when they had him in their own 
 hands the priests did not feel secure, but planned, at the 
 earliest possible hour, to turn over their prisoner to the 
 Roman jurisdiction. Meanwhile a meeting of members of 
 the Council was held to frame the charges they should lay 
 before the governor. Early in the morning he was accord- 
 ingly brought to Pilate's court, accused of giving himself 
 out for the king of the Jews. On this charge he was exe- 
 cuted the same day in the Roman mode, by crucifixion. 
 
 Jesus was not in his own thought nor in the apprehension 
 of those who heard him, friend or foe, the founder of a new 
 religion. However different the emphasis of his teaching 
 from that of the school and the synagogue, he had no doc- 
 trine about God's nature and character, or about what he 
 requires of men, or on his relation to his people and his 
 purpose for them, or concerning the hereafter of the indi- 
 vidual and the world, that would have been unfamiliar to a 
 well-instructed Jew of his time. Nor was he, as some in 
 modern times would make him, a preacher of social reform, 
 taking the part of the poor and downtrodden, denouncing 
 their oppressors, and inveighing against the structure of 
 society that made such injustice possible. The economic 
 reconstruction of society was the last concern of a man 
 who believed that God was on the point of putting into 
 effect his own programme for the new world. 
 
 Without any attempt to extract what nowadays is called 
 the "essence of religion," Jesus kept closely to what is 
 essential in religion. About much that seemed to his pious 
 contemporaries of great importance he was little concerned. 
 A simple and natural piety, a pure and upright life, unsel- 
 fish goodness to all men, taking its example and inspiration 
 from the goodness of the Father in Heaven, who bestows 
 blessings on the evil as well as the good — such is the char- 
 acter God desires to see in men. Here, then, is the empha- 
 sis of Jesus' teaching — piety, morality, and charity. He 
 did not come to annul the Law and the Prophets, but to 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 115 
 
 confirm them. Not less than the righteousness of the 
 scribes and Pharisees, but more, is required of those who 
 would enter the kingdom of Heaven. Jesus accepted the 
 institutions and observances of Judaism as a positive ele- 
 ment in religion, and conformed to them; but he did not 
 attribute to these externals intrinsic worth in the sight of 
 God nor allow that punctiliousness about them was by 
 itself a sign of superior religiousness. Tithing garden-herbs 
 was well, but not to be so preoccupied with it as to forget 
 that justice, charity, and fidelity are of greater account than 
 mint, anise, and cummin. 
 
 The subject of Jesus' teaching was the reign of God. 
 The phrase was associated in Jewish thought especially 
 with the prophecies in Zech. 14, 9 and Obad. verse 21; it 
 was an age in which the Lord should be sovereign in all the 
 world, the one God, universally acknowledged. Though 
 the Jews often connected it with the coming of the Mes- 
 siah, the idea of the reign of God was in origin and mean- 
 ing independent of that expectation. God had, indeed, 
 been king from the beginning, but his sovereignty was not 
 recognised by men. When Israel at Sinai uttered the 
 words, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do and listen 
 to," for the first time a people piofessed its allegiance to 
 God's kingship. And this profession every Jew renewed 
 daily in the recitation of the Shema (Deut. 6, 4-9), sub- 
 mitting himself to the authority of the "kingdom of 
 Heaven." The reign of God was thus a present reality in 
 so far as God's sovereignty was acknowledged, the obliga- 
 tion to obey his law assumed, and his will done. In so far 
 as the Jewish people came short of this, the reign of God 
 was an unfulfilled ideal. But it was their firm faith that 
 the time would come when it should be fully realised, not in 
 this one nation alone, but throughout the world. The reign 
 of God would then be revealed in its glory and power. This 
 was the essentially religious form of the Jewish expectation 
 of the golden age to come. 
 
 To these ideas and expectations the teaching of Jesus 
 
116 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 attaches itself. The reign of God, manifest and universal, 
 is about to begin. To live in the world as it will be then is 
 the supreme object of desire and striving. Inasmuch as it 
 is the very definition of the reign of God that his will is 
 done on earth as it is done in heaven, only those can have 
 a place in it whose character corresponds to its nature; it 
 is a world in which there are none but good and godly men. 
 Jesus' idea of true religion has already been described. 
 The piety, morality, and charity which constitute it have 
 no esoteric sense or sectarian definition. The conception 
 of piety naturally draws most upon the Psalms as expres- 
 sions of religious experience; and when Jesus tells his hearers 
 what kind of men the reign of God and its blessings belong 
 to, it is the character of the humble and godly in the Psalms 
 that he depicts. It was the type of piety he exemplified in 
 his own life and tried to cultivate in his followers. A dis- 
 tinctively Jewish feature, as compared with the Psalms, is 
 the thought of God as the Father in Heaven, and the influ- 
 ence of this conception not only on piety but on morality 
 and charity, in all which spheres it has an important place 
 in the teaching of Jesus. 
 
 To illustrate the nature and worth of the kingdom of 
 God, Jesus frequently employed parables, or comparisons, 
 a mode of teaching much used in the synagogue. The 
 parables of Jesus display a fertility of invention and a 
 felicity of expression that give them a poetic charm rarely 
 found in the parables of the rabbis. 
 
 In what way the reign of God was to be inaugurated, the 
 advent of which he believed to be imminent, is a question 
 with which Jesus does not seem at first to have concerned 
 himself. If we can trust the order of time in the Gospel 
 tradition, it was not till toward the end of his brief career 
 that he spoke to his disciples of the Son of Man who was 
 to come on the clouds of heaven, and of the judgment 
 with which the present period of the world's history should 
 end, as foretold in Daniel and in certain visions of Enoch. 
 The phrase "son of man," which in the mother tongue of 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 117 
 
 Jesus and his disciples meant simply a human being (indefi- 
 nite), acquired a specific sense only in this apocalyptic asso- 
 ciation — the figure "like a man" whom Daniel and Enoch 
 saw in heaven, and whom the latter identified with "the 
 righteous and elect one," the Messiah. 
 
 On the arrest of Jesus his disciples fled and made their 
 escape to Galilee. Before long, however, they returned to 
 Jerusalem. They believed that God had brought Jesus to 
 life again and taken him up to heaven, whence he would 
 shortly descend in power and glory. He was himself the 
 Son of Man, of whose imminent coming to judgment he had 
 spoken. Their faith that Jesus was the Messiah was thus 
 re-established, and their expectation took a new form. 
 This faith was connected with visions of their risen Master. 
 According to the tradition Paul received, he appeared first 
 to Peter, then to the Twelve, 1 afterward to others, either 
 singly, as to James (Jesus' brother) and to Paul himself, or 
 to numbers together — once to more than five hundred. 
 
 In Jerusalem, where they awaited the descent of the 
 Messiah from heaven, the disciples had their own meetings 
 by night in private houses, but they spent much of their 
 time in the courts and halls of the temple, and used the 
 opportunity which the resort to the holy house gave them 
 to endeavour to convert others to their faith that Jesus 
 was the Messiah. They were the more zealous in these 
 efforts because they believed that only those who, repenting 
 of their sins, acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah would be 
 saved when he came to judgment. 
 
 For proof they adduced Scripture texts, especially Psalm 
 22, in which they found the death of the Messiah fore- 
 told in all detail and circumstance just as Jesus died on 
 the cross. In other Psalms they found predictions that 
 the Messiah should be raised from the dead (Psalm 16, 
 8-11), and be seated at the right hand of God (Psalm 110, 
 1). That Jesus has been raised from the dead and taken 
 
 !In the earliest accounts the scene of these first appearances was 
 probably Galilee. 
 
118 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 up to heaven they were witnesses, for they had seen him. 1 
 In confirmation they pointed to the miraculous cures they 
 wrought by the name of Jesus. The arguments and ex- 
 hortations of the Apostles made converts, both among the 
 residents of Jerusalem and the visitors who came up to the 
 feasts from many lands. Some priests are said to have 
 been among them, and later we read of Pharisees who em- 
 braced the faith. 
 
 The leading men in the little community of believers were 
 the three who had been the closest companions of Jesus, 
 Peter and the brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebe- 
 dee. There were twelve "Apostles" — the number was im- 
 portant because it was the symbol of their mission to the 
 twelve tribes of Israel — but though as members of this 
 group they enjoyed a certain precedence, the rest of the 
 Twelve figure only in the catalogues, not in the history. 2 
 James, the brother of Jesus, was not one of the Twelve, but 
 his relation to Jesus made him an important accession to 
 the ranks of the disciples, and at a later time he became one 
 of the pillars of the church in Jerusalem, taking precedence 
 even of Peter. 
 
 At first the disciples seem to have confined their efforts 
 to Jerusalem, but when the momentary expectation of the 
 coming of the Messiah subsided, they extended the sphere 
 of their labours to the surrounding country, while converted 
 pilgrims returning to their homes carried the gospel to 
 remoter parts. The spirit and method of the propaganda 
 are represented in the instructions traditionally ascribed to 
 Jesus (Matt. 10, Iff.). The missioners (Apostles) were to 
 address themselves to Jews only, avoiding towns inhabited 
 by heathen or Samaritans. They went from place to place, 
 depending on the hospitality of the inhabitants for enter- 
 tainment. If they met an unfriendly reception in any 
 place they were not to brave persecution, but to flee to 
 another. Their business was urgent, for before they were 
 
 1 See Acts 2, 32. 
 
 2 The field was thus left free for apocryphal legends. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 119 
 
 through with the cities of Israel the Son of Man would 
 come. So Jesus had foretold. 
 
 The disciples of Jesus the Nazarene, as they seem to 
 have been commonly called, were orthodox and pious Jews, 
 whose Messianic and eschatological beliefs were their sole 
 peculiarity. They worshipped in the temple and frequented 
 the synagogues with the rest. As their numbers grew they 
 perhaps formed a congregation of their own, as any group 
 of Jews who could muster the quorum for prayer (ten men) 
 was free to do, the synagogue being a purely voluntary 
 association. 1 
 
 Outside of Palestine the disciples of Jesus followed for a 
 time the practice of the Apostles in Jerusalem and addressed 
 themselves with their gospel to Jews only. But in mixed 
 communities, where there were not only proselytes to Juda- 
 ism but many other "religious persons" who frequented the 
 synagogues and accepted the fundamental ideas of Judaism 
 without becoming proselytes, the knowledge of the gospel 
 filtered by various channels into heathen circles and pre- 
 pared the way for direct efforts for the conversion of Gen- 
 tiles. 
 
 The preaching to Gentiles was not merely an extension 
 of the missionary field, it was the beginning of a Gentile 
 Christianity. Converts from heathenism necessarily appre- 
 hended the gospel in a very different way from the Jewish 
 disciples in Jerusalem. The whole background and setting 
 of the disciples' conception — the life under the Law, Jewish 
 Messianic expectations, and Jewish eschatology — were lack- 
 ing. On the other hand, they brought their own modes of 
 religious thought, and attached to the words they heard the 
 signification and connotations of their own speech. The 
 greatest difference of all was that the gospel of the Lord 
 Jesus appeared to them, as it could not to Jewish believers, 
 to be a new religion. However close its relation to Juda- 
 ism might be, in making faith in the Lord Jesus the condi- 
 
 1 Thus we read in Acts (6, 9) of synagogues of the Libertines (Ro- 
 man freedmen) and others. 
 
120 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tion of salvation for Jew and Gentile alike it set itself over 
 against Judaism as well as against all the varieties of hea- 
 thenism, a distinct and exclusive religion. 
 
 From what they heard of the life and teaching of Jesus 
 they would understand that he was the founder of this 
 religion; but the far more important thing was that he was 
 the author of the salvation which his religion promised 
 men. Jesus was to them a purely religious figure, the 
 Saviour through whom they had the forgiveness of sins 
 and the assurance of everlasting life. Both their thought 
 of him and their feeling toward him were thus very differ- 
 ent from the personal love and reverence of his disciples, 
 who had lived with the Master in intimate fellowship, and 
 among whom the tradition of his doings and sayings was a 
 sacred memory. 
 
 The names and titles applied to Jesus by his disciples 
 also had a different meaning and different associations in 
 Greek and to the mind of Gentiles. Messiah, so full of sig- 
 nificance to a Jew, literally translated Christos ("anointed"), 
 had no corresponding suggestion in Greek; it was a mere 
 title, Jesus the Christ, and very soon lost even this distinc- 
 tion and was combined in the proper name, Christ Jesus or 
 Jesus Christ. The disciples spoke of Jesus in their Aramaic 
 mother tongue as "our master" (marari), the verbal equiv- 
 alent of which is o icvpios r/fiaiv. In Greek the article was 
 in most cases sufficient specification, and men said 6 icvpios 
 'I^o-ow, "the Lord Jesus," or among themselves simply 
 "the Lord." This became the characteristic title of Jesus 
 Christ in Gentile Christianity. 
 
 If Christos had no religious associations in Greek, Kyrios 
 (Lord) had many. It was a standing epithet in the wor- 
 ship of numerous deities in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. 
 The Roman emperors assumed the title Kyrios (Dominus) 
 as the most unequivocal assertion of their divine supremacy. 
 There were "gods many and lords many," and Gentiles who 
 heard that men could be saved only through the Lord Jesus 
 Christ would without question understand Kyrios as a 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 121 
 
 divine title. This was made doubly certain by the associa- 
 tion with salvation. "Saviour" (Scott?/?) also was a title or 
 epiclesis of many deities, as well as of divine Hellenistic 
 kings and Roman emperors. The religions which professed 
 to have the secret of a blessed immortality all made salva- 
 tion depend on initiation into the cult of a particular saving 
 divinity, and the Christian churches seemed to Gentiles to 
 be mysteries of this kind. 
 
 It was probably in the train of such ideas and associations 
 that the worship of Jesus Christ as a divine Lord and Sa- 
 viour originated among Gentile Christians. At any rate, it 
 soon became the distinguishing mark of the Christian relig- 
 ion in the Gentile world. To Paul, Christians are those 
 "who invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 The spread of the gospel among the Gentiles gave rise to 
 a controversy about the relation of such converts to the 
 Jewish Law. The conservative faction in the church in 
 Jerusalem, made up in part of Pharisees and headed by 
 James, the brother of Jesus, who is represented both by 
 Josephus and by the Palestinian Christian tradition as a 
 typical Jewish saint, maintained that Gentiles must be cir- 
 cumcised and bind themselves to observe the whole Law, 
 written and oral; those who would share in the fulfilment 
 of God's promises to the Jews must become proselytes to 
 Judaism. Jesus himself had said: "Until heaven and earth 
 pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away 
 from the law till everything in it be done," and "He who 
 relaxes a single one of the very least of these commandments 
 and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of 
 Heaven." They insisted also that Jewish believers should 
 not enter the houses of uncircumcised Gentile converts, 
 much less eat at their table; for all Gentiles and everything 
 belonging to them was unclean. It was the standpoint of 
 rigorous Judaism. 
 
 There was, however, among the Jews themselves another 
 and larger way of thinking of God's purpose for the world, 
 derived from the prophecies which predict the universality 
 
122 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of the true religion. The reign of God foretold in these 
 prophecies was an age in which the Gentiles also should 
 acknowledge the sovereignty of the one true God and do 
 his righteous will, without being incorporated in the Jew- 
 ish people. According to the Book of Acts, Peter's experi- 
 ence led him to the conviction that "in every nation he 
 who fears God and works righteousness is acceptable to 
 him." But when it came to the practical consequences in 
 intercourse with uncircumcised believers, he vacillated be- 
 tween the freer attitude which corresponded to this convic- 
 tion and submission to the authority of James and the 
 pressure of Jewish opinion. Thus two tendencies early ap- 
 peared in the community in Jerusalem itself. 
 
 The Hellenistic Jews were inclined to a less stringent 
 theory than their Palestinian brethren as well as to a freer 
 practice. In a heathen environment they naturally laid 
 the greatest weight on the generic differences between Juda- 
 ism and the pagan religions around them — monotheism, the 
 rejection of idolatry, the avoidance of heathen vices — and 
 conceived Judaism in these essential articles as the future 
 universal religion. The religious persons who adopted thus 
 much of Judaism, attended the synagogue, kept the Sab- 
 bath, and perhaps observed some of the most distinctive of 
 the dietary laws, such as abstinence from pork, certainly 
 believed that they were in the way of salvation, even though 
 uncircumcised, and the Jews undoubtedly encouraged them 
 in this belief. Nor is it probable that social intercourse 
 between Jews and these "God-fearing" Gentiles was con- 
 fined within the narrow limits that would have been possible 
 under Pharisaic regulation; even the Pharisee was not ex- 
 pected to live according to his pledge outside the land. 
 
 These differences about the relation of Gentile converts 
 to the Jewish Law did not necessarily involve a different 
 apprehension of the person and work of the Messiah and 
 the salvation believers should enjoy when he came; the 
 issue was at bottom a conflict between a national exclusive 
 and a universal conception of the mission and destiny of 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 123 
 
 Judaism in the peculiar Messianic form which the disciples 
 of Jesus believed to be its fulfilment. Meanwhile, however, 
 a Gentile Christianity had grown up whose conception of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ and his salvation was altogether dif- 
 ferent. To those who embraced this, as has been said, 
 Christianity was not a variety of Judaism, but a new relig- 
 ion, of which Judaism was at most a prophecy and an 
 historical preparation. For them there was therefore no 
 reason why a Gentile who sought his salvation in this relig- 
 ion should become a Jew to do it. 
 
 In most places Hellenistic Jewish disciples and Gentile 
 converts seem from the first to have coalesced without 
 difficulty. The Jews brought their Scriptures not only to 
 establish the new faith on the authority of revelation but 
 to instruct their fellow believers in the character of God 
 and the character he required of men. On the other hand, 
 they joined with the Gentile Christians in the worship of 
 Jesus as their Lord and Saviour without being conscious of 
 any defection from the principle of monotheism. Those 
 who had some tincture of Greek philosophy soon found a 
 way, as we shall see, to give Christ an even higher place in 
 their theology. Of the process by which Gentile and Jew- 
 ish Christianity were fused into a common type which may 
 perhaps best be called Hellenistic Christianity there is nat- 
 urally no record, but the fact is a secure inference from the 
 whole subsequent development. The elements and pro- 
 portions varied in different places; we can, in fact, hardly 
 imagine the earliest Christianity in Syria and Asia Minor 
 too diversified. 
 
 It is in this composite Hellenistic Christianity, not in the 
 Messianic Judaism of the Apostolic church in Jerusalem, 
 that the antecedents and premises of Paul's teaching are 
 to be sought. He was not its author, as is often assumed, 
 but its ablest and most zealous exponent and its most origi- 
 nal and fecund thinker. 
 
 Saul of Tarsus, better known by his Roman name, Paul, 
 was born of "Hebrew" (that is, probably, Aramaic-speak- 
 
124 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ing) parents. His father or some more remote ancestor had 
 acquired Roman citizenship, presumably as a freedman. 
 Tarsus, where Paul's youth was passed, was a flourishing 
 Greek city, with considerable reputation for learning and 
 culture; its schools took rank beside those of Athens and 
 Alexandria. As a young man he went to Jerusalem, where 
 he had family connections, and became a student of the 
 Law under the famous Rabbi Gamaliel. A Pharisee, zealous 
 for the religion of his fathers, he saw no good in the new 
 sect with its crucified Messiah and its apocalyptic expecta- 
 tions, and willingly lent himself as an agent of the inquisi- 
 tion which the Sanhedrin set on foot. Suddenly converted 
 to the faith he had persecuted by a vision of Christ in 
 heaven, he took refuge from the indignation of his country- 
 men in the Arabian kingdom of Aretas. Three years later, 
 after a fortnight's visit to Jerusalem, he returned to north- 
 ern Syria and Cilicia, where for several years he preached 
 the gospel to the Gentiles. Of this independent activity 
 there is no record, but from the time he followed the sum- 
 mons of Barnabas to Antioch he is the central figure in the 
 Acts; and besides this narrative we have a half-dozen or 
 more of his own letters addressed to different churches, which 
 not only present his teaching and reveal his character, but 
 give a vivid picture of the life of the early Christian com- 
 munities. 
 
 Paul's missionary journeys led him back and forth through 
 Asia Minor, and to Macedonia and Achaia. After several 
 years, while on a visit to Jerusalem, he was set upon by a 
 mob, inflamed by a rumour that he had introduced an un- 
 circumcised heathen into the courts of the temple, and 
 would have been killed had not the Roman commandant 
 rescued him out of their hands by arresting him as the cause 
 of the disturbance. After a long detention at Csesarea, 
 while his case was still pending before the procurator, he 
 claimed his right as a Roman citizen to have his cause 
 heard by the emperor, and was accordingly sent to Rome. 
 There he lived for two years in military custody but in free 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 125 
 
 intercourse with Jews and Christians. At this point the 
 narrative in Acts breaks off. All that can with reasonable 
 confidence be gathered from other sources is that he was 
 put to death in Rome under Nero. 1 
 
 Such composite Hellenistic Christian communities as have 
 been described above were doubtless established in Syria 
 or Cilicia before Paul found his way thither. It may be 
 assumed that their faith had not yet been the subject of 
 much reflection, and that the problems it contained were 
 scarcely recognised. They inevitably emerged, however, in 
 the discussions with Jews and Gentiles which attended the 
 preaching of the new religion; and it was presumably in the 
 course of his missionary labours in those parts, before his 
 appearance in Antioch, that Paul thought his way to the 
 fundamental doctrines which he calls his gospel. But new 
 conditions and controversies in the wider field of activity to 
 which he was subsequently called kept him thinking on, and 
 the letters we have from the last ten or fifteen years of his 
 life show a steady progress. 
 
 Paul was fully conscious that the gospel he preached was 
 his own; he did not receive it, he says, by instruction of 
 men, but through revelation of Jesus Christ. In particular 
 he emphasises his independence of the Judsean Apostles; 
 neither first nor last did he owe them anything. In assert- 
 ing that he had his gospel by revelation he does not mean 
 that his knowledge of the facts of Jesus' life and death came 
 in that way; he refers more than once to things he had 
 received by tradition. But his gospel is not the facts related 
 by tradition; it is his interpretation of them, and above all 
 his doctrine of the person and work of Christ. Herein his in- 
 dependence of the Judaean leaders needs no demonstration. 
 
 To Paul, as to the Gentile Christians, the Lord Jesus Christ 
 was a divine being, the Son of God. He was the creator of 
 the world. Christians have not, like the heathen, many 
 gods and many divine lords, but one God, the Father, from 
 whom ("out of whom," as the source of being) the universe 
 1 Nero died June 9, 68 A. D. 
 
126 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 proceeds, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom (as 
 the agent in creation) the universe came into being and is 
 maintained. The cosmic functions of Christ are set forth 
 more fully in the Epistle to the Colossians. 1 He is God's 
 beloved Son, the image of the invisible God, the first-born 
 of all creation; for in him was created the celestial and ter- 
 restrial universe, not alone the visible heavens and earth, 
 but the invisible thrones, lordships, principalities and 
 powers — ranks of superhuman beings to whom the admin- 
 istration of the universe is committed. 
 
 Laying aside the divine form in which he existed before 
 his appearance on earth, he assumed the form of a servant 
 by taking the likeness of humanity, and in this semblance 
 submitted to death on the cross. For this self-abnegation 
 God exalted him to higher rank, and conferred on him the 
 name that excels every name, 2 that in the name of Jesus 
 all beings in heaven and earth and hell should bow in 
 adoration and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 3 to the 
 glory of God the Father. 
 
 Christ is thus a divine being of inferior order, subordinate 
 to the Father. Such divinity did not conflict with mono- 
 theism. The unity of the godhead did not, either for Greeks 
 or Jews, exclude the existence of beings who, notwithstand- 
 ing their inferiority to the supreme God, were universally 
 and properly called gods. And, indeed, the more exalted 
 the idea of the supreme deity the more need was felt of 
 some intermediary between him and the world of creation 
 and providence. The Jewish philosopher, Philo, whose 
 God is elevated in his nameless and undefinable godhead 
 above all the concerns of time, interposes between him and 
 the created universe the divine Logos, whom he calls "Son 
 of God," "First Born," "Second Deity." 4 
 
 Paul's God is, however, not a transcendent deity after the 
 
 1 The authenticity of Colossians is contested by many critics. The 
 Christology, however, is only the culmination of ideas which are found 
 in other letters of Paul. 
 
 2 The name "Lord." ■> Appropriation of Isaiah 45, 23. 
 4 See above, p. 61. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 127 
 
 pattern of Plato or Philo, but the personal God of the Bible, 
 and Paul's concern is not cosmogony but redemption. To 
 deliver men from sin and death, in whose thraldom all man- 
 kind lay, Christ, the Son of God, descended to earth and 
 died upon the cross; the work of deliverance accomplished, 
 and those twin enemies deprived of their power, he ascended 
 to heaven, where he is enthroned at the right hand of God, 
 and whence he will ere long come to take his saints to himself. 
 
 Paul's gospel is the gospel of the cross; the death and 
 resurrection of Christ are the foundation of the Christian 
 religion. Without them there is no salvation for Jew or 
 Gentile; in them there is salvation for all mankind. Christ's 
 death is potentially the death of all; in his resurrection 
 humanity triumphs over death and attains eternal life. 
 But only those are actually saved who are so united with 
 him that they were crucified with him and with him are 
 risen from the dead. 
 
 This union is effected by faith, which is not merely the 
 intellectual and moral acceptance of the gospel, not simply 
 a trust in God or in Christ, but an undefinable experience 
 in which oneness with Christ is permanently realised. This 
 is the characteristic Pauline conception of faith, the most 
 distinctive feature of his doctrine of salvation. It has no 
 antecedent or analogy in Judaism or among Jewish believers 
 in Jesus, and none in the personal religions (mysteries) or 
 philosophies of the time; it sprang from Paul's individual 
 experience — an experience peculiar both in its outward cir- 
 cumstance and in the temperament of the man. For this 
 reason his mystical idea of faith made little impression on 
 early Christian thought, which held fast to the ordinary 
 and accepted meanings of the word, belief and trust. Of 
 much greater influence, because more in accordance with 
 current ways of thinking, was Paul's teaching about the 
 sacraments. In baptism into the name of Jesus Christ a 
 man goes through Christ's death and resurrection; he is 
 plunged into Christ's death, entombed with him, rises with 
 him to a new and immortal life. In the bread and wine of 
 
128 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the Lord's Supper the communicants partake of the body 
 and blood of Christ, not in metaphor or symbol, but in 
 reality. The realism of these conceptions is strikingly 
 illustrated by the practice of vicarious baptism for relatives 
 and friends who had died without the knowledge of Christ, 
 and by the fatal consequences of eating the bread and 
 drinking the cup of the Lord without "discriminating the 
 body" (sc. from common bread and wine). 
 
 Paul calls his gospel a mystery, and a mystery, in the 
 proper sense of the word, it must have seemed to his hearers. 
 It had its sacred legend of a divine being who met upon 
 earth a tragic fate, and by his triumph over death opened 
 the way of immortality to men. 1 Salvation was by union 
 with him in his passion and his resurrection, and could be 
 achieved only by those who confessed Christ as Lord and 
 became members of his church. The form of initiation, 
 baptism, was common in the mysteries. The sacramental 
 eating of the body and blood of the Lord which made men 
 partakers of the divine nature and so insured them immor- 
 tality also had analogies there. Enthusiasm was cultivated 
 in the church as in the thiasoi. Finally, as in the mys- 
 teries, this way of salvation was open to all men, without 
 distinction of race, station, or sex. 
 
 It was, indeed, only in the guise of a mystery that Chris- 
 tianity could present itself in that age as a universal per- 
 sonal religion. Its success in the regions where it first 
 spread was due to the fact that it thus offered men the 
 highest good they could conceive — the assurance of immor- 
 tality — in the form they could best understand — by union 
 with divinity. Not that Christianity borrowed its ideas 
 and rites from the mysteries; Gentile Christians necessarily 
 conceived the gospel and the distinctive observances they 
 received from the missionaries as a mystery. 
 
 Christianity differed widely, however, from other mys- 
 teries. Its drama of redemption was not a savage myth of 
 lust and violence, but the story of a divine being, a Son of 
 1 See Vol. I, pp. 581/., 589/. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 129 
 
 God, who came down to earth and voluntarily laid down 
 his life that he might save men from death, and by his 
 resurrection bestow on them eternal life. Great and char- 
 acteristic differences were due also to its inheritance from 
 Judaism. From Judaism it took its sacred Scriptures, with 
 the prestige of immemorial antiquity and the authority of 
 divine revelation — no small advantage in an age when men 
 were looking on all hands to revelation for religious, and 
 even for philosophical, certainty. From Judaism it took, 
 also, its idea of the one God, creator and ruler of the uni- 
 verse, thus fitting its scheme of salvation into the larger 
 context of a monotheistic theology in a way unknown in 
 the mysteries. 1 Above all, it laid the emphasis in its idea 
 of God on his moral character and on his insistent demand 
 of a corresponding moral character in man, thus, like Juda- 
 ism, making morality an integral part of religion. God's 
 relation to men, especially the thought of God as father — ■ 
 not in the sense of author or progenitor, but as the object 
 of filial love and obedience — is also conceived essentially in 
 Jewish fashion. It is the combination of these elements 
 with the mystery of salvation through the Lord Jesus that 
 gives its peculiar character to Christianity. 
 
 In the mysteries, as has been shown in another place, 
 death and the dismal existence after death were the lot of 
 mankind because men are men and not gods; it is human 
 nature. 2 For Paul, on the contrary, it is the penalty of 
 sin. Death is universal because sin is universal : Jews under 
 the revealed Law, and Gentiles who have the law of nature 
 written in the human conscience — all have sinned. This 
 universal sin began with the first man, the progenitor of the 
 race. By his disobedience sin entered into the world, and 
 death by sin; through Adam's sin all men became sinners, 
 and all are under the doom of God's broken law. Nor is 
 this all. Sin is not man's nature as it came from the hand 
 
 1 In the mysteries generally the supreme god was ignored; the whole 
 interest was in the saviour god. 
 
 2 See Vol. I, pp. 443/. 
 
130 CHRISTIAJMITY 
 
 of God; but by inheritance, example, and habit it has be- 
 come second nature, and it is as impossible for him to cast 
 it off as if it were his original constitution. The seat of its 
 power is "the flesh," by which Paul does not mean merely 
 the body as material, but body and soul, sense and reason, 
 as they are, corrupted by sin. It renders nugatory all the 
 aspirations after truth and goodness that man finds in his 
 mind (nous), and is in permanent antagonism to God and 
 his righteous will, to the gospel and the Spirit; the thoughts 
 and aims of "the flesh" are opposed to God, for they are 
 not and cannot be subject to the law of God. So long as 
 a man is "in the flesh" he cannot please God. 
 
 Herein lies the necessity of the death of Christ. 1 Since 
 all have sinned, Christ by his death made atonement for 
 the sins of mankind, and thus rendered it possible for God 
 to "justify" (i. e., to save) the sinner who by faith in Christ 
 avails himself of this salvation. In the mysteries the death 
 of the hero is a meaningless calamity; it is his resurrection 
 only that has religious value. To Paul the death of Christ 
 is an expiation provided by God himself, who sent his Son 
 to redeem the sinful race of men. 
 
 Paul is zealous to prove not only that the salvation in 
 Christ avails for every man, but that there is no other way 
 of salvation, and especially that Judaism is none. The 
 Jews believe, he says, that they will be saved by the works 
 of the Law, that is, by conformity to the will of God as 
 revealed in Scripture and tradition; they rely on their own 
 righteousness. 2 But to be found righteous on his own 
 merit a man must have kept the whole Law perfectly, a 
 thing no one ever has done or can do. The Law was given, 
 according to Paul, not that men by obedience might attain 
 to righteousness, but to bring them to a consciousness of 
 their sinfulness, and, by the impossibility of fulfilling its 
 
 1 To the immediate disciples of Jesus his death had no profounder 
 necessity than that the Scriptures must be fulfilled. 
 
 2 The Jewish doctrine of salvation was, in fact, very different (see 
 above, pp. 70/.). Paul implicitly denies that God does, or can, freely 
 forgive the penitent sinner. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 131 
 
 demands, to impress upon them the necessity of another 
 righteousness than their own. It was a tutor under whose 
 stern discipline the Jews were put to prepare them for Christ. 
 
 The perpetuity of the Law was an axiom in Judaism and 
 to the Jewish believers in Jesus. For Paul the Law was 
 a pedagogic institute, a temporary dispensation. When 
 Christ came and the new dispensation of grace was inaugu- 
 rated, the Law, belonging to an order of things that had 
 passed away, expired by its own implicit limitation without 
 need of formal abrogation. Consequently, for Christians to 
 be circumcised and put themselves under the obligation of 
 the two-fold Law was nothing short of apostasy. 
 
 Paul thus emancipated Christianity from the Law not only 
 in practice but in principle, without impugning the charac- 
 ter of the Law, which is "holy and just and good," and with- 
 out abandoning the ground of revealed religion in the Old 
 Testament. A more radical type of Gentile Christianity, 
 which made its appearance within Paul's lifetime, did both; 
 it rejected the Law as in itself evil, imposed by a deity in- 
 ferior to the Christian God or hostile to him — ideas which 
 in the next century gained great currency in Gnostic sects. 1 
 
 Paul's opponents accused him, by abolishing the Law, of 
 destroying the very foundations of morality, and some of 
 his converts evidently thought that the logic of no law was 
 lawlessness. He does not meet these inferences, as has 
 often been done in more recent times, by distinguishing be- 
 tween ritual and ceremonial and the moral law. The Law 
 was for him, as for the Jews, an indissoluble unity; as a 
 whole it was given, as a whole it was annulled. But his 
 Christian has no need for an external regulative of conduct 
 in Scripture and tradition, because he has the principle and 
 motive of right living in himself, or, rather, in the spirit of 
 Christ that lives in him. His old sinful nature is dead; it 
 was crucified with Christ — how can he any more live in sin ? 
 Such was the theory; experience was a different story, as 
 Paul's letters to the Corinthians testify. 
 1 See below, pp. 154 ff. 
 
132 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Religious worship supposes a prwsens numen, and Chris- 
 tians who worshipped the Lord Jesus necessarily believed 
 that their Lord was present in their gatherings for worship. 
 That he should be thus at once in heaven and on earth 
 did not make them any difficulty; the religions of the time 
 all made the same assumption without ascribing to the 
 gods omnipresence. So, also, among the Jews the Shekina, 
 the invisible presence of God, was wherever ten men (the 
 quorum of the synagogue) were gathered for prayer. 
 
 The presence of Christ in the Christian community was 
 manifest in the operations of the Spirit. As in the Old 
 Testament the spirit of God is the author of experiences in 
 which men seem to be possessed and controlled by some- 
 thing above themselves, and endued with supernatural 
 wisdom or power, so in the Christian church the spirit comes 
 upon men, producing enthusiasm or ecstasy; they prophesy, 
 speak with tongues and interpret the unintelligible dialect 
 of the spirit, heal diseases and expel demons, at its prompt- 
 ing and in its power. As in the Old Testament the opera- 
 tions of the spirit are attributed to God, who sends it, so in 
 the church the work of the spirit of Christ is the work of 
 Christ. But besides these occasional and spectacular mani- 
 festations of divine possession, the spirit of Christ indwell- 
 ing in Christians is the permanent source and power of 
 their peculiar religious life. The virtues and graces — " love, 
 gladness, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithful- 
 ness, meekness, continence" — are the work of the spirit; 
 they are in the empirical man as supernatural as the gift of 
 tongues or miraculous powers. The spirit is for Paul a 
 divine atmosphere in which the Christian lives, an element 
 which, like the atmosphere, penetrates and pervades his 
 whole being. 
 
 The Jewish ideal of a golden age on earth, which had its 
 origin in the Messianic prophecies, and even in its most 
 universalised form could not be dissociated^from the na- 
 tional hope — it always left an invidious precedence, if not 
 pre-eminence, to the Jews — was not the good which Gentiles 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 133 
 
 seeking the salvation of their souls asked of religion. Many 
 Jews, also, living in an atmosphere of Greek thought, enter- 
 tained the conception of the immortality of the soul which 
 was current in popular religious philosophy and had no 
 affinity to the orthodox Palestinian eschatology. The sal- 
 vation which such Jews, like their Gentile neighbours, sought 
 was a state of eternal blessedness with God and the souls of 
 the good. A Jewish Hellenist like the author of the Wisdom 
 of Solomon, or a Christian Hellenist like the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, conceives salvation in the same way; 
 the resurrection of the body has no room in his thought. 
 
 Paul was a Pharisee ; the resurrection of the body was the 
 distinguishing dogma of his school. He had let go pretty 
 nearly all else of his Jewish orthodoxy, but on this point he 
 was tenacious. The resurrection of Christ and the resur- 
 rection of believers were in his mind correlative. In Juda- 
 ism, as in Zoroastrianism, whence the doctrine came, the 
 resurrection was the redintegration out of its dispersed ele- 
 ments of the identical body that was dissolved at death and 
 the reunion of the soul with it, that the whole man, soul 
 and body, might stand at the bar of God's great judgment 
 and receive the just retribution of the deeds which they had 
 together done in the mortal life. The scene of the blessed 
 hereafter beyond resurrection and judgment was this earth, 
 purified and glorified. 
 
 Paul's conception is entirely different. When the Lord 
 comes in the clouds, his saints will be caught up to meet 
 him in the air and go to be for ever with him in heaven. At 
 the same time the dead in Christ will be raised and taken 
 up to heaven. But heaven is no place for flesh and blood, 
 and so those who are living at Christ's coming will be trans- 
 formed, and the bodies which rise from the tomb will be as 
 unlike those that were committed to it as the plant that 
 springs from the earth is unlike the seed that was buried in 
 it. " It is sown an animal body, it is raised a spiritual body" 
 — that is, probably a body of fiery matter such as angels are 
 made of; it will be like the glorious body of the Lord him- 
 
134 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 self. In another even more significant passage Paul lets go 
 this slender thread of continuity. In a familiar (originally 
 Orphic) metaphor, the body is a tent in which the soul has 
 its transient habitation; when this tent is struck the soul is 
 not left naked and homeless; a celestial body awaits it, an 
 imperishable house of God's own building. Thus for Paul 
 "resurrection" is not the restoration and revivication of the 
 fleshly body, but the assumption to heaven of the soul 
 invested with a new and heavenly body. 1 
 
 Far the greater part of those to whom the gospel was 
 preached, whether Jews or Gentiles, rejected it. The ground 
 of this rejection Paul sometimes puts in the sinful will of 
 man, or he ascribes it to a false conceit of wisdom, or to the 
 influence of superhuman powers of evil — "the god of this 
 age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that the illu- 
 mination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the 
 image of God, should not enlighten them." But when he 
 expresses his deeper reflection on the problem he finds the 
 solution in predestination. With his view of the inherent 
 sinfulness of humanity and its consequent aversion to the 
 truth, faith was not in the power of man, it must be the 
 gift of God; and that God had not bestowed on all the will 
 to believe was plain. "He has mercy on whom he wills, 
 and whom he wills he hardens'.' — so the Scripture taught. 
 Such reflections were confirmed by his own experience; like 
 Augustine, his doctrine of election was rooted in his experi- 
 ence of divine grace. Paul's doctrine of predestination is 
 not the determinist corollary of an idea of God which as- 
 serts for him a causality so absolute as to leave no place for 
 finite free will; it is his solution of the problem, Why, when 
 the gospel is so convincing, do not all men believe ? 2 
 
 The philosophies as well as the religions of the time, in 
 proportion as their idea of God was metaphysically or 
 morally sublimated, made place for a multitude of powers 
 intermediate between God and the world of nature and 
 
 1 It is perhaps not superfluous to remark that neither the soul nor the 
 spiritual body is immaterial. Paul was not a Platonist. 
 
 2 So it was also with Mohammed. See below, pp. 396/. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 135 
 
 men. Some of them were good, the agents of the divine 
 will in the administration of the universe; some evil, and 
 hostile to God and all good. Paul recognises such a hier- 
 archy of evil. They are the principalities, rulers, and 
 powers which are to be overcome and in the end annihilated 
 by Christ, but against which, meanwhile, Christians have to 
 battle. Demons of superhuman might and malignity sur- 
 round man and strive to compass his undoing; the air — the 
 whole region beneath the sphere of the moon — is full of 
 them. At their head is one whom Paul calls "the god of 
 this age"; in John he is "the ruler of this world." 
 
 One class of powers which played a great part in the 
 thought of the time were the heavenly bodies. Not only a 
 man's outward fortune and his circumstances but his tem- 
 perament and moral predisposition were determined by the 
 stars under which he was born — an astrological fatalism. 
 These are the <TToij(eia tov Koa-fiov, the elements of the 
 universe, to which the Galatians seem to desire again to 
 come into bondage. They are the "rulers of this age," 
 who in ignorance of God's secret purpose crucified the 
 glorious Lord, and thus unwittingly carried out God's plan 
 of redemption and became the cause of their own undoing. 
 In Paul's Epistles this dualism is not a part of a reasoned 
 theory of the universe; it serves him to put in the strongest 
 light the necessity of the salvation in Christ and the stu- 
 pendous magnitude of the achievement. For Paul con- 
 ceives the problem of redemption not merely as the salva- 
 tion of individuals from sin and death, but as the deliver- 
 ance of the universe itself from the bondage of corruption, a 
 problem of cosmic dimensions. In this sense it became the 
 speculative problem of Gnosticism, which approached it 
 from the standpoint of a dualism more radical than Paul's, 
 though it found welcome authority in Paul; his "god of 
 this age" became in their hands the creator of this evil 
 world, the god of the Jews and giver of their Law, the author 
 of everything that was opposed to the higher Christianity 
 they professed. 
 
 Paul was too original, his construction of Christianity 
 
136 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 was too individual a combination of disparate elements — 
 the Apostolic tradition, the primitive Gentile Christian 
 apprehension of the gospel, the Judaism in which he was 
 brought up, and the redemptive religions of the time and 
 region in which he preached the mystery of salvation 
 through Christ, all passed through the alembic of a singular 
 personal experience — his presentation of his doctrine in his 
 Epistles was too occasional and elliptical to be compre- 
 hended as a whole by the ordinary mind. Consequently his 
 influence in the following generations, considerable as it 
 was, was the influence of ideas and expressions detached 
 from their context of thought and sometimes taken in a 
 sense foreign to his intention, not of the system of ideas 
 which we construct and call Pauline. The main current of 
 Christian thought did not, as is often imagined, take its 
 rise in Paul, it did not even pass through him; rather it 
 flowed by him as around a rock in the bed of a stream. 
 
 A striking illustration of this is the writing which we 
 know under the title, "Epistle to the Hebrews." The un- 
 known author was a Grecian Jew, well versed in the Scrip- 
 tures of his people and expert in the methods of interpreta- 
 tion which are generally called Alexandrian. From the 
 common premises of the Christian propaganda, by the aid 
 of his allegorical method, he develops a doctrine of the 
 person and work of Christ and of the way of salvation 
 through him which, though not entirely independent of 
 Paul's, displays remarkable originality of conception. 
 
 The theme of the Epistle is the incomparable superiority 
 of Christianity over Judaism: it has a more perfect revela- 
 tion, a better law, a new covenant, larger promises, a more 
 efficacious atonement, and all this through Christ. The 
 Prophets, Moses, the angels through whose instrumentality 
 the Law was given, were ministers of God, but Christ is the 
 Son. He is an outstreaming of the Father's glory, like the 
 light that radiates from the sun, of the same nature, yet 
 distinct; the very image of God's person, as the impression 
 of a seal is the counterpart of the image engraved on the 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 137 
 
 gem. 1 By his agency God made the worlds, and by God's 
 mighty power he sustains them. He became man, assum- 
 ing all the infirmities of humanity except sin, and having 
 made a purification for sins, he took his seat at the right 
 hand of the majesty on high, exalted to a place as much 
 superior to the angels as the name "son" is more honour- 
 able than theirs (ayry e \ i, "messengers"). The conception 
 of the nature of the Son and his relation to the Father is 
 not essentially different from that of Paul in the letters to 
 the Philippians and Colossians or of the Gospel of John, 
 though it is otherwise expressed. 
 
 More characteristic is the author's construction of the 
 work of Christ. He is the great high priest, and by once 
 offering himself, the true and perfect sacrifice, and by per- 
 petual intercession in the celestial sanctuary, he makes a 
 priestly atonement, and is the author of eternal salvation. 
 Of these supersensible realities the Aaronic priesthood and 
 the sacrifices of the Jewish Law were but types or shadows, 
 having in themselves no efficacy to expiate sin or to purge 
 the conscience of the sinner. By the blood of Jesus a new 
 way is opened for men into the presence of the holy God; 
 having him to intercede for them, Christians approach with 
 confidence the throne which is now for them a throne of 
 grace. In this freedom of access to God and assurance of 
 his favour is the immeasurable superiority of Christianity. 
 
 When this life is over Christians will enter upon an eter- 
 nal Sabbath, in which they cease from their labours as God 
 did from his when the creation was finished. In the celes- 
 tial city, with the innumerable concourse of angels, the 
 native citizens of heaven; with God, the judge of all, and 
 Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant; with the spirits of the 
 righteous of the Old Testament who have reached the goal, 
 they too will attain perfection. The resurrection of the 
 body and what goes with a material environment in the 
 
 1 Philo uses similar figures of the Logos, but of Philo's transcendent 
 idea of God, and consequently of the metaphysical significance of the 
 Logos in Philo's system, there is no trace in Hebrews. 
 
138 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 hereafter has no place in this Hellenised hope of immortal- 
 ity. Like Paul, the author holds fast to the primitive 
 Christian expectation of the speedy coming of Christ, who is 
 now seated at the right hand of God, waiting till God shall 
 make his enemies his footstool (Psalm 110); then he will 
 appear the second time for the salvation of those who ex- 
 pect him. The day of his advent is visibly drawing near, 
 and the author insistently exhorts his readers to be ready 
 for it. 
 
 The higher conception of the nature of Christ which is 
 set forth in the Epistles of Paul and in Hebrews has also 
 its Gospel, in which the way is opened to a more philosophi- 
 cal apprehension of the person of Christ and his relation to 
 God through the doctrine of the Logos. The Stoics had 
 made this term familiar, and Philo had adopted it in a 
 sense modified both by the Platonic element in his thought 
 and by the associations of the "word of God" in the Jew- 
 ish Scriptures, as the most adequate name for the agency 
 which his ontological idea of the godhead constrained him 
 to interpose as a "second deity" between the transcendent 
 God and the world of nature and of men. He makes the 
 Logos solve the problem of cosmogony; it is fundamental 
 in his theory of revelation, and has a central place in his 
 philosophy of the religious life. There is reason to think 
 that the divine Logos occupied a similar place in the relig- 
 ious thought of some Gentile circles as well as in philo- 
 sophical speculations. 
 
 The author of the Fourth Gospel assumes that the name 
 and idea of the Logos are familiar to his readers, and there- 
 fore rapidly summarises the philosophical doctrine — the 
 eternal divinity of the Logos, his intimate relation to God, 
 his work in creation and revelation — to come at once to the 
 new and distinctively Christian doctrine, the incarnation of 
 the Logos. 
 
 The original Palestinian gospel represented the faith of 
 the primitive community of disciples in Jerusalem that 
 Jesus was the Messiah. The Spirit of God came upon him 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 139 
 
 at his baptism, a heavenly voice saluted him as God's 
 chosen one, his beloved son. In the power given him by 
 God he wrought miracles; he taught with authority the 
 true nature of the reign of God and how men must live to 
 have a part in it. Rejected by the rulers of his people, put 
 to death by the Roman governor as a would-be king of the 
 Jews, God raised him from the dead and took him up to 
 heaven, whence he would ere long come to judgment. 
 The Synoptic Gospels, as we have them, are the Gospels of 
 Greek-speaking churches, and the reflection of their type 
 of Christianity is recognisable in them in various ways; but 
 the figure of Jesus remains in all essentials as the older tra- 
 dition traced it. 
 
 To those a corner-stone of whose faith it was that Christ 
 was a divine being, who became man for men's salvation, 
 and after finishing his work on earth resumed the divine 
 existence he had temporarily laid aside, these Gospels must 
 have seemed inadequate, and toward the end of the century 
 an unknown author in Asia Minor (probably in Ephesus) 
 produced a fourth Gospel, entitled in the manuscripts, 
 "According to John." Having at the outset identified 
 Christ with the divine Logos, as we have seen, this Gospel 
 presents the life and teaching of Jesus as the manifestation 
 of an incarnate deity whose divine glory shone through the 
 veil of flesh, the glory of the Father's only son. 
 
 The divine self-consciousness of Jesus declares itself 
 throughout. He not only came hither sent by God, but he 
 issued out of God; not only is he in the Father and the 
 Father in him, but he asserts publicly to the Jews in the 
 temple: "I and the Father are the same thing." Hence, to 
 know him is to know the Father; a man who has seen him 
 has seen the Father; it is God's will that all men honour 
 the Son just as they honour the Father. 
 
 Yet the author makes it clear that the divinity of Christ 
 is a divinity, so to speak, of the second order; the Logos as 
 god is distinguished from (the supreme) God; the "only- 
 begotten Son" suggests the familiar contrast to the "unbe- 
 
140 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 gotten." 1 By his own account Jesus utters what the 
 Father has given him to say; his miracles are the works 
 which his Father has given him to do; what he does is what 
 he sees the Father do. The miracles of the Fourth Gospel 
 are few in number, and are all signal exhibitions of super- 
 natural power, such as the opening of the eyes of a man 
 born blind or bringing back to life one who had lain three 
 days in the tomb. These works are "signs," evidences of 
 his divine claims. 
 
 In accordance with the conception of the life of Jesus as 
 that of an incarnate deity, he exhibits no symptoms of 
 human weakness. The agony in the Garden of Gethsemane 
 has no place in this Gospel. No one takes his life from him, 
 he lays it down of himself; he has power to lay it down and 
 power to take it again. The crucifixion is an exaltation; it 
 is a return to the Father and a resumption of the divine 
 glory he had with him before the world was. The last 
 words from the cross are not the cry, "My God, my God, 
 why hast thou forsaken me?" (Psalm 22, 2), as in Matthew 
 and Mark, but, "It is accomplished!" 
 
 Salvation is eternal life, which the Son gives to all whom 
 the Father has given him (the elect). The secret of eternal 
 life, or rather its essence, is to know the only true God and 
 Jesus Christ whom he has sent. This knowledge is not a 
 monotheistic doctrine about God; it is a mystical knowing 
 mediated through the Son; those who possess it, another 
 writer of the school says, are in the true God (1 John 5, 20). 
 While in the popular mysteries the initiates sought an eter- 
 nal life that was only a kind of deified this-life by union, 
 enthusiastic or sacramental, with the saviour-god, more 
 philosophically minded seekers of salvation strove to attain 
 it by the ' way of yvcoaK, a transcendental knowledge by 
 which man became divine or realised his essential divinity. 
 The gnosis was not an intellectual or rational knowing, it 
 was itself a "mystery"; it had its vision, or rather "sight" 
 (did), of God, by which, it was sometimes said, man is 
 1 Moxo7eeijs and 6.y4vrqTos. Philo; the Hermetic Scriptures. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 141 
 
 deified in this life. The standing metaphor for gnosis is 
 "light." Indeed, from a figure it becomes a synonym; 
 "light" and "life" in this esoteric dialect are inseparable 
 correlates. 
 
 This way of salvation by knowledge, which might not 
 inaptly be called an intellectual mystery, attracted many; 
 it created a considerable religious literature, most of which 
 appears to have been written in the second or third cen- 
 tury. The doctrine itself, however, can be traced a good 
 deal further back, outside of Christianity as well as in it. 
 Echoes of its ideas as well as of its characteristic terminol- 
 ogy may be recognised in Paul; the author of the Fourth 
 Gospel is more profoundly influenced by them. 
 
 The knowledge of God, which is eternal life, can come 
 only from God himself, who reveals himself in his Logos. 1 
 So John: "No one has ever seen God: an only-begotten 
 (i. e., unique) god (or son), 2 who is in the bosom of the 
 Father, he told about him." This was the mission of 
 Christ on earth. No man has ascended to heaven; the 
 secrets of the heavenly world can be revealed only by him 
 who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in 
 heaven. He is the light of the world, and those who fol- 
 low him will not walk in darkness, but will have the light 
 of life (John 8, 12; cf. 1, 4). The consequence of linking 
 eternal life with knowledge is that the function of the Logos- 
 Christ is essentially that of a revealer or a revelation of 
 God. His own people, to whom he first came, did not 
 accept him, but all who did accept him he enabled to become 
 sons of God. Christianity appears here fully self-conscious: 
 it is the only true religion, and has therefore a universal 
 mission. Jesus was sent for the salvation of the world 
 (ic6a/j,o<i); he preaches to the Samaritans, and is hailed by 
 them as the Saviour of the world. On his last visit to Jeru- 
 salem certain Greeks (Gentiles) seek an interview with him; 
 
 1 Similarly not only Philo, but the adepts of the gnosis salvation. 
 
 2 Between the rival readings, iwvoyevris 0e6s and 6 fmvoyev^i vlbs, the 
 probability is strongly on the side of the former. 
 
142 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the Jews suspect him of an intention to go abroad and teach 
 the heathen. He himself says: "I have other sheep, which 
 are not of this (Jewish) fold; them also I must lead, and they 
 will hear my voice, and there will be one fold, one shepherd." 
 
 "The world" is sometimes, when the author is expressing 
 the universal character of Christianity, all mankind as the 
 object of God's love, the field of Christ's mission; oftener 
 "the world" is the comprehensive term for the opposition 
 to God and all good. This opposition has a superhuman 
 head, the "ruler of this world," like Paul's "god of this 
 age." The mass of mankind belong to the world; Christians 
 are an elect minority. Faith is the belief that Jesus is the 
 only Son of God, by which men are led to turn to him for 
 the knowledge of God which is eternal life. Belief and 
 unbelief do not lie in man's will, but in God's choice. 1 
 
 The idea that the entrance into the new and higher, the 
 immortal life, must be by a spiritual or intellectual rebirth, 
 or rather regeneration, meets us often in the mysteries, and 
 especially in the intellectual mysticisms of the age; ava- 
 yevvrjadcu, iraXi^eveaCa, are familiar terms in them. In 
 John, also, it is the sine qua non of salvation. Flesh breeds 
 flesh; spirit alone can engender spirit, and only he who is 
 begotten by the divine spirit can enter the "kingdom of 
 heaven." 2 In the thought of the time spirit was not only 
 the principle of a divine life but of the higher knowledge; 
 so Paul conceives it (e. g., 1 Cor. 2, 14). In John the two are 
 inseparably connected, or rather they are the same thing. 
 
 Where salvation consists in knowing God (gnosis), sacra- 
 ments, as a real means of communicating the divine life or 
 nature, are unnecessary. 3 It is in accord with the ruling 
 ideas of the Gospel according to John, therefore, that the 
 institution of the Lord's Supper is not narrated in it; its 
 place is filled by an esoteric discourse. The sacraments of 
 
 1 All the circles and sects which find salvation in gnosis attribute to 
 themselves a special gift or capacity not shared by the multitude. 
 
 2 "Kingdom of heaven" in this Gospel is not the reign of God on 
 earth, but the realm of God in heaven. 
 
 3 So in the Hermetic circles; so also in some Christian mystics. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 143 
 
 the Christian church nevertheless existed; in the author's 
 time they had a central place in its liturgy. The Eucharist 
 seems to have been an especial object of Jewish attacks. As 
 in other cases, John carries back the questions and contro- 
 versies of his own age and surroundings to the beginning, 
 and lets Jesus himself make answer and defence. The 
 miraculous supply of bread for the needs of the multitude 
 serves to introduce a discussion in the synagogue in Caper- 
 naum. Neither that bread nor the manna Moses gave their 
 fathers was the real bread from heaven, but Jesus himself, 
 who came down from heaven; or, more explicitly, his body. 
 Only he who eats his flesh and drinks his blood possesses 
 eternal life. The Jews take him literally and find the asser- 
 tion absurd; but their cavils only draw from him emphatic 
 reaffirmations in even more paradoxical terms — he will not 
 abate a syllable of the obnoxious expressions. But when he 
 was alone with his disciples, who found the doctrine almost 
 too much for them, 1 he explained that the flesh is of no use 
 at all, the spirit alone gives life. In the discussion in the 
 synagogue the necessity of the sacrament is maintained 
 against objections from without: the flesh and blood of 
 Christ in the Eucharist are a "medicine that makes a man 
 immortal, an antidote for death," as Ignatius wrote to the 
 Ephesians not long after. To the disciples is given what is 
 frequently called a spiritual interpretation of the sacrament: 
 the virtue resides, not in the material elements, but in the 
 words of Jesus, which are spirit and life. 
 
 So also with worship. Holy places and sacred times be- 
 long to an outgrown order. "God is spirit, and they who 
 worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." 
 Baptism is but once alluded to (John 3, 5), in a context 
 where it is wholly subordinate to the Spirit. True Chris- 
 tian worship is not a public cultus, but an attitude or rela- 
 tion to God in the mind and heart. 
 
 A peculiar development of the idea of the Spirit in this 
 
 1 According to John 6, 66, many disciples fell away from Jesus as a 
 consequence of this discourse. 
 
144 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Gospel is the doctrine of the "paraclete," or counsellor, 
 whom the Father will send after the departure of Jesus, and, 
 so to speak, as his vicar. He will not only recall to the 
 memory of the disciples all that Jesus said, but will be the 
 medium of future communications from him; he will guide 
 them into all the truth. The church thus has in its spirit- 
 counsellor an organ of continuous revelation, of progress in 
 the truth. 
 
 A somewhat detailed sketch of the teaching of Paul, of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, and of the Gospel according to 
 John has been necessary because these writings contributed 
 more than all others to Christian ideas about the Saviour 
 and salvation. A comparison of Paul with John, and of 
 both with the deposit of primitive Palestinian tradition in 
 the older Gospels and the first chapters of the Acts, shows 
 what widely diverse conceptions existed side by side in the 
 last quarter of the first century; and the variety would be 
 increased if the other writings ultimately included in the 
 New Testament were similarly examined, and the compari- 
 son extended to the "heresies" which are combated as 
 erroneous, that is to the peculiar opinions and speculations 
 of small and often local groups of Christians. Such a sur- 
 vey is remote from our present purpose; but one book re- 
 quires notice by reason both of its peculiar character and of 
 its influence on Christian eschatology, namely the Revela- 
 tion of John. 1 It begins with a series of seven letters dic- 
 tated by the Son of Man to the seer in his vision, and con- 
 taining mingled praise and blame, warning and exhortation, 
 to as many churches in Asia Minor. The rest (chapters 
 4-22) is an apocalypse in a series of visions such as is familiar 
 in Jewish literature from Daniel and Enoch to 2 (4) Esdras 
 and Baruch. The ideas and imagery are in large part tra- 
 ditional, only regrouped in another way by a new turn of 
 the kaleidoscope and applied to another situation. Most 
 
 1 Whether the John who is the recipient of the revelations is meant 
 to be the Apostle, or some other, was disputed in the ancient church, 
 as it is among modern scholars. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 145 
 
 of the visions contain so little that is specifically Christian 
 that it has been seriously questioned whether they were not 
 appropriated entire from Jewish sources with only a super- 
 ficial adaptation to Christian use. Whatever degree of 
 literary originality may be allowed the author, the matter 
 is Jewish throughout. 1 The resurrection of the saints to 
 enjoy the thousand-year reign of the Messiah; the war of 
 Gog and Magog at the end of the millennium, and their de- 
 struction; the general resurrection and last judgment; the 
 new Jerusalem descending from heaven in all its glitter of 
 gold, even to the river of life and the trees bearing monthly 
 crops of new fruit and medicinal leaves, are the trite ideas 
 and imagery of Jewish eschatology in apocalypse and Mid- 
 rash. Through the authority of the Revelation of John this 
 materialistic eschatology, with its corporeal resurrection 
 and its millennial reign, was brought over into the church, 
 and found acceptance not only among ignorant Christians, 
 to whose imagination it offered something more tangible than 
 the ideas of Paul and John, but among men like Justin who 
 boasted of philosophic education. In the second century 
 millenarian eschatology was orthodoxy in Asia Minor and 
 the wide regions which took their theology from that source; 
 it is the faith of Irenaeus. It has survived through all the 
 vicissitudes of theology, and over and over again has broken 
 out in epidemics of enthusiasm. 
 
 While the gospel was spreading among Greeks and bar- 
 barians and a distinctive Gentile Christianity was being 
 developed, the church in Jerusalem preserved the primitive 
 type of belief and adhered to the Jewish law and custom of 
 life. It is probable, indeed, that in reaction from the ten- 
 dencies which were transforming Hellenistic Christianity 
 into another religion the conservative element in Jerusalem 
 gained more complete control and became more Jewish than 
 ever. The church was held in pious esteem, and collections 
 were made in Gentile churches for the poor brethren in 
 Judaea; but it had no longer any influence on the movement 
 1 Sectarian Jewish, it should perhaps be said. 
 
146 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 outside of Palestine. James was put to death by the San- 
 hedrin in 63 A. D., but the act was condemned by the best 
 citizens and those most scrupulous about the laws, on whose 
 complaint Agrippa deposed the high priest as the author 
 of the deed. During the war (66-72 A. D.) the members 
 of the community in Judaea are said to have taken refuge in 
 Pella, on the other side of the Jordan. The successor of 
 James was a cousin of Jesus, named Simeon. He and his 
 successors down to the war under Hadrian (132-135 A. D.) 
 are enumerated in the list of bishops of Jerusalem, but it is 
 hardly likely that the ruined city was their residence. 1 
 
 The calamities which befell the Jews, the internecine strife 
 of parties, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, 
 doubtless gave a new impetus to the preaching of dire judg- 
 ment impending, of which all these things were but the 
 signs foretold in prophecy and apocalypse, and more ex- 
 plicitly by Jesus; and the preaching found readier credence 
 among men under whose very eyes the world seemed to be 
 coming to an end. At the beginning of the second century 
 the disciples of Jesus the Nazarene, as they are called in 
 Jewish sources, were numerous in Judaea and in Galilee, and 
 were making such headway with their propaganda that 
 the leading rabbis of the generation were constrained to 
 make more rigorous opposition to the spread of the heresy. 
 The vehemence of their utterances shows that the matter 
 gave them concern, the more because the heresy had in- 
 sinuated itself even into their own ranks. It is significant 
 that it was thought necessary to make a formal pronounce- 
 ment that the Gospel (evayyeXiov) is not an inspired and 
 sacred book. Significant also is the introduction into the 
 form of public prayer under the direction of the Patriarch 
 Gamaliel II of a petition, "May the Nazarenes and the 
 heretics suddenly perish!" — an effective means of prevent- 
 ing the disciples of Jesus from leading the prayers in the 
 
 1 The large number of these "bishops" — twelve in a single genera- 
 tion — suggests that the list includes the heads of other communities in 
 Judaea. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 147 
 
 synagogue, or of detecting them, if, as worshippers, they did 
 not join heartily in this curse on themselves. The adoption 
 of such a measure shows that Jewish Christians frequented 
 the synagogues; perhaps it was directed chiefly against those 
 who had secretly embraced the faith. 
 
 The Jewish rebellion in the reign of Hadrian took a Mes- 
 sianic character; the leader, Bar Cozeba, was proclaimed as 
 the "Star out of Jacob," the predicted conqueror of Edom 
 (Rome), 1 hence his new name, Bar Cocheba. The Christian 
 Jews could not support him without denying their own 
 Messiah, Jesus, the signs of whose imminent coming they 
 saw in the commotions around them, and they fled again 
 to the regions east of the Jordan. When the war was over, 
 and Hadrian decreed that no Jew, under pain of death, 
 should set foot in the new city, iElia Capitolina, which he 
 built on the site of the ruined Jerusalem, the Christian Jews 
 fell under the prohibition with all the rest, and the church 
 which was presently established there was a Greek church 
 with Gentile Christian bishops. 
 
 The development of catholic theology in the second and 
 third centuries left the Jewish Christians of Palestine be- 
 hind. From the catholic point of view their antique no- 
 tions were not a stunted survival of a primitive type of 
 faith, but Judaizing heresies, and it is from the compilers of 
 collections of heresies that the scanty information we have 
 about them chiefly comes. To the middle or end of the 
 fourth century some of them conserved their original beliefs 
 with little change. They bore the name Nazarenes which 
 the Jews gave to all Christians, and were found principally 
 in the Decapolis in the region around Pella, in a district in 
 Basanitis, and in Ccele-Syria about Bercea (Aleppo). By 
 Epiphanius' account, they had the Hebrew Scriptures and 
 lived in all respects according to the Jewish Law, differing 
 from other Jews solely in their belief that Jesus was the 
 Messiah. They had a Gospel in Aramaic, which Epiphanius 
 identified with the original Matthew. Jerome visited the 
 1 Num. 24, 17 ff. 
 
148 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Nazarenes of Beroea, which was only a few miles from his 
 hermitage in the desert of Chalcis, and copied their Gospel, 
 which, like Epiphanius, he took for the Aramaic Matthew. 
 The specimens of their interpretation of Scripture which 
 Jerome gives evince hostility to the scribes and Pharisees, 
 beginning with the schools of Hillel and Shammai. They 
 interpreted Isaiah 9, 1, of the liberation of the Galileans 
 from the errors of the scribes and Pharisees by Jesus, and 
 the shaking off of the heavy yoke of Jewish traditions, and 
 verse 2 of the shining out of the gospel of Christ to the 
 bounds of the Gentiles and the way of the great sea by the 
 preaching of Paul, "the last of the Apostles." In their 
 relations to catholic Christians they seem to have occupied 
 the middle ground represented in Acts by Peter and de- 
 scribed in the middle of the second century by Justin — the 
 Law of Moses was binding on born Jews, but not on Gentiles. 
 Other Jewish Christian sects regarded Paul as a renegade 
 and the adversary of the Apostles, and could not say evil 
 enough about him. They had a Gospel related in some 
 way to Matthew, but beginning, like Mark, with the appear- 
 ance of John the Baptist. They rejected the story of the 
 miraculous birth of Jesus, and believed him the son of 
 Joseph and Mary by ordinary generation. They main- 
 tained the position of the adversaries of Paul in Galatia; 
 circumcision and the observance of the whole Law is neces- 
 sary to salvation. It is from some such party that the 
 original story came which forms the groundwork of the Clem- 
 entine Recognitions and Homilies, in which the subordina- 
 tion of Peter to James is evidently sectarian. Others, 
 again, with the Catholic Church, confessed Christ born of 
 the Virgin. Some became infected with notions vaguely 
 designated as "gnostic," which were rife in the first centuries 
 of our era among Jews and heathen as well as Christians. 
 Of these general types of Jewish Christianity there were 
 many and constantly changing varieties. They flourished 
 chiefly in the regions east of the Jordan. After the fourth 
 century little is heard of them, but some of them survived 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 149 
 
 to a later time; Mohammed's acquaintance with Christianity 
 came mainly from such sources. 
 
 The organisation of the primitive societies of believers 
 was very simple. There were missionaries ("apostles") 
 who were sent out from the principal centres — Jerusalem or 
 Antioch — to preach the gospel or visit other churches, 
 sometimes taking helpers with them. The local societies 
 were called "assemblies," like the Jewish synagogues. The 
 affairs of the society were managed by the seniors (presby- 
 ters, elders), whether by the tacit recognition or choice of 
 the community, or appointed by the missionaries. Paul's 
 letter to the Philippians is addressed "to all the saints 
 (ajioi, initiates) in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with 
 the overseers and helpers." There were also prophets who 
 spoke as they were inspired; but prophecy was an occasional 
 gift, not an office. 
 
 A more advanced stage of organisation is reflected in the 
 instructions for missionaries in the Epistles to Timothy and 
 to Titus, where the qualifications of overseers, and the 
 duties of helpers, both men and women, especially in the 
 administration of the charities of the churches, are defined. 
 We learn that the elders were at the head of the commu- 
 nity, and that some of them preached and taught in its 
 gatherings; what the peculiar function of the overseers was, 
 if indeed they are to be distinguished from the elders, we 
 are not informed. The letters of Ignatius, bishop of Anti- 
 och, written early in the second century to churches in Asia 
 Minor, show that each church was ruled by a single over- 
 seer (bishop), 1 with a plurality of elders (presbyters) and 
 helpers (deacons) under him. A society in which these 
 three orders are not found, Ignatius says, is not called a 
 church. The authority of the bishop is supreme; baptism 
 and the Eucharist are administered by him or by such as he 
 has empowered to do so. This episcopal constitution of the 
 church soon became universal, and all the conditions of the 
 1 The English "bishop" is Greek episkopos, "overseer." 
 
150 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 time — the growth of the church, its relations to the civil 
 authority, the conflict with heresy — tended greatly to in- 
 crease the power of the bishops. The churches in different 
 cities were autonomous, and were not united in any common 
 organisation, but there was much coming and going among 
 them, and frequent intercourse by letters. Christians 
 everywhere felt themselves members of one great religious 
 communion, which Ignatius calls the General ("Catholic") 
 Church, in distinction from the churches of individual cities. 
 The same thing was true of the initiates of the mysteries of 
 Isis or Mithras. Similarly, the Jews spoke of the "Syna- 
 gogue of Israel," which embraced all adherents of Judaism — 
 we might equally well translate "Israelitish Church." 
 
 In the gatherings of the first Christians the greatest free- 
 dom prevailed, and scenes of disorderly enthusiasm such as 
 Paul reproved in Corinth may have been not infrequent; 
 but before long, at least in their principal assemblies, in- 
 struction and exhortation took a larger place. In the 
 synagogue, in which some of them had been brought up and 
 which many others had frequented, they had before them 
 an institution singularly adapted to these ends, and the 
 reading of portions of the Scriptures (especially the Prophets) 
 and discourse upon them were early taken over into Chris- 
 tian use. Jewish prayers and their biblical models also 
 much influenced the development of the Christian liturgies. 
 Besides the Scriptures, letters of Apostles, especially those 
 of Paul, or communications from other churches, were fre- 
 quently read. 
 
 The distinctive Christian rite of the early church was the 
 mystery, or sacrament, 1 of the Eucharist, the participation 
 in the flesh and blood of the Lord. Primitively this rite 
 concluded a church supper, called Agape ("love"); but it 
 was, in some parts of the church sooner, in others later, 
 detached from this connection and transferred to the prin- 
 cipal daytime service, of which it formed the solemn cul- 
 mination. 
 
 1 Sacramentum is the Latin translation of the Greek /xuaTijpio>\ 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 151 
 
 About the middle of the second century, in a defence of 
 Christianity addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius, Jus- 
 tin gives a description of Christian worship in Rome, in 
 substance as follows: 
 
 In the Sunday assemblies a lesson is read from the Memoirs of the 
 Apostles (Gospels) or the writings of the Prophets; the presiding officer 
 (bishop) follows with a discourse admonishing his hearers to conform 
 their lives to the good teachings they have heard, after which the con- 
 gregation rises, and all unite in prayers. This part of the service is 
 succeeded by the celebration of the Eucharist: bread, and wine mixed 
 with water, are brought to the bishop, who offers praise and honour to 
 the Father of the Universe through the name of the Son and the Holy 
 Spirit, and gives thanks at length that God has bestowed these gifts 
 on us, the people responding, Amen ! The deacons then distribute to 
 each of those present a portion of the bread and of the wine, and carry 
 portions to absent members of the church. 
 
 In the sequel an explanation of the sacrament is given as 
 the Christian tradition, which contains substantially the 
 Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. 
 
 In the latter part of the first century and the begin- 
 ning of the second Christianity spread rapidly and widely. 
 The chief early centres of distribution were Antioch for 
 Syria and Cilicia, Ephesus for Asia Minor, Rome for Italy, 
 and presumably Alexandria for Egypt and the Cyrenaica. 
 Churches were soon planted also at Carthage and at Lyons, 
 from which the gospel was disseminated in Africa and 
 southern Gaul. Somewhat later Edessa became the metrop- 
 olis of a Syriac-speaking Christianity. 
 
 The progress of the new religion presently attracted the 
 attention of the government, all the more because common 
 rumour accused the Christians of abominable orgies in their 
 clandestine assemblies — feasting on human flesh and pro- 
 miscuous sexual intercourse, Thyestean banquets and 
 (Edipean incests. 1 The charges were believed not only by 
 
 1 Christians spoke of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the 
 "son of man"; the "brothers" and "sisters" met at night in secret con- 
 venticles, and separated with the "kiss of peace." 
 
152 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the masses but in intellectual circles. The magistrates 
 soon found out that Christians not only did not worship the 
 gods, but, what was worse, refused to burn incense before 
 statues of the emperor, take oath by him, or otherwise 
 acknowledge his divinity. This was a species of Icesa majes- 
 tas, a capital crime at once political and religious. The 
 procedure was summary; the mode of execution, except in 
 the case of Roman citizens, arbitrary with the magistrates. 
 Exposure to wild beasts in the arena as a spectacle for the 
 populace was a favourite way of disposing of criminals con- 
 demned to death, and Christians were frequently sentenced 
 to this fate. 
 
 Down to the edict of toleration in 311 Christians were 
 never safe from prosecutions of this kind; but until the mid- 
 dle of the third century those who suffered death for their 
 faith were not many compared with the growing numbers of 
 Christians in the empire. Strenuous repressive measures 
 might be in operation in one province, while in the neigh- 
 bouring ones the churches were unmolested; a severe perse- 
 cution in a region was often followed by years of tranquil- 
 lity; there were periods when the church enjoyed almost 
 unbroken peace throughout the empire. Decius (249-251) 
 was the first to employ the whole administrative machinery 
 of the empire in a general persecution. 
 
 In the second century a succession of apologists under- 
 took the defence of Christians against the vulgar calumnies 
 and against the imputation of disloyalty. They protested 
 against the injustice of subjecting them to torture and 
 death for the mere name of Christian, which, though not 
 the form, was the actual working of the procedure com- 
 monly employed in their case. They took occasion also to 
 set forth the evidences of Christianity and arguments to 
 prove that it was the only true religion. 
 
 In the writings which the church eventually included in 
 its list of Christian Scriptures, divinely inspired and there- 
 fore normative for doctrine and life, the readers are often 
 warned against false teachers and their teachings. Such 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 153 
 
 warnings are especially frequent in the so-called Pastoral 
 Epistles, in Second Peter, Jude, and the letters to the 
 churches of Asia in the first chapters of the Revelation of 
 John; and (outside the New Testament) in the letters of 
 Ignatius. The teachings thus condemned are sometimes 
 called "heresies," a word which properly signifies the dis- 
 tinctive principles of philosophical schools, but in eccle- 
 siastical use has from the beginning the connotation of 
 false and harmful opinions. 
 
 The oldest specifically Christian heresy was that Christ 
 did not in reality suffer and die, but only in seeming. It 
 was natural for converts from heathenism to think of the 
 appearance of Christ on earth as the temporary assumption 
 by a god of a human form, as in so many tales in the mythol- 
 ogies. To such as had some tincture of philosophy the very 
 definition of the divine was to be by nature exempt from 
 suffering and death. Men who regarded matter as inhe- 
 rently evil could not conceive that Christ was really em- 
 bodied in human flesh, with all its corruption and defile- 
 ment. The belief that the humanity of Christ was only a 
 semblance thus had its origin in the desire to think of him 
 nothing unworthy of a god; 1 as a doctrine, the docetic theory 
 of Christ's humanity is linked with the dualism of popular 
 philosophy. 2 
 
 The Jewish origin of Christianity, the essential identity 
 of the two religions in their monotheism and their morality, 
 the appropriation of the Jewish Scriptures by the church, 
 and the fact that many converts to Christianity in the first 
 generations came to it by way of the synagogue, explain the 
 persistent recurrence of Judaising tendencies. If there was 
 no longer a propaganda such as Paul had to combat in 
 Galatia, which by accepting circumcision and the obligation 
 of the whole Law would have transformed Hellenistic Chris- 
 tianity into a sect of Judaism, there was an inclination to 
 conform to Jewish observances in the keeping of Sabbaths 
 
 1 On a similar phenomenon in Buddhism, see Vol. I, p. 302. 
 
 2 See below, p. 166. 
 
154 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 and festivals and of prescriptions about food and drink, 
 such as is censured in the Epistle to the Colossians, along 
 with superstitions like the worship of angels which were as 
 heretical in Judaism as in Christianity. The Judaising 
 against which Ignatius warns the churches of Asia was of a 
 like kind. Christianity (this is the first occurrence of the 
 word) is a way of living different from Judaism: "Let us 
 learn to live according to Christianity"; "for if we continue 
 to live according to Judaism, we confess that we have not 
 received grace." 
 
 A more radical opposition appears in the Epistle of Bar- 
 nabas. 1 According to this author, Christians did not, as 
 was commonly taught, supersede the Jews as the people of 
 God, the true Israel, when the Jews rejected Christ; the 
 Jews never were the people of God. The Mosaic covenant 
 was broken and annulled at the foot of Sinai by the sin of 
 the golden calf before it ever went into effect. God's cov- 
 enant belongs exclusively to Christians. The Jews, with 
 their literal interpretation and material practice, wholly 
 perverted the spiritual meaning of the Law. God never de- 
 manded sacrifices and oblations, but a contrite heart; not 
 the circumcision of the flesh, but of the ears and heart. 
 The narratives of the Old Testament are allegories of Christ; 
 the author claims for Christians the Law (in its spiritual 
 sense), all the prophecies and the promises — in short, he 
 leaves the Bible to the Jews only for a stumbling-block. 
 This attitude is not an exaggeration of the antithesis of Law 
 and gospel in Paul, or of the contrast of type and reality 
 in Hebrews (with which the author has otherwise some 
 affinity), it is the opposite of Paul, as a glance at Romans 11 
 shows. 
 
 Instead of taking possession of the Jewish Scriptures and 
 making of them a preparation for Christianity or a revela- 
 tion of it, others abandoned it to the Jews altogether, cre- 
 ating a complete contradiction between the Old Testament 
 and the New. This conception of Christianity was com- 
 
 1 The writing which bears this title is not by the companion of Paul. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 155 
 
 mon to Marcion and the Gnostics, and led to his being 
 classed with them, though he does not belong to them. To 
 Marcion, Judaism and Christianity, the Law and the gospel, 
 were so completely opposite in teaching and in spirit that 
 they cannot have the same author. The god of the Old 
 Testament was warlike and a cruel deity. He laid down 
 his will in a law, and inexorably inflicted its penalties on 
 transgressors; in this sense he was a just god. This just 
 god was the demiurge, artificer of the visible universe, as 
 is told in Genesis; a god of inferior intelligence and imper- 
 fect in character. Above him was the supreme God, creator 
 of the invisible or intelligible universe, whose nature is pure 
 goodness. This good God was unknown — even the demi- 
 urge was not aware of his existence — until Christ came 
 down from heaven to reveal him, and drawing men away 
 from allegiance to the demiurge, to call them into his own 
 kingdom. Indignant at this invasion of his realm, the 
 demiurge caused him to be crucified. Christ was not the 
 Messiah foretold in the Old Testament by the prophets of 
 the demiurge; the Jewish Messiah is an Antichrist, who 
 shall one day arise and be overcome. After this triumph, 
 the souls of those who are saved through Christ will enter 
 into the kingdom of God. The body of man is a work of 
 the demiurge; the Christian must, therefore, combat and 
 subdue it, with its appetites and passions. The ethics of 
 the system are ascetic; the motive is love to the good God. 
 Such, according to Marcion, was the teaching of Paul, 
 the only pure Christianity. The church, ignoring the warn- 
 ing of its Master, had put the new wine of the gospel into 
 the old bottles of Judaism, with the inevitable result. His 
 mission was to restore genuine Christianity by bringing the 
 church back to Paul. Whatever in the Epistles of Paul and 
 the Pauline Gospel, Luke, was at variance with this doc- 
 trine, he deleted as Judaising interpolation, and gave his 
 followers an expurgated Pauline canon, rejecting the other 
 Gospels and Epistles altogether. Failing in his efforts to 
 reform the church according to his ideas, Marcion organised 
 
156 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 a rival church, which lasted till after the empire became 
 Christian, and, to judge from the temper in which the 
 Fathers attack it, must in many places have had numerous 
 adherents. 
 
 Others, with a more thoroughgoing dualism, reasoned 
 that the artificer of this world, evil as it is through and 
 through, must himself be altogether bad. Since their doc- 
 trine was that an esoteric knowledge (gnosis) is the only sal- 
 vation from the evils of bodily existence and the world of 
 matter and sense, the commandment not to eat of the tree 
 of knowledge (Gen. 2) was to them plain proof that the god 
 of the Old Testament, the demiurge, was the enemy of man- 
 kind. By this prohibition he sought to keep man from his 
 highest good, and when man had tasted the fruit of knowl- 
 edge, again displayed his malignity by barring the way to 
 the tree of life. The serpent, on the contrary, "the most 
 intelligent of the animals" (Gen. 3, 1), was man's friend, 
 revealing to Eve the envy and falsehood of the demiurge 
 and the true effect of the forbidden fruit: "Your eyes will be 
 opened, and ye will be as gods, knowing good and evil." 
 It was the serpent, they said, who opened to men the knowl- 
 edge of the heavenly mysteries; the serpent who in the days 
 of Herod appeared in human form (Christ). 1 Some of these 
 Ophites (Serpent Sect) are said to have produced in their 
 sacrament a snake from a box and let it crawl around and 
 over the elements, a rite to which Greek mysteries offer 
 partial parallels. The Law of Moses having been imposed 
 by an evil and inimical deity, it was incumbent on those 
 who knew his true character to go contrary to his command- 
 ments. The sinners of the Old Testament, who would not 
 obey the mandates of the demiurge, were the men of light 
 in their time; one sect characteristically chose Cain for their 
 eponymous saint. 
 
 The saving knowledge was here a subtle theosophy, there 
 myth and mummery; secret rites and magical charms full 
 of unintelligible and unpronounceable names had a large 
 1 Cf. John 3, 14. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 157 
 
 place in it. The number and variety of Gnostic sects or 
 schools was prodigious; the movement, which began in the 
 Apostolic Age, was at its height in the latter half of the 
 second century, and only slowly subsided. In them all men 
 sought to attain salvation by an esoteric knowledge (gnosis) 
 of the mysteries of the godhead, of the universe, and of the 
 soul, and those who had this knowledge were therefore 
 called "Gnostics." 
 
 The Gnostics not only called themselves Christians, but 
 professed to be a very superior sort of Christians, if not the 
 only genuine Christians. Amid the clamour of these rival 
 pretensions the question, Where is true Christianity to be 
 found? was urgent. Only one answer was possible: True 
 Christianity was what had been taught and practised in 
 the church from the beginning. Peculiar authority natu- 
 rally belonged to the churches which could assert an un- 
 broken tradition of faith and order from their apostolic 
 founders. The succession of bishops conserved and passed 
 on this tradition, and thus became, so to speak, the living 
 criterion of orthodoxy, its authoritative exponents. The 
 bishops of the leading sees communicated to one another 
 the doctrine of their churches and co-operated in measures 
 to combat error. Before the end of the second century 
 synods of bishops began to be held, an organ of concerted 
 action. Thus the conflict with heresy strengthened the sense 
 of Catholic unity, and the episcopate, as the bulwark of the 
 Catholic faith, acquired a greatly enhanced importance. 
 
 Another result of the conflict with heresy was the forma- 
 tion of lists of writings attributed to the Apostles, or to their 
 companions and helpers under apostolic direction, which 
 the church accepted as Christian Scriptures, excluding the 
 spurious Gospels, Acts, and Revelations of the Gnostics and 
 other heretics, many of which also bore apostolic names and 
 claimed the authority of inspiration. Here again prescrip- 
 tion gave the criterion: books which had long been in use in 
 all the chief churches were genuine, those which had not 
 this recognition were rejected as apocryphal; those which 
 
158 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 were accepted in some parts of the church, but not in all, 
 were dubious. The oldest list that has been preserved 1 
 comprises the Four Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, the Epis- 
 tles of Paul (including Hebrews), James, 1 Peter, 1 John, 
 and the Revelation of John. Unanimity about some of the 
 books in the New Testament was not attained even in the 
 fourth century; but the object of the canon was achieved. 
 
 Still another result of the conflict was the employment of 
 brief summaries of the Catholic faith as a test of orthodoxy 
 and a norm for the interpretation of Scripture, which by 
 their allegorical higher exegesis the Gnostics wrested to 
 support their very unscriptural speculations. Such com- 
 pends of Christian truth had been in use earlier in the 
 admission of converts by baptism; they now became a 
 "standard of the truth" (icavwv t??? aXrjdeia<s). The Ro- 
 man baptismal confession from which the so-called Apostles' 
 Creed is derived, in its oldest known form ran somewhat as 
 follows: 
 
 I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ his only 
 Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, 
 crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried; the third day he rose from 
 the dead; he ascended to heaven; he sitteth at the right hand of the 
 Father; thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead; and in 
 the Holy Ghost, the Holy Church, the remission of sins, the resurrec- 
 tion of the flesh. 
 
 Symbols of similar content in varying phrase were em- 
 ployed in the East also. 
 
 Thus in the course of the second century, by its own 
 development and through the conflict with heresy, the 
 church became what Ignatius at the beginning of the cen- 
 tury had prophetically called it, the Catholic Church, with 
 an efficient episcopal organisation maintaining an authori- 
 tative apostolic tradition, a canon of sacred Scripture, and 
 an explicitly defined rule of faith. In all this progress the 
 church in Rome had a leading part. Before the close of 
 1 Muratorian Canon. Roman (not official), about 180 A. D. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 159 
 
 the century Irenseus, bishop of Lyons in Gaul, a native of 
 Asia Minor, who in his youth had listened to the words of 
 the aged Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, could write of the 
 Roman church: "Ad hanc enim ecclesiam, propter potiorem 
 principalitatem, necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, 
 hoc est, eos qui sunt undique fideles, in qua semper . . . 
 conservata est ea quse est ab apostolis traditio." 1 
 
 1 Every church, that is, all believers everywhere, ought to agree with 
 this [i. e., the Roman] church, in which the tradition coming down from 
 the Apostles has always been preserved. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 
 
 Defenders of Christianity — The Logos-Christ — Ireraeus — Monarchians 
 — Basilides and Valentinus — Clement of Alexandria — The Theo- 
 logical System of Origen — The Great Persecutions — The Arian 
 Controversy — Council of Nicsea — Revolt against its Creed — Coun- 
 cils of Seleucia-Ariminium — Reaffirmation of the Nicene Symbol 
 — Nestorius and Eutyches: Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon 
 — Monophysite Schisms. 
 
 The writers who undertook the exposition and defence 
 of Christianity for educated readers — the so-called Apolo- 
 gists — were chiefly converted philosophers of a kind com- 
 mon in those days, half sophist, half rhetorician, who dis- 
 coursed in public, or to paying hearers who frequented 
 their lecture-rooms, on moral and religious subjects. They 
 found in the new religion the true philosophy; it had the 
 authority of divine revelation, and it gave the assurance of 
 a blessed immortality. Christianity was to them primarily 
 a revelation in the Scriptures and through Christ of the 
 truth about God, of the moral law with its rewards and 
 punishments, and of immortality through knowledge of the 
 truth and obedience to the revealed will of God. 
 
 They endeavoured to prove that in its teaching about 
 God Christianity was in accord with the best thought of the 
 age, transcending it by carrying the thinking on under the 
 guidance of revelation to its vaguely adumbrated conse- 
 quences, and making practical application of its theology 
 to religion and life. The superiority of Christianity to the 
 old religions must be patent, they argued, to all intelligent 
 men; and, lest any should fail to see it, they set out in a 
 
 160 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 161 
 
 glaring light the unreasonableness of polytheism and idol- 
 atry and the absurdities and immoralities of the myths — an 
 enterprise in which they had many precursors among the 
 Greeks as well as in Jewish controversial literature. 
 
 For the Apologists, as in the popular religious philosophies 
 out of which they came, God was eternal, and in his un- 
 changeable divinity too exalted to be brought directly into 
 action in the changing world of things and men. Like Philo 
 and the Gospel of John, they find the connection between 
 God and the world in the idea of the Logos, which as divine 
 reason was eternally immanent in God, and was emanated 
 from God before creation, that through him the world might 
 be made (Prov. 8, 22 /.). The Logos is the Son of God, 
 generated by his power and will, not as by a division of his 
 essence. All revelation comes from him; it was he who 
 appeared in human form to the patriarchs, he who spoke 
 by the prophets. Nor was the work of the Logos confined 
 to one people; whatever is reasonable and right in the teach- 
 ing of Greek philosophers and poets is from the same source. 
 The full revelation is made in the incarnate Logos. Com- 
 bining Pauline (Colossians) and Johannean phraseology, 
 Justin uses the name Christ of the Logos before the incar- 
 nation. The Logos, or the Christ-Logos, is thus a deity of 
 the second order, numerically distinct from the Supreme 
 God, but of one mind and will with him, emanated from 
 God, or, in more scriptural phrase of the same meaning, 
 generated by him. In this pluralistic monotheism the Spirit 
 is sometimes distinguished from the Father and the Logos- 
 Son — an anticipation of the problem of the ontological 
 Trinity, not of its solution. 
 
 The knowledge of God (yvwo-K) is not in the Apologists 
 an esoteric insight into the mysteries of the divine Being, as 
 with the intellectual Gnostics, but a knowledge of God's 
 unity, character, and will. Faith, that is, the acceptance of 
 the Christian religion and obedience to its new law, is the 
 condition of salvation. Salvation is deliverance from the 
 assaults of demons, of which the world is full, and when this 
 
162 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 life is over, immortality, or, as it is commonly expressed, 
 "imperishability" (a^>8apa-Ca t "incorruption"). 1 
 
 In their notions of the hereafter the Apologists, contrary 
 to what might be expected of philosophers with a streak of 
 Platonism, accept the beliefs of unphilosophical Christians, 
 taking the resurrection in material literalness: "We expect 
 to receive our bodies again after they are dead and laid in 
 the ground." Justin, with all whose orthodoxy he regards 
 as unequivocal, looks for a thousand-year reign of Christ 
 on earth with a rebuilt and enlarged Jerusalem as his capi- 
 tal, after which will come the general resurrection and the 
 last judgment, as in the Revelation of John. 
 
 Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (d. ca. 200 A. D.) is in sub- 
 stantial agreement with the Apologists in his conception of 
 the Logos, Son and revealer of the Father, who spoke by 
 ,the prophets and was incarnate in Christ, and of the Spirit, 
 as well as in his idea of faith {credere ei est facere eiixs volun- 
 tatem), the obligation of the moral law, free will and ability, 
 and in his beliefs about the hereafter. He has, however, a 
 more profound theory of the reason of the incarnation, the 
 germs of which he may have brought from his native Asia 
 Minor — they are found in Ignatius — but the development 
 of which was probably not uninfluenced by contact with 
 the intellectual Gnostics and their doctrine of a fallen 
 world. 
 
 God, by his Word (Logos), made Adam after his own like- 
 ness. This godlikeness, which included immortality, Adam, 
 by his fall, lost for himself and all his descendants, who 
 inherit his mortal nature; the recovery of the pristine like- 
 ness to God is therefore the condition of immortality; its 
 possession is "imperishability." To this end the race must 
 begin over again, with Christ as its head in place of Adam. 
 By the union of divinity and humanity in Christ — a com- 
 mixtio et communio dei et hominis — he undoes the harm 
 
 1 See 1 Cor. 15, 53. The preference for this word over iBavaala, 
 "immortality," is due to the fact that in Greek philosophy ytyveirBai 
 and <j>0elpe<r6a.i. are opposites, "come into existence," "cease to exist." 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 163 
 
 Adam did and restores to mankind the lost divine image. 
 Only man could fairly overcome man's enemy, death; only 
 God could give security of salvation; "unless man were 
 made one with God, he could not share in incorruption." 
 Against the Gnostic doctrine that the humanity of Christ 
 was only a semblance, Ireneeus affirms that he took from the 
 Virgin Mary sybstantiam carnis; but with equal emphasis 
 that the deity thus incarnated is "the Son, ever co-existent 
 with the Father, uncreated, of the same essence" (6fj,oovo-io<i). 
 
 The union of deity with a real and true body of flesh and 
 blood makes the body of man capable of immortality. 
 The Gnostics, "despising the creation of God (the body) 
 and rejecting the salvation of the flesh," think that when 
 they die their souls will mount above the sky and go to 
 that imaginary Father of theirs. Ireneeus holds, on the con- 
 trary, that souls abide in an invisible place appointed by 
 God until the resurrection; then receiving bodies and rising 
 entire, that is, bodily, 1 they will thus come to see God. As 
 for Ignatius the sacramental bread was a medicine that 
 gives immortality, so in Irenseus the flesh which is nourished 
 upon the body and blood of the Lord cannot be destined to 
 destruction. After the invocation, the bread is no longer 
 common bread, but a Eucharist, in which is a heavenly as 
 well as an earthly element; so also our bodies, receiving the 
 Eucharist, are no longer perishable, having the expectation 
 of an eternal resurrection. It is through the sacrament 
 that the salvation of the flesh is achieved. 
 
 The doctrine of the Logos seemed to thinkers imbued with 
 the current religious philosophy to furnish a key to the 
 understanding of the Scriptures, and to harmonise the 
 church's worship of Christ as God with its polemic mono- 
 theism. There were others, however, to whom this dis- 
 course of a second god, the son of the first, begotten by him 
 before the creation of the world — of Father and Son, or 
 of Father, Son, and Spirit, as two, or three, numerically 
 distinct divine beings — had a familiar mythological sound 
 1 This is the Jewish doctrine. See above, pp. 55/., 75. 
 
164 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 which made the whole Logos theology suspicious; and 
 this prejudice was doubtless strengthened by the resem- 
 blance of the emanation of the Son in this theology to the 
 theories of the Gnostics. Attempts were therefore made to 
 interpret the Gospels and the common faith of the church 
 in a way more conformable to naive monotheism. Some, 
 rejecting the Fourth Gospel, held that Jesus was born of the 
 Virgin, in accordance with the Father's will. He was a 
 man of exemplary character and deeply religious. At his 
 baptism the Spirit descended upon him, consecrated him as 
 the Christ, and endued him with supernatural powers. 
 Then and thus he became the Son of God in the Messianic 
 sense, but not of divine nature. If it was permissible to at- 
 tribute divinity to him, it was only after his resurrection 
 and ascension, and only in a loose use of the word. This 
 opinion, which closely resembles that of some of the Jewish 
 Christian sects described above, was rejected by the church 
 without further ado. 
 
 Others endeavoured to maintain at once the deity of 
 Christ and the numerical unity of the godhead by the 
 theory that it was God himself who became incarnate, and 
 no other. One and the same God was both Father and Son, 
 now invisible, now visible; now unbegotten, and again born 
 of the Virgin; now impassible and immortal, now suffering 
 and dying on the cross. A somewhat more developed 
 theory taught that the one God assumed in succession 
 different r61es (TrpoacoTra, personw) : in the character of Fa- 
 ther he was the creator and legislator; in that of Son, 
 from the incarnation to the ascension, he was the Saviour; 
 in the present age he is the Spirit in the church. Thus, 
 these scriptural names stand for modes or phases of God's 
 operation or self-manifestation, not for a supreme God with 
 one or two subordinate deities springing in some way out 
 of him. Those who made the arithmetical unity of God 
 (fiovapx(a) 1 their shibboleth are commonly called "mo- 
 
 1 Movapxla. is the Greek word for "monotheism," or the doctrine of 
 the divine unity. 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 165 
 
 narchians" (more correctly, "monotheists," or unitarians); 
 their adversaries nicknamed them "patripassians," asserting 
 that by their doctrine of identity they made the Father 
 suffer on the cross. 
 
 There is every reason to suppose that the gospel found its 
 way to Alexandria at a very early time, probably not much 
 later than to Antioch; but of the establishment of the church 
 there and of its history to the close of the first century 
 nothing whatever is known. That the Christian community 
 was by that time numerous, and had gained adherents among 
 the intellectual class may be inferred from the fact that as 
 early as the reign of Hadrian two great Gnostic systems 
 originated in Alexandria. Basilides undertook to derive 
 the universe from the metaphysical principle of pure Non- 
 being instead of absolute Being, without the hypothesis of 
 emanation, and to construe salvation in an ascending scale 
 only, without the hypothesis of an antecedent fall of spirits 
 from the higher realms — a graduated salvation, in which 
 each attains according to his capacity, while those who 
 finally remain below are enveloped in "the great ignorance," 
 and, knowing nothing above them to aspire to, are content. 
 
 Valentinus, like Plotinus, starts with the metaphysical 
 Absolute, which is beyond the categories of knowing and 
 being. From this proceeds by emanation the Nous (Uni- 
 versal Intellect), from it the Logos, from it Anthropos (ideal 
 generic Humanity). 1 To each of these is given a (grammati- 
 cally) feminine counterpart: Mind-Truth, Word-Life, Man- 
 Church, and by a kind of analysis of the last two pairs of 
 concepts, secondary emanations proceed from them. All 
 this is in what the Platonists of the time called the tcocrfw*; 
 votjto*;, a universe that has only an intellectual (i. e., incor- 
 poreal) existence; the Valentinians called it the PlerSma, 
 the fulness of the godhead. There was no world of sense, 
 no matter. Plotinus arrives at his primordial matter by a 
 final stage in the self-exteriorisation of the Absolute; Valen- 
 
 1 Compare the system of Plotinus, Vol. I, pp. 533 /. Observe that 
 in the Valentinian scheme Humanity is in the godhead. 
 
166 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tinus can conceive the very existence of matter only as the 
 result of a fall within the godhead itself. 
 
 This is set forth in Platonic fashion in the myth of the 
 fall of Wisdom through its aspiration to know the unknow- 
 able. In the remotest of the emanations, Sophia, a desire 
 arose to know the Father and commune with him, which 
 none but Nous can do. This ambition to transcend her 
 bounds and its failure excited in her the emotions of igno- 
 rance and grief and fear and perplexity; and when she was 
 delivered from these and they were extruded from the 
 PlerSma, they became the primordial elements of the visible 
 universe — ignorance and grief, fear and perplexity, are the 
 very tissue of nature as well as the warp of human life. 
 Out of them a demiurge fashioned the world; he, or the 
 angels (like Plato's "younger gods"), made man's body 
 and breathed into him a soul. Some men have also received 
 from a higher source a germ of spirit; they are the " spiritual 
 men." 1 
 
 Man is not only mortal, he is sinful; his heart is the habi- 
 tation of a multitude of demons, which make and keep it 
 unclean. Only the Son can expel them and purify the 
 heart, and only the pure in heart can see God. Christ, the 
 Saviour, was emanated that he might come and recover the 
 spiritual race that is from above — as the fall was in the god- 
 head, the recovery must come from it. It is a poetic imagi- 
 nation that Christ was an emanation of all the seons of the 
 Pleroma, each of whom contributed what was best in it to 
 the making of the most perfect beauty, the Star of the 
 Pleroma (cf. Col. 1, 17; 2, 9). When this Jesus came forth 
 from the bosom of the godhead to earth, he brought a body 
 with him from above, and passed through the Virgin Mary, 
 taking no substance from her womb. The motive of this 
 docetism is plain: he whose mission is to deliver men from 
 the world of matter and sense cannot himself be subject to 
 the infirmities or the defilement of the flesh. 
 
 1 The distinction of material, animal, and spiritual men comes from 
 1 Cor. 2, 14; 15, 46 ff. 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 167 
 
 These thinkers undertook to solve the problem of the 
 universe in a monistic sense, starting with Absolute Being 
 or Absolute Non-Being; to account for the material world 
 and all the physical and moral evil in it, without involving 
 God in it or making him responsible for it; to explain how 
 souls, which are by nature divine, came to be in this exile, 
 imprisoned in the body, defiled and corrupted by contact 
 with matter and the desires of the flesh; how they may be 
 liberated, purified, and restored to their native estate; and 
 how the redemption of the universe itself is to be achieved 
 and nature delivered from the bondage of corruption. 
 These were the central problems of contemporary religious 
 philosophy. The specific problem of Christian philosophy 
 was to interpret, from these premises and in this scheme, 
 the nature of the Saviour, and his work in the salvation of 
 individual souls and the redemption of the cosmos. In 
 them, as in the Neoplatonists, a theory of the universe was 
 not the ultimate end of speculation; the relation of the soul 
 to God furnished the basis of an intellectual mysticism the 
 goal of which is the reascent of the soul to God or its union 
 with God. 
 
 Expelled from the church, Valentinus and his disciples 
 formed churches of their own, which survived the impartial 
 persecutions of the heathen emperors, but succumbed to the 
 particular persecution of their Christian successors. But 
 putting heretics out of the church did not put the questions 
 they raised out of the world, nor did the refutations of 
 churchmen like Irenseus and Hippolytus answer them. If 
 the church was to gain or hold thinking men, it must offer 
 them a better philosophy than the Gnostics, it must think 
 its faith into a theology. Like the systems of Basilides and 
 Valentinus, like the philosophy of Plotinus, this theology 
 came from Alexandria. 
 
 The Christian school in Alexandria, from its foundation,*' 
 took a prominent place among the schools of that university 
 city. Clement, the second head of the school, was a man' 
 of voluminous reading in Greek literature and philosophy, 
 
168 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 as well as in the Scriptures and Christian authors, both 
 Catholic and Gnostic, and his reputation for learning and 
 eloquence drew to his lecture-rooms throngs of pagan as well 
 as Christian hearers. His peculiar service was to vindicate 
 the right of educated and thoughtful men to an apprehen- 
 sion of Christianity which satisfied their intelligence, and 
 to show that such an apprehension is possible without, like 
 the Gnostics, rejecting the traditional standard of truth. 
 He calls himself a gnostic; the "pseudo-gnostics" are not 
 to be allowed to usurp so honourable a name. His gnosis, 
 however, is not a theosophy, but a knowledge of divine 
 things profounder than that of simple believers, and not 
 accepted on authority but rationally established. The 
 faith of the common Christian is " an epitome of the es- 
 sentials," the knowledge of the Christian gnostic is "the 
 sure demonstration of the things received by faith." The 
 true gnostic lives on a higher plane than the simple believer, 
 morally as well as intellectually, and Christians should en- 
 deavour, by the study of philosophy and the discipline of 
 the religious life, to attain this higher stage. The divine 
 Logos is the source of all intelligence, knowledge, and 
 morality. The education of the human race is the work 
 of the Logos — the Greeks by philosophy, the Jews by the 
 Law, until Christ came. It is the Logos which now turns 
 men from false religions and evil ways, trains them in right 
 living, and is their teacher in the true knowledge. 
 * Clement's successor, Origen, was born in Alexandria of 
 Christian parents, in 185 or 186 A. D., and as a boy had 
 heard Pantsenus, the founder of the school, as well as Clem- 
 ent. His father was one of the first victims of the persecu- 
 tion in 202 or 203, and Origen, on whom the support of the 
 family devolved, began his career as a teacher by giving 
 lessons in grammar. After a short time the bishop, Deme- 
 trius, appointed him to the head of the catechetical school, 
 over which he presided until 231. Long-standing difficul- 
 ties with the bishop then came to a head. Origen, deprived 
 of his place in the school and compelled to leave Egypt, 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 169 
 
 established himself at Caesarea in Palestine, where the rest 
 of his life was spent in teaching and writing. He died in 
 254 at Tyre. 
 
 Origen's productivity was enormous. Besides his critical 
 labours on the Greek Old Testament, he made exegetical 
 commentaries or series of homilies on many books of the 
 Old Testament and most of the New; he took an active part 
 in the controversies of the time, and kept up an extensive 
 correspondence. His defence of Christianity against the 
 attack of Celsus is an apology of a new kind. The treatise 
 "On the First Principles" (of Christian philosophy) is the 
 first systematic exposition of Christian theology. It is this 
 work with which we are especially concerned here. 
 
 At the outset the author gives a succinct statement of 
 the faith which the church has received by tradition from 
 the Apostles. In the conflict of opinions this is the only 
 norm; nothing is to be accepted as truth which is in any 
 way at variance with this apostolic tradition. But the 
 Apostles delivered thus only the articles which are necessary 
 for all Christians to believe, and often without explanation 
 or reason. To many questions which a thinking mind can- 
 not help asking the rule of faith gives no answer. Investi- 
 gation and speculation have, therefore, room and right 
 beside and beyond, though not against, the ecclesiastical 
 standards. Systematic theology thus begins with an apology 
 for its existence. Of the four books into which the work is 
 divided the first treats of God and rational existences; the 
 second of the world and mundane creatures, and of the 
 soul and its destiny; the third, has for its principal subject 
 the freedom of the will, and the conflict men have to sustain 
 with the devil and his hosts; the fourth is on the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures and their interpretation, concluding with 
 a recapitulation of the main points discussed in the work. 
 
 In the schools of Alexandria Platonism had aways been 
 the prevailing philosophy. It had, indeed, appropriated 
 much from other sources — from Aristotle, from the Stoics, 
 and from the later Pythagoreans — but it Platonised what- 
 
170 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ever it took, in the faith that all good thoughts were Pla- 
 . tonic. The Alexandrian Platonists had a strong antipathy 
 /for every kind of materialism. They were not satisfied to 
 rest in the dualism of mind and matter, 1 or, in religious terms, 
 of God and the world, which Plato himself had not over- 
 come; they sought a solution which, from the premises of 
 the immaterialist conception of reality, should be as com- 
 plete and unitary as the Stoic system from its materialist 
 premises. We find this endeavour in Philo; the specula- 
 tions of Basilides and Valentinus show further advance in 
 this direction; it was in Origen's time that the goal was 
 reached. He himself, after he had already been for several 
 years the principal of the Christian school, attended the 
 lectures of Ammonius Saccas, the reputed founder of the 
 Neoplatonist school; Plotinus was a younger contemporary; 
 Porphyry in his youth had seen the aged Origen, perhaps at 
 Csesarea or at Tyre. 2 
 
 As in Valentinus and Plotinus, God is for Origen trans- 
 cendent in the proper meaning of that much misapplied 
 term. He is the /torn? or evas, absolute and simple unity. 
 Philo called his Absolute Notts, "Intellect"; Origen, with 
 Plotinus, goes beyond this: the One transcends the Plotinian 
 categories of thought and being (hreiceiva vov ical ova las). 
 The problem of Origen, as of every similar metaphysical 
 monism, is how from this Absolute, one, simple, unchange- 
 able, the manifold universe of becoming, change, and disso- 
 lution can be derived — how the all-exclusive unity can be 
 the origin of all existence; and, above all, how to escape 
 making the Good the source of evil. Plotinus, as has been 
 shown in another place, 3 interposed between God and the 
 material world a descending series of emanations, the first 
 and highest of which was the Nous, or Universal Intellect. 
 Origen, following Philonic and Christian rather than Pla- 
 
 1 The Platonic matter is not the gross stuff of which what we call 
 material things are made, nevertheless it is an eternal somewhat be- 
 sides God. See Vol. I, p. 503 and note 1. 
 
 2 On these philosophers, see Vol. I, pp. 533 ff. 
 
 3 See Vol. I, pp. 533/. 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 171 
 
 tonic terminology, gives this place to the Logos, or Universal 
 Reason. In the Scriptures this intermediary has various 
 other names: Son, First-Born, Only-Begotten, Christ. It is 
 the Wisdom which was the beginning of God's ways, gen- 
 erated before the earth was made (Prov. 8, 22 ff.); an efflux 
 of the glory of the Almighty (Wisd. 7, 25/.; cf. Heb. 1, 3), 
 and therefore of the same essence with him (6(ioov<no<;) ; 
 distinct yet not separate, like the sunbeam and the sun. 
 Plotinus uses the same illustration; the figure — but not the 
 meaning — is familiar to those who recite the Nicene creed: 
 $<Ss e« faros, "Light derived from Light." Another 
 simile, which excludes the imagination of corporeity, is 
 volition proceeding from thought. 
 
 For the emanation of the Logos, Origen employs the term 
 "generation," * which was established in the use of the 
 church. It is the process by which the Father is father 
 and the Son son, and since this relation is eternal Origen 
 speaks of "eternal generation," sicut splendor generatur a 
 luce. "There never was a time when the Son was not" — 
 the words became a watch-cry, or a war-cry, in later con- 
 troversies. 
 
 The Son is generated of the essence (ovala) of the Father, 2 
 an eternally distinct divine hypostasis. 3 But though of the 
 same essence with the Father, the Son is not on an equality 
 with the Father. The Father alone is unbegotten, that is, 
 to him belongs the aseity of godhead; he is God himself and 
 of himself. The Son is begotten, a second god, worthy of 
 second honour after the universal God; he is god, but not 
 God. The Father is incomparably good; the Son is not 
 good of himself, but an image of the goodness of God — and 
 so on, consistently. The Logos, or hypostatic divine Wis- 
 dom, is inferior to the transcendent God, because it con- 
 tains in itself the logoi, or (immaterial) germinal principles, 
 
 1 Plotinus (i. 5, 6 /.) uses the same word of the emanation of the 
 Nous. 
 
 2 Oiala in a Platonic sense. 
 
 3 The word in Origen's use signifies "rational individual." 
 
172 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of the multiplicity of existences, 1 thus standing between the 
 absolute One and the phenomenal many; he is the first-born 
 of all creation, and in him were created all things, visible and 
 invisible (Col. 1, 15-17). 
 
 The Spirit is as much below the Son as the Son is inferior 
 to the Father. It is eternally (i. e., timelessly) created by 
 the Son, and of all things (i. e., the rational existences) that 
 were created by the Logos, it is most highly honoured. In 
 revelation it was an instrumentality of the Logos, but its 
 specific operation is in the saints, that is, in the members of 
 the Christian church. It thus occupies the place which 
 Scripture and the unreflective faith of the church assigned 
 it; to Origen's philosophy it is superfluous. 
 
 From eternity a multitude of immaterial intelligences, or 
 rational souls, were given existence by the Logos, in all 
 respects equal, endowed with freedom. 2 The Son loved 
 what he had made (cf. Wisd. 11, 24), and granted to them 
 to partake of his nature in the measure in which they sev- 
 erally clave to him in love. Some of them were possessed 
 by a more ardent love of the author of their being, others 
 by a slighter affection; and these last had less part in him. 
 Thus, in the exercise of their freedom, the rational souls in 
 different degrees declined from their original, not by positive 
 error but by defect of love. 
 
 The consequence of this alienation was that souls were 
 invested with bodies, and a material universe was brought 
 into being for their abode. Those which have declined least 
 from their original have a corporeal vesture of fine setherial 
 matter; they are principalities, powers, angels. The devil 
 and his angels, the demons of various ranks who swarm in 
 the air, are the souls that have fallen deepest. Between 
 angels and demons are men; they too are rational existences, 
 lapsed from the intelligible world, and incorporated in an 
 
 1 The term is Stoic; but the Stoic logoi were not immaterial. 
 
 2 In maintaining their equality Origen contradicts the Gnostic theory 
 of the superiority of a favoured class of "spiritual" men; their freedom 
 exempts God from responsibility for the evil that came by their fall. 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 173 
 
 earthly and mortal body vivified by an animal soul. Among 
 human souls, again, some have sunk deeper than others; the 
 inequalities of birth and fortune, apparently unmerited suf- 
 ferings — as of one born blind — are thus explained without 
 admitting chance or fate, or the necessity of attributing the 
 evils in the world to another power in order to save the jus- 
 tice and goodness of God, as in vulgar Gnosticism. 
 
 Freedom of will remains in fallen spirits, and in it the 
 possibility of rising stage by stage to the highest or sinking 
 to the lowest. The goal set before all is to recover their 
 primal estate. The human will is free, but its original 
 equilibrium is lost; in the body the soul is exposed to the 
 defilement of matter and the temptation of demons who 
 seek to draw it deeper into ruin. And not only man, but 
 the highest angels and the heavenly bodies, with the whole 
 creation which has been unwillingly made subject to vanity 
 (/iaratoTT;?, Romans 8, 20), are in need of salvation. 
 
 To save the world, the Son of God (the Logos) united with 
 himself a rational soul — the only one of all that had never 
 erred nor departed from him — and sheathed, as it were, in 
 this soul, entered an undefiled body. Origen calls this not 
 incarnation (ensarkosis, "enfleshment"), but "humanise- 
 ment" {enanthroyesis). Christ is Theanthropos, God-Man; 
 he even uses the word "composite." But he takes pains 
 to distinguish in thought what belongs to the divine and 
 the human respectively. It was the human body only that 
 suffered (the divine is impassible); and "the only-begotten 
 Son of God, the Word of God, and his Wisdom and Right- 
 eousness and Truth, is not circumscribed in the confines of 
 a body" (the divine is not subject to spatial limitations). 
 
 Being the image of the invisible God, Christ is a revela- 
 tion of him, "for by him by whom the Son is known, the 
 Father also is known." He is the Way that leads to the 
 Father; by it those who fell from their first estate may 
 return. Christ calls those who are in the flesh, that first he 
 may make them to be conformed to the incarnate Logos, 
 and then lead them on to the vision of himself as he was 
 
174 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 before his incarnation (the Logos in his divine nature), that 
 so they may say: "Though formerly we knew Christ after 
 the flesh, henceforth we know him so no more." 
 
 In his eschatology Origen departs more widely from the 
 common belief of the church. He combated the crassly 
 material imagination of the thousand-year reign of Christ 
 on earth, which was not only entertained by the vulgar, but, 
 in defence against the objections of educated heathen and 
 especially in the conflict with Gnosticism, had become a 
 touchstone of orthodoxy. The Revelation of John, which 
 was the chief source of these conceptions and gave them 
 apostolic authority, Origen interpreted allegorically; it was 
 a cardinal principle of his hermeneutics that whatever 
 sounds material and carnal is to be taken figuratively in a 
 spiritual sense. 
 
 Regarding the material body as a prison in which the 
 exiled soul is confined by reason of its fall, the resurrection 
 of the flesh, however purified, contradicted his very idea of 
 salvation. Origen ranged himself on the side of Paul, 
 "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." 
 The spiritual body with which the soul is hereafter to be 
 invested will be organised by a germinal logos which now 
 exists in the body; thus individual identity is preserved, 
 without identity of material constitution. Origen's de- 
 materialisation extends not only to heaven but to hell; its 
 fire is not a material and external fire torturing sensitive 
 bodies, but the inner fires of conscience and remorse, a suf- 
 fering at once punitive and purificatory. 
 
 By progress in knowledge and virtue human souls may 
 attain, through finer and purer embodiments, even to the 
 highest of the archangelic ranks. The goal of all — angels 
 and men and demons — is to reascend to their first estate 
 and be again the pure, bodiless intelligences they were before 
 their lapse, in loving communion and participation with 
 the Logos. Even the devil and his angels will thus return 
 to God, and when this end is reached the material universe 
 will be dissolved into its primal nothingness. This is the 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 175 
 
 "restitution of all things" (airoicaTdcrTao-R iravTwv) of which 
 the Apostle speaks (Acts 3, 21). Then God will be all 
 in all as at the beginning (1 Cor. 15, 28). But inasmuch 
 as souls are always free, it is possible for them again to 
 fall away, and thus the cycle is renewed. There will be 
 innumerable worlds after this, as there have been before it. 1 
 The doctrine of the restoration of all things is not the pious 
 hope of a sentimental universalism — from such emotional 
 promptings Origen is wholly free. It is the necessary coun- 
 terpart of his theory of the nature of souls and of their 
 lapse, and is demanded both by his metaphysics and his 
 theodicy. 
 
 In the last book of the "De Principiis" Origen develops 
 a theory of the threefold sense of the divine revelation in 
 Scripture: there is the literal and historical sense, which is 
 all that simple-minded readers see in a passage; the more 
 intelligent find in it a moral lesson; while the truly enlight- 
 ened man alone discovers, besides these, an allegory of pro- 
 found spiritual truth. Many things, not only in the Old 
 Testament but in the New, taken literally, are impossible 
 or unreasonable or even immoral. The purpose of revela- 
 tion in such cases is to constrain the reader, by the unaccepta- 
 bleness of the apparent sense, to search beneath the letter 
 for the hidden meaning. This is the first clear enunciation 
 of the theory of the multiple sense of Scripture which to the 
 end of the Middle Ages was generally accepted. 
 
 Origen was attacked from all sides. His theology had 
 ideas enough in it to furnish subjects of controversy for 
 centuries. The simple believers, to whom all philosophising 
 about matters of faith lay under the presumption of unbe- 
 lief, found more specific heresies in his doctrines. The lapse 
 of souls was palpably Gnostic, and so was the whole concep- 
 tion of salvation. The dematerialised eschatology was one 
 of their great stumbling-blocks. Without a resurrection of 
 the flesh they could imagine no satisfaction in a future life; 
 the delights of everlasting rational thinking and participation 
 1 The resemblance to Stoic doctrine is obvious. 
 
176 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 in the divine Reason were none to them; the final restora- 
 tion, in which even the devil was to be saved, was pecu- 
 liarly obnoxious. Besides, it was all against plain Scripture 
 and the immemorial faith of the church. The anthropo- 
 morphists, especially strong among the monks, were scan- 
 dalised by his immaterial deity. Their God was as the 
 Bible described him, with a body and members like theirs. 
 They triumphantly proved his corporeity by Scripture: 
 Does it not say "God is spirit"? and does not everybody 
 know that spirit is material? The antipathy of the com- 
 mon man for Origenism is easy to understand. Deprived 
 of an imaginable God and an imaginable heaven, what 
 would be left of his religion ? 
 
 The central problem of Christian theology from the be- 
 ginning had been to reconcile the deity of Christ with 
 monotheism. The Apologists found the solution in the 
 doctrine of the Logos. Origen gave to this doctrine a 
 metaphysical form and foundation. But the unity of the 
 godhead in his system was a metaphysical, not a personal 
 unity; he derived the Logos-Son from the Absolute-Father 
 by a process which, under another name, was the emana- 
 tion which the Gnostics had brought into disrepute; and 
 the Son remained a deity of inferior rank. In the following 
 generations other theories of the relation of the Son to the 
 Father, based on a different fundamental philosophy, were 
 proposed only to be refused by the church; the Neoplatonic 
 character was permanently impressed on Christian theology 
 by Origen. But Origen's system as a whole was not 
 accepted. In particular, the subordination of the Son to 
 the Father, and the inferiority of the Spirit to both, which 
 was an essential feature of it, the necessary consequence of 
 its metaphysic, was rejected. The eternal equality of the 
 three Persons of the Trinity became, as we shall see, the 
 only orthodoxy. His peculiar theory of the incarnation 
 was forgotten; the apocatastasis was finally branded as 
 heresy. Yet Origen makes an era in the history of Chris- 
 tian theology, and however widely the dogma defined at 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 177 
 
 Nicaea differs from the Trinity of Origen, it would not have 
 been but for him, and it was ultimately made tolerable to 
 the Eastern church by a return to him. 
 
 Down to the middle of the third century the church in 
 different regions and different times had suffered from a 
 number of more or less severe persecutions, which, however, 
 seldom lasted long and did little to check the spread of 
 Christianity. Decius (249-252) was the first to set the 
 whole machinery of the empire in motion to seek out the 
 Christians and constrain them to renounce their faith and 
 conform to the religion of the state. Those who obstinately 
 refused to offer sacrifice or burn incense before an image 
 were tortured and put to death. Many suffered in this 
 way, among them the bishops of several of the great sees. 
 The number of those who fell away was vastly larger; in 
 some places it was almost the whole community. The per- 
 secution lasted, with a brief intermission and some changes 
 of method, for about ten years. Then for more than forty 
 years, fpom the accession of Gallienus (260 A. D.) until the 
 nineteenth year of Diocletian (303 A. D.), the church en- 
 joyed to all intents and purposes complete toleration. It 
 quickly recovered from the ravages of the Decian persecu- 
 tion and grew more rapidly than in any former generation. 
 Christians were found everywhere and in every rank of 
 society — in the army, the government bureaus, in the impe- 
 rial household, sometimes in high charges. Diocletian's 
 wife and daughter are said to have been Christians. 
 
 The last persecution, and by far the worst, was begun 
 by Diocletian in 303, but continued in the East with even 
 greater severity after his retirement. An edict of toleration 
 was signed by three of the four emperors in 311, but it was 
 not until two years later that it brought much relief to the 
 churches in the regions over which Maximin ruled. The 
 Edict of Milan, issued by Constantine and Licinius in 313, 
 put Christianity on a complete equality with the old relig- 
 ions: "Every man has full liberty to worship whatever he 
 chooses." The places of worship and other property of 
 
178 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the church which had been seized during the persecution 
 were restored without payment. Not only the religious 
 liberty of individuals but the rights of the church as a 
 corporation were established. In 323 Constantine, himself 
 a Christian, 1 became sole emperor, and with freedom and 
 imperial favour the church entered on a period of great and 
 rapid expansion. Henceforth, except for the short reign of 
 Julian (361-363 A. D.), the emperors were Christians, and 
 before the end of the century the temples were closed and 
 all acts of heathen worship forbidden by law. 
 
 The controversies over the deity of Christ continued, 
 only temporarily intermitted in the crises of persecution, 
 and growing in violence with every revival. Parties were 
 formed; bishops excommunicated one another; synods con- 
 demned rival opinions as heretical and assumed to define 
 the Catholic faith; ecclesiastical politics played an increas- 
 ingly prominent part in the struggle. When, on the death 
 of Licinius, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt came under the 
 rule of Constantine, he found the church rent by these con- 
 flicts, and even the public order disturbed. 
 
 The most serious of these dissensions was the Arian con- 
 troversy. Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, had in his 
 youth studied under Lucian, the head of the school in Anti- 
 och, where the Peripatetic philosophy had greater influence 
 than in Alexandria, and had there imbibed, at least in germ, 
 the views which were later called Arian. In Arius's (ulti- 
 mately Aristotelian) definition the distinguishing mark of 
 deity is self-existence. It followed that the Son, who owed 
 his existence to the Father, was not God. He rejected the 
 theory of emanation which, whether under that name or 
 another, was involved in the doctrine of the Logos-Son. 
 The Logos was for him a creature, brought into existence by 
 the will of God before the creation of the world, the first of 
 all creatures (Col. 1, 15), existing before time. 2 He, like all 
 
 1 He was not baptised till shortly before his death, in 337. 
 
 2 Time began with the creation of the heavenly bodies whose revo- 
 lutions measure it. 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 179 
 
 other things, came into existence from non-existence; there 
 was a time when he was not. So far from being of the same 
 nature with the Father, the Son is in all respects unlike the 
 distinctive nature (ovala) of the Father. 1 The name God 
 is applied to him liturgically, we might say; but he is not 
 God in reality. 
 
 For these heresies an Alexandrian synod in 321 deposed 
 Arius and a dozen or more of his supporters. Arius retorted 
 the accusation of heresy upon his bishop, Alexander, whom 
 he charged with Sabellian errors, that is, with making 
 Father and Son the same being. 2 In Palestine, whither 
 they betook themselves, Arius and his companions found a 
 friendly reception. Many bishops in Syria and Asia Minor 
 sympathised with them. Eusebius, the bishop of the capi- 
 tal (Nicomedia), took up their cause, and tried to array the 
 episcopate of Asia Minor and Syria to bring pressure to 
 bear on Alexander for the restoration of Arius. Alexander 
 was not idle; he circulated a summary of the teachings of 
 Arius, "the most pernicious of all the heresies that have 
 ever been, the precursor of Antichrist." Emissaries of the 
 two parties were everywhere, presenting their side and col- 
 lecting the signatures of bishops. The entire ecclesiastical 
 East was in commotion. 
 
 Constantine, having failed to compose the strife by good 
 advice, convoked a council of the whole church to settle 
 this issue and other dissensions of minor consequence. This 
 first oecumenical council met at Nicaea, in the near neigh- 
 bourhood of the imperial residence. There, in the early 
 summer of 325, about three hundred bishops, or presbyters 
 delegated by their bishops, assembled. By far the greater 
 number were from Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt; the Latin 
 West had hardly more than a half-dozen, including two 
 Roman presbyters representing Pope Sylvester. The empe- 
 ror himself presided at the opening session, and made his 
 influence felt throughout. 
 
 The deposition of Arius was confirmed, and he was ban- 
 
 1 Arius uses oiala in a Peripatetic sense. 2 See above, p. 164/. 
 
180 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ished to Illyrlcum. The personal issue being thus disposed 
 of, the council took in hand the framing of a symbol in 
 which the Catholic faith, particularly concerning the nature 
 of Christ, should be so defined as to preclude dispute and 
 thus secure the unity and peace of the church. How far it 
 was from achieving this result generations of bitter strife 
 were to show. 
 
 The basis of the Nicene symbol was the creed in use in 
 the church of Ceesarea in' Palestine, which by some changes 
 in phraseology and the insertion of some new clauses was 
 fortified on the points in controversy. 
 
 The text of this creed is as follows: l 
 
 We believe in one God, Father Supreme, maker of all things, visible 
 and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten 
 of (Ik) 2 the Father, as his only Son, that is, of the essence of the Father, 
 God of (Ik) God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten, not 
 made, of the same essence (d/woia-ios) with the Father, through whom 
 all things in heaven and in earth came into being; who for us men and 
 our salvation came down and was made flesh, became man, suffered, 
 and rose on the third day, ascended to heaven, and is coming to judge 
 the living and dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit. 
 
 To the symbol is added an anathema, specifically con- 
 demning the teachings of Arius: 
 
 Those who say, "There was a time when he was not, and before he 
 was begotten he did not exist," or assert that the Son of God is of a 
 different subsistence (in-io-raffis) or essence (oiVia), or created, or subject 
 to change or variation, the Catholic Church anathematizes. 
 
 Some of the expressions in this symbol were objectionable 
 to many members of the council, especially the use of the 
 word homoousios to define the relation of the Son to the 
 Father. The word bore the stigma of heresy fastened upon 
 it a half-century before by a large and representative synod 
 
 1 The so-called Nicene Creed as it is used in modern liturgies is not 
 the creed adopted at Nicaea or by any other council. 
 
 2 The preposition here and in the following clauses means "out of," 
 signifying source or origin. 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 181 
 
 of the bishops of Syria and Asia Minor which deposed Paul 
 of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, for teaching that the Logos 
 (or Wisdom, or Spirit) in God corresponded to the rational 
 faculty in man, having no distinct personality. "God, 
 together with the Logos, is one person," he said, and he 
 employed the word homoousios to express precisely this 
 identity — "the same person." To the great majority of 
 the Orientals, then and afterward, the term seemed to 
 give countenance to a doctrine no less obnoxious to them 
 than that of Arius, a doctrine which maintained the uniper- 
 sonality of God in such a way as to leave no room for per- 
 sonal distinctions in the godhead, and for which the name 
 of Sabellius served as a prejudicial label. The Origenists 
 solved the difficulty for themselves by using ovala of the 
 one essence or nature of the godhead and viroa-Taa-K for the 
 eternal personal distinctions in it; but the council seemed 
 to obliterate this discrimination by using the two in the 
 anathema as synonyms. 
 
 Whatever opposition there was in the council was over- 
 borne. Hosius of Cordova, who had the theological ear of 
 the emperor, insisted on homoousios. In Latin ovcria and 
 imocnaav; were expressed indifferently by substantia; and 
 unius substantive seemed the exact expression to contradict 
 Arius's assertion that the Logos was in all respects unlike 
 the substantia (ovcria) of the Father. Constantine let it be 
 known that the word had his approval, and the bishops who 
 objected to it most strongly made haste to subscribe with 
 such grace as they could. They doubtless said to them- 
 selves that, after all, the word was ambiguous enough to 
 cover a multitude of opinions. 
 
 The controversy was not long in coming. The protago- 
 nists were on the one side Eusebius of Nicomedia and on 
 the other Athanasius, who as a deacon had attended his 
 bishop, Alexander, to Niceea, and in 328 succeeded him in 
 the episcopate of Alexandria. Athanasius was so con- 
 spicuous a figure in the half-century after Nicsea as the 
 leader of the party which stood immovable on the ipsissima 
 
182 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 verba of the symbol, above all the homoousios, without com- 
 promise or accommodation; he wrote so voluminously in its 
 defence, and suffered so much in exile and flight for his 
 intransigeance, that it is not strange that the Nicene dogma 
 is called Athanasian, and that it is popularly supposed that 
 Athanasius had a chief hand in framing the creed — which 
 he assuredly did not. 1 
 
 We may fortunately spare ourselves the history of this 
 unedifying strife. Suffice it, then, to say that before the 
 death of Constantine (337), Eusebius having meantime 
 become his adviser in theology and ecclesiastical affairs, 
 Arius had been recalled from exile; the Arians restored to 
 communion by a council at Tyre, with the approval of the 
 emperor; Athanasius deposed by the same council for abuse 
 of power, and consigned by the emperor to banishment at 
 Trier in Gaul. 
 
 The Latin West, with few exceptions, held to the Nicene 
 symbol. They understood that it excluded from the church 
 the heretics who said that Christ was not God, and did not 
 see why the Greeks should make such a pother about the 
 particular words by which this salutary end was accom- 
 plished. The influence of Athanasius, who after his second 
 extrusion from his see (339), took refuge in Italy, attached 
 the leading Latin bishops to his person and party. They 
 refused to recognise his deposition, and regarded him as a 
 much-maligned and persecuted man. 
 
 In the East, on the contrary, Constantine was no sooner 
 dead than the church laid on the shelf the creed he had im- 
 posed on it, by framing new confessions of faith in which the 
 shibboleths of Nicsea are eloquent by their absence, and which 
 could be subscribed by moderate men of all parties. 2 When 
 
 1 It is a much less excusable error that the issue at Nicsea was, as is 
 wittily said, an iota — homoousios vs. homoiousios. "O/xoios icar' oialav 
 is Athanasius, not Arius; the homoiousian party which arose after 
 Nicsea was no less anti-Arian than the homoousian. 
 
 2 Notable among these is one adopted by a synod at Antioch in 341. 
 It must be remembered that the Nicene Creed had no such sacredness 
 as it eventually acquired. It had the authority of a general council; 
 but no one in that day imagined that the church which had made it 
 had n j power to change it or set it aside by another council. 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 183 
 
 Constantius became sole emperor, in 353, he set himself to 
 bring the Latin episcopate into line with the overwhelming 
 majority of the Orientals. First he forced them to acknowl- 
 edge the deposition of Athanasius, banishing the few recal- 
 citrants, among them Pope Liberius. The next step was 
 formally to supersede the Nicene symbol. To this end the 
 emperor convoked two councils, or rather an oecumenical 
 council sitting in two sections, that for the Eastern half of 
 the empire meeting at the Isaurian Seleucia (in Cilicia), 
 while the Western bishops met at Ariminium (Rimini), in 
 Italy. Both adopted an identical creed, which contained, 
 indeed, nothing controversially Arian, but on the other 
 hand nothing to which any but the extreme Arians (Ano- 
 moeans) could not assent. The Son was declared to be 
 "like the Father who begat him, as the Scriptures say"; the 
 phrase "in all things like" 1 was carefully avoided.. A state- 
 ment was annexed to the creed to the effect that, inasmuch 
 as there is nothing in the Scriptures about the "essence" 
 (ovaia) of the Father and the Son, nor of the viroaTaa-v; of 
 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it is the will of the council 
 that these terms be not used any more. The symbol of 
 Seleucia-Rimini was sent around to the bishops who had 
 not been in attendance on the council for their subscription, 
 and almost without exception they signed it. The church 
 thus with virtual unanimity substituted for the creed of 
 Nicsea a symbol from which the essential unity of the Son 
 with the Father and even his essential likeness to the Father 
 was eliminated, and put the very terminology of that creed 
 under the ban. Constantine had tried to restore peace in 
 the Catholic church by a creed that should exclude, as he 
 doubtless was persuaded, a few contentious heretics; Con- 
 stantius sought to secure unity by a symbol which, avoiding 
 obnoxious phraseology and divisive questions, could be 
 assented to by all but a few irreconcilables at either extreme. 
 Neither plan achieved the desired result. 
 
 In November, 361, Constantius died and was succeeded 
 by his cousin Julian, whose heart's desire was the revival 
 1 A phrase early used by Athanasius. 
 
184 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of the old religions. In his philosophic detestation of 
 all "Galileans" he ignored their dogmatic varieties. The 
 heretical sects against whom Constantius had legislated 
 enjoyed an interval of repose, and numerous Catholic 
 bishops who were for one reason or another sojourning in 
 foreign parts, among them Athanasius, were allowed to 
 return to their sees, a measure decidedly not conducive to 
 peace where they found another incumbent in possession. 
 The episode did not last long, for after Julian's death in 
 the Persian campaign (June, 363) Christianity came back 
 to power. 
 
 The great majority of Latin bishops had given their adhe- 
 sion to the creed of Rimini, not because they had seen a 
 new light, but because the doctrinal wind had changed at 
 Constantinople. When, therefore, they were left to them- 
 selves by Julian's impartial contempt, Athanasius and Pope 
 Liberius had little difficulty in bringing back the Western 
 episcopate, with few exceptions, to the Nicene formula. In 
 the East the movement in the same direction was slower, 
 but it was in the end accomplished. A council of Eastern 
 bishops convened by the Emperor Theodosius at Constan- 
 tinople in 381, after condemning heresies on the right hand 
 and the left — Arians of both the radical and the moderate 
 type, Semi-Arians, who denied that the Holy Spirit was of 
 the same essence as the Father and the Son, Sabellians, Mar- 
 cellians, Apollinarians — reaffirmed the Nicene Creed with- 
 out addition or subtraction, and adopted an explanatory 
 statement on the Trinity, which has not been preserved. 
 The heretics were by imperial edicts dispossessed of their 
 churches, and their assemblies for worship were prohibited. 
 The laws were constantly made more stringent, the enforce- 
 ment more energetic. 
 
 The return to the Nicene Creed pure and simple was 
 made possible by a construction of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity which conserved both the essential oneness of the 
 godhead and the distinctions of Father, Son, and Spirit. The 
 divine nature, or essence (ova [a), is one and the same in all; 
 but Father, Son, and Spirit are three eternally distinct 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 185 
 
 " subsistences " (viro<TTd<rei<;) . The Father is " ungenerated " 
 (self -existent) ; the Son is "generated" timelessly (in a meta- 
 physical sense) by the Father; the Spirit "proceeds" (John 
 15, 26) from the Father. 
 
 This solution, which was found by theologians of the mid- 
 dle party {homoiousians), comes in the end from Origen. 
 But the. transcendent deity of Origen has disappeared, and 
 with it the conception of the Logos-Son as an intermediate 
 being between the Absolute and the universe; with it, too, 
 the inferiority of the Son to the Father and of the Spirit 
 to the Son. The whole tendency was to make the three 
 not only coessential but coequal. The appearance of tri- 
 theism in this pluralistic monotheism was not overcome; the 
 unity of the godhead resolves itself into a "source of deity" 
 (Athanasius), or into a mere generic unity; in either case, 
 as such, impersonal. Interpreted in this way, the Nicene 
 Creed excluded all varieties of unipersonalism, Sabellian 
 as well as Arian, and to this it owed its success. 
 
 One of the features of this New-Nicene theology was the 
 elevation of the Holy Spirit to equal partnership in the 
 hypostatic Trinity. The creed of Nicaea said only, "We 
 believe in the Holy Spirit," without saying what they be- 
 lieved about it. Athanasius in his later years desired the 
 addition of an explicit statement that the Spirit also was of 
 the same essence (6/j.oovaiov) , but found few willing to go 
 so far. Some held, with Origen, that the Spirit was a crea- 
 ture; others found no scriptural warrant for applying the 
 name God to it, nor had it ever been, for itself, an object of 
 worship in the church. At Constantinople, as we have 
 seen, the "adversaries of the Spirit," or Semi-Arians, who 
 would not call the Spirit God, were anathematised in the 
 same breath with the old Arians who denied the name and 
 nature to the Son. Thus the Trinity was completed. The 
 doctrine has been since the fourth century the characteristic 
 of Christian theism, and is still professed, though frequently 
 with extremely unorthodox interpretations, by all Chris- 
 tians who call themselves orthodox. 
 
 The outcome of the Arian controversy was the dogma 
 
186 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 that the Son, or Logos, who was incarnate in Jesus Christ, 
 was not an inferior kind of deity, but of the same nature as 
 the Father, an eternally distinct person in the unity of the 
 godhead. The incarnation itself now became the central 
 problem, and the strife over the person of Christ was longer 
 and bitterer than over the deity of the Son; the schisms to 
 which it gave rise persist to our day in the so-called national 
 churches of the East. 
 
 The mass of plain Christians had doubtless always taken 
 the incarnation mythologically, and found no difficulty in 
 it. Very early the opinion emerged that Christ's body was 
 not a real flesh-and-blood body. 1 The earliest philosophy 
 of it, in the Apologists, was that the Logos, a deity of the 
 second order, intermediary between God and the universe, 
 assumed a human body and dwelt among men to reveal 
 God and the knowledge in which is eternal life. But where 
 it was held that eternal life is not achieved by knowledge of 
 God but by participation in the divine nature, the incarna- 
 tion necessarily had a different significance: God became 
 man that (through his union with humanity) man might be 
 made god (that is, immortal). 2 This salvation by deifica- 
 tion must embrace the whole man; to accomplish it the Son 
 must not merely be God in a human body, but must really 
 assume humanity — must be man, body and mind. 
 
 The question^had been touched on incidentally in more 
 than one phase of the early Arian controversy, but it was 
 brought into the focus of discussion by Apollinarius of Lao- 
 dicea, in Syria, about 350 A. D. Apollinarius belonged to 
 the strict homoousian party, and stood with his friend 
 Athanasius for the Nicene Creed to the foot of the letter. 
 It was evidently the prevailing conception in his surround- 
 ings that in Jesus Christ both the God and the man were 
 complete and distinct. Apollinarius rejects this theory, be- 
 cause the incarnate Christ would then be not one person 
 but two; not the one Son of God, but two sons, once by 
 
 1 See above, p. 153. 
 
 2 So Irenseus and Athanasius. See above, pp. 162 /. 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 187 
 
 nature and once by adoption; and there would be in the 
 same subject two independent and possibly conflicting wills, 
 a human and a divine. He endeavoured, therefore, to ex- 
 plain the incarnation in such a way as to secure the unity of 
 the person of Christ while maintaining both his divinity 
 and his humanity. The analogy of human personality sug- 
 gested the solution. As in man, body and soul, or, accord- 
 ing to another psychology, body, soul, and intellect (Nous), 
 constitute one person, so in Christ, the body of flesh with its 
 animal soul, and the Logos, which in him fills the place of 
 the human Nous, or rational soul, constitute one person. 
 One divine person; for between the Logos and the body is 
 such a union that not only their activity but their nature is 
 one. The body of Christ is the body of God; in crucifying 
 his body the Jews crucified God; nay, even "the flesh, as 
 the flesh of God, is God." Like Irenseus, Apollinarius draws 
 the sacramental consequence: "His flesh, by virtue of the 
 deity essentially united with it, gives life to men; we are 
 saved by partaking of it (in the Eucharist) as of nutriment." 
 In this divine-human person the man was evidently in- 
 complete, lacking human intelligence and self-determina- 
 tion. But, opponents urged, if men are saved through the 
 assumption of humanity by the divine Logos, the assump- 
 tion must be complete or the salvation of man will be corre- 
 spondingly incomplete. The Catholic faith, so a Roman 
 synod declared, was perfectum deum perfectum suscepisse 
 hominem. The doctrine of Apollinarius was condemned; 
 but the issues he had raised were not so easily laid, and 
 before long the whole church was in turmoil over them. 
 Athanasius held views of the person of Christ, which, though 
 less clearly thought out or avowed, were so much like those 
 of Apollinarius that writings of Apollinarius had no diffi- 
 culty in circulating under Athanasius' name; and through- 
 out the controversy the Alexandrians in general were in- 
 clined to assert Christ in the incarnation so wholly God 
 as to curtail or nullify his human nature, while their oppo- 
 nents were no less concerned to maintain unimpaired his 
 
188 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 complete humanity than his true divinity. The more mod- 
 erate of the Alexandrians held, against the Apollinarists, that 
 Christ had a human Nous (rational soul), as well as body 
 and (animal) soul, but that this Nous had no independent 
 human activity. The completeness of the human nature 
 was thus preserved in its elements, but not in its functions; 
 the will and the whole rational and moral life of Christ was 
 merely divine. The two natures are only theoretically 
 distinguished; in reality they are fused in an "essential uni- 
 fication" — Apollinarius's own phrase. 
 
 The Antiochians denied that there was any such fusion 
 or confusion of humanity and divinity; each was complete in 
 itself and distinct. The man Jesus Christ had a natural 
 human development, human weakness, human needs, and a 
 human will, which, though constantly inclined to good by 
 the Logos, did not for that reason cease to be a free will. 
 He was like all other men, differing in no respect from his 
 fellows except that the Logos was graciously pleased to 
 dwell in him as in a temple, but this gracious indwelling did 
 not change his nature. The unity of the divine and human 
 natures in him was a moral, not a physical, unity. They 
 laboured to overcome the dual personality of which their 
 adversaries accused this doctrine, but with incomplete 
 success. 
 
 In 428 Nestarius, a priest of Antioch, became bishop of 
 Constantinople. In a sermon preached shortly afterward 
 he expressed his disapproval of the custom of calling the 
 Virgin Mary "Mother of God" (0eoTo'«w) : "She did not 
 bear the deity . . . she bore a man, an organ of deity." 
 To plain Christian piety, which worshipped Christ as God, 
 speculations about the number of natures in him seemed 
 nothing short of blasphemy. The monks especially, whose 
 theology was of the muscular kind, demonstrated their rev- 
 erence for the Mother of God by riots, and the suppression 
 of these disturbances did not increase the bishop's popu- 
 larity. Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, forthwith entered the 
 lists as the champion of the unity of Christ's nature against 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 189 
 
 those who made two of him. His favourite formula was: 
 "one enfleshed nature of the God-Logos"; "of (e«) two na- 
 tures one" (sc. person). The human nature is impersonal; 
 it is only the garment of the Logos, which has thus embodied 
 itself in humanity but remains in this association the One 
 it was before. Christ was human as having human nature, 
 not as a human being. 
 
 A general council was convened in Ephesus in the summer 
 of 431. By a stroke of audacity Cyril, who with his parti- 
 sans was early on the ground, opened the council before 
 the arrival of the Pope's legates or the bishops from Syria 
 and Asia Minor, and proceeded to depose Nestorius. When 
 the Oriental bishops came, they held a session by them- 
 selves and deposed Cyril for his violation of conciliar rights. 
 The emperor thought it would be for the peace of the world 
 to be rid of both of them. Nestorius went back to his old 
 monastery near Antioch, whence he was subsequently sent 
 into more distant banishment; but Cyril escaped to Egypt 
 and defied both the sentence of the council and the edict of 
 the emperor. The efforts of the government patched up a 
 temporary truce between the contending parties, but a few 
 years later the strife broke out again, fiercer than ever. A 
 monk named Eutyches, an ultra-Cyrillian, was condemned 
 by a local synod in Constantinople in 448 for denying that 
 the humanity of Christ was of the same nature as ours 
 (ofioovaux; ^filv) : before the union there were two natures, 
 after it but one (viz., the divine nature). Dioscurus, of 
 Alexandria, seized the opportunity to reopen the hereditary 
 episcopal war on his rival in Constantinople and the Oriental 
 bishops. His influence at court procured the calling of a 
 general council at Ephesus in 449, and his own appointment 
 to preside at it. By this council Eutyches was pronounced 
 orthodox and restored; the bishop of Constantinople, Fla- 
 vian, and a half-dozen of the leading Oriental bishops were 
 deposed, amid proceedings so scandalous as amply to de- 
 serve the name with which Pope Leo stigmatised the coun- 
 cil, "latrocinium Ephesinum"; and the "anathemas" of 
 
190 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Cyril, in which he let himself go the whole length both of 
 his logic and his language, were declared to be the orthodox 
 faith. 
 
 The death of Theodosius II in 450 was the downfall of 
 the party in the court and the imperial household which 
 had been for Eutyches. The new rulers, Theodosius' sis- 
 ter, Pulcheria, and her husband, the emperor Marcian, 
 leaned the other way. To put an end to the strife they con- 
 vened another general council at Chalcedon in 451. In 
 numbers it exceeded all its predecessors; more than five 
 hundred and twenty bishops sat in it, all from the eastern 
 half of the empire, except the Pope's legates (one of whom 
 presided) and two African bishops. Dioscurus was brought 
 to account for the doings of his "robber synod" and de- 
 posed, the sentence being read by the legate in the name 
 of Pope Leo — "by us and by this council." 
 
 The council then, after reaffirming the creed of Nicaea 
 and that of Constantinople (381), adopted a statement in- 
 tended to exclude on one side the errors which had been 
 labelled with the name of Nestorius and on the other those 
 of Eutyches. The definition of the orthodox doctrine of 
 the person of Christ is in substance that which Pope Leo . 
 had sent to the council of 449 (the so-called "Tome of Leo") 
 but for the sake of conciliation as much use as possible was 
 made of the phraseology of Cyril. 1 
 
 The statement affirms that Christ is perfect equally in 
 his divinity and his humanity; he is of the same nature 
 (o/ioouo-to?) with the Father in his divinity, of the same 
 nature with us in his humanity, in all respects like us except 
 for sin. He was begotten of the Father before all ages as 
 regards his divinity, and, as regards his humanity, in these 
 last times born of Mary the Virgin, the Mother of God; the 
 same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-Begotten, in 2 two natures, 
 without confusion, without change, without division, with- 
 
 1 Especially as he expressed himself in a letter to Nestorius, penned 
 in a cautious moment and disguising his real opinion. 
 
 2 Leo's iv triumphed over Cyril's 4k. 
 
THEOLOGY AND DOGMA 191 
 
 out separation; the difference of the two natures being in 
 no wise done away by reason of the union, but rather the 
 peculiarity of each nature being preserved and concurring 
 in one nature and one individual (vrroaTaat,?) ; he not being 
 divided nor separated into two persons, but one and the 
 same Son and Only-Begotten, God-Logos, the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 The West stood fast by the decree of Chalcedon in the 
 sense of the Tome of Leo. The situation in the East was 
 very different. There a large part of the church regarded 
 this doctrine as a thinly disguised Nestorianism. To them 
 Christ was God without any circumlocution; "two natures," 
 however qualified or extenuated, left him but half God. 
 These Monophysites ("partisans of one nature"), as their 
 opponents named them, who were the great majority in 
 Egypt, and everywhere counted in their number most of 
 the monks, took their doctrine from Cyril in those writings 
 in which he spoke out his whole mind, especially from his 
 "anathemas," which had been adopted by the council at 
 Ephesus in 449. 
 
 Their watchword was "God was crucified." The emperor 
 Zeno's attempt in 482 to unite the distracted church by a 
 Henoticon, or formula of union, in which the doctrine of 
 Chalcedon was virtually surrendered, failed; but it had an 
 unexpected result — it made a breach with the Western 
 church which lasted for a quarter of a century. The state- 
 ment of Chalcedon was formally reaffirmed by the emperor 
 Justin in 519. A Cyrillian interpretation Was put upon it, 
 to the exclusion of all others, by the Council of Constanti- 
 nople in 553, and emphasised by the imperial condemna- 
 tion of the writings of the Oriental opponents or critics of 
 Cyril. The Chalcedonian formula is, therefore, the official 
 orthodoxy of both the Eastern and the Western church, but 
 is officially interpreted in contrary senses. The thorough- 
 going Monophysites were not to be won back by such partial 
 concessions; Egypt was almost solidly Moncphysite, and 
 the Coptic church, with its dependency, the church of 
 
192 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Abyssinia, the Armenian (Gregorian) church, and the 
 Jacobite Syrians remain unreconciled to this day. 
 
 Another effort for union in the seventh century raised a 
 new controversy over the question whether there were in 
 Christ two wills, a divine and a human, or only one, the 
 divine will. After fifty years of contention and vacillation, 
 an oecumenical council at Constantinople in 681 decided 
 for two, the human will obediently following and being sub- 
 ject to the divine; and anathematised, among others, Pope 
 Honorius, for being of the other opinion. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM 
 
 Latin Christianity — Augustine — The Trinity — The Pelagian Con- 
 troversy — Augustine's Doctrine of Sin and Grace; Incomplete 
 Reception in the Church — Asceticism: Hermits and Monasteries 
 in Egypt — Monachism in other Lands — Benedict of Nursia — ■ 
 Mysticism: Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus Confessor. 
 
 The Christian church in the West was in the beginning 
 a Greek-speaking church, and down to the end of the second 
 century, in Rome as well as in the provinces, the literature 
 which it produced was in Greek. Proconsular Africa seems 
 to have been the first region where Christianity gained a 
 foothold among a Latin-speaking population. There, in all 
 probability, the earliest Latin translations of the books of 
 the New Testament were made and a Christian literature in 
 Latin had its beginnings. At the end of the second cen- 
 tury and in the first decades of the third the African church 
 had in Tertullian a writer who may fairly be said to have 
 created Christian Latinity, and in whom a Western type of 
 Christianity first appears. In the next generation Cyprian, 
 bishop of Carthage (d. 258), was the greatest figure in all 
 the West, a statesman of the church, who did more than 
 any other to define and defend the catholic idea of the 
 church. Before the third century was far advanced the 
 Western church had become a Latin church; but there was 
 close communication with the East. Greek authors were 
 much read in the original or in translations; many of the 
 leading men of the Latin church in the fourth century — 
 men like Ambrose of Milan, Hilary of Poitiers, Lucifer of 
 Cagliari — were learned in Greek theology, and several of 
 them had lived in the East. The Latins were less inclined, 
 
 193 
 
194 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 in general, to subtleties of theological speculation than the 
 Greeks, but they took their part in the controversies of the 
 fourth and fifth centuries, and both at Nicsea and at Chal- 
 cedon the West shaped the dogma of the church. 
 
 The man who gave its distinctive character to Western 
 Christianity was Augustine. Born at Tagaste, in Numidia, 
 in 354, of a heathen father and a Christian mother, he was 
 educated for the career of a rhetorician — we should say a 
 professor of Latin literature. While a student at Carthage 
 he was drawn into the company of the Manichaeans, 1 and 
 was for ten years or more a catechumen (auditor) in their 
 church. His gradual disillusion was succeeded by a period 
 in which Academic scepticism of a Ciceronian type seemed 
 to him the proper attitude of mind in matters of religion. 
 Meanwhile he had removed from Carthage to Rome, whence 
 he was called to Milan to fill a public professorship. There 
 the instruction of the great bishop Ambrose so far overcame 
 his misunderstandings and prejudices about Catholic Chris- 
 tianity that he became a catechumen. 
 
 Augustine found his way to an intellectual acceptance of 
 Christianity through translations 2 of Neoplatonic writings 
 which came into his hands in Milan. In this philosophy 
 both dualism and scepticism were overcome; by it, for him, 
 the rationality of Christian doctrine was established. Neo- 
 platonism was for Augustine much more than the bridge 
 by which he passed over to the church; it entered into his 
 religious experience, and its influence on his thinking was 
 pervasive and permanent. In his earlier writings it pre- 
 dominates; in later years he was more biblical and more 
 churchly, but his fundamental philosophy was unchanged. 
 Coincident with the intellectual epoch which Platonism 
 made in Augustine's life was a moral crisis. A recital of 
 
 1 Manichseanism was a composite religion in which Christian (Gnos- 
 tic) and Zoroastrian elements were combined in varying proportions. 
 Its outstanding fea.ture was a religious dualism. It was for a long 
 time a serious competitor of Christianity, not only in the East, where 
 it arose, but in Africa and Italy. 
 
 2 By Victorious. 
 
LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM 195 
 
 the story of St. Antony and the lives of other ascetics 
 wrought in him a violent revulsion of feeling. He loathed 
 the life of sensual indulgence he had led; and from that time 
 forth "concupiscence" was for him the prime and typical 
 sin. This was the temper of the ascetic piety of the times, 
 pagan as well as Christian; the Platonists no less than Paul 
 taught him that to begin its ascent to God the soul must 
 emancipate itself from the desires of the flesh. 
 
 After his baptism in Milan (Easter, 387), Augustine spent 
 a short time in Rome and then returned to Africa. For a 
 while he lived at Tagaste with a few like-minded friends in 
 a kind of voluntary monastic society; but in 391 he was 
 made a priest at Hippo, and in 395 bishop of that see. 
 There he laboured for the rest of his life, and there he died 
 in 430, in the midst of the Vandal invasion. 
 
 The Latin church, as a whole, notwithstanding the ter- 
 giversation of Rimini, adhered steadfastly to the creed of 
 Nicaea. 1 Augustine interpreted the accepted dogma from 
 the presuppositions of his Neoplatonic philosophy. God, 
 the prima essentia, una ceterna vera substantia, is an indi- - 
 visible unity. Father, Son, and Spirit "simul omnes est unus 
 dominus"; and even in the things which are peculiarly 
 ascribed to them severally he sees the indivisible operation 
 of the Trinity. The distinction of the persons is only rela- 
 tively to one another; that is, in the relation of the Father 
 to the Son and the Son to the Father, and of both to the 
 Spirit, which proceeds from them both. He is well aware 
 that "person" does not properly express such relations. 
 Personality in the proper sense he attributes to the one 
 God, whose esse is the same as personam esse. He sought 
 to make the Trinity intelligible by psychological analogies, 
 the relations of thinking mind to itself; memoria, intelli- 
 gentia, voluntas; or mens, notitia mentis, dilectio; we may 
 paraphrase, "intellect, thought (which, as expressed, is 
 word), and volition, or love." And as in our experience 
 
 1 The Arians had considerable strength in northern Italy, and Am- 
 brose had trouble with them while Augustine was in Milan. 
 
196 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 each of these in operation includes the other two, so it is 
 in God; no one of the Persons ever is or acts alone. 
 
 The Greeks, from the Apologists on, had assumed, with 
 the philosophers, the freedom of man's will as the condition 
 of moral responsibility, and had emphasised it in opposition 
 to the current astrological fatalism and to the dualism of 
 the Gnostics. In baptism all former sins were remitted; 
 thereafter it was for the Christian, with the aid of divine 
 grace, to lead a good life in accordance with the will of 
 God. Of his ability to do so they made no question. Atha- 
 nasius affirmed that many Christians after baptism lived 
 without sin. Salvation was deliverance from mortality by 
 deification, more specifically the deification of the body. 
 The common teaching in the West was similar. 
 
 Tertullian, a lawyer with a Roman lawyer's tincture of 
 Stoic philosophy, saw things in a different light. The radi- 
 cal evil is not mortality, but sin; and sin is not the voluntary 
 act of an individual endowed with free will, but a corrupt 
 nature which all men have inherited from Adam. This evil 
 ' of the soul proceeds ex originis vitio, and is in a sense natural, 
 "for the corruption of nature is second nature." The idea 
 of a hereditary corruption of the soul made him no diffi- 
 culty, for he held with the Stoics that the soul is corporeal 
 (we say, "material"), and, with Pansetius, that it is propa- 
 gated by the implanting of a soul-germ in the act of genera- 
 tion. 1 Correspondingly, divine grace is not merely the for- 
 giveness of sins in baptism and the enlightenment of the 
 mind by the knowledge of the truth; "there is a force of 
 divine grace, altogether more potent than nature, which 
 dominates the power of choice." He conceives this force 
 as substantial (spirit); it enters into a man and works in 
 him physically. 
 
 Nearer to the time of Augustine, Victorinus and the 
 unknown author who is now commonly- quoted by the 
 absurd name "Ambrosiaster," 2 in their commentaries on 
 
 1 Original sin is the continuity of soul-germ-plasm, a Weismannian 
 might say. 
 
 2 Because his writings were formerly attributed to Ambrose of Milan. 
 
LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM 197 
 
 the Epistles of Paul had interpreted him in a way similar to 
 Augustine, but without anticipating the far-reaching con- 
 sequences he drew. Augustine was early led by such pas- 
 sages as Romans 9, 16; 1 Cor. 4, 7; Phil. 2, 13, to the con- 
 viction that God is the author of the will to believe, and 
 this corresponded well with his own experience of the way 
 he had been led from error to truth, from doubt to faith. 
 That since Adam's fall and in consequence of it man is 
 unable of himself to do or even to will any good; that his 
 salvation, therefore, depends wholly and solely upon God; 
 and that God's saving purpose cannot be thwarted by man's 
 unwillingness — these convictions, also, find expression in 
 writings from the early years of Augustine's episcopate. 
 The systematic development and co-ordination of these ideas 
 were brought about by the controversy with Pelagius and 
 his followers which began in 411. 
 
 Pelagius held that God endowed man at his creation with 
 free will, that is, the power of choosing between good and 
 evil, which is the pre-eminence of the rational soul, the 
 dignity and worth of human nature. This freedom was 
 not lost in Adam's fall; it is in every one of his descendants 
 as it was in him. Further, man has not only a formal free- 
 dom, he has the ability to do all that God requires of him; 
 it is inconsistent with the character of God to command 
 what man cannot do. There is no such thing as original 
 sin — sin transmitted from parent to child as per traducem 1 
 — all the way from Adam down. Voluntariness is the 
 essence of sin, which is not a corruption of nature but a mis- 
 use of free will. If sin were necessitated in any sense, it 
 would not be man's own sin, and God could not justly hold 
 him accountable for it. The grace of God gives the for- 
 giveness of sins in baptism, and makes men children of God; 
 it enlightens the mind, and inclines the will to good by 
 knowledge of the good — the moral influence of the truth. 
 Predestination, finally, is nothing but God's foreknowledge 
 of those who will believe. 
 
 1 That is, as a vine is propagated by layering. 
 
198 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Augustine's doctrine is the antipodes of all this. Adam 
 was created righteous and endowed with free will; if he 
 had willed to abide in this state, God would have given him 
 grace to continue steadfast in his good will, and he and his 
 posterity would have shared the blessedness of the angels 
 who kept their first estate, knowing neither pain nor death. 
 But Adam fell. Abusing his free will, he lost the power to 
 will the good; the consequence of voluntary sin was the 
 dura necessitas peccatum habendi. The sin of Adam not 
 only brought on his descendants as by a kind of attainder 
 the sentence of death which God pronounced upon him; the 
 sin itself is entailed upon them. Even infants, who have 
 no actual sin of their own, are born with this original sin, 
 that is, the sin which inheres in them from their origin in 
 Adam. The sin of the first man was in reality the sin of 
 all his posterity, for they were all in him (Romans 5, 12). * 
 The just punishment of that sin is justly inflicted on all 
 men, "who were that one man." An infant is punished — 
 though with a mitissima damnatio — because it is part of the 
 massa perditionis. Every human being comes into the 
 world with this entail of original sin, and being engendered 
 in concupiscence inherits a corrupt nature, in which sensual- 
 ity is stronger than reason. Every one, as soon as he is old 
 enough to be a moral agent, makes himself guilty of actual 
 sin, and that of necessity; yet this necessity is not his excul- 
 pation but his condemnation. When Augustine asserts 
 that free will did not perish from human nature by Adam's 
 sin, he means only that men sin voluntarily, not under out- 
 ward constraint; for in men subject to the devil the will is 
 impotent to anything but sin; it can will only evil, not 
 good. Such freedom to evil only is but another name for 
 the dura necessitas peccatum habendi. 
 
 1 For i<f> <£ irdvTus HumpTov, "for that all have sinned," the Latin version 
 has in quo omnes peccaverunt, "in whom {sc. Adam) all sinned." If 
 the translator had rendered eo quod, it is possible that the Western 
 church might have been as little afflicted with original sin as the Greeks 
 or the Orientals. 
 
LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM 199 
 
 To this conception of sin, original and actual, Augustine's 
 doctrine of grace and its operation corresponds. Since man 
 can do nothing good, God must do all in man's salvation. 
 Chrysostom represents the Greek standpoint when he says: 
 "It depends on us and on God. First we must choose the 
 good, and then God does his part. He does not anticipate 
 our will, that our freedom may not be impaired; but when 
 we have made the choice, he helps us in many ways." Au- 
 gustine's man has no such power of choice. The will to 
 believe is a work of God in man; faith is the gift of God. 
 This faith is not merely true belief about Christ, for in that 
 sense demons and wicked men may believe. Christian faith 
 is inseparably joined with hope in Christ and love to him; 
 if a man have not these, he believes that there is a Christ, 
 he does not believe in Christ. The faith by which man is 
 justified is faith working by love. Justification is not, in 
 Augustine, a declaratory act, as the reformers of the six- 
 teenth century interpreted Paul, by which the sinner is 
 pronounced righteous in virtue of the righteousness of Christ; 
 it really makes a man righteous. 1 "This is the grace of God 
 through Jesus Christ, whereby he makes us righteous with 
 his own righteousness, not with ours." The justifying grace 
 of God liberates the will, so that it is free for good instead 
 of evil; it inspires good-will, or love, by which its subject 
 is renewed in the inner man; " by the indwelling of the Spirit 
 there arises pleasure in, and love of, that supreme and un- 
 changeable good which is God"; by shedding abroad love 
 in man's heart it implants good desire in place of evil desire 
 (concupiscentia mala). 
 
 The saving grace of God, by which alone a man can be- 
 lieve in Christ or even wish to do so, is not bestowed on all, 
 but only on those whom God chooses; and his choice is not 
 motived or conditioned by anything in those who are its 
 object. The very idea of grace excludes desert — the grace 
 of God would not be gratia, Augustine says, unless it were 
 
 1 Justificare is justum facere. The Protestants read their Paul in 
 Greek. 
 
200 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 gratis. From eternity God elected and predestined to eter- 
 nal life a determinate number of individuals. These, in 
 their time, he calls according to his purpose; to them he 
 gives faith; in them he inspires love; them he justifies (makes 
 righteous); them he glorifies. God's purpose cannot fail of 
 its end; his grace works indeclinabiliter et insuperabiliter. It 
 works in the elect the will to believe, works with their will 
 for good, and secures them against falling away. The pre- 
 destinated are sons of God not only before they are reborn, 
 but before they are born, and cannot possibly perish. The 
 rest of mankind God leaves in the sin and guilt and just 
 condemnation in which the whole race lies. This arbitrary 
 and inscrutable predestination of the elect to eternal life 
 and the rest to eternal death does not impugn God's jus- 
 tice, for in justice all deserve damnation, and if in his 
 mercy he saves some out of this massa perditionis et dam- 
 nationis, he does no wrong to those whom he leaves to their 
 doom. 
 
 A synod at Carthage in 418, attended by bishops from all 
 the African provinces, anathematised Pelagian teachings, 
 and, in contradiction to them, delivered itself on original 
 sin, the necessity of grace, and its operation, in accord with 
 Augustine. That the church had always held, at least im- 
 plicitly, the doctrine of original sin, the synod proved by 
 infant baptism. Infants were baptised for the remission of 
 sins, and it was the universal belief that infants who died 
 unbaptised could not enter the kingdom of heaven. With 
 this established practice and belief Pelagius' denial of origi- 
 nal sin was squarely irreconcilable. The Pope concurred in 
 the condemnation of Pelagius, and the emperor Honorius 
 required all the bishops in the Western empire to subscribe 
 an anti-Pelagian declaration upon pain of deposition and 
 banishment. At the Council of Ephesus (431), where Pope 
 Cselestine joined hands with Cyril of Alexandria, Pelagius 
 was included in the same condemnation with Nestorius, 
 who had espoused his cause; but the doctrines of Augustine 
 never found acceptance in the Greek or Oriental churches, 
 
LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM 201 
 
 and the controversy which so profoundly agitated Latin 
 Christendom then and thereafter had no echo in Greek. 
 
 In the West itself it was one thing to repudiate Pelagius, 
 and quite another to go the whole length with Augustine, 
 when once it was seen how far that was. The total inability 
 of man either to do or to will any good; the irresistibility 
 and inamissibility of divine grace; an election which, with- 
 out regard to anything in its object, predestines some to 
 salvation and the rest to perdition — these doctrines were 
 quite as radical departures from generally accepted opinion 
 as Pelagius' optimistic estimate of human nature and con- 
 sequent minimising of the function of divine grace in man's 
 salvation. Unconditional individual election had as its 
 corollary ideas of the church and sacraments widely differ- 
 ent from those which tbe church had always entertained — 
 on which, one might say, it was built. Vincent of Lerinum 1 
 invoked the principle of prescription against these innova- 
 tions: "We should take the greatest pains to hold what has 
 been believed everywhere, always, and by all; for this is 
 truly and distinctively catholic." "Quod ubique, quod sem- 
 per, quod ab omnibus" — this famous criterion of Catholic 
 orthodoxy was framed against Augustine, whose total in- 
 ability, absolute predestination, and irresistible grace met 
 none of these conditions. 
 
 The strongest opposition to Augustine's doctrines came 
 from the monks of southern Gaul, where monastic institu- 
 tions had recently been introduced from the East. For 
 them, as in all Greek theology, free will was an axiom; the 
 premise of all ascetic piety was the potency and merit of 
 man's effort, with the assistance of divine grace, to achieve 
 salvation. Their position was that of the church at large, 
 East and West, before Augustine. Against Pelagius they 
 affirmed that every man sinned in Adam's sin, and that no 
 man is saved by his own works, but by regeneration through 
 the grace of God. But the propitiation in the sacrament 
 of the blood of Christ is offered to all; so that all who will 
 1 An island and monastery near the modern Cannes. 
 
202 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 to come to faith and baptism can be saved. God predesti- 
 nated to salvation those of whom he foresaw that they 
 would be worthy of election, and would depart from this life 
 with a good end. "Therefore every man is admonished to 
 believe and to work, so that no man should despair of attain- 
 ing eternal life, since a reward is prepared for willing devo- 
 tion." All the distinctive features of Augustine's system 
 are here conspicuous by their absence. 
 
 The Augustinian doctrines, especially of prevenient and 
 unmerited grace, were embodied in the canons of a local 
 synod at Orange in 529, to which their confirmation by 
 Pope Boniface II gave an authority that the synod itself 
 did not possess. It is a very mitigated Augustinianism, 
 however, which is expressed in them. Predestination is 
 mentioned only to deny predestination to evil; of the irre- 
 sistibility of grace there is no word; and the churchly point 
 of view appears in the inseparable association of grace with 
 baptism: "We believe that, grace having been received by 
 baptism, all baptised persons, by the aid and co-operation of 
 Christ, are able, if they will labour faithfully, to fulfil all 
 things which pertain to the salvation of the soul, and are 
 under obligation so to do." 
 
 The form in which the doctrines of grace were transmitted 
 to the Middle Ages is best represented by Pope Gregory 
 the Great (590-604): God in his inscrutable purpose chose 
 some beforehand, and justly left some in their evil ways. 
 The grace of God — which is not irresistible — is not bestowed 
 in consideration of any desert in man. Without the grace 
 of God we can do nothing good; but the good deeds we do 
 are not God's only but ours; he treats them as our merit, 
 and rewards it as if it proceeded from us alone. There was 
 thus a general tendency to abandon irresistible grace, and 
 to state the doctrine of election in such a way as at least 
 to mask the implication of predestination to damnation; to 
 overcome inability by baptismal grace, and to make room 
 for the merit of good works. Yet unabridged Augustinian- 
 ism was not without influential representatives of unim- 
 
LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM 203 
 
 peached orthodoxy, such as Fulgentius of Ruspe in the 
 sixth century, and was more than once revived in the Mid- 
 dle Ages. 
 
 There was an ascetic strain in Christian piety from the 
 beginning. At first the expectation of the imminent com- 
 ing of Christ to judgment was the prime motive; when this 
 subsided, the conflict of sense and reason, of body and soul, 
 which ran through all the thinking of the time and gave an 
 ascetic turn to religious philosophy and everything that we 
 should call personal religion, took its place. Those who 
 aspired to higher achievements in the Christian life all mor- 
 tified the flesh more or less in conventional ways. Conti- 
 nence (ijKpd,Teia) was elevated to the first rank among the 
 virtues for the married as well as the unmarried; a meagre 
 diet without flesh or wine, varied by periods of strict fast- 
 ing, was an approved method of subduing the appetites 
 and passions; the counsel of Jesus to the rich young man, 
 "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor," was followed 
 by many. This self-discipline did not require separation 
 from society nor the abandonment of ordinary occupations. 
 But in Egypt, in the third and fourth centuries, a new type 
 of asceticism developed, which rapidly spread through the 
 Christian world. At first the ascetics withdrew from the 
 city to some uninhabited spot near by to devote themselves 
 undistracted to religious exercises. Soon the desire for 
 more complete seclusion drew some of them deeper into the 
 desert, where they formed a kind of colony, living singly 
 or two and two in simple huts, and subjecting themselves 
 to such privations as seemed good in their own eyes. Those 
 who excelled in self -mortification were called "athletes," 
 and, as Dom Butler has said, they loved to "make a record" 
 in austerities. One heard that another lived on a pound of 
 bread a day; forthwith he put himself on rations of four or 
 five ounces and a scanty allowance of water. The biog- 
 graphers of the Egyptian monks delight in such anecdotes. 
 Even this mode of life was too sociable for the most am- 
 bitious ascetics; they retreated into still more inhospitable 
 
204 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 solitudes, and built their cells out oi sight and sound of one 
 another, meeting only in church on Sabbaths and Sundays. 
 The eremite 1 form of monachism prevailed in Lower and 
 Middle Egypt. Its most famous representative was An- 
 tony, who, if he did not establish a rule, gave it direction 
 and became its great example. 
 
 About the same time Pachomius originated the coenobite 2 
 type. He also had led the life of a hermit in the desert; but 
 towards 320 A. D. he founded in Upper Egypt a monastery 
 on a different model. The monks lived, twenty or more 
 together, under the same roof; they had separate cells, 
 but ate at a common table. The establishment comprised 
 several such houses, each under its own house-master 
 appointed by the abbot. The surrounding wall enclosed 
 also a porter's lodge, a hospice for guests, an infirmary, 
 storehouses, and workshops. The larger monasteries had 
 their own church, where all the monks assembled for the 
 principal services, while the daily offices were said in the 
 several houses. The whole life of the monks was ordered 
 by rule; their worship and their work, their food and their 
 fasts, their garb and behaviour were minutely prescribed. 
 Labour had an important place in it, and various trades 
 were carried on — agriculture and gardening, blacksmith ing, 
 dyeing, tanning, shoemaking, and so forth. The monastery 
 was an economic community; what it produced beyond its 
 own needs was sold or exchanged far the common good. 
 The new plan had an immediate success; other monasteries 
 for men were established on its model, and presently similar 
 institutions for women. 
 
 The primary aim of asceticism was the subjugation of 
 the flesh, with a pronounced sexual emphasis. These pas- 
 sions were commonly conceived as demonic impulses in man 
 or demonic assaults upon him; hence the battle with the 
 lusts of the flesh became a warfare with the demons who 
 strove thus to compass the undoing of the soul. The biog- 
 
 1 Greek IpwlT-qs, "desert-dweller," whence English "hermit." 
 
 2 Greek Kowbfiiov, "community life." 
 
LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM 205 
 
 raphies of the monks are full of such combats, often in forms 
 so concrete and circumstantial as to suggest genuine halluci- 
 nation. The positive goal, as in the pagan asceticism of the 
 time, was the mystical experience of the emancipated spirit 
 in communion or union with God. A single passage from a 
 homily of Macarius may suffice for illustration : 
 
 When the soul, having attained the perfection of spirit, is completely 
 purged of all passions and united in ineffable communion with the 
 Comforter, the Holy Spirit, then is it also counted worthy to become 
 spirit, most intimately united with the Spirit; then it becomes all light, 
 all eye, all spirit, all joy and bliss and exultation, all love and compas- 
 sion, all goodness and friendliness. 
 
 There was a spiritual as well as a bodily ascesis; we read 
 of withdrawal from the world in the solitude of mental 
 concentration, contemplative prayer, daily inquisition of 
 conscience, reflection on death, walking in the presence of 
 God, and the like. 
 
 The monastic movement spread from Egypt to Palestine, 
 and to Syria, where the tendency was to complete isolation 
 and extreme austerity. It soon reached Asia Minor also, 
 where Basil gave it the form which prevailed in the Greek 
 church and has continued to this day. The monks lived 
 together in monasteries under a prescribed rule. Their 
 work was in common, meals in common, prayer in common 
 seven times a day. Their ascetic exercises were directed by 
 the superior, and were moderated by the principle that so 
 to weaken the body by fasting as to unfit it for labour is 
 contrary to Scripture. 
 
 Monachism was introduced into Gaul from Egypt in the 
 middle of the fourth century, and Cassian, who had lived 
 among the hermits of the Nitrian desert, set forth in his 
 Institutes their mode of life, with such modifications as the 
 climate of Marseilles demanded. In Italy, whither it was 
 brought about the same time, every variety of monachism 
 was represented — eremite and coenobite, regular and ir- 
 regular. 
 
206 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 The reformer and organiser of Western monachism was 
 Benedict of Nursia. His famous rule for the monks of 
 Monte Cassino (529 A. D.) may, indeed, justly be regarded 
 as the institution of a new type, whose principle was, no 
 excess in anything. Sufficient simple and nourishing food, 
 comfortable plain clothing suitable to the season, ample 
 time for unbroken sleep, moderation in the length of divine 
 offices, were its distinctive features; reading had its ap- 
 pointed daily hours as well as toil and prayer, and learning 
 was cultivated. The organisation and discipline of the 
 monastery were completely regulated; the rule enjoins the 
 strictest obedience to the superior. Labour and obedience 
 are, indeed, the cardinal principles of the order. Benedict 
 founded also a corresponding order for nuns, with a similar 
 rule; his sister, Scholastica, was its first abbess. The Bene- 
 dictine rule in time superseded all others 1 and became the 
 universal type of monachism in the Western church, as that 
 of Basil was in the Eastern churches. 
 
 The service which the Benedictine monasteries rendered 
 to civilisation in the following centuries is inestimable. 
 They kept the lamp of learning burning through the dark 
 ages. In their libraries was preserved what we possess of 
 the heritage of ancient Rome and of early Christian litera- 
 ture in Latin. The monastery schools educated not only 
 monks and clerics, but youths of secular families. The 
 Christianising and civilising of the Teutonic nations was in 
 great measure their work. Partly through the practical 
 Roman genius of the author of the Benedictine rule, partly 
 in consequence of the tasks which the conditions of the 
 time imposed, Western monachism is distinguished by its 
 practical character from Eastern, with its more exclusively 
 ascetic and contemplative ideals. 
 
 Since monachism represented the higher Christian life, 
 
 priests and bishops were chosen with increasing frequency 
 
 from among the monks, and this strengthened the feeling 
 
 that all the clergy should lead an ascetic life after the mo- 
 
 1 Except in the Celtic church. 
 
LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM 207 
 
 nastic pattern, so far as the conditions and duties of their 
 calling permitted. In particular, clerical celibacy was an 
 ideal which sought to convert itself into a rule, especially 
 in the West. Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome were zealous 
 for it; popes and synods enacted it into the law of the church. 
 Clerics who were married before ordination must live apart 
 from their wives; marriage after ordination was prohibited. 
 The perpetual necessity, to the end of the Middle Ages, of 
 fresh legislation against the marriage or concubinage of the 
 clergy is evidence of its ineffectiveness. In the East long- 
 established custom was made law by the Second Trullan 
 Council (692), which forbade the second marriage of the 
 clergy and marriage after ordination; married bishops must 
 not live with their wives, but this rule does not apply to 
 presbyters. Most of the bishops, in fact, come out of the 
 monasteries; priests are almost invariably married, and this 
 is the case also in the Oriental churches. 1 
 
 The mystical aspiration in Christian asceticism has been 
 referred to above. 2 The classic system of Christian mysti- 
 cism is found in the writings which bear the name of Dio- 
 nysius the Areopagite (Acts 17, 34), but were in fact com- 
 posed in one of the last decades of the fifth century. God 
 in Dionysius is the Absolute, transcending reason, intellect, 
 and being (Xo'709, vofc, ova-la), as in Plotinus and Origen. 
 In the affirmative way all perfections may be attributed to 
 him in superlative degree; but if we proceed in the opposite 
 way to negate of God all the limitations implied in these 
 ascriptions, we arrive at last at an abstraction of which 
 nothing can be predicated: the godhead is inexpressible, in- 
 conceivable, unnamable. "God is nothing in anything at 
 all"; "he is the abstraction of all that is." This is the com- 
 mon philosophic doctrine, the influence of Proclus, the great 
 systematiser of Neoplatonism, is evident in other parts of 
 
 1 Those fractions of the Greek and Oriental churches which have 
 come into the Roman obedience (Uniates) are allowed to follow in this 
 respect their ancient rule. 
 
 2 See p. 205. 
 
208 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the system. The " supergodhead, superessentially super- 
 existing, superior to all things" is logically — not in time — 
 prior to the Trinity. Dionysius affirms the identity of the 
 Trinity with the Unity; we should rather say that he makes 
 the Trinity an eternal evolution of the Unity. 
 
 His Christology is Monophysite. 1 Jesus stands between 
 the transcendent godhead and the orders of being inferior 
 to him; through him, in different degrees, by a hierarchical 
 series of mediations, they are made partakers of divinity; it 
 is Jesus also who draws them to communion, and finally to 
 union, with God. The orders of beings higher than man, 
 the angelic hierarchy, are nine, in three groups: Thrones, 
 Cherubim, Seraphim; Lordships, Powers, Authorities; Prin- 
 cipalities, Archangels, Angels. To this celestial hierarchy 
 the ecclesiastical hierarchy corresponds, through whose 
 agency in the church which he founded Jesus draws men 
 back to God. The three stages in the Christian's progress 
 toward the goal of union with God are purification, illumina- 
 tion, consummation, which in the ministry of the ecclesiasti- 
 cal hierarchy are symbolised by the functions of the deacon, 
 priest, and bishop respectively. The real purification and 
 illumination are intellectual. The consummation is an 
 ecstasy in which, sense and reason being left behind, the 
 soul enters the divine darkness and contemplates the divine 
 Being in complete ayvaxria. The agnosia is "a gloom veri- 
 tably mystic, within which man closes all perceptions of 
 knowledge and enters into the altogether impalpable and 
 unseen, being wholly of Him who is beyond all and of none, 
 neither himself nor other, and by inactivity of all knowl- 
 edge he is united in his better part to the altogether un- 
 known, and by knowing nothing, knowing Knowing tran- 
 scending intellect." Herein the goal is attained, Qewcns, 
 "deification." 
 
 1 Accepted on their own pretension as the teaching of a disciple of 
 Paul, these writings, with those of Athanasius (or of Apollinarius under 
 the name of Athanasius) and Cyril, are the great authorities of the 
 Monophy sites. 
 
LATIN THEOLOGY. MONASTICISM 209 
 
 This oneness with God, or identification with the Abso- 
 lute, is achieved only by love (e/aw?) ; but in Dionysius love 
 is an intellectual attraction, as in the Greek philosophers, 
 rather than the passion of devotion and self-surrender which 
 the more emotional forms of mysticism mean by love. It 
 is aroused by the contemplation of the divine perfection or 
 of the absoluteness of the divine Being — by what God is in 
 himself, not by what he is to the subject. 
 
 The great interpreter of Dionysius was Maximus Con- 
 fessor (d. 662) - 1 In him both the common ascetic-ethical 
 and the emotional elements in mysticism have a larger 
 place. The purification of the soul, which in Dionysius is 
 essentially intellectual, is in Maximus the removal of the 
 moral hindrances to the attainment of perfection, especially 
 the extirpation of the passions. Practical, or ethical, phi- 
 losophy has thus to cleanse the soul from sin and purge the 
 conscience. The second stage is the contemplation of the 
 divine Being ((frvaiicr) OeoopCa). Through it the mystical 
 progress is to the "theological philosophy," in which God 
 reveals himself in many-voiced silence and infinite light. 
 The spiritual life has an initial stage (77/>o'oSo?), an ascent of 
 the soul to God (avd/3a<n<;) , and an assumption (avdXrjtyis) 
 into the mysteries of the divine existence. The soul that 
 loves God is deified. It yields itself wholly to the enfolding 
 divine embrace, is made like God, entering into ineffable 
 communion with him, and losing itself in the ocean of the 
 godhead. 
 
 The writings of the Pseudo-Areopagite and of Maximus 
 have been the Bible of mystics in the Eastern church; their 
 influence on Moslem mysticism (Sufis) is demonstrable; it is 
 perhaps to be recognised in the Jewish Kabbala. A copy 
 of the works of Dionysius was sent by the Byzantine em- 
 peror, Michael Balbus, in 827, as a present to the Frank 
 
 'For daring to maintain that there were two wills in Christ (see 
 above, p. 192) when the emperor had decreed that there should be only 
 one, Maximus had his tongue out out to the root and his right hand 
 chopped off. 
 
210 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 king, Louis the Pious, to whom the gift was the more precious 
 because he believed that the author, the disciple of Paul, 
 was no other than the legendary first bishop of Paris, the 
 martyr apostle of France. In the next generation, at the 
 instance of Charles the Bald, Dionysius was translated from 
 Greek into Latin by John Scotus Eriugena. It is evident 
 from Eriugena' s earlier works that he was acquainted with, 
 the Greek Fathers, and much influenced by the teachings 
 of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, and the doctrines of Dio- 
 nysius and Maximus Confessor fitted very well in his mind 
 with the Platonising bent he had contracted from them as 
 well as from Augustine, and in some part perhaps more di- 
 rectly from later Greek philosophy. 
 
 The esteem in which the works of Dionysius were held 
 in subsequent times is shown by the fact that between 
 Eriugena (ca. 850) and the Renaissance (Ficino, 1492), four 
 other translations were made. Of their influence on theology, 
 not alone among the Greeks — especially in John of Damascus 
 — but in the West, it must suffice here to say that Hugh of 
 St. Victor, Grosseteste, and Albertus Magnus wrote com- 
 mentaries on them, and that Thomas Aquinas quotes them 
 so often that a bare index of references to passages in Dio- 
 nysius fills many columns. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 
 
 Suppression of Paganism — Uniformity and Schism — Bishops, Metro- 
 politans, and Patriarchs — Primacy of Rome — Liturgies — The 
 Mass — Baptism — Confirmation — Church Festivals and Fasts — 
 Doctrine of the Church in Cyprian — Heretical Baptism — Augus- 
 tine's Doctrine of the Sacraments — Saints and Martyrs — The 
 Virgin — Angels — Images and Pictures in Churches — The Icon- 
 oclastic Struggle — Purgatory — The Church at the End of the 
 Ancient Age. 
 
 The abrogation of the laws against Christianity and the 
 favour Constantine and his successors showed to the church 
 led to a great increase in the numbers of Christians and a 
 corresponding decline of the old religions. Soon the Chris- 
 tian emperors enacted laws against them. Constantius 
 (d. 361) ordered all the temples to be closed, and prohibited 
 sacrifice upon pain of death. It does not appear, however, 
 that any serious effort was made to enforce this law where 
 public opinion did not support it; in the great centres like 
 Rome and Alexandria it was a dead letter. Julian (361— 
 363) did not have to reopen the temples; they had never 
 been closed. The legislation of the emperors who followed 
 Julian went no further than to forbid bloody sacrifices. 
 But in 392 Theodosius prohibited all acts of heathen wor- 
 ship, in the temples, on the highways, or on private grounds, 
 under severe penalties. The offering of sacrifice was ex- 
 plicitly put under the head of high treason (majestas), pre- 
 cisely as the Christians' refusal to sacrifice had been treated 
 under the heathen emperors; but the pagans did not display 
 the same zeal for martyrdom. The temples were in some 
 cases converted to municipal uses, others were preserved as 
 architectural monuments. In places where the people held 
 
 211 
 
212 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tenaciously to the religion of their fathers, as, for example, 
 at Gaza, the government sometimes winked at the continu- 
 ance of heathen worship — for tangible reasons. The zeal 
 of the bishops outran the execution of the law by the offi- 
 cials. In 391 Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, with his 
 army of monks, after riots in which much blood was shed, 
 destroyed the great temple of Serapis. Chrysostom sent 
 out from Antioch raiding-parties of fanatical ascetics, " burn- 
 ing with divine zeal," to demolish the temples in the Lebanon 
 region; Porphyry of Gaza, armed with a special rescript 
 of the emperor Arcadius procured by an imposture worthy 
 of a comedy, razed the famous temple of Marnas. In the 
 West the suppression of paganism was slower and less com- 
 plete; Christians were relatively less numerous, the hand 
 of the government was less firm, and the Teutonic invasions 
 gave it more urgent occupation. 
 
 The Christian emperors were minded to have but one 
 kind of religion in their dominions; they legislated not only 
 against pagans and Manichseans, but against Christian 
 heretics and schismatics of every name. Constantine, as 
 we have seen, ordered that their churches should be turned 
 over to the Catholics and their corporate property confis- 
 cated; their meetings for worship, even in private houses, 
 were prohibited. During the controversies in the Catholic 
 church over the nature and person of Christ, first Arius and 
 his followers were exiled, then Athanasius and the uncom- 
 promising Nicaeans; now it was Nestorius, then Eutyches, 
 and again the Origenists and the Orientals. The heathen 
 emperors had persecuted Christians because they would not 
 conform to the religion of the state in the externals of wor- 
 ship, but left it free to every man to think what he pleased; 
 the Christian emperors demanded conformity of thought, 
 or at least of profession — subscription one day to Nicsea, 
 the next to Rimini; first to Ephesus, then to Chalcedon, 
 as one faction or another inspired the autocrat's theology. 
 The church paid dear for the privilege of being a state 
 church. 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 213 
 
 The efforts to secure uniformity by more exact definition 
 of dogma, and the use of all the machinery of church and 
 state to force the true faith for the time being, as prescribed 
 in canons of councils and the decrees of emperors, upon 
 dissidents, resulted in new and formidable schisms. The 
 older secessions — Novatians, Donatists, Meletians — had 
 arisen over questions of church order and discipline; those 
 sects were puritan protests against the laxity of the great 
 church. The schisms of the fourth and fifth centuries were 
 doctrinal; they were parties which refused to accept dog- 
 mas enunciated by particular councils or to change their 
 faith when the doctrinal weather-cock veered around in 
 Constantinople. 
 
 All the conditions of the growth of the church had tended 
 to the concentration of responsibility and authority in the 
 person of the bishops, for which, before the middle of the 
 third century, Cyprian found a jure divirw theory. To this 
 authority the councils called by the emperors to legislate 
 for the whole church in doctrine and discipline added not a 
 little; the bishops thus assembled were the church, their 
 decision was its collective voice. All bishops were in theory 
 equal; each had in his own sphere the same powers and pre- 
 rogatives; in synods and councils each cast a single vote. 
 In Egypt only, in conformity with its political adminis- 
 tration, the bishop of Alexandria exercised an authority 
 over the other bishops comparable to that which elsewhere 
 the bishop had over his presbyters; he was an ecclesiastical 
 autocrat — his enemies sometimes called him the Pharaoh. 
 The bishops of the great sees such as Alexandria and Antioch 
 exerted a wide influence beyond their diocesan boundaries. 
 Antioch was the leading church not only in Syria but in 
 Cilicia and far into Asia Minor. Ephesus was held in honour 
 by reason of its part in the early history of Christianity, but 
 had declined in actual importance. Before Constantine 
 there was no provincial organisation and no recognised 
 metropolitan authority, though a gravitation in the latter 
 direction is apparent. 
 
214 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 In the canons of the Council of Nicaea, however, the group- 
 ing of the bishops by provinces and the primacy of the 
 bishop of the chief city of the province, the seat of the civil 
 administration, are assumed, the organisation of the church 
 in the East being thus assimilated to the provincial organi- 
 sation of the empire as remodelled by Diocletian. The 
 council of 381 went a step farther, in giving to the bishops 
 of Constantinople, Ephesus, and Csesarea in Cappadocia, 
 with those of Antioch and Alexandria, 1 an authority supe- 
 rior to that of other metropolitans and of provincial coun- 
 cils. Among these, again, it assigned to the bishop of Con- 
 stantinople a rank second only to the bishop of Rome, that 
 is, in effect, the precedence over the whole episcopate of 
 the Eastern church. Ephesus and Csesarea soon lost their 
 independent rank to Constantinople, while Jerusalem was 
 erected into a patriarchate with the provinces of Palestine 
 under it. Thus, from the middle of the fifth century there 
 were in the East four patriarchates, Constantinople, Anti- 
 och, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. But for the Moslem con- 
 quests, which wrested Syria and Egypt from the empire, it 
 is not improbable that the centralising tendencies of the 
 Byzantine empire after Justinian and the weakening of the 
 other patriarchates by the Monophysite schism would have 
 given Constantinople a position in the Eastern church cor- 
 responding to that of Rome in the West. 
 
 The church of Rome was always the great church of 
 Western Christendom. As the sole church of apostolic 
 foundation, the scene of the labours both of Paul and of 
 Peter, to whom Christ had given the primacy among the 
 Apostles, it was pre-eminently the custodian of apostolic 
 tradition. Its situation also lent it prestige; the church of 
 the capital was naturally looked up to as the capital church 
 of Christendom. The removal of the seat of government 
 did not diminish this prestige, while it left the bishops of 
 Rome all the greater freedom and power. In the inter- 
 
 1 Corresponding to the "dioceses" of Justinian's administrative 
 
 system. 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 215 
 
 minable strife of the Eastern bishops, the support of the 
 pope was eagerly sought; they carried their grievances to 
 Rome and urged its intervention. The Council of Sardica 
 (343 or 344) 1 gave to bishops who thought themselves un- 
 justly judged by provincial councils the right to carry their 
 appeal to the bishop of Rome, who might, if he saw reason, 
 order a rehearing before a commission named by him, or, 
 if he remitted the case to the original instance, might be 
 represented by a legate at the new trial. 
 
 The second great centre of Latin Christianity was Car- 
 thage, which was in communication with Rome and gener- 
 ally in accord with it. Disagreements arose, sometimes 
 sharp collisions of opinion, but there was no rivalry between 
 the sees, and such perennial strife as raged between Alexan- 
 dria and Antioch or Alexandria and Constantinople was 
 unknown in the West. Nowhere was the precedence of 
 Rome more cordially acknowledged than at Carthage. In 
 the distress which befell the church through the Teutonic 
 invasions and the establishment of Arian churches in the 
 kingdoms the conquerors founded in Gaul and Spain, in 
 Lombardy and Africa, everything that was Catholic in those 
 lands turned to Rome for guidance and succour. 
 
 Many things thus conspired to give to Rome the primacy 
 in Western Christendom; but primacy was yet far from 
 supremacy. At the close of the sixth century there was no 
 indication that the Latin church would one day become 
 more strongly centralised than ever the Roman empire had 
 been. No one — the popes as little as the rest — seems to 
 have felt any pressing need of such a thing. 2 
 
 The main features of Christian worship were always the 
 same, but in time the simple rites described by Justin in the 
 middle of the second century were elaborated into a stately 
 
 1 The council was convoked as a general council, but the Eastern 
 bishops withdrew because the Latins would not recognise the deposi- 
 tion of Athanasius; consequently it represented the Western churches 
 only. 
 
 2 Duchesne, Origines du culte chretien, 5th edition, p. 44. 
 
216 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 cultus. This tendency, inherent in all ritual, was greatly 
 furthered by the influence of the Old Testament when the 
 Christian clergy came to be regarded as succeeding to the 
 place of the priesthood of the former dispensation. The 
 gorgeous raiment of the high priest, the ceremonial vest- 
 ments of the other priests, the solemn processions, the choirs 
 of Levitical singers intoning psalms, the clouds of incense 
 from swinging censers — all seemed a divine model of reli- 
 gious worship, which warranted the church in rivalling the 
 pomp of the ancient cults. 
 
 The Eucharist was the centre of the Christian cultus, and 
 the eucharistic liturgy was the first to be fixed. Doubtless 
 the process is correctly outlined by Duchesne: 
 
 At the beginning the usage was everywhere much the same; not 
 wholly, for a complete identity in details cannot be admitted even for 
 the churches founded by Apostles. It is not at first that men attach 
 to matters of this kind the importance that makes them sacred and 
 fixes them. By degrees customs become rites, and rites are expanded 
 into more or less imposing and complicated ceremonies. At the same 
 time the subject of the prayers and exhortations was fixed ; usage indi- 
 cated to the officiating minister the ideas he was to develop and the 
 order in which he was to treat them. Later, the last step was taken 
 by adopting fixed formulas which left nothing to individual choice and 
 the accidents of improvisation. 1 
 
 Before this last stage was reached local diversities had 
 established themselves and were thereafter perpetuated. In 
 the third century the great centres of Christendom, Rome, 
 Antioch, Alexandria, had their own peculiarities of usage, 
 which followed the expansion of the church into wide regions, 
 again with many local variations. The liturgy now in use 
 in all the orthodox patriarchates of the East, and in the 
 national churches of Greece, Russia, Bulgaria, Servia, is 
 called by the name of St. Chrysostom; it is the liturgy of 
 Constantinople, a development of the Syrian type, while 
 the Alexandrian is perpetuated by the Coptic (Monophysite) 
 church in Egypt and by the Abyssinian church. In the 
 1 Origines du culte chrftien, 5th edition, p. 54. 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 217 
 
 West the Roman liturgy attained its present exclusive use 
 only at a comparatively late time. In Gaul, Spain, Britain, 
 and Ireland, the older liturgies were of the class which is 
 conventionally named Gallican; Milan long had its own 
 (Ambrosian) liturgy. 
 
 When the whole population became Christian the part of 
 the ancient service which had regard particularly to converts 
 not yet admitted to baptism (catechumens), 1 with its long 
 lessons from Scripture and recitation of Psalms, was much 
 abridged, especially in the West. The homily had never 
 had the same importance in Latin Christendom as in the 
 East; preaching was reserved to the bishop, in person or 
 by deputy, and was occasional and infrequent. The effect 
 of all this was to make the public cultus virtually consist 
 in the Mass. 
 
 This tendency was promoted by the conception of the 
 Mass as a sacrifice, which several factors contributed to 
 render increasingly prominent: the sacerdotal conception of 
 the work of Cbrist developed by the author to the Hebrews 
 — Christ the priest, Christ the atoning sacrifice, Christ the 
 intercessor; the sacerdotal idea of the Christian priesthood, 
 analogous to all the ancient religions and particularly to 
 the Levitical institutions; the primitive liturgical associa- 
 tion of the offering of the congregation with the Eucharist. 
 What did most, however, to establish the sacrificial concep- 
 tion of the Mass in the theology of the Western church was 
 that in it atonement was made for sins committed after 
 baptism, and the forgiveness of the penitent sinner thus 
 assured. 2 Pope Gregory I (d. 604) presents the doctrine in 
 
 1 The catechumens were dismissed before the missa fidelium, the 
 celebration of the Eucharist, at which only those in full communion 
 with the church might be present. 
 
 2 Baptism conveyed the remission of antecedent sins — in the case 
 of infants, of original sin; but how the forgiveness of sins committed 
 after baptism could be assured was a question which had exercised 
 serious minds from early times. The sacrifice of the Mass answered 
 this question, and in connection with the development of the discipline 
 and doctrine of penitence constitutes one of the most important features 
 of Catholic theology. 
 
218 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 its classic form: "Christ, by the mystery of his humanity, 
 continually offers sacrifice (sacrificium immolat)." "In his 
 sacrament he suffers again for us; for as often as we offer to 
 him the victim (hostiam, "the host") of his passion, so often 
 we repeat his passion for our absolution." The Mass is a pro- 
 pitiatory sacrifice by which penitent sinners are reconciled 
 to God, and is efficacious not only for the living but for the 
 dead in purgatory. In the sacrament the essential thing 
 was the participation by the faithful in the body and blood 
 of the Lord; in the sacrifice it was the offering of the eucha- 
 ristic victim by the priest for the faithful. 
 
 The rite of baptism assumed its form in an age when the 
 candidates were chiefly converts from heathenism. It was 
 a solemn initiation into the mysteries of the Christian reli- 
 gion, which usually took place at Easter, after a preparation 
 lasting several weeks. An important part of this prepara- 
 tion was the exorcism of the demons which inhabited every 
 heathen, the opening of the candidates' lips and ears by the 
 application of the priest's spittle ("effeta," Mark 7, 13), 
 and the anointing of his breast and back with oil, followed 
 by the renunciation: "Abrenuntias Satanse? — Abrenuntio. 
 Et omnibus operibus eius ? — Abrenuntio. Et omnibus pom- 
 pis eius? — Abrenuntio." Thereupon the candidates recited 
 the baptismal creed, which had been delivered to them the 
 preceding Sunday. Baptism was by triple immersion; fol- 
 lowing it, the baptised, clad in new white garments, pre- 
 sented themselves before the bishop, who, after an invoca- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit, made the sign of the cross on the 
 forehead of each with the consecrated anointing oil, saying: 
 " In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, pax tibi." From 
 the baptistery the neophytes passed into the basilica to 
 their first communion. Such was the Roman rite in the 
 fourth or fifth century; and so, with minor variations and 
 with less imposing accompaniments elsewhere. 
 
 Baptism was administered by the bishop or under his 
 direction. The spread of Christianity into districts remote 
 from the cities and the growth of the custom of infant bap- 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 219 
 
 tism made it difficult to maintain this rule, and it became 
 common for presbyters to baptise. In the West the impo- 
 sition of hands, however, remained an exclusive function 
 of the bishop as the successor of the Apostles, he visiting 
 the churches in his diocese from time to time to confer it. 
 The episcopal "seal" (signaculum) , which originally had 
 been the culminating act of the baptismal ritual, was thus 
 detached from baptism, and might be separated from it by 
 a considerable interval of time. The sacrament of confirma- 
 tion became independent. The effect of the two sacra- 
 ments was distinguished, after New Testament precedents: 
 the one was the laver of regeneration and the remission of 
 sins; by the other the gift of the Holy Spirit was conferred. 
 At first, probably, the children of Christian parents were 
 admitted to the church by baptism only when they were of 
 an age to profess for themselves the faith of their parents. 
 The belief that in baptism all former sins were forgiven; 
 the fact that the rite could not be repeated; the uncertainty 
 whether grave sins committed after baptism could be for- 
 given at all, or more than once, made it seem prudent to 
 defer this obliteration of the record, and many remained 
 catechumens for years, even to their death-bed, that they 
 might pass from the world with a clean slate. The belief 
 that those who died unbaptised could not enter the kingdom 
 of heaven (John 3, 5) had the opposite effect, and led to 
 the baptism of infants. How early this began cannot be 
 determined. The first mention of it is in Irenseus. Origen 
 (d. 254) affirms that infant baptism was an apostolic tradi- 
 tion; his contemporary Cyprian discusses the question 
 whether baptism, like circumcision, should take place on 
 the eighth day or might be administered sooner. A genera- 
 tion earlier Tertullian opposed the custom, but did not 
 assail it as an innovation. The rite was essentially the 
 same as in the case of adults, the parents making the re- 
 sponses for the infant. As in the case of adults, baptism 
 was immediately succeeded by participation in the Eucha- 
 rist, so that the child was at once fully initiated into the 
 
220 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Christian mysteries. Infant communion, still universal in 
 the Eastern churches, continued in the West until late in 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 Parents frequently neglected to present their children for 
 the imposition of the bishop's hands, and attempts were 
 made to remedy this abuse by imposing ecclesiastical pen- 
 alties on such as failed to do so within the first three years, 
 and by excluding from communion children who had not 
 been confirmed. A council of the thirteenth century per- 
 mitted a delay of seven years; and in the sixteenth century 
 the Council of Trent approved the postponement of confir- 
 mation till the twelfth year, which is since then the rule of 
 the Roman church. One result of this maturer age was a 
 great revival of catechetical instruction in preparation for 
 the first communion, and consequently an increased knowl- 
 edge of Catholic doctrine among the laity. 
 
 The church had from the beginning held its principal 
 assembly for worship on Sunday, and early made Wednes- 
 day and Friday fast-days. In time public worship in the 
 churches were held on these days also, in some with a cele- 
 bration of the Eucharist, in others (e. g., in Alexandria) 
 without. The great annual festival was the Pascha (Eas- 
 ter), in the spring, at the season of the Jewish Passover, 
 whose name it appropriated. A preparatory period of fast- 
 ing culminated in the mourning of the day of crucifixion; a 
 silent day followed, during which the Saviour lay in the 
 tomb; on the next was the rejoicing over the resurrection, 
 his triumph over death and hell. With such a theme it was 
 inevitable that the ritual should assume a dramatic char- 
 acter, which is more marked in the Greek than in the Roman 
 liturgy. 
 
 The date of this festival was fixed by that of the Jewish 
 Passover, at which season Jesus was crucified. Most of the 
 churches celebrated the resurrection on the Sunday follow- 
 ing the fourteenth of the Jewish month Nisan; but in Asia 
 Minor, for a time, they kept it on the fourteenth of the 
 month, whatever day of the week that might be. Differ- 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 221 
 
 ences arose also about the mode of determining on what 
 day of the Julian year the fourteenth of Nisan fell, and the 
 rule adopted by the Council of Nicaea did not wholly end 
 them. At the close of the second century the fast before 
 Easter lasted only a few days. Of the forty-day fasting 
 period (Quadragesima) which we call Lent there is no trace 
 before the fourth century, and the custom of its observance 
 varied greatly in different parts of the church. The usage 
 of the Eastern churches continues to differ from that of the 
 West, which received its present form in Rome in the sev- 
 enth century. 
 
 The festival of the nativity of Christ is of much later 
 origin than that of the resurrection. In the fourth century 
 the Eastern churches had a festival on January 6, which 
 they called the "Manifestations" (to, iTn<f>dvia) , commemo- 
 rating the nativity, the adoration of the Magi, and the bap- 
 tism of Jesus. The observance of December 25 originated 
 at Rome, probably in the fourth century; it was introduced 
 in Antioch about 375 and adopted in Alexandria about 430. 
 The choice of the day (the winter solstice in the Roman 
 calendar) was an appropriation for Christ, "the sun of right- 
 eousness," of the Natalis Solis Invicti, the Syrian sun-god, 
 identified with Mithras. 1 
 
 That there is no salvation out of the church was the uni- 
 versal belief of Christians from the first. For Paul the 
 church was the body of Christ, in which his spirit dwelt; he 
 was the head, Christians were the members. To the com- 
 moner apprehension the church alone had the saving truth; 
 it alone possessed the sacraments by which men, their past 
 sins washed away, were born anew, and, by partaking of 
 the flesh and blood of the divine Saviour, became them- 
 selves divine and immortal. 
 
 It has been shown in an earlier connection how the multi- 
 plication of heresies, each pretending to be the true way of 
 salvation, was met by the criterion of catholicity and apos- 
 tolic tradition. In the third century there was acute con- 
 1 See Vol. I, pp. 578 /., 597. 
 
222 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 troversy over the question whether such as had denied their 
 faith in time of persecution might be restored to the com- 
 munion of the church. The rigorists seceded on this issue, 
 and the churches of Africa were rent by dissension. The 
 leaders of this schism were men of unimpeachable ortho- 
 doxy, and they had the earlier tradition of the church on 
 their side, which had not admitted any remedy for apos- 
 tasy. It was this situation which gave occasion to Cypri- 
 an's "Unity of the Catholic Church," in which the doctrine 
 of the church found a classic formulation. 
 
 "Extra ecclesiam salus non est." "A man cannot have 
 God for his father who has not the church for his mother." 
 The church had often been compared to Noah's ark; only 
 those who are in it can escape destruction. Cyprian adds 
 a new simile, particularly apposite to the puritan seceders: 
 the church is Rahab's house; there is safety within its doors, 
 but whoever leaves its shelter invites his doom. But the 
 Novatians professed to be the true church; in refusing to 
 restore the lapsed they were loyally preserving its purity 
 and maintaining the ancient strictness of its discipline, to 
 which the majority was recreant. What was to decide in 
 these conflicting claims? Cyprian's answer is, the church 
 is where the regular episcopate is. The church is founded 
 upon the bishops, and all its activities are directed by them, 
 as was ordained by divine law. They are the successors of 
 the Apostles, vicaria ordinatione, and to them, through the 
 Apostles, Christ says: "He that heareth you, heareth me." 
 The bishop is in the church and the church in the bishop; 
 if any man is not with the bishop he is not in the church. 
 In other words, to secede from the regularly constituted 
 bishop is to put oneself outside the pale of the church and 
 the hope of salvation. The criterion of the true church is 
 the legitimacy of the episcopate. 
 
 There can be but one true church. The unity of the 
 church is a corollary of the unity of the godhead (John 10, 
 30; 1 John 5, 10). It is symbolised by the seamless vesture of 
 Christ, in contrast to the mantle of the prophet Ahijah which 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 223 
 
 was rent into twelve pieces. The unity of the church, 
 again, rests on the unanimity of the episcopate, the conoors 
 numerositas episcoporum. The church of Rome is "the 
 leading church, from which the unity of the priesthood 
 springs." "There is one God, and one Christ, and one 
 church, and one throne founded upon Peter by the word of 
 the Lord." The ideal unity of the church has not merely 
 its symbol but its embodiment in the successor of Peter. 
 The throne of the bishop of Rome is the cathedra Petri. 1 
 
 The existence of numerous bodies of Christians having a 
 ministry and sacraments similar to those of the Catholic 
 Church early raised a practical problem which in turn 
 opened important questions in the doctrine of the sacra- 
 ments. If a man who had been baptised in an heretical sect 
 came over to the Catholic Church, was he to be baptised 
 like a convert from heathenism, on the ground that he- 
 retical baptism was a counterfeit, or was his baptism to be 
 regarded as valid baptism (which could not be repeated), 
 notwithstanding the heresy of the administrator? The 
 African church, under Cyprian's lead, maintained the for- 
 mer view, which had influential supporters elsewhere also. 
 Pope Stephen held, on the contrary, that whatever errors 
 the heretics might be in, their intention was to administer 
 baptism according to the command of Christ. Those who 
 had been baptised by them were therefore to be received 
 into the Catholic Church by the imposition of the bishop's 
 hands "in pcenitentiam." 
 
 The Roman view and practice eventually prevailed. In 
 the Donatist Controversy Augustine gave it its doctrine. 2 
 Baptism by a heretic or schismatic, if formally correct, is 
 Christian baptism, and imparts the character Dominicus; 
 
 1 The exposition has a special application to the situation in Rome 
 at the time Cyprian wrote. Novatian had been consecrated bishop 
 by the rigorists, in opposition to Pope Cornelius, the bishop in orderly 
 succession. 
 
 2 The Donatists were a puritan separatist sect which was very strong 
 and aggressive in Africa and Numidia in the fourth century, especially 
 among the native population. 
 
224 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 but so long as the subject remains out of the communion of 
 the Catholic Church his baptism remains without effect, it 
 does not avail to the remission of sins. Its potential effi- 
 cacy, so to speak, becomes actual only when he who has 
 been baptised outside the church comes into it. For love, 
 which is the grace of the New Testament, is to be found 
 and can be conserved only in the church; in the Catholic 
 Church alone can the Spirit be received. The church is the 
 body of Christ; in the unity of the body the members are 
 bound to one another and to their head by love — unitas 
 servat caritatem. Augustine's doctrine of grace has here an 
 important influence on his idea of the church. Conversely, 
 one who has been baptised in the church does not lose the 
 sacrament of baptism if he separates from its unity, but he 
 loses the grace of which the church is the sole repository. 
 It is the same with orders, for, like baptism, ordination 
 confers a character 1 indelebilis, which permanently distin- 
 guishes the priest from the layman by the power to admin- 
 ister the sacraments. Once imparted, this power cannot be 
 lost nor taken away. The ministration may be irregular or 
 illegitimate, but the sacraments are not thereby rendered 
 invalid. 
 
 As the outcome of these controversies the important 
 principle was established that the efficacy of the sacrament 
 is independent of the person of the minister. Augustine 
 puts this in the strongest way: "Between an Apostle and a 
 drunken man there is a great difference; but between the 
 baptism of Christ which an Apostle gives and that which a 
 drunken man gives there is no difference." The question 
 is not who gives, but what he gives. If the rigorists had 
 had their way, a man could have no assurance that the 
 sacraments he received were the genuine sacraments, effi- 
 cacious unto salvation. 
 
 Augustine's conception of the sacraments corresponds to 
 his doctrine of grace. Sacrament is defined as sacrum sig- 
 num, a sacred symbol, a thing or an act which brings to 
 
 1 "Stamp." 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 225 
 
 mind a res sacra, specifically, a gift of divine grace which 
 is to be received. "What are any material sacraments but, 
 so to speak, visible words?" Meaning and value is given 
 to them by the words of Christ which accompany them in 
 the liturgy: "Accedit verbum ad elementum, etiam ipsum 
 tanquam visibile verbum." All religions have their sacra- 
 ments: "In no kind of religion, true or false, can men be 
 held together, unless they are united by some sort of fellow- 
 ship in visible symbols, or sacraments." In conformity 
 with his definition, Augustine applies the term sacrament 
 to various rites — ordination, marriage (Eph. 5, 4), the salt 
 given to a catechumen is a sacrament; but baptism and the 
 Eucharist are the chief sacraments. 
 
 The reality, or virtue, of the sacrament is solely the in- 
 visible grace of God through the Holy Spirit; without this 
 inward sanctification it profits a man nothing. When it is 
 remembered that for Augustine the work of grace is the 
 inspiration, or infusion, of love (caritas), by which the sub- 
 ject is renewed in the inner man, it will be seen how widely 
 his conception differs from that which attributed to the 
 sacraments a kind of physical efficacy. 1 Many are in the 
 church and receive the sacraments who, not being of the 
 elect, have not the saving grace of God. It does not avail 
 to have the outward sign, or symbol, of grace, if a man 
 have not love, the reality. That the doctrine of the sacra- 
 ments in the West has a more spiritual character than that 
 of the East is chiefly to be ascribed to Augustine. 
 
 The earliest Christian worship was addressed to God the 
 Father and to the Lord Jesus Christ. In time subordinate 
 objects of worship were introduced, and a secondary cultus 
 of the saints. The martyrs had always been venerated; 
 commemorative services were held at their tombs on the 
 anniversary of their martyrdom, and feasts 2 only too closely 
 resembling those of heathen custom, which in fact they 
 perpetuated. Augustine, who was under no illusion about 
 
 1 Augustine understands Jesus himself to refute this notion in John 6. 
 
 2 Called agapce,a,nd ostensibly a dispensation of charity to the poor. 
 
226 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 this relation, writes: "Drunkenness and luxurious banquets 
 in the cemeteries are commonly believed by the carnal and 
 ignorant multitude to be not only an honour to the martyrs 
 but a solace to the dead." The Manichsean Faustus taunts 
 the church: "You have turned the sacrifices into love-feasts, 
 and in the place of the idols put the martyrs, whom you 
 worship with similar prayers; you placate the shades of 
 the dead with food and wine." l 
 
 Originally prayer was made for the martyrs, but this 
 seemed derogatory; it was more fitting to pray to them, 
 seeking their intercession with God. Chapels were built at 
 their tombs or on the scene of their martyrdom, their relics 
 were enshrined in the churches. To the sacred legend of 
 the martyr were added narratives of signal answers to 
 prayer at his tomb or miracles wrought by the relics. Men 
 resorted to his shrine for supernatural help, and it became 
 the seat of a popular cult. Eminent confessors and cham- 
 pions of the faith were honoured in the same way. Some of 
 the Apostles, notably Peter and Paul at Rome, stood high 
 in the roll of the martyrs; tradition or legend gave the 
 crown of martyrdom to all the rest. 
 
 In popular apprehension the saints occupied a place simi- 
 lar to that of the heroes in the later Greek religion; they 
 were patrons and protectors of localities, and objects of a 
 local cult, whose help the people of the neighbourhood sought 
 with offerings, prayers, and vows in various needs. The 
 monotheistic religious philosophies of the time made room 
 for this side of the popular religion by recognising a class of 
 good daimones, beneficent superhuman powers, who were 
 properly revered with prayer and offerings. The church 
 had combated this worship, not because it was plural, but 
 because it was heathen; in the cult of the saints it found a 
 Christian substitute. The legal suppression of paganism 
 furthered this development; the saints became the succes- 
 sors of the innumerable local and functional divinities whose 
 worship had always been the chief part of the every-day relig- 
 
 1 Compare what Augustine narrates of his mother, Confessions, vi, 2. 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 227 
 
 ion of the masses. The chapel of a saint took the place 
 of the shrine of the dispossessed demon; the new occupant 
 assumed the functions of his predecessor, the local customs 
 and superstitions were often transferred to him. Christi- 
 anity abolished the great gods; under other names it adopted 
 the little ones. 
 
 In correct theological theory, what was sought of the 
 saints was their intercession with God for the blessings de- 
 sired by those who invoked them. To the less subtle appre- 
 hension of the worshippers at their shrines, the saints them- 
 selves answered the prayers and received the offerings of 
 the faithful. 1 A distinction was also made by the teachers 
 of the church between the homage paid the saints and the 
 peculiar worship (Xarpeia) which is rendered to God alone; 
 and, while urging the people to avail themselves of the inter- 
 cession of the saints, they warned them against confounding 
 the two kinds of worship. 
 
 In the fourth century no pre-eminence over the other 
 saints was ascribed to the Virgin Mary. Her perpetual 
 virginity had been much earlier affirmed, and was main- 
 tained with especial zeal by the ascetics. Augustine, "for 
 the honour of the Lord," would hold her exempt from the 
 sinfulness to which the other saints were subject. The con- 
 troversies about the person of Christ came to a head in the 
 question of the ©eoTo/cm, and many of the most ardent 
 champions of the one nature were actuated more by jeal- 
 ousy for the "Mother of God" than by understanding of 
 the theological issues. The Council of Chalcedon gave to 
 this title dogmatic significance and authority; the Virgin 
 was elevated to a rank far above the Apostles and the mul- 
 titude of saints. In the following period churches dedi- 
 cated to Mary were erected in great numbers. Festivals 
 of the Virgin, generally in proximity to Christmas, appear 
 in various calendars, both Eastern and Western, in the 
 sixth century. The church in Rome seems not to have 
 observed such days before the seventh century, when it 
 
 1 On the same phenomenon in Mohammedan lands, see below, p. 484. 
 
228 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 adopted from the Greeks four festivals, the Presentation in 
 the Temple (Purification of the Virgin), forty days after the 
 Nativity of Christ; the Annunciation, nine months before 
 Christmas (March 25); the Nativity of the Virgin, Septem- 
 ber 8; and her death (Dormitio), August 15. 
 
 The worship of angels which Paul reprobates in his letter 
 to the Colossians seems to have been especially common in 
 Asia Minor. In the fourth century it was prohibited by a 
 council at the Phrygian Laodicea; but its persistence in 
 that region a century later is attested by Theodoret, who 
 notes particularly chapels dedicated to Michael; 1 those who 
 were addicted to the cult justified it by the argument that, 
 inasmuch as the God of the universe is invisible and inac- 
 cessible, it is proper to gain the good-will of God through 
 the angels. The defence gives a true explanation of the 
 increasing prominence of the worship of the Virgin and the 
 saints as well as the angels: the God of the universe, even 
 where he was not exalted, as he was by metaphysical theo- 
 logians, to a transcendence which excludes all transactions 
 with men, was too great, too remote, too unimaginable, too 
 unhuman, to satisfy the religious need for a power to which 
 the common man can draw near with his every-day cares. 
 To the early Christians Christ had been the mediator and 
 intercessor with the Father, but in proportion as theology 
 dehumanised him and elevated the Son to a deity identical 
 in nature and equal in majesty with the Father, defining 
 him in terms as abstract and incomprehensible, religion ex- 
 perienced the need of other mediators and intercessors, 
 and the theologians themselves commended this way of 
 access to God. The growing pre-eminence of the worship 
 of the Virgin reflects the feeling that of all intercessions the 
 most effectual must be that of the Mother with her son. 
 
 One of the commonplaces of the Christian polemic against 
 the old religions was the attack on idolatry, and so long as 
 
 1 Michael was regarded by the Jews as the champion of their nation, 
 and it is not improbable that the beginnings of angelolatry in the 
 church came from Jewish sects or superstitions. 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 229 
 
 the conflict with heathenism lasted it was natural that the 
 church should avoid every semblance that could give the 
 heathen a pretext to retort the accusation. When this 
 stage was passed, the same reason did not exist, and pic- 
 tures were introduced into the churches, scenes from the 
 sacred history or the legends of the saints, at once decorative 
 and instructive. Representations of Christ were at first of 
 a symbolical character, a lamb at the foot of a cross being 
 the commonest. Beginning as aids to devotion, pictures 
 soon became objects of devotion. The multitude was no 
 more able in the new religion than in the old to realise the 
 presence of the deity without some aid from the senses to 
 the imagination. By the sixth century the worship of the 
 eikons was universal in the orthodox East. Some churches 
 boasted the possession of images "not made with hands," 
 as heathen temples had had their idols that fell down from 
 heaven; there were images that bled and images that winked; 
 miraculous cures and deliverances were wrought by the pic- 
 tures of the saints as well as by their relics, and ex votos were 
 hung up before them, as aforetime in the heathen shrines; 
 a rank thicket of legend grew about the wonder-working 
 images. The monks were zealous promoters of both the 
 worship and the mythology; the religion of the ignorant 
 masses was compact of these superstitions. 
 
 Several of the emperors, beginning with Leo the Isaurian 
 (717-740), took strenuous measures to abolish this worship, 
 removing the images from the churches and whitewashing 
 the pictures on the walls. A subservient council in Con- 
 stantinople (754) declared image-worship to be idolatry, 
 contrary to Scripture and the Fathers, and excommunicated 
 its defenders, including John of Damascus, the most emi- 
 nent theologian of the Greek church. Feminine piety came 
 to the rescue. Under the regency of the empress Irene the 
 second Council of Nicsea (787) condemned the acts of its 
 predecessor as heretical and blasphemous, ordered the 
 images to be restored, and religious veneration to be paid 
 to them, with the use of incense and the burning of oandles 
 
230 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 before them. The laws against them were renewed by Leo 
 the Armenian (813-820) ; but the empress Theodora caused 
 the acts of the Council of Nicaea to be reaffirmed (842). 
 The conflict, which had lasted more than a hundred years, 
 ended in the complete triumph of the images, and the Festi- 
 val of Orthodoxy, observed to this day in the Greek Church, 
 was instituted to commemorate it. 
 
 Throughout this struggle the Roman Church arrayed itself 
 against the "image-breakers" and anathematised their doc- 
 trine. The council of 754 was not recognised in the West; 
 legates of Pope Adrian I were present at Irene's council in 
 787, where a dogmatic pronouncement in favour of image- 
 worship was made. The Frankish church in those days 
 had a mind and voice of its own. It would neither exclude 
 images from the churches nor approve the veneration of 
 them. When the acts of the Nicene Council of 787 were 
 transmitted by Pope Adrian to Charles the Great, the 
 answer, made in the king's own name, maintained this posi- 
 tion, unshaken by the conjoint authority of an oecumenical 
 council and the pope. The new council, he affirmed, was 
 as bad as its predecessor; pictures are properly allowed in 
 churches as representations of events or for the decoration 
 of the walls, but adoration of them should be strictly for- 
 bidden. A synod at Paris in 825 accompanied its condem- 
 nation of image-worship with an express censure of Pope 
 Adrian for lending his authority to the superstitious prac- 
 tices prevailing in Italy and at Rome, which he ought to 
 have resisted. Through the greater part of the ninth cen- 
 tury the worship of images continued to be forbidden in the 
 Frankish kingdoms; but in the end it prevailed there also. 
 
 The belief that sins committed after baptism must be 
 expiated by suffering, which is the basis of the penitential 
 discipline of the church, received an extension or comple- 
 ment in the Western church in the doctrine of purgatory. 1 
 Christians who die with minor sins unatoned for undergo 
 for a longer or shorter time a purification by fire, and only 
 
 1 The Greek and Oriental churches have no corresponding doctrine. 
 
INSTITUTIONS. WORSHIP 231 
 
 after their release from this place of suffering are admitted 
 to the abode of the blessed. Gregory the Great, who did 
 much to give currency and authority to this belief, taught, 
 as we have seen, that the sacrifice of the Mass avails to 
 atone for the sins of the dead as well as the living, and thus 
 to abridge the time of purgatorial torment or secure release 
 from it, and this is the doctrine of the Western church. 
 The six or seven centuries with which we have hitherto 
 been engaged are the formative period of the Christian 
 religion. By the end of this period — and for the most part 
 long before — its distinctive doctrines had been authorita- 
 tively defined and generally accepted in the terms of the 
 creeds; it had also in the writings of the Fathers a classical 
 theological literature of hardly inferior authority; its organ- 
 isation, institutions, and forms of worship were fully estab- 
 lished; it had developed its own types of asceticism and of 
 mysticism. Certain great questions had not been formally 
 decided — the problems of grace and freedom, in the West, 
 for example; others, like the work of Christ, in distinction 
 from his person, had not been adequately discussed, far less 
 satisfactorily solved. But however much was thus left for 
 future generations to do, the decisions of the great councils, 
 the consensus of the Fathers, the prescription of custom, 
 the body of tradition, were regarded on all hands as the 
 unalterable norm of the Christian religion; such it had al- 
 ways been, and such it should always be. That this was an 
 illusion, both as to the past and the future, may seem to the 
 historian palpable; but it was a conservative force of im- 
 measurable consequence. And this Catholic Christianity, 
 whose origins lie in the Apostolic or sub-Apostolic Age, which 
 appears fully developed before the end of the ancient age 
 and was perpetuated essentially unchanged through the 
 Middle Ages, remains to the present day the religion of by 
 far the greater part of Christendom. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Moslem Conquests — Final Breach between the Eastern and Western 
 Churches — Teutonic Invasions — Conversion of the Germanic 
 Peoples — Carolingian Revival of Learning — Eucharistic Con- 
 troversies — The Mediaeval Penitential Discipline — Indulgences — 
 Treasury of Merit — Anselm's Cur Dews Homo — Church and State: 
 Augustine's Civitas Dei — The Frankish and German Emperors — 
 The Conflict over Investitures — The Issue of Supremacy: Gregory 
 VII, Innocent III, Boniface VIII— Denials of Papal Claims — ■ 
 The Great Councils: Pisa, Constance, Basel, Florence — Restora- 
 tion of Papal Power. 
 
 The Moslem conquests of the seventh century in the 
 space of a few years wrested Syria and Egypt from the 
 empire, while Asia Minor was subjected to ever-renewed 
 invasions which more than once brought the crescent within 
 sight of Constantinople. The conquerors did not discrimi- 
 nate among the theological varieties of their Christian sub- 
 jects; to the churches which had been under the disabilities 
 of heresy in the empire the impartial toleration of the 
 caliphate was a deliverance. The great church, on the other 
 hand, lost the privileges it had enjoyed as the state church 
 of the empire and the material advantages that accrued 
 from this position. All branches of the church were con- 
 fronted by the urgent practical task of adjusting themselves 
 to the new situation and of maintaining their hold on the 
 Christian population, resisting the strong motives to de- 
 fection which the legal and social inferiority of Christians 
 and the incidence of taxation presented. It might have 
 been thought that under these circumstances they would 
 have been drawn together into some kind of union, but this 
 was not the case; doctrinal differences had long since been 
 organised in rival churches which had no communion with 
 
 232 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 233 
 
 one another, and as the heretical churches had their strong- 
 holds among certain populations— Copts, Armenians, Sy- 
 rians — language was another and permanent divisive prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 The intellectual life of the Eastern churches was not ex- 
 tinguished by the advent of Islam. A century after the 
 conquest the Greek church had its first— and last— great 
 systematic theologian in John of Damascus, the son of an 
 official of high rank in the service of the caliph, and himself 
 brought up to the same service. His work became the 
 classic of orthodoxy. But the age was past when Greek 
 theologians took the leading part in the discussion and 
 definition of Christian doctrine. The history of theology in 
 the Greek and Oriental churches is in itself an interesting 
 and too much neglected subject; but it may without injus- 
 tice be said that since the eighth century those churches 
 have had no appreciable part in the historical development 
 of Christianity as a whole. 
 
 Notwithstanding sharp conflicts which more than once 
 temporarily interrupted the communion of the Roman 
 Church with the East, the idea of the unity of the church 
 universal was too firmly established and the actual bond of 
 union too strong to permit non-intercourse to harden into 
 permanent division. But in time the complete separation 
 of the Latin-German West from the Byzantine empire dis- 
 solved the political ties; the attempts of the popes to assert 
 their headship of the whole church by intervention in inter- 
 nal affairs of the patriarchate of Constantinople; the con- 
 servative orthodoxy of the Greeks, who regarded the more 
 progressive West with suspicion and magnified into heresy 
 all departures from their own formulas and customs, led in 
 1054 to the final breach, when the Pope's legates laid on 
 the altar of Santa Sophia a bull of excommunication against 
 the Patriarch, to which he at once replied in kind by launch- 
 ing an anathema against the Pope. The Oriental patriarchs 
 naturally sided with their Constantinopolitan colleague 
 against the pretensions of Rome. The severance of the 
 
234 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 East and the West was complete, and repeated efforts to 
 reunite them came to naught. Through causes partly theo- 
 logical and ecclesiastical, partly political, the gulf has but 
 widened in the course of the centuries. 
 
 The great migrations and their political results brought 
 within the sphere of the Greek church and its missionary 
 activity chiefly Slavic (or Slavonised) peoples, and the 
 national churches of Russia, Servia, and Bulgaria, which are 
 sprung from it, contain the great bulk of its present adhe- 
 rents. The racial characteristics of these peoples and their 
 civilisation have made their impress on their Christianity 
 in manifold ways, while the original Greek element has be- 
 come relatively inconsiderable. 
 
 Of the Oriental churches especial interest attaches to that 
 which is commonly called Nestorian, in which the position 
 of the so-called Oriental party in the controversy over the 
 divine and human natures in Christ was perpetuated. 
 Driven from Edessa, where they had maintained a flourish- 
 ing school, they sought in Persia the toleration that was 
 denied .them in the Christian empire, and established at 
 Nisibis a seminary of biblical and theological learning in 
 which the best traditions of the Antiochian school were per- 
 petuated. In the face of repeated and severe persecutions 
 by Persian kings set on by the Zoroastrian clergy, they dis- 
 played much zeal for the conversion of the people; in the 
 following century their missions carried Christianity through 
 central Asia, and by 635 they had reached China. In their 
 efforts to convert the Mongols they found themselves in 
 competition with Buddhist monks, and ere long Islam also 
 entered the field. In our own day a remnant of this once 
 numerous and enterprising church survives on the shores of 
 Lake Urmia and in the neighbouring mountains of Kurdi- 
 stan, and American (Presbyterian), English (Church of Eng- 
 land), Roman Catholic, and Russian Orthodox missionaries 
 have vied with one another to convert this handful of Syrian 
 Christians to some one or other of these varieties of alien 
 Christianity, or from one of them to another. 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 235 
 
 Christianity in the West down to the end of the fourth 
 century was the religion of the Roman and Romanised 
 population, chiefly in the cities. Among the barbarous (that 
 is, un-Latinised) Berbers in North Africa, Iberians in Spain, 
 Gauls, Britons, and Germans, it had made few converts; in 
 wide regions it had not gained a foothold at all. In the 
 more thoroughly Romanised parts of the provinces, and 
 even in large parts of Italy, the country people still clung 
 to the gods of their fathers. The fifth century opened with 
 the first appearance in Italy of Alaric and his Goths (400 
 A. D.) ; in 410 he took and sacked the city of Rome. Before 
 the end of the century the Western Empire had ceased to 
 exist even in name (476); barbarian kingdoms had been 
 established in Gaul, Spain, Africa, and finally in Italy itself. 
 The invaders were of Teutonic race; the invasions were for 
 the most part the migration of tribes or loose confederations 
 of tribes, thrust out of their earlier seats by a more remote 
 Asiatic migration from the steppes (the Huns), and seeking 
 new lands within the borders of the empire. The first- 
 comers were often pushed from their settlements by fresh 
 waves of migration behind them, or drawn from them by 
 prospect of richer plunder and wider lands beyond, by the 
 adventurous spirit of their chiefs, or by dissensions among 
 them. When the movement came to rest the invaders set- 
 tled on the land, and, like the Arabs in Syria and Egypt or 
 in Irak in the seventh century, speedily appropriated the 
 civilisation of the conquered and revivified it by the infu- 
 sion of the energy and ambition of a fresh race. The sub- 
 sequent history of civilisation and of Christianity in the 
 countries which had been included in the Western Empire 
 derives its distinctive character from the blending of Roman 
 and Teutonic strains. 
 
 The first of the Germanic peoples with whom the Roman 
 Empire came into conflict were the Goths, who in the fifth 
 and sixth decades of the third century ravaged the Balkan 
 Peninsula and Asia Minor far and wide. The emperor De- 
 cius fell in battle against them (251), and though they sus- 
 
236 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tained a signal defeat at Naissus (modern Nish) in 269, the 
 emperor Aurelian in 274 withdrew the Roman garrisons 
 from Dacia, leaving the country north of the Danube in the 
 undisputed possession of the Goths, whose settlements ex- 
 tended eastward along the shores of the Black Sea to the 
 Crimea. 
 
 It was probably in the latter region that Christianity first 
 reached them; a bishop of Gothia sat in the Council of 
 Nicsea (325). The apostle to the Goths was Ulfila, who 
 was consecrated bishop for them by Eusebius of Nicomedia 
 in 341. It was in the days of Constantius, when Arianism 
 was orthodoxy, and it was thus to an Arian Christianity 
 that the first Teutonic people was converted. Arians both 
 branches of the Goths remained during the two centuries 
 of their national greatness, in Italy, and in Gaul and Spain. 
 All the other Germanic peoples who were converted pre- 
 vious to the end of the fifth century — Suevi, Vandals, Bur- 
 gundians, Lombards — were either Arians from the begin- 
 ning or went over to Arianism under the example of their 
 Gothic kinsmen. Except the Vandals in Africa, the con- 
 querors did not molest the Catholic churches in their new 
 kingdoms. The difference of religions ran on lines of race: 
 Teutonic Christianity was Arian; Catholic Christianity was 
 Latin — that was the outstanding difference. For the rest, 
 priesthood, sacraments, liturgy, were similar; practical relig- 
 ious and moral teaching the same. 
 
 The Franks on the lower Rhine, at the end of the fifth 
 century (496), were the first considerable Germanic people 
 to embrace Catholic Christianity and hold to it; and as they 
 speedily became the leading German power they were the 
 chief instrument in catholicising Gaul. They drove the 
 Arian Visigoths out of southwestern Gaul into Spain and 
 annexed the Ostrogothic domain in Narbonne and Pro- 
 vence; the impression of these victories converted the Bur- 
 gundian king. Thus by the middle of the sixth century all 
 Gaul was nominally Catholic. The Visigothic kingdom in 
 Spain went over to the Catholic Church in 589. Among the 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 237 
 
 Lombards in Italy Catholic influences made themselves felt 
 within a generation after the conquest, by the middle of 
 the seventh century Catholicism prevailed. The Vandals 
 alone remained steadfast in their Arianism till the over- 
 throw of their power by Justinian (533). 
 
 The catholicising of the Teutonic nations was not brought 
 about solely by political influences. The Catholic Church 
 was the principal heir of the ancient Latin culture — language, 
 literature, science, art — and when the newcomers sought to 
 possess themselves of this superior civilisation, the Catholic 
 clergy were their natural teachers. Religious unity in turn 
 greatly furthered the amalgamation which rapidly fused 
 not only the Romanised population and the German in- 
 vaders into one people, but the pagan Gauls and Iberians, 
 who in this period came into the church in large numbers. 
 
 The Germanic invaders of Britain, who in the fifth and 
 sixth centuries had overwhelmed the native British Chris- 
 tianity, were converted in the seventh, partly by mission- 
 aries seiit from Rome (596), partly, especially in the north, 
 by Celtic monks from Ireland. The Irish church in its 
 isolation preserved many antique usages, and had peculiar 
 institutions of its own which it was not disposed to give up 
 at the demand of the foreign ecclesiastics for conformity to 
 the Roman model; it was a full century before the latter 
 completely prevailed in Great Britain. 
 
 The Saxons, whose hostility to the Franks extended to 
 their religion, were converted by Charles the Great in a 
 series of wars from 772 to 803; obstinate paganism, overt or 
 covert, and even the attempt to escape baptism or the failure 
 to fast in Lent, was punished by death. The frontier of 
 Christianity was thus pushed eastward to the Elbe. In 
 the next three centuries the Scandinavian countries, as well 
 as Moravia, Bohemia, and Hungary, were Christianised, 
 while the conversion of Russia was in progress from Con- 
 stantinople. Finally, between the twelfth and fourteenth 
 centuries, Christianity was established in Pomerania, Baltic 
 Prussia, Lithuania, and in Courland and Livland. 
 
238 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Under the Carolingians there was a notable revival of 
 learning in the Frankish church. Charles the Great drew 
 to his court scholars from other lands, such as Paulus Diaco- 
 nus and Theodulph of Orleans, and in Alcuin of York 
 (d. 814) he had what would now be called a minister of 
 education. Bishops and abbots were required to maintain 
 cathedral and monastery schools; at the court school many 
 of the young nobility were educated under Alcuin's direc- 
 tion. The fruit of this revival is seen in the fact that in 
 the ninth century the Frankish church was ahead of all the 
 rest in learning and intellectual activity. 
 
 The revived interest in theological studies soon reopened 
 old controversies or started new ones. We have seen that 
 the prevailing teaching in the Latin church was a miti- 
 gated Augustinianism — so much mitigated that since the 
 sixteenth century it has more commonly been called Semi- 
 Pelagianism. The genuine doctrine of Augustine had, how- 
 ever, been maintained in its vigour and rigour by Fulgentius 
 and others in the sixth century, and had never been subjected 
 to ecclesiastical censure. But when in the middle of the 
 ninth century the monk Gottschalk asserted a twofold pre- 
 destination, "of the elect to repose, of the reprobate to 
 death," he was condemned for the implication that God 
 constrained man to sin against his will — predestination to 
 evil — and spent the rest of his life in confinement in a mon- 
 astery. This personal condemnation did not deter other 
 theologians, among them Ratramnus, from maintaining 
 views not substantially different from those of the unfortu- 
 nate monk, while Hinckmar of Rheims went so far beyond 
 the happy mean in the opposite direction that his proposi- 
 tions were censured by synods in other provinces. 
 
 Christians from the earliest times believed that in the 
 sacrament of the Eucharist the communicant really partook 
 of the flesh and blood of the divine Saviour and thus became 
 a partaker of the divine life. But in what way the body 
 and blood of Christ are present in the elements was a ques- 
 tion the simple believer did not ask, and about which theo- 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 239 
 
 logians, from at least the second century, entertained dif- 
 ferent theories. John of Damascus was the first to formu- 
 late a physical-transformation doctrine, which became the 
 orthodoxy of the Greek church. A corresponding stage, 
 but with a different theory, was reached in the West a cen- 
 tury later in Paschasius Radbertus' treatise, "De Corpore 
 et Sanguine Domini" (831). In the consecration the sub- 
 stance of the bread and wine is inwardly effectively changed 
 into the flesh and blood of Christ, though to the sight and 
 taste there is no change. Moreover, so Paschasius taught, 
 the flesh and blood of Christ upon the altar are the same 
 identical body which was born of Mary, suffered on the 
 cross, and rose from the tomb. "It was the will of Christ 
 that in a mystery this bread and wine, by the consecration 
 of the Holy Spirit, should be potentially created true flesh 
 and blood, and thereby he should daily be mystically sacri- 
 ficed for the life of the world." 
 
 The most eminent Carolingian theologians, Ratramnus, 
 Rabanus Maurus, Walafried Strabo, standing in the Augus- 
 tinian tradition, controverted Paschasius, rejecting with 
 especial energy the identification of the body and blood in 
 the Eucharist with the body Christ wore on earth; nor were 
 writers lacking in the succeeding centuries who followed 
 them in the teaching that Christ was in the Eucharist, not 
 corporeally, but spiritually. The whole tendency of the 
 age, however, was to the realistic conception of the sacra- 
 ment, and when in the middle of the eleventh century Beren- 
 gar of Tours avowed his agreement with Scotus (Eriugena, 
 to whom he erroneously attributed Ratramnus' refutation 
 of Radbertus), and declared that if this were heresy Am- 
 brose and Augustine and Jerome would have to be adjudged 
 heretics, Lanfranc at once procured his condemnation at 
 Rome without so much as a hearing (1050). At a Roman 
 synod in 1059 he was forced to recant and subscribe a state- 
 ment in which it was declared: "The bread and wine which 
 are placed upon the altar are, after the consecration, not 
 merely a sacrament (*. e., a sacred symbol), but also the true 
 
240 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 body and blood of the Lord, and are by the senses, not only 
 sacramentally but in fact, handled by the priest, broken 
 and ground by the teeth of the faithful." After a few years 
 the controversy broke out again, and Gregory VII, at 
 another Roman synod in 1079, exacted of Berengar the con- 
 fession: "I believe in my heart and confess with my mouth 
 that the bread and wine which are placed upon the altar 
 are, by the mystery of holy prayer and the words of our 
 Redeemer, substantially converted into the true and proper 
 and life-giving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord, 
 and after the consecration are the true body of Christ which 
 was born of the Virgin, and, being offered for the salvation 
 of the world, hung upon the cross, and which sits at the 
 right hand of God, and the true blood of Christ which was 
 poured from his side, not merely through the sign and vir- 
 tue of the sacrament, but in its proper nature and true 
 substance." 
 
 The opponents of Berengar accepted the consequences of 
 their position, that even to sinners and unworthy communi- 
 cants the Eucharist is the true flesh and blood of Christ; but 
 only in nature, not in salutary effect. In this controversy 
 the Aristotelian categories of substance and accident were 
 first employed to explain the conversion of the elements; 
 the substance, after the consecration, being the body and 
 blood of the Lord; the accidents, the sensible properties of 
 bread and wine, thus laying the foundation for the scholastic 
 theory of transubstantiation. 1 
 
 One of the most important developments of the Middle 
 Ages was a new form of penitential discipline. In the ancient 
 church certain great, and for the most part openly scanda- 
 lous, sins excluded the offender from the communion of the 
 church and consequently from sacramental grace. Restora- 
 tion was possible only by the way of a public penitence sol- 
 emnly undertaken in the presence of the church, and pro- 
 ceeded only by slow stages; the final reconciliation was also 
 a public act, performed with impressive ceremonies by the 
 1 This term became current in the twelfth century. 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 241 
 
 bishop. For sins which were not included in the ancient 
 category of deadly sins the church knew only the pcenitentia 
 fidelium, the contrition of the sinner, his own prayers for 
 forgiveness, and the privations— chiefly fasting and other 
 abstinences— which for the good of his soul he imposed 
 upon himself. Naturally such penitents often unburdened 
 their souls by confessing their faults, and sought the pastoral 
 guidance of priests or bishops; and naturally, too, certain 
 customary modes of penance grew up; but this formed no 
 part of the penitential discipline of the church. 
 
 The ancient public discipline was ill adapted to the state 
 of society and conditions in the new Teutonic kingdoms, 
 and, in spite of all efforts to uphold or revive it, fell more 
 and more into desuetude. Meanwhile, the foundations of 
 a new system were laid in the monasteries, where monks 
 who had been guilty of an infraction of the rule of the 
 order or of any of the "principal faults" against which the 
 ascetic life was a lifelong conflict — pride, vainglory, envy, 
 anger, lethargy, 1 avarice, gluttony, incontinence — were re- 
 quired to confess their faults before the assembled brethren 
 in the chapter, to beg forgiveness of any they had wronged, 
 and to seek the prayers of the brethren for divine forgive- 
 ness. Fasting, vigils, and multiplied prayers were employed 
 as remedies for these faults, and were often thought of as a 
 satisfaction (that is, as making good the fault) to God. 
 
 The extension of this discipline to laymen, requiring pri- 
 vate confession to a priest and the assumption of a penance 
 imposed by him, seems to have originated in the Celtic 
 church in Ireland, which had from the beginning a peculiar 
 monastic character — its clergy were monks, and its churches 
 were served from the monasteries — and this adaptation of 
 the methods of monastic discipline to the pastoral regimen 
 for the laity was the more natural because the ancient 
 canonical forms of penance had never taken root in the 
 Irish or British churches. For the guidance of those on 
 whom it fell to impose penance, manuals were drawn up, in 
 
 1 Acedia. 
 
242 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 which the normal penance for various sins of clerics or lay- 
 men was defined. Fasting for prescribed periods and of 
 prescribed degrees of severity, and the recitation of a cer- 
 tain number of Psalms, are the commonest forms of pen- 
 ance; in the gravest cases, lifelong seclusion in a monastery, 
 exile from the land for a term of years, or pilgrimage to dis- 
 tant holy places was imposed. The measure of even the 
 milder inflictions is often so inordinate that a very ordinary 
 sinner, by cumulation, might find himself with more years 
 of penance to run than of life. It was in accord with the 
 principle of composition in both the Celtic and Teutonic law 
 that severer privations for a shorter time might be substi- 
 tuted; the penance might also be compounded by the devo- 
 tion of a man's goods to charity or to the church. 
 
 From Ireland and England this system spread to the 
 continent with the missionary monks, and though at first 
 opposed by the Frankish clergy, came more and more into 
 use there. For a time the monks alone received the con- 
 fessions of such as of their own accord resorted to them, 
 and prescribed penance out of their penitential books; but 
 the secular clergy followed their example, and in 789 Charles 
 the Great ordered all priests who had the cure of souls to 
 confess their parishioners. A synod at Chalons in 813 de- 
 creed : " One who comes to confess his sins is to be instructed 
 to make confession concerning the eight principal faults 
 which it is difficult to avoid in this life, whether he has com- 
 mitted them in thought or, worse yet, in deed." The prac- 
 tice of private confession rapidly became general. A law 
 for the whole church, making it obligatory on all the faith- 
 ful, was first made, however, at the Fourth Lateran Council 
 in 1215: "Every Christian of either sex who has come to 
 years of discretion must privately confess all his sins truth- 
 fully to his own priest at least once a year, and endeavour 
 to the best of his ability to fulfil the penance imposed upon 
 him, reverently receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist at 
 least at Easter." 
 
 Originally the penitent had to fulfil penance before being 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 243 
 
 restored to good standing in the church; but the Irish peni- 
 tentials sometimes provide for his rehabilitation after the 
 lapse of a part of the period, and in the end absolution came 
 to be given upon the penitent's solemn engagement to per- 
 form the penance imposed upon him. The form of absolu- 
 tion long continued to be deprecatory, for example: "May 
 Almighty God be thy helper and protector, and grant indul- 
 gence for thy sins, past, present, and future." Only about 
 1200 did the prayer for divine forgiveness give place to the 
 priest's declarative "Absolvo te," and theologians, even later, 
 were not at one about the significance of the priestly abso- 
 lution. There can be no doubt, however, that those who 
 received absolution, in whatever phrase, took the act as 
 certifying, if not conveying, the remission of sins. 
 
 The three essential elements of penitence are contritio 
 cordis, confessio oris, and satisfactio operis. The older un- 
 derstanding was that the divine remission was conditioned 
 upon all three, and therefore was bestowed only when the 
 penance (satisfactio) had been completed. When, however, 
 absolution was pronounced before the performance or even 
 the beginning of the penance, the question arose what sig- 
 nificance the satisfactiones had. The solution adopted by 
 the schoolmen was that by absolution the sinner is relieved 
 of the eternal punishment justly due to every sin, but not 
 of its temporal penalties in this life or beyond. These must 
 be endured either in providential afflictions borne in a peni- 
 tent spirit or in the form of penance. The sins of the faith- 
 ful for which satisfaction has not in one or the other of these 
 ways been made in this life remain to be expiated in the 
 fires of purgatory. In this form and definition penitence is 
 a sacrament through which the remission of sins is assured. 
 Even deadly sins by virtue of it become venial; that is, they 
 do not remedilessly consign the sinner to eternal torment 
 in hell. 
 
 Related in principle to the commutations and redemp- 
 tions of penance to which reference has been made above 
 are indulgences. Bishops, at the dedication of a church, for 
 
244 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 example, granted those who resorted to the church on that 
 occasion and made their offerings there "indulgence" (that 
 is, remission) of a certain fraction (e. g., half) of the penance 
 they might be under at the time. Subsequently indulgences 
 were granted running for a stated period of time and appli- 
 cable to the reduction of the penance to which a man might 
 therein become liable. The custom apparently had its 
 abuses, for the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) decreed that 
 bishops should not grant more than a year's indulgence at 
 the consecration of a church, and on other occasions not 
 more than forty days. 
 
 Distinct from these episcopal indulgences were the plenary 
 indulgences granted by the popes. The first of this kind 
 were offered by Urban II to the crusaders (1095) in the fol- 
 lowing form: "Whoever out of pure devotion, and not for 
 the purpose of gaining honour or wealth, shall go to Jerusa- 
 lem to liberate the church of God, may reckon that journey 
 in lieu of all penance." Papal indulgences were later offered 
 on many occasions, of which the most notable was the Papal 
 Jubilee instituted by Boniface VIII in 1300. To such as, 
 being penitent and confessed, should, on fifteen days in 
 that year (or, if residents of the city of Rome, on thirty 
 days) visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul, "we 
 grant," so the bull runs, "not only a full and ample, but 
 the very fullest pardon of all their sins." Boniface contem- 
 plated a jubilee every hundred years; but Clement VI ap- 
 pointed one in 1350, and the interval was later shortened to 
 thirty-three, and in 1475 to twenty-five years; it was also 
 early extended beyond Rome, and plenary indulgences "in 
 the form of jubilee" have been frequently proclaimed at 
 other times. 
 
 The scholastic theologians raised the question: If the 
 church, by the authority given it by its Master, "Whoseso- 
 ever sins ye remit, they are remitted," released the indi- 
 vidual from the satisfaction he was bound to make, how 
 was this debt to God paid ? They solved the problem by 
 the theory of the treasury of merits. In this treasury are 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 245 
 
 accumulated, together with the infinite satisfaction made 
 by Christ (the swpererogationes Christi, quae sunt thesaurus 
 spiritualis ecclesiw — Alexander of Hales), the superabundant 
 satisfactions of the Virgin Mary and the saints; and upon 
 this treasury the church draws for the payment of the debts 
 remitted to the faithful by indulgences. Authority was 
 given to this doctrine by Clement VI in his jubilee bull 
 (1343). Another question was whether the indulgences 
 apply only to penances imposed by the church, and there- 
 fore expire with this life, or whether they avail also for the 
 satisfaction that remains to be made in purgatory. Thomas 
 Aquinas maintained that their efficacy is not limited to this 
 life; they are valid to release a reatu pcenos in purgatory 
 also. Down to the middle of the fifteenth century, however, 
 the contrary opinion was held by some theologians of re- 
 pute. Moreover, since in mediaeval law satisfaction might 
 be made by one man for another, it followed in theology 
 that indulgences acquired by the living may be applied to 
 the benefit of the faithful dead in purgatory. The first 
 formal grant of indulgences for the dead (per modum suf- 
 fragii) was made in a bull of Sixtus IV in 1476. 
 
 The most important contribution of the mediaeval church 
 to the completion of the Christian system of doctrine, the 
 necessity of the death of Christ as a vicarious satisfaction 
 for the sins of men, or as it is commonly called the doctrine 
 of the atonement, is closely connected with the development 
 of the penitential discipline which we have been following. 
 The theologians of the early church found the reason of the 
 incarnation either in the need of a complete revelation of 
 divinity in the Logos, or in the necessity that divinity should 
 enter into humanity in order that humanity might partici- 
 pate in divine immortality. 1 But neither of these theories 
 adequately explained the necessity of the death of Christ. A 
 common explanation, accepted even by Origen, was that 
 his life was given for mankind as a ransom to the devil, who 
 overreached himself in the transaction and thereby lost his 
 1 See above, pp. 160/. and pp. 162/. 
 
246 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 right to the death of all men. 1 The same view, along with 
 others, appears in Augustine, and was current down to 
 Anselm's day. Partial anticipations of Anselm's theory 
 may be recognised in Augustine and especially in Gregory 
 the Great, but the more immediate premises were the pre- 
 dominating conception of the death of Christ as a sacrifice 
 to God, associated as it was with the sacrifice of the Mass, 
 and the belief that satisfaction is indispensable to the remis- 
 sion of sins, which, with the related ideas of debt and desert, 
 was firmly established in the mediaeval practice and theory 
 of penitence. The argument of Anselm's " Cur deus homo " 
 may be briefly summarised as follows: 
 
 Every rational creature owes to God complete conformity to his will. 
 If man does not render this obedience, he robs God of the honour that 
 is his due. This is the nature of sin, and so long as man does not pay 
 to God what he has robbed him of he abides in sin. Nor is it sufficient 
 merely to restore what he withheld; as amends for the dishonour done 
 to God man must return more than he took away. This is the satis- 
 faction which every sinner is bound to make to God. God cannot ig- 
 nore the offence, for that would subvert the moral order of the world 
 by doing away the difference between the righteous and sinners, and 
 contravene the law of retribution under which by divine ordinance 
 man and his deeds lie. 
 
 Sin demands, therefore, either punishment or satisfaction. But if 
 God should punish man as his sin deserves, it would frustrate his pur- 
 pose in the creation of mankind. 2 Nor can man make adequate satis- 
 faction; first, because he can never do more than it is his duty to do, 
 and, second, because the dishonour done to God by his defection re- 
 quires amends beyond human measure. The whole world is no equiva- 
 lent for the smallest disobedience against God, and a satisfaction 
 adequate to man's sin must be greater than all in the universe that is 
 not God. 
 
 Such a satisfaction God alone can make, while, as a satisfaction for 
 men's sins, it must be made by a man. He who is to make the satis- 
 faction must therefore be at once perfect God and perfect man. Ac- 
 
 1 This resulted from a combination of New Testament passages in 
 which the death of Christ is spoken of as a ransom (e. g., Mark 10, 45) 
 with 1 Cor. 2, 8. 
 
 2 Which was, according to Anselm, to replace with human beings the 
 number of the angels who fell. 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 247 
 
 cordingly, by the birth from the Virgin, God took unto himself a sinless 
 man, in a union in which the integrity of neither nature is impaired. 
 This God-man rendered to God the perfect obedience he owed, and 
 freely offered to the Father the life which he had not forfeited — "tarn 
 pretiosam vitam, immo seipsum, tantam scilicet personam tarda voluntate 
 dedit " — thus giving to God something incomparably greater than aught 
 that is not God, and sufficient to make good all the debts of the human 
 race. Such a gift could not go unrequited; and, needing nothing for 
 himself, Christ made over the recompense to men, that they may share 
 in his merit, that the debt they have incurred by sin may be cancelled, 
 and the grace which on account of their sins they lack may be con- 
 ferred upon them. 
 
 The pivotal points in the theory are that without satis- 
 faction there is no remission of sins, and that, as an offence 
 against God's honour, 1 sin demands such immeasurable 
 amends as could be made only by the death of the God- 
 man, the merits of which are transferred to men. The 
 argument is conducted with notable logical acumen, and 
 the form of dialogue gives the author opportunity to discuss 
 various objections which may be raised against the theory. 
 Most of the schoolmen adopted the Anselmic doctrine. In 
 the form in which it was put by Aquinas it became an article 
 of Catholic orthodoxy, and — what in view of its premises 
 and implications is more remarkable — a central dogma of 
 Protestant orthodoxy as well. In regard to the satisfaction 
 which the sinner himself makes in penance, Aquinas teaches 
 that it suffices, not of itself, but because God accepts it; 
 "and since everything imperfect supposes a perfect by 
 which it is sustained, every satisfaction made by a mere 
 man derives its efficacy from the satisfaction of Christ" — a 
 not unimportant supplement to the theory of penitence. 
 
 The only other mediaeval theory of the atonement that 
 requires notice, rather as an anticipation of some modern 
 opinions than for its immediate influence, is that of Abelard 
 (d. 1142). Developing the idea of Paul in Romans 5, 8/. — 
 an idea which was of great significance to Augustine — he 
 
 1 Offences against honour are great in proportion to the dignity of 
 the offended party. 
 
248 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 taught that the revelation of the love of God in the death 
 of Christ inspires in men the love which makes them sons of 
 God. Abelard finds in this effect not alone a psychological 
 explanation of justification (in the Catholic sense), but the 
 rationale of the divine plan of salvation. He speaks indeed 
 the language of Scripture and of the church — Christ offered 
 himself as a sacrifice to God; in his death he bore the pun- 
 ishment of men's sins — but he carries this thought no fur- 
 ther, and does not, like Anselm, conceive the death of 
 Christ as a necessary satisfaction to God. "Our redemp- 
 tion is that supreme love in us, through the suffering of 
 Christ, which not only delivers us from the bondage of sin, 
 but gains for us the true freedom of the sons of God." 
 
 So long as the empire was pagan the government seldom 
 interfered in the domestic affairs of the church; but when 
 Christianity became the religion of the empire the imperial 
 autocrat ruled the church as sovereignly as he ruled the 
 state. The emperors called general councils; appointed the 
 presiding bishop; openly, or from behind the scenes, deter- 
 mined their action in matters of dogma as well as of admin- 
 istration and discipline, and enforced their decisions. They 
 issued doctrinal formulas in their own name, and even took 
 it upon them to pronounce the teaching of great theologians 
 heretical. They named, transferred, and removed bishops 
 and patriarchs with at most a "pro forma respect to canonical 
 procedure. This supremacy of the state over the church 
 was taken as a matter of course, and, however great the 
 dissatisfaction with particular acts, the right of the emperor 
 over the church, by virtue of his headship in the state, was 
 not contested. 
 
 The West was not so immediately under the eye and con- 
 trol of the autocrat in Constantinople; in the age of the bar- 
 barian invasions it was for a long time left to its own 
 resources. But when the imperial power in Italy was 
 restored in 536, Justinian resumed the sovereignty in eccle- 
 siastical as in civil affairs. A pope who had been duly 
 elected by the clergy, people, and soldiers of Rome, in joint 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 249 
 
 congregation at the Lateran, could not be consecrated with- 
 out the mandate of the emperor in Constantinople or his 
 representative, the exarch in Ravenna; and this continued 
 the law till the fall of the exarchate in 751. 
 
 The ideas of church and state in the Middle Ages were 
 profoundly influenced by Augustine's "De Civitate Dei," a 
 work which embodies his ripest thought and is the crown of 
 his literary achievements, a Christian counterpart to the 
 Republic of Plato. Two states stand over against each 
 other, a heavenly and an earthly. Cain, the builder of the 
 first city, is the founder of the civitas terrena, as his brother 
 Seth is of the ccelestis. Two diametrically opposite affec- 
 tions created and characterise them: self-love reaching to 
 contempt of God, the earthly; love of God even to contempt 
 of self, the heavenly. The earthly state had its origin in 
 violence. In it selfishness reigns, and the conflict of merely 
 self-regarding aims would make it no better than one great 
 latrocinium, did not self-interest itself discover the necessity 
 of keeping order and protecting men against one another. 
 Thus, without change in its nature, the state undertakes to 
 maintain the peace, and achieves an imperfect kind of 
 justice. 
 
 The typical representatives of the civitas terrena are Baby- 
 lon and ancient Rome, while the calestis is represented be- 
 fore Christ by the Jews, and now by the Christian church. 
 The heavenly state is, however, not to be identified with the 
 actual church; it is an ideal commonwealth which numbers 
 among its citizens those who have gone before and those 
 who shall come after, as well as those now on earth. And 
 as in this respect it is wider than the actual church, so in 
 another it is narrower, for it includes only the elect who are 
 predestinated to reign with God. As in the old dispensa- 
 tion there were in the Jewish church many reprobate, so it 
 is now in the Christian church; and these, notwithstanding 
 their external relation to the church and its sacraments, 
 belong to the civitas terrena. Inasmuch as there is no cer- 
 tain sign by which the elect are distinguished from the 
 
250 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 reprobate, there is thus — to use the language of a later time 
 — a church invisible within the visible church. 
 
 The heathen empire persecuting the church was the em- 
 bodiment of the kingdom of this world in its opposition to 
 the kingdom of God. But in Augustine's time, when the ru- 
 lers were Christians, when Christianity was the religion of the 
 state, and the laws had in many points been amended and 
 supplemented to accord with Christian standards, the Ro- 
 man Empire could no longer be identified outright with ,the 
 civitas terrena; all the less because, rationalising the material 
 chiliastic expectations of the early church, Augustine saw in 
 the triumph of Christianity in the empire the beginning of 
 the millennium, the reign of Christ on earth. An analogy 
 was again suggested to him by the Jewish economy, where 
 the theocratic state (a civitas terrena) was a shadow of the 
 civitas Dei, in which alone its significance lay, and which it 
 served. So now, in Christian times, rulers who employ 
 their power to promote the widest extension of the worship 
 of God, thus making their power the servant of the divine 
 majesty, may be citizens of the commonwealth of God. 
 
 The Catholic Church and the Christian Empire were not 
 for Augustine the (ideal) civitas Dei and civitas terrena, but 
 they were, so to speak, their historical incorporations, and 
 it was inevitable that in minds less imbued with Platonic 
 idealism this distinction should be effaced and the concep- 
 tion simplified by identifying the civitas Dei with the church. 
 Augustine himself, when he writes as a practical church- 
 man, is not scrupulous to observe his own distinction. The 
 common idea of the church as an institution in which those 
 who hold its faith, receive its efficacious sacraments, and 
 die in its communion are saved, neutralised the Augustinian 
 doctrine which limited salvation to an unrecognisable con- 
 gregation of the predestinated within the church, even 
 among those who accepted it. Thus, Gregory the Great, 
 while reaffirming Augustine's definitions, asserts that " every 
 one knows that the holy church is the city of the Lord," and 
 proceeds to the application, the earthly power (the state) 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 251 
 
 is bound to serve the church. A corollary of Augustine's 
 theory which had a great influence on the political thinking 
 of the Middle Ages was that, as there was on earth but one 
 embodiment of the celestial commonwealth, the Catholic 
 Church, so there could be but one of the terrestrial, the 
 Roman Empire. 
 
 The struggle of the church, first for independence of the 
 civil powers and then for supremacy over them, may be 
 called the leading motive of mediaeval history. In the 
 course of this conflict not only was the monarchical cen- 
 tralisation of ecclesiastical power in the hands of the popes 
 brought to consummation, but a doctrine of the supreme 
 authority, by divine right, of the popes over political rulers 
 was formulated, to which the Catholic church has consis- 
 tently adhered. 
 
 The new era which began with the Carolingian kingdom 
 opened with an auspicious harmony between the two powers. 
 The pope gave his sanction beforehand to the deposition of 
 the last of the Merovingian puppet kings, and the elevation 
 of Pippin to succeed him — it was better that the name of 
 king should be borne by him who had the royal power than 
 by him who had none. Pippin was accordingly acclaimed 
 at Soissons, and anointed king by Boniface (751), and sub- 
 sequently by Pope Stephen II himself. On his part Pippin 
 came to the help of the pope against the Lombards, who 
 had subdued the exarchate, 1 and, having recovered the con- 
 quered territory, bestowed it upon the pope, thus laying the 
 foundation of the temporal power of the papacy, which was 
 confirmed and enlarged by Pippin's son and successor, 
 Charles the Great, after the overthrow of the Lombard 
 kingdom in 774. 
 
 The coronation of Charles by Pope Leo III in St. Peter's 
 on Christmas Day, 800 A. D., was, in the minds of the par- 
 ticipants and of the people who acclaimed him Augustus 
 and Emperor of the Romans, the revival of an independent 
 
 1 The parts of Italy which were ruled in the name of the emperors in 
 Constantinople, with Ravenna as the capital. 
 
252 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Roman Empire of the West. In later times the coronation 
 of the emperor by the pope was interpreted as a demon- 
 stration of the sovereignty of the spiritual power over the 
 temporal: in the exercise of his divine right the pope had 
 taken the empire from the Greeks and bestowed it upon 
 the Frankish king. Contemporaries did not attach such a 
 significance or deduce such consequences from the act. 
 The precedent was nevertheless momentous. The anoint- 
 ing of kings, after Old Testament example, was a consecra- 
 tion which lent a religious sanction to the succession, or 
 upon occasion to usurpation; the coronation of an emperor 
 by the pope came more and more to be regarded as a con- 
 firmation of the election by the princes. 
 
 The immediate result, however, was that the new rulers 
 exercised over the election of popes a control like that 
 which had been exercised by the emperors in Constanti- 
 nople. The election by the clergy and people of Rome was 
 subject to the confirmation of the emperor, represented by 
 his ambassador (missus), who from 824 permanently resided 
 in the city. In his own kingdom Charles, like his prede- 
 cessors, appointed bishops as of royal prerogative, convoked 
 synods and presided at them, issued in capitularies laws for 
 the national church, and controlled its discipline by means 
 of his missi. In the controversy over images the Frankish 
 church, as has been noted, had a mind of its own, and did 
 not hesitate to pass censure on Pope Adrian. The closer 
 relations of the Carolingians with the Roman Church, which 
 led among other things to the introduction of the Roman 
 liturgy in their domains, were not allowed in any way to 
 infringe on the autonomy of the Frankish church or the 
 prerogative of the Frankish king. In Italy itself Charles 
 assumed the same authority in ecclesiastical affairs as in 
 his own kingdom; his missi exercised oversight even over 
 papal officials, heard complaints, and entertained appeals. 
 He himself, before his coronation as emperor, sat in judg- 
 ment on the charges brought against Pope Leo by his 
 enemies. 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 25-3 
 
 Under the weaker hands of Charles's successors the church 
 strove to emancipate itself from this tutelage, and Nicho- 
 las I, one of the great figures in the history of the papacy, 
 vigorously upheld the independence of the church, resist- 
 ing all interference of the civil powers in ecclesiastical 
 affairs. In the church itself he asserted the supreme author- 
 ity of the Roman see by virtue of the primacy of Peter; all 
 the rights of bishops and councils are derived from the 
 powers conferred on him by Christ. In the exercise of this 
 authority Nicholas annulled the acts of synods, deposed 
 archbishops, and humbled the most powerful and imperious 
 of Frankish prelates, Hinckmar of Rheims. In pronouncing 
 illegitimate a synod which Hinckmar as metropolitan had 
 convened according to custom, Nicholas laid down the rule, 
 so often cited in later times: "No one has the right to con- 
 voke a general council without the consent of the pope." 
 
 With the revival of the empire, a century later, the Ottos 
 made and unmade popes at their will; 1 their successors left 
 Italy to itself and the papacy became for a time an appanage 
 of the counts of Tusculum. Henry III delivered the church 
 from the scandal of three popes at once in Rome itself by 
 procuring the deposition or resignation of all three, and 
 caused his own nominee, a German bishop, to be elected to 
 the vacant see (1046). The two following popes were made 
 in the same way. With them began an epoch of reform in 
 the church in the spirit of the movement which had its 
 origin in the monastic reforms at Cluny in the preceding 
 century. 
 
 The reformers saw one of the chief causes of the lamenta- 
 ble state of the church in its dependence on the civil power, 
 and one of their first aims was to secure the independence 
 of the papacy by taking the papal elections out of the con- 
 trol either of Roman factions or the German emperor. To 
 accomplish this, the choice of a pope was committed by the 
 
 1 Otto I invaded Italy in defence of the pope, and was crowned em- 
 peror in 962. He confirmed the pope in the possession of his temporal 
 power and enlarged the territories subject to him. 
 
254 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Lateran synod in 1059, under Nicholas II, to the cardinals, 
 primarily the cardinal bishops; 1 leaving to the other clergy 
 and the people of Rome only the formality of assent. The 
 appointment to the cardinalate in this period of men of dif- 
 ferent nations not only made that body more truly repre- 
 sentative of the whole church but gave the reforming party 
 a predominant influence in the curia. The synod of 1059 
 also made stringent decrees against the two inveterate evils, 
 clerical concubinage and the procuring of ordination or pro- 
 motion in the church for money. Finally, it forbade any 
 cleric to get a church through laymen in any way, whether 
 for a price or gratis. 
 
 This decree was meant to strike at the root of lay domina- 
 tion over the church, and the attempt to force this reform 
 inevitably brought the church into conflict with the civil 
 power. Many of the bishoprics and abbeys had large 
 landed possessions, bestowed on them by the piety of rulers 
 and nobles, which under the feudal system the bishops and 
 abbots held as feoffs from their lords, for which they were 
 bound to do homage, pay tallage, furnish a quota of armed 
 retainers, and even to follow their liege to war. In Ger- 
 many the ecclesiastical vassals were a main support of the 
 king against the more independent dukes and lesser nobility. 
 Ecclesiastical posts were frequently conferred for personal 
 and political reasons on religiously unworthy persons; they 
 were often simply sold — of course under less vulgar names. 
 The bishops in turn sold preferment to benefices and church 
 dignities. Many abbacies were bestowed in commendam on 
 laymen, who enjoyed the revenues without concern for the 
 purposes of the foundation, or they were similarly turned 
 
 1 Cardinal bishops are the bishops of certain suburban churches in the 
 immediate vicinity of Rome (since the eighth century, seven in num- 
 ber), who assisted the pope in his ritual functions, and constituted a 
 kind of permanent synod. Cardinal priests were the priests serving 
 certain principal ("cardinal") churches in the city of Rome. The class 
 of cardinal deacons grew out of the ancient division of the city into 
 districts for the administration of charity, which in time came to have 
 their centre in a particular church in the district. 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 255 
 
 over to bishops, whose wealth was thus augmented by the 
 impoverishment of the monasteries. The protection of lay 
 patrons or feudal lords often enabled the clergy to snap 
 their fingers at the authority of their ecclesiastical superiors 
 in their efforts to enforce canonical discipline. Laymen 
 who had built or endowed churches or monasteries on their 
 own lands retained the right of patronage, and followed the 
 example set them from above in disposing of the positions 
 in their gift. 
 
 The reformers saw only one way to remedy these evils, 
 namely, to make an end of the system of lay investiture, 
 root and branch. It was accordingly decreed that no cleric 
 should receive the investiture of a bishopric, abbacy, or 
 church from the hand of emperor, king, or any lay person 
 whatsoever. Such investiture is declared to be null and void, 
 and both the secular ruler who confers it and the cleric who 
 receives it incur excommunication ipso facto. Vacancies in 
 bishoprics are to be filled by canonical elections, at which 
 the clergy and people choose their pastor under the direc- 
 tion and with the consent of the metropolitan or of an 
 episcopal visitor appointed by the Apostolic See. 
 
 This effort to do away with lay investiture and make a 
 reality of canonical election encountered opposition not 
 only in Germany, but in France and England. The entan- 
 glement of the church in the feudal system was too complete 
 and of too long standing to permit its cutting itself loose by 
 its own fiat. At one moment, later in the conflict, it was 
 seriously proposed by a pope that the church should surren- 
 der all the lands, rights, and privileges it held from the 
 crown, the emperor agreeing on his part to give up the right 
 of investiture. The independence of the church would thus 
 have been purchased at the price of its worldly power and 
 possessions. Such a solution was as impracticable from the 
 one side as from the other, and the plan was quickly dropped. 
 But if the church retained its possessions, bishops and abbots 
 would have to continue to be invested with them in custo- 
 mary feudal fashion, and the sovereigns would continue to 
 
256 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 determine on whom they would confer the office with the 
 feoff. A compromise, based on a distinction between the 
 political and the ecclesiastical character of the bishop, was 
 arrived at in the Concordat of Worms (1122), in which the 
 free canonical election of bishops, absque simonia et aliqua 
 violentia, was promised by the emperor, but they must be 
 held in his presence or that of his representative. The 
 emperor gave up the form of investiture by ring and staff, the 
 insignia of the spiritual office, by which he seemed to confer 
 the episcopate, and invested with the temporalities by touch- 
 ing the newly chosen bishop with his sceptre, the symbol of 
 temporal rule. In Germany the enfeoffment must precede 
 the consecration. The rights of both church and state 
 seemed thus to be safeguarded, but manifestly the emperor 
 was left a very effective way of excluding candidates who 
 did not please him. 
 
 In the strife over investitures the larger issue of supremacy 
 inevitably emerged, and Gregory VII developed to its ut- 
 most consequence the principle that the church is above 
 the state, and that the pope as the head of the church has 
 by divine right supreme power not only in the church, but 
 a fortiori over secular rulers, even the highest. He claimed 
 authority to dethrone sovereigns who did not obey the 
 church and to release their subjects from their allegiance, 
 and enforced his sentence by excommunication, and by the 
 new and tremendous weapon of the interdict, which sus- 
 pended public worship, the administration of the sacra- 
 ments, and funereal rites in the territories subject to the 
 recalcitrant prince. In the exercise of this power he de- 
 clared Henry IV deprived of his royal rights in Germany 
 and Italy, and all Christians released from any oath they 
 had made or might make to him; and, favoured by the 
 political conjuncture in Germany, he compelled Henry to 
 go to Canossa. The picture of the king in penitential garb, 
 presenting himself barefoot in the snow at the gate of the 
 castle on three successive days, seeking admission to the 
 presence of the pope, impresses the imagination not merely 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 257 
 
 by the dramatic fact but by its symbolical significance. 
 But it had its reverse. Henry answered a fresh excom- 
 munication by causing synods at Mainz and Brixen to pro- 
 nounce the deposition of the pope, and a new pope, Clem- 
 ent III, to be chosen. Gregory died at Salerno, where he 
 had taken refuge on Norman territory, a few months after 
 Henry's pope had crowned his master emperor in Rome. 
 His last words were, " I have loved righteousness and hated 
 iniquity, therefore I die in exile." 
 
 The ideas of Augustine's "Civitas Dei" are evident in 
 Gregory's conception of the relation of church and state. 
 The origin and nature of earthly government is thus set 
 forth: "Who can be ignorant that kings and dukes started 
 with men who, knowing not God, prompted by the ruler of 
 this world, the devil, by arrogance, robbery, perfidy, mur- 
 der, and almost all crimes, with blind lust of power and 
 intolerable presumption, assumed to lord it over men their 
 peers." The contemporary factor in Gregory's thinking is 
 the influence of feudal ideas. As in the feudal kingdom all 
 power and authority derived directly or mediately from the 
 king, so in the ecclesiastical hierarchy from the pope. The 
 oath which Gregory required of the metropolitans corre- 
 sponded to the vassal's oath of fealty to the king; the con- 
 ferring of the pallium was a form of ecclesiastical investi- 
 ture; bishops took an oath of submission to their metro- 
 politans. Similarly in the political sphere. Once the prin- 
 ciple admitted that the sacerdotium has precedence over the 
 imperium, and it follows not only that "the priests of Christ 
 are the fathers and masters of kings and princes and of all 
 the faithful," but, according to feudal notions, that what- 
 ever rights the empire had were conferred on it by the 
 church. The coronation of kings and emperors was then 
 not merely a religious consecration but a kind of investiture. 
 Gregory draws this consequence: "Those whom the Holy 
 Church, of its own motion, with deliberate intention, calls 
 to reign or empire, not for fleeting glory but for the welfare 
 of many, should be humbly obedient." Gregory's ideal was 
 
258 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 a feudally organised theocracy, in which the pope, as the 
 vicar of God, was suzerain. 
 
 The emperors naturally entertained quite different no- 
 tions of the way God intended the world to be governed. 
 When, in 1157, Pope Hadrian IV reminded Frederick I, 
 Barbarossa, of the gratitude he owed the Roman Church 
 for conferring on him the imperial crown, and held out to 
 him the prospect of larger "beneficia," the emperor bluntly 
 replied: "Inasmuch as our royal and imperial power is 
 derived, through election by the princes, from God alone, 
 who by the suffering of Christ his Son subjected the world 
 to be ruled by the necessary two swords, and since the 
 Apostle Peter taught the world this doctrine, 'Fear God, 
 honour the king/ whoever says that we have received the 
 imperial power pro beneficio 1 from the pope contravenes the 
 divine institutions and the teaching of Peter, and is guilty 
 of falsehood." 
 
 The climax of papal power was reached under Inno- 
 cent III (1198-1216). In the church he achieved the con- 
 centration of power in the hands of the pope which corre- 
 sponded to the autocratic idea of the office. It was a corol- 
 lary of this idea that the function of the bishops was to 
 assist the pope in the administration of the church: "He 
 has called them to help him by taking a part of his care, 
 that thus the burden of his so great charge may be the 
 better borne through subsidiary agencies." The right to 
 name bishops and abbots, to translate bishops, and to de- 
 pose them is, from these premises, indisputable. 
 
 Innocent III also claimed the right to judge of the fitness 
 of the king whom the princes had chosen, and in disputed 
 elections to decide between the claimants, basing his right 
 on the transference of the empire from the Greeks to the 
 Occidentals by Pope Leo III, and on the fact that only the 
 pope could crown an emperor. He exercised this right in 
 behalf of Otto IV against Philip of Swabia; and when Otto 
 failed to keep his impossible promises, crowned Frederick II 
 1 Taking the term in its feudal sense, "as a feoff." 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 259 
 
 in his stead. Nor was it in the affairs of the empire alone 
 that he thus intervened. Philip Augustus of France, Peter 
 of Aragon, Alfonso IX of Leon, Sancho of Portugal, Ladis- 
 laus of Poland, were all forced to submit to his will. The 
 English king John, who declined to accept an archbishop 
 of Canterbury named by the pope, was brought to terms by 
 the threat of a crusade, and consented to hold England and 
 Ireland as a feoff from the Holy See and pay an annual trib- 
 ute for them; while in the conflict between John and the 
 barons Innocent pronounced the Magna Charta null and 
 void, and forbade the king to observe it or the barons to 
 enforce it under pain of excommunication. "The Lord left 
 to Peter not only the whole church but the whole world 
 to govern" — this was Innocent's doctrine, and he did his 
 best to live up to it. His next successors followed in his 
 footsteps, and in their struggle with the empire accomplished 
 the ruin of the house of Hohenstauffen. 
 
 In the second half of the thirteenth century there were 
 in the course of fifty years no less than fourteen popes; and 
 even if they had been men of greater mark than they were, 
 the brevity of their tenure of power of itself would have 
 prevented them from sustaining the papacy at the height 
 which it had reached under Innocent III. Boniface VIII 
 (1294-1303), a man of great ability and towering ambition, 
 tried to reclaim the supremacy which Innocent had exer- 
 cised, but the times had changed, and Boniface failed where 
 his predecessor had succeeded. France, under Philip the 
 Fair, and England, under Edward I, were altogether differ- 
 ent nations to deal with from the loose structure of the 
 German Empire. 
 
 The first issue was the right of the state to tax the prop- 
 erty of the church and of clerical persons, a right which 
 the pope claimed for himself alone. Boniface, under pen- 
 alty of excommunication, forbade emperors, kings, and 
 nobles of every rank, to impose under any name a tax or 
 tribute upon the church or to lay hands on its property, 
 and prohibited clerics of every rank from agreeing to pay 
 
260 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 taxes or making contributions to the state, or keeping any 
 promises they might have made to that effect. Edward I 
 ignored the bull; Philip answered it by forbidding gold and 
 silver to be exported from his kingdom, thus cutting off at a 
 stroke a large part of the papal revenue. A few years later 
 the pope summoned the French prelates to Rome to delib- 
 erate on reforms in the French church, and cited the king 
 to appear there in person, haughtily reminding him that a 
 king of France was bound to obey the pope. The states- 
 general supported the king, and forbade the French bishops 
 attending the council. A school of jurists had grown up in 
 France, who from a revived study of the civil law derived 
 a doctrine of the supremacy of the state with which the 
 papal claims were irreconcilable. The church in a nation, 
 they held, was subject to its authority; its property was 
 subject to taxation and must bear its part in the burdens of 
 the state; clerical persons were subject to the jurisdiction 
 of the civil courts in civil and criminal causes. The curial- 
 ist lawyers and the scholastic theologians stoutly maintained 
 the contrary doctrine. 
 
 The conflict produced the explicit and authoritative defi- 
 nition of the supremacy of the church over all civil powers 
 in the bull of Boniface VIII, "Unam Sanctam Ecclesiam 
 Catholicam" (1302). The two swords (Luke 22, 38), the 
 spiritual and the temporal authority, were both committed 
 by Christ to the church, the one to be used by it, the other 
 to be wielded for it and at its bidding by secular rulers. 
 The spiritual power has to institute the earthly, and to 
 judge it if it goes astray; the supreme spiritual power, the 
 pope, is subject to no human judgment, but to God's only. 
 "He who resists this power thus ordained by God resists 
 the ordinance of God." "This authority, although it is 
 given to a man and exercised by a man, is not a human but 
 a divine power, given by the mouth of God to Peter for 
 himself and his successors in Christ. . . . Wherefore we 
 declare, affirm, define, and pronounce that to be subject to 
 the Roman pontiff is unqualifiedly necessary unto salvation 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 261 
 
 for every human creature." Such guidance must be in- 
 errant; and Thomas Aquinas, who in the preceding genera- 
 tion taught the same doctrine of necessary subjection to 
 the pontiff, joined with it papal infallibility, which was 
 after all only an adaptation of the old tradition that Christ 
 had promised that the Roman church should never err in 
 doctrine. 
 
 The bull "Unam Sanctam" formulated unsurpassably the 
 doctrine of papal absolutism. But this extreme assertion 
 of papal prerogative overstrained the bow. The kingdoms 
 of Europe, strong in national spirit and national pride, had 
 no disposition to bow submissively to a foreign dominion. 
 Benedict XI had to recede from the intransigeant attitude 
 Boniface had taken in the conflict with France, and after 
 his brief reign (1303-'04) the French party prevailed in the 
 conclave and elected the archbishop of Bordeaux, who 
 ascended the throne as Clement V (1305-'14). The new 
 pope was crowned at Lyons, and in 1309 permanently fixed 
 his residence in Avignon, an enclave in French territory, 
 where he and his successors were dependent on French sup- 
 port and subservient to French interests. 
 
 The whole theory on which the papal claim to temporal 
 as well as spiritual autocracy was based was challenged 
 from more than one side. Dante, in his "De Monarchia," 
 held that the imperial power is derived from the supremacy 
 of the Romans over the whole world, which was given them 
 directly by God and is to exist to the end of the world, 
 assuring the temporal well-being of men, as their spiritual 
 well-being is dependent upon the pope. The conflict be- 
 tween the Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian and Pope John 
 XXII produced the most important contribution to the 
 literature of the controversy, the " Defensor Pacis " of Mar- 
 silius of Padua and John of Jandun, which discusses the 
 origin and end of the state and the relations of the secular 
 and sacerdotal powers, and deduces from this exposition a 
 series of conclusions of a much more radical character. 
 Not only is the jurisdiction of the civil ruler over ecclesias- 
 
262 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tical persons and his control in ecclesiastical affairs set forth 
 with unflinching consequence, but the basis of the pontifical 
 claims in the primacy of Peter is flatly denied. All bishops 
 are of equal authority derived directly from Christ; there is 
 no warrant for the claim that one of them is the superior of 
 others in spiritual or temporal matters. To define what is 
 of faith and to decide doubtful points in the divine law only 
 a general council of the faithful is competent; no partial 
 assembly or individual of whatever rank has such power. 
 Similarly, only a council can make acts which are not pro- 
 hibited by divine law offences at ecclesiastical law. From 
 the commandments and prohibitions of the New Testament 
 no human being can dispense men. Only the lawmaking 
 power in a Christian state can order the meeting of a gen- 
 eral or local council, and only a council so convened is legiti- 
 mate. In short, the power .of the pope to give law to the 
 church in matters of faith and morals or in discipline, with 
 the consequent power of dispensation, and his jurisdiction 
 over the church at large, as well as the supremacy of the 
 sacerdotal over the civil power — one may say, the whole 
 mediaeval theory of the papacy — was categorically re- 
 jected. 
 
 The scholastic theologian Occam, 1 involved in the con- 
 flict of the strict Franciscans with the same pope, John 
 XXII, also took refuge with Ludwig the Bavarian, and 
 employed his pen in defence of the emperor's side against 
 the pope. Applying the principle of the sole authority of 
 Scripture, he denied in Mo the papal claim to rule over 
 rulers: the highest civil power, the empire, and the highest 
 spiritual power, the church, are in their respective spheres 
 independent and of equal authority. On similar grounds 
 he denied the infallibility of the pope in matters of doc- 
 trine, - the decision of John XXII concerning the poverty of 
 Christ and his disciples was in his eyes flatly against the 
 Scripture and a glaring instance of papal fallibility. 
 
 The practical assertion of the principle that the supreme 
 1 See below, pp. 275/. 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 263 
 
 authority in the church is not vested in the Roman pontiff, 
 but in a general council, was not brought about by contro- 
 versial writings like the "Defensor Paris," but by the his- 
 tory of the church itself. The seventy years' captivity, as 
 the Romans called the Avignonese papacy, seemed to be 
 happily ended by the return of Gregory XI to Rome in 1377. 
 Upon his death in the following year an Italian pope, Ur- 
 ban VI, was elected to succeed him, but within four months 
 he had so alienated the cardinals that they declared the 
 election void on the ground that it had been made under 
 duress, and elected Cardinal Robert of Geneva, who took 
 the title Clement VII. Urban maintained himself in Rome; 
 Clement, after an unsuccessful attempt to oust his rival, 
 took up his residence in Avignon. For half a century, the 
 allegiance of the European nations was divided fairly equally 
 between two popes. The situation was not only a clamant 
 scandal to Christendom, but it doubled the burdens and 
 aggravated all the evils of the papal financial system. All 
 efforts to restore the unity of the church by the action of 
 the popes themselves proved futile, and at last the cardinals 
 of the two parties united to call a general council. This 
 council met at Pisa in 1409, and, asserting its right as rep- 
 resenting the church universal, deposed both popes on the 
 ground that they were in heresy against the unity of the 
 Catholic Church by the very fact that there were two of 
 them, and elected a new one. Since the deposed popes did 
 not recognise their deposition, the result was that the church 
 had three popes instead of two, and this triad was perpet- 
 uated by the election, in 1410, of John XXIII, as successor 
 to the Pisan pope. To put an end to this situation, the em- 
 peror Sigismund constrained John to convene a new general 
 council at Constance in 1414. 
 
 The Council of Constance affirmed its character and 
 authority with the utmost clearness: "This Holy Council 
 of Constance . . . declares that, being legitimately con- 
 vened in the Holy Spirit, constituting a general council and 
 representing the Catholic Church, it has its power immedi- 
 
264 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ately from Christ, and that every man of whatever station 
 or dignity, even the papal, is bound to obey it in those 
 things which pertain to faith and the extirpation of the 
 aforesaid schism and the reformation of the church in head 
 and members." 
 
 The claim of the council to represent the church was not 
 a mere phrase. In it sat not only bishops and mitred 
 abbots, but doctors of theology and of law from the univer- 
 sities, and delegates of civil rulers. Warned by the experi- 
 ence of Pisa, the council endeavoured to bring the popes to 
 resign, holding deposition over them as a last resort. All 
 obstacles being finally removed, a new pope, Martin V 
 (1417— '31), was chosen, under regulations laid down by 
 the council, by an electoral college composed of the cardinals 
 together with thirty other members of the council, six from 
 each of the participating nations. There was again at last 
 one universally acknowledged head of the church. Before 
 and after the election of Martin V there was much discus- 
 sion of reforms in the administration and discipline of the 
 church, and particularly in the papal fiscal system, but con- 
 flicting interests of nations, churchmen, and corporations 
 prevented harmony about the nature and extent of these 
 reforms. Some things were agreed upon and decreed by 
 the council, but it left the rest and most important to be 
 settled by concordats between the pope and the several 
 countries singly. 
 
 According to precedent and papal claims a council could 
 only be convoked by the pope, and experience had shown 
 that precisely at the times that a council was most needed 
 the pope was least inclined to call one. To remedy this 
 condition, the Council of Constance decreed that another 
 council should meet at the end of five years from its own 
 adjournment, a second seven years later, and thereafter 
 once every ten years. The pope and cardinals might, if 
 occasion arose, call a council in the interval, but they 
 had no authority to postpone the decennial meeting. Each 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 265 
 
 council, before its adjournment, was to appoint the place 
 of meeting for the next, in concurrence with the pope, or, in 
 default of his action, by its own decision. 
 ^ Provision seemed thus to be made for a regular succes- 
 sion of councils representing the whole church, and exercis- 
 ing in its name the supreme authority in doctrine and dis- 
 cipline which the popes had claimed for themselves. The 
 Council of Basel (1431-49) reaffirmed the decrees of Con- 
 stance concerning the independence and authority of general 
 councils, and replied to an attempt of the pope to dissolve 
 it by denying his power to do so without its consent. Hav- 
 ing no schism to claim its first attention, it was free to 
 devote its undivided efforts to projects of reform. The 
 council re-established the ancient rights of episcopal elec- 
 tion against papal reservations, which it expressly pro- 
 hibited, abolished some of the most obnoxious of the papal 
 taxes altogether and greatly limited others. Indeed, it 
 allowed its repugnance to taxation and its hostility toward 
 the reigning pope to carry it so far in this direction as to 
 deprive the curia of a revenue adequate to its legitimate 
 needs, and the longer it sat the greater extremities it seemed 
 inclined to go to. 
 
 A favourable opportunity for a diversion was given the 
 pope by the overtures of the Greeks. The Byzantine em- 
 peror John VII, Palaeologus, hard pressed by the Turks, 
 was willing to do almost anything to gain the support of 
 the West, and the pope conceived that the moment was 
 opportune for the reunion of the Eastern and Western 
 churches. He accordingly directed the council to remove 
 to Ferrara to meet the emperor and a great train of Greek 
 bishops who had come to Italy for the purpose. The ma- 
 jority of the council refused to obey this order, and con- 
 tinued its sessions at Basel. The pope's council was, how- 
 ever, opened at Ferrara, whence it was shortly transferred 
 to Florence. After long discussions on the ancient points of 
 controversy between the East and the West — the filioque in 
 
266 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the creed, 1 the doctrine of purgatory, the sacrifice of the 
 Mass, unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and the suprem- 
 acy of the pope — a formal basis of union was given out in 
 the form of a bull of Eugenius IV, "with the approval of 
 the General Council of Florence." The Greeks yielded on 
 all the disputed points, but with an explanation of the filio- 
 que which they could take in an orthodox sense. When the 
 terms of this plan of union were known in the East, the in- 
 dignation of the Greeks against their representatives at 
 Florence knew no bounds. The great majority, living under 
 Moslem dominion and therefore free to speak their whole 
 mind, denounced the surrender to the Latins, and many 
 of the bishops who had subscribed retracted. The West 
 did nothing to help the Greeks against the Turks; in 1453 
 Constantinople fell, and nothing more was heard of the 
 plan of union. 
 
 While the negotiations were going on at Florence, the 
 rump of the council at Basel forfeited the remnant of respect 
 and influence that was left it by pronouncing the deposition 
 of Pope Eugenius and electing Felix V, thus creating a new 
 but fortunately short-lived schism. With it the age of the 
 reforming councils came to an end, and the attempt to 
 substitute conciliar parliamentarism for papal monarchy. 
 
 In the second half of the fifteenth century a succession of 
 able popes, favoured by European political conditions, re- 
 stored the power and prestige of the papacy, which had 
 been so sadly shaken by the Avignonese captivity, the great 
 schism, and the arrogation of the councils. Under them, 
 also, Rome succeeded Florence as the centre of the Renais- 
 sance culture in art, architecture, and letters. Nicholas V, 
 founder of the Vatican Library, Pius II (1458-64), Sixtus IV 
 (1471-'84), and at the beginning of the following century, 
 
 1 In the Latin creeds the Spirit is said to proceed "from the Father 
 and the Son. As the creed said in the Mass purported to be the creed 
 of the Council of Nicsea, the Greeks denounced this addition as the 
 falsification of an oecumenical symbol, and rejected it as a plain con- 
 tradiction of the Gospel, which spoke only of the Spirit proceeding 
 from the Father. 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES 267 
 
 Julius II (1503-13), and Leo X (1513-21) are famous in 
 the history of the Renaissance as well as in that of the 
 papacy. They proved strong enough to reaffirm the 
 supremacy of the pope over the whole church, and over 
 councils, which derived their right from the pope alone. 
 The Fifth Lateran Council under Leo X unqualifiedly 
 asserted this doctrine, and renewed the declaration of the 
 bull "Unam Sanctam" that it is necessary to their salva- 
 tion that all Christians be subject to the Roman pontiff. 1 
 
 1 Bull, Pastor (Bternus, 1516. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Rise of Universities — The Schoolmen — Thomas Aquinas — Duns Scotus 
 — Systematisation of Theology; Aristotelianism — Nominalism — 
 Mysticism — Hugh of St. Victor, Bernard of Clairvaux — Eckhart 
 and His Disciples — Monastic Reforms — Military Orders — Fran- 
 ciscans and Dominicans — Sects : Waldensians, Albigenses, 
 Brethren of the Free Spirit — Joachim of Fiori and the Eternal 
 Gospel — Situation in England — Wycliffe and the Lollards — John 
 Hus and the Bohemians — The Italian Renaissance — Humanism 
 in Other Lands. 
 
 The new stirring of intellectual life which began in the 
 eleventh century manifested itself in a greatly quickened 
 interest in theological questions and the introduction of 
 new methods in the treatment of them. In Berengar's dis- 
 cussion of the Eucharist, Lanfranc not only condemned the 
 doctrine, but gave vent to his indignation that Berengar 
 defended his position by reasoning rather than tradition — 
 as if logic had anything to do with such matters ! But 
 Lanfranc's pupil, Anselm (d. 1109), was convinced that it 
 was possible by reason alone, without bringing in revelation 
 ©r the authority of the church, to demonstrate the existence 
 of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the necessity of the 
 incarnation — in short, all the principal doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity. In Abelard (d. 1142) the dialectic method took a 
 more critical turn. His "Sic et Non," proved that there is 
 no consensus of tradition to which appeal can be made as a 
 final authority. Following a method inaugurated by the 
 canonists, he brought the conflicting dicta of the Fathers 
 into categorical opposition, not to overthrow the principle 
 of authority, but to show that where doctors disagree, the 
 contradictions can only be resolved by dialectic and critical 
 
 268 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 269 
 
 methods. Employing the same methods constructively, he 
 was the first Western theologian to endeavour to cover the 
 wide field of systematic theology. What was original in his 
 system found little of favour in his own day or afterward, 
 but his method was generally adopted by his successors. 
 
 It was in this age that the first universities began to grow 
 out of the old cathedral schools and supersede them. The 
 transition was so gradual that exact dates are arbitrary. 
 Abelard studied and lectured in the cathedral school in 
 Paris, but not long after his death the community of recog- 
 nised scholars who held from the chancellor of the cathedral 
 the licentia docendi developed into the University of Paris. 
 Oxford followed at no long interval, and in the thirteenth 
 and fourteenth centuries universities were founded in most 
 of the chief cities of western Europe. To the most famous 
 of these, especially to Paris, students resorted by thousands 
 from far and wide. 
 
 The loose organisation — or, rather, lack of organisation — 
 of the universities favoured the independence of the teachers 
 and the variety of the teaching. There were no professors 
 appointed by a superior authority; every master who pos- 
 sessed the license to teach might establish himself in a uni- 
 versity and lecture to such students as his reputation drew 
 to hear him. Teachings which diverged too widely or too 
 noisily from orthodox opinion were subject to ecclesiastical 
 censure, but short of open conflict with the accepted doc- 
 trines of the church there was large liberty, and the teachers 
 made liberal use of it. 
 
 In the universities scholastic theology, which is the great- 
 est intellectual achievement of the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries, was developed. Abelard is usually taken to mark 
 the beginning of the movement, Thomas Aquinas its culmi- 
 nation; in the fourteenth century its decadence began. The 
 first stage was the application to theological questions of the 
 "modern dialectic," derived chiefly from the logical treatises 
 of Aristotle, of which the early schoolmen possessed only 
 incomplete translations; and the first theoretical question 
 
270 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 to breed contention was the nature of universals, a problem 
 which they found stated in Boethius's translation of Por- 
 phyry's Isagoge (Realism and Nominalism). The doctrines 
 of the church were now submitted to logical scrutiny. With 
 sophistical acumen the teachers raised factitious objections, 
 drew hair-splitting distinctions, and arrived at paradoxical 
 conclusions by formally unimpeachable syllogisms, keeping 
 clear of imputation of heresy the while by enouncing their 
 novelties as mere conjectures and plausible opinions (placita). 
 
 These are the garrulce ratiocinationes against which Peter 
 Lombard inveighs. In his own "Liber Sententiarum," the 
 most important work of the first period of scholasticism, 
 which treats systematically the chief loci of mediaeval the- 
 ology, he combines the traditional with the dialectic method. 
 The propositions are supported, the questions answered, by 
 testimonia from the Scriptures and the Fathers. Authori- 
 ties which seem to contradict his propositions or to conflict 
 with one another are reconciled by ingenious interpretations 
 or acute distinctions, by which means he arrives at a har- 
 mony between John of Damascus and Augustine on the 
 Trinity. To the proof from authority he adds rational 
 argument, and in resolving difficulties or refuting objections 
 shows himself an expert dialectician. On this side the in- 
 fluence of Abelard is manifest. The orderly disposition of 
 the Lombard's work, and especially the ample and pertinent 
 collection of authorities, admirably adapted it to use as a 
 text-book in theological lectures, and it came into general 
 use for this purpose; to the end of the scholastic age almost 
 every celebrated doctor lectured on the "Sentences," and 
 many commentaries on it were published. 
 
 A new epoch in scholastic theology opened when the school- 
 men became acquainted through translations, first from the 
 Arabic, later from the Greek, with the scientific and philo- 
 sophical writings of Aristotle, and with the works of Mos- 
 lem and Jewish Aristotelians, especially of Avicenna, Aver- 
 roes, and Maimonides. 1 A synod in 1209 and a papal legate 
 1 See pp. 89 f. and 453 ff. 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 271 
 
 in 1215 prohibited lectures in the University of Paris on 
 Aristotle's natural philosophy and metaphysics, permitting 
 only his logic; but this prohibition was soon disregarded, 
 and before a generation had passed the domination of Aris- 
 totle was firmly established. Philosophy now took its place 
 beside the mediaeval Trivium and Quadrivium of liberal arts 
 in the enlarged plan of university study under the Faculty 
 of Arts, through which students passed before taking up 
 professional studies in the three higher faculties (theology, 
 law, medicine). The great schoolmen lectured on Aristotle 
 as on the Scriptures and on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, 
 and the recognition of philosophy as an independent disci- 
 pline was favourable to a freer treatment of metaphysical 
 problems. 
 
 The first attempt to construct a complete system of the- 
 ology in the light of the new learning was the "Summa Uni- 
 versse Theologiae" of the English Franciscan, Alexander of 
 Hales (d. 1245), and his example was followed by all the 
 great masters to the end of the period. In his "Summa" 
 the scholastic method is fully developed, but the material 
 influence of Aristotle is comparatively small, as it is also in 
 his pupil Bonaventura (d. 1274). It is much greater in the 
 Dominicans, Albert of Bollstadt (d. 1280) and Thomas 
 Aquinas (d. 1274). The former deserved the honorific titles, 
 "the Great" and "Doctor Universalis" by the compre- 
 hensiveness of his erudition, in which he surpassed all the 
 scholars of his age. On the question of the relation of phi- 
 losophy to theology he held that philosophical problems 
 are to be treated as such, and not confused with those of 
 speculative theology. On the other hand, he was convinced 
 that, though philosophy may demonstrate the existence and 
 attributes of God and his relation to the universe, specifi- 
 cally Christian doctrines like the Trinity and the incarnation 
 are beyond its field; the naive confidence of the dialectic 
 theologians of the preceding century in the ability of reason 
 to discover, or at least to demonstrate, the truths of revela- 
 tion had been broken by philosophy. 
 
272 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Thoracis Aquinas (1225-74), the son of an Italian count, 
 studied under Albert at Cologne, and followed the master 
 to Paris and back to Cologne, where he began his own career 
 as a teacher. Besides Cologne and Paris, Thomas lectured 
 in Rome, Bologna, and Naples. His "Summa Theologiae" 
 is the supreme achievement of the scholastic theology; in- 
 deed, as a reasoned exposition of the whole body of Catholic 
 doctrine it has never been equalled. No man except Au- 
 gustine has been a greater power in European theology 
 than Aquinas. And not on theology in the narrower defi- 
 nition alone, but on philosophy, ethics, and political theory, 
 did he leave the permanent impress of his genius. 
 
 More even than in particulars, the influence of Aristotle 
 is seen in the structure of Aquinas's system, and above all in 
 the consistent intellectualism of his thinking. Theology, as 
 he conceives it, is a science which brings into an organic and 
 rational whole the knowledge of God which is attainable 
 by reason and that which — above reason but not contrary 
 to reason — is given by revelation. It is not a practical but 
 a theoretical science; knowledge of God is an end, not a 
 means. The precedence which he gives in ethics to the 
 dianoetic virtues over the practical has the authority of 
 Aristotle for it, as well as the tendency and tradition of 
 Catholic piety. This intellectualism is undoubtedly one of 
 the sources of his enduring power. 
 
 The Franciscans took a no less active part in the scholas- 
 tic movement than the Dominicans, but they kept closer to 
 the Augustinian-Platonic tradition. The great light of theo- 
 logical learning in the order was Johannes Duns Scotus 
 (d. 1308), who, educated at Oxford, taught chiefly in Paris 
 and Cologne. He was master of the Aristotelian learning 
 both on its formal and material sides, and of all the school- 
 men had the most critical head. His work is in considerable 
 part a running controversy with the writings of Aquinas, 
 much of whose reasoning he deems inconclusive. Duns 
 Scotus sets narrower limits to the competence of reason than 
 Aquinas: not only the superrational doctrines of the Trinity 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 273 
 
 and the incarnation, but the life of God, his reason, his will, 
 foreknowledge and foreordination, the immortality of the 
 human soul, the divine judgment, are not susceptible of 
 demonstration in a strict sense. Theology rests on the 
 authority of Scripture and the church, and the only cer- 
 tainty is that of faith. He is not inclined to allow philoso- 
 phy a voice in theological questions, assuredly not a decisive 
 voice. In his own philosophy he is more influenced than 
 Aquinas by the Arab Aristotelians, especially by Avicenna, 
 in whom there is a strong vein of Neoplatonism. 
 
 Scotus is in line with Augustinian tradition when, con- 
 trary to Aquinas, he gives the will precedence over the in- 
 tellect, puts action above contemplation, and conceives 
 theology as a practical, not a speculative, science. Corre- 
 spondingly, for Scotus, God is not essentially Pure Thought 
 but Absolute Will. It might be supposed that Scotus would 
 have deduced from this idea of God a strict determinism; 
 on the contrary, the primacy he ascribes to the will in man 
 leads him to affirm its freedom. The (timeless) divine pre- 
 destination is only in some inscrutable way the background 
 of man's action, whose fate is in his own hands. Thomas 
 Aquinas, on the other hand, combines philosophical deter- 
 minism with the Augustinian doctrine of predestination in a 
 way which from one point of view seems to go the whole 
 length with Augustine, while from another it was capable 
 of an interpretation more in accord with the common theo- 
 logical compromises. 
 
 General chapters of the Dominicans within a decade of 
 Aquinas's death adopted his works as the standard of the 
 order; the Franciscans accorded a similar pre-eminence to 
 Duns Scotus. Theologians who did not belong to either of 
 these orders addicted themselves to one system or the other, 
 and the controversies of Thomists and Scotists long con- 
 tinued to make much noise in the scholastic world. 
 
 If we should attempt in a few words to sum up the chief 
 results of the scholastic period, we should remark first the 
 systematisation of the whole body of Catholic theology, 
 
274 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 and the effort to give it throughout a rational, and as far 
 as possible a logically demonstrative character. A " Summa " 
 like that of Aquinas comprehended the fundamental doc- 
 trines which had been authoritatively defined by the an- 
 cient church through the councils, and by what may be called 
 the catholic consensus, together with those which belonged 
 more particularly to the tradition of the Western church, 
 and had in part been developed and formulated in the Middle 
 Ages and through the labours of the earlier schoolmen, such 
 as the doctrines of grace, the atonement, the number, na- 
 ture, and operation, of the sacraments, the doctrine of the 
 church and its relation to the state. The system of Catholic 
 theology was thus formally completed and its method per- 
 fected, though on many and important points there re- 
 mained differences upon which no authoritative decision 
 had yet been reached. 
 
 But there is something of even greater consequence than 
 all this. In the beginning of Christian theology the ancient 
 conception of the universe in its popular Platonic form with 
 a measure of Stoic admixture was naively assumed by 
 Christian thinkers, who, like Philo before them, interpreted 
 the Scriptures in this sense, and thus obtained for their 
 philosophy the authority of revelation. Origen, the founder 
 of a more scientific theology, was a Platonist, and in the 
 development of dogma in the fourth and fifth centuries the 
 Alexandrian (Platonic) school prevailed; its teachings be- 
 came orthodoxy, while theologians of Peripatetic leanings 
 were responsible for many heresies, including Arianism and 
 Nestorianism. Neoplatonism pervades the thinking of Au- 
 gustine, the master theologian of the Latin church; Diony- 
 sius, the Areopagite, also, whose influence not only on mys- 
 ticism but on theology was considerable, was a Neoplatonist. 
 The Western Middle Ages, with no access to the sources, 
 had their meagre knowledge of Greek philosophy chiefly 
 through Augustine. 
 
 The great schoolmen, on the other hand, adopted the 
 classical conception of the universe in its systematised Aris- 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 275 
 
 totelian form — its physics and astronomy, as well as its 
 metaphysics — and with few and partial exceptions accorded 
 to Aristotle in the field of science an authority hardly less 
 decisive than that which in other spheres they attributed to 
 revelation. They undertook to organise all the knowledge 
 of the universe— God, man, and nature— that is attainable 
 by observation and reason, together with that which is 
 given by revelation, Greek philosophy and Christian theol- 
 ogy, in one comprehensive, coherent, and rational system of 
 truth. Thus, for the first time, the antique conception of 
 the universe as a whole was incorporated in Christian doc- 
 trine. The church accepted the results, and eventually 
 came to endow them with the authority and finality of the 
 Christian religion, thus imposing upon itself in later centu- 
 ries the task of upholding the science of the ancients against 
 modern science — the Ptolemaic astronomy against the Cop- 
 ernican, for example. 
 
 A new turn was given to scholastic theology in the four- 
 teenth century by Occam (d. ca. 1349), a pupil of Duns 
 Scotus at Paris, where he also taught with much success. 
 On the question of universals he took a position contrary 
 to the variations of realism in the great schoolmen before 
 him: universal terms such as "man" are only conventional 
 signs for classes in which the mind groups for itself indi- 
 viduals. In thought, also, "man" is a sign — a natural 
 sign — which owes its universality to its indefiniteness. Our 
 intellectual and logical operations are carried on with such 
 counters. The theory is therefore called "nominalism." 
 Occam's nominalism involved a theory of knowledge, meta- 
 physical and psychological, which led him to deny the pos- 
 sibility of attaining certainty by the rational processes in 
 which his predecessors had such confidence. Not only can 
 the truths of religion not be demonstrated by reason; they 
 cannot even be proved to be rational — rather the contrary. 
 They are to be apprehended solely by faith, on the authority 
 of revelation; and if God in his inscrutable wisdom had 
 ordered that the opposite should be true and right, for ex- 
 
276 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ample, that pure selfishness should be meritorious, it would 
 have been so, reason notwithstanding. In the history of 
 thought epistemological scepticism has repeatedly succeeded 
 a period of bold speculation or confident dogmatism, or has 
 resulted from the deadlock of dogmatic systems, and it is 
 not strange that nominalism, or "modernism," as it was 
 also called, rapidly gained ground at the expense of the real- 
 istic schools, especially of the Scotists, from whom it sprang, 
 and for a century or more overshadowed them. 
 
 The twelfth century witnessed not only the rise of scho- 
 lastic theology but a great revival of mysticism, whose most 
 conspicuous representatives are Bernard of Clairvaux and 
 Hugh of St. Victor. Against Abelard and his kind, who, in 
 the elation of the new dialectic, thought to demonstrate 
 everything by reason, and thus reduced the mysteries of the 
 Christian religion to a shallow reasonableness, Bernard and 
 Hugh maintained that there is a knowing which is beyond 
 the discursive intelligence, truths that are above reason. 
 Such truths are to be accepted by faith on the authority of 
 Scripture and the church; but only by the mystical vision, 
 or intuition, is it possible for faith to be transformed into 
 knowledge. The soul rises to the height of immediate 
 knowledge by three stages, cogitatio, meditatio, contemplatio : 
 the last alone can give an invincible conviction of those 
 objects of faith which are above reason. The path to this 
 goal in Hugh is substantially Augustine's. In Richard of 
 St. Victor the Areopagite influence is stronger. The mys- 
 ticism of Bernard is distinguished by devotion to Jesus in 
 his divine humanity, and particularly in the humility of his 
 earthly life. He is the great exponent of a type of mysticism 
 in which Christ is the central figure — a mysticism more 
 specifically Christian and more churchly than the classic 
 systems. 
 
 These theologians combated a one-sided intellectualism; 
 but it would be a mistake to imagine that scholasticism and 
 mysticism were contradictory principles or even conflicting 
 tendencies in mediaeval thought. The mystical element in- 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 277 
 
 herited from Augustine and reinforced by Dionysius appears 
 in varying measure in all the great schoolmen, including 
 Aquinas; and on the other hand, the churchly mysticism of 
 the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries is all scholastic, and 
 the aberrations, so far as they have any ideas in them, are 
 equally so. 
 
 The ideals of the religious life which prevailed among 
 the Franciscans naturally inclined them to the type of mys- 
 tical piety represented by Bernard of Clairvaux; among the 
 "Spirituals" and their sectarian offshoots the influence of 
 Joachim of Fiori gave currency to pantheistic notions de- 
 rived from Eriugena, as well as to apocalyptic vagaries; the 
 addiction of the order to its great doctor, Duns Scotus, had 
 its consequences in the sphere of mystical theology also. 
 
 Especial interest attaches to a group of German mystics 
 of the fourteenth century belonging to the Dominican order, 
 among whom Eckhart, Tauler, and Suso are the outstand- 
 ing names. Eckhart (d. 1327), the theologian of the three, 
 was for several years professor of theology in Strassburg and 
 Cologne, and portions of his Latin writings brought to light 
 in recent times show that he was the author of a scholastic 
 theological treatise on a large scale, the introduction to 
 which, exhibiting its plan and illustrating its method, has 
 fortunately been preserved. As a Dominican, Eckhart 
 stands in the Thomist tradition of his order, but in what is 
 peculiar to him the influence of the Moslem philosopher 
 Avicenna is especially marked. His fundamental proposi- 
 tion, "esse est deus," leads him to consequences which, not 
 only in the rhetoric of his German sermons but in the Latin 
 of his scholastic writings, have a pantheistic sound, and 
 were gladly appropriated by pantheistic circles and sects. 
 They were impeached by the archbishop of Cologne, and 
 at the end of a process in the midst of which Eckhart died, 
 twenty-eight articles extracted from his works were con- 
 demned as heretical or exposed to the suspicion of heresy. 
 In the former category is included the theory of the un- 
 created and uncreatable somewhat in the soul, the divine 
 
278 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 spark, which gives its distinctive form to Eckhart's mysti- 
 cism as well as to his peculiar doctrine of regeneration, a 
 theory which is related to the religious psychology of al- 
 Ghazali, and has a resemblance to certain Gnostic and Kab- 
 balistic teachings. In the depths of the soul, in that un- 
 created light which as "scintilla animce" is implanted in it, 
 it is rapt in an ecstasy into the silent desert of the divine 
 being, beyond the distinction of the persons into the god- 
 head itself, in which are no distinctions; it enters into the 
 timeless and changeless. The eternal generation of the 
 divine Word realises itself as the regeneration of the soul; 
 Christ is born again in the soul of man which is conformed 
 to his likeness. 
 
 Preaching in the vernacular, which had been from the 
 beginning one of the chief businesses of the mendicant 
 orders and especially of the Order of Preachers, the Domini- 
 cans, flourished greatly in this period, and Eckhart's ser- 
 mons contributed more to the spread of his theory and 
 practice of mystical piety than his professorial treatises; 
 they found a grateful soil in religious houses for women and 
 in those lay circles which were seeking to cultivate a purer 
 and deeper religious life. His teachings were disseminated 
 still more widely by the preaching of his followers, the en- 
 thusiast and ascetic Suso, and Tauler, whose less speculative 
 genius turned the dubious abstrusities of the Master into 
 the practical channels of religious and moral revival. The 
 Friends of God found in him a teacher after their own 
 heart. Yet in these circles, as in the writings of the Dutch 
 mystic, Jan van Ruysbroeck, and in the anonymous "Ger- 
 man Theology," the ideas of Eckhart furnish the ground- 
 work of the mystical theology. The affinities of the "Book 
 of Spiritual Poverty," long erroneously attributed to Tauler, 
 on the other hand, are with the Franciscan type of mysti- 
 cism, and its way to the goal, union with God, is not the 
 intellectual ascent to God but the complete quiescence 
 of the human will in God's. The "Imitatio Christi" of 
 Thomas a Kempis moves in the common Catholic tradition 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 279 
 
 which had its fountainhead in Augustine, and owes little 
 to the various developments of mysticism in the scholastic 
 period or to fresh infusions of Neoplatonism and Arabian 
 philosophy. 
 
 What gives this late mediaeval mysticism its great relig- 
 ious importance is that its teachers were not content to 
 reveal to a few singular souls the secret of "the flight from 
 the alone to the alone," or to recall the professed religious 
 to the true end of monastic piety, but preached it as the 
 way of life for the laity as well as the clergy. This popular- 
 isation had two results: first, it impressed on men that relig- 
 ion is essentially an inner life having its expression and 
 criterion in Christian conduct, and not merely the acceptance 
 of the doctrines of the church and the use of its efficacious 
 sacraments; the second result, a consequence of the first, 
 was, as in similar movements which throw the emphasis 
 on individual experience, a relative indifference to dogma, 
 the bulk of which had no obvious relation to such experi- 
 ence, and to external authority, all the more that this au- 
 thority was often wielded by worldly ecclesiastics. 
 
 The stirring intellectual activity of the last centuries of 
 the Middle Ages was only one aspect of a quickening of 
 religious life which expressed itself in many ways besides 
 theology — in architecture and painting, for example. One 
 of its first manifestations were reforms in the religious orders 
 aiming to restore not only the discipline but the spirit of 
 the monastic life, and the founding of new orders or congre- 
 gations, among which may be particularly named the Car- 
 thusians, who revived in their monasteries the solitary life; 
 the Cistercians, an offshoot of the Benedictine order, which, 
 largely through the efforts and the fame of Bernard of Clair- 
 vaux, soon surpassed in numbers and influence all the rest; 
 and the Premonstratensians, founded by Norbert, who 
 devoted themselves chiefly to preaching and pastoral work 
 among the masses and to missions among the Wends. So 
 many other orders sprang up in the course of the twelfth 
 century that Pope Innocent III felt constrained to forbid 
 
280 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the foundation of any more (1215), but the prohibition was 
 not long maintained. 
 
 The Crusades gave rise to new orders of a peculiar char- 
 acter, of which the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John, and 
 the Templars were the most important. Growing out of 
 organisations for the care of sick pilgrims to Jerusalem and 
 the protection of pilgrims on their way to and from the 
 holy places, they became military orders, whose members 
 were knights under the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, 
 and obedience. They received from the popes large privi- 
 leges and exemptions, and both speedily became powerful, 
 wealthy, and worldly. The Templars were in the thirteenth 
 century the richest order in Europe. Their wealth was 
 their ruin, and led to the dissolution of the order by Pope 
 Clement V and the confiscation of their vast estates in 
 France by Philip the Fair (1312) on charges of heresy, im- 
 piety, and gross immorality. A third order, the Teutonic 
 Knights (1199), found its chief sphere of activity in the con- 
 quest of the heathen in eastern Prussia and the imposition 
 of Christianity on the conquered. 
 
 The religious movements of the thirteenth century pro- 
 duced two new orders of a different type from any that had 
 gone before them, the mendicant friars. The founder of 
 the elder of these was Francis of Assisi. Converted by a 
 serious illness from the ways of an exuberant youth, he 
 resolved in penance for his former sins and in literal obedi- 
 ence to the call of the Lord (Matt. 10; Luke 10), without 
 purse or shoes or staff, to go forth preaching the kingdom 
 of heaven. Others, like-minded, joined him in this mission 
 and way of life. Enterprises for the conversion of Moslems 
 in Syria and Morocco to the Christian faith having proved 
 fruitless, Francis came back to Europe and strove to con- 
 vert Christians to the Christian life according to the precept 
 and example of their Master. The association and its lay 
 preaching were irregular, and if the work was to go on eccle- 
 siastical sanction was necessary. This was given by Inno- 
 cent III in 1209, and in 1223 Honorius III approved the 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 281 
 
 rule of the order. The brotherhood was devoted to missions 
 and the preaching of the gospel. Evangelical poverty was 
 the law not only for its individual members but for the com- 
 munity; herein unlike the older orders, in which the corpo- 
 rate wealth of the monasteries was often enormous, and was 
 one of the chief causes of the declension from the monastic 
 ideal which kept them in perennial need of reform and made 
 the very success of a reformed congregation the cause of its 
 decadence. Even before Francis' death (1226) more prac- 
 tical heads in the order found his ideal of pure mendicancy 
 impracticable, and under his successor as general of the 
 order, Elias, the strictness of the rule was relaxed. The 
 result of progressive departures from the ideal of the order 
 was a series of secessions; the stricter sort, in whose eyes 
 amendments of the rule and laxity in observance were a 
 kind of apostasy, separating from the body of the order. 
 The treatment they received from the popes threw some of 
 them into a hostile attitude to the papacy and even to the 
 church, and made them an easy prey to heresy. 
 
 Unlike the monks of the older time, who chose by prefer- 
 ence solitary places for their establishments, the Franciscans 
 found their field of labour in the cities, where they were 
 soon provided with houses to dwell in and more regular 
 means of support than casual charity. Francis founded 
 also a conventual order for women, who lived in strict seclu- 
 sion, possessing only the bare walls of the convent with its 
 garden, and wholly dependent on voluntary gifts. 
 
 The influence of the Franciscan movement was greatly 
 extended by the institution of the Tertiaries of St. Francis, 
 men and women under the direction of the order, who with- 
 out giving up their domestic ties and ordinary callings, en- 
 deavoured to lead a life after the gospel pattern, avoiding 
 worldly dissipations, practising charity, and cultivating a 
 religious spirit. 
 
 The other great mendicant order of the age, the Domini- 
 cans, was founded by a Spanish priest of high birth and edu- 
 cation, with the immediate purpose of winning back to the 
 
282 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 faith of the church, by preaching, the heretics who abounded 
 in southern France. They adopted the so-called Rule of 
 St. Augustine, with supplementary regulations of their own, 
 and the order was formally recognised by Honorius III in 
 1216. At the first general chapter of the order (1220) they 
 added the principle of evangelical poverty, after the ex- 
 ample of the Franciscans; but as this was an adventitious 
 part of the rule, not the constitutive idea of the order, 
 adaptation to actual conditions raised no such conflicts as 
 rent the Franciscans. The Dominicans, also, formed a 
 body of Tertiaries, and the order grew very rapidly, chiefly 
 in the cities. 
 
 The rise of the mendicant orders is one of the most sig- 
 nificant phenomena of the age. They were called into ex- 
 istence by a deep concern for the religious condition of the 
 multitude, and the response their labours found shows that 
 in the masses themselves the need of a revival of the religious 
 life was felt. Both orders made preaching a chief part of 
 their vocation, and found in it the most effective way of 
 reaching the people, who in this respect were much neglected 
 by the secular clergy. The popes gave to both orders gen- 
 eral powers to confess penitents, and they soon became the 
 favourite guides of lay consciences, the Dominicans largely 
 in the higher classes, the Franciscans among the common 
 people. The orders had a firmly knit organisation, with a 
 general (Minister Generalis) or master (Magister Ordinis) 
 at the head, provincials, and periodical general chapters. 
 Both were immediately under the jurisdiction of the pope 
 and dependent on him, and in return for his protection and 
 patronage rendered him most efficient service in many ways. 
 
 The Dominicans encouraged learning from the beginning. 
 Francis himself regarded learning as belonging to the vani- 
 ties of this world no less than wealth and station: Jesus and 
 the Apostles were simple and unlettered men, and such those 
 who renewed their work should be. This attitude was, how- 
 ever, not long maintained, and teachers of both orders soon 
 sought to establish themselves in the universities. The 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 283 
 
 University of Paris resisted this intrusion, but had to yield 
 to a papal mandate. Most of the great schoolmen of the 
 thirteenth century belonged to one or the other, and the 
 rivalry of the orders extended to theological systems. Alex- 
 ander of Hales, Bonaventura, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus 
 were Franciscans; Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas 
 were the great lights of the Dominicans. 
 
 The same stirring of the religious life, the same dissatis- 
 faction with existing conditions in the church, which gave 
 birth to the mendicant orders manifested itself in move- 
 ments which found no room in the church and consequently 
 separated from it. One of these sects, the Waldensians, 
 had an origin not dissimilar to that of the Franciscans, but 
 a totally dissimilar fortune. The words of Jesus to the rich 
 young man in the Gospel and the lives of saints who had 
 put them into practice made such an impression upon Peter 
 Valdes, a prosperous citizen of Lyons, that he gave all his 
 goods to the poor, and in obedience to the command of the 
 Master took to the preaching of the gospel, making central 
 in his message the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount 
 and the missionary charge of Jesus to his disciples (Matt. 10). 
 Men and women, chiefly of the lower classes, after his ex- 
 hortation and example, began to preach, wandering from 
 place to place with no fixed abode, taking food and lodging 
 from those who received their word. Valdes sought papal 
 approbation from Alexander III, but it was denied him 
 (1179). Had he obtained it, as Francis did thirty years 
 later, he might perhaps have been enrolled among the saints 
 instead of the heretics, for there is no intimation that at 
 that time he had departed from the teaching of the church 
 or impugned its authority. But when his irregular evan- 
 gelism was forbidden, he opposed the commandment of 
 Christ to the prohibition of the pope and continued his 
 work. 
 
 His followers multiplied in southern France and Aragon, 
 and spread into Italy, where their centre was Milan. Their 
 societies, which were in the beginning only conventicles 
 
284 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 within the church for the cultivation of the religious life 
 after their fashion, were presently excluded from the church, 
 and they then created an organisation of their own with a 
 ministry and sacraments. The opposition of the church 
 threw them into antagonism with it, and led them to deny 
 its authority, asserting against it, as the sects always did, 
 the authority of Scripture. Soon also they fell out with 
 some of its doctrines, partly in consequence of their inde- 
 pendent reading of the New Testament, of which they had a 
 vernacular version, partly through contact with the heretical 
 Albigenses, among whom they lived and with whom they 
 suffered. Scattered by the crusade against the Albigenses, 
 some of them found a refuge in the valleys of Piedmont, 
 and survived there till the sixteenth century, when they 
 were drawn into the current of the Protestant Reformation 
 and learned to look upon themselves as its forerunners. 
 
 Another symptom of the religious unrest was an alarming 
 recrudescence of dualistic heresies from which the West had 
 for centuries been free. Their adversaries stamped them 
 with the historical label, "Manichaeans," and in fact many 
 things in the accounts of their doctrines and practices sug- 
 gest the association. Their own name for themselves was 
 "Cathari" (the Pure), and they were connected in some 
 way with the Bogomiles (Friends of God) who plagued the 
 Greek church in the same age, being especially numerous in 
 the Balkan Peninsula. The Cathari had many ramifications 
 and variations, and were called by many local names, of 
 which Albigenses is the best known. 1 Over against a God 
 of light and the invisible world, they set, as the author of 
 the visible universe, a god of darkness, whom they called 
 the prince, or god, of this world; and upon this basis they 
 erected a system which in its general features strikingly 
 resembles some of the dualistic Gnosticisms of the early 
 Christian centuries. Like the Gnostics and the Manichaeans, 
 they drew the practical consequences of their dualism in 
 the rejection of marriage and of animal food. They repu- 
 1 In other regions they were called Bulgari. 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 285 
 
 diated the institutions and sacraments of the Catholic 
 Church, claiming to be themselves the only true church; 
 their own great sacrament was the consolamentum, an initia- 
 tion into the class of Perfecti, in which, by the laying on of 
 hands, the Holy Spirit was communicated, and thereby sal- 
 vation secured. 
 
 In southern France the Albigenses were so large a part 
 of the population that Bernard of Clairvaux writes from 
 his own observation of "churches without people, people 
 without priests, priests without respect, Christians without 
 Christ, the holiness of holy places denied, the sacraments 
 no longer sacred, and holy days without their ceremonies." 
 Protected by many of the nobles, they made light of ecclesi- 
 astical fulminations; efforts to convert them by preaching 
 had no success. Finally, in 1209, a crusade was launched 
 against them; the nobles in whose territories they had flour- 
 ished were dispossessed and the land ravaged by war. 
 
 To complete their destruction the ancient episcopal in- 
 quisition, which was as old as Carolingian times, was revived. 
 New efficacy was given to its investigations by the obliga- 
 tory annual confession imposed by the Fourth Lateran 
 Council (1215). Those who came to confession were ex- 
 amined about their own beliefs and practices and those of 
 their neighbours; those who stayed away, by the very fact 
 incurred the suspicion of heresy. Soon a new and more 
 formidable instrument was created in the papal inquisition 
 instituted by Gregory IX (in 1232-'35) and intrusted to the 
 Dominicans, which was promptly set to work in the coun- 
 tries infected with heresy. The procedure of the inquisitorial 
 tribunals was of a kind to inspire terror in innocent as well 
 as guilty; the names of the accusers and the witnesses were 
 kept strictly secret; the examination of the accused, equally 
 in secret, was conducted on the presumption of guilt, and 
 often resolved itself into an effort to entrap the accused; 
 torture was employed to extort confession. 1 The execution 
 
 1 This procedure was not, as is often imagined, invented by the 
 ecclesiastical tribunals; these were the ordinary methods of the justice 
 of the times. 
 
286 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of the sentence was' committed to the secular arm, and laws 
 for the punishment of heretics were enacted by Louis IX 
 of France (1228), the emperor Frederick II (1220/.), and 
 other princes. 
 
 Here and there voices were lifted up against the persecu- 
 tion of heretics or the infliction of death upon them, but 
 without effect. The doctrine of the church is defined and 
 defended by Aquinas: Heresy is a crime which deserves 
 death, for the corruption of the faith is a much graver 
 offence than counterfeiting the coinage, which is everywhere 
 a capital crime. The extirpation of irreclaimable heretics is 
 a measure which the church takes for the. safety of others 
 to whom the contagion might spread. 
 
 Besides the dualistic heresies of which we have spoken, a 
 pantheistic heresy which seems to have some connection 
 with the teaching of Amalric of Bena (d. 1205) 1 spread 
 widely in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. 
 Its adherents called themselves "Brethren and Sisters of 
 the Free Spirit." The spiritual man, they held, is by nature 
 God. He is therefore impeccable, and whatever he does, it 
 is no sin. Consistently, they denied the peculiar divinity of 
 Christ; every spiritual man is all that Christ was. The 
 perfect man is wholly free, neither bound to keep the com- 
 mandments in the Bible nor to obey the laws of the church 
 or the orders of prelates. They rejected the belief in pur- 
 gatory and hell, resurrection and future judgment: when 
 the body dies, the spirit, or soul, returns to him from whom 
 it issued forth, and is so reunited with him that nothing 
 remains but that which was from eternity, God. No one 
 will be damned, no Jew and no Moslem. These ideas to 
 some extent infected the Beghards in the region of the lower 
 Rhine, in whose mystical piety they found a favourable soil, 
 and seem to have found acceptance among a fraction of the 
 Waldensians. The principal seat of the sect was in upper 
 Germany and Switzerland. 
 
 1 Amalric imbibed the ideas that upset him from the Neoplatonic 
 vein in Moslem philosophy. 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 287 
 
 In a wholly different spirit, Joachim of Fiori (d. 1202), as 
 the result of his studies in the prophets and the Apocalypse 
 of John, taught that a new dispensation was about to begin, 
 the age of the Spirit, succeeding the age of the Son (the 
 New Testament, with the priesthood and sacraments of 
 the church), as that succeeded the age of the Father (the 
 Old Testament, the Jewish economy), an age that should 
 bring full knowledge and spiritual freedom. This consum- 
 mation was to be brought about through the instrumentality 
 of an unworldly and spiritual monasticism. These ideas 
 were naturally much to the taste of the strict Franciscans. 
 The "eternal gospel" (Rev. 14, 6), the gospel of full spiri- 
 tual knowledge for the age of the Holy Spirit, was discov- 
 ered by some of them in the writings of Joachim himself. 
 About the year 1200, they thought, the spirit of life deserted 
 the Old Testament and the New to make way for the " eter- 
 nal gospel." With their minds thus turned to the inter- 
 pretation of history, they saw in Frederick II the scourge 
 of the corrupt church, the spiritual Babylon (Rome). To 
 these spiritual Franciscans evangelical poverty in imitation 
 of Christ and the Apostles and conformity to the precept 
 and example of St. Francis was the heart of the gospel, the 
 touchstone of genuine and consecrated Christian life. The 
 efforts of the heads of the order and of successive popes to 
 subdue their obstinacy only confirmed them in the con- 
 viction that the church was fallen away from true Chris- 
 tianity and wholly given over to worldliness, and drove 
 them into the position of intransigeant sects, some of which, 
 like the Fraticelli, were separated from the church, and by 
 natural affinity embraced heretical opinions resembling those 
 of the Brethren of the Free Spirit. 
 
 The same motives which led great numbers to enroll as 
 Tertiaries of the mendicant orders gave rise to independent 
 movements of a similar character, among which the Beghards 
 and Beguines of the Low Countries and the Rhineland are 
 the best known. The pursuit and profession of a more 
 serious religious life and a more scrupulous morality had its 
 
288 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 customary effect in these circles. They compared them- 
 selves to their own advantage not only with the mass of the 
 laity, but with priests, monks, and friars, who took their 
 religion more comfortably, and they were disposed to con- 
 temn the authority of the church as well as the persons of 
 its representatives. Not only the churchly mysticism of 
 Eckhart and Tauler but divers heretical doctrines found 
 adherents among them. 
 
 Till the latter part of the fourteenth century England was 
 little affected by the new religious movements of the conti- 
 nent. The king and parliament, supported by a strong 
 national feeling, firmly resisted the encroachments of the 
 papal power — the filling of English benefices by appointees 
 of the pope, the carrying of civil and criminal causes, origi- 
 nal or appealed, which belonged before the courts of the 
 realm to a foreign tribunal, and the draining of English gold 
 into the coffers of the Avignonese popes, who were at the 
 beck and nod of the national enemy, France. There was, 
 furthermore, an unmistakable anticlerical temper in both 
 Lords and Commons, to which the wealth and power of the 
 clergy and endowed orders, and the manners and morals of 
 the mendicant friars — a favourite subject of satire and dia- 
 tribe — contributed. Heresy, however, though it had ap- 
 peared in England in more than one form, had got no foot- 
 hold there; the inquisition had not been introduced, and 
 the statute, "De hceretico comburendo," was enacted only in 
 1401. 
 
 This law was directed primarily against the Lollards, a 
 sect whose rapid spread in the preceding quarter-century 
 gave cause of apprehension to the ruling classes in the 
 state as well as to the church. The founder of the sect, 
 John Wycliffe, a secular priest and teacher in the University 
 of Oxford, first attracted wider notice by writings in support 
 of the powers of the king against the pope, in which he 
 maintained positions similar to those of Marsilius of Padua 
 and Occam, in conjunction with a development of the 
 theory of dominium applied to the origin, nature, and limits 
 
THE LATEE MIDDLE AGES 289 
 
 of civil and ecclesiastical rule, from which he deduced far- 
 reaching consequences; for example, that it is not only law- 
 ful but meritorious for temporal rulers to dispossess eccle- 
 siastical persons or communities of wealth which they 
 habitually misuse. His conception of the fully Christian 
 life under the lex evdngelica alone was much the same as that 
 of Francis of Assisi; but his theory of dominium carries him 
 farther than evangelical poverty. If all men were fully in 
 grace there would be no right of private property, but all 
 would have all things in common; in other words, the ideal 
 society would be communistic. In the world as it is, he 
 recognised that this ideal is impracticable; but it is not 
 strange that the peasants' insurrection of 1381 was charged 
 to the spread of his revolutionary communistic ideas among 
 the masses. 
 
 To Wycliffe the striving of the clergy for preferment, 
 wealth, and power was in conflict with the law of Christ; it 
 was evidence that they were not of the number of the pre- 
 destinated, but were hypocrites, who were in the church 
 only in name, not in reality. Inspired by him, numbers of 
 "poor priests," most of them laymen, went up and down 
 the land preaching to the people in the mother tongue and 
 setting an example of a ministry without worldly possessions 
 or ambitions. In vindication of his doctrine of the lex evan- 
 gelica, Wycliffe maintained in a voluminous scholastic trea- 
 tise," On the Truth of Sacred Scripture" (1378), the supreme 
 authority of Scripture, not like the nominalists in contrast 
 to reason, but above the decretals of popes and the teach- 
 ings of the schoolmen. That the people might know and 
 judge for themselves the issues between himself and the 
 church, and that the unlearned as well as the learned might 
 have the law of Christ, he translated the New Testament 
 from Latin into English, and some of his disciples did the 
 same by the Old Testament. 
 
 Beginning with censure of papal abuses (among others, 
 indulgences), Wycliffe advanced to more radical ground: 
 "It appears . . . that the pope and his whole sect, invested 
 
290 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 with temporal dominion, is a hardened heretic." * Christ 
 rendered unto Caesar what was Caesar's and- sought no 
 worldly power; the pope, who acts quite otherwise, appears 
 to be the vicar, not of Christ, but of Antichrist. He attacked 
 also the doctrine of transubstantiation, affirming that the 
 body and blood of Christ are truly and really present in 
 the Eucharist, but that transubstantiation, identification, or 
 impanation, 2 have no foundation in Scripture. His own 
 doctrine of the Eucharist may be described as a scholastic 
 rendering of Augustine's; his opponents identified it with 
 Berengar's and condemned it accordingly, which was of 
 itself proof to him that the Roman Church can err in mat- 
 ters of faith. Other parts also of the doctrine of the sacra- 
 ments were questioned or criticised, but without so wide 
 departure from the prevailing teaching. 
 
 Wycliffe's defence of the rights and powers of the state 
 gained him influential patrons among the nobility, who pro- 
 tected him against the efforts of the ecclesiastical authorities 
 to bring him to account for his utterances; and though a num- 
 ber of propositions taken from his writings were pronounced 
 heretical and others erroneous, and he was obliged to leave 
 Oxford, he died in the communion of the church (1384). 
 After the accession of Henry IV, of the house of Lancaster 
 (1399), however, the state lent its hand to the church to 
 extirpate the Lollards. Deprived of the countenance they 
 had received from many of the nobility and gentry, they 
 were driven into concealment and before the Reformation 
 of the sixteenth century had ceased to exist as a sect. 
 
 The writings of Wycliffe early found their way from Ox- 
 ford to Prag, and the Hussite movement in Bohemia was 
 largely inspired by his ideas. John Hus, from whom this 
 movement has its name, was a professor of philosophy in 
 the university and a popular preacher in the vernacular, 
 who stood in high esteem not only with king and people but 
 for a time with his ecclesiastical superiors. His severe stric- 
 
 1 The temporal power is heresy in fact. 
 
 2 Two other theories discussed by the schoolmen. 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 291 
 
 tures on the clergy and the abuses of the church, in which 
 he followed closely in Wycliffe's footsteps, cost him this 
 churchly favour and laid him open to the imputation of 
 Wycliffite heresy. The king and the university took his 
 side; the papal legates sustained the archbishop and the 
 excommunication he had pronounced on Hus. This con- 
 flict with the authorities of the church moved him not only 
 to attack the pope (John XXIII) for abusing his spiritual 
 power for temporal ends — the occasion was the proclama- 
 tion of a crusade against the king of Naples with the custo- 
 mary indulgence — but to write a book, "De Ecclesia," in 
 complete agreement with Wycliffe's work under the same 
 title, of which, indeed, it was substantially a reproduction. 
 On the ground of thirty-nine propositions in this book, 
 chiefly impugning the authority of the hierarchy, he was 
 condemned by the council at Constance and, despite an 
 imperial safe-conduct, burned there in 1415. 
 
 Doctrinally, Hus was more conservative than Wycliffe. 
 Like him he opposed the indulgences, and denied that con- 
 fession to a priest is indispensable to the forgiveness of sins; 
 but he, did not follow the English theologian in rejecting 
 the doctrine of transubstantiation. He approved, however, 
 the demand of the reform party in Bohemia, that in the 
 sacrament of the Eucharist the cup should be administered 
 to lay communicants as well as to the clergy. 
 
 The death of Hus aroused a storm of wrath in Bohemia, 
 and converted the Hussite movement into a national cause. 
 The attempts of the pope and the emperor to break it united 
 nobles and people in defence, and they maintained for 
 twenty years their political and ecclesiastical independence. 
 The Council of Basel in 1433, by some concessions, notably 
 of communion in both kinds, won back to the church the 
 more moderate party (Utraquists, or Calixtines), who had 
 made this the principal issue; the radical Taborites would 
 not be reconciled. In the civil war that ensued the latter 
 sustained a crushing defeat (1434) which ended their mili- 
 tant career. Thereafter they by degrees merged in the ma- 
 
292 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 jority, or perpetuated Waldensian and Wycliffite doctrine 
 and practice in the sect of the Bohemian Brethren. 
 
 The revival of the study of classical Latin literature and 
 antiquities in the fourteenth century, in which Petrarch's 
 is the shining name, was followed in the fifteenth by the 
 opening to the West of the whole wealth of Greek literature. 
 The Council of Florence (1439) brought learned Greeks to 
 Italy; the fall of Constantinople (1453) drove many others 
 thither, carrying their precious manuscripts with them, and 
 ere long they were teaching the language and interpret- 
 ing the authors to zealous hearers in all the chief cities of 
 the peninsula. It is difficult for us to imagine the enthusi- 
 asm which this rediscovery of antiquity inspired. Hitherto 
 learning had been professional and chiefly clerical; the so- 
 called liberal arts, which had once meant the education of a 
 gentleman, had been desiccated into the Trivium and Qua- 
 drivium of the mediaeval universities, the Faculty of Arts in 
 which they were taught being merely a preparatory school 
 for the professional faculties of theology, civil and canon 
 law, and medicine. Theology towered above all the rest. 
 The new learning was a field in which clerics had no pre- 
 eminence and the universities for a while no part. The 
 invention of printing came at the opportune moment; the 
 presses poured out editions, translations, elucidations, which 
 put the newly retrieved treasures of ancient literature in 
 the hands of eager scholars everywhere. 
 
 The revival of learning introduced a new, untheological 
 kind of international culture, a culture which drew its in- 
 spiration and took the patterns for its imitation from classi- 
 cal antiquity. The civilisation they discovered there was a 
 secular civilisation. It had no church, no hierarchy wield- 
 ing the two swords of spiritual and political power; its re- 
 ligion had no dogmas prescribing what all men should think 
 on all things divine and human. Greek religion, as they 
 learned it through poetry and art, was a religion of beauty 
 and of freedom. In the poets and the philosophers they 
 found a noble and beautiful ethos, not inferior to the best 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 293 
 
 Christian teaching; they found high speculation on the uni- 
 versal frame of things, on immaterial reality, on the nature 
 and destiny of man. The name "humanism" implies its 
 antithesis; mankind and its concerns supplanted divinity in 
 the interest of men. All this not only weakened the hold 
 of the church and its doctrines on men's minds, but produced 
 in many an indifference to revealed religion; while in not a 
 few emancipation went to the length of a practical paganism. 
 
 The recovery of Plato, few of whose works had previously 
 been known, led to a revival of Platonism, or rather Neo- 
 platonism, of which the Florentine Academy, founded by 
 Cosimo dei Medici, was the great centre; from it proceeded 
 Ficino's translations of Plato and Plotinus, and of the so- 
 called "Hermes Trismegistus." In this renaissance of Pla- 
 tonism many found a soul-satisfying philosophy and a suffi- 
 cient religion for intellectual men. Aristotle, in some form 
 and extent and interpreted in one fashion or another, had 
 been the final authority in philosophy for the schoolmen; 
 Aquinas had completed the great synthesis which made 
 the Aristotelian conception of the universe an integral part 
 of Christian theology. Now the authority of Plato was 
 arrayed against that of Aristotle, and the foundations of 
 the great scholastic system were shaken. 
 
 The humanists, who formed their taste on classical models, 
 had an aesthetic antipathy to the theologians because of 
 their uncouth style and barbarous diction, and they had an 
 equally strong aversion to the scholastic method with its 
 subtle distinctions and its interminable syllogisms. Cicero 
 showed how philosophical questions were discussed by culti- 
 vated men in a common-sense way, without any such 
 deafening clatter of dialectical machinery. Many, seeing 
 that in this way much could be finely said on every side 
 without a decisive outcome, inclined to a gentlemanly scep- 
 ticism of Ciceronian fashion. For a doctrine of the rational 
 guidance of life the humanists turned naturally to Stoicism 
 as they found it in Cicero and Seneca, and it became again, 
 as it had been in the last centuries of the ancient world, the 
 
294 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 moral philosophy of educated men. Epicureanism, in the 
 vulgar sense, had a large following in practice, but only 
 rarely so outspoken an advocate as Laurentius Valla in his 
 "DeVoluptate." 
 
 Philological studies soon put men upon investigations of 
 the genuineness of writings attributed to ancient authors, 
 and in this field some of the Renaissance scholars displayed 
 notable critical acumen. Applying the same methods to 
 the "Constitutum Constantini," in which the emperor makes 
 a gift to Pope Sylvester of the city of Rome, with all the 
 provinces and cities of Italy and the western regions, and 
 puts them under the potestas et ditio of the pope — the founda- 
 tion of the temporal power of the papacy — Cusanus and 
 Valla demonstrated that it was a mediaeval forgery. Their 
 historical studies taught them to go to the sources, and they 
 discovered that the history of Rome, as they read it in the 
 ancient authors, was a very different thing from the mediae- 
 val notions of it. It was inevitable that similar observations 
 should presently be made in the field of Christian antiquity. 
 
 In the revival of letters and art the popes of the second 
 half of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 
 turies had an eminent part, and both the refinement of 
 taste and the dissoluteness of morals which are associated 
 with the Renaissance were conspicuously exemplified in the 
 lives of more than one of them. Many of them were before 
 all else Italian princes; political ambitions and the advance- 
 ment of their families were nearer to their hearts than the 
 higher interests of the church. Savonarola, like one of the 
 old prophets, lifted up his voice in season and out of season 
 against the corruption of the age. His zeal for the liberties 
 of Florence was as obnoxious to Pope Alexander VI (1492- 
 1503) as his efforts to reform the morals and manners of 
 the gay city, and when his hour came the Borgia on the 
 throne of Peter gave order that the monk who had defied 
 the pope and invoked Christendom to depose him "should 
 die, if he were a second John the Baptist." 
 
 The tastes of the Renaissance popes in architecture, art, 
 and living were extravagant; the curia followed their exam- 
 
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 295 
 
 pie, and the papal finances were correspondingly in chronic 
 disorder. Every means was resorted to to increase the 
 revenues, from tithes for crusades in which the sword was 
 never drawn to tariffs on every step of ecclesiastical ad- 
 vancement and dispensations from all kinds of canonical 
 prohibitions. Complaints against the extortions of the 
 curia were never louder or more universal than at the begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth century. France and England had 
 long ago found means to protect themselves in considerable 
 part from these exactions; but on Germany, which for want 
 of national unity and national spirit had no such defence, 
 they fell with double weight. The resentment thus created 
 was easily turned into sympathy with Luther in his attacks 
 upon the hierarchy among classes to whom his theological 
 innovations were of no concern. 
 
 Beyond the Alps, the Renaissance, which in Italy, amid 
 the monuments and memories of the ancient civilisation, 
 had the ambition to be a resurrection of the culture of 
 pagan Rome, took the soberer form of a revival of learning 
 through the study of the classic literatures, to which was 
 soon added the study of the Bible in the original Hebrew 
 and Greek and of the early Christian authors. The presses 
 poured out not only editions of the classics and of the 
 Fathers, but, far outnumbering them all, of the Bible, in 
 Latin, in Hebrew, in Greek, and in translations into modern 
 languages. Between 1450 and 1520 not less than 156 edi- 
 tions of the Latin Bible appeared; there were seventeen 
 editions of the whole Bible in German (from Latin), besides 
 many more of the church lessons; eleven in Italian, ten in 
 French. The first Greek New Testament, edited by Eras- 
 mus, was published in 1516; the first polyglot Bible, the 
 great plan of a Spanish humanist, Cardinal Ximenes, con- 
 taining the Old Testament in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in 
 parallel columns, with the Targum on the Pentateuch, and 
 the New Testament in Greek and Latin — six volumes in 
 folio — was issued in 1520. 1 
 
 1 The printing of the New Testament was finished in 1514. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 
 
 The Situation at the Beginning of the 16th Century — Indulgences 
 for St. Peter's — Luther's Theses — Effect of the Theses in Ger- 
 many — Condemnation at Rome — Luther's Three Treatises of 
 1520- — Excommunication — The Diet of Worms — Political Com- 
 plications — The Augsburg Confession — The Peace of Augsburg — 
 Reformation in Switzerland — Zwingli — Humanism and Reform 
 in France — Calvin at Geneva — Scandinavian Kingdoms — Luther- 
 anism in England — Henry VIII — Reformation and Reaction — 
 Elizabeth — Knox in Scotland — A Half-Century of Reform — Char- 
 acteristics of the Movement — Rejection of the Authority of the 
 Church — The Scriptures and the Right of Interpretation — Justi- 
 fication by Faith — Influence of Luther's Theological Education — 
 Law and Gospel — Predestination — The Sacraments — The Canon 
 of Scripture — The Mass and the Ministry — More Radical Re- 
 formers — The Peasants' Revolt and the Anabaptists — Conse- 
 quences — Luther and the Creeds — Melancthon. 
 
 There was nothing in the state of the church at the be- 
 ginning of the sixteenth century that foreboded the great 
 Western schism, the Protestant Reformation. The flood of 
 heresies which in the twelfth and following centuries had 
 spread over Europe had subsided. The crisis of the con- 
 ciliar age was past, and the power and prestige of the papacy 
 had been restored. The need of reform in the church and 
 of a revival of the religious life was recognised not only by 
 the humanists but in the high places of the church itself. 
 In Spain notable and lasting reforms had been achieved; in 
 Italy the Oratory of Divine Love, which counted among its 
 members some of the most eminent churchmen of the age, 
 including several who became cardinals, set the example of 
 sincere piety and pure life in the midst of the surrounding 
 
 296 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 297 
 
 ecclesiastical worldliness, and exerted a leavening influence 
 in a wide circle. Revival and reform in those countries 
 were alike animated by a thoroughly churchly spirit. There 
 was no similar movement in Germany, though the influence 
 of the mysticism of Eckhart and Tauler had not wholly died 
 out. Theology there was in the depths of its nominalist deca- 
 dence, and the presumptuous ignorance of the obscurantist 
 monks was a mark for the satire of the humanists, whose 
 pens had been sharpened in the conflict between Reuchlin 
 and the Dominicans of Cologne. Erasmus had written the 
 Praise of Folly, and the Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum were 
 being read with immense merriment by the friends of the 
 new learning. The exactions of the papal fiscal system gave 
 occasion to frequent recitals of grievances which remained 
 fruitless, but the fidelity of Germany to the church appeared 
 unimpeachable. 
 
 The occasion of the outbreak, also, was accidental, and in 
 itself commonplace. Pope Julius II, who had undertaken 
 the rebuilding of the Church of St. Peter in Rome, issued in 
 1510 a bull offering indulgences in forma jubilcei, with vari- 
 ous benefits, to those who should contribute to the funds for 
 this work. His successor, Leo X, in 1515, made the Arch- 
 bishop of Mainz commissioner for these collections in the 
 provinces of Mainz and Magdeburg and the diocese of 
 Halberstadt. 1 The archbishop intrusted the preaching of 
 the indulgences to a Dominican friar named Tetzel, who 
 had had much experience and success in similar business. 
 
 According to the instructions issued by the archbishop, 
 four distinct benefits (gratia?) were offered, any of which 
 might be purchased separately. The two which concern us 
 here are, first, a plenary remission of all sins, availing also 
 to cancel the pains to be suffered in purgatory, to such as, 
 being contrite and confessed, visited at least seven churches 
 on which the papal arms were set up, reciting in each five 
 
 1 In Spain, France, and England, the pope did not venture to offer 
 these indulgences at all; but three commissioners were appointed for 
 Germany, and one for Poland. 
 
298 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Paters and five Aves, and made a contribution rated accord- 
 ing to the status, occupation, and income of the giver, from 
 twenty-five gold florins down to one; and, second, for souls 
 now in purgatory, a plenary remission of all sins, which the 
 pope bestows and grants per modum suffragii (i. e., not by 
 the power of the keys), on condition that the living put 
 into the collection-box a contribution according to their 
 ability. 
 
 The doctrine of indulgences, even in the carefully guarded 
 form in which it is stated by the authoritative theologians 
 of the church, is exposed to only too facile misunderstand- 
 ings by the lay mind, unaccustomed to refined distinctions; 
 and when proclaimed by popular preachers with a strong 
 interest in the size of the contribution, was sure to be mis- 
 leading, particularly in regard to the remission of sins to 
 souls in purgatory. The elector of Saxony did not permit 
 the sale of indulgences in his territory, but the preachers 
 marketed them just over the border. Their doings and the 
 reports of their sayings provoked a young professor in the 
 University of Wittenberg to dispute their teaching and 
 practice. He accordingly posted on the door of the castle 
 church, the usual place for university notices, ninety-five 
 theses, which he undertook to defend against all comers in 
 a public discussion by word of mouth or in writing. It 
 was a challenge to an open debate, a kind of academic tour- 
 nament much in fashion in those days. 
 
 The theses do not sound very revolutionary. In the 
 main they rest on the ground of the accepted Catholic doc- 
 trine. Several of them are directed against the perversions 
 and abuses attributed to the venders of indulgences, which 
 the author assumes that the pope cannot be cognisant of. 
 Others, however, contradict the principles upon which the 
 indulgences were granted. He asserts, for example, that it 
 is not the pope's intention, nor in his power, to remit any 
 penalties except those which are imposed by his own author- 
 ity or that of the canons; that penalties imposed by the 
 church come to an end with death and are not carried over 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 299 
 
 into purgatory; 1 he denies the doctrine of the treasury of 
 merits on which the pope draws for indulgences. On the 
 other hand, he affirms that the whole life of the faithful 
 should be penitence, inward and outward, and that the 
 words of Christ, "agite pcenitentiam," refer to this, not to 
 the sacrament of penance; that a Christian man who feels 
 true compunction for his sins has plenary remission from 
 penalty and guilt even without letters of indulgence; that 
 the pope's remission of guilt is merely declaratory; and that 
 works of mercy are of much higher worth in the eyes of God 
 than the pope's letters of pardon. 
 
 What concerned him most in the whole matter was that 
 by the preaching of indulgences men were encouraged to a 
 false security of salvation. He was incensed, also, at the 
 exploiting of the people by the venders of indulgences. 
 " Christians ought to be taught that if the pope knew of the 
 extortions of the mercenary preachers, he would rather see 
 the Church of St. Peter in ashes than that it should be built 
 with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep." "Why does 
 not the pope, who is richer to-day than the richest Cras- 
 suses, build the single church of St. Peter out of his own 
 money, instead of out of the poor believers ? " 
 
 The author of these theses was Martin Luther. He was 
 born November 10, 1483, at Eisleben in Thuringia. His 
 father's ambition to make a lawyer of him sent him to the 
 University of Erfurt, where he graduated Master of Arts in 
 1505. Erfurt, like most of the German universities, was 
 still in the mediaeval rut, and was one of the strongholds of 
 the modernist (nominalist) philosophy and theology. With 
 the group of young Erfurt humanists — some of them only 
 too human — Luther seems to have had no contact. Hardly 
 had he taken his degree, when he disappeared into an Augus- 
 
 1 The extension of the benefits of indulgences to purgatory was still 
 contested in the fifteenth century; the first formal grant of indulgences 
 for the dead was in a bull of Sixtus IV in 1476. The treasury of 
 merits had papal authority in a bull of Clement VI, in 1343. See 
 above, pp. 244/. 
 
300 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tinian monastery, and after taking the vows began the study 
 of scholastic theology, which he pursued further in the fol- 
 lowing years at the newly founded University of Witten- 
 berg. In 1510 he was sent on business of the order to 
 Rome. What he saw of the capital of the church under 
 one of the most brilliant of the Renaissance popes was not 
 of a kind to impress the unsophisticated young monk favour- 
 ably, and the impression of the moment doubtless became 
 more deeply unfavourable in his reflective memory as years 
 passed. Returning to Wittenberg, he finished his studies 
 and was made Doctor of Theology in 1512. In the follow- 
 ing years he lectured upon the Bible — Psalms, Romans, 
 Galatians, Hebrews — and besides his teaching, had over- 
 sight as district vicar of eleven monasteries of his order in 
 Saxony and Thuringia. Both in the order and in the uni- 
 versity he was regarded as a rising man. 
 
 The theses provoked both the archbishop, who felt him- 
 self censured by them, and the Dominicans, who resented 
 an attack upon one of their order, and from both sides com- 
 plaint was promptly made at Rome. In Germany Tetzel 
 replied in two series of theses, and a more redoubtable con- 
 troversialist, Eck, professor at Ingolstadt, entered the lists 
 against Luther. The real issue, as Luther's adversaries 
 made clear, was the right of the pope to grant such indul- 
 gences, and this widened into the question of papal powers 
 in general. This was well understood at Rome also. Pri- 
 erias, the pope's Magister Sacri Palatii, wrote a "Dialogue 
 on the Power of the Pope," in which his supremacy and 
 infallibility are asserted, and the corollary drawn: "Who- 
 ever says that the Roman Church has not the power to do 
 what in fact it does in the matter of indulgences is a heretic." 
 
 In Germany the theses and the sermons and pamphlets 
 with which Luther followed them up had wide circulation 
 and found a hearty response among the laity, great and 
 small, who saw in them, not an attack on the church, but a 
 defence of the German people against the extortions of the 
 curia and a telling stroke at the unpopular Dominicans. 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 301 
 
 They regarded Luther as a champion of the perennial de- 
 mand for the reform of ecclesiastical abuses, and the matter 
 and manner of the replies to him strengthened this feeling. 
 The humanists, with fresh memories of their own conflict 
 with the Dominican obscurantists of Cologne, were on his 
 side. Luther thus became, almost at once, the leader of a 
 national revolt, unconscious of its own ends. His colleagues 
 in the university stood by him, and the elector, proud of 
 his new foundation and of the young professor who had so 
 suddenly leaped into fame, protected him. A summons to 
 Rome, July, 1518, was changed to an order to appear be- 
 fore the cardinal legate, De Vio (Caietanus), at Augsburg, 
 whose instructions were to insist on Luther's recantation of 
 his errors. The hearing was held in October, 1518, but the 
 recantation was not secured. Luther insisted on arguing 
 the question; Caietanus, one of the most eminent theologians 
 of the age, commentator on Aquinas, was not disposed to 
 enter into discussion with an obscure monk. Luther re- 
 turned from Augsburg to Wittenberg, leaving behind him 
 an appeal from the pope misinformed to the pope to be 
 better informed, which he presently changed to an appeal 
 from the pope to a future general council. An adroit dispu- 
 tant soon drew from him that even a council was not infalli- 
 ble; infallible was only the Word of God. 
 
 The proceedings against him at Rome moved deliberately. 
 In view of the approaching imperial election, the pope had 
 strong reasons not to give offence to the Saxon elector, so 
 that it was not until June, 1520, that the bull, Exsurge 
 Domine, was issued, expressly condemning a long series of 
 propositions extracted from the writings of Luther, ordering 
 that his books should be publicly burned, and giving him 
 sixty days from the publication of the bull within which to 
 make his recantation. Meanwhile the movement in Ger- 
 many had made rapid progress, both in numbers and self- 
 consciousness. Luther himself, seeing farther and growing 
 bolder, published in 1520 three of his most significant writ- 
 ings. In the first of these, addressed "To the Christian 
 
302 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Nobility of the German Nation," he attacks the triple wall 
 by which the church is fortified in its abuses : first, the exal- 
 tation of the spiritual estate, which sets the clergy above the 
 laity as a class apart; second, the claim of an exclusive right 
 to interpret the Scriptures; and, third, the pretension that 
 the power to convene a council resides in the pope alone. 
 He calls upon the German nobles to set their hand to refor- 
 mation by constituting a national church under the primate 
 of Germany. They should prohibit pilgrimages, diminish 
 the number of holy days, abolish the celibacy of the priest- 
 hood, reform the universities, and put restrictions upon the 
 power of the trade-guilds — a large programme of ecclesiasti- 
 cal and economic reconstruction. In the "Babylonish Cap- 
 tivity of the Church" he attacks the Catholic doctrine of the 
 sacraments, through which the church has usurped the place 
 of mediator and dispenser of grace, and by which it holds 
 the Christian people in subjection. The third of these writ- 
 ings is on "The Freedom of a Christian Man," in which he 
 sets forth his own fundamental apprehension of religion. 
 
 When the bull was published, Luther, so far from showing 
 any disposition to retract, replied with a pamphlet, "Against 
 the Bull of the Antichrist," in which he denounced the papal 
 see as the seat of Antichrist, -delivered over to Satan the 
 pope with his bull and all his decretals, and shortly after, 
 amid great enthusiasm of students and townsfolk, publicly 
 burned the papal bull, the tomes of canon law, and various 
 writings of his opponents. Meanwhile the term set in the 
 bull had expired, and the bull of excommunication issued, 
 cutting off Luther and his adherents from the church, and 
 calling on the civil power to put down Luther, with his 
 abettors and protectors. 
 
 The elector, unwilling to sacrifice Luther, insisted that 
 he should be heard before the newly elected emperor, 
 Charles V, and the diet of the empire (Reichstag), about 
 to meet at Worms; and notwithstanding the protest of the 
 papal nuncio, the emperor yielded to his urgency. Luther 
 appeared before the diet (April, 1521), but there also de- 
 clined to retract what he had written and said. On his 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 303 
 
 way back from Worms under safe-conduct he was, by the 
 elector's device, waylaid by an armed band and carried off 
 to the Wartburg, where under an assumed name he remained 
 in safety for several months, employing his enforced seclu- 
 sion on a translation of the New Testament from Greek 
 into German. A month after his departure the emperor 
 issued the Edict of Worms, putting Luther and all his sup- 
 porters under the ban of the empire. But three days be- 
 fore the edict was issued the French ambassador had taken 
 his leave from Worms; the war with France began. In 
 this conflict the emperor had need of the united support of 
 Germany, and was constrained to overlook the disregard of 
 the edict. Thenceforth for ten years, France, the popes, 
 and the Turks, singly or in combinations, kept the emperor 
 so fully occupied that he was unable to turn his hand to 
 the extirpation of heresy in Germany. The diets, at his 
 instance, repeatedly resolved that the edict should be en- 
 forced as far as possible — which always proved to be not 
 at all — and as often rehearsed the ecclesiastical grievances 
 of Germany and demanded a council to redress them. 
 
 The emperor also urged the calling of a council, hoping 
 that by the removal of the just grounds of complaint and 
 by reasonable concessions the Lutherans might be recon- 
 ciled, or, if they refused to meet these concessions half-way, 
 might forfeit the countenance of moderate men to whom 
 the unity of the church and the peace of the empire was of 
 more concern than the new doctrines. But the popes, 
 partly because of hostility to Charles V, partly out of not 
 unreasonable apprehension that a council on German soil 
 might revive the precedents of Constance and Basel, could 
 not be brought to the point. The result was that the rulers 
 and free cities introduced the Lutheran reforms in doctrine, 
 worship, and church government, and appropriated church 
 property, especially of the monastic establishments, as they 
 saw fit; and the diet of Speier (1526) legitimated this anoma- 
 lous state of things, "while awaiting the sitting of a council 
 or national assembly." 
 
 When, therefore, in June, 1530, the diet convened at 
 
304 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Augsburg under the presidency of the emperor himself, all 
 parties recognised that its task was to find some form of 
 reconciliation by which, if possible, the ultimate resort to 
 force might be avoided. The supporters of Luther had no 
 wish to separate themselves from the church; their aim was 
 reformation, not secession. Accordingly, the princes and 
 cities which had adopted the Lutheran reforms presented a 
 statement of their doctrinal position and an enumeration 
 of the changes they had introduced in worship and disci- 
 pline, with the reasons for them. This statement, subse- 
 quently known as the Augsburg Confession, prepared by 
 Philip Melancthon, was conciliatory in tone, and put the 
 most Catholic face possible on the reformed teaching and 
 practice. "Our churches do not dissent from the Catholic 
 Church in any article of faith, but only remove some few 
 abuses which have come in by the error of the times, con- 
 trary to the intent of the canons." The titles of the chap- 
 ters in the second part show in what points the reformers 
 found their "few recent abuses" to amend: Communion in 
 Both Kinds; Marriage of the Clergy; the Mass; Confession; 
 on Diverse Kinds of Meats (rules about food, fasts, etc.); 
 on Traditions; Monastic Vows; Ecclesiastical Power. 
 
 A refutation was prepared and presented by a committee 
 of Catholic theologians, and conferences were held between 
 the two parties, but agreement was impossible. The final 
 action of the diet left the Protestants till April of the next 
 year to turn from the error of their ways. Thereupon the 
 Protestant princes and a dozen of the cities formed a league 
 for self-protection, which was subsequently joined by 
 others; and negotiations were entered into with England, 
 France, Denmark, and other enemies of the emperor. 
 Protestantism thus became a political movement, the 
 Schmalkald League was an irnperium in imperio, with which 
 new danger from the Turks compelled the emperor to treat. 
 By the truce of Nurnberg (1532) the emperor agreed that 
 the Protestants should be left unmolested until the meeting 
 of a council, or in case such council was not convened within 
 
THE PEOTESTANT REFORMATION 305 
 
 six months, until a special meeting of the diet. Neither the 
 council nor the diet met. More wars with the Turks in 
 the East and on the Mediterranean, a second war with 
 France, and a revolt in the Netherlands, kept Charles too 
 busy to intervene in Germany. Meanwhile, Protestantism 
 gained many additional states and cities. 
 
 In 1546, however, the emperor outlawed the elector of 
 Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse, and by his victory at 
 Muhlberg (1547) overpowered all resistance. With the 
 sanction of the diet (Augsburg Interim, 1548) he set about 
 restoring the old order of things in the church, with the 
 reservation of a few minor points which were left to the 
 decision of the Council of Trent. Then all at once his right- 
 hand man among the German princes, Moritz of Saxony, 
 changed sides, and made alliance, at the price of the bishop- 
 rics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, with the king of France, 
 who took the field as the "protector of the liberties of Ger- 
 many and its captive princes." Charles barely escaped 
 capture by Moritz' army by hasty flight over the Brenner. 
 His work was all undone. The settlement of the religious 
 question was left to the next diet, at which, in 1555, the 
 Peace of Augsburg was concluded. 
 
 By its provisions the adherents of the Augsburg Confes- 
 sion were recognised in the empire as a religion having 
 an equal standing with the old. Religious freedom, or 
 even toleration, was not contemplated on either side. The 
 principle was cuius regio, eius religio. Every secular ruler 
 might hold either to the old religion or to the Augsburg 
 Confession, and his successor, if so minded, might change 
 his faith; but within his territory no other religion was suf- 
 fered than that of the prince for the time being. The same 
 right to choose between the two religions belonged to the 
 free cities. Those subjects who were unwilling thus to 
 accept their religion from above had the privilege of expa- 
 triating themselves and seeking a new home in a territory 
 of their own religion. Much against the wishes of the 
 Lutherans, an exception was made in the case of the great 
 
306 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ecclesiastical princes, the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and 
 Cologne. If one of them abandoned the old faith, he abdi- 
 cated with it his principality. Germany was thus divided 
 between territories of the old religion and those of the Augs- 
 burg Confession. Reformed churches outside the Augsburg 
 Confession were expressly excluded from this peace. 
 
 Almost simultaneously with the Lutheran movement in 
 Germany, a similar movement began in Switzerland under 
 the leadership of Huldreich Zwingli; but, partly through the 
 impress of the leader's personality, and more largely through 
 the peculiar political and social conditions in Switzerland, 
 it took a widely different course. Born within two months 
 after Luther, Zwingli was, like Luther, a man of the people, 
 but his early life and education had been very different. 
 Luther had a scholastic training; Zwingli's was purely hu- 
 manistic. He had studied in the way of the new learning 
 at Bern and Basel and Vienna; his ideal of a scholar was 
 Erasmus, with whom he early came into friendly personal 
 relations and long continued in correspondence. Theology, 
 whether of the old scholastic or the "modernist" kind, he 
 had never concerned himself with. Immediately upon tak- 
 ing his second degree in arts, he became a parish priest at 
 Glarus and later at Einsiedeln, where he continued his 
 studies in Greek and cultivated his talent as a popular 
 preacher. The reputation which he made in these fields led 
 to his election in 1519 as people's priest, that is to say, 
 preacher and pastor, of the Minister church in Zurich, where 
 he at once began preaching in course on the New Testa- 
 ment, commencing with the Gospel of Matthew. Luther's 
 writings presently became known to him, and although he 
 never acknowledged Luther as his master, and later was at 
 radical variance with him, particularly in the matter of the 
 sacraments, he was furthered in his thinking by Luther. 
 
 The conditions in Switzerland were vastly different from 
 those under which Luther laboured in Saxony. The Swiss 
 cantons, autonomous, and really, if not nominally, inde- 
 pendent of the empire, united only by a league for mutual 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 307 
 
 protection, subject to no princes, and little disposed to 
 allow the bishops to control their actions, governed them- 
 selves by councils of their own election, which even before 
 the Reformation often asserted themselves in ecclesiastical 
 affairs. The path of Zwingli's reform in Zurich, which 
 began in 1522, was therefore plain. Controversy having 
 arisen about the obligation of the Lenten fast, the cantonal 
 government, under Zwingli's influence, decided that the 
 Scripture was the only authority, and that only what has 
 its authority is binding. A series of public disputations 
 was held with conservative opponents on fasting, the celi- 
 bacy of the clergy, the Mass, the monasteries, and pictures 
 in the churches, and the council decreed that these things, 
 having no warrant in Scripture, should be reformed. A vis- 
 itation of the churches was ordered and biblical instruction 
 prescribed for the clergy as well as the laity; provision was 
 made for the relief of the poor, which the abolition of the 
 monasteries and charitable foundations had made a public 
 question; civil laws were enacted concerning marriage, for 
 the relief of the burdens that rested on the peasantry, for 
 the creation of schools and the establishment of a univer- 
 sity; the property of the monasteries was appropriated for 
 the newly organised parishes and parish schools — so swift 
 was the march of reformation. The movement soon spread 
 to the other cantons, beginning with Bern, the most impor- 
 tant city in the southwestern part of German Switzerland. 
 It reached also the cities of southern Germany as far as 
 Strassburg, where reforms were carried through in a similar 
 way by the city councils, and where humanistic preparation 
 inclined the reformers to Swiss rather than the Lutheran 
 ways of thinking, or to a mean between them. 
 
 Among the leaders of French humanism, Le Fevre 
 d'EtapIes had taken up with enthusiasm the study of the New 
 Testament, and in 1512 published a commentary on the 
 Epistles of Paul, in which he maintained the final authority 
 of Scripture, brought out Paul's doctrine of justification by 
 faith, denying the merit of works any part in it — salvation 
 
308 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 is the free gift of God— had doubts about the obligatory 
 celibacy of the clergy, suggested that the services of the 
 church should be in the language of the people, and com- 
 bated popular superstitions — a position not dissimilar to 
 that of Erasmus. In 1523 he published a French translation 
 of the New Testament. With his enlightened humanism, 
 he combined in his theological conceptions and his personal 
 piety a mysticism derived from the writings of Dionysius the 
 Areopagite and Richard of St. Victor. Like Erasmus, Le 
 Fevre died in the bosom of the old church; but many of his 
 disciples, influenced by the writings of Luther and the agita- 
 tion in Germany, went further than their master. The new 
 ideas made rapid progress, especially in the circles thus pre- 
 pared for them; but in France the movement had neither 
 the protection of princes nor the autonomy of cities to shel- 
 ter it, and by 1525 a period of persecution began in which 
 many were put to death, and still more sought refuge in 
 Germany, especially in Strassburg, and in Switzerland. 
 
 By one of these exiles, Farel, the Reformation was in- 
 troduced into Geneva, and under him and John Calvin, who 
 joined him in 1536, that city became the centre and main- 
 stay of the French-speaking reformed churches. Calvin, born 
 at Noyon in Picardy in 1509, had had what we call a classical 
 education in Paris, and studied law in Orleans and Bourges. 
 Like many other young humanists he was in sympathy 
 with the ideas of Le Fevre and Erasmus, but it was not 
 until 1533 that he associated himself with the more ad- 
 vanced party which had broken with the church. In the 
 following year he left France for Basel. There, in 1536, he 
 wrote his " Institutio Religionis Christiana?," an exposition of 
 Christianity in the new light, designed to demonstrate to 
 the king, to whom a prefatory letter is addressed, that those 
 who were being persecuted for their faith were not, as was 
 slanderously reported of them, political agitators or sacri- 
 legious fanatics, nor were they heretics from the fundamen- 
 tal doctrines of the Christian church. 
 
 In the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, and 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 309 
 
 Sweden), then united under one sovereign, Lutheranism was 
 introduced by the king as early as 1520, chiefly, it would 
 seem, with the motive of curbing the power of the great 
 ecclesiastics. In 1537 the Danish church was fully reor- 
 ganised on the Lutheran model, and Norway was under 
 the same laws, though the Reformation there made slower 
 progress among the people. In Sweden, which in the 
 meantime had achieved its national independence, the same 
 stage was reached by 1531. 
 
 The humanistic movement had done its part in preparing 
 the way for the Reformation in England as well as upon 
 the Continent. Colet, returning from studies in Paris and 
 Italy, introduced the new methods of interpretation into 
 the study of the New Testament at Oxford as early as 1496. 
 His influence drew Erasmus to England. Linacre and 
 Grocyn taught Greek at Oxford, and had Thomas More 
 among their pupils. Luther's writings, particularly the 
 "Babylonish Captivity" (1520), made no small stir among 
 the students and younger teachers, which not only led 
 Henry VIII to prohibit these books, but prompted him to 
 write a defence of the seven sacraments of the church 
 (1521), for which royal demonstration of orthodoxy the 
 grateful pope rewarded him with the title, "Defender of 
 the Faith." Luther's reply was in his most unmannerly 
 manner, and exasperated the monarch still more against 
 everything Lutheran. 
 
 That this "Defender of the Faith" within a dozen years 
 broke with the pope and made the church in England inde- 
 pendent of Rome was not due to any access of sympathy 
 with the principles of the reformers about papal authority, 
 much less with their doctrinal innovations, but to the 
 refusal of the curia to annul his marriage with Catherine of 
 Aragon in order that he might marry Anne Boleyn. When 
 the pope threatened him with excommunication, Henry's 
 answer was a series of acts of Parliament, declaring that the 
 bishop of Rome has no more jurisdiction in England than 
 any other foreign bishop; the only supreme head on earth 
 
310 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of the Church of England is the king. Bishops are hence- 
 forth to be nominated by the king, the chapter retaining 
 only the empty form of election; they take their oath to the 
 king, all oaths of papal obedience being done away. Denial 
 of the king's supremacy in the church was made high trea- 
 son, and Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More suffered 
 its penalties. The suppression of the monasteries and con- 
 fiscation of their large possessions followed. By the distri- 
 bution of a part of these spoils as royal grants to serviceable 
 supporters, Henry created a powerful vested interest against 
 a return to the Roman obedience. It would have been im- 
 possible, even for as strong a monarch as Henry VIII, to 
 carry through and enforce such legislation, had it not been 
 for the national self-sufficiency of the English people and 
 an ancient and deep-rooted hostility to foreign authority 
 and taxation. 
 
 Political motives at one moment inclined Henry to enter 
 into friendly relations with the Protestant princes of Ger- 
 many, and the ten articles which the king himself drew up 
 and convocation adopted in 1536 made some concessions 
 to the Protestant position. An English translation of the 
 Bible was not only licensed, but in 1538 a copy was ordered 
 to be put in a public place in every church. The Lutherans 
 in England were encouraged by these acts to think that if 
 the king went so far he might go farther. They were un- 
 deceived by the law of Six Articles (1539), often called the 
 "Bloody Statute," in which the doctrine of transubstantia- 
 tion was declared to be the faith of the Church of England, 
 and the denial of it was punished by fire and confiscation 
 of goods; communion in both kinds was rejected, and the 
 marriage of the clergy; vows of chastity were declared in- 
 dissoluble; private masses and auricular confession main- 
 tained. Many were put to death under this act; others fled 
 the kingdom, finding refuge in Frankfurt, Strassburg, and 
 Switzerland, where they were fortified in their views by 
 closer contact with the continental reformers. It was of 
 much consequence for the further history of the Reformation 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 311 
 
 in England that the associations thus formed were chiefly 
 with the South Germans and Swiss, so that when the exiles 
 returned under Edward VI it was to cultivate in England 
 a type of doctrine materially different from Luther's. 
 
 Henry's death (1547) brought to the throne his only son, 
 Edward VI, a boy of nine years; and under the protectorate 
 of Somerset and later under the guidance of Northumber- 
 land, the Reformation was established in England on the con- 
 tinental model, at first with some moderation, later in more 
 radical fashion. The accession of Mary (1553), shortly 
 followed by her marriage with Philip of Spain, brought 
 a reaction in which all the religious innovations of Henry 
 VIII and of Edward VI were swept away; England, purged 
 of schism, returned to the bosom of the church — but the 
 sequestered property was not restored. Five years later 
 her sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, succeeded 
 her, and the situation was again reversed. 
 
 Elizabeth was her father's daughter: she had been edu- 
 cated under the direction of Cranmer; she resented the 
 stigma of illegitimacy put upon her by the church, and 
 could not forget that under her sister's rule she was con- 
 strained against her will to conform to the Catholic cultus. 
 Her first parliament repealed the acts of Mary's reign con- 
 cerning religion, and revived numerous acts of Henry VIII 
 and Edward VI, re-establishing the supremacy of the crown 
 over the Church of England. In the oath of supremacy it 
 is declared that, "The Queen's Highness is the only supreme 
 governor of this realm ... as well in all spiritual and eccle- 
 siastical causes as temporal, and that no foreign prince, 
 person, prelate, state, or potentate has, or ought to have, 
 any jurisdiction, power, superiority, or authority, ecclesias- 
 tical or spiritual, within this realm." The second— more 
 completely reformed— prayer-book of Edward VI, with some 
 changes, was restored by act of Parliament; his "Forty-two 
 Articles," embodying the reformed doctrine, revised, with 
 some use of the Wurttemberg Confession of Brenz, were 
 issued as the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. 
 
312 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 An act of uniformity prescribed the use of the Book of 
 Common Prayer, and forbade under very severe penalties 
 any deviation from the rites and forms therein contained. 
 The most important changes in the Articles have to do with 
 the headship of the church, in which connection the authority 
 of the sovereign in relation to the word and sacraments is 
 „ disclaimed, and in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, where 
 the articles of Edward VI flatly denied the real presence, 
 while the Thirty-nine Articles speak of the presence of 
 Christ "only in a celestial and spiritual manner," and of 
 the reception of Christ in the sacrament through faith — ■ 
 Calvin succeeded Zwingli. 1 
 
 Lutheran doctrine found entrance into Scotland as early 
 as 1528, when Patrick Hamilton was burned for it; but it 
 was not until after the accession of Elizabeth in England 
 that the Reformation made much progress. Then, under 
 the lead of John Knox, it swept everything before it, taking 
 a national form widely different from that of England, and 
 essentially Genevan both in doctrine and polity. 
 
 If we look at the religious map of Europe a half -century 
 after Luther's theses, we find that the religion of the Augs- 
 burg Confession was established in a considerable number 
 of the states and free cities of Germany, but that its ad- 
 vance in other quarters had been stayed; and in the Cath- 
 olic states, notably in Bavaria and the Austrian crown lands, 
 where Protestantism had made considerable progress, the 
 repressive measures of the princes and the efforts of the 
 Jesuits promoted a reaction in which it steadily declined. 
 A similar decline took place in the territories of the eccle- 
 siastical princes, the archbishoprics of Mainz and Trier. 
 Switzerland, except the forest cantons, was reformed; the 
 Scandinavian kingdoms were Lutheran; England under 
 Elizabeth was finally separated from the Roman Church; 
 Scotland had just broken away. In France the Huguenots 
 
 1 In the liturgy, the form of administration combines the phrase- 
 ology of the two prayer-books of Edward VI, and is therefore half Catho- 
 lic, half Genevan. 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 313 
 
 had multiplied in spite of persecution, and counted among 
 their leaders some of the strongest men in the nation; the 
 civil wars, of which differences of religion were the cause 
 or pretext, had just begun, and were to keep the country 
 continually embroiled till the end of the century. Philip II 
 was trying to stamp out the movement in the Netherlands 
 by arbitrary exercise of power which provoked the great 
 national uprising against Spanish rule. In Spain and Italy 
 the movement had been put down by .the inquisition before 
 it gained much headway. Within fifty years the schism 
 had grown from insignificant beginnings till all western 
 Europe was divided by it, and no one could foresee how 
 much farther it might go — certainly he would have been a 
 sanguine prophet who in 1567 had ventured to announce 
 that the tide had reached full flood. 
 
 The common characteristic of the movement in all lands 
 was the rejection of the authority of the church whether 
 speaking through pope or council, and not alone its concrete 
 authority, but the doctrine of the church on which its claim 
 to supremacy rested. In contradiction to this doctrine the 
 reformers set up the dogmatic principle of the final sole 
 authority of divine revelation in Scripture. The theory, as 
 we have seen, was by no means new. In Scotus it was 
 the usual retreat of intellectual scepticism upon revelation. 
 Occam had taught it in conformity with the irrationalism 
 of his nominalist premises, and it was perpetuated in his 
 school, but he had given it application only to the suprem- 
 acy and infallibility of the pope. Wycliffe had extended it 
 to other doctrines, notably to transubstantiation; various 
 heretical sects had founded on Scripture alone their eccen- 
 tricities of faith and manners; the doctrine had been con- 
 demned in the person of John Hus, as Eck triumphantly 
 reminded Luther. 
 
 The final authority of Scripture was, however, .not the 
 real issue, but the authority to interpret Scripture. The 
 church claimed this as its exclusive right. The reformers 
 asserted this right for themselves, and, in principle, for every 
 
314 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Christian man — practically, they meant for those who in- 
 terpreted as they did. 
 
 The point at which Luther was led in the controversy 
 over indulgences to array the Scripture against the church 
 was the penitential system; but this opened into the larger 
 question, "What is of necessity to salvation?" The answer 
 he gave was the doctrine of justification by faith; and justi- 
 fication by faith, variously apprehended and interpreted, is 
 the second characteristic dogma of Protestantism. To this 
 conception of the way of salvation Luther had come before 
 1517, mainly through his interpretation of Paul; but he had 
 not discovered any conflict between it and the teaching of 
 the church, and it was only in opposition to the claim of 
 the church to stand between God and man with the keys 
 of the kingdom of heaven in its hands that the individual 
 immediacy of salvation by faith became the corner-stone of 
 his theology. 
 
 That man is justified by faith, not by the works of the 
 law, is written so large in the Epistles of Paul that it could 
 not be overlooked. Predecessors and contemporaries of 
 Augustine speak of justification by faith, or by faith alone, 
 as if the language were familiar in their time; it had never 
 disappeared from Catholic exegesis, and had been revived 
 by the humanists, notably by Le Fevre. 1 To the apprehen- 
 sion of the common man it may have meant no more than 
 the remission of sins in baptism, but the interpreters of Paul 
 could not so restrict it. For Augustine, as we have seen, 
 justification is a real change in the nature of man, an "ex 
 impio fieri justum," by a participation in the divine righteous- 
 ness (jwtitia). The grace of God, inspiring a faith working 
 through love, in that moment justifies man; but the trans- 
 formation of his character by which the end of God in him 
 is fully attained is a progressive work — justification is both 
 act and process. This was substantially the teaching of 
 the great schoolmen, especially of Aquinas. 
 
 1 See above, pp. 307/. Le Fevre's interpretation was known and 
 commended by Luther before 1517. 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 315 
 
 To Luther, on the contrary, justification is not a change 
 wrought by divine grace in the nature or character of man, 
 not the overcoming in him of sin and the establishment of 
 righteousness, but solely a change in his relation to divine 
 justice, so that his sin with its guilt (reatus, liability to pun- 
 ishment) is not imputed to him; while, as the complement of 
 non-imputation of sin, the righteousness of Christ is imputed 
 by God to man as his righteousness. It is, to speak irrev- 
 erently, a piece of celestial book-keeping, in which man's 
 debit is carried over to be charged to Christ, while Christ's 
 credit is transferred to man. Melancthon conceived justi- 
 fication more distinctly as a judicial act, and brought into 
 use for it the idea and term "forensic." 
 
 To this difference in the conception of justification corre- 
 sponds a different conception of faith. The Augustinian 
 idea of faith has been sufficiently indicated above. 1 For 
 Luther, faith is the unquestioning acceptance and appro- 
 priation of the gospel, that is to say, of the promise of 
 salvation through Christ. His very definition of gospel is 
 "promise," in opposition to law, which is command and de- 
 mand; and justification follows upon this faith, which God 
 has made its condition sine qua non. This definition of faith 
 is not only at variance with the Augustinian tradition in 
 Catholic theology, but it leaves out what is most character- 
 istic in the Pauline idea of faith. 
 
 The influence of Luther's scholastic training is especially 
 manifest in his doctrine of salvation. He knew only the 
 nominalist schoolmen, and among them had chiefly studied 
 Gabriel Biel; he had some acquaintance also with the writ- 
 ings of d'Ailly and of Occam. Of Aquinas he never had 
 any considerable knowledge, but he had to the full the 
 nominalist prejudice against him and against the whole 
 Aristotelian scholasticism. It was natural, therefore, that 
 he should reject all realistic conceptions of grace and its 
 operation. He held unquestioningly the theory of the 
 arbitrariness of divine will which Occam and his successors 
 1 See above, p. 199. 
 
316 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 had inherited from Scotus. The question, How is such a 
 scheme of salvation reconcilable with the moral character 
 of God ? was not raised by him; if it had been pressed upon 
 him, he would doubtless have replied with Biel, that what- 
 ever God called just was made just by his calling it so; and 
 to say that anything that God ordains or does is unjust, is 
 to impose upon him the limitations of human standards of 
 right and wrong. 
 
 If on this side Luther's ideas were cast in the mould of 
 nominalism, in other things they' were given form and em- 
 phasis by his antipathy to the theology in which he had 
 been educated. Inheriting Scotist teaching concerning the 
 human will, the nominalists conceded to man the ability, 
 under the general influence of God, to predispose himself to 
 salvation. Biel, for example, says, When a man does what 
 in him lies, God necessarily gives him grace, in accordance 
 with an immutable divine ordinance; and to what lies in 
 him belongs the ability to love God above all things. This 
 disposition merits " de congruo" the grace which enables 
 him through "meritum de condigno" to attain to salvation. 
 Luther believed himself to have in his own experience the 
 proof that man has no such power, so that, in making salva- 
 tion to such a degree dependent upon man's initiative, 
 theologians were in reality making his salvation impossible. 
 That man could in any sense merit divine grace seemed to 
 him a contradiction in terms. 
 
 No word in the vocabulary of theology was so obnoxious 
 to Luther as "merit." Not only was there no merit of any 
 species in anything that a man did antecedent to justifica- 
 tion, but nothing that the justified man did in his whole life 
 possessed merit in any sense or measure, or deserved any 
 reward at God's hands. The only merit is Christ's, imputed 
 to the believer. Obligation (debitum) belongs to the same 
 circle of ideas, and is repudiated with desert. For the man 
 justified by faith there is no more obligation; Christ has 
 assumed it all. Obligation, desert, reward, belong to the 
 sphere and economy of law, which as a whole is superseded 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 317 
 
 and annulled by the gospel. Law and gospel are contra- 
 dictories. By "law" Luther means not only the preceptive 
 and statutory parts of the Old Testament, but everything 
 in the New Testament that demands or commands, or 
 speaks of God's wrath. "Thou shalt love the Lord with 
 all thy heart," and, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- 
 self," is "law" as much as "Thou shalt not kill," or, "The 
 soul that sinneth, it shall die." "Gospel" is all in the Old 
 Testament or the New which points to Christ as the Saviour 
 and to salvation through faith alone. 
 
 The necessary counterpart of Luther's theory of man's 
 total inability to any good is predestination. On this point 
 Luther is more rigidly deterministic than Augustine: "God 
 foreknows nothing contingently, but foresees and does all 
 things by his immutable, eternal, and infallible will." He 
 does not shrink from making God the cause of Adam's fall, 
 or from saying that, since God moves all things in all actions, 
 it necessarily follows that he moves and acts in Satan and 
 in wicked men. These conclusions are not reached from 
 metaphysical premises, or by abstract reflections on the 
 sovereignty of God; he is concerned to assert man's mere 
 passivity in salvation in order to put the certainty of salva- 
 tion on the one sure foundation, the immutable will of God. 
 Here, also, the idea of God as absolute will, which he had 
 from the nominalist Scotist tradition, doubtless helped him 
 over the moral difficulties of such a conception, which from 
 other premises might well seem insuperable. 
 
 To this doctrine of predestination logically corresponds 
 the idea of the church as the " prwdestinatorum universitas," 
 which comes from Augustine, and had been explicitly form- 
 ulated by Wycliffe and Hus. The Christian church is a 
 spiritual unity, not a bodily or visible one; the church uni- 
 versal is an object of faith. The marks by which its pres- 
 ence in the world is recognised are the preaching of the 
 gospel and administration of the" sacraments. The hier- 
 archy is not the church. All Christians are priests, worthy 
 to appear before God, to pray for others, and to instruct one 
 
318 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 another in religious things. A sacrament, in his definition, 
 exists where an express divine promise is given which calls 
 for faith. This leaves of the seven sacraments of the medi- 
 aeval church only baptism, the Lord's Supper, and penance 
 (i. e., penitence). Penance stands, however, on a different 
 footing from the others, and before long he excluded it 
 because the promise does not accompany a "sign." 
 
 The sacraments were in his view means of grace, but not 
 as vehicles of different kinds of realistically conceived grace. 
 What man receives in and through all the sacraments is the 
 forgiveness of sins; and this grace is conveyed, not in the 
 material of the sacrament, but in the word which accom- 
 panies it, so that its efficacy is conditioned upon the recipi- 
 ent's faith that he has the forgiveness promised in the 
 gospel. It is obvious that infant baptism fits this theory 
 ill, and Luther made the case as hard for himself as he could 
 by declaring that "baptism helps nobody and is not to be 
 administered to any unless he believes for himself." At one 
 time he thought that "in baptism children do believe for 
 themselves and of their own faith, which God works in 
 them." Later he was content to base the obligation of the 
 rite solely on the command of Christ. 
 
 Luther's doctrine of the Eucharist is sharply opposed to 
 the Catholic doctrine by his denial of its sacrificial character. 
 He is at variance with Catholic teaching also when he finds 
 the grace which the sacrament conveys only in the word, 
 and makes its efficacy depend upon the faith of the recipi- 
 ent. 1 On the other hand, he held with compensatory tenac- 
 ity to the physical presence of the body and blood of Christ 
 in the consecrated elements, taking the words of Christ in 
 the institution, "This is my body," with uncompromising 
 literalness. This brought him into conflict with Zwingli, 
 who with the Swiss and many of the South German reform- 
 ers, interpreted the words figuratively — "This represents 
 my body" — and regarded the sacrament as a memorial and 
 symbolical rite. The effort of Philip of Hesse to put an end 
 1 In his definition of faith. 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 319 
 
 to a strife so injurious to the common cause by bringing the 
 protagonists together at Marburg (1529) for discussion was 
 fruitless. Luther made agreement with him on this point a 
 test of Christianity, and treated those who held the con- 
 trary opinion as enemies of the gospel. An irremediable 
 schism was the consequence. The theory of transubstantia- 
 tion, by which Aquinas and other schoolmen explained the 
 mode in which the body and blood of Christ are present in 
 the elements, and to which the Fourth Lateran Council 
 (1215) had given its authority, Luther rejected in favour of 
 another scholastic theory, namely, that the substance of 
 Christ's body is not substituted for that of the bread and 
 wine, but introduced beside it. 1 
 
 In falling back upon the sole authority of divine revelation 
 in Scripture, the reformers were confronted by some diffi- 
 cult questions. The Catholic Church received the Bible 
 as the word of God because the church had always so re- 
 ceived it, and the canon of Scripture — the list of books to 
 which this character attached — was determined by the tra- 
 dition of the church. But when the authority of the church 
 and its tradition was denied, the question arose, How do 
 we know that the Bible is the inspired word of God ? Au- 
 gustine said, "I should not believe the gospel did not the 
 authority of the Catholic Church move me thereto." In 
 place of this objective assurance Luther puts the certifica- 
 tion of inner experience: "God must say to thee in thine 
 own heart, 'This is God's word.'" As later reformers 
 expressed it, the testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti is the 
 only conclusive proof of the inspiration of Scripture. By 
 such a criterion every Christian might have his individual 
 Bible, which "found" him; and it is plain that if Luther had 
 committed himself to the guidance of this instinct, he would 
 have dropped from his private canon more than one book in 
 
 ^his theory is discussed by Peter Lombard, and was later held 
 by Occam and d'Ailly, from the latter of whom Luther adopted it, 
 being moved not only by d'Ailly's argument, but by his own nomi- 
 nalist antipathy to everything Thomistic and Aristotelian. 
 
320 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the New Testament as well as in the Old. What he actually 
 did with the Old Testament was to fall back upon the Jew- 
 ish canon as contained in the Hebrew Bible, and to segre- 
 gate the books of the Christian Bible which are not acknowl- 
 edged by the Jews, putting them in a collection by them- 
 selves under the title Apocrypha. For this name, and for 
 the judgment which is expressed in it, he had precedent and 
 authority in Jerome; but the segregation was an innovation 
 which established itself in all Protestant versions of the 
 Bible. 
 
 He did not similarly revise the traditional canon of the 
 New Testament, but he created by a dogmatic criterion a 
 canon of the gospel within the canon of the books. "Those 
 Apostles who treat oftenest and highest of how faith alone 
 justifies, are the best Evangelists. Therefore St. Paul's 
 Epistles are more a Gospel than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 
 For these do not set down much more than the works and 
 miracles of Christ; but the grace which we receive through 
 Christ no one so boldly extols as St. Paul, especially in his 
 letter to the Romans." In comparison with the Gospel of 
 John, the Epistles of Paul, and 1 Peter, "which are the 
 kernel and marrow of all books," the Epistle of James, with 
 its insistence that man is not justified by faith alone, but by 
 works proving faith, is "a mere letter of straw, for there is 
 nothing evangelical about it." It is clear that the infalli- 
 bility of Scripture has here, in fact if not in avowal, followed 
 the infallibility of popes and councils; for the Scripture 
 itself has to submit to be judged by the ultimate criterion 
 of its accord with Luther's doctrine of justification by faith. 
 
 The sole final authority of Scripture was not a fundamen- 
 tal proposition from which Luther set out to discover a 
 scriptural doctrine of salvation, much less to develop a 
 new doctrine of the church and the sacraments and all that 
 went with them; the logic of his opponents pushed him 
 farther and faster than his own logic or disposition would 
 have done, and always he was thrown back on the Scripture 
 for authority. He was more interested in the effect of the 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 321 
 
 new apprehension of salvation on the religious life of indi- 
 viduals than in the outward manifestations of religion, and 
 saw no need for change in the customary forms except where 
 they implied and conveyed false ideas about salvation and 
 led men to put their confidence in aught else than the gos- 
 pel. To remodel the institutions and liturgy of the church 
 on a consistently biblical pattern was not in his mind. He 
 would do away with private masses, because the sacrificial 
 character was impressed on them with peculiar distinct- 
 ness, and because they were regarded as good works, by 
 which propitiation was made to God for the sins of living 
 and dead. When he came to revise the Latin Mass (De- 
 cember, 1523), he omitted the canon, and everything which 
 suggested offering, but in other points was inclined to leave 
 large liberty even to weak consciences. Only he was in- 
 sistent that "the word," in lesson and sermon, should be 
 the chief thing in every gathering of the congregation for 
 worship. 
 
 With the sacrificial character of the Mass Luther rejected 
 also the sacerdotal character of the clergy. In the only 
 sense in which there is a priesthood under the Christian 
 dispensation, all Christians are priests. Bishops, presby 
 ters, deacons, in different functions, constitute a Christian 
 ministry — primarily a ministry of the Word — deriving their 
 office and authority not from episcopal ordination in Apos- 
 tolic succession, but by delegation from the community, 
 every member of which is competent to teach, preach, bap- 
 tise, and administer the Lord's Supper, though for the sake 
 of order the actual exercise of these functions is committed 
 to certain chosen individuals. There is consequently no 
 such thing as indelibility of orders; the community can 
 depose a minister whom it has itself chosen and ordained. 
 
 But though Luther himself applied the biblical test only 
 to things he deemed contrary to the gospel, on the principle 
 that what is not against Scripture is for Scripture and Scrip- 
 ture for it, when he asserted that the word of God is the 
 only norm, and that all Christians have the same right to 
 
322 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 interpret it, he enounced a principle over which he had no 
 control. Men of a more radical temper were for abolishing 
 everything that could not prove its right to exist by Scrip- 
 ture, and making things over on the model they found in 
 their Bibles. While Luther was in seclusion in the Wart- 
 burg, headstrong spirits, under the lead of his colleague, 
 Carlstadt, ran away with the reformation in Wittenberg, 
 the excitement and confusion being augmented by the com- 
 ing of some prophets from Zwickau, who professed to be in- 
 spired, predicting a new Turkish invasion and the approach- 
 ing end of the world, and declaring the baptism of infants 
 no baptism. It required Luther's return and all his influ- 
 ence to restore the rule of moderation. 
 
 The Zwickau prophets were the precursors of the radicals 
 who were opprobriously labelled "Anabaptists," i. e., "re- 
 baptisers," because, holding that infant baptism was no 
 baptism, they baptised adults who joined them. The name 
 covers a wide diversity of opinion and temper. Some of 
 those upon whom it was fastened were biblical literalists 
 who proposed a thoroughgoing reformation of institutions, 
 worship, and life, after the precept and example of the New 
 Testament, with no opportunist concessions to things as 
 they are, such as made Luther and Zwingli stop half-way. 
 Others asserted that the supreme authority is not the Scrip- 
 ture, which is but the dead letter, not the living word of 
 God. The true word of God is internal; from within, in the 
 recesses of his own spirit, a man must hear the eternal word 
 of the Father speak to him. By this inner word of immedi- 
 ate revelation he must be taught, not by Scripture and 
 preaching. To some, again, this doctrine of the indwelling 
 of the divine word became a real incarnation by which man 
 is deified even in this present life. Pantheistic ideas and 
 peculiar views about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, 
 also, early appeared among them. The levelling of all in- 
 equalities of class and possession, and the community of 
 goods, were an attractive part of the programmes for an 
 earthly kingdom of heaven, and Anabaptist socialists like 
 Munzer had their hand in the Peasants' Revolt. 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 323 
 
 This great uprising, which spread like wild-fire through 
 southwestern Germany in 1524-25, was the outcome of 
 long-standing oppression, which had more than once before 
 provoked local insurrections; but the Twelve Articles in 
 which the grievances and demands of the Swabian peasants 
 were embodied, drawn up probably by a village priest, 1 put 
 in the forefront the demand that each community should 
 have the right to appoint its own pastor and to depose him 
 if he conduct himself improperly; and followed this by the 
 provision they proposed to make for the support of their 
 pastors and of the poor from the tithes, the administration 
 of which was to be in the hands of the community. In the 
 political and social part of the programme appeal is made 
 throughout to the authority of the word of God; if it can 
 be proved to them from Scripture that any of their demands 
 are not in agreement with the word of God, the petitioners 
 will recede from it; if they discover other articles of com- 
 plaint in Scripture, they will bring them forward. Thus 
 the authors seized upon the watchword of the Reformation 
 in the neighbouring Switzerland as well as in Germany; and 
 they may have expected this argument to be more incon- 
 venient if not more persuasive because so many of the 
 Swabian and Franconian knights were avowed partisans of 
 Luther and reform. 
 
 Luther read the nobility and the clergy a lesson on the 
 revolt, which he tells them they alone have brought upon 
 themselves by their resistance to the gospel and their op- 
 pression of the peasantry. To the peasants he laid down 
 the law: "Let every soul be in subjection to the higher 
 powers." Rebellion against constituted authority cannot 
 be excused by any wrong the powers that be may have 
 done; it is not for subjects to take judgment into their own 
 hands. He exhorts both sides to submit the matter to 
 arbitrament, and to meet each other in a spirit of mu- 
 
 1 This memorial was issued in March, 1525, nine or ten months 
 after the outbreak of the revolt, and was evidently intended as an 
 appeal to the sympathy of the reform party. See particularly the 
 apologetic preamble. 
 
324 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tual concession. When this exhortation fell on deaf ears, 
 Luther broke out on the "Murderous and Thieving Rabble 
 of Peasantry" in his most ferocious manner, crying to the 
 rulers: "Hither to deliver, hither to the rescue; have pity 
 on the poor people, stab, smite, throttle, who can." To this 
 task the princes and nobles needed no incitement; the 
 revolt, which had ravaged wide regions with fire and sword, 
 was quelled with vindictive thoroughness. 
 
 The Anabaptists, persecuted with death or banishment 
 by reformed and Catholic alike, multiplied in secret, espe- 
 cially along the Rhine and in the Netherlands; and, as is 
 common when the wholesome restraint of publicity is re- 
 moved, the extravagant elements prevailed more and more 
 among them, until in 1534-'35, after an abortive attempt at 
 Strassburg, they undertook to revive theocracy in Miinster 
 as the New Jerusalem, with Old Testament accompaniments 
 such as polygamy, apostolic community of goods, and a 
 Leyden tailor for a Davidic king. The capture of the city 
 by the troops of Catholic and Lutheran princes put an end 
 to the militant variety of Anabaptism, with its reign of very 
 ambiguous saints on earth. What was left subsided into 
 the peaceable sect of Mennonites. 
 
 Luther's opponents charged the Anabaptists and the 
 peasants to him: religious, political, and social revolution 
 was in the logic of his principles, as soon as men got hold 
 of them who had the consistency to think them through 
 and the courage to translate the consequence into action. 
 Luther might try to clear his skirts by writing fiercely 
 against the peasants, but as Erasmus reminded him, he 
 could not by these tirades keep many from believing that 
 by his writings in German against the "greaselings and 
 shavelings," against monks and bishops, and for gospel lib- 
 erty against human tyranny, he had given occasion to these 
 popular tumults. 
 
 To Erasmus and his humanist following, who expected 
 that enlightenment would in time bring about a temperate 
 reform, Luther's excess of zeal and his vituperative eloquence 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 325 
 
 had always been distasteful; they now withdrew the mea- 
 sure of countenance they had at the beginning shown him. 
 Erasmus himself, whom many regarded as the real author 
 of the mischief— "Erasmus laid the eggs, Luther hatched 
 them"— now openly came out against him with a treatise 
 on Free Will, aimed at the crude determinism of Luther's 
 hyper-Augustinianism, and drew from him in his reply, "De 
 Servo Arbitrio," a reaffirmation of the incriminated doctrine 
 pushed to a veritable reductio ad impium. On the other 
 hand, in his "savage book" — as Erasmus called it— against 
 the peasants, Luther committed religion as completely to 
 the support of power and possession, however ruthlessly 
 used, as ever the. mediaeval church had done, and dashed the 
 hopes of those who dreamed that the "gospel" had a promise 
 for the life that now is as well as for that which is to come. 
 But the greatest consequence of the Anabaptist extrava- 
 gances and the Peasants' War was its reaction on Luther 
 himself. He had begun with enthusiastic confidence that, 
 when the word of God was set free and the gospel of justi- 
 fication by faith proclaimed, it would make men think right 
 and do right. A revival of true religion in the hearts of 
 men would in due time bring all needed reforms. Of the 
 civil power he asked only protection for the gospel. Now, 
 confronted by the varieties of Anabaptist gospels, all claim- 
 ing, like his own, the authority of the word of God, and by 
 the revolutionary excesses which defended themselves with 
 the same appeal, he was constrained to put his trust in 
 princes to extirpate obnoxious sects and maintain the social 
 ■order; and the subsequent political history of the Reforma- 
 tion in Germany permanently impressed on Lutheranism a 
 peculiar territorial character. The old order was overthrown 
 and the new imposed by the princes, each as seemed to him 
 good. The religion of the ruler was the religion of his sub- 
 jects. In place of Luther's original idea of the independence 
 of each Christian community, came a multitude of Lutheran 
 state churches under the autocratic supremacy of the prince 
 for the time being, who not only legislated in church orders 
 
326 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 on organisation, discipline, and worship, but imposed elabo- 
 rate confessions of faith on his clergy, all subject to equally 
 arbitrary change by his successor. In the violent doctrinal 
 controversies which rent the Lutheran churches almost be- 
 fore Luther was dead, the parties clamoured and intrigued 
 for the theological ear of rulers as the surest way to make 
 the truth prevail. 
 
 Luther despised philosophy and had no intellectual inter- 
 est in theology. Everything in his mind centred about 
 justification solely by faith, in which alone he found the as- 
 surance of salvation he sought. The doctrines which are 
 premises, consequences, or corollaries of this — what are com- 
 monly called the doctrines of sin and grace, including the 
 sacraments — he thought out in his own way; the conflict in 
 which he was thereby involved led him to deny the authority 
 of the church and the whole doctrine of the church on which 
 its authority rested, and to assert against it the sole au- 
 thority of Scripture. What lay outside these controversial 
 issues he did not impugn. 
 
 He accepted the three received symbols of Western 
 Christendom, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and 
 the Athanasian Creed, as the doctrine of the church univer- 
 sal; and, though he did not find the phraseology of the 
 theological creeds in the Bible, and recognised, as Augustine 
 did, that "Trinity," with its mathematical implications, is 
 a word the use of which can only be justified by inability 
 to find a better one, he never questioned that the dogmas 
 of the Trinity and the deity of Christ formulated the teach- 
 ing of Scripture and were fundamental articles of the Chris-, 
 tian faith. He took pains to emphasise his agreement with 
 "the true Christian church" on these cardinal points by 
 publishing the three symbols in German translation, with 
 an explanatory comment. The religious faith by which 
 alone man is justified is thus limited not only to the church 
 of the word and the sacraments, but by an orthodox confes- 
 sion. " Whoever wishes to be saved must, before all things, 
 hold the catholic faith, which unless a man preserve whole 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 327 
 
 and inviolate, beyond doubt he will eternally perish" — so 
 runs the beginning of the Athanasian Creed, on which 
 Luther was as sound as the pope himself. That the authority 
 of the creeds lay not in the church but in the Scripture im- 
 plied that the Bible is a body of revealed doctrine, a con- 
 ception the evolution of which made the churches of the 
 Reformation dogmatic churches to a degree surpassing 
 Catholicism itself. 
 
 The theological teacher of the Lutheran Reformation was 
 Melancthon,. who was called to Wittenberg as professor of 
 Greek in 1518. The first edition of his "Loci Communes 
 Rerum Theologicarum" (1521) is little more than a clear 
 and orderly exposition of Luther's ideas; but in the course of 
 time he became more independent, and in the later editions 
 of the Loci as well as in his other writings his views on some 
 important points differed materially though not controver- 
 sially from Luther's. The principal divergences concerned 
 predestination and the Lord's Supper. Melancthon gave 
 up Luther's deterministic conceptions, with the pure pas- 
 sivity of man and the irresistibility of divine grace. There 
 are three concurrent causes in conversion — the word of God, 
 the Holy Spirit, and the human will assenting to the word 
 of God and not contending against it. In the doctrine of 
 the sacraments Melancthon departed more widely from 
 Luther as time went on. He had comparatively early found 
 himself unable to accept Luther's scholastic theory of the 
 ubiquity of Christ's glorified body — a communication of the 
 divine attribute of omnipresence to his human nature — and 
 inclined more and more to the symbolical interpretation of 
 the words, "This is my body," which Luther always insisted 
 on taking literally. 
 
 Both this Calvinistic modification of the doctrine of the 
 sacrament and the synergistic doctrine of salvation became 
 the subject of long and acrimonious controversies among the 
 Lutherans of the next generation, and in these controver- 
 sies, and in the effort to put an end to them either by the 
 more exact definition of the true teaching of the church or 
 
328 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 by arriving at consensus of some kind, the corpus of doc- 
 trine having a confessional and normative authority in one 
 part or another of the Lutheran churches grew to formidable 
 dimensions; but what was of more consequence than these 
 dogmatic libraries was the fact that sound doctrine now 
 became the dominant idea. It was the possession of the 
 sound doctrine which made the true church — sound doctrine 
 in the Scripture, sound doctrine in the creed and confes- 
 sions. Under this incubus of confessional controversy and 
 dogma the moral and religious forces which the Reforma- 
 tion had set in motion came to a standstill for a time, and 
 in some places even turned back. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION. II 
 
 Calvin — Institutio Christianas Religionis— Election— The Law of God 
 — Sacraments — The Church — Lutheran and Reformed Protes- 
 tantism — The Creeds — Servetus — Antitrinitarian Tendencies — 
 Socinus — Criticism of the Doctrine of the Atonement. 
 
 Calvin's "Institutio Christiana; Religionis" (1536), as has 
 been said above, was originally designed as an apology of 
 the Reformation, which, by a clear presentation of the posi- 
 tion of the reformers should convince the king of France 
 and open-minded Catholics that the reformed doctrines 
 were neither so heretical nor so dangerous as they were rep- 
 resented. In this first edition of the Institutio Calvin sets 
 forth substantially the teaching of Luther, with some modi- 
 fications after Butzer, but in a form which bears the stamp 
 of his own individuality. The chapters treat, in order, of 
 the Law, Faith, Prayer, the Sacraments (Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper), the False Sacraments, and Christian Lib- 
 erty, thus including only the reformed doctrine of salva- 
 tion. In later editions it became a complete system of 
 theology, with a different and more methodical disposition 
 of the material, treating, in four books, of the Knowledge 
 of God, the Creator; the Knowledge of God, the Redeemer, 
 first revealed to the Fathers under the Law and afterward 
 to us in the Gospel; the Way in which the Grace of Christ 
 is Received; and the External Means Leading to Salvation. 
 In its final form (1559) it is beyond question the greatest 
 theological work of the Reformation, a pre-eminence due in 
 part to the logical character of Calvin's mind and the lucidity 
 of his exposition, in part to his learning and skill as an inter- 
 preter of the Scriptures, a field in which he surpassed all 
 his contemporaries. 
 
 329 
 
330 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Luther defended with the authority of Scripture certain 
 doctrines which were in conflict with those of the church; 
 he made no attempt to construct a system of doctrine on 
 the authority of Scripture alone, or even to develop a doc- 
 trine of Scripture. Calvin's Institutio, appropriately to its 
 general plan and divisions, begins with a discussion of the 
 sources of the knowledge men may have of God — the innate 
 sensus divinitatis and divine revelation in Scripture. The 
 latter is the ceternce veritatis regula, the norm of doctrine and 
 of life; obedience to the will of God revealed in it is the source 
 not only of a perfect and complete faith but of all right 
 knowledge of God. On the Bible are to be based, therefore, 
 the organisation and discipline of the church and the moral 
 standards and sanctions of a Christian community, as well 
 as the whole system of Christian doctrine. To the consis- 
 tent application of this principle the wide differences between 
 the development of the Reformed and the Lutheran branches 
 of Protestantism are in largest measure due. 
 
 Justification by faith is the distinctive article of Protes- 
 tant doctrine in its Reformed as well as its Lutheran type. 
 Calvin's presentation of this doctrine is more closely and 
 completely Pauline than Luther's. To Luther it was the 
 ground of a subjective assurance of a salvation whose sole 
 condition was the confident appropriation of the promises 
 of the gospel, and he always conceived it in antithesis to the 
 ideas of divine law, obligation, good works, and desert — an 
 antithesis which he forced to a contradiction. Calvin de- 
 velops an objective doctrine of justification based on an 
 exacter interpretation of Paul. He defines justification as 
 "the acceptance whereby God, having received us into 
 favour (grace), regards us as righteous." It consists of two 
 parts, the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ's 
 righteousness. He holds, with Paul, that no other faith 
 justifies than that which is efficacious by love; but denies 
 that it owes its justifying power to the efficaciousness of love. 
 
 The inseparable sequel of justification is sanctification (Ro- 
 mans 8, 30); Christ justifies no one whom he does not go 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 331 
 
 on also to sanctify. The development of a holy character 
 after the divine pattern is the purpose of God in human 
 salvation. It is evident not only that Calvin is here the 
 truer interpreter of Paul, but also that he is much nearer to 
 common Catholic doctrine. He distinguishes between the 
 act, in which God accepts the believer as righteous (justi- 
 fication), and the process, in which, by the work of the 
 Spirit of God within him, man is made holy (sanctifica- 
 tion). Catholic theology covers both act and process with 
 the name Justification. The important thing is that the 
 two, however named, are inseparable. 
 
 A central idea in Calvin's thinking is the sovereignty of 
 God, who rules the world, not as abstract and arbitrary will, 
 but as a moral personality, the final cause of all whose ways 
 in creation, history, providence, and redemption is his own 
 glory. 1 From this point of view the predestination of the 
 elect is necessarily apprehended in a different way from 
 that in which Luther viewed it. For Luther, who ap- 
 proached the question from the side of original sin, predes- 
 tination was essential to the assurance of salvation, not a 
 necessary consequence of God's sovereignty. It is a result 
 of this approach that Luther said little, and evidently 
 thought seldom, of the reverse side of the election of some 
 to faith and salvation, namely, the reprobation of the non- 
 elect. Calvin, on the contrary, faces without flinching this 
 unavoidable consequence, and brings the eternal damnation 
 of the reprobate as well as the salvation of the elect into 
 relation, not only to the positive will of God, but to the one 
 final cause, God's glory. "We give the name predestination 
 to the eternal decree of God by which he decided for himself 
 what should become of every individual man. For we are 
 not all created in the same condition. To some eternal life 
 is foreordained, and to others eternal damnation." Of the 
 former it is said that the end of their election is "that we 
 may be to the praise of divine grace"; of the latter, "that 
 by God's just, but inscrutable judgment, they were raised 
 1 This conception he had from Butzer. 
 
332 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 up to manifest his glory by their condemnation." Calvin 
 held this hard doctrine, not because of his own hardness of 
 heart, but because he found it, letter for letter, in Paul. It 
 was, as we have seen, the final teaching of Augustine; and 
 the difference between Calvin and the German Reformers 
 is only that he, like Zwingli, puts it in plain words. Like 
 Luther, Calvin also held — as they both believed, in agree- 
 ment with Augustine — that Adam's fall was not only fore- 
 seen but foreordained by God. 
 
 Those whom God has predestined to salvation he calls, 
 not alone by the general external call of the gospel, but by a 
 special inner calling, which, through the enlightening work 
 of the Holy Spirit, produces saving faith. Faith is thus not 
 so inseparably bound to the word and sacraments as it is in 
 Luther; but Calvin found no warrant in Scripture for Zwin- 
 gli's large-hearted stretching of the possibilities of absolute 
 predestination to save, by the mysterious operation of the 
 Spirit, not only God's elect among Jews and Christians, but 
 pagan philosophers like Socrates. 
 
 Luther had little interest in the organisation of the church; 
 he rejected the authority of the hierarchy, but did not 
 attempt to construct from the Scripture a normal type of 
 church government. ' He left all that at the outset to the 
 Spirit of God, and in the end to the civil rulers. Calvin, on 
 the contrary, believed that he found in the New Testament 
 a revealed pattern for the church, with a ministry including 
 pastors; teachers; elders, who were chiefly occupied with the 
 maintenance of order, morals, and discipline; and deacons, 
 who were the organs of its charity. He found in the Bible 
 not only norms of church order and discipline, but a divine 
 regulative for the life of the community. He had not that 
 repugnance, both personal and theoretical, to law as law, 
 which was so strong in Luther. That the law is not a way 
 of salvation, he held uncompromisingly; but the law in the 
 Old Testament and in the New was for him the revelation 
 of God's permanent will for the life of man and the order of 
 society, upon which human law should be based — the lav 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 333 
 
 of the state and the law of the church, between which there 
 should be entire harmony. When it came to the applica- 
 tion of this principle, there was a great deal more to be 
 found in the Old Testament than in the New, so that in the 
 church in Geneva and those which followed its doctrine and 
 example the Old Testament had a very much larger effect 
 than in the sphere of the Lutheran Reformation. 
 
 The revelation of God's immutable will for human life in 
 the Scriptures must be essentially one with the law of nature, 
 which is divinely impressed on the intelligence and conscience 
 of all men. Hence the legislation of the Old Testament, 
 adapted to particular times and circumstances, may be in- 
 terpreted in principle, universalised, and supplemented by 
 the law of nature. Calvin's juristic studies and his early 
 interest in Seneca show here; and this Stoic enlargement of 
 the conception of divine law is characteristic of the Reformed 
 churches, in marked contrast to Lutheran orthodoxy and 
 to the literal legalism of some later sects. 
 
 In his doctrine of the sacraments Calvin occupies a mid- 
 dle ground between Zwingli, for whom they are mere sym- 
 bols, and Luther's semi-Catholic conception. Baptism is 
 the sacrament which confirms and sanctions a covenant into 
 which children are received by God; it is the Christian coun- 
 terpart of circumcision, the covenant sacrament of the old 
 dispensation. No other immediate efficacy need be attrib- 
 uted to it. When children thus introduced into the cove- 
 nant come to years of discretion, "the remaining significance 
 of this sacrament will follow at such time as the Lord has 
 foreseen." In the Lord's Supper Calvin rejects Luther's 
 scholastic figment of the ubiquity of the glorified body of 
 Christ and the corporal presence of the body of Christ in 
 the consecrated elements, altogether. In the later editions 
 of the Institutes he formulates his final position as follows: 
 "The matter, or substance, of the sacrament I call Christ, 
 with his death and resurrection. By the effect of the sacra- 
 ment I understand redemption, righteousness, sanctification, 
 eternal life, and all the other benefits which Christ offers to 
 
334 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 us. . . . In the mystery of the Supper, by the symbols of 
 bread and wine, Christ is truly exhibited to us, even his 
 body and blood, in which he fulfilled all obedience to gain 
 for us righteousness." This presence is, however, mediated 
 through the Spirit to the spirit, not physically or materially. 
 
 Calvin distinguishes clearly, as Zwingli had done before 
 him, between the invisible church, which is the numerus elec- 
 torum, and the visible church, which is called church with 
 respect to men. The visible church is present wherever the 
 word of God is sincerely preached and listened to, and 
 where the sacraments are administered in accordance with 
 the institution of Christ; for his promise, "Where two or 
 three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the 
 midst of them," cannot fail. Unlike Luther and Zwingli, 
 Calvin firmly adhered to the principle of the autonomy of 
 the church in its relation to the civil authority. The church 
 of the Genevan ideal is, however, not a voluntary church, 
 an association of religiously minded men and women within 
 the secular community; it is the church of the whole people 
 of the city, all of whom are members of it, under its instruc- 
 tion and discipline. The church and the civil magistracy, 
 each independent in its sphere, should work together har- 
 moniously for the glory of God. In France, in a Catholic 
 state, the Reformed churches constituted themselves, through 
 their local, provincial, and national synods — a kind of re- 
 publican organisation — as a national Reformed Church; and 
 a similar organisation was created in the Netherlands and 
 in Scotland — an adaptation of Calvin's church in a city- 
 state to national dimensions and conditions, and always 
 with the idea of the church of the whole people. 
 
 The breach between the German and the Swiss Reformers 
 was never closed; the churches of the Augsburg Confession 
 repudiated fellowship with Zwinglians and Anabaptists in 
 one breath. The Swiss, on the other hand, early drew to- 
 gether in a consensus which accommodated or harmonised 
 Zwinglian and Calvinistic views. The two main branches 
 of the reform movement went their several ways, and remain 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 335 
 
 to this day apart — the Lutheran, or Evangelical, and the 
 Reformed, or Calvinistic. Protestantism in Switzerland, 
 France, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland was of the 
 Reformed kind; the Lutheran Reformation was confined to 
 the Protestant parts of Germany and to the Scandinavian 
 countries, and even in Germany the Reformed gained 
 ground that had once been Lutheran, especially in the 
 Palatinate. 
 
 The rapid spread of Protestantism provoked violent mea- 
 sures for its suppression. In Italy and in Spain, where it 
 got only a slight foothold, these measures were completely 
 successful; the Protestants who escaped the Inquisition 
 sought refuge in other lands. In the Netherlands the effort 
 of Philip II to extirpate reform and to override the ancient 
 rights of the provinces with an autocracy of Spanish pattern 
 brought about a general uprising of nobles and cities, and 
 ended in the independence of the United Netherlands 
 and the establishment of a national Protestant church. In 
 France, also, the Protestants took up arms in self-defence, 
 and the struggle assumed a political character which kept 
 the kingdom in a state of intermittent civil war from 1562 to 
 1589, when the accession of Henry rV, of Navarre, himself 
 brought up a Protestant, gave a more favourable turn to 
 their affairs, and the Edict of Nantes (1598) granted tolera- 
 tion to the Huguenots, recognising them as a body politic 
 within the state. The fall of La Rochelle (1628) put an end 
 to this anomalous condition; and in 1685 the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes deprived the Huguenots of protec- 
 tion, and led to emigration on an unprecedented scale, 
 which was an economic disaster for France, since it drove 
 into rival countries thousands of the most skilful workmen 
 in industries which were growing up in competition with 
 France. Protestantism remained a proscribed religion in 
 France until the revolution of 1789. 
 
 The rejection of the authority of the Catholic Church, 
 the assertion of the sole authority of the Word of God in 
 Scripture in matters of doctrine, logically demanded a re- 
 
336 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 vision of all the questions which the ancient church had 
 settled by the decisions of the councils as the issue of the 
 great controversies from the third century on. Luther, who 
 had comparatively little interest in theology and was not 
 much troubled by logical consistency, did not draw this 
 consequence. He accepted, as we have seen, not only the 
 Nicene but the Athanasian Creed, without demur or criti- 
 cism. In the Augsburg Confession the exposition of the 
 Principal Articles of Faith begins with the declaration that 
 the churches which the statement represents teach that the 
 decree of the Nicene Council is true, and to be believed 
 without any doubt; and proceeds to condemn a catalogue 
 of heretics on the deity and the person of Christ, including 
 the "Samosatenes, ancient and modern." Calvin was less 
 enamoured of the ancient symbols: the Athanasian Creed 
 had never been approved by any legitimate church; the 
 Nicene Creed was a hymn, suited to be sung, rather than a 
 confession of faith. 1 Both were the work of the post-apos- 
 tolic age, and devoid of authority. Yet he found the doc- 
 trines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ in the New 
 Testament, and the heresies of Servetus on these points 
 seemed to him no less than to the Roman Inquisition to 
 deserve death. 
 
 Servetus' "De Trinitatis Erroribus" (1531) was probably 
 in Melancthon's mind when in the Augsburg Confession he 
 gave a special note of condemnation to the "modern Samo- 
 satenes." His "Christianismi Restitutio" is a complete sys- 
 tem of theology, the aim of which is to restore the primitive 
 purity of Christian doctrine as it is revealed in Scripture. 
 Unlike Melancthon's "Loci" and Calvin's " Institutio," the 
 "Restitutio" did not grow out of the work of a reformer and 
 the need of a community; it was the work of a solitary 
 scholar, thought out in secrecy and printed anonymously. 
 Servetus was the first to bring histor.ical criticism to bear 
 upon the Nicene dogma. Its Trinity was not only not to be 
 
 1 This way of disposing of the creed has been rediscovered by some 
 modern Anglicans. 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 337 
 
 found in the New Testament, but it was not the doctrine of 
 the ante-Nicene church: it was not in the Apostolic Fathers 
 or the Apologists, in Irenseus or Tertullian, above all, not in 
 the great Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, who enter- 
 tained views widely at variance with it. He therefore re- 
 garded the Nicene doctrine, not, like the Reformers, as a 
 correct formulation of the teaching of Scripture and of the 
 church from the beginning, but as a corruption of genuine 
 Christianity, precisely as the Reformers regarded the doc- 
 trines of the mediaeval church. 
 
 In philosophy Servetus had imbibed the spirit of the 
 revived Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance, and had 
 great reverence for the writings of Hermes Trismegistos and 
 the Chaldsean Oracles of Zoroaster, as the fountain-head of 
 this sublime philosophy in immemorial antiquity; the same 
 ideas pervade the Old Testament and the New as he inter- 
 prets them. In his criticism of the orthodox doctrine of 
 the Trinity and in the construction which he opposes to 
 it these prepossessions are evident. His own doctrine is 
 briefly expressed in the thesis which serves as title to the 
 chapter on this subject in the "Restitutio": "De Trinitate 
 Divina, quod ea non sit invisibilium trium rerum ttjusio, sed 
 verae substantias Dei manifestatio in Verbo et communicatio 
 in Spiritu." Far from reducing Christ to a lower place than 
 he occupied in Catholic doctrine and its repetition by the 
 Reformers, Servetus believed that thus alone was Christ's 
 complete deity affirmed and the truth of the Trinity made 
 consistent with the unity of God. Space forbids an exposi- 
 tion of other parts of his system which are of no less interest; 
 it must suffice to add that he stood opposed to all the Re- 
 formers in the assertion of the freedom of the human will. 
 
 Servetus had no disciples. When the Genevans burned 
 him, and the Inquisition, out of whose hands he had slipped, 
 burned the whole edition of his book except the few copies 
 that had been privately distributed, they made between 
 them an end of this strictly individual heresy. 1 
 
 1 The influence of his thinking may be recognized in some individuals, 
 but in no party. 
 
338 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Antitrinitarian tendencies appeared sporadically within 
 the area of the German and Swiss Reformations, commonly 
 in connection with Anabaptist ideas. An Anabaptist coun- 
 cil which met secretly in Venice in 1550 and was attended 
 by sixty delegates declared their belief on this point: "Christ 
 is not God, but man, born of Joseph and Mary, but full of 
 divine powers. He died in order to attain God's righteous- 
 ness, that is, the utmost of his goodness and mercy, and his 
 promise." Unitarian views emerged also in Italy in human- 
 ist circles touched by Calvinistic ideas. Driven thence by 
 the activity of the Inquisition, the refugees betook them- 
 selves to Geneva and other Swiss cities, where, however, 
 when they made their opinions known, they found no peace. 
 Some of them sought security and a field of activity in 
 Poland and Transylvania, associating themselves with the 
 Calvinistic branch of the Reformation in those countries, and 
 disseminated their ideas with such success that they won 
 over to their view a considerable part of the churches of 
 those regions. A division was the result, and the Unitarians 
 organised their own synods and schools. In their ranks wide 
 differences developed. Some occupied a virtually Arian 
 position, maintaining the pre-existence of Christ and his 
 subordination to the Father; others rejected his pre-exist- 
 ence, but held to his birth from the Virgin, and adored the 
 risen Christ, whence they were known as " Adorantes"; while 
 a third, more radical, party denied the supernatural birth, 
 and condemned the adoration of Christ as the worship of 
 the creature in place of the Creator ("Nonadorantes"). 
 The head of the last-named party in Transylvania, Francis 
 David, was, at the instance of Biandrata, a leader of the 
 "Adorant" Unitarians, sentenced to life-imprisonment, and 
 died in prison. 
 
 The overcoming of these dissensions was chiefly the work 
 of Faustus Socinus (Sozzini) of Siena. Socinus' uncle, 
 Lselius Socinus (d. 1562, at Zurich), likewise entertained 
 Unitarian views, without any zeal for propagating them, 
 and had managed to live in reformed cities in Switzerland 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 339 
 
 and Germany without antagonising the Reformers. Faustus 
 Socinus (born 1539, d. 1604), after living for twelve years in 
 Florence at the Medicean court, spent four years in Switzer- 
 land, chiefly in Basel, whence he was called by Biandrata 
 to Transylvania to try to compose the strife among the Uni- 
 tarians there. In this effort he did not succeed, and after 
 a short time removed to Poland, where the rest of his life 
 was spent. It was chiefly through him that the Arian ele- 
 ment, on the one side, and the radical "Nonadorantes," on 
 the other, were won over to the middle way, the few irrecon- 
 cilables seceding. The Racovian Catechism (1605), chiefly 
 the work of Socinus, represents the doctrine of the main 
 body, the "Polish Brethren," as they called themselves. 
 
 The movement made great and rapid progress. At Rakow, 
 its principal centre, a school was established, which in its 
 most flourishing time counted a thousand scholars, and 
 where Protestants and Catholics, Anabaptists and Unitarians, 
 studied side by side. There also was established the print- 
 ing-press from which their literature was distributed, and 
 there the general synod of the Unitarians in Poland and 
 Transylvania annually brought together the ministers, el- 
 ders, and deacons of the churches. In the early years of 
 the seventeenth century they had a considerable number of 
 theological teachers and writers of mark, the greater part 
 of them German by birth, and the movement gained a foot- 
 hold in Germany itself, particularly at the University of 
 Altdorf. 1 After 1632 the Catholic reaction gained the upper 
 hand in Poland, and under John Casimir, Jesuit and Cardi- 
 nal, who became king in 1648, the destruction of this flourish- 
 ing church was completed. Only in Transylvania has it 
 survived through great tribulation to our own day. Many 
 Unitarians, driven out of Poland, found refuge in other 
 countries, especially in Prussia and the mark of Branden- 
 burg, and in Holland. In the latter country they associated 
 themselves in part with the Mennonites, in part with the 
 Remonstrants. From Holland, partly by migration, partly 
 1 Near Nurnberg. 
 
340 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 through literature, Unitarian ideas passed to England, where 
 they attracted sufficient attention to evoke an act of Par- 
 liament in 1648, making the denial of the divinity of Christ 
 a capital offence. 
 
 It was not an accident that this movement had its origin 
 in Italy. Like the humanistic reformation which Le Fevre 
 d'Etaples, Colet, and Erasmus conceived and laboured for, 
 it had its roots in the Italian Renaissance and its precursors 
 in Italian thinkers. The renaissance of Christianity by a 
 return to the sources was a natural counterpart of the re- 
 naissance of classical antiquity by the same means. The 
 New Testament itself was a piece of the ancient world, and 
 better understood by those who had steeped themselves in 
 the thought of antiquity and interpreted it as other ancient 
 authors are interpreted than by those who read it through 
 the eyes of mediaeval schoolmen or of the Fathers. They 
 interpreted Paul, not by Augustine, but in the light of Neo- 
 platonic and Stoic ideas which seemed to them not only to 
 be the acme of ancient philosophy, but to embody eternal 
 verity, and they discovered the same sublime philosophy in 
 Paul's Epistles and the Gospel of John. 
 
 Erasmus, in his "Enchiridion Militis Christiani" (1502), 
 set forth in simple and popular form what would to-day be 
 called "the religion of Jesus," as the essence of Christianity, 
 without the modern antithesis to "the Christianity of Paul," 
 but instinctively recognising ■ the fountainhead of Chris- 
 tianity, and making the last step in the ascent to the 
 sources. In his view the teaching of Jesus is a compendium 
 of universal religious and moral truth; Christianity is in 
 substance identical with all the true religion and morality 
 that ever was, to which it adds the authority of Christ and 
 the help of divine grace. 
 
 The Italian reformers with whom we are here concerned 
 were the heirs of this spirit; but while Erasmus and such as 
 he laboured for a revival of pure Christianity within the 
 church, their successors, two or three generations later, com- 
 ing after the schism and in the midst of the reaction, saw 
 
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 341 
 
 hope of a restoration of true Christianity only outside the 
 church, and were restrained from radical conclusions neither 
 by affection for the church and desire to maintain the unity 
 of Christendom, nor, it must be added, by historic sense. 
 There was none among them comparable in learning or in- 
 tellectual acumen to the great humanists, or to many of the 
 theologians of their day, Catholic or Calvinist; nor were 
 they men of broader minds, but they pushed their biblical 
 rationalism to its consequences, whatever they might be. 
 
 The doctrine of the Trinity was criticised by Socinus and 
 his successors, on both biblical and rational grounds. Christ 
 is for Socinus a man of extraordinary kind, miraculously 
 conceived, endued with divine wisdom and power, raised 
 from the dead, and exalted to a place of power beside God, 
 and therefore properly worshipped. His work was primarily 
 that of a prophet; he gave a new and deeper meaning to the 
 law, promised us eternal life, and set us the example of a 
 moral perfection which he sealed with his death. Like the 
 humanists, with their ultimately Greek conception of sin 
 as a voluntary act, Socinus maintained the freedom of the 
 human will, with a theory of divine grace which was promptly 
 branded as Pelagian. 
 
 Especially incisive was his criticism of the theory of sat- 
 isfaction in the Anselmic doctrine of the atonement, as it 
 was held by both Catholics and Protestants. He denies, on 
 Scotist premises, that there is in God any necessity for sat- 
 isfaction, and declares that the punishment of the innocent 
 in place of the guilty conflicts with the justice of God. Re- 
 mission of sins and satisfaction for sin are contradictories; 
 the one excludes the other. Vicarious satisfaction in the 
 case of personal punishment is impossible; to allow such sub- 
 stitution would be the height of injustice. Moreover, since 
 the deity is incapable of suffering, the death of Christ, if 
 conceived as substitutionary, could have only the value of 
 a single human life, and therefore could not suffice for the 
 whole world; while, if the substitution were intrinsically 
 equivalent, it would necessarily operate unconditionally to 
 
342 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the salvation of all, and its efficacy would not be dependent 
 on faith. The whole unbiblical and unreasonable doctrine 
 is immoral in itself, and has an immoral influence on men. 
 Upon the ground of the juridical conception of the satisfac- 
 tion of Christ, entertained particularly by Protestants, this 
 criticism was in fact so telling that it moved Grotius to a 
 reconstruction of the doctrine of the atonement in which 
 he endeavoured to avoid the Socinian objections. 
 
 In this theory the death of Christ is neither humanity's 
 amends in the person of the God-man to God's injured 
 honour (Anselm) nor the execution upon him of the penalty 
 which retributive justice demanded of the whole human 
 race for violated law (Protestant doctrine). The necessity 
 of Christ's death lay not in the satisfaction by an equivalent 
 of offended honour or of inexorable penal justice, but in 
 the maintenance of public justice. The moral government 
 of the world cannot be maintained without law and its sanc- 
 tions, nor would these be effective to secure that conformity 
 which is necessary to public welfare if the ruler uniformly 
 remitted the penalty on the simple condition of repentance, 
 for men would think that he did not take his own law seri- 
 ously and that they need not. The death of his Son, in- 
 flicted by God and voluntarily undertaken by Christ, show 
 in the most impressive way how grave a thing sin is in the 
 eyes of God, and is above all things apt to move men to 
 repentance, faith, and righteous life. Abelard conceived 
 the moral influence of the death of Christ as grateful love; 
 for Grotius it is rather the fear of what a God in whose sight 
 sin is so heinous will do to unrepentant sinners. 
 
 The Grotian theory prevailed among the Arminians, and 
 was taken up by influential schools of Calvinism, partic- 
 ularly by Jonathan Edwards and his successors in New Eng- 
 land. With many modifications it is at the bottom of most 
 modern "moral influence" theories of the atonement. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION 
 
 The Council of Trent — Reform Decrees — Doctrinal Decrees — Scrip- 
 ture and Tradition — Justification — The Sacraments — Orders of the 
 Ministry — Professio Fidei Tridentinae — The Roman Catechism — 
 Catholic Dogmatics, Polemics, Historical Studies — Ignatius Loyola 
 and the Society of Jesus — Missions, Catholic and Protestant. 
 
 From the beginning of the conflict in Germany the call 
 for a council of the church to correct abuses and settle dis- 
 puted questions of doctrine had never ceased to be heard. 
 The emperor Charles V had urged one pope after another 
 to call such a council, but the reluctance of the popes to 
 convoke a council under the conditions on which the Ger- 
 mans insisted, the bad terms on which they habitually were 
 with Charles, and the political complications of the times 
 prevented, and it was not until December, 1545, that a gen- 
 eral council at last was convened in Trent, a city of the 
 Empire on the Italian side of the Alps. Things had by that 
 time gone so far that there was no longer any reasonable 
 hope that the council could achieve the end which had been 
 originally desired, namely, to heal the dissensions by the 
 institution of reforms the necessity for which was acknowl- 
 edged on all hands, and by a free discussion, and, if possible, 
 a common understanding upon the contested points of doc- 
 trine. Whereas in 1537 the more moderate Protestants 
 were in favour of participation in a council, the Protestant 
 members of the Diet at Worms in 1545 refused to have any- 
 thing to do with it. Consequently the Council of Trent 
 found its task, not in endeavouring to reconcile the differ- 
 ences between Catholics and Protestants, but in a precise 
 definition of Catholic doctrine in opposition to Protestantism 
 and in far-reaching reforms in church order and discipline. 
 
 343 
 
344 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Nineteen years elapsed between the first session of the 
 council, on December 13, 1545, and the last, December 4, 
 1563. Its history falls into three periods. It sat in Trent 
 from December, 1545, to March, 1547, when the pope trans- 
 ferred it to Bologna. Two sessions only were held at Bo- 
 logna, and then Julius III moved it back to Trent again, 
 where it continued its labours for a year, May, 1551, to 
 April, 1552. During this period representatives of the 
 Protestant princes and free cities, at the instance of the 
 emperor, made their appearance in the council, but with 
 demands which it could not in any case have granted, even 
 if new political complications had not broken off its delib- 
 erations. Not until January, 1562, was it able to convene 
 again, and although an invitation was again given to the 
 Protestants to participate, this proposal met no response. 
 In the meantime the religious peace of 1555 had formally 
 recognised the division, and established the rights of the 
 religion of the Augsburg Confession in the Empire; conse- 
 quently the remaining sessions of the council were devoted 
 exclusively to matters of Catholic interest. 
 
 The reform decrees of the council left hardly any side of 
 the church life untouched. At the very beginning they deal 
 with instruction in the Scriptures in the higher and lower 
 schools, and with preaching in the churches, which was en- 
 joined upon the parish clergy under the oversight of the 
 bishops. The reforms are throughout in a conservative 
 spirit. They nowhere depart from long-established and uni- 
 versally recognised principles of Catholic church order and 
 discipline, but upon these principles they correct a multitude 
 of abuses which prevailed in almost every sphere; and al- 
 though the promulgation of the decrees and the best effort 
 to enforce them could not in a day put an end to evils which 
 were the growth of centuries, and although some of the good 
 plans of the council did not prove practicable, it must be 
 recognised that the Council of Trent inaugurated a new era 
 not only in the administration but in the life of the church. 
 
 The doctrinal decrees of the council deal chiefly with 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION 345 
 
 specific issues which had been raised by the Protestant Re- 
 formers. So far as the fundamental dogmas of the church 
 are concerned, the council contented itself with solemnly 
 reaffirming the Nicene Creed as it stood in the liturgy. 
 On these dogmas there was indeed no controversy between 
 Catholics and Protestants. Similarly, the general Augustin- 
 ian construction of the doctrine of grace and the Anselmic 
 doctrine of the atonement were held in common by both 
 parties. In defining the teaching of the church on disputed 
 points, the council had chiefly in view those which had 
 been raised in the Lutheran controversy in Germany. 
 
 At the outset it laid down, in opposition to Luther's sole 
 authority of Scripture, the concurrent authority of the 
 Scriptures and the unwritten traditions, "which, being re- 
 ceived by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, 
 or handed down by the Apostles themselves at the dicta- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit, have been transmitted to us." 
 These two sources and norms of Christian truth and morals 
 the church "receives and venerates with equal piety and 
 reverence." The canon of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments is defined in accordance with the tradition and use 
 of the church, including the books not found in the Bible 
 of the Jews, which Luther had segregated under the title 
 Apocrypha, and to which he denied the authority of inspira- 
 tion. It further prescribed that in all public lectures, dis- 
 cussions, and expositions, the vetus et vulgata editio — that is 
 to say, the Latin Bible, as it had for centuries been in use 
 in the church — shall be treated as authentic, and shall be 
 interpreted in the sense "which the holy mother Church, 
 whose it is to judge of the true sense and intention of the 
 Holy Scriptures, has held and holds"; thus asserting the pre- 
 rogative right of the church to determine the interpretation 
 of Scripture, which Luther and all the reformers denied. 
 The foundation having thus been laid, the council proceeded 
 to the particular doctrines at issue. 
 
 The dogmatic decrees deal chiefly with the doctrine of 
 original sin; the nature and operation of justification, and 
 
346 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 its fruits, good works; and with the sacraments. The decrees 
 were framed with great deliberation and thorough discus- 
 sion in the commission of theologians which prepared them, 
 and after general discussion in plenary session and adoption 
 by the council, their final form was given them by a com- 
 mittee assigned to that special task. 
 
 In the decree on justification (January 13, 1547) the 
 council sets forth the Augustinian doctrine which had been 
 held in substance by the church since the fifth century, as 
 it was defined by Aquinas. "Justification ... is not 
 merely the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and 
 renewal of the inner man by the voluntary acceptance of 
 grace and of the gifts by which a man from being unrighteous 
 is made righteous (ex injusto Jit Justus) and from an enemy a 
 friend, that he may be in expectation an heir of eternal 
 life." Throughout this long and carefully formulated de- 
 cree the council meets the Reformers on their own ground; 
 there is no appeal to tradition or the Fathers; every state- 
 ment is based on Scripture. Indeed, in its endeavour to 
 combine in one harmonious presentation the whole teaching 
 of Scripture concerning this side of man's salvation, the 
 decree is more consistently scriptural than Luther, who 
 seized on one aspect of Paul's teaching, as he interpreted it, 
 to the exclusion of all that did not agree with it. 
 
 The subject of the sacraments engaged the council in each 
 of the three periods of its activity. In the first (1547), it 
 laid down the far-reaching principle that all righteousness 
 begins, grows, and if lost is restored, by sacraments; and 
 drew up a body of canons condemning various errors about 
 the sacraments. Among these anathematised errors are the 
 assertions that the seven sacraments, viz., Baptism, Confir- 
 mation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Orders, 
 and Matrimony, were not all instituted by Christ; that they 
 are not necessary to salvation, but that without them, by 
 faith alone, man receives from God the grace of justifica- 
 tion; that they do not contain and confer the grace they 
 signify, but are only external signs of the grace received 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION 347 
 
 through faith and works of the Christian profession; that 
 they do not confer grace ex opere operate 
 
 The decrees on the sacraments proceed from later sessions 
 (1551; 1562-'63). In them the complete mediaeval develop- 
 ment as it had been consolidated and defined by Aquinas is 
 comprehensively, clearly, and uncompromisingly set forth, 
 and in the accompanying canons the contrary errors are spe- 
 cifically anathematised. Thus, in the Eucharist, after the 
 consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially con- 
 tained under the appearance of those sensible things. By 
 the consecration the whole substance of the bread is con- 
 verted into the substance of the body of Christ, 1 and the 
 whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood; 
 this conversion is fitly and properly called " transubstantia- 
 tion." Yet in each of the elements is the whole Christ, his 
 body and his blood, 2 his soul and his divine nature, by vir- 
 tue of the hypostatic union. The cultus latrice which be- 
 longs to God alone is to be paid to the sacrament: "For we 
 believe that same God to be present in the sacrament, of 
 whom the Eternal Father, bringing him into the world, said, 
 'Let all the angels of God worship him.'" 
 
 In another decree the sacrificial character of the Mass is 
 affirmed and defined. In the divine sacrifice which is per- 
 formed in the Mass the same Christ is contained and is 
 bloodlessly immolated who upon the cross once offered him- 
 self in blood; therefore that sacrifice is truly propitiating; 
 and through it, if we draw near to God with a true heart 
 and right faith, with fear and reverence, contrite and peni- 
 tent, we obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. 
 In accordance with the tradition of the Apostles, it is prop- 
 erly offered not alone for the sins of the living, their penal- 
 ties, satisfactions, and other needs, but also for the dead in 
 Christ who are not yet completely purified (in purgatory). 
 
 1 "Substance" must be understood in the Aristotelian definition, 
 not in any of the modern senses of the word. 
 
 2 Communion in both kinds, on which the Bohemians and the Re- 
 formers insisted as essential to the sacrament, is therefore unnecessary. 
 
348 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 The necessary counterpart of this doctrine is the sacra- 
 ment of Orders. The Eucharistic sacrifice of the New Tes- 
 tament requires a new sacrificial priesthood, which was in- 
 stituted by Christ. To the Apostles and their successors in 
 this priesthood he committed the power of consecrating, 
 offering, and ministering his body and blood, and of remit- 
 ting or retaining sins. The decree affirms also the necessity 
 of ecclesiastical ordination; the indelible character (stamp) 
 impressed in ordination; the divine institution of the hier- 
 archy with its several orders; and particularly, in opposition 
 to the Protestants, of the leading place in the hierarchy held 
 by bishops, successors of the Apostles, superior in rank to 
 presbyters, and " set by the Holy Spirit to rule the Church 
 of God" (Acts 20, 28), to whom belongs the power of ad- 
 ministering the sacrament of Confirmation, ordaining the 
 ministry of the church, and doing various other things 
 which are not in the competence of the lower orders of the 
 clergy. 
 
 The sacrament of Penance (Penitence) is defined with 
 especial care, in close agreement with Aquinas, and defended 
 against the animadversions of the Reformers. 
 
 In the fundamental principle that all grace is imparted 
 through sacraments, the council formulated precisely what 
 had been the unformulated belief of the church from the 
 beginning, and the multiplication of sacraments is rather 
 differentiation than invention. "Out of the church there 
 is no salvation" was self-evident, because the Catholic 
 Church alone had the efficacious sacraments. The hier- 
 archical organisation of the church is as old at least as the 
 early second century; and the bishops, elders, and deacons 
 of the New Testament had always been taken as the Apos- 
 tolic institution of the three orders of the ministry till the 
 exegesis of some of the humanists made bishops and pres- 
 byters the same order, an interpretation in which the Re- 
 formed churches followed them. On these points, there- 
 fore, the council stood fast in the Catholic tradition and 
 gave it formal dogmatic authority. And it was here, over 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION J349 
 
 the church and the sacraments, rather than on points of 
 theology or morals, that the real issue lay. 
 
 The decrees of the council were confirmed by Pope Pius IV 
 in the bull "Benedictus Deus" (January 26, 1564), and a 
 congregation of cardinals was appointed to supervise the 
 execution of its reforms. To secure conformity to its doc- 
 trinal decrees the "Professio Fidei Tridentinse" was drawn 
 up, and the pope prescribed that it should be taken by all 
 ecclesiastics having the cure of souls and by the members of 
 all orders, with an oath of obedience to the Roman pontiff 
 as the successor of Peter and the vicar of Christ, and a 
 pledge, with the help of God, to maintain unimpaired to the 
 end of life " this true Catholic faith, outside of which no man 
 can be saved." His successor, Pius V, in conformity with 
 the recommendations of the council, revised the Breviary 
 and the Missal. An authentic edition of the Vulgate was 
 published by Sixtus V (1590), which proved to be very 
 incorrect and was superseded by another, thoroughly re- 
 vised, under Clement VIII in 1592. 
 
 One of the undertakings to which the Council of Trent 
 set its hand, but which in the end it devolved on the pope, 
 was the preparation of a catechism in which the doctrine 
 of the Catholic Church should be set forth for the instruc- 
 tion of the people, with the express purpose of counteract- 
 ing the influence of the numerous and popular Protestant 
 catechisms. Such a catechism was prepared with great 
 care by a commission under the superintendence of Cardinal 
 Borromeo, and after revision by eminent theologians headed 
 by Cardinal Sirletus, was published in 1566. The "Cate- 
 chismus Romanus" was designed to be a practical manual 
 for the clergy, particularly for parish priests, upon whom 
 fell the duty of giving instruction in religion, not primarily 
 for the use of the laity, for which end its very dimensions 
 — it makes 500-600 octavo pages — unfit it. Like earlier 
 works of a similar kind, both Catholic and Protestant, it is 
 arranged under the main divisions: The Apostles' Creed, 
 the Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's 
 
350 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Prayer. It is a clear and comprehensive statement of 
 Catholic teaching in theology and morals, based primarily 
 upon the Scripture, but fortified by abundant references 
 to the Fathers. It was highly commended by Pope Pius 
 V and several of his successors, and while it has never bad 
 exclusive authority or universal use in catechetical instruc- 
 tion, 1 it may be regarded as a standard of orthodoxy in the 
 chief topics of theology. 
 
 The revival of dogmatic theology which had begun in 
 Spain before the Reformation was greatly stimulated by 
 the work of the council, in which Spanish theologians took 
 a leading part. The ablest systematic work which came from 
 this school is the "De Locis Theologicis" of the Spanish 
 Dominican Melchior Cano (d. 1560), who naturally follows 
 in the footsteps of Aquinas, but endeavours to put the scho- 
 lastic theology on a broader basis. In defence of Tridentine 
 doctrine and polemic against Protestantism, the learned and 
 acute writings of the Italian cardinal Bellarmin, easily hold 
 the first place. As an antidote to the Lutheran "Magdeburg 
 Centuries," in which church history testified to the antiquity 
 of Protestantism, Baronius (d. 1607) produced his monu- 
 mental "Ecclesiastical Annals," a work of enormous erudi- 
 tion and genuine historical spirit. In the vast collections of 
 works of the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers, and in a 
 multitude of separate editions, there was in the later six- 
 teenth century and through the seventeenth a veritable ren- 
 naissance of Christian literature. The apparatus for a 
 critical study of the original texts and versions of the Bible 
 was provided in the Complutensian Polyglot (1514— '17) of 
 Cardinal Ximenes and its more comprehensive successors, 
 the Antwerp and Paris Polyglots (1569 ff. and 1629 /.), 
 both from the hands of Catholic scholars, from whom came 
 also learned and voluminous commentaries on the whole 
 Bible and on parts of it. 
 
 1 The Jesuits, indeed, impugned its symbolical character, out of dis- 
 like for its too explicitly Thomist attitude on the doctrines of grace, 
 and even professed to discover heresies in it. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION 351 
 
 Beside and beneath all this was a greatly quickened re- 
 ligious earnestness, which manifested itself in the founding 
 of new orders and religious congregations, many of them 
 devoted to Christian work — teaching, charitable and spiri- 
 tual labours among the poor, the care of the sick; and on 
 another side in a revival of Catholic piety which took its 
 habitual ascetic-mystical forms. The mysticism of Santa 
 Teresia and St. John of the Cross, or of St. Francis de Sales, 
 is, however, of a different type from the classical mysticism 
 of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It had not the 
 same predominating intellectual character, and sought its 
 goal not in the intellectual vision of God, but in absorbing 
 love and complete quiescence in the will of God. 
 
 In this great revival of Catholicism, and in the recovery 
 to the Church of whole regions or countries which had fallen 
 away, no single instrument effected so much as the Society 
 of Jesus, which obtained the approbation of Pope Paul III 
 in 1540. The founder, best known by his Latinised name, 
 Ignatius de Loyola (1491-1556), was a Spanish nobleman 
 brought up to the career of arms, whose heart and mind 
 were turned to religion during a long convalescence from a 
 wound received in the siege of Pampeluna in 1521. The 
 soldier's spirit is impressed on the order in its original name, 
 "Compariia de Jesus," in the military model of its organisa- 
 tion, and in the principle of soldierly obedience which is the 
 essence of its rule. The same spirit is manifest in the long 
 and systematic training to which the members of the order 
 are submitted. 
 
 This is the outward side of Loyola's institution; the soul 
 of it is the "Book of Spiritual Exercises," a method of re- 
 ligious experience, in which by meditation on sin, righteous- 
 ness, and judgment, the abhorrence of sin is aroused by 
 which the soul is purified; in the second stage, meditation 
 on the kingdom of Christ leads to the dedication of life to 
 the service of God; in the following stages this resolve is con- 
 firmed, the difficulties of the religious life are presented, and 
 the way to overcome them shown; the end to which this 
 
352 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 whole discipline is directed is reached when the soul is filled 
 with an ardent love of God. This is not, however, as in 
 quietist mysticism, the ultimate and all-satisfying achieve- 
 ment, but the motive power of a life of intelligent activity 
 in the service of God and his church. 
 
 The great influence of the order was gained and exercised 
 in three principal ways: first, by preaching, especially in 
 missions, by which they reached the masses; second, as con- 
 fessors and spiritual advisers of rulers; and, third, by their 
 schools and colleges, in which great numbers of youth of the 
 higher classes were educated. The Jesuits were the reform- 
 ers of education in the Catholic countries of Europe; the 
 Ratio Studiorum was a great advance both in matter and 
 method over the mediaeval curriculum. They cultivated 
 humanistic studies, while guarding against their dangers to 
 faith and morals, and took an active part in the new devel- 
 opment of science. In the advancement of Catholic learn- 
 ing, of which mention has been made above, Jesuit scholars 
 vied with members of the older orders. 
 
 The discovery of America and the opening of the sea 
 route to the East Indies, in which Spain and Portugal were 
 foremost, and the reopening of the land way to China, com- 
 ing in this time of quickened religious life, kindled the zeal 
 of Christians for the conversion of the nations of the New 
 World and of the oldest, and a new period of missionary 
 activity began, in which the Jesuits had their full share. 
 Loyola's first plan for his Company had been a mission en- 
 terprise, and this purpose was never lost sight of. One of 
 the original little band, Francis Xavier, by his labours in 
 India and Japan earned the title "Apostle of the Indies." 
 He died knocking at the doors of China, but in the next 
 generation Jesuit missionaries gained entrance to the empire 
 and began their remarkable work. Among the aborigines 
 of North and South America, also, Jesuit missionaries were 
 among the foremost names. The Dominicans and Francis- 
 cans manifested similar enthusiasm for the Christianising of 
 the world, and large results were achieved by their efforts. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION 353 
 
 The organisation of the Congregation "De Propaganda 
 Fide" (1622) brought the missionary operations of the 
 Church throughout the world under a central direction in 
 Rome. 
 
 Protestants were much later than Catholics in the field 
 of missions, except here and there on the margin of Euro- 
 pean colonies; it was not till the nineteenth century that 
 they undertook the work on a larger scale through volun- 
 tary societies, and in part eventually as church organisa- 
 tions. In the meantime Protestant powers had taken the 
 place of Spain and Portugal as the foremost colonising and 
 commercial nations. In the four centuries that have elapsed 
 since the opening of this third great age of expansion a 
 large part of the world which at the beginning of the six- 
 teenth century lay outside Christendom has been annexed 
 to it by colonisation and by missions, both in the lands of 
 ancient civilisation such as India, China, and Japan, and 
 among races on a lower plane of culture in every quarter of 
 the globe, and millions of converts have been gathered into 
 native churches. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THE SEQUEL OF REFORMATION 
 
 Jansenism — Arminianism and the Synod of Dort — The School of Sau- 
 mur — The Westminster Confession of Faith — Political Results of 
 the Reformation — Dissatisfaction with its Religious Results — 
 Puritanism — Pietism — John Wesley and the Methodist Revival 
 — The Baptists — George Fox and the Society of Friends — Mul- 
 tiplication of Sects — Transitional Character of the Renaissance 
 and the Reformation — Things in which Catholics and Protestants 
 Agreed. 
 
 To present a united front against Protestantism, the 
 Council of Trent had avoided as far as possible explicit pro- 
 nouncements, and even discussion, on questions which 
 divided schools and orders within the church. The old con- 
 troversies of Thomists and Scotists, of Dominicans and 
 Franciscans, continued, with an increment of zeal from 
 the universal revival of theological interest. The Jesuits 
 were a new contentious element. They were promptly in 
 conflict with the Dominicans over the ancient issue of divine 
 grace and the human will, and in their antagonism to the 
 Thomist Augustinianism of the older order some Jesuit 
 theologians even went so far as to make grace efficacious 
 non ex se, sed ex consensu humano praviso. Antagonism 
 to such Pelagianising assertion of the power of the human 
 will led on the other side to an Augustinian reaction which 
 did not always keep within the bounds of scholastic quali- 
 fications, and was the more obnoxious because of its resem- 
 blance to Protestant doctrine. The condemnation of the 
 Jansenists was a declaration of the Church against this sus- 
 picious revival of a high Augustinianism. 
 
 In the Protestant churches the great controversies of the 
 post-Reformation period were in the same field, but in a 
 
 354 
 
THE SEQUEL OF REFORMATION 355 
 
 contrary sense; they had their origin in attempts to modify 
 the Augustinianism of the Reformers and the more ex- 
 treme positions of the theological epigoni. In the Lutheran 
 churches the synergism of Melancthon and the Philippists 
 was combated by the strict Lutheranism of Flacius and his 
 school. The "Formula of Concord" (1580) decided for the 
 "genuine Lutherans" against the synergists: in conversion 
 man is purely passive; "he is worse than a stock or a 
 stone until God brings him to life from the death of sin." 
 Yet the absolute predestination which is the necessary 
 counterpart of total inability is illogically denied. 
 
 In the Reformed churches a reaction against the Calvin- 
 istic logic with its double decree of election and reproba- 
 tion led the so-called Remonstrants in Holland, under the 
 influence of a Leyden theologian, Arminius, to claim tolera- 
 tion in the Dutch churches for modifications of the con- 
 fessional doctrine in certain important points. For par- 
 ticular election, with its corollary, reprobation, they sub- 
 stituted a universal conditional predestination, a decree of 
 God to save through Christ those of the sinful race of men 
 who, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, believe on him 
 and persevere. They held the universality of the atone^ 
 ment; Christ died for every man, to gain for all the forgive- 
 ness of sins, but so that no one actually attains this except 
 the believer. Man of himself is unable, either to think, will, 
 or do, anything truly good; the grace of God is the begin- 
 ning, continuation, and completion of all good in man, but 
 the operation of divine grace, neither in regeneration nor in 
 the regenerate is irresistible. The controversy had not 
 gone far before the inamissibility of grace was also denied. 
 
 The conflict between this party and the strict Calvinists 
 was soon entangled with political issues, the particularist 
 loyalty of the Provinces and the centralising aims of the 
 Stadholder. A national synod was demanded by the ortho- 
 dox party. To strengthen their position, they enlarged 
 their plan to a representative council of the Reformed 
 churches, and delegates from England, the Palatinate, 
 
356 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Hesse, Bremen, and Switzerland, participated in it. This 
 synod, which met in Dordrecht (November, 1618, to May, 
 1619), in contradiction to the Remonstrants, formulated the 
 "Five Points of Calvinism" with uncompromising rigour. 
 Its canons contain the most extreme statement of Calvin- 
 istic doctrine, halting only before the supralapsarian theory, 
 which made election and reprobation anterior to creation 
 and the fall; and halting there, not out of consideration for 
 the Arminians, but in order to maintain an undivided front 
 against them, since among the churches represented in the 
 council this theory was by no means universally approved. 
 As in the Roman church the repudiation of the revived 
 Augustinianism of the Jansenists was the more energetic 
 because of its resemblance to Protestantism, so in the Re- 
 formed church Arminianism was the more zealously com- 
 bated because it seemed a step toward the "Semi-Pelagian- 
 ism" of the Roman church, and particularly of the Jesuits. 
 The canons of Dordrecht were formally adopted only in 
 Holland and by the French church, but they were accepted 
 throughout the whole of Reformed Protestantism. It was 
 the first and last general council of the Reformed churches, 
 and was among them not infrequently spoken of as an 
 "oecumenical council." A modern historian would be more 
 inclined to call it the Reformed Trent. 
 
 The Arminians, expelled from the national church, and 
 at first exiled from the land, survived as a sect, and, freed 
 from compulsory orthodoxy, presently showed themselves 
 amenable to influences not only from Dutch humanism, rep- 
 resented, for example, by Grotius, but to some extent from 
 the Anabaptists (Mennonites) and from Socinian refugees 
 from Poland. 
 
 The Synod of Dort had defined thorough Calvinism in a 
 way to exclude all ambiguity, and therefore to make the 
 inherent difficulties of the system more difficult than ever. 
 Another attempt to get over these difficulties was made by 
 theologians of the flourishing French school at Saumur, who 
 endeavoured to reconcile particular election with the uni- 
 
THE SEQUEL OF REFORMATION 357 
 
 versality of the offer of salvation in many passages of Scrip- 
 ture by the theory of hypothetic universalism, introducing 
 distinctions by which the harshness of Calvinism seemed 
 to be moderated. For example, where the Reformed 
 churches had hitherto unanimously denied to man any 
 ability in himself to exercise saving faith, they taught that 
 men have the natural ability to believe, but not the moral 
 ability. They maintained, also, the mediate imputation of 
 Adam's sin, through an inherited sinful nature, in conflict 
 especially with the forensic theory of imputation held by 
 the so-called Federal school. 
 
 But what aroused even more acrimonious controversy 
 than these mitigations of Calvinism was the proof adduced 
 by Cappel that the Hebrew vowel-points and accents were 
 not part of the original text, but embody the traditional in- 
 terpretation of the Jewish schools many centuries later. 
 Protestantism, in its controversy with Roman Catholic 
 scholars over the authentic text of Scripture, had been 
 driven by its own logic and that of its opponents to stake 
 everything upon the very letter of inspiration, so that in 
 admitting the right of textual criticism on the original 
 Hebrew and Greek, and not infrequently giving the readings 
 of the Septuagint preference over the Masoretic text, Cap- 
 pel and his disciples seemed to be undermining the very 
 foundations of Protestantism. 
 
 This liberal, or "New School," Calvinism found consider- 
 able acceptance in France, Holland, and England, but it 
 encountered, also, the most violent opposition. In particu- 
 lar the Swiss churches drew up against it the "Formula Con- 
 sensus Helvetica" (1675), in which not only was the inspira- 
 tion of the Hebrew punctuation made a dogma, but an 
 ultra-scholastic Calvinism was set over against the modi- 
 fications and distinctions of the new school. On the Lu- 
 theran side, the corresponding extreme was reached in the 
 so-called "Consensus Repetitus" of 1664, which, however, 
 never attained symbolic authority. 
 
 The most comprehensive of the seventeenth century sym- 
 
358 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 bols was the Westminster Confession of Faith, which,- to- 
 gether with the Longer and Shorter Catechisms, was framed 
 by a commission established by the English Parliament in 
 1643, and was adopted by act of Parliament, under the 
 title, "Articles of the Christian Religion," in 1648. It was, 
 therefore, in intention and authority, not an ecclesiastical 
 but a national confession, taking the place of the Thirty- 
 nine Articles, as the Directory for Worship, by the same 
 authority, superseded the Prayer-Book. When at the Res- 
 toration, Episcopacy, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the 
 Prayer-Book were re-established in England, the West- 
 minster Confession and Catechisms remained the standards 
 of the Church of Scotland, and through it became the 
 standards of English-speaking Presbyterianism everywhere. 
 It was also adopted, with omissions or changes in the articles 
 on church government, by the English Independents and 
 the Congregational churches in New England, and, with a 
 substitute for the article on infant baptism, by the Calvin- 
 istic Baptists, so that no other Protestant confession had 
 an equally wide acceptance and influence. It was also the 
 last, the end of the confessional age. 
 
 As a consequence of controversies within and without, 
 the later Protestant symbols are much more definite and 
 detailed than the earlier; the Westminster Confession is a 
 complete system of Calvinistic theology in confessional 
 form. The same influences were at work in the old church 
 from the Council of Trent on; the Roman Catechism is an 
 exposition of Catholic doctrine on an even larger scale. 
 The consequence was, that on both the Protestant and the 
 Catholic sides the intellect and conscience of men were 
 fettered by standards of orthodoxy imposed by authority 
 and enforced not only by ecclesiastical penalties but in 
 most countries by the civil law, to a degree unknown before 
 the Reformation. 
 
 The Reformation permanently separated from the Catho- 
 lic Church a large part of central and western Europe. 
 Beginning as an individual revolt against certain abuses, it 
 
THE SEQUEL OF REFORMATION 359 
 
 gathered momentum as every kind and motive of opposition 
 to the Church flowed into its main channel. It commended 
 itself to the masses by bringing them freedom from eccle- 
 siastical taxation, from the spiritual and temporal dominion 
 of the hierarchy, and from dependence upon the priesthood; 
 it appealed to the Teutonic spirit in its antipathy to Italian- 
 isation of the church and the perpetual drain of German 
 revenues into the coffers of the curia. Almost at once it 
 assumed a political character. It was introduced by princes 
 in their territories, with small regard for the preferences of 
 the masses, and in the free cities by the majority of the 
 limited citizen body. It made radical changes in the insti- 
 tutions of the church, and radical, though limited changes, 
 in doctrine. The aberrations and excesses of those who 
 took its principles too largely or too literally soon led to a 
 firmer organisation and more rigid control by the civil 
 authority, which had thus replaced, within its own boun- 
 daries, the authority of the Church. This political char- 
 acter led to long and desolating wars — the Thirty Years' 
 War, and the civil wars of religion in France. Doctrinal 
 conflicts between the two great branches of the Reforma- 
 tion, and even more acrimonious controversies within them, 
 gave to theological differentiae an exaggerated importance, 
 and tended more and more to make orthodoxy, according 
 to local and sectarian definitions, not only the mark of the 
 true church but the essence of true religion. 
 
 The results of the Reformation in the religious and moral 
 life of communities and individuals fell far short of the 
 ideals of the Reformers and of their first enthusiastic expec- 
 tation. Neither the freedom of the gospel and its inter- 
 pretation, from which Luther hoped everything, nor religious 
 instruction and discipline in the churches of the Genevan 
 model, transformed human nature. The reformation of the 
 church was only in very imperfect measure a reformation 
 of Christian life. This was especially true in the coun- 
 tries where the national-political character of the move- 
 ment was most marked. Dissatisfaction with this failure 
 
360 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of the Reformation to realise its own ideals was wide-spread 
 and deep, not so much in the high places of state and church 
 as among the humbler ministry and the people, and resulted 
 in what may be called the second great wave of reformation. 
 This movement had in many ways a striking resemblance to 
 the revivals of lay piety in the Middle Ages, and had an 
 even closer affinity to the sects of the sixteenth century 
 which the Protestant churches, both Lutheran and Re- 
 formed, excommunicated and persecuted. 
 
 It sought in the Scriptures the rule and model of Chris- 
 tian experience and Christian conduct, as well as of insti- 
 tutions and doctrine. Its theological premises were the 
 radical corruption of human nature — original sin unrem- 
 edied by sacramental grace — and the universal corruption 
 of the world through sin. "Worldliness" was the great 
 evil; the renunciation of "the world," the very mark of the 
 true Christian. But while in former times those who 
 aspired to the higher religious life took refuge from the 
 world in the desert or within the walls of a monastery, in 
 Protestantism, as so largely in the Catholic Church of the 
 late Middle Ages, men renounced the world, not by with- 
 drawing from it, but by living in it without being of it. 
 They sought a personal experience of religion, which, from 
 their Augustinian starting-point, necessarily had its begin- 
 ning in conversion, an abrupt intervention of God in the 
 life of the sinner, turning him from the way of death to that 
 of life. Paul, Augustine, Luther, were typical examples of 
 such a miracle of divine grace. The scheme of conversion 
 was often formally laid out: the subject, profoundly con- 
 scious of his sin and guilt and his exposure to the just wrath 
 of God, and of his helplessness even to repent and believe, 
 experienced, often suddenly, a sense of deliverance, of for- 
 giveness, of perfect trust, of communion with Christ. In 
 this experience of salvation was the beginning of a new life, 
 conformed to the teaching and example of Christ, for which, 
 also, patterns of religious exercises and regulatives of beha- 
 viour were soon framed, the avoidance of worldly recreations 
 
THE SEQUEL OP BEFORMATION 361 
 
 and amusements being frequently an unduly prominent part 
 of them. As in the Catholic counterparts of this move- 
 ment, religious experience frequently attained or aspired to 
 mystical levels; while in the conviction that the evil in the 
 world was nearing its climax, men turned to the Apocalypse 
 to console themselves with the predictions of its imminent 
 dissolution and of the millennial glory thereafter. 
 
 In Great Britain this movement bears the name Puri- 
 tan. It originated in the Church of England, and, as an 
 essentially religious movement, was not immediately con- 
 cerned with the form of church government. The influence 
 of continental theories and the example of the sister estab- 
 lished Church of Scotland, however, gave rise to a party of 
 divine-right Presbyterians, some of whom saw no difficulty 
 in reconciling presbytery with episcopacy — bishops being 
 only a kind of superintendents — while others were for a 
 thorough reconstruction of the constitution of the English 
 church on the presbyterial model. A smaller party, driven 
 into antagonism to the established religion by the severe 
 laws against religious gatherings of every kind outside of 
 the regular services of the church, looked on the state 
 church as hopelessly fallen away to the world; it was to 
 them the Babylon of which the prophet warned, "Come ye 
 out from among them and be ye separate." Some of these 
 took refuge from prosecution in the toleration of Holland, 
 and ere long migrated to New England, whither a few years 
 later they were followed by a more considerable body of 
 Puritans, Presbyterian in their theory of church govern- 
 ment and of the relation of church and state. In their new 
 home their churches were the established churches of small 
 communities (towns), with an order and discipline which 
 was an adaptation of the Genevan model to their peculiar 
 conditions. 
 
 A similar movement within the established Church of 
 Holland got for its adherents the nickname "Precisians," 
 by its scrupulous regulation of conduct and religious exer- 
 cises — things in which the great body of the ministry and 
 
362 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the people were less disposed to be "precise" than in their 
 scholastic orthodoxy. 
 
 Dissatisfaction with the "dead orthodoxy" of the Lu- 
 theran churches in Germany gave rise to Pietism, in the 
 early history of which the two great names are those of 
 Spener (d. 1705) and Francke (d. 1727). Neither in Hol- 
 land nor in Germany were separatist tendencies developed; 
 the pietistic circles or associations were formed within the 
 churches, ecclesiolce in ecclesia, which met in private to cul- 
 tivate spiritual religion and scrupulous morality. The 
 movement spread rapidly, especially among the middle 
 classes in the towns and cities, and in parts of Germany 
 even reached the neglected peasantry. There, as in Hol- 
 land, it encountered strong opposition from the clergy, and 
 from the universities, into some of which, however, it even- 
 tually found entrance. In the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century, the age of the AufkldrUng, Pietism declined, and 
 in most regions its societies or circles died out. The relig- 
 ious revival of the nineteenth century in Germany was in 
 the church itself. 
 
 Puritan ideals were maintained within the Church of 
 England in what is commonly called an "evangelical" type 
 of piety; and in the eighteenth century, reinforced by the 
 influence of German Pietism, gave rise to the great Metho- 
 dist revival. The leaders in this movement were the 
 brothers, John and Charles Wesley. The name "metho- 
 dist" had been fastened upon them and their associates as 
 students at Oxford, because of a regimen of piety which 
 they had adopted for themselves, including weekly com- 
 munion and meetings in one another's rooms for prayer and 
 spiritual conversation; it was extended to the whole body of 
 their followers, and what had been at first a term of derision 
 was accepted by themselves as a denominational title. The 
 Wesleys addressed their efforts to the masses in the cities 
 and large towns and in the mining districts, who were much 
 neglected by the church, indifferent to religion, and often 
 grossly immoral, drunkenness being a common and rapidly 
 
THE SEQUEL OF REFORMATION 363 
 
 growing evil among them. They emphasised in their preach- 
 ing the lost state of sinners and the necessity of conversion 
 and the new life, and this preaching found a response in 
 the consciences of many of the middle classes who had been 
 quite satisfied with the moderate and moral religion they 
 found in the churches, but were now impressed by the con- 
 viction that these refuges were vain against the wrath of 
 God upon unrepentant and unconverted sinners, however 
 reputable. The idea of separation from the Church of 
 England was not in the thought of the founders of Metho- 
 dism; what they aimed at was to revive true religion in the 
 church and to recover to it the great lapsed masses. The 
 movement spread with unexampled rapidity and power in 
 city and country, and ere long was carried across the Atlan- 
 tic to the English colonies in America, where similar results 
 attended it. 
 
 John Wesley was not only an eloquent and indefatigable 
 preacher but a born leader and organiser, and fully aware 
 that it was easier to convert great crowds of people in a 
 whirlwind of emotion than to keep them converted and 
 build them up in faith and righteousness. He accordingly 
 introduced a system in which his converts were gathered in 
 small groups under the guidance and responsible oversight 
 of a leader. The ordained clergymen who were drawn into 
 the movement were far too few for the task as it grew upon 
 their hands, and laymen were enlisted in the work as itin- 
 erant gospellers. Superintendents were appointed over the 
 work in particular districts, who, when the separation from 
 the Church, made inevitable by all these irregularities, was 
 accomplished, became the Methodist bishops. To the end 
 of his life John Wesley kept all the threads of the whole 
 movement in his own hands, and presided over it like the 
 general of some great semi-military religious order conse- 
 crated to the conversion of the world. A comparison with 
 Ignatius Loyola inevitably suggests itself — a comparison as 
 instructive in its differences as in its resemblances. 
 
 The characteristic feature of Methodism in its early days 
 
364 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 was mass conversion, for the accomplishment of which a 
 highly effective technic was developed; and repeatedly in 
 the succeeding generations these efforts and methods have 
 been revived with results which, if less amazing than those 
 of the first expansion, have nevertheless been of large and 
 lasting consequence. 
 
 The excessive emphasis put in the second stage of the 
 Reformation upon conversion as an experience or an act of 
 a subject arrived at years of intelligence and responsibility 
 made the question of infant baptism even more difficult 
 than it was for the Reformers of the sixteenth century. 
 The Anabaptists, who had drawn the logical conclusion in 
 that age, survived in Holland in the sect of the Mennonites, 
 and early in the seventeenth century some English sepa- 
 ratists (Brownists) in Amsterdam were led, under Mennonite 
 influence, to baptise one another. The declaration of faith 
 of this first English-speaking Baptist church dates from 
 1611, and asserts that, inasmuch as baptism is the outward 
 manifestation of dying to sin and walking in newness of life, 
 it is not to be administered to infants; and that churches 
 constituted in any other way or of any other persons than 
 of such adult converts as have been thus baptised are not 
 according to Christ's testament. Noteworthy in this dec- 
 laration is also the assertion of the principle of religious 
 independence: "No church ought to challenge any preroga- 
 tive over any other," and "the magistrate (that is to say, 
 the civil government) is not to meddle with religion or mat- 
 ters of conscience, nor compel men to this or that form of 
 religion." These first English Baptists, as might be ex- 
 pected from their Mennonite associations, were Arminian, 
 or, as they were afterwards called, " General Baptists," 1 in 
 distinction from the Calvinistic or "Particular Baptists." 2 
 The latter, drawn chiefly from the independent Puritan 
 
 'They taught a "general" predestination to salvation of all who 
 would believe. A later name of the same import is "Free-Will" Bap- 
 tists. 
 
 2 Holding to a "particular" election of individuals. 
 
THE SEQUEL OF REFORMATION 365 
 
 churches, became by far the more numerous body both in 
 Great Britain and in America. Neither branch, at first, 
 insisted upon immersion as the only scriptural form of bap- 
 tism, but both soon came to do so, and to make it a criterion 
 of genuine Christianity. 
 
 The most famous name among the English Baptists of 
 the seventeenth century is that of John Bunyan (d. 1688), 
 whose persistence in lay preaching earned him many years 
 of imprisonment. His "Pilgrim's Progress," published in 
 1678, is one of the most widely read books in English litera- 
 ture. In all the Puritan world probably no book except the 
 Bible was so universally known; and from none can the 
 modern reader get so vivid an impression of what religion 
 meant to a Puritan of the Puritans. 
 
 For the Baptists and other Puritan separatists of the 
 seventeenth century, and for the Methodists in the follow- 
 ing century, the church was a congregation of adult mem- 
 bers who had experienced conversion, and associated them- 
 selves to further one another in the Christian life. In 
 theory and intention it was a society of the regenerate; it 
 admitted only such as gave presumptive evidence of regen- 
 eration, and cut off such as subsequently disproved the 
 presumption or fell from grace. Terms of communion and 
 exercise of discipline were meant, so far as possible, to make 
 the visible church correspond to the invisible. The old 
 dualism of Christ's church and the world lying in the 
 Evil One was revived in new rigour; and these little and 
 local groups assumed toward the society about them the 
 attitude which the ancient church took toward the heathen 
 world, ignoring the existence of a Christian civilisation and 
 government, and often regarding the established churches of 
 Christendom much as the primitive Christians regarded the 
 pagan religion of the Roman Empire. Each of these bodies, 
 esteeming itself to be a peculiar depositary of truth and 
 righteousness, treated the others as adversaries rather than 
 allies in the common cause. 
 
 None of the religious bodies which came into existence in 
 
366 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 England in the seventeenth century is more interesting than 
 the Society of Friends, or, as they were nicknamed, Quakers. 
 The founder, George Fox (d. 1691), feeling, as did so many 
 others in his time, that the Christianity around him was 
 more concerned about formal correctness in doctrine and 
 church order than about vital piety, began to preach the 
 necessity of repentance, and of a personal experience of 
 religion and personal knowledge of the truth — a knowledge 
 not acquired from the teaching of others, but through enlight- 
 enment by the divine Spirit. The subjective, or spiritual, 
 tendency in Protestantism has its most complete realization 
 in Quakerism. Since everything depends on spiritual ex- 
 perience and enlightenment, and the ability to instruct and 
 edify others comes only through the gift of the Spirit on 
 occasion, they could not acknowledge any class of priests or 
 ministers who had an official or exclusive right to preach 
 and teach; that the clergy made a profession and livelihood 
 of preaching seemed to them a sin against the Spirit. Every 
 one to whom the Spirit gave a word for his fellows had in 
 that gift and for that time the call of God to speak; other- 
 wise no one had such a call. They took literally the words 
 of the Apostle Paul, in Christ "there is neither male nor 
 female," and therefore saw no reason why the Spirit should 
 not give a profitable message by the lips of a woman. Paul 
 had, indeed, also said, "I suffer not a woman to teach," but 
 Paul lived a long time ago and under other and widely 
 different social conditions. 
 
 In their reaction against formalism, by which the freedom 
 of the Spirit was restrained and its very life chilled and 
 deadened, they rejected the set forms of Christian worship 
 — the reading of lessons from Scripture; obligatory prayers, 
 whether out of a book or out of the preacher's head; the 
 singing of hymns by choirs and congregations. They gath- 
 ered to commune with God in the spirit; to listen to the 
 word of edification, if such a word was given by the Spirit 
 to one of the assembly; if not, to commune with God in the 
 silence of their own spirit. The sacraments — baptism with 
 
THE SEQUEL OF REFORMATION 367 
 
 water, the communion of bread and wine — they set aside as 
 material symbols which contributed nothing to those who 
 possessed the spiritual reality of membership in Christ and 
 communion with him, and which, as the whole history of 
 the church had shown, were in perpetual danger of being 
 put into the place of the reality. 
 
 In other things the early Quakers did not consciously 
 depart from the current Puritan type; but consistently with 
 their view of the inner light, by which the Scripture is 
 interpreted and the truth for the time and occasion brought 
 to the minds and hearts of men, they did not bind them- 
 selves, nor impose upon those who joined them any creed or 
 confession of faith. Their organization was after the Pres- 
 byterian pattern, but without the Presbyterian insistence 
 on divine right. The mystical element was very strong in 
 the movement from the beginning; Fox himself is one of the 
 great mystics. It is, indeed, the soul of Quakerism. On 
 the ethical side, the outstanding things are the rejection of 
 oaths — even judicial — condemnation of war, the insistence 
 on honesty and truthfulness, on simplicity in living and in 
 speech, and the emphasis on active philanthropy which has 
 made them the leaders in many reforms and charities. 
 
 The Puritans were strictly orthodox according to the Re- 
 formed pattern — the more stiffly orthodox, in opposition to 
 the Arminianism which was common among the clergy of 
 the Church of England in the seventeenth century; the 
 German Pietists were equally orthodox after the Lutheran 
 pattern, though they set much less value than their oppo- 
 nents on orthodoxy for its own sake, and this relative indif- 
 ference to confessional theology made Pietism a forerunner 
 of what might otherwise seem to be its antipodes, Rational- 
 ism. The greater body of the Baptists, as has been said, 
 were strict Calvinists. Wesley carried over into the main 
 Methodist movement an evangelical Arminianism from the 
 Church of England; but his fellow worker, Whitefield, was a 
 Calvinist, and a smaller body of Calvinistic Methodists grew 
 up beside the larger. Thus, this second wave of reforma- 
 
368 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tion brought forth no fundamental modifications of Protes- 
 tantism, and produced no great new symbol. 
 
 A tendency to indefinite subdivision was inherent in all 
 these sects, and after toleration was insured by law in Eng- 
 land in 1689, and in the larger freedom of America, this ten- 
 dency had full play; new sects sprang out of old ones, as 
 in those low types of organism which multiply by fission. 
 Sometimes a secession of the stricter sort was a protest 
 against growing laxity of teaching or practice in the main 
 body; sometimes progressive elements were driven out by 
 an intransigeant confessionalism; sometimes division was 
 the outcome of contention over forms; new methods of re- 
 vival gave birth to many new denominations. The divisive 
 issues were in the main, intrinsically or historically, insig- 
 nificant, and the departure from the common types of the 
 Reformed churches, small, compared with differences which 
 existed side by side, if not always amicably, within the 
 established Protestant churches. The most diminutive 
 were often the most contentious and persistent. 
 
 The Renaissance and the Reformation lie in the transition 
 from the mediaeval to the modern age of European civilisa- 
 tion; they do not belong to the modern age. This is 
 peculiarly true of the Reformation. If we examine either 
 Lutheran or Reformed theology, we find that the Reformers 
 have much more in common with the schoolmen of the 
 Middle Ages than with modern thinkers. The problems 
 which they propose, the way they formulate them, the prem- 
 ises from which they essay the solution, and the methods 
 they employ, are essentially mediaeval, not modern. 
 
 The Bible was for both Catholics and Protestants, from 
 beginning to end, and in every word, an immediate revela- 
 tion from God, embodied in an inspired book, and free from 
 every suspicion of error either in the original recording of 
 the revelation or in its transmission. It was interpreted by 
 all as a book of divine oracles. Both Catholics and Protes- 
 tants inherited and accepted without question the ancient 
 
THE SEQUEL OF REFORMATION 369 
 
 conception and astronomical construction of the universe in 
 the theological form which had been given it by the great 
 schoolmen, particularly by Thomas Aquinas. The earth 
 was the centre of the universe, around which the sun and 
 the moon, the planets and the fixed stars, all in their several 
 spheres, revolved; and these luminaries were created and 
 existed for the sake of the earth and the creatures upon it. 
 At the head of this mundane creation stood man, who was, 
 therefore, the real centre of the created universe. His sal- 
 vation was God's end in creation; the world was made as a 
 stage for the drama of redemption. 
 
 Catholics and Protestants were, or meant to be, equally 
 orthodox on the dogmas defined in the Nicene and Atha- 
 nasian Creeds, and held, so far as they understood it, the 
 Chalcedonian Christology. Their'ideas of God, the Trinity, 
 the Person of Christ, were identical. What is even more 
 important, they agreed that the dogmas formulated in these 
 creeds were revealed truth, an unchangeable deposit of faith. 
 
 Both read in the Bible the same religious drama of human 
 history, as it was written in Paul, interpreted by Augustine. 
 The fall of man, original sin, predestination and election, 
 the satisfaction of Christ, the nature and way of justifica- 
 tion — in short, the doctrines of sin and grace — were as fun- 
 damental in Protestant theology as in Catholic; and the 
 differences, however their importance was magnified on both 
 sides, were of small moment in comparison with their essen- 
 tial agreement. The differences were, indeed, hardly greater 
 than had existed among the schoolmen, from whom they 
 were in considerable part inherited. When Protestant the- 
 ologians of the second generation began to construct com- 
 plete systems of doctrine, they not only reverted to the 
 scholastic type and built upon the great mediaeval synthesis 
 of Aristotle and revelation as on an impregnable rock, but 
 drew directly and largely on the Neo-Thomist theologians of 
 the Spanish school for material and argument. 
 
 Catholics and Protestants were at one in another impor- 
 tant point. Both adopted without qualification the medi- 
 
370 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 seval conception of a homogeneous civilisation under the 
 inspiration and regulation of religion; and however widely 
 they differed about the relation of church and state, none 
 of them dreamed of such a thing as the separation of church 
 and state, 1 or of a secular culture in which philosophy, sci- 
 ence, literature, art, are pursued for their own sake. For 
 this reason all the churches of the Reformation, no less than 
 the old church, regarded education as a function of the 
 church, and endeavoured to exercise complete control over 
 it from bottom to top. 
 
 The ideal of uniformity in doctrine and discipline was as 
 strongly fixed in the minds of the Reformers as of their oppo- 
 nents, but the sphere of this uniformity was narrowed to 
 the boundaries of a nation, a principality, or a city, or, at 
 the largest, to a confederation of such religious sovereign- 
 ties; and because the sphere was thus limited, and because 
 everything was new, there was far less room for variety 
 than in the mediaeval Catholic church. The idea of liberty 
 of conscience, as we understand it, was not for a moment 
 admitted by any of them. 2 Toleration of sects and heresies 
 by the civil authority was, in the eyes of the Protestant 
 churches quite as much as in the Catholic, a manifest sin. 
 Servetus was burned in Geneva with as good a conscience as 
 he would have been burned by the Inquisition in Lyons, if 
 he had not broken jail. The moderate Unitarian, Bian- 
 drata, got the radical Unitarian, David Francis, sentenced 
 to life imprisonment in Transylvania, and in prison the 
 obstinate man who would not worship Christ died. Quak- 
 ers and Baptists were flogged and banished from the Puri- 
 tan colony of Massachusetts Bay with as stern a resolve to 
 maintain the purity of the gospel and the unity of the faith 
 as they would have been under the laws of Anglican uni- 
 formity. The Catholic, Sir Thomas More, who was be- 
 headed because he would not confess Henry VIII the su- 
 preme head of the church in England, was solitary in 
 
 1 The Anabaptists and kindred sects are an exception. 
 
 2 This notion also was confined to the Anabaptists. 
 
THE SEQUEL OF REFORMATION 371 
 
 imagining, in his Utopia, 1 an ideal commonwealth, in which 
 complete religious freedom existed and no man was subject 
 to pains and penalties for his belief. 
 
 The Protestant churches declared the word of God in 
 Scripture to be the only authority in faith and practice, and 
 in theory held that the right of interpretation belongs, not 
 to the church, or its ministers and professors, but to every 
 Christian. The eccentric results this liberty of interpreta- 
 tion produced were alarming, and they soon found them- 
 selves under the necessity of bridling the freedom of private 
 judgment by confessions and catechisms which prescribed 
 how the Scripture must be interpreted, and had therefore in 
 fact an authority superior to the Scripture; precisely as the 
 Catholic Church had been compelled to do from the days of 
 the Gnostics on. 
 
 •Appropriately named "Land of Nowhere." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 MODERN TENDENCIES 
 
 The Copernican Astronomy — Its Condemnation in Galileo — Francis 
 Bacon — The Philosophy of Descartes — Locke and Hume — Kant 
 and the Idealistic Philosophies — Modern Science — Historical Criti- 
 cism — Progressive Dissolution of Protestant Theology — Influence 
 of Modern Thought in the Catholic Church — The Eighteenth and 
 Nineteenth Centuries — Pius IX — The Syllabus of Errors — Dogma 
 of the Immaculate Conception — The Vatican Council — Infalli- 
 bility of the Pope — Conflict with Modernism. 
 
 The intellectual movement of the Renaissance was essen- 
 tially secular. The very names humanists and the humani- 
 ties are in conscious antithesis to divines and divinity. Few 
 of the representatives of this movement put themselves 
 in opposition to the church, but they went their indepen- 
 dent way without concerning themselves about the bearing 
 of their studies and thinking upon the doctrines of the 
 church. Many of them, as we have seen, hoped for reforms 
 in the church, not only external but internal, through the 
 progress of knowledge and enlightenment. This movement 
 was interrupted by the Reformation. Within a few years 
 after Luther posted his famous theses the attendance at the 
 universities had greatly fallen off, and the interest in human- 
 istic studies greatly declined. For a century or more relig- 
 ion was the absorbing subject of thought and controversy, 
 and religion was more and more completely identified with 
 doctrine. But although secular intellectual interests were 
 thus thrust into the background, they were not wholly 
 superseded. While the Reformation was gaining its first 
 great successes in Germany and Switzerland, and the world 
 was ringing with the names of Luther and Zwingli, a Polish 
 astronomer, Copernicus, was undermining one of the cor- 
 
 372 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES 373 
 
 ner-stones of the mediaeval combination of Aristotelian cos- 
 mology and ontology with divine revelation on which both 
 Catholic and Protestant theologians rested their conception 
 of the universe. Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium 
 Ceelestium," substantially finished in 1530, came from the 
 press, with a dedication to Pope Paul III, as the author 
 lay ori his death-bed in 1543. The observations of Tycho 
 Brahe, interpreted by the mathematical genius of Kepler, 
 corrected the so-called Copernican theory and established 
 it upon a firm basis. It was enthusiastically embraced by 
 Giordano Bruno, who, breaking the shell Copernicus had 
 left about the universe, revelled in the infinity of the uni- 
 verse, an endless multitude of solar systems, which, waxing 
 and waning in the endless course of time, manifest through- 
 out an enduring life. 
 
 The Copernican astronomy was condemned in the process 
 of Galileo, who was denounced to the Inquisition in 1615, and 
 compelled to promise for the future neither to defend nor 
 teach that theory. The famous sentence of the Inquisitors 
 ran: "That the sun is in the centre of the universe and mo- 
 tionless is a proposition absurd and false in philosophy, and 
 formally heretical, because it is in express contradiction to 
 Holy Scripture. That the earth is not the centre of the 
 universe, and not motionless, but has also a diurnal motion, 
 is likewise a proposition absurd and false in philosophy, and, 
 theologically considered, at least erroneous in matter of 
 faith." The publication of his " Dialogue Concerning the 
 Two Principal Theories of the Universe," the Ptolemaic and 
 the Copernican (1632), brought him into the hands of the 
 Inquisition again, and he was made to abjure, curse, and 
 detest these errors and heresies. 
 
 The full significance of this dislocation of the universe was 
 not at once recognised. But with the new astronomy, the 
 beginning was made in the modern world of an observation 
 and investigation of nature whose object is solely to dis- 
 cover and interpret the phenomena of nature by the exact 
 methods of science, independent of tradition, philosophy, 
 
374 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 and theology — in other words, of a religiously disinterested 
 science, which sets for itself its own goal and pursues it in 
 its own way. . 
 
 Of this movement Francis Bacon is a conspicuous expo- 
 nent, not so much through any notable contributions of his 
 own to science, as by his clear conception and exposition of 
 the nature, end, and methods of science. Knowledge of 
 nature is to be gathered from nature itself by observation 
 and induction, proceeding from the particular to the gen- 
 eral, ascending from the fact to the principle or law, not 
 descending from general principles a priori, borrowed from 
 metaphysics. The results of such research, being the an- 
 swer of nature itself to the inquiry of the investigator, are 
 not subject to review in the alien forum of philosophy or 
 theology. 
 
 In philosophy the new era began with Descartes, 1 who 
 attempted to establish philosophy on a demonstrative, that 
 is, a mathematical basis. In Descartes, as in Bacon, the 
 important thing, from our point of view, is not his philos- 
 ophy itself, but the fact that he completely set aside the 
 systems of the ancients and their mediaeval successors, and 
 addressed himself to his task with new, primarily mathe- 
 matical methods; and that in his endeavour to construct 
 an intellectual system of the universe, Descartes was as un- 
 concerned about the consequences to Christian theology as 
 Copernicus with his revolutionary theory of the physical 
 universe. This indifference, indeed, is the characteristic of 
 both natural science and philosophy in this period; they 
 moved, as it were, in another sphere, and let the theologians 
 revolve — or stand still — untroubled in their own. 
 
 Descartes laid in mathematics and physics the foundation 
 of a mechanist philosophy of the universe, including not 
 only inorganic nature but organic, and halting only at mind 
 in man. Newton, by his investigations in physics and 
 astronomy, above all by his discovery of the laws of gravi- 
 tation, made such a construction of the physical universe 
 
 1 1596-1650. 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES 375 
 
 appear not only conceivable but verifiable. The work of 
 his successors, culminating in Laplace's Mecanique Celeste 
 (1799-1825), steadily progressed toward a complete mathe- 
 matical solution of the mechanical problem of the solar 
 system. 
 
 The thinkers of the seventeenth century framed great 
 metaphysical systems of the universe — dualistic in Descartes, 
 monistic in Spinoza, pluralistic-individualistic in Leibniz. 
 Locke recalled the human understanding to more modest 
 problems by bidding it recognise its limitations when it 
 comes to universes; the proper business of philosophy is to 
 teach man to understand himself by empirical study of the 
 nature and origin of his ideas and emotions. Hume devel- 
 oped a sensationalist theory of cognition which, excluding 
 the ideas of substance and causality, leaves metaphysics 
 nothing to live on. In the levels below high philosophy the 
 same trends of thought are reflected in English deism and 
 French naturalism, in English latitudinarianism and Ger- 
 man rationalism. Nor were science and philosophy the 
 only influences. There was a revival of notions of natural 
 law, natural morals, natural religion, which, ultimately of 
 Stoic origin, had come out in the age of the Renaissance, 
 and formed part of the humanist tradition perpetuated by 
 the side of the Reformation rather than in it. The growth 
 of democratic ideas in state and church, and the individual- 
 ism that goes with them, ran easily into the rejection of all 
 authority for the all-sufficient reason that it was authority. 
 As in the age of the Greek Sophists, the individual man 
 made his private reason, or the common sense of his kind, 
 the measure of all things human and divine. In the lat- 
 ter part of the eighteenth century "free thought," ranging 
 from deism, through scepticism, to outspoken atheism was 
 wide-spread, and often noisily triumphant over the super- 
 stitions of Christianity; while the ministry and theologians 
 of the Protestant churches devoted their efforts to making 
 Christianity reasonable from premises and by methods 
 dangerously like those of its critics. 
 
376 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 The alarm excited by the excesses of the French Revolu- 
 tion brought about a reaction in religion as well as in poli- 
 tics. The critical philosophy of Kant discovered for rational 
 religion room and authority in the Practical Reason which 
 Pure Reason denied it. The idealistic philosophies which 
 succeeded — Fichte, Schelling, Hegel — restored religion to its 
 place in their great metaphysical systems, and presently be- 
 came the parents of philosophical theologies more orthodox 
 in sound than in sense. In the first half of the nineteenth 
 century religion regained much ground that it seemed per- 
 manently to have lost in the eighteenth; and theology in all 
 Protestant countries was in the sign of repristination, with 
 the inevitable consequence of new divisions, among which 
 the Unitarian movement in New England is one of the most 
 significant. 
 
 Meanwhile, science was making rapid advances in every 
 field, and the new conception of the universe which, in dis- 
 tinction from metaphysical or theological theories, may 
 properly be called scientific, was obtaining more and more 
 general recognition. Astronomy and physics had already 
 taught men to see in the universe a vast mechanism, im- 
 pelled by inherent forces under invariable laws. Now, 
 geology and chemistry joined hands with astronomy to 
 create a new cosmology. Botany and zoology, hitherto 
 chiefly descriptive sciences, set themselves to the problem 
 of the origin of species in organic evolution, from the lowest 
 living cell to man; and biological chemistry sought to pene- 
 trate the final secret, the origin of life. Thus arose a con- 
 flict between science and theology, which had in Genesis a 
 revealed cosmogony irreconcilable with the evolutionary 
 hypothesis, while the creation of Adam in the image of God, 
 his fall, and the entail of sin and death on his posterity, lay 
 at the foundation of its doctrine of redemption. 
 
 Nor was it the sciences of nature alone by which the 
 foundations were attacked. Historians applied to the Bible 
 the principles and methods of criticism which they employed 
 on other ancient writings, and to the history of the Jewish 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES 377 
 
 and Christian religions the idea of development which be- 
 longs to the very definition of history in modern times. 
 Biblical criticism was not a new thing in the nineteenth 
 century, but it was pursued with better-defined method and 
 with more strictly historical motives. The result was a 
 complete revision of the chronology of the Old Testament 
 literature and of the history of the religion of Israel. Not 
 only particular results, but the assumption on which the 
 historian proceeds, namely, that the authenticity, age, and 
 historical value of the writings comprised in the canon of 
 the Jews are to be determined and appraised in the same 
 way as the sources of secular history, conflicts with the fun- 
 damental doctrine of sacred Scripture. The same methods 
 were employed on the New Testament, with a correspond- 
 ing and even more disturbing reconstruction of the begin- 
 nings of Christianity. The habit of looking at religious 
 problems historically had a more far-reaching consequence, 
 the introduction of the note of relativity into judgments of 
 truth and right. The idea of development in doctrine is 
 diametrically opposed to the dogmatic conception of an un- 
 changeable deposit of faith, at whatever moment in the 
 past this deposit is supposed to have crystallised in unchange- 
 able formulas. 
 
 The historical study of Judaism and Christianity was not 
 the only thing which contributed to this result. In the nine- 
 teenth century European scholars attained a much larger 
 and more exact knowledge of the religions and religious phi- 
 losophies of Oriental peoples, especially through the study 
 of their sacred books — the religions of India, from the age 
 of the Veda; Zoroastrianism, the reform religion of the 
 Iranians; the native religions of China and Japan, and the 
 varieties of Buddhism in those countries. The decipher- 
 ment of the Egyptian and Babylonian monuments opened 
 a way to the knowledge of the two most ancient religions 
 of western Asia. Great progress was made also in an his- 
 torical apprehension of the religions of Greece. These in- 
 vestigations revealed large and significant resemblances 
 
378 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 among the higher religions, and gave birth to a new study, 
 which called itself the Comparative Science of Religion. 
 The material collected by ethnologists in all quarters of the 
 earth among peoples upon the lower levels of civilisation 
 showed a remarkable degree of uniformity in the elementary 
 conceptions and practices of religion, and challenged schol- 
 ars to the attempt to solve, by historical methods, the prob- 
 lems of the origin and development of religion as a whole. 
 
 The consequence of all this was that, in the minds of 
 many, Christianity was deprived of the unique position 
 which it asserted for itself and which hitherto had been 
 conceded to it in Christendom; it might be greatly su- 
 perior to other religions, but this superiority was only 
 relative — the "absoluteness" of Christianity disappeared. 
 
 Through a voluminous popular literature of propaganda 
 and refutation, scientific theories and biblical criticism have 
 been widely disseminated, and are accepted by an increasing 
 number not only of laymen but of ministers in most Protes- 
 tant denominations. The old confessions from the sixteenth 
 or seventeenth century have seldom been formally set aside 
 or revised, but there is a growing disposition to treat them 
 as venerable historical monuments rather than as adequate 
 expressions of present-day beliefs, and the terms of subscrip- 
 tion have often been relaxed till they are hardly more than 
 nominal. This dissolution of Protestant theology has gone 
 much farther in some churches than in others, but none has 
 been able to shut out entirely the mordant atmosphere of 
 contemporary thought. 
 
 Speaking generally, the Protestant churches which have 
 retained authoritative confessional standards and require 
 assent to them on the part of their ministers, and which 
 possess a strong ecclesiastical organization, through their 
 control of theological education and of ordination to the 
 ministry, have more successfully resisted these disintegrat- 
 ing tendencies, at least by driving out or keeping out too ad- 
 venturous spirits. This is especially true of the free churches 
 • — the established churches are distinctly laxer. In those 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES 379 
 
 denominations, on the other hand, which inherited the tra- 
 dition of independency, in which the autonomy of the in- 
 dividual church is legally complete, and morally restrained 
 only by the undefined common opinion and sentiment of 
 similar autonomous congregations or their voluntary asso- 
 ciations; where each church makes its own terms of com- 
 munion, and frames its own confession of faith for the as- 
 sent of its members, or employs only an undogmatic " cove- 
 nant"; where no convention or "council" has right to 
 frame or power to impose a common creed — the various Con- 
 gregational bodies in the United States, for example — there 
 is entire ecclesiastical freedom, and in them the abandon- 
 ment of the theology of the seventeenth century is most 
 general. Yet the Baptists, who are the most radical of 
 independents, have remained among the most conservative 
 of religious bodies. 
 
 The task which awaits "advanced" Protestantism is to 
 find a theology, or, some would say, a philosophy of re- 
 ligion, which shall represent modern conceptions of the uni- 
 verse, of the place and part of man in it, of the origin and 
 development of religion in general and of Christianity in 
 particular, and of the specific excellencies of Christianity, 
 as adequately for the present as the scholastic theology did 
 for the thirteenth century or the Protestant confessions of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for their time. 
 
 The general trend is toward a practical, or "socialized," 
 Christianity, which makes much of the teaching and exam- 
 ple of Jesus, of the thought of God as the father of all men, 
 of service to fellow men as the essence of true religion, of 
 the reconstruction of society on the principles of the gospel. 
 It is optimistic about the native possibilities of humanity, 
 has an exalted consciousness of superiority to the past, and 
 conjures with the word "progress," often conceived as a 
 kind of biological evolution of an organism called "society." 
 Original sin and the paralyzed or even enfeebled will are 
 quite antiquated, and with them the Pauline-Augustinian 
 doctrines of grace. 
 
380 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 It might be thought that, having come to this common 
 ground, there would be a tendency to a reunion of the mul- 
 titudinous sects which have forgotten their reason for exist- 
 ence, if for no higher than economic motives. There is, 
 however, no sign of such a. result. Most of the Protestant 
 bodies co-operate more freely than formerly and, when they 
 get together, deplore the divisions of Christendom and talk 
 about unity; but, though they are for the most part no 
 longer severed by living doctrinal differences, they are kept 
 apart by the differences of the past embalmed in memories 
 and, above all, embodied in corporate institutions. 
 
 The influence of contemporary movements of thought in 
 philosophy, science, and political theory was felt in the 
 Catholic Church also. The rising spirit of nationalism re- 
 vived the old desire for national autonomy in ecclesiastical 
 as well as in civil affairs. The declaration of the French 
 clergy on ecclesiastical power (1682) renews the assertion 
 of Gallican liberties of the preceding centuries; and a similar 
 broad doctrine was promulgated in Germany in the second 
 half of the eighteenth century by some of the great German 
 archbishops. It was upon the same principles that Joseph II 
 in Austria undertook -a drastic reform of the church in his 
 dominions; and his example was followed by his brother, 
 Leopold, grand duke of Tuscany, with the support of some 
 of the bishops. The programme of their Synod of Pistoia 
 (1786) was the most radical of the kind. Revolution and the 
 Napoleonic wars gave European rulers other preoccupa- 
 tions; but the readjustments of boundaries and the com- 
 pensation of dispossessed secular princes at the cost of the 
 lands of the Church, deprived it of a great part of its 
 territorial possessions. The secularization of church prop- 
 erty and the suppression of monasteries in almost all Euro- 
 pean countries, the recognition of freedom of worship and 
 civil equality, and the progressive assumption of all func- 
 tions of education by the state, seriously impaired the 
 influence of the Church. 
 
 Nor were the intellectual and social tendencies of the 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES 381 
 
 time more favourable. The forces which produced the 
 French Revolution were not only anti-clerical, but in large 
 part anti-Christian; and the unbridled individualism which 
 was rife in the philosophies of the time, as well as in the 
 teachings of Rousseau and his followers, made against all 
 religious authority. The eighteenth century as a whole 
 was a period of decadence, which made it, in the judgment 
 of a Catholic historian, the most unchristian of all the 
 centuries. Of the nineteenth century the same historian 
 writes as follows: "The characteristic of political life was its 
 gradual penetration by the principles of democracy pro- 
 claimed by the French Revolution, which make the nine- 
 teenth century the age of constitutionalism and parliamen- 
 tary government in its various modifications. In its intel- 
 lectual life the idealistic philosophy of the beginning of the 
 century did not permanently prevail, nor did any definite 
 conception of the universe to the exclusion of all others; it 
 was dominated by the empirical positivist and rational- 
 naturalistic tendencies of thought which make it the cen- 
 tury of the natural and historical sciences. In the field of 
 morals, the striving for the complete autonomy of the indi- 
 vidual personality asserted itself far more strongly, and has 
 as a necessary consequence the rejection of the idea of 
 authority, and resistance to the authoritative regulation of 
 the individual's inner life. Finally, social life was marked 
 by the full development of nationalism, which brought the 
 differentiation of the Occidental peoples to a kind of conclu- 
 sion, and raised to a hitherto unknown pitch the national 
 sentiment, the consciousness that each nation has in it cer- 
 tain special endowments and conditions, and has a right to 
 demand its place in the concert of peoples. There can be 
 no doubt that all these factors were necessarily unfavour- 
 able to the religious life." 
 
 By these conditions the Catholic Church was forced into 
 a defensive position, which impressed itself on its whole 
 activity. It became more than ever the advocate of the 
 old against the new, of ecclesiastical authority against reli- 
 
382 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 gious individualism, of dogmatic Christianity against the 
 subjective spirit of the age. 
 
 This conflict with the spirit of the age is nowhere more 
 consistently and comprehensively exhibited than in the 
 Syllabus of Errors issued by Pope Pius IX in 1864. The 
 heads under which these eighty errors are catalogued are 
 instructive: Pantheism, Naturalism, Rationalism, Indiffer- 
 entism, Latitudinarianism, Communism, Secret Societies, 
 Bible Societies, Clerico-Liberal Societies, Errors about the 
 Church and its Rites, About Civil Society and its Relation 
 to the Church (separation of church and state), Errors 
 about Natural and Christian Ethics, About the Temporal 
 Power of the Pope, Errors of Modern Liberalism. 
 
 The most important doctrinal deliverance since the Coun- 
 cil of Trent was the promulgation by Pius IX in the bull, 
 "Ineffabilis Deus" (1854), of the dogma of the Immaculate 
 Conception of the Virgin Mary, which is thus defined: "The 
 Blessed Virgin Mary, in the very instant in which she was 
 conceived, by the singular grace and privilege of Almighty 
 God, in foresight of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour 
 of the human race, was preserved immune from any stain of 
 original sin." The question whether or not the Virgin 
 Mary shared in original sin had been much debated in the 
 scholastic age. It was a standing matter of controversy 
 between the Franciscans and the Dominicans, which Pope 
 Sixtus IV tried to keep within bounds in 1487 by forbidding 
 the advocates of either doctrine to call the other heretical 
 for opinions upon which the Roman Church had never de- 
 cided. The Council of Trent, while guarding its decree on 
 original sin from the inference that the Virgin Mary was 
 included in it, contented itself for the rest with reiterating 
 the constitution of Sixtus IV. 
 
 The pontificate of Pius IX was signalised, also, by the 
 final decision of another long-controverted question, namely, 
 the supreme authority and infallibility of the pope. The 
 Vatican Council in 1870, besides defining the doctrine of the 
 church upon the topics, God, Revelation, Faith, and Reason, 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES 383 
 
 with especial reference to modern errors, framed a dogmatic 
 constitution on the Church of Christ. This constitution deals 
 in four chapters with (1) the institution of apostolic primacy 
 in the person of St. Peter; (2) the perpetuity of this primacy 
 of Peter in the Roman pontiffs; (3) the nature and author- 
 ity of the primacy of the Roman pontiff (jurisdiction); 
 and, (4) the infallibility of the pope. The definition is- as 
 follows: "Therefore, we (sc, the Pope), faithfully adhering 
 to a tradition which has been received from the beginning 
 of the Christian faith, to the glory of God our Saviour, to the 
 exaltation of the Catholic religion and the salvation of Chris- 
 tian peoples, with the approbation of the sacred Council, 
 teach and declare it to be a divinely revealed dogma, that 
 the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, 
 in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all 
 Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he 
 defines that a doctrine concerning faith or morals is to be 
 held by the universal church, by the divine aid promised to 
 him in the blessed Peter, is endowed with that infallibility 
 with which the divine Redeemer meant his church to be 
 furnished in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals; 
 and therefore that such decisions of the Roman Pontiff are 
 irreformable of themselves, and not by the consent of the 
 Church." 
 
 That the church in its teaching capacity is infallible had 
 always been Catholic doctrine; the question was, whether 
 this infallibility resided in a general council or in the per- 
 son of the Roman pontiff. 1 The latter position was main- 
 tained by Aquinas, and in the post-Reformation controversy 
 by Bellarmin; it had the powerful support of the Society of 
 Jesus. Nevertheless, there was decided opposition to the 
 dogma, both within the council and outside of it, partly by 
 such as were opposed to the dogma itself, partly by others 
 who thought the pronouncement inopportune at that time. 
 Almost all of these opponents promptly made their sub- 
 mission when once the constitution was adopted. Those 
 1 See above, pp. 260 ff. 
 
384 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 who believed that a general council was infallible could 
 not well deny its infallibility in pronouncing the infallibility 
 of the pope. A few, chiefly German, theologians refused to 
 accept the dogma and were excommunicated. The so-called 
 Old Catholic Church, which sprang from this, had, however, 
 nowhere any popular support, and soon ceased even to be 
 talked about. 
 
 Leo XIII made it his chief aim to reclaim for the Church 
 the leadership in the modern world; and to accomplish this 
 endeavoured to re-establish a closer relation between the 
 Church and the world of his times, in the conviction that 
 the highest aims of civilisation cannot be achieved without 
 religion and the authority of the Church. His deliverances, 
 consequently, especially on social and political questions, 
 had a more positive and constructive character than those 
 of his predecessor. To the spirit of the age, however, he 
 was as little disposed to make concessions as Pius IX. In 
 the Christian philosophies of the Middle Ages, especially in 
 Aquinas, he found the most complete harmony of divine 
 revelation and human reason, faith and knowledge, and saw 
 in them the proper antidote to the unchristian philosophies 
 of modern times. He therefore enjoined the study of the 
 philosophy of Aquinas in Catholic schools and seminaries, 
 and did much in many ways to further it. 
 
 Under Leo XIII and his successors a movement among 
 Catholic scholars to which its adversaries gave the name of 
 Modernism made considerable progress. They believed, 
 like the Pope, that it was the mission of the Church to 
 reclaim its leadership in the modern world; but they believed 
 that it could do so only by finding its place in the modern 
 world, not by turning back to the thirteenth century, with 
 its great synthesis of Aristotle and revelation. Critical and 
 historical studies, in which some of them were eminent, led 
 them to apply the principle of historical development not 
 only to the institutions of the church but to its dogmas, 
 and to assert that, as in the past there had been growth in 
 the church as in a living organism, so there must be progress 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES 385 
 
 in the present, continuous progress in the future. Chris- 
 tianity, they maintained, must adapt its modes of thinking 
 to the progress of philosophy and science, and to men's 
 ideas on political and social subjects; it must continually 
 advance in experience and apprehension of religious truth, 
 which in its fulness forever lies beyond men's power of con- 
 ception and adequate expression. The evolution of dogma 
 was, therefore, not merely a historical theory, it was a pro- 
 gramme of progress. 
 
 Against these ideas and tendencies the Church has ex- 
 pressly and emphatically pronounced. In the decree "La- 
 mentabili Sane Exitu" (1907) and the encyclical "Pascendi 
 Gregis," of the same year, a long catalogue of Modernist 
 errors is condemned, and precautionary and disciplinary 
 measures are prescribed to check the spread of the move- 
 ment, particularly in institutions of learning and through 
 publications by Catholic scholars. The church is resolved 
 by all means in its power to prevent the disintegrating effects 
 of modern philosophy, science, history, biblical criticism 
 and exegesis, upon the dogmas of religion, which has been 
 so conspicuously exemplified in contemporary Protestantism. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 MOHAMMED 
 
 Mohammed — Religion of the Arabs before Mohammed — The First 
 Revelations — Hostility of the Meccans — Mohammed at Medina — 
 Arabia Won for Islam — Mohammed's Mission — The Idea of God 
 — Predestination — The Koran — The Prophets — The Hereafter — 
 Worship — Morals in the Koran — The Jews — Nationalising of 
 Islam. 
 
 Mohammedanism, or to give it its proper name, Islam, 1 
 is the most recent of the great religions, and its rise and 
 early progress lie more fully than any other in the daylight 
 of history. The revelations of the Prophet during the 
 twenty years, more or less, of his career were collected in 
 the Koran within the next years after his death, and of the 
 authenticity of its contents there has never been any sub- 
 stantial question. Besides the Word of God in the Koran, 
 the words of Mohammed in his own name, his decisions and 
 regulations on questions of justice or morals or religious ob- 
 servance, were gathered as precedent; his daily habits were 
 examples. In the spread of Islam, again, there was no long 
 period of obscure propaganda, like the first generations of 
 Christianity; the expansion of the Arab empire carried the 
 religion of the conquerors with it; it was in the name of 
 religion that their victorious hosts were set in motion and 
 that the subject lands were ruled. 
 
 Mohammed was born about 570 A. D. Many legends 
 cluster about his childhood, but all that is known with 
 reasonable certainty is that he was early left an orphan and 
 was brought up by an uncle, Abu Talib. As he grew to 
 manhood he journeyed with the Meccan caravans in their 
 visits to Syria and to Yemen, and saw something of the 
 
 ^'Submission" (to God). 
 386 
 
MOHAMMED 387 
 
 world from the back of a camel, but the only incident 
 related about these journeys, the meeting with the Christian 
 hermit who recognised the youth's prophetic mission, are 
 pious fictions. Mohammed's first journeys were made in 
 company with his uncle; subsequently he was employed by 
 a widow, Khadijah, whose capital was invested in the cara- 
 van trade. He conducted the business so much to her sat- 
 isfaction that she presently proposed to him a matrimonial 
 partnership. Mohammed was about twenty-five years old; 
 Khadijah was considerably his senior and had already had 
 two husbands, but the marriage seems to have been a 
 happy one, and was blessed with six children, two sons (who 
 died in childhood) and four daughters. Mohammed had 
 great respect for Khadijah, and as long as she lived he took 
 no other wife. 
 
 Of the years between his marriage and the beginning of 
 his mission there is no record. We only know that in the 
 period immediately preceding his first revelation, which 
 occurred when he was about forty years of age, he spent 
 much time in solitude upon a mountain near Mecca, engaged 
 in religious exercises in which fasting and vigils seem to 
 have had a large place. 1 From the character of his earliest 
 utterances in the Koran it may be inferred, that he had 
 brooded over the idea of divine judgment which he had got < 
 from Christian and Jewish sources, until the conviction pos- 
 sessed him that this judgment in all its terrors was impend- 
 ing over his people for their sins, above all for the worship 
 of false gods and idols. Such broodings and forebodings 
 wrought, we can well conceive, with more than common 
 power upon a highly susceptible temperament, and upon 
 nerves overstrung by lonely watching and fasting. The de-^ 
 scriptions that are given, in Moslem tradition of the way 
 Mohammed was affected in moments of revelation have led 
 some students to believe that he was a victim of epilepsy; 
 others interpret the phenomena as symptoms of a less seri- 
 
 1 Such exercises had no place in the religion of the Arabs, and seem 
 to be in imitation of Christian ascetics. 
 
388 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 ous nervous disorder, perhaps of a hysterical character. 
 Sonie abnormality there undoubtedly was; but, while these 
 experiences may explain Mohammed's faith in his own in- 
 spiration, they no more account for the content or effect of 
 his prophesyings than the similar experiences of Saint Paul 
 account for Pauline Christianity. 
 
 The religion of Mohammed's countrymen was of a very 
 primitive kind. There were many gods, and two or three 
 goddesses who were held in especially high esteem. These 
 deities had their several holy places, whither men resorted 
 on occasion to seek their aid, fulfil a vow, or consult the 
 oracle. The sacred precincts were marked off by boun- 
 dary stones. The object of worship, or, to speak more ex- 
 actly, the object in which the divinity lodged, was most 
 commonly a stone, sometimes a tree or a group of trees. 
 In Mecca there was a small square temple, into one corner 
 of which the sacred stone was built. Idols, like the image 
 of Hubal in this temple, were rare and recent importations. 
 
 Apart from local and tribal associations, the gods had 
 little individuality; there was no specialisation of function 
 and no mythology. The goddesses bore feminine names, 
 but they had nothing else of the sex about them. 1 Allah 
 ("the deity,* like the Hebrew ha-elohim), before Mohammed 
 elevated him to the place of sole God, had, by virtue of the 
 generality of the appellation a certain precedence over gods 
 who were individualised by proper names and local habita- 
 tions. 
 
 The victim in sacrifice was killed with a dedication, "In 
 the name of" — whatever god it might be; the blood was 
 smeared on the holy stone or poured into a pit at the foot. 
 The flesh furnished a feast for the offerer, his family, and 
 guests. There was no sacrificial priesthood; the priests were 
 diviners, and sometimes custodians of the holy places. 
 
 At some of the chief sanctuaries there was an annual 
 concourse of strangers from near and far; the religious festi- 
 val was combined with a great fair, at which the products 
 
 1 This is said of Mohammed's time and place; with what they may 
 have been elsewhere and in other times we are not here concerned. 
 
MOHAMMED 389 
 
 of different parts of the peninsula and foreign wares were 
 exchanged. Mecca was the scene of the most frequented 
 of these festivals in all that part of Arabia. A suspension 
 of tribal wars and blood-feuds during the sacred months, a 
 kind of truce of God, insured the safety of visitors at the 
 festival and on the journey. 
 
 In the north of Arabia, the kingdoms of Palmyra and of 
 Hira, vassal buffer-states of the Roman and Persian em- 
 pires respectively, were Christian; and from them Chris- 
 tianity had spread into the belt of Arab tribes that stretched 
 , across the desert between. In Yemen, in the south, then 
 1 under Persian rule, the population was largely Jewish and 
 Christian. Not so far from Mecca, there were Jewish tribes 
 at Medina and in the oases north of it. The caravan trade 
 with the north and the south brought the Meccans some 
 acquaintance with these religions; Jewish and Christian 
 slaves were no rarity in Mecca. Several of Mohammed's 
 contemporaries in Mecca, Medina, and Taif had discovered 
 the inferiority of Arab paganism, and became in their per- 
 sonal conviction monotheists, with an eclectic appropria- 
 tion of Christian ideas. They made no effort, however, to 
 win others to their way of thinking, and did not attack the 
 religion of their countrymen. Two of them, in Mecca, were 
 of kin to Mohammed's wife; one was a neighbor, and inti- 
 mate in his house. . Through such channels Mohammed 
 may have got the ideas which worked in his mind with such 
 different effect; he certainly did not get from them the 
 inspiration to his missi6n. 
 
 : At the end of one of his retreats on Mount Hira his call 
 came to proclaim the word of God to his generation. Tra- 
 dition has embellished the fact with a wealth of legendary 
 circumstance; the simplest story is that in a dream the 
 angel of revelation (Gabriel) appeared to him and bade him 
 recite what God revealed to him. 1 According to the most 
 
 ^n other places in the Koran the verb ("ikra") means "recite" 
 a sacred text (from memory) ; it is used also of reading (aloud) a writ- 
 ten text, and in the latter sense it is understood by the decorative 
 traditions according to which Gabriel brought down a strip of silk 
 inscribed with the words of revelation. 
 
390 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 generally accepted opinion, the words of«the angel are pre- 
 served in the Koran, Sura 96, 1-5. 
 
 "Recite ! in the name of thy Lord, 
 Who created man of a clot of blood. 
 Recite ! Thy Lord is most gracious, 
 Who taught by means of the pen, 1 
 Taught man what he knew not." 
 
 Mohammed, the tradition continues, returned to his 
 home in great perturbation, not comprehending what had 
 befallen him; Khadijah comforted him and consulted Waraka 
 ibn Naufal, who, from his acquaintance with the older 
 Scriptures, recognised that Mohammed was called to be the 
 prophet of his people, as Moses had been in his day. 
 
 Another very early revelation is the beginning of Sura 74: 
 
 "O thou who liest wrapped up ! 
 Arise and give warning, 
 And magnify thy Lord, 
 And purify thy garments, 
 And keep aloof from defilement. 
 And be not liberal, seeking to gain by it; 
 And wait patiently for thy Lord." 
 
 These utterances, like the rest of the Koran, are in the 
 rhymed sing-song in which the heathen soothsayers were 
 wont to couch their responses. An imitative translation of 
 an early Sura (93) may give some notion of the form: 
 
 "By the bright day 
 And the night without ray, 
 Thy Lord forsakes not nor casts thee away. 
 The hereafter the present will more than repay; 
 Thy Lord will give, nor say thee nay. 
 Found he thee not an orphan and became thy stay, 
 Found thee wandering and set thee on thy way, 
 Found thee poor and did thy wants allay ? 
 Therefore the orphan do not thou gainsay, 
 Nor the beggar drive away; 
 But the goodness of thy Lord display." 
 
 1 The reference is to the Scriptures of the Jews and Christians. 
 
MOHAMMED 391 
 
 For a time Mohammed addressed himself to individuals, 
 chiefly in the circle of his more intimate acquaintance. The 
 first to believe in him were of his own household — his wife 
 Khadijah, his freedman and adoptive son Zaid ibn Harithah, 1 
 his cousin Ali ibn Abu Talib (who was a lad of ten years at 
 the utmost). Outside the house the first believer was Abu 
 Bekr, one of the most esteemed men in Mecca for his 
 probity and his charity, whose knowledge and experience, 
 sound judgment, and benevolent disposition led men to 
 seek his advice on public and private affairs, and gave his 
 counsel great weight. Abu Bekr made no secret of his 
 faith in Mohammed, and the influence of his words and 
 example induced others to believe. After a time Moham- 
 med was encouraged to speak publicly to his townsmen as 
 he found opportunity; but his converts were not very nu- 
 merous, and were chiefly young men and "feeble folk," as 
 the narrator phrases it — people of small account in the 
 community. The Meccans at first looked on with a tol- 
 erant incredulity; when Mohammed passed a group of them 
 they would point at him and say: "There goes that young 
 man of the family of Abd al-Muttalib who talks about 
 heaven." But when he went farther and reviled the gods 
 they worshipped and dilated on the perdition of their pagan 
 forefathers, their enmity was aroused. 
 
 The Meccans had no great religious zeal; they resented 
 Mohammed's attacks not so much for the gods' sake as 
 from loyalty to the institutions of the city. They had, 
 moreover, a strong economic interest in maintaining those 
 institutions, for the importance of Mecca was due in large 
 part to the holy places in its territory, and the multitudes 
 of pilgrims who resorted thither at the festivals brought 
 much gain to the citizens. The remorseless logic with 
 which Mohammed consigned to hell their forefathers who 
 
 1 Zaid had been brought from Syria to Mecca as a slave by a nephew 
 of Khadijah. He came from a region and a tribe (the Kalbites of 
 Dumat al-Jandal) which had long been in contact with Judaism and 
 Christianity. 
 
392 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 had died in the days of ignorance incensed men with whom 
 the bond of blood was the most sacred point of honour and 
 obligation. Mohammed later forfeited the protection of 
 his uncle, Abu Lahab, and incurred his mortal enmity, by 
 averring that his father (Mohammed's grandfather) was in 
 the fire with all the rest of the heathen. Opposition only 
 sharpened Mohammed's tone and made his denunciations 
 more vehement. 
 
 Mohammed's adversaries urged his uncle, Abu Talib, to 
 silence the troublesome preacher, or to withdraw his pro- 
 tection and let them silence him; but Abu Talib, though he 
 was no believer, stood by his nephew. When the other 
 families of Mecca made a compact to have no dealings with 
 the Hashimites so long as they sheltered Mohammed, the 
 clan allowed themselves to be shut up in their quarter for 
 many months rather than dishonour themselves by surren- 
 dering their kinsman. But while Mohammed himself was 
 thus safe from anything worse than insult, those of his fol- 
 lowers who had not the protection of a powerful family suf- 
 fered more seriously, and some of them, finding their situa- 
 tion intolerable, took refuge among the Christians in Abys- 
 sinia. Shortly after the interdict was raised Mohammed 
 set out with one companion on a mission to Taif, a flourish- 
 ing town two days east of Mecca, but met a rude reception, 
 and after a few days was constrained to make his way back 
 to Mecca. 
 
 He had better success with some pilgrims from Yathrib, 1 
 whom the annual festival brought to Mecca. Several of 
 them professed Islam, and by their efforts at home others 
 of their townsmen were converted. In two years' time the 
 movement had made such progress at Medina that Moham- 
 med decided to remove thither. He gave the word to the 
 Meccan Moslems, who in small groups, eluding observation 
 as far as possible, migrated to Medina. Mohammed him- 
 self and the faithful Abu Bekr remained till the rest were 
 safely off, and then followed them. Before taking this step, 
 1 Later known as Medina, that is "the city" (of the Prophet). 
 
MOHAMMED 393 
 
 Mohammed had, in a family conclave, formally severed the 
 ties of kindred which bound him to his people and put him- 
 self under the protection of representatives of the men of 
 Medina. This withdrawal is the Hijra (Hegira), and when, 
 after Mohammed's death, it was made the Moslem era, 
 the chronologers fixed the beginning of the year on a day 
 corresponding to July 15, 622 A. D. 
 
 The Arabs of Medina belonged to two tribes, Aus and 
 Khazraj, which had migrated thither no great while before 
 from the south of the peninsula. There were also in Medina 
 and its neighbourhood several tribes of Jews, long settled in 
 those parts, and in everything but their religion thoroughly 
 Arabised, in all probability, also, largely of Arab blood. 
 The refugees from Mecca brought a new element into an 
 already complicated situation. In regulating their rela- 
 tions to the Supporters in Medina, Mohammed established 
 the principle that all the Moslems formed one community, 
 and were bound to protect one another in all things and 
 'against all enemies, the bond of the common religion being 
 above all ties of clan and kin, and in case of conflict super- 
 seding them. Disputes that arose within the community 
 were to be referred to God and Mohammed, that is, in 
 effect, to the arbitration of the Prophet. The Jewish clans 
 which were clients of the Arab tribes of Medina were to be 
 protected in the exercise of their religion; and of the heathen 
 in the city it was demanded that they should not take the 
 part of the heathen of Mecca against the believers. 
 
 In this constitution the foundation of Mohammed's politi- 
 cal power was laid. Medina had in recent years suffered 
 much from intestine wars between the Aus and Khazraj, in 
 which the Jews also had been involved, and from their legacy 
 of blood-feuds. The new order put an end to all this, and 
 even those who were least impressed by the religious merits 
 of Islam could not fail to see the great gain it brought in 
 security for life and possessions. Many professed Islam 
 from such motives, without any real heart in it. These 
 "hypocrites" were a constant trial to Mohammed, and at 
 
394 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 more than one juncture a peril to the cause; numerous 
 revelations express his distrust of them. 
 
 Medina lay conveniently near the main route to the 
 north, and Mohammed, after some forays on a smaller 
 scale, laid plans to intercept the annual Meccan caravan 
 returning from Syria. The caravan escaped, but the Mec- 
 cans felt it necessary for future safety to chastise the pre- 
 sumption. The smart defeat they suffered at Bedr was 
 damaging to their prestige and greatly enhanced that of 
 the Moslems. In the following years the conflict was re- 
 newed with varying fortunes, but in the end Mohammed 
 ? prevailed. Mecca itself was taken by him in the year 8 
 (early in 630 A. D.), and the idols and other appurtenances 
 of heathen worship were destroyed. In the following year 
 Abu Bekr headed the pilgrimage, and formally proclaimed 
 that Mecca and the holy places belonged to the Moslems, 
 and that henceforth no heathen should be allowed to take 
 part in the ceremonies. Mohammed himself made the pil- 
 grimage in 632 A. D., introduced some changes in the rites, 
 and gave the festival the form it has preserved to the present 
 day. 
 
 "'The authority which Mohammed had acquired at Medina 
 and his successes against the Meccans inclined many of the 
 Bedouins to his side; missionary bands converted some and 
 camel raids convinced others. The catastrophe that befell 
 the Hawazin, who had allied themselves with the citizens 
 of Taif against him after the capture of Mecca, completed 
 the change of heart. In 622, when Mohammed, after 
 prophesying for a dozen years to a stiff-necked generation, 
 shook the dust of Mecca from his feet, the refugees and the 
 supporters together numbered but a few hundred; when he 
 died, ten years later, all Arabia had embraced his religion, 
 and a Moslem army was on foot to carry the truth into 
 Syria. 
 
 Mohammed's mission, as he conceived it in the beginning, 
 was to warn his countrymen that the day of judgment was 
 at hand, and to urge them to flee from the wrath to come 
 
MOHAMMED 395 
 
 by putting away their vain idols and serving the one living 
 and true God. "There is no god but God (Allah)" is the 
 corner-stone of religion. God is a jealous God, and toler- 
 ates no rivals; to have other gods besides him is the sin of 
 sins. Not the heathen only are guilty of this sin, but the 
 Christians, who say " God is the Messiah, the son of Mary," 
 or "God is the third of three." x The unity of God is the 
 message of God by all his prophets: "We sent no apostle 
 before thee to whom we did not reveal that there is no God 
 but me." 
 
 j The idea of God is essentially that of the Old Testament, 
 | and doubtless came to him through Jewish channels. The 
 title, al-Rahman, "the merciful," which in one period of 
 his ministry Mohammed used as a proper name for God by 
 preference to all others, is a foreign word, borrowed from 
 the Jews, and the emphasis on the attribute of mercy, espe- 
 cially on God's forgiving grace, is of the same origin. Stock 
 and stone worship and idolatry are denounced; God must 
 not be imaged in any likeness. For the rest, Mohammed 
 pictured God, as the naive imagination of Jews and Chris- 
 tians had always done, in the highest heaven, seated upon 
 a lofty throne, surrounded by angelic ministers, some of 
 whom continually adore him, while others go to and fro, 
 revealing his word or doing his will upon earth. The devil 
 (Iblis, Diabolos, or Shaitan, Satan), an angel who fell 
 through pride, is an adversary and tempter, as in Judaism 
 and Christianity. God is not remote from the affairs of 
 men: "Dost thou not see that God knows what is in the 
 heavens and on the earth? There cannot be a secret con- 
 ference of three, but he makes the fourth with them ... he 
 is with them wherever they are, and will declare to them 
 on the day of resurrection what they did." 
 
 God is almighty as well as all-wise, the creator of the 
 heavens and the earth and of all things in them, and master 
 of his own creation; "Lord of the worlds," "Lord of man- 
 
 1 The strictures on Christian polytheism are all in Suras revealed 
 at Medina. 
 
396 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 kind." In his controversies with the Meccans Mohammed 
 was naturally led to lay emphasis on God's sovereignty and 
 his omnipotence. His right none can contest, his will 
 naught can resist. Yet he is no despot, wielding his awful 
 power arbitrarily or capriciously, for he is wise and merciful. 
 
 Mohammed was so firmly convinced of his mission and 
 of the truth of his message, of the urgency of his warning to 
 flee from the wrath to come, that he could not understand 
 why all men did not believe, and surrender themselves to 
 God's will. They asked for signs, for miracles such as had 
 attested the divine mission of the older prophets; he dis- 
 claimed supernatural powers, but what miracles could be 
 so conclusive as the "signs" that were sent down to him, 
 the verses of the Koran itself. Yet the fact remained: 
 only a few believed, even on this convincing proof, while 
 the mass rejected both the claims of the Prophet and his 
 revelations. The only explanation that offered itself was 
 that God had given to some to believe and be saved, and 
 left others to perish in their unbelief, and this of determi- 
 nate purpose: "God leads astray whomsoever he wills, and 
 guides aright whom he wills." 
 
 The idea of predestination in the Koran is not derived 
 from abstract reflections on the implications of God's sov- 
 ereignty, but is the practical solution of a problem thrust 
 upon Mohammed by his experience. Nor is God's dealing 
 usually represented in the Koran as arbitrary: God leaves 
 to wander to their own ruin, like wayfarers lost in the 
 desert, those who have shown themselves unwilling to be 
 guided by him. Of the Israelites who treated Moses ill, 
 Mohammed says: "When they turned aside from the right 
 way, God turned their hearts aside; God does not guide 
 evil-doers"; of the hypocrites at Medina: "They forget God 
 and he forgets them"; and similarly in many places. Nor 
 does Mohammed, even where he asserts God's agency most 
 unqualifiedly, desist from urging men to believe and submit 
 as if all was in their power. The preaching of predestina- 
 tion is not meant to make the sinner feel his helplessness, 
 
MOHAMMED 397 
 
 but to warn him of his peril if he rejects the message. We 
 shall see how the crude and inconsistent utterances of the 
 Prophet on this subject gave material for great controver- 
 sies among Moslem theologians. Meanwhile it will not be 
 amiss to remind ourselves that here also Mohammed was 
 walking more closely than he knew in the traces of the 
 Jewish and Christian Scriptures. 
 
 There is no stronger evidence of the impression which the 
 two great book religions made upon the "illiterate prophet" l 
 than the fact that he could not conceive a divine revelation 
 otherwise than as Scriptures which God " sent down." His 
 own revelations were transcripts of a celestial original, 
 brought to him in parts from time to time as need was by 
 Gabriel. These casual and piecemeal revelations, collected 
 soon after his death, constitute the Koran, the inspired 
 scripture of Islam. The Koran consists of one hundred and 
 fourteen chapters, or Suras, varying in length from a few 
 lines to many pages, and differing no less widely in form 
 and content, from the rhapsodical oracles of which exam- 
 ples have been given above to prosaic legislation on every- 
 day matters. 
 
 The compilers, having no historical interest, made no 
 attempt to order the chapters chronologically or by subject; 
 they began with the long chapters revealed at Medina — 
 chiefly legislative, and often composite — and put the short 
 Suras, among which are the earliest revelations, at the end. 
 Partly by the aid of tradition, partly by internal evidence, 
 modern criticism is able to divide the prophet's outgivings 
 into three or four large groups, corresponding to as many 
 stages in his career, and thus to trace with some confidence 
 the development of his ideas and aims. For our present 
 purpose it must suffice to indicate in the proper place the 
 more striking changes which were the result of the new 
 situation in which he found himself at Medina. 
 
 God's word to men in olden times was made known 
 
 1 Mohammed emphasizes the fact that his doctrine was not learned 
 out of books. 
 
398 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 through his messengers, or prophets; and Mohammed, as 
 he conceived his mission more clearly, took these titles to 
 himself: he was the messenger of God (rasul), commonly- 
 translated "apostle"), the Prophet (nabi) whom God sent 
 to the Arabs. 1 If the Meccans reject him and his message, 
 the prophets before him were no better received in their 
 time. The generation of Noah would not listen to him, and 
 perished in the flood; the Egyptians spurned Moses, and 
 were drowned in the Red Sea. The catastrophes that over- 
 took those who refused to hear the prophets were favorite 
 themes with him; to the examples from biblical history he 
 added Ad and Thamud, Arab tribes whose ruin, it was 
 revealed to him, was a judgment for rejecting their prophets, 
 Hud and Salih. The Old Testament stories came to him 
 by hearsay, with legendary embellishments, and he retold 
 them with improvements and some original misunderstand- 
 ings. What he tells of Jesus comes chiefly from apocryphal 
 and heretical sources. 
 
 Mohammed's notions of the hereafter are plainly derived 
 from Jewish and Christian sources. The beginning and 
 very motive of his preaching was the impending judgment 
 of God. The signs of its approach and the events of the 
 great day, with its eternal issues, fill a large space in the 
 Koran and in utterances from every period of the prophet's 
 career; they are depicted with peculiar vividness in a group 
 of Suras which reflect the acute stage of Meccan opposition. 
 The "signs" belong to the common apocalyptic tradition; 
 portents and convulsions in nature fill men with consterna- 
 tion; the trumpet sounds, the earth gives up its dead, and 
 the assembled generations appear before the judgment 
 throne of God; the books are brought forth in which men's 
 deeds are recorded — all the familiar imagery. The Mec- 
 cans met these threatenings with a light heart; they mocked 
 at the resurrection and all the stage-machinery of judg- 
 ment. Mohammed's definition of an infidel is one who calls 
 
 1 The explicit assumption of these titles begins in the last period at 
 Mecca, and is common only in the Suras revealed at Medina. 
 
MOHAMMED 399 
 
 the judgment-day a lie; to such he promises a convincing 
 experience of it. 
 
 Hell is a gulf of fire, in which, fettered and chained, sinners 
 broil, unable to die and without escape. "The Fire" is 
 the common and sufficient word for it; the name jehinnam 
 is the Hebrew gehinnom, the Gehenna of Jewish and New 
 Testament eschatology. Paradise is "the Garden" — again 
 the Jewish word. Here Mohammed's imagination was more 
 original. His "garden" was a place of green meadows 
 and shady trees, bearing all pleasant fruits, of springs and 
 flowing rivers — the very heaven for a dweller in the barren, 
 burning valley of Mecca, for the Arab of the desert. There 
 are all things that man can desire in lavish abundance, 
 delicious fruits, streams of milk and honey, wine without a 
 headache in it, silken raiment and rich adornment, rare 
 perfumes. It is frankly a paradise of the senses; fair-eyed 
 maids with complexion like pearls and rubies are one of the 
 attractions of the place. 1 But it is also a place where no 
 false nor foolish word is spoken, and where the saved con- 
 tinually praise God for his goodness. An influential school 
 of Moslem theologians, as we shall see, interpreted these 
 descriptions figuratively, as many Christians interpret the 
 city with streets of gold and gates of pearl, the river of liv- 
 ing water, and the trees with twelve kinds of fruit in the 
 Revelation of John. 
 
 The rejection of the false gods had as a consequence the 
 abandonment of the whole heathen cultus. In its stead 
 Mohammed instituted a worship of prayer, like the devo- 
 tions of Jews and Christians. The prayers, which con- 
 ; sisted of recitation of verses of the Koran, were individual, 
 : though a number of Moslems might come together to offer 
 them at the same time. The hostility of the Meccans made 
 the early Moslems choose secluded places outside the city 
 or the shelter of private houses for their conventicles. At 
 Medina a large house of worship (mesjed, "mosque") was 
 
 1 It should be said that the Huris appear only in a small group of 
 Suras. 
 
400 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 built where the Moslems might perform their private devo- 
 tions if they wished, and in which they assembled to pray 
 in unison under the leadership of Mohammed. As the Jews 
 had their Sabbath and the Christians their Lord's Day, 
 so Mohammed appointed the Friday noon hour for public 
 prayer, appearance at which was made a religious duty. 
 In other respects, also, the times and forms of daily private 
 prayer were more exactly regulated. At the gathering in 
 the great mosque Mohammed often addressed the congre- 
 gation, not only on what we should call religious subjects, 
 but on divers matters of general interest to the community. 
 "With the worship of the heathen gods Mohammed for- 
 bade the various forms of divination that were practised 
 at their shrines. Under the same condemnation he put 
 gambling, a vice to which the Arabs were much addicted, 
 and in which they went to excesses that remind us of 
 what Tacitus tells of our Teutonic forefathers. In his later 
 deliverances he prohibited unreservedly the use of wine; 
 wine and gambling are Satan's devices to provoke quarrels 
 among the Moslems , and to turn them from the remem- 
 brance of God and from prayer. 
 
 Infanticide, which was common, especially the burying of 
 supernumerary daughters, Mohammed condemned as mur- 
 der. He forbade fornication, and prescribed severe and 
 equal penalties for both parties. He set a limit on the num- 
 ber of wives a man might have at one time, and restricted 
 the freedom of divorce; required a considerate treatment 
 of slaves, and made the manumission of believing slaves a 
 meritorious work. It is unreasonable to censure Moham- 
 med for not reconstructing the whole social system of the 
 Arabs in anticipation of modern ideas. For his time and 
 according to his light, including what came to him from 
 Judaism and Christianity, he accomplished notable reforms; 
 unfortunately he gave the finality of revelation to their 
 limitations. 
 
 Judged by the same standard, the moral teaching of the 
 Koran is high; it may fairly be compared with Deuteron- 
 
MOHAMMED 401 
 
 omy, or such compends of Jewish morals as Lev. 19; as may 
 be seen in the following, from a Meccan Sura (17, 23/.): 
 
 Put beside God no other god, lest thou one day sit condemned and 
 without helper. Thy God had decreed that ye serve no one but him. 
 And that thou treat thy parents well, if one or both of them grow old 
 in thy house, and do not speak rudely to them, nor grumble at them, 
 but use to them honourable speech. And incline to them the wing of 
 humility out of compassion, and say, O Lord, have compassion on 
 them, as they brought me up when I was little. Your Lord knows 
 what is in your hearts if ye be righteous, and verily he is forgiving 
 to the penitent. 
 
 And give what is right to thy kinsman and to the poor and to the 
 wanderer; but do not squander thy substance, for the squanderers 
 have always been the devil's brothers, and the devil is ever ungrateful 
 to his Lord. But if ever thou must turn away from them to seek from 
 thy Lord the favour thou hopest for, 1 give them at least a kind word. 
 Let not your arm hang motionless from your shoulder, but do not open 
 your hand quite wide, 2 lest thou shouldest have to sit blamed and im- 
 poverished; for thy Lord gives sustenance abundantly to whom he will 
 or sparingly — verily, he knows and sees his servants. 
 
 Do not kill your children out of apprehension of poverty; he will 
 provide for them and you. Killing them is a great sin. 
 
 Avoid fornication; it is an abomination and a wrong way. 
 
 Do not kill one whom God has forbidden you, unless it be for a just 
 cause. As for him who is slain unjustly, we have given his next of 
 kin the right to avenge him; but let him not exceed bounds in killing 3 
 — verily he is ever helped. 
 
 Do not touch the property of the orphan, 4 except to improve it un- 
 til he arrive at his majority. 
 
 Fulfil your agreement. Verily, an agreement is always inquired 
 into (by God). 
 
 Give full measure when you measure, and weigh with an honest 
 balance; that is the best and fairest way. 
 
 Do not follow what thou dost not know about. What a man lis- 
 tens to and looks at and thinks in his heart — all these will one day be 
 asked about. 
 
 And do not walk proudly on the earth, for, verily, thou canst not 
 split the earth nor make thyself as tall as the mountains. All this is 
 an abomination in the sight of thy Lord. 
 
 1 1, e., to seek your own livelihood. 
 
 2 Be neither niggardly nor lavish in benevolence. 
 
 * In pursuing the blood-feud. 
 
 4 Whose guardian you may be. 
 
402 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Mohammed believed at the outset that the religion he 
 preached to his countrymen was the same that had been 
 preached by the prophets before him; this was, indeed, a 
 necessary consequence of his belief in revelation. Of these 
 prophets Moses and Jesus were the greatest, and the Law 
 of the Jews and the Gospel of the Christians were the most 
 important of the Scriptures that God had "sent down" in 
 former times. What was "sent down" to him was to con- 
 firm what was already in their hands. When the Moslems 
 were harassed in Mecca, he sent a company of them to 
 Abyssinia to find a refuge among their Christian fellow- 
 believers. At Medina he expected the Jews to recognise 
 the agreement between his teaching and theirs, and to own 
 him as a prophet in the true succession, perhaps as the Mes- 
 siah for whom they were waiting. The Moslems, when 
 they prayed, turned their faces toward Jerusalem; the Day 
 of Atonement was made a solemn fast for Moslems, the one 
 great fast in the year. Mohammed did not see why, if he 
 acknowledged Moses and his Torah, the Jews should not 
 acknowledge him and his Koran. 
 
 The Jews proved obdurate; their doctrine had no place 
 in it for Arab prophets or messiahs. They took a malicious 
 pleasure in exposing the ignorance of biblical history which 
 Mohammed displayed in his stories about biblical persons, 
 thus impugning his claim to have his stories by revelation. 
 He retorted that his was the true and original version; if it 
 was told otherwise in the books of the Jews it was because 
 they had falsified their Scriptures. The attitude of the 
 Jews was not only vexatious, but had in it a visible element 
 of danger. In conjunction with the "hypocrites," as Mo- 
 hammed calls the numerous class who outwardly professed 
 Islam but had no real faith in it, they might at more than 
 one crisis have made' his position in Medina untenable. In 
 the interludes in the conflict with the Meccans, Mohammed, 
 on one pretext or another, fell upon the Jews, and did not 
 stop till he had driven out all their tribes from Medina, and 
 conquered their strongholds in the oasis of Khaibar. 
 
MOHAMMED 403 
 
 The breach with the Jews had far-reaching religious con- 
 sequences. It was now revealed to Mohammed that not 
 toward Jerusalem, but toward Mecca should men turn their 
 faces when they prayed; he abrogated the observance of 
 the Day of Atonement and ordained instead a fast for the 
 whole month of Ramadan; he declared the Jewish dietary 
 laws annulled. Islam was not the same with Judaism and 
 Christianity; it was the restoration of an older and purer 
 faith, the Religion of Abraham. This religion Abraham had 
 planted among the Arabs; with Ishmael, the forefather of 
 the Arabs, he had built the Kaaba at Mecca and dedicated 
 it to the worship of the true God. During his career at 
 Mecca Mohammed had always shown reverence for the 
 Kaaba, notwithstanding that it was a house of idols; now 
 he made it his mission to recover the ancient Arabian sanc- 
 tuary and restore it to its original consecration. When he 
 ordered the pilgrimage in mass in 628, he doubtless thought 
 of the possibility of seizing the sacred places by a coup de 
 main; but the Meccans were beforehand with him, and 
 much to the chagrin of his followers, he had to turn back 
 without accomplishing the pilgrimage. Two years later, as 
 we have seen, he was more successful, and restored the 
 House of God to its true owner. He did more: he incorpo- 
 rated the rites of pilgrimage, a whole piece of unassimilated 
 Arab paganism, into Islam, making them the very culmina- 
 tion of its cultus; taking care, however, to obliterate their 
 address and significance. This nationalising of Islam con- 
 tributed much to its immediate success among the Arabs; its 
 remoter consequences would have taken more of a prophet 
 than Mohammed to foresee. 
 
 While in this way Islam was becoming the national reli- 
 gion of the Arabs, Mohammed was imagining larger things. 
 Having come to think of Islam, not as substantially identi- 
 cal with Judaism and Christianity, but as a later and more 
 perfect revelation superseding them, he seems to have con- 
 ceived his own mission in corresponding dimensions — a 
 prophet to mankind. He is said to have sent letters to the 
 
404 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Roman emperor Heraclius and to the Persian Chosroes, 
 summoning them to submit to the authority of God and 
 his apostle; and was following his epistle with an army 
 when death overtook him. The history of Islam in the fol- 
 lowing period was determined by this double character. It 
 was the national religion of the Arabs, and it was their task 
 to bring the rest of mankind under its sway, establishing 
 thus the sovereignty of God in this world. The Arab em- 
 pire assumed the character of a universal theocratic state; a 
 form, it will be remembered, which the Jewish Messianic 
 hope sometimes took, and an endeavour which has many 
 Christian parallels. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 THE CALIPHATE. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES 
 
 The Caliphs — The Moslem Conquests— Situation of Jews and Chris- 
 tians — Moslem Law — Custom and Tradition — Development of 
 Jurisprudence — The Principle of Consensus— The Kharijite 
 Schism — Early Controversies— The Mutazilites — Their Idea of 
 God — Doctrine of the Created Koran — Rationalised Eschatology 
 — Mediating Theology — Al-Ashari — Al-Bakilani. 
 
 The situation in which the death of Mohammed (632 
 A. D.) left his followers was exceedingly difficult. During 
 ' his lifetime he had kept all authority in his own hands. 
 Military commanders were appointed for a specific expedi- 
 tion with specific instructions, and when they had accom- 
 plished their task, they laid down their command and 
 returned to the ranks of the believers. Even when his ill- 
 ness made it necessary to designate a leader for the public 
 players in the mosque, the appointment was made only for 
 the temporary occasion with no provision for a possible re- 
 currence. All questions that arose in the community were 
 settled by him, and if his own authority was not sufficient, 
 a revelation was thrown into the balance. He had thus 
 built up no organisation, no machinery of administration 
 which might have gone on when the master mind which 
 had designed and created it was withdrawn. He had made 
 no provision for a successor, either by naming one or by 
 determining the method in which one should be chosen. 
 As prophet, it was clear to everybody that he could not 
 have any successor — was he not the last of the prophets? 
 But the religious-political community which Islam had 
 become required a head and a central and supreme author- 
 
 405 
 
406 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 ity; this was indeed the indispensable condition of its con- 
 tinued existence. 
 
 For a moment it seemed as if conflicting interests and 
 ambitions might lead to intestine strife; but better counsels 
 prevailed, and Abu Bekr was recognised on all sides as the 
 vicar of the Apostle of God ("caliph"). Abu Bekr was on 
 every account the right man. His personal character, his 
 intimate relation to Mohammed reaching back to the very 
 beginning of Mohammed's career, his simple-minded faith 
 in the Prophet and loyalty to his word and example, made 
 it sure that the work of Mohammed would be carried on, 
 his unfinished task completed, in his own spirit. 
 
 The news of Mohammed's death was the signal for the 
 falling away of all Arabia; Medina, Mecca, and Taif almost 
 alone remained true. Medina itself was for the moment 
 seriously threatened by the tribes from the north and the 
 northeast; it had been almost stripped of its defenders to 
 make up the army despatched under the command of 
 Osama against Syria in accordance with plans which had 
 been formed by Mohammed before his death. Yemen fell 
 away as a matter of course, and Yemama with all the regions 
 beyond. It is an interesting evidence of the impression 
 Mohammed had produced upon the Arabs that the leaders 
 in this attempt to assert Arab liberty almost without excep- 
 tion either gave themselves out for prophets or had prophets 
 at their elbows. The struggle which gave the armies of the 
 caliphate most difficulty was in Yemama, where the prophet 
 Maslama (nicknamed by the Moslems Moseilima), at the 
 head of the tribe Abu Hanifa, was only subdued after great 
 efforts. The turn of Yemen followed, and before the end 
 of 633 all Arabia had been reconverted by the Moslem 
 armies. 
 
 The consolidation of Islam in Arabia, the fusion into one 
 body animated by one spirit of men and tribes which had 
 yesterday been engaged in fratricidal war, was accomplished 
 by the aggressive wars which now began against the Roman 
 and Persian Empires. These conquests fell in the caliphate 
 
THE CALIPHATE 407 
 
 of Omar, who in August, 634, succeeded Abu Bekr and was 
 the real organiser of the empire. This is not the place to 
 recite the history of these conquests; it must suffice to recall 
 a few dates which indicate the successive stages in the ex- 
 pansion of Islam. Damascus fell into the hands of the 
 Moslems in the late summer of 635, and in August of the 
 following year was fought on the banks of the Yarmuk the 
 battle which determined Heraclius to evacuate all Syria. 
 On the other side, the battle of KadisiyaTn 637 brought 
 under Moslem dominion those parts of the Persian Empire 
 which had been ancient Babylonia and Assyria. The strug- 
 gle for the eastern provinces continued for some time longer. 
 A decisive victory was won at Nehawend, in 642, and in 
 a few years all Iran was reduced to subjection. In 640 
 Egypt fell into the hands of the Moslems without serious 
 opposition.' Thus when Omar died by the hand of an assas- 
 sin, in 644, he was "at the head of an empire which extended 
 from Cyrene on the west to the frontiers of India on the 
 east. 
 
 Under his successor, Othman (644-'56), the movement of 
 expansion slackened. The Moslem empire had indeed 
 reached what might not improperly be regarded its natural 
 limits. Othman was a weak ruler with an especial weak- 
 ness for his kinsmen and the old aristocracy of Mecca. 
 Mohammed himself and his immediate successors had, out 
 of motives of policy, shown exceptional favours to these 
 late-comers into the faith, but under Othman they got pos- 
 session of all the best places, the command of armies, the 
 governorships of the richest provinces. Many of these men, 
 as everybody knew, had little religion in their hearts, though 
 they fully appreciated the political possibilities of Islam. 
 The process of secularisation which was converting the 
 empire of the faith into a monarchy quite after the pattern 
 that prevailed among the unbelievers did not go unobserved 
 nor without protest, and Othman found himself the mark 
 of dangerous opposition from two sides — on the one hand 
 from the old believers, the representatives of the truly relig- 
 
408 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 ious spirit of Islam, and on the other hand from rival aspi- 
 rants to the caliphate. These and other discontented ele- 
 ments made common cause against the caliph. In 656 
 hands from Irak and Egypt assembled at Medina and, 
 when the caliph refused to abdicate at their demand, be- 
 sieged him in his own house, forced an entrance, and killed 
 him. 
 
 AH, the first cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed, suc- 
 ceeded in getting himself acclaimed caliph, and thereupon 
 a period of civil wars began. Two rival candidates who 
 raised the standard of insurrection in Irak were speedily 
 disposed of; but a more formidable enemy arose in Moawiya, 
 the governor of Syria, who made it his mission to avenge 
 the murdered caliph on the heads of those who had insti- 
 gated or connived at the crime and profited by it. Ali's 
 supporters were made up of incompatible elements; when 
 he yielded to the dictation of one party he alienated the 
 other; 1 he had, indeed, to put down a formidable revolt in 
 his own army while the decisive struggle with Moawiya was 
 still pending. Moawiya was much stronger in material 
 resources and had a united following. Before the unequal 
 conflict reached its inevitable issue, Ali was murdered (Jan- 
 uary, 661); in the summer of that year Moawiya entered 
 Cufa and received the oath of allegiance as the "Chief of 
 the Believers." In the course of a few years Moawiya made 
 himself master of the whole Moslem world. He established 
 the seat of government at Damascus, and his successors 
 ruled there for nearly a century, until, in 750, the Omayyad 
 caliphate of Damascus gave place (except in Spain) to the 
 Abbasid caliphate of Bagdad. ' 
 
 The Arab armies did not, as is still sometimes imagined, 
 march up and down the world offering mankind the dilemma, 
 " Islam or the sword ! " The Koran enjoins the Moslems to 
 force the heathen (Arabs) to embrace the religion of the 
 one true God; it bids them war with others till they submit 
 to the rule of Islam; but it expressly protects the adherents 
 1 See below, p. 414. 
 
THE CALIPHATE 409 
 
 of the book-religions, Judaism and Christianity, 1 in the ex- 
 ercise of their religion. The Moslem conquests were not, 
 in fact, inspired by fanaticism, nor marked by sanguinary 
 excesses, as wars go. The capitulation of Jerusalem to 
 Omar in 636 stands out in strong contrast to the ruthless 
 massacre of Jews and Moslems when the crusaders took the 
 city in 1099 A. D. The protected populations had to pay 
 a capitation tax, and taxes on the lands, which were left in 
 their possession, the Moslems being at the beginning regarded 
 as an army of occupation encamped on conquered territory, 
 and not allowed to acquire real property. The early caliphs 
 were not at all zealous for the conversion of tax-paying 
 Christians or Zoroastrians into tax-supported Moslems; and 
 when multitudes began to go over to the religion of their 
 masters, the rulers were seriously embarrassed by a move- 
 ment which upset their theory and curtailed their finances. 
 The Moslems were compelled to take over the adminis- 
 trative machinery they found in operation in the conquered 
 countries with its organised staff of secretaries and clerks. 
 Thus, in Syria and Egypt the officials through whom the 
 business of government was carried on were Christians, 
 Greeks and Copts; in Irak, Persians. Some of these offi- 
 cials rose out of the bureaus to positions of confidence and 
 responsibility; the father of John of Damascus, the greatest 
 theologian of the Greek church, held a high station at the 
 Omayyad court, and the son was educated for the same 
 career. More than one of the caliphs entertained himself 
 by listening to discussions between Moslems, Jews, and 
 ] Christians, on the distinctive features of their respective 
 (religions and their relative merits; and the development of 
 Mohammedan theology itself gives ample evidence of intel- 
 lectual intercourse between Moslem and Christian thinkers. 
 Fanaticism is, indeed, the last sin of which history can 
 accuse the Omayyad caliphs, and if there were among the 
 Abbasids some gloomy bigots, it is well to remember that 
 they persecuted dissident Moslems with more zeal than 
 1 Zoroastrianism, also, was included in the category. 
 
410 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 other religions. Compared with the Christian emperors in 
 Constantinople or the Sassanian kings of Persia, it may 
 fairly be said that Moslem rule was tolerant in principle and 
 habitually tolerant in practice. 
 
 The Koran is anything but a complete body of legislation 
 for the Moslem theocracy. Some matters of prime impor- • 
 tance in religion, such as the forms of worship, are not in it 
 at all, and the same is true in the secular sphere. Moham- 
 med regulated these matters by his word and example, not 
 by revelation. Every one in Medina knew them by daily 
 observation; but when the years of rapid expansion came, 
 and multitudes of converts in other cities and among the 
 Bedouin tribes had to be instructed in the ways of Islam, 
 differences of observance arose, small, perhaps, but none the 
 less points of dissension. When Arabs from many tribes, 
 with their inherited peculiarities of custom and law, were 
 brought together in the armies and the standing camps, 
 these differences also easily became contentious. In the 
 conquered lands, amid populations of other races, with 
 civilisations of their own, many new questions came up for 
 which there was no provision in the Koran. 
 
 It was natural that on many points the custom of the 
 community in Medina, which had been shaped under the 
 eyes and by the hand of Mohammed himself, should be 
 taken as a pattern and guide, and that inquiries should be 
 made of such as had lived there in the days of the Prophet, 
 how they did this or that in Medina. Often not only was 
 the practice reported, but utterances of Mohammed bearing 
 on the matter were alleged. Much in the Koran itself was 
 obscure — the reading, the serise, the occasion — and here also 
 the associates of the Prophet were often the only ones who 
 could explain, and end dispute. Tradition, thus, almost from 
 the first moment, became an authority, supplementing revela- 
 tion and interpreting it. .. 
 
 The volume of tradition swelled with portentous rapidity. 
 That part of it which reports custom and precedent is called 
 Sunna; that which" 1 preserves sayings of the Prophet is 
 
THE CALIPHATE 411 
 
 Hadith, "tradition" in the narrower sense. For the authen- 
 tication of a tradition it was soon established as a principle 
 that it should be transmitted by an unbroken series of 
 attestors, reaching back to one of the companions of the 
 Prophet. Besides this formal criterion, the trustworthiness 
 of the source was taken into account; some of the com- 
 panions were discovered to have suspiciously fertile memo- 
 ries, and some of the early reporters were proved to be 
 inventive geniuses. From the first, traditions were fabri- 
 cated on the right hand and the left. Every party, school, 
 and sect in the Moslem world for centuries adduced tradi- 
 tions in its support; they were arrayed against one another 
 in every controversy. The gathering, sifting, and ordering 
 of traditions became one of the main branches of Islamic 
 science. 
 
 For a good while it was held that traditions should be 
 learned by heart and transmitted by word of mouth, 1 but in 
 time the mass became too enormous for even the most capa- 
 cious memory, and recourse to writing became imperative. 
 The earliest collections of this kind aimed at comprehen- 
 siveness rather than strict verification; they took in tradi- 
 tions on every subject — on the Prophet, the Koran, rites 
 and ceremonies, law, theology, morals, and manners — 
 arranged under the names of the contemporaries of Moham- 
 med to whom they were attributed, and prefixing in every 
 instance the complete line of transmission. 2 A more con- 
 venient classification, by subjects, was, however, soon intro- 
 duced, and more serious effort was made to exclude the 
 spurious and note the dubious. 
 
 Six such collections came to be generally recognised as 
 authoritative. The highest repute is enjoyed by those of 
 Bukhari (d. 870 A. D.) and Muslim (d. 875), which are sup- 
 posed to contain only "sound," that is well-authenticated 
 
 1 The oral Law of the Jews, the Mishna and Talmud, is an analogous 
 case. 
 
 2 The Musnad of Ibn Hanbal is an example, of this type; in print it 
 fills six stout volumes. 
 
412 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 traditions. These two collections include historical, doc- 
 trinal, and ethical material, as well as legal. Most of the 
 others confine themselves more strictly to legal traditions, 
 including under that term the norms of religious observance 
 as well as matters of civil law. 
 
 Moslem law is based upon revelation and tradition — the 
 Koran and the Sunna. In the development of jurispru- 
 dence, the school of Medina and those that followed it went 
 on the principle that everything should be grounded in tra- 
 dition, or at least confirmed by it. Others, in dealing with 
 the new problems that arose out of new circumstances, gave 
 larger scope to deduction and analogy, and allowed a place 
 to juristic speculation. The latter school shows in many 
 ways the influence of the principles and method of Roman 
 law. Moslem law has also everywhere accommodated it- 
 self to local conditions and customs, which under the name 
 Adat or Urf have a considerable place in the actual law, for 
 example in matters of land tenure. It is an erroneous 
 notion that Moslem law is — or professes to be — wholly 
 derived from the Koran, which, as a matter of fact, has no 
 provisions whatever for many subjects of the first impor- 
 tance in the legislation of a civilised state; or that it is in 
 fact based exclusively on revelation and tradition, Koran 
 and Sunna. In a modern Mohammedan state such as the 
 Turkish Empire, the Sheria, or religious law, is clearly dis- 
 tinguished from the civil law (Kanuri), which has been made 
 from time to time by the sultans, as the Roman law was 
 made by the rescripts of the emperors, or is embodied in 
 codes drawn up by jurists and promulgated by the sultan. 
 
 Of the many schools of jurisprudence which flourished in 
 the early centuries of Islam, four have survived in the ortho- 
 dox Moslem world to the present time: that of Abu Hanifa 
 (d. 767), which is generally followed in the countries under 
 Turkish rule and by the Sunnite Moslems in India; that of 
 Malik ibn Anas (d. 795), in parts of Egypt, all North Africa, 
 and formerly in Spain; that of al-Shafii (d. 820), in southern 
 Arabia and the Indian Archipelago, as well as in parts of 
 
THE CALIPHATE 413 
 
 Egypt; that of Ibn Hanbal (d. 855), which formerly pre- 
 vailed in Mesopotamia and Syria, but under Turkish influ- 
 ence has been gradually superseded there by the Hanifite 
 school. The differences between these schools concern 
 chiefly minor details of ritual, and certain points in the law 
 of succession and inheritance, which has had a large devel- 
 opment in Moslem jurisprudence. Although the contro- 
 versy between these schpqls was sometimes heated, they 
 are all recognised as orthodox and legitimate. A Moslem 
 removing from- one country to another may change the 
 school in which he was rjrought up for that of his new resi- 
 dence without scruple and without censure. Judges some- 
 times give decisions according to two schools or more. The , 
 adherents of these systems are therefore by no means to be 
 regarded as sects, by which misleading name they are some- 
 times called in our books. 
 
 The same mutual tolerance is manifested in other spheres. 
 A tradition of the Prophet puts in his mouth the saying, 
 "Differences of opinion in my religious community are a 
 sign of the divine, goodness." The agreement of the Mos- 
 lem world to regard the rival schools as alike orthodox 
 makes them so in fact. The principle which underlies this 
 recognition is one of wide application. The agreement of 
 the Moslem world in doctrine or practice not only makes 
 the practice or the doctrine permissible, but puts upon it 
 the stamp of sound orthodoxy. Here again a tradition of 
 the Prophet is produced for authority: "My religious com- 
 munity will never be unanimous in error." This consensus 
 is, in fact, the only authority for many things which are an 
 integral part of Mohammedan religion as we know it. Even 
 for things which are at variance with the fundamental teach- 
 ing of the Koran itself, such, for example, as the worship of 
 saints, universality is all that is necessary to make them 
 unimpeachable. Consequently, when in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury the Wahhabis attacked the worship of saints as pure 
 idolatry, they were regarded by the Moslem world at large 
 as heretics for departing from the consensus of the Moslem 
 
414 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 community, though they indubitably had the Koran on 
 their side. Islam never developed any formal method of 
 defining its own consensus, such as the Christian church 
 created in its oecumenical councils. So far as there can be 
 said to be any theory on the subject, it is that the agree- 
 ment of scholars of recognised authority in any age makes 
 their consentient opinion the expression of the consensus 
 of the Moslem world. 
 
 Tne conflict between Ali and Moawiya gave rise to the 
 first schism in Islam. Ali had in his army more than his 
 share of the men who were animated by the religious spirit 
 of the early believers, including many of the Koran reciters. 
 They fought to subdue the world to the faith, not to create 
 an empire after the fashion of the unbelievers. They could 
 not forget that the Meccan aristocrats, Moawiya's father, 
 Abu Sofyan, foremost among them, had been the head and 
 front of the opposition to Islam, and had come over to it 
 only when its triumph was sure. Under Othman these 
 eleventh-hour Moslems had got into power, and were mak- 
 ing the most of it to further worldly ambitions. Moawiya 
 represented antecedents and aims that were equally ob- 
 noxious to them. But Ali could reckon on their support 
 only so long as be satisfied their exacting notions of how a 
 caliph ought to behave; and when in the course of the strug- 
 gle he made concessions which compromised his claims, 
 twelve thousand of them marched out of his camp and 
 assumed a threatening attitude. From this secession they 
 got the name Kharijites, as we might say, "Come-outers." 
 In their view Ali had forfeited the allegiance of true Moslems. 
 
 The caliphs had hitherto been chosen by a small, self- 
 constituted group of leaders from their own number. The 
 Kharijites maintained that the caliph should be elected by 
 the voice of the whole body of Moslems; the succession was 
 not hereditary in the family of the Prophet, as some of the 
 partisans of Ali claimed, nor was it necessary that the caliph 
 should be of the tribe of the Koreish to which Mohammed 
 belonged; the sole necessity was that he should be the 
 
THE CALIPHATE 415 
 
 worthiest man. The Chief of the Believers must be distin- 
 guished by exemplary obedience to the law of God as re- 
 vealed by his Prophet. If he failed in this requirement, he 
 should be deposed and a better chosen in his place. 
 
 The question of the legitimate caliph brought with it the 
 question of the true Moslem. As the Kharijites saw it, the 
 great mass of those who bore the name had not the root of 
 the matter in them. The profession of Islam, they con- 
 tended, was not enough to make a man a Moslem, nor the 
 outward observances of religion; the true Moslem is one 
 who makes the will of God the rule of his life. A professed 
 Moslem who is guilty of grave sin is, notwithstanding the 
 faith he avows, an unbeliever. In their sectarian self-con- 
 sciousness they were the only true Moslems; the rest were 
 apostates, on whom it was their business to execute the 
 sentence of God, which was writ plain in the Koran. The 
 thorough branch of the Kharijites held that even the infant 
 children of "unbelievers," that is, of other Moslems, should 
 be ruthlessly slain; a more moderate sentiment was that 
 they should be left to grow up, and then given their choice 
 between adhesion to (Kharijite) Islam or death. Like all 
 zealots, they could never agree among themselves, but split 
 up in endless factions. The most radical, who were the 
 very Ishmaelites of Islam, their hand against every man and 
 every man's hand against them, ended by being extermi- 
 nated by the armies of the caliphs. Another branch early 
 established itself in Oman, where it still survives, and whence 
 it has spread to the Zanzibar coast. Others, in the train of 
 the Moslem conquests, reached northwestern Africa, where 
 they found a grateful soil among the Berbers, and still 
 occupy a region about Mzab. These Ibadites, as they are 
 called from the name of one of their early leaders in Bag- 
 dad, have their own schools of law and theology; they do 
 not intermarry with other Moslems, and keep more or less 
 aloof from them, though they have long ceased to wage 
 holy war on them. 
 
 In opposition to the Kharijites, who allowed neither 
 
416 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 peace here nor salvation hereafter to such as did not live 
 as good Moslems should, there were many who deemed it 
 presumptuous thus to forestall the judgment of God. A 
 man who professed Islam and conformed to its observances 
 was to be treated as a Moslem; whether he was a true be- 
 liever they left it to God to decide at the last day. They 
 were called Murjites, "Postponers." By these controver- 
 sies the questions, What makes a man a Moslem? (What 
 is islam?) What is faith (iman) ? were bequeathed to the 
 schools. 
 
 i/The first conflicts over freedom and necessity, also, had 
 their origin in practical issues rather than in theoretical 
 reflections on the sovereignty of God and the nature of 
 man. The doctrine that the powers that be are ordained 
 of Goo! was naturally in favour with the powers themselves; 
 and no less agreeable to them was the doctrine that their 
 doings also were decreed by God, so that resistance to them, 
 and even criticism of them, was an impiety. Such deter- 
 minism could quote the Koran, and tradition adduced say- 
 ings of Mohammed more explicitly affirming it. In oppo- 
 sition to this convenient dogma, which made the rulers irre- 
 sponsible instruments of the inscrutable divine will, man's 
 power over his own actions, and consequently his responsi- 
 bility for them, was asserted. It is narrated that two dis- 
 ciples of Hasan al-Basri one day came to him with the lam- 
 entation: "These kings 1 (the Omayyad caliphs) shed the 
 blood of Moslems and seize their goods, and then say that 
 what they do is decreed by God I" whereat Hasan exclaimed, 
 "By God, the enemies of God lie!" One of these disciples 
 was afterward put to death for the treasonable heresy of 
 affirming that man has power over his own actions. The 
 problem thus raised was the subject of long and heated con- 
 troversy before the rigorous determinist dogma was finally 
 established. 
 
 Other influences contributed to give discussion a wider 
 range and a more academic character. In Syria particu- 
 
 i "King" was an opprobrious name, as "despot" or "tyrant" to us. 
 
DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES 417 
 
 larly, Moslems, in their eager quest for knowledge, made 
 acquaintance of Christian theology with its background of 
 Greek philosophy, and in friendly or controversial discus- 
 sion were put upon many problems, some of them common 
 to both religions, others peculiar to their own. Under such 
 stimulus to thinking they commenced to reason about them 
 for themselves and make the beginning of a Moslem the- 
 ology. Their enterprise was viewed with undisguised sus- 
 picion by the most, especially by the jurists, accustomed 
 to treat the Koran and traditions as final authorities. As 
 always, the mass of simple believers was on the same side; 
 the very idea of reasoning about matters of faith savoured 
 to them of unbelief. The incipient theologians were stig- 
 matised as "Debaters," with a depreciatory connotation — 
 men who argued about things that God had put beyond 
 argument by revelation. 
 
 It must be admitted that the tendency of the most influ- 
 ential school of thinkers in the second century of the Mos- 
 lem era was not such as to reassure men who had an an- 
 tipathy to all philosophising about religion. For the Mu-' 
 tazilites, as they were called, did what is always suspicious 
 in a religion of authority, they admitted reason as a source 
 of knowledge by the side of sense and revelation; and, hav- 
 ing done so, took the next inevitable step and made reason 
 the criterion of truth and right. In this sense they may be 
 called the rationalists of Islam. 1 They accepted the Koran 
 as a divine revelation, and held that everything in it, when 
 rightly interpreted, must be in accord with reason, which 
 meant, as the same formula has meant in Christian theology, 
 that everything in Scripture must be so interpreted as to 
 make it accord with reason. 
 
 The name they gave themselves, the Party of Equity and 
 Unity, fairly expresses their aims. They were concerned to 
 purify the idea of God by rejecting all conceptions that 
 seemed to conflict with the unity and uniqueness of the 
 godhead, and everything inconsistent with God's justice and 
 1 More exactly, rational supranaturalists. 
 
418 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 fair-dealing toward his creatures. It is an evidence of the 
 religious character of the movement that the Mutazilites 
 were at the outset much more interested in the ethical part 
 of the programme than in the metaphysical. 
 A We have seen that at an earlier time the freedom of man's 
 will, or, in their own phrase, man's origination of his actions, 
 had been affirmed, in order that evil-doers and oppressors 
 might not put off the responsibility for their wrong-doing 
 upon God. The Mutazilites reasoned also that if man's 
 actions were determined, it would be unjust in God to pun- 
 ish him for them. The premise of their argument was, 
 that God must be just, that is, he must do what the com- 
 mon sense and conscience of men deem just. To the 
 orthodox Moslem that was an enormous presumption. For 
 him, as for Mohammed, God was the absolute monarch of 
 the world he had made, and had a right to do as he pleased 
 with his creatures. To say "must" about God was little 
 short of blasphemy; it was to set limits — and the limits of a 
 human judgment — upon his godhead. It was plain, too, 
 that in the affirmation of man's freedom and ability the 
 fundamental doctrine of predestination was nullified. 
 
 The Mutazilites went farther in the same path. God 
 having created men — as it must be supposed that he did — 
 with the beneficent purpose of bringing them to blessedness, 
 it was incumbent on him to reveal to them the way of sal- 
 vation. The sending of the Prophet was what they called 
 "necessary grace" — a phrase that sounds much like a con- 
 tradictio in adjecto. It must be assumed universally that 
 in everything that God does he has the best interest of his 
 creatures in view, and that everything that befalls us, seen 
 from his point of view, which comprehends all, is for the 
 best. 1 There is a great deal in the world that seems to defy 
 so benevolent an interpretation, but, with the compensa- 
 tions of the future life to appeal to, the Mutazilites came off 
 pretty well with their theodicy. Some of them found further 
 relief in an adaptation of theories of transmigration and of 
 1 The affinity to Stoic doctrine will be noted. 
 
DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES 419 
 
 the fall of souls, 1 doctrines which served them to explain 
 also the sufferings of animals. 
 
 If the conservative Moslem, whether simple-minded or 
 juristically sophisticated, was asked why this action was 
 good and that bad, his answer was: "Because God has com- 
 manded the one and forbidden the other." The distinction 
 between right and wrong, they maintained, is arbitrarily 
 created by the will of God, and men know what is right 
 and wrong only through revelation. The rationalists, on 
 the contrary, held that man by reason, apart from revela- 
 tion, recognises some actions as good and right and others 
 as bad and wrong. This difference is independent of God's 
 will; he does not make a thing good by commanding it, but 
 he commands it because it is good. Not only this, but 
 there is a natural knowledge of God — his existence, his 
 character, and his will — which man in the exercise of reason 
 may attain, and is bound to attain; if he does not, he de- 
 serves eternal punishment. The heathen are not punished 
 for their ignorance of a revelation that had not come to 
 them, but because they closed their eyes to the light of 
 nature. 2 
 
 ' The common idea of God was crudely anthropomorphic. 
 Taking the words of the Koran in their natural sense, men 
 imagined God sitting upon a throne in heaven, a being with 
 hands and feet, eyes and ears; a body, therefore, and some 
 doctors of repute did not hesitate to say a body of flesh 
 and blood. To the Mutazilites this material image of God 
 was idolatrous. The language of revelation, they held, is 
 figurative, accommodated to the incapacity of gross minds 
 for philosophical ideas. God is not somewhere in space and 
 time, he is infinite and eternal; and anthropomorphic no- 
 tions, which impose upon him the limitations of a magnified 
 humanity, are a real denial of his godhead. The vision of 
 God in Paradise which the Koran promises is a spiritual 
 
 1 Transmigration they might have got from the Indian religions; 
 the combination with the fall of souls, however, is a Greek peculiarity. 
 
 2 Compare Paul's argument in the first chapter of Romans. 
 
420 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 vision, not a seeing with the eyes of sense; for God is not a 
 sensible object. To the ordinary Moslem, who could not 
 imagine what a spiritual vision might be, this was a ration- 
 alistic denial of the explicit words of revelation; they made 
 the literal seeing of God a touchstone of orthodoxy. 
 
 The plain mind and the juristic exegetes took the attri- 
 butes of God as literally as his members. To God's wis- 
 dom, for example, they ascribed a substantive existence; 
 they made of it, in the language of Christian theology, an 
 eternal hypostasis. The Mutazilites rejected this concep- 
 tion as irreconcilable with the unity of the godhead: an 
 eternal divine Wisdom is another god, like the persons of 
 the Christian Trinity. How the attributes of God can be 
 conceived so as not to impair the unity of the godhead was 
 a problem which Mutazilite thinkers solved for themselves 
 in different ways. God, some said, was omniscient, not by 
 an accessory attribute of omniscience, but omniscience was 
 his essence; others taught that omniscience was an aspect 
 of his essence; or a state, or mode, of his essence. The 
 resemblance of some of these theories to certain Christian 
 Trinitarian speculations is obvious, and did not escape Mos- 
 lem critics. It is probably not a mere coincidence; Moslem 
 theologians were not unacquainted with the discussions of 
 the divine attributes by Christian theologians. 
 
 One of the heresies of the Mutazilites which was pecu- 
 liarly abhorred by the orthodox was about revelation. Mo- 
 hammed's idea of revelation was derived from Jews and 
 Christians, and, since both had their revelations in Scrip- 
 tures (the Law and the Gospel), he conceived that a book 
 was the highest form of revelation. From the same source 
 he learned that revelations were delivered to the prophets 
 by angels, particularly by the angel Gabriel. The account 
 he gave of his own revelations conformed to this precon- 
 ceived type. The "korans" (texts) which God " sent down" 
 to him from time to time by the hand of Gabriel were chap- 
 ters from a book. God himself was the author of this book, 
 the heavenly original of which was inscribed by the hand of 
 
DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES 421 
 
 God (like the Decalogue in Exodus) on a "carefully pre- 
 served tablet." 1 The Prophet repeated to his followers 
 what was thus sent down piecemeal; they learned the words 
 by heart or wrote them down; in his later years at Medina 
 he dictated them to a secretary. After his death, as we 
 have seen, the revelations were compiled and put together 
 in a volume to which as a whole the name Koran is given. 
 
 It was not long before the Koran, that is to say, the 
 original in heaven, was declared to be eternal. It was Jew- 
 ish doctrine that the Law existed before the creation of the 
 world, not as an idea in the mind of God, but in a kind of 
 suprasensible reality; but it was created. Christian the- 
 ology, on the other hand, spoke much of an uncreated and 
 eternal Word of God (Logos), and it is quite possible that 
 the early Moslems who heard these phrases thought that 
 they meant the Christian Scriptures, and, not to be outdone, 
 applied the predicates to their own Koran — it was the eter- 
 nal, uncreated Word of God. 
 
 To the Mutazilites this seemed to give the Koran an inde- 
 pendent existence, in conflict with the fundamental dogma 
 of the unity of God. The ultraorthodox doctrine of the 
 uncreated Koran was, they asserted, the worst kind of in- 
 fidelity, polytheism was the only word for it. In excess of 
 zeal for the Word of God, some of their opponents went so 
 far as to declare that the Koran men read or recited was 
 uncreated too. The Mutazilite view was that the original 
 in heaven was created in time. The Korans in men's hands 
 are produced by men; their authority lies in the fact that 
 they reproduce the contents of the original. No contro- 
 versy of the age was hotter than this. The caliph Mamun 
 in 827-'28 A. D. proclaimed it a heresy to maintain the 
 uncreated Koran; an inquisition was set in operation, and 
 those who persisted in their error were excluded from office, 
 their testimony was not taken in court, and the most ob- 
 stinate or outspoken were imprisoned. Within a genera- 
 tion the tables were turned, and Mutawakkil (847-'61), per- 
 1 That is, protected from alteration. 
 
422 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 secuted the Mutazilites for the heresy of maintaining that 
 the Koran was created. 
 
 The rationalistic attitude of the Mutazilites appears also 
 in their eschatology. Most of them interpreted Moham- 
 med's paradise of the senses figuratively; others hit upon 
 the happy notion that every one will find the kind of a 
 heaven he is capable of appreciating; so long as the thinker 
 might have an intellectual heaven, he was willing that the 
 others should enjoy the Huris. They had greater difficulty 
 with eternal punishment, and various opinions were held 
 about it. Feeling the disproportion between the deeds of a 
 lifetime and an eternity of consequences, some taught that 
 when men had been rewarded or punished in the measure 
 of their desert, heaven and hell would cease to be; others 
 believed in the ultimate annihilation of the wicked; still 
 others held to a kind of conditional immortality — at the 
 resurrection all but true believers will turn to dust. The 
 presence of children in hell was also a disputed point; it was 
 thought by some that those who would have been unbeliev- 
 ers if they had grown up were justly sent thither. 
 
 The Mutazilites enlist our sympathy for their endeavour 
 to give prevalence in Islam to a purer and morally worthier 
 idea of God and his dealing with men. But it must be 
 acknowledged that they were trying to put new wine into 
 old bottles, and, as often in like cases, their opponents saw 
 more clearly than they what would happen to the bottles. 
 
 The orthodox, "the party of tradition," as they called 
 themselves, the intellectual leaders of which were the jurists, 
 maintained for a long time their logical attitude of opposi- 
 tion to all reasoning about matters of religion; their answer 
 to all arguments was an appeal to authority. In the tenth 
 century of our era, however, conservative thinkers under- 
 took to combat the rationalists with their own weapons and 
 construct systems of theology that should be at once ortho- 
 dox and reasonable; and though the authoritarians regarded 
 these attempts with great suspicion, it had finally to be 
 allowed that the method was justified by the results. 
 
DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES 423 
 
 The most famous name among these founders of an ortho- 
 dox Moslem theology is al-Ashari, who died at Bagdad in 
 935 A. D. Al-Ashari was reared in a conservative atmo- 
 sphere, but as a young man he studied under al-Jubbai, 
 then the most eminent Mutazilite professor in Bagdad, and 
 distinguished himself by his controversial ability, which he 
 demonstrated not only in disputations but in several books 
 written to expound and maintain Mutazilite positions. 
 Forty years old, and one of the shining lights of liberal 
 theology, he suddenly made a public recantation in the 
 Friday mosque in Bagdad; and thenceforth to the end of his 
 life devoted all his powers to the demolition of rationalism 
 and the defence of orthodoxy. 
 
 Such sudden conversions are a favourite subject of legend, 
 the formation of which often begins with the subject him- 
 self. 1 The story of al-Ashari's conversion is told with 
 numerous variations and embellishments; a standing feature 
 is the appearance of the Prophet to him in a dream, com- 
 manding him to write in defence of the revealed truth. 2 
 What actually wrought his change, of heart is not known. 
 His former allies, whom he now assailed with a violence not 
 unusual in converts, accused him of various unworthy mo- 
 tives, but there is no reason to question his sincerity. He 
 connected himself with the legal school of the Hanbalites, 
 the narrowest and most bigoted of all, and took pains to 
 emphasise this association by way of a guarantee of his 
 unimpeachable orthodoxy. 
 
 We have seen that the Mutazilites got over the anthropo- 
 morphic expressions of the Koran by taking them figura- 
 tively; the hand of God, for instance, is a metaphor for his 
 
 1 Familiar examples are those of Paul and Augustine; another notable 
 Moslem case is al-Ghazali, on whom see below, pp. 459/. 
 
 2 The point of the vision is that al-Ashari should not abandon the 
 dialectic method (kalam), but defend by it the true doctrine. The 
 story has the marks of an apology addressed to critics who thought that 
 when he turned his back on the liberals he should at the same time 
 have renounced their manner of disputation and fallen into the ranks 
 of the authoritarians whose only argument was, "so it is in revelation 
 and tradition." 
 
424 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 power or his beneficence. The ultraliteralists contended 
 that it was a real hand like a man's. Al-Ashari taught that 
 when the Koran speaks of the hand of God, it is to be taken 
 literally, not metaphorically; but in what manner, it was 
 not for man to speculate. It must be believed without 
 asking how, and without conceiving God in the likeness of 
 man; 1 for the Koran explicitly declares that God does not 
 resemble anything in the universe. The controversy be- 
 tween the rationalists and the traditionalists had been pecu- 
 liarly keen over the passages in the Koran in which God is 
 represented as sitting on a celestial throne. The literalists 
 held that it must be believed as an article of the orthodox 
 faith that God is literally seated on a literal throne, which 
 is the fixed place where he rests; the Mutazilites took all 
 such language metaphorically. Al-Ashari asserted the in- 
 scrutable reality of the throne and of the sitting, while 
 affirming that God was not a body in space. No more after 
 the creation of the throne than before, was his presence lim- 
 ited to one place; nor in his sitting on the throne was he 
 upheld by it, but it was upheld by him. 
 
 About the hereafter al-Ashari's position seems to have 
 been that revelation is the only possible source of informa- 
 tion; reason knows nothing of the other world or what 
 happens there, and should not pretend to improve on what 
 God has disclosed. The Mutazilites, as we have seen, 
 rationalised the Moslem eschatology, and turned more or 
 less of its picturesque Paradise into figures of speech. Al- 
 Ashari appears here to go the whole way with the tradition- 
 alists; the Prophet's pool, where believers arriving in Para- 
 dise slake their thirst, is a reality; the balances in which 
 men's deeds are weighed are real; the automatic judgment- 
 bridge is real; the inquisition at the tomb by the angels 
 Munkar and Nakir is no fable or metaphor. 2 Belief in all 
 
 1 This formula, "Without (thinking) how, and without making him 
 like (anything)," was found to be of great virtue in steering a course 
 between "is" and "is not." 
 
 2 See below, p. 475. 
 
DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES 425 
 
 these realities is imperative; they are formally introduced 
 into the creed. With regard to the vision of God in Para- 
 dise, the denial of which was in the eyes of the orthodox 
 one of the most scandalous heresies of the Mutazilites, al- 
 Ashari again tries to find the safe middle path: God will in 
 some mysterious way really be seen, but not as the vulgar 
 think, with eyes of flesh and blood; the seeing is a kind of 
 knowing or intellectual apprehension. 
 
 When it c omes t o the idea of God and his attributes, th e. 
 influence of al-Ashari's education appears in mo re substan- 
 tial concessions to reason. The realism of the common 
 mind made the attributes of God, metaphysical and moral 
 indiscriminately, and even the descriptive predicates, a kind 
 of entities, having a substantive existence beside God. To 
 the Mutazilites, as has been shown above, accessory attri- 
 butes were irreconcilable with the unity of God. Al-Ashari 
 accepts the usual catalogue of the seven divine attributes, 
 including seeing and hearing. He conceives them, not as 
 mere names which men give to different aspects of the 
 divine being and activity, nor as modes of the divine exist- 
 ence, but as real and eternal distinctions inherent in the 
 essence of God, and neither identical with the essence nor 
 existing apart from it. In this way he strives to find the 
 mean between the literalists, who seem to separate the attri- 
 butes from the being of God, and the rationalists, who seem 
 to leave to the attributes no real existence at all. 
 
 In the question which had been so hotly controverted be- 
 tween the Mutazilites and the traditionalists, whether th e 
 j gnrrl nf Gn^ wgq TfatpH n v uncr ea.t fir l. id-Ashari made a 
 distinc tion which has become the acce pter! solution in Mos^ 
 lem-theology. The word (spee ch.) r>t dnd, as an idea in 
 God, is uncreated and eternal ; but the words of the Koran 
 as recited or read, and its written letters and words, are 
 produced in time and bv men . This theory seemed more 
 rational than even that of the rationalists, who held that 
 the Koran was created by God in time, before its revelation 
 to Mohammed, and it was adopted not only by al-Ashari's 
 
426 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 immediate successors, but by al-Ghazali. Only the extreme 
 literalists continued to affirm that the paper and the ink 
 and the writing and all that was between the covers of the 
 Holy Book were uncreated. 
 
 Al-Ashari held with the orthodox against the Mutazilites 
 that good and evil, belief and unbelief, happen according 
 to the decree and by the almighty power of God. But he 
 -gtw^- J^eynnd pr^pgtingtirvn tr> a, d eterminism of the m ost 
 rigid kind . God is for him the only creator, the only being 
 in the universe who has the power to produce or originate. 
 He is the creator of men and of their acts. 1 This is true, not 
 only in the physical but in the intellectual sphere. The 
 conclusion which we reach by logical reasoning is not the 
 necessary outcome of the reasoning, but is created in our 
 minds by God. Man has in himself no natural power to 
 act at all; the power to act is in each case momentarily 
 created in him by God. In what we regard as voluntary 
 acts, God creates in man, in addition to the power to act, a 
 power of choice; and in accordance with man's choice, God 
 creates the act itself, so that the potentiality, the choice, 
 and the act are the work of God. AH-t he acts of man are 
 there fore not merely predete r mined, they are effectuated by 
 God. An illustration is taken from a man who is writing: 
 God creates first the potentiality of moving the pen; then, 
 the will to move it; third, the bodily motion of the hand; 
 and fourth, the motion of the pen. Man conceives himself 
 to act voluntarily in the exercise of the power of choice and 
 that the act is his own. In reality, the power of choice is 
 created, the choice determined, the act effected, by God; 
 man's participation in it is solely that of appropriation 
 (kasb), by which, in his own mind, he makes the choice and 
 the act his. 
 
 Th is theory evidently makes God the immediate and 
 occasional creator of evil as well as of good, and al-Ashari 
 courageously accepts this consequence. 2 His old Mutazilite 
 
 1 Koran 37, 94. 
 
 2 On a similar courage in Luther, see above, p. 317. 
 
DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES 427 
 
 teacher, al-Jubbai, held that God was by nature incapable 
 of doing or causing evil; on the contrary, God must will for 
 all his creatures what is for their best interest. Several 
 anecdotes are told to show how al-Ashari, after his conver- 
 sion, cornered his old teacher with the difficulties of this 
 optimistic theory. According to al-Ashari, God wills the 
 unbelief of the unbeliever, creates it in him, and damns him 
 for it, as truly as he creates the belief of the believer and, of 
 his grace, rewards him for it in Paradise. 
 
 AJ^s hari abolishe s, thp patpgnry nf na tality altogethe r, 
 ■liy making everything t hat occurs in the inner or oute r 
 
 wnrlrl thp immprliatp anrl i solated act of God L Nothing in 
 
 nature has such a property that, by virtue of this property, 
 it produces an effect. Thus, when a man touches ice, it is 
 not the ice, by virtue of the property of coldness in it, that 
 causes the sensation of cold, but God who produces in man 
 this sensation; and if — so we read in a modern orthodox 
 catechism — God should at any time prefer to do so, he might 
 cause a man to have the sensation of a burning heat when 
 he touched ice. There is no such thing as law in nature, 
 not to say law of nature. All we can affirm is that certain 
 antecedents are usually followed by certain consequents 
 because God commonly acts in this way; but there is no 
 other connection between the antecedent and the conse- 
 quent than our observation of this sequence in the usual 
 way of God. From these premises, miracle is not a viola- 
 tion of natural law or a breach in the law of causality— for 
 there are no such things — but merely an act of God un- 
 familiar to our experience. 
 
 ^The Mutazilites had held that right and wrong are dis- 
 tinguished by the reason and conscience of mankind, apart 
 from all revelation; that men are under obligation to make 
 this distinction and conduct themselves accordingly; and 
 that if they do not do so they are justly punished. Al- 
 . Ashari, with the old orthodox, maintained, on the contrary, 
 that right and wrong are known only through revelation, 
 and that actions are right, not because of anything in their 
 
428 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 nature or ours, but because God has commanded them, and 
 wrong only because he has forbidden them. On the vexed 
 question of faith and unbelief, al-Ashari holds that every 
 one who turns in prayer towards Mecca is presumptively a 
 Moslem, and is not to be regarded as an unbeliever because 
 he is guilty even of such sins as fornication, theft, and wine- 
 drinking. Only one who commits such sins, holding them to 
 be permitted, is an unbeliever. Faith (iman) is a narrower 
 concept than Islam; it includes confession in words and the 
 evidence of works, and is thus capable of increase and de- 
 crease. Al-Ashari again sides with the traditional schools 
 against the Mutazilites in maintaining the reality of magic 
 and witchcraft, the belief in demons and their doings, and 
 in the miracles of the saints. 
 
 An attemp t_similar to_jl-Ashari's to provirle Islam with, 
 a rational o rthod ox theology^was-made by his cont.empo- 
 -r«^val=Ma±imdL(d^44) 7 4n-^i«te»t-Sa,mafkand. His writ- 
 ings seem to have almost all been lost. Later writers have 
 transmitted to us lists of the points of difference between 
 the two systems; and a Maturidite creed by al-Nasafi 
 (d. 1142) is still used in schools in parts of the Turkish Em- 
 pire. 1 The difJ^rixxces-axe^in^arVsw^ters-of-woTds-rather 
 than_aiibstance^ and in so far as they are substantial, con- 
 cern chiefly minor points of controversy. Al-Maturidi 
 denied, for example, that God can impose upon man an 
 obligation to do the impossible, which al-Ashari affirmed. 
 Again, for al-Maturidi "appropriation" has a somewhat dif- 
 ferent sense from that which al-Ashari gives it. The reader 
 who is curious about other differences may compare for him- 
 self the creeds of al-Ashari and al-Nasafi printed in the 
 appendix to Macdonald's "Muslim Theology." 
 
 The conservative jurists did not exhibit much gratitude 
 towards al-Ashari for his attempt to make Moslem doctrine 
 rationally tenable, and his followers were not seldom in- 
 cluded with the Mutazilites in one comprehensive condem- 
 
 1 It was published by Cureton in 1843; a translation in Macdonald, 
 Muslim Theology, pp. 308 ff. 
 
DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES 429 
 
 nation and commlnation. Within fifty years after his 
 death, however, his doctrine was widely accepted in Irak, 
 whence it spread into Persia— then under Seljuk rule— and 
 westward into Syria and Egypt; in North Africa and Spain 
 it first gained a firm footing through the influence of Ibn 
 Tumart (d. 1128) at the beginning of the sixth century of 
 the Moslem era. 
 
 A mong those who came aft pr and rWplnpprl +W g y C w, 
 of al-Ashari. the mo st noteworthy was al-Bakilan i. On 
 the divine attributes he a dopted the m n^H«tin tK^ry f>f 
 Abu. Hasturp : the_^ttribut es are modes of the divine being 
 which cannot be nnnppivprl apart frnm it, h ut imp ort ,no 
 
 plurality in the gnrlhearl inasm u ch a.g tnpy have- in tnpm - 
 
 se l v e s no suhstRntive exist e n ce. To him is also attributed 
 the introduction of the atomistic theory , which subsequently 
 became so general that Maimonides ascribes it to all the 
 Moslem dogmaticians. All things are composed of atoms, 
 which are in all respects alike. With the atomic doctrine 
 of matter went necessarily the theory of void space. He 
 held the theory of the atomic subdivision of time, also. 
 Two other propositions are attributed to him by Ibn Khal- 
 dun; namely, that an accident cannot inhere in an accident 
 (contrary to Aristotle), and that an accident does not last 
 for two consecutive moments of time. Motion, like space 
 and time, is discontinuous. 
 
 The relation of all this to the Asharite doctrine of creation 
 is evident. God brings together the atoms in a body and 
 simultaneously creates its accidents. Since the accidents 
 cannot endure for more than one atom of time, and sub- 
 stance without accidents is inconceivable, it follows that an 
 object which appears to us to be permanent is in reality 
 created anew by God in every instant of time, and if he 
 should for a moment cease to exercise this continuous cre- 
 ative activity, the body would cease to exist. Thus, also, 
 every act of man is not only immediately created by God 
 (al-Ashari), but is momentarily created and recreated by 
 him. What is true of single objects or accidents is true of 
 
430 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 the universe as a whole; it is created anew by God every 
 instant. There is no such thing as causal connection or 
 natural law, nothing but the arbitrary act of the Creator. 
 Nothing in nature, therefore, is constant; and nothing is 
 impossible. If God willed it so, anything might be the next 
 moment endowed with accidents or properties the exact 
 opposite of those which in our experience it possesses. By 
 this doctrine of the atomic constitution of matter and the 
 momentaneity of accidents, Bakilani believed himself to 
 have provided a theoretical basis and explanation for the 
 doctrine of God's sole and universal creative activity. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 THE PARTISANS OF ALI 
 
 Ali — The Legitimist Party — Infallible Authority of the Imam — His 
 Nature — Doctrine of the Return of the Imam — The Imam- 
 Mahdi — Shiite Sects — Differences between Shiites and Sunnites. 
 
 Among those who supported the claims of Ali to the 
 caliphate and afterward maintained his cause against 
 Moawiya there were some who were moved by personal 
 considerations. Ali had been one of the early believers at 
 Mecca and one of the staunchest adherents of the Prophet. 
 As a general, he was not the equal of some of the other 
 Moslem leaders, but as a champion in single combat, he had 
 distinguished himself on many fields. A popular saying 
 ran: "There is no sword but Dhu al-Fakar, 1 and no paladin 
 but Ali." In the first election, which resulted in the choice 
 of Abu Bekr, there were some who, on such grounds, thought 
 that Ali should have been the man. There was also a 
 legitimist party who held that the successor of Mohammed 
 should be of his own family. Ali was Mohammed's cousin, 
 and husband of the Prophet's daughter, Fatima. Thus, 
 both by blood and by marriage, he was nearest of kin to 
 Mohammed. When Ali fell under the dagger of a Kharijite 
 assassin, this party gave its allegiance to Hasan, Ali's son 
 by Fatima, and when Hasan renounced his claim, preferring 
 security and luxury on an ample pension to the doubtful 
 issue of a conflict with Moawiya, they transferred their 
 loyalty to his younger brother, Husein. Husein allowed 
 himself to be drawn from the safety of the Holy Cities to 
 head a hopeless revolt at Kufa, and fell at Kerbela (680), in 
 the eyes of his partisans a martyr in the holy cause. A 
 more serious, though in the end unsuccessful revolt in Irak, 
 
 1 The name of Ali's sword. 
 431 
 
432 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 headed by Mukhtar and supported not only by Arabs but 
 by many of the native Persian converts to Islam, put for- 
 ward as the legitimate successor a son of Ali by another 
 wife, Mohammed ibn al-Hanafiyya. 
 
 The principle of legitimacy soon assumed a religious as 
 well as a political aspect. In the eyes of this party the 
 successor of Mohammed was not merely the caliph, vicar 
 of the Apostle of God as the head of the theocratic Moslem 
 state, who commanded its armies, protected its borders, 
 administered and enforced its laws, c'ivil and religious; he 
 was the Imam, the successor of the Prophet as the religious 
 head of the Moslem world. To this office, they asserted, 
 Ali was formally appointed by Mohammed; consequently, 
 the first three caliphs, elected by the companions of the 
 Prophet, were not only illegitimate in the political sense, 
 i but their rule was from the religious point of view a usurpa- 
 tion by which the true Imam was set aside. The usurpers 
 and their aiders and abettors thereby put themselves out- 
 side the pale of Islam; and to this day it is the mark of 
 orthodoxy among the great body of the followers of Ali 
 (Shia) to curse Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman, in the public 
 ' prayers in their mosques. 
 
 The legitimate Imam is for them not only the supreme 
 religious authority, but an infallible authority. God, they 
 argued, cannot have left the Moslem world to determine 
 what is true doctrine and sound practice by study and dis- 
 cussion or the vague principle of consensus; he must have 
 given it an infallible guide, not merely at the beginning, 
 but in every generation. This infallible guide is the " Imam 
 of the Age," and to recognise this Imam and submit to him 
 in all things is the prime religious obligation of every true 
 Moslem. The Imam is not only infallible in his deliver- 
 ances on doctrine and practice, he is endowed with sinless 
 perfection. Mohammed did not claim such perfection for 
 himself; he speaks of himself as a man like other men, and 
 urges men to repentance by his own example. But among 
 his followers the belief that he was without sin early arose. 
 
THE PARTISANS OF All 433 
 
 Some held that he was exempt even from sinful impulses, 
 and the question was debated in the schools whether he was 
 above all sorts of mistakes. Among orthodox Moslems, 
 ! however, the Prophet's freedom from sin or from error, 
 j however far it extended, was ascribed to the singular favour 
 of God, who bestowed it upon him of his grace. The Imam 
 of the Shiites, on the contrary, is sinless as well as infallible 
 by nature. One view widely entertained even among the 
 more moderate Shiites was that a particle of substantial 
 divine light was implanted by God in Adam, from whom 
 it was transmitted by a kind of traducianism to elect de- 
 scendants of his in different ages down to Abdallah and Abu 
 Talib, between whom it was divided, passing to their sons, 
 Mohammed and Ali; from Ali, in whose sons by Fatima the 
 divided lines reunited, it descended generation by genera- 
 tion, to the successive Imams of the Age. It is, indeed, the 
 presence of this particle of divine light in the substance of 
 his soul which makes him the Imam, and gives him the 
 spiritual qualities which raise him above the common ranks 
 of men. 
 
 The more extreme sects of the Shiites, the "Ultras," as 
 they are called by the other Shiites as well as by the Sun- 
 nites, are not content with this theory of a divine element 
 in the soul of the Imam. For them, Ali and the Imams are 
 incarnations of the godhead; and some of them have gone 
 so far as to hold, not only that one and the same God has 
 from age to age manifested himself in many human forms, 
 but even that the body in which this manifestation has 
 taken place is the same identical body. 
 
 Such extravagances, which may be called the radical 
 Gnosticism of Islam, have always been condemned by the 
 main body of the Shiites; but they have embodied them- 
 selves in sects, some of which have diverged so widely from 
 Mohamm adanism that they are more properly to be regarded 
 as derivative religions. 
 
 A doctrine which is held in one form or another by all 
 branches of the Shiites is "the return," which resembles the 
 
434 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Jewish expectation of the return of Elijah and the Christian 
 belief in the return of Christ. According to Moslem writers, 
 the first promulgator of the doctrine was a certain Abdallah 
 ibn Saba, a Jewish convert to Islam, which would incline 
 us to look for its starting-point in Jewish ideas; but in its 
 development Christian influence is unmistakable. After the 
 death of Ali, some of his followers asserted that he was not 
 really dead, but had been taken up into the clouds of heaven, 
 whence he would presently return to take vengeance on his 
 enemies and establish the reign of justice on earth. A simi- 
 lar belief attached itself to Mukhtar's Imam, Mohammed 
 ibn al-Hanafiyya, who was said not to have died, but to 
 have withdrawn to a valley called Radwa, in the mountains 
 seven days' journey from Medina, where he waited the 
 hour determined by God for his return. The poets describe 
 this abode of the Concealed Imam in language plainly de- 
 rived from the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 11: leopards 
 and lions graze beside cattle and goats, which feed without 
 fear in the same meadow with beasts of prey and slake their 
 thirst at the same drinking-place, precisely as in orthodox 
 Mohammedan belief, at the end of time, when Jesus shall 
 return and bring in the golden age, "Lions and camels, tigers 
 and oxen will graze peacefully together." 
 
 The belief that the Imam had not died was not the only 
 form in which the expectation of his return was entertained; 
 some Shiites adopted the theory of the transmigration of 
 souls, in accordance with which it was possible at the same 
 time to admit that the Imam had really died and that he 
 would return. In time, however, the doctrine of the Con- 
 cealed Imam, who was somewhere alive and waiting the day 
 of his reappearance, prevailed among the principal Shiite 
 sects. The Moslem books on the history of sects abound in 
 such notices as this : Such and such a sect (bearing the name 
 of its Imam) holds that So-and-So (their Imam) " lever died, 
 nor ever will die until he has filled the earth with justice as 
 it is now filled with injustice." 1 
 
 1 It was the caliphs — in the beginning, the Omayyads, later the Ab- 
 basids of Bagdad — who filled the earth with injustice. 
 
THE PARTISANS OF ALI 435 
 
 ! y 
 
 The Shiite doctrine of the return of the Imam was early 
 combined with the common Moslem belief in the coming of 
 the Mahdi (literally, "the one who is guided," scil. by God), 
 which has an important place in orthodox eschatology. 
 According to the common traditions, Mohammed foretold 
 that in the last days a man of his own family, bearing the 
 same name and the same patronymic as himself (Moham- 
 med ibn Abdallah), should arise to establish on earth the 
 reign of righteousness and peace. 1 The Shiites appropriated 
 the prophecy for their Imam; when the Concealed Imam is 
 manifested on the stage of history, he will be the Mahdi. 2 
 
 Some branches of the Shiites did not mean by the "Con- 
 cealed Imam" one who had disappeared from among men, 
 but only a descendant of Ali whose character and office were 
 not publicly avowed, and who was consequently known as 
 the Imam only by the small circle who were in the secret. 
 Such unproclaimed Imams might succeed one another for 
 generations, until at the right time one of them appeared as 
 the Mahdi. Thus, the founder of the Fatimid dynasty in 
 North Africa and Egypt professed to be the descendant in 
 the seventh generation of Mohammed ibn Jafar, the last of 
 the recognised Imams of one of the chief branches of the 
 Shiites, himself the seventh in succession from Ali through 
 Husein. 
 
 The partisans of the line of Ali repeatedly rose in insur- 
 rection in the cause of one or another of their Imams, and 
 kept up at all times a secret propaganda which did much to 
 undermine the Omayyads and bring about their fall. The 
 fruits of the legitimist agitation were appropriated by the 
 descendants of Mohammed's uncle, al-Abbas, the caliphs of 
 Bagdad, who made large capital of their descent. Some of 
 them were not averse to taking the role of Imam themselves, 
 but the genuine Shiites saw in this only one presumptuous 
 usurpation more. They were as irreconcilable under the 
 
 1 Some anti-Mahdist traditions identify this figure who inaugurates 
 the golden age with Jesus: "There is no Mahdi but Jesus the son of 
 Mary." 
 
 2 The idea of the Imam-Mahdi was at the bottom of the Babi insur- 
 rection; see below, pp. 512/. 
 
436 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Abbasids as they had been under their predecessors, and 
 continued their subterranean campaign with results to which 
 there will be occasion to return in another chapter. 
 
 Of the innumerable divisions and subdivisions of the 
 Shiites only three need be more particularly considered. 
 The Zeidites are named after Zeid ibn Ali ibn Husein, 
 whom they acknowledge as the Imam instead of Moham- 
 med al-Bakir, the fifth Imam of the other sects. They dif- 
 ■ fer from the rest in denying that Mohammed designated 
 j Ali as his successor by a written instrument; the companions 
 1 who elected Abu Bekr and Omar did not, therefore, delib- 
 i erately set aside the will of the Prophet, however much they 
 1 erred in not choosing the best man for the place. Some of 
 them held that Ali voluntarily yielded his right to Abu Bekr 
 and Omar, so that they were legitimate caliphs. Conse- 
 ' quently, they do not, like the rest of the Shiites, curse Abu 
 ; Bekr and Omar as usurpers and infidels. The most tolerant 
 even extended their charity to Othman; but they all agreed 
 in rejecting Moawiya and his successors. A Zeidite dynasty 
 established itself in Tabaristan in 864 A. D., and ruled that 
 province for more than sixty years; in Dailan and Gilan 
 they held on even longer. The Idrisids, who ruled Morocco 
 from 788 to 985, were also Zeidites. More permanent was 
 the sway of the Zeidite Imams in southern Arabia (Yemen), 
 where they gained a footing at the end of the ninth century, 
 and have maintained themselves to the present day. In 
 theology the Zeidites, like the Shiites in general, were much 
 influenced by the Mutazilites, and still preserve the char- 
 acteristics of their doctrine. 
 
 The most important of the branches of the Shiites are the 
 Imamites, or, as they have been commonly called in more 
 recent times, the "Twelvers." The latter name is given 
 them because, in distinction from their chief rivals, the 
 "Seveners," their succession of Imams includes twelve 
 names, beginning with Ali, Hasan, and Husein, and then in 
 the line of Husein to the eleventh, Hasan al-Askari (died 
 A, H. 260). The twelfth, Mohammed ibn Hasan, disap- 
 
THE PARTISANS OP ALI 437 
 
 peared from among men, and is the Concealed Imam, the 
 Mahdi who shall come. The Twelvers, who have been 
 called the Shia High Church, have been the state religion 
 of the kingdom of Persia since 1502. The rival sect of the 
 "Seveners" end their series of visible Imams with Ismail 
 ibn Jafar, the sixth in the succession recognised by the 
 Twelvers. From them sprang the Ismailis, of whom there 
 will be more to say hereafter. 
 
 The partisans of Ali accuse the other side of mutilating 
 or corrupting the text of the Koran to get rid of the embar- 
 rassing passages which established the claims of Ali to the 
 succession. According to them Othman, who supervised 
 the redaction of the existing text of the Koran, suppressed 
 in different places more than five hundred words of revela- 
 tion, among them the explicit declaration: "Verily, Ali is 
 the guidance." The orthodox naturally retorted on them 
 the accusation of interpolating the text and of falsely inter- 
 preting it in favour of Ali, thus dealing with the revelation 
 of God in the Koran as the Jews and Christians had done 
 with their Scriptures. 1 
 
 It is frequently said that the most salient difference be- 
 tween the great body of Moslems and the Shiites is that the 
 former acknowledge and the latter deny the authority of 
 tradition. This error, which is probably due to the fact 
 that the orthodox Moslems call themselves Sunnites ("tra- 
 ditionalists"), entirely mistakes the Shiite position. The 
 authority of tradition has no less weight with them than 
 with the Sunnites, and a considerable part of the traditions 
 found in the orthodox Sunna books are accepted also by the 
 Shiites. The difference between them is that to be authori- 
 tative with the Shiites a tradition must be traced back to 
 the "family of the Prophet," among whom Ali himself 
 occupies the place of eminence; while for the Sunnites it is 
 sufficient that an unbroken chain of transmitters ascends 
 to one of the " companions of the Prophet." 
 
 In matters of ritual observance the differences between 
 1 There is, in fact, no ground for the Shiite charges. 
 
438 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 the Shiites and other Moslems are not greater than those 
 which divide the various rites of Sunnite Islam; the main 
 features of these observances were fully established before 
 the schism. In the religious law, also, the differences are 
 comparatively small. One of the most considerable is that 
 the Shiites allow and the Sunnites disallow a form of tem- 
 porary marriage (mut'a) which was customary among the 
 Arabs before Mohammed and which Mohammed himself in 
 the Koran appears to permit. According to the Sunnites, 
 Mohammed later withdrew this permission; while the Shiites 
 maintain that Omar unlawfully prohibited such marriages. 
 In their theology the Shiites are much more hospitable to 
 Mutazilite doctrines than Sunnite orthodoxy is. The Mu- 
 tazilites were especially strong in the regions where the 
 Shiites were most numerous, and there was no Shiite al- 
 Ashari. Notwithstanding their more liberal theology, the 
 Shiites are much more intolerant than the orthodox Mos- 
 lems. 1 One probable reason of this is the fact that many 
 Zoroastrians were converted to Mohammedanism in its Shia 
 form; for Zoroastrianism was a highly intolerant religion. 
 To Zoroastrian influence is probably also to be ascribed the 
 fact that to the Shiites all the rest of mankind, Jews, Chris- 
 tians, and Moslems, are unclean. To the Sunnite Moslem, 
 animals slaughtered by Jews or Christians are clean; to the 
 Shiite unclean. The marriage of a Moslem to a Jewish or 
 Christian woman is permitted by the Sunna, prohibited by 
 the Shiites. 
 
 1 The Mutazilites themselves, when they had the power were, like 
 many other liberals, the reverse of tolerant to the conservatives. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Other-worldliness of Primitive Islam — Example of Christian Ascetics 
 • — Early Sufis — Influence of Neoplatonism — The Mystic-Way and 
 Goal — Love to God — Indian Influence — Pantheisrn^Essays of 
 the Pure Brotherhood — "Theology of Aristotle" — Moslem Aris- 
 totelians: al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna — Averroes. 
 
 Mohammed's call, as it is in one of the oldest Suras of the 
 Koran, was to give warning that the judgment of God was 
 impending upon his nation, in which none would escape 
 destruction save such as, renouncing their vain gods and 
 their evil ways, made their submission to the one true God 
 and did his will as revealed through his prophet. The first 
 believers lived in constant expectation of this great crisis 
 and in preparation for it. The religious exercises in which 
 Mohammed had engaged even before his appearance as a 
 prophet, and which he taught to his earliest followers, were 
 inspired by the sense of imminent catastrophe; fas^ug^and^ 
 
 prqy pr WP rp thfir ch ajgc tp '''' :! *'V fpa.t.nrpg. The small SUCCeSS 
 
 of his mission at Mecca and the persecutions which he and 
 his followers had to endure quickened this kind of piety. 
 \ "O ther-worldliness" was the ruling idea of the religion . 
 
 At Medina the circumstances of the situation to some 
 extent diverted the mind of Mohammed and his followers 
 from that world to this. Nevertheless, we should err if we 
 thought that the character of the religion or the sentiment 
 of believers underwent a radical change. The possession of 
 Mecca and the transformation of the Kaaba into the sanc- 
 tuary of Islam, the conversion of the Arabs in town and 
 desert, were part of the plan of God for the establishment of 
 
 439 
 
440 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 the true religion in the earth; but for pious Moslems who 
 had imbibed the teachings and spirit of Mohammed all this 
 was but a preparation for the last day, not the beginning of 
 a new epoch in the history of the world. The success of 
 these enterprises, however, and above all the wars of con- 
 quest waged by the caliphs against the Roman and Persian 
 empires, drew to the banners of Islam multitudes whose 
 aims and satisfactions were altogether of this world. They 
 gained riches and power, and used them to promote the 
 interests of their families and tribes; and if the day of judg- 
 ment intruded upon their minds at all, they, like men of all 
 times in great and sudden prosperity, postponed the uncom- 
 fortable thought to an indefinite future, or turned it into 
 God's vengeance on the unbelievers. The consolidation of 
 the Moslem conquests under the early Omayyads by politi- 
 cal necessity took the form of an Arab empire, not of a 
 theocratic socialism. 
 
 The Kharijite movement has already shown us that this 
 historically inevitable develop ment was obnoxious to no 
 inronsiaTerabje^jjiart^ of the M oslem ^com munity on hnth 
 political and religious grounds. In that revolt the Koran 
 reciters, who as a class clung tenaciously to the ideas and 
 ways of primitive Islam, took a leading part. In the strife 
 and confusion of the civil wars by which the Moslem world 
 was rent in the second generation, it would be strange if 
 many had not seen the signs of the end of the age, the 
 shadow of judgment cast before. 
 
 T o this nati v e expectation of an imminen t day of doom 
 a foreign influence was adde d. Even in the days of heathen- 
 ism, as we know from the old poets, the hermits, spending 
 their lives in perpetual devotion, had made a deep impres- 
 sion on the Arabs who passed their cells as they travelled 
 the caravan routes or rode on forays. Now, in Syria and 
 in Irak, Moslems came in contact with Christian ascetics , 
 living in solitude, macerating their bodies by fasting, keep- 
 ing long vigils in prayer, in daily preparation for God's 
 judgment. That in reaction from the corruption of religion 
 
MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 441 
 
 and morals which they saw on all hands many religious- 
 minded Moslems were inclined to an ascetic life after the 
 monkish pattern is convincingly attested by the great num- 
 ber of fictitious traditions in which the Prophet is made to 
 disapprove such practices, and the prominence that is given 
 in traditions about the companions of the Prophet to their 
 enjoyment of the good things of this life. An often-quoted 
 tradition of Mohammed is: "There is no monkery in Islam; 
 the monkery of Islam is the Holy War." Protracted fast- 
 ing is condemned: "The Moslem who keeps up his bodily 
 strength loves God more than the weakling." "He who 
 eats with gratitude to God is as good in his eyes as the faster 
 who abstains from eating." Celibacy, which was the uni- 
 versal rule among the Christian ascetics, never had any 
 place in Mohammed's idea of religion, it is true; but the 
 traditions which condemn it are the product of other con- 
 ditions than those which prevailed in Medina in his time. 
 To a man who had resolved upon a celibate life, Mohammed 
 is reported to have said: "Some of you have made up your 
 minds to belong to the brethren of Satan ! Either you pro- 
 pose to be a Christian monk; in that case, join them openly ! 
 Or you belong to our people; then you must follow our cus- 
 tom (sunna). Our custom is married life." The use of per- 
 fumes and cosmetics was peculiarly distasteful to the ascetic 
 temper of many pious Moslems. By way of contrariety, 
 anecdotes were current about the most admired heroes of 
 early Islam, telling how those holy persons used to perfume 
 themselves, dye their hair and beards, and deck themselves 
 in fine raiment. One of the chief authorities for the tradi- 
 tions of Medina, Abu Hureira, for example, is said to have 
 used perfumes so abundantly that the children recognised 
 him by the smell when he passed the schoolhouse. 
 
 A more definite a ^tic moveme nt spread fr omjilyriajo 
 Irak-^ar ly in th e-4me-o£-the JOmayyads. Those who ad- 
 dicted themselves to it were called 'Ubbjd (singular, 'Abid), 
 that is, men devoted to the service of God. They fought in 
 the wars like the rest, but stood aloof from public life, and 
 
442 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 some even declined their share in the distribution of spoils. 
 The influence of Christianit y is seen no t only inlhejDujtward 
 
 forms n f thnii- mnnt iVi gm, hut in the fq .ctuJ-.ha.fct.liR earliest 
 
 writings which_ come_ f rom these cir cles _abound in undis- 
 guised appropr iations, from the New Testam ent^ frequently 
 pres enting themselves a straditional sayings of Mohammed. 
 They neither worked for a living nor begged for it, but left 
 it to God to give them one as he saw fit, and counted it a 
 peculiar virtue to take no thought for the morrow. He who 
 trusts God is "the child of the moment"; he neither looks 
 back to the past nor forward to the future. This quietism 
 expresses itself in their word, that man should be in the 
 hand of God as passive as a corpse under the hand of him 
 who washes it. They cultivated insensibility to hunger and 
 all bodily privations; if they were ill, they did not seek the 
 aid of a physician; the praise and blame of men was all 
 the same to them, and they were indifferent to the treat- 
 ment they received from men. The ordinary pious Moslem 
 contented himself with the prescribed prayers at the ap- 
 pointed hours of day and night. These ascetics, on the 
 contrary, taking their warrant from the injunction of the 
 Koran, "Call God often to mind, and praise him morning 
 and evening" (33, 41), developed a kind of litany (dhikr), 
 most commonly made up of the names or titles of God, 
 which they recited, singly or in company, with endless repe- 
 tition, as a means of fixing the attention constantly on God 
 and his attributes. 
 
 Thus far the Sufis 1 may be said to represent primitive 
 Moslem notions and ideals, enriched from the Gospels, and 
 more or less externally influenced by the forms of Chris- 
 tian monasticism. Among the Christian monks, however, 
 mysticism had early taken deep root, and doubtless through 
 them the Sufis got their first mystical ideas and aims. In 
 time, however, they came to draw more directly upon the 
 fountainhead of Occidental mysticism, the Neoplatonic phi- 
 
 1 The name comes from their coarse woollen garb. 
 
MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 443 
 
 losophy. 1 The i nflux of Neoplatonism began before the end 
 of the second century of the Moslem era, and in the third 
 became the predominant intellectual element in Sufism. 
 One of the men who had the largest part in the creation of 
 this new type of Moslem mysticism was Dhu al-Nun Misri, 
 by race a Copt or a Nubian, whose ideas came to him through 
 Christian channels. 2 
 
 This philosophy gave a new meaning and end to asceticism. 
 The soul, it taught, is of divine origin; here on earth and in 
 the body it is an alien and exile. The goal of the mystic 
 is liberation from the body and from the world, return to 
 God, union with God — a union in which the finite person- 
 ality is swallowed up and lost in the infinite, and in losing 
 finds its true self. Individuality is the fatal illusion, the 
 deadly sin. The Sufis allege a tradition of the Prophet: 
 "Thine existence is a sin with which no other sin can be 
 compared." Jelal al-Din Rumi in his quatrains sings: 
 "In the beginning my soul and Thine were but one; my 
 appearance and Thine; my disappearance and Thine. It 
 were false to speak of 'mine' and 'Thine.' Between us the 
 I and the Thou have ceased to be"; and again: "I am not I, 
 and yet Thou art not I; I am at once I and Thou, Thou art 
 at once Thou and I. In relation to Thee, O beauty of 
 Khoten, I am bewildered whether Thou art I or I Thou." 
 
 Since the illusion of individuality is produced by the dis- 
 tinctive qualities, or attributes, of the individual, the aim 
 of the mystic is to rid himself of these: "Purify thyself from 
 all the attributes of self, that thou may'st behold thy glori- 
 ous essence ! " 
 
 This supreme goal is not to be achieved at once by an 
 audacious bound into the bosom of the Infinite, but only 
 by progressive stages in the path which has been marked by 
 
 1 See Vol. I, pp. 533 #.; II, pp. 207 f. See Index s. v. "Neoplatonism." 
 
 2 The opinion, formerly prevalent and still frequently repeated, that 
 Sufi pantheism was of Persian origin, a reaction, it was said, of the 
 Indoeuropean mind against the hard Semitic deism of Mohammedan 
 theology, is erroneous from every possible point of view. 
 
444 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 those who have already attained and been made perfect. 
 The Sufi, therefore, calls himself a wayfarer on the road 
 which leads to "the Truth," 1 that is, the one Reality in 
 the universe. One of the oldest comprehensive treatises on 
 the mystic way nam^s seiwB-.-.sta.p-ps " before the, snhlimft 
 achievement^ to wit, repentance, abstinence, renunciation, 
 poverty, patience, trust in God, satisfaction. The wayfarer 
 must traverse these stages in succession, making himself 
 perfect in each before he proceeds to the next. They co«- 
 .sl itute the .aar p + ' n a 71 ^ p+hipnl rli'em'plinr> nf \he Snfj The 
 first step in the path is repentance, or conversion, which in- 
 cludes not only contrition for past sins against God or men, 
 but the abandonment of them, with full resolve never again 
 to fall into them, and reparation of the wrongs which one 
 has done his fellows. 2 To illustrate the importance of 
 reparation, it is told that when a man who had formerly 
 been the governor of a province wished to become a Sufi, his 
 spiritual director bade him first return to the province and 
 secure the forgiveness of every one to whom he had done an 
 injury — a task upon which he spent four years. Repen- 
 tance is not merely man's turning to God; it has its origin in 
 God's gracious turning to man. To some one who asked 
 the Sufi poetess, Rabia, whether if he turned in penitence to 
 God, God would turn in mercy to him, she replied: "No; 
 but if he turn toward thee, thou wilt turn toward him." 
 
 The penitent seeker next put himself under the guidance 
 of a director, a man of experience and approved piety, whose 
 injunctions he followed in everything. The probationary 
 period was sometimes extended over three years, in the 
 first of which the novice was bidden devote himself to the 
 service of his fellow men; in the second, to the service of 
 God, and in the third, to watchfulness over his own thoughts. 
 He can serve his fellow men only when he esteems all men 
 better than himself; he can serve God only when he wor- 
 ships him without regard to his own advantage in this life 
 
 1 Al-Hakt 
 
 2 So also in the Jewish doctrine of repentance. 
 
MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 445 
 
 or the other; and he can keep his own heart only when his 
 thoughts are collected and every care dismissed, so that he 
 can commune with God without distraction. Only after 
 this trial was it permitted to assume the patched garment 
 which was the distinctive dress of the dervish. 1 
 
 r>istiy+ frnm th^ stages of t he nath are the states of the 
 .mystic . The latter are not progressive attainments of man, 
 but emotions and experiences which God bestows on man 
 when and how he will. The treatise already quoted has 
 ten such "states." namely, meditation, nearness to God, 
 love, fear, hope, longing, intimacy, tranquillity, contempla- 
 tion, and certainty. "They descend from God into man's 
 heart without his being able to repel them when they come 
 or retain them when they go." When a man has traversed 
 all the stages of the path and experienced whatever states 
 God is pleased to bestow upon him, only then does he enter 
 upon that higher plane of consciousness which the Sufi calls 
 Knowledge and Truth; only then does the seeker become 
 the knower, in whom knower and knowing and known are 
 identical. 
 
 ^This transcendental knowledge cannot be reached by the 
 methods of sense or the speculations of philosophy, nor can 
 it be imparted by teaching. It comes in a flash of intuition, 
 or rather of divine illumination. Those who possess it 
 cannot describe it, for the truth is inexpressible, inconceiv- 
 able. "Strive to cast off the veil, not to augment book- 
 lore; no books will further thy intent. The germ of love to 
 God grows not in books; shut up thy books, turn to God 
 and repent." It is at_once_ J aelf-knowkdg.e. and-knowje^ge 
 ofG od. for these are not two bu t one : the secret lies in the 
 realisation that the appearance of otherness is nought but 
 illusion. 
 
 The ecstasy of this experience is often spoken of as intox- 
 ication — an exaltation and expansion in which the conscious- 
 ness of self is surmounted. Still oftener, as in the mystic 
 poetry of all ages and religions, it is in the love of God that 
 
 1 The garment of rags is the proper garb of the Buddhist monk. 
 
446 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 man loses himself and finds the fulfilment of his being. 
 Love is the principle and motive of Sufi ethics; it is, as 
 Jelal al-Din says, "the remedy of our pride and self-con- 
 ceit — the physician of all our infirmities. Only he whose 
 garment is rent by love becomes entirely unselfish." 1 He 
 who loves God supremely sees God in all his creatures, and 
 expresses this divine love in all his dealings with them. 
 This motive alone gives meaning and worth to deeds of 
 charity; so long as man bestows all his goods to feed the 
 poor that by good works he may earn a reward in this 
 world or in Paradise, his works are not good. The true 
 Sufi would give his life to save the life of another human 
 being, or even of an animal; he would endure the punish- 
 ment of hell if so doing he could secure Paradise for its 
 inmates. 2 
 
 The goal of the Sufi path is not the intellectual intuition 
 of oneness, but the emotional experience of it, the rapture 
 of love in the possession of the beloved, or rather in being 
 possessed by the beloved. This experience is presented in 
 imagery borrowed from human love, not by way of inten- 
 tional allegory, but because it is the only language that is 
 poetically possible. 3 God is the perfection of beauty; it is 
 this supreme beauty which inspires the mystic's love, and 
 it is his love which enables him to see in God beauty to 
 which other men are blind, just as "The Madman of Love" 
 in Arab poetry discerns in his mistress beauties which no 
 other discovers. 
 
 It must be admitted that the bacchanalian and erotic 
 poetry of Persian and Turkish mysticism not only often 
 violates the reserve which reverence seems to us to impose, 
 but frequently transgresses the line between religious emo- 
 tion at its highest pitch and sensual passion, but that is the 
 standing peril of the mystical Eros. 
 
 Only by love is God known. Revelation, however true 
 it may be, cannot give this knowledge, for revelation is a 
 
 1 An allusion to the story of Joseph and Zuleikha. 
 
 2 Compare the words of Paul in Romans 9, 3. 
 
 3 Plato naturalised it in philosophy; see Vol. I, p. 501. 
 
MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 447 
 
 necessary accommodation to the incapacity of the common 
 mind; at best, an attempt to say what cannot be expressed 
 in words. Equally vain is it to look for knowledge of God 
 in the definitions and discussions of philosophers and scho- 
 lastic theologians. Love is also the key to the understand- 
 ing of God's dealings with men. Why does God deal thus 
 with me? Reason discovers no answer, revelation gives 
 none; but he who loves understands, as a child through love 
 discerns the benevolent motive of a father's severity, if not 
 his wise design. 
 
 Greek and Christian influences are not the only ones 
 which are recognisable in Sufism. The Moslem conquests in 
 the eastern provinces of the Persian empire brought them 
 into regions where Indian asceticism and philosophy had long 
 been established. The chief agency in the dissemination 
 of Indian ideas beyond the bounds of the Indian peninsula 
 was Buddhism; not the primitive Buddhism which is known 
 to us chiefly through the Pali Canon, but the northern 
 Buddhism of the Mahayana school. 1 The ontology of the 
 Mahayana has a strong resemblance to Neoplatonism, but 
 the characteristic Neoplatonic doctrine of successive emana- 
 tions from the fulness of Absolute Being had no place in it. 
 The influ£Qce_jof_ Buddhism is p erhaps most clearly se en 
 amonR_the-Sufig_ i n the idea o j.Fana^^lu^erally " cessation " 
 — a termjn whjchjmay be_disc erned jji_jittemrjtj»jind an. 
 eipiiaJeiutioxJfevana. The complement of Fana is Baka 
 ■ — abiding, or continuance, i. e., in God. Al-Kharaz em- 
 ployed these terms to denote the perfection of saintship in 
 those who have traversed all the stages and found the object 
 of their search. He defends himself against the imputation 
 that by Fana he means the annihilation of essence or per- 
 sonality, or that Baka implies a confusion between human 
 and divine attributes. Fana is dying to the sight of human 
 abasement and living in the contemplation of divine omni- 
 potence; the true servant of God is so lost in contemplation 
 of him that he no longer attributes his actions to himself, 
 but refers them all to God. Other Sufis, however, less care- 
 1 See Vol. I, pp. 303 #. 
 
448 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 ful of the semblance of orthodoxy, conceived Fan a, as such 
 an absorption in the Godhead, or identification with it, as 
 meant the end of individual existence. One of them writes: 
 "When the temporal joins itself to the eternal, the former 
 has no more existence. Thou hearest and seest nought but 
 Allah ! When thou readiest the conviction that there is no 
 existence except Allah, when thou realisest that thou thy- 
 self art He, that thou art identical with Him, then nothing 
 exists but He ! " 
 
 "Let me become non-existent, for non-existence 
 Calls to me with organ tones, 'To him we return I'" 
 
 Al-Hallaj was put to death in 922 A. D. for crying in the 
 ears of the scandalised Moslems of Bagdad, "Ana al-Hakk," 
 "I am the Reality" — the sole Reality in the universe, God. 
 According to Hallaj, man is essentially divine. God created 
 man in his own image; he projected from himself that image 
 of his eternal love that he might behold himself as in a mir- 
 ror. Hence he bade the angels worship Adam (Koran 2, 32), 
 in whom, as in Jesus, he became incarnate. Inasmuch as 
 the humanity (nasut) of God embraces the whole bodily 
 and spiritual nature of man, the divinity (lahut) of God can- 
 not unite with that nature, except by an incarnation or an 
 infusion (hulill) of the divine spirit, such as takes place 
 when the human spirit enters the body. 1 Thus, Hallaj says 
 in one of his poems: 
 
 "Thy spirit is mingled in my spirit, even as wine is mingled with pure 
 water. 
 When anything touches thee it touches me. Lo, in every case thou 
 art I! . . ." 
 
 And again: 
 
 "I am he whom I love, and he whom I love is I: 
 We are two spirits dwelling in one body. 
 If thou seest me, thou seest him, 
 And if thou seest him, thou seest us both." 2 
 
 1 Nicholson, Mystics of Islam, pp. 150/. 
 
 2 Nicholson, p. 151. 
 
MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 449 
 
 This dangerous extreme led to a reaction among the more 
 moderate Sufis, who, repudiating this self-deification and 
 the antinomian immoralism of the radicals, endeavoured to 
 make their mysticism compatible with orthodoxy. Of this 
 tendency the most notable representative is al-Kusheyri, 
 whose Epistle was published in 1045 A. D. We shall see 
 later how in the person of its greatest theologian, al-Ghazali, 
 Moslem orthodoxy assimilated large and fruitful elements 
 from Sufism. 
 
 It is evident that in Sufi pantheism the ground of Islamic 
 
 mnnntheifir" ''" ^mplpfply ahanrlnnp^ In place of the One 
 
 personal God, creator and ruler of the world, was put the 
 sole reality in the universe, the One, the Truth; while for a 
 religion of submission to the will of the supramundane ruler 
 and obedience to his law, with fear of the divine judgment 
 for its motive and the rewards and punishments of the future 
 life for its sanctions, is put a mystical love in which lover 
 and beloved are one, or a transcendental knowledge of 
 identity in which the illusion of individuality is overcome; 
 for the material fires of hell, the separation of the soul from 
 its origin, its alienation from its true self; for paradise, the 
 eternal reunion. As in all similar systems, the positive ele- 
 ments of religion, its commandments and observances, have 
 no meaning or value to him who has attained the truth; at 
 most, it may be admitted that they have a pedagogic use 
 in that through them man may be led to repent and enter 
 upon the Way. Most of the Sufis outwardly conformed to 
 the religious law and custom to avoid scandal or punishment; 
 but there were individuals and sects who held themselves 
 emancipated not only in spirit, but from the letter of the 
 law. Antinomianism is, indeed, inherent in all mysticism. 
 The Sufis applied to the Koran an allegorical method of 
 interpretation by which they found beneath the letter a 
 spiritual sense, and the more extreme among them acknowl- 
 edged no other significance in it. 1 They were called the 
 
 1 The Shiite sects practised a similar esoteric exegesis for other ends, 
 professing that Mohammed had given to Ali the key to the hidden 
 sense of the text. Sufis sometimes borrowed this legitimation. 
 
450 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Batiniyya, which we might literally render "Insiders," that 
 is, those who seek — and find — the true inwardness of the 
 teaching or the precept of revelation. 
 
 Upon these heights the differences between religions dis- 
 appear. The love of God, the knowledge of God, may be 
 attained by Jews or Christians as well as by Moslems. Ibn 
 Arabi says: "There was a time when I took it amiss in my 
 companion if his religion was not like mine, but now my 
 heart admits every form. It is a pasture for gazelles, a 
 cloister for monks, a temple for idols, a Kaaba for the pil- 
 grim, the tables of the Law, and the sacred book of the 
 Koran. Love alone is my religion, and whithersoever men's 
 camels turn, it is my religion and my faith." "The ways of 
 God are as many as the souls of men." The various reli- 
 gions with their creeds and rites, in so far as they divide 
 men, are evil. A poet belonging to one of the emancipated 
 orders of Dervishes sings: "Until mosque and Medresa 1 are 
 laid altogether waste, the work of the Kalender (Dervishes) 
 will not be complete; so long as belief and unbelief are 
 not altogether the same, 2 not a single man will be a true 
 Moslem." 
 
 Some of the Sufis drew the practical consequences of the 
 divine all-oneness which put them beyond good and evil, as 
 certain pantheistic Christian sects in the Middle Ages are 
 said to have done; but such extravagances were condemned 
 as severely by the great body of the Sufis as by the rest of 
 mankind. 
 
 An in terestin g.- e;ff.ar-fc~ to propagate- a philosophical and- 
 mystical conception .of xeality is found in a collection -of. 
 essayg by members of a society inJBasra who call themselves 
 the Ikhwan aJ-Safa. 3 The fifty essays of this collection 
 are arranged in four "main divisions corresponding to the 
 stages of an encyclical education. The first part contains 
 the fundamental sciences (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, 
 
 1 School. 
 
 2 1, e., so long as any difference is made between Moslem and infidel. 
 
 3 By this name they probably meant "The Sincere." 
 
MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 451 
 
 geography, theory of music, mathematical relations) and 
 logic; the second treats of the natural sciences and of man; 
 the third part is devoted to the doctrine of the Universal 
 Soul (Anima Mundi) and the relations of partial and indi- 
 vidual souls to it; the fourth part deals with the theological 
 sciences. The first two parts and the last are in the main 
 Aristotelian; the doctrine of soul is Platonic, but with a 
 considerable admixture of Pythagorean and Aristotelian ele- 
 ments. As in the earlier stages of Arab philosophy gener- 
 ally, the complete harmony of Aristotle and Plato was 
 assumed; Aristotle was read and interpreted through the 
 Neoplatonic commentators. 
 
 The Plotinian theory of emanations underlies the whole: 1 
 First is the One, the Absolute; then the Universal Irftelli- 
 gence; then the Universal Soul; the Primordial Matter; and 
 finally the world of things. Under the influence of Py- 
 thagorean number-mysticism, however, these stages are by 
 subdivision increased to nine. The Universal Soul is one, 
 but it has many powers, which permeate all nature, and are 
 distributed in all bodies and elements, from the planets 
 down to the plants; these powers are what are called the 
 souls of. these creatures, and, as in Plotinus, constitute a 
 system of souls in the Universal Soul. Man is a microcosm; 
 and the correspondence of his nature to the macrocosm is a 
 favourite theme with the writers. In the material world 
 and in union with the body, the soul is, as it were, in a state 
 of stupor, unmindful of its origin, its nature, and its des- 
 tiny. When it is awakened from its slumber it seeks to 
 return to its source, the Universal Soul. This attraction is 
 love, the best definition of which is, "Love is a mighty desire 
 for union." Such union is possible only between intellec- 
 tual subjects. " The Creator is the first beloved, for the uni- 
 versal heaven revolves only in desire toward the Creator." 2 
 Those who have set before them this goal cleave to the 
 Creator, strive to be like him, and imitate him in work and 
 word, in knowledge and in act. 
 
 1 See Vol. I, pp. 533/. 2 Aristotle: «iw is epii/ievov. Vol. I, p. 508. 
 
452 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Like the Mutazilite rationalists, t hese - mystics allegorize 
 thfL^jaterialistic Mosleni_figchatolog^. The resurrection is 
 not the re-creation of the body, but the awakening of the 
 soul from its heedless slumber; it is the return from the 
 world of matter and body to the world of spirit or of mind. 
 The great resurrection is the separation of the Universal 
 Soul from the material world and its return to God. Hell is 
 not a place of material torment where an angry God pun- 
 ishes sinners in the fire; the sinful soul has its hell in its own 
 body in this life. The cosmopolitan eclecticism which is 
 natural with such ideas appears in the" essays. The authors 
 claim the wisdom of all peoples and all religions. Socrates 
 and Plato, as well as Noah, Abraham, Mohammed, and Ali, 
 are among the prophets; Socrates, and Jesus, and the family 
 of Ali are the holy martyrs of this reasonable faith. 
 
 Those who are awakened from the sleep of folly recognise 
 the true values of things. To them every day is a festival, 
 every moment an act of worship; their rest is obedience to 
 God. All times and places are alike to them; there is only 
 one place of worship, only one Kibla, 1 namely, to fulfil the 
 word of God. Their love to God manifests itself in religious 
 toleration, and in kindness toward all creatures; it gives 
 those who possess it, in this life composure of soul, heart- 
 freedom, peace with the whole world, and hereafter the 
 ascent to the eternal light. 
 
 The Neoplatonism which underlies this system reached 
 the Moslems through various channels, first, in all prob- 
 ability, through Christian theologians, later through trans- 
 lations from the Greek, directly or through the Syriac. The 
 works of Dionysius the Areopagite 2 were comparatively 
 early known, and their influence can be distinctly traced. 
 One of the most important intermediaries was the so-called 
 "Theology of Aristotle," under which name a work com- 
 
 1 The point toward which the worshipper turns his face in prayer — 
 the Moslems toward Mecca, Jews and Oriental Christians toward 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 2 See above, pp. 207 ff. 
 
MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 453 
 
 piled from the Enneads of Plotinus was accepted without 
 question as a work of Aristotle, and enjoyed the supreme 
 authority which his name carried. It is largely occupied with 
 the doctrine of the soul, as the titles of the several books 
 show: On the Soul, Soul and Mind, Qualities and Names of 
 the Soul, Substance of the Soul, The World of Intelligence, 
 Creator and Creation, the Stars, The Supreme Soul, First 
 Force in Matter, Potentiality and Energy, the Rational Im- 
 mortal Soul, the Ultimate Origin of Things. Similarly, an 
 abstract in Arabic of the 2Toi%etWts ®eo\oyuctf of Proclus 
 (Liber de Causis) was taken for Aristotelian doctrine. Neo- 
 platonising Aristotelians like Alexander of Aphrodisias, and 
 Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle such as Proclus and 
 Themistius contributed their share to the confusion. 
 
 Tjie^writings o f Aristotle wh ich ww earliest know n. io 
 the_Moslenls and most hi ghly value d by__them werejhe 
 mrthnrfit*'- 1 run! JHR^7~espe7Jiall y the log ic, and ihe. various 
 writmgs_onTia^uraTTiistory. The name philosopher in Ara- 
 "blc~liasalways designated a professed follower of Aristotle, 
 who was to them the philosopher by way of eminence. 
 The first of the Arab philosophers, al-Kindi (d. about 870), 
 lays down what became an axiom with his successors, that 
 the only way to philosophy is through the propaedeutic sci- 
 ences, and he did much to make accessible the logical, math- 
 ematical, and astronomical teachings of Aristotle; but at the 
 same time he had some hand in the production of the 
 famous "Theology of Aristotle," and in his own theology 
 was through and through a Neoplatonist. 
 /The grjg t- st.iimhling-h locks_in_the genuine Aristotle to 
 / Moslems J _as well as to Jews and Christians, weie,~Just, the 
 eternit y of the un iverse, which was the necessary corollary 
 of his conception of God as the First Cause; s&wd, theJim- 
 itQtinn^nfOojrs_knowled ffe to univ ersals, which excludes 
 particular providence; and, third, his denial nf immnrtal ity 
 t o the ind ividual souL. All these theories are integral parts 
 of Aristotle's system, and they are in flat contradiction to 
 the fundamental doctrines of all three religions, creation, 
 
454 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 providence, and retribution. The Arab_~A rictotolian s had, 
 however, no doubt of the genuineness of the "Theology," 
 and made the Metaphysics agree with it as well as they 
 could. Al-Farabi (d. 950) and Avicenna (d. 1037) got over 
 "the necessary eternity of matter, for example, by invent- 
 ing the category of the "relatively necessary." Avicenna 
 endeavoured to make a place in his philosophy for proph- 
 ecy and miracles, divine providence, and immortality, re- 
 curring for the last to Platonic arguments. Both of them 
 have an emanationist cosmology for the spheres above the 
 moon, and Avicenna combines with this the Neoplatonic 
 series of emanations. Both were Sufis, and both — Avicenna 
 in larger measure than al-Farabi — had leanings to occultism 
 of various kinds. For subsequent speculation, the most im- 
 portant contributions of these philosophers were in the fields 
 of psychology and epistemology. 
 
 Between the philosophers and the theologians there was 
 no peace. The theologians accused the philosophers of in- 
 fidelity. The philosophers retorted that the theologians did 
 not know what they were talking about; they had the au- 
 dacity to pronounce on the ultimate problems without either 
 training in science or knowledge of philosophy. Al-Ghazali 
 gave a summary of the systems in his "Tendencies of the 
 Philosophers," as a preparation for the "Demolition of the 
 Philosophers," 1 in which he undertook to expose the errors of 
 their metaphysics, psychology, and natural science, and to 
 prove their teachings in irreconcilable conflict with revela- 
 tion. A century later Averroes replied with the "Demolition 
 of the Demolition" — and he made it thorough ! The great- 
 est of all mediaeval commentators on Aristotle here ex- 
 poses the superficiality of the critic and the sophisms of the 
 theological dialectic. 
 
 The philosophers, most of whom were by their calling 
 physicians and men of science, made no effort to popularise 
 their doctrines; they held, indeed, that no one without sci- 
 entific education had any business with such questions. 
 1 The original title was "The Collapse of the Philosophers." 
 
MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 455 
 
 They enjoyed, therefore, comparative freedom for their 
 speculations, notwithstanding the hostility of the theolo- 
 gians. This state of things came to an end in the East in 
 the first half of the twelfth century, and the writings of the 
 philosophers were more than once publicly burned. In one 
 such conflagration, in 1160, the works of Avicenna and the 
 Essays of the Ikhwan al-Safa were consigned to the flames. 
 When once it was in this business, the Moslem inquisition 
 did not make too fine distinctions, but burned scientific 
 treatises on astronomy in the category of astrology. In the 
 West, however, Arab philosophy had in the twelfth century 
 its short-lived glory. Ibn Bajja, of Fez, known to the 
 schoolmen as Avempace (d. 1138), begins this period, Aver- 
 roes (Ibn Rushd; d. 1198) ends it. 
 
 The Aristotelianism of al-Farabi and Avicenna was of a 
 denatured kind, which Aristotle would hardly have recog- 
 nised and would certainly not have acknowledged. Aver- 
 roes made an era in European philosophy by his endeavour 
 to interpret honestly the genuine teachings of the Stagirite, 
 and it does not detract from the magnitude of his achieve- 
 ment that he was not always right in his interpretation. He 
 spurned the subterfuges by which Aristotle was harmonised 
 with the religious dogmas of creation, providence, and im- 
 mortality. Science and philosophy are one thing; religion 
 is another. Each should confine itself to its own sphere, 
 and not intrude on that of the other. Religion is for all, 
 and is given in a form and language intelligible by the com- 
 mon mind; philosophy is the affair of the few who have the 
 mental power and discipline and the previous scientific 
 training it demands. The philosopher should not, by col- 
 porting science in the market-place, undermine the faith of 
 the simple believer; the unphilosophical should not, in the 
 name of faith, put dogmatic restraints on philosophical 
 speculation. The worst enemies of faith, in his eyes, were 
 theologians like al-Ghazali, who undertook to establish the 
 truth of religion by their dialectic reasonments and their 
 pseudo-metaphysics, and demanded that men should believe 
 
456 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 not only what was revealed but the reasons they gave 
 for it. 1 
 
 This plan for avoiding conflict between philosophy and 
 religion by leaving them no common ground to contend 
 upon has more than once been revived, sometimes in behalf 
 of the freedom of thought, sometimes of the immunity of 
 faith to reason. In some of the schoolmen it became the 
 doctrine of a double truth, according to which a proposition 
 might at the same time be true in philosophy and false in 
 theology or vice versa. 
 
 In a history of Moslem philosophy it would be necessary 
 here to go into Averroes' theory of the unity of the intel- 
 lect, which was to the Christian schoolmen the character- 
 istic heresy of Averroism, and as such was combated by 
 Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. This doctrine, however, by 
 way of which Averroes found something better than the 
 immortality of the individual soul, had no similar echo in 
 Islamic theology; and, indeed, the influence of the last great 
 Moslem philosopher was immeasurably greater in the Chris- 
 tian than in the Moslem world. 
 
 1 See below, p. 474. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 
 
 Al-Ghazali — His Life and Religious Experience — "Revival of the 
 Religious Sciences" — The Way of Salvation — The Higher Life — 
 Theology in the West^-Ibn Hazm and the Zahirites — Ibn Tumart 
 and the Almohads. ' 
 
 In bringing down the history of Moslem philosophy to 
 Averroes, its last representative, we have anticipated, and 
 must now turn back to the man who _gave_to MohammedaH 
 theology and ethics the form whic h in all .assanijals- it- -has 
 re tained ever sinc e. Al-Ghazali ( d. 1111) stands to Moslem 
 theology in this respect in somewhat the same position that 
 Thomas Aquinas does to Christian theology. His great 
 work, "The Revival of the Religious Sciences," may fairly 
 be compared to the "Summa" of Thomas Aquinas, but his 
 personal contribution to theology was more considerable 
 than that of the Christian theologian. 
 
 AI-Ghaza li was born a t Tus, near Meshed, 1 in 105 8 , A..JJL 
 Early left an— efpkan, he fWnfpd Viimmlf tn thonln^iVn l 
 _gtuuiy, as he himself says, from no higher motive than that 
 there were scholarships for theological students, and that 
 teaching offered a career. After studying jurisprudence (of 
 the school of al-Shafii) 2 he went to Nisabur, then one of 
 the great centres of learning in the Moslem world, and con- 
 tinued his studies under one of the most celebrated theo- 
 logians of his time, commonly known by his honorary title, 
 Imam al-Haramain, an Asharite and at the same time a 
 
 1 In Khorasan. For a fuller biography, see D. B. Macdonald, Life 
 of al-Ghazzali, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. XX 
 (1899), pp. 71-132. 
 
 2 The Asharites were chiefly of this school. 
 
 457 
 
458 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 mystic of the orthodox type, a man of large learning and 
 deep piety. Under him al-Ghazali studied logic, the natural 
 sciences, and philosophy, as well as theology. After the 
 death of his master (1085), he left Nisabur, and in 1091 was 
 appointed by the Seljuk vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, professor in 
 his newly founded college at Bagdad. As a teacher he had 
 a conspicuous success, and his lecture-rooms were crowded 
 with students; but at the height of his career he suddenly 
 resigned his chair and left Bagdad. The reason he gave was 
 the failure of his health; his ostensible purpose, a pilgrimage 
 to Mecca. In an interesting intellectual and spiritual auto- 
 biography, Munkidh min al-Dalal, the cause of his with- 
 drawal is explained. The b reak d own of his health was the 
 result o f p™ Q^"+g infollpp-hig) prigis Inquiry into the nature 
 and grounds of certainty in matters of religion led him into 
 the depths -of arepticicm. . Certainty could be assured only by 
 the evidence of the senses or by the primary ideas of reason, 
 but further reflection threw even these certainties into doubt. 
 From this extreme he was delivered, he tells us, not by 
 reasoning, in which he found no help, but by God, who 
 cured him of that disease, and brought him back to the con- 
 viction that in the ideas of reason there is a basis of cer- 
 tainty. But recognition that certainty is possible was not 
 yet attainment of certainty. 
 
 Looking about him upon those who professed to have the 
 certainty of religion, he found four classes: the scholastic 
 theologians (Mutikallimun), who undertook to confirm the 
 truth by reason; the esoteric sect (Batiniyya), who had an 
 infallible guide in their Imam, and held that only by com- 
 mitting themselves implicitly to him can men be secure; the 
 philosophers, who relied on logical demonstration; and the 
 mystics, who thought that truth was revealed to them in- 
 tuitively in their ecstasies. Such, then, were the ways in 
 which he must seek certain knowledge. To return to a 
 naive faith in what he had been taught as a child was im- 
 possible — the very condition of that kind of faith is that 
 a man should not be conscious that it is such. 
 
ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 459 
 
 He set hi mself^JjierefQrp.. to famin e the methods and 
 results'~oTthe~tEeolpgians and the philosophers. The argu- 
 ments of the theologians, he discovered, were all very well 
 for those who accepted the Koran and tradition; they could 
 defend orthodoxy against various kinds of heretics, and 
 refute their errors; but against such as denied their premises 
 they were helpless. Some of them indeed ventured farther 
 into the field of philosophy, but, being poorly grounded in 
 the sciences, they only exposed themselves to the ridicule of 
 the philosophers. As for the philosophers 1 themselves, their 
 mathematics, logic, and natural science are all very well, 
 but the metaphysics which affirms the eternity of the world, 
 denies God's knowledge of particulars, and rejects the resur- 
 rection of the body and bodily punishments hereafter is 
 mere infidelity; their ethics they have appropriated from 
 the Sufis. 2 Of those who, renouncing reason, took refuge 
 in the infallibility of their Imam, he entertained a very 
 poor opinion; their arguments moved in a circle. 3 There 
 
 remained , then, only thp way nf thp mystic 
 
 With the general character of this way he was not un- 
 acquainted, but he now addressed himself to a more thor- 
 ough study of their treatises, several of which. he mentions 
 by name. The jesu.lt ofthis study was a recognition tha t 
 what-iie was_Jn^se axcn of w asnot to be got from books. 
 Descriptions of stages and states were not the thingTtseTf. 
 There is as much difference between a definition of renun- 
 ciation — the condition of a man whose soul is no longer of 
 this world — and the reality of it as between knowing the 
 symptoms and causes of intoxication and being intoxicated. 
 
 He had by this time been hron^ht. back to firmfaith in 
 t.heJ-hreeJunda.maQ tfl.1 doctrin es *if Tall inn : ^odTliKeTropneL- 
 and t he Last Day, not, as he is at pains to repeat, by definite 
 
 1 His controversy is chiefly with the Arab Aristotelians. 
 
 2 The agreement, as far as it extends, is in reality due to their com- 
 mon dependence on the same Greek sources. 
 
 3 The sect which al-Ghazali has in mind are the Ismailis (see below, 
 pp. 499 ff., 504); particularly, the branch which Hasan al-Sabbah de- 
 veloped into the Assassins. 
 
460 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 arguments, bu t by circumsta nc es and e x periencesj yhich can- 
 not be described; and he was sure, also, that the blessedness 
 of the other life is to be attained by restraining the desires of 
 the flesh, and by severing the attachment of the heart to this 
 world and fixing all desire upon God. A severe struggle 
 ensued. His high position and brilliant future held him 
 back; fear for the fate of his soul urged him on. His health 
 broke down under the strain. The physicians declared that 
 it was a mental ailment for which their art could do nothing. 
 At last, as has been said, he resigned his place and set out 
 for Syria. There he remained for almost two years in 
 retirement, spending his time in prayer and meditation and 
 in the religious exercises of the Sufis, devoting himself to 
 "mastering his desires, combating his passions, purifying 
 his soul, perfecting his character — in a word, preparing his 
 heart for meditation on God." 
 
 At the end of this time he made the pilgrimage to Mecca 
 and Medina, pausing on his way in Jerusalem and at Hebron. 
 After that, at the urgency of his children, he^returijed^o 
 
 ■^e-J]a^t^whei£un__s£mi7i^iffimeiit-he_ D.ursued the mystic 
 way which alone leads direct to God. As he describes this 
 waypthe hrst_tbing is to . purge the heart o f g ,ll besid es CiaA. 
 The key to the contemplative life is to immerse the heart 
 completely in the thought of God; the goal is a total pass- 
 ing away (Jana) in God. But this end is only a beginning; 
 the revelations which come to the mystics, in which, in the 
 waking state, they perceive the angels and the souls of the 
 prophets, hear their voices, and gain their guidance, are 
 succeeded by states which cannot be described or defined. 
 Men have called this supreme experience a fusion of the soul 
 with God (hulul), or identification with God (ittihad); others 
 call it union (wusul), but such language is a sin. The ex- 
 perience itself, however, is the firm ground of faith and the 
 key to the understanding of prophecy. Al-Ghazali thu s 
 learned th at religious certainty_Js_jto_b^Jaua4~oalxJn re- 
 
 Uigiou^js xperience; it is experience alone that can put the 
 existence and character of God, the verity of prophetic reve- 
 
ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 461 
 
 lation, the reality of the future life beyond question and con- 
 troversy. Thjs-convir:t,ion ^xpjains his hostility — perhaps 
 animosity would be the truer woTo^ ToT^e'Rniiolastic theo- 
 lngjp ng and i n t^ jurifitn 
 
 In 1 106, at the command of the sultan, al-Ghazali returned 
 to Nisabur to teach in the college there; it was just eleven 
 years after his departure from Bagdad. He cannot have 
 remained there very long, for before his death (1111) we 
 find him again in his native town, Tus. 
 . The title of Ghazali's great work, Iky a 'Ulum al-Din, Re- 
 vivification of the Religious Sciences, implies the conviction, 
 which he elsewhere expresses plainly and emphatically, that 
 ^heology and ethics in the Moslem world of his days were in 
 frjjnorihnnri sta.te,~~anrl' tha t, it wa.fi h is missio n to p ut, npw 
 life-into them by__pen etrating t hem with the spirit of true 
 religion . The sequel proved that he was not mistaken; 
 th e "Revivification" ga ve to orthodox Islam a character-and 
 direct i on which it has n e ver Tost . 
 
 The work is divided in to four rmrH each of which is in 
 ten chapters. In the first part, after defining the nature of 
 science and of the religious sciences in particular, the author 
 treats of the fundamental articles of Moslem faith: The 
 knowledge of the being of God, his attributes and his opera- 
 tions; then the particular topics of Moslem eschatology, ' 
 which men are bound to believe on the authority of revela- 
 tion; the succession of the four caliphs after Mohammed, 
 with a refutation of the exceptional claims made by the 
 Shiites for Ali; the conditions of the orthodox Imamate. 
 This is followed by a discussion of the controverted ques- 
 tions of the relations of faith (Iman) and Islam, and the 
 increase or decrease of faith. Al-Ghazali next takes up the 
 observances prescribed in Moslem law: the ritual purifica- 
 tions, private and public prayer, alms-giving, fasting, the 
 pilgrimage to Mecca, always describing the proper form of 
 the ceremonial as defined by tradition and the law books, 
 but taking pains to emphasize the proper attitude of mind 
 and heart in the performance of these duties, and the spiri- 
 
462 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 tual benefits which man derives from them. Thus, when 
 he treats of the ceremonial purifications, he dwells upon the 
 necessity of purity in the heart, and of the removal from it 
 not merely of the vices which defile the inner man, but of 
 all that is not God. He sets forth the forms of prayer pre- 
 scribed by tradition, and treats separately of private devo- 
 tion, the recitation of the names and praises of God, and 
 petitions for moral and spiritual blessings. In this connec- 
 tion he has brought together a number of prayers attributed 
 by tradition to godly men and saints of the older time, Jesus 
 among them. 
 
 Throughout, he is concerned tn imp i:fisu-upo.n--hisHPeadePS 
 that prayer is to be offered, alms given, the fast kept — in a 
 word, ahth g observances o f ^religio n perform ed — in such_a 
 waj£jha±_£ehgjous_jand_ moral benefit-may— be-der wed jr©» 
 ..therat To recite prayers as a matter of routine and by 
 force of habit, without attention or intention, merely utter- 
 ing articulate sounds without any regard to the sense, is 
 fruitless; to be of avail, prayer must be made with con- 
 centration of attention and understanding of the meaning 
 of the words, a sense of the greatness of God and the 
 nothingness of the creature, and in the fear of God inspired 
 by the consciousness of our own shortcomings, weakness, 
 and inclination to evil, and mindfulness of all that we owe 
 to God. Similarly, the reading of the Koran is an act of 
 devotion as profitable to the soul as it is pleasing to God, 
 if it be performed in the spirit of devotion. The Koran is 
 the word of God written; it is, so to speak, a letter from the 
 Almighty to his creatures; it should be read, therefore, rev- 
 erently, attentively, reflectively, with meditation on the 
 mysteries of truth which it contains. 
 
 Even for the rites of the pilgrimage to Mecca — that un- 
 digested piece of Arab heathenism which Mohammed in- 
 corporated in Islam — Ghazali succeeded in finding religious 
 meaning and profit. All the other prescribed observances, 
 as he remarks, have some rational end, and are plainly useful 
 to the soul; but the throwing stones into the valley of Mina 
 
ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 463 
 
 and going in a circle around the Kaaba have no sense, no 
 spiritual utility, in harmony with the natural inclination of 
 the soul. And precisely therein consists the merit of the 
 observance; man abdicates his reason in obedience to the 
 law of God by performing acts which have no intelligible 
 end. This is the value of the pilgrimage for the simple 
 believer; but for the enlightened these seemingly meaning- 
 less acts have a deeper moral and spiritual significance, 
 which is discovered by the way of allegory. Mecca is the 
 symbol of Paradise; the Kaaba, of the abode of God; the cir- 
 cuit about the holy house is a figure of the continual adora- 
 tion which the angels render to the Lord around his throne; 
 the race back and forth between the hills of Safa and Merwa 
 is an image of the perplexity of the soul before God's bar; 
 the gathering of the pilgrims on Mount Arafat should remind 
 them of the Day of Judgment and the like. 1 
 
 Th g '"ray " f gglvn+inn fnr man k thp pnrinVg+inn r>f fjif 
 _hga jt. hy thp pvtirpatinn n f vi'pp, a.nrl union with Onrl by thf 
 
 acquisition of a virtuous-character. Al-Ghazal i opens this 
 part of his work with the elementary notions of p sychol og y. 
 '^ Wonders of the H eart." These notions are essentially 
 Pralbu ic. The faculties, or powers, of the soul are appetite, 
 passion, intelligence, 2 the last also called, in religious lan- 
 guage, the heart. The heart of man is like a house with 
 many portals, or like a fortress attacked by archers from 
 every side. 3 It has good thoughts and impulses which are 
 called inspirations, and evil impulses which are called sug- 
 gestions; the inspirations come from angels, the suggestions 
 from demons. Satan, the great enemy, continually strives 
 to enter the fortress of man's heart and rule in it. His 
 assaults can be averted only by guarding well all the en- 
 trances, among which he names anger and lust, envy and 
 
 1 The Sufis were fond of these allegories — a more elaborate one from 
 Junaid is quoted by Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, pp. 91 /. 
 
 2 "Eiri.8vfila., dvfids, vovs. 
 
 3 The reader may be reminded of Bunyan's "Holy War," with its 
 fortress of Man-Soul. 
 
464 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 avarice, gluttony and the love of luxury, inordinate desire 
 for riches (under which word he includes everything that is 
 not strictly necessary to existence). One of the most dan- 
 gerous of these avenues of evil is sectarian zeal, which gives 
 rise to rancour and calumny. "When Satan succeeds in 
 making one of these fanatics believe that his school or sect 
 is the only true one, if it agrees with his personal inclina- 
 tion, he will induce the man to justify any idea that occurs 
 to him by saying that it is the teaching of his sect; and so 
 with great satisfaction he will believe that he is labouring 
 for religion, when in reality he is only working for the devil." 
 The temptation of Satan is often so subtle as to leave man 
 in doubt whether it is not a good inspiration. Al-Ghazali 
 illustrates this at some length in an analysis of the tempta- 
 tions of the popular preacher — a passage which has all the 
 more interest, because, as we know, it came out of his own 
 experience. The question at what stage a natural impulse 
 becomes a temptation and the temptation a sin, also leads 
 into a psychological discussion. Against evil impulses and 
 temptations ejaculatory prayers are a defence, but they have 
 this virtue only when they are coupled with man's serious 
 effort to mortify his passions. 
 
 There arejiotj3nly-A^rtuous _and vi cious__actiQns, ijulsin.- 
 fuihabjts, which are diseases of the soul, and virtuous habits 
 — habit being defined as a quality or form of the soul im- 
 pressed upon it, from which acts proceed without hesitation 
 or the necessity of reflection. The dof tri^ p f the f omp-ear- 
 A\pa] virtues js ult.JTnaleljz-EIa.tnpip; the definition of a vir- 
 tue as a mean between excess and defect is not only Aris- 
 totelian, but follows closely the lines of the Nicomachean 
 ethics; the theologian contributes his part in the shape of 
 proof-texts from the Koran. 
 
 Passing, now, to the more specifically ascetic part of the 
 work, it is remarked that it is an error to think that the 
 ascetic endeavour is the complete annihilation of the passions, 
 a thing impossible in itself, since concupiscence, for exam- 
 ple, is a power which God has implanted in man for a useful 
 
ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 465 
 
 purpose; it is necessary, necessitate natures. The aim of the 
 good, man is to^bring^thejmpulses of natureJotoJiiatia? 
 mon^whjchjsjthejust medium heWeen_gxcess and defect. 
 This perfect harmo nyisin some men, notably in Jesus, John 
 the Baptist, and alTtE^prophets, innate. Most men, how- 
 ever, can only acquire it by effort and discipline in the habit- 
 ual practice of the virtues, and by imitation of the conduct 
 of virtuous men. 
 
 The hind rances to the hjghfr l' ff> w*"'"" must first nf_a,U 
 be_overc nm e a r - e— ric he s, h ono urs^-sectarian .zeal^nd_.gn ! _ 
 Riches and honours must be put aside; sectarian zeal may 
 best be overcome by ignoring the particular tenets of the 
 schools and falling back on the simplicity of the fundamental 
 dogmas of Islam, "There is no god but Allah, and Moham- 
 med is his Apostle." It is not an essent ial pnnditinn nf gpirj- 
 t]iaj pprfprtinn that fl. man -slmnlH belong _£o_a,ny- theofogtcarl 
 
 nr jnriitir flrhm>l The remedy for sin is repentance, which 
 consists in abandoning all unrighteousness, firmly resolving 
 not to fall again into sin, contritely and sincerely mourning 
 over one's past life, restoring what he has taken unjustly 
 from others, and forgiving his enemies. 
 
 In this way, man has need of a guide. A spiritual director 
 who is a wise physician of souls knows how to recognise the 
 faults and shortcomings of those under his direction and 
 prescribe for each the suitable remedy. Man is in need, 
 also, of a stronghold, within which he is safe from the assaults 
 of the enemy, the fortress of solitude, silence, fasting, and 
 vigil. The spiritual exercises practised under direction in 
 the monastery and the stages of the mystic's progress are 
 set forth at some length. The author is not unaware of the 
 dangers of these methods, and particularly in the highest 
 stages of meditation, when they are undertaken by men un- 
 prepared, or disqualified by nature. InJhes e phapt , er , s, _as- 
 thxoughout-thfc. work, ps ychological insig hi^aad-seund-seBse 
 Tnask-4he-aulh,or's treatment. 
 
 This-brief ^mmaryn3Hhe-ccrrttents--of the-Ihya, in which 
 many things — for example, an admirable chapter on the edu- 
 
466 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 cation of children — are passed over altogether, may serve at 
 least to indicate to the reader the character of a work whi ch 
 perhaps_. m or e than any other singl e-jamt ing has influenced 
 religion^ thonghjjindlife in the Mohammedan world. 
 
 Al-Ghazali never concealed his conviction, that one oLthe 
 chief causes of the wjde-spread indifferejiceJjT, religion, not 
 to say scepticism, i n his time was t he fact that th ecanonigts. 
 with their controversial zeal about the minutise of law and 
 observance, and the scholastic theologians, absorbe d in tb^eir 
 endeavour to construct a rational dogmatics and defend^ it 
 against other schools, heretical or orthodox, nad-.JK>„vital 
 interest in religion., and were often wof ully lacking in piety. 
 His criticisms were sharply resented by the professors of law 
 and theology; he had made himself especially detested by 
 the philosophers; while the representatives of traditional or- 
 thodoxy, who would hear nothing besides Koran and Sunna, 
 regarded him with the suspicion which they entertained 
 against all thinkers. Especially in Spain, where at the be- 
 ginning of the twelfth century learning had almost all run 
 to canon law, his writings were formally condemned and 
 publicly burned. Jieloxme»-^e--^Kuz£jbially obngxious_±o 
 ac^ejiii(^-SGh«la«tieisfiir^whQsg_prestige they threaten. It 
 was not JoargT-iciffieyer, before al-Ghazah came to be hon- 
 «.Qurjed~as .a-pillac 9J. the faith and revered aiT ajial^.^mich 
 titles as "the Reviver of Religion," "Proof of Islam," were 
 bestowed upon him. Legends soon attached themselves to 
 his name, and it was said that he was for three days the 
 Kutb, that is, "the axis," or invisible head, of the Sufi hier- 
 archy in the world. The superstitious believed that he 
 knew the secret names of God, and by them was able to 
 conjure the Jinns and all the forces of the lower world; he 
 was reputed to have in his possession the book of Jafr, con- 
 taining mysterious wisdom which Ali had. handed down in 
 the line of the Imams, and which al-Ghazali alone, in his 
 old age, was able to interpret. 
 
 Down Jjo_ the ^laventh-jcentu-ry- theolpgjcJiad gained no 
 permanent foothold in the- West; ..the learned in Morocco 
 
ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 467 
 
 and Spain were almost exclusively devoted to juristic studies, 
 chiefly in the narrow school of Malik ibn Anas. The Muta- 
 zilite controversies had hardly an echo in that remote end 
 of the Moslem world, and consequently no need was felt of 
 a rational dogmatics such as al-Ashari and al-Maturidi had 
 created in the East. Sceptics, and that of a radical kind, 
 there had indeed been, but with them there could be no 
 compromise or accommodation. The first theologian of note. 
 i n Spain was Ibn Hazm (d. 1064 ). He himself had" been 
 trained as a jurist of theShafiite school, and for a short time 
 filled the office of vizier at Cordova, as his father had done 
 before him. After he lost this place he spent his life in 
 study, and in controversial writings which displayed so vio- 
 lent and intolerant a temper that a proverb couples the 
 tongue of Ibn Hazm with the sword of al-Hajjaj. 1 He ad- 
 dicted himself to the Zahirite school of law and exegesis, of 
 which he was the first exponent in the West. 
 
 It has been noted above that there were controversies 
 among the orthodox schools of Moslem law over the extent 
 to which inference and analogy might legitimately be em- 
 ployed in jurisprudence. In the third century Da'ud ibn 
 Ali, a Shafiite, pushing to extremes the opposition of _h ig 
 school to specula tive method i" jnrfcpi-nrlpiyp, became 
 the founder of a secession which is called Zahirite — we 
 might say the "Qhyinns-.S?"'^" . g rhnpl He recognised no 
 authority in law but the express terms of the Koran and 
 tradition taken in their obvious meaning, rejecting exten- 
 sion by analogy of cases, and inferences from the reason or 
 motive of the rule in the Koran or the traditions of the 
 Prophet, refusing to recognise behind the decision in a par- 
 ticular case the implicit enunciation of a general principle. 
 Further, he disallowed the acceptance of a rule of law upon 
 the authority of the founder of a school, and demanded that 
 the student, instead of blindly repeating and following the 
 ipse dixit of a fallible master, should make up his own mind 
 
 1 Governor of Irak under Abd al-Malik and Walid, proverbial for 
 his merciless severity in dealing with disloyalty (d. A. D. 714). 
 
468 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 about the meaning and application of the language of the 
 Koran and tradition. Jbnjiazm maintained_jhe__Zahjrite 
 principles with jreat en ergy not onT^nH EhejsphgjE-oi^H'is- 
 pnMence7T>ut Tn the sphere o f doctri ne. The theologians 
 corhTofFeven worse' at his hands thjin^&ejurists, ancTa^ 
 Ashari receiveslio more^rnefcyThan the Mutazilites; indeed, 
 it is u pon al-Ashari in particu lar that he poured out the 
 vials of his wrath. 
 
 TTiislmtipatny is due primarily to al-Ashari's employ- 
 ment of a rational dialectic in dogmatics, where he should 
 have confined himself to the letter of the Scripture and tra- 
 dition and the consensus of the companions of the Prophet. 
 Even where he bases his conclusions upon the Koran, he uses 
 a freedom of interpretation which in Ibn Hazm's view has 
 no other end than that of substituting the results of his own 
 reasoning for the plain sense of revelation. Again, in defin- 
 ing the meaning of words in the Koran, especially of religious 
 terms, al-Ashari, with the majority of Moslem theologians, 
 frequently had recourse to the usage of the old Arabic poets 
 and the language of the Bedouins accumulated by the lexi- 
 cographers, instead of making the specific usage of the 
 Scripture itself decisive. Thus certain theologians, who de- 
 fined faith (imari) as signifying merely assent to the truth 
 or professed acceptance of it, alleged in support of this view 
 examples from common speech, in which this is the usual 
 meaning of the word. Ibn Hazm indignantly protests 
 against this. What faith means in the Koran is to be 
 learned from the Koran itself; and even apart from revela- 
 tion, Mohammed doubtless knew Arabic quite as well as 
 any heathen poet or stray Bedouin. In the Koran, faith 
 includes not only knowledge of God in the heart and con- 
 fession with the tongue, but works accordant thereto. It is 
 fair to say that this perfectly sound principle of exegesis was 
 not a discovery of Ibn Hazm, but was recognised by many 
 Arabic philologists before as well as after him. 
 
 UBQl Lthe questij m-Qf-4be-dtvm^ttt^b«tes-IbxLHazm em- 
 phaticalb^rejected as a produc 
 
ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 469 
 
 without any foundation in Koran ™- tradition, al-Ashari's 
 doctrin e of ete rnal immajient— distiBetioas^a— the-divine 
 being. No less energetically did he reject the view of those 
 who held the theory of eternal attributes distinct from the 
 essence of God. It is at first blush surprising to find this 
 literalist at one with the Mutazilites in denying the exist- 
 ence of the attributes, but the grounds of his denial are quite 
 at the opposite pole from theirs; they are, in fact, the conse- 
 quence of his literalism. There is not a word in the Koran 
 or the traditions about any attributes of God. God in his 
 word does not talk about an attribute of knowledge; he calls 
 himself a knower, and so with all the rest. The terms from 
 which the theologians derive their doctrine of attributes are, 
 in truth, only names by which God has been pleased to 
 make himself known in his revelation. We are not war- 
 ranted in going beyond this and ascribing to God an attri- 
 bute of power, because he calls himself powerful, or life, 
 because he calls himself living. In this fashion Ibn Hazm 
 cuts the ground from under the whole discussion, and dis- 
 misses it as not only futile, but presumptuous and almost 
 blasphemous. 
 
 ^pn+hpE-pfti nt in which he assails al-Asnar i most, violently 
 is_th^-doa trinp of the Word of God . The Asharites taught 
 that the word of God is an essential attribute, eternal, un- 
 created, distinct from God, and different from God's knowl- 
 edge, and that it is one, sole, and indivisible — "God has 
 only one Word." Ibn Hazm brands this as pure infidelity: 
 "We will ask them, Is the Koran the word of God, or not? 
 If they say, No, they are, according to the unanimous teach- 
 ing of all Moslems, unbelievers. If they say, Yes, we will 
 ask them further, Is this word of God the Koran which is 
 recited in the mosques, written in manuscripts, and learned 
 by heart? If they say, No, they are again, according to 
 the unanimous teaching of all Moslems, unbelievers. If 
 they say Yes, they contradict their own false doctrine." 
 
 It might be imagined that an interpreter who . insists so 
 stren uously that the w ord of God shall be taken in its plain 
 
470 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 _S£ose would be found in the ranks of the anthropomorphists, 
 who in this matter certainly have the letter of the Koran 
 on their side. Far from it! Anthropomorphism is as re- 
 pugnant to Ibn Hazm as to the Mutazilites; but he does 
 not, like the rationalists, dispose of the hands and face and 
 other members of God in the Koran as figures of speech; he 
 undertakes by dictionary and grammar to prove that in the 
 
 : passages under dispute the words have a literal meaning 
 
 I altogether different from that in which the reader offhand 
 
 ' takes them. 
 
 The tr iumph of the Ash aritp dnflmg.tipf) in + np "Vypst.Jga*S-a. 
 fPS" 1t, of the conqu ests of the Alm nh prl Hynfl .st.y under Abd 
 al-Mum in and his successors . The name of this dynasty is 
 a^pahish — corruption of the Arabic, al-Mowahhid, "Uni- 
 tarian," a party, or sect, which made its creed and its battle- 
 cry the Tauhid, the assertion of *"" unity nf OnH The 
 fo under of this movement- was Jbj3_Iuma£t, a Berber of the 
 Masmudah tribe. He had studied in the East under Asha- 
 rite teachers; and although the legends which bring him 
 into personal connection with al-Ghazali are more than 
 improbable, the vnfljjpnrp nf fl.1- Oha,7a,li'q work s i s. upques - 
 tiauabJ e - On his return to Morocco he found his first ta sk 
 1i^ a. refnrma.t t jnn nf the life nf his countrym en. cJLwhicJl, to 
 tell the truth, there was abundant np^ d. The Mohamme- 
 danism of the Berbers was at best superficial; the laws of 
 the Koran against intoxicating drinks were a dead letter; 
 swine roamed the streets of the towns, and their flesh was 
 eaten without scruple. Other customs of theirs were in 
 equally plain violation of Mohammedan law. Among the 
 ruling Almoravids the men habitually kept their faces care- 
 fully covered, while the women went unveiled, in disregard 
 of the law which forbade one sex dressing like the other. 
 Nor was he better satisfied with the religious notions 
 of his countrymen. The jurists of the prevalent Mal- 
 ikite school insisted on the literal sense of the anthropomor- 
 phic expressions in the Koran and tradition, and the cau- 
 tionary phrase, "in some inscrutable manner," 1 with which 
 
 1 "Without thinking how"; see above, p. 424. 
 
OETHODOX THEOLOGY 471 
 
 they were accustomed to qualify their assertions made lit- 
 tle impression on the popular imagination, which was grossly 
 materialistic. Ag ainst these "corporealists" IhnJ Ikmaj* 
 mad e war without quarter . They were, in his eyes, infidels, 
 and apostates from Islam. The watchword Touted meant 
 for him, as it had done for the Mutazilites, not merely the 
 unity of God, but his incorporeality, and in the creed which 
 he drew up, and to which he required the confession of his 
 followers, this is a fundamental article. 1 
 
 Qn the nups tk>ft-o£--the-attr Jbutes Ibn Tnma.rt Hppa rts 
 from the position of al-Ashari and al-Ghazali, and agrees 
 wi th Th n Harm , under whose influence on this point he 
 manifestly stands, in denying the existence of eternal distinc- 
 tions in the essence of the godhead. Like Ibn Hazm — and 
 like al-Ghazali, though for a different reason — he was most 
 hasiile^te-4he_jjirists, with their endless casuistry and super- 
 fcetation of "opinions," to the neglect of both the sources 
 of law and its principles. Authority lay only in the Koran, 
 the authentic traditions of the Prophet, and the consensus 
 of the companions of the Prophet. 2 
 
 Before long, however, the reformer took a higher flight. 
 He g ame to believe h imself the Ma.lirli, .gent by God to , 
 restore <\pcs\(\py\i. Islam, and Ur-fiJL the worlcf with nghteous- 
 ,negs_as now it is filled with iniquity, in preparation for the 
 hour of God's judgment. 3 He made a collection of tradi- 
 tions concerning the signs of the last times and the charac- 
 ter and work of the Mahdi, including certain alleged sayings 
 of the Prophet which praised the people of the West and 
 foretold the coming of the reformer from among them. It 
 had long been a part of the common tradition that the 
 Mahdi would have the same name and patronymic as the 
 Prophet, Mohammed ibn Abdallah. So small a matter did 
 not stand in Ibn Tumart's way; he simply assumed these 
 
 1 For this creed see Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen 
 Gesellschaft, vol. XLI, pp. 72 /. 
 
 2 Not the consensus of the Moslem world, expressed in the agree- 
 ment of the heads of schools, as in the ordinary interpretation of the 
 principle. 
 
 3 See above, p. 434. 
 
472 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 names, and found more easy credence because it was noth- 
 ing uncommon for a Berber to have an Arabic name as well 
 as a more familiar one in his native tongue. A genealogy 
 was also worked out in which his lineage was traced back 
 to Ali and Fatima. 
 
 The Shiite doctrine that the Mahdi was an infallible 
 Imam, the last in a succession that began with Adam, was 
 not unfamiliar in Morocco, where a Shiite dynasty had 
 ruled for nearly two centuries. 1 _ Ibn Tum art's second con- 
 fession of faith was an Imam ite creed, in wEich the mission^ 
 flridWt horiTy of^trTeTrnlmTwere set fortE~in a mosfpositTve 
 flnH circu mstantial manner. He didncTTiaTrre-4rimself in 
 it, but every trait in the" description tallied so well with 
 his person that it had its intended effect when Abd al- 
 Mumin and ten of his fellow disciples saluted him: "These 
 signs and characteristics are to be found in thee alone. Thou 
 art the Mahdi!" 2 
 
 eforfi- long he had a laxge_ following among the Berbers, 
 with whom he had all the more succe^sHbeea^rse^luTreligious 
 deliverances, his confessions of faith and exhortations, were 
 made in their own tongue; he even introduced the innova- 
 tion of causing the call to prayer to be made from the min- 
 arets of the mosques in Berber instead of Arabic. Presently 
 he summoned the believers to a Holy War against the ruling 
 dynasty of the Almoravids (al-Murabit), 3 whom, for their 
 false ideas of a corporeal God and their neglect of the reli- 
 gious law of Islam, he denounced as infidels, and their rulers 
 as Antichrists. The first encounters went against the 
 Mowahhids, and Ibn Tumart died (1128) without having 
 seen the triumph of his cause. 
 
 Ahd-Bj-Mnmin^r^k "p *" P imfinishej_ jynrV 1 and-io-^tip 
 jhir ty-three years of his rule conquered Morocco_and--all 
 MosTenTSpjijn^^ 
 
 1 A. D. 788-985. 
 
 2 Compare Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi, Mark 8, 27-29. 
 
 3 The name signified originally men who picket their horses on the 
 frontier, that is to say, "Champions of the Faith." 
 
ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 473 
 
 and subjected, one after another, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, 
 thus bringing all North Africa from the frontier of Egypt to 
 the Atlantic under his sway. Abd al-Mumin had been a 
 student of theology before he became the most famous 
 general of his time, and his first successors, especially Man- 
 sur, the third of the line, were eminently learned in the 
 science of tradition. Mansur is said to have made an auto 
 da ft; of the law-books; cases should be decided by direct 
 appeal to the corpus of tradition, not by the opinions of the 
 jurisconsults. Although the triumph of the Almohads was 
 the triumph of a purer and a more spiritual theology, it 
 does not appear that theological studies flourished much 
 under their rule. Their times are made illustrious in phi- 
 losophy by the names of Ibn Bajja, Ibn Tofail, Averroes, and 
 of one of the greatest of the mystics, Ibn Arabi; but by no 
 great theologian. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 
 
 Tfefl f-Tit.ials nf lUrvaloTv. Ba]jof — -Worship — The Fast of Ramadan — 
 Pilgrimage to Mecca ,— Surv.5 als -fif Pag anism — Typrship of Sa ints 
 — ^ogtriae- oi'—^ftlwiiQri— Ethjsa_ ajgcL _Morals — TjieJSmiljr — 
 Slavery— Jnjiaic^iirig.,XJrinis—!'Eiety — DervisF Orders. 
 
 The obligations of the Moslem were early summed up — 
 probably during Mohammed's years at Medina — under five 
 heads: The Profession of Faith, Worship, the Payment of 
 Poor-Rates, the Fast of Ramadan, and the Pilgrimage to 
 Mecca. The simple Profession of Faith is: "I bear witness 
 that there is no god but Allah (the one true God), and that 
 Mohammed is the Apostle of God." The first article, the 
 confession of faith in the one God, is, in works on Moslem 
 theology and books intended for the religious instruction of 
 laymen, understood to include belief in the teachings of the 
 Koran and traditions concerning the angels, the prophets 
 and saints, the Scriptures, and the other life. In all these 
 topics especial prominence is given to the points which had 
 been denied or disputed in the period of the great contro- 
 versies. It is comnioj2ly_helc^toJbe incumbent on, every 
 Moslem-to-be. -acquainted with -the fundamental articles- of 
 belief „as they_ are contained in _the creeds, and with the 
 grmmd&Jiluwhich..they are believed. A mere implicit faith, 
 which accepts these doctrines as a whole uporTauthority, 
 without knowing in particular what they are or why they 
 are held, is.nci.mBELcient*. This was the position of- al-Ashari, 
 and may be regarded as an integral part of or thodo xy. 
 Some, like Ibn Arabi and al-Sanusi, went so far" as to hold 
 that blind acceptance of the articles of belief without know- 
 ing the rational proof of them is unbelief. 
 
 474 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 475 
 
 On the existence and attr ibutes of God it is sufficient to 
 refer to what has already been said of the teaching of al- 
 Ashari and al-Ghazali. 1 S ix attributes^ are commonly enu- 
 merated; namely, life, knowledge. h£aring,_sight, _will, and 
 Speech, which are inherent in the divine essence, eternal, and 
 unchangeable. The . doctrine of predes tination, also, and 
 of the i m mediate c reation of men's actions.-hy— God, agrees 
 with that of the theologians named: "Good and evil 2 occur 
 by his predestination, by his will, and by his operation." 
 The angels, in various ranks and with diverse functions, are 
 always obedient to God's will; they neither eat nor drink, 
 and are without sex. Among them Gabriel, the angel of 
 revelation, Azrail, who receives the souls of men at death, 
 and Israfll, who is to sound the trumpet on the day of resur- 
 rection, are particularly named. 
 
 From age to. .age. God- has had bis .prophets among men, 
 ';' the—first-Xxf- whom- -was- Adam and ..the last_ Mohammed. 
 Among the rest, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus hold the high- 
 est rank. Prophets have appeared not only among Jews 
 and Christians, but among many other peoples; indeed, 
 every nation has hadjts .prophet. To some of these proph- 
 ets scriptures have been sent down by the hand of Gabriel : 
 the Pentateuch to Moses, the Psalter to David, the Gospel 
 to Jesus, and other books to other prophets, each for his 
 own people. MohammpH w as spnt as a praph£Lta all men, 
 and— ta_ the- demons. 3 The Koran_is the fin^Lxe-velatiori, 
 and_shall ahidejm^i^he_end_pf..the_worJd. 
 
 The rationafistsln their time had allegorised away the 
 whole eschatology of the Koran and tradition; and partly 
 for this reason, and partly because the spontaneous rational- 
 ism of the human mind revived their objections, the several 
 features of this eschatology are defined as obligatory beliefs: 
 the inquisition at the tomb, when the angels Munkar and 
 Naklr will question the dead about their God, their prophet, 
 their religion, and their Kibla; 4 the signs of the last days— 
 
 1 See above, p. 475. 2 Moral as well as physical. 3 Jinns. 
 
 4 The place toward which their face was turned in prayer. 
 
476 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 the appearance of Antichrist, 1 the descent from heaven of 
 the prophet Jesus, who will kill the Antichrist and be con- 
 verted to Islam; the appearance of the Mahdi, of the family 
 of the Prophet, who will join Jesus; the outbreak of Gog and 
 Magog and the Beast of the Earth; the rising of the sun in 
 the west, and the like — are specified in detail; 2 furthermore, 
 the weighing in a balance of each man's good and evil deeds; 
 the bridge stretched over hell, which for the righteous is a 
 broad highway, while for the wicked it is narrower than the 
 edge of a sword; the ponds of the prophets, Mohammed's 
 being the largest of all, at which believers shall quench their 
 thirst, each with his individual drinking-cup, before enter- 
 ing Paradise; Paradise itself, whose soil is musk and the 
 bricks of its buildings gold and silver, where the saved 
 shall have for a wish whatever kind of food and drink they 
 desire, while unbelieving men and demons will ever abide in 
 hell, tormented by huge serpents and scorpions, by fire and 
 boiling water, and when their bodies are burned up and re- 
 duced to coals, God will create them a new body to suffer 
 more torment. 
 
 _M^ohajnjaied--is-f-o-r- orthodox— M-oslems__nQ _t only the_ last 
 and greatest of the. prophets, J)ut the, mos t excellent of all 
 created beings. The tendency which appears early in the 
 traditions to match and surpass what the Christians claimed 
 for Jesus exalted Mohammed to inerrancy and sinlessness. 
 Although Mohammed himself, when challenged by his 
 scoffing countrymen to prove his assertions by a miracle, 
 not only refused to gratify the demand of the unbelieving 
 generation for a sign, but declared that he had no miracu- 
 lous powers, appealing to the "signs" of the Koran itself, 
 the words of God given him from heaven, as the only and 
 conclusive miracle, his followers soon attributed to him 
 many and amazing miracles as proof of his prophetic office. 
 Among' these miracles in the traditions are the making of 
 
 1 Al-Dajjal. 
 
 1 The details are, in great part, Talmudic or Zoroastrian, or both. 
 See Vol. I, pp. 398 /.; II, p. 75. 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 477 
 
 the sun stand still, in imitation of Joshua; making water 
 flow, like Moses; and the multiplication of food and drink 
 for his hungry and thirsty followers, like the feeding of the 
 thousands in the Gospels. Moslem doctrine distinguishes 
 the evidential miracles of the prophets, which they work to 
 convince men of their mission, from the miracles of the 
 saints, which God works for them, or through them, out of 
 his special favour to them. Tkejm^ercjssjon of the Prophet 
 jor so me believers at the day of resurrection, and the accep-_ 
 tancjfofjffiis intercession hy .God is also a -belief incumbent 
 upoji_aILMoslems. 
 
 The significant name for worship in Islam is "prayer," 
 and it may be said that ritual pray er constitutes the p ublic. 
 and private worship of JMojiammedans. The canonical 
 .hours, which were not fixed until some time after Moham- 
 med's death, are five; namely, at dawn or just before sunrise, 
 at noon, before sunset, just after sunset, and after dark. 
 Prayer should be said in a state of ceremonial purity, and is 
 therefore preceded by ablutions in which the face, the hands 
 and forearms, and the feet and ankles are washed in a man- 
 ner fixed in general by tradition, but with minor variations 
 in the different rites. In the absence of water, sand or 
 dust may be used, as in Jewish law. The^ashing_of-4he 
 whole body is required as a purification after numerous 
 ceremonial defilements. 1 
 
 Injjrayer the worshipper faces. tawarcLMecca, the direc- 
 tion of which is indicated in all the mosques by a niche in 
 the wall. The prayers consist stL prescribed ejaculations of 
 praise, to God,, petitions, and the recital of parts of the 
 Koran r always including the first Sura, which from its fre- 
 quent repetition is sometimes called by Western writers the 
 Lord's Prayer of Islam: — "Praise to God, the Lord of the 
 Worlds, al-Rahman, 2 the Merciful, the King of the Judgment 
 
 1 Sexual functions and contact with death are the chief of these, as 
 in Judaism and Zoroastrianism. 
 
 2 The name al-Rahman is a Hebrew and Aramaic name of God in 
 common use among the Jews, from whom, directly or indirectly, Mo- 
 hammed got it. It is not an Arabic word, and Mohammed conjoins 
 
478 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Day ! We worship thee, and implore thine aid. Guide us 
 in the straight path, the path of those on whom thou hast 
 bestowed thy grace, not of those on whom thine anger rests, 
 nor those who go astray." 
 
 The recitationo^_thejrajers_in_the_mosq-ue^ or elsewhere 
 is accompanied -by a^xed -sueeess-ion- ni -genuflexions and 
 prostrations, which vary slightly in. the different. rites.- The 
 time of prayer is announced by a crier from the tower, or 
 minaret, of the mosque; the prayers may be performed in 
 any place where the Moslem happens to be, though it is 
 preferable to make them in the mosque. On Friday at 
 noon the men of a city are required by law to convene in 
 the principal mosque of the place to recite their prayers in 
 unison, under the direction of a leader (imam). The Friday 
 assembly usually includes, besides the congregational pray- 
 ers, a kind of sermon, for which, however, the congregation 
 is not required to remain. Apart from the obligation ol.at- 
 
 -tenrli'ngr t pe noon pravers. Friday i s not in aUV SP.Tl.SP, fl^holv 
 
 day ; unlike the Sabbath of the Jews or the Lord's Day of 
 the Christians, no restriction whatever is put upon either 
 work or play. 
 
 The .p oor-rat es, which were originall y, as their name zakat 
 indicates, voluntary chari ty, by which the Moslems whom 
 God had blessed with this world's goods relieved the neces- 
 sity of their poorer brethren, .a gon developed into a system 
 .of taxati on, not only for the benefit of the poor, bu t for the 
 co mmon purposes of the communi ty, such as the building 
 of mosques. They were then prescribed in amount, and 
 collected by officials; but in modern times the payment of 
 them is in most countries left to the conscience of believers. 
 
 As has been said above, Mohammed originally made but 
 one obligatory fast-day in the year, corresponding with the 
 Jewish Day of Atonement, but after the momentous breach 
 with the Jews he put in place of it a ia.st through the, eptirp 
 
 with it an Arabic adjective rahim, in the meaning tender-hearted, 
 merciful, compassionate. Several other expressions of the prayer are 
 apparently drawn from the phraseology of Jewish prayers. 
 
CEEED, WORSHIP, MORALS 479 
 
 jao ath of Ramadan , perhaps in imitation of the Lenten fast 
 of the Oriental Christians. -Turing tlie y^»i^ n f t , n j n rnnn th 
 Moslems are required to nhspr ve a. complete fast, from sim.- 
 rise to sunset, abstaining not only from food and drink, but 
 even from such alleviation of hunger and thirst as is afforded 
 by smoking. It is the custom, therefore, to take a meal 
 before sunrise and a fuller one after sunset. Indifferent 
 Moslems not infrequently spend the night making up for 
 the abstinences of the day; but piety requires that the sen- 
 timent of the fasting day should prevail in the night also, 
 which, so far as it is not given to sleep, should be passed in 
 prayer and the recitation of the Koran, or in godly conver- 
 sation. The Moslem calendar, since Mohammed abolished 
 the rude intercalation of the heathen Arabs, has a year of 
 twelve lunar months (354/5 days), and consequently the 
 months rotate through the solar year three times in a cen- 
 tury. When Ramadan falls in summer it is no inconsider- 
 able infliction; yet the fast is pretty strictly observed . 
 
 When Mohammed made the pil grimage to Me cca, nhliga- 
 tory nn eyery Mnnlpm he did not foresee the expansion of 
 the Moslem world. He meant the pilgrimage to be an 
 annual observance, taking the place of the pagan Hajj and 
 the fairs in the neighbourhood of Mecca. The obligation is 
 nowJlfikL to bo □atioflod if a - maajnakes . the pilgrimage aace 
 in his lif e, though it is correspondingly meritorious to make 
 nToftener. Distance and expense, however, render it im- 
 possible for the majority to make the pilgrimage at all; and 
 the J? w hnnk* gcnm.mn Ha.tp. the duty to the . f ajclijy.-ina«y 
 r,?rrmptinmi. 
 
 ' TV "> ritffl of the pilg^matrp wfTf adopted rnmbined. and 
 ir^rpr^rgtt.rl in T s la.m t from the ceremonies of p agan Ararx 
 ffts j;jva.k. Mohammed changed the forms only so far as was 
 necessary to dissociate them from the worship of the old 
 gods, without attempting to substitute a significant connec- 
 tion with the new religion. These ceremonies are of diverse 
 kinds and are performed at different places in Mecca and 
 outside of it. 
 
480 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 The centre of jheseritg s in Mecca js the TTaahfya cubical 
 structure of roughly thirty to forty feet in its three dimen- 
 sions. In its southeast corner, built in at a height where it 
 can conveniently be touched by the worshippers, is the 
 famous black stone, a span long, in a silver mounting which 
 holds together the fragments into which it was broken when 
 the Kaaba was burned during the siege of the city by the 
 armies of the Caliph Yezid in the year 683. The Kaaba itself 
 contains a single windowless room, access to which is through 
 a door several feet above the ground. The whole building, 
 roof and sides, has a covering of black brocade, renewed 
 every year, with a broad border on which are embroidered 
 in gold texts from the Koran. A few steps away from the 
 corner in which is the black stone is the well Zemzem, which 
 is believed to be the water that God showed Hagar when 
 Ishmael was dying of thirst in the wilderness. 1 A third 
 holy object in this area is the so-called Makam Ibrahim, by 
 which is now understood the stone that Abraham stood on 
 while he was building the Kaaba. 
 
 In the Hajj, as it is usually performed by pilgrims from a 
 distance, two ceremonies of independent origin are com- 
 bined. Of the first of these the Kaaba is the centre, while 
 the rites of the second group take place outside the city. 
 The first, which may also be performed by itself in ful- 
 filment of a vow or otherwise, is called the Umrah. The 
 ceremonies begin when the worshipper arrives at the boun- 
 dary of the Haram, or sacred territory, which surrounds 
 Mecca on all sides. To perform the Umrah, therefore, a 
 resident of Mecca or a temporary sojourner in the city must 
 first go outside this limit. At the boundary he lays aside 
 his ordinary dress, and assumes the Ihram, a garb consist- 
 ing of two pieces, one of which is hung around the loins, the 
 other thrown over the shoulders. In all probability this is 
 merely ancient Arab costume perpetuated, as in many other 
 cases, in a religious ceremony. Thus attired, the pilgrim 
 makes his way to the open space surrounding the Kaaba, 
 1 Genesis, 21, 19. 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 481 
 
 shouting at the top of his lungs the word Labbaika ! which 
 is explained to mean: "At thy service, God!" 1 Then, 
 running to the right, he makes the circuit of the Holy House 
 seven times, kissing or touching with his hand the corner 
 where the sacred stone is, and the southwest corner, in which 
 there is another, less holy, sacred stone. His next business 
 is to perform the race between Safa and Merwa, two slight 
 elevations on opposite sides of the valley about five hundred 
 yards apart. This course, also, he traverses seven times; 
 across the bottom of the valley, between two posts set up as 
 markers, he runs with all his might. The exercise begins at 
 Safa, not far from the Kaaba, and ends at the same point. 
 This completes the religious exercises of the Umrah, which 
 may be performed at any time of the year. 
 
 In distinction from this, the Hajj ceremonies proper are 
 confined to the pilgrimage month, Dhu al-Hijja. When the 
 pilgrim enters the sacred territory he puts on the pilgrim 
 garb already described, which he wears until the completion 
 of the ceremonies. During this time he must not shave nor 
 cut his hair; he may not take animal life of any kind, 2 and 
 must abstain from commerce with women. On the eighth 
 of the month in the afternoon the pilgrims leave Mecca and 
 go out to Arafat, a hill, or ridge of hills, a short distance 
 outside the sacred territory to the east, on the road from 
 Mecca to Taif, where they encamp for the night. The night 
 should properly be spent in devotion; but for those who are 
 not devotionally inclined improvised coffee-houses furnish 
 opportunities of secular relaxation. During the morning of 
 the ninth the pilgrims wander about as they please; at noon, 
 if so disposed, they may hear a sermon. Later in the after- 
 noon occurs the great event for which they are gathered; it 
 consists simply in standing still, shouting Labbaika! and 
 reciting certain texts from the pilgrim manual. 3 The mo- 
 
 1 The meaning of the word and the act are unknown. 
 
 2 Except the sacrificial victims. 
 
 3 In heathen times the obligatory standing and shouting were doubt- 
 less the accompaniment of a sacrifice. 
 
482 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 raent the sun has set, the assembly breaks up, and all start 
 at a rush toward Mecca, to the first halting-place, Mudalifa. 
 The essential part of the performance is to run at top speed. 
 At Mudalifa the night prayers are said, and the pilgrims 
 spend the night in vigil in the open air. Before sunrise, by 
 torchlight, there is another obligatory stand in front of the 
 mosque, and before the sun is really up another rush is 
 started to Mina. The day of Mina is the day of the pilgrim 
 sacrifices. Four distinct ceremonies fall on this day. At 
 the end of the valley there is a pile on which every pilgrim 
 throws seven stones, supposedly stoning the devil. Then a 
 victim, which has been marked for sacrifice ever since enter- 
 ing the sacred territory, is slaughtered. Part of the flesh 
 furnishes a feast for the worshippers, the remainder is dried 
 for subsequent use or given to the poor. When the feast 
 is over the pilgrims shave and lay aside their antique garb. 
 This is evidently the proper ending of the rites; the pilgrim 
 has formally returned from sacred to secular state. In fact, 
 however, there follows a return rush from Mina to Mecca, 
 with a circuit of the Kaaba, and the running between Safa 
 and Merwa — ceremonies properly belonging to the Umrah 
 — after which most of the pilgrims return to Mina and en- 
 camp there, sometimes remaining for a day or two, but with 
 no other religious duties than to throw a stone daily on the 
 devil's piles. 
 
 The pilgrimage brings to Mecca large numbers of people 
 — estimates vary from 50,000 to 70,000 annually — from all 
 parts of the Moslem world. Formerly almost all made the 
 long journey in caravans, starting from Damascus or from 
 Cairo. Many, especially from India and Persia, but also 
 from Egypt, now travel by steamer to Jidda, the port of 
 Mecca on the Red Sea, about thirty miles from the Holy 
 City. A Turkish railroad has also been built from Damascus 
 to Medina, parallel to the line of the old pilgrim road, and 
 many pilgrims from Syria take this more comfortable, and 
 therefore presumably less meritorious, way of fulfilling their 
 religious duty. 
 
m« 
 
 CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 483 
 
 ?he coiu^£]aiQn-ef^^-ATO^w-4« ^T^arn ^ H|R jg^rJMEtl 
 with_ great rapidity a nd ..■Corce saonding siipfirfinia.lit.y- It 
 was a long time..b.efore the observ ances of the new religion 
 w ere thoroughly esta blished amo ng them, not t o speak_ pj 
 JiS-ldeap- DestructioiToTfliFobjects of pagan worship, the 
 holy trees and standing stones, was easily accomplished, 
 but this outward abolition of heathenism. Hjd j .pt ^irpate- 
 ths^gUefs OT even the practices w hich iindeiJ.ay-A.i ifl k-pa,g afl _ 
 ism. Among the Bedouins in particular, both in Arabia 
 and in the border-lands, the religion of the J ahiliyy a— the 
 "Times of Barbarism" — still survives essentially unchanged, 
 with only a thin layer of Mohammedanism superposed upon 
 the depths of native superstition. Sacrifices are still offered 
 at ancient holy places, and offerings to the dead are made 
 at the tombs of kinsmen or of the mythical ancestors of 
 tribes and clans. 
 
 Nojl^_the_situation materially d ifferent among jthe peas-^ 
 ajrts_cJLMD^lem_cauatriss. In Syria, for example, sacred 
 trees are still decorated with rags torn from the garments of 
 the worshippers, miraculous powers are ascribed to the holy 
 waters of sacred wells and springs, the hilltops' which were 
 the "high places" of the ancient Canaanites are still places 
 of worship, where Moslems, Jews, and Christians together 
 perpetuate religions which are immemorially older than all 
 of them; and what is true of Syria is true, mutatis mutandis, 
 of all other parts of the Moslem world, such as India or 
 North Africa. The_rgl iginns which Islam— supplanted-4*^e 
 Qn in Islam unchanged and. unabashed. The most-fre- 
 quented places of worship in most countries are the shrines 
 of the Welis, the tombs or cenotaphs of holy men and women. 
 In a large part of the Mohammedan world Christian saint- 
 worship preceded Moslem saint-worship, and was adopted 
 by the Mohammedans as the shrines of pagan gods and 
 heroes had been earlier appropriated for Christian saints 
 and martyrs. One not insignificant difference is, however, 
 to be observed : the worship of saints has never found a place 
 in the mosque corresponding to that which it has in Chris- 
 
484 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 tian churches, even when the mosque is erected in memory 
 and honour of a saint. 
 
 The shrinej|[_jm|_jscjga£±ime&.-4h^_^*t^^ 
 heroes of the M osl em faith. - -The tomb of Mohammed in 
 Medina was naturally from the first an object of venera- 
 tion to the Moslems. The holiest places of the Shiites are 
 the tomb of Husein at Kerbela and that of Ali al-Rida, the 
 eighth Imam, at Meshed, both of them tombs of martyrs. 
 Great doctors of the law, like Ahmed ibn Hanbal, multitudes 
 of Sufi saints, some of them famous in the literature of mys- 
 ticism, others of only local repute, the founders of Dervish 
 orders and their eminent successors, have contributed their 
 quota to the multitude of shrines. Many, however, are 
 ancient pagan places of worship legitimised in Islam by a 
 legend which makes them the burial-places of a Weli. 
 
 In orthodox theory the saints are invoked, in virtue of 
 their merits, to intercede with God for the blessings which 
 the worshippers seek at their shrines. In fact, they are for 
 the vast majority of Moslems local divinities, to whom sac- 
 rifice is offered and prayer made, whose aid is sought to 
 heal the sick, to give children to barren women, to prosper 
 men in all their various enterprises. Many of them have 
 only a local celebrity; to others throngs gather from all the 
 region at certain festival seasons; to some pilgrimages are 
 made even from distant parts. Thousands thus resort to 
 Meshed and to Kerbela, and to Tanta in Egypt, where the 
 feast has to this day preserved features of Egyptian religion 
 as it was described by Herodotus. 
 
 The voluminous Moslem hagiology is full of the miracles 
 wrought by the saints in their lifetime and miraculous help 
 and deliverance given to worshippers at their tombs. The 
 theologians made a distinction even in name between the 
 miracles of the prophets, which are proofs of their divine 
 mission, and the miracles of the saints, 1 which are wrought 
 by God for the saints as tokens of peculiar favour, but to 
 
 1 Miracles of the prophets are ayat, "signs"; those of the saints karO,- 
 mat, "tokens of favour," 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 485 
 
 which no evidential value attaches. Since there are no 
 more prophets, the world at large is concerned only with 
 the miracles of the saints. 
 
 Relics have neve r had tb p rfhVinns. importnnpo m Jslatn 
 wnirh ttipy Vigyp in rnrj^janjty They are relativ ely fe w; 
 yenera.tpH fnr tnfjr hfctpnVa.l asKnrja,tir>n — real or fictitious 
 — with men of mark in the history of the religion; and this 
 reverence has usually a purely private character. The 
 sword Dhu al-Fakar, which the Prophet presented to Ali, 
 was one of the treasures of the Abbasid caliphs. In the 
 fourth century the mosque in Hebron boasted of the posses- 
 sion of a genuine shoe of the Prophet, and several other 
 shoes of the Prophet were shown in other places; there are 
 numerous supposed autographs of the Prophet and of the 
 first caliphs. Hairs from Mohammed's beard were particu- 
 larly prized, and were worn as amulets. In India the ven- 
 eration of relics and their use as amulets seems to have been 
 particularly developed, in imitation and rivalry of native 
 practice, and there it has even found a place in the public 
 cultus of the mosques. 
 
 Tha^w hatever subtle distinctions the theologians might 
 make, the worship of the saints was in reality a relapse into 
 pol ytheism was plainly seen by_th&-Mutazilites^and in their 
 zeal for the unity of God they t herefore condemned, Jt 
 without c cjPp rnTr "' gp In the eyes of the orthodox, how- 
 ever, the condemnation of these rationalists was rather a 
 commendation; and it is significant that the founders of 
 Moslem dogmatic theology from al-Ashari to al-Ghazali, as 
 well as the philosopher Avicenna, took it upon them to 
 defend the miracles of the saints and the benefits to be 
 gained by worship at their shrines and pilgrimages to them. 
 On the other hand, some who are deservedly accounted 
 the most conservative of conservatives were outspoken 
 against both the worship and the miracles. Among these 
 was Ibn Teimiyya, who declared that a pilgrimage to the 
 tomb of Mohammed or the other prophets and saints is a 
 "pilgrimage of rebellion," in defiance of the commandment 
 
486 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 of God; and it is well-known that the great puritan reaction 
 in Islam in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which 
 we know by the name of the Wahhabis, was peculiarly vio- 
 lent against the tombs of the Welis and other intrusions of 
 polytheism into Islam. Agai^*- a11 g"fh pffnrt^ tn rp.st.nre 
 j-Vip original ..purity_of . monotheistie,_faitri anH practice, -the 
 lon g-established univer saLfiUgtom prevailed- Ibn Teimiyya 
 had to sit in prison a long time for his heresy on this point; 
 the Wahhabi movement never exerted much influence out- 
 side of Arabia, and in Arabia itself is now limited to a small 
 region and has lost its iconoclastic fury. 
 
 Mohammedanism Jias-_alsxi_Jts_lixirig ..saints, to whom 
 miraculo us powe rs are^attoibuted^ and who jare objects- of 
 superstitious veneration. Emment^aS-PetJcs..ancL jn y stj cs — 
 Sufis and "Dervishes — who nave attained in this life to that 
 intimate union with God which for the common apprehen- 
 sion is hardly to be distinguished from deification, have al- 
 ways been thus regarded by many. The Shia Imams, even 
 among the least extravagant sects, have in them a scintilla 
 of divinity which sets them quite apart from common hu- 
 manity; while the ultra-Shiites see in the Imams incarna- 
 tions of the godhead, such as in our own time Baha Allah 
 was to his followers. In India the Moslem Pirs, both among 
 the Shiites and the Sunnites, occupy a place and exercise an 
 authority quite like that of the Hindu Gurus, and many 
 would think that a man had a poor chance of salvation who 
 did not put himself completely under the direction of such 
 a spiritual guide. In Morocco and Algiers the marabout 
 (murabit) is the Mohammedan successor to the holy men, or 
 living gods, of Berber heathenism; they are accorded little 
 less than divine honours while they live, and their tombs 
 become shrines of pilgrimage after their death, 
 ^sjn the Moslem doctrine of salvation, man is not saved by 
 w.oik^~eitheF ritual and ceremonial or moral", but by faith; 
 and faith itselLis the -work -oLGod by his electing, disposing^ 
 and preserving- grace, without which nojnaa.can believe 
 nto salvation. As we have seen above, there were early" 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 487 
 
 and long-continued controversies among Moslem theologians 
 concerning the nature of saving faith: Should faith be 
 understood as creed, the profession of the two great articles, 
 "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is the Apostle 
 of God"? Or does it include sincere and firm conviction 
 in the heart of the truth of this profession? And finally, 
 must a genuine and efficacious faith bring forth its proper 
 fruit in a life of obedience to the law of God as revealed in 
 his word and in the teaching and example of the Prophet? 
 Differences in regard to the definition of the term "faith" 
 and its relation to "Islam" still exist; but for the substance 
 of the matter Mffisle.m^orthodojg'- -agrees- that true -faith 
 should be accompanied by_ works, though it. would -hardly 
 s ay tha t JKOjks .are a_conditian of -salvation. It is sinful pre- 
 sumption to judge that a man who professes Islam will at 
 his death be sent to hell because his life is in flagrant viola- 
 tion of the religious law and common morality. Consist- 
 ently, it is held to be no less presumptuous to predict that 
 the Moslem most conspicuous for knowledge of his religion, 
 most scrupulous in the fulfilment of its obligations, and 
 most eminent in all the virtues of life, will go to Paradise 
 when he dies; for the decree of God is secret, into which no 
 man can penetrate. 1 Exception is made only for ten indi- 
 viduals among the companions of the Prophet, of whom he 
 is reported to have said that they were destined to Paradise, 
 and for the martyrs who seal their faith by dying for it in 
 the "Way of God," to whom the Prophet promised the 
 same good end. 
 
 JTJie_ilW-ay--QLizud" was, above all, wax^agahxsLxtribe- 
 lievjersJn jdefence _oLtheJtue_rpl iginn r or to extend 4ts-de- 
 ginion and achieve its supremacy iu-the-w©ri4. Later and 
 less militant generations gave the name "martyr" (that is, 
 "witness to the faith") to others than those who laid down 
 their lives in the holy war, for example, to Moslems who 
 lost their lives in some great catastrophe of nature, or to a 
 
 1 Compare the decree of the Council of Trent on Justification, c. 12: 
 "Nisi ex speciali revelations sciri non potest, quos Deus sibi elegerit." 
 
. 488 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 man who is killed while defending his house or property 
 against robbers. The theologians and ascetics gave the 
 notion a still wider extension. The word jihad, commonly 
 interpreted "holy war," of itself means only "supreme 
 effort" in the way of God. Traditions were adduced in 
 which Mohammed is reported to have said that a man who 
 recites the Koran to fulfil the will of God is as highly regarded 
 by God as the martyrs; and the arrogance of the jurists at 
 a later time carried some of them so far as the assertion, 
 on the feigned authority of the Prophet, that the ink which 
 flows from the pens of the learned has a higher value in the 
 eyes of God than the blood of the martyrs shed in the holy 
 war. Such extravagances, whatever credence they may 
 have found among some of the learned themselves, made 
 little impression upon popular belief, whichjiajsjdjway^asso- 
 .ciated martyrdom withdeath injwar_for God's^cause. 
 
 Not onfy may no man presume to foretell the salvation 
 oFanothfir (with~tEe~exceplions just named), bu t no man 
 -can. have any assurance ofhis own^ajyatjon. ThejinGer- 
 tainty_of salvation lies in the logic of predestination; it is 
 orthodox ^Sugustiniamsm as well as orthodox Mohamme- 
 danism. 1 At the intercession of the Prophet some Moslems 
 will at death be admitted immediately to Paradise, but no 
 man can have any certainty that he is one of this number. 
 Thus, a wiflkaome-Jusecurity serves to counteract the pre- 
 sumption that all who profess the true religion and out- 
 wardly observe its ordinances, or do not scandalously neg- 
 lect them, will enter Paradise. On the other hand, as has 
 already been observed, it has become an orthodox dogma 
 that no one who truly professes Islam will be eternally 
 damned. Even the torments of hell to which the wicked 
 are condemned at the day of resurrection are expiatory; and 
 thus in the end all Moslems will be saved. 2 
 
 1 Compare again the Council of Trent on Justification, c. 9, against 
 the Lutherans, who incorporated this assurance (fiducia) in faith itself. 
 "Nullus scire valeat certitudine fidei, cui non potest siibesse falsum, se 
 gratiam Dei esse consecutum." This is also Calvinistic orthodoxy. 
 
 2 This is also Jewish doctrine; see above, p. 75. 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 489 
 
 /^The religious ethics of I slam ar e those of a, re vealed reli - 
 gion. Its author itative sources are the same as those of 
 theology and law ^na melyThe word oTGod in the Koran, the 
 teac hing and example of the Pr ophet, and the. consensus, of 
 t he Moslem com munity. The disposition to reduce every- 
 thing to juristic formulation which is so apparent in Moslem 
 dogmatics manifests itself also in ethics, and gives it a for- 
 mal and nomistic character. This is, however, a tendency 
 
 t h a t js inpvi'tAb le- i n thr> g *VHP» nLs^wwoale><i. religion, which 
 
 treats morals as a_part of the revealed law of God; it may 
 be observed in Judaism and Christianity as well as in Mo- 
 hammedanism or Zoroastrianism. The sanctions JiLmosals, 
 _a!so, are rel]giou,s; obedience to God's law is requited by him 
 with a reward which is not of merit but of grace, while dis- 
 obedience is punished as it deserves. Submission to God's 
 will (Islam) being the first commandment of God, the works 
 of those who disbelieve in his revelation are vain; "they will 
 weigh for nothing on the day of resurrection" (Koran 18, 
 105) ; " they are like a mirage in the desert, which the thirsty 
 traveller takes for water, but when he comes thither, finds 
 nothing" (Koran, 24, 39) - 1 
 
 Logically it would seem as if there would be no room for 
 either good deeds or evil in a system in which God is the 
 sole and immediate creator of every deed, and that the 
 theory of appropriation, in which the theologians endeavour 
 to account for man's consciousness of choice and the approv- 
 ing and disapproving judgment of conscience upon his choices 
 by making man's actions subjectively his own, does not suf- 
 fice to establish his moral responsibility. Nor is there any 
 question that Moslems have often drawn the practical con- 
 sequence of a doctrine which makes God"! will the cause of 
 all their deeds, and laid the responsibility for their misdeeds 
 upon God's will. The moral teachers of Islam have, how- 
 
 1 This is Christian doctrine also. The Western church, after Augus- 
 tine, denies that apart from the grace of God in his church there are 
 any good works. Judaism, in which faith has no such determining 
 value, teaches, on the- contrary, that God in his justice will requite 
 even the worst of men for his good deeds. 
 
9 
 
 490 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 ever, never countenanced this fatalistic attitude, but at 
 whatever cost of inconsistency with the implications of the 
 dogma, have inculcated man's obligation to live uprightly, 
 virtuously, and charitably among his fellows, and endeav- 
 oured to inspire the fear of God's just judgment on those 
 who live otherwise. laJslanv as 4n- other systems which 
 have .gxajted the supremacy of God and extended the scope 
 of his decree to all the, actions at men, the common sense 
 and. conscience of mankind has always been sounder than 
 the logic of determinism. 
 
 While, in theory Koran and Sunna are the. source of -all _ 
 Moslem ethics, like the written and oral Law in Judaism and 
 the Bible for thoroughgoing Protestants, ^yet in Islam,, as in 
 these religions, many other elements enter into the actual 
 fabric ..of- morals, other influences Tnto- eth-ieal doctrine. 
 The Arab conquerors in Syria and Egypt were brought at 
 once into contact with the moral standards and ideals of 
 Christian populations, in Babylonia and Persia with those 
 of Zoroastrians. From an early time, especially in ascetic 
 and mystical circles, CJmstianJinfluence is easilxrecogniseii. 
 Many passages from the New Testament, particularly words 
 of Jesus in the Gospels, were attributed to Mohammed, 
 and thus became by adoption part of the normative Mos- 
 lem tradition; while other borrowings were installed in the 
 practice of Islam with the authority of the catholic consensus. 
 The elements with which its ethical tradition was thus en- 
 riched were appropriated because they were felt to be con- 
 sonant with the teachings of the Koran itself. Mohammed 
 had not failed to emphasise the deeisive.vakae-of-motive_and 
 intention in determining the quality of .moraLactions, or the 
 truth that goodness and helpfulness toward our fellow men 
 in need has a greater religious value than worship and cer- 
 emonial observances; and when Moslems became familiar 
 with the Gospel — which it must be remembered is a divine 
 revelation and one of the acknowledged sacred Scriptures — 
 they recognised in its words the spirit of their own religion. 
 A survey of the collections of Moslem traditions and of the 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 491 
 
 writings of the Moslem mystics would show how^ large a 
 part of the teaching of the Gospel ha.H passer! hy one r4y? - 
 pel or ano thjerJnto^Mosje iTi thnn gfrt. 
 
 ThtQjigh _,contact with Christians the_Mo^ems made S£- 
 quaintance n ot^nlxjadth the ^ew^es^en^butj?ith^e_ 
 ethics of the chur ch^Jatwhjgji Greek philosop hy, especially 
 Platonic and Stoic, ha d largely con tributed. Later they 
 drew for themselves on the same source. Mosle m ethics j s 
 therefore of a comp osite rather than an eclectic type. The 
 four_PJa tonic virtues furnish th e general scheme: the defini- 
 tion of virtue as a mean between two extremes, both of 
 which are vices, is taken from Aristotle, and the Nicoma- 
 chean Ethics are^ largely cite d; the ideas of the nature and 
 destiny~of the soul and the goal of moral endeavour are 
 Neoplatonic. This combination may be seen, with varia- 
 tions, in the Essays of the Ikhwan al-Safa, in al-Ghazali, 
 and in Ibn Miskawaihi's Refinement of Morals. 1 The can- 
 onists, so far as they go into ethics, and the rationalistic theo- 
 logians were inclined to mix legs Plato with their Aristotle. 
 
 The constitution of a Moslem state leaves no room for a 
 political ethics like the classical systems of the Greeks. 
 Among the Shiites, where the Imam is the divinely ordained 
 head of both church and state, obedience to the Imam is of 
 the very essence of Islam, and in Sunnite orthodoxy, also, 
 obedience to the powers that be, which are ordained of God, 
 is a religious obligation. Even among the radical Kharijites 
 the duty of obedience to rulers was not challenged in princi- 
 ple; but inasmuch as a Moslem ruler whose conduct did not 
 accord with their notions of what a ruler ought to be and 
 do, by that very fact forfeited his right to rule and it be- 
 came the duty of every true Moslem to join in deposing 
 him, the obligation to obedience was crossed by the religious 
 duty of revolution. It would be admitted on all hands, 
 also, that when, in the great decadence of Islam that fore- 
 shadows the last day, the Mahdi appears to restore the 
 
 1 An analysis of the contents of this interesting treatise is given by 
 De Boer, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. V, p. 507. 
 
492 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 reign of righteousness on earth, it will be the duty of all 
 true Moslems to rally to his standard for the overthrow of 
 the tyrants and Antichrists who reign in that evil time. 
 More than once a self-appointed Mahdi like Ibn Tumart 
 has headed a revolution by which dynasties have been over- 
 thrown and new ones established. 
 
 Thg family is probably the sphere in /ffihjch. Moslem morals 
 -present, the inost-Striking contrast. to .those of modern jChris- 
 tian co untries. The Koran, restricting the unlimited polyg- 
 amy which Tiad theretofore been lawful among the Arabs, 
 limited the number of wives that a free Moslem might have 
 at one time to four, while a slave is allowed only two. Other 
 prescriptions of the Koran, establishing the equal rights of 
 wives, increase the economic hindrances to polygamy, and 
 it has probably always been true that by far the largest 
 
 part of Moslem men have had but one wife at a time. J)ir 
 
 vorce, however^js^easy, and advantage is largely taken of 
 this facility, the only restraint upon which is that the hus- 
 band loses the mahr — originally the price paid to the woman's 
 family, but actually a settlement which the husband makes 
 upon his bride at marriage — together with the usufruct of 
 his wife's dowry. Consequently, what might be called = coa- 
 ^eou±ix£4)oJygamy has-always been very -frequent. In addi- 
 tion to his lawfully wedded wives, a Moslem may have as 
 many female slaves as his station and means allow, and his 
 connection with these slaves is as lawful as that with his 
 free wives. If such a slave bears a son who is acknowledged 
 by her master, she becomes a "mother of a child"; there- 
 after her master cannot sell her, and at his death she be- 
 comes free without further formality. A son thus acknowl- 
 edged is free and shares in his father's inheritance with the 
 sons of the wedded wives. While the Moslem law thus 
 allows to a man as many women as he can support in his 
 family, it makes adultery, fornication, and prostitution not 
 only heinous sins, but under certain circumstances crimes 
 most severely punished by the law. 
 
 Women fprman infenor^lass_inMoslem-law-and-in-Mos- 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 493 
 
 Jemjsociety^ In inheritance, for example, the portion of a 
 woman is one-half that of a male kinsman in the same 
 degree, and in cases where the testimony of two witnesses is 
 required by law, they may be either two men or a man and 
 two women. But popujarjiotions in the West about the 
 status of Moslem women are in many ways erroneous; for 
 instance, that Mohammed taught or Mohammedans believe 
 that women have no souls, or that there are no women in 
 Paradise. On the contrary, believing women have in the 
 Koran the same promise of Paradise as men, and husbands 
 are promised the company there of such of their wives as 
 they may desire. In the Koran no distinction is made be- 
 tween the religious obligations which are incumbent upon 
 women and those prescribed for men. Women do not, as a 
 matter of fact, much frequent the mosques; they are much 
 more often to be found at the shrines of the Welis or in the 
 cemeteries. The pilgrimage to Mecca can be performed by 
 women only under conditions of company and guardianship 
 which make it impossible for .most women. The obligatory 
 alms fall out because few women possess property in their 
 own right. 
 
 A tradition -whic h goes ba ckjto.„an£arly-timeinth'e~Eis- 
 tor y of Islam mjakgs _the^tudy ,olih£. religious scieocgsjjbK- 
 gat ory on ey^ ryMoglem, man .or woman ^and the annals of 
 Moslem learning are adorned with the names of not a few 
 women who distinguished themselves in these fields. In the 
 science of tradition, for example, two women taught the tra- 
 ditions which they had heard from Malik ibn Anas at Me- 
 dina; and the most highly reputed name in the transmission 
 of the famous corpus of Bokhari is also a woman, Karima 
 bint Ahmed, of Merw. The latter part of the sixth and the 
 first half of the seventh centuries of the Moslem era abound 
 in names of women eminent for learning in this and other 
 branches of Moslem science, whose signatures on their 
 diplomas were sought by some of the best-known scholars 
 of the age. As such an authorisation 1 was given only to 
 
 1 Ijaza. 
 
494 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 students who had personally heard the instruction of the 
 teacher, it follows that these learned ladies had, at least in 
 some cases, given public lectures, with men as their hearers. 
 A modern example of the same kind among the Shiites, who 
 in this respect are quite as strict as the Sunnites, is that of 
 Kurrat al-Ain, as famous for her beauty as for her learning 
 and her eloquence, who gave regular lectures in Sheikhi dog- 
 matics at Kerbela and at Bagdad, before she became one 
 of the apostles and martyrs of the Babi reform. 
 
 In Jhe roll _of Moslem saints the_names of many women 
 stand. Among them the women of the family of Ali take 
 the most prominent place, not only among the Shiites but 
 even in Sunnite Egypt, by survival and reminiscence of the 
 Fatimid times. The tomb of the Sitta Nafisa is one of the 
 most sacred spots in Egypt, and the miracles which were 
 wrought by the saint in her lifetime and after her death are 
 the subject of a whole cycle of legend. The Sitta Nafisa 
 was the great-granddaughter of Hasan and daughter-in- 
 law of the Imam Jafar al-Sadik, and is celebrated for her 
 piety and charity as well as for her learning in the Koran and 
 its interpretation. The greatest number of sainted women 
 is contributed by the Sufis, whose religious mysticism had a 
 peculiar attraction for women. In the Sufi literature more 
 than one woman shines; Rabia is most eminent in the double 
 character of saint and poet. In_ the flourishing _days_ j>l 
 Moslem joonasticism there were many .convents_ior women, 
 and some still remain in its .general jdecline. 
 
 If at the present day, as in former centuries,.jnost JWoslem 
 women., are very ignorant, in religion beyond thaijimiied 
 .sphere joiLthe law_which_ialls in ^their- d^m£stic_cpgnisancfi, 
 it is not because they have intentionally been kept in igno- 
 rance, but because there is no one to teach them except 
 their fathers and brothers, or their husbands, most of whom 
 do not themselves know a great deal more and are not much 
 concerned to teach the little they know. 
 -Slavery in most Moslem countrieaia^. been,jmcUs^alinQst^ 
 exdu^iyjsly-donrestie slavery, andt he slavg s — who usually 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 495 
 
 become Moslems — are jreated as members of the household 
 and feel themselv es to be such; so that the institutuSTis^pf 
 
 ^ much .milder form than slavery in the Roman Empire or 
 in Christian countries like America in modern times. It 
 has always been a meritorious act to set slaves free, and this 
 is often done by the owner in his lifetime, or in the anticipa- 
 tion of death. Many slaves are allowed by their owners to 
 carry on trade or business on their own account, and are 
 thus enabled to purchase their freedom. 
 „ Gambling , which was evidently a favourite pastime of 
 the heathen Arabs, is strictly Jorbidden. in the Koran, and 
 the lawyers have construed the prohibition as extending to 
 forms of chance to which even the most rigorous of Chris- 
 tian moralists would hardly stretch the definition; for exam- 
 ple, to life insurance and fire insurance; this, in connection 
 with the similar casuistic extension of the laws against usury, 
 which are made to forbid everything that lies under the 
 remotest suspicion of speculation in future values, constitutes 
 a serious hindrance to the economic development of Moslem 
 countries. The lawyers, however, like their kind in all the 
 world, have been fertile in legal fictions by which the ex- 
 cessive stringency of their own casuistry is more or less 
 circuitously evaded. 
 The Koran contains differen Laod n ot altogeth er, .consis- 
 
 ^tent prescr mtionsjn regard to drinking, and even the final 
 prohibition of drinking wine left room for abundant con- 
 troversy in the legal schools. Was the prohibition to be 
 construed strictly as applying only to wine, that is, the fer- 
 mented juice of the grape? Or should it be assumed that 
 the lawgiver's intention was to prevent drunkenness, and the 
 prohibition consequently be extended to all other kinds of 
 fermented drinks containing alcohol, and to all narcotics, 
 Indian hemp, opium, and tobacco? The straightest sect 
 of Islamic pharisees, the Wahhabis, put the "drinking of 
 tobacco" under the same ban with intoxicating liquors; 
 while at least one unimpeachably orthodox creed declares 
 the drinking of nabidh, an intoxicating drink made from the 
 
496 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 fermentation of dates or other fruit, not to be prohibited. 
 ^^Contrary to prevalent opinion — most prevalent opinions 
 about Islam are" wrong^heJjp^hibitojY_Jaffis,_D£-the Mos- 
 km^rehgicm have proved, onjthe whole,, as ineffective as 
 modemChristian experiments in the same direction. There 
 is probably notT aliterature in the" world so reeking of wine 
 as that of the golden age of the highly religious Abbasid 
 caliphate in Bagdad, and this odour clings to the literature 
 of later times, such as the stories of the Arabian Nights, for 
 example, the scene of many of which is laid in Bagdad. It 
 is true nowadays, and doubtless always has been true, that 
 many pious Moslems, with puritan strictness in morals, 
 abhor the use of intoxicants of every kind as a great sin; 
 and it is also true that in Mohammedan cities the drink- 
 shops, like the bagnios, have always been kept by Christians 
 or Jews; but that, as is sometimes said, a single verse in the 
 Koran has made the Moslem world a world of total abstain- 
 ers has not a shadow of warrant in the facts. 
 
 In_the cultivation of personal religion jnJUl&BL the first 
 place belongs to the public and private prayers, which are 
 always said with decorum and ^paren£devoutness. When 
 the appointed hour of prayer arrives and the call of the 
 crier is heard, the Moslem, wherever he may be, performs 
 his ablutions, spreads his prayer-carpet, and goes through 
 the number of rounds of prayer prescribed by his rite and 
 such supererogatory ones as he may prescribe to himself. 
 He has not the least of the feeling common to many Chris- 
 tians that private devotions are a thing for the privacy of 
 the closet. The set forms of prayer which constitute the 
 Moslem liturgy are accompanied by short personal prayers, 
 for which there are special manuals. Thus, before begin- 
 ning the ablutions: "I am about to cleanse myself of my 
 bodily impurities to prepare myself for prayer, a sacred act 
 which will bring me near to the Most High. In the name 
 of the great and exalted God, Praise be to God who has gra- 
 ciously made us Moslems ! Islam is truth; unbelief is false- 
 hood." Every subsequent stage of ablution is accompanied 
 
CREED, WORSHIP, MORALS 497 
 
 by a brief ejaculatory prayer, appropriate to the particular 
 act, as, for example, when it comes to the ears: "0 my God ! 
 make me of the number of those who hear thy word and faith- 
 fully follow it." "O my God ! let me hear, one day, the in- 
 vitation to enter Paradise with the upright." At the end of 
 the ablutions is recited a confession of sin and a prayer for 
 forgiveness. 
 
 Tbe_£uMcworship..of Islam*, however sincere and, devout 
 itj iay be, has in it _nojnysticaI element. This si de of r gji- 
 giojv-which has had so large a deveiopmenTTnTslam, not 
 , only among the Sufis, but through their influence among 
 the masses of the people, is cultivated. particularly.iy_Jifi 
 various Dervish order s. In the early centuries those who 
 addicted themselves to the spiritual life put themselves 
 under the direction of a teacher or guide, by whom they 
 were inducted into the mystical way; they lived with him, 
 followed his instruction, and imitated his example. Al- 
 Ghazali put himself under such a director at Damascus, 
 and in his later years presided over a group of disciples 
 at Tus, who lived together in a common habitation, a kind 
 of monastery. In these older associations there was no 
 continuity; the death of the master dissolved them. In the 
 century after al-Ghazali, however, they developed into 
 orders bearing the name of the founder, and perpetuating 
 his teaching and methods. One of the oldest. oi.ihfise-Der- 
 vish orders, and still one of the largest anH most influential, 
 is that f oundexL bv AhH al-Kadir al-Jilani J jL-UM). It 
 has many_iranches, and is widely distributed througluthe 
 Moslem wo rld. The Dervish orders claim for themselves 
 all the Sufi saints, and carry back their origin to the begin- 
 nings of Islam, most of them claiming Ali as the original 
 founder, though a minority trace their spiritual pedigree to 
 Abu Bekr. 
 
 Each-of— thcso ha s a -juIe_ascribecLto the founder, and a, 
 ritua l of its -o w^-djff-ering- in pn.rtifiila.ra, tnpngh_ not in_gen-v 
 eral character, from that o f thejathers. They haye_monas^- 
 _teries in which the professed members of the order live to- 
 
498 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 gether under the direction of their Sheikh, and where they 
 perform together their common religious exercises. Some 
 of the members are celibates, but, with rare exceptions, 
 .gglibacy is not a part of ^the^_rulej. The exercises consist 
 primarily of the recitation of Dhikrs, repetitions of names 
 and praises of God, in the particular form in use in the order, 
 accompanied by movements of the head or of the whole 
 body. The end and effect of these performances is to in- 
 duce an exaltation which may go to the length of autohyp- 
 nosis. The so-called Whirling Dervishes (Maulawi), who 
 derive from Jelal al-Din Rumi, and the Howling Dervishes 
 (Refaii), are familiar to all readers of books of travel in the 
 Ottoman Empire. Each order has a distinctive dress or 
 badge by which its members are recognised. Many of the 
 monasteries were originally pious foundations, but their en- 
 dowments have in modern times greatly diminished. Most 
 of the inmates live by their own labour, or upon the charity 
 of religious persons; many of them are beggars and go about 
 with a begging basket, as it were the sign of their trade. In 
 some orders, on the contrary, begging is forbidden. 
 
 Besidfisjhe professed-membersof 4he-Dervigh.traternities, 
 many laymen are ^associated, with them* in a relation which 
 has been not inaptly compared to that of the Tertiaries of 
 the Franciscan order. They live in the world and pursue 
 their ordinary occupations, but assemble weekly, or some- 
 times daily, usually in the evening, at the house of the order, 
 to take part in such religious exercises as have already been 
 described, under the direction of the Dervish Sheikh. By 
 these means they strive to attain a personal experience of 
 religion, a sense of the nearness and the power of God, which 
 they do not feel in the same way in the staid and decorous 
 worship of the mosque; or, beyond that, a state of enthusi- 
 asm or ecstasy. In the monasteries the practice of secluded 
 meditation at certain seasons is still perpetuated by a few 
 of the inmates who have progressed farthest in the way. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 
 
 The Ismailis— Doctrine of the Sect— Karmatians— Assassins— Druses 
 — Sheikhis — Babis and Bahais— The Ahmediyya. 
 
 In a former chapter the general characteristics of Shia 
 Mohammedanism have been described, and its main divi- 
 sions enumerated. Some of these are far removed from 
 common Moslem orthodoxy, but may, notwithstanding these 
 departures, properly be covered by the name of Islam. There 
 are, however, offshoots of the Shia which have deviated so 
 widely from the type that they are not to be classed as hereti- 
 cal Moslem sects, but as distinct religions, which have grown 
 out of Mohammedanism, or in whose comprehensive syn- 
 cretism the most important elements — or those which they 
 themselves think it expedient to put in the foreground — are 
 derived from Shiite Mohammedanism. Some of these call 
 themselves Moslem, and even proclaim themselves the only 
 true Moslems, while others wear the name only as a disguise, 
 which they throw off when they venture to speak freely. 
 
 The common stock from which most of these religions 
 have sprung may best be designated by the name Ismaili. 
 Their line of historical Imams contains seven names: Ali, 
 Hasan, Husein, Ali ibn Husein, Mohammed ibn Ali, Jafar 
 ibn Mohammed, and Ismail ibn Jafar. 1 Ismail died in his 
 father's lifetime, leaving as his successor in the Imamate, a 
 son, Mohammed, who disappeared in India; according to 
 others, Ismail did not die. In the former view it is Moham- 
 
 1 The "Twelvers" count as their seventh Imam, Musa, a younger 
 son of Jafar, holding that Ismail had been excluded by his father from 
 the succession because he was addicted to drunkenness. 
 
 499 
 
500 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 med, the son of Ismail, who is to reappear as the Mahdi; 
 the latter hold that it is Ismail himself. 
 
 The founder of the Ismaili sect and the author of its pecu- 
 liar system was a certain Abdallah ibn Maimun, a man of 
 Persian descent, who lived about the middle of the third 
 century of the Hegira in Khuzistan. His aim seems to have 
 been, by means of a secret order, to undermine Islam, and 
 to substitute an altogether different religion. His system, 
 the basis of which is Neoplatonism, is thus described by 
 De Goeje: 1 
 
 From God, the mysterious Being who is wholly incomprehensible to 
 mankind and cannot be defined by any attributes, emanated by his 
 will the Universal Reason, which produced the Universal Soul, the 
 creator of Primal Matter, Space, and Time. These are the five con- 
 stituents of the universe, and consequently of man, the microcosm. 
 But as every emanation has a tendency to return to its source, man's 
 object in life is perfect union with the Universal Reason. This, how- 
 ever, would be wholly unattainable by him without heavenly help. 
 Therefore the Universal Reason and the Universal Soul have mani- 
 fested themselves to the world in human shape, the one as prophet- 
 legislator, the other as his assistant and supporter. So appeared suc- 
 cessively Adam and Seth, Noah and Shem, Abraham and Ishmael, 
 Moses and Aaron, Jesus and Peter, Muhammad and Ali. After the 
 disappearance of the prophet-legislator, the assistant continues his 
 work, and is the Imam, or leader, the sole interpreter of the true 
 meaning of the divine word. He is followed by six other Imams, after 
 the death of the last of whom a new incarnation takes place. . . . 
 Muhammad, the son of Ismail, is the seventh incarnation. His assistant 
 is Abdallah ibn Maimun, who, with his successors, has to preach and 
 promulgate his law, till, with the reappearance of the last of these as 
 the Mahdi, the end and scope of human life will be reached. All 
 these legislations, though each in succession is better than its prede- 
 cessor, so that the last is the most perfect, are in reality one, only 
 adapted to the understanding of the men of each period. Moreover, 
 it is always the same Being that incarnates itself in different forms, 
 even as the soul of each Imam passes into the body of his successor. 
 
 Thus there have been, since the world began, six prophets, 
 incarnations of the Universal Intelligence, and in the inter- 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. Ill, p. 222. 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 501 
 
 val between each two successive prophets a series of seven 
 Imams, incarnations of the Universal Soul. The last in- 
 carnation of the Universal Intelligence was near at hand, as 
 was proved by apocalyptic arithmetic, operating with the 
 theory of chronological periods in the history of the world. 
 Abdallah professed to be in communication with the Con- 
 cealed Imam and to communicate his teaching and com- 
 mands to his followers. He organised an extensive propa- 
 ganda by means of missionaries (Da'Is), whom he sent out 
 to disseminate his doctrine among men of all religions; and, 
 in fact, by their efforts many converts were made, not only 
 among Moslems, but among Christians, Jews, and Zoroas- 
 trians, all of whom, it must be remembered, expected the 
 coming of a Messiah. The converts were made to swear 
 with the most solemn oaths that they would never reveal 
 aught of the Ismaili doctrine. There were several stages in 
 the disclosure of the doctrine, or degrees in the mystery, 
 and the missionaries were often not acquainted with the 
 complete system. The method they employed was to raise 
 questions and instil in men's minds doubts about the re- 
 ligion they professed. Then the Ismaili doctrine of the 
 succession of prophets and their assistants was communi- 
 cated, and the inquirers were taught that each of the proph- 
 ets had given a religious law adapted to his age. The posi- 
 tive religious law had, however, in itself no religious value; 
 it might be an allegory of higher things to the man who 
 brought to it a knowledge of the higher things derived from 
 elsewhere, and it was only this esoteric sense of the scrip- 
 tures of the various religions which had any worth. Those 
 who after long testing and preparation were initiated into 
 the higher degrees were taught that the philosophers are 
 superior to all the prophets, Plato and Aristotle to the 
 Koran and the Gospel; for philosophy is the universal form 
 of truth, and all the philosophers express one and the same 
 truth. From this point of view all positive religions are 
 equally good, or equally bad — at any rate, equally negli- 
 gible. What relation there is between all this and the 
 
502 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Essays of the Ikhwan al-Safa, 1 whose authors are also sus- 
 pected of having been a secret society with political ends, it 
 is impossible to determine. 
 
 Abdallah's ambition was, not merely to be the founder 
 and head of a new religion which should supplant all others, 
 nor even to rule with unlimited authority a religious com- 
 munity organized as a great secret society; he aimed to 
 undermine not only the Moslem religion, but the Moslem 
 states, by the employment of the same means by which the 
 Shia missionaries had undermined the Omayyad caliphate 
 and — not by any intention of theirs — brought the Abbas- 
 ids into power. 
 
 The chief apostle of the Ismaili faith in Irak was a certain 
 Hamdan, nicknamed Karmat, after whom his followers were 
 called Karmatians. The seat of government — for from the 
 beginning they were a political as well as a religious com- 
 munity — was established in the vicinity of the ancient Baby- 
 lon in the year 890. In this region they soon made so many 
 converts that the Moslem governor in Cufa found it profit- 
 able to tolerate them, imposing upon them for his own 
 benefit a tax of a dinar a head. The government in Bagdad 
 began to see danger in the movement, and its. founder, 
 Abdallah ibn Maimun, finding that the authorities were on 
 his track, fled to northern Syria, which remained the head- 
 quarters of the sect until 900. Meantime the doctrine had 
 been preached with great success in Yemen, and within a 
 generation the Karmatians conquered nearly the whole 
 province, so that Mecca itself was in great alarm. In 
 Bahrain, also, a Karmatian state was founded, between 893 
 and 903, and successfully resisted all the efforts of the cali- 
 phate to bring it into subjection. A large army sent against 
 it in 927 was totally defeated, and even Bagdad was seriously 
 threatened. The following year Karmatian armies from 
 Bahrain took Mecca at the time of the pilgrimage, with 
 great slaughter both of the inhabitants and of the pilgrims, 
 and carried off to their capital at Lahsa the sacred black 
 1 See above, pp. 450 ff. 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 503 
 
 stone from the Kaaba, the veneration of which they pro- 
 nounced mere idolatry. The stone remained in their pos- 
 session for more than twenty years, and was only restored 
 by them at the instance of the Fatimid caliph Obeid Allah. 
 For many years they made the road to Mecca so dangerous 
 or imposed so heavy a toll upon the pilgrims whom they 
 allowed to pass under their conduct, that the pilgrimage 
 from Irak nearly ceased. 
 
 In 900 Obeid Allah, a grandson of Abdallah the founder 
 of the sect, fled from Syria by way of Egypt to the far west 
 of north Africa, where ten years later he makes his appear- 
 ance at Kairwan, the capital, in the character of the Mahdi. 
 He found the ground prepared for him, for from the time 
 of the Idrisid dynasty in Morocco (788 to 985) the Berbers 
 had been familiar with Shiite doctrines and claims. The 
 new Mahdi gave himself out for a descendant of Ali and 
 Fatima through the seven Imams of the Ismaili scheme and 
 a succession of Concealed Imams following Ismail. He 
 established his capital, called al-Mahdiyya, near Tunis; and 
 sixty years later his descendants, as the Fatimid caliphs, 
 added Egypt, and subsequently Syria, to their empire, ruling, 
 thus, from the borders of Morocco to Aleppo. In pretending 
 to be descendants in direct line from Ali, the Fatimid caliphs 
 gave their rule the semblance of Shiite legitimacy, and thus 
 assumed the character of the only rightful Moslem rulers, 
 in opposition to the Abbasid usurpers. 
 
 In Egypt and Syria their subjects were chiefly orthodox 
 Sunnites, and while the Fatimids made no concealment of 
 their adherence to the Shia, on which indeed their claims 
 were founded, and caused the call to prayer in all the 
 mosques to be made with the Shiite formula, they in gen- 
 eral observed a politic regard for the prejudices of the 
 masses. Their relation to the Ismaili movement, both on 
 its political and its religious side, on the other hand, was 
 carefully kept in the background. Yet in the palaces of the 
 caliphs at Cairo secret assemblies were held, where among 
 the initiates doctrines were taught and discussed subversive 
 
504 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 of the very foundations of Islam; from these circles the 
 movement proceeded which gave rise to the religion of the 
 Druses. 
 
 Another offshoot of the Ismailis, which made for itself a 
 name of mystery and of terror, is that which Europeans 
 know by the name of the Assassins. 1 By Moslem writers 
 they are sometimes called Hasanites, after the name of their 
 founder; the name they themselves used, at least in the 
 beginning of their career, seems to have been Talimites, 
 that is, those who make the following of an infallible reli- 
 gious teacher their distinctive tenet. The main structure 
 of their doctrine is the same as that of other Ismailis, but 
 seems in some particulars to have been more highly elabo- 
 rated. Their esoteric teaching, as might be expected in a 
 secret society of the kind, is only imperfectly known. The 
 founder of the Assassins was Hasan Sabbah, who after 
 studying the Ismaili doctrines, apparently in Egypt, returned 
 to Persia as a missionary. The operations of this kind of 
 missionaries were, however, not appreciated by the police, 
 since they were not unjustly regarded as equally dangerous 
 to religion and to the state. Hasan accordingly conceived 
 the brilliant idea of securing a safe basis for these operations 
 by seizing (1090 A. D.) the stronghold of Alamut, an isolated 
 rock on the edge of the Elburz Mountains near Kasvin, 
 which he fortified in such a way as to make it almost im- 
 pregnable. The rock was about three hundred yards long 
 and very narrow, rising precipitously about two hundred 
 feet above the plain. Around the fortress the land was 
 cultivated with such diligence that, we are told, it was like 
 the garden of Paradise. Hasan wrote a number of contro- 
 versial treatises which were of sufficient importance to evoke 
 formal refutations from al-Ghazali, and Alamut was a seat 
 of learning as well as the stronghold of the Assassins. When 
 Hulagu and his Mongols stormed and destroyed the place 
 
 ■Arabic hashshdsh, one who intoxicates himself with hashish (Can- 
 nabis indica.) 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 505 
 
 in 1256, they found in it a large library, which they com- 
 mitted to the flames. 
 
 Not long after they established themselves at Alamut we 
 find them at Aleppo also; and their numbers continued to 
 increase, until in the latter part of the twelfth century they 
 had ten or a dozen,strongholds in Syria. Here the crusad- 
 ers came in contact with them, and through the crusade 
 historians we hear a good deal about them and their chief, 
 the "Old Man of the Mountain." 
 
 The name Assassins in the European sense is properly 
 applicable only to one, the lowest, class of the members of 
 the order, who among themselves were called Fida'is, "The 
 Devoted." They were not inducted into the deeper mys- 
 teries of the order, but were carefully trained in the use of 
 arms and the arts of disguise, sometimes also in foreign 
 languages, and were bound to absolute obedience to the 
 command of the Grand Master. They were taught to be 
 patient and bide their time until the right opportunity for 
 the execution of their mission should come. They did not 
 often survive their victims, for they were fond of doing their 
 work in the most dramatic way, striking down a Moslem 
 ruler or minister in the mosque on a Friday, or a Christian 
 prince on a Sunday in church, thus inviting the martyrdom 
 which insured them a high place in Paradise. The emis- 
 saries who in 1192 killed Conrad of Montferrat, Signor of 
 Tyre and titular king of Jerusalem, had spent six months 
 in the crusaders' camp disguised as Christian monks. Chris- 
 tian rulers as well as Moslem are said to have hired the ser- 
 vices of these experts to put their enemies out of the way. 
 ""Their Syrian fortresses were all occupied by the Egyptian 
 Sultan Baibars in 1273; but they afterward regained some 
 of them, and as late as 1326 held as many as five. Though 
 their political power has long been broken and they have 
 given up their murderous practices, this branch of the 
 Ismailis still survives in the region of the Lebanon, where 
 their numbers were estimated a few years ago by a Moslem 
 official at 20,000; but there are believed to be in the cities 
 
506 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 many more who conceal their sectarian beliefs under the 
 general protection of Islam, nor are they by any means ex- 
 tinct in Persia, where, however, among the more fanatical 
 Shiites, they are under still greater necessity of concealing 
 their true character. In western India, where they are 
 called Khojas, there are said to be 50,000 or 70,000 of them. 
 Their head, who bears the title Agha Khan, a lineal descen- 
 dant of the last Grand Master of the Assassins in Alamut, 
 through whom he traces his pedigree in the line of the Fati- 
 mid caliphs from Ismail, the seventh Imam, resides in Bom- 
 bay, and not only enjoys the veneration of the sect, but de- 
 rives large revenues from their annual tribute. The Agha 
 Khan of our day is very much a man of the world, with a 
 modern education, who has visited Europe and the United 
 States, and even Japan. Of the peculiar doctrines of the 
 Ismaili and their elaborate organisation and initiation by 
 degrees little if anything has survived. 
 
 Another religion, further removed from orthodox or even 
 heretical Mohammedanism than the Assassins, is that of the 
 Druses, who to the number of perhaps 150,000 still occupy 
 considerable parts of the southern Lebanon and an extensive 
 district in the Hauran. The characteristic feature of their 
 creed is that the Supreme God was incarnated, or mani- 
 fested in the flesh, in the person of Hakim Abu Ali Mansur, 
 the sixth of the Fatimid caliphs and the third to reign in 
 Egypt, who died or, according to their own doctrine, dis- 
 appeared, in 1020. Hakim's career impressed his contem- 
 poraries as more like that of an incarnate devil than an in- 
 carnate god. He persecuted not only Moslems who refused 
 to acknowledge the exclusive claims of Ali to the caliphate, 
 but Jews and Christians. The record of his deeds leaves no 
 room to doubt that he was insane, and in many ways re- 
 minds us of the emperor Caligula. During his reign an 
 Ismaili missionary named al-Darazi, a Persian or Turk by 
 race, came to Egypt, where he was received by Hakim with 
 favour. Before long al-Darazi began publicly to teach that 
 Hakim was God, the Creator of the Universe, and exhorted 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 507 
 
 the people to embrace this doctrine. In a book which he 
 wrote he said that the soul of Adam had passed into Ali, and 
 from Ali into the ancestors of Hakim, and finally embodied 
 itself in that prince. This was too much for the masses; he 
 was attacked by the mob and narrowly escaped with his 
 life. Hakim did not dare openly to take his part, but got 
 him safely away to Syria, where he carried on an active 
 propaganda in the region west of Damascus and in the 
 southern Lebanon. The name Druses, apparently derived 
 from that of this Darazi, was given them by outsiders; they 
 called themselves only Mowahhidin, that is, "Unitarians." 
 
 Another Ismaili missionary, Hamza ibn Ali, succeeded him 
 in Egypt, proclaiming that Hakim was God, and he, Hamza, 
 the prime minister of God. Hakim now took courage to 
 play the role assigned to him. He ceased to attend the 
 Friday prayers in the mosque, and for several years inter- 
 rupted the pilgrimage to Mecca under pretence that the 
 Arabs made it too dangerous, and failed to send the cover- 
 ing for the Kaaba, which was annually renewed. Having 
 thus openly broken with Islam, he suddenly became toler- 
 ant toward the adherents of other religions. 
 
 In 1020, as has been said, Hakim disappeared, probably 
 the victim of a secret murder, which a Moslem account 
 attributes to his sister. Those who believed in him held 
 that he was not dead, but had withdrawn in the manner of 
 the Concealed Imams, and would in due time return. His 
 disappearance left Hamza the earthly representative of the 
 divine power, and he pretended to be in direct communion 
 with Hakim. In this way he made himself the real head of 
 the movement, and presently succeeded in supplanting al- 
 Darazi among the Syrian converts of the latter, so that in 
 the Druse tradition al-Darazi has become the great adver- 
 sary of the faith of which he was in fact the founder. The 
 sacred scriptures of the Druses are ascribed to Hamza, who 
 was himself a manifestation of the Universal Intelligence, as 
 Hakim was the incarnation of the supreme godhead. The 
 doctrine of the Druses is better known than that of other 
 
508 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 similar sects, because during the Druse wars in the nine- 
 teenth century their sacred books, which they preserve with 
 the utmost secrecy, fell into the hands of Moslems and 
 Christians. 
 
 With the common features of the Ismaili system and its 
 successive emanations from the Absolute Unity of the god- 
 head, are combined new elements which have an obvious af- 
 finity with Christian Gnosticism and perhaps with Manichse- 
 ism. Thus, notwithstanding the fundamental importance of 
 the doctrine of the divine unity, a dualistic principle is in- 
 troduced into the very first stage of emanation: the Antago- 
 nist, Pure Darkness, proceeds from the Universal Intelli- 
 gence, which is Pure Light, as a consequence or punishment 
 of the sin of the latter in looking with complacency upon 
 his own glorious light. The Universal Soul, the second 
 emanation, in like manner brings forth an opposite princi- 
 ple called the Foundation, or Companion, and so on through 
 succeeding stages of emanation. Human souls, when they 
 come into being, contain both light and darkness — good and 
 evil are both found in them from the beginning. 
 
 The Druses are divided into two classes, in their own ter- 
 minology, the Intelligent and the Ignorant. Only the former 
 are initiated into the profounder teaching of the religion, 
 and constitute an esoteric circle like the higher degrees 
 among the Gnostics, or among the Pure Brethren and in the 
 Ismaili sects generally. For them the Koran and all the 
 observances of Islam are abrogated; though they may pro- 
 fess or practise them, when necessary, as a disguise. The 
 uninitiated, on the other hand, if living among Moslems, 
 habitually conform to the custom of the country. The In- 
 telligent are just as willing to confess themselves in substan- 
 tial agreement with Christians — not, of course, the Syrian 
 Christians whom they have around them, but Christians of 
 European, and particularly of the Protestant, type. Under 
 the solvent power of their esoteric philosophy all positive 
 religions are only forms or names of the one true and uni- 
 versal religion, which they possess in its purest and highest 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 509 
 
 form. In this respect their attitude is the same as that of 
 the modern Bahais. 
 
 ^ The Druses are unique, so far as I know, among the reli- 
 gions of the world in constituting a closed religious com- 
 munity, neither seeking converts nor admitting those who 
 seek to join them. Their gospel was preached for twenty- 
 six years, and those who accepted it became Druses. At 
 the end of that time the door was shut, and cannot be 
 opened again. At first the return of Hakim was expected 
 soon, but as time went by, the Druses, like the early 
 Shiites or the early Christians, postponed their expecta- 
 tion, and settled down to live in the world that now is. 
 They have, like other religions in similar circumstances, 
 books in which the signs of the end of the age and the ap- 
 proaching return of Hakim are set down, and the final tri- 
 umph of the true religion described. When Hakim comes, 
 he will abide forever as visible Manifestation, having his 
 capital in Egypt. The Moslems, Christians, and Jews will 
 be subjected to the rule of the Druses, who will fill all 
 places of rank and power in the theocratic empire. 
 
 The latest offshoot of the "Ultra" Shiite heresies are the 
 Babis and Bahais. While most of the eccentric religions 
 with which we have been engaged sprang from the branch 
 which recognises seven Imams, the Babis originated among 
 the sect of the Twelve Imams, but they are themselves 
 the proof, if any were needed, that in these circles, also, 
 the more radical Ismaili doctrines of the incarnation or, to 
 speak more exactly in their own terms, the "manifesta- 
 tion" of the godhead had taken deep root. Indeed, the 
 Bektashis, and the Ali-Ilahis or Kyzylbashes, who belong 
 to the branch of the Twelve Imams, are not behind any 
 variety of the Ismailis in the multiplicity of emanations of 
 the godhead, or of godheads themselves, in their Points and 
 Manifestations. 1 Among the Nusairi these sublimities are 
 united in an interesting syncretism with the survivals of a 
 pagan nature-worship. Fadl Allah, the founder of the Shia 
 1 To the Ali-Ilahis Ali is the Supreme God in person. 
 
510 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 sect of the Hurufis, from whom, at least indirectly, the Bab 
 and his followers contracted their propensity to find cabal- 
 istic significance in numbers, also gave himself out for a 
 Manifestation of the godhead (1398), his doctrine for "the 
 most perfect revelation of truth," and was put to death by 
 Timur for his blasphemy. The Babi-Bahai "Manifesta- 
 tions" had therefore many predecessors, and the funda- 
 mental philosophy in all is the same. 
 
 The next antecedents of the Babis are to be found in a 
 sect founded by the Sheikh Ahmed al-Ahsai (d. 1826), who 
 called themselves Sheikhis, "Followers of the Sheikh." The 
 essential features of his doctrine were that God in himself, 
 as the Absolute, cannot be known "even by the heart" — a 
 rejection of Sufism as well as of scholasticism. All the divine 
 attributes are found in the Imams, and the actions ascribed 
 to God are produced by them; they are — this is the essence 
 of the heresy — the four, Causes of Creation. 1 Ahmed says 
 of the Imams: "I believe in your return; each of you the per- 
 fect cause of all that is not God." The Imams, or Imam, 
 for they are in reality one in all their manifestations, are 
 thus intermediary between the Absolute God and the world 
 of sense. Abstractly, this intermediary may be called the 
 Truth; it is the first emanation of the Absolute, and corre- 
 sponds to the Universal Intelligence of the Ismailis, the In- 
 telligence, or Will, of the Druses. 
 
 s More distinctive and of greater consequence for the future 
 was the doctrine that there must be among the Shiites, the 
 true Moslems, in every generation one perfect man, serving 
 as a channel of grace between the absent Imam and his 
 church. The Sheikh Ahmed and his successor, Kazim of 
 Resht, were such perfect Shias in their generation. Another 
 name for this intermediary between men and the Concealed 
 Imam in whom are all the divine attributes, is the Door 
 (Bab), a term and idea which are current also among the 
 Ismailis, Druses, and Nusairis. The orthodox doctrine in the 
 sect of the Twelve was that after the disappearance of the 
 1 Efficient, Material, Formal, and Final. 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 511 
 
 twelfth Imam, in the year 873/4, communication was main- 
 tained with him through an intermediary called the Bab. 
 There were in this period of the "minor occultation" suc- 
 cessively four Babs. After the death of the last of these 
 the door was closed and communication with the Imam 
 ceased (940/1). It was believed, however, tha.t the door 
 would be opened again in the generation preceding the 
 return of the Imam. When, therefore, Sheikh Ahmed and 
 Kazim of Resht professed to be in communication with the 
 Imam they virtually claimed the function of the Bab, and 
 this title was given to them by their followers, even if it 
 was not assumed by themselves. 
 
 Among those who came under the influence of the Sheikhi 
 movement was a young man named Ali Mohammed (born 
 about 1820), the son of a tradesman in Shiraz. At Kerbela, 
 whither he had gone to visit the tomb of the martyr Husein, 
 he heard Kazim of Resht, who was lecturing there, and 
 made the acquaintance of a number of Kazim's disciples. 
 Ali Mohammed had no more education than is common in 
 his class, and it may fairly be assumed that Kazim's lectures 
 on the Sheikhi doctrine were beyond his depth, but at least 
 he picked up at Kerbela the ideas which determined his own 
 career. These ideas, especially the expectation of the ad- 
 vent of the Imam, wrought strongly upon a temperament 
 predisposed to religious exaltation, and a couple of years 
 later (1844) at Shiraz in a mosque near his home he an- 
 nounced himself as the Bab; in him was reopened the door 
 which, according to the common Twelver doctrine, had been 
 closed for centuries; he was the precursor of the Imam 
 Mahdi. 1 In this quality he vehemently assailed the corrup- 
 tion of the Mollahs, the clergy of the state church— always 
 a fruitful theme for reformers and grateful to the ears of 
 the masses. 
 
 Shortly after, he went on the pilgrimage to Mecca, and 
 there also he is said to have made some sort of demonstra- 
 
 1 The year 1844 A. D. corresponds to the Moslem year 1260, exactly 
 a thousand years from the accession of the twelfth Imam (260 A. H.). 
 
512 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 tion, which does not, however, seem to have had any conse- 
 quence. Returning to Persia, he sent out missionaries 
 (Da'Is) to disseminate the faith. The proclamation which 
 was made in his name by one of his followers in a mosque 
 in Shiraz shows that, from believing himself to be the door 
 of communication with the Concealed Imam, he had come 
 to claim to be the Imam Mahdi himself; and he accord- 
 ingly demanded that the Shah of Persia should recognise 
 him as such, and acknowledge that he held his royal au- 
 thority from the Imam, that is to say, from the young 
 tradesman of Shiraz, Ali Mohammed! Nor was this the 
 climax of his claim. A Shiite tradition, of which the Druses 
 and Nusairi had already availed themselves, was that Ali 
 had declared that the essence of the revelation in the Koran 
 is concentrated in the Bismillah ("In the name of God") 
 at the beginning; the whole of the Bismillah is in the letter 
 Ba, and the whole of the Ba in the diacritical point under 
 it. Ali Mohammed presently declared himself this "Point 
 of Revelation," "the Primal Point," that is to say, the sum 
 and substance of divine revelation. But the "Point" was, 
 in the extravagant doctrine, not merely the quintessence of 
 revelation, it was the first emanation of God, which in each 
 prophetic cycle manifested itself again in the revealer or 
 embodied revelation of that epoch. In all these persons, 
 from Adam on, it is the same identical Point, as the sun 
 which rises new every day is always the very same sun. 
 Each Manifestation is more perfect than its predecessor; 
 and this progressive revelation will continue cycle by cycle, 
 a new Manifestation coming when men are prepared for it. 
 
 The Sheikhi sect had been split by the claim of Ali Mo- 
 hammed to be the Bab, the successor of Kazim of Resht. 
 There was another claimant, a certain Mohammed Karim 
 Khan, whom Ali Mohammed usually spoke of as the " Quin- 
 tessence of Hell-Fire," or the "Infernal Tree of Zakkum." 
 Many of Kazim's disciples, and they, it would seem, the 
 elite of his following, acknowledged Ali Mohammed, among 
 them a notable group at Kasvin, to which the poetess Kur- 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 513 
 
 rat al-Ain belonged. To them he was, not the mere Imam 
 Mahdi of the vulgar expectation, the militant Messiah who 
 was to lead the hosts of Islam to the conquest of the 
 world, the righteous ruler who was "to fill the earth with 
 justice, as now it is filled with oppression," but the mani- 
 festation of the Universal Will, or Intelligence, the primal 
 emanation of the Absolute, with whom began a new era 
 in the history of religion. His revelation, the Beyan, super- 
 seded and thus abrogated the Koran and all the ordinances 
 of Islam. 
 
 The disclosure of this more exalted doctrine at a great 
 gathering of the Babis at Bedesht was a crisis which for a 
 moment threatened a fatal schism. The danger was over- 
 come, chiefly by the diplomacy of Kurrat el-Ain — a diplo- 
 macy as audacious in execution as it was ingenious in con- 
 ception. The masses, however, while giving their adherence 
 to the higher conception of Ali Mohammed's nature and 
 mission, were not diverted from the execution of the Mahdi 
 programme as they conceived it, and before long were in 
 arms in different parts of the country against the Shah's 
 government. The insurgents were suppressed with diffi- 
 culty after fighting which lasted for many months, and the 
 vanquished were treated with great severity. While the 
 revolts were still in progress, the government decided to 
 strike at the root of the evil by putting to death the pre- 
 tender to supreme authority in state and church. The Bab, 
 who had been imprisoned even before the conference at 
 Bedesht, was executed at Tabriz, July 9, 1850. 
 
 The revelation for the new dispensation is called the 
 Beyan. In it the transcendent God declares to the recipi- 
 ent of the revelation (the Bab): "Verily I have created 
 thee, and I have established two degrees for thee. The 
 first of these two degrees is that which belongs peculiarly 
 to me, and in this degree no one can see anything in thee 
 except myself. Therefore it is that thou sayest on my 
 authority, 'I am God; there is no God beside me, the Lord 
 of the universe'; in the second degree thou dost glorify me, 
 
514 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 praise me, confess my unity, adore me, thou art of those 
 who bow down before me." That is to say, in his divinity 
 he is the only God, the Lord of the universe; in his (appar- 
 ent) humanity he is a worshipper of God. So much for the 
 theology of Babism. The practical part of the Beyan is the 
 constitution and law for a Babi commonwealth. It con- 
 tains regulations for religious worship — prayers, pilgrimage 
 to the birthplace of the Bab, for marriage and succession, 
 and the like. In relation to unbelievers, the fundamental 
 law is that believers when they have the power are to take 
 possession of all the property of those who have not "en- 
 tered into the Beyan," and directions are given for the dis- 
 tribution of the spoil of conquered cities. In Persia proper 
 no other religion is to be tolerated; no unbeliever to set 
 foot in it, unless he be licensed for the sake of trade. All 
 Moslem shrines are to be demolished. In their place, 
 shrines shall be erected for the eighteen "Letters of Life," 
 the apostles of Babism, richly decorated from the plunder 
 of the older holy places. 
 
 A good deal of the Beyan sounds to us like a Utopia, but, 
 however Utopian its provisions, it was in intention the 
 divinely revealed law for the state which the Bab's followers 
 were fighting to establish on the ruins of the kingdom of 
 Persia. 
 
 The Bab had before his death designated as his successor 
 a youth named Yahya of Nur, who is called in the religion 
 Subh-i-Ezel, Dawn of Eternity, and commissioned him to 
 complete the Beyan, which the Bab himself left unfinished. 1 
 Subh-i-Ezel was recognized by the majority of Bab's fol- 
 lowers, though dissensions were caused by the claims of 
 others to be the promised Manifestation. An attempt on 
 the life of the Shah in 1852 led to the execution of twenty- 
 eight of the leading spirits among the Babi, including 
 Kurrat al-Ain and several others of the "Letters of Life," 
 the apostolic circle of eighteen. Subh-i-Ezel had an elder 
 half-brother, Husein, who assumed the name Baha Allah, 
 1 It does not appear that this was ever done. 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 515 
 
 Splendour of God. He also was a disciple of the Bab, and 
 after the attempted assassination of the Shah was im- 
 prisoned, but, being released, after some months followed 
 his brother to Bagdad. There Subh-i-Ezel lived in seclu- 
 sion, only his brothers and some of his most intimate fol- 
 lowers being admitted to his presence; while the conduct of 
 affairs outside "the veil" was in the hands of his abler and 
 more experienced brother, Baha Allah. The most impor- 
 tant of the writings of the sect in this Bagdad period is the 
 Ikan, or "Book of Certainty," an exposition of Babi doc- 
 trine and demonstration of the mission of the Bab, com- 
 posed by Baha Allah in 1861/2. 
 
 Bagdad was a convenient base for Babi propaganda and 
 agitation in Persia, and in 1864, upon representations by 
 the Persian government to the Porte, the two brothers, with 
 a considerable number of their disciples, were transported, 
 first to Constantinople, and a few months later to Adria- 
 nople. In the latter city, in the year 1866/7, Baha Allah 
 formally announced himself as "Him whom God shall mani- 
 fest," for whom the Bab had bidden his disciples look. 
 This declaration caused a schism in the Babi community. 
 Most of them attached themselves to the cause of the 
 new Manifestation, but a conservative minority adhered to 
 Subh-i-Ezel. The Turkish authorities found it necessary to 
 separate the factions. Subh-i-Ezel, with his family and a 
 few followers, was sent to Famagosta, in Cyprus, while Baha 
 Allah and his party were deported to Acre on the Syrian 
 coast. In Persia also the Babi church was split over the 
 two brothers, but in the end almost all recognised Baha 
 Allah. 
 
 "He whom God shall manifest," so the Bab had fore- 
 told, would bring a new and fuller revelation, abrogating 
 and superseding the Beyan as that superseded the Koran. 
 Such a law for the new dispensation Baha Allah gave in the 
 Kitab Akdas, the "Most Holy Book," which was from time 
 to time supplemented by numerous responsa and epistles. 
 Like the Beyan, the Kitab Akdas resembles the Koran, the 
 
516 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 only sacred scriptures with which the authors or their 
 disciples were familiar, and both in its ideas and in its 
 phraseology the reader is constantly reminded of the older 
 revelation, for whose ordinances in matter of civil law and 
 religious observance it substitutes others of the same gen- 
 eral nature. 
 
 The Most Holy Book begins with the fundamental dogma 
 of the religion. "The first thing that God has prescribed 
 for the servants of God is that they should recognise the 
 sunrise-point of his revelation, and the eastern horizon of 
 his word, which is 'the place' of his essence in the world of 
 the word and the creation." The terms in which this utter- 
 ance of God is couched, however cryptic they may sound 
 to Western readers, were plain and unambiguous to Persians 
 familiar with the doctrines of the esoteric Shia sects. "The 
 place" is here, as in the scriptures of the Druses, the human 
 being, or rather, the human form, in whom the godhead 
 itself is embodied and manifested in this world. 
 
 The counterpart of the recognition of this divinity in 
 human form is unquestioning and unqualified acceptance of 
 his teaching and obedience to his commands. "Whoever 
 lays hold of him lays hold of all good, and he who rejects is 
 lost, even though he bring all good works. If ye accept 
 this most exalted 'place' and most lofty 'horizon,' every 
 one must obey what is commanded by the 'Desired.' These 
 two things go together; man cannot take one of them with- 
 out the other." 1 
 
 Baha Allah in fact made for himself as extravagant 
 claims as were made by or for any of his predecessors in 
 that vein. According to Abd al-Baha, the ground of Baha 
 Allah's vast superiority to all who gave revelations before 
 him is that they were only manifestations of the Supreme 
 Intelligence, or Will, or — when he talks to Occidentals — of 
 the Holy Spirit, while in him is manifested, not an emana- 
 tion from the divine essence but that Essence itself. The 
 
 1 The two things are to acknowledge Baha Allah as God and to do 
 whatever he commands. 
 
UAMKAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 517 
 
 Druse Hakim also is the Supreme God in the flesh; but he 
 preserves something of the mystery of the godhead by dis- 
 appearing, leaving Hamza, the manifestation of the Uni- 
 versal Intelligence, to reveal his religion to men. 
 
 Like the Beyan, the Kitab Akdas is a legislation for a 
 church-state, including its constitution, laws, ceremonial, 
 and liturgy. The legislation, upon the whole, exhibits a 
 larger mind and more knowledge of the world than the 
 Bab's. Into the details of this legislation it is impossible 
 to enter here. It ranges from the regulation of the canonical 
 hours of prayer and the number of series of prayers to be 
 said at each, the worshipper's face being turned in "my 
 most holy direction," that is toward the abode of Baha 
 Allah, to the frequency with which the finger-nails should 
 be cut and the superiority of a douche bath over a plunge. 
 These institutions are unchangeable for a millennium. 
 "Whoever before the completion of a full thousand years 
 shall claim authority (amr), 1 he is a liar and a fraud. . . . 
 Whoever interprets this verse allegorically, or explains it 
 otherwise than it is revealed in its plain sense, is cut off 
 from the spirit of God and his mercy which was before all 
 worlds." 
 
 In one important respect the attitude of Baha Allah dif- 
 fers entirely from that of the Bab. The latter was the 
 Imam Mahdi, whose mission it was, in accordance with the 
 common expectation, to dethrone the rulers of this world 
 and establish the reign of righteousness; accordingly, when 
 the Shah refused his submission to this supreme authority, 
 the followers of the Bab drew the sword for the holy war. 
 Baha Allah, on the contrary, took pains at the beginning 
 to make clear that the establishment of the true religion by 
 force was no part of his programme. He held— herein 
 adopting the position of the Fatimid (Ismaili) caliphs in 
 Egypt— that religion should win men's hearts by persuasion, 
 not constrain their allegiance by the sword. 
 
 As the founder of a universal religion, he endeavoured to 
 1 To produce a new revelation. 
 
518 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 demonstrate his claims, not only from the Koran and the 
 previous Shia systems, but from the Jewish and Christian 
 Scriptures, and from Acre he addressed his apologetic and 
 propaganda to the Christians of Europe and America, and 
 with considerable success. This Occidentalised Bahaism has, 
 however, a very remote resemblance to the genuine teach- 
 ing of the "Most Holy Book" and the complementary scrip- 
 tures which must be regarded as the authentic sources for 
 the knowledge of the religion. 1 
 
 Upon the death of Baha Allah, in 1892, his sons — of whom 
 he left four, besides three daughters 2 — quarrelled about the 
 headship of the community. Abbas, who called himself 
 Abd al-Baha, had been ornamented by his father with the 
 title "Mightiest Branch," while his brother Mohammed Ali 
 was the "Greatest Branch." Abbas was accused by his 
 brothers of claiming that authority which it was declared 
 in the Most Holy Book no one should claim for a thou- 
 sand years. In another of his writings Baha Allah had 
 affirmed: "The manifestations are ended with this greatest 
 Manifestation (sc. himself), and whoever claims such a 
 thing is a forger and a liar." 3 
 
 What foundation, if any, there is for these charges we 
 have no occasion to inquire. The main thing is that the 
 quarrel of the brothers became a schism in the religion 
 which has persisted to the present. The party of Abd al- 
 Baha, however, prevailed, and its rival has sunk into relative 
 insignificance. 
 
 The authority which Abd al-Baha claims for himself, and 
 which is asserted for him by his sect, is based upon the right 
 to interpret the revelation made by Baha Allah. For practi- 
 
 1 The Most Holy Book is an effectually sealed book to the Occidental 
 adherents of the religion, who cannot extract illumination or edification 
 from the Arabic original. 
 
 2 He had two wives and a concubine, all of whom survived him. 
 
 3 From the frequency and emphasis of such utterances it is clear that 
 Baha Allah apprehended that some one of his followers, and very 
 likely of his sons, would try to supplant him as he had supplanted the 
 Bab. 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 519 
 
 cal purposes it serves as well to be the sole and infallible 
 interpreter of a revelation as to give a new one. Upon the 
 death of Abd al-Baha the headship in the religion and the 
 power of interpretation will pass to a Council called the Bet 
 al-Adl, House of Justice, which will preside over all the 
 interests of the religion, and in its decisions and interpreta- 
 tions will be divinely and infallibly guided. 
 
 The numbers of the Bahais are very variously estimated. 
 The great mass of them are in Persia, but the religion has 
 adherents in other Moslem countries also, and it has made 
 a few thousand converts in Europe and America. In Per- 
 sia, Bahai writers claim from a third to a half of the popula- 
 tion of the country, which would give them three millions 
 or upwards, while some American Christian missionaries 
 would reduce these figures to one or two hundred thousand. 
 One reason for this surprising difference in the figures is the 
 difficulty of determining how much of a Bahai a man must 
 be in order to be counted. The principle that religious 
 beliefs should be concealed or disguised when it is dangerous 
 or inconvenient to avow them is so ingrained in the Shiites 
 of all stripes that religious statistics are impossible. 
 
 A still more recent syncretistic incarnation religion of this 
 type, with other heretical Moslem premises but similar uni- 
 versal pretensions, was started in India in 1889, by Mirza 
 Ghulam Ahmed, of Kadhian, in the Panjab. A Moslem 
 tradition runs, "In the beginning of every century (of the 
 Moslem Era) God will raise up one who shall reform the 
 faith," and as early as 1880 Ahmed had announced himself 
 as the reformer who was due at the beginning of the four- 
 teenth century of the Hegira. In 1889 he came out with 
 much grander claims. He was the Mahdi whom the Mos- 
 lem world expected — a denatured^ peaceable Mahdi, it must 
 be added; he was the Christ whose second coming Chris- 
 tians awaited; while to the Hindus he presented himself as 
 the latest Avatar. As one of his supporters writes, "These 
 three claims point to the universality of the Ahmediyya 
 mission. 
 
520 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 The gist of the founder's doctrine of himself may be briefly 
 stated in his own words: "As I have been given the name 
 of Messiah by God, with reference to the creatures' rights, 
 and am an incarnation of Jesus Christ, on account of having 
 been sent in his spirit and character and cast in the same 
 mould, similarly I have received the name of Muhammad 
 Ahmad by virtue of my function as a reformer of the trans- 
 gression of Creator's authority to spread the unity of God, 
 and therefore I have been sent in the spirit and character 
 and cast in the mould of the holy Prophet Muhammad, 
 may peace and blessings of God be upon him. Thus I am 
 at once Isa Messih and Muhammad Mahdi. Messiah is a 
 title given to Jesus Christ, and it means one who is anointed 
 and blessed by God, his vicegerent in earth and a truthful 
 and righteous person. The title of Mahdi was given to the 
 holy Prophet Muhammad, and it means one who is naturally 
 guided and the heir to all truths, and in whom the attribute 
 'guide' of the Almighty is fully represented. The grace 
 of God and mercy have made me the heir to both these 
 titles in this age, and manifested them conjointly in my per- 
 son. This is the true interpretation of my claim to the title 
 of Isa Messih and Muhammad Mahdi. The way in which 
 this manifestation has taken place is known in Islamic ter- 
 minology as baruz. 1 I am therefore a baruz of Jesus as well 
 as of Muhammad, peace be with them, and my person is 
 spiritually a combination of the persons of these two eminent 
 prophets." 2 
 
 In contradiction to both Christian and Moslem belief that 
 Jesus, after his crucifixion, rose from the tomb and was taken 
 up to heaven, whence in the last days he will return, Ahmed 
 felt it necessary to his own pretensions to prove that Jesus 
 did not die, but, his wounds having been healed by a magical 
 ointment, made his escape to Galilee, and thence found his 
 
 1 "Baruz means the spiritual appearance of one in the person of an- 
 other, the two bearing a striking resemblance to each other in their 
 qualities and characters, and being as like one another as two peas." 
 
 2 See Revue du Monde Musulman, vol. I, pp. 534 ff. 
 
EXTRAVAGANT SECTS AND DERIVATIVE RELIGIONS 521 
 
 way to the East, where his tomb was opportunely discovered 
 at Srinagar, in Cashmere. 
 
 Apart from the claims for the founder's own person, the 
 movement appears on its own presentation as an endeavour 
 to revive a religious spirit among Indian Moslems, and to 
 reform some of their ways. It appeals for authority to the 
 Koran, the Old and New Testaments, and to "trustworthy" 
 Moslem traditions. Under the stimulus of the educational 
 work of Christian missionaries, considerable stress is laid 
 upon similar efforts by Moslems. Ahmed died in 1908; but 
 the progress of the movement continued, and it has been 
 recently estimated that its adherents now number perhaps 
 50,000. It, also, has established its missionary outposts in 
 the West, and publishes in English the "Review of Relig- 
 ions" in India, and the "Islamic Review" in England. An 
 edition of the Koran in sumptuous form, with an English 
 translation, and a commentary embodying the sectarian in- 
 terpretation, has been begun. 
 
LITERATURE 
 
 The sole aim of the following list is to direct the reader who may 
 desire to inform himself more fully about one of the religions treated 
 in this volume, or some aspect of it, to books which he may with ad- 
 vantage consult for that purpose. Books of a highly technical char- 
 acter are not included, nor, on the other hand, purely popular works. 
 Especial mention is made of the books in any of these fields in which 
 fuller bibliographies may be found. So far as possible, reference is 
 made to books accessible in English; but the most important books in 
 other languages are also named. Investigations of special topics in 
 monographs or periodicals are not entered in the list. 
 
 GENERAL 
 
 Works of Reference. — Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Edited 
 by Jambs Hastings. Vol. I. 1908. This comprehensive work has 
 now reached the tenth" volume ("Picts — Sacraments," 1919), and its 
 completion may be expected within a comparatively short time. It 
 contains many articles on the religions to which the present volume is 
 devoted — articles historical, theological, philosophical, and biographical 
 — besides the discussion of many features of these religions in large, 
 comprehensive articles upon religious, moral, and social phenomena. 
 Most of these contributions are from scholars of recognised compe- 
 tence and some of high rank in their special field. The selected bibli- 
 ographies appended to the articles will serve to guide the inquirer to 
 the most important literature on the subject. The general periodicals 
 on the history of religions, such as the Revue de I'histoire des religions, 
 frequently contain articles of value on subjects which fall within the 
 scope of this volume, but they have not the same relative importance 
 as in the field of the former volume. In the Lehrbuch der Religions- 
 geschichte, edited by P. D. Chantepie de la Sattssaye (3d ed., 1905), 
 the religion of the Israelites is treated by J. J. P. Valeton, Jr., of 
 Utrecht, but comes to an end with the beginning of the Christian era. 
 The chapters on Islam are written by the very competent hand of 
 M. Th. Houtsma, of the same university, but within cramping limits 
 of space. Judaism since the first century of the Christian era is ignored, 
 and Christianity is excluded, as is the case in several other of the larger 
 comprehensive works on the history of religions, probably because it 
 was thought that it had a sufficiently large literature of its own. Of 
 recent works designed for general readers, especial mention may be 
 made of Hopkins, E. W., The History of Religions, 1918, which treats 
 of the so-called primitive religions and those of the barbaric civilisa- 
 tions, as well as those of peoples upon a higher plane of culture, includ- 
 ing Christianity. 
 
 523 
 
524 LITERATURE 
 
 Inasmuch as the Old Testament is sacred Scripture to Christians as 
 well as to Jews, the Bible dictionaries covering the Old Testament and 
 the New are of use as works of reference to the student both of Juda- 
 ism and of Christianity. Two such works may be particularly recom- 
 mended here: Encyclopaedia Biblica. Edited by T. K. Chetne and 
 J. Sutherland Black. 4 vols. 1899-1903. Dictionary of the Bible. 
 Edited by James Hastings. 4 vols. 1898-1902; with an Extra Vol- 
 ume, containing supplementary articles, 1904. The former, notwith- 
 standing some provocative eccentricities, is a superior piece of appa- 
 ratus; the latter better represents the middle way in criticism, which 
 is supposed to be safe. Both are for the most part the product of the 
 best English and American scholarship. Some of the more compre- 
 hensive encyclopaedias, particularly the Real-Encyklopadie fur protes- 
 tantische Theologie und Kirche and the Catholic Encyclopedia, include 
 in their scope the field of the Bible dictionaries, and the Jewish Ency- 
 clopedia does the same for the Old Testament. 
 
 JUDAISM 
 
 Works of Reference. — The Jewish Encyclopedia. 12 vols. 1901-6. 
 Indispensable for biography, philosophy, theology, ritual, etc. 
 
 History. — The only work covering the whole history on a large scale 
 is Ghaetz, Heinrich, Geschichte der Juden von den dltesten Zeiten bis 
 auf die Gegenwart. 11 vols. 1853-74. English translation, omitting 
 the notes and appendices of the original: History of the Jews. 5 vols. 
 1891-2. American edition, revised and continued, 1891-8, with a 
 sixth (index) volume. — For the Old Testament period, or to the begin- 
 ning of the Christian era, Ewald, Heinrich, Geschichte des Volkes 
 Israel. 3d ed. 1864-6 (4 vols, to the beginning of the Christian era). 
 The most important work on the subject from the critical presump- 
 tions of the middle of the nineteenth century. English translation, 
 edited by Russell Martineau: The History of Israel. 8 vols. 1869-86. 
 Stade, Bernhard, Geschichte des Volkes Israel. 2 vols. 1887-9. 
 The first considerable work upon the basis of the newer criticism. 
 Wellhausen, Julius, Israelitische und judische Geschichte. 7th ed. 
 1914. The most illuminating and suggestive treatment of the sub- 
 ject. McCurdt, J. F., History, Prophecy, and the Monuments; or 
 Israel and the Nations. 3 vols. 1895-1901. Smith, H. P., Old Tes- 
 tament History. 1903.— From 200 B. C. to 200 A. D. Schurer, Emil, 
 Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi. 3 vols. 3d 
 and 4th eds. 1898-1901. With full and almost exhaustive bibliogra- 
 phies of every part of the subject. English translation (from the 2d 
 German edition) : A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus 
 Christ. 3 vols. 1885-91. In part parallel to Schurer, but extending 
 into the subsequent period, Juster, Jean, Les Juifs dans I'empire 
 Romain; lew condition juridique, iconomique et sociale. 2 vols. 1914 
 (an index volume is to follow). A work of enormous learning and the 
 highest value. — For the history of the Jews after the war under Ha- 
 drian, besides the history of Graetz (above), the articles in the Jewish 
 Encyclopedia, under the various countries in which Jews were settled, 
 
LITERATURE 525 
 
 e. g., "Babylonia," etc., and the selected bibliographies appended to 
 them, offer the best approach to the subject. Literature. — For the 
 current opinion about the age and authorship of the books of the Old 
 Testament and other critical questions the student may profitably 
 consult: Drivee, S. R., Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testa- 
 ment. 6th ed. 1897. A smaller book which may serve for a first 
 approach to the subject is Moore, G. F., The Literature of the Old 
 Testament. 1913. For the historical literature see the article under 
 that title in Encyclopaedia Biblica. More detailed information will 
 be found in the articles on the several books of the Old Testament in 
 Encyclopaedia Biblica, Dictionary of the Bible, and elsewhere. — On 
 the Apocrypha, Apocalypses, etc.: Kautzsch, Emil (and others), Die 
 Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Allen Testaments. 2 vols. 1900. 
 Translations, with introduction and notes. Charles, R. H. (and 
 others), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in 
 English, with introduction and critical and explanatory notes. 2 vols. 
 
 1913. For those who read German, Kautzsch is preferable. — Rab- 
 binical and later Jewish literature: Winter, J., und Wunsche, Aug., 
 Geschichte der jiidisch-hellenistischen und talmudischen Litteratur. 3 vols. 
 1894-6. Includes all branches and periods of the literature in mono- 
 graphic treatment by many scholars, with illustrative extracts in trans- 
 lation. — Religious and moral teaching of the Jewish school and syn- 
 agogue: Bacher, Wilhelm, Die Agada der Tannaiten. 2 vols. 1884-90 
 (Vol. I, 2d ed., 1903). Palestinian masters down to about 200 A. D. in 
 chronological order, with their moral and religious teachings and inter- 
 pretations of Scripture, etc., topically arranged. Of the greatest 
 value for the age of the New Testament. By the same author, a cor- 
 responding work, Die Agada der palastinensischen Amorder. 3 vols. 
 1892-9. To the beginning of the fifth century. Religion. — Smith, 
 W. Robertson, The Religion of the Semites. 2d ed. 1894. Refer- 
 ence may also be made to Curtiss, Samuel Ives, Primitive Semitic 
 Religion To-Day. 1902. On survivals of prehistoric heathenism in 
 the popular religion of Syria and Palestine. — Inasmuch as religion is 
 the chief interest in the history of Israel, the subject is treated more 
 or less fully in all the histories the titles of which have been given 
 above. On the history of the religion specifically, Smend, Rudolf, 
 Alttestamentliche Religionsgeschichte. 2d ed. 1899. Kautzsch, Emil, 
 "Religion of Israel," in Dictionary of the Bible (Hastings), Extra Volume, 
 pp. 642-734. Smith, H. P., The Religion of Israel; an historical study. 
 
 1914. Peters, John P., The Religion of the Hebrews. 1914. With a 
 classified bibliography. Schultz, Hermann, Alttestamentliche Theolo- 
 gie. 4th ed. 1889. English translation (from the 4th German edi- 
 tion): Old Testament Theology. 2 vols. 1892.— Particular subjects: 
 Moore, G. F., "Sacrifice," Encyclopaedia Biblica, Vol. IV, cols. 4183- 
 4233. With bibliography. Mitchell, H. G., The Ethics of the Old 
 Testament. 1912. Hughes, H. M., The Ethics of Jewish Apocryphal 
 Literature. 1909. Charles, R. H., A Critical History of the Doctrine 
 of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism, and in Christianity. 1913. 
 Jewish School and Synagogue. — Schurer (above), with extensive 
 literature. Weber, Ferdinand, Die Lehren des Talmud. (1880, under 
 
526 LITERATURE 
 
 another title) 1886. To be used with caution, and hardly without 
 independent knowledge; the author has imposed upon the subject a 
 system wholly foreign, and even antagonistic to it, and adduces testi- 
 monies indiscriminately from any place or time. Bousset, Wilhelm, 
 Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter. 2d ed. 
 1906. (Literature, pp. 54-59.) This presentation depends far too 
 largely upon apocryphal and apocalyptic writings which Judaism itself 
 has never regarded as authoritative, and Judaism is in the author's 
 mind too clearly a foil for Christianity. An excellent treatment of 
 certain important subjects, to be particularly commended to Chris- 
 tian students, is Schechter, Solomon, Some Aspects of Rabbinic 
 Theology. 1909. Volz, Paul, Judische Eschatologie von Daniel bis 
 Akiba. 1903. The most thorough monograph on the subject. Valuable 
 studies on special topics are: Elbogen, J., Die Religionsanschauungen 
 der Pharisder. 1904. Klausner, Joseph, Die messianischen Vor- 
 stellungen des jiidischen Volkes im Zeitalter der Tannaiten. 1904. — On 
 Jewish worship in the Synagogue: Dembitz, L. N., Jewish Services in 
 Synagogue and Home. 1898. Oesterley, W. O. E., and Box, G. H., 
 Religion and Worship of the Synagogue. 2d ed. 1911. A recent work 
 in this field, of the highest value but of a more technical character is 
 Elbogen, Ismar, Der judische Gottesdienst in seiner geschichtlichen 
 Entwickelung. 1913. Middle Ages. — On the Karaites and the Jew- 
 ish philosophies and philosophised theologies of the Middle Ages, it 
 must suffice here to refer to Winter und Wunsehe, Litteratur u. s. w., 
 (above), and to the relevant articles in the Jewish Encyclopedia, where 
 the literature may be found with all necessary fulness; see also Gold- 
 ziher, Ignaz, " Die islamische und die judische Philosophie" (below, 
 under Mohammedanism). Particular mention may be made, however, 
 of Kaufmann, David, Geschichte der Attributenlehre in der jiidischen 
 Religionsphilosophie des Mittelalters von Saadja bis Maimuni. 1877. 
 Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed. Translated by M. Friedlander. 
 2d ed. 1904. A translation of select parts of Bahya ibn Pakuda, 
 Duties of the Heart, by E. Collins, 1911. — Kabbala. — Ginzberg, Loots, 
 "Cabala," Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. Ill, pp. 456-479. History and 
 doctrines; ample literature. Bloch, in Winter und Wiinsche, Littera- 
 tur, Vol. Ill, pp. 220-286. Theology. — Kohler, Kaufman, Jew- 
 ish Theology Systematically and Historically Considered. 1918. Abel- 
 son, J., The Immanence of God in Rabbinical Literature. 1912. See 
 also, Abelson, J., Jewish Mysticism. 1913. Margolis, Max, The 
 Theological Aspect of Reform Judaism, in Year Book of the Central 
 Conference of American Rabbis, 1903, pp. 185-338, and separately, 
 1904. Zionism.— See Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, pp. 666-686. 
 Gottheil, Richard J. H., Zionism. 1914. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 For a lucid and accurate, though extremely condensed, presentation 
 of the external and internal history of Christianity, the reader is 
 referred to Williston Walker, History of the Christian Church, 1918, 
 to which, under the modest title, " Bibliographical Suggestions," is 
 
LITERATURE 527 
 
 appended a select bibliography, classified and annotated. The follow- 
 ing list has a much more limited scope. 
 
 Works of Reference. — ReaUEncyklopadie fur protestantische Theolo- 
 gie und Kirche. 3d ed. 24 vols. 1896-1913. The New Schaff-Her- 
 zog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. 12 vols. 1908-12. Largely 
 indebted to the preceding, but not a translation of it. The Catholic 
 Encyclopedia. 15 vols. 1907-14. A work of excellent learning, and 
 especially to be commended to Protestant students. A Dictionary of 
 Christian Biography, Literature, Sects, and Doctrines. Edited by Smith, 
 W., and Wace, H. 4 vols. 1877-87. Covering the first eight cen- 
 turies. History.— Gibbon, Edward, The History of the Decline and 
 Fall of the Roman Empire. Edited by J. B. Burt. 7 vols. 1896- 
 1900. The Cambridge Medieval History. Edited by Gwatkin, H. M. 
 and Whitney, J. P. 2 vols. I. The Christian Roman Empire and 
 the Foundation of the Teutonic Kingdoms. 1911. II. The Rise of 
 the Saracens and the Foundation of the Western Empire. 1913. The 
 Cambridge Modern History. Edited by Ward, A. W., Prothero, 
 G. W., and Leathes, S. 13 vols. 1902-12. I. The Renaissance! 
 II. The Reformation. III. The Wars of Religion. IV. The Thirty 
 Years' War. The Cambridge Histories are a series of monographs by 
 many scholars, with ample bibliographies accompanying each section. 
 Emerton, Ephraim, The Beginnings of Modern Europe (1250-1450). 
 1917. An instructive and extremely interesting book on a critical 
 period. Literature. — Moffatt, James, The Historical New Testa- 
 ment. A new translation, with prolegomena, historical tables, critical 
 notes, and an appendix. 2d ed. 1901. Moffatt, James, Introduc- 
 tion to the Literature of the New Testament. 1911. Julicher, Adolf. 
 Einleitung in das Neue Testament. 5th and 6th ed. 1906; reprinted 
 1913. English translation: Introduction to the New Testament. 1904. 
 Kruger, Gustav. Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteralur in den ersten 
 drei Jahrhunderten. 1st and 2d ed. 1895. English translation: His- 
 tory of Early Christian Literature in the First Three Centuries. 1897. 
 Of larger works on the same subject especial mention may be made 
 of Bardenhewer, Otto, Geschichte der altkirchlichen Litteratur. 3 
 vols. (Vols. I and II, 2d ed., 1913-14; Vol. Ill, 1912.) To the end of 
 the fourth century. History. — Hergenrother, Cardinal Joseph, 
 Handbuch der allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte. 4th ed. By J. P. 
 Kirsch. 3 vols. 1902-7. A work of great learning; very full regis- 
 tration of the literature. Moeller, Wilhelm, Lehrbuch der Kirchen- 
 geschichte. 3 vols. (Vol. Ill bearbeitet von Gustav Kawerau.) 2d 
 and 3d eds. 1897-1907. English translation: History of the Christian 
 Church. 1892-1900. I. The Ancient Church (A. D. 1-600). II. 
 Middle Ages. III. Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Du- 
 chesne, Louis, Histoire ancienne de I'eglise. 3d and 4th eds. 3 vols. 
 1906-10. English translation : The Early History of the Christian Church, 
 from its Foundation to the End of the Fifth Century. 2 vols. 1909, 1912. 
 Holtzmann, Heinrich, Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Theologie. 
 2 vols. 1897. Weizsacker, Carl von, Das aposlolische Zeitalter der 
 Christlichen Kirche. 2d ed. 1892. English translation: The Apos- 
 tolic Age of the Christian Church. 2 vols. 1897. McGiffert, A. C, 
 
528 LITERATURE 
 
 History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age. 1910. Eusebius, Eccle- 
 siastical History, translated and annotated by A. C. McGiffert. 
 Harnack, Adolf von, Die Mission und Ausbreilung des Christentums 
 in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten. 3d ed. 2 vols. 1915. English 
 translation: The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First 
 Three Centuries. 2 vols. 1908. Dobschutz, Ernst von, Die urchrist- 
 lichen Gemeinden; sittengeschichtliche Bilder. 1902. English transla- 
 tion: Christian Life in the Primitive Church. 1904. Harnack, Adolf 
 von, Entstehung und Entwickelung der Kirchenverfassung und des 
 Kirchenrechts in den zwei ersten Jahrhunderten. 1910. English trans- 
 lation: The Constitution and Law of the Church in the First Two Centu- 
 ries. 1910. Doctrine. — Sources for the history of Christian doctrine. 
 The Ante-Nicene Fathers; translations of the writings of the Fathers 
 down to A. D. 325. 9 vols. 1885-96. Bibliography and General 
 Index (to 1st 8 vols.). 1887. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Series 
 I, 14 vols. 1886-94. Series II, 12 vols. 1890-5. On the history 
 of doctrine the most useful work for the student is, Loofs, Friedrich, 
 Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte. 4th ed. 1906. With 
 copious extracts from the Fathers and other sources. A convenient 
 work of similar kind accessible in translation is, Seeberg, Reinhold, 
 Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. 2d and 3d eds. 3 vols. 1908-13. 
 English translation: Text-Book of the History of Doctrines. 2 vols. 
 1905. On a much larger scale and of more individual character is, 
 Harnack, Adolf von, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. 4th ed. 3 vols. 
 1909-10. English translation (from 3d German edition) : History of Dog- 
 ma. 7 vols. 1894-9. Schaff, Philip, The Creeds of Christendom. 4th 
 ed. 3 vols. 1905. A collection of the creeds and confessions, ancient 
 and modern, with translations and notes, and an historical introduction. 
 For the history of early Christian worship the most useful book is 
 Duchesne, Louis, Origines du culte Chretien. 5th ed. 1909. Mid- 
 dle Ages. Papacy. — Mirbt, Carl, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums. 
 3ded. 1911. Creighton, Mandell, History of the Papacy, from the 
 Great Schism to the Sack of Rome. 6 vols. 1899. Pastor, Ludwig, 
 Geschichte der Pdpste seit dew, Ausgang des Mittelalters. 3 vols. 1886— 
 95. A supplement to this is, Pastor, Ungedruckte Akten zur Geschichte 
 der Pdpste. 1904-6. English translation: History of the Popes from 
 the Close of the Middle Ages. 2d ed. 11 vols. 1899-1912. Hefele, 
 Carl Joseph von, Conciliengeschichte. 2d ed. 1873 seqq. English 
 translation: History of the Councils of the Church. 1871-96. Scholastic 
 Philosophy and Theology. — Wulf, Maurice de, Histoire de la phi- 
 losophic midievale; precedie d'un apercu sur la philosophie ancienne. 
 1900. English translation: History of Medieval Philosophy. 1909. 
 Stockl, Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters. I, 1864; II, 1865; 
 III, 1866. Haureau, Barthelemy, Histoire de la philosophie scolas- 
 tique. 3 vols. 1872-80. Taylor, H. O., The Mediceval Mind. 
 2 vols. 1914. Maclear, G. F., A History of Christian Missions dur- 
 ing the Middle Ages. 1863. Fortescue, A., The Ceremonies of the 
 Roman Rite Described. 1918. Technical. Trevelyan, G. M., Eng- 
 land in the Age of Wycliffe. 1899. Lechler, G. V., Johann von Wiclif 
 und die VorgeschicMe der Reformation. 2 vols. 1873. Schaff, D. S., 
 
LITERATURE 529 
 
 John Huss, His Life, Teachings, and Death, after Five Hundred Years. 
 1915. Renaissance. — See the Cambridge Modern History. Vol. I. 
 Protestant Reformation. — Lindsay, T. M., A History of the Reformation. 
 2 vols. 1906-7. McGiffert, A. C, Martin Luther; the Man and 
 His Work. 1911. Smith, Preserved, Martin Luther. 1911. Kost- 
 lin, J., Martin Luther, sein Leben und seine Schriften. 2 vols. 2d ed. 
 1883. By one of the leading German Luther students. Grisar, 
 Hartmann, Luther. 3 vols. 1911-12. A learned Catholic historian, 
 who makes use of a good deal of material recently brought to light. 
 Authorised English translation: Martin Luther. 6 vols. 1915-17. 
 Walker, Williston, John Calvin. 1906. For other biographies, his- 
 tories of particular churches or sects, etc., reference must be made to 
 the bibliography in Walker (see above). The best general survey of 
 the history of Christianity since the Reformation is Geschichte der 
 Christlichen Religion (Die Kultur der Gegenwart, I, 4). 2d ed. 
 1909: Ehrhard, Albert, " Katholisches Chrislentum und Kirche West- 
 europasinder Neuzeit" (pp. 298-430); Troeltsch, Ernst, " Protestan- 
 tisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit" (pp. 431-755). The 
 former is by an eminent Catholic historian, the latter by one of the 
 leading Protestant theologians of Germany. Both are furnished with 
 excellent classified bibliographies. 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Works of Reference. — Hughes, Thomas P., Dictionary of Islam. 
 1885. Convenient, but with serious limitations. The great Encyclo- 
 pedia of Islam is only in its beginnings. A large annotated bibliogra- 
 phy is appended to The Presentation of Christianity to Moslems. 1917. 
 Literature. — Noldeke, Theodor, Geschichte des Qorans. 1860. 2d 
 ed. Bearbeitet von Friedrich Schwally. Part I. 1909. The most 
 important critical work. Sale, George, The Koran. 1734; very often 
 reprinted. A paraphrastic translation, embodying the interpretation 
 of Moslem commentators; with notes, and a Preliminary Discourse on 
 the life of Mohammed, Moslem doctrine and practice (now in part 
 antiquated). Rodwell, J. M., El-Kor'dn; or The Koran: translated 
 from the Arabic, the Suras arranged in chronological order. 1871. 
 2d revised and amended edition. 1876. The attempt to arrange the 
 chapters in chronological order is conjectural and inconvenient. 
 Palmer, Edward H., The Qur'dn. 2 vols. 1880. Sacred Books of 
 the East, Vols. VI and IX. Not equal to Palmer's reputation, either 
 in the translation or the introduction. The only translation which 
 gives any notion of what the Koran is like in form is Ruckert, Fried- 
 rich, Der Koran im Auszuge vhersetzt. Edited by August Muller. 
 1888. Wherry, E. M., Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran. 
 4 vols. 1882-6. History.— Muller, August, Der Islam im Mor- 
 gen- und Abendland. 2 vols. 1885-7. The best comprehensive his- 
 tory. Encyclopedia Britannica. 9th ed. 1875-88. "Mohammedan- 
 ism " "Mohammed" (Wellhause'n), "Early Caliphate" (Stanislas 
 Guyard), "The Koran" (Theodor Noldeke). In the 11th edition the 
 excellent article on the "Caliphate" by de Goeje, and the brief articles, 
 
530 LITERATURE 
 
 "Mohammedan Institutions," "Mohammedan Law," by D. B. Mac- 
 donald may be commended. Religion.— The Arabs before Moham- 
 med. Wellhausen, Julius, Reste ardbischen Heidentumes. 2d ed. 
 1887. Jaussen, Antonin, Cout-umes des Arabes au pays de Moab. 
 1908. Survivals of immemorial Arab heathenism; a work of very 
 great value. Mohammed. — Margoliouth, D. S. Mohammed and the 
 Rise of Islam. 2d ed. 1905. The author brings to his task a large 
 knowledge of the Arabic literature, and gives in the light of it a fresh 
 presentation of the subject — also one coloured by various prejudices. 
 Gkimme, Hubert, Mohammed. 2 vols. 1892, 1895. I. Life of 
 Mohammed. II. Introduction to the Koran; Theological System 
 of the Koran. Aw, Sted Ameer, The Spirit of Islam, or the Life and 
 Teachings of Mohammed 1896. An attractive presentation by a 
 modern liberal Moslem. Islam. — Gow>ziher, Ignaz, Vorlesungen uber 
 den Islam. 1910. From Mohammed to the latest sectarian develop- 
 ments (Babis, Ahmediyyas, etc.). By the most eminent of living 
 Islamic scholars; with copious notes and references to the literature, 
 Oriental and Occidental. Gow>ziher, Ignaz, Muhammedanische Stu- 
 dien. 2 vols. 1889, 1890. Klein, F. A., The Religion of Islam. 
 1906. Macdonald, Duncan B., The Development of Muslim Theology, 
 Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Theory. 1903. With classified bib- 
 liography. A good introduction to the subjects. Boer, T. J., de, 
 Geschichte der Philosophie im Islam. 1901. English translation: The 
 History of Philosophy in Islam. 1903. See also de Boer's article, 
 "Philosophy, Muslim" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 
 IX, pp. 877-883. (Literature, p. 883.) Goldziher, Ignaz, "Die 
 islamische und die jiidische Philosophie," in Allgemeine Geschichte der 
 Philosophie (Die Kultur der Gegenwart, I, 5). 1909. pp. 45-76. A 
 sketch by the hand of a master. Horten, M., Die philosophischen 
 Probleme der spekulativen Theologie im Islam. 1910. Horten, M., 
 Die philosophischen Systeme der spekulativen Theologen im Islam. 1912. 
 Arnold, T. W., The Preaching of Islam. 2d ed. 1913. Macdonald, 
 Duncan B., The Religious Altitude and Life in Islam. 1909. Bliss, 
 Frederick J., The Religions of Modern Syria and Palestine. 1912. 
 On Mysticism (Sufism), see Goldziher, Ignaz, Vorlesungen, u. s. w., 
 lecture 4, and Nicholson, R. A., The Mystics of Islam. 1914. With a 
 bibliography, including the principal translations of Sufi authors. Ba- 
 bis and Bahais. — Brown, Edward G., "Bab, Babis," in Encyclopae- 
 dia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. II, pp. 298-308. With a full bibli- 
 ography, down to 1910. Ahmediyya. — A history of the movement 
 and description of its character and aims by an adherent is printed (in 
 English) in the Revue du Monde Musulman. Vol. I (February, 1907), 
 pp. 535-576. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbas, al-, uncle of Mohammed, 435 
 
 Abd al-Baha, 518. 
 Abbasid caliphate. 408, 435. 
 Abd al-Baha, 516, 518 /. 
 Abd al-Kadir al-Jilani, 497. 
 Abd al-Mumin, 472 /. 
 Abdallah ibn Maimun, 500 ff. 
 Abelard, 268 /. 
 
 theory of atonement, 247 /. 
 Ability, natural and moral, 357. 
 Abraham, Beligion of (Islam), 403. 
 Absolute, Neoplatonic, 165. 
 
 Bahya ibn Pakuda, 86, Kabbala, 
 96. 
 
 Valentinus, 165 ff., Origen, 170. 
 
 Dionysius the Areopagite, 207 /. 
 
 Maximus Confessor, 209. 
 
 Ikhwan al-Safa, 451 /. 
 
 Ismaili, 500. 
 
 Sheikhi, Babi, 510, 512. 
 Absolution, form of, 243. 
 Abu Bekr, first caliph, 391, 392, 406. 
 Abu Hanifa, jurist, 412. 
 Abu Talib, Uncle of TVTnha mm p.fi, 392. 
 Abyssinian Church, 191 /. 
 Accidents, momentaneity, 429. 
 Adam, sin of, in Paul, 129. 
 
 Irenseus, 162, TertuUian, 196. 
 
 Augustine, 197, 198. 
 
 Pelagius, 197. 
 
 Massilians, 201. 
 
 See also Original sin. 
 Adam and Eve, 35 /. 
 Adam Kadmon, 96. 
 Adat, Moslem customary law, 412. 
 Adorantes, Unitarian party, 338 /. 
 Adrian I, Pope (772-95), 230. 
 Moas, 166. 
 
 Africa, Proconsular, Christianity in, 
 193. 
 
 Mohammedanism in, 407, 436, 
 466 ff., 503, 506/. 
 Agape, 150, 225. 
 Agha Khan, 506. 
 ' kyvoxrla, 208. 
 Ahab, king of Israel, 13. 
 Ahmediyya, 519 ff, 
 Ailly, Pierre d', 315, 319, n. 1. 
 Akiba, Rabbi, 67. 
 
 Alamut, fortress of Assassins, 504 /. 
 Alaric, 235. 
 Albertus Magnus (Albert of Boll- 
 
 stadt), 271. 
 Albigenses, 284 /. 
 Alexander Jannaeus, 54. 
 
 Alexander of Hales, 271. 
 Alexandria, Jews in, 51. 
 
 church in, 165. 
 
 Christian school, 167 /. 
 
 philosophy and theology in, 169 
 ff., 178/., 181/., 187 ff. 
 
 rivalry with Antioch and Con- 
 stantinople, 188 /. 
 Ali, fourth caliph, 408, 431. 
 
 party of (Shia), 432. 
 
 incarnation of godhead, 433, 509. 
 Ali Mohammed (the Bab), 511 ff. 
 Ali-Ilahis, 509. 
 Allah, "the deity," 388. 
 Allegory, in Philo, 60. 
 
 Barnabas, 154. 
 
 Origen, 175. 
 
 Sufis and Shiites, 449 /. 
 
 Ismaili, 501. 
 Almohads, 470 ff. 
 Almoravids, 470, 472. 
 Altdorf, university, TJnitarianism in, 
 
 339. 
 Amalric of Bena, 286. 
 America, Protestantism in, 358, 361, 
 
 363, 368, 376, 378 ff. 
 Amos, his message, 15-17. 
 Anabaptists, 322, 324. 
 
 See also Baptists. 
 Anan ben David, 81 /. 
 Angels, in Judaism, 71. 
 
 Christian worship of, 154, 228. 
 
 nature of, Origen, 172. 
 
 Moslem doctrine, 475. 
 Anima Mundi, 451, 453, 500 /. 
 Anomceans, radical Arians, 183. 
 Anselm, 268. 
 
 theory of atonement, 246 /., 345, 
 369. 
 Anthropomorphism, in Judaism, 90. 
 
 Christian monks, 176.. 
 
 Moslem, 419, 423 /., 470-472. 
 
 Mutazilite rejection of, 419 /. 
 
 mediating theory, al-Ashari, 424. 
 
 combated by Ibn Hazm, 470. 
 
 by Ibn Tumart, 471 /. 
 Anthropos, in Valentinian Pleroma, 
 
 165. 
 Antichrist, Moslem, 476, 492; cf. 472, 
 
 in Christian polemics, 290, 302. 
 Antinomianism, Marcion, 155. 
 
 Gnostics, 156. 
 
 Sect of the Free Spirit, 286. 
 
 Anabaptist, 322. 
 
 Sun, 449 /. 
 
 531 
 
532 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Antioeh, philosophy and theology in, 
 
 178, 188. 
 Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, 52. 
 Antisemitism, 105. 
 Antitrinitarian tendencies, 338. 
 
 See also Trinity, Unitarians. 
 Antony, Saint, 194, 204. 
 ' ' A.<t>6a.p<rla, 162. 
 Apocalypse, New Testament, 144 /. 
 
 See also Revelation of John. 
 Apocalypses, Jewish, 64 /. 
 Apocatastasis, Origen's theory, 174/., 
 
 176. 
 Apocrypha, in Protestant versions of 
 Old Testament, 320. 
 
 Council of Trent on, 345. 
 Apollmarius of Laodicea, 186 ff. 
 Apologists, Christian, 152. 
 
 teaching of, 160-162, 186, 245. 
 Apostles, the Twelve, 118/. 
 
 missionaries, 149. 
 Apostles' Creed, 158, 326, 349. 
 Appropriation, of acts, al-Ashari, 426. 
 Aquila, translator of the Bible, 67. 
 Aquinas, 261, 269, 271-275, 315, 346, 
 348, 350, 369. W 
 
 influence of Dionysius the Areo- 
 pagite on, 210. 
 
 philosophy of, Leo XIII on, 384. 
 Arabia, Jews and Christians in, 389. 
 Arabs, religion before Mohammed, 
 388/. 
 
 conversion of, 394, 406. 
 
 conquests, 406 /. 
 Arians, 178/., 181-184. 
 
 Goths and other Germanic peo- 
 ples, 236/. 
 Aristotelianism, Arab, 451, 453 ff. 
 
 Jewish, 87/., 89-94. 
 
 scholastic, 269 ff. 
 Aristotle, influence on schoolmen, 
 269 ff. 
 
 synthesis with Christian theol- 
 ogy, 274/., 372/., 384. 
 
 teachings incompatible with 
 Bible and Koran, 92, 453 /. 
 
 "Theology of," 452/. 
 
 See also Aristotelianism. 
 Arms, and his teaching, 178 ff. 
 
 recalled from exile, 182. 
 Ark (chest), of Jehovah, 5, 10, 11, 39. 
 Ark, Noah's, figure of the church, 224. 
 Armenian (Gregorian) Church, 192. 
 Arminianism, departures from Cal- 
 vinism, 355. 
 
 in Church of England, 367. 
 
 "Wesleyan Methodists, 367. 
 Arminians, in the Netherlands, 355 /. 
 Arminius, 355. 
 Asceticism, Jewish, 58/., 86. 
 
 Christian, 203-207. 
 
 mediaeval sects, 283 ff., 289 /. 
 
 Protestant, 360 ff. 
 
 Moslem, 439 ff. 
 al-Ghazali, 463, 464 /. 
 See also Monasticism, Mysticism, 
 Sufls. 
 Ashari, al-, life and teaching, 423-429. 
 antagonism to, 428 /., 468 ff. 
 triumph of his theology in the 
 West, 470 ff. 
 Asmonaeans, 52 /. 
 Assassins, 504 ff. 
 Astrology, fatalism, 135. 
 Astronomy, Copernican, 372 /. 
 Athanasian Creed, 326, 336, 369. 
 Athanasius, 181 /., 183, 184, 185, 186. 
 
 on the person of Christ, 187 /. 
 Atomism, in Moslem dogmatics, 429 /. 
 Atonement, Day of, 43 /. 
 in the synagogue, 78 /. 
 Moslem fast, 402, 403, 478. 
 Atonement, doctrine of, Paul, 130. 
 Anselm, 245 ff., 345, 369. 
 
 Socinus' criticism, 341 /. 
 Aquinas, 247. 
 Abelard, 247. 
 Grotius, 342. 
 
 Arminian, universality of, 355. 
 Attributes, of God 
 
 in Jewish theology, 83, 84, 86. 
 justice and mercy, 70. 
 Maimonides, 90 /. 
 Moslem controversy, 420. 
 al-Ashari, 425. 
 Ibn Hazm, 468 /. 
 Ibn Tumart, 471. 
 orthodox doctrine, 475. 
 Augsburg, Reichstag of, 303 /. 
 Interim, 305. 
 Confession, 304, 336. 
 
 churches of the, 305 /., 334, 
 344. 
 Peace of, 305, 344. 
 Augustine, life and teaching, 194-203. 
 church and sacraments, 223-225. 
 Civitas Dei, 249-251, 257. 
 Augustinianism, opposition to, 201 /. 
 Synod at Orange, 202. 
 Gregory I, 202 /. 
 in Middle Ages, Gottschalk, 238. 
 Reformers, Luther, 317, Melanc- 
 thon, 327 /., Calvin, 331, For- 
 mula of Concord, 355. 
 Jansenists, 354. 
 
 Synod of Dordrecht (Dort) , 355 /. 
 Formula Consensus Helvetica, 
 
 357. 
 See also Arminianism, Pelagian- 
 ism. 
 Avatar, Ghulam Ahmed, the latest, 
 
 519. 
 Avempace (Ibn Bajja), 455. 
 Averroes (Ibn Rushd), 94, 270, 454 .y. 
 Averroism, 94, 456. 
 Avicebron (Ibn Gabirol), 87. 
 
INDEX 
 
 533 
 
 Aricenna (Ibn Sina), 87, 89, 91, 94, 
 270, 273, 277. 
 
 Aristotelianism of, 454 /. 
 Avignon, popes at, 261, 263, 288. 
 Azazel, 43 /., 72. 
 Azrail, angel, 475. 
 
 Baal of Tyre, temple in Samaria, 13 /. 
 Baal Shem, founder of Hasidism, 98 /. 
 Baals, gods of Canaanites, 6. 
 
 Israelite worship of, 7, 19. 
 Bab, "Door" (of communication with 
 God or the Imam), Ismaili, Druse, 
 Nusairi, 510. 
 
 Imamite doctrine, 510 /. 
 Bab, Ali Mohammed, the, 511 ff., 517. 
 
 higher claims, 512 /. 
 
 godhead, 513 /. 
 
 successor, 514. 
 Babel, Tower of, 37. 
 Babis, offshoot of Ultra Shiites, 509, 
 512 ff. 
 
 schism, 515. 
 
 See also Baha Allah, Bahais. 
 Babylon, fall of, 31. 
 Bacon, Francis, 374. 
 Baha Allah, 514-518. 
 Bahais, offshoot of Babis, 509. 
 
 Baha Allah supplants the Bab, 
 515. 
 
 revelation, Kitab Akdas, 515/. 
 
 fundamental dogmas, 516 /. 
 
 schism among, 518 /. 
 
 numbers, 519. 
 Bahaism, as universal religion, 517 /. 
 Bahya ibn Pakuda, 85 ff. 
 Baka, abiding (in God), 447. 
 Bakilani, al-, 429. 
 Balance, in judgment of dead, 424, 
 
 476. 
 Baltic Prussia, conversion of, 237. 
 Baptism, in mysteries, 128. 
 
 Christian, in Paul, 127. 
 
 in Gospel of John, 143. 
 
 ritual, 218 /. 
 
 remission of sins, 196, 200, 219. 
 
 regeneration, 219. 
 
 postponement of, 219. 
 
 infant, Catholic Church, 219. 
 remission of original sin, 200. 
 Luther on, 318. 
 Calvin, 333. 
 Anabaptists, 321, 364. 
 
 heretical, 223 /. 
 
 See also Baptists. 
 Baptists, Mennonites, 364. 
 
 English, origin and branches, 364, 
 367. 
 
 theory of the church, 365. 
 
 See also Anabaptists. 
 Barbarossa, on church and state, 258. 
 Bar Cocheba, 67, 147. 
 Barnabas, Epistle, 154. 
 
 Baronius, Ecclesiastical Annals, 350. 
 
 Baruch, Apocalypse of, 65. 
 
 Basel, Council of, 265/., 291. 
 
 Basilides, 165. 
 
 Basra, "Pure Brethren," see Ikhwan 
 
 al-Safa. 
 Batiniyya, 450, 458. 
 Beast of the Earth, in Moslem escha- < 
 
 tology, 476. 
 Beelzebul, 111. 
 Beghards, 286, 287. 
 Beguines, 287. 
 Bektashis, 509. 
 Beliar, demon, 72. 
 Bellarmm, Cardinal, 350. 
 Benedict of Nursia, 206. 
 Benedictine rule and monasteries, 
 
 206. 
 Benedictus Deus, Bull, 349. 
 Berbers, Mohammedanism of, 470. 
 
 accept Ibn Tumart as Mahdi, 
 472. 
 Berengar of Tours, on Eucharist, 
 
 239/. 
 Bern, Reformation in, 307. 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, 276. 
 Beroea (Aleppo), Nazarenes at, 147 /. 
 Bet al-Adl, Bahai council 519. 
 Beyan, Scriptures of Babis, 513 /. 
 
 legislation in, 514. 
 Biandrata, 338. 
 
 Bible, first Latin version of New Tes- 
 tament, 193. 
 
 editions and translations at re- 
 vival of learning, 295. 
 
 Luther's translation of New Tes- 
 tament (1522), 303. 
 
 infallible divine oracles, 368. ■ 
 
 See also Scriptures. 
 Biel, Gabriel, 316. 
 
 Bishops, in New Testament and Igna- 
 tius, 149. 
 
 organs of Apostolic tradition, 
 157. 
 
 synods of, 157. 
 
 parity, 213, 262, authority, 213. 
 
 Cyprian on the episcopate, 222. 
 
 canonical election, 255. 
 
 Luther's theory of the ministry, 
 321. 
 
 in Church of England, 310. 
 
 powers of, Tridentine decree, 348. 
 
 Methodist, 363. 
 Bishops of Rome, see Popes. 
 Bismillah, 512. 
 
 Black stone, at Mecca, 480, 481 , 502 /. 
 Bogomiles, 284. 
 Bohemia, conversion of, 237. 
 
 Hussite reformation and wars, 
 290/. 
 Bohemian Brethren, 291 /. 
 Bonaventura, 271. 
 Boniface II, Pope (530-532), 202. 
 
534 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Boniface VIII, Pope, 259-261. 
 
 conflict with Philip the Fair, 259. 
 
 Bull, Unam Sanctam, 260 /. 
 Brandenburg, Unitarians in, 339. 
 Brethren and Sisters of the Free 
 
 Spirit, 286. 
 Bridge, judgment, 424, 476. 
 Britain, conversion of, 237. 
 
 See also England, Scotland. 
 Brownists, 364. 
 Bruno, Giordano, 373. 
 Buddhist influence in Suflsm, 447. 
 Bulgaria, national church, 216. 
 Bull, Unam Sanctam (1302), 260, 261, 
 267. 
 
 Exsurge Domine (1520), 301. 
 
 Benedictus Deus (1564), 349. 
 
 Ineffabilis Deus (1854), 382. 
 Bunyan, John, 365. 
 
 Cabala (Kabbala), 94-97, 209. 
 Caesarea Philippi, Peter's confession, 
 
 111/.; cf. 472, n. 2. 
 Cain, 37, 249. 
 Calendar, Christian, Easter, 220 /. 
 
 Moslem, 479. 
 Caliph, functions of, Sunnite theory, 
 432. 
 
 Shiite Imam, ibid. 
 Caliphate, primitive, 405 ff. 
 
 administration, 409. 
 
 Kharijite theory, 414 ff. 
 Caliphs, the Four, 405-408. 
 
 Omayyad, 408. 
 
 Abbasid, 408, 435. 
 
 Fatimid (Ismaili), 503. 
 Calixtines, 291. 
 Calvin, life, 308. 
 
 Institutio Christianas Religionis, 
 308. 
 
 theology, 329-334. 
 Calvinism, symbols of, Swiss, 334. 
 
 Canons of Dort, 356. 
 
 Westminster Confession and Cat- 
 echisms, 357 /. 
 
 Formula Consensus Helvetica, 
 357. 
 
 See also Reformed Churches. 
 
 "Five Points," 356. 
 
 "New School," 357. 
 Canaanites, religion, 2 /., 6, 7 /. 
 Cano, Melchior, De Locis Theologicis, 
 
 350. 
 Canon of Scripture, ancient Chris- 
 tian, 158. 
 
 Protestant revision, 319 /. 
 
 Council of Trent, 345. 
 Cappel, Louis, 357. 
 Cardinals, 254. 
 
 Carlstadt (Andreas Bodenstein), 322. 
 Carmatians, 502 /. 
 Carthage, church in, 193, 215. 
 
 Synod at (418), 200. 
 
 Carthusians, 279. 
 
 Casimir, John, king of Poland, 339. 
 
 Catechetical instruction, 220. 
 
 Catechism, 
 
 Racovian, 339. 
 Westminster, 358. 
 Catechismus Romanus, 349 /., 358. 
 Cathari, 284. 
 
 Catholic Church, modern conditions 
 and tendencies, 380-385. 
 See also Church. 
 Catholic Reformation, 343 ff. 
 Causality, category of, al-Ashari, 427. 
 Celibacy, clerical, 207, 254, 308, 310. 
 Luther's rejection of, 302, 304. 
 condemned in Moslem tradition, 
 
 441. 
 among Dervishes, 498. 
 Certainty, religious, ways to, 458. 
 through religious experience only, 
 460. 
 Chalcedon, Council of, 190 /., 227. 
 doctrine of Person of Christ, 
 190/. 
 Charles the Great, 251 /. 
 
 revival of learning under, 238. 
 on image- worship, 230, 252. 
 Charles V, Emperor (1519-58), 302/., 
 
 305, 343. 
 Chiliasm, see Millennium. 
 Christ, the name, 120. 
 
 faith of Jewish disciples, 117 /., 
 
 138/., Nazarenes, 147/. 
 a divine being, 121, 123. 
 worship of, 121, 123, 132. 
 Paul, 125 /., Hebrews, 136 /., 
 
 John, 139 ff. 
 docetic heresy, 153. 
 Marcion, 155, Gnostics, 156. 
 Apologists, 161, Irenseus, 162/. 
 Monarchians, 163-165. 
 Valentinus, 166, Origen, 171 /., 
 
 176. 
 Paul of Samosata, 180 /. 
 Arian and Nestorian controver- 
 sies, 180-191. 
 Council of Chalcedon, 190 /. 
 Reformers, 326, 336. 
 Amalricians, 286. 
 Servetus, 336 /. 
 Anabaptists, 338. 
 Socinus, Socinians, 338-340, 341. 
 See also Trinity, 
 death of, meaning and neces- 
 sity; disciples of Jesus, 130, 
 n. 1. 
 
 Paul, 126 /., 130, Hebrews, 
 
 137. 
 ransom to the devil, 245. 
 Anselm's theory, 245 ff., 
 
 Abelard, 247 /. 
 See also Atonement. 
 Spirit of, Paul, 132. 
 
INDEX 
 
 535 
 
 second coming, 117, 133, 138, 
 
 145, 162. 
 See also Millennium. 
 Christianity, first occurrence of the 
 name, 154. 
 
 early Gentile, 119 ff. 
 coalescence of Gentile and Jew- 
 ish, 123. 
 inheritance from Judaism, 123, 
 
 129. 
 as a mystery, 128 /. 
 Jewish, 138 /., 147 /. 
 Judaising tendencies and antag- 
 onism to them, 153-156. 
 spread of, 118 ff., 151, 193. 
 after Constantine, 211 /. 
 conversion of Germanic peo- 
 ples, 235-237. 
 Britain, 237. 
 Eastern Europe, 237. 
 modern missions, 352 /. 
 Christians, crimes charged to, 151. 
 Christmas, age of the festival, 221. 
 Christos, the title, 120. 
 Chrysostom, Saint, demolishes pagan 
 temples, 212. 
 liturgy of, 216. 
 Church, early organisation, 149. 
 "catholic," in Ignatius, 150. 
 at the end of the second century, 
 
 157-159. 
 Greek, see Greek Church. 
 Eastern, 191 /., 234. 
 Latin, 193 /. 
 doctrine of, Cyprian, 222 /. 
 
 Gregory I, 250/., Augustine, 
 223/., 249/. 
 Wyclifle, 288/., Hus, 291. 
 
 See also Church and State. 
 Luther's idea of, 317, 321, 325. 
 Swiss, Zwtngli, 307. 
 Calvin, 332 /., 334, 370. 
 Reformed, the Netherlands, 
 France, Scotland, 334 /. 
 
 England, 309 /., 311 /., 335. 
 Anabaptist and sectarian idea of, 
 
 322, 324, 364, 365 ff., 368. 
 and world, 365. 
 Church and state, 
 
 Augustine, Civitas Dei, 249 /., 
 
 257. 
 Gregory I, 250. 
 in the Christian empire, 248 /. 
 under the Carolingians, 252. 
 Nicholas I, 253. 
 
 Gregory VII, influence of Augus- 
 tine and feudal ideas, 256 ff. 
 Frederick I, Barbarossa, 258. 
 Innocent III, 258 /. 
 Boniface VIII, 259 ff., Leo X. 
 
 267. 
 theory of French jurists, 260. 
 Dante, De Monarchia, 261. 
 
 Marsilius of Padua, Defensor 
 
 Pacis, 261 /., Occam, 262. 
 Wyclifle, 288 /. 
 Calvin, 334. 
 Cistercians, 279. 
 Civilisation, Catholic and Protestant 
 
 ideal of, 369 /. 
 Civitas Dei, Augustine, 249 /., 257. 
 Clement of Alexandria, 167 /. 
 Clementine Recognitions and Homi- 
 lies, 148. 
 Clergy, see Priesthood, Orders, 
 
 Bishops. 
 Common Prayer, Book of, 312. 
 Communism, Wyclifle, 289. 
 
 Anabaptists, 322-324. 
 Compania de Jesus, foundation of, 
 
 351/ 
 Concealed Imam, of Shiites, 434 /., 
 436/ 
 
 Ismaili, 499 /., 503, Druse, 507, 
 Sheikhi, 510/., Babi, 512. 
 Concord, Formula of, 355. 
 Concupiscence, in Augustine, 195, 
 198, 199. 
 
 al-Ghazali on, 464 /. 
 Confession, in monasteries, 241. 
 to a priest, 241-244. 
 law of the Church, 242. 
 Confession of Faith, Westminster, 
 
 358. 
 Confirmation, Sacrament of, 219 /., 
 346. 
 
 age for children, 220. 
 administered by bishop, 348. 
 catechetical instruction, 220, 
 349/ 
 Congregational churches in New Eng- 
 land, 358, 361, 379. 
 Conquests, Moslem, 407, 408 ff. 
 Conscience, liberty of, 370. 
 Consensus, principle of, in Islam, 
 
 413. 
 Consensus Repetitus, 357. 
 Consensus, Catholic and Protestant, 
 
 368-371. 
 Constance, Council of, 263 ff., 291. 
 Constantine, first Christian emperor, 
 
 178. 
 Constantinople, Council of (381), 184. 
 Fifth General Council (553), 191. 
 iconoclastic council (754), 229 /. 
 Constantius, Emperor, 183. 
 Constitutum Constantini, 294. 
 Consubstantiation, 319. 
 Conversion, Paul, 124. 
 Augustine, 194 /. 
 necessity of, 364. 
 paradigm of, 360 /. 
 methods, 362-364. 
 Moslem, al-Ashari, 423. 
 Al-Ghazali, 460. 
 in Sufi "way," 444. 
 
536 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Copernicus, 372 /. 
 
 astronomical system condemned, 
 373. 
 Coptic Church, 191. 
 Corruption of nature, TertuUian, 196. 
 
 Augustine, 198, 200. 
 
 See also Original sin. 
 Cosmogony, Jewish, 37 /. 
 Cosmology, Maimonides, 90 /. 
 
 al-Farabi, Avicenna, 454. 
 
 schoolmen, 274 /. 
 
 modern, 372 /., 376. 
 Cosmos, redemption of, 135, 167, 
 
 452. 
 Council, Nicaea (325), 179. 
 
 Sardica (343), 215. 
 
 Seleucia-Rimini (359), 183. 
 
 Constantinople (381), 184. 
 
 Ephesus (431), 189. 
 
 Ephesus (449), 189. 
 
 Chalcedon (451), 190/. 
 
 Constantinople (553), 191. 
 
 Constantinople (754), 229/. 
 
 Nicaea (787), 229. 
 
 Fourth Lateran (1215), 242. 
 
 Pisa (1409), 263. 
 
 Constance (1414-18)), 263 ff., 
 291. 
 
 Basel (1431-49), 265, 266, 291. 
 
 Ferrara-Florence (1438-9), 265. 
 
 Fifth Lateran (1516), 267. 
 
 Trent (1545-63), 343 ff. 
 
 Vatican (1870), 382/. 
 Councils, authority of, 261-266. 
 Counter-Reformation, 343 ff. 
 Courland, conversion of, 237. 
 Creation of the world, Genesis 1, 37 /. 
 
 out of nothing, 88, 92. 
 
 argument from, to creator, 84, 86. 
 criticism, Maimonides, 90. 
 
 God's end in, 92 /. 
 
 Asharite doctrine, 427, 429. 
 Creation of acts, 426, 475. 
 Creed, Jewish, Maimonides, 94, 102. 
 
 Christian, Apostles', 158, 326, 
 349. 
 
 Nicene, 180, 184/., 326, 336, 
 
 345, 369. 
 Chalcedonian, 190 /. 
 Athanasian, 326. 336, 369. 
 
 Moslem, 474. 
 
 al-Ashari, 428. 
 al-Maturidj, 428. 
 Crescas, Hasdai, 94. 
 Criticism, textual, 357. 
 
 biblical, in 19th century, 377. 
 Cross, gospel of the, Paul, 127. 
 Crusades, 280. 
 
 Cultus, attitude of the prophets to, 
 15 if. 
 
 See also Worship. 
 Cusanus, Nicolaus, 294. 
 Cyprian, 193. 
 
 Unity of the Catholic Church, 
 222. 
 
 on heretical baptism, 223. 
 Cyril of Alexandria, 188-192. 
 Cyrus, King, 31. 
 
 Da'is, Ismaili emissaries, 501. 
 
 Babi, 512. 
 Damascus, Jewish sect at, 59. 
 Daniel, Book of, 64. 
 Dante, De Monarchia, 261. 
 Darazi, al-, 506 /. 
 Darius Hystaspis, 32. 
 David, Francis, 338, 370. 
 Day of Atonement, 43 /., 78 /. 
 
 Moslem fast, 402, 403. 
 Deacons, in early church, 149. 
 
 cardinal, 254, n. 1. 
 
 See Orders of the Ministry. 
 Death, origin of, 36, 129. 
 
 uncleanness from, 40/., 477, n. 1. 
 
 See also Immortality. 
 Decius, Emperor, persecutions, 152, 
 
 177. 
 Decrees of God, Gottschalk, 238. 
 
 Reformers, 331 /. 
 
 Synod of Dordrecht (Dort), 356. 
 
 See also, Election, Predestina- 
 tion. 
 Decrees, Papal, Lamentabili sane ex- 
 itu, 385, Pascendi gregis, 385. 
 
 Tridentine, 344 ff. 
 Dedication, Feast of, 78. 
 Defensor Pacis, 261, 288. 
 Defilement, religious, see Unclean- 
 ness. 
 Deification, mystic goal, Dionysius 
 the Areopagite, 208. 
 
 Sufi, 448. 
 Deism, 375. 
 Demons, in Judaism, 37, 71, 72, 110/. 
 
 Christianity, 135, 161, 166, 172, 
 173, 174/. 
 
 Mohammedanism, 463, 475. 
 Denmark, Reformation in, 308 /. 
 Deposit of faith, 369, 377. 
 Dervish, orders, 497 /. 
 
 lay associates, 498. 
 
 See also Sufis. 
 Descartes, philosophy of, 374. 
 Determinism, Luther, 317. 
 
 Moslem theologians, 426 /., 429 /. 
 
 in Moslem orthodoxy, 489. 
 
 See also Predestination. 
 Deuteronomy, 22 ff. 
 Development, idea of, in theology, 
 
 377, 384 /. 
 Devil, in Judaism, 72 /. 
 
 Christianity, 135, 174 /., 245. 
 
 Mohammedanism, 395, 463 /., 
 482. 
 
 See also Dualism. 
 Dhikr, Moslem litany, 442, 498. 
 
INDEX 
 
 537 
 
 Dhu al-Nun Misri, 443. 
 
 Diaspora, see Dispersion. 
 
 Diets of the Empire (Reichstag) : 
 
 Worms (1521), 302/. 
 
 Speier (1526), 303. 
 
 Augsburg (1530), 303 /., (1555), 
 305. 
 Diocletian, Emperor, persecutions, 
 
 177. 
 Dionysius the Areopagite, 207-210. 
 
 influence, in the church, 209 /., 
 276, 308. 
 
 in Moslem mysticism, 209, 452. 
 Dioscurus, bishop of Alexandria, 189. 
 Director, Spiritual, Dervishes, 497. 
 
 Sufl, 444, 465. 
 Disciples of Jesus, first, 109. 
 
 their faith, 117/., 119, 138/. 
 Discipline, ecclesiastical, 240 ff. 
 
 Reformed churches, 332 /. 
 
 Protestant sects, 365. 
 
 See also Monasticism. 
 Dispersion of the Jews, 32 /., 52. 
 Divination, Israelite, 9. 
 
 forbidden in Koran, 400. 
 Docetism, 153. 
 
 Valentinus, 166. 
 Dogma, ancient church, 180, 184 /., 
 190/. 
 
 Mediaeval development, 273-275. 
 
 Tridentine, 344-349, Vatican, 
 382/. 
 
 Protestant position, 336, 368- 
 371. 
 
 Moslem, 474—177. 
 
 See also al-Ashari, al-Ghazali. 
 Dogmas, in Judaism, Maimonides' 
 Creed, 94. 
 
 Mendelssohn on, 102. 
 
 Reformed Judaism, 103 /. 
 Dominicans, 281-283, 271/., 273, 300. 
 
 350, 352, 354. 
 Donation of Constantine, 294. 
 Donatists, 213, 223. 
 Dordrecht (Dort), Synod of, 355/. 
 Druses, 506-509, 510, 517. 
 Dualism, Paul, 135, John, 142. 
 
 Marcion, 155, Gnostics, 156. 
 
 Manichseans, 194. 
 
 Cathari, Albigenses, 284. 
 Duns Scotus, John, philosophy and 
 theology, 272 /., 283, 315 /., 317. 
 
 influence of lbn Gabirol, 87. 
 
 See also Scotists. 
 
 Easter, 220/. 
 
 Eastern churches, national, 191/., 234. 
 
 See also Greek Church. 
 Eck, antagonist of Luther, 300. 
 Eckhart, 277 /. 
 
 Ecstasy, Dionysius the Areopagite, 
 208, 209. 
 
 Eckhart, 277 /. 
 
 Sufl, 445. 
 al-Ghazali, 460 /. 
 See also Mysticism. 
 Eden, Garden of, 35 ff. 
 Edict of Milan, 177. 
 of Worms, 303. 
 of Nantes, 335. 
 Education, Jewish schools, 63. 
 
 Christian, Carolingian revival, 
 238. 
 
 Renaissance, secular, 292. 
 Jesuit reforms, 352. 
 function of the church, 370. 
 assumption by the state, 
 380. 
 Moslem, 493 /. 
 Egypt, Christianity in, 165 ff., 201 ff. 
 Mohammedanism in, 407, 409, 
 503/. 
 Elders (presbyters), 149. 
 
 in Calvinistic churches, 332. 
 Election, doctrine of, Paul, 134. 
 John, 140. 
 Augustine, 200, 201, Gregory I, 
 
 202. 
 Gottschalk, 238. 
 Reformers, 331 /. 
 Jansenists, 354. 
 Arminians, 355. 
 School of Saumur, 356 /. 
 Synod of Dordrecht (Dort), 356. 
 Elements, of the universe, 166. 
 
 astrological, 135. 
 Elijah, prophet, 13 /., 15. 
 Elisha, prophet, 14. 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 311. 
 Emanation, Neoplatonic, 165, 170, 
 451. 
 
 Valentinus, 165 /., Origen, 170 /. 
 al-Farabi, 87, 454, Avicenna, 87, 
 
 91, 454. 
 Maimonides, 91. 
 Ikhwan al-Safa, 451. 
 Kabbala, 96. 
 
 Ismaili, 500 /., Druse, 508. 
 Sheikhi, 510. 
 
 Babi, 512 /., Bahai, 516 /. 
 Emperors, Christian, supremacy over 
 church, 248 /. 
 
 Carolingian, 251 ff. 
 the Ottos, 253. 
 See also Church and State. 
 Emunot we-Deot, Saadia, 84 /. 
 England, in Middle Ages, 255, 259, 
 288. 
 
 Wycliffe and the Lollards, 288- 
 
 291. 
 Reformation in, 309 ff., 335. 
 Puritanism, 361, 365, 367. 
 Methodism, 362-364. 
 Baptists, 364 /. 
 Friends, 365-367. 
 Church of, 309/., 311 /., 358, 367. 
 
538 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Enoch, Apocalypses, 64 /. 
 Ephesus, Council of (431), 189. 
 
 Latrocinium Ephesinum (449), 
 189. 
 Epicureanism, at Renaissance, 294. 
 Epiphany, festival of, 221. 
 Episcopate, see Bishops. 
 Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum, 297. 
 Erasmus, 297. 
 
 alienation from reformers, 324 /. 
 
 on the freedom of the will, 325. 
 
 Enchiridion Militis Christiani, 
 
 340. 
 
 Eriugena (Erigena), John Scotus, 
 
 209 /., 277. 
 Eschatology, Jewish, 55 /., 75, 84, 94, 
 104, 476. 
 
 Christian, Revelation of John, 
 144/. 
 Apologists, 162, Irenaeus, 
 
 162, 163. 
 Origen, 174. 
 Moslem, orthodoxy, 475 /. 
 Mutazilite, 422. 
 al-Ashari, 424 /. 
 Ikhwan al-Safa, 452. 
 al-Ghazali, 461. 
 Esdras, Second (Fourth), 65. 
 Essenes, 58. 
 
 Etaples, Le F6vre d', 307 /., 340. 
 Eternal generation, Origen, 171. 
 Ethics, Jewish, Ibn Pakuda, 85 /., 
 Maimonides, 93. 
 
 Moslem, 441, 489 ff. ' 
 Mutazilite, 419. 
 Sufi, 444 /. 
 al-Ghazali, 463-465. 
 See also Morals. 
 Eucharist, celebration in early church, 
 150/. 
 doctrine of, in John, 143. 
 Ignatius, ibid. 
 Justin, 151, Ireneeus, 163. 
 development of liturgy, 215 /. 
 mediaeval theories, 238 ff. 
 Wycliffe, Hus, 290 /. 
 Luther, 318/. 
 Zwingli, Calvin, 333 /. 
 Council of Trent, 347 /. 
 Eusebius of Nicomedia, 179, 181 /. 
 Eutyches, 189. 
 Evangelical poverty, 
 
 Franciscan, 262, 280/., 287, 289. 
 Wycliffe, 289 /. 
 Evil, origin of, 155 /. 
 
 speculative Gnostics, 167. 
 Valentinus, 165 /. 
 Origen, 172 /. 
 See also Dualism, Adam. 
 Excommunication, 240 /., 256, 365. 
 Exercises, spiritual. Sun, 444. 
 
 al-Ghazali, 465; cf. Bahya, 86 /. 
 See also Mysticism. 
 
 Exorcism of demons, by Jesus, 110, 
 111. 
 in Christian baptism, 218. 
 Experience, ground of religious cer- 
 tainty, 460. 
 Expiation, Jewish, 41 ff. 
 death of Jesus, 130. 
 Exsurge Domine, Bull, 301. 
 Ezelriel, prophet, 23, 25, 26, 27. 
 
 Fadl Allah, founder of Hurufis, 509. 
 Faith, Christian, in Paul, 127. 
 Apologists, 161. 
 and knowledge, Clement, 168. 
 content of, denned, creeds, 180, 
 
 190/., 326/., 369, 371. 
 Augustine, 199, 314/. 
 Luther, 315, Calvin, 332. 
 See also Justification, Conver- 
 sion. 
 Moslem doctrine, 415 /., 486 /. 
 al-Ashari, 427, 428. 
 al-Ghazali, 459, 460 /. 
 content of, 474-476. 
 implicit, not sufficient, 455, 
 
 474. 
 and works, 415, 428, 468, 
 487. 
 Faith and reason, 88, 268, 275, 417, 
 468. 
 
 See also Philosophy and Religion. 
 Fall, in the godhead, 166. 
 
 of angels, 71 /., 246, 11. 2. 
 of souls, Origen, 172. 
 of Adam, see Adam. 
 Family, in Moslem morals, 492 /. 
 Fana, in Sufi authors, 447, 460. 
 Farabi, al-, 87, 454, 455. 
 Fasting, 78 /., 203, 220, 221, 241 /., 
 
 307, 403, 465, 478 /. 
 Fatalism, astrological, 135. 
 Father, in heaven, 74, 116. 
 Fathers, of the church, authority, 
 
 231. 
 Fatima, daughter of Mohammed, 431, 
 
 472, 503. 
 Fatimid caliphs, Ismaili, 503 /., 517. 
 Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), 8. 
 
 giving of the Law, 77. 
 Ferrara-Florence, Council of, 265. 
 Festival of Orthodoxy, 230. 
 Festivals, Israelite, 5, 8 /. 
 
 in synagogue observance, 76 ff. 
 Christian, 220 /. 
 
 martyrs and saints, 225 /. 
 the Virgin, 227 /. 
 pagan Arabs, 388 /. 
 Moslem pilgrimage, 479—482. 
 Ficino, 210, 293. 
 
 Filioque, in the Creed, 265/., 266, n. 1. 
 Flesh, in Paul, 130. 
 
 See also Asceticism, Dualism. 
 Flood, Jewish myth, 34. 
 
INDEX 
 
 539 
 
 Florence, Council of (1439), 265. 
 
 Medicean Academy, 293. 
 Fons Vitae, of Ibn Gabirol, 87. 
 Foreknowledge of God, 197. 
 
 See also Predestination. 
 Formula Consensus Helvetica, 357. 
 Formula of Concord, 355. 
 Fox, George, 366, 367. 
 France, Christianity in, 236 /. 
 
 resistance to papal claims, 259 /., 
 261. 
 
 Eeformation in, 307 /., 312 /., 
 334/. 
 
 New School Calvinism, 356 /. 
 
 Gallicanism, 380. 
 Francis de Sales, Saint, 351. 
 Francis of Assisl, Saint, 280. 
 Franciscans, 277, 280 ff. 
 
 spiritual, 287. 
 
 schoolmen, 283. 
 Francke, August Hermann, 362. 
 Frank, Jacob, 98. 
 Frederick I, Barbarossa, 258. 
 Free Spirit, Sect of the, 286. 
 Freedom of the will, in Judaism, 83, 
 93. 
 
 Greek Fathers, 196, 199. 
 
 Pelagius, 197. 
 
 Scotus, 273. 
 
 Erasmus, 325. 
 
 Servetus, 337. 
 
 Arminians, 355. 
 
 Moslem controversy, 416. 
 
 Mutazilites, 418. 
 
 See also Determinism, Predesti- 
 nation. 
 Friday prayers, Moslem, 400, 478. 
 Friends, Society of, 366 /. 
 Friends of God, 278. 
 
 Bogomiles, 284. 
 Fulgentius, 203. 
 
 Gabbiel, angel, 475. 
 Galileo, condemnation of, 373. 
 Gambling, forbidden in the Koran, 
 400. 
 
 in Moslem law, 495. 
 Gaza, pagan worship at, 212. 
 Generation, eternal, Origen, 171. 
 Geneva, Reformation in, 308. 
 Gentile Christianity, 119 ff., 125, 
 132/. 
 
 See also Christianity. 
 Gerizim, Samaritan temple, 48. 
 *' German Theology," 278. 
 Germany, Christianising of, 235-237. 
 
 religious conditions, sixteenth 
 century, 297. 
 
 Eeformation, 297-306, 313-328. 
 
 Anabaptists, 322, 324. 
 
 Peasant's Eevolt, 323 /. 
 
 Reformed Church in, 335. 
 
 Pietism, 362. 
 
 Ghazali, al-, life and religious expe- 
 riences, 457 ff. 
 
 Ihya Ulum al-Din, 461 ff. 
 mysticism, 460 /., 465. 
 theology and ethics, 461 ff. 
 hostility to the philosophers, 
 
 454, 459. 
 reputation and influence, 466, 
 470/. 
 Ghulam Ahmed, founder of Ah- 
 
 mediyya, 519-521. 
 Giant races, origin of, 37. 
 
 Druses, 507 /. 
 Gnosis, in John, 140 /. 
 Apologists, 161. 
 Gnostics, 156/. 
 Clement of Alexandria, 168. 
 See also 208 /., 276. 
 Gnosticism, its speculative problem, 
 135, 167. 
 in the Kabbala, 96. 
 in Islam, 433, 500 /. 
 Druses, 507 /. 
 Gnostics, 156/., 163. 
 Basilides, 165. 
 
 Valentinus, 165 /. — , 
 
 God, character of in the prophets,^ 
 16-19. -J 
 
 monotheism, Jewish, 28 ff., 122. 
 idea of, in Philo, 60 /., 72. 
 
 rabbinical, 69 ff. 
 names and epithets, 73. 
 
 Father in Heaven, 74, 116. 
 word of, 72. 
 
 See also Attributes. -v 
 
 Christian ideas, 123, 125 /., 129, \ 
 139, 140/. _J 
 
 theology of the early church, 
 
 161-186. 
 Augustine, 195 /. 
 Dionysius the Areopagite, 207 /. 
 schoolmen, 270-276. 
 Luther, 315 /., Calvin, 331. 
 See also Trinity. 
 Mohammed's conception, 394- 
 
 396. 
 Mutazilite views, 417-420. 
 al-Ashari, 424, 425-427, al- 
 
 Bakilani, 429 /. 
 al-Ghazali, 460 /. 
 Sufis, 442 /., 447 ff. 
 Ikhwan al-Safa, 450 ff. 
 Moslem philosophy, 452-456. 
 orthodox Islam, 474 /. 
 See also Attributes. 
 Ismaili doctrine, 500. 
 Incarnation, or Manifestation, 
 
 506/., 509, 513/., 516/. 
 Word of, see Word, Logos. 
 Gods, Canaanite, 6 /. 
 
 Arab, 388. 
 Gog and Magog, 145, 476. 
 Golden Age, Messianic, 74 /. 
 
 ,~1 
 
540 
 
 INDEX 
 
 expectation of, 107. 
 
 See also Reign of God. 
 Good and evil, conflict of, 134/., 142, 
 154-156. 
 
 See also Right and "Wrong. 
 Gospel, of the cross, Paul, 127. 
 
 as a mystery, 128. 
 
 Eternal, Joachim of Fiori, 287. 
 
 Luther's conception, 317, 320. 
 
 in the Koran, 402. 
 
 in Moslem tradition, 490 /. 
 Gospels, see Scriptures. 
 Goths, invasion of Italy, 235. 
 
 conversion, 236 /. 
 
 See Ostrogoths, Visigoths. 
 Gottschalk, twofold predestination, 
 
 238. 
 Government, see Caliph, Caliphate, 
 
 Church and State, Imam. 
 Grace, of God, Paul, 134. 
 
 in Greek theologians, 201. 
 
 Augustinian doctrine, 196-200. 
 
 Pelagius, 197. 
 
 Massilians, 201 
 
 Gregory I, 202. 
 
 Reformers, 315 ff., 327, 330 ff., 
 355/. 
 Greek Church, theology, 160-192, 
 199, 200 /. 
 
 asceticism, mysticism, 203-210. 
 
 iconoclastic controversy, 228- 
 230. 
 
 final breach with Latin church, 
 233/ 
 
 proposed reunion fails, 265 /. 
 
 differences in doctrine and prac- 
 tice, ibid. 
 Gregorian (Armenian) Church, 192. 
 Gregory I, Pope, doctrine of grace, 
 202. 
 
 the Mass, 217 /. 
 
 Purgatory, 231. 
 
 Church and state, 250 /. 
 Gregory VII, Pope, 256 /. 
 Grotius, Hugo, 342. 
 
 Hades, Jewish (Sheol), 54 /. 
 Hadith, tradition, 411. 
 Hadrian, Jewish war, 67 /., 146, 147. 
 Hajj, pilgrimage, 403, 462 /., 479 ff. 
 Hakim, Patimid caliph, 506 /., 517. 
 
 See also Druses. 
 Hakk, al-, Reality, God, 444, n. 3, 448. 
 Hales, Alexander of, 271. 
 Hallaj, al-, 448. 
 Hamdan (Karmat), 502. 
 Hamza, founder of Druses, 507. 
 Hanifs, 389. 
 Hasan, son of Ali, 431. 
 Hasan (ibn al-) Sabbah, founder of 
 
 Assassins, 504. 
 Hasanites (Assassins), 504-506. 
 Hasidim, "the Pious," 46, 53. 
 
 Hasidism, 98-100. 
 
 Heart, in religion, 85 /., 166, 460, 462, 
 463. 
 
 See also Mysticism. 
 Heaven, metonomy for God, 71, 73. 
 Heaven (abode of the blest) . 
 
 Judaism, 133, Paul, ibid. 
 
 See also Paradise. 
 Heaven, Kingdom of, see Reign of 
 
 God. 
 Heavenly bodies, astrological fatal- 
 ism, 135. 
 Hebrew vowel-points, 357. 
 Hebrews, Epistle, 136. 
 Hegel, 376. 
 
 Hegira (Hijra), Moslem era, 393. 
 Hell, Zoroastrian, 55. 
 
 Jewish, 56/., 75. 
 
 the Koran, 399. 
 
 Moslem orthodoxy, 476, 488. 
 
 Origen, 174. 
 
 Mutazilites, 422, Ikhwan al-Safa, 
 452. 
 Hellenistic Jews, 57, 59#., 122/., 133. 
 Henoticon, Emperor Zeno's, 191. 
 Henry VIII, of England, 309-311. 
 Heresies, 153 ff., 163-167, 178/., 184, 
 y 186-188, 188-190, 197, 200, 283- 
 292, etc. 
 Hermes Trismegistos, 337. 
 Herzl, Theodor, 105. 
 Hierarchy, celestial, 208. 
 
 in the church, 208, 348. 
 
 See also Orders of the Ministry. 
 High places, 7 /., 11, 23. 
 High priest, Jewish, 39. 
 Hinckmar of Rheims, 238. 
 History, a moral order, 16 #., 29/., 70. 
 History of Religions, 377 /. 
 Holiness, of God, 70. 
 
 religious, 27 /. 
 Holy Spirit, in Trinity, 185. 
 
 See also Spirit. 
 Holy War, in Islam, 488. 
 Homily, see Preaching. 
 Homoousians, Homoiousians, 182, 
 185, 186. 
 
 See also 'O/xoo&rws. 
 Honorius, Pope, 192. 
 Hosea, prophet, 18 /. 
 Hosius of Cordova, 181. 
 Hospitallers, Knights of St. John, 280. 
 Hugh of St. Victor, 209, 276. 
 Huguenots, 312 /., 335. 
 Human sacrifice, in Judah, 20 /. 
 Humanism, 292-294, 309, 340. 
 Humanity, in the godhead, Valenti- 
 nus, 165, n. 1. 
 
 of God, al-Hallaj, 448. 
 Hume, David, 375. 
 Hungary, conversion of, 237. 
 Hurufls, Shia sect, 510. 
 Hus, John, 290 ff. 
 
INDEX 
 
 541 
 
 Husein, son of AH, 431, 436, 484, 499. 
 Hussite movement, Bohemia, 290 ff. 
 Hypocrites, at Medina, 402. 
 Hypostasis, 171, 180, 181, 183, 185. 
 Hypothetic Universalism, 357. 
 
 Ibadites, 415. 
 
 Iblis, the devil, 395 
 
 Ibn Arabi, 450, 473. 
 
 Ibn Bajja (Avempace), 455, 473. 
 
 Ibn Gabirol, 87. 
 
 Ibn Hanbal, 413. 
 
 Ibn Hazm, 467-470. 
 
 Ibn Rushd, see Averroes. ■ 
 
 Ibn Sina, see Avicenna. - 
 
 Ibn Teimiyya, 486 /. 
 
 Ibn Tofail, 473. 
 
 Ibn Tumart, 470-172. 
 
 Iconoclastic controversy, 229/., 486/. 
 
 Idolatry, in Israel, 11, 30/. 
 
 Christian, 229-230. 
 
 Arab, 387, 388, 394. 
 Ignatius, of Antioch, 149 /., 153. 
 Ikan, Babi apologetic treatise, 515. 
 Ikhwan al-Safa, Essays of, 450 ff., 
 
 501 /., cf. 86. 
 Illumination, in Christian mysticism, 
 208. 
 
 in Moslem mysticism, 445. 
 Images, in churches, 229 /. 
 Imam, office and nature, 432 /. 
 
 Concealed, 434 /., 436 /., 499 /., 
 503, 507, 510/., 512. 
 Imam-Mahdi, 435, 472, 512 /. 
 Imams, Twelve, succession, 436. 
 
 Seven (Ismaili), succession, 499. 
 Iman, faith, 416. 
 
 See also Faith. 
 Immaculate Conception, 382. 
 Immortality, in Judaism, 54 ff., 84 /., 
 88, 104. 
 
 Maimonides, 91. 
 
 Christian Apologists, 162. 
 
 Irenaeus, ibid. 
 Imputation, of Christ's righteousness, 
 315. 
 
 of Adam's guilt, mediate, 357. 
 Incarnation, of Christ, 126 /., 137, 
 138/., 161, 162/., 166, 173, 186 ff., 
 245-247. 
 Incarnation of godhead, Ultra-Shiites, 
 433, 486; Druse, 506 /.; Bekh- 
 tashis, AJl-Ilahis, Nusairis, Hurufls, 
 509/.; Babi-Bahai, 512/., 516/. 
 India, Mohammedanism in, 486. 
 
 Ismailis, Khojas, 506. 
 
 Ahmediyya, 519 ff. 
 Individualism in religion, 26 /., 375. 
 Indulgences, episcopal, 243 /. 
 
 Papal, 244/., 297 ff. 
 
 attacks upon, 289, 291, 297/. 
 Ineffabilis Deus, Bull (1854), 382. 
 Infallibility, of the Pope, Aquinas, 261. 
 
 Vatican Council, 382 ff. 
 
 contra, Occam, 262, Luther, 301. 
 
 of Councils, 301, 383 /. 
 
 of Mohammed, 432. 
 
 of the Imam, 432. 
 Infanticide, forbidden in the Koran, 
 
 400. 
 Innocent III, Pope, 258 /. 
 Inquisition, episcopal, 285. 
 
 papal, 285 /., 335. 
 Intercession, of Christ, 137. 
 
 of saints, 226-228, in Islam, 484. 
 
 of the Prophet, 477, 488. 
 Intermarriage with aliens, 45. 
 Interpretation, figurative and alle- 
 gorical, 60, 174, 419, 422, 449. 
 
 theory of multiple sense, 175. 
 Intolerance, 79/., 370, 409/., 438. 
 Intoxicants, prohibition of, 495 /. . 
 Investitures, conflict over, 253 ff. 
 Ireland, Irish church, 241 /. 
 Irenaeus, 162 /. 
 Irene, Empress, 230. 
 Isaiah, prophet, 17 /. 
 Islam, meaning and implications, 386, 
 
 415/., 428, 487. 
 Ismail ibn Jafr, 499 /. 
 Ismailis, 437, 499-509. 
 Israel, settlement in Palestine, 1-5. 
 
 religion, 5-31. 
 
 kingdom of, 3, 13, 19 /. 
 Israfil, angel, 475. 
 Italy, Renaissance, 266/., 292 ff. 
 
 Reformation in, 335, 338, 340 /. 
 
 Jacobites, Monophysite Syrian 
 
 church, 192. 
 James, brother of Jesus, 118, 121 /., 
 
 146. 
 Jansenists, condemnation of, 354. 
 Jehovah, god of Israelite tribes, 2 ff. 
 character, in prophets, 15 ff. 
 monotheism, 23 /., 28-31. 
 myths, 34-39. 
 
 disuse of the proper name, 73. 
 Jelal al-Din Rumi, 443, 446. 
 Jeremiah, prophet, 21, 23, 25, 26. 
 Jerusalem, 3, 10 /., 23, 24, 32, 66, 
 147. 
 church in, 117-119, 121, 145 ff. 
 capture of, by Omar, 409, and 
 by the crusaders, 409. 
 Jesuits, 351 ff., 354. 
 Jesus, life, 108-114. 
 teaching, 114-117. 
 faith of Palestinian disciples, 117, 
 118 /., 138 /. 
 See also Christ. 
 Moslem doctrine, 395, 402, 435, 
 
 n. 1, 448, 465, 475, 476. 
 Ahmediyya, 519 ff. 
 Jewish Christianity, 148. 
 See Christianity. 
 
542 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jews, in Arabia, 389, 402 /. 
 
 Hellenistic, 57, 59 ff., 122 /. 
 
 situation under Christian em- 
 perors, 79 /. 
 Jihad, 488. 
 
 Joachim of Fiori, 277, 287. 
 Job, Book of, 48 /., 55. 
 John, Gospel, 138-144. 
 
 Revelation, 144. 
 
 See Revelation of John. 
 „ohn the Baptist, 107/., 465. 
 John of Damascus, 210, 229, 239, 270. 
 John of Jandun, 261. 
 John of Leyden, 324. 
 John of the Cross, St., 351. 
 John XXII, Pope, 261, 262. 
 John XXIII, Pope, 263, 291. 
 Josiah, king of Judah, 21 ff. 
 Jubilee, Papal, 244. 
 Jubilees, Book of, 64. 
 Judah, tribe, 2. 
 
 kingdom of, 3, 24. 
 
 Asmonaean princes, 52-54. 
 Judah the Patriarch, 68. 
 Judah ha-Levi, 88 /. 
 Judaising tendencies in Christianity, 
 
 153, 216. 
 Judaism, in the Persian period, 31-50. 
 
 at beginning of Christian era, 62- 
 79. 
 
 Moslem renaissance, 81 ff. 
 
 prophetic mission, 104. 
 
 Reform, 102 ff. 
 
 See also Israel. 
 Judas Maccabaeus, 52. 
 Judgment, of the dead, Judaism, 55 ff. 
 
 of the world, 64. 
 
 in Christianity, 145. 
 
 in Islam, 387, 475. 
 
 See also Eschatology. 
 Julian, Emperor, 183. 
 Jurisprudence, Moslem, 413. 
 Justice, of God, 16/., 70, 197/., 246/., 
 
 341, 417-419. 
 Justification, Augustine, 199. 
 
 Abelard, 247 /. 
 
 Luther, 315-317. 
 
 Calvin, 330 /. 
 
 Tridentine decree, 346. 
 Justinian, Emperor, 248. 
 
 Kaaba, at Mecca, 403, 463, 480 /. 
 Kabbala, Kabbalists, 94-97, 209. 
 Kalam, Moslem scholastic theology, 
 
 423, n. 2. 
 Kant, 376. 
 
 Kanun, Moslem civil law, 412. 
 Karaites, 81 ff. 
 Karmatians, 502 /. 
 Khadijah, 387, 390, 391. 
 Kharijites, 414 /. 
 Khazars, conversion of, 88. 
 Khojas, 506. 
 
 Kibla, 452, n. 1, 475, n. 4. 
 
 Kindi, al-, 453. 
 
 Kingdom of Heaven, 71, 107 /. 
 
 See also Reign of God. 
 Kitab Akdas, Scriptures of Bahais, 
 
 515-519 
 Knights of St. John, 280. 
 Knowledge of God, 140 /., 161, 168. 
 
 See also Gnosis, Gnostics, Mysti- 
 cism. 
 Koran, 396, 397 /. 
 
 teaching of, 394-401. 
 
 created or eternal? 420 /., 425 /., 
 469. 
 
 anthropomorphism in, 419 /., 
 423/., 470/. 
 
 ethics, 400 /., cf. 490 ff. 
 
 interpretation, 419, 422, 449, 467. 
 
 the final revelation, 475. 
 
 Suras translated, 1, p. 477 /. ; 96. 
 1-5; 74; 93, p. 390. 
 Kurrat al-Ain, 494, 512 /., 514. 
 Kusheyri, al-, 449. 
 Kuzari, of Judah ha-Levi, 88. 
 Kyrios, divine title, 120 /. 
 Kyzylbashes, 509. 
 
 Lamentabili sane exitu. Decree 385. 
 Laplace, Mgcanique Celeste, 375. 
 Lapsed, restoration of, 222. 
 Lateran Council, Fourth, 242. 
 
 Fifth, 267. 
 Latrocinium Ephesinum, 189. 
 Law, Jewish, 33-45, 62 /., 66 /., 68 ff. 
 
 Jesus' attitude to, 110/. 
 
 position of Jewish Christians, 
 119, 121, 145/., 147/. 
 
 Paul, 130 /., Barnabas, 154. 
 
 Marcion, 155, Gnostics, 156. 
 
 Luther, 316/., Calvin, 332/. 
 
 of Moses, in the Koran, 402. 
 Law, Moslem, basis of, 412. 
 
 schools of jurisprudence, 412 ff. 
 
 religious observances, 477 ff. 
 
 spirit and benefit of observance, 
 461. 
 Law of nature, Calvin, 332 /. 
 Learning, revival of, Carolingian, 238. 
 
 Renaissance, 292 ff., 309, 340. 
 Leibniz, 375. 
 Lent, 221. 
 
 Leo I, Pope (440-61), 189 ff. 
 Leo XIII, Pope, 384. 
 Leprosy, Jewish law, 41 /. 
 Levi ben Gerson, 94. 
 Levites, 9, 40. 
 
 Lex evangelica, Wycliffe, 289. 
 Liberius, Pope, 183. 
 Liberty of conscience, 370. 
 Lithuania, conversion of, 237. 
 Liturgy, of the synagogue, 79. 
 
 reforms in, 102. 
 
 Christian, 151, 216-218, 252. 
 
INDEX 
 
 543 
 
 Church of England, 311 /. 
 Luther, 321. 
 See also Mass, Worship. 
 Moslem, 477 /. 
 Llvland, conversion of, 237. 
 Locke, John, 375. 
 Logoi, 171. 
 Logos, Philo, 61, 126, 138. 
 
 Gospel of John, 138, 139, 141.' 
 Apologists, 161, Irenseus, 162. 
 opposition to the Logos Chris- 
 
 tology, 163 /. 
 Clement of Alexandria, 168. 
 Origen, 170 ff., 176, 185. 
 Paul of Samosata, 180 /. 
 Arius, 178. 
 Apollinarius, 186/., Antiochians, 
 
 188. 
 Cyril, 190 /. 
 
 Moslem, eternal Word, 421. 
 Lollards, 288-290. 
 Lombard, Peter, Liber Sententiarum, 
 
 270. 
 Lombards, 236, 237. 
 Lord Jesus Christ, title, 123. 
 Lord's Supper, Paul, 128. 
 Calvin, 333. 
 
 English Prayer-Book, 312. 
 See also Eucharist, Mass. 
 Love, God's, to men, 19, 69, 70. 
 of God, Ibn Pakuda, 86. 
 Kabbala, 96. 
 
 Dionysius the Areopagite, 209. 
 Santa Teresia, 351. 
 Moslem mystics, 445 /., 448, 
 451/. 
 Loyola, Ignatius de, 351. 
 Lucian, head of school in Antioch, 
 
 178. 
 Ludwig the Bavarian, Emperor, 262. 
 Luria, Isaac, Kabbalist, 95, 97. 
 Luther, life and teaching, 297-306, 
 313-327. 
 
 influence of nominalism on, 
 
 315/., 319 andn. 1. 
 the three treatises of 1520: To the 
 Christian Nobility of the Ger- 
 man Nation, The Babylonish 
 Captivity of the Church, The 
 Freedom of a Christian Man, 
 301 /. 
 Lutheranism, in Germany, 325. 
 in Scandinavia, 308 /. 
 
 Maccabees, 52 /. 
 Magdeburg Centuries, 350. 
 Mahdi, in orthodox Islam, 435. 
 
 appearance of, 476, 492. 
 
 Jesus as, 435, n. 1. 
 
 Ibn Tumart acclaimed, 471, 472. 
 
 Obeid Allah, 503. 
 
 Ghulam Ahmed, 519. 
 
 See also Imam-Mahdi. 
 
 Maimonides, 89-94, 270. 
 
 Creed, 94. 
 Malik ibn Anas, jurist, 412. 
 Manasseh, king of Judah, 20 /. 
 ^.Manichseanism, 194, n. 1, 212, 284, 
 508. 
 "Manifestations," of the godhead. 
 Druse, 509. 
 
 other sects, 509 /. 
 Bahai, 516 /., 518. 
 of the Universal Intelligence and 
 the Universal Soul. Ismaili, 
 500/. 
 
 Druse, 507 /., other sects, 
 
 509. 
 Babi, 512, Bahai, 515. 
 See also Incarnation. 
 Marabouts, 486. 
 Maranos, 100. 
 Marburg Conference, 319. 
 Marcion, 155. 
 Marduk and Tiamat, 38. 
 Marnas, temple of, razed, 212. 
 Marsilius of Padua and John of Jan- 
 dun, Defensor Pacis, 261. 
 Martin V, Pope, 264. 
 Martyrs, 225 /. 
 
 in Islam, 487 /. 
 See also Saints. 
 Mary, see Virgin Mary. 
 Mary, Queen of England, 311. 
 Mass, sacrifice of the, 217 /. 
 
 atones for sins after baptism, 217. 
 for sins of living and dead, 231. 
 Luther's rejection of, 321. 
 Tridentine decree, 347. 
 See also Eucharist. 
 Massilians, 201 /. 
 
 Matthew, Gospel of, in Aramaic, 147. 
 Maturidi, al-, theology of, 428. 
 Maximus Confessor, 209. 
 Mecca, Arab festivals, 389. 
 taken by Moslems, 394. 
 captured by Karmatians 502. 
 pilgrimage to, 403, 462, 479-482. 
 Medicean Academy, Florence, 293. 
 Medina, Mohammed at, 392-394. 
 Arabs of, 393. 
 traditions of, 410, 412. 
 Melancthon, 327. 
 Meletians, 213. 
 Mendelssohn, Moses, 101 /. 
 Mendicant orders, 282. 
 Mennonites, 324, 339, 364. 
 Mercy, of God, in Judaism, 70. 
 
 in Islam, 395, 477 /. 
 Merit, of good works, 202, 316 
 
 Luther's position, 316. 
 Messiah, Jewish, 59, 67, 74 /., 103, 
 104. 
 
 Jesus, 111 ff., 117f., 119/. 
 Pseudomessiahs, 97, 98. 
 Messianic age, 74 /. 
 
544 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Metempsychosis, Mutazilites, 418 /. 
 
 Shiites, 434. 
 Methodism, 362 ff. 
 Metropolitans, 214. 
 Micah, prophet, 18. 
 Microcosm, man, Ikhwan al-Safa/451. 
 Midrash, 68. 
 Milan, Edict of, 177. 
 Millenarianism, post-Beformation, 
 
 361. 
 Millennium, Revelation of John, 145. 
 
 Justin, Irenseus, 145, 162. 
 
 Origen, combats the belief, 174. 
 
 Augustine's view, 250. 
 Ministry, Orders of, 149 /. 
 
 See Orders of the Ministry. 
 Miracles, of Jesus, 110. 
 
 in Gospel of John, 140. 
 
 of saints and martyrs, 226. 
 
 Mohammed's disclaimer, 396. 
 
 of the Prophet, Moslem doctrine, 
 476/. 
 
 of the saints, 477, 484 /. 
 Mishna, 68, 75. 
 Missa Fidelium, 217, n. 1. 
 
 See Mass. ^ 
 Missions, Catholic, 352 /. 
 
 Protestant, 353. 
 
 See also Christianity, spread of. 
 Moawiya, governor of Syria, caliph, 
 
 408, 414, 431. 
 "Modernism" (Nominalism), 276. 
 Modernism, 384 /. 
 Mohammed, early life, 386, 388. 
 
 first revelations, 389 /. 
 
 opposition of Meccans, 391. 
 
 at Medina, 392 ff. 
 
 prophecy and lawgiving, 390 /., 
 394-403, 475. 
 
 idea of revelation, 420. 
 
 Moslem doctrine about, 432 /., 
 475, 476. 
 
 intercession at judgment-day, 
 477, 488. 
 
 Shiite beliefs, 433, 500 /. 
 Mohammed ibn al-Hanaflyya, 432. 
 Mohammed ibn Hasan, Concealed 
 
 Imam, 436 /. 
 Mohammedan, see Moslem. 
 Mohammedanism, conversion to, 232/. 
 
 of Christians, 409. 
 
 spread of, 386, 394, 406 /. 
 
 in North Africa, 415, and Spain, 
 466 ff. 
 
 Oman and Zanzibar, 415. 
 
 in India, 486. 
 
 pagan survivals in, 403, 479 ff. 
 
 Jewish and Christian elements, 
 394 /., 398 /., 409, 420 /., 434, 
 440#., 452/., 462, 477, 479, 483, 
 490/ 
 
 beliefs and observances, 394-400, 
 474-482. 
 
 theology, 415 ff., 457 ff., 467 ff.. 
 
 470 ff. 
 creeds, 428, 474. 
 morals, 400 ff., 490 ff. 
 religious tolerance, 409 /., 438. 
 Sunnite and Shiite, 431 ff., 437 ff. 
 Molech, child-sacrifices, 20 /. 
 Monarchians, "monotneists," 164 /. 
 Monasticism, Essenes, Therapeutse, 
 58/. 
 
 Christian, beginnings of, 201/., 
 
 203 ff. 
 in Middle Ages, 241 /. 
 reforms and new orders, 279—283. 
 in Islam, see Dervish. 
 Monism, see Neoplatonism, Panthe- 
 ism. 
 Monks, in theological controversies, 
 176, 188 /., 191, 229. 
 See also Monasticism. 
 Monophysite schism, 191 /. 
 Monotheism, Jewish, 28#., 69#., 122. 
 in Jewish philosophy, 60 /., 72, 
 
 84 ff., 90. 
 Christian, see God, Christ, Lo- 
 gos, Trinity. 
 Mohammed, 394-396. 
 See also God, Attributes. 
 Monothelitic controversy, 192. 
 Morality, integral in religion, 15 ff. 
 Jesus' teaching, 114-116. 
 in Islam, 489 ff. 
 Morals, Jewish, 15 ff., 24, 49. 
 Moslem, 400 /., 490 ff. 
 See also Ethics. 
 Moravia, conversion of, 237. 
 More, Thomas, Utopia, 370/. 
 Moritz of Saxony, 305. 
 Moses, 4, 402, 500. 
 Moses ben Maimon, 89-94, 270. 
 Moslem, who is a true? 415 /., 428, 
 
 487. 
 Mosques, 399. 
 Mother of God, 188, 227. 
 
 See also Immaculate Conception. 
 Mowahhidin, Moslem party name, 
 470, 507, cf. 417. 
 
 dynasty (Almohads) , 470 ff. 
 Munkar, angel at the tomb, 424, 475. 
 Minister, Anabaptists at, 324. 
 Murabit (Almoravid), dynasty, 470, 
 
 472, 486. 
 Murjites, 416. 
 
 Mutazilites, 417—428, 469, 471, 485. 
 influence on Shiite theology, 436, 
 
 438. 
 influence on Jewish theology, 83- 
 86. 
 Mutikallimun, "Debaters" (Dialecti- 
 cians), 90, 417, 458. 
 Mysticism, Jewish, Ibn Pakuda, 85- 
 87. 
 Kabbala, 95 ff. 
 
INDEX 
 
 545 
 
 Hasidism, 98 /. 
 
 Christian, Dionysius, 205-210. 
 
 mediaeval, 276-279. 
 
 Santa Teresia, St. John of the 
 
 Cross, 351. 
 Fox, Society of Friends, 367. 
 Moslem, 439-452, 460. 
 Myths, Jewish, 33-39. 
 
 Nakib, angel at the tomb, 424, 475. 
 
 Nantes, Edict of, 335. 
 
 Nasafl, al-, 428. 
 
 Nationalism, development of, 380, 
 
 381. 
 Nature, corruption of man's, 196. 
 
 See Original sin. 
 Nazarenes, 146 ff. 
 Nebuchadnezzar, 24. 
 Necessity and freedom in Islam, 416. 
 See also Determinism, Freedom 
 of the Will. 
 Neoplatonism, in Judaism, 85 /., 87, 
 89, 95 /. 
 
 Christian, 165-167, 169 ff., 
 
 194 ff., 207 ff., 274, 293. 
 Moslem, 442 ff., 450 ff., 491. 
 Ismaili, 500 /. 
 Babi, Bahai, 513, 516. 
 Neo-Thomists, 350, 369. 
 Nestorians, 234. 
 Nestorius, 188/. 
 
 Netherlands, Reformation in, 313. 
 Reformed Church in, 334 /. 
 Remonstrants (Arminians), 339, 
 
 355/. 
 Mennonites, 324, 339. 
 Unitarians (Socinians), 339. 
 Puritan (Precisian) movement in, 
 361/. 
 New England, migration to, 361. 
 
 Congregational churches in, 358, 
 
 361, 379. 
 Unitarianism, 376. 
 New School Calvinism, 357. 
 New Testament, Wycliffe's, English, 
 289. 
 
 Luther's, 303. 
 See also Bible. 
 Newton, 374. 
 
 New Year's, Jewish, 76, 78. 
 Nicaea, Council of (325), 179. 
 
 Second (787), 229. 
 Nicene Creed, 180-186, 190, 195. 
 at and after the Reformation, 
 326, 336, 345, 369. 
 Nicholas I, Pope (858-67), 253. 
 Nineteenth century, character of, 
 
 381. 
 Nominalism, the older, 270. 
 Occam, 275 /. 
 in Germany, 297, 299. 
 influence on Luther, 315 /., 317, 
 319. 
 
 of Moslem and Jewish philoso- 
 phers, 94. 
 Nonadorantes, branch of Unitarians, 
 
 339. 
 Norway, Reformation in, 308 /. 
 Nous, in Valentinus, 165 /., Origen, 
 170. 
 
 See also Universal Intellect. 
 Novatians, 213. 
 Nusairi, 509. 
 
 .Obeid Allah, Ismaili Mahdi, 503. 
 Occam, nominalism, 275 /., 313. 
 
 on papal claims, 262. 
 
 influence on Luther, 315 /., 319. 
 Old Catholics, 384. 
 Omar, second caliph, 407, 409, 432, 
 
 436. 
 Omayyad caliphate, 408, 409, 416, 
 
 434. 
 'OfioLoifftos, 182, n. 1. 
 'OjMoiaios, in Irenaeus, 163. 
 
 Origen. 171. 
 
 Paul of Samosata, 181. 
 
 Nicene Creed, 180 /., 182, and 
 n. 1. 
 
 of the Spirit, 185. 
 
 See also Homoousians. 
 Ophites, Serpent Sect, 156. 
 Orange, Synod at, 202. 
 Oratory of Divine Love, 296. 
 Orders, of the Ministry, 149 /., 208. 
 
 Luther's theory, 321. 
 
 Calvin, 332. 
 
 Tridentine decree, 348. 
 
 See also Bishops. 
 Orders, sacrament of, 346, 348. 
 
 rejected by Reformers, 317/., 
 321, 329. 
 
 indelibility of, 224. 
 Oriental party, in Christological con- 
 troversy, 188 /., 191, 234. 
 
 churches, 191 /., 234. 
 Origen, life, 168 /. 
 
 De Principiis, 169. 
 
 system of theology, 169-175. 
 
 controversy, 175-177, 184 /. 
 Original sin, TertuUian, 196. 
 
 Augustine, 197, 198, 200. 
 
 Pelagius' denial, 197. 
 
 Massilians, 201. 
 
 Luther, 315 ff., 331. 
 
 Calvin, 331 /. 
 Orthodoxy, Festival of, 230. 
 Ostrogoths, 236. 
 Othman, third caliph, 407 /., 432, 
 
 436. 
 Oiffta, 171, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184 /. 
 
 Pachomius, 204. 
 
 Paganism, suppression of, 178, 211 ff., 
 237. 
 
 survivals in Christianity, 225 ff. 
 
546 
 
 INDEX 
 
 / 
 
 Arab, 388 /., in Islam, 479 ff., 
 483 ff. 
 Palestine, expected return of Jews to, 
 56, 104 ff. 
 
 attitude of reform to, 103. 
 Pantheism, Baal Shem, 98 /. 
 
 Eckhart, 277. 
 
 Amalric, 286. 
 
 Brethren of the Free Spirit, 286. 
 
 Sufi, 443 ff., 449. 
 
 Hallaj, al-, 448. 
 Papacy, primacy of church of Eome, 
 158 /., 214 /. 
 
 Cathedra Petri, 223. 
 
 relation to the empire, 248 /., 
 252/. 
 
 struggle for independence, 253 /. 
 
 assertion of supremacy, 256-261. 
 
 claims contested, 258, 261 /. 
 
 Babylonian Captivity, 263. 
 
 Great Schism, ibid. 
 
 conciliar age, 263-266. 
 
 recovery of papal power, 266 /. 
 
 Vatican Council, 382 /. 
 
 See also Pope. 
 Parables, of Jesus, 116. 
 Paraclete, in John, 143 /. 
 Paradise, Garden of Eden, 35 ff. 
 
 Mohammedan, 399, 422, 424, 
 452, 476. 
 Pascendi gregis. Decree, 385. 
 Pascha, Easter, 220. 
 Passover, nomadic festival, 5 /. 
 
 in the synagogue, 77. 
 Patriarchs, Christian, 214. 
 Patripassians, 165. 
 Paul, life, 123-125. 
 
 teaching, 125-136. 
 
 attitude of Jewish Christians to, 
 148. 
 
 influence, 123, 135 /., 196 ff., 
 314 ff., 330 ff. 
 Paul of Samosata, 181. 
 Peasant's Revolt, in England, 289. 
 
 in Germany, 323 ff. 
 Pelagius, 197, 200, 201. 
 Penance (Penitence), 240-243. 
 
 essential elements, 243. 
 
 satisfaction in, 243, Aquinas, 247. 
 
 sacrament of, 243, 348. 
 
 Luther's view, 299. 
 
 See also Confession, Indulgences, 
 Kepentance. 
 Penitential Books, 242. 
 Penitential Days, Jewish, 78. 
 Pentateuch, 33, 51, 62, 77, 79. 
 
 See also Law, Jewish. 
 Pentecost, 8, 77. 
 People of the Book, 408 /. 
 Persecution, of Christians, 151 /., 
 177/. 
 
 by Christians, of Jews, 79/., 100. 
 of pagans, 178, 211 /. 
 
 of dissident sects and opin- 
 ions, 209, n. 1, 212. 
 of mediaeval heretics, 285 /., 
 
 288, 290. 
 in sixteenth century and 
 after, 310 /., 312 /., 324, 
 337, 338, 339, 370, etc. 
 by Moslems, 409 /., 421. 
 Persia, rise of, 31 /. 
 
 religion, see Zoroastrianism. 
 Mohammedanism in, 407, 409, 
 431 /., 437, 438, 443, 499 ff. 
 Person of Christ, controversies, 185- 
 192. 
 theories controverted by Saadia, 
 85. 
 Peter, 109, 111?/., 472, n. 2, 223, 260, 
 
 383 
 Pharisees, 53 /., 56, 58, 66 /., 109 ff., 
 
 115, 122. 
 Philip of Hesse, 318 /. 
 Philip II, of Spain, 313. 
 Philistines, 1, 3, 10. 
 Philo, 59 ff., 72, 126 /., 138. 
 Philosophy, Arab, influence in Juda- 
 ism, 85-95. 
 
 in Christian theology, 270 /., 273, 
 
 277, 455, 456. 
 Greek, influence of, 57, 60/., 417, 
 
 429. 
 See also Aristotelianism, Aris- 
 totle, Neoplatonism. 
 in mediaeval universities, 270. 
 modern, 374 ff., 100, 381, 384. 
 Philosophy and religion, Philo, 60. 
 Judah ha-Levi, 88, Maimonides, 
 
 89. 
 Christian Apologists, 161. 
 Clement of Alexandria, 168. 
 Origen, 169. 
 
 Schoolmen, 268 ff., 274 /. 
 Averroes, 455 /. 
 Scotus, 272 /. 
 Occam, 275 /. 
 Renaissance, 293. 
 Descartes, 374/. 
 Leo XIII, 384. 
 in Islam, 417, 450 /., 453 ff. 
 al-Ghazali, 458 /., 466. 
 Ismaili, etc., 500 /. 
 Pietism, 362. 
 
 Piety, Jewish, 45, 85 ff., 98 /. 
 Christian, 114 /., 203. 
 Moslem, 439 ff., 496 /. 
 See also Asceticism, Mysticism, 
 Pietism, Puritanism. 
 Pilgrimage to Mecca, 403, 462 /., 
 
 479 ff., 482. 
 Pilgrims, Plymouth, 361. 
 Pippin, King, 251. 
 Pisa, Council of, 263. 
 Pistoia, Synod at, 380. 
 Pius IX, Pope, 382 /. 
 
INDEX 
 
 547 
 
 Platonism, influence in Judaism, 57, 
 60/. 
 
 Christian theology, 160-162, 274. 
 
 in Renaissance, 293. 
 
 See also Neoplatonism. 
 Pleroma, Valentinus, 165. 
 Plotinus, 165, 170, 207, 293. 
 
 " Theology of Aristotle," 452 /. 
 "Point," The, 509, 512, 516. 
 Poland, Reformation, Unitarians, 
 338/. 
 
 Catholic reaction, 339. 
 Polish Brethren, 339. 
 Polygamy, Moslem, 400. 492. 
 Polyglot Bibles, 295, 350. 
 Pomerania, conversion of, 237. 
 Pontiff, Roman, see Pope. 
 Poor-rates, in Islam, 478. 
 Pope, election of, 248 /., 252 /., 254. 
 
 in oecumenical councils, 179, 189, 
 190, 194, 214 /. 
 
 emperors crowned by, 251 /., 258. 
 
 infallibility, 261, 262, 382 ff. 
 
 See also Papacy. 
 Porphyry, bishop of Gaza, 212. 
 Prayer, Jewish, 76, 79, 97, 99. 
 
 Christian, 151, to saints, 225 ff. 
 
 Moslem, 399, 400, 477 /., 496. 
 to saints, 483/., 485. 
 spirit of, al-Ghazali, 462. 
 
 See also Liturgy. 
 Prayer-Book, English, 311 /. 
 
 Jewish, 79. 
 Preaching, 282. 
 
 in synagogue, 63. 
 
 in the church, 150, 151, 217, 279, 
 282. 
 
 in sects, 283, 289. 
 
 Reformers, 321. 
 
 in the mosque, 400, 464, 478. 
 Precisians, 361 /. 
 Predestination, Paul, 134. 
 
 Augustine, 197, 199-203. 
 
 Pelagius, 197. 
 
 Gottschalk, 238. 
 
 Aquinas, Scotus, 273. 
 
 Luther, 317, Melancthon, 327 /. 
 
 Calvin, Zwingli, 331 /. 
 
 Formula of Concord, 355. 
 
 Jesuits, Jansenists, 354, 356. 
 
 Arminian doctrine, 355. 
 
 Synod of Dordrecht (Dort), 356. 
 
 in the Koran, 396, 416. 
 
 Mutazilites in conflict with, 418. 
 
 al-Ashari, 426/., 429/ 
 
 Moslem orthodoxy, 475. 
 Premonstratensians, 279. 
 Presbyterianism, Reformed churches, 
 332, 334. 
 
 in England and New England, 
 361. 
 Presbyters, 149. 
 
 See also Orders of the Ministry. 
 
 Priesthood, Jewish, 9, li, 39 /. 
 
 Christian, 149, 216, 217/., 241 ff., 
 348. 
 
 Luther, 317, of all believers, 321. 
 
 (hierarchy), Tridentine doctrine, 
 348. 
 
 See also Celibacy, Orders of the 
 Ministry. 
 Procession of the Spirit, 185, 265 /., 
 
 266, n. 1. 
 Proclus, influence on Dionysius, 207/. 
 Professio Fidel Tridentinse, 349. 
 Prohibition of intoxicants, Moslem, 
 
 400, 495 /. 
 Propaganda Fide, Congregation, De, 
 
 353. 
 Prophecy, theory of, Maimonides, 92. 
 Prophet, The, see Mohammed. 
 Prophets, in Israel, 9 /., 13 /., 15 ff. 
 
 Books of the, in synagogue, 62 /. 
 
 In the church, 149. 
 
 Anabaptist, 322, 324. 
 
 in Islam, 402, 465, 475. 
 Protestant Reformation, 296-342. 
 
 See Reformation. 
 Protestantism, modern trend, 376-380. 
 Proverbs, Book of, 49. 
 Providence, in Maimonides, 91 /. 
 Psalms, in temple ritual, 76. 
 Psalms of Solomon, 64. 
 Pseudo-Areopagite, see Dionysius. 
 Pseudomessiahs, 97, 98. 
 Pure Brethren of Basra, 86. 
 
 See also Ikhwan al-Safa. 
 Purgatory, 230 /., 243, 245, 297-299. 
 Purifications, Jewish, 41 ff. 
 
 Moslem 477. 
 Purim, Feast of, 78. 
 Puritanism, 360 ff., 364. 
 
 Qtjakebs (Society of Friends), 366 /. 
 
 Rabia, Sufi poetess, 494. 
 Racovian Catechism, 339. 
 Radbertus, Paschasius, 239. 
 Rahab, house of, figure of church, 222. 
 Rahab, sea-monster, 38 /. 
 Rahman, al-, 395, 477, n. 2. 
 Ramadan, Fast of, 403, 478 /. 
 Rationalism, 375. 
 Rationalists in Islam (Mutazilites), 
 
 417 ff. 
 Realism, 270, 275; cf. 94. 
 Redemption, problem of, in Paul, 135. 
 
 in speculative Gnostics, 167. 
 
 See also Salvation. 
 Reform, movement in Judaism, 102 ff. 
 
 decrees, Tridentine, 344/ 
 
 See also Reformation, Reformed 
 Church. 
 Reformation, Protestant, 296-342. 
 
 in Germany, 296-306, 312, 314- 
 328. 
 
548 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Switzerland, 306/., 308, 329-334. 
 
 France, 307/., 335. 
 
 England, 309-312, Scotland, 312. 
 
 The Netherlands, 313. 
 
 Scandinavia, 308 /. 
 
 Italy, 335, 338, 340 /. 
 
 Poland, Transylvania, 338-340. 
 
 situation in 1567, 312 /. 
 
 characteristics, 313. 
 
 transitional character, 368-371. 
 
 religious and moral results, 359. 
 
 second wave of, 359-368. 
 
 Counter-Reformation, see Cath- 
 olic Reformation. 
 Reformed Church, distribution, 334 /. 
 Regeneration, in John, 142. 
 
 baptismal, 219. 
 Reign of God (Kingdom of Heaven), 
 71, 107, 109, 111, 114 /., 115 ff., 122. 
 Relics, 226, 485. 
 
 Religion and philosophy, see Philos- 
 ophy and Religion. 
 Remonstrants, 339, 355 /. 
 Renaissance, Italian, 266 f., 292-295, 
 
 337-340, 368. 
 Repentance, Jewish doctrine, 27, 70, 
 74, 79, 86. 
 
 John the Baptist, 108. 
 
 Jesus, 109. 
 
 Luther, 299. 
 
 al-Ghazali, 465. 
 
 Moslem mystics, 444 /. 
 
 See also Penance, Penitence. 
 Restitution of all things, Origen, 175. 
 Restoration, prophecies of, 25 /., re- 
 building of Temple, 32. 
 Resurrection, of the body, 55 ff. 
 
 rabbinical Judaism, 75. 
 
 Philo, 61. 
 
 Hellenistic Jews, 133. 
 
 Maimonides, 94. 
 
 Paul's conception, 133 /. 
 
 Hebrews, 137/. 
 
 Revelation of John, 145. 
 
 Apologists, Irenseus, 162, 163. 
 
 Gnostics, 163. 
 
 Origen, 174, 175 /. 
 
 in the Koran, 398. 
 
 Mutazilites, 422. 
 
 Ikhwan al-Safa, 452. 
 
 al-Ashari, 424. 
 
 al-Ghazali, 461, 463. 
 
 Orthodox Islam, 475 /. 
 Resurrection of Christ, 117 /., 127, 
 
 128. 
 Retribution after death, Judaism, 
 54 ff. 
 
 early Christianity, 133 /., 145. 
 
 in Islam, 398/., 475 /. 
 
 See Eschatology. 
 Return of Christ, 117 /., 133, 138. 
 
 of Imam, Shiite doctrine, 433 ff. 
 
 of HaUm, Druse, 507, 509. 
 
 Reuchlin, 297. 
 
 Revelation, of Jewish Law, 68 /., 94, 
 102. 
 
 Jewish theory of, 60, 84, 92. 
 
 Christian, 138, 161, 168, 173, 175. 
 
 Mohammed's idea, 397, 420 /. 
 
 Mutazilite theory, 421. 
 
 angel of (Gabriel), 475. 
 
 See also Koran, Prophecy, Scrip- 
 ture. 
 Revelation of John, 64 /., 75, 144 /., 
 
 162, 174, 175 /., 287. 
 Richard of St. Victor, 276. 
 Right and wrong, per se, or by will of 
 
 God, 275 /., 315 /., 419, 427 /. 
 Rimini, Council of, 183. 
 Ritual, Jewish, 44. 
 
 See also Liturgy, Worship. 
 Roman Catechism, 349 /., 358. 
 Rome, church in, 151, 158 /., 214 /., 
 222 /., 227 /. 
 
 See also Papacy, Popes. 
 Russia, conversion of, 237. 
 
 national church, 216. 
 Ruysbroeck, Jan van, 278. 
 
 Saadia, 84 /. 
 Sabbath, 46. 
 SabeUians, 179, 181. 
 Sacraments, in mysteries, 140. 
 
 Paul, 127, John, 142 /. 
 
 early church, 143, 150 /. 
 
 ritual and doctrine, 217 ff., 221, 
 223/. 
 
 Augustine, 224 /. 
 
 the seven, 346. 
 
 Luther, 318, Calvin, 333 /. 
 
 Council of Trent, 346 /. 
 
 See also, Baptism, Confirmation, 
 Eucharist, the Mass, Penance, 
 Orders. 
 Sacred places, Canaanite, Israelite, 
 7/., 11, 23. 
 
 Jewish, 47 /. 
 
 Arab, 388 /. 
 
 See also Mecca, Wells. 
 Sacrifice, of Christ, 137 (c/. 127), 217/. 
 
 See also Mass. 
 Sacrifices, Jewish, 7 /., 40, 47. 
 
 Arab, 388. 
 
 Moslem pilgrimage, 482. 
 Sadducees, 66. 
 Sages, Jewish, 49 /. 
 Saints, successors of pagan divinities, 
 226, 483. 
 
 worship of, Christian, 225 ff. 
 
 Moslem, 413, 483 ff. 
 
 intercession of, 227, in Islam, 484. 
 
 See also Iconoclastic controversy. 
 Salvation, Gentile Christianity, 120 / 
 
 Paul, 126, 127 /., Hebrews, 137. 
 
 John 140, Gnostics, 156. 
 
 Apologists, 161, Irenseus, 163. 
 
INDEX 
 
 549 
 
 Origen, 173, Greek Fathers, 196, 
 
 199. 
 Pelagius, 197. 
 
 Augustinian doctrine, 198-200. 
 Anselm, 245 ff. 
 Luther, 315 /. 
 See also Justification. 
 Moslem doctrine, 486 /., 487, 
 
 488. 
 See also Predestination. 
 Samaritans, 47 /. 
 Sanballat, 47. 
 Sanhedrin, 66 /. 
 Sardica, Council of, 215. 
 Satan, 72 /., 395, 463 /. 
 
 See Devil. 
 Satisfaction, in penance, 241, 242 /., 
 247. 
 
 See also Treasury of Merits. 
 Saul of Tarsus, see Paul. 
 Saumur, School of, 356 /. 
 Saviour (Swnjp), divine title, 121. 
 Savonarola, 294. 
 Saxons, conquest and conversion of, 
 
 237. • 
 Scandinavia, conversion of, 237. 
 
 Reformation in, 308 /. 
 Scapegoat, Jewish, 43 /. 
 Schism, Great, of Papacy, 263. 
 
 Moslem, 414 /. 
 Schmalkald League, 304. 
 Scholasticism, 268-276. 
 
 its achievements, 273 ff., 384. 
 Neo-Thomist, 350, 369. 
 Schools, Jewish, 63, 66 /. 
 See also Education. 
 Science, conflict with theology, 376/., 
 381. 
 
 modern, 372-374, 376. 
 Scotists, 354. 
 
 Scotland, Reformation in, 312, 334, 
 335, 358. 
 
 Presbyterianism, 361. 
 Scotus, John Duns, 87, 272 /., 275, 
 
 316. 
 Scotus, John (Eriugena), 209 /., 277. 
 Scriptures : 
 
 Jewish, 53. 
 
 reading and study, 62 /., 
 
 66 /., 77. 
 interpretation, allegorical, 
 
 60. 
 Jesus' knowledge of, 107 /. 
 in early church, 117 /., 123, 
 
 129, 148. 
 Karaites, 82 /. 
 See also Criticism, Law, 
 Prophecy. 
 Christian Church, Canon, 158, 
 319/., 345. 
 interpretation, multiple 
 
 sense, 175. 
 authoritative, 345, 371. 
 
 authority of, 273, 275, 289, 
 
 313/., 319, 368. 
 Anabaptists, 322. 
 Calvin's doctrine, 330. 
 and tradition, 345. 
 Jewish and Christian, in the Ko- 
 ran. 397 /., 402. 
 in traditions, 442, 490 /. 
 Moslem idea of, 397, 475. 
 See also Koran. 
 Scythians, 21 /. 
 
 Sects, Jewish, 47 /., 58 /., 65, 81 ff., 
 97 ff. 
 
 Christian, ancient, 146 ff., 155, 
 156/., 165/., 213. 
 mediaeval, 284-292. 
 Reformation, 322-324. 
 modern, 356, 361-368. 
 Moslem, 433-438, 499 ff. 
 Seers, Israelite, 9. 
 Sefirot, in Kabbala, 96. 
 Sekel ha-poel, 91. 
 Seleucia-Rimini, Council of, 183 /. 
 Semi-Arians, 185. 
 
 Semi-Pelagianism, 356, 201 /., 238, 354. 
 Sepher ha-Yesirah, 95. 
 Septuagint, 51. 
 
 Serapis, temple destroyed, 212. 
 Serpent, tempter, 35 /. 
 
 sect (Ophites), 156. 
 Servetus, 336 /., 370. 
 Seven Imams, followers of (Seveners), 
 436/. 
 
 See also Ismailis. 
 Shabbethai Zebi, 97. 
 Shafli, al-, jurist, 412. 
 Shechem, Samaritan temple at, 48. 
 Sheikhis, 510 /., 512. 
 Shema, 76. 
 Sheol, 54 /. 
 
 Sheria, Moslem religious law, 412. 
 Shia, party of Ali, 431. 
 Shiites, 431 ff. 
 
 "Ultras," 433. 
 
 traditions and theory of tradi- 
 tion, 437. 
 peculiarities of rite and law, 438. 
 theology, Mutazilite influence, 
 
 438. 
 intolerance, 438. 
 See also Ismailis. 
 Sibylline Oracles, 65. 
 Simeon, successor of James, 146. 
 Simeon ben Yohai, 95. 
 Simony, in church law, 254. 
 Sin, Jewish conception, 42. 
 Paul, 129 /. 
 
 Tertullian, 196, Augustine, 198. 
 Pelagius, 197. 
 deadly, 240 /. 
 Anselm's doctrine, 246 /. 
 Luther, 315. 
 al-Ghazali, 463 /., 465. 
 
550 
 
 INDEX 
 
 See also Original sin, Penance, 
 Indulgence. 
 Sinlessness, of Christ, 137. 
 
 of Mohammed, 432 /., 476. 
 
 of the Imams, 433. 
 Slavery, in the Koran, 400. 
 
 in Mohammedan countries, 494 /. 
 Society of Jesus, 351 /., 354. 
 Socinus, Faustus, 338 /., 341 /. 
 Socinus, Lselius, 338. 
 Son, of God, divinity of inferior rank, 
 125 /., 136 /., 139 /., 171 /., 176, 
 178/. 
 
 coessential with the Father, see 
 *0juooi5<nos. 
 
 coequal, 185. 
 
 See also Christ, Logos. 
 Son of Man, 116/., 119. 
 Swrijp, 121. 
 
 Soul, nature of, 84, 86, 91, 96, 98 /., 
 172 /., 207 /., 277 /., 443, 451, 463. 
 
 See also Immortality. 
 Spain, Jews in, 85 ff., 100. 
 
 Christianity in, 236, 281 /., 283, 
 296, 335, 350 ff. 
 
 Mohammedanism, 454 /., 466 ff. 
 Spener, 362. 
 Spinoza, 100, 375. 
 Spirit, of God, in Old Testament, 132. 
 
 Paul (of God, of Christ), 132. 
 
 John (Paraclete), 143/. 
 
 Apologists, 161, Origen, 172. 
 
 See also Trinity. 
 
 Sect of the Free, 286. 
 
 Age of the, Joachim, 287. 
 
 Anabaptists, 322. 
 
 Quakers, 366. 
 Spiritual body, 133 /., 174. 
 Spiritual director, Sufi, 444, 465, 497. 
 Spiritual Exercises, Loyola, 351 f. 
 Stages, of the mystic way, 444; cf. 
 
 208, 209, 276. 
 Stars, see Astrology. 
 State, see Church and State. 
 States, in Moslem mysticism, 445. 
 Stoicism, revival at Renaissance, 293/. 
 
 in eighteenth century, 375. 
 Stories, Jewish (Esther, etc.), 64. 
 Subh-i-Ezel, 514. 
 
 Suffering, problem of, 173, 418 /., 447. 
 Sufis, 442^52. 
 
 See also under al-Ghazali, 458— 
 460, 464 /. 
 Sunna, 410, 412, 490. 
 Sunnites, defined, 437. 
 Supralapsarianism, 356. 
 Suso, 278. 
 Sweden, conversion of, 237. 
 
 Reformation in, 308 /. 
 Switzerland, Reformation in, 306 /., 
 
 308, 334 /., 357. 
 Syllabus of Errors, Pius IX, 382. 
 Sylvester, Pope, 179, 294. 
 
 Symbols, see Creeds. 
 Synagogue, 62 /., 76-79. 
 Synergism, 355. 
 Synod at Carthage, 200. 
 
 at Orange, 202. 
 Synod of Dordrecht (Dort), 355 /. 
 Synods, of bishops, 157. 
 
 See Councils. 
 Syria, Mohammedanism in, 407 /., 
 409. 
 
 Tabernacles, Festival of, 8 /., 76, 
 
 77. 
 Taborites, 291. 
 Talmud, 75/., 80, 81. 
 
 Karaite rejection, 82. 
 Reformed Judaism, 103. 
 Targum, 62. 
 Tauhid, 470. 471. 
 Tauter, 278. 
 Templars, 280. 
 Temple, Israelite, 11. 
 
 in Jerusalem. 10, 39, 52, 66. 
 in Egypt, 47 /. 
 Samaritan, on Gerizim, 47 /. 
 Temptation, al-Ghazali on, 464. 
 Teresia, Sta., 351. 
 TertuUian, 193, 196/. 
 Testaments of Twelve Patriarchs, 64. 
 Tetzel, 297, 300. 
 Teutonic Knights, 280. 
 Teutonic tribes, migration, 235. 
 Theodicy, problem, in Job, 48 /. 
 
 Mutazilites, 418 /. 
 Theodora, Empress, 230. 
 Theodosius, Emperor, 211. 
 Theology, Jewish, Philo, 59-62. 
 rabbinical, 68-74. 
 mediaeval, 84-94. 
 Christian, New Testament, 125- 
 144, 160. 
 ancient church, 160-192. 
 Middle Ages, 238-248, 268- 
 
 276. 
 Reformation, and after, 313- 
 321, 327/., 330-334, 338/., 
 345-350, 354-358. 
 Catholic and Protestant con- 
 sensus, 368 /. 
 modern tendencies, 372-380, 
 384/. 
 Moslem, 416-430, 457^73, 474- 
 488. 
 Theology of Aristotle, 452 /. 
 6«>t6kos, 188, 227. 
 
 See also Mother of God. 
 Therapeutse, 58 /. 
 Thirty-nine Articles, 311 /., 358. 
 Thomas a Kempis, 278 /. 
 Thomists, 354. 
 Tolerance, religious, Moslem, 410, 
 
 438. 
 Toleration, Edict of (311), 177. 
 
INDEX 
 
 551 
 
 of sects and heresies, a sin, 370. 
 See also Persecution. 
 Tombs, of martyrs and saints, 225— 
 227. 
 
 in Mohammedan lands, 483- 
 486. 
 Tome of Leo, 190. 
 
 Tradition, Jewish, 53, 67, 68 /., 75 /. 
 Christian, 157, 158 /., 169. 
 principle of, 201. 
 Protestant position, 301, 
 
 313, 319, 330. 
 Council of Trent, 345. 
 See also Scripture. 
 Moslem, 410 /. 
 
 falsification, 411. 
 collections, 411 /. 
 Sunnite and Shiite criteria, 
 
 437. 
 New Testament in Moslem, 
 442, 490 /. 
 Traducianism, 196, 197, 198, 453. 
 Transcendence, of God, in Philo, 60/., 
 72. 
 
 not rabbinical, 73 /. 
 Ibn Gabirol, 87, Kabbala, 96. 
 Valentinus, 165, Origen, 170. 
 Dionysius the Areopagite, 207. 
 Ikhwan al-Safa, 451 ff., Ismaili, 
 i 500 /. 
 Translations of Scriptures: 
 
 Greek, Septuagint, 51, Aquila, 
 
 67. 
 Aramaic (Targum), 62. 
 Arabic, Saadia, 84. 
 Latin, 193, 295, 345, 349. 
 Vernacular, 284, 289, 295, 303, 
 308. 
 Transmigration of souls, 418 /., 434. 
 Transubstantiation, 238-240. 
 rejection of, "Wycliffe, 290. 
 
 Luther, 310, Zwingli, 318. 
 Calvin, 333 /. 
 Tridentine decree, 347. 
 Transylvania, Unitarians in, 338 /. 
 Treasury of Merits, 244 /., 298 /. 
 Trent, Council of (1545-' 63), 343 ff. 
 Trinity, controversies, 176-179, 181- 
 183. 
 definition of the dogma, 180, 184, 
 
 185. 
 Augustine on, 195 /. 
 Dionysius the Areopagite, 208. 
 Eeformers, 326, 336. 
 Servetus, 336 /. 
 other antitrinitarians, 338. 
 Socinus, 338 /., 341. 
 external criticism, Saadia, 85. 
 Mohammed, 395. 
 in Moslem controversy, 420. 
 Twelve Imams, followers of- 
 (Twelvers), 436 /., 499, n. 1. 
 offshoots of, 509 ff. 
 
 TJlpila, apostle of the Goths, 236. 
 
 Umrah, 480 /. 
 
 Unam Sanctam, Bull, 260, 261; 
 
 267. 
 Uncleanness, Jewish Law, 40-44, 45. 
 Moslem law, 477. 
 Shiite notions, 438. 
 Uniformity, Act of, 312. 
 Union with God, see Mysticism. 
 Unipersonalism, 185, cf. 164 /., 179, 
 
 181. 
 Unitarians, Monarchians, Sabellians, 
 164/., 179, 181. 
 
 Arians, 178 /., 181-184. 
 
 Servetus, 336 /. 
 
 Anabaptists, 338. 
 
 Socinians, 338 /., 341. 
 
 in Poland and Transylvania; 
 
 338. 
 dispersion, 339 /. 
 in New England, 376. 
 "Unitarians," Moslem party name, 
 
 470, 507, cf. 417. 
 Universal Intellect (Nous), 165 /., 
 170. 
 Ikhwan al-Safa, 451. 
 incarnations or manifestations, 
 500 /., 507, 513, 516. 
 Universal Soul (Anima Mundi), 451, 
 
 453, 500 /. 
 Universalism, Hypothetic, 357. 
 Universe, conception of, ancient 
 church, 274. 
 
 scholastic synthesis, 274 /., 372/. 
 Catholic and Protestant theol- 
 ogy, 368 f. 
 Universities, rise of, 269. 
 See also Education. 
 'Tir6<TTO(ris, 171, 180, 181, 183, 185, 
 
 191. 
 Urf, Moslem customary law, 412. 
 Utraquists, 291. 
 
 Valentinus, 165 /., 167. 
 Valla, Laurentius, 294. 
 Vandals, 236, 237. 
 Vatican Council, 382 /. 
 Versions, of the Bible, see Transla- 
 tions. 
 Virgin Mary, QcotSkos, 188, 190. 
 
 perpetual virginity, 227. 
 
 without actual sin, ibid. 
 
 worship of, festivals, 227 /. 
 
 intercession of, 228. 
 
 immaculate conception, medi- 
 seval controversy, 382. 
 
 dogma defined, ibid. 
 Virtue, al-Ghazali on, 464, 
 
 in Moslem ethics, 491. 
 
 See also Ethics. 
 Visigoths, 236. 
 
 Vowel-points, Hebrew, inspiration of, 
 357. 
 
552 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Vulgate, authoritative version, Tri- 
 dentine decree, 345. 
 authentic edition, 349. 
 
 Wahhabis, 413, 486. 
 Waldensians, 283. 
 Weighing of deeds, 424, 476. 
 Welis, 483 ff., 493. 
 Wesley, John, 362 ff. 
 Westminster Assembly, 357 /. 
 
 Confession of Faith and Cate- 
 chisms, 358. 
 
 adoption of, ibid. 
 Whitefleld, George, 367. 
 Wiclif, see Wycliffe. 
 Will, see Freedom of the Will. 
 Wine, forbidden in the Koran, 400, 
 
 495/. 
 Wisdom, of God, 50, 72, 171, 420. 
 Wisdom of Solomon, 57, 72. 
 Wittenberg, University of, 300. 
 
 Reformation in, 298 ff. 
 Women, in Moslem law and society, 
 492-494. 
 
 learned, among Moslems, 493 /. 
 Word, of God, in Judaism, 72. 
 See also Logos, 
 in Moslem theology, 421. 
 Asharites, 469. 
 Ibn Hazm, ibid. 
 See also Koran, created or eter- 
 nal? 
 World, the, in John, 142. 
 Worldliness, Puritan attitude, 360 (c/. 
 
 278/., 280-284, 287/., 289/.). 
 Worms, Concordat of, 256. 
 Diet of, 302 /. 
 Edict of, 303. 
 
 Worship, Jewish, ancient, 7 ff., 10 /., 
 22 /., 39 ff., 47 /., in synagogue, 76- 
 79. 
 
 spirit of, Ibn Pakuda, 85 /., al- 
 
 Ghazali, 461 /. 
 Christian, in John, 143. 
 of Christ, 121, 123, 132, 225. 
 of saints, see Saints. 
 of the Virgin, 227 /. 
 of angels, 228. 
 forms of, Justin, 150 /. 
 elaboration, liturgies, 215 ff. 
 See also Liturgies, Mass. 
 Moslem, 399 /., 477 /., 480- 
 482. 
 Wyclifle, 288-291, 317. 
 
 Ximenes, Cardinal, 295, 350. 
 
 Yahweh, see Jehovah. 
 Yathrib (Medina), 392 n. 
 
 Zaddikim, in Hasidism, 99 /. 
 Zahirite, school of Moslem law, 467. 
 Zakat, 478. 
 Zeal, sectarian, al-Ghazali on, 464, 
 
 465. 
 Zechariah, prophet, 32. 
 Zeidites, 436. 
 Zeno, Emperor, 191. 
 Zionism, 105 /. 
 Zohar, 95. 
 Zoroastrianism, influence on eschatol- 
 
 ogy, 55 /., 476. 
 intolerance, 438. 
 Zurich, Reformation in, 306, 307. 
 Zwickau prophets, 322. 
 Zwingli, 306/., 312, 318/., 334. 
 
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 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. By A. E. Garvte, D.D., Principal of 
 New College, London, England. 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. By CHARLES HENRY Robin- 
 S0n, D.D., Hon. Canon of Ripon Cathedral and Editorial Secretary of the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. 
 
 [Now Ready. 
 
The 
 International Critical Commentary 
 
 ARRANGEMENT OF VOLUMES AND AUTHORS 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 GENESIS. The Rev. John Skinner, D.D., Principal and Professor of 
 Old Testament Language and Literature, College of Presbyterian Church 
 of England, Cambridge, England. [Now Ready. 
 
 EXODUS. The Rev. A. R. S. Kennedy, D.D., Professor of Hebrew, 
 University of Edinburgh. 
 
 LEVITICUS. J. F. Stenntng, M.A., Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. 
 
 NUMBERS. The Rev. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D., Professor of Hebrew, 
 Mansfield College, Oxford. [Now Ready. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. The Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., sometime 
 Regius Professor of Hebrew, Oxford. [Now Ready. 
 
 JOSHUA. The Rev. George Adam Smith, D.D., LL.D., Principal of the 
 University of Aberdeen. 
 
 JUDGES. The Rev. George F. Moore, D.D., LL.D., Professor of The- 
 ology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. [Now Ready. 
 
 SAMUEL. The Rev. H. P. Smith, D.D., Librarian, Union Theological 
 Seminary, New York. [Now Ready. 
 
 KINGS. [Author to be announced.] 
 
 CHRONICLES. The Rev. Edward L. Curtis, D.D., Professor of 
 Hebrew, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. [Now Ready. 
 
 EZRA AND NEHEMIAH. The Rev. L. W. Batten, Ph.D., D.D., Pro- 
 fessor of Old Testament Literature, General Theological Seminary, New 
 York City. [Now Ready. 
 
 PSALMS. The Rev. Chas. A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., sometime Graduate 
 Professor of Theological Encyclopaedia and Symbolics, Union Theological 
 Seminary, New York. [2 wis. Now Ready. 
 
 PROVERBS. The Rev. C. H. Toy, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Hebrew, 
 Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. [Now Ready. 
 
 JOB. The Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., sometime Regius Professor 
 of Hebrew, Oxford. 
 
The International Critical Commentary 
 
 ISAIAH. Chaps. I-XXVII. The Rev. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D., Pro- 
 fessor of Hebrew, Mansfield College, Oxford. [Now Ready. 
 
 ISAIAH. Chaps. XXVIII-XXXIX. The Rev. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D. 
 Chaps. LX-LXVI. The Rev. A. S. Peake, M.A., D.D., Dean of the Theo- 
 logical Faculty of the Victoria University and Professor of Biblical Exegesis 
 in the University of Manchester, England. 
 
 JEREMIAH. The Rev. A. F. Ktrkpatrick, D.D., Dean of Ely, sometime 
 Regius Professor of Hebrew, Cambridge, England. 
 
 EZEKIEL. The Rev. G. A. Cooke, M.A., Oriel Professor of the Interpre- 
 tation of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford, and the Rev. Charles F. 
 Burney, Diitt., Fellow and Lecturer in Hebrew, St. John's College, 
 Oxford. 
 
 DANIEL. The Rev. John P. Peters, Ph.D., D.D., sometime Professor 
 of Hebrew, P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia, now Rector of St. Michael's 
 Church, New York City. 
 
 AMOS AND HOSEA. W. R. Harper, Ph.D., LL.D., sometime President 
 of the University of Chicago, Illinois. [Now Ready. 
 
 MICAH, ZEPHANIAH, NAHUM, HABAKKUK, OBADIAH AND JOEL. 
 
 Prof. John M. P. Smith, University of Chicago; W. Hayes Ward, D.D., 
 LL.D., Editor of The Independent, New York; Prof. Julius A. Bewer, 
 Union Theological Seminary, New York. [Now Ready. 
 
 HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH, MALACHI AND JONAH. Prof. H. G. MITCHELL, 
 D.D.; Prof. John M. P. Smith, Ph.D., and Prof. J. A. Bewer, Ph.D. 
 
 [Now Ready. 
 
 ESTHER. The Rev. L. B. Paton, Ph.D., Professor of Hebrew, Hart- 
 ford Theological Seminary. [Now Ready. 
 
 ECCLESIASTES. Prof. George A. Barton, Ph.D., Professor of Bibli- 
 cal Literature, Bryn Mawr College, Pa. [Now Ready. 
 
 RUTH, SONG OF SONGS AND LAMENTATIONS. Rev. CHARLES A. 
 Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., sometime Graduate Professor of Theological Ency- 
 clopaedia and Symbolics, Union Theological Seminary, New York. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 
 ST. MATTHEW. The Rev. Willoughby C. Allen, M.A., Fellow and 
 Lecturer in Theology and Hebrew, Exeter College, Oxford. [Now Ready. 
 
 ST. MARK. Rev. E. P. Gould, D.D., sometime Professor of New Testa- 
 ment Literature, P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia. [Now Ready. 
 
 ST. LUKE. The Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., late Master of University 
 College, Durham. [Now Ready. 
 
The International Critical Commentary 
 
 ST. JOHN. The Right Rev. John Henry Bernard, D.D., Bishop of 
 Ossory, Ireland. 
 
 HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. The Rev. WILLIAM SANDAY, D.D., 
 LL.D., Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Oxford, and the Rev. Wil- 
 loughby C. Allen, M.A., Fellow and Lecturer in Divinity and Hebrew, 
 Exeter College, Oxford. 
 
 ACTS. The Rev. C. H. Turner, D.D., Fellow of Magdalen College, 
 Oxford, and the Rev. H. N. Bate, M.A., Examining Chaplain to the 
 Bishop of London. 
 
 ROMANS. The Rev. William Sanday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret 
 Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and the Rev. 
 A. C. Headlam, M.A., D.D., Principal of King's College, London. 
 
 [Now Ready. 
 
 I. CORINTHIANS. The Right Rev. Arch Robertson, D.D., LL.D., 
 Lord Bishop of Exeter, and Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., late Master of 
 University College, Durham. [Now Ready. 
 
 II. CORINTHIANS. The Rev. Alfred Plummer, M.A., D.D., late 
 Master of University College, Durham. [Now Ready. 
 
 GALATIANS. The Rev. Ernest D. Burton, D.D., Professor of New 
 Testament Literature, University of Chicago. [In Press. 
 
 EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS. The Rev. T. K. Abbott, B.D., 
 DLitt, sometime Professor of Biblical Greek, Trinity College, Dublin, 
 now Librarian of the same. [Now Ready. 
 
 PHILIPPIANS AND PHILEMON. The Rev. Marvin R. Vincent, 
 D.D., Professor of Biblical Literature, Union Theological Seminary, New 
 York City. [Now Ready. 
 
 THESSALONIANS. The Rev. James E. Frame, M.A., Professor of 
 Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York City. 
 
 [Now Ready. 
 
 THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. The Rev. Walter Lock, D.D., Warden 
 of Keble College and Professor of Exegesis, Oxford. 
 
 HEBREWS. The Rev. James Moffatt, D.D., Minister United Free 
 Church, Broughty Ferry, Scotland. 
 
 ST. JAMES. The Rev. James H. Ropes, D.D., Bussey Professor of New 
 Testament Criticism in Harvard University. [Now Ready. 
 
 PETER AND JUDE. The Rev. Charles Bigg, D.D., sometime Regius 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. 
 
 [Now Ready. 
 
 THE JOHANNINE EPISTLES. The Rev. E. A. BROOKE, B.D., Fellow 
 and Divinity Lecturer in King's College, Cambridge. [Now Ready. 
 
 REVELATION. The Rev. Robert H. Charles, M.A., D.D., sometime 
 Professor of Biblical Greek in the University of Dublin. [In Press.