Os 
 7& 
 
 Grom fhe Librarp of 
 (professor Samucf Wiffer 
 in Memorp of 
 Zudqe Samuef ΑἸ ον Breckinridge 
 (presented fip 
 Samuef Willer Breckinridge Zong 
 fo the Zibrarp of 
 
 (Princeton Theofogtca? Seminary 
 
 BR. 160 Ν43913 18631°vi2 
 
 Neander, August, 1789-1850. 
 
 The history of the christiar 
 religion and church during 
 
ΠΥ - 
 
on Sant illir- 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND CHURCH 
 
 DURING 
 
 THE THREE FIRST CENTURIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 ν΄ 
 DR. AUGUSTUS NEANDER. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, 
 
 BY HYWNEY JOHN ROSE, B.D. 
 
 RECTOR OF HOUGHTON CONQUEST, 
 
 AND LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 ΘΟ ΤΩ Ee 
 
 CONTAINING 
 THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SECTS AND DOCTRINES, AND AN ACCOUNT 
 OF THE CHIEF FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 LONDON: 
 PRINTED FOR J. σα. F. & J. RIVINGTON, 
 
 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, 
 AND WATERLOO-PLACE, PALL-MALL. 
 
 1841. 
 
LONDON: 
 ᾽ GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ᾿ fq 
 ST. JOHN’S SQUARE. > 
 
THE 
 
 TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 In presenting to the public the second volume of this translation 
 of Dr. Neander’s History of the Church, I may be allowed to 
 express my regret that the promise of its speedy appearance 
 (made at the publication of the first volume), has not been duly 
 realized. It would be of little interest to detail the causes of 
 this delay, as they are chiefly of a personal character, if they were 
 not calculated to show that some of them are unlikely again to 
 operate, so as to prevent my rapid progress in finishing my 
 translation of the succeeding volumes of this able work’. ‘The 
 circumstances of our own country, at the period of the publication 
 of the first volume, left those, who took much part, as I did then, 
 in periodical literature, but little time or thought for studies of a 
 less stirring character, and however higher in value, of a more 
 remote interest; and the same cause led me to presume that such 
 a work then would find but few readers. University employ- 
 ments, and many other avocations which I had not anticipated, 
 at first took me away from the subject, and every one knows with 
 what difficulty employments once suspended are again resumed. 
 About the beginning of this year, however, the publishers having 
 informed me that the first volume was out of print, I determined 
 to finish the second immediately, part of it having been printed 
 some years ago, and the result has been the present publication. 
 
 ' Should no unforeseen obstacles occur, I trust, in a very short period, to publish 
 two more volumes, which will contain the same proportion (three Bands, or Parts) 
 
 of the original. 
 
 A2 
 
lv THE 'TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 The second volume, now published, completes the history of 
 the first three centuries, and the first portion of the work is now 
 finished. I must therefore take the present opportunity of offer- 
 ing a few remarks, both upon the original work and on the 
 translation. With regard to the former, I have expressed my 
 own opinion very fully in the preface to the first volume, and I 
 do not see anything there which I should wish to retract, nor is 
 there much which I think it necessary to add. I have the same 
 opinion of the candour and integrity of the author; and I entertain 
 the same dissent from some of his opinions. The few remarks 
 which I would here offer, are rather to be taken as cautions to 
 those younger readers, who apply to these volumes for instruction. 
 I would suggest to them the unsatisfactory nature of some of its 
 statements, and attempt to point out one of the causes from which 
 this circumstance proceeds. With regard to the whole of the 
 Church question, 1 have spoken so fully in the preface and the 
 notes to the first volume, that I need not touch upon it now. 
 But the great doctrinal point, which I think is treated in an 
 unsatisfactory manner, is that of the Trinity (see pp. 256, and 
 289-90) ; the most important of all the doctrines of Christianity. 
 
 The author may, perhaps, think it foreign to the province of 
 the historian, to express a decided opinion on doctrinal points— 
 a view in which I cannot wholly coincide. I think a perfectly im- 
 partial statement of the arguments of those who differ from us, and 
 a perfectly fair account of their conduct, are quite compatible, 
 not only with entertaining a decided opinion on such matters, but 
 with the expression of it. And I confess that it would have given 
 me great satisfaction to find in Dr. Neander’s statements with 
 regard to the great doctrine of the Trinity, something less indis- 
 tinct and shadowy, than the passages to which I have here pointed 
 attention. I think such statements might have been made, without 
 any fear of appearing to explain that mysterious dogma. It 
 appears to me a question rather of fact than of speculation, as 
 one might attempt to show in the following manner. Without 
 any presumptuous attempt to explain to ourselves the doctrine of 
 the ‘Trinity, if we ask ourselves one or two simple questions, we 
 
THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. Vv 
 
 must bring the matter to an issue at once; viz. Is our Saviour 
 spoken of in Scripture, in language inapplicable to any created 
 Being, and at the same time is the idea of the Father suffering 
 on the cross entirely excluded? And again: is the Holy Spirit 
 spoken of in Scripture in a manner inconsistent with anything 
 but a clear objective sense? These things belong to the class of 
 facts, rather than to that of opinions, and the doctrine of the 
 Trinity does nothing more than enounce these facts—the Atha- 
 nasian creed itself contains no speculative explanation of them, 
 and no attempt at it. Let us therefore with this impression 
 before our minds, enquire to what the remarks of Dr. Neander 
 are really applicable. I think it will be seen that they not only 
 admit a construction, by which they do not oppose the doctrine 
 of the Trinity, even as laid down in the most precise manner in 
 the Athanasian creed; but that they properly apply to further 
 speculative attempts to explain this doctrine. But still I think 
 they are expressed in so indistinct a manner, that a very large 
 proportion of readers would consider them, as directed against 
 any positive declarations of the necessity of a belief in this 
 doctrine, as held by the orthodox; and I think the tendency of 
 the language, and the manner in which it is used, calculated 
 rather to lower the notion of the absolute necessity of a right 
 faith, even in such essential points as this—a tendency, which, in 
 other hands, might be carried much further, and where the 
 moderation and Christian feelings of Dr. Neander were wanting, 
 might produce great mischief. We must never forget that the 
 disciples of any erroneous system or tenet, always diverge more 
 widely from the truth than their master. The divergency of error 
 is invariably a progressive operation. 
 
 I regret, therefore, the indistinctness, of which I speak, both for 
 these reasons, and because I think it the province of ecclesiastical 
 history to give witness to the great doctrines of Christianity, and 
 warning to future generations from the errors of those which have 
 passed away. The author, however, of this work appears to be 
 chiefly solicitous about the improvement of the heart and the 
 affections of man by Christianity, for which solicitude no one can 
 
vi THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 do otherwise than honour and respect him; but at the same time 
 it is certain, that to effect this great end, the maintenance of all 
 the great doctrines of Christianity in their integrity is absolutely 
 essential. Whatever is revealed, whatever has been universally 
 maintained in the Christian Church from the first ages, I believe 
 to be necessary to be received, in order that Christianity may pro- 
 duce its full effect in the amelioration of man’s nature, and that any 
 departure from them will soon be felt in its practical influence. 
 
 The next point to which I would draw attention, is the general 
 view which the author takes of the progress of Christianity, in 
 regard to the formation of the opinion of the Church on great 
 questions of doctrine. We can scarcely conceive more than three 
 ways in which Christian doctrines may be supposed to have ob- 
 tained their recognition in the Church in express formule. 
 
 1, They may be supposed to have been explicitly maintained 
 in the same words, and with the self-same limitations from the 
 very first ages of the Christian Church,—a view which the ampli- 
 fications of doctrine, as exhibited in the history of existing creeds, 
 sufficiently shows to be untenable. 
 
 2. They may be supposed to have been held implicitly’, and in 
 some degree only as matters of consciousness, until the prevalence 
 of opposite errors required this consciousness to be embodied in 
 definite terms, and expressed in public formule: ;—or 
 
 3. We may suppose that all doctrines were in a mere chaotic 
 state till controversies arose, and then that the doctrines were 
 actually formed during the contioversies, and new doctrines were 
 thus, as it were, thought out and made by these controversies. 
 
 Of these views the second appears to me the most consistent 
 with history, and the third appears to be that which I should 
 derive as my impression from reading this work. It may not be 
 the opinion of the author, and he might probably disavow it, if 
 placed thus before him; but still I think it is the impression, 
 which would generally be entertained by most of his readers. 1 
 
 1 Thus a belief in the Trinity implied a belief in the eternity of the Son, ἅς. We 
 must remember, however, that the shorter confessions of faith (for baptism, &c.) are 
 
 summaries, which youched for more than they expressed. See Bull, Judicium Eccl. 
 
 Cath, cap. iv. 
 * 
 
THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. Vil 
 
 am not about to argue the question here, as that would, of itself, 
 require a volume’. I only point out the difference between 
 these two positions, and request the readers of ecclesiastical 
 history to bear it in mind, and judge for themselves. I should 
 deeply regret it, if in any way I have misrepresented the view of 
 my author. I only state that this is the impression left upon my 
 mind by close attention to his work. 
 
 The last point to which I would draw attention is the manner 
 in which the views which Dr. Neander has embraced, appear some- 
 times to influence the judgment he forms on points only incident- 
 ally connected with them. His aim, indeed, is to be perfectly 
 impartial and unprejudiced,—an aim which, we know, it is almost 
 impossible for any man entirely to attain; and therefore we may 
 not wonder if sometimes we see, in his case, pre-conceived 
 opinions affecting his decisions. ‘The point, to which I more 
 particularly allude, is the judgment he passes on the genuineness 
 and integrity of some of the most remarkable remains of Christian 
 antiquity. As asingle example, I would only mention the decision 
 of Dr. Neander (p. 331-2), that § 40 of the Epistle of Clement 
 of Rome is an interpolation. ‘The learned and amiable author 
 of this work believes, that the transference of Jewish terms to 
 the Christian priesthood is of later date than the time of Clement 
 of Rome, and accordingly decides that this must be an interpo- 
 lation. He alleges, indeed, that it contradicts the rest of the 
 Epistle ; but this term appears to me too strong to apply to the 
 case in question. Toa person who had not formed so strong an 
 opinion on this subject as Dr, Neander, such a contradiction 
 would hardly appear. to exist. No doubt, whenever so learned 
 and candid a writer as Dr. Neander has arrived at an opinion, 
 like that to which I have adverted, every passage, which appears 
 to militate against it, challenges an inquiry, at least from him, 
 into its genuineness ; but such an opinion is no argument against 
 its genuineness in the minds of others, whose opinions differ on 
 
 1 | would only suggest to my younger readers one or two works on the great doc- 
 trine of the Trinity, from which they will derive great advantage. I mean the works 
 of Bp. Horsley, Dr. Waterland, Bp. Bull, and, as a very convenient and useful 
 
 ᾽ 
 
 work of reference, Dr. Burton’s “ Testimonies of the Ante- Nicene Fathers.’ 
 
Vili THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 that very point; and it is hardly a just method of proceeding on 
 this sole ground to refuse the testimony of one of the witnesses 
 before the controversy is decided’, I think in these respects 
 there is a degree of caution required in admitting some of the 
 conclusions of this work; and my conviction of the necessity of 
 such caution probably may originate, and is certainly strength- 
 ened by the circumstance, that on many points our views do not 
 coincide. 
 
 These are the principal circumstances which I would point 
 out as likely to prevent this work from being as generally ac- 
 ceptable and useful in this country, as its great merit in other 
 respects would lead us to expect that it might become *. I trust 
 that, in expressing my opinion on these points, I have been 
 betrayed into no presumption, and shown no disrespect to the 
 author, whose work I have translated, and also that I have not 
 stepped beyond the proper province of a translator. It might 
 be supposed that I coincided in all the views here maintained, if 
 I intimated nothing to the contrary ; and as I think some of them 
 unsound, I should feel that I was thus far promoting erroneous 
 opinions. But having pointed out what appear to me, after 
 paying considerable attention to the work, the sources of its chief 
 
 1 Of course these remarks are not meant to apply to clear cases of anachronisms, 
 which are often of service in detecting forgeries. Take for example the will of St. 
 Patrick which mentions Indulgences. Which word was not in use for centuries after 
 his death. ; 
 
 2 I might, perhaps, justly appeal in this point to the almost unanimous opinion of 
 those writers in whose works I have seen ary notice of those of Dr. Neander. All bear 
 testimony to the excellence of the author, but all with a reserve on some point. They 
 all express their unfeigned respect for the learning of the author, his excellent qualities 
 of head and heart, as well as the general usefulness of his works, but all qualify it by 
 expressing a dissent from some of his views. See for instance, the Bishop of Lincoln’s 
 preface to his work on Tertullian, where he controverts many of Dr. Neander’s state- 
 ments and opinions; or Dr. Burton’s introduction to his Bampton Lectures, where, in 
 speaking of this very history, and expressing a hope that it would be translated, he 
 adds, ‘‘ The writer is a theorist, as are many of his countrymen; and I could wishthat 
 some of his observations had not been made. But he has investigated with great 
 patience of research, and with a very original train of thought, the early history of the 
 Church ; and if he carries into execution what he has partly promised to undertake, a 
 full and special history of the Church in the time of the apostles, he will probably 
 
 confer a lasting benefit on literature in general.”’ p. xvii. 
 
THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. ix 
 
 faults, I leave my readers to exercise their own judgment on the 
 subject, and to derive all the advantage and instruction from this 
 history, which, in most respects, it is calculated to bestow. 
 
 With regard to the translation itself, I must, as I before ob- 
 served, leave others to judge of the manner in which my humble 
 task has been performed. I remain of the same opinion still as 
 to the duty of a translator. In works of this nature fidelity is his 
 first merit, and ought to be his chief aim; and for this reason, 
 I think we ought very rarely to resort to a paraphrastic version Ἶ. 
 
 The style of this work in general is not such as to render it 
 particularly easy to bring into English, with fluency and freedom ; 
 but this difficulty is, of course, very much increased, when the 
 subjects of which it treats approach the subtil regions of meta- 
 physics. A large portion of this volume, it will be seen, is 
 devoted to a development of the various systems of Gnosticism, 
 and to an explanation of the views of Manes and his followers. 
 Oriental mysticism and theosophy has long been noted as full of 
 obscurity ; and even the acute and learned Bayle has not hesi- 
 tated to express his utter inability to enter into it. After 
 speaking, in his article on Zerdusht, or Zoroaster, of the Persian 
 notions of light and darkness, he adds, “ This chaos of thought 
 is incomprehensible to us western people. None but the eastern 
 nations, accustomed to a mystical and contradictory language, 
 can bear such excessive nonsense without disgust and horror.” 
 This is too sweeping a position, and too strong language; much 
 has been done since his days to introduce us to a more intimate 
 acquaintance with the ideas of the eastern nations, but still this 
 difference in the habits of thought between these two families of 
 the human race, will always tend to make the speculative views 
 of the one difficult to the other. Dr. Neander has done much to 
 arrange and systematize the various theories of Gnosticism ; but 
 their obscurities have not been entirely removed, nor are they in all 
 cases lessened bya passage through the regions of German meta- 
 
 1 Tam fully aware that a different principle has been maintained, and that some 
 translators from German works have professed to give their author’s sense rather than 
 his words; and have thought themselves justified in altering, and even omitting whole 
 passages. It must be obvious that this proceeding is liable to many dangers, and it can 
 never represent the mind and opinions of the author ; which is always desirable. 
 
x, THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 physics. There is one difficulty, however, which no one can 
 properly appreciate, except those who have known it by experi- 
 ence, in every attempt to present the metaphysical and philoso- 
 phical speculations of German writers to English readers; and 
 that difficulty arises from the copiousness of the German meta- 
 physical vocabulary, and the poverty of our own. 
 
 Without passing any judgment on the various systems of phi- 
 losophy which have made their appearance in Germany within 
 the last fifty years, we may say that the Germans have paid more 
 attention to metaphysics latterly than our countrymen have 
 done; and, whether these systems be true or false, they have 
 certainly carried to a very high point of refinement their analysis 
 of the subtle processes of thought within us. In reducing their 
 analysis to systems, they have made minute distinctions between 
 these processes, which they have been enabled to embody in 
 their language, and thus to introduce a definiteness into their 
 copious vocabulary, of which our own language is hardly capable. 
 And besides this, the lax manner in which all words in English, 
 referring to mental processes’ are used, renders it impossible to 
 represent such distinctions intelligibly, without expressly defining 
 beforehand in what sense we mean to use the words. Conception’, 
 
 1 The same is trne in some degree in respect to our mental faculties also. 
 
 2 Sir G. Haughton, in his Prodromus (more particularly mentioned in the next note) 
 has, however, endeavoured to recal us to a more definite use of these words. He 
 seems rather inclined to banish idea altogether and substitute for it image or perception. 
 He says, ‘‘ an idea must either be the equivalent of a perception, or a conception ; and 
 these two words are merely abstractions, that could have no sense, if we did not refer 
 them respectively to the only assertion any of us can truly make; namely, I PERCEIVE 
 Things, and I conceive States,’ p. 205. It must be remembered that Sir G. Haughton’s 
 fundamental principle is this. Every word necessarily means nothing more than 
 THING or STATE, ‘‘ and even the last of these two terms is a mere sound—a symbol 
 boldly invented by the intellect, for the purpose of reasoning,” p. 5. He says also, 
 p. 45, “ that all reasoning is effected solely by means of words, either single or linked 
 together in those chains which we call Conceptions ; but no single word, STATE even 
 not excepted, can be a conception in any other sense than as a sound preserved by the 
 memory.’ To theclass of Perceptions according to him belong all objects we PERCELVE 
 when we see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. To Conceptions belong all the Combinations, 
 Relations, and other States, of the objects or things we perceive, and of which we are 
 enabled to ¢hink or coNCEIVE by the mysterious operations of the intellect, aided by 
 the almost equally mysterious mechanism of language which it had previously prepared 
 
THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. xi 
 
 thought, idea, notion, perception, apprehension, and other words are 
 used synonymously, which might be devoted to different processes, 
 and the very distinction of the Reason and the Understanding, on 
 which so much stress is laid in Germany, is seldom brought 
 forward in English works’. These circumstances make it difficult 
 
 by and for the process, to which we give the name of thought. To this class must 
 likewise be referred those essences which we derive by strict inference when we 
 observe the design, harmony, and operations of nature, such as God, Soul, and 
 Power.” 
 
 This is definite enough, and this author will perform a service to our language and 
 to our habits of thinking, if he can persuade all writers to be more precise in the 
 use of such terms, whether they adopt his definitions or not. 
 
 But let not my meaning be misunderstood. I do not here pretend to give any 
 judgment either about the German systems or Sir G. Haughton’s book. I only point 
 out the existence of certain refinements of speculation among our German neighbours, 
 which our language scarcely enables to present in the symbols which it affords us. In 
 professedly metaphysical works, the difficulty may, perhaps, be obviated by definitions, 
 but where these words only occur incidentally, as in this history, the difficulty intro- 
 duced by this consideration is not slight. The cause perhaps lies deeper, and this has 
 been most ably touched upon by one, whose memory I revere, whose guidance I daily 
 miss, and whose correcting hand would have rendered these pages far more worthy of 
 consideration ; and it would be injustice not to quote his words :— 
 
 “The English are not a thinking and speculative, but a practical people, and they 
 are accustomed to look at things only in a practical point of view. This habit is 
 carried into their literature, and he who wishes to gain their attention must not deal 
 in abstractions, or he will write in vain. Things must be presented in a definite 
 tangible form, or the English capacity cannot receive them. It may be a very good or 
 a very bad state of the intellect; on that point I say nothing; but I maintain that this 
 is the state of English intellect, and this will sufficiently account for the neglect ex- 
 perienced by many valuable works of latter days,’”’—The State of Protestantism in 
 Germany, by the late Hugh James Rose, p. 208. 
 
 1 To this sweeping remark there are of course some exceptions, and among these it 
 would be wrong to omit mentioning the late Mr. Coleridge’s admirable little volume, 
 entitled ‘ Aids to Reflection.’ I may also add that Sir G. Haughton in his Prodromus 
 has distinguished between Reason and Understanding, but not exactly in the same man- 
 ner as the German metaphysicians. Of the understanding he says, ‘‘ The first great 
 delusion we are under, is in supposing that the word Understanding represents any 
 thing whatsoever. We, that is, our thinking selves, may understand what we hear or 
 see; but when we employ the Abstract word Understanding for some part of ourselves, 
 we do so clearly by a fallacy. When we understand anything, we necessarily feel, are 
 conscious, and intelligent ; and were I to analyse the term Understanding, according to 
 the usual mode in these cases, I would consequently say, that it is compounded of 
 
 Feeling, Consciousness, and Intelligence. For, if I analyse one Abstraction, J shall 
 
xii THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 adequately to represent in any English translation the exact 
 views of the author in those passages, where any words occur, 
 
 most likely do it by the help of others; but in reality there is neither Understanding, 
 Feeling, Consciousness, nor Intelligence ; and instead of these, we ‘must remember that 
 it is the union of soul with matter, which, being organized into human frames, under- 
 stands, feels, is conscious and intelligent.’ Of the Reason, on the contrary, he says, 
 ‘¢ Of all the divisions into which we separate ‘the Mind,’ Reason is the only one which 
 is not a misconception arising from the delusive nature of language. It is not a 
 faculty, but a real agent, aiding and assisting the intellect of man in all its varied 
 operations.” The view which Sir G. Haughton developes is briefly explained thus: 
 Intellect” (that which thinks). ‘‘ Sensorium’’ (that portion of the brain which is 
 conscious), “ and Nerves” (the seat of sensation), ‘‘ constitute the mysterious agent 
 called Self;’? and he elsewhere says of the Intellect, ‘It is this unknown organ so 
 highly endowed, and constituting the thinking, reflecting agent, resulting from the 
 combination of soul with matter duly organized, that I call in these pages by the name 
 of INTELLECT. . The author immediately after the above assertion about Reason as an 
 Agent, not a faculty, begs his readers to suspend their judgment on the point till he has 
 developed his views in some future work. ᾿ 
 
 It would be altogether foreign to the subject of these volumes to enter at any length 
 into metaphysical disquisitions, but in noticing the difficulty which arises to the English 
 translator of a German work, from the difference in the mental condition of the two 
 nations, it is not perhaps altogether out of place to allude to an English work on the 
 subject of Metaphysics, written with considerable clearness and ability, which pro- 
 poses to throw a new light on all the phenomena of our minds, and to show that all 
 metaphysical systems have hitherto been founded on delusions, arising from our 
 mistaking the nature and force of the words we use. That the work deserves serious, 
 and impartial consideration, as a remarkable exposition of Nominalism given in a 
 systematic form, and applied in a novel manner, few persons would be inclined to 
 deny ; but whether the author establishes his views, I do not undertake to decide. I 
 think however in some instances, our author’s Nominalism carries him too far. When 
 he speaks of our attachment to the Chuich, the State, the Constitution, a principle, &c. 
 as showing the ‘hold which Abstractions have upon our nature,’ and ‘how much we 
 are swayed by mere words ;’ when he observes,—that ‘ not one of these designate any 
 thing that has a real existence, except as a sound: still we are ready to sacrifice our 
 lives for them. .... .. Without language, not one of these conceptions could have 
 had an existence; nor could one drop of the torrents of blood that have flowed from 
 such causes have been shed’—is not the author carried away by his own theory? 
 We can hardly reason on what we should be “ without language ;” but it can scarcely 
 be said that we are ready to sacrifice our lives in these cases for mere abstractions. 
 Had the author here used his usual clearness and acuteness, would he not have seen 
 that if these words are mere abstractions, they are only convenient symbols (abridging 
 as symbols do the processes of reasoning), which stand for matters which exert a very 
 practical influence on men’s happiness? When we say a man is ready to sacrifice his 
 life for the Constitution, what do we mean but that he is ready to resist changes in all 
 
THE 'TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. xiii 
 
 which pre-suppose a recognition of the distinctions common 
 among his countrymen. I have endeavoured to grapple with 
 this difficulty as well as I was able; but in order that I might 
 apprize the reader that there was something, which could not be 
 rendered by a word exactly synonymous with the original, I have 
 occasionally inserted the German word, and sometimes referred 
 to the preface for some observations on the subject. This is 
 particularly the case with such words as Anschauung, Begriff, 
 Bewusstseyn, &c.; and I have thought that it might be advan- 
 tageous to the English reader, if, at the end of this Preface, I 
 threw into the form of a brief vocabulary a few remarks on such 
 words, and a translation of a few passages from German philoso- 
 phical works, in which they are expressly defined. To this I 
 will, therefore, refer those readers who require further satisfac- 
 tion on this point. 
 
 It will be seen that in some passages, where I have thought 
 a literal translation might appear obscure or ambiguous, I 
 have given a paraphrase in a note, or vice versa, in order that 
 I may not appear to evade a difficulty in this manner. There 
 is, however, one passage in which, if there is no incorrectness 
 
 the relations of life, which he considers likely to bring misery on himself and all 
 around him, Let us take another instance to make this clearer. The words Slavery 
 and Freedom express mere abstractions, exactly as much as the words cited by Sir G. 
 Haughton ; but would the resistance to the one, and the struggle for the other, appear 
 to him to be a struggle about a mere abstraction? In these cases men contend about 
 changes of condition involving practical consequences to themselves, and it is in vain, 
 in order to persuade them to lay aside their differences, to tell them that the watch- 
 words of their cause are mere abstractions. And the same reasoning is applicable, 
 mutatis mutandis, to the instances selected by Sir G. Haughton. With regard to 
 ‘the Church,’ to those who believe that our Saviour bound men together under certain 
 laws, to contend for the welfare and extension of the society, comprising all who 
 embrace those laws, must be a duty. The term may be an abstract term, but it 
 comprehends truths and realities, for which men are bound to contend, though they 
 cannot be justified in using Persecution for the sake of them. Men talk about 
 these abstractions, but they contend about realities, included among the complicated 
 notions, of the aggregate of which these abstractions are the conventional symbol. I 
 trust in making these observations I have not misrepresented, nor mistaken this author, 
 for although he appears to despair of a fair hearing in England, and looks for it to the Ψ 
 truth-inguiring spirit of Germany, I can say that I opened his essay with perfect 
 impartiality, and shall look with much interest to any further development of his views. . 
 
χὶν THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE, 
 
 in the text, I have left it without any attempt to explain its 
 meaning, which is certainly obscure. It occurs in p. 321, line 
 6—13, and it may perhaps be right to state the sense I deduce 
 from it. It appears to express a notion of Origen, in which he 
 intimates that the word of God, through which the Logos com- 
 municates himself to the soul of man, is called the flesh and blood 
 of Christ, and is also the heavenly bread, (symbolized under the 
 sacramental bread,) of which we must eat in order to live for 
 ever; and that the breaking of the bread, and pouring out of the 
 wine, are symbols of the multiplication of the words, by which it 
 is made effectual to the heart of each individual believer. This 
 I believe to be the general purport of the sentence, although 
 there is an awkwardness about the construction of it in the 
 original which I cannot entirely clear away, and I have accord- 
 ingly left only an exact and literal translation of it. Had I been 
 able to consult the passages of Origen, on which the statement 
 is founded, I might have been able to remove all difficulty ; but 
 the references did not enable me to do this. The only edition 
 of Origen which I possess is that of Huet; and in this place 
 Neander does not refer to that edition, nor does he give means 
 by which it may be traced in that edition. 
 
 With regard to the quotations generally from Greek and Latin 
 Fathers, I have followed the same course as in the first volume. 
 I have verified them whenever I was able, and have generally 
 enabled my readers to do so with much greater ease than myself, 
 by referring to other editions. ‘This is particularly the case with 
 the very numerous quotations from Clemens Alexandrinus. The 
 edition to which Dr. Neander refers is almost invariably the edition 
 of Paris, 1629 ; and unfortunately it happens to be the most in- 
 convenient one possible for those who possess any other. ‘There 
 are no divisions in it, but that of pages, and these pages are not 
 marked in other editions. ‘The pages of Sylburg’s and Potter’s 
 editions are marked in that of Klotz (Leipsic, 1831); and I have 
 in almost every instance given the reference to each of these. 
 The books of Clemens Alexandrinus are of very considerable 
 length, and a reference to the page of the Paris edition is of no 
 value except to those who possess that particular edition. I have 
 
THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. XV 
 
 not always given the reference to Klotz; but the pages of Potter 
 and Sylburg being found in the margin of that edition, it is by no 
 means necessary. 
 
 I now proceed to givea list of such words as may be productive 
 of some obscurity or difficulty, with an explanation of them from 
 German works of authority, especially the Philosophical Lexicon 
 of Krug’. I insert also a few words, of which Dr. Neander makes 
 frequent use, and respecting which some brief remarks may be 
 acceptable. 
 
 * Anschauung (intuitio), in its most restricted sense, is synony- 
 mous with an image-presented-to-us-through-the-sight *, from the 
 verb schauen, to see. But because the representations of-the-sight 
 [Gesichtsvorstellungen] have the greatest clearness and objec- 
 tivity of all our sensuous perceptions, under the term Anschauung, 
 taken in a more extended sense, we understand generally an 
 objective representation to any of our senses, and contrast with it 
 an Empfindung, or sensation [sensatio], as a subjective, sensuous 
 representation. ‘This contrast is, however, not to be understood 
 exclusively, but only as the predominant distinction. In the case 
 of an Anschauung, the Objective (the condition of the object repre- 
 sented) comes most strongly into consciousness ; in an Empfindung, 
 
 1 Allgemeines Handworterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften, nebst ihrer 
 Literatur und Geschichte. Nach dem heutigen Standpuncte der Wissenschaft bear- 
 beitet und herausgegeben von D. Wilhelm Traugott Krug, Professor der Philosophie 
 an der Universitat zu Leipzig, &c. Zweite verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. 
 Vier Bande. Leipzig, 1832. Fiinfter Band, als Supplement zur zweiten Auflage. 
 Leipzig, 1838. 
 
 2 The original word is Gesichts-vorstellung, representation of-the-sight. Object of 
 sight would not be a just translation, as this would leave out the notion of the subject 
 in whom the representation is formed. Of Vorstellung, Krug says (sub voce), Vor- 
 stellung (representatio), is properly an outward operation through which we set anything 
 before ourselves, or before others; on which account this word is also used when any 
 one at court, or in society, allows himself to be presented to others, to personal ac- 
 quaintance. But since with that outward act [Thédtigkeit, act, agency] there is 
 always conjoined an inward one also, by which something is made present to our 
 consciousness ; this making-present to us is also called a vorstellen [or setting before 
 us], and the inward effect is called a Vorstellung [or representation]. And every 
 [ Vorstellung] representation is a more or less clear and striking image of something, 
 
 which is the circumstance or the object of the representation, as the ego is the subject of it. 
 
Χνὶ THE 'TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 or sensation, the Subjective (the condition of the subject in which 
 the representation takes place). In its widest meaning <An- 
 schauung is equivalent to a sensuous representation’. Hence, 
 sensuous knowledge’ is called anschauliche, or intuitive. 
 
 “‘ Pure or ἃ priori intuitions [Anschauungen] are those which 
 are referred to space and time generally, and to that which can 
 be constructed therein independently of experience (purely 
 mathematical magnitudes) ; empirical, or ἃ posteriori intuitions, 
 are those which are referred to objects of experience, perceivable 
 in space and time. An intellectual Anschauung is one which pro- 
 ceeds from the Understanding ; a rational one, that which proceeds 
 from the Reason. 
 
 ** As soon as we distinguish the Reason and the Understanding 
 from Sense, it becomes inconsistent to speak of perceiving intui- 
 tively [anschauen] as an act of the senses, and at the same time 
 as an act of the Reason or of the Understanding. But still it 
 may be said that the imagination performs this act [anschauet], 
 because it is itself nothing but an inward sense. But the Sense 
 itself is called also the Anschauungsvermogen, or faculty-of-in- 
 tuition (facultas intuendi). The Anschauwungsweise* [or mode of 
 intuition ]—the forma intuitionis, on which account the word An- 
 schauungsform is sometimes used—is nothing but the law, accord- 
 ing to which our Sense performs the act of intuition. . . . . 
 
 ** Anschauungs- or Intuitions-Philosophie is opposed by many 
 to Verstandes- or Reflexions-Philosophie, and they prefer the 
 former to the latter. But they ought properly to be taken to- 
 gether, because the ideas derived from intuition, [Anschauungen] 
 and from reflection [or Begriffe, see the next word] are the 
 elements of all human knowledge.”—Krug’s Lexicon, vol. i. p. 
 160-1. 
 
 To this extract from Krug, I may append the following from 
 Kiesewetter’s Logik zum Gebrauch fiir Schulen, Vienna, 1824 :— 
 
 ' Perhaps impression would give the best translation of this word. 
  Sinnliche Erkenntniss, a cognition obtained through the senses. See the word 
 Erkenntniss, further on in this preface. 
 
 * This expression is used, rather more laxly by Neander, p. 27. See note. 
 
THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. XVil 
 
 «ς All thoughts are representations, but all representations are not 
 thoughts. All representations must present something; this 
 something which they present (which does not, however, on that 
 account require to have a real existence) is called their object [or 
 Gegenstand]. Now that representation which refers itself to a 
 single object, and that too, immediately, (without any inter- 
 mediate representation) is called an Anschauung [or Intuition]. 
 All representations, which are not [Anschauungen or] Intuitions, 
 and also all representations which are referred to more than one 
 object, as also all mediate representations, are thoughts. ‘The 
 representation [or image in the mind,] which I have of the 
 picture of my friend, which is hanging before me, and which 
 I look upon; the representation I have of the tones of a violin, 
 which I am actually listening to; the representation which I have 
 of the flower I am smelling, the tea I am tasting, or of the pain 
 of burning, which I feel at the moment; the representation of 
 the late king, which my imagination recals into consciousness ; 
 or the image of a mountain stream presented to my fancy; the 
 representation of the present condition in which my mind actually 
 is—all these are intuitions [Anschauungen], because they refer 
 to one object, and we see at once that this reference is imme- 
 diate, and that they do not require any intermediate representation. 
 The representations of Man, Flower, &c. are not intuitions, for 
 they do not refer to one object, but comprehend many; and still 
 further, they do not refer immediately to an object, but do so by 
 means of intuitions (the representation, Man, for instance, is re- 
 ferred first to the intuition of individual men, as Caius, Titus, &c.) 
 and hence they are thoughts (Gedanken). Dr. Kiesewetter then 
 proceeds to show that the statement, ‘Caius is sick,’ and the syllo- 
 gism, ‘ All men are mortal, Caius is a man, therefore Caius is 
 mortal,’ are thoughts [Gedanken], not intuitions [ Anschauungen], 
 as in the first case we do not rest in the simple image of Caius, 
 but unite the proposition with it that he is sick, &c.” 
 
 To this extract I might add the article from the Conversations- 
 Lexicon, in which the writer draws a distinction between outward 
 and inward intuitions, the former -being the intuitions of all 
 
 VOL, Il. a 
 
XVlil HE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 objects in space, the latter of all objects only in time, which we 
 perceive only as changes in ourselves, such as the images of our 
 imagination [as in the examples of Kiesewetter, the mountain- 
 stream, or the late king] our thoughts, &c. He then proceeds to 
 say, that all outward things, having a representation, and being 
 necessarily in some time, are also inward, and thus by our imagi- 
 nation we can represent the objects of space in our minds; ‘ but 
 on the contrary, that inward representations, being only repre- 
 sentable in time, not in space, cannot at the same time be outward 
 things, and hence that the latter class of representations have no 
 form.’ After speaking of the fine arts, he then proceeds further 
 to say, that “the effect of any work of art depends chiefly on its 
 Anschaulichkeit, and is more lively and will please more, the 
 more its representations resemble our intuitive-representa- 
 tions.” 
 
 I might accumulate more extracts on this subject, but the above 
 will be sufficient for our present purpose, which is, not to write 
 an Introduction to the elements of German Philosophy, but to 
 bring forward sufficient to illustrate the use of some of the terms 
 which occur in this volume (see pp. 21, 26, 27, 29, 67, 68, 214 
 215). It will be seen from these extracts that in its strictest 
 philosophical sense, Anschauung means an image of one outward 
 object in the mind, conveyed thither by the sight, but that it is 
 used generally for any ideas of sense. I may perhaps observe, 
 that in page 214, 1 should have done better to translate it by 
 intuition than by perception, and in the note, page 215, it would 
 have been better to translate it by intuition than by ‘immediate 
 knowledge ! although in both these cases the context and the note 
 will prevent any misapprehension. In page 68 also, Intuition 
 would perhaps be the best translation. In page 26, I believe that 
 the note and the translation when compared with the above ex~ 
 tracts from other writers, will convey the meaning of my author 
 with tolerable justice. He there contrasts the Anschauungen of the 
 Eastern people with the abstractions of the Western,—the lively 
 pictures which the former raised in their imaginations with the 
 abstractions of the latter. Thus Sophia became with the Eastern 
 
_— 
 
 THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. Xix 
 
 people, not an abstract idea of Wisdom’, which they would not 
 attempt to reason upon, but a person, whom they could picture 
 to their minds, and to which they could attribute all the qualities 
 and actions of a person, and thus represent to themselves all that 
 related to her, with the most graphic liveliness. Their whole 
 system of Atons, Pleroma, &c. are nothing but a set of pictures, 
 called up and figured in their prolific imaginations; and it is in this 
 respect in which they are said to be so devoted to Anschauungen 
 in preference to Begriffe. Intuition and pictorial representation to 
 the mind, are the two chief points to which we must turn our 
 attention in all passages where the word Anschauung occurs, and 
 these two leading points will, I think, explain all such passages in 
 this volume. 
 
 I now pass on to the next word, which may be much more 
 briefly treated, in consequence of the length to which the pre- 
 ceding discussion has been carried. 
 
 “ Begriff. Begriff isa representation, through which something 
 is thought upon; but an object is thought-upon, when we repre- 
 sent it by means of certain signs*. From the collecting together 
 of these signs (a concipiendis notis), such a representation is 
 called a [Begriff, or] Conception (Conceptus, notio). The Be- 
 griff or Conception is therefore a mediate and general [or common, 
 gemeinsame] representation, and is therefore essentially distin- 
 guished from an Anschauung, or an Empfindung, through which 
 something individual is always represented; as when any one 
 beholds a house, or feels a pain. But he, who only thinks upon 
 that, which we call a house or a pain, he has a [Begriff ] concep- 
 tion of it, which he may refer to any house or pain whatsoever. 
 
 11 do not by the use of this word mean to assert we can have really any abstract 
 idea of wisdom, or that wisdom is more than an abstract term, which we must unite with 
 a Being, before we can conceive it: in which case it becomes a concrete, not an abstract 
 idea. I donot enter into this question at all, which most metaphysical writers discuss 
 at great length. 
 
 2 Under Begreifen, Krug says, ‘ This word means to feel with the fingers, as we & 
 order to acquaint ourselves accurately with anything. But begreifen also my of 
 form Begriffe, because these exist by means of the taking together of a » 
 things.’ 
 
 a2 
 
ΧΧ THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 A Conception, therefore [or Begriff] is the unity of a multitude 
 [eines Mannigfaltigen'], which multitude may be greater or less, 
 but is always more comprehensive than the multitude of the An- 
 schauung. He who looks upon the starry heaven, beholds many 
 stars, but the conception [Begriff] of a star goes far wider ; it 
 comprehends those under the horizon, and even those which are 
 invisible by reason of their distance. So also he who thinks upon 
 a house or a mountain by means of conceptions, has a more com- 
 prehensive representation of it, than he, who merely looks upon 
 many houses and mountains, although the intuitive representation 
 [or Anschauung’] is fuller of contents or subject-matter, and there- 
 fore more lively than the conception [Begriff] which only con- 
 tains what is common to these things. If we wish to become 
 thoroughly acquainted with any [Begriff, or] Conception, we 
 must analyse it, that is, divide it into its signs or marks, as far as 
 this is possible. We thus learn its contents [its subject-matter, 
 its complexus], and we can then determine how far it goes, that 
 is, to how many things it applies,” &e.—Krug, vol. i. p. 306. 
 
 Kiesewetter (I. c. p. 14—17) says, “" There are three kinds of 
 thoughts, Conceptions, Judgments, and Conclusions,” (Begriffe, 
 Urtheile, und Schlusse,) and then characterises the first of them 
 thus. ‘A Conception (Begriff ] is, like an Anschauung, a single 
 representation, but not like the latter, a representation of a single 
 object, as it represents many objects; it is also mediate, whereas 
 on the contrary, an Anschauung is immediate. The conception 
 Man, is a single representation, but refers to many objects; I do 
 not obtain the Conception on Man immediately, as I do the An- 
 schauung of Caius, but mediately.” 
 
 He afterwards says :— 
 
 ** Our first conceptions arise out of intuitions, but it is quite 
 clear that we do not merely separate our conceptions only from 
 intuitions, as explained above’; but can also create new concep- 
 tions from our existing conceptions. Thus abstracting from 
 
 1 This might be translated, ‘the unity of the Multifarious,’ which is always more 
 
 comprehensive than the Multifariousness of the Anschauung. 
 
 2 He had explained the process of abstraction in another section. 
 
THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. Xxi 
 
 Lion, Tiger, Wolf, &c. all in which they differ, and combining 
 what remains, we have a new conception, ‘a quadruped of 
 prey.” ” 
 
 This will suffice on the subject of Begriff. 
 
 Bewusstsein, Consciousness. Itis not necessary to enter into the 
 philosophical questions connected with this word, as Dr. Neander 
 seems generally to apply it in its common and usual sense, 
 although sometimes, by a more lax usage of language; he may 
 unite with the common meaning of consciousness, a moral sense, 
 which renders it more nearly equivalent to our word conscience. 
 
 The note subjoined to the word Gottesbewusstsein, will suffice 
 for its explanation, p. 236. 
 
 Erkenntniss, Cognition. Erkenntnisse, Cognitions. 
 
 «ς Erkennen (Cognoscere) means not only to represent or to think 
 of anything, but to refer one’s representations (Vorstellungen *) to 
 real objects, and to distinguish these objects from each other, as 
 things of a definite character. This Erkennen, or cognizing, is 
 more than merely thinking; it is a real laying-hold (erfassen, or 
 ergreifen) of things—on which account the old philosophers 
 designated it also by the name καταλαμβάνειν; or comprehendere 
 —but then this takes place by means of representations (Vorstel- 
 lungen). These representations are partly sensuous [derived 
 from the senses], or, are intuitions [Anschauungen, see the word], 
 and sensations [Empfindungen], which refer to the Individual 
 (this or that particular object), and, partly intellectual [derived 
 from the Understanding], or Conceptions [ Begriffe] which refer 
 to the General (or that which is common to many things). But 
 if anything real is to be known (erhennt, cognized), it must be given 
 (datum), or at least capable-of-being-given (dabile), ὁ. e. it must 
 be capable of being seen, or felt; or to speak more generally, of 
 being perceived (wahrnehmen). Whatever is not in any manner 
 perceivable (neither inwardly nor outwardly) that is also not 
 cognizable (erkennbar, knowable) ; it cannot be pointed out and 
 
 1 It must be remembered, as an able writer has well stated it, (Ed. Rev. Oct. 1832) that 
 
 Vorstellung is the genus of which Idee, Anschauung, and Begriff, are the species. 
 Of these, Idee is used in strict philosopby only for the ideas of the Reason. 
 
XXli THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 defined objectively in its reality, although subjectively in the 
 consciousness of the Ego’ there may be grounds for maintaining 
 its existence. In this case it is an object of Belief, not of 
 knowledge, the latter being only said of what we maintain from 
 objective or real sources of cognition.’ 
 
 ‘ Erkenntniss (Cognitio). Cognition, as the result of cognizing 
 (Erkennen, see the foregoing article), is said both individually 
 and generally. In the case of individual things, cognition is the 
 reference of a representation to a given object, by which it is 
 distinguished as a definite thing, from other things which more or 
 less resemble it. ‘Thus we have a cognition [or knowledge] of 
 the Moon, when it is represented as a heavenly body revolving 
 round the Earth, and undergoing certain changes. Thus we 
 perceive it competently, and consider it a real thing, although to 
 us it is only an appearance [Erscheinung, a Phenomenon]; for 
 what it is, independently of the manner in which it is repre- 
 sented to us, 7. 6. what it is in its own nature’ we do not know. 
 The same is true of other things which we perceive, as we do 
 the moon, constantly in a certain manner, and necessarily repre- 
 sent according to this perception of it. We are therefore justified 
 in laying down as a general principle-of-cognition the following 
 proposition. All which is necessarily represented in the case of 
 a real thing, as far as it appears, according to our original mode 
 of perception, belongs to it as an object-of-cognition, and may 
 therefore be predicated of it in judgments which are universally 
 valid. The sum [Inbegriff] of these judgments is Human-hnow- 
 ledge generally. We also consider ourselves as the containers, or 
 bearers of cognition (the subjecta cognitionis, or subjects in which 
 these cognitions reside), and the things which we thus know are 
 its objects (objecta cognitionis).’— Krug, vol. i. p. 816-17. 
 
 In the Conversations-Lexicon the writer, after giving an ex- 
 planation nearly equivalent to the above, and distinguishing 
 between Sense, Understanding, and Reason, goes on to say, 
 
 1 The word here stands for the thinking subject. 
 
 2 Asa thing-in-itself, is the literal translation, ‘ Ding an sich.’ 
 
THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. Xxlii 
 
 ** Reason is elevated above Sense and Understanding, and its 
 peculiar representations are called Ideas, as e. g. the represen- 
 tations of Godhead, Freedom, Immortality, Duty, Virtue, &c. 
 Whether and how far any thing can be known [erkannt] through 
 these Ideas, is taught by the Theory of the Faculty-of-Cognition, 
 which investigates the laws and limits of this faculty. But 
 pre-supposing that something can be known by our Reason, it 
 must be called the highest faculty of Cognition, as there is 
 nothing in human nature higher than the Reason. ‘The Under- 
 standing and the Reason are often classed together under the 
 name of the higher faculty of Cognition, because these two 
 faculties in common language are not distinguished so accurately 
 as scientific precision requires. 
 
 “The distinction between empirical and rational cognition 
 belongs here. The former (from ἐμπειρία, experience) is a know- 
 ledge whose validity rests on experience, and herein upon the 
 lower or sensuous faculty-of-cognition. The latter is a know- 
 ledge, the validity of which reposes on grounds which can be 
 known only through the higher, the intellectual’, or the ra- 
 tional faculty-of-cognition. The whole knowledge of man, how- 
 ever, is an indivisible whole, connected together within him, and 
 as such, a common production of Sense, Understanding, and 
 Reason, jointly.” 
 
 I need not add more on the subject of the word Erkenntniss, 
 which the reader will find used in p. 220, 234; but the above 
 observations may serve to rectify any mistake into which the 
 translation might otherwise lead. ‘The word is, perhaps, in neither 
 case used by our author in its strictest philosophical sense ; but 
 if it be, ‘definite conception,’ would not be accurate, but simply 
 ‘cognition.’ Again, in p. 234, I have translated ‘speculative 
 Erkenntnisse’ by ‘speculative ideas,’ which in popular language 
 may adequately represent the original, although it is not philoso- 
 phically just. ‘ Speculative cognitions’ would be the accurate 
 
 1 Even in this sentence the Understanding and the Reason seem too little dis- 
 tinguished. 
 
 a4 -- 
 
XXiv THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 translation, which would be nearly equivalent to what we should 
 call ‘a philosophical knowledge,’ or theoretical, as opposed to 
 moral and practical. (See Krug’s Lexicon, under the word ‘ spe- 
 culative.’) 
 
 I may here conveniently point out an inaccuracy in p. 80 of 
 this translation, which, although it does not lead to any great mis- 
 apprehension of the author’s meaning, deserves correction. 
 
 The sentence to which I allude is the following: ‘ All the 
 powers and modes of operation of the soul, which are directed to 
 that which is temporal and perishable—such as its powers of 
 reflection and the understanding, in which, according to Valenti- 
 _ nus, is contained the ψυχη;, will then utterly cease’.” 
 
 The error here is very easily corrected. I would substitute for 
 the latter part of it the following translation : ‘such as its faculty 
 of reflection, the understanding, the sum of which powers, accord- 
 ing to Valentinus, is the Ψψυχη, will then utterly cease.” Der 
 Verstand is in apposition with das Reflexions-vermégen—with 
 which it is synonymous, and therefore the connecting particle 
 ‘and’ is erroneous. ‘The former translation ‘in which is con- 
 tained the ψυχη; is neither so accurate nor so free from ambiguity 
 as the latter. But the error which I am anxious to correct is the 
 making two faculties out of two words used synonymously. 
 
 These are the chief words which require illustration, or give 
 me reason to fear that my version may in some degree fall short 
 of the full meaning of the original; but I think, after this full 
 explanation, no one can find any difficulty in placing himself in 
 the condition of a reader of the original work in these passages. 
 
 There are, however, one or two other words or phrases, which 
 are used in this work, in a manner which almost baffles exact 
 translation. For instance, the words Menschheit and die mensch- 
 liche Natur, are used with a two-fold reference. When we speak 
 of the renovation, improvement, &c. of human nature, we may 
 mean two things, either a general renovation and improvement 
 
 1 The original is: Wie das Reflexions-vermogen, der Verstand, deren Inbegriff dem 
 Valentinus die ψυχὴ ist, δο. 
 
THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. XXV 
 
 over the whole mass of human beings, or improvement in every 
 part of man’s nature, his will, his affections, &c. Now it is not 
 always easy to determine to which of these notions it is to be 
 referred, or whether to a sort of notion compounded of these two. 
 But this cannot offer any obscurity which a little thought and 
 consideration will not readily remove, and it has hardly, therefore, 
 been deemed worth while to add any explanatory periphrasis, 
 which would only encumber the text, already sufficiently com- 
 plicated in its structure. 
 
 Again, the word Leden ‘ Life,’ admits of an use, which is inade- 
 quately represented by our word ¢ Life,’ although the word ¢ vital’ 
 is used in a kindred sense. It is used in a religious sense for 
 all in religion which animates and excites us to an endeavour 
 after improvement in our spiritual condition—all which raises us 
 from the death of sin to the life of Righteousness—all which 
 raises us up froma dead and lifeless unconcern about our souls 
 to a lively interest in them—all that excites, raises, and purifies 
 our religious affections. Now although ‘ lively’ and ‘vital,’ are 
 applied in a sense somewhat analogous to this, our English word 
 ‘Life,’ hardly represents this range of ideas, except in the 
 combination of particular phrases. ‘Thus it would be legitimate 
 to use it in a phrase like the following, “There is no life in 
 that man’s religion ;” and such a phrase would be intelligible, 
 but the word hardly bears so wide an application as the 
 German ‘ Leben,’ in the first sentence in section v. page 169. 
 I have, however, ventured to use it there, as the context would 
 explain it. ‘The word there translated ‘ understanding’ is Begriff, 
 which is more properly ‘ conception ;’ but the word “ understand- 
 ing,’ or ‘knowledge,’ in the popular acceptation of the terms, 
 perhaps, conveys the meaning of the author better than a transla- 
 tion more philosophically accurate. At all events with the context, 
 and these few observations, there can be no difficulty to any one 
 in fixing the exact import of the phrase. 
 
 Eudemonism (see p. 216). Perhaps the following explanation 
 from Krug (vol. i, p. 848) may be of service. After showing the 
 
ΧΧΥῚ THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 meaning of Eudiimonie to be happiness, (εὖ and δαιμων; having a 
 condition like that of a good genius, or happiness) Krug pro- 
 ceeds :—‘* Eudemonist therefore means one who strives only after 
 happiness, and that, too, his own happiness; and Eudemonism 
 means that line of opinion and conduct which is thoroughly 
 embued with such an endeavour, as well as a system adapted 
 to it.” 
 
 I may, perhaps, be allowed to mention that I have employed 
 the article and the adjective, to express abstract terms, more fre- 
 quently than is common in English composition. In German it 
 is a phraseology of most frequent occurrence ; and I have some- 
 times found it almost impossible to express the meaning of the 
 original without it. I have, in order to call attention to the 
 circumstance, usually prefixed a capital letter to the adjective. 
 
 In translating the word Kirchen-lehrer, Thave generally avoided 
 the more convenient and common phrase of “ the Fathers,’ except 
 when reference is made to them as authors. The phrase, Church- 
 teachers, seems more appropriate in the translation of a work of 
 this kind, where the author speaks of what was actually taught in 
 the Church, more especially as the phrase of ‘ the Fathers’ is used 
 in German, as well as in English. 
 
 Where I have given explanatory additions, &c., I have en- 
 closed them usually in brackets of this form [ 1; to distinguish 
 them from the parentheses of the author, which are within the 
 common parenthetical signs. regret to observe, that in a few 
 cases this precaution has been overlooked, but, I trust, not so as 
 to create any confusion. 
 
 With these remarks on the phraseology, &c. of the original and 
 the translation, I now close this preface. I fear some readers may 
 think it too extended, and that I have descended to too minute 
 particulars, and to explanations which can hardly be needed 
 by those into whose hands this volume is likely to fall. But as 
 some of these words and explanations refer to most interesting 
 portions of the original (e. g. the explanation and development 
 of the Gnostic systems), I am desirous to place every one as far 
 
= 
 
 THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. XXVli 
 
 as possible, in the condition of a reader of the original, and to 
 obviate by every means in my power, any difference between the 
 original and the copy. It is a matter of interest to see the light 
 in which a mind, like that of Dr. Neander, views the subjects he 
 here treats; and the more faithful I can make my transcript of 
 the original, the more I shall have done for the satisfaction of 
 those who feel this interest. It is still my maxim that it is the 
 chief business of a translator to ‘say every thing which the author 
 says, and nothing whatever which he does not say.’ (Pref. to 
 vol i. p. xiii.) How far I have succeeded in this I must leave 
 others to judge. I will only add that, both in translating the work, 
 and in the observations I have made on any of its tendencies or 
 views, the single object I have had in view has been to serve the 
 cause of truth and religion; and if those who are entitled to 
 judge on these great questions, shall think that I have not entirely 
 failed in that object, I shall feel that my labour has not been in 
 vain. 
 
 H. J. Rose. 
 Houghton Conquest, 
 
 1841. 
 
if ἤρεοδννα 7 
 ἊΝ 
 +. 
 
 ey γον A 
 
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 TO THE 
 
 SECOND PART}. 
 
 To the readers, who have given to the first half of the first 
 volume of my Church History such a reception, as makes me 
 still more responsible to them, as an author; I here communicate 
 the continuation of my work. On the object at which I have 
 aimed in treating the History of the Church I need not add any- 
 thing further, after what I have stated in the preface to the first 
 part; to him, who finds himself on too opposite a position, in 
 regard to knowledge and to life, to be able or willing to under- 
 stand what is here advanced, I cannot expect to make myself 
 intelligible by further explanation; our disagreement is unavoid- 
 able. Even with regard to those readers, for whom I have written, 
 I need not express more fully my gratitude to them. The word 
 which comes from the heart and the spirit, finds, as it can, without 
 further preface, its way to the heart and spirit; discourse must find 
 its own hearers, and writings their own readers*, nothing further 
 can be done to recommend and attract. 
 
 1 This preface belongs to the second of the three brochures in which this first 
 portion of the History of the Church was written. It contains Sections iii. and iv. 
 beginning p. 215 of vol. i. of the translation, and ending in vol. ii. p. 168. 
 
 2 Das Wort muss sich seine Horer und die Schrift ihre Leser selbst suchen. This 
 seems to be a proverbial phrase, especially as it is printed in what are equivalent to 
 our italics. 
 
XXX THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 I feel only that it is a duty to add a word on one subject; viz. 
 the extent to which this volume has proceeded, which may 
 appear disproportionate to many. It was from the beginning my 
 plan to treat the History of the Church in the three first centuries 
 at great length, because this period appeared to me the most 
 weighty for every Christian and every theologian; because 1 
 believed that the establishment and the propagation. of just and 
 unprejudiced views on the composition of the Christian Church, 
 on Christian worship, on Christian life, and Christian doctrines, 
 would be particularly important and salutary, both in a general 
 point of view, and in particular for our times in opposition to 
 different kinds of errors now in circulation from many different 
 quarters. The fermentation which the appearance of Christianity 
 produced in the moral, religious, and intellectual nature of man- 
 kind, is of particular service in directing attention to the peculiar 
 nature of the Gospel in the greatest number of different points of 
 view’, and therefore this extraordinary object certainly requires 
 and deserves consideration in the greatest number of lights. We 
 recognize here the different directions of the human mind and 
 spirit, which are repeated in following periods, often only under 
 other forms, and often in a less free and original manner. When 
 these foundations of the whole History of the Church, are more 
 fully developed, in the following centuries much may be pre- 
 supposed and handled in a shorter and more compressed manner. 
 The history of the sects of this period,—in which the differences 
 and contradictions proceed from the inmost depth of the human 
 spirit and heart, and, being as yet uncontrolled and forcibly re- 
 pressed by the deadening influence of a court, and State-Church, 
 can develope themselves with more breadth and freedom—is so 
 much the more interesting and instructive than the doctrinal con- 
 troversies of the Oriental Church in the succeeding centuries, 
 which often lose themselves in dry dialectics, and are often 
 debased by the mixture of the miserable elements of the party- 
 squabbles of the Byzantine court. 
 
 1 The literal translation would here be ‘in the most many-sided manner ;’ and ‘ the 
 most many-sided consideration,’ 
 
 7 
 
ee 
 
 THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE. ΧΧΧΙ 
 
 _ These and similar grounds induced me to treat this first 
 volume of the Church History with greater fulness, and we are 
 therefore by no means to reckon the number of volumes likely to 
 follow upon the same scale. ‘The third part, which is about to 
 appear p.v. at Easter next, will contain the conclusion of the 
 first volume, and if possible the representation of the Apostolic 
 Age, of which I spoke in the preface to the first part. I must 
 request the learned reader to suspend his judgment on the 
 arrangement of the whole to the conclusion of the first volume ἡ. 
 
 A. NEANDER. 
 
 1 A paragraph or two are here omitted, containing thanks to Dr. Rheinwaid of 
 Stuttgard for correcting the press. H.J.R. 
 
a ad "0 κι 
 
 sca Ress. ᾧ 3 Nit Ser , 
 r r = Ἢ ἧ , ἊΝ aN 
 δ ἢ . TrPPSTUAT Eee ge, Τῷ Wurst hal Mee nbs 
 Hi Sufi ‘ } Γ ᾿ al +) ahi rau WD Qi ἢ 
 
 ἡ Υ͂ "Ν᾿ τᾷ ἯΙ 
 
 ult - δὰ, ΤΑΣ “-" 
 
 iy ie sel 
 
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 TO THE 
 
 THIRD: PART), 
 
 I HERE publish the conclusion of the first volume of my History 
 of the Church. I must at the same time acknowledge in some 
 degree the justice of the remark made by excellent men, viz. that 
 the representation of the Apostolic period ought properly to have 
 preceded the whole of the work. ‘There were, however, many 
 reasons which were certainly more of a subjective than an objec- 
 tive character, which induced me still to delay the history of this 
 period. At the same time, after I had once followed this plan, I 
 found also, upon close consideration, that it might prove con- 
 venient to attach this representation [of the Apostolic period] as 
 an appendage to the completion of the whole; and therefore I 
 have thought it best to complete this volume, according to the 
 plan on which I had begun, and according to the decision I had 
 previously announced, to reserve the representation of the Apos- 
 tolic period for a separate treatise’. The more I believe myself 
 to have come to this undertaking by an inward calling [durch 
 einen innern Beruf], the more full of importance the idea of it 
 appears, as it forms itself out of the whole of my life and study, 
 the more I acknowledge on that account how much the realiza- 
 
 1 This Part contains Section V., and commences in vol. ii. p. 169, of the English 
 Translation. 
 
 2 This has since been published, and is now announced as in the course of transla- 
 tion by Mr. Hamilton. 
 
 VOL. II. b 
 
XXXIV PREFACE TO THE THIRD PART. 
 
 tion falls below the ideal conception, by so much the more wel- 
 come will it be to me, if other unprejudiced friends of truth, who 
 are men of sound knowledge, will point out to me any defi- 
 ciencies in it as a whole, or in its several parts; and certainly, 
 as far as I can do it without prejudice to the fundamental views 
 maintained throughout the whole work, I shall use such remarks, 
 in order to bring the work in a future edition nearer to its proper 
 object. And, in this feeling, I must first express at once my 
 most hearty thanks to the excellent man, who, with an unpre- 
 judiced love of truth, with an earnestness of mind, and with 
 profound knowledge, and in a friendly spirit, wrote a notice upon 
 the work in the Literatur-Zeitung of Halle, for March, 1827, 
 (p. 60—62). As Ido not agree in my doctrinal opinions with 
 the critic, and as he has himself brought forward this difference 
 in our dogmatical views, I must on that account the more prize 
 and acknowledge with gratitude the calm love of justice, and the 
 kind-hearted moderation of the writer; and I do this the more 
 also, because it is so rare amidst the party passions of our pre- 
 sent theological and ecclesiastical criticism, to find this spirit of 
 genuine toleration, which, in the decision of one’s own opinions, 
 is ready to acknowledge the rights of another, and is mindful of 
 the necessity ἀληθευειν ἐν ayary. And yet I might find fault 
 with the author, for having accused me of an inclination to a 
 pietistic character, if he had used the name pietism in as indis- 
 tinct a manner, as is usual among certain parties at present, and 
 as has been the case always in the application of those names, by 
 which the predominant spirit of the times stamps the character 
 of heresy on all which is opposed to its own views. But as the 
 author expressly states what he understands by it, and as I really 
 acknowledge as my dogmatical persuasion what he designates by 
 this name, viz. the view of Christianity, as healing the corruption 
 implanted in human nature, and as destined to represent the 
 Divine in the form of a servant, with which [view] the supra- 
 naturalistic principle is connected, that it communicates a know- 
 ledge [Erkenntniss] which lies beyond the range of human nature.” 
 —As, I say, I acknowledge this as my belief, I can find no fault 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD PART. XXXV 
 
 with the reviewer, either on the ground of injustice or unfair- 
 ness. Only I might contend with him about the use of the name 
 pietism, according to a just development of its meaning both 
 etymologically and historically ; but this would not be the proper 
 place for it. I will make besides only the following remark, 
 that when we speak here of a knowledge lying beyond the reason 
 of man, I mean thereby such a knowledge as is necessary for the 
 euring of that corruption which lies in human nature, and not the 
 revelation of a speculative dogmatical system; and yet my belief 
 in regard to this, [viz. the revelation of a speculative system, ] may 
 be recognized in the third part, which I now publish, as far as it 
 can be done in such an historical representation as this. I will 
 only add that what the critic represents as the object of Chris- 
 tianity, “that man should attain to a free moral change of mind, and 
 to a child-like reliance on a God of love,” according to my doctrinal 
 belief, is by no means in contradiction to those principles, which 
 appear to the critic to denote an inclination to a pietistic character 
 of mind; but are far rather founded upon it. Where certain differ- 
 ences in philosophical or dogmatical views exist, misunderstand- 
 ings are hardly to be avoided, even where there is the most 
 candid love of truth and the most perfect good will, and I think, 
 without meaning to impugn in any way the reviewer’s love of 
 truth, that still some of these mistakes have crept into this 
 review, which is a sound one, when considered from the position 
 which its author takes. When, for example, the reviewer oppo- 
 ses to my statement of the heathen religions, the Hellenic καλὸν 
 κάγαθον, and thinks, that, reversing my sentence, men might deny 
 to Christianity the idea of Beauty [the Beautiful], with the same 
 justice that I deny to Heathenism the idea of Holiness, I must 
 reply, that when I say that in the religions of antiquity the 
 idea of the Beautiful, and not the idea of Holiness, was the 
 animating principle (as every one must acknowledge, who sees 
 in Antiquity the position of the development of religion in an 
 esthetical direction), it by no means follows that the idea of 
 Holiness was altogether wanting ; which I freely confess can never 
 be the case, where the God-consciousness implanted in man beams 
 
 b2 
 
XXXVi PREFACE TO THE THIRD PART. 
 
 through the surrounding corruption, and therefore any one might 
 justly say, conversely [/i¢erally reversing the proposition], that the 
 animating principle of Christianity is the idea of Holiness, not 
 that of the Beautiful, from which it by no means follows that the 
 idea of the Beautiful is altogether wanting; only with this 
 difference, that Christianity does not stand in opposition to the 
 one-sided heathenism, as itself a one-sided modification of reli- 
 gious materials; but that it is the highest element, which receives 
 into itself all inferior elements for the fashioning of man, and is 
 destined to set forth the harmony in human nature from the 
 highest position, so that here also the Beautiful, which in 
 heathenism appeared oftentimes at variance with Holiness, must 
 become ennobled into a form under which Holiness is revealed. 
 When, further, the critic accuses me of maintaining that myths 
 are synonymous with lies, I must beg leave to observe that in 
 the passages alluded to by the reviewer (vol. i. p. 6—9), I have 
 represented, not my own view of the origin and existence of the 
 heathen religion, but the view of the old legislators and states- 
 men, who were accustomed to consider religion only in the light 
 of a handmaid of the State. ‘To suppose an absolute lie, which 
 —existing as a lie—could maintain a dominion over the hearts 
 of men throughout centuries, is truly something unintelligible. 
 There exists as the foundation of all religious phenomena, some- 
 what of that revelation which beams through and reveals the 
 undeniable connexion of the human spirit with the God in 
 whom we live and move and have our being. But the lie which 
 exists at first unconsciously, or the error, engrafts itself upon the 
 Original and the Divine. Universally there is, in the lie, which 
 exists involuntarily, a misunderstanding and a falsification of what 
 is true, and I think that I have spoken plainly on this point in 
 p- 7, and in other passages. Iam from my very heart an enemy 
 to the harsh one-sided mode of considering history, so unsuited 
 to the spirit of the Gospel, so as to see in all that is Ante- 
 Christian, exclusive of Judaism, nothing but the works of 
 Satan, and so as not to trace throughout the whole history of 
 human nature, as through every individual human life, the pro- 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD PART. ΧΧΧΥΪ 
 
 gress onward from father to son—and I hold this mode to be as 
 unchristian as it is unintelligible. 
 
 It would carry me too far to offer explanations on other points, 
 and I must reserve this in individual cases for any future new 
 editions, where I shall with pleasure make use of all the observa- 
 tions of this excellent man, whether they suggest corrections, 
 or by being opposed to my views, they excite me to further 
 enquiry. 
 
 From my heart I coincide with the declaration of the reviewer 
 against those ‘who seek to banish the life-giving spirit by 
 formule, and to deaden the force of faith by a new-stamped 
 orthodoxy.” Certainly, as the consideration of Christianity, human 
 nature, and history teaches us, formule and symbolical books 
 cannot bring into the hearts of men vital Christianity, from 
 which alone the cure of man’s nature can proceed—but they far 
 rather introduce in its stead a dead, delusive, and limiting sub- 
 stitute. It is only where truth wins the heart and spirit of man 
 through her own inward power, utterly unsupported by outward 
 means, that the power of faith, and the true right faith, can be 
 established. As far as regards the anxiety expressed by the 
 reviewer, (for which I heartily thank him,) lest I should be 
 determined by outward circumstances to spare space to the injury 
 of the work, the excellent arrangements made by our esteemed 
 friend, the publisher, have put me in a condition to meet the 
 wishes expressed, and at the same time a cheaper edition, with 
 smaller type, will lighten the expense of the work to those who 
 are in indifferent circumstances. 
 
 As far as the judgment of those is concerned, who recognize 
 nothing, which does not come under a certain definite form, 
 adapted to their own particular school, and who arrange ὦ priori 
 first a dogmatical system, and then an interpretation and a history 
 after the formule of certain schools, which must suit every thing, 
 and which can only impede freedom of thought, studies, and life ; 
 I can do nothing but despise the judgments that proceed from 
 such a quarter, whether expressed or implied in silence ;—and, 
 indeed, all this arrogant and pretended knowledge of certain 
 
XXXvViil PREFACE TO THE THIRD PART. 
 
 parties of our times is my detestation. I willingly stand on the 
 position of a general history; and may God preserve me from 
 such a plan, as can be deduced from a few miserable formule, 
 without study and without life! a true pest both for the spirit 
 and the heart! It would be well if we would learn from general 
 history, that there is nothing new under the sun, and if we would 
 hear how John of Salisbury characterizes this disposition in the 
 twelfth century : 
 
 “‘Ttaque recentes magistri e scholis et pulli volucrum e nidis 
 sicut pari tempore morabantur, sic pariter avolabant. Sed quid 
 docebant novi doctores et qui plus somniorum quam vigiliarum 
 in scrutinio philosophiz consumpserant? Numquid rude aliquid 
 aut incultum, numquid aliquid vetustum aut obsoletum?  Lcce 
 nova fiebant omnia, innovabatur grammatica, immutabatur dialec- 
 tica, contemnebatur rhetorica, et novas totius quadrivii vias, 
 evacuatis priorum regulis, de ipsis philosophiz adytis profere- 
 bant. Solam rationem loquebantur, argumentum sonabat in ore 
 omnium et asinum nominare vel hominem aut aliquid operum 
 naturee aut ineptum nimis aut rude, et a philosopho alienum '.” 
 
 Let this work, therefore, be dedicated to all those who, with 
 an humble heart, and in freedom from the service of man, seek 
 the truth which is with God alone, and comes from God. 
 
 Deo soli gloria, omnia hominum idola pereant ! 
 
 Berlin, 1827. A. NEANDER. 
 
 1 [One paragraph is here also omitted, the object of which is merely to thank Dr. 
 Rheinwald for correcting the press, and preparing the table of contents, the index, 
 chronology, &c. 
 
 I have not translated the index, as the table of contents will fully answer the purpose. 
 H. J. R.] 
 
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 TO VOL. I. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTION AND DEVELOPMENT 
 OF CHRISTIANITY AS A SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES. 
 
 1. General Introductory Remarks, p. 1—3. 
 PAGE 
 Christianity not a dead letter, but a life-giving spirit— Different instruments for 
 the One Truth—Internal Unity of Christianity—Development of Christianity 
 by means of controversies and contentions ...++scereseeeerererereerecees 1 
 
 2. History of Sects. 
 
 Two chief divisions of the religious Spirit. 
 
 a) The Judaizing Sects, p- 3—19. 
 
 Jewish and heathen Christians—Peter and James—Paul—Four parties; a) 
 Pseudo-Petrians ; 3) Genuine apostolical Jewish Christians; y) Pseudo- 
 Pauline Christians; 6) Genuine apostolical Heathen-Christians (Justin 
 Martyr). New Church at Alia Capitolinassessesssseeeees Hdsondocmeod, xe! 
 
 Ebionites—Their names—Different kinds of Ebionites— Difference between them 
 —(Origen on this subject)—Representation of them by Epiphanius—Differ- 
 ences in their Christology—The Clementine on this subject—Their accept- 
 ance of a simple original religion—The theory of revelation according to the 
 Clementine—Relation of Christianity to the original religion—Relation of 
 Mosaism and the Gospel—The asceticism of the Ebionites—The Nazarenes 
 mentioned by Jerome ..cecevesccorsssecseeseresessesssssssesscaces 9 
 
 b) The Sects which arose from the mixture of the Oriental Theo- 
 sophy with Christianity, p. 19. 
 
xl ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Gnostic Sects. 
 
 a) General introductory remarks on the origin, character, and 
 differences of these Sects, p. 19—49. 
 
 yvwor in Christianity—Contrast between the πνευματικοι and the ψυχίικοι 
 (=zodXor)—Esoteric—Exoteric Religion—From the mixture of old- 
 oriental views of Religion with those of Neo-Platonism a Theosophic 
 Christ is formed—The then condition of the Roman Empire considered in 
 reference to its influence on the formation of these 'systems ......+.+++- see UE) 
 Genetic formation of Gnosis—A peculiar, animating principle in it—Key-note of 
 this system—Subject-matter of the ideas in Gnostic speculation—Relation of 
 Christian faith to this speculation—Idea of Emanation—Doctrine of the 
 JEons—Theory of Evil—Dualism........... slale,e\eisie/e’atalels'elcie'elajeleleslairisiehi mcs 
 Alexandrian and Syrian Gnosis (the latter modified by Parsism)—Relation of 
 both these tendencies to each other—Zabians .eeeceseeeessseccee seeeee 90 
 Essential differences between the various Gnostic systems—The points of agree- 
 ment in all Gnostics—Maker of the world (Anptovpyoc)—Their views of 
 the Theocracy of carnal and spiritual Judaism. Anti-Jewish Gnostics— 
 Their views relating to the Demiurgos and to Judaism, in which they departed 
 from the Jewish Gnostics—between the New and the Old Testament— 
 τ σε se ectesieicieseleate iene ciel ΕΣ eiote\eteveustond clete roe ™ainieieeiokats auto 
 Ethical Differences—Antinomians—Special differences—Concerning Marriage 
 Concerning the person of the Redeemer (Docetism) ..... ΡΤ ον «1 
 Classification of the Gnostics in consequence of these differences—into the “ sects 
 which engraft themselves on Judaism, and those which oppose themselves 
 FOU τιν ete sens «rns a0 "εκ "ΟΣ ποτ τὴ ss ὦ ον ΠΥ νοῶ. 48 
 Exegesis of the Gnostics—Arbitrary. criticism—Their theory of accommodation 
 in an exegetical point of view—They wish to found Christian mysteries.... 44 
 
 Means by which Gnosticism was advanced—They were called forth by opposition 
 against a rude conception of Divine things—Proper mode of considering 
 Gnostics in histOry cose cececeec recess cccecccecereres Ἂς iclepic sleeevclelers ἢ 
 
 8B) The Individual Sects. 
 
 1. The Sects whose system was engrafted upon Judaism, p. 49—98. 
 a) Cerinthus. 
 
 Contradictory accounts of him—His doctrines—His view of the baptism of Jesus 
 —His Christology—His views on Judaism—His Chiliasm .....+.+eeee++. 49 
 
 b) Basilides. 
 
 Sphere of his operations—Foundation of his system—Doctrine of the Divine 
 powers—Ogdoad—appatac—Theory οἵ Emanation—Dualism—Parallel 
 members in the opposition established throughout the whole cycle of the 
 world—General process of purification—Metempsychosis—Development of 
 Life in Nature—His adpywv—Doctrine of Providence, and the Theodiczea- 
 Typical view of Judaism—Supposition of written documents of the wisdom 
 of the Patriarchs—On the Canon of the Old Testament—His theory of 
 Redemption—Relation of the Archon to Christ—His views on the Sufferings 
 
 - 
 
 of Jesus—Doetrine of Justification... ...s0sessenctpessserasscunrsccas’ Om 
 
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 xli 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Detached considerations on the religious and moral ideas of the School of Basi- 
 lides—Doctrine of Faith—Ethics of Basilides—His partial asceticism—His 
 MLE ROMINA I ini d alate ania ain wikigin ΡΠ sete Na 
 
 6) Valentinus and his School. 
 
 His Life, and formation of his character—Relation to Basilides—/Eons-—Pleroma 
 —Self-limitation of the Bythos—Horos, and his mode of operation—Double 
 cogva—Three gradations of Being—Their mutual relations—His Demiurgos 
 —Nature of the πνευματικον, ὑλικον, WUXLKOY co eeeceesceereees Ἐν τ nial 
 
 His theory of Redemption—The Plastic Soter—Relation of man to the Universe 
 —His notion of Inspiration—His views on that subject in reference to the 
 Prophets and to heathenism—Appearance of the Soter—Physical Messiah— 
 The main point in Redemption—Xproriavicpoc Puyikocand πνευματικος--- 
 Spiritual pride—Eschatology—Syzygy of the Soter with the Sophia ...... 
 
 Distinguished men of this School. 
 
 Heracleon—His exegesis of St. John—Allegorizing indications—His opposition 
 to martyrdom as an ‘ opus operatum’,...... ΟΞ 
 Ptolemzus—His relation to Valentinus—Letter to Flora—Threefold Principle 
 of the Mosaic Law of Religion—His typical system—Fasts—True object of 
 WORIIMAYE oan SAosek Ke codon oronccre coeds oGnnb Or ΠΟ ΞΕ 
 Marcus—His life—Character of his doctrines—The idea of a λογος του ὀντος 
 refined by him to the utmost point. ᾿ς 6. 56 ce cesses se τοι ον ο ὁ κ . ὁ »95 6666 
 Bardesanes—Life—Character of his Gnosticism—He attacks the doctrine of an 
 εἱμαρμενη---ἴ5 doctrine of moral freedom—He seeks traces of truth in all 
 
 nations eee eee eee ee το κσο cote ee ee eee eeeeeeeeseeeesesees 
 2. Gnostic sects, which denied the connexion between the Old and 
 the New Testament, and between the visible and invisible worlds, 
 
 p- 98—118. 
 a) Ophites. 
 
 Distinction between them and the Valentinian Gnosis—Their Demiurgos— 
 Jaldabaoth—é¢topoppoc—Their anthropology—Meaning of the Serpent— 
 Their view of the fall—Christology—Ophitish Pantheism—Its practical 
 influence—Investigation of their relation to the older Oriental systems of 
 
 MOWAT Sao RS ODO ODOC DOROIUOCOUCCOOCG νον σον δοσο δ ϑεον δὼ 86 π|Ὁ 0 
 
 ὃ) Pseudobasilidians. 
 
 67 
 
 70 
 
 76 
 
 88 
 
 91 
 
 91 
 
 90 
 
 98 
 
 Character of their sect—Views on Christ’s sufferings and death—On martyrdom . 104 
 
 c) Sethites and Cainites. 
 
 Anthropology of the Sethites—Shameful Antinomianism of the Cainites ......... 105 
 
 d) Saturninus. 
 His Anthropology and Christology ......ee++eeee+: ereteiste δι οἴ, ο (alae ante’ ciat Scie! 
 e) Tatian and the Encratites. 
 
 His life—His conversion to Gnosticism—Fanciful ascetic disposition— Traces of 
 an use of Apocryphal Gospels— Eyxparirar—Julius Cassianus—Severiani 
 
 106 
 
 . 108 
 
xlii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Z ‘ . PAGE 
 JS) Eclectic, Antinomian Gnostics. 
 
 Carpocrates—His religious system worked out by his son Epiphanes—Doctrine 
 
 of supreme Unity—Pantheistic Mysticism—Antinomianism—Corruption of 
 
 St. Paul’s doctrines—Carpocratians at Same—Inscriptions relating to this 
 
 SECU revelelataiatie’aiatetoie'ols!<lalalalalelalelelis!vpisieletets/al-1's!sisiatelstalie\elelalsieisiavels sists τοῦ ττὔοὖὸν tn 
 ATIPItACTI—-—ENOCLCIATAS τ τόν νονν νεῖν κεν τ ραν κκνἢ δα crate ofelateleyeleyaialereialaleiels/eretarerstetemml tlic 
 Nicolaitans— Name of this sect—Error of their founder—Nicolaus—Simonians— 
 
 Their Coryphzeus—Simon Magus....++sssseecesececccecerceccccesers [10 
 
 g) Marcion and his School. 
 
 His relation to Gnosticism—His predominantly practical disposition—His sources 
 for the knowledge of genuine Christianity—Literal interpretation of Scripture 
 —His contrastbetween πίστις and yywouc—History of his religious education 
 and development—Seeds of the doctrine of the Demiurgos—Opposition to 
 the Old Testament—His abode in Rome—Acquaintance with Cerdo—His 
 later history—Accounts of his end—Representation of his principles— 
 Opposition between holiness and justice ......sccesscceeveee®s Boooosccr: Wie: 
 Doctrine of the Demiurgos and man—Christology—Doctrine of redemption— 
 His Patripassianism and Docetism—His view of the ‘‘descensus ad inferos” 
 ——J'wo'-fold) Messtanie Kite dom: ἐς εἶ} δ οἰστοῖς εἰς καἰ slels sislelelaleiersiatelen 127 
 Marcion’s ethics and his asceticism—His views on the Canon of Scripture ...... 132 
 
 Marcionite Sects. 
 
 Marcus—Lucanus—Apelles—Tertullian on the character and system of the last 
 Fis (CONVErsiON LOstNe Malte teres els elaine stot eloioverelololelsioieleiaisiataisicl ciel cicieteicieee [1 
 
 Additional Remarks. 
 On the Cultus of the Gnostics. 
 
 Marcosians—Caians—Baptismal formula of the first—Use of extreme unction in 
 the case of the dead—Marcion against the ‘‘ Missa fidelium’”—His endeavour 
 after a primitive Christian of cultus—No vicarious baptism in Marcion’s 
 
 SYSUCMsis'cie'wiele: viewielv/als's\'veiviehe alvietele οι οἷν να διοἵ ον ὁ. 6 δ Ὁῆπ «(2,615 δἶς ὁ του 95 τος 136 
 
 II. Manes and the Manichees, p. 140—168, 
 
 Character of Manicheeism—History of its founder—Western and Eastern sources 
 —Acts of Archelaus of Cascar—Representation of his doctrines by Scythianus 
 and Buddas—Oriental sources—Education and development of Manes— 
 Amalgamation of Parsism and Christianity in him—He gives himself out for 
 the Paraclete—Relations of this public appearance—His fate ............. 140 
 Doctrines—His Dualism and Pantheism—Doctrine of the Kingdom of Light, 
 of the Mother of Life, of the first Man, of the living Spirit, and of the Soul 
 of the World—The struggles of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the process of 
 purification of the physical and moral world—Transference of Mithras to the 
 Christ of Manes—Mystical natural Philosophy—Christ crucified in nature— 
 Origin, formation, and nature of man—Dominion of the soul over the 
 oAn—Allegorical meaning of Genes. IY., I1I.—Destiny of man—Original 
 corruption—Infant-baptism—Appearance of Christ, the Sun-Spirit—Christ 
 crucified, a mere symbol—Last fate of evil—Sources of religious knowledge 
 —Mode of treating and criticizing Holy Scripture—Faustus the Manichee,, 147 
 
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xliii 
 
 PAGE 
 Composition of their religious assemblies—Exoteric and esoteric doctrines— 
 Electi, Auditores—Orders—Use of the Sacraments—Their sign of recognition 
 —Festivals—Festival of the martyrdom of Manes—Their moral character 
 —Persecutions against them—-Edict of Diocletian against this sect ........ 164 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF 
 CHRISTIANITY AS A SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES IN THE CATHO- 
 LIC CHURCH, WHICH FORMED ITSELF IN OPPOSITION TO 
 THE SECTS, p. 169—416. 
 
 I. The genetic development of Church Theology in general, and the 
 characteristic of the individual religious and dogmatical dispositions 
 which have peculiarly influenced it, p. 169—234. 
 
 Relation of Christian life to the development of doctrine—Opposition to Judaism 
 and Heathenism, especially against Gnosticism. Influence of the latter on the 
 development of Doctrine, especially upon the settlement of Hermeneutic 
 Principles. Possible mode of engrafting it upon what there is of truth in 
 OROUE sodaddsadin cncncnonobnn 0b d6sH0bs DoaSosSeBoonousooHbasodeee UG 
 Direction and tendency of the Church Theology derived from these considerations 
 —Realistic—Idealistic dispositions .......eececeeeseescccecesessescces 172 
 
 Realistic Disposition. 
 
 Predominant in the development of Church Theology—in Asia Minor—Polycarp 
 
 of Smyrna, Papias of Hierapolis, Melito of Sardis, lrenzeus of Lyons—also in 
 
 the Western (Romish) Church....... “ἀξ... ᾿ς εἰ ες cisttapiclele-s ἐἰρῖν caiman τ ρει, Lge 
 Practical-Christian disposition of Irenzeus—His controversy with Gnosticism,,., 174 
 Erroneous turn taken by this Realism, as shown in Montanus .........+..000- 176 
 Montanus—Nothing new brought forward by him—His doctrines further moulded 
 
 by Tertullian—Character of Montanism........ccccsscecesecseee ἀτός 1D. 
 
 Events of the Life of Montanus—His peculiarity —Uncertainty as to the time of 
 his coming forward—His appearance explained—His practical errors—Mon- 
 tanistic prophetesses—Priscilla, Maximilla ........cseeeeeecececeecs Gee U7 7 
 Spirit of Montanism—Gradual development of the Church throughthe Paraclete— 
 The extension and completion of the first Revelation—especially in reference 
 to life and moral doctrines, and in regard to the defence of the doctrines 
 PARC NEAT ELALLACK CON, εἰς ον ον κινιυ δὲν ον βίοι ase ais. glean υἱοῖα αὐ ὁ δ τ κ migisisinis φὸ» 5. LOO 
 Opposition of Montanism to Church views, which clung only to outward things. 
 Tertullian on the Church of the Spirit, and the Church of the Bishops—Idea 
 of the spiritual priesthood of all Christians—But a confusion, nevertheless, 
 Betweentherold and ithe: Newel HCOCrACY ss τιον σε «00's /ola/viels εν ον νανεν aes LOS 
 
xliv ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 Prophets of the Montanists—Idea of ecstasy carried to the extreme—Controver- 
 
 sies concerning inspiration—'The opposite extreme (Origen)—Their doctrine 
 concerning the last outpouring of the Holy Spirit about to precede the 
 return, Of Christ: s ay-'suere otalerateyatainlo=lefelisinl s/s) έΕοέΕέέΕοΠΨΠΠΕΠοΠέ[ΠΠἘΠΠΠ|͵ππππΠππ-τ..-- "τὸ 
 Moral doctrine—Their aberration from its true meaning—New commandments— 
 Their asceticism—Fasts commanded—Opposition of evangelic freedom to these 
 fasts—Their views on martyrdom—On marriage—Their principles in regard 
 to penance’( Tertullian) 5... <0 oj asiss © 00 p 0 vn.cinmfan me's s’s0s aenisinisic 9 
 Zeal, in Tertullian, against an exaggerated reverence for martyrdom—Millenarian 
 ade qachasododa goc0s bo Oo Undo σα τς οὐ πο θα: α ὅσσ σου σσοσσσσσοο LEI 
 Outward history of Montanism—Circumstances favourable to its advance—Its 
 opponents—Synods respecting Montanism—Concord established by means of 
 Trenzeus—His mission to Eleutheros—Later opponents; Praxeas—Montanists 
 as Church-party in separation [i.e. a schismatical party ]—(Cataphrygians, 
 HSCEI) adon ganoogdnDpO UO On OoNOUOAON TOD OD OROdB OO ORGCaICO0RC5 τ 
 Violent opponents of Montanism, arising from a cold intellectual disposition—Alogi 194 
 
 Idealistic disposition in the Alexandrian Church. 
 
 Alexandrian catechetical schools—Their original intention (Eusebius, Jerome) 
 —Activity of individual catechists—Originally only one catechist—Origen 
 divides his office with a second—Requisites for this office—Clement on this 
 point—Their activity furthered by the foundation of a learned normal school 
 fOLALeAC HELIS Ofsted DULG Ne steleleicleleheteleteraialelsta/alofaleteloteleteleialeyeiaiiniataieialaietateii ae to 
 
 Relation of the catechetical schools to different mental dispositions (to the Greeks, 
 to the Gnostics, and to the Realists)—Their Γνωσις ἀληθινὴ .....+002-+- 197 
 
 Relation to the Gnostics—Difference from them in their theory of πίστις and 
 yvworc—Clement on Pistis—Origen ......seceseccecsccccccencsovcces 198 
 
 Peculiarly Christian feature in their Gnosis—Its subjective nature and objective 
 sources of knowledge (Clement)—Biblical character of their Gnosis— 
 Reproaches against them for requiring intellectual attainments and culture— 
 Clement defends them for requiring these—Mutual relations of Christianity 
 and philosophy—Clement alternately mild, and severe against the adversa- 
 ries of the Alexandrian Gnosis—He defends philosophical study —One-sided 
 view of the Ante-Christian condition and education of man on the part of his 
 opponent (Tertullian)—Clement on the march of the development of the 
 Grecian philosophy, considered in the light of an education for human nature 
 —On the relation of δικαιοσυνή to philosophy,and its weak points—Philoso- 
 phy considered as a point of transition to Christianity .....e0..seeeeeeee- 201 
 
 The Alexandrians began to consider Christianity as the reconciliation of the 
 oppositions caused by human one-sidedness—Their freedom of spirit....... 21] 
 
 Intermixture of Platonism and Christianity in reference to πίστις and γνωσις. 
 
 A LGOTLC) AA SUDOLGINALE CONGILION q «ci ὁ, ὁ ο ἢ ees ciel τος ὁ eielelevels nie taetanteraleielesiaretc rene Lcd 
 
 Point of connexion of the Alexandrian yywortkoc with the Gnostic πρευμάτικος, 
 of. the morikoc-with the Wuyswocssiicccicereeisstcccseossoaserecseene 214 
 
 Difference of the two—existing certainly, but not of great importance—Its causes 
 —tTheir predominantly speculative disposition, and the opposition to other 
 modes of conceiving πίστις... +... e+ al Slat bei! ojatevocaleelateneiniets wolataletsioieisic aretemee LO 
 
 Consequences of this separation of yywotg from atoreg—Theosophy............ 216 
 
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xlv 
 
 PAGE 
 Further advance of the ideas of Clement by Origin—His view on the nature of 
 faith and its degrees—Opposition to faith in sight (yvwouc)—False explana- 
 tion of St. Paul’s expressions—On the two-fold position of a spiritual and 
 a carnal Christian—On spiritual Judaism and carnal Christianity—On the 
 deeperisense of holy Scripturesisic cc... οἱ οἴει εἰ αἶα τοῖν δ εἰν οἰ οἶδς ΡΞ 0] 
 Connexion of this theory with the different forms of revelation of the Logos— 
 Distinction of the predicates of the Logos in reference to his nature, and 
 what he is, as received in reference to redemption—Origen on the subordi- 
 nate position—and condescension to it—Disapproval of a contemptuous pride 224 
 Theory of different exegetical positions connected with the former theory —Two- 
 fold position—The predominantly speculative spirit leads to an intermixture 
 of Christian philosophy and the doctrines of the Christian faith ........... 227 
 
 Subject-matter [Lit. contents] of Gnosis—as received by Origen—Third (and 
 more exhortatory) sense of Scripture—for those who had not attained to 
 Gnosis—Supposition of myths in Scripture—Application of this p-inciple to 
 Bap neh CHLAMION LT atetalatelatateleia nic cla'a's!elsieerelelers/alniaicisialele s/etsiaie ataisiaie claret stan co 
 
 Explanation of the views of Origen—Truth and error mixed together in them— 
 
 But still what is historical not destroyed—Necessary opposition to these 
 Mele WW SELIMERE ALIGN ata autefnl etal aje! win: a'sip's aie vinis'sha ΠΟ ΡΥ ac 
 
 II. The Development of the great doctrines of Christianity 
 considered separately, p. 234—329. 
 
 Theology. 
 
 Doctrine concerning God—God-consciousness revived in Christianity—Different 
 forms of its development—Controversy of tbe Church-doctrine with the 
 superstiticus and idolators—Appeal to the original God-consciousness— 
 Clement on the demonstration of the existence of God—Origen—Theophilus 
 of Antioch on the revelation of God inthe creation—Tertullian—W ho appeals 
 to the testimony of the soul, especially against Marcion .........eseeeeee02 230 
 
 Nature of God—Realistic conception of it—Tertullian—Confusion between cor- 
 poreality and existence—Spiritualization of the Idea-of-God by means of a 
 practical disposition—Irenzus, Novatian. Distinction between Anthropo- 
 morphism and Anthropopathism—Truth in the latter—Opposition between 
 a sensuous humanizing of God in religious Realism ; and a de-humanizing of 
 him in Idealism—Peculiar nature of Marcion’s Anthropopathism—Tertul- 
 lian against him—Endeavours of the Alexandrians to spiritualize Anthropo- 
 pathism—Origen—Middle way of the Alexandrians between the Gnostics 
 and ἘΠΕ rest of the Church-teachers «iccioe.cs.s>.00 ov v0e00n oc sa nmcieeciccee COD 
 
 Doctrine concerning creation—Creation out of nothing—In opposition to the 
 religions of nature [deification of nature |—Maintenance ofthe Incomprehen- 
 sible as such against speculation and poetry [imaginative views |—Christianity 
 purifies religious faith—Misconception of this doctrine by the Gnostics...... 246 
 
 Doctrine of Hermogenes—Difference and coincidence of his turn of mind with 
 that of the Gnostics—His controversy against the emanation-doctrine of the 
 Gnostics—Tertullian concerning him—His doctrine of evil—Deduced from 
 natural necessity—Eternity of two principles—God the forming principle— 
 
 His inconsistency in the notion of a progressive formation of matter—Theo- 
 doret concerning him—Irenzus and Tertullian against these dispositions .,.. 249 
 
xlvi ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Peculiar system of Origen—Engraftment on the Church-doctrine, and union of 
 speculation with it—Impossibility of a transition from not-creating to 
 creating—Origen, an opponent of the Gnostic emanation-system—Supposes 
 a spiritual beaming-forth of God—Eternal Becoming—His opponent Metho- 
 dius—Weakness of his objectionS...++ssseeeesseevereees aialplalelelotelate tats 
 
 Origen’s doctrine of the omnipotence of God—Platonizing view of it—Importance 
 of this doctrine in his system ..ccccceseeeesescssscccvevecceseuse ose 
 
 Doctrine of the Trinity—Peculiarity of Christianity in the recognition and worship 
 of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier—Import of this doctrine— 
 Different modes of conceiving the Triune God—Mischief arising from the 
 mixture of speculative and dialectic notions with the practical elementece.e.. 
 
 Idea of the Logos—Engrafting on the previous ideas derived from St. Paul and 
 St. John—Union of the doctrine of the divinity of Christ with existing 
 speculative ideas—Two different dispositions, already existing among the 
 Jews—The Church-doctrine engrafts itself on the one, while the other comes 
 forward to oppose the Church-doctrine, and thus furthers its development ... 
 
 The opponents of the Church-doctrine endeavour to maintain firmly the Unity of 
 God (the povapyva)—Difference in the application of this theory to Christ 
 —Two classes of Monarchians derived from this source—The first pro- 
 ceeding from a dialectic and critical turn of mind, the second from a 
 practical and Christian ....c.ecceccsecceccecre cscs cesereecsseeces cee 
 
 The second class of Monarchians more sharply opposed to the first, than to the 
 Church-doctrine—from a peculiarly Christian leaning—Patripassians—Origen 
 CONCEINING theM ,... .seesececcee rs ceencecrssssrssesesesseeeessscees 
 
 Praxeas, a Patripassian—His life—His doctrine of the Logos—Two views con- 
 cerning it possible, according to Tertullian ...¢occssscosesacssccccvececes 
 
 Doctrines of Noetus—Theodoret and Hippolytus concerning him........eees-- 
 
 First class of Patripassians—First traces of them—Their founder Theodotus— 
 Artemon—Artemonites—Christology of the two parties—Explanation of the 
 Artemonite disposition ...e...sccrccccerecerccecscscscesssececers 
 
 Alogi—Whether they belong to this class—First trace of them in Ireneus— 
 Traces in Epiphanius—Enquiries into the nature of this party —Connexion 
 between the Alogi and the Theodotians according to Epiphanius—Their 
 opposition to the Gospel of St. John, and the Old Testament .............. 
 
 Paulof Samosata—Ambiguity of his character—Accusations against him—Zenobia, 
 Queen of Palmyra, favours him—He uses this connexion for worldly objects 
 —He favours the acclamations of the people in the Church—Changes the 
 Church-hymns, apparently from dogmatical grounds—His doctrine of the 
 Logos—Reference which he gave to the name of ‘Son of God’’—He was 
 in the habit of concealing his theological views—Fate of Paul «ὁ. ὁ. “ιν τε ον 
 
 Last class of Monarchians (a third class, which stood between the two already 
 mentioned)—Beryllus of Bostra—Eusebius concerning him—Agreement 
 between Origen and Eusebius—Origen persuades Beryllus—Spirit of 
 moderation in the Alexandrian School ...eesessseeveeccessrreecseceres 
 
 Sabellius engrafts his doctrines on those of Beryllus—Sources of his doctrine 
 
 according to Epiphanius—His Monas and Trias—His doctrine of the Logos 
 —The spiritual personality of the Logos considered as an hypostatized 
 
 7 
 
 251 
 
 254 
 
 255 
 
 256 
 
 258 
 
 260 
 
 ib. 
 262 
 
 . 262 
 
 265 
 
 269 
 
 273 
 
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xlvii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 emanation—Denial of an eternally enduring personality—Final return to 
 PERO ATT. τ ists bia inlnafuiverin’elcleislulsin|seleleieichasvaaik vis cleis oielslgislafeldweeraree 
 Church-doctrine of the Trinity, in opposition to the Monarchians—Opposed views 
 of the Western and Eastern Churches—The Alexandrians—Origen—His 
 doctrines. taken collectively—His views opposed both to Gnostics and 
 Monarchians—Opposed to the transference of the idea of time to the Logos— 
 To sensuous representations and expressions in regard to generation— 
 Opposed to ὁμοούσιον, in favour of the absolute pre-eminence of the Father— 
 Practical consequence of this doctrine in regard to prayer ...seeee+..ee0e. 
 Comparison of Tertullian with Origen—Condemnation of the ὁμοουσιον by the 
 Mannrenim re ATILIOCH sale cisis'leie'n’d’e|@'s!cle/« s1e.s oie ἐξ Στ chara sien eetaiel ἘΝ 
 Seed of a controversy between the Origenistic system, and that of the Romish 
 Church—Letter of Dionysius of Rome against ὁμοουσιον--- Ἢ [5 moderation. . 
 Doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost—Imperfect ideas on the nature of Spirit— 
 The idea of a personal substantial Being is firmly maintained—Justin Martyr 
 
 ΞΟ ΠΥ ciene’s cuiavelerece'e's 6.6 ὁ τὸν slelercie/s/eimiaecieieice 6/a.¢)sieiace ata 
 
 Anthropology. 
 
 Doctrine concerning human nature—Its peculiar importance in reference to the 
 doctrine of Redemption—Pneumatology—Connexion with Anthropology— 
 Neglect of what is of importance in a Christian and practical point of view 
 among the Gnostics—Church-doctrine in opposition to them—IJn reference 
 
 ἐτοῦτος ἀπ ΣΟ ΤΥ eevee eee eso sees ee eeeeo ee eeseseseesreseesse 
 
 Contrast between the North African and the Alexandrian teachers. 
 
 North African Church—Tertullian’s doctrine—His peculiar theory of the propa- 
 gation of the first corruption—Tertullian on sinfulness—Opposition against 
 the division of the soul into ἄλογον and Aoytkoy—Against the Gnostic 
 doctrine of different elementary principles in human nature—Tertullian on 
 grace and free-will—No irresistible grace ......escscccccccccccccscces 
 
 Alexandrian Church—Clement against the North African doctrine—His Anthro- 
 pology—Peculiar system of Origen—He endeavours to derive all differences 
 from moral freedom—Vacillating views of Origen hereon, in respect to the 
 “νι τ τ τε πεῖ δ, τὸ sic's vin s¥elataialetolniala) fatal sie μι τ 
 
 Origen against Traducianism and Creatianism—He teaches the pre-existence of 
 souls—Allegorical explanation of the narrative concerning Paradise—The 
 doctrine put forth in the book wep. ἄρχων respecting the degradation of 
 fallen souls in the bodies of animals afterwards given up—Theory of a process 
 of purification in opposition to the notion of a cycle in the wanderings of the 
 soul—Three principles, according to Origen, in the fallen nature of man— 
 —Their characteristics...+...... SOOO OOOO ODOC SOO ae OOOO noon 
 
 Christology. 
 
 Doctrine about the Redeemer—Development of this doctrine—Realistic-Christian 
 disposition called forth by opposition to Gnostic systems—Especially by 
 opposition to Docetism—Ignatius of Antioch—Tertullian—Doctrine of 
 Clement, corrupted by Neo-Platonism (the ἀπαθεια of the Redeemer)— 
 Doctrine of Irenzus—Justin Martyr—In his system the Logos takes the 
 place of ἃ soul—Tertullian on the proper human soul of the Redeemer ... 
 
 276 
 
 280 
 
 286 
 
 288 
 
 289 
 
 291 
 
 293 
 
 290 
 
 300 
 
 303 
 
xl viii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Influence of Origen on the Church system of doctrine—His efforts for a systematic 
 foundation of this doctrine—Difference between the πνευμα and the ψυχὴ in 
 Christ—The Redeemer’s soul an instrument for the communication of life— 
 His doctrine of the nature of the body of Christ—His influence on the 
 formation of the Church-doctrine—The Origenistic view brought forward 
 against Beryllus of Bostra—Objections to the doctrine of Origen ......+++ 
 
 Doctrine concerning Redemption—Character of the doctrine at this period—Nega- 
 tive and positive side of the doctrine—Both these points used against 
 Docetism—In the doctrine of Irenzus the latter point, in that of Justin 
 Martyr the former predominant—Peculiar theory of redemption in Origen— 
 His view of the magical operation of the sacrifice of a guiltless one ....+ee. 
 
 Doctrine concerning faith—Connexion between redemption and sanctification— 
 Subjective appropriation of redemption—Individual witnesses of the original 
 Christian conviction and consciousness [ Bewusstsein ]|—Clement of Rome— 
 Irenzeus on law and faith—The Pauline notion of faith obscured—Judaizing 
 view of it—False notion among the Gnostics—Marcion—Fundamental idea 
 of the Church-doctrine—Disturbed by interchange of outward and inward 
 
 thingS....r.cccvcccccccccssccrsesenrscesseesccessesssesssnssscncs 
 
 Doctrine concerning the Church. 
 
 Doctrine concerning the sacraments—Obscurity concerning the relation of the 
 divine thing to the outward token—a) Baptism—Irenzeus—Tertullian— 
 Confusion between outward and inward—Its practical prejudicial conse- 
 quences—Satisfaction for sins committed after baptism, by means of penances 
 and good works—Cyprian—b) Supper of the Lord—Doctrine of Ignatius of 
 Antioch—Justin—Irenzus—Tertullian—Beliefin the North African Church, 
 in a supernatural sanctifying power of the token—Doctrine of the Alexan- 
 drians—View of Origen—His doctrine of the symbol in the Sacrament ..... 
 
 Eschatology. 
 
 Doctrine concerning the last things—Chiliasm—Conception of the idea of a 
 millennial kingdom—Sensuous Chiliasm of Papias of Hierapolis—This is 
 purified and spiritualized in the case of Irenzus—It never belonged to the 
 general doctrines of the Church... ..cssesseecscveacscrevcscrsssevece 
 
 Antichiliastic disposition—Opposition to Montanism—The presbyter Caius against 
 Proclus—Influence of the learned views of the Alexandrians on the spiritual- 
 ization of the ideas of the kingdom of God and Christ—Sensuous Chiliasm 
 in Egypt—Defended by Nepos of Nomos, and advanced by Korakion— 
 Moderation of Dionysius of Alexandria in controverting this error—His 
 work wepuémayyekcwy—Judgment concerning Nepos ..+.eseessececeeees 
 
 Doctrine concerning the Resurrection—Views of the Gnostics—A carnal con- 
 ception opposed to this view—Interchange [ Verwechselung ? Reconciliation] 
 of the opposite extremes in Origen .....2.cccccerccccccccceccceccscens 
 
 Docirine of the restoration of all things—Theory of Origen ....ee+eecseeseveees 
 
 306 
 
 309 
 
 313 
 
 316 
 
 322 
 
 324 
 
 327 
 328 
 
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xlix 
 
 III. History of the most celebrated Church-teachers, 
 p. 329—416. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Apostolical Fathers—Difference between their writings and those of the Apostles 
 —Writings of these Fathers, in an unsatisfactory condition........0.00+4+ 
 Barnabas—The Catholic epistle not written by him—Alexandrian spirit in that 
 letter—Fanciful remarks in it alternately with pompous ones—Tendency of 
 PUEME ISM eters tetaslale sic\e/stelsioiein'cie(ele n/p sii sis \s's'« soabodn aninbadcgonogn 
 Clement of Rome—His letter to the Corinthian Church—Fragment of a second— 
 Two letters under his name in the Syrian Church (edited by Wetstein)— 
 Doubts as to their genuineness—The Clementine—Apostolical Constitutions 
 ΠΕΣ ΟΣ ΘΙ ΠΗ͂Σ MIS NAME 2" ca 6 e/afs[e/elesla solic Α διπὶο δα, κιο 5, 8.5 Ὁ clolsis o/s seins 
 Hermas—Pastor Herme—Doubts as to its genuineness .....seseseseeeecseees 
 
 Ignatius of Antioch—Seven epistles to the Churches of Asia Minor, and to 
 ΒΒ CAN Datel τινι o/'</s//eis/e!scsinieis) ois δία κι 5 Sper τι ρίαν μοῦ εἰ γῆς οι δ 6 δ6 61...» 
 Polycarp of Smyrna—Epistle to the Philippians ............06- ebay veces 
 Apologists—Occasion of the defence of the Christians—Quadratus—His Apology 
 lost— Eusebius concerning him ...... #0 0S a.n.0.0,0,0.0 ec εἴ οἷ α 010.000 lec.o0se 
 PAOISCLO GR ems τιον κατ» wars pies Se» late ter οἷ ole elejeieisipicineieiele’ sels ὃν κ' οιοΐοῖο νοοῖ οἷον οἰκο 
 Justin Martyr—Accounts of his life and education—His religious development— 
 His activity as a preacher of the Gospel—His Apology to the emperor— 
 Occasion of the first Apology—Time at which it was written—Whether 
 written in the time of Marcus Aurelius—It comes into the time of Antoninus 
 Pius—Peculiar ideas of these Apologies on Revelation and the Aoyoc σπερ- 
 pearucoc—But nothing of this kind occursin his other writings—His ‘ Ex- 
 hortation to the Greeks’—Explanation of this difference—Aoyoc προς Ἕλ- 
 Anvac—Treatise περι provapxtac— Dialogus cum Tryphone Judzo — Its 
 authenticity and relation to the other writings of Justin—Agreement of the 
 Apologies and this Dialogue—Especially in the doctrine of the Logos and 
 the ΤΙνευμα ayvov—Occasion and cause of the composition of this Dialogue 
 —Lost work of Justin—Letter on the characteristics of Christian worship, 
 not/penuine—Hisimartyrdom)....ce..cscsessvacceecsccnsreseveeerscs 
 Tatian, a disciple of Justin—His religious development—His study of the Old 
 
 Testament—Preparatory to believing—His address to the heathen ........ © 
 
 Athenagoras—Apology to the emperor—Personal accounts of him—Treatise in 
 defence of the resurrection .......cccccenscsvocecersscsccssncescusss 
 Hermias—His διασυρμος των ἐξἕω φιλοσοφων---Α violent enemy of the Greek 
 PMO MOLY ἡ το το claleiatatlets's 10 lele aialiarehavereielaieie the αὐ ει δ δ᾽ οἷο sie stalp ole’ τἰτν ἐ Ἐν ἢ» ς 
 Theophilus of Antioch—Apologetical work by him addressed to Rell cee 
 
 commentary on the Bible......sscccccccscccersscsccssscecenseseccs : 
 
 Peculiar character of the Church-teachers of Asia Minor. 
 
 Formation of the Anti-Gnostic—Practical—Realistic spirit—Hegesippus—His 
 
 Church history—Hardly an opponent of Paul—Active authorship of these 
 
 teachers—(Melito of Sardis) —Their object—Claudius Apollinaris ...... 
 ¥OL. 11. - 
 
 929 
 
 - 329 
 
 331 
 333 
 
l ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 Irenzus, bishop of Lyons and Vienne—His epistles to Florinus—Irenzus no 
 Montanist—His chief work against the Gnostics—His other writings— 
 Exegesis and Hermeneutics formed in opposition to the Gnostics—Epistles 
 
 of Irenzeus to Blastus and Florinus ......cceseceseceeceeseececeecesces 960 
 Hippolytus, a disciple of Ireneeus—His residence—His writings—List of the latter 
 —His works on tke Gospel of St. John and the Apocalypse—Against thirty- 
 
 two heresies—About Antichrist, and his wporpemrixoyv προς Σεβερειναν .. 309 
 
 Peculiar character of the Church-teachers of North Africa. 
 
 Tertullian—His characteristics—Personal history—His conversion to Montanism 
 —Whether he remained a Montanist—Tertullianisis.....eee.seeeeeeeees 902 
 Cyprian—Influence of Tertullian on him—His ‘ Libri Testimoniorum’—Inten- 
 tion and aim’of this collection} .s's's/s!es's's.c ss ‘ae 's slelece o's ales se'se sane 900 
 [ Commodianus—His ‘Instructiones ’—Written not long after Cyprian’s time—His 
 strict notions—Speaks against pride in martyrdom as an ‘opus operatum’].. 367 
 
 Arnobius—Account of his conversion—His apologetic work—Occasion of his 
 conversion—Time of the composition of his work ‘ Adversus Gentes’...... 368 
 
 Romish Church. 
 
 Its original poverty in Theological respects —Caius—Novatianus—His writings— 
 Treatise concerning the Jewish laws about food—Minucius Felix—his Apolo- 
 SELIC DidlOpUe ss vic'sie τ .ea ee via ale views bowed secs peGivic = Ue celaemaemod L 
 
 Peculiar character of the Alexandrian Church-teachers. 
 
 Pantznus—Clement of Alexandria, his successor in the office of Catechist—His 
 writings—Of an apologetic, ethical, and dogmatical character—His Hypo- 
 typoses—The rest of his writings .....escessssscrescscccscecesssgenss Ofe 
 
 Origen—His biography—lInfluence of his father Leonides on the formation of his 
 religious character—Influence of Clement on his theological development— 
 Origen amidst persecution—His place of refuge—His controversy with 
 Gnosticism—His firmness during the persecutions—His asceticism — Mis- 
 MHUSTSLANOAD POM LUIS κε clauelsinie civic uicislslateeloledielsis <\dpaieoihicieialaleeteitalats eleleicietaeteln OU 
 
 Theological formation of Origen—His employment on the Platonic philosophy— 
 Justification of this study—Ammonius Saccas, his teacher—Change in the 
 theological turn of his mind—His free spirit of investigation, and his mild- 
 ness, particularly in reference to the Gnostics in Alexandria—(Ambrosius) 
 —Hiis services in the cause of exegesis and criticism—He divides his office of 
 Catechist with Eeraclag oi. ssjeosssnulewciens sivisirisieeinsiecisicle= eslegipisic cain a 9] 
 
 His activity as a theological teacher—Character of his lectures on the explanation 
 of Scripture—Active participation of Ambrosius in his labours—His expres- 
 sions with regard to the object of his labours—His commentary—His work 
 περι aoxwy—His endeavours for the party of the Church zealots—His 
 
 ΄ 
 
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 li 
 
 PAGE 
 
 relations with Demetrius of Alexandria—Jealousy of the latter towards him 
 — Origen ordained a presbyter at Casarea—Persecution of Origen by the 
 Bishop—First and second synods against him—Excommunication of Origen 
 in the last of these—Causes of these persecutions—One cause of them the 
 dogmatical. views of Origen [dogmatik]—His expressions with regard to 
 those who charged him with heresy—His writings addressed to the Synod in 
 JMS GIN GARICE So de oa bAAOoodtENO de dd τ πἰτον ὁ ὁ σ᾽ εἰσ,» εἴας οὶ εἰς εν 
 
 His activity in Palestine—Exhortation to the confessors—His change of resi- 
 dence—Correction of the Alexandrian version—Hexapla—His conduct in 
 this matter defended by himself—His interchange of letters with Julius 
 Africanus, and his prejudices in regard to the traditions of the Church—The 
 rest of his writings—His influence on the controversies relative to the doc- 
 trine—His stedfast confession during the Decian persecution—His death .,.. 
 
 Continuation of the Origenistic School—Disciples of Origen—Heraclas—Dionysius 
 of Alexandria—His letter to the Bishop Basilides in Egypt—Pierius and 
 Theognostus, teachers of the Alexandrian Church—An Origenistic and an 
 Ait OM enisticypAaLLyn I) συ Ρῦν leisietelete ele e sien scfeiriee el viasieie s/c) σοι οτν οἷν ἐπῆν 
 
 Hieracas, the ascetic—His allegorizing Exegesis and ascetic bias—His disapproval 
 of marriage—Participation in the kingdom of heaven, a consequence of 
 severity and strictness of moral observances—His views on the middle state 
 of children [in the world to come] and on the Trinity ................ 
 
 Gregory Thaumaturgus—His parentage and education—His acquaintance with 
 Origen leads him to Christianity—His language concerning the Exegesis of 
 Origen—His departure from his master—Origen—Epistle of the latter to 
 Gregory—His activity in Neo-Czsarea—His writings .....eceeessseanes 
 
 Methodius, bishop of Olympus—An opponent of the Origenistic school—but an 
 Map σεν 01 6-- ELIS WW DICIN ES! ἐν δ ων cies cine το gisie νι κοί διν φῦ. 6 δὲν ον elvigisive! οἱ 
 
 Pamphilus, presbyter at Czsarea in Palestine—Defends Origen. He is the founder 
 of a theological school, especially for exegesis—His work in defence of 
 Origen, written in conjunction with his scholar Eusebius ...........+0.00- 
 
 Theological school at Antioch—Of great importance in an exegetical point of 
 Wiew——Dorofhes ἀπῇ LUCIA το... εν ες ἐν clelelel elsi e\sislelulsiale!elelsle) sie) letsl Valet ele 
 
 General conclusion in regard to this period .....sssccccccerescssererserenes é 
 
 ». 385 
 
 391 
 
 400 
 
 .. 403 
 
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 -- 586", 
 
 Ἔα 57, 
 — 108, 
 se 17: 
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 3 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 line 24, after And yet upon a more accurate investigation, add it appears. 
 
 11, instead of the influence of which, on their religious, &c. read the 
 influence of which was very great on their religious, &c. 
 
 18, for Basilidas, read Basilides. 
 
 — Eucratites, — Encratites, in the title to the section. 
 22, — Andaban, — Ardaban. 
 8 from bottom, for denied, read desired. 
 
 » — learning — leaning. 
 
 15 , in note, for Theodotion, read Theodotian. 
 
 16, for Hieropolis, read Hierapolis. 
 
 11, dele the comma after senses. 
 
 10 from bottom, for Heracles, read Heraclas. 
 
 6 , — Sakkas, — _ Saccas. 
 
 * For the correction of an error in p. 80. See Preface, under the word Erkenntniss, 
 
 pe XXili-ix. 
 
 The reader 18. requested to correct the errata marked *, as they materially affect the 
 sense of the passages to which they belong. 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 _CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND CHURCH, 
 
 DURING THE THREE FIRST CENTURIES. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, AS CONCEIVED AND DEVELOPED 
 UNDER THE FORM OF A SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES, 
 
 (1.) General Introductory Remarks. 
 
 CuRrisTIANITY showed itself in doctrines as well as in human 
 life to be no constraining, dead, and killing letter, but a spirit 
 developing itself freely, and promoting its own free develop- 
 ment,—a living spirit that made alive also. It was not given 
 to man as a compact, dogmatical system in one definite form, 
 which was to be propagated from the very beginning as some- 
 thing unchangeable in a lifeless channel of transmission, but the 
 One truth was to be developed in various forms, and manifold 
 relations, and applications, through the means of its first instru- 
 ments, so characteristically distinguished from each other, and 
 sanctified for the work; and particularly by the four pillars of 
 the Church, the apostles Paul and James, Peter and John, who 
 represent whole characteristic dispositions of human nature, when 
 enlightened by Christianity. It was left to the free conceptions 
 of each individual human spirit to recognise the oneness of 
 divine truth under the variety of human representation, and just 
 as each man felt himself more attracted by this or that form of 
 apostolic Christianity, according as his peculiar nature was more 
 akin to this or that disposition, and according as the peculiarities 
 VOL. II. B 
 
2 VIEWS OPPOSED TO IT. 
 of his nature and his individual education conducted him from 
 this or that side to Christianity, which may be approached from 
 so many different sides. It was left to each man also to appro- 
 priate Christianity to himself in his own individual mode, and 
 when once appropriated to exhibit it again in his own individual 
 mode in his spiritual life. In those first documents of the com- 
 munication of the grace of the Holy. Spirit the holy truths were 
 revealed in their simplicity and loftiness, and made capable of 
 a manifold lively application, but not set forth in a perfectly- 
 formed human system. System and organic unity lay in the 
 thing itself; there was the real inward unity and the inward 
 connexion of Christianity as One whole, in which all individual 
 parts develope themselves from one center-point, and are harmo- 
 niously interwoven together by means of one fundamental princi- 
 ple. Now this inward unity laid its foundations in the inward 
 life of men, together with Christianity itself, as soon as they had 
 received Christianity into their hearts by a lively faith; and yet 
 it was only by degrees that out of this inward unity Christianity 
 could develope itself as a systematic whole, in thought as well as 
 in all other branches of life, with clear and full perceptions and 
 consciousness. In relation to its spiritual, as well as to its moral 
 reception, it proved itself by its peculiar efficacy a leaven destined 
 by degrees to penetrate the whole mass of human life. This is 
 true, as well of the individual doctrines of Christianity as of the 
 whole religion itself. 
 
 As Christianity therefore, considered in the light of a whole, 
 could only by degrees, and with a constantly increasing clearness, 
 unfold itself in the spiritual conscience of the thinking man, as a 
 connected system, rejecting every thing foreign to its nature 
 which attempted from without to join itself with it; so also 
 it was only gradually that the full scope of the single doctrines 
 contained in this one whole could stand forth clearly and defi- 
 nitely in this same conscience. As in life, so in thought Chris- 
 tianity found a world already in existence, which was formed on 
 different principles, and in which it must first create a way for 
 itself by means of its overcoming and reforming spirit. As in 
 life, so in the regions of thought it was necessary for Christianity 
 to contend against the opposite dispositions which were then in 
 vogue, and which opposed it not only with open enmity, but by 
 partially stealing something of Christianity, and making it their 
 own threatened to mix themselves up with it. This was the 
 
EARLY SECTS. 3 
 
 more likely to happen then, because Christianity appeared in a pe- 
 riod so full of ferment and of expectation, and exercised a power 
 which attracted the opposite elements and dispositions of human 
 nature from so many different sides; and those peculiar disposi- 
 tions which were unable to resist the attractive power of Chris- 
 tianity were yet unwilling to give themselves up to it wholly, and 
 suffer their own deficiencies to be supplied by it, but they were 
 inclined to set up a Christianity of their own for themselves, and 
 capriciously to sever what in that religion is one and inseparable. 
 But still the opposition against these adulterated and partial con- 
 ceptions of Christianity and of Christian doctrines served well to 
 bring forward more clearly and definitely in the thinking con- 
 science the peculiar nature and inward unity of Christianity, and 
 the peculiar import and character of its several doctrines. 
 
 But since the development of the Christian scheme of doctrine 
 can only be fully understéod by means of its connection and its 
 contentions with these manifold oppositions to it, we shall find it 
 absolutely necessary previously to give these oppositions, as they 
 appear in the various Christian sects, a more accurate considera- 
 tion. 
 
 (2.) Lhe History of Sects. 
 
 THERE were two main divisions of the religious character; the 
 one a carnal spirit, that endeavoured to lower every thing to the 
 level of sense, and the other an exclusively spiritual disposition, 
 that spiritualized and refined every thing away too much ;—which 
 opposed Christianity from the very beginning, or threatened to 
 adulterate it by mixing themselves up with it’. The one party 
 rested wholly on the earthly appearance of the divine, and in it 
 overlooked the higher Spirit which animated it; the other thought 
 that they could grasp the overwhelming Spirit without the reality 
 of the appearance: the one would have in Christianity only the 
 human without the divine; the other only the divine without the 
 human. When first Christianity arose out of Judaism, it was 
 from Judaism that the first intermixture of these two dispositions 
 with it proceeded also. The first disposition was the most preva- 
 lent among the great mass of the Jewish people, and therefore 
 this came the first into contact with Christianity, and thence pro- 
 ceeded all those sects, which, mistaking the peculiar and charac- 
 
 1 Compare the Introduction to this work, vol. i. p. 54. 
 
 B2 
 
4 LATE. REJECTION OF THE LAW. 
 
 teristic difference between the law and the gospel, made out of 
 Christianity only a perfected Judaism, and which were unable to 
 comprehend and acknowledge what is thoroughly new in Chris- 
 tianity and its effects, as well as that by which Christ is distin- 
 guished from all the sages and saints of the Old Testament. 
 
 (a.) The Judaizing Sects. 
 
 Tue origin of these sects carries us back into the apostolic age. 
 Among those things of which Christ said that the apostles could 
 not yet understand them, and that they should first be revealed 
 to them by the illumination of the Spirit, one of the most pre- 
 eminent was that doctrine which is so intimately interwoven with 
 the nature of the gospel,—the doctrine of the foundation of the 
 kingdom of heaven in all mankind, only by faith in the Redeemer ; 
 from which the abrogation of the ceremonial law of Moses fol- 
 lowed as a matter of course. Even after the apostles, by the 
 illumination of the Holy Ghost, had attained to the right know- 
 ledge of the Redeemer, they were nevertheless not immediately 
 in clear possession of all the consequences which flow from this 
 doctrine in regard to the all-sufficiency of faith in Him, and the 
 needlessness of the Mosaic ceremonial law. Even when they 
 perceived that the preaching of the gospel was to reach the hea- 
 then also, and that they were to become fellow--partakers in the 
 kingdom of Christ, (as indeed many of the better spirits among 
 the Jews had already deduced this from the prophecies,) even 
 then they had no other notion than that the heathen, together 
 with the gospel, were to embrace the whole ceremonial law of 
 Moses. It was only when St. Peter, having been called to the 
 conversion of Cornelius, by means of a vision connected with this 
 eall, the meaning and object of which the Spirit of God had 
 taught him to understand, had been persuaded that God made no 
 difference between Jew and Gentile, and when he saw faith in 
 the gospel working with the same divine power among the hea- 
 then, that he became the man to stand up among the apostles at 
 Jerusalem as a witness to the truth which he now recognized; and 
 the apostles then, by the light of the Spirit, attained to a know- 
 ledge of that which hitherto had been sealed up to them in the 
 counsels of God in regard to man’s redemption. When St. Paul 
 afterwards was chosen out especially as the instrument of God for 
 
DIFFERENCE IN THE ΜΟΙ) OF TEACHING. ὃ 
 
 the preaching of the Gospel, what he calls the mystery of Christ, 
 into which he had received so deep an insight, was announced to 
 the rest of the apostles, as well as to himself (Ephes. iii. 4, 5.) ; 
 and here also no contest of principles could take place among 
 them, as is beautifully declared in the apostolic council at Je- 
 rusalem (Acts xv.). But the different spheres of operation chosen 
 by the apostles, introduced an outward difference in their mode 
 of proceeding. 
 
 Those apostles, whose exertions lay entirely among the Jews 
 in Palestine, themselves observed the ceremonial law, and left its 
 observance to be continued, for this was a matter of perfect indif- 
 ference, being only an outward thing, as long as the conscience 
 made no more of it, and as long as people did not profess to seek 
 justification and sanctification by it. But the fancy, that sanctifi- 
 cation might be found in ceremonial observances, could not be 
 destroyed by an outward attack, from simply throwing away the 
 ceremonial law at once; for what was founded on persuasion, 
 could only be removed by persuasion also. If the belief, that 
 sanctification and holiness can only be attained through the 
 grace of God in Christ, had once been able thoroughly to pene- 
 trate the consciences of mankind, ceremonies would have fallen 
 away of themselves. But if men were persuaded over-hastily to 
 throw them away, many weak-minded people might be led away 
 to do things which their consciences might reproach them for,— 
 and others, who might have been won to the Gospel by degrees; 
 had they only been able to join it outwardly at first, would then 
 be wholly inclined to reject it from the very beginning. ‘This 
 was always the plan pursued by a pure evangelic spirit, not to 
 begin with an outward amendment, but to suffer only the tmward 
 power of truth to effect every thing itself, working from within 
 to things without. 
 
 The case of St. Paul, whose sphere of exertion lay among the 
 heathen, was different. Among them, the connection of Christ- 
 ianity with the ceremonial law would only increase, to the utmost 
 degree, the difficulty of its propagation ; because the prevailing 
 peculiarities of the heathen people were so strongly opposed to 
 that law. The only thing which could possibly have brought 
 them to submit to a yoke so burthensome to their peculiar habits, 
 and to make so great a sacrifice, would have been the persuasion, 
 that their justification and salvation depended upon it ; and to in- 
 troduce or to further such a persuasion, would have been nothing 
 
0 JEWISH AND HEATHEN CHRISTIANS. 
 
 else than untlermining in them the whole foundation of the Christ- 
 ian religion, and giving them a Jewish-Christian ceremonial wor- 
 ship, instead of the living faith of Christianity. Therefore, the 
 apostle St. Paul—the very same person whose principle it was to 
 become to the Jews a Jew, in order to win the Jews to Christ- 
 ianity—was obliged so expressly to oppose himself, as a defender 
 of Christian freedom, to the Judaizing teachers, who wished to 
 force the Jewish ceremonial law on the acceptance of the Churches 
 formed from heathen converts also. 
 
 The Churches, which consisted entirely of Jews, who, in their 
 Christian faith, still lived entirely as Jews, must have formed a 
 striking contrast to the Churches formed from heathen converts, 
 in whom the pure spiritual character of the Christian worship was 
 the most prominent feature, and among whom religion was con- 
 nected with no outward ceremonies whatever. But the commu- 
 nion of faith and love was not to be broken in consequence of all 
 these differences in the outward circumstances and form of life ; 
 Christians of both descents and classes were to look upon each 
 other as brethren. Those who had attained to the full ripeness 
 of Christian knowledge, to τελειότης ἐν Xptory, were to bear with 
 those, who were not as far advanced, in a spirit of love and ten- 
 derness, in the hope that God would reveal to those also in his 
 own time, those views in which they were deficient, if only all 
 would endeavour to apply faithfully to the purposes of a Christian 
 life the measure of knowledge, which was vouchsafed to them. 
 Phil. iii. 15. 
 
 The knowledge of many of the Jewish Christians was deficient 
 also in regard to other things, besides the importance of the ce- 
 remonial law. Their limited and narrow-minded representations 
 of the nature of Christianity, and their limited views as to the 
 person of Christ himself, served admirably to go hand in hand. 
 As in their opinion the difference between the Gospel and the 
 law was only a difference of degree, they could also perceive be- 
 tween what Christ was, and what Moses and the Prophets were, 
 only a difference of degree. ‘They knew, therefore, in this point of 
 view, the Messiah more after the flesh than after the Spirit: they 
 knew him rather as the Son of David, than as the Son of God. 
 And yet, in the first place, the belief in Jesus as the Messiah was 
 to be a point of union for all, even amidst all other differences in 
 their measure of Christian knowledge, and in their other reli- 
 gious opinions ; and from this one point all further development 
 
 19 
 
THEIR CHARACTERISTIC DIFFERENCES. 4 
 
 of Christian knowledge was to proceed. The apostles left it to 
 the guidance of the Spirit, to lead all men from this one point to 
 the unity of the faith, and knowledge of the Son of God. 
 
 But, although the apostles agreed in their principles, as to 
 the relation of Christianity to Judaism ; although the apostles in 
 Palestine and St. Paul recognized each other mutually, as inde- 
 pendent fellow-labourers in the same work, this their agreement 
 was, nevertheless, not acknowledged by all, who called themselves 
 their disciples. ‘There were Jewish-Christians, who were not con- 
 tent with having toleration and tenderness shown to their narrow- 
 minded notions, but who wished to force those notions on all 
 others, and persecuted every freer evangelical spirit with blind 
 zeal. ‘These men maintained most strictly, that no person could 
 have an equal share with the Jews in the blessings of the Mes- 
 siah’s kingdom, unless he received the Mosaic law in all its ex- 
 tent: and these were the people who endeavoured to destroy the 
 foundation of Christianity, laid by St. Paul in the Churches of 
 the heathen converts, and to introduce, instead of it, doctrines 
 which savoured more of Judaism than of Christianity. They would 
 not, therefore, acknowledge St. Paul, who opposed their influence 
 so strongly, for an apostle. In their opinion, those only were apos- 
 tles whom Jesus himself had instructed during his life on earth, 
 and had placed in their apostolic calling. St. Peter and St James ! 
 were the pillars of the Church, to which they more particularly 
 appealed, although they did not act in accordance with the spirit 
 or the notions of those apostles. Hence there arose a pseudo- 
 Petrian and a pseudo-Jacobite party of Jewish Christians. It 
 was natural enough that the spirit of opposition on one side should 
 call forth a similar spirit on the other; and a party of zealots 
 among the heathen converts, who prided themselves most haugh- 
 tily on their freedom, as Christians, opposed themselves to these 
 narrow-minded Jewish-Christians, and would not allow the ob- 
 servers of the ceremonial law to be reckoned by any means as 
 genuine Christians: these people vaunted their freer Gnosis, and 
 by their contempt of the Jewish people, and by their exaggera- 
 tion of the contrast laid down by St. Paul, between the law and 
 the Gospel, they were in danger of being seduced into despising 
 the Old Testament itself. They would acknowledge Christianity 
 
 1 The James, who is known under the name of the brother of the Lord, probably 
 the apostle, the son of Alpheus or Cleophas; being the relation of Jesus by blood. 
 He was also called bis brother by an use of the word in an extended sense. 
 
8 FOUR SECTS.—JUSTIN MARTYR. 
 
 only in the mode in which it was represented by St. Paul, and 
 St. Paul was to be their only apostle. He, however, would 
 acknowledge only one Christ for all, and only one Church of 
 Christians sanctified by Him, and calling on their common Lord ; 
 and he would know nothing of Paul’s party, and Peter’s party. 
 But still, where the genuine evangelical spirit and the power of 
 love did not quench these differences, it was necessarily the case, 
 that this opposition should be developed still more distinctly as 
 time went on. 
 
 In the first half of the second century we find again the four 
 parties, which had formed themselves in the apostolic age. 
 
 1. The Jewish zealots—the pseudo-Petrians. 
 
 2. The more moderate, and genuine evangelical Jewish Christ- 
 ians. 
 
 3. The zealots among the heathen converts—the pseudo-Paul- 
 ine Christians. 
 
 4. The more moderate and genuine apostolic heathen Christ- 
 jans. 
 
 Among these latter was Justin Martyr. He says in his Dia- 
 logue with Trypho’, “ There are persons who will have no inter- 
 course with those who observe the ceremonial law, and will not 
 share the hearth with them, and say that they cannot be saved. 
 I do not agree with these persons; but if the others, from weak- 
 ness of persuasion, wish to observe as far as they can, even those 
 laws of Moses, which we think were given on account of the 
 hardness of man’s heart; if they will only, at the same time, rest 
 their hope on Christ, and do that which is lawful and holy by its 
 own nature, and by eternal laws, and have no hesitation in living 
 with other Christians, without endeavouring to compel them also 
 to the observance of these things, then we say, that such persons 
 are to be looked upon as our brethren in all respects. But if 
 those from among your people (the Jews) who say that they be- 
 lieve in Christ, compel those of the heathens, who embrace the 
 faith in this same Christ, to live entirely according to the law 
 laid down by Moses, or else decline all intercourse with them, 
 then I cannot approve of such persons at all. And yet I believe, 
 that perhaps those who follow them in the observance of the 
 ceremonial law, if they believe in Christ at the same time, will be 
 saved.” 
 
 1 Ed. Colon. p. 200. [P. 137. Ed. Jebb. P. 266. Ed. Paris.) 
 
ALIA CAPITOLINA, 9 
 
 The Church of Jerusalem, which must have been induced by 
 the Jewish war to take refuge in Pella beyond the Jordan’, from 
 its origin till the first half of the second century, consisted en- 
 tirely of Christians of Jewish descent, who therefore unitedly 
 continued in the observance of the ceremonial law. By means 
 of this outward bond they were all united together, whatever 
 differences besides might be found in their opinions on doctrinal 
 points and their religious dispositions. It was a peculiar cirecum- 
 stance of an outward nature which first caused a separation 
 amongst them. In fact, when Hadrian was induced by the rebel- 
 lion of the Jews under Barchochab to prohibit them entirely 
 from setting foot on the earth and the neighbourhood of Jerusa- 
 lem, since they generally drew upon themselves the jealousy of 
 the Roman governors, it was natural enough that the Christian 
 Church, which apparently had returned back to Jerusalem in 
 this interval’, should wish to escape being confounded with the 
 Jews. ‘Those, therefore, who were restrained by religious scru- 
 ples from doing what might enable them to attain this object, 
 were obliged to separate themselves from the rest. The others 
 joined themselves with Christians of heathen descent, and formed 
 with them a Church in the heathen colony, A‘lia Capitolina, 
 which had arisen on the site of old Jerusalem, and in this Church 
 the ceremonial law was entirely abandoned ἧ. 
 
 We often find it the case in the history of sects, that people 
 describe under one common name sects which are really different, 
 but agree with one another in some points, without remarking the 
 points of difference between them, so that they attribute to all 
 these sects what may justly be said only of one or other of them. 
 This was the case here also; from the time of Irenzus all those 
 Christians of Jewish descent, who considered it necessary to con- 
 tinue in the observance of the ceremonial law, were designated 
 by the common name of the sect of the Esionrres. In regard 
 to the derivation of the name, Tertullian is the first who makes 
 mention of a founder named Ebion, and others have followed 
 him in this account. Better informed writers, such as Irenzeus 
 and Origen, know of no such person; and it is clear that the 
 
 1 Euseb. iii. 5. * Epiphanius de mensuris et ponderibus, ec. 15. 
 
 3 See Euseb. iv. 6., and the remarkable words of Sulpicius Severus, after he has 
 quoted that prohibition of Hadrian; Hist. Sacr. ii. 31. “Quod quidem Christians 
 fidei proficiebat, quia tum pcene omnes Christum Deum sub legis observatione cre- 
 debant.” 
 
10 EBIONITES.—ORIGIN OF THE NAME. 
 
 invention of such a person only arose from the not understanding 
 the name of Ebionite. Origen gives us the proper derivation of 
 the term, namely, from the Hebrew }38 (Ebion) poor; but the 
 meaning which we find attributed to the word by him, that is to 
 say, as containing a reference to the poverty of their religious 
 conceptions and of their faith’, cannot possibly be the original 
 meaning of the term, for they themselves gave their own sect 
 this name, and they clearly would not have set themselves a 
 name which would be a reproach to them. But even if we grant 
 that this name was given them by others, and by such as were of 
 sentiments hostile to their sect, who were the persons who would 
 have branded them with this name understood in this sense ? 
 Could it be Christians of heathen descent ? These might, indeed, 
 have applied the name to them in ¢his very signification ; but then 
 we can hardly imagine that they would have chosen an Hebrew 
 name. Or was it the Jews, who were angry at Christianity in 
 general? This might be possible, if we modify in some degree 
 the notion of poverty of thoughi, after the idea of a very acute 
 enquirer, who has recently distinguished himself in this walk of 
 knowledge *, and if, putting the word into the mouth of those 
 Jews who expected a Messiah to come in visible glory, we imagine 
 them to designate by this name the faith in a poor and crucified 
 Messiah. And yet this meaning, taken by itself, does not appear 
 to be the simplest nor the most natural; for even this learned 
 writer himself connects this meaning with one we are about to 
 mention. If we follow the interpretation of the name which we 
 find in the later Ebionites of Epiphanius, it originally denoted a 
 class of poor men. ‘This may have been applied to them either 
 as consisting of poor persons of the lower orders, whom none of 
 the rich and the learned had joined (see John vii. 49.), a reproach 
 
 1 Origen, t. xvi.; Matt. xii. Tp ἐβιωνείῳ και πτωχευοντι περι THY εἰς Ἰησουν 
 πιστιν. Origen can hardly mean in this place to give an etymological explanation ; 
 but he is only making an allusion in his own way to the meaning of the word. 
 However, in the book c. Celsum, ii. c. 1. he says expressly, ἐπώνυμοι τῆς κατα τὴν 
 txOoxny FTW XELAC TOU νομου. 
 
 {In Neander’s earlier work, Genetische Entwickelung der Vornehmsten Gnos- 
 tischen Systeme, Berlin, 1818, there is a long appendix on the subject of the Pseu- 
 do-Clementine Homilies, and on the Ebionites. In Burton’s Bampton Lectures, 
 note 80, the authorities may be found by whom the existence and the non-existence 
 of Ebion are respectively supported. Matter, Hist. du Gnosticisme, vol. ii. p. 320, 
 says, that ‘at least it is certain there was no such founder of a sect as Ebion.’’ H. R.] 
 
 2 Dr. Gieseler, in Staiidlin and Tzschirner’s Archive for Ancient and Modern 
 Ecclesiastical History. 1V. Band. Second Part, p. 307. 
 
EBIONITES.—ORIGIN OF THE NAME. 1 
 
 which the heathens made to the Christians ', and which the proud 
 and the wise in their own opinion have constantly made to the 
 disciples of simple truth; or they may have been persons who 
 had voluntarily renounced all earthly property, and voluntarily 
 given up all their earth’s wealth, in order that they might devote 
 their whole life to Divine things; and in this case we should be 
 reminded of a similar name in the case of later sects*. The lat- 
 ter idea corresponds the most nearly with the explanation given 
 by the later Ebionites themselves in Epiphanius; for they ap- 
 pealed to the conduct of their ancestors in laying down all their 
 goods at the feet of the apostles. In truth, however, this is no 
 decisive proof, for we may certainly imagine it possible that these 
 later Ebionites had introduced a meaning into the term which 
 was foreign to its original sense. According to either of these 
 explanations this appellation may have been originally a general 
 name of the Christians in Jerusalem, or it may have been from 
 the very beginning the name of a certain ascetic sect among the 
 Jewish Christians, which the Church teachers afterwards extended 
 by mistake to all Judaizing Christians. Such an appellation, in 
 such a sense, suits admirably the spirit of the ascetic Ebionites, 
 who paint themselves to us in the apocryphal book called the 
 Clementines*; for in that book, according to the contrast be- 
 tween the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, which they 
 misunderstood, (as if the whole earthly world, not merely in 
 regard to its sinful misuse, but of itself and by its very nature, 
 necessarily belonged to Satan); in this book we find it required 
 of those who wish to belong to the kingdom of God, that they 
 should renounce as far as possible all possessions in a world which 
 was none of theirs, but which belonged to Satan; that they 
 should possess nothing but what was absolutely necessary to their 
 bare subsistence, that they should only possess bread, water, and 
 one garb, and even these necessaries of life they should obtain 
 by the sweat of their brow ἡ. 
 
 1 See Vol. i. p. 62. 
 
 * Humiliati, pauperes de Lugduno. 
 
 3 [In Neander’s Genetische Entwickelung, &c. he says, p. 367, “although all the 
 opinions which the first Fathers, who have given us but very scanty notices of the 
 Ebionites, attributed to them, are not to be found in him (the author of the Cle- 
 mentines), yet he belongs far more to this class of Judaizing Christians than to the 
 class of the Nazarenes.’’ He therefore considers the work written by a man of Ebio- 
 nitish views. See also Matter, Hist. du Gnosticisme, vol. ii. p. 329. H. R.] 
 
 4 Clementin. Homil. 15. c. 7, 8, 9. 
 
12 CLASSIFICATION OF EBIONITES.—ALTOGETHER JUDAIZERS. 
 
 Many among these Judaizing Christians had brought their car- 
 nal Jewish habits of thought with them into Christianity, and 
 they had thus only applied the common Jewish representation of 
 the Messiah to Jesus. According to this representation they 
 considered him a man, like other men, who had been chosen as 
 Messiah by a peculiar decree of God’s counsel, solemnly dedi- 
 cated to this office by Elias, that is, according to their notions, by 
 John who represented Elias, and at this moment had been fur- 
 nished with the Divine power requisite for the accomplishment 
 of his office. This was the only class of Ebionites known to Ire- 
 neeus, and they appear to us as the offspring of those old Jewish 
 opponents of St. Paul. Like them, these Ebionites considered 
 circumcision as an indispensable condition to a perfect participa- 
 tion in the kingdom of God: the earthly Jerusalem was still to 
 them the true city of God, and they abused St. Paul as an apos- 
 tate from the law’. 
 
 The mild manner in which Justin Martyr speaks of these opi- 
 nions of the Ebionites on the person of Jesus’, is worthy of ob- 
 servation :—‘** There are some,” he says, “ of our people, who 
 acknowledge him to be the Messiah, and yet consider him a man, 
 born of men; with whom I do not agree: and the greater number 
 also, being of my opinion, do not say this; for we are commanded 
 by Christ not to follow the doctrines of men, but to hold that 
 which has been proclaimed by the holy prophets, and taught by 
 him *.” Thus Origen‘ sees in the Ebionites weaker brethren, who 
 
 1 Treneus, i. 26. and alibi. I am no longer so strongly of the opinion, that the 
 difficult passage, “Que autem sunt prophetica, curiosius exponere nituntur,” is to 
 be understood after the ideas of the Clementine, of a too subtile investigation into 
 the meaning of true prophecies, as I endeavoured to show in my book on the Gnos- 
 tics, p. 391; for only the common sort of Ebionites, whose notions were entirely 
 those of carnal-minded Jews, appear to have been known to Irenzus; and the idea 
 brought forward in the Clementine, of true and false prophecies, would be quite 
 foreign to their spirit. We can say nothing more than that Ireneus found himself 
 at a loss among interpretations of the prophets after the Jewish Rabbinic method, 
 which were in vogue among the Ebionites, but entirely at variance with the usual 
 Christian methods of interpretation, and therefore that he took occasion to accuse 
 them as hypercritical subtilties. 
 
 * It is at least probable, although not certain, that he had the Ebionites here in 
 his thoughts ; but notwithstanding, they are not mentioned by him at all as a pecu- 
 liar sect. The reading ἀπὸ rou ἡμετερου γενους, does not, therefore, appear to me 
 suspicious. Not only the authority of manuscripts, but the antithesis to the phrase, 
 Tov γένους ὑμων, which precedes, appears to support this reading. 
 
 * Dial. ο. Tryphon. Jud. ὃ 48. [P. 142. Ed. Jebb: p. 267, Ed. Par.] 
 
 4 Matt. t. xvi. c. 12. 
 
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEM. 13 
 
 did not reject Christ, who was their Messiah, and to whom they 
 looked for all assistance ; although they recognized in him only 
 the Son of David, and not the Son of God. He gives a very 
 pretty allegorical turn to the account of the blind man in Mark 
 x. 46: he makes the blind man, who calls on Jesus, an Ebionite, 
 and the multitudes around, who commanded him to hold his peace, 
 believers from among the heathen converts, who generally held 
 the more exalted notions in regard to the person of the Messiah ; 
 and he then continues thus: “ But although the multitudes com- 
 - manded him to be silent, yet he cried the more, because he be- 
 lieved in Jesus, although his faith was of an human kind’; and 
 he cried out aloud, and said to him, ¢ Son of David! have merey 
 on me.” 
 
 How different would many things have been, if men, in this spirit 
 of love and freedom, had always allowed the grace of the Redeemer 
 to fall on all who call upon him ! if they had always taken into their 
 account the various stages in the Christian progress up to the ripe- 
 ness of manhood in the faith, and had not wished to force different 
 spirits all at once into the same measure and degrees! But even 
 Origen considered the Ebionites as heretics against St. Paul, and 
 as persons who were but little different from Jews ἡ. 
 
 Irenzeus judged all Ebionites together by those, of whom he had 
 heard, and attributed to all the same ideas with regard to the 
 person of Jesus. On the contrary, Origen, a man of more accu- 
 rate investigation, who had been in Palestine himself, distin- 
 guishes the Ebionites into two classes; of which one denied the 
 miraculous birth of Jesus, and the other admitted it®. We may 
 see from this difference having been overlooked by earlier writers, 
 how easy it was to overlook the differences in opinion between 
 different branches of the same party. It is not unlikely that those 
 who acknowledged the supernatural operations of the Divine 
 Spirit at the birth of Jesus, and considered his birth as a miracle 
 which stood forth from the chain of usual human events, sup- 
 posed also a certain original union of God or of the Divine 
 Spirit, with the human nature of Jesus,—and then they would 
 already have retreated farther from the opinions of the narrow- 
 minded Jews, and more nearly approached those of the Christ- 
 
 1 Πιστευων μεν ἐπι τον Inoovy, ἀνθρωπικωτερον δὲ πιστευων. 
 
 2. Jerem. Homil. xviii. c. 12, Τυπτουσι τὸν ἀποστολον Ἴησου Χριστοῦ λογοις 
 δυσφημοις. Matt. t. xi. 5.12, ᾿Ολιγῳ διαφεροντες των ᾿Ιουδαιων, 
 
 3 Origen ο. Celsum, vy. c. 61. 
 
14 : THEIR CHRISTOLOGY. 
 
 ians, because they did not make the peculiar operation of the 
 Divine Spirit on the man Jesus begin all at once, at one definite 
 moment of his life; namely, the season of his consecration to the 
 office of Messiah, by John; but instead of isolating the human 
 nature of Christ, they allowed that it developed itself from the 
 very beginning, in union with God; and from the very begin- 
 ning they made a very essential difference between Christ and 
 the other organs of God among men. 
 
 In the representation of the Ebionites given by Epiphanius *, 
 we actually find some, who believed in the higher nature of the 
 Messiah, and busied themselves in speculations upon it. One 
 party of them recognized in the appearance of Jesus, from the 
 very beginning, a spirit of an higher kind, which could not pro- 
 ceed from the chain of the natural progress and development of 
 human nature ;—that pure outpouring of the Divine Spirit (the 
 original form of human nature) which first existed in the person 
 of Adam, and then again appeared on earth, at various times, as 
 the renovator of fallen humanity; until at last it returned in the 
 person of the Messiah, in order to bring all his children to him- 
 self, and to raise them with himself to the eternal kingdom, where 
 he will repose with them for ever from all his wanderings, and all 
 his cares. This is the same doctrine which is found in the apo- 
 eryphal book of the Clementines, from which we have been able 
 in this representation, to fill up the account of Epiphanius. The 
 others adopted the common Jewish idea, that Jesus was first in- 
 vested with Divine powers, while yet merely a man, only at his 
 solemn consecration to the office of Messiah. But, instead of the 
 indefinite notion of Divine power, they imagined a Spirit ele- 
 vated above all angels, the highest representative of God; and, 
 according to them, this was the real heavenly Messiah*, who 
 united himself with the man Jesus, as his instrument, at his bap- 
 tism, and effected every thing through him. 
 
 It may be said, that we cannot judge of those older Ebionites by 
 the Ebionites of the fourth century, mentioned in Epiphanius, for 
 these latter may have appropriated to themselves, in later times, 
 notions quite foreign to their original dispositions, by intercourse 
 with many other theosophico-ascetic sects: but then these notions 
 bear completely the stamp of a far more ancient Jewish theo- 
 sophy ; and their agreement with the ideas of the Clementine be- 
 
 1 Heres . 2" 
 Heres. 30. 2 Ὃ ἀγὼ Χριστος. 
 
THE CLEMENTINE.—EPIPHANIUS. 15 
 
 speaks a higher antiquity ; for the Clementine, at least in its 
 ground-work, certainly cannot come to us from a later period 
 than the second century. Nor can we be surprised at finding 
 theosophico-ascetic dispositions among the Judaizing Christians; 
 for there were many sects of that kind among the Jews, who 
 united a certain attachment to the ceremonial law with these dis- 
 positions, and many of whom would be attracted by Christianity 
 in some one point of view, without being able to receive it quite 
 pure, and by itself, and would therefore endeavour to amalgamate 
 it with their earlier habits of thought. And although we usually 
 find St. Paul engaged in controversy with Jews, of entirely gross 
 and carnal habits of thought, which were only directed to earthly 
 views, yet, in the Epistle to the Colossians, his adversaries are 
 those Judaizing and false teachers, who united a theosophico- 
 ascetic disposition with a certain attachment to the ceremonial 
 law ; and they are as different from his other usual antagonists, as 
 those Ebionites of Epiphanius, to whom the author of the Cle- 
 mentine belonged, were from those usually called bionites, 
 which was the only party known under that name to the older 
 Fathers of the Church. We recognize here one peculiar family 
 of the Judaizing Christians; the seed of which, as well as of the 
 common sort of Ebionites, is to be sought :n the apostolic age’. 
 If we compare the Clementine with the accounts in Ephesians, 
 the example of this sect will make it very clear, how people of 
 this kind might have so inward a feeling of religion in one point 
 of view, while in another they adhered so closely to its outward 
 things: on the one hand might prize so highly an authority given 
 by God, while on the other they subjected it so capriciously to 
 the theosophic system established in their schools, and separated at 
 the dictates of their own will, whatever did not suit their ideas. 
 They supposed a simple original religion, which that first pure 
 man, who received the immediate outpouring of the Divine Spirit 
 in his heart, and learnt from it all divine truth, had in the first 
 
 1 Only Methodius, who lived at the end of the third and the beginning of the 
 fourth century, appears to have known them, when he says of them (Symposion De- 
 cem Virgin. Bibliothec. Grecor. Patr. auctor. noviss. T. i. Paris, 1672. fol. 113.) 
 that they had denied the inspiration of the Holy Ghost in the Prophets, and main- 
 tained that they wrote only ἐξ idvac κινησεως; and although we cannot here with 
 certainty recognize the whole of the Clementine notion of prophecy, it is at least 
 certain, that he speaks of persons, who, unlike the usual Jews of a Pharisaic cast, 
 very much lowered the authority of the Prophets, and would not acknowledge their 
 writings to be inspired in the same degree as the Pentateuch. 
 
10 CHRISTIANITY A REVIVAL. 
 
 instance delivered to his children. This religion was to be always 
 propagated pure and unmixed, by means of oral transmission ; it 
 did not however maintain its purity, but was constantly adul- 
 terated more and more by the interspersion of the evil principle. 
 Many new institutions, proceeding from God, were therefore 
 needed to purify the original religion from these adulterations. 
 Moses was one of the restorers of this original religion; it was 
 to be spread by oral delivery, and thus it was also to be con- 
 stantly propagated among a number of initiated people. But 
 when the revelations of God imparted by Moses were set down 
 in Scripture, many errors mixed themselves up with it, being 
 strewn among them by the evil principle, as God permitted, in 
 order to try in mankind their sense of divine things, and their 
 love to God, by their separation of the truth from falsehood, and 
 their rejection of every thing which opposed the pure idea of 
 God. (Under this head were reckoned every passage in which 
 God lets himself down to the notions of humanity in order to 
 instruct mankind, and is represented after an anthopopathical 
 manner’, as well as all that related to the sacrifice of victims.) 
 But the mass of carnal-minded Jews did not know how to dis- 
 tinguish the original Mosaism from these adulterating additions. 
 And then that pure outpouring of the Spirit of God, the Fore- 
 father of the human race, out of love to his children scattered 
 over the whole earth, was impelled to appear again on earth in 
 the person of Jesus, in order to purify the original religion from 
 the additions which deformed it. He himself points out this 
 object of his appearance, when he says, Matt. v. 17, ‘* Ye must 
 not imagine that I am come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it *.” 
 That which he destroyed cannot belong to that which he call 
 the law, cannot belong to that original religion *. He appeared 
 
 1 Although in the author of the Clementine a lively eastern power of imagination 
 prevailed too strongly over the powers of conception, to allow him to form to himself 
 a pure spiritual idea of God, he himself looked on God as an higher Being, of radiant 
 appearance in an human form. [ Ein hdheres Lichtwesen in menschlicher 
 gestalt.” GrErm. | 
 
 [The word I have translated powers of conception is “ begriffsvermogen.’’ It 
 must be remembered that Begriff. means an abstract idea. See the Preface. H. R.] 
 
 * The words rove προφητας are here capriciously left out, because this sect did 
 not acknowledge the Divine illumination of the prophets, and saw in them, in fact 
 only the propagators of many errors—as, for instance, of the error of an earthly 
 political kingdom of the Messiah. 
 
 3. Clementin. Homil. 111. 51. 
 
PURE MOSAISM ONE WITH THE GOSPEL. 17 
 
 particularly for the purpose also of extending his blessings over 
 the rest of his children, the heathen, of imparting that original 
 religion also to them, which had been always propagated among 
 the initiated. The doctrine of Christ is, therefore, entirely one 
 with the pure original Mosaism. The Jewish Mystic, an Essene, 
 or something of the same kind, converted to Christianity, did not 
 need to receive any new doctrines; the doctrine of Christ was to 
 him only a ratification of his earlier theory of religion, and he 
 was only delighted to find that the secret doctrines had been 
 made known for the common good of all mankind, which he had 
 never before thought possible. He saw in Jesus a new appear- 
 ance of that Adam whom he had always honoured as the source 
 of all that is true and Divine in human nature. Only a father 
 could love his children as Jesus loved mankind: ‘ But what gave 
 him most sorrow was, that he was opposed from ignorance by 
 those for whom he was struggling, as for his own children, and 
 yet he loved those who hated him,—and yet he wept over their 
 disobedience,—and yet he blessed them that blasphemed him,— 
 and yet he prayed for his enemies ; and all this he did, not only 
 as a father himself, but he taught his disciples also to conduct 
 themselves towards other men as their brethren ’*.” 
 
 The following conclusion would be deduced from this: one and 
 the same original religion is in pure Mosaism, and in Christianity : 
 he who has the former can dispense with the latter, and he who has 
 the latter can very well dispense with the former; at least if the 
 Jew will not blaspheme Christ, whom he knows not, nor the 
 Christian Moses, whom he also knows not. ‘The doctrine is 
 given by God, and man has received it without any of his own 
 co-operation, and all depends on this, whether the Jew practises 
 what Moses commands, and the Christian what Christ appoints. 
 Christianity is also here (in this system) only the doctrine of 
 another Jaw; the author of the Clementine, like many other 
 ascetics and mystics, had experienced nothing of the opposition 
 between this law of God and the law of sin in human nature, 
 —of the gulf between the acknowledgment of this law, and the 
 loving and perfecting it,—or of the difference between the letter 
 that kills, and the Spirit that makes alive ; and therefore he was 
 unable to recognise the real difference between Mosaism (of 
 
 1 Ta ἀπ’ aiwvoc ἐν κρυπτῳ ἀξιοις παραδιδομενα κηρυσσων. 
 2 Homil. iii, 19. 
 VOL. II; Gc 
 
18 CHRISTIANITY A NEW EXCITEMENT.—THE NAZARENES. 
 
 which he had formed an entirely arbitrary notion) and Christian- 
 ity—that is to say, the real, peculiar, fundamental nature of 
 Christianity. He says, in fact, ‘ There would have been no 
 need for the appearance, either of Moses or of Christ, if men 
 would have chosen to acknowledge what is right of themselves '.” 
 Which means, ‘if they would have suffered themselves to be 
 brought to a proper understanding of the original religion, by 
 means of that part of their own nature which is akin to the 
 Divine.’ 
 
 He perverts in a remarkable manner those glorious words of 
 Christ, Matt. xi. 25, which require child-like resignation and 
 simplicity °. He finds nothing in this passage more than that 
 God had hidden the Divine Teacher, Jesus, from the wise among 
 the Jews, who knew already from Moses what they had to do, as 
 he had, on the contrary, revealed him to the heathen, who did 
 not yet know, how they ought to live *. 
 
 In the Clementine a certain asceticism is recommended, and yet 
 at the same time the holiness of the marriage state is maintained, 
 and to mislead mankind to celibacy is represented as the mark of 
 a false prophet. Now this appears as a characteristic mark of the 
 Ebionites also in Epiphanius, and the comparison of these two 
 accounts shows that this disposition in the Ebionites did not arise 
 afterwards out of opposition to the monkery of the predominant 
 Church, but that we are to recognize the original Hebraism in it, 
 and therefore it may have been a trait common to the different 
 Ebionitish sects. Traces of the enmity of the Judaizing parties 
 to celibacy are to be found as early as the time of St. Paul. See 
 his first Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. vii. 
 
 In these Clementine Ebionites there are also symptoms of a 
 Judaizing sect, which, although it could only consider the apostle 
 St. Paul, who opposed so strongly their doctrine of the identity 
 of Mosaism and Christianity, and other ideas peculiar to them- 
 selves, only in the light of a perverter of the doctrine of Christ, 
 was yet mildly disposed towards the heathen, and by no means 
 wished to force the ceremonial law upon them. In Jerome, 
 on the contrary, under the name of Nazarene (the original name 
 
 1 Hom. viii. 6. Eizrep ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτων ro εὐλογον νοεῖν ἐβουλοντο. 
 
 ? As we usually find in the Apocryphal Gospels, he certainly robs these words in 
 some degree of their simplicity, because he quotes the words codwy with the addi- 
 tion of πρεσβυτερων. To νηπίοις he adds θηλαζουσιν. 
 
 3 Hom. viii. 6. 
 
 12 
 
 ~ 
 
THE NAZARENES.—JUDAISM AND GNOSTICISM. 19 
 
 given to all Christians by the Jews, see Acts xxiv. 5.) we find 
 the descendants of those Jewish Christians of a genuine evan-~ 
 gelic disposition, who would not allow the existence of any con- 
 tradiction between the apostles, the same people, of whom we 
 found the last trace in Justin Martyr (see above). ‘They point- 
 edly combated the regulations and the ceremonial worship of the 
 Pharisees; and while they themselves observed the ceremonial 
 law, they did not force it on the heathen. ‘They acknowledged 
 the apostle Paul as a teacher of Divine wisdom, whom God had 
 peculiarly chosen for his instrument, for the purpose of bringing 
 the tidings of salvation to the heathen nations. They lamented 
 the unbelief of their own people, and longed for the time when 
 they also should be converted to the Lord, whom they had cruci- 
 fied, and renounce all their idols. ‘Then nothing would be done 
 by the power of man, but every thing which Satan set up in 
 opposition to the kingdom of God, would fall down by the power 
 of God, and all who had hitherto pleased themselves, in the fancy 
 of their own wisdom, would be converted to the Lord. They 
 thought that they found this promise in the prophecies of Isaiah 
 (xxxi. 7, 8). The conclusion which we are entitled to draw 
 clearly from all this is, that from the very times of the apostles 
 various sorts of Jewish Christians spread themselves abroad, 
 which people have been led into confusion with each other by the 
 common names which were given to them. 
 
 (b.) The Sects which arose from the mixture of the oriental Theo- 
 sophy with Christianity. 
 
 1. Lhe Gnostic Sects. 
 
 (a.) General remarks on their origin, character, and differences. 
 
 We pass from the Judaizing sects to the Gnostics, who, pro- 
 ceeding from one common stock with the former, developed them- 
 selves afterwards in a manner which set the two parties into a 
 constantly increasing opposition. If we contemplate the charac- 
 teristics of both dispositions pushed to the extreme, we cannot 
 conceive a stronger opposition than that between the narrow and 
 carnal disposition of Judaism, which cleaves to outward things, 
 
 ! Hieronymi commentar. in Iesaiam. ed. Martianay, t. iii. p. 79. 83. 250. 261. 
 
 Cro 
 
920 ΓΝΩΣΙΣ.---ΗΟ FAR CHRISTIAN. 
 
 and comprehends every thing only after the senses,—and the 
 spirit of Gnosticism, which gives itself up to unbridled licence 
 in its speculations on Divine matters, despising the letter, ideal- 
 izing every thing, and striving to reach beyond the limits of 
 earthly existence and the material world; and yet, just as one is 
 often led to observe, that dispositions, which in our conceptions 
 are widely opposed, really are connected together in the outward 
 world! by various means, and unite together by many points of 
 communication, so the following considerations will verify such 
 an observation in regard to this very difference. 
 
 At the time of the first propagation of Christianity, the name 
 γνωσις (gnosis, knowledge], in the widely-extended phraseology 
 of the Jewish divines of Alexandria, denoted a deeper insight 
 into the nature and the inward connection of the various doctrines 
 of religion. As far as the word denotes only this general idea, 
 it might be used in regard to Christianity, without prejudice to 
 the peculiar nature of Christian faith. Nay, even here, in eon- 
 junction with other charismata more immediately connected with 
 what is practical, there might be a charisma of Gnosis, which, 
 setting out from its own peculiar position, might exert a general 
 and beneficial effect on the development of the Christian life ; 
 and, in fact, St. Paul mentions such a thing in the first Epistle 
 to the Corinthians. Thus the name Gnosis, in the Epistle 
 ascribed to Barnabas, betokens that deep insight into the spirit of 
 the Old Testament, and the object of the economy of the Old 
 Testament, which was afforded by Christianity. 
 
 Although this idea was applied in an arbitrary, and therefore 
 in a false manner,—as, for instance, in that very letter, (see be- 
 low)—yet, considered in itself, and by itself, it contains nothing 
 repugnant to the simple nature of the Gospel, because that 
 Gospel, in its very simplicity, is destined to imbue and appro- 
 priate to itself all the powers and dispositions of human nature, 
 even those that are spiritual, and in its very simplicity it opens 
 the inexhaustible depths of Divine wisdom in the eye of the 
 spirit. Among the mystical sects of the Jews and their philoso- 
 phical teachers of religion at Alexandria*, we have already re- 
 marked the germ of a Gnosis, conceived under an entirely 
 different notion. Here, under the name of “ the Religion of the 
 
 L' “ Erscheinungswelt.” Lit. World of appearances, or phenomena.—Tr. | 
 ? See Part I. Introduction. 
 
‘UNCHRISTIAN GNOSIS. 21 
 
 Perfect, an esoteric system of doctrines, containing only pure 
 ideas, which could be comprehended only by a small number of 
 initiated persons, consisting of men distinguished for their high 
 intellectual gifts of perception’, and their high spiritual nature, 
 (the ryeuparikor,)—was opposed to the faith founded on authority, 
 and entertained by the sense-bound multitude, who held fast only 
 the symbolic covering of these pure ideas, and were utterly incapa- 
 ble of understanding them in their real meaning. (These were 
 the ψυχικοι; the πολλοι.) Such an opposition, although neces- 
 sarily grounded on the very nature of the religion that preceded 
 Christianity, would entirely overthrow the fundamental charac- 
 teristics of Christianity, because Christianity pulled down every 
 such partition wall between man and man, and Greek and barba- 
 rian, educated and uneducated, were to become one in Christ, 
 and one source of Divine life and inward illumination was to be 
 present in one common faith; this illumination was to develop 
 itself in proportion to their advances in holiness, and Christian 
 views were not to be made dependent on intellectual powers, 
 bestowed only on a certain class of men, but were to proceed, 
 in all, out of their inward Christian life, and out of their own 
 inward experience, although, nevertheless, peculiar depth or 
 clearness of view might be a particular charisma. Christ, in- 
 deed, thanks his heavenly Father for having revealed to chil- 
 dren what he had hidden from the wise; and St. Paul requires 
 that those who are wise in this world should become fools that 
 they might receive Divine wisdom. But then, such Gnostics as 
 these were unable to comprehend these truths and to become 
 children, in order to enter into the kingdom of heaven, and to be 
 poor with the rest of mankind, and to be rich only in Christ: 
 they wished to have precedence of the multitude of the believers 
 by means of a pretended higher kind of wisdom. 
 
 Another disposition belonging to this Gnosis, which is at vari- 
 ance with the peculiar nature of the gospel, is closely connected 
 with that of which we have just treated. It was because Chris- 
 tianity presented religion in its independence and elevation above 
 every thing earthly, that it was able to find entrance and extend 
 itself among all the different habits of life which mankind adopts, 
 and form a Church differing in its constitution from all other so- 
 cial unions among men, and independent on them ; and thus also 
 it presented religion, considered in a doctrinal point of view, in 
 
 [1 Anschauungsgabe. See Preface. | 
 
29 MIXTUKE OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 a substantial form, entirely independent of all speculations as 
 well as of all mythology, and in a form adapted to all the various 
 degrees of advancement which are found in human nature, and 
 all the various periods of its progress. ‘That Gnosis, on the con- 
 trary, brought the doctrines of religion into connexion again 
 with all the enquiries which can occupy a speculative reason, as 
 was the case in the old Oriental systems of religion, such as 
 those of Zoroaster, of Brahma, and the Buddhists. A speculative 
 cosmogony, desirous of explaining what is incomprehensible, and 
 a theosophy, which would anticipate the views reserved for a 
 higher state of being, were made the basis of the doctrines of 
 religion, and these would therefore be unintelligible to the 
 greater mass of mankind, and, im consequence of this, an opposi- 
 tion would necessarily follow between the esoteric and the exo- 
 teric religion. This mixture of religion and speculation would 
 besides necessarily be dangerous to the essentially practical cha- 
 racter of Christianity, in virtue of which all is made to turn on 
 the acknowledgment of sin, the application of the redemption 
 provided for man, and the sanctification which proceeds out of it 
 by means of faith working by love. 
 
 It appears, then, that the view of religion on which this Gnosis 
 was founded, was the old Oriental system, to which also the 
 Platonic joined itself, as well as the new Platonic. It might 
 happen that men who were altogether devoted to some such 
 Oriental theosophy would constantly find themselves attracted on 
 one side or the other by Christianity, which is calculated to lay 
 hold on human nature from so many different sides, while yet 
 they might be unable to conquer themselves so far as to sacrifice 
 their former habits of thought entirely to Christianity ; and hence 
 they endeavoured to form for themselves a theosophical Chris- 
 tianity of their own, and a theosophic Christ of their own, after 
 their own manner. And thus also, if the Gospel were now to 
 make its way powerfully among the Persians, the Brahmins, and 
 the Hindoos, it is most probable that similar phenomena would 
 take place again; the real and genuine Christians would be ac- 
 companied by converts who would endeavour to amalgamate 
 Suphism, Buddhism, and Brahminism with Christianity ; and in 
 fact we find traces of such an attempt here and there even now’. 
 
 In order to perceive clearly the formation of those Gnostic sys- 
 
 * The English Missionary reports from the East Indies, and the conversations of 
 that genuine evangelical missionary, Martyn, with the Persian Suphi, in the very 
 instructive biography of that person, will give proofs of this assertion. 
 
IN THE ROMAN DOMINIONS. 935 
 
 tems, one must put oneself into that remarkable time of ferment 
 from which they proceeded. A lively intercourse and an unusual 
 interchange of ideas was then taking place between the nations 
 of the western and the eastern world, which are otherwise so 
 widely separated by their situation and by their differences in 
 their peculiarities of character ; an intercourse that arose from the 
 overgrown empire of Rome, which embraced within it all these 
 nations, or at least brought their boundaries into close connexion 
 with each other. The spirit, which sighed after new revela- 
 tions from heaven, and after some new excitement of the spiritual 
 life, unsatisfied alike by the Hellenic mythology and by the dicta 
 of philosophical systems among the Greeks (Hellenes), mingled 
 together all these various elements of religion, and endeavoured 
 to put together out of them the fragments of a system of truth 
 which had been lost. The comparison of different systems of 
 religion would of course open many resemblances to their view, 
 which to the surprised enquirer would seem as evidences of truth ; 
 for the religious development of human nature is a mirror which 
 reflects, partly, the original revelation of a Divine Being who 
 draws man to him,—a revelation which has been variously propa- 
 gated by tradition, either more or less corrupted: partly, the 
 needs, desires, and wishes that arise from the religious nature 
 of man; and partly also, that speculative reason which mixes 
 itself up in all religious contemplations, which has its own funda- 
 mental principles that constantly recur under different forms, and 
 which is for ever wearying itself in vain to pass over that line, 
 which the limits of human knowledge draw around it. At Alex- 
 andria, and in different parts of Asia, even Jewish theologians 
 were unconsciously carried away by this religious eclecticism ’. 
 Accordingly, in the Gnostic systems the elements of the old 
 Oriental systems of religion, (especially the Persian, but certainly 
 the East Indian also,) of Jewish theology, and of Platonic philo- 
 sophy, may be found melted down together, and a more extensive 
 acquaintance with the different religious systems of the interior 
 of Asia might perhaps give us a great many new disclosures as to 
 the connexion between these systems; but then at the same time 
 we must carefully guard ourselves against immediately conclud- 
 ing that an outward communication has at some time or other 
 taken place solely from finding an agreement which may arise 
 
 1 See the Introduction in vol. i. 
 
24 ANTICHRISTIAN GNOSIS. 
 
 from an inward source, namely, iu the self-same essential disposi- 
 tions of human nature, from which similar phenomena will result 
 under similar circumstances. 
 
 This Gnosis opposed Judaism as a religion too carnal, too 
 earthly, too narrow, and too little theosophical; for how little 
 spiritual, how cold, how little, and how empty must Judaism 
 appear to men of this disposition, when they compared it with 
 the old colossal systems of religion in Asia, although to one who 
 knows what purpose religion is to serve for man, the very com- 
 parison which led them to despise Judaism would be the first 
 thing which would lead him to recognize its full value for the 
 religious development of human nature. ‘Those old religions, in 
 their enigmatic form, in which men are inclined to look for lofty 
 wisdom rather than in a simple one, appeared to promise far more 
 decisions on the questions which exercised their enquiries. Mere 
 Platonism appeared to them too 16} πὸ and too measured *; it 
 appeared to them constantly to confine itself entirely to the nar- 
 row limits of finite reason, and to have no sense and perception 
 of higher intercourse with the spiritual world. Gnosis was de- 
 sirous, by means of the new ideas opened to it by intercourse 
 with the East, of obtaining higher and more recondite conclusions 
 about the nature of things, their origin and development, than 
 Platonism had to offer. Had this Gnosis been consistent in its 
 disposition, and had it not been carried away by the mighty 
 attracting power of that which is Divine in Christianity, it might 
 have come in good earnest into controversy with Christianity as a 
 religion of too practical and human a nature, and as a religion 
 that did not raise itself enough into the supernatural regions. 
 The self-same character of mind which in the Christian Gnostics 
 opposed only the ecclesiastical disposition, and a faith that would 
 set limits to speculation, would have opposed Christianity in 
 general, had it been carried to extremes, and had it been clearly 
 aware of its own principles; and, indeed, the traces of an un- 
 Christian, and also of an openly anti-Christian Gnosis are to be 
 
 ' Zu niichtern. Germ: perhaps it may mean too sober, too temperate. 
 
 2 Zu besonnen. Germ: too ratiocinative, too much the result of deliberative 
 meditation, 
 
 [1 add the German words here that those of my readers who understand that 
 language may draw their own conclusions as to what Neander intends here ; for I 
 am not aware of any expressions in English, which are entirely synonymous with 
 is, pe 1} 
 
GENETIC FORMATION OF GNOSTICISM. 95 
 
 found, perhaps in a certain class of the Ophites (see below), in 
 the Jewish Cabbalists, and in the Zabians, or the disciples of John. 
 
 Although the Gnostic systems contained elements selected out 
 of various old systems of religion, yet they can never be entirely 
 explained from the supposition of an intermixture and joining 
 together of these alone; there is a soul and spirit of a peculiar 
 kind*, which animates most of these collections. In the first place, 
 the time, in which they originated, has impressed upon them a 
 wholly peculiar character, just as it often happens in times of 
 great ferment, that certain dispositions communicate themselves 
 to a whole series of spiritual phenomena, even without any out- 
 ward connexion or intercourse. Now the prevailing tone’ in 
 most serious minds of that time, was the feeling of disunion, and 
 of being unsatisfied by the existing world; a longing which would 
 overclimb the limits of the earth; a desire after a new and higher 
 order of things. ‘This tone of feeling pervades also the Gnostic 
 systems, and Christianity worked in an especial manner on this 
 tone; and without Christianity, the Christian Gnostic systems 
 would have become an utterly and entirely different thing. The 
 idea of redemption was that which formed the peculiar nature of 
 Christianity ; and this idea suited that peculiar tone of feeling 
 prevalent among those systems, although it could be embraced by 
 them only in a partial manner, and not in its whole extent, and 
 all the consequences deducible from it. The ideas of restoring an 
 harmonious tone to a world in which it had been broken, of re- 
 storing a degraded creation to its original state, of restoring the 
 lost connexion between heaven and earth, of the revelation of a 
 mighty and Divine life in man, elevated above the limits of human 
 nature, as well as the notion of a new course of development, 
 which had entered into the whole economy of the world ;—these 
 were the ideas which communicated a new and imposing cha- 
 racter to Gnosis altogether. 
 
 Those theosophists busied themselves with the investigation of 
 the great enquiry, the answer to which has always been the 
 highest problem of human speculation; but in answering which, 
 human reason must always recognize its own insufficiency ; or, if 
 it will explain that which is incomprehensible, must always 
 deceive itself with mere phrases, or with the fictions of fancy. 
 
 1 [Ein eigenthiimliches beseelendes Princip. Germ. Literally, a peculiar ani- 
 mating principle. ] 
 
 2 [Grundton, key-note. The word translated disunion is zwiespalt, which ex- 
 presses division, in consequence of a violent rent. ] 
 
20 FAITH INDEPENDENT OF SPECULATION. 
 
 These Gnostics, as Oriental theosophists, in whom, at least for 
 the most part, the Oriental element predominated over the Hel- 
 lenic, must in no manner or degree whatever be compared with 
 the thinking people of the Western world; they engaged them- 
 selves far more in representations and visible images, than in 
 abstract ideas’. Where the thinking man of the west would 
 have formed to himself only an abstract conception, with them 
 a living appearance, a living personality stood before their souls, 
 for them absolutely to look upon in reality. They disregarded 
 the abstract notions of the mind as a lifeless sort of thing ; every 
 thing hypostasized itself in their eyes, where nothing but ab- 
 stract ideas were presented to the thinkers of the Western world. 
 The image, and that which was represented by the image, were 
 so constantly joined together in their modes of thought, that they 
 were unable to separate the one from the other. ‘They were far 
 rather carried away unconsciously by the ideas that floated before 
 their minds, or that inspirited them, from one mental picture to 
 another *, from image to image, so that they were not in a con- 
 dition to develope these ideas with any thing like a clear con- 
 sciousness of their nature. ‘The enquiries which chiefly occupied 
 them were these: How is the transition from infinite to finite ? 
 How can man imagine to himself the beginning of a creation ? 
 How can he think of God as the original projector of a material 
 world, so foreign to his own nature? Whence come those wide 
 differences of nature among men, from the man of truly godly 
 disposition, down to those who appear given up entirely to blind 
 desires, in whom no trace of the rational and the moral creature 
 can be found * ? 
 
 Now it was exactly here that Christianity made religious faith 
 independent of speculation, and cut off at once all that could lead 
 to those speculative cosmogonies, by which the element of pure 
 religious faith was only troubled, and the confusion between the 
 ideas of God and nature furthered, inasmuch as it (Christianity) 
 directed the eye of the spirit beyond the whole extent of the 
 
 1 Sie bewegten sich viel mehr in Anschauungen und Bildern, als in Begriffen. Germ. 
 
 [It is difficult to render these words exactly. Anschauung, (intwitio) looking upon, in 
 its original sense, means the representation or image of an object conveyed to the mind 
 by the sight ; and it is used also secondarily of the notices conveyed by other senses. 
 It is here used of visible representations or images, as opposed to Begriffen or abstract 
 ideas. For some further remarks on these words, see the Preface. H. R.] 
 
 2 [From anschauung to anschauung.—See last note. } 
 
 3 [On this portion of the subject, see the’ 5th Book of Beausobre’s Histoire du 
 Manichiisme. Vol. ii. especially p, 205, ἅς, H. R.] 
 
DENIAL OF CREATION. 27 
 
 visible world, where, in the chain of cause and effect, one thing 
 is constantly unfolding itself out of another, to an Almighty work 
 of creation performed by God, by which the worlds were pro- 
 duced, and in virtue of which the visible did Nor spring out of 
 that which appears. Heb. xi. 3. Creation is received here as 
 an incomprehensible fact, under the constraint of a faith, that 
 raises itself above the position occupied by the understanding, 
 which wishes constantly to deduce one thing from another, and 
 to explain every thing, while it denies all that is immediate’. 
 This, which is the only real point of practical importance, the 
 doctrine of the Church endeavoured to maintain in its conception 
 of the creation out of nothing ; opposing itself thus to the old 
 methods of ἡ representation, which limits the creation of God by 
 supposing matter already in existence, and represents him, after 
 an anthropopathical manner, not as an independent original 
 Creator, but as a being who acted on and formed pre-existing 
 matter. Gnosis would not acknowledge any such limits to spe- 
 culation ; she wished to explain and represent to the mind how 
 God is the foundation and the source of all existence. As it mis- 
 understood the negative import of the creation out of nothing, it 
 opposed to it the old principle, “ out of nothing comes nothing.” 
 Instead of this it presented to its imagination the idea of an out- 
 flowing of all Being, from the highest Being of the Divinity. 
 This idea of an emanation would allow itself to be conceived 
 under a variety of images: under the form, for instance, of a 
 numerical development from an original unity; of an outstream- 
 ing of light from an original light; of an unfolding of spiritual 
 powers or ideas, which obtained substantiality, and of an utterance 
 of a series of syllables and sounds, till they were re-echoed. 
 
 The idea of such an emanation corresponds to a feeling deeply 
 rooted in the human mind, and found in it something to fasten 
 itself upon; but at the same time, it gave occasion to many spe- 
 culations by which men might easily be led away, for ever, farther 
 from that which is of practical importance for religious belief, and 
 indeed might lose it altogether. 
 
 1 [Alles unmittlebare. Germ. I understand by this all immediate acts of the 
 Divinity, such as creation. The word translated understanding, is verstand, and 
 we must bear in mind the distinction usually made in Germany between verstand 
 and vernunft, the understanding and the reason. See Coleridge’s Aids to Spiritual 
 Development. H. R.] 
 
 2 [Anschauungsweise. Germ. I suppose this word to mean a habit of consi- 
 dering these subjects, where all the operations of the Divinity are presented to the 
 view of the mind in a palpable form cr image, See Preface. H. R.] 
 
98 SYSTEM OF ZONS.—ORIGIN OF EVIL. 
 
 In this mode of representation God appeared as the incompre- 
 hensible original source of all perfection’, and shut up within 
 himself; and no means of transition between this incomprehen- 
 sible Being of God, and finite existence, could be imagined. Self 
 limitation, a letting down, is the first beginning of a communica- 
 tion of life on the part of God, the jirst revealing of the hidden 
 God, from which every other revelation of God, which unfolds 
 itself further, proceeds’. Now from forth of this first member of 
 the chain of life there develope themselves, first, the manifold 
 powers or attributes, which dwell in the very Being of God, 
 which, up to that first time of his letting himself down had been 
 shut up in the abyss of his Being, every one of which represents 
 the whole Divine existence, in some one particular point of view, 
 and to which, in this point of view, the names that belong to the 
 Deity were transferred *. ‘These Divine powers, therefore, un- 
 folding themselves into substantiality, are the seeds and elements 
 of all other developments of life. The life contained in them 
 developes and individualizes itself constantly more and more, and 
 in such a manner also, that the degrees of this development of 
 life constantly go lower down, and the spirits constantly become 
 weaker, the more distant these developments are from the first 
 link of the chain. We must remark that a Gnosis which, in its 
 endeavour to explain the incomprehensible, was for ever falling 
 into anthropopathism, has here unconsciously attributed the rela- 
 tions of Time to the Eternal. 
 
 Granting now that the existence of a pure spiritual world, akin 
 to God, was fairly to be explained, men could represent to them- 
 selves the development of different degrees of perfection ; but 
 how was it possible to explain the origin of the material* world 
 by means of an emanation from God? and how the origin of 
 evil? Even in respect to the latter,—a problem on which specu- 
 
 i The unfathomable Βυθος, according to Valentinus, the Being raised above all 
 description, of whom nothing can be suitably (eigentlich) predicated; the acarovo- 
 μαστος of Basilidas, the wy of Philo.—See Part i. p. 48—50. 
 
 2A πρωτὴ καταληψις éavrov: the mpwrov καταλήπτον Tov Θεοῦ hy- 
 postatically embodied (hypostasirt. hypostatized) in a νοὺς or Λογος. 
 
 3 Hence comes the difference in the use of the word αἰὼν among the Gnostics ; 
 according to its etymological meaning, namely, eternity, it sometimes denotes the 
 Eternal,as a distinctive predicate of the Supreme Being ; sometimes it denotes those 
 Divine original energies, and sometimes the whole world of emanations, πλήρωμα, 
 in opposition to the temporal world. It occurs in the latter sense in Heracleon ap. 
 Origen. 7. xiii. in Joh. c. 11. 
 
 4 [Sinnliche, that which is the object of the senses. The ewternal, or material 
 world. ] 
 
DUALISM.—EMANATIONS. 29 
 
 lation has made shipwreck so often, to the prejudice of God’s 
 holiness, and the freedom of man, a being gifted with reason, and 
 destined for morality,—even in regard to this point, Gnosis would 
 not allow any limits to be put to speculation. If God gave free- 
 will to man, and if this free-will is the cause of evil, then the 
 origin of evil, said the Gnostics, falls back on God himself. They 
 would not hear of a difference between a permission, and an 
 actual originating cause, on the part of God’. Now whosoever 
 does not follow the necessities of his moral nature, and the law 
 inscribed upon his inmost conscience, and with immoyeable cer- 
 tainty of faith, and with the assurance of inward moral experience, 
 firmly hold, that evil can be founded in nothing else, and be 
 explained from nothing else, but can only be comprehended as 
 the act of a wilfulness, that falls away from God’s holy law, and a 
 self-seeking which opposes itself to the will of God,—he must neces- 
 sarily either prejudice the holiness of God, and take away the 
 objective importance of the opposition between good and evil, 
 and therefore utterly remove in its foundations the idea of moral 
 good and evil, considered in themselves, because he throws back 
 the origination of the latter upon God,—or else he must preju- 
 dice the omnipotence of God, because he establishes an absolute 
 evil, and an independent foundation of that evil beyond God, by 
 which also, in fact, he fundamentally removes the idea of evil in 
 a moral point of view, because he deduces it from without, and 
 makes of it an independent nature, which operates necessarily ; 
 by which means he involves himself at the same time in a contra- 
 diction with himself, through the idea of an independent being 
 besides God, of a God who is not God, who is not good. The 
 Gnostics, avoiding the first rock, made shipwreck on the second. 
 They united a Dualism with their system of emanations, and 
 endeavoured to explain the origin of this whole earthly world, 
 in which good and evil are mingled together, and which does not 
 answer to the ideal of the spirit, from the intermixture of two 
 opposite principles and their mutual operations ; and this endea- 
 vour to explain opened a wide space to their speculation and 
 their formation of fantastic theories. ‘There now developed them- 
 selves here two modes of viewing these matters *, which, however, 
 in those days of religious and philosophic eclecticism, did not 
 
 1 To pn κωλῦον αἰτιον torey—was their usual motto in opposing the Church 
 doctrine. 3 [ Anschauungsweise. | 
 
30 ALEXANDRIAN GNOSIS. 
 
 always come into sharp opposition, but came into connection with 
 each other by the amalgamation of various intermediate mem- 
 bers, while the same idea, in fact, forms the foundation of both 
 these modes of view, only that it was conceived in the one case 
 after a more speculative fashion, in the other after amore mythical. 
 In the one mode of conception the element of Grecian specula- 
 tion more prevails, in the other the element of Oriental imagery 
 [anschauung]; and hence these two modes of view make the 
 difference between an Alexandrian Gnosis and a Syrian Gnosis, 
 (the latter being determined particularly by the influence of 
 Parsism,) as far as we can oppose, in abstracts, these two kinds 
 of Gnosis to each other, without regard to the intermixture of 
 them together, which we find in the phenomena of those 
 times. 
 
 In the first the Platonic notion of an ὑλη prevails ; this is dead 
 and lifeless matter ; the boundary which, from without, limits the 
 development of life, that proceeds by regular gradations, in virtue 
 of which imperfect beings develope themselves out of the per- 
 fect, each more imperfect than the preceding; and this vAn again 
 is represented under various forms—as the Darkness that stands 
 by the side of the Light—as Emptiness (κενωμα; κενον) in oppo- 
 sition to the Fulness of the life of God—as the Shade that stands 
 beside the Light—and as Chaos and the dark stagnant water. 
 This matter of itself being lifeless, has by its nature no impulse ; 
 every kind of life is foreign to it, and of itself it makes no attack 
 on the Divine Being; but inasmuch as the Divine developments 
 of life, (the beings that proceed from the preceding emanation, ) 
 the farther they are removed from their first member, become 
 always weaker and weaker, because their connection with that 
 first member is always less close, there arises in the last grade of 
 the development an imperfect work, which cannot maintain itself 
 in connection with the divine chain of life, which sinks from out 
 of the world of A®ons into that Chaos, or else—which is the 
 same representation a little differently modified—something froths 
 over out of the fulness of the Divine life into the neighbouring 
 chaos’. 
 
 Lifeless matter now receives, by means of its intermixture 
 with the Living Being, that of which it was in want, a quicken- 
 
 1 According to the representations (auschauungsweise) of the Ophites, and of 
 Bardosanes. 
 
SYRIAN GNOSIS. 91 
 
 ing'; but then the Divine Being, the Living Being, is also 
 injured by means of its intermixture with the chaotic. Being 
 multiplies itself; a subordinate, deficient life arises; ground is 
 taken for a new world, and a creation forms itself beyond the 
 bounds of the emanation-world ; but, as the chaotic principle of 
 matter, on the other hand, has obtained a spirit of life, a clear, 
 active opposition to the Divine nature now comes forward, a 
 blind, un-divine natural power, of an entirely negative character, 
 which opposes itself hostilely to all formation through the Divine 
 Being; and thence come, as the works of the spirit of the ὕλη 
 (the πνευμα bAckov)—Satan, evil spirits, and wicked men, in all 
 of whom no reasonable, no moral principle, no principle of free- 
 will, prevails, but only blind desires. As Dualism carries in 
 itself a self-contradiction, it cannot maintain its ground with any 
 clear speculative thinker, who is conscious of the course of his 
 reasoning. The more Gnosis inclined to this side, and became 
 clearly conscious to itself of this disposition, which to say the 
 truth rarely happened, because of the prevalence of oriental 
 imagination over occidental abstract comprehension, in all Gnostic 
 systems,—the more must it have endeavoured ta lead back this 
 Dualism to a higher unity. It then declared expressly what the 
 Cabbala and the Neo-Platonism taught,—that Matter is nothing 
 else than the necessary limit’ between existence and non-existence, 
 which can be conceived as any thing having an independent ex- 
 istence, only by the power of abstraction *:—it is the opposition 
 to being, which arises as a necessary limit, on every development 
 of life from out of the Deity *. In such a manner Dualism 
 might finally resolve itself into Pantheism. 
 
 The other mode of viewing these matters engrafted itself more 
 upon the Parsic doctrine of an Ahriman and his kingdom, which 
 it would be an obvious course for the Gnostic sects, especially 
 those which were formed in Syria, to appropriate to themselves. 
 This mode of view supposed an active, wildly-raging dominion of 
 
 [! Eine Beseelung—Germ. Literally, a quickening, an animation, the infusion 
 of a soul of life.—H. R. ] 
 
 2 It was thus also called the exterior rind of existence, mI. 
 
 3 By means of a νοθος λογος according to the Neo-Platonists. 
 
 4 Thus the Gnostics in Irenzus (ii. 4.) expressly defend themselves against the 
 reproach of Dualism. ‘‘Continere omnia Patrem omnium et extra Pleroma esse 
 nihil et id quod extra et quod intus, dicere eos secundum agnitionem et ignorantiam, 
 sed non secundum localem distantiam.” The lower creation was contained in the 
 Pleroma veluti in tunica maculam, 
 
32 THEIR MUTUAL RELATION. 
 
 ~ 
 
 evil or darkness, which by means of its attack on the empire of 
 light, introduced a mixture of light and darkness of the Divine, 
 and that which opposes it. Different as these two modes of con- 
 ception may appear in their way of representation, yet the self- 
 same fundamental idea may be recognised in them. When the 
 latter mode of view takes a somewhat more speculative turn, it 
 passes into the first, of which we shall find traces in the views of 
 Manicheeism, which bears upon it far more than all Gnostic sys- 
 tems the mark of Parsism (see below) ; and where the first mode 
 of view takes a more poetical character, and endeavours to picture 
 itself upon the imagination, it passes over involuntarily into the 
 last 1, 
 
 Even among the Platonists there were some, who supposed 
 that from the very beginning, together with an unorganic, dead 
 matter, as the materials for the bodily world, there existed also 
 a blind, unbridled, moving power, an undivine soul, as the ori- 
 ginally-moving and active principle. Thus, while that unor- 
 ganic matter was organized into the bodily world by the forma- 
 tive power of the Deity, that formative power communicated also 
 law and reason to that wild, tumultuous, and reason-opposing 
 soul. ‘Thus the chaos of the ὕλη was formed into an organ- 
 ized body of the world, and that blind power into a reason- 
 able principle of the soul of the world, that animates the uni- 
 verse. Thus, while all reasonable spiritual life in human nature 
 descends from this last, all that is contrary to reason comes from 
 the other: all that is impelled by desire and passion; all evil 
 spirits are its productions. One sees easily how the idea of this 
 ψυχη ἄλογος; floating over the chaos, might fall in with the idea 
 of a Satan, who originally presided over the kingdom of dark- 
 ness *. 
 
 In the system of the Zabians or disciples of John, which is un- 
 doubtedly connected in its origin with the Syrian Gnosis, although 
 there appears an independent kingdom of darkness with its own 
 peculiar powers, yet this has no influence on the higher kingdom 
 
 ' Thus, for example, where Plotinus paints matter as seized with a longing after 
 light or the soul, and speaks of it as darkening the light, while it endeavours to em- 
 brace it. Plotin. Enneas I. lib. viii. ο. 14. Ὕλη παρουσα mpocairet, Kat οἷον ἐνο- 
 χλει, και εἰς το εἰσω παρελθεῖν ἐθελει, την δὲ ἀλλαμψιν και το ἐκειθεν φως ἐσκοτωσε 
 Ty μίξει. 
 
 ? See Plutarch de Anime Procreat. e Timzo, especially c. 9. Opera, Ed. Hutten. 
 t. xiii. p. 296. 
 
THEIR INTERMIXTURE. 99 
 
 of light. It was the thought of one of the genii of the kingdom 
 of light, to tear himself loose from the source which every thing 
 ought to glorify, and to form an independent world that should 
 exist for itself ——it was this thought that first became the cause of 
 a mixture between the two kingdoms, the first foundation of this 
 visible world, built upon an earth won from the kingdom of dark- 
 ness ; ὃ. e. from chaos, which world the powers of darkness at once 
 endeavour to seize upon or to destroy, because they will not suffer 
 any strange rule in their domain. Now, while this genius, Abatur, 
 who formed the third stage in the development of life, was look- 
 ing into the dark water of chaos, there arose out of his reflection 
 in it an imperfect genius, formed from a mixture of this form of 
 light with the being of darkness, and to be ennobled by degrees 
 hereafter, namely, Fetahi/, the former of the world, from whose 
 imperfection all the defects of this world are derived’. In the 
 system of the Syrian Bardesanes also, matter appears as the 
 mother of Satan ἧ. 
 
 This sufficiently shows how the modes of view of the Syrian 
 and the Alexandrian Gnosis pass into each other on this side. It 
 may indeed very fairly be asked, whether one is justified in 
 speaking of a Gnosis as originally Alexandrian, or whether 
 Syria be not the birth-place of all Gnosis, whence it was only 
 transplanted to Alexandria, and received a peculiar stamp at this 
 latter place in consequence of the Platonizing, Hellenizing dis- 
 position, which prevailed there? In Alexandria, such a Gnosis 
 
 1 This sect of Zabians, (βαπτισται, from yiz,) Nazarenes, Mandzans, (ac- 
 cording to Norberg, from yp, μαθηται or yywortkot,) clearly derives its origin 
 from those disciples of John the Baptist, who, contrary to his spirit and feeling, after 
 his martyrdom took up an hostile disposition towards Christianity. Traces of such 
 persons are to be found in the Clementine, and the Recognitiones Clementis, and 
 perhaps also in the ἡμεροβαπτισται and the γαλιλαιοι of Hegesippus. See F. 
 Walch. de Sabeis comment. Soc. Reg. Gott. t. iv. Part. Philolog. From these a 
 sect afterwards formed itself, whose system being formed out of the elements of older 
 Oriental theosophy, is of great importance for the history of Gnosticism. A critical 
 treatise on their most important religious book, the Liber Adami, would contribute 
 much to this object. See the critique of that work by Gesenius, in the Literatur 
 Zeitung of Jena. Jena, 1817. Nos, 48—5l. and (Kleuker’s 7) critique on it in the 
 Anzeigen of Gottingen. 
 
 2 Lichtnatur, Being of light. Germ. 
 
 5 This idea is entirely to be compared with the ophiomorphos of the ophitish sys- 
 tem, (see below,) although in the ophitish system this appears of a lower kind; and 
 the ophitish system, in its speculative notions, is yet akin to the Alexandrian sys- 
 tem of Valentinus in many respects. 
 
 VOL. II. D 
 
34 ARE THEY PRACTICALLY OPPOSED ? 
 
 would probably find much to engraft itself upon in a certain 
 Jewish idealistic philosophy of religion, already in existence 
 there; but in this the Platonic and occidental element, which 
 keeps itself more on the pure idealistic point of view, and does 
 not immediately hypostasize ideas, and make representations of 
 them, was too predominant to suffer the peculiar character of 
 Gnosis to proceed forth from it, without the influence of the pure 
 Orientalism from Syria. 
 
 One might imagine that this double mode of view would have 
 produced a peculiar distinction in the practical spirit of these two 
 systems. As the Syrian mode of view supposed an active empire 
 of evil, which was destroyed with the empire of matter, one might 
 be led to imagine that it made the avoidance of this abominable 
 matter and its hostile productions, and the strictest asceticism, the 
 chief object of morality. As, on the contrary, the Alexandrian 
 Gnosis considered matter as unorganized materials for formation, 
 and the Divine Being as the formative principle, one would think 
 that it would recognize no such negative system of morality, but 
 would establish a more active formation and improvement of the 
 world, by the power of the Divine principle as the foundation of 
 their moral system. ‘This supposition might perhaps appear still 
 more probable on a comparison of many Alexandrian and Syrian 
 systems. 
 
 And yet on a more accurate investigation, that such a differ- 
 ence in the practical influence of these two systems, is by no 
 means necessary. Even a system, in which the Parsic dualism 
 prevailed to the utmost extent, might recognize in the whole 
 universe a higher life, which was only bound prisoner in the 
 bonds of matter, and might recommend co-operation towards the 
 freeing of that life, by victory cver the empire of darkness, by 
 means of a practical forming and improving influence over nature. 
 And so, in fact, Parsism commanded an outward activity, because 
 it represented all formative influence upon the outward world, 
 especially agriculture, as a struggle against the destroying and 
 order-opposing power of Ahriman, and as an activity which was 
 employed in the service of Ormuzd. And therefore the dualistic 
 Manicheeism furthered a great reverence towards nature, and by 
 no means an enthusiastic and ascetic contempt of it; although on 
 another ground this system led to a strict asceticism: and cer- 
 tainly it cannot be denied, that the prevailing feeling of Oriental 
 notions, as we may even now see from the people of the Kast, in 
 
THEIR REAL DISTINCTION.—THE DEMIURGOS. 35 
 
 general shone forth in highly prizing an ascetic and contemplative 
 disposition, which elevated itself above the ordinary earthly life. 
 But this disposition had also spread itself already in the district, 
 where a Grecian spirit prevailed, and had found reception parti- 
 cularly in Alexandria’. The pure Platonic doctrine of gross 
 matter, as being the source of blind desires, and of the guilt con- 
 tracted by the soul in a former life, might become a point for a 
 strict asceticism to fix itself upon; as in fact it did to many 
 Platonists. 
 
 The most essential difference between the different Gnostic 
 systems, the influence of which, upon the whole religious and 
 spiritual character of these sects, concerns their different view of 
 the relation of the temporal, earthly system of the world, to that 
 higher and invisible one, of the relation of Christianity, to the 
 whole development of human nature, (whether they supposed a 
 gradual development of the theocracy, as an organically-connected 
 whole; or whether they made Christianity out to be a fragment 
 which appeared all on a sudden, without previous preparation, ) 
 and of the relation of Christianity to Judaism. All these consi- 
 derations are closely connected together. 
 
 All Gnosties agree in this, that they suppose, as we have above 
 remarked, a world in which there is a pure development of life 
 out of God; a creation, which is nothing but a pure unfolding of 
 the Divine Being’, as being elevated far above that creation 
 which was produced from without by means of the formative 
 power of God, and was limited by matter previously existing ;— 
 and they agreed in ¢his also, that they did not allow the Father 
 of that higher emanation world to be the immediate Former of 
 this lower creation; but they brought down the Former of the 
 world, (the Snuovpyoc,) far below that higher system and its 
 Father, because he (the δημιουργος) was connected with the uni- 
 verse, which was formed and governed by him. But the difference 
 among them was this; namely, that though they agreed as to the 
 existence of this inferiority, they were at variance as to the mode 
 of it. One party, setting out from views which had already long 
 been prevalent among the Alexandrian Jews, supposed that the 
 supreme God had produced, and still governed this world, by 
 means of the angels, who were his ministering spirits. At the 
 head of these angels stood one, who guided and ruled every 
 
 1 See Part I. The Introduction. 2 myer Ddiv- 
 
 D2 
 
90 THE DEMIURGOS. 
 
 thing, and on that account was especially called the Former and 
 the Governor of the world. They compared this Demiurgos with 
 the Spirit that formed and animated the world, after the system of 
 Plato and the Platonists, which also (according to the Timzeus of 
 Plato) endeavoured to form the image of the Divine reason in that 
 which oelonged to time, in that which was ‘‘ Becoming to be’.” This 
 angel is a representative of the supreme God on this lower stage 
 of existence: he does not act independently, but only according 
 to the ideas given to him by the supreme God, as the world- 
 forming soul of the Platonists creates every thing after the 
 ideas imparted to him by the supreme vove*: but these ideas are 
 elevated above his own limited being; he is unable to under- 
 stand them; he is only their unconscious instrument, and is, 
 therefore, unable himself to understand the meaning of the 
 whole work wrought by him: as an instrument guided by a 
 higher inspiration, he reveals what is above his own comprehen- 
 sion. Here, therefore, they grafted themselves on the current 
 ideas of the Jews, in supposing that the supreme God had re- 
 vealed himself to their ancestors through the medium of an angel 
 that served him as the organ of his will; and that the Mosaic 
 legislation was derived from such an angel. And they considered 
 the Demiurgos as the representative of the supreme God in this 
 respect also; just as the rest of the nations of the world were par- 
 titioned among the other angels, as their guides, so the Jewish 
 people, as the peculiar people of Jehovah, that is, the supreme 
 God, were committed to the care of the Demiurgos, as his repre- 
 
 1 [As Neander has only referred generally to the Timzus, I have taken this phrase 
 from the translation by Taylor. I add the original of Neander: Das ideal der gott- 
 lichen vernunft in dem werdenden, zeitlichen darzustellen strebt. We have no word 
 that answers to werdenden, which expresses the beginning of existence, the becoming, 
 not the actually being. H. R.] 
 
 [Since the above note was written, a friend lent me ‘‘ Bockshammer on the Free- 
 dom of the Will; translated by A: Kaufman, of Andover ; 1835:” in which the 
 word ‘becoming’ is used substantively, ὁ. g. p. 75.— Yet this connecting love, ac- 
 cording to the representation of the above-named treatise, is rather an originated be- 
 coming, man, an original being :” and a note referring to Neander is added by the 
 translator, to this effect: ‘‘ The idea of a secondary Being, without beginning, an- 
 fangslosen werdens, an originated becoming in opposition to an unoriginated Being, 
 (eternal generation,) was somewhat refined, was somewhat incomprehensible ; nay, 
 it appeared even contradictory to Arius, who had but little of the speculative or in- 
 tuitive, &c. Neander,” &c. H.R.] 
 
 2 The ὁ ἐστι ζωον (in opposition to the γενήτον, or the θεος γενητος of Plato,) 
 the παραδειγμα of the Divine reason hypostatized. 
 
SPIRITUAL AND CARNAL JEWS. ot 
 
 sentative!. He also revealed here in the establishment of their 
 religion, as well as in the creation of the world, those higher 
 ideas which he himself could not understand in their true mean- 
 ing. The Old Testament, like the whole creation, was the veiled 
 symbol of a higher system. 
 
 But in the Jewish people itself they made a complete dis- 
 tinction, after the Alexandrian fashion, between the great multi- 
 tude, which is only a representative type of the people of God 
 (the Israelites according to the flesh, the ᾿Ἴσραηλ αἰσθητος, κατα 
 capa), and the small number of those who become really con- 
 scious to themselves of the destination of the people of God. 
 (The souls of this number are the spiritual men of Philo, the 
 *IopanX πνευματικος; νοητος; the generation consecrated to God 
 which really lived in the contemplation of God, the ἀνὴρ ὅρων 
 τον Θεον, the πνευματικοι, γνωστικοι; in opposition to the ψυ χικοι 
 or πιστικοι.) ‘The latter (the ψυχικοι) with their fleshly thoughts 
 kept fast to that which was outward only ; they did not observe 
 that this was merely a symbol, and therefore they did not recog- 
 nize the intention of that symbol’. Those sensuous-minded 
 men did not recognize the angel through whom God revealed 
 himself in all the appearances of God (the Theophanies) in the 
 Old Testament, that is to say, the Demiurgos, in his just relation 
 to the hidden supreme God, who never reveals himself in the 
 world of sense; they confused form and prototype, symbol and 
 idea*. They did not elevate themselves above the Demiurgos, 
 but considered him as the supreme God himself. Those spiritual 
 men, on the contrary, have clearly recognized the ideas which 
 were wrapped up in Judaism, or at least have a presentiment of 
 them; they have raised themselves up beyond the Demiurgos to 
 recognize the Supreme God, and thence they become peculiarly 
 
 1 According to the Alexandrian version of Deuteron. xxxii. 8, 9. ore διεμεριζεν ὁ 
 ὑψιστος ἐθνη, ἐστησεν ὁρια ἐθνων κατα ἀριθμον ἀγγελων Θεοῦ και ἐγε- 
 νηθη μερις Κυριοῦυ λαος αὐτου Ἰακωβ. 
 
 2 Thus a moderate Gnostic, who had not reached that refined Gnosticism formed 
 by the mixture of Alexandrian idealism with Syrian theosophy, determines (in the 
 letter ascribed to Barnabas) that the Jews had entirely misunderstood the whole 
 ceremonial law, by observing it outwardly, instead of seeing in it only an allegorical 
 representation of general religious and moral truths. It was Gnosis, which first 
 opened this true sense of it. 
 
 3 [The form, and the original form represented by it; the symbol, and the idea 
 symbolized. The German is, sie verwechselten auch hier bild und urbild, symbol 
 und idee. ] 
 
9:8 ANTI-JEWISH GNOSTICS. 
 
 his true worshippers (θεραπευται). The religion of the former 
 class was solely founded on a faith which they took upon autho- 
 rity, while these latter lived in the contemplation of Divine 
 things. The former required to be educated by the Demiurgos 
 by rewards and punishments, and the means of terror; but these 
 latter required no such means of discipline; they raised them- 
 selves up by the force of their spirit to the Supreme God, who is 
 a source of blessing only to those who are capable of communion 
 with him, and they love him for his own sake’. 
 
 Now, when these Jewish theosophists of Alexandria had em- 
 braced Christianity, and interwoven their former notions with it, 
 they saw the spirit of the Old Testament entirely unveiled in 
 Christianity, and the highest ideas of the whole creation brought 
 clearly before the light ; and now for the first time the object of 
 the whole creation and of the whole development of human 
 nature became clear. As far as the highest A¢on’, who appeared 
 in the person of Christ, was elevated above the ae and the 
 Demiurgos, so far is Christianity elevated above Judaism and the 
 whole earthly creation. The Demiurgos himself now recognizes 
 a revelation which entered into his kingdom, and from henceforth 
 serves it as its instrument, conscious that he was only an instru- 
 ment *. 
 
 The other party of the Gnostics consisted especially of persons 
 who had not been attached to the Mosaic religion before their 
 conversion to Christianity, but had formed to themselves in for- 
 mer times an Oriental Gnosis opposed to Judaism as well as to 
 all national religions, a kind of system of which we find some 
 traces in the books of the Zabians, and which is constantly found 
 in the East among the Persians and the Hindoos, They did not, 
 like the former, consider the Demiurgos and his angels merely as 
 subordinate and limited beings, but as beings entirely hostile to 
 the supreme God. ‘The Demiurgos and ie angels wished to 
 establish themselves in their limited condition as independent 
 beings and would suffer no foreign sovereignty in their dominion. 
 
 1 See above, Part I. p. 48. et seqq. on the twofold views mentioned by Philo. 
 
 2 Νοὺς or λογος. 
 
 3 We sce easily how these Gnostics might use the passages of the New Testament 
 where the λόγος λαληθεις δια Tov Yiov is compared with the Aoyog NadyOerg Ov ἀγ- 
 γέλων, (see e.g. Heb. ii, and Ephes. iii. 10.) in order to form their artificial super- 
 structure of doctrines, by means of their fanciful and idle speculation, on the founda- 
 tion of a Jew, hints only thrown out, en passant, by the apostle. 
 
THE DEMIURGOS. 39 
 
 Whatever of a higher nature comes down into their sphere they 
 endeavour to keep imprisoned there, that it may never be able to 
 raise itself above their narrow limits. In this system it is proba- 
 ble that the empire of the world-forming angels coincided for the 
 most part with that of the deceiving spirits of the stars, which 
 are hostile to man’s freedom, and exercise a tyrannic sway over 
 the affairs of this world’. ‘The Demiurgos (according to this 
 system) is a limited and limiting being, proud, envious, and 
 revengeful, and this his character declares itself in the Old Tes- 
 tament which is derived from him. As these Gnostics were 
 unable, from want of the requisite exegetic and hermeneutic 
 knowledge, as well as of the proper pedagogo-historical * point 
 of view, to understand the Old ‘Testament, which was so opposite 
 to their system, and were yet ‘nevertheless accustomed to give 
 their judgment upon every thing, they attributed all the errors 
 which arose from a gross and sensuous anthropopathical view of 
 the Old Testament among the common sort of Jews, to the Old 
 Testament itself. But, according to their view, the error of the 
 Jews consisted solely in this, that they considered the Demiurgos 
 who reveals himself such as he is, in the Old Testament, to be 
 the Supreme God, who differs from him infinitely. The Demi- 
 urgos is (according to them,) really such a being as that which 
 the Jews represented to themselves under the notion of the Su- 
 preme God. ‘These Gnostics believed that they recognized the 
 form of that hateful Demiurgos in the Old Testament, and also 
 in nature, which they judged with the same dogmatical human 
 rashness. ‘The Supreme God, the God of holiness and love, 
 who stands in no connexion with the world of sense, has not 
 revealed himself in this earthly creation by any thing, except by 
 some Divine seeds of life which are scattered abroad in human 
 nature, and whose unfolding the Demiurgos endeavours to stop 
 and to overwhelm. He can be acknowledged and honoured in 
 the highest degree only in the mysteries, by the few who are spi- 
 
 1 Thus the seven star spirits, and the twelve star spirits of the zodiac, which were 
 produced by the evil connexion between the deceived Fetahil with the Spirit of 
 darkness, in the Zabian system, play an important part in all that is evil. It is from 
 their deceitful artifices that Judaism and Christianity, which are so hateful to the 
 Zabians, are produced. 
 
 2 [I suppose Neander here considers the Jewish history as affording an instruc- 
 tive lesson to man, as containing the Divine mode of education for human nature ; 
 but as I am not certain that this is his view, I have only put the German compound 
 word into literal English ; padagogisch-geschichtliche gesichtspuncht. H. R.] 
 
40 DIFFERENCE IN MORAL VIEWS. 
 
 ritual men; and now (according to them) this God has let him- 
 self down all at once, without previous preparation, to this system 
 of the world by means of his highest Aton, in order to draw up 
 to himself the higher spiritual natures akin to himself which are 
 imprisoned there. Christianity can find no point in all creation 
 to attach itself upon, except in some mysteries and philosophical 
 schools, in which a higher kind of wisdom is propagated as their 
 common doctrine. 
 
 This difference between the Gnostic systems was of the great- 
 est importance in a theoretical and practical point of view. As 
 the Gnostics of the first class recognized in the Demiurgos the 
 instrument of the Supreme God and his representative, who 
 formed nature according to the ideas of the Supreme God, and 
 conducted the development of the kingdom of God, in history, 
 they might, in accordance with their principles, search for the 
 revelation of the Divinity in nature and in history; they needed 
 not of necessity to be entangled in an unchristian hatred of the 
 world. They might acknowledge that the Divinity might be 
 revealed under earthly relations, and that every thing earthly 
 might by this means become ennobled. ‘They might therefore 
 be very moderate in an ascetic point of view, as in fact we find 
 was the case with many of this class, although the practically 
 injurious disposition of deducing evil only from the existence of 
 objects of sense, must easily have arisen from their notion of the 
 ὕλη; and although their overprizing of a contemplative Gnosis 
 must have been in danger of becoming prejudicial to the spirit of 
 active love. 
 
 On the contrary, the other sort of Gnosis, which considered 
 the Creator of the world as a being entirely at enmity with the 
 Supreme God and his system, would naturally produce a wild, 
 dark hatred of the world, entirely at variance with the spirit of 
 Christianity. This exhibited itself outwardly in two ways; it 
 either shewed itself with nobler and more rational men in an 
 extravagantly strict asceticism, and an anxious avoiding of all 
 intercourse with the world,—on which, however the Christian is 
 bound to exert a forming influence, and then, at all events, mo- 
 rality would be a thing merely of a negative kind; nothing, in 
 short, but a way of purification as a preparation for contempla- 
 tion,—or else it shewed itself in men of an impure nature, and 
 inclined to wild fancies, and in men of ungoverned passions, in a 
 licentious contempt for all moral laws. When once these Gnosties 
 
DIFFERENT ViEWS OF MARRIAGE. 4] 
 
 set out from this principle,—‘ this whole world is the work of a 
 limited ungodly spirit, it is utterly incapable of all revelation of 
 the Divinity, and we higher natures, who belong to a far higher 
 world, are imprisoned in it,’—this conclusion would immediately 
 follow ; ‘ Every thing outward is utterly and entirely indifferent 
 to the inward man; nothing of an higher nature can here be ex- 
 pressed, and the outward man may give himself up to every kind 
 of lust, provided the inward man be not thereby disturbed in the 
 tranquillity of his contemplation. The very means by which 
 we must prove our contempt and our defiance of this wretched 
 and hostile world, is by not suffering ourselves to be affected by 
 it in any condition whatever. ‘The means by which we must 
 extinguish the empire of our senses, is by remaining undisturbed 
 in our tranquillity of spirit, while we give ourselves up to every 
 kind of desire. ‘We must struggle against our lusts by the 
 indulgence of them,” said these freethinkers; ‘for there is 
 nothing great in abstaining from pleasure, if we have never tried 
 it; but it argues greatness when a man finds himself in the midst 
 of pleasure, and yet is not overcome by it*.” ‘The heathen phi- 
 losopher Plotinus makes a very striking remark against these men, 
 which all, who view the matter even from the ground of Christ- 
 ianity, must recognize as true, namely, that while they venture 
 with more boldness than Epicurus, who denied any overruling pro- 
 vidence of this world, to throw out the same accusations that he 
 did, they must necessarily bring men to the same result, in regard 
 to morals; which result would be this: “That nothing is left for 
 us here, except to give ourselves up to our desires, and to despise 
 all the laws of this world, and all morals, for there is nothing good 
 to be found in this abominable world *.” 
 
 This difference is also shewn in the consideration of individual 
 moral relations. The Gnostics of the latter class either pre- 
 scribed celibacy and abhorred marriage, as something unclean and 
 profane, or else, according to the principle that every thing 
 
 1 Clemens, Stromata, lib. ii. p. 411. Porphyry de Abstinentia Carnis, lib. i. § 40, 
 &c. paints the notions of these men in a manner quite accordant with that of Cle- 
 mens. ‘It is only some little standing water,” say they, “ which can be defiled by 
 receiving into it something unclean; not the ocean, which receives every thing, 
 because it knows its own greatness. So also little men may be overpowered by what 
 they feed upon, but not he who is an ocean of power (ἐξουσία, apparently an ex- 
 pression peculiar to them, founded on a misuse of that of St. Paul in 1 Cor. viii. 9. 
 vi. 12.), which receives all things into itself, and becomes not defiled.” 
 
 2 See the excellent argument in Plotinus, Ennead. ii, lib. ix. ο, 15. 
 
42 THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 
 
 relating to the senses is entirely indifferent, and that people here 
 must only defy the Demiurgos by contempt of his limiting laws— 
 they justified the indulgence of every desire. ‘Those of the for- 
 mer class, on the contrary, honoured marriage as an holy state, by 
 which the natural state of man was to be ennobled. And the 
 Valentinian Gnosis, in fact, as it universally considered the lower 
 world as a symbol and mirror of the higher, and as it sought for 
 the revelation of the highest law of that higher system in the 
 different stages of existence in manifold degrees,—so also it re- 
 cognized, in the marriage connection, the image of a higher 
 connection, which runs through all stages of existence, from the 
 very highest link of the whole chain. (See below.) Besides, 
 the influence of the originally Jewish notions, which were inclined 
 to prize the marriage condition highly, is also shewn here. 
 
 The difference between these two classes of Gnosis is still farther 
 brought prominently forward in their different mode of consi- 
 dering the person of Christ. All Gnostics, however, in a certain 
 respect agree in this, that, as they separated the God of heaven 
 and the God of nature from each other, and as they therefore 
 severed also the invisible and the visible system, the Divine and 
 the human, too widely from each other; so also they would not 
 recognize the union of the Divine and the human in the person 
 of Christ. And yet, just as we have observed a remarkable dif- 
 ference in regard to the first of these matters, between the two 
 chief divisions of the Gnostic system, we shall also be able to 
 remark such a difference in regard to the latter of them. We 
 shall find here also an essential gradation in the views entertained 
 of the relation between the Divine and the human in Christ. 
 The one party, indeed, recognized the manhood of Christ as real, 
 and also conceded to it a certain dignity, although, as they made 
 two Gods out of the one God of heaven and of nature, and 
 allowed the Creator of the latter to be only the instrument of 
 the former, they also divided the one Christ into two Christs, a 
 higher and a lower, a heavenly and an earthly one, in such a 
 manner, that the latter was merely the instrument of the for- 
 mer; and these two they held were not originally indissolubly 
 bound together, but the former had united himself to the latter, 
 for the first time, at the baptism in the river Jordan. But the 
 other class of Gnostics, as they denied the connection of Christ- 
 ianity with Judaism, and with all historical development of God’s 
 kingdom among mankind, and as they made out of the God of 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF ΑΝΟΒΊΤΙΟΞ. 45 
 
 Christ and of the Gospel a different God from that of nature and 
 of history, so also they rejected the connection of the appearance 
 of Christ with nature and with history. Christ did not here, 
 (according to them) enter into nature, nor into the historical de- 
 velopment of human nature. The view, which suited the fan- 
 tastic disposition of the East, and had long since been spread 
 abroad among the Jews, namely, that a higher Spirit might 
 represent itself to the eye of sense in a multitude of delusive 
 forms’, which appeared to the senses, but had no reality,—this 
 notion was applied to Christ, and one whole essential part of his 
 earthly existence and his personality, was thus argued away; the 
 whole of his human nature was denied; the whole human appear- 
 ance of Christ was made a mere deceptive appearance, a mere vision 
 —and this was Docetism, the direct contrary to mere Lbionitism, 
 which would recognize nothing but the human in Christ. And 
 this view might, at last, be carried so far—as it was among the 
 more fanciful Bastlidians—as exactly to despise the most holy 
 points in the human life of Jesus in the most profane manner. 
 The Gnostic systems will also admit of a very natural division 
 into two classes by means of their most essential and influential 
 differences. The first class, consisting of those sects which ac- 
 knowledge the connection between the visible and the invisible world, 
 —between the revelation of God in nature, in history, and in Christ- 
 tanity, and the connection between the Old and the New Testament, 
 as the development of one whole theocratical scheme—and the second 
 class, of those which tear asunder these connections, and which make 
 Christianity only an insulated fragment in the history of man; or, 
 as we may explain it more shortly, the sects which founded their 
 views on Judaism, and those which set themselves entirely at 
 enmity against it*. It is, we avow, natural enough, that between 
 these opposite extremes many intermediate opinions should be 
 
 1 My readers may remember the Indian Maja, and many other Indian Myths. 
 
 2 This division has this circumstance in its favour, that it is only in this manner 
 that the peculiar system of Marcion—which, however, is necessarily connected with 
 the Gnostic systems only from one side,—can find its proper place among them. 
 Clement of Alexandria in a certain degree confirms this division, when he calls 
 Valentinus the kopugatog τῶν πρεσβευοντων τὴν κοινοτητα. (Strom. lib. vi. 641.) 
 —the leader of those who maintain @ common source of the revelation of the Divinity 
 among men, and do not deny the connection of Christianity with all earlier revela- 
 tions of God. The πρεσβεύοντες to ἰδιον του χριστιανισμου, who would not 
 acknowledge any such κοινοτὴς between Christianity and any other revelation 
 whatever of Divine truth, according to him, also, would be the contrast to this class. 
 
44 GNOSTIC EXEGESIS ARBITRARY. 
 
 found, which do not, however, invalidate the correctness of the 
 division. 
 
 It is peculiarly instructive to consider the mode and manner by 
 which these Gnostics were able to come to the persuasion, that 
 their doctrines, so foreign to the simple Gospel, could have been 
 delivered by Christ and the apostles, and how they endeavoured 
 to prove this. We find here the same phenomena, which, arising 
 out of causes that lie in the very inmost nature of man, were 
 often repeated in following centuries. With a ready-formed 
 Theosophie system, based on its own fundamental principles, 
 they went to the Holy Scriptures, and sought to find in them 
 something to hang their system upon. And this they might 
 easily find, because they were wholly unacquainted with the rules 
 of grammatical and logical interpretation ", and despised attention 
 to such matters as carnal’, for their inward intuition was to open 
 every thing. But they were punished for the pride, which, 
 trusting to a certain inward light, only granted to higher natures 
 of a certain class, despised the usual human means of knowledge. 
 Therefore they were given up to every kind of error which can 
 arise from the want of considering the occasion and the connection 
 in which any thing is said, from the confusion between different 
 meanings of a word*, from the want of distinguishing between meta- 
 phorical and proper expressions, and from the arbitrary application 
 of single traits in comparison, without regard to that which consti- 
 tutes the real points of comparison. ‘The subjective caprice of the 
 imaginative faculty, of the feelings, and of speculation, without 
 an objective law, proceeding from the application of the rules of 
 thought and language, might find whatever it chose in the Scrip- 
 tures, and introduce it into them. The Parables, for the simplicity 
 and practical depth of which they had no feeling, were therefore 
 peculiarly acceptable to them, because an arbitrary interpretation, 
 when they had once put the real point of comparison out of their 
 view, had the freest play here. But contention against the arbi- 
 trary biblical interpretation of the Gnosties had also the advan- 
 
 1 Origen (Philocal. c. 14.) shews how much strengthened in their errors the 
 Gnostics were by their dyvova τῶν NoytKwy in their interpretation of the Bible. 
 
 2 Only fit for the Puyxucor. f 
 
 ® As, for example, where they found the word “world” used with blame in the 
 New Testament, these passages served them for a proof, that this whole creation is 
 something imperfect, and could not come from the supreme and perfect God; for it 
 never entered into their heads, that the word “world” might be used in the New 
 Testament in a different sense. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ACCOMMODATION. 45 
 
 tageous effect, that it made their opponents attentive to the 
 necessity of a more accurate grammatical and logical interpreta- 
 tion of the Bible, and induced them to the establishment of the 
 first Hermeneutic Canons, as we may observe from various proofs 
 in the writings of Irenzeus, ‘Tertullian, Clemens, and Origen. 
 
 The bolder among the Gnostics used a theory of interpretation 
 likely to lead to arbitrary principles of criticism. They said,— 
 Christ and the apostles spoke according to the different conditions 
 and views of the man to whom they spoke; they took these dif- 
 ferent positions themselves. With the Yvyicor—those who were 
 in the condition of a blind unintellectual faith (those who were 
 fettered by Jewish prejudices)—they spoke only of a Demiurgos, 
 because their limited natures could not understand any thing 
 higher. (The Gnostics are the fathers of the theory of an accom- 
 modation, as used in the Christian Church in an exegetical point 
 of view, although of itself the theory of an accommodation is as 
 old as the difference between an esoteric and an exoteric religious 
 system.) The higher truths from the world of AZons, and those 
 above that world, they (1. 6. Christ and the apostles) had (accord- 
 ing to this view) communicated only to a small circle of initiated 
 men, who were capable of receiving such truths in virtue of their 
 higher spiritual natures (as πνευματικοι)» and these truths they 
 indicated only in detached images and hints, which could be un- 
 derstood by none but such natures. ‘That higher wisdom they 
 had delivered (as St. Paul says, 1 Cor. ii. 6.) only orally among 
 the perfect, and only orally was it for ever to be propagated in 
 the narrow circle of the initiated. 
 
 The knowledge of this secret tradition, therefore, first gives 
 the true key of the deeper interpretation of the Scriptures. 
 Irenzeus says, on the contrary, ‘ For the apostles, who were sent 
 forth to find the wandering, and to give sight to those who saw 
 not, and to heal the sick, did not address them in language suited 
 to their then notions, but according to the revelation of truth. 
 ...... + For what physician, who wishes to heal the sick, 
 would act according to the desires of the sick man, and not ac- 
 cording to that which is proper to cure him? ....... ’ The 
 apostles, who are the disciples of the truth, are far from all lies ; 
 
 1 Contra Heres. iii. 5. J 
 ? [This passage, in the original, precedes the rest of the quotation. H. R.] 
 
40 CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. 
 
 for a lie has nothing in common with the truth, any more than 
 darkness with light. ..... . Our Lord, who is the truth, lied 
 not.” 
 
 Or else they said, ‘“ From the account of the apostles itself, we 
 cannot learn the pure doctrine of Christ, for the apostles were 
 fettered by psychical and Jewish opinions; and the Pneumaticus 
 (i. ὁ. the spiritual man) must separate the psychical from the 
 pneumatical in their writings.” Or they even ventured to sepa- 
 rate, in the very discourses of Christ himself, what the psychical 
 Christ spoke in him by the inspiration of the Demiurgos,—what 
 the Divine wisdom, still hovering between the dominion of the 
 Demiurgos and the Pleroma, and not yet arrived at its full per- 
 fection ',—and what the highest νοῦς, uttered from out the 
 Pleroma *. 
 
 If these Gnostics had been thinkers of the same sort with the 
 people of the western world, they would have separated in their 
 composite (construirten) Christ what he said under the influence 
 of immediate inspiration, out of an intuition elevating itself above 
 all that belongs to time, and what he said speaking from a re- 
 flection disturbed by ideas belonging to time; but they would 
 only have been expressing the same notions in different lan- 
 guage. 
 
 These Gnostics were, in part, not thoroughly resolved to break 
 from the rest of the Church, and to found separate communities. 
 They were, indeed, persuaded, that the ψυχίκοι;, as they were 
 conditioned, could receive Christianity in no other than the 
 Churchly form; that they could arrive at no higher degree than 
 that of faith upon authority; that their faculty for the higher spi- 
 ritual intuition was utterly gone, and therefore they wished not to 
 disturb these men‘, whose views were more of the common eccle- 
 siastical kind, in their tranquil faith,—but they wished, after 
 grafting themselves upon the common Church assemblies, to 
 found, in connection with them, a kind of theosophic schools, and 
 of Christian mysteries, into which all those in whom they believed 
 they could observe that higher faculty, not conceded to all, might 
 be received. ‘They made complaints also that men would not 
 suffer them to remain in the communion of the Church, and 
 
 1“ Sophia,” or “Achamoth.” See below. * ~ ? See Irenzus, lib. 111. c. 2. 
 3 Tove κοινοὺς ἐκκλησιαστικους. 
 
GNOSTICISM FAVOURED BY PRIDE. 47 
 
 called them heretics, whereas they entirely agreed with the doc- 
 trine of the Church '. 
 
 But what would have become of the Church, if this intention 
 of theirs*, of extending themselves in the Church by this dis- 
 tinction of two different stages of religion, had succeeded. How 
 deeply would it have injured the simplicity, the confidence, and 
 the clearness, of the Christian faith, the practical spirit of Christ- 
 ianity, the bond of Christian communion that unites all hearts, 
 and reason also which attains the development due to its nature 
 in the light of Christianity, while it is conscious to itself of its 
 natural limits,—limits which a presumptuous intellectual intuition 
 pretended to pass over®. But the spirit of Christianity, as we 
 shall see when we come to consider the theological development 
 of spiritual knowledge in the Church, awakened two different 
 dispositions, which, uniting in this warfare, opposed Gnosticism. 
 
 That which procured an entrance for Gnosticism, was a pride 
 (founded, we confess, on one side in human nature,) which has 
 always especially contributed to further those dispositions which 
 are not willing to content themselves with that which is simple, 
 but are always anxious to have something of their own, which 
 sets them above others, a pride which finds it very hard to let 
 itself down so far, as simply to receive and accept, together with 
 the rest of mankind. Irenzus and Plotinus, two men of such 
 thoroughly different characters, both point out to us how the 
 pride of human nature is flattered by the phantasies of the Gnos- 
 tics. The former says*, “ He who has given himself up to them 
 becomes instantly puffed up; he believes himself to be neither 
 
 ! Queruntur de nobis, quod cum similia nobiscum sentiant, sine causa abstineamus 
 nos a communicatione eorum, et cum eadem dicant et eandem habeant doctrinam, 
 vocemus illos hereticos. Iren. lib. iii. c. 15. 
 
 2 In which they themselves were conscious of no impropriety, because this sort 
 of proceeding was founded on the entire view which they entertained of religion. 
 
 3 The doctrine of Plotinus,—ro δὲ ὑπερ νουν, ἠδη ἐστιν ἐξω Tov νου To πέσειν, 
 —is quite just, in as far as it opposes the Gnostics, who spoke of a higher organ 
 than reason for the knowledge of the Divine nature, that is to say, the πνευματικον, 
 a faculty which resided only in certain natures. But this proposition is false when it 
 is used, as in the notions of Plotinus it might be, to oppose Christianity in general, 
 which gave us an objective source of knowledge of Divine things, elevated above 
 human reason, in a revelation of God, from which reason, as an organ (or instru- 
 ment) is to draw (its knowledge) under the illumination of a higher Spirit. 
 
 4 Lib. iii. c. 15. [This passage is paraphrased, but not translated, by Neander ; 
 in fact, the first part of it almost baffles translation. We must remember that part 
 of Ireneus has descended to us only in a Latin translation. ΕΠ. R. ] 
 
48 OPPOSITION TO CARNAL VIEWS. —UNSATISFIED LONGINGS. 
 
 in heaven nor on earth, but to have entered into the Pleroma, 
 and carries himself most proudly.” And Plotinus says, “ Irra- 
 tional men are at once caught by such speeches as these: ‘Thou 
 shalt become better, not only than αἴ men, but than all Gods 
 also,’ for great is the pride of men. The man who was before 
 humble and discreet, now hears with pleasure—‘ Thou art a son 
 of God', but the rest, whom thou lookest up to with admiration, 
 are no sons of God; thou art also higher than heaven, without 
 doing any thing for that purpose.’” ut 
 
 On the other hand, as it usually happens that every prevailing 
 error of any age has its opposite in another error, by which it 
 has been called forth, and the combating of which lends it a 
 plausible appearance; and as, for the most part, it happens that 
 whenever any false tendency spreads itself abroad among one 
 part of mankind, it has for its foundation some truth, which is 
 misunderstood, and partially conceived, and some want of human 
 nature, which, in itself; and of itself, is real, but has been led 
 astray,—so it happened here also. It was opposition against a 
 gross and sensuous conception of Divine things, among the Jews 
 and Christians, which called forth Gnosticism; and it furthered 
 its propagation the more, because Christianity had awakened also 
 new spiritual wants, which could find no satisfaction in a mere 
 faith founded on authority, which despised every thing ideal, cast 
 away from it all higher contemplation and intuition, and abruptly 
 rejected all speculation. If the Gnostics did imagine faith so 
 mean a thing, and if they did not attain to a knowledge of what 
 it is in vital Christianity, and in the ideas of St. Paul, they may 
 have been induced to such a course by their opposition to men, 
 who either did not in their lives manifest the true power of faith, 
 by shewing that it was an animating principle of life, or at least 
 did not understand how to shew, in its full development, the 
 truth, that faith is something more than a mere belief on the 
 strength of authority, and than a mere subjection to outward 
 authority, that it is an inward living disposition and an inward 
 principle of life, the source of a new life within. 
 
 Many have been led to Gnosticism by an unsatisfied desire 
 after a deeper Christian knowledge, and after a knowledge of the 
 inward organic connection of the doctrines of Christianity’. The 
 
 1 A πνευματικος, who alone could descend immediately from the Supreme God. 
 ? As Ambrosius, of whom and to whom the great Origen (who converted him from 
 
CERINTHUS. 49 
 
 Gnostics made the first attempt to develop the Christian doc- 
 trine as a whole, and in its individual parts, according to their 
 interior connection, and to form out of Christianity a continued 
 and connected mode of viewing divine and human things. The 
 desire and endeavour after an inward connection and an inward 
 unity of knowledge, is not to be mistaken among them; although 
 we acknowledge this endeavour of theirs, whieh in one point of 
 view was right, was sadly led astray, and took a false and de- 
 structive turn, because they would not know Christianity from 
 its own peculiar and essential nature, because they mixed hetero- 
 geneous elements with Christianity, which is complete and suffi- 
 cient in itself, because they did not regard the natural limits of 
 human knowledge, and because they were unable to perceive 
 the limits which belong to religion, and those which belong to 
 knowledge. Their tremendous errors stand in history as an 
 instructive warning and example. 
 
 After these general reflections, we now proceed to the indivi- 
 dual Gnostic sects, and, according to the division which has ap- 
 peared th® most suitable, we shall first speak of those Gnostic 
 sects which, engrafting themselves on Judaism, supposed a gradual 
 development of the theocracy to take place in mankind, proceeding 
 Srom one original foundation, 
 
 ((β.) The individual sects. 
 (1.) The Gnostics, whose system was engrafted on Judaism. 
 
 (a.) Cerinthus. 
 
 As the doctrine of this Gnostic shows us clearly how Gnosis 
 formed itself out of Judaism, he forms the natural transition-point 
 from the Judaizing sects to the Gnostics. In the accounts which 
 remain to us of his opinions, we find contradictions and difficul- 
 ties which can only be explained by taking a just view of the 
 manner in which Gnosticism was deduced from Judaism. Cerin- 
 
 the errors of Gnosticism) said, ‘From want of persons who preach the better 
 truths, while you could not, out of your love to Jesus, bear an unreasonable and 
 ignorant faith (αὐτὸς youv ἀπορίᾳ τῶν πρεσβευοντων Ta KpELTTOVA, μὴ φερων THY 
 ἄλογον και ἰδιωτικὴην πιστιν, δια THY προς τον Inoovy ἀγαπην), you gave yourself 
 up formerly to doctrines which afterwards, using the understanding bestowed upon 
 you rightly, you knew to be erroneous, and cast away.”—Origen. T. v. Joh. towards 
 the end. 
 VOL, II. Ε 
 
50 CERINTHUS, DOCTRINES OF.—CONFLICTING EVIDENCE. 
 
 thus, according to an old tradition which we have no valid reason 
 to doubt, lived at Ephesus at the same time with St. John. He 
 lived in those regions, where corruptions of Christianity had 
 already in early times threatened Christianity ; which were, how- 
 ever, different corruptions from those’ with which Christianity 
 had to contend in its very birth, and which proceeded from a 
 Pharisaical Judaism, while these rather arose from a mixture 
 of Jewish theosophy with Christianity. 
 
 The most striking contradiction between the accounts of the 
 doctrines of Cerinthus appears to lie in this ; that Irenzeus makes 
 him out a complete Gnostic, while the Presbyter Caius of Rome, 
 who wrote at the end of the second century, and Dionysius, Bishop 
 of Alexandria, after the middle of the third century, ascribe to 
 him a gross sensual Chiliasm, which bears upon it the garb of the 
 carnal notions of Judaism. We might, however, bring these two 
 accounts nearer to each other, if we were at liberty to subtract 
 a little from each. It may easily have happened to Irenzeus, that, 
 where he found a few traits resembling Gnosticism, he made out 
 of them a whole Gnostic system. ‘To the Presbyter Caius, as a 
 zealous opponent of Chiliasm, every thing was welcome which 
 could serve to place Chiliasm in an unfavourable point of view ; 
 and certainly he was not inclined to explain the expressions of a 
 system which he detested, in the mildest manner; and was the 
 less likely to do so, because these expressions might easily be 
 misunderstood by a person not accustomed to the Jewish--Oriental 
 mode of speaking allegorically. And besides, it was natural that 
 Irenzeus, in whose persuasion a belief in Chiliasm was necessary 
 to a perfect orthodoxy, should not quote such a view among the 
 peculiar opinions of a Gnostic, whom he hated. We shall now 
 endeavour, from the fragments which we can gather from the 
 above-cited reports, compared with the account of Epiphanius, to 
 put together a whole. 
 
 According to Irenzus’, Cerinthus taught that the world was 
 created by a power ἡ quite subordinate to the highest God, which 
 did not even so much as know this God who was elevated above 
 
 ' See Acts xx. 29. Comp. 1. and 2. Epistles to Timothy, and the Epistle to the 
 Colossians. 
 
 2 The passage which is most to be used for this purpose, being that in which 
 Irenzeus mixes up Cerinthus less than elsewhere, with other Gnostics, is lib. i. 
 26. j 
 
 % Virtus, δυναμις, Mm, a terminus technicus of Jewish theology. 
 
CERINTHUS.—BAPTISM OF OUR LORD. δ] 
 
 every thing. According to Epiphanius', he held that the world 
 _ was created by angels. The Jewish element, which is the founda- 
 tion of all this, is here easily recognized; he thought that the 
 God’, who was elevated above all contact with material things, 
 and who came not forth from the hidden recesses of his incom- 
 prehensible nature, had created this world by means of minister- 
 ing angels. He supposed, in accordance with the Jewish theories, 
 different ranks and degrees in the higher world of spirits, and 
 ascribed to the angels or powers, through which God had created 
 earthly things, a lower stage in this gradation ; just as he chose 
 to place earthly things, without denying their divine origin, yet 
 far below heavenly things. Perhaps he did not teach, that those 
 angels did not know the supreme God; but only that they had a 
 very imperfect knowledge of God and of the highest heavens, and 
 not the perfect knowledge which was first to be communicated by 
 the revelation of the Divine Logos. At the head of these angels, 
 Cerinthus (according to Irenzus) placed a power, which was 
 taken from among them, and presided over them. He main- 
 tained also, according to the apparently common representation 
 of the Jews, that the Mosaic law had been revealed by means of 
 this angel*. While he said this, he still desired strictly to bring 
 forward and elevate the dignity of the Mosaic law, as compared 
 with all human systems, and all other national religions: but then 
 when compared with the revelation of the Messiah, he desired to 
 sink this same law as low as the angels are below the highest 
 Logos. In his doctrine as to the person of the Messiah, he was 
 in some respects entirely inclined to cling to the usual Jewish 
 notion. (See above.] ‘The man Jesus was (in this view) a son 
 of Joseph and Maria, begotten in the natural way, provided with 
 no sort of miraculous gifts, who had distinguished himself from 
 the rest of the Jews only by a superior degree of obedience to 
 the law* and wisdom. By these qualities he made himself worthy 
 of being chosen ἡ from among all mankind as the Messiah. He 
 himself knew nothing of this destination appointed for him; this 
 was first revealed to him in his baptism by John, at the time 
 destined to his consecration for the office of Messiah, and at the 
 
 1 Heres. 8, or 28. 2 The wy of Philo. 
 
 3 According to Epiphanius, by one of those, perhaps the presiding one, to whom, 
 as the representative of the supreme God on this stage of being, the guidance of the 
 people consecrated to God, was especially confided. 
 
 4 By δικαιοσυνὴ in its usual Jewish sense. 5 ry exhoyy Χριστος. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 CERINTHUS.—BAPTISM OF OUR LORD. 
 
 : 
 
 same time he was furnished with the powers necessary to him for 
 the fulfilment of this destination. ‘That supreme Logos or Spirit 
 of God? appeared and descended from the heavens, which opened 
 above Jesus, in the radiant form of a dove, and it sunk down into 
 the heart of Jesus. The narrative given in an Ebionite recen- 
 sion of the EvayyeAwov καθ᾽ “EBpaove, where it is said’, “ While 
 the people were being baptized, Jesus came and suffered himself 
 to be baptized by John,” (probably without being conscious that 
 he was different from the rest of those baptized by John, or that 
 any thing peculiar would take place in regard to him.) ““ and 
 when he came forth from the water, the heavens were opened, 
 and he saw the Holy Spirit of God in the form of a dove, de- 
 scending and entering into him*.” (The luminous form de- 
 scended visibly upon his head, and entered into him. It now 
 disappeared: a proof that the Holy Spirit or Logos had wholly 
 united itself with his person.) ‘* And there was a voice from 
 heaven which said, Thou art my beloved Son, in thee am I well 
 pleased ;” and again, ‘‘ this day have I begotten thee *;” that is 
 to say, I have brought thee to the dignity of a Son, that is, of the 
 Messiah, by means of the connexion with this Spirit of God; 
 ‘“‘and immediately there shone around a great light *.”. By means 
 of a connexion with this supreme Spirit Jesus now first attained 
 to a rank, a power, and a wisdom, elevated above this whole world, 
 and the angels that preside over it. He now first attained to the 
 perfect knowledge of the supreme God, and of heavenly things. 
 Now the angels themselves might learn from his revelations ; and 
 now he performs miracles by the Divine power of this Spirit, 
 which is united to him. ‘This is that which used him as its 
 instrument in every thing; this is the πνευμα του Xpuorov, 
 the Messiah himself, in the highest sense of the word®. The 
 
 1 It is quite allowable to suppose that Cerinthus, like many Jewish theologians, 
 considered the zvevua ἁγιον and the λόγος as identical. 
 
 2 [This extract is taken from Epiphanius Heres. xxx. Ebion. ὃ 19. and is printed 
 in Grabe Spicilegium Patrum Seeculi I. p. 272. H. R.] 
 
 85. Eide ro πνευμα του Θεοῦ To ἁγιον, ἐν Eider περιστερας κατελθουσης και EiceX- 
 θουσης εἰς αὐτον. 
 
 3 eyw σημερον γεγεννήκα σε. 
 
 ὅ [I have distinguished the parts which occur in the Greek text by inverted com- 
 -mas; the rest is the interpretation put upon it by Neander, which is hardly distin- 
 guished enough in the German. It contains his view of the interpretation the Gnos-. 
 tics put upon this passage. H. R.] 
 
 ® The ἄνω Χριστος, the Χριστος ἐπουρανιος, of whom Jesus was only the human 
 instrument, the karw Χριστοῦ. 
 
CHRISTOLOGY AND JUDAISM OF CERINTHUS. 53 
 
 idea of a Messiah, who should redeem by means of his suffer- 
 ings, did not suit the notions of a Cerinthus, who had no feel- 
 ing for the Divine nature in the form of a servant, and who was 
 attached to the imposing grandeur of a magical and _ theoso- 
 phic system’. In union with the mighty Spirit of God, Jesus 
 could not have suffered: by this union he must necessarily have 
 triumphed over all his enemies. The very fact of suffering is of 
 itself a proof that the Spirit of God which was united with him, 
 had been beforehand separated from him, and had gone up again 
 to the Father. To the suffering of the Man, now left to himself, 
 Cerinthus apparently ascribed no part of the work of redemp- 
 tion *. 
 
 According to Epiphanius, this theosophist, who arranged every 
 thing anew so as to suit his own notions, denied the resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ. In pursuance of this idea he may have supposed 
 that the Divine Logos would unite itself again to the man Jesus, 
 only when it was about to appoint him the victorious king of the 
 Messiah’s kingdom, and raise up all the faithful with him to take 
 their share in that kingdom. The account of Epiphanius, how- 
 ever, is not entirely to be relied on; because as he preceeded on 
 the supposition that St. Paul was contending in every place 
 against the followers of Cerinthus, he may have attributed to 
 Cerinthus a doctrine which he did not hold, in consequence of 
 the passage in 1 Corinth. xv. 
 
 Cerinthus further agreed with the Ebionites in holding the 
 perpetual obligation of the Mosaic law, in a certain sense, upon 
 Christians. He might well suppose that the highest meaning of 
 Judaism, which was not clearly known even to the law-giving 
 angel himself, the Τουδαισμος πνευματικος, the heavenly Judaism, 
 which was shadowed forth by the earthly, had been first revealed 
 by the revelation of the Logos, and that yet that earthly and 
 shadowy form was still to last till the triumphant approach of the 
 kingdom of the Messiah, or to the beginning of a new and hea- 
 venly order of things. But as Epiphanius says of him, that he 
 partly*® held fast to Judaism, and it is not likely that the latter 
 should have invented any thing of this sort; we may conclude 
 from it, that Cerinthus did not look on every thing in Judaism 
 
 1 [ Literally, who love magic-theosophic grandeur. H. R.] 
 2 See below, under the head Basilides. 
 3 Προσεχειν τῳ ᾿Ιουδαισμῳ ἀπο μέρους. 
 
54 CERINTHUS.—CHILIASM.—BASILIDES. 
 
 as equally divine; and that in some degree, like the author of 
 the Clementine, and many other mystic sects of the Jews, he 
 made a distinction between an original Judaism, and the later 
 corruptions of it; and that he insisted on the continued obli- 
 gation only of that part of the ceremonial law which he con- 
 sidered as among the genuine parts of it. Asa sort of middle 
 and transition point from the earthly system of the world to 
 the new, eternal, heavenly system, Cerinthus, with many Jew- 
 ish theologists, supposed a thousand-year season of happiness, 
 under the government of the Messiah rendered triumphant 
 through the power of the Logos, which was to take place in 
 Jerusalem as the centre-point of the ennobled earth. A too 
 literal interpretation of the passage in Ps. xe. 4. led people to 
 suppose, that as a thousand years in the sight of God are but 
 as one day, the world would last in its present state six thousand 
 years; and then at the conclusion of the earthly course, a sab- 
 bath (a time of undisturbed blessing) of a thousand years would 
 take place on earth for the pious, now delivered from all strug- 
 gles. We are certainly inclined to ask, whether he made to him- 
 self so gross and carnal a representation of the blessings of this 
 thousand-years’ sabbath, as Caius and Dionysius accuse him of, 
 which does not appear to harmonize well with the general cha- 
 racter of his opinions. He spoke of a marriage-feast, which was 
 at that time an image commonly used to represent the happy 
 union of the Messiah with his own people’; but those who ex- 
 plained his words with a feeling of bitterness against him, might 
 misinterpret such images. Dionysius says, that when he spoke of 
 fasts and sacrifices, he was only endeavouring to gloss over his 
 gross and carnal representations. But what was there to justify 
 him in this declaration " ? 
 
 (b.) Basilides. 
 
 We pass now from Cerinthus to Basilides, who wrote in the 
 first half of the second century. It is most probable that Alex- 
 andria was the sphere of his activity; the stamp of an Alexan- 
 
 1 The Gnostics also pictured the happiness of the πνευματικοι received into the 
 Pleroma, under the image of a marriage-festival, a marriage between the σωτὴρ and 
 the cogia ; between the spiritual natures and the angels. (See below.) So in Hera- 
 cleon ap. Origen. t. x. Joh. ὃ 14. we find avamavoig ἡ ἐν yapy. 
 
 2 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iii, 28. 
 
τ 
 
 BASILIDES.—DIVINE ENERGIES.—HIS OGDOAD. Bs 
 
 drian Jewish education cannot be mistaken in him and in his son 
 Isidore, whose name points out his Egyptian birth. But the 
 account of Epiphanius, that Syria, the general birth-place of 
 Gnostic systems, was also the native land of Basilides, is not in 
 itself improbable, although it is on the other hand not a sufficient 
 proof. ‘The doctrines of emanation and dualism were the founda- 
 tion of his system; at the fountain-head of these emanations he 
 placed the hidden God, elevated above all representations and 
 images’. ‘The middle point between this incomprehensible origin 
 and all following developments of life, is the unfolding of that 
 Being in his several powers which individualize themselves, and 
 become in fact, so many names of the unnameable Being. Man 
 ean only think on God after the analogy of his own spirit; and 
 an objective truth forms the foundation of that analogy, inasmuch 
 as the spirit of man is the image of God. He can form to himself 
 no representation of the most perfect Being, without breaking the 
 idea of the most perfect, which resides within his spirit, into the 
 several parts of which it consists ; and he feels himself compelled 
 to distinguish the several attributes of this most perfect Being, in 
 order to make this idea comprehensible to himself: but a deep 
 thinker is well convinced, that this is merely a necessary expe- 
 dient to assist human imperfection, and knows how to distinguish 
 that which is objective, from that which is subjective. And 
 yet the Gnostic was not capable of entering into this distinc- 
 tion: what is necessary to human conceptions, he attributed to 
 the objective development of existence; as thus :—in order to 
 bring forth life out of himself, the Being which contains all per- 
 fection within himself, must first unfold himself into the several 
 qualities which the idea of absolute perfection contains; and then, 
 instead of the abstract conception of attributes, that suits not with 
 Oriental habits of thought, there come Living, personified (hyposta- 
 sirte] powers, which continue working in independent activity ; as, for 
 instance, first, the intellectual powers, the Spirit, (vove,) Reason, 
 (Aoyoe,) Thought, (φρονησις.) Wisdom, (σοφια:) and then Power, 
 (δυναμις.)} by which God puts the resolves of his wisdom into 
 execution ; and, lastly, the moral attributes, without which God’s 
 almighty power never shows itself active; namely, holiness or 
 moral perfection, (duKcatoovvn’*, a word which must be understood 
 
 1 Ὁ dkarovopacroc, dppnroc. 
 ? It is remarkable that Basilides used the word δικαιοσυνὴ according to its He-~ 
 
56 ABRAXAS.—DUALISM. 
 
 according to the Hellenistic and Hebrew phraseology, and not in 
 the narrow sense of the German word, gerechtigkeit, unless 
 people will understand this German word in its original etymo- 
 logical sense,) and then, after moral perfection, follows inward 
 tranquillity, peace (εἰρηνη)» which, as Basilides justly acknow- 
 ledged, can only be there where holiness is; and this tranquil- 
 lity is the characteristic of the Divine life: and this forms the 
 close of this inward Divine development of life’. The num- 
 ber seven was a holy number to Basilides, as well as to many 
 theosophists of these times; and thus, in his system, these seven 
 δυνάμεις, together with the first original, which had unfolded 
 himself into them, formed the πρώτη ὀγδοας; and the root of 
 all existence. From thence the spiritual life went on deve- 
 loping itself, constantly farther and farther into manifold degrees 
 of existence, every lower one being always the impression, the 
 resembling image (αντιτυπος) of the higher. If we may draw 
 conclusions as to the doctrines of the original school from what 
 we find of the later Basilidians in Irenzus, and from the gems 
 and amulets of the Basilidians, as Basilides, in accordance with 
 the seven days of the week, always supposed seven similar beings 
 in every stage of the spiritual world,—so also, in consideration of 
 the days of the year, he supposed there were three hundred and 
 sixty-five such regions, or stages, in the spiritual world. This is 
 expressed in the mystical word aBpa&a¢ (which was a symbol of 
 his sect) when it is interpreted by the usual method of reckon- 
 ing Greek letters numerically ὅ. 
 
 Within this emanation-world every thing was that which it ought 
 to be in its own proper position: but out of an union between 
 the Divine and the undivine there arose a disharmony, which 
 was to be brought again into harmony. 
 
 There is, alas! in this place, an hiatus in our accounts of the 
 Basilidian system. It is a matter of. question whether. Basilides 
 
 brew and Hellenistic sense, to denote moral perfection, while other Gnostics, espe- 
 cially those of the second class, used it only to denote a more imperfect moral con- 
 dition ; an idea of righteousness (gerechtigkeitsbegriff) in a more confined sense. 
 
 1 Tren. lib. i. ο. 24. lib. 11. ο. 16. Clem. Strom. lib. iv. 539. 
 
 2 [a=1 + B=2 + p=100 + a=1 + E=60 + a=1 + c=200. H. R.] 
 
 It may be that this name, which designates the whole emanation: world as deve- 
 lopment of the Supreme Being, had also another meaning; but all attempts at an 
 explanation of it will for ever be merely arbitrary ones, for there are no sure grounds 
 in existence from which one could argue about it. 
 
PROCESS OF PURIFICATION. 57 
 
 followed the mode of conception in use with those who supposed 
 the intermixture to take place by the falling down of some of the 
 Divine seed of life into the chaos bordering upon it; or of those, 
 who imagined an empire of evil, which was active by its own 
 energy, and supposed the intermixture to have taken place by an 
 aggressive assault of this empire upon the Empire of Light. In 
 a fragment which is still extant, Basilides quotes the opinion 
 of the Persians on the two opposite empires of Ormuzd and 
 Ahriman; but as the passage which follows has not been pre- 
 served to us, we cannot with certainty conclude whether he quoted 
 this doctrine in approbation or disapprobation. If we remember 
 that he belonged to those who wished to complete the propositions 
 of the Grecian, that is, the Platonic philosophy, by means of the 
 profounder wisdom of the East, the first of these suppositions 
 will appear the most probable. Also, when he spoke of a confu- 
 sion and intermixture of principles’, this might very naturally 
 lead to such a conclusion. The accusation made by Clemens of 
 Alexandria against Basilidas, that he deified the devil*®, leads 
 also to the supposition that Basilides gave occasion to this accusa- 
 tion by his representation of a substantial evil Being*. And, 
 besides, the Basilidian doctrines have much that is akin to the 
 Parsic and Manichzean °. 
 
 But howsoever this intermixture of Light and Darkness, of the 
 Divine and the un-divine, might have arisen, it would neverthe- 
 less, according to this system, necessarily be subservient to the 
 glorification of the Divine Being, to the fulfilling of the ideas of 
 the Supreme Wisdom, and of the law of all the development of 
 life; because the empire of evil is of itself naturally nothing- 
 worth. The empire of the Divine Being is the real empire, and 
 that which is naturally victorious. 
 
 Light, Life, Soul, Good; on one side:—Darkness, Death, 
 Matter, Evil, on the other. These in the system of Basilides, 
 
 ' Disputat. Archel. et Mani. opp. Hippolyt. ed. Fabricii. lib. iii. p. 193. 
 
 2 rapaxoc και συγχύσις ἀρχικη. Clem. 1. ii. f. 408. 
 
 3 Clemens Strom. lib. iv. p. 507. πως οὐκ ἄθεος, θειαζων τον διαβολον. 
 
 4 Διάβολος, Ahriman. 
 
 5 If Basilides, 1. c. in the Dissertation of Archelaus, speaks in his own person of a 
 pauperis natura, sine radice et sine loco rebus superveniens, must not these enig- 
 matic words be taken to express the doctrine of an empire of evil, without beginning, 
 which, in its poverty, is smitten with desire after the treasures of the kingdom of 
 Light; and penetrating into the light, would wish to seize these, and carry them off 
 for itself. 
 
538 METEMPSYCHOSIS. 
 
 were the members which answered to each other, and maintained 
 the opposition which he supposed to exist throughout the whole 
 course of the universe. In general, just as rust fastens itself 
 from without on iron, so Darkness and Death cleave to the fallen 
 seed of Light and Life, Evil cleaves to Good, and the un- Divine 
 to the Divine, without, however, effecting the annihilation of the 
 original Being; it must only by degrees purify itself from every 
 thing foreign to it, in order to attain to its original splendour, 
 just as iron must be cleansed from rust in order to obtain again 
 a higher polish’. Such a process of purification the whole course 
 of this world affords to the fallen being, as a system which was 
 formed for the perfection of this purification, in order to separate 
 that which is Divine from that which is foreign to its nature, and 
 to conduct it again to what is akin to it, and to a re-union with 
 its original source. 
 
 One would be inclined to think that a system in which a moral 
 retribution was the prevailing idea, might perhaps admit the notion 
 of a passage of the soul into various human bodies, according to 
 the measure of its deserts in a former state of existence, so that 
 it might be placed, according to its deserts, in a different human 
 body, and in different circumstances, and a different situation, and 
 so that it might have to expiate by penitence the guilt contracted 
 in its former state, although only conscious of it in a mysterious 
 and general manner. But the doctrine of a banishment of the 
 soul into the bodies of animals does not appear to suit so well the 
 prevailing moral notion of the system, as one cannot imagine any 
 penitence taking place where there is no moral consciousness at 
 all. And yet, in all systems of this nature, the moral element is 
 not purely and abstractedly conceived, but is always mixed with 
 physical considerations. We have, therefore no reason to doubt 
 am account which makes Basilides introduce such a metempsy- 
 chosis in his own words; as it is a doctrine which, by means of 
 the intermixture of Orientalism, Platonism, and Judaism, was 
 certainly at that time widely diffused even among many Jewish 
 sects. 
 
 ‘T'wo modes, however, of viewing this doctrine may now be 
 thought of; the one, when the notion of moral retribution is con- 
 
 ' Basilides speaks thus in general terms about the sufferings of all fallen Beings 
 of Light: “ Trouble and anxiety naturally fall on things, as rust on iron.’ ‘O πόνος 
 
 kat ὁ φοβος ἐπισυμβαινει τοις πραγμασιν ὡς ὁ ἰος τῳ σιδηρῳ. Clemens Alex. 
 Strom. lib. iv. p. 509. a. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE. 59 
 
 stantly kept stedfastly in view, and the soul is supposed to be 
 banished into the bodies of animals, only as a mode of punish- 
 ment : the other, when it is conceived under the more physical 
 notion of a gradual development of the spiritual seed of life, 
 which constantly becomes more freed from matter, which keeps 
 it prisoner, and constantly attains more and more to conscious- 
 ness, and to the development of its original nature. Basilides 
 appears in one passage to favour this latter notion, and appears 
 to be declaring how the soul struggles itself into consciousness, in 
 the body of an animal out of an unconscious state. ‘The words in 
 Rom. vii. 9. about a hfe without the law, he understands as relat- 
 ing to such a life in the body of an animal, whether that of a 
 quadruped, or that of a bird; where no law for the soul could 
 exist’. The view, that the soul might be still more imprisoned 
 and hemmed in by matter, in yet lower degrees of existence, 
 would easily engraft itself on this interpretation; and also that 
 in plants, and in stones, there is a soul, only more imprisoned, 
 which, by degrees, freeing itself more and more, developes it- 
 self from stone to plant, from plant to animal, and from animal 
 toman. ‘This mode of representation suits also with his whole 
 system ; because he considers matter not as anything that lives, 
 but only as that dead stuff, which has joined itself with that which 
 is living. And besides, there is with him no such thing as a dead 
 nature ; but in all nature there is a life which is held prisoner by 
 matter, and striving to set itself free. And thus he might well 
 say, that all existence is connected together one part with the 
 other; and that, according to the will of God, man must love all 
 that exists, in virtue of this mutual connexion’. 
 
 Two different views were here also united together: the one 
 was, a gradual development from the lowest to the highest, from 
 which that original intermixture and that original fall had pro- 
 ceeded; and the other, a voluntarily-incurred degradation into a 
 lower state of being. And yet, one is inclined to ask, whether 
 Basilides really supposed that the being of light (lichtnatur) or 
 soul, which had once attained to humanity, in the process of its 
 purification and development, could ever sink back into the body 
 of an animal; or whether he did not, on the contrary, confine the 
 
 Δ See Origen Commentar. in Ep. ad Rom. vol. iv. Opp. p. 549. 
 2 ‘Ev pepog ἐκ του λεγομενου θεληματος Tov Θεου ὑπειληφαμεν, TO ἠγαπηκεναι 
 ἁπαντα, ὃτι Noyor ἀποσωζουσι προς το παν ἅπαντα. Strom. lib. iv. fol. 508. 
 
60 THE AKCHON DEMIURGOS.—PROVIDENCE, 
 
 process of purification for a nature which had once attained to 
 this point, entirely within the limits of human nature. 
 
 To the whole earthly system, or to this whole purifying pro- 
 cess of nature and history, Basilides assigned such a Creator (of 
 whose place in the Gnostic systems we have already spoken in 
 the introductory remarks) as he called by the name of the Ruler, 
 or the angel that has the government of this world, (6 ἀρχων.) 
 And yet, according to the doctrine of Basilides, this archon does 
 not act independently and by his own power in the conducting 
 of the universe ; all at last proceeds from the providence of the 
 supreme God, which presides over every thing. 
 
 In the first place, all beings develop themselves according to the 
 law implanted in their peculiar individual natures; which law, toge- 
 ther with their nature, proceeds from the supreme God. The archon 
 only gives the first impulse to this natural course of development, 
 and then he himself becomes guided in his whole conduct by the 
 ideas of the supreme God, who animates every thing, without 
 being able to comprehend them’. We cannot, therefore, in any 
 way accuse Basilides of an unchristian contempt of the world, a 
 denial of a revelation of God in the universe, or an unchristian 
 dualism, which does not recognise the God of grace as the God 
 of creation, and which tears asunder the harmonious connexion 
 between revelation and nature; such a violent dualism can by no 
 means be laid to his charge. It was rather that he made it a 
 matter of great consequence to set forth the law of unity which 
 bound every thing together, from the highest to the lowest; ‘ the 
 world is only one, and is the temple of God.” (See below.) It 
 was a great object to him to justify Providence against every 
 reproach. His conclusion always was, “ I will rather say any- 
 thing whatever, than cast the slightest imputation on Provi- 
 dence *.” 
 
 ' Clem. Strom. lib. iv. p. 509. ‘H προνοια, εἰ και ἀπο Tov ἄρχοντος κινεισθαι 
 apxXETaL, ἀλλ᾽ ἐγκατεσπαρὴ ταις οὐσιαις συν Kat TY των ὁλων γενεσει προς TOU 
 των ὅλων Θεου. Thus, also, in Plotinus (Ennead. iii. lib. ii.), on the subject of 
 mpovoa as a natural development in virtue of an indwelling eternal law of reason, 
 we find the following remark: τὴν προνοιαν τῷ παντι εἰναι, TO κατα νοῦν αὐτὸ 
 εἰναι. There is, however, this difference, that in Basilides there is a more Christian 
 consideration brought forward; because he supposes, in co-operation with the law 
 of nature, a personal God, who acts independently, and guides the development of 
 that law of nature; and, by means of the act of redemption, brings to perfection 
 higher results, than could proceed from the mere development of the law of na- 
 ture. 
 
 * Clem. Strom. lib. iy. p.506. ¢. Hav7’ ἐρω yap μαλλον, ἡ κακὸν τὸ προγοουν ἐρω. 
 
 12 
 
JUDAISM TYPICAL.—WISDOM OF THE PATRIARCHS. 61 
 
 With regard to the rejation of Judaism to the revelation of the 
 loftiest truth and to Christianity, it is in the highest degree pro- 
 bable that Basilides thought in a manner analogous to the 
 Alexandrian Jewish notions on this point, and to his own notions 
 as to the relation between the earthly world and the loftiest sys- 
 tem of the universe. He supposed that the archon, in the conduct 
 of the Jewish people, as well as in the conduct of the universe, 
 had served the supreme God as an instrument, which was not 
 itself conscious of the ideas which were implanted in it, and that 
 the archon had been taken by the great mass of the Jewish 
 people for the supreme God himself, whom he was to represent. 
 It was only those higher natures, which were to be found dis- 
 persed among the Jewish people; it was only the “ people of 
 God,” in its true sense; the πνευματικὸς Ισραηλ: that had been 
 able to raise themselves above the archon himself, to a recognition 
 of the supreme God represented by him, and thus, above the sen- 
 suous covering of Judaism to the contemplation of those ideas, 
 which were contained under this covering, but not understood by 
 the archon himself. An example of his allegorical notions is 
 found in the following saying, “ The one temple of Jerusalem is 
 the type of the one world, which is the temple of God’.” 
 
 But he supposed also the existence of written documents, in 
 which the higher wisdom was brought forward, perhaps more 
 unreservedly than in the writings of the Canon of the Old Testa- 
 ment. In accordance with an idea then widely spread, he traced 
 the tradition of such a philosophical secret doctrine up to the 
 Patriarchs in particular ; and it would appear to him hardly any 
 thing else than natural, that the great mass of the sensuous- 
 minded Jews should not receive those writings, of which they 
 could understand nothing, as canonical. According to the Alex- 
 andrian fashion, he deduced all the traces of truth found in the 
 best Greek philosophers’, which he eagerly hunted after, from 
 that original tradition. ‘‘ Let no one believe,” says Isidorus, 
 the son of Basilides, ‘ that that which we call a peculiar posses- 
 sion of the elect, was earlier said by some philosophers ; for it 
 is not their discovery, but they have taken it out of the Prophets, 
 
 1 Clem. Strom. lib. v. p. 583. D. ‘Eva vewy ἱδρυσαμενος του Θεοῦ (ὁ Mwanc) μο- 
 voyevn TE κοσμον Karnyyeire. Similarly also Philo says, wept μοναρχίας lib 11. τὸ 
 μὲν ἀνωτατω Kat προς ἀληθειαν ἵερον Θεοῦ νομιζει» τον συμπανταὰ χρὴ κοσμον 
 εἰναι, To δὲ χειροκμητον. This idea is still further carried into particulars both by 
 Philo and Josephus. 
 
 * As with Plato and Aristotle. 
 
62 DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 and attributed it to their pretended sages (or to their false wis- 
 dom)'.” It certainly deserves to be remarked (as Gieseler has 
 remarked), that Basilides supposed even Ham to have been 
 among those who handed down this higher wisdom, and perhaps 
 he deduced peculiarly from him the φιλοσοφια [βαρβαρος", which 
 he probably, as a recognizer of the higher wisdom, set above the 
 Greeks *. 
 
 The fundamental Christian doctrine of a redeeming grace had 
 its essential place in the system of Basilides, as the Supreme God 
 was to manifest himself to human nature, and communicate to it 
 a life akin to his own, in order to raise it above the limits of the 
 mundane system, or the world of the Archon, to communion with 
 himself, and to the higher world of spirits. It is clear that this 
 operation of the Supreme God, according to the system of Basil- 
 ides, could only relate to those spiritual natures which were 
 destined by their very constitution for a higher world, but which 
 found themselves prisoners in a lower one. ‘These might, through 
 the progressive development of the metempsychosis raise them- 
 selves from one stage to another in the kingdom of the Archon ; 
 but they could not, in compliance with the desire implanted in 
 them, attain beyond this kingdom and the Archon himself, to 
 communion with the highest system of the world, and to clear 
 knowledge, as well as to the free exercise of their higher nature, 
 unless the Supreme God himself brought his Divine life near to 
 their kindred seed of life, and thereby first set this into activity. 
 And while spiritual natures, by the act of redemption, are raised 
 to the highest position, the influence of redemption at the same 
 time extends itself also to the subordinate stages of being ; har- 
 mony becomes universally re-established, and every class of being 
 attains the condition which is conformable to its nature. But 
 although Basilides on the one side brought forward an element 
 in the doctrine of redemption, which was entirely foreign to the 
 fleshly Judaism that clung to earth,—he was on the other side, 
 like Cerinthus, altogether Hbionitish, inasmuch as he supposed a 
 
 1 Clem. Strom. vi. 641. Kat μὴ τις οἰεσθω, ὁ φαμὲν ἰδιον εἰναι των ἐκλεκτων» 
 TOUTO προειρημένον ὑπαρχειν ὑπο τινων φιλοσοῴφων, οὐ yap ἐστιν αὐτων εὑρημα, 
 των δὲ προφητων σφετερισαμενοι, προσεθηκαν τῳ μὴ ὑπαρχοντι κατ᾽ αὐτους σοφῳ. 
 It appears to me now, that this passage requires no emendation, if we may take the 
 word cody either as masculine or neuter. The expression that follows, ot προσποι- 
 ουμενοι φιλοσοφειν, confirms this explanation of it: 
 
 2 The traces of the higher wisdom, to be found among the Persians and Hindoos. 
 
 3 Ἕλληνες aet παιδες. 
 
CHRISTOLOGY.—THE ARCHON UNDECEIVED. 63 
 
 sudden entrance of the Divine nature into the life of Jesus, and 
 did not recognize any God-man, in whom the Divine and the 
 human natures had been inseparably united from the first. He 
 supposed, as his fundamental position, a redeeming God, but no 
 redeeming Giod-man. 
 
 The man Jesus was not to him the Redeemer, he was distin- 
 guished from other men only in degree; and Basilides does not 
 appear ever to have ascribed absolute unsinfulness to him. He 
 was, in the notions of Basilides, only the instrument which the 
 redeeming God chose, in order to reveal himself in human nature, 
 and to seize on that nature so as to work upon it. With him the 
 Redeemer, in the peculiar and highest sense of the word, was the 
 highest /Zon*, who was sent down from the Supreme God for 
 the highest Aton’, who was sent down from the Supreme God 
 for the fulfilment of the work of redemption: this Being united 
 himself with the man Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan. From 
 this point the whole work of redemption set forth: from that 
 time the man Jesus spoke things which were far beyond the 
 reach of this lower creation. 
 
 The Archon himself, as well as John the Baptist (who was, in 
 the name of the Archon, to consecrate Jesus to the office of 
 Messiah, in the subordinate sense in which the Archon wished, 
 and had promised a Messiah,) was surprised, and seized with 
 astonishment, when he saw the Nove descend, and when he heard 
 at the same time the voice that sounded from heaven, and per- 
 ceived the accompanying appearances’*, and heard this Jesus, 
 whom he had supposed a man of his own kingdom, announce 
 such extraordinary things. He now himself, for the first time, 
 recognises the Supreme God, and the highest system of the 
 world, to both of which he had involuntarily served, till now, as 
 an unconscious instrument, which believed that it acted inde- 
 pendently. He now submits himself willingly to an higher 
 Power, imploring it with astonishment; and from this moment 
 he works freely and consciously, as the instrument of that higher 
 Power. He now recognizes the truth, that even in the kingdom 
 in which he had hitherto believed himself to be supreme, there 
 are beings imprisoned, which are elevated above himself and his 
 world, and which the Nove will free from these bounds, as well-as 
 
 1 Or voue, which is called διάκονος, as serving to the salvation of mankind. 
 2 Which Basilides apparently learned from an apocryphal Gospel. 
 
64 THE ARCHON UNDECEIVED. 
 
 the man Jesus, and raise them to the higher system of the world ; 
 he recognizes the essential distinction between the natures that 
 belong to him of right and are akin to him *, and those which, by 
 their kind, belong to a higher kingdom, and are capable of com- 
 munion with the Nove; he separates each from the other, and 
 lets the latter go free out of his kingdom, without putting any 
 impediment in the way of their elevation. We shall now quote 
 the very words of this man, who conceived every thing under his 
 own peculiar imagery: ‘ When the ruler of the world heard the 
 words of the Redeeming Spirit’, he became astonished at that 
 which he heard and saw, as he heard unexpectedly the glorious 
 message ; and his astonishment was called fear.’ The words, 
 ‘The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,’ are thus to be 
 understood; they mean that the fear of this God is the beginning 
 of wisdom, which separates the different kinds of beings from one 
 another, allows them to come to perfection, and leads them all to 
 the stage of existence for which they -are destined ; for he that 
 rules over all does not separate merely those which belong to the 
 world, but even the elect, and suffers them to depart freely from 
 his dominion ἧ. 
 
 1 The koopoc,—the krtovc,—the koopixot,—the κλήτοι. 
 
 2 Also in the Evayyeduoy καθ᾽ “EBpatovc, which Jerome had received from the 
 Nazarenes, the words which sounded from heaven, are ascribed to the ‘‘fons omnis 
 Spiritus Sancti, qui requievit super Christum,” who descended from heaven. 
 
 3 Clemens, Stromat. lib. ii. p. 375. τὸν ᾽Αρχοντα ἐπακουσαντα τὴν φασιν Tov 
 διακονουμενου πνευματος, ἐκπλαγηναι τῷ TE ἀκουσματι Kat τῷ θεαματι και THY 
 ἐκπληξιν αὐτου φοβον κληθηναι ἀρχὴν γένομενον σοφιας φυλοκρινητικὴης TE Kae 
 διακριτικης Kat τελεωτικης και ἀποκαταστατικης, οὐ yap μονον τον κοσμον, ἀλλα 
 και τὴν ἐκλογὴν διακρινας, ὁ ἐπι πασι προπεμπει. We must here add a few 
 remarks. The explanation of the words of Ps. cxi. 10.or of Eccles. i. 16. according 
 to the Basilidian system, gives a remarkable example of the caprice of a theosophical 
 exegesis, which, without regard to the context in which the words stand, lets them, 
 according to this system, mean any thing which they can possibly mean in any con- 
 text whatever. If the announcement of the heavenly διάκονος is called an evay- 
 γελιον for the ἄρχων, then it is clear (they conclude) that he did not merely submit 
 himself by compulsion to the higher powers, but that his first astonishment passed 
 into a mingled feeling of delight and reverence. 'The prospect, as soon as the elect 
 natures should have attained the glory destined for them, of becoming freed from 
 the tiresome regimen of this world, and of entering into rest with his own people (to 
 which expectation of the Demiurgos the Gnostics referred Rom. viii. 20, 21. accord- 
 ing to Origen, τ. i. in Joh. p. 24.) must assuredly have been a joyful one for him. 
 Comp. Didascal. anatol. opp. Clem. p. 796 D., where the fact that the Demiurgos 
 established the Sabbath, is adduced as a proof how disagreeable labour is to him. 
 Perhaps it may occur to some persons, that we ought to read rw ἐπὶ aoe instead of 
 ὁ ἐπι πασι, so that it would mean that the Archon freely leads the elect natures out 
 
~ 
 
 THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 65 
 
 We see here how Basilides conceived and painted after his own 
 eccentric manner, that which Christianity effects, as a divinely 
 animating, freeing and enlightening principle, as the matter 
 which sets human nature in fermentation. ‘These effects, partly 
 judging by the deep penetration of his own mind, and applying 
 its inward operations to outward things, he traced to some funda- 
 mental law of Christianity, and partly from observation of the 
 phenomena of his own time. ‘That which Christianity effected 
 generally, in reference to the history of human nature, Basilides 
 represented as an impression made on the Archon which repre- 
 sented that nature. 
 
 Like Cerinthus, he also attributed the whole work of redemp- 
 tion to the redeeming heavenly Genius, and most probably coin- 
 cided with him in the supposition that this Genius had left the 
 man, whom he had hitherto made use of as his instrument, to 
 himself at the time of his suffering. According to his system, the 
 suffering of Christ could have nothing to do with the work of re- 
 demption ; for, according to his narrow views of justice, it was not 
 consonant to the Divine justice that one, who deserved it not, should 
 suffer for others; and it was required, that all evil should be atoned 
 for by suffering. He considered not merely suffering in general, 
 but also every suffering ἐγ) particular, as a punishment for sin. He 
 held the theory against which Christ spoke in John ix. 3. Luke xiii. 
 2. Every one suffers for his actual sins, or for the evil present in 
 his nature,—evil which he brought with him out of a former state of 
 existence, and which, nevertheless, had not yet come into a state 
 of activity’. And thus, by reference to evil of this kind, he jus- 
 tified Providence in the sufferings inflicted on children. If any 
 one made an objection to him from the sufferings of acknowledged 
 good men, he had a fair right to answer by an appeal to the 
 general fact of the presence of sinfulness in human nature, and 
 to say,—‘‘ Be the man you shew me what he may, he is still a 
 man, and God only is holy; who will find harmony among those, 
 where there is no harmony’?” Job xiv. 4. 
 
 of his kingdom to the God who is above all, to whom it is their last destination to 
 elevate themselves. 
 
 1 Sufferings,—the penances and purifications of dapapria, or ἁμαρτητικον.--- 
 Stromat. iv. 506. [Sylburg, p. 217. Potter, p. 600. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 322.] 
 
 2 [Germ. “ Wer will eine Stimme finden bei denen, da keine Stimme ist?” The 
 Hebrew of the passage, however, is different from this, and exactly agrees with our 
 English translation. H. R.] 
 
 VOL. II. Ε 
 
66 THEODICEA.—-NO OBJECTIVE JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 But then the case was different, where this proposition was 
 applied to the Redeemer, who, as sure as he is the Redeemer, 
 must be free from sin. Clement of Alexandria expressly blames 
 Basilides because he went so far in the extension of this propo- 
 sition. But in those words of his which Clemens quotes, this is 
 not necessarily implied; he says only,—‘ But if you, leaving 
 this whole enquiry on one side, come to this, that you put me 
 into a difficulty by particular persons, if you say, for instance,— 
 ‘Then he has sinned, because he has suffered.’”—It may be said 
 that Basilides here speaks only of certain persons held in parti- 
 cular reverence, and in great fame for holiness ; and that Clement 
 has allowed himself to draw an inference. But, in the first place, 
 the reproach which Basilides here suffers to be made against his 
 proposition, would lose its proper force and signification, if it 
 were not so understood; and zn the second, the extension of this 
 proposition thus far, altogether coheres also with his theory of the 
 relation of suffering to sin, and with his theory of the Divine 
 justice, and of the process of purification, to which every nature 
 belonging to the kingdom of the Archon is subject. The Jesus 
 which belonged to this kingdom, required redemption even him- 
 self, and could be made partaker of it only by his connection with 
 that heavenly redeeming Spirit (the duaxovoc). In order to be- 
 come worthy of being redeemed before all others who needed 
 redemption, and being used as an instrument to extend further 
 the operations of the redeeming Spirit to others, it was sufficient 
 if he, as the most excellent and purest man, and the most ad- 
 vanced in the process of purification, had merely the minimum 
 of sinfulness. We must here observe that the Basilidian system, 
 which at any rate supposed a proportion between the sin and the 
 degree of punishment, was certainly liable to the following objec- 
 tion: ** How does so great suffering consist with the smallest 
 degree of sinfulness?” But, apparently he was not at a loss 
 for an answer here, if we may judge from what he says on the 
 subject of martyrdom. He says, ‘‘ The consciousness of serving 
 as an instrument for the highest and holiest things of human 
 nature, and of suffering in this office, (perhaps also a prospect of 
 the glory into which he should enter by means of his suffering, ) 
 sweetened his sufferings to him so much, that it was to him as if 
 he did not suffer at all. 
 
 According to the same principle, he also consistently acknow- 
 ledged no justification in the sense indicated by St. Paul, no 
 
DOCTRINES ABOUT FAITH. 67 
 
 objective justification before God; no forgiveness of sin as a 
 release from sin and the punishment of sin. According to his 
 doctrine, every sin, whether before or after faith in the Redeemer, 
 or baptism, must be alike atoned for by suffering. That is a 
 necessary law of the system of the world, which nothing can 
 annul. ‘The only exception he makes is in the case of sins pro- 
 ceeding from ignorance, or involuntary sins’: but it is a pity 
 that his explanation of this very indefinite expression has not 
 been preserved to us. But if, on the contrary, under the term 
 justification (δικαιωσις; δικαιοσυνη) be understood an inward sub- 
 jective making just, a sanctification through the communication 
 of Divine life, then such a doctrine would hold a very necessary 
 place in the system of Basilides. 
 
 Among the religious and moral notions of the Basilidian school, 
 there is much that deserves attention, which we are desirous of 
 bringing forward particularly. 
 
 In regard to the idea of Faith, the Basilidian school distin- 
 guished itself by this,—that they expressly opposed the usual 
 Jewish and Jewish-Christian notion of Faith, as another kind of 
 opus operatum, an acknowledgment of certain religious truths, which 
 exists as something individual in the soul of man, and operates 
 no farther on the whcle inward life, a mere outwardly existing 
 traditional belief, which brings forth no fruits in the life of man— 
 and also that they, with a deeper penetration into the spirit of St. 
 Paul’s doctrines, represented Faith as an inward thing, an entire 
 bent of the inward life, an entrance of the Spirit into an higher 
 sphere, and a real communion with that higher system. But, on 
 the other hand, he receded from the genuine notion of St. Paul, 
 because, like all Gnostics (except Marcion) he considered religion 
 in its contemplative, more than in its practical, character; and 
 also, in his notion of Faith, made the contemplative element more 
 prominent than the practical. With him Faith is a certain kind 
 of view *, which includes in itself a certain intellectual appro- 
 priation of that which is beheld, and a new spiritual life also in 
 it. On the contrary, according to the genuine Christian idea of 
 St. Paul, Faith is a practical appropriation of Divine things, bya 
 devotion of the will, a practical entrance into a new relation with 
 God, given by a peculiar revelation from him, from which an 
 
 ' Movac rac ἀκουσιας Kav κατ᾽ ayvovay ἀφιεσθαι. Strom. iv. 536, [Sylb. p. 
 229. Potter, p. 633—4. Klotz. vol. ii. p. 362. ] 
 2 [Anschauung. See the former notes on this word, and the Preface. H. R.] 
 F2 
 
08 DOCTRINES ABOUT FAITH. 
 
 entirely new direction and employment of the inward life pro- 
 ceeds. From this, we acknowledge, as the whole spiritual life is 
 formed anew from this foundation, an entirely new kind of religious 
 view must develope itself. When therefore Basilides supposed 
 different degrees in this view [anschauung] (in respect of purity, 
 clearness, elevation and depth), no objection could lie against 
 him on that account, on any genuine Christian grounds, had he 
 only recognised the common foundation of faith in all Christians, 
 and deduced every thing only from the different degrees in which 
 the influence of that faith developed itself on the spiritual life. 
 But he, confounding between faith and sight’, supposed, instead 
 of one and the same life in a Faith, which is the same in all Christ- 
 ians, different hinds of Faith, according to the different sorts of 
 natures. That is to say, just as men, according to their nature, 
 belonged to a higher or a lower grade of the spiritual world, so 
 also they were capable of a higher or a lower kind of view. 
 Those higher ideas need no proof, but they prove themselves 
 through ΕΠ to those higher spiritual natures which are 
 akin to them, and which become involuntarily attracted by the 
 revelation of the higher world, which is their proper home. 
 Therefore Basilides says, ‘The faith of the elect finds out doc- 
 trines without any demonstration by means of a spiritual com- 
 prehension” (an intellectual sight’); and in this sense he gives 
 this definition of faith; “an assent of the soul to something 
 which does not act upon the senses, because it is not present *.” 
 That is to say,—although the elect live in this world as strangers, 
 nevertheless, by the influence of faith, they recognize, as real, 
 those things of the higher world which beam upon them from 
 afar. And hence he supposes the degree of faith to which a 
 person can elevate himself as a stranger in this world, to corres- 
 pond to that grade of the spiritual world to which he belongs *. 
 From the principles of Basilides, his moral doctrines must have 
 been of a severe nature. In his morality the ruling principle must 
 
 1 [Anschauung. Between faith and that faculty, by which Basilides supposed a 
 view, an image or visible representation, to be present to the mind of the believer. 
 See Preface. H. R.] 
 
 2 Clem. Strom. ii. 363. ἡ πιστις της ἐκλογῆς Ta μαθηματα ἀναποδεικτως εὑρισ- 
 κουσα καταληψει νοητικῃ. [Sylb. p. 156. Potter, p. 433—4. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 128.] 
 
 * Clem. Strom. ii. 371. ψυχῆς συγκαταθεσις προς τι των μὴ κινουντων αἰσθησιν, 
 δια τὸ py παρειναι. [Sylb. p. 169. Potter, p. 448, Klotz, vol. ii. p. 139.] 
 
 * Clem. Strom. ii. 363, πίστις και ἐκλογὴ οἰκεια καθ᾽ ἕκαστον διαστημα' ἐπακο- 
 λουθημα της ἐκλογὴης τῆς ὑπερκοσμιου ἡ κοσμικὴ πίστις. 
 
GRACE AND FREE-WILL. 63 
 
 have been this, that man should free himself from that foreign 
 admixture, which having attached itself to his original nature, 
 disturbs and controls it, and that he should constantly attain more 
 and more to a free development and exercise of that original 
 nature. According to this system, man is a little world; just as, 
 according to his spirit, he may be akin to the different natures of 
 the higher spiritual world, so also, in accordance with his lower 
 nature, he bears within himself that which is akin to the different 
 grades and natures of the lower earthly world. He has within 
 himself many admixtures’ of a foreign nature, wherein the dif- 
 ferent qualities of the world of animals, of vegetables, and of 
 minerals, are reflected: and thence come the desires, passions, 
 and affections corresponding to these (as, for example, the imita- 
 tive and pranksome nature of the ape, the murderous propensities 
 of the wolf, the hardness of the diamond); and the collection of 
 all these influences of the world of animals, plants, and minerals, 
 forms the blind unreasonable soul’, which always opposes the 
 operations of that part of man’s nature which is akin to God. 
 It seemed of importance to Isidorus, the son of Basilides, to 
 guard this doctrine from the objection, or the misunderstanding, 
 which would represent it as endangering moral freedom, and 
 holding out an excuse for every wickedness, as if it proceeded 
 from the irresistible influences of these foreign admixtures. He 
 appealed to the superior power of the Divine nature: ‘ Since 
 we have so much vantage-ground by means of our reason, we 
 must therefore appear as conquerors over the lower creature in 
 
 τ᾿. He says also, “ Let a man only desire to do good, and he 
 
 will attain it*.” It is already to be deduced from the whole con- 
 nection of the Basilidian scheme, that while he placed the power of 
 the will so high, yet he by no means ascribed to it an independent 
 self-sufficiency, nor at all denied the necessity of the assistance of 
 grace from a higher power. According to his theory of redemp- 
 tion, he acknowledged it as necessary that the Divine in man 
 
 should receive power from its connection with a higher source in 
 
 1 Appendages of matter, προσαρτηματα. 
 
 2 The ψυχὴ προσφνὴς ἀλογος. 
 
 3 Δεὶ δὲ τῷ λογιστικῳ κρειττονας γενομένους, της ἔλαττονος ἐν ἡμιν κτισεως 
 φανηναι κρατουντας. 
 
 4 Strom. iii. 427. ϑελησατω povoy ἀπαρτισαι To καλον και ἐπιτευἕεται. [8]0. 
 
 Ῥ. 183. Potter, p. 510. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 213. ] 
 
70 NOT EXCLUSIVELY ASCETIC. 
 
 order to give it a just activity. How far men were admonished 
 by him of their need of help, is shewn by the advice which 
 Isidorus gives to him who is suffering under temptations: ‘ Let 
 him only,” he says, ‘‘ not withdraw himself from the brethren ; 
 let him only confide in his communion with the body of saints ; 
 let him say, “1 am entered into the sanctuary, nothing evil can 
 happen to me’.”” It is also proved by the distinction which he 
 made, of the two conditions of the inward life, the one, where a 
 man in temptations prays for strength to conquer, and the other, 
 where he gives thanks for the victory, which he has obtained by 
 the support of the Divine power’. I grant that the doctrine of 
 certain higher natures, which are elevated above the weaknesses 
 of other men, might always easily create dangerous self-deceits of 
 pride, because it is irreconcileable with the existence of Christian 
 humility. There were later Basilidians, who corrupted this doc- 
 trine in a most pernicious manner, and thence deduced the free- 
 dom of the saints, which was to be bound by no law*. (See 
 below.) The doctrine of matter might have led to an exaggerated 
 and partial ascetic tendency in morality: but the acknowledg- 
 ment of the communication and the interlacing which exists 
 between the visible and the invisible world, as well as the recog- 
 nition of the Divine nature as a victorious forming-principle 
 for all creation, had here a counter-balancing effect, as we 
 have already observed in regard to this whole class of Gnostics. 
 Basilides considers marriage as a holy state, in no way incon- 
 sistent with the existence of Christian perfection; and, under 
 certain circumstances, as a means of guarding against evil pro- 
 pensities. And it was only under certain circumstances that he 
 allowed celibacy to be efficacious, as a means of attending to 
 Divine things, with less interruption from earthly cares ἡ. 
 
 (c.) Valentinus and his School. 
 
 Nex to Basilides we place Valentinus, who was contemporary 
 vith him, although a little later. If we judge from his Hellen- 
 
 ' Strom. iii, 427. [See above, in the last note, for references. | 
 * Strom. |. c. bray δὲ ἡ εὐχαριστια cov εἰς airnow ὑποπεσῃ. 
 
 8. Strom. 111. 427. [See last note but one. ] 
 
 ! Strom. lib. iii. from the beginning. 
 
THE HONS.—THE PLEROMA. 7] 
 
 istic expressions, and the Aramaic names, which appear in his 
 system, he was of Jewish origin. He was born an Egyptian’, 
 and most probably he owes his education likewise to Alexandria. 
 He travelled thence to Rome, where he appears to have passed 
 the latter part of his life; and this gave him an opportunity of 
 making his doctrines more known, and propagating them in these 
 regions also. In his fundamental notions he agreed with Basil- 
 ides; it was only in the manner of explaining them, and in the 
 representation of the images in which he developed his ideas, 
 that he differed from him. But as people did not carefully dis- 
 tinguish from one another, the doctrines of the founders of 
 Gnostic schools, and those of their later followers, by whom these 
 doctrines had only been modified in a peculiar manner, and as 
 they joined with the Valentinian system many kindred doctrines, 
 which flowed from one common source, it is difficult, from the 
 representations which have come down to us, to determine with 
 certainty what doctrines properly belonged to Valentinus him- 
 self, as the founder of the school. 
 
 What the δυνάμεις were with Basilides, the Aions? were with 
 Valentinus; but the following notion is peculiar to him, namely, 
 that as the veil (or covering) of all life resides in the original 
 source of all existence (the Bythos), but is not yet unfolded, 
 together with the development of life that proceeds from that 
 first source, members which mutually supply the defects of each 
 other form themselves, that is to say AZons, both male and female, 
 one of which is chiefly generative, the other receptive* ; and that 
 by the mutual communication of these Alons the chain of that 
 development of life constantly goes on. ‘The female is the sup- 
 plement of the male, ro πληρωμα ΄, and the perfect line of Acous 
 is now considered as an whole, as the fulness of the Divine life 
 streaming out of the Bythos, which must again be constantly 
 rendered fruitful, as it were, by it (the Divine life), and it is 
 called, in relation to him, the female, the Pleroma! The hidden 
 being of God cannot be known by any one; it is the absolutely 
 
 ' According to the account given by Epiphanius. 
 
 2 See the explanation of this word given above. 
 
 3. Just as in all the rest of the creation, which represents an image of that higher 
 world, this twofold line of agents is to be found. 
 
 * TlAnjpwpa. These Theosophs, who certainly did not scrupulously adhere to 
 the strict grammatical meaning of terms, perhaps understood this word both in an 
 active and a passive sense at the same time, and applied it both to ro wAnpour and 
 To πληρουμενον. 
 
7: SELF-LIMITATION OF THE BYTHOS.—THE HOROS. 
 
 “ 
 
 ἀγνωστον ; it is only in as far as he has revealed himself in the 
 unfolding of his powers or Avons, that he can be recognized. 
 All individual A®ons, in their varied modes of revelation, are 
 called forms and names of that Being’, who, in his secret ex- 
 istence is inconceivable, not-to-be-named, and elevated above 
 conceptions and images, just as the Monogenes, that first self- 
 revelation of the hidden Being, is called peculiarly the INvis1BLE 
 Name of the Bythos. It is an idea deeply rooted in the Valen- 
 tinian system, that since all existence has its foundation in the 
 self-limitation of the Bythos, so also the existence of all created 
 being depends on limitation. When every thing remains within 
 the limits of its peculiar sphere, and is that which it ought to be 
 according to its assigned position in the development of life, then 
 every thing can dovetail together well, and a just harmony exist 
 in the chain of the development of life. As soon as any being 
 endeavours to overpass these limits,—as soon as ever a being, 
 instead of recognizing God in the revelation which he makes 
 of himself to that being, according to his position,—emboldens 
 himself so as to wish to penetrate into His hidden Being, it runs 
 a risk of sinking into annihilation. Instead of laying hold of that 
 which is real, it loses itself in that which is without existence. 
 The Horos (épo¢), the Genius of limitation, of bounding (the 
 power of truth personified, which assigns and sets fast the boun- 
 daries of each individual being, which watches over those bounda- 
 ries, and when they are broken restores them), therefore takes 
 an important place in the system of Valentinus. Gnosis is here, 
 as it were, giving testimony against itself. The ideas of the 
 Horos and the Redeemer must have been much akin to each 
 other in the Valentinian system, and in fact the Horos was called 
 by many the Autpwrn¢e and σωτηρ, the Redeemer and Saviour ; 
 and we find traces which indicate that he was meant to represent 
 only one mode of operation of the one redeeming Spirit,—that 
 Spirit which, according to the different places of his operations, 
 that extend themselves throughout all the stages of existence, 
 and according to his different modes of operation, is betokened 
 by different names, and by others is divided into different per- 
 sous (Hypostases). The Valentinians ascribe two modes of 
 operation to this Horos; ¢he one of a negative kind, by means of 
 which he lays down the limits for all existence, and separates and 
 
 ' The Alons are poppat του Θεου, ὀνόματα Tov ἀνωνομαστου. 
 
TWOFOLD ΣΟΦΙΑ, 73 
 
 removes from it all that is foreign to it’; and in virtue of this 
 power he is properly called ὅρος ; and the other is that operation, 
 by means of which he sets fast and establishes, in their peculiar 
 sphere, and forms, all those beings who are purified from that, 
 which, being foreign to their nature, troubles their existence’; 
 and in virtue of this power, he is called σταυρος; a word which is 
 used both for a cross, and a stake or bulwark; to both of which 
 meanings the Valentinians here made allusion. Their remarks 
 on those sayings of the Redeemer, in which they thought they 
 recognized the Horos, make their ideas on the subject plain. 
 Thus they referred, Luke xiv. 27, to the establishing power 
 of the Horos*, and Matthew x. 34, and Mark x. 21, to his 
 separating power*. In the first of these passages, according 
 to them, our Saviour means that only those persons can be his 
 disciples who bear his cross, 7. e. who give themselves up to 
 that Divine power of the Redeemer which is symbolically repre- 
 sented by the cross, and suffer themselves to be formed and firmly 
 established by it in his own peculiar way. In the second passage 
 our Saviour hints at his Divine purifying power, by which he 
 clears that which is akin to God from the admixture of the un- 
 godly, and produces the annihilation of the latter*. Both are 
 intimately connected together, the clearance from the foreign 
 admixture of the An, from intermixture with which this irregular, 
 indefinite, and unquiet vacillation between existence and non- 
 existence proceeds, and a firm establishment in a definite, peculiar, 
 Divine existence, unmingled with any thing else. 
 
 If Basilides deduced the intermixture of the Divine with mat- 
 ter from an assault of the kingdom of darkness upon the kingdom 
 of light, on the contrary, Valentinus deduced it from a commo- 
 tion that arose in the Pleroma, and a descent of the Divine seed 
 of life from the Pleroma into matter, consequent upon that com- 
 motion. He acknowledged, as well as Basilides, a Divine wis- 
 dom, which revealed itself in the world; but here, also, in his 
 view, the lower is only an image of the higher. It is not the 
 Divine wisdom itself, not the Alon σοφια herself, but the un- 
 timely fruit of her travail, which is to unfold itself and arrive at 
 
 1 The évepyera μεριστικὴ Kat διοριστικη. 
 2 The ἐνεργεια ἑδραστικὴ και στηριστικη. 
 3 The ἐνεργεια στηριστικὴ Kat ἑδραστικὴη. 
 4 The ἐνέργεια μεριστικὴ και διοριστικη. 
 5 [renzus i. ο. 3. § 5. 
 
74 THREE STAGES OF BEING. 
 
 its maturity only by degrees. He distinguishes between an avw 
 and a KaTw copia (Achamoth'): this latter is the soul of the 
 world, from the admixture of which with the ὕλη all living exis- 
 tence is produced, and is in different stages, higher, in proportion 
 as it can keep itself clearer from connexion with the vAn, and 
 lower, in proportion as it is attracted and affected by matter. 
 There exist, therefore, these three stages of being. 
 
 1. The φυσεις πνευματικαι, or those Divine seeds of life, which 
 are elevated above matter by their nature, and which are akin to 
 copra, to the soul of the world, and to the Pleroma. 
 
 2. The φύσεις ψυχικαι; or such natures as proceeded from the 
 life that had been divided by admixture with the ὕλη; and an 
 entirely new stage of being begins with these natures, an image 
 of the higher world, but in a subordinate position. 
 
 3. The ungodly, which is opposed to all improvement; the 
 being which can only disturb, and is entirely the slave of blind 
 desires and passions. 
 
 There is only a difference of degree between all, which proceeds 
 from the unfolding of the Divine life (which flows forth from the 
 Bythos through the A*ons), from the Pleroma downwards to 
 its seed, which has fallen down into human nature—that seed 
 which, being sown, must attain its ripeness in the earthly world ; 
 but between those three classes of being there is an essential dif- 
 ference of nature. Each one, therefore, of these classes must 
 have its own independent principle which predominates in it, 
 although every process of improvement and development leads 
 back in the end to the Bythos, which works on every thing by 
 means of various organs in the various grades of being, and whose 
 law is the only ruling one. He cannot, however, himself enter 
 into any immediate connexion with that which is foreign to him, 
 and, therefore, in that subordinate grade of being which lies be- 
 tween the perfect or Divine, and the ungodly or material, there 
 must exist a Being as the image of the Most High’, which, while 
 it thinks that it acts independently, must yet serve the universal 
 law, from which nothing is exempt, for the realization of the 
 ideas of the Supreme even to the very extreme limits of matter. 
 This Being is in the psychical world, what the Bythos is in the 
 higher world, only with this difference, that it involuntarily acts 
 as the organ of the former; and this being is the Demiurgos of 
 Valentinus. The Hy/le also has its principle, which represents it, 
 
 : Ἢ o om 
 nya 2 The pecorye. 
 
THREE STAGES OF BEING. 79 
 and through which it operates; but by its very nature it is not of 
 a forming and creative, but of a destructive kind: this is Satan. 
 
 1. The nature of the πνευματικὸν is that which is essentially 
 akin to God (the ὁμοουσιον τῳ Oey), and thence comes simple 
 and undivided existence +, the life of unity or oneness (οὐσία 
 ἑνικὴ μονοειδης). 
 
 2. The Being of the ψυχικοι, divided into number and variety, 
 but still submitting itself to a higher unity, and allowing itself 
 to be guided by that unity, at first unconsciously, afterwards con- 
 sciously. 
 
 3. The Being of Satan and his whole kingdom: mere opposi- 
 tion to all unity ; the Being divided and distracted in itself, with- 
 out any capability for unity, or any point for unity to begin from ; 
 and with all this, an endeavour to destroy all unity, to spread its 
 own indwelling distraction over every thing, and to distract every 
 thing’. 
 
 In that first grade of being the life, which, by its very nature, 
 is eternal, exists as something inalienable, a necessary ἀφθαρσια:; 
 the ψυχικον; on the contrary, stands in the middle between im- 
 mortal and mortal. The Puyo. obtain immortality, or they 
 become subject to death, according as they give themselves up 
 by their inclinations to the Divine or to ungodliness. ‘The nature 
 of Satan, like that of the ὕλη, is death itself, annihilation, the 
 negation of all existence, which, in the end, when all existence, 
 which has been divided by its means, shall have developed itself 
 to the full extent of all its properties, and shall have fixed itself 
 sufficiently in itself, shall then destroy itself in itself, being over- 
 come by the power of the positive, after it (the negative, anni- 
 hilating power) has drawn to itself all its kindred ungodliness. 
 The existence of the first is the pure development of life from 
 within,—an activity which is not directed outwards, and which 
 has no obstacles to overcome; and a tranquillity which is a life 
 and action. 
 
 2. The existence of the ὕλη is of itself, and by its own nature, 
 the stillness of death; but after a spark of life has fallen into it, 
 and communicated to it a certain something analogous to life, it 
 becomes in its representative, Satan, a wild kind of self-contra- 
 dicting impulse. 
 
 1 [The German is here “ das Leben der Einheit.” I think in English the same 
 idea would be better rendered ‘ oneness of existence.’ H. R.] 
 
 * The οὐσία πολυσχιδης, which endeavours to assimilate every thing to itself. 
 12 
 
70 VALENTINUS ON REDEMPTION. 
 
 3. To the Demiurgos, and to those that are his, namely, the 
 Psychical, there is peculiarly assigned an activity directed out- 
 wardly; an impelling activity: they desire to do much, as it 
 usually happens with such busy people, without rightly under- 
 standing what they do ',—without becoming themselves properly 
 conscious of the ideas which direct them ἡ. 
 
 The doctrine of the redemption took also a very important 
 place in the Valentinian system, and peculiarly forms its center- 
 point; but it was by him, even more than by Basilides, removed 
 from the regions of practical things into those of speculation and 
 metaphysics. As, according to his system, a process of the de- 
 velopment of life pervades all regions of existence, and as the 
 disharmony, which, as far as its seed is concerned, first arose in 
 the Pleroma itself, beginning thence, has spread itself farther °, 
 so the whole course of the world can only then first attain its proper 
 object, when harmony shall be again restored, in all grades of ex- 
 istence, as well as in the Pleroma; that which happens in the 
 Pleroma must be imaged in all other grades of existence. And 
 thus, therefore, as the work of redemption takes place in different 
 stages of existence, and the same law is here fulfilled in different 
 forms, and in different conditions, it is the same agent of the 
 revelation of the hidden God, the same agent, through whom the 
 life that streamed forth from God becomes united with him again, 
 who, continuing his work, till the completion of the whole, is 
 imaged (or reflected) in different hypostases, wherever he is per- 
 fecting his work in different stages of existence. So it is the 
 same idea which is represented in a Monogenes, a Logos, a 
 Christus, and a Soter. The Soter is the Redeemer for the whole 
 of the world that lies beyond ihe Pleroma, and therefore also the 
 plastic Being for that world; for in this system, to form and to 
 redeem hang closely together, as is already evident from the two- 
 fold operations of the Horos. By means of this formative pro- 
 cess, the higher nature is first made free from the matter that 
 adheres to it; and out of an unorganic, formless being, is unfolded 
 into a definite, organized being, gifted with individual qualities ἡ. 
 
 1 Φᾧυσις πολυεργος, πολυπραγμων. 
 
 ? The documents on which this rests will be found in the writings of Heracleon, 
 quoted by Origen. Tom. xiii. Joh. c. 16. 25 30.51.59. Tom. xx. c. 20. 
 
 * The foundation of the whole of the new creation, lying beyond the Pleroma, 
 which new creation can proceed from division alone. 
 
 ‘ [ Literally, “into a definite, individual, and organized being.’ —H. R.] 
 
THE PLASTIC SOTER. 77 
 
 It is by means of redemption that the higher property first attains 
 to its mature and perfect development, and to clear consciousness. 
 Redemption is the completion of the formative process. ΑἹ] the 
 Divine life of the Pleroma concentrates itself, and is reflected in 
 the Soter, and through him extends its operations for the indivi- 
 dualizing of the Divine life, in order that the spiritual natures, 
 which are akin to the Pleroma, may be sown abroad in the world, 
 and ripen into perfect existence. ‘The Christus of the Pleroma 
 is the working principle, the Soter beyond the Pleroma' is the 
 receiving, the forming, and the perfecting principle ", 
 
 The Soter first proves his redeeming and forming power on 
 that still imperfect soul of the world, which came from the 
 Pleroma, as this soul must, at some time or other, spread itself 
 abroad over all the spiritual natures that are akin to it, and which 
 sprouted forth from it, as the universal mother of spiritual life in 
 the lower world. (See above). The Soter is the proper fash- 
 ioner and governor of the world, as he is the Redeemer; for the 
 formation of the world is the first beginning of the process of 
 development, which can only be brought to completion by means 
 of redemption. The Soter, as the inward active principle, puts 
 into the soul-of-the-world *, destined to make up a syzygy * with 
 him, the formative ideas, and she communicates them to the 
 Demiurgos, who imagines that he is acting independently; and 
 he, unconsciously to himself, under this cultivation becomes 
 animated and influenced by the power of these ideas. Whilst 
 Valentinus ° represented the Demiurgos and the world fashioned 
 
 1 In the τόπος pecornroc. 
 
 2 Thus Heracleon says of the Soter, in relation to Christians, that the former 
 receives the Divine seed out of the Pleroma from the latter, as a yet undeveloped 
 seed; and that he communicates to it the formation into a definite and separate 
 being—rnv πρωτὴν poppwow τὴν κατα yEVEoLY, εἰς μορφην, και φωτισμον, Kat 
 περιγραφὴν ἀγαγων και ἀναδειξας. Origen, Joh. t. 11. ο. 15. Τὸ bring to light, to 
 form, and to individualize, are identical ideas among the Gnostics. The indefinite, 
 the unorganic, corresponds in spiritual beings to the ὑλη. Thusin the Valentinian 
 fragment in Irenzus i. c. 8. §. 4. the μορῴφουν, φωτιζειν, φανερουν, is opposed to the 
 προβαλλειν σπερματικως THY ὅλην οὐσιαν. Christus sows the seed, the Soter 
 harvests it. Origen, Joh. i. 13. p. 48. 
 
 5. Κάτω σοφια, Achamoth. 
 
 4 (It will be remembered that in this system all the Eons were evolved by pairs, 
 or syzygies.—H. R.] 
 
 5 After Plato, who considers the Spirit that fashions the world, and the world 
 animated by him, as one whole, one Θεὸς yeynroc, ἕν Zwov; and after the example 
 of Philo, who represents the Λόγος, and the body of the world animated by him, 
 as one whole. 
 
78 IMAGE OF GOD IN THE CREATION. 
 
 and animated by him as one whole, he paints this whole as 
 an image of the glory of God, sketched by the Soter, as by a 
 painter. But, to say the truth, as every image, from its very 
 nature, is an imperfect representation of the original prototype, 
 and can be rightly understood only by him who has the power of 
 beholding the original,—thus also the Demiurgos, with his crea- 
 tion, is only an imperfect image of the glory of God; and he 
 alone who has received in his inward soul the revelation of the 
 invisible Divine Being, can rightly understand the world as the 
 image, and the Demiurgos as the prophet, of the Supreme God. 
 The inward revelation (which is the portion of the πνευματικοι) 
 is an authentication of the outward, an authentication of the 
 Demiurgos as the representative of God. Valentinus himself 
 expresses this thus!: ‘as much as the picture is less than the 
 living countenance, so much the world is less than the living 
 God. And what is the cause of the picture? ‘The greatness of 
 the countenance, which afforded the original to the painter, in 
 order to become honoured by the manifestation of his name; for 
 no form has been invented as an independent thing. But as the 
 name of the thing itself supplies that which is wanting in the 
 paintings, so also the invisible God’ acts for the authentication of 
 the image which is made.” 
 
 It is afundamental notion of the Valentinian and of all Gnostic 
 systems, that man is destined to represent and to maintain the 
 connection between the higher world and the empire of the Demi- 
 urgos, that is, to reveal the Supreme God in this world. Human 
 nature, and the revelation of God, are here kindred notions ; 
 and hence the first man*[Urmensch] was one of the Valentinian 
 ‘ions; and, according to other Valentinian systems, it was said, 
 ‘When God wished to reveal himself, this was called man +4.” 
 The Demiurgos created man, to image and represent himself; 
 he breathed into him a soul akin to his own being. But, even 
 here, he was acting as the instrument of a higher Being. Man 
 
 1 Clem. Strom. lib. iv. 509. [Sylb. p. 218. Potter, p. 603. Klotz, vol. 11. p. 326—7. ] 
 
 [The quotation from Valentinus is probably corrupt, and requires the alteration 
 of ἐπληρωσαν into ἐπληρωσεν, which the common interpreters, as well as Neander, 
 have made. The only difficulty lies in the latter part, which I here quote: τις οὖν 
 αἰτια THE εἰκονος; μεγαλωσυνὴ TOV προσωπου παρεσχημένου TY Cwypapy τον 
 τυπον, ἵνα τιμηθῃ Ov ὀνόματος αὐτου: οὐ yap αὐθεντικως εὑρεθη poppy, ἀλλα τὸ 
 ὀνομα ἐπληρωσαν τὸ ὑστερησαν ἐν πλασει. H. R. |} 
 
 2 God’s invisible Being. 3. The Adam Kadmon of the Cabbala. 
 
 4 See Iren. lib. 1. ο. 12. ὃ. 4. 
 
SOUL (¥YXH) AND SPIRIT (ITNEYMA). 79 
 
 was to represent that first man. Without the Demiurgos be- 
 ing conscious of it, the Sophia communicated to him the spiritual 
 seed, which he transplanted into the soul of man; and thence it 
 happened that man at once revealed something which was of a 
 more elevated nature than the whole creation, into which he 
 entered; so that the Demiurgos himself, and his angels, were 
 seized with astonishment, for as yet they knew nothing of a 
 higher world. The Demiurgos thought that he himself was an 
 independent ruler; but now, to his astonishment, he saw a higher 
 power enter into his dominions. ‘This astonishment is universally 
 repeated, wherever man, limited as he is, being animated by the 
 ideas of a higher world, expresses them in his works, as in art 
 and indeed universally, where the hands of men execute any 
 thing in relation to the name of God. ‘Thus it happens that men 
 fall down and worship their own images, being filled with a reve- 
 rential astonishment by the sensation’ of a higher power, which 
 is unknown to them. We will bring forward the words of the 
 man himself: “ And just as the angel was seized with fear at 
 that creature (πλασμα)ὴ. when it spoke of loftier things than 
 such as suited its creation, by means of him who had invisibly 
 communicated to it the seed of the life from above, (namely, the 
 Soter,) and when it spoke with freedom and confidence,—so also, 
 in the race of the men of this world, the works of man become 
 a terror even to those who made them, such as pillars, and statues, 
 and every thing which the hands of all men execute in honor of 
 the name of God *.” 
 
 But that which human nature was universally to represent, 
 became now really brought to pass only in those spiritual men*, 
 Through them was the life-giving, purifying principle of the 
 Divinity to be spread abroad, and penetrate even to the utmost 
 limits of the An; these spiritual natures are the salt and the 
 light of the earth, the leaven for all the race of man. ‘The ψυχη 
 is only the vehiculum for the πνευματικον, in order that it may be 
 able to enter into the temporal world, in which it is to develop 
 itself to maturity. When this aim shall have been attained, the 
 spirit, which is only destined for the life of intuition *, will leave 
 
 ' [Ahnung. Literally, a presentiment. It expresses here a feeling indicating a 
 sense that leads us to recognize this higher Power. H. R.] 
 
 2. Clem. Strom. lib. ii. 375. [Sylb. p. 161. Potter, p. 448. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 145. ] 
 
 3 The φυσεις πνευματικαι. 
 
 4 [Das Leben der Anschauung. See Preface. H. R. |} 
 
80 VALENTINIAN NOTION OF INSPIRATION. 
 
 that vehiculum in the lower sphere ; and every spiritual nature, as 
 the female and recipient element in regard to the higher world 
 of spirits, will be elevated in the Pleroma to its syzygy with the 
 angelic nature which corresponds to it. Only the highest and 
 immediate intuitive powers (that is the meaning of Valentinus) 
 will then come into operation. All the powers and modes of 
 operation of the soul, which are directed to that which is tem- 
 poral and perishable,—such as its powers of reflection, and the 
 understanding, in which, according to Valentinus, is contained 
 the Yvyn, will then utterly cease ἡ. 
 
 The attractive power, with which the Divine Being works on 
 every thing, without those who receive the impression under- 
 standing it, or being able to explain it to themselves, is a favorite 
 notion with Valentinus. ‘The Demiurgos was attracted by the 
 spiritual natures which were scattered among the Jewish people, 
 without being conscious of the reason of it. He made them, 
 therefore, prophets, priests, and kings. ‘Therefore it happened 
 that the prophets were enabled especially to hint at the higher 
 order of things, which should be brought among men by the 
 Soter. According to Valentinus, a fourfold principle acted upon 
 the Prophets :— 
 
 1. The psychical principle, the human and limited soul, the 
 unassisted soul. 
 
 2. The spiritualization of this ~uyxn, which is derived from the 
 Demiurgos working upon it. 
 
 3. The unassisted πνευματικον. 
 
 4. The pneumatical spiritualization, which is derived from the 
 influence of the Sophia’. 
 
 Thus Valentinus, in reference to these four principles, could 
 distinguish in the writings of the prophets, different promises of 
 a higher and lower character and meaning, and a higher and 
 lower sense, which differed from each other, in the same passage. 
 
 1. The mere human sayings. 
 
 2. The single prophecies of future events, which the Demi- 
 urgos, who, although not Omniscient, yet looked into a wider 
 circle of the future, was able to communicate ; and the prophecies 
 of a Messiah, which came also from the same source, but were 
 still enveloped in a temporal and Jewish form; the prophecies of 
 a Messiah, such as the Demiurgos would send,—a Psychical 
 
 1 Comp. Aristot. de Anima, lib. iii, c. 5. 2. See Iren. lib. i. c. 16. ὃ. 3, 4. 
 
TRACES OF TRUTH AMONG HEATHENS. 81 
 
 Messiah for the Psychical world, the ruler of a kingdom of this 
 world. 
 
 5. The ideas which verged upon the Christian economy, and 
 pointed to it, the enlightened Messianic notions, brought forward 
 in more or less purity, according as they proceeded purely from 
 the higher spiritual natures, or the immediate influence of the 
 Sophia. This view might lead to remarkable investigations as 
 to the mixture of the Divine and human in the prophets, and 
 introduce conclusions which would be fruitful towards the inter- 
 pretation of the prophets themselves. The Valentinian view 
 was opposed to the determination of those, who, in spite of the 
 words of Christ in Matt. xi. 9, &c., and in spite of 1 Pet. i. 12. 
 attributed a perfect and Christian knowledge to the prophets. 
 It may be asked, whether Valentinus recognized the beams of 
 higher truth only among the Jews; whether he allowed the ex- 
 istence of spiritual natures only among the Jews, or whether he 
 acknowledged that they were spread abroad also among: the 
 heathen. According to Heracleon’, he held the Jews to be the 
 kingdom of the Demiurgos,—the Heathen the kingdom of Mat- 
 ter, or of Satan,—and the Christians the people of the Supreme 
 God; but this does not prove that he excluded from the heathen 
 all that belongs to the superior race; because, although he ex- 
 pressly assigned Judaism to the Demiurgos, he supposed that it 
 contained some scattered seeds of the higher pneumatical system ; 
 and although he assigned Christianity to the Supreme God, he 
 saw also, even among the Christians, a large class of Psychical 
 persons. He, therefore, only speaks of the prevazling ingredients ; 
 and therefore, notwithstanding the prevailing state of the ὑλη 
 among the heathen, he might recognize scattered seeds of the 
 Pneumatical. He was in fact obliged to confess this according 
 to his own principles, according to which the higher spiritual 
 principle of life (the πνευματικον)ὴ was to pervade all grades of 
 being even to the very limits of matter, in order to prepare the 
 universal annihilation of the ὑλη. What Valentinus says, in the 
 passage above quoted, of the power of art, which turns itself to 
 the formation of idols, allows us to conclude that he judged the 
 polytheistic system more mildly than the common Jews, to whom 
 the idols were only evil spirits, and that he, supporting himself by 
 Acts xvii. 23. believed that even in this system, although it was 
 
 1 Origen, in Joh. t. xiii. ὃ. 16. 
 VOL. II. G 
 
80 THE SOTER. 
 
 sullied by the prevalence of the hylic principle, there might be 
 observed traces of an unknown God, who spread his unrecog- 
 nized influence over all things. ‘Thus Valentinus, ina still-extant 
 fragment of a homily ’, actually hints at the traces of truth spread 
 about even in the writings of the heathen, in which the inward 
 being of the spiritual people of God, or of the πνευματικοι; who 
 are spread abroad in the whole world, reveals itself. ‘* Much of 
 that which is written in the books of the heathen, is found written 
 in the Church of God; this common part is the voice out of the 
 heart, the law written in the heart; this is that people of the 
 beloved (i. ὁ. this higher consciousness which is found in common, 
 is the mark of the scattered community of the Soter, of the 
 πνευματικοι)» which is beloved by him, and loves him in return.” 
 
 The Soter, who from the beginning had conducted the whole 
 process of the development of the spiritual seed of life, which had 
 fallen down from out of the Pleroma for the formation of a new 
 world, the invisible Fashioner and Ruler of this new world,—was 
 now obliged at last, himself, to act upon the course of the world, 
 without any intermediate agency, in order to spread forth the act of 
 redemption, which he had originally perfected in the mother of 
 all spiritual life, the soul of the world, or the Sophia,—upon all 
 the spiritual life which had flowed forth from her, and thus to 
 bring the whole work to completion. All being, even down to the 
 very hylic matter that struggles against all being, was capable of 
 ennoblement, each after its own degree. ‘The Soter must therefore 
 enter into connection with all these stages of being, in order to 
 fashion all, both the lower (the Psychical) as well as the higher 
 (the Pneumatical), into the degree of the higher life, of which 
 each is capable. Except for this, according to the usual course 
 of nature, the Soter could enter into connection only with the 
 spiritual nature, which is akin to him, and such a nature could 
 enter into this temporal world only in connection with a Ψψυχη. 
 
 Valentinus might here coincide with the doctrine of Basilides, 
 only with this difference, that with the first of them, the human 
 part in the person and in the life of the Redeemer received a 
 somewhat higher character, although not the right and becoming 
 one; the Christ, composed and decomposed by him, according to 
 his own notions, was always very different from the historical 
 Christ. 
 
 1 Clem. Strom. lib. vi. p. 641. [Sylb. p. 272; Potter, p. 792; Klotz, vol. iii. 
 p. 128.] 
 
 10 
 
PSYCHICAL MESSIAH.—THE TWO UNITED. 83 
 
 The Demiurgos had promised to his own people a Redeemer, 
 a Messiah, who would release them from the dominion of the 
 hylical, introduce the annihilation of every thing which opposed 
 itself to his empire,—rule over every thing in his name,—and 
 rejoice all that obeyed him with all kinds of earthly happiness. 
 He sent down this Messiah, who represented the very image of 
 the Demiurgos, out of his own heaven ; but this elevated Being 
 could not enter into any connection with matter; nay, as it was 
 to introduce the annihilation of every thing material, how could 
 it receive any thing whatever from matter? ‘There would then 
 have been joined with the material body, a material spirit’ of 
 life, akin to it, and the source of every thing evil; and how could 
 he have been the Redeemer, if the principle of evil had been. 
 present in his own nature. The Demiurgos also formed a body 
 for the psychical Messiah out of the finer etherial matter of 
 heaven, out of which he sent him down into this world. This 
 body was so formed, by some wonderful contrivance*, that he 
 appeared visibly, and could subject himself to all sensuous 
 actions and affections, and yet do this in a manner entirely dif- 
 ferent from the usual kind of bodies*. But the miracle of the 
 birth of Jesus consisted in this, that the psychical nature which 
 came down from the heaven of the Demiurgos, together with the 
 etherial body brought from thence, came into the light of the 
 world through the body of Mary only as through a canal*. But 
 yet this psychical Messiah would never have been able to com- 
 plete the work laid upon him by the Demiurgos: there was need 
 of a higher power for the conquest of the empire of the ὕλη; 
 the Demiurgos acted as well here as in every thing as the uncon- 
 scious instrument of the Soter. This latter had appointed the 
 moment in which he would unite himself with this psychical Mes- 
 siah as his instrument, in order to fulfil the work which had been 
 prepared and promised by the Demiurgos in a far higher sense 
 than he himself anticipated, and to found a Messianic kingdom of 
 a far higher kind, to the real circumstances of which only the 
 most elevated predictions of the prophets, and those not under- 
 stood by the Demiurgos himself, had pointed. 
 
 The psychical Messiah, who did not perceive the destination 
 which was to fall to his lot through his union with the Soter, in 
 
 1 The ψυχὴ ἄλογος. 2 Ἔξ οἰκονομιας. 
 5. Σωμα ἐκ τὴς apavove ψυχικῆς οὐσιας. Theodot. didascal. Anatol. 
 * Ὡς δια σωληνος. 
 
 G2? 
 
84 THE TWO UNITED. 
 
 the mean time laid before man the Ideal of ascetic holiness. He 
 was able to exert an extraordinary dominion over matter from 
 the peculiar nature of his body. He let himself down indeed to 
 man, so as to eat and drink; but still without being subject to the 
 same affections as other men: he carried on every thing after a 
 divine manner’. 
 
 At the baptism in the Jordan, where he was to receive his 
 solemn consecration to his calling as the Messiah from John the 
 Baptist, the representative of the Demiurgos, the Soter, who 
 had thus conducted every thing through his invisible guidance, 
 united himself with him, descending under the symbol of the 
 dove. On this question, whether the psychical Messiah from the 
 Jirst bore a spiritual nature within him, which, descending with the 
 vehiculum of a soul, was to develop itself to maturity in this 
 world, that it might then first become capable of redemption; or 
 whether it was only at his descent into this world that the Soter 
 first received from the Sophia a spiritual nature as a vehicle, in 
 order to be able to unite himself with the human nature, and 
 that also the higher pneumatical nature was communicated to 
 the Messiah of the Demiurgos during baptism: on this point 
 there might be a diversity of opinions even in the Valentinian 
 school itself’. 
 
 1 Clem. Strom. Lib. iii. 451. 
 
 2 The latter view is apparently found in a passage of Heracleon; Origen, t. vi. 
 § 23.; Grabe Spicileg. t. ii. p. 89, where I once (see my Genetische Entwickelung, 
 &c. p. 149) erroneously supposed that I could recognize the doctrine that the Soter 
 himself became man, and that of his union with the human nature from its first de- 
 velopment. He explains John i. 27, in his manner, first justly, according to the 
 sense expressed by the words, “John avows that he is not worthy to render the 
 smallest service to the Redeemer;’’ and then afterwards he arbitrarily introduces a 
 higher sense into the simple words, according to his own theosophic ideas: οὐκ ἐγὼ 
 εἰμι ἵκανος, iva Ov tue κατελθῃ ἀπο μεγεθους Kat σαρκα AaBy, ὡς ὑποδημα, περι ἧς 
 ἔγω λογον ἀποδουναι οὐ δυναμαι, οὐδὲ διηγησασθαι ἡ ἐπιλυσαι τὴν περι αὐτῆς 
 οἰκονομιαν. We can hardly here, under the term “ the flesh,” which the Soter, who 
 came down out of the higher region from the bounds of the Pleroma and the τόπος 
 μεσοτητος, had received, understand the body of the psychical Messiah, formed by 
 some peculiar οἰκονομία; for he is certainly here speaking of the Soter, who re- 
 vealed himself to John at the baptism, and at all events, according to the Valenti- 
 nian doctrine, he did not unite himself with the body, but with the psychical Messiah 
 who bore this body.. And then John, who here represented the person of the Demi- 
 urgos himself, would never have uttered his astonishment thus at this wonderful 
 body formed by the latter person himself (the Demiurgos). But the Valentinians 
 called every covering every vehicle for a higher being, which lets himself down into a 
 lower region, a gap. The Sophia gave a σπέρμα πνευματικον, in order that he 
 might let himself down to the earth in this as a vehicle for his appearance, and 
 
THE PASSION NOT THE CHIEF MATTER. 85 
 
 According to the doctrine of Valentinus, as well as that of 
 Basilides, the appearance of the redeeming Spirit in human na- 
 ture, and its union with the psychical Messiah would be the chief 
 business in the work of redemption. He also agreed with Basi- 
 lides in this, that the Soter had left the psychical Messiah to 
 himself at his passion, but he ascribed more importance than 
 Basilides to the passion of the Messiah, although a theosophy, 
 which sought peculiar mysteries, everywhere despised a simple 
 explanation, and in consequence of its multitude of mystical and 
 speculative relations and meanings would not allow the feelings 
 of the heart to show themselves; although this theosophy was too 
 contemplative and superhuman to be able rightly to comprehend 
 the passion of Christ in its human and moral aspect. As the 
 psychical Messiah spread himself upon the cross, and with the 
 cross spread himself over the lower world, this was an image of 
 that first act of redemption by which the Soter (see above) had 
 extended himself over the Sophia with the σταυρος. Just as in 
 the higher region this effected the freeing of the Sophia from 
 that which is foreign to her, so also it effected in the lower the 
 freeing of the psychical from the material, which is the ground- 
 work of all that is evil, even to the final annihilation of it alto- 
 gether, after it has become dissolved in itself!. By the words 
 “Into thy hands, O Father, I commend my spirit,” he com- 
 mended the πνευματικὸν omeoua which was then leaving him, in 
 order that it might not be detained in the dominion of the De- 
 miurgos, but that it might raise itself up free into the higher 
 region, and that all those spiritual natures, whose representative 
 this spiritual nature united with him was, might also be raised 
 up with it. The psychical Messiah raises himself up to the 
 Demiurgos, who transfers to him in his name the sovereign might 
 and rule, and the pneumatical Messiah raises himself up to the 
 Soter, whither all freed spiritual natures are to follow him. 
 
 The most important matter, the chief concern for the pneuma- 
 tical natures in the work of redemption, is still the redemption, 
 
 might thereby enter into union with the uyy. The opening words of the Didascal. 
 Anatol. give us the proof of this, for it is said, ὁ προεβαλεν σαρκιον τῷ λόγῳ (as 
 well as to the Soter) ἡ copia To πνευματικὸν σπέρμα, TouTO στολισαμενος κατηλθεν 
 ὁ owrnp. It was also of this wonderful apparatus that Heracleon spoke. 
 
 1 The declaration of Heracleon in Origen, t. vi. ὃ 23, rw σταυρῳ ἀνηλωσθαι Kat 
 ἠφανισθαι πασαν THY Kaktay, must be understood in connexion with the whole Va- 
 lentinian system. 
 
86 CHRISTIANITY TWOFOLD, 
 
 which was imparted to human nature by its union with the Soter 
 at the baptism in the Jordan. ‘This must be repeated in every 
 individual case. Valentinus speaks thus of the sanctifying effects 
 of inward communion with the Redeemer. ‘But there is one 
 Good, (whose free appearance is the revelation through the Son,) 
 and through him alone can the heart become pure after all evil 
 spirits have been banished out of the heart, for many spirits 
 inhabiting it will not allow it to be pure. Each one of these 
 fully performs its own work, while they defile it in manifold ways 
 by unseemly desires. And it appears to me to be with such a 
 heart as with an inn, which is trampled upon and trodden down 
 and often filled with dirt, while men dwell within it without 
 restraint, and take no care whatever about the place, as one in 
 which they have no concern. Thus also the heart, until it attains 
 heavenly grace, remains unclean, as being the abode of many 
 evil spirits. But where the Father, the only one that is good, 
 takes possession of it, then is it sanctified and it shines with light; 
 and thus he who possesses such a heart, is declared to be blessed 
 (μακαριζεται) because he will see God '.” 
 
 He who is thus united with God is already a member of the 
 heavenly community, is already incorporated by the power of the 
 Redeemer into the host of blessed spirits, which is thus expressed 
 in the language of the Valentinian school: ‘ As every pneuma- 
 tical soul has its other half in the higher world of spirits (the 
 angel which belongs to it) for union with which it is destined, so 
 does it receive through the Soter the power to enter at once into 
 this syzygy in regard to its spiritual life *.” 
 
 As the psychical and pneumatical beings are different from one 
 another in their nature and their destination, so they remain dif- 
 ferent also in Christianity. There is a χριστίανίσμος ψυχικος 
 and a χριστιανισμος πνευματικος. St. Paul declares to the psy- 
 chical, that for them he has known nothing and could preach 
 nothing but Christ erucified®; that he could not preach to them 
 that wisdom of the perfeet which is hidden even to the Demiur- 
 gos and his angels. The Valentinians distinguish also, according 
 to their system, a twofold signification of redemption and of bap- 
 
 " Strom. lib. ii. p. 409. [Ed. Par. 1629.] [Sylburg, p. 176; Potter, p. 488—9 ; 
 Klotz, vol. ii. p. 191.] 
 
 2 Heracleon ap. Origen, t. 13, § 11. κομιζεσθαι παρ᾽ αὐτου τὴν δυναμιν και τὴν 
 EVWOLY καὶ τὴν ἀνάκρασιν προς το πληρωμα αὐτης. 
 
 5. Didascal. Anatol. Of a twofold mode of preaching of St. Paul. In regard τὸ 
 the Psychici, ἐκηρυξε τον owrnpa γενητον και παθητον. 
 
PNEUMATICAL AND PSYCHICAL, 87 
 
 tism, in regard to the psychici and the pneumatici. The psychici 
 must be led to believe by means of miracles and other acts that 
 strike the senses’; they are only capable of a belief upon autho- 
 rity, and not capable of a persuasion which proceeds from the in- 
 ward essence of truth, nor of the intuitive perception (anschauung) 
 of truth itseef- ‘To such men Christ speaks in John iv. 48. The 
 spiritual men, on the contrary, need no such outward means of 
 instruction: in virtue of their kindred nature they are attracted 
 by truth itself without any intermediate means*. When truth 
 reveals itself to them, there follows instantly in them a confident 
 belief, such as could not be effected from without, and could only 
 proceed from the immediate influence of truth upon their kindred 
 spiritual nature *. ‘Their worship of God founded on their know- 
 ledge of the truth is the true “reasonable service of God.” 
 
 That seed of the spiritual nature is that by which men are 
 attracted by the Redeemer, and led to him, the men of the 
 Spirit; therefore, they who possess that seed are the salt and the 
 soul of the outward Church, those through whom Christianity is 
 farther propagated as the forming principle of human nature ἡ. 
 By these spiritual men the illumination of all this earthly uni- 
 verse, the final annihilation of all that is material and evil, is to 
 be prepared, after matter has been deprived of all the life which 
 it has seized upon for itself. Valentinus thus addresses these 
 pretended spiritual men: ‘Ye are, from the beginning, immor- 
 tal, and children of eternal life, and ye have been desirous to 
 divide death among yourselves*, in order that ye may exhaust 
 and expend it, and that death may die in you and through you; 
 for when ye dissolve the world (prepare the dissolution of the 
 material world), but ye yourselves will not be dissolved, ye are 
 lords over the creation, and over all that is corruptible®.” Al- 
 though at the bottom of these high-sounding words, as far as 
 
 1 Δι᾿ ἐργων φυσιν ἔχοντες kat Ot αἰσθησεως πειθεσθαι και οὐχι λογῳ πιστεύειν. 
 Orig. t. xiii. § 59. 
 
 2 Heracleon in Joann. t. xiii. c. 20, the dexrixn Zune διαθεσις. 
 
 3 “H ἀδιακριτος Kat καταλληλος Ty φύσει. 
 
 4 See the proof of this in Heracleon, to be given almost immediately. 
 
 5 While they were sent down into the midst of the material world.. 
 
 6 Strom. lib. iv. p. 509. B. [Ed. Paris, 1629.] ’Az’ ἀρχης ἀθανατου ἐστε και 
 rexva Gone tore αἰωνιας. Kat tov θανατον ἠθελετε μερισασθαι εἰς ἑαυτους, wa 
 δαπανησητε αὖτον και ἀναλωσητε και ἀποθανῃ ὁ θανατος ἐν ὑμιν και Cv ὑμων. 
 Ὅταν yap τον μὲν κοσμον λυητε, ὑμεις δὲ μη καταλυησθε, κυριευετε της κτισεως και 
 τῆς φθορας ἁπασης. [Sylb. p. 218; Potter, p. 603; Klotz, vol. ii. p. 326.] 
 
838 HERACLEON. 
 
 they were applied to the calling of Christians, as instruments for 
 the revelation and extension of God’s kingdom, there is some- 
 thing of truth; yet this truth is here mixed with a pride, which, 
 in the case of certain peculiarities, might easily introduce the 
 most mischievous excesses of fanaticism. If the Valentinians 
 had been able to found a Church according to their own notions, 
 the Pneumatici would have been the Christian Brahmins. 
 
 Now, when the end prepared by these spiritual men should 
 have been attained, then, after the dissolution of the whole ma- 
 terial world, the Soter, united into a syzygy with the Sophia, and 
 under him the matured spiritual natures in pairs with the angels, 
 were to enter into the Pleroma, and the last (lowest) stage of the 
 spiritual world * was to receive the psychici under the Demiurgos ; 
 and they also were to receive that measure of happiness which 
 was suited to their peculiar nature. The Demiurgos rejoices 
 himself in the appearance of the Soter, through which a higher 
 world, to which he had hitherto been a stranger, is revealed to 
 him, and through which also he, being freed from his harassing 
 service, is enabled to enter into rest, and receive an echo of the 
 glory of the Pleroma. He is the friend of the Bridegroom (the 
 Soter) who stands there and belongs to him, and delights himself 
 in the voice of the bridegroom, and delights himself in the fulfil- 
 ment of the marriage*. John the Baptist spoke those words, 
 John ili, 29, as the representative of the Demiurgos. 
 
 § Distinguished Men of the School of Valentinus. 
 
 AmoneG the men of the Valentinian school the Alexandrian 
 Heracleon is distinguished by more learning and profoundness 
 than the others. He composed a commentary on the gospel of 
 St. John, from which Origen * has preserved some fragments of 
 importance, perhaps also a commentary on that of St. Luke, 
 from which (if such be the case), Clement of Alexandria* has 
 handed down to us a fragment,—the explanation of Luke xii. 8. 
 
 1 The τόπος μεσοτητοῦ. 
 
 2 The union of the Soter with the Sophia, and of the angels with the spiritual 
 natures in the Pleroma. 
 
 8 In his Tomi upon John, in which he frequently refers to the explanations of 
 Heracleon. 
 
 4 Strom. iv. 503. [Sy!burg, p. 215; \Potter, p. 595—6 ; Klotz? vol. ii. p. 316—8. } 
 
ST. JOHN IV.—ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATIONS. 89 
 
 It is easy to understand that the deep and inward spirit of St. 
 John’s writings would be attractive to the Gnostics. Heracleon 
 brought to the explanation of this gospel a deep religious feeling 
 directed to interior things, together with an understanding which 
 was clear, whenever he was not led into error by theosophical 
 speculations; but that which was wanting in him was a feeling for 
 the simplicity of St. John, and a knowledge or a recognition of 
 the principles of grammatical and logical interpretation in general, 
 without which free room is given to every caprice, even in thie 
 interpretation of the Scriptural writers, inasmuch as they, as 
 men, although inspired men, obeyed the laws which regulate the 
 modes of speech and thought among men. Although as far as 
 we can see, Heracleon intended honestly to deduce his theology 
 out of St. John, yet he was altogether taken possession of by his 
 own system, and so thoroughly entangled in it in all his modes of 
 thought and conception, that he could not stir a step free from it, 
 and involuntarily introduced its views and ideas into the Holy 
 Scriptures, which he considered as the source of divine truth. As 
 a proof of what is here said, we will take a closer view of Hera- 
 cleon’s explanation of the glorious conversation of our Saviour 
 with the woman of Samaria. He could not stand by the simple 
 historical narrative, nor content himself with the profound, psy- 
 chological consideration of this Samaritan woman in her relation 
 to the Saviour. Immediately in this Samaritan woman, who was 
 attracted by the words and the appearance of Christ, an image is 
 presented to his mind of all spiritual natures, which are attracted 
 by that which is divine; and therefore in this narrative the whole 
 relation of the πνευματικοι to the Soter, and to the higher spi- 
 ritual world, must be represented. And therefore, the words of 
 the Samaritan woman must bear a double sense; one, a sense of 
 which she herself was conscious, and the other that higher sense, 
 which she uttered as the representative of the whole class of 
 πνευματικοι; Without being conscious of it; and therefore also the 
 words of the Saviour in reference to these things must also bear 
 a two-fold sense, a higher and a lower, a notion which involves 
 the uunatural supposition of a double conversation going on at 
 the same time. And yet he had seized upon the fundamental 
 idea of the words of the Redeemer in a very understanding spi- 
 rit, if he could only have prevented himself from being drawn 
 away from the main matter by seeking too much in subordinate 
 particulars. He explains justly the words of Christ (John iy. 10. 
 
90 ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATIONS. , 
 
 13. 14.) which are to be understood spiritually+: ‘ ‘The water, 
 which the Saviour gives, is from his spirit and his power. . . 
 
 . His grace and his gift are something which can never 
 be taken away, nor corrupted, nor consume away in him who 
 partakes of it, . . . . . . They who receive that which 
 is abundantly given to them from above, themselves also let that 
 which is given to them bubble over for the eternal life of others.” 
 But then he draws the false conclusion, that because Christ 
 meant the water, which he wished to give, to be taken in a sym- 
 bolical sense, that consequently also the water of the well of 
 Jacob must be understood in a symbolical sense. It was to be a 
 symbol of Judaism, which satisfies not the desires of the spiritual 
 nature, and of its perishable earthly glory. When the Samaritan 
 woman says, ‘‘ Give me this water, that I may not thirst, that I 
 may not come hither to draw;” then the burdensomeness of Juda- 
 ism was to be betokened by this, the difficulty of finding in it 
 (Judaism) the nourishment of the inward life, and its unsatisfac- 
 toriness 2, When the Redeemer desired the woman to call her 
 husband, he meant her other half in the world of spirits, the 
 angel which belonged to her, in order that she, coming with him 
 to the Saviour, might receive power from him to bind herself 
 with this her other half, and thus unite with him. The ground 
 for this arbitrary interpretation was this: “9 He could not speak of 
 her earthly husband, because he was well aware that she had no 
 lawful husband. . . . According to the spiritual meaning * 
 the Samaritan woman did not know her husband; she knew 
 nothing of the angel, that belonged to her: according to the 
 literal meaning *, she was ashamed to say that she was living in an 
 unlawful connection.” Heracleon further concluded, that as the 
 water is the symbol of the divine life bestowed by the Redeemer, 
 so is the pitcher a symbol of the capacity in the disposition of the 
 Samaritan woman for this Divine life. She left the pitcher behind 
 with him; that is to say, as she had such a vessel with the Sa- 
 viour, as was fitted to receive the living water, she returned into 
 the world, in order to announce the coming of Christ to the 
 psychical °. 
 
 1 [This passage is quoted, Grab. Spicileg. vol. ii. p. 94—5. H.R.] 
 
 2 To ἐπιμοχθον, και δυσποριστον και ἀτροφον ἐκεινου του ὕδατος. 
 
 3 Τὸ πληρωμα αὐτης. See above. 4 Kara τὸ vooupevoy. 
 
 5. Kara τὸ ἁπλουν. 
 
 ® The thought of Heracleon is here a just one, that only he who is in union with 
 
VIEWS OF MARTYRDOM.—PTOLEMZUS. 91 
 
 Heracleon properly opposed the habit of prizing martyrdom 
 as an opus operatum. ‘The multitude,” he says’, “ hold confes- 
 sion before the civil power to be the only thing: but this is 
 wrong, for even the hypocrite might make this confession. This 
 is a particular confession; it is not the common confession, which 
 ought to be made by all Christians, of which he is here speaking ; 
 it is the confession through works and conduct, which answer to 
 a belief in him*. This common confession is followed by that 
 peculiar one, if it be needful, and if reason enjoins it. ...... 
 Those persons who confess him with their mouth, may deny him 
 through their works. Those only can truly confess him, who 
 live in the confession of him, among whom he himself confesses, 
 because he has received them into himself, and they have received 
 him into themselves*. Therefore can he never deny himself *.” 
 
 We next make mention of ProLemaus, who, to judge from the 
 work of Irenzus, (which was specially levelled against the party 
 of this man,) must have laboured much for the propagation of 
 Valentinian principles. One is led to inquire whether it be 
 true, as Tertullian asserts*, that Ptolemzeus was distinguished 
 from Valentinus, because he imagined the AXons rather under 
 the form of Hypostases, while Valentinus conceived them to be 
 powers in-dwelling in the being of God; or at least one inquires, 
 whether this difference was of so much importance; because, in 
 fact, the representation of the Atons by the Gnostics, far from 
 being mere abstract notions of attributes, always must have 
 bordered on hypostatizing. 
 
 the Saviour by his feelings can preach him properly to others,—although this just 
 thought is introduced into this place by an arbitrary interpretation of that which is 
 historical. We must here do Heracleon the justice to acknowledge, that Origen, 
 here as well as in many other places, attacks him unjustly, as if he contradicted 
 himself ; ‘for how could the Samaritan,” says he, ‘‘ preach to others, when she had 
 left behind her, with the Redeemer, from whom she departed, her organ for the 
 reception of the Divine life.” But Heracleon was here quite consistent in his appli- 
 cation of the allegory; he did not think of any local leaving behind. 
 
 1 In the fragment of his Commentary on St. Luke, quoted above. 
 
 2 Here again, what Heracleon says is in itself quite just; and yet his explanation, 
 which has no reference whatever to the context, is quite false. 
 
 3 ᾽Ἐνειλημμενος αὐτους και ἐχομενος ὑπο τουτων. 
 
 4 Which would necessarily happen, if those who are in connection with him 
 were to deny him. 
 
 5 Nominibus et numeris onum distinctis in personales substantias, quas Valen- 
 tinus in ipsa summa divinitatis, ut sensus et affectus et motus, incluserat. Adv. 
 Valentinian. c. 4. 
 
92 PTOLEM#US.—EPISTLE TO FLORA. 
 
 A very important piece of Ptolemzus, which has been pre- 
 served—his letter to one Flora, whom he endeavoured to gain 
 over to the Valentinian principles '—shows that he was extremely 
 skilful in presenting his views to others in a manner likely to 
 recommend them, As he was apparently writing to a Christian 
 lady of the Catholic Church, he had particularly to remove the 
 objection, which she would make on the contradiction between his 
 doctrines and those of the Church, and against the supposition that 
 the Old Testament, and the creation of the world, did not proceed 
 Srom the Supreme God. In regard to the first, he appeals to an 
 apostolical tradition, which had come down to him through a 
 series of hands, as well as to the words of our Saviour, according 
 to which men must determine every thing. By tradition he pro- 
 bably means an Hsoteric tradition, which he, being self: deceived, 
 doubtless deduced from some pretended disciple of the apos- 
 tles; and as to the words of our Saviour, he could easily bring 
 them into accordance with his own system by the Gnostic eze- 
 gesis. In regard to the second point, we may well conceive 
 that he has represented his principles under the mildest pos- 
 sible form, in order to obtain acceptance for them with one 
 who was uninitiated ; but still we find in his conclusions nothing 
 which contradicts the Valentinian principles. He combats two 
 opposite errors, the error of those who held that the creation of 
 the world, and the Old Testament, were the work of an evil 
 Being, and the error of those who attributed them to the Supreme 
 God ; in his opinion, the one party was in error, because it knew 
 only the Demiurgos, and not the Universal Father, whom Christ, 
 who alone knew him, had been the first to reveal: the other, 
 because it knew nothing of an intermediate Being, like the 
 Demiurgos. Ptolemzus, also, would probably say,—the first 
 view is that of men, who remain Jews even in Christianity; the 
 other that of men, who, without any intermediate state of transi- 
 tion from the service of Matter and Satan, in heathenism, had 
 attained at once to the recognition and knowledge of the Su- 
 preme God ; and who believed, because they had made this sudden 
 spring in their religion and knowledge, that a similar sudden 
 transition took place in nature. ‘ How cana law,” he justly 
 inquires, ‘ which forbids all evil, proceed from an evil Being, 
 who wars against all morality?” And he.adds, ‘They who do 
 
 1 Epiphan. Heres. xxxiii. ὃ. 3. 
 
HIS PRINCIPLES. 93 
 
 not recognize the providence of the Creator in the world, must 
 be blind not only in the eyes of the soul, but even in those of the 
 body.” 
 
 He throws the Mosaic religious code into a threefold divi- 
 sion :— 
 
 1. That which proceeds from the Demiurgos ; 
 
 2. That which Moses settled after the dictates of his own un- 
 assisted reason *; 
 
 3. The oldest additions to the Mosaic law’. 
 
 The Saviour clearly distinguishes the law of Moses from the 
 law of God (i. ὁ. of the Demiurgos) in Matt. xix. 6, ἄς. He, 
 however, exculpates Moses again, and seeks to shew, that he 
 gave way to the weakness of the people only when forced, in 
 order to avoid a greater evil. That which proceeded from the 
 Demiurgos he divided again into a threefold division ; 
 
 1. The purely moral enactments, disturbed by nothing extra- 
 neous, which are properly called “The Law,” in reference to 
 which, our Saviour says that he is not come to destroy the Law, 
 but to fulfil it; for as it contained nothing alien to the nature of 
 the Saviour, it required only fulfilment; as, for instance, the 
 commandments, Zhou shalt do no murder,— Thou shalt not commit 
 adultery,—were fulfilled in the commands neither to be angry, nor 
 to lust. 
 
 2. The Law, disturbed by the intermixture of evil, as that 
 part, which permits of revenge, Levit. xxiv. 20. xx. 9. “ He 
 who recompences evil for evil, does no less evil, because he 
 repeats the same conduct, but in a different order.” 
 
 The Gnostic has here only one measure for all cases; he could 
 not discover the distinction of the politico-juridical from the 
 purely moral, nor the necessary connection between the two, 
 from the very nature of the economy of the Old Testament. 
 And yet he recognizes here, as well as in Moses, an element of 
 instruction. ‘This command,” says he, “was, and remains 
 still, in other respects a just one, given on account of the weakness 
 of those who receive the Law, though it transgresses the pure 
 
 1 This distinction of different agents (factors) who worked together in the compo- 
 sition of the Holy Scriptures, is quite conformable to the Valentinian notion of 
 Inspiration. 
 
 2 According to the theory of the Clementine, viz. that when the Law was written 
 down from the oral tradition of it, many foreign additions were mingled with the 
 oldest part of it. 
 
94 TYPES. 
 
 Law ; but it is foreign to the nature and goodness of the Father 
 of all, perhaps not consonant to the nature even of the Demi- 
 urgos', but probably only forced upon him; for while he who 
 forbade one murder, commanded a second, he suffered himself to 
 be surprised by necessity, without being aware of it.” He means 
 to say, that the Demiurgos was wanting, not in the will, but in 
 the power, to overcome evil; and this part of the Law is entirely 
 abolished by the Saviour, as contrary to the nature of the Su- 
 preme God. 
 
 3. The typical ceremonial Law, which (see above) contains 
 the type of the higher spiritual things, the Law of Sacrifices, of 
 Circumcision, of the Sabbath, of the Passover, and of Fasts. 
 «ς All this, which was merely type and symbol, was changed after 
 the truth had appeared. The sensuous and outward observance 
 is removed, but it is transferred to the spiritual: the names 
 remain the same, but the things are changed. For the Saviour 
 has commanded us also to offer sacrifices; but not sacrifices by 
 means of irrational animals, nor such incense, but through spiri- 
 tual praise and thanksgiving, and through charity, and doing 
 good to our neighbour. He wills also, that we should be cir- 
 cumcised; not, however, by the circumcision of the foreskin of 
 the body, but the spiritual circumcision of the heart. He wills 
 also, that we should observe the Sabbath, because he wishes us 
 to rest from doing evil. Also, that we should fast; but not with 
 a bodily fast, but a spiritual, in which abstinence from all evil 
 consists. Our people, however, do observe the external fast, 
 because it may be of some service even to the soul, if reasonably 
 used, and neither used in imitation of any one, nor out of habit, 
 nor on some particular day, as if some one day were appointed 
 for that purpose,—but where it is used also with remembrance of 
 the real fast, that those who are unable to keep that fast, may be 
 reminded of it by outward fasting.” And yet what true insight 
 into the spirit of the system of religion proposed in the New 
 Testament ; what thoughtfulness and mildness of judgment does 
 he show here ! 
 
 Marcus and Bardesanes’ are distinguished persons among 
 
 ! ] have translated after an emendation of the text, |. c. c. 3. which I consider 
 necessary: ἰσως οὐδὲ TOUT, OY TY τουτου καταλλῆλον. 
 
 2 We can only mention Secundus in a cursory manner; for the only thing worth 
 remarking about him is his modification of the ideas of Valentinus, by which he 
 
 made a distinction in the first ogdoad between a rerpag δεξια and a τετρας ἀριστερα, 
 naming the first, light, and the second, darkness: this is remarkable, because it 
 
MARCUS. 95 
 
 those who are called the disciples of Valentinus; we say, ‘who 
 are called the disciples,” because it would probably be more cor- 
 rect to state that both of them drew from the same sources in 
 Syria, the native land of Gnosticism, which Valentinus had used. 
 Marcus apparently came from Palestine in the latter half of the 
 second century. His coming from Palestine appears probable, 
 from the aramaic liturgical formule, of which he made use. 
 While in an Heracleon and a Ptolemzeus the Alexandrian style of 
 knowledge and learning formed rather the characteristic of their 
 theosophy, so on the contrary, in Marcus the poetic and symbolic 
 was the prevailing character. He brought forward his doctrines 
 in a poem, in which he introduced the AZons speaking in liturgi- 
 cal formule, and in imposing symbols of worship. (We shall 
 hereafter introduce specimens of these latter.) After the Jewish 
 cabalistic method, he hunted after mysteries in the number and 
 the position of letters. ‘The idea of a λογος του ὀντος, of a 
 word as the revelation of the hidden Divine Being in creation, 
 was spun out by him with the greatest subtilty; he made the 
 whole creation a progressive expression of the inexpressible. As 
 the divine seeds of life, which lie enclosed in the AZons, con- 
 tinually unfold themselves wider and individualize themselves, 
 this represents, that these names of the unnameable being divide 
 themselves into their separate sounds. An echo of the Pleroma 
 falls down into the ὕλη» and becomes the formative principle of 
 a new inferior creation ἧ. 
 
 shows that, like most mystics, in the pride of his speculation he placed the original 
 foundation of evil in God, while he elevated God above the opposition of good and 
 evil, but supposed that the seed of the division took its rise when the development 
 of life began to proceed from God. Irenzus, ]. i. c. 11, ὃ 2. A similar view is 
 found with those magi among the Parses, who taught, after Scharistani, that “* Yez- 
 dan cogitasse secum; nisi fuerint mihi controversiz, quomodo erit? Hancque 
 cogitationem pravam, nature lucis minus analogam, produxisse tenebras, dictas 
 Ahriman.” (Hyde, Hist. Relig. Vet. Pers. p. 295.) 
 
 1 To ἀῤῥητον ῥητον γενηθηναι. 2 The σπερματα πνευματικα. 
 
 3 In general, it is a peculiarly Gnostic idea, to conceive that the hidden Divinity 
 expressed himself aloud till it was re-echoed, and died away, and then again that the 
 echo fashioned itself into a clear note [or tone, TON] and into a clear word, for the 
 revelation of the Divinity; and this idea they could apply under a variety of dif- 
 ferent relations. Thus Heracleon says. The Saviour is the Word, as the revelation 
 of the Divinity, all the body of prophecy, which predicted him, without being justly 
 aware of the idea of the Messiah, in its spiritual sense was only one note [ton], 
 which preceded the revealing word: John the Baptist, standing in the middle be- 
 tween the economy of the Old and of the New Testament, is the voice [or tone, 
 stimme}, which is akin to the word, as the word expresses thoughts, with a con- 
 
90 BARDESANES.—NO CHANGE IN HIS OPINIONS.—DENIES FATE. 
 
 The second of these, Bardesanes, who is still less to be reck- 
 oned as a proper disciple of Valentinus, lived at Edessa in Meso- 
 potamia, as we learn from his name, ‘the son of Daisan,” 
 derived from a river of this name in the town of Edessa: he 
 made himself known by his extensive learning; many among the 
 older writings give notices of changes in the system of Bardesa- 
 nes. According to the account of Eusebius, he was at first 
 devoted to the system of Valentinus; but when he had seen, 
 after accurate inquiry, how untenable much of it was, he went 
 over to the orthodox Church; and yet at the same time retained 
 much of his old doctrines, so that he became the founder of a 
 peculiar sect. According to Epiphanius he went over from the 
 orthodox Church to the Valentinians. But Ephraim Syrus, the 
 learned Syrian writer, in the fourth century, who lived in the 
 land of Bardesanes, and wrote in his language, and who had read 
 his writings, gives us absolutely no notice whatever of these 
 changes in the doctrinal notions of Bardesanes, and it is easy 
 enough to explain how those false reports arose. Bardesanes, 
 when he spoke publicly in the Church, like the rest of the Gnos- 
 ties (see above), made the prevailing doctrinal notions his starting 
 point: he let himself down after his own fashion to the capacities 
 of the psychici. On many simgle points he really coincided with 
 those notions more than other Gnostics, and he might also, from 
 sincere conviction, unite against many other Gnostic sects, at 
 that time prevailing in Syria, as against those who denied the 
 connexion between the Old and the New Testament, or those 
 who derived the visible world from an evil being, or those who 
 held the doctrine of fate to the prejudice of moral freedom ; just 
 as the Gnostic Ptolemeus (see above) notwithstanding his Gnos- 
 ticism, had also written against such people. 
 
 It was in entire accordance with the Valentinian system, that 
 Bardesanes acknowledged something in the nature of man, 
 incomprehensible to itself, and elevated above the whole world, 
 
 sciousness of their meaning. The voice [stimme, voice, note, or tune] becomes a word, 
 when John becomes the disciple of Christ, and the note [or sound, ton] becomes a 
 voice [stimme] when the prophets of the Demiurgos, together with the Demiurgos 
 himself, arrive at a consciousness of the higher world-system, which the Messiah re- 
 veals, and serve that system knowingly and willingly. Origen, t. vi. Joh. § 12. 
 Ὁ λογος μὲν 6 Σωτὴρ ἐστιν, φωνὴ δὲ ἡ ἐν Ty ἐρημῳ πᾶσα προφητικὴ ταξις, τὴν 
 φωνὴν οἰκειοτεραν οὐσαν τῳ λογῳ λογον γενεσθαι. τῳ «ἠχῳ φησιν ἐσεσθαι τὴν εἰς 
 φωνὴν μεταβολὴν, μαθητοῦ μὲν χωραν διδους Ty μεταβαλλουσῃ εἰς Aoyoy φωνῃ ἡ 
 (it ought rather to be rnv) dovdov δὲ ry ἀπὸ ἠχου εἰς φωνην. 
 
MORAL FREEDOM. 97 
 
 in which the temporal consciousness of man developes itself; 
 the human soul being a seed shed abroad from out of the Pleroma ; 
 its essence and its powers, which are derived from higher regions, 
 remain, therefore, hidden even from itself, until it shall have 
 arrived at a full consciousness and use of them in the Pleroma’. 
 This, however, according to the Gnostic system, could only be 
 true about the spiritual natures ; but according to that system he 
 must have ascribed to the psychici also, a moral freedom, elevated 
 above the power of the influences of nature, or the power of the ὑλη. 
 He, therefore, although like many of those inclined to Gnos- 
 ticism, he busied himself with astrology, contended against the 
 doctrine of such an influence of the stars (an εἰμαρμενη) as should 
 be supposed to settle the life and affairs of man by necessity. Eu- 
 sebius in his great literary treasure-house, the προπαρασκευη 
 evayyeAccn, has preserved a large fragment of this remarkable 
 work; he here introduces among other things the Christians dis- 
 persed over so many countries’, as an example of the absurdity 
 of supposing that the stars irresistibly influence the character of 
 a people. “ Where they are,” he says of the Christians, “they 
 are neither overcome by abominable laws and customs, nor does 
 their nativity, deduced from their prevailing stars, compel them 
 to practise the wickedness which is forbidden by their Lord. 
 But they are subject to sickness, to poverty, to pain, and to that 
 which is accounted shame by men. For as our freeman does not 
 suffer himself to be compelled to slavery, and if he is compelled 
 resists those who compel him, so on the other hand, the man who 
 appears to us a slave’, does not easily escape from subjection. 
 For, if every thing was in our own power, we should be τὸ wav 
 (the universe), as, if we were not able to do anything, we 
 should be the mere instruments of others, and not of ourselves. 
 But when God helps, every thing is possible, and no obstacle can 
 exist, because nothing can resist his will. And even if anything 
 does appear to oppose him, it then happens so because he is the 
 Good, and suffers every nature to retain its peculiarities and its free 
 will'.” In accordance with his system he searched for traces of 
 
 1 See Ephraem. Syr. Opp. Sys. Lat. t. ii. p. 553—5. 
 
 2 See Part i. p. 74. (Euseb. Prep. Evang. Ὁ. vi. c. 10.) 
 
 3 (“Unser Erscheinungsmensch als ein dienstbarer,” ὅς. ‘The original is thus : 
 Ὥσπερ yap ὁ ἐλευθερος ἡμων ἀνθρωπος δουλευειν οὐκ ἀναγκαζεται, κἀν ἀναγκασθη 
 ἀνθισταται τοις ἀναγκαζουσιν, οὗτως οὐδὲ 6 φαινομενος Hwy δουλος ἀνθρωπος 
 της ὑποταγῆς ἐκφευγειν ῥᾳδιως δυναται. H. R.} 
 
 4 [The passage which Neander has here selected is so limited that it does not give 
 
 VOL. II. H 
 
98 THE OPHITES. 
 
 truth among all nations, and he remarked in the East Indies a 
 class of sages (the Brahmins, Saniahs) who lived a rigid ascetic 
 life, and amidst idolaters preserved themselves free from idolatry, 
 and worshipped only the one God. 
 
 2. The Gnostic sects, which denied the connection between the Old 
 and New Testaments, and between the visible and the invisible 
 worlds. 
 
 (a.) Zhe Ophites. 
 
 As Cerinthus formed the most natural point of transition from 
 the Judaising sects to the Gnostics,—so the Ophites make the 
 most natural point of transition from the Valentinians to this 
 second class of Gnostics; for it is here shown how the same 
 ideas, by a slightly different turn, may lead to entirely different 
 propositions. 
 
 In the system of this sect, as well as in that of the Valenti- 
 nians, the notion of a soul of the world prevailed, of a weak 
 reflection of light from the Pleroma, which falling down into 
 matter, animated the dead mass, and yet was itself affected by 
 matter also; this soul of the world, the source of all spiritual life, 
 which attracts again to itself all which has once flowed from it, 
 this Pantheistic doctrine, of which the seed had already been 
 sown in the Valentinian system, in the Ophitic scheme only 
 comes forward in greater prominence, as the essential doctrines 
 of Christianity are driven further into the back ground; and 
 even in this respect again, different modifications appear to have 
 found place in different branches of the Ophitic sects. The same 
 fundamental principle might, at the same time, be conceived and 
 applied in different modes, just according as the Christian, the 
 purely oriental and theosophic, or the Jewish element happened to 
 predominate in each case. 
 
 The Ophitic system represented the origin of the Demiurgos, 
 who is here called Jaldabaoth, exactly in the same way as the 
 Valentinian; and even in the dectrine of his relation to the 
 
 an adequate view of the meaning of Bardesanes. The argument of Bardesanes 
 appears to be of this kind: Some things are αὐτεξουσια, and these things are 
 changed sometimes in nations, others are not. The things that are in our own 
 power are not bound down in stern laws of necessity by climate. Such things may 
 be instanced, as circumcision and keeping of the Sabbath; these the Jews celebrate 
 every where. H. R.] 
 
OPHITES AND VALENTINIANS. 99 
 
 higher order of the world, the point of transition (7. 6. from one 
 system to another) may be easily recognized. ‘The Valentinian 
 Demiurgos is a limited Being, who imagines, in his finite facul- 
 ties, that he acts independently. The higher order of the world 
 is a thing altogether strange to him; he serves it without being 
 conscious of it. In the phenomena which proceeded from it, he 
 was at first entirely at a loss, he was surprised; but this is not 
 the fault of a wicked disposition in him, only of his ignorance. 
 At length he is attracted by the Divine nature, and out of a 
 condition of unconsciousness, attains at length to a state of con- 
 sciousness, and he now serves the higher order of the world with 
 delight. According to the Ophitic scheme, on the contrary, he 
 is a being not merely finite, but entirely at enmity with the 
 higher order of the world, and obstinate in his hatred of it. 
 Whatever of higher light he derived, in virtue of his descent 
 from the Sophia, he only misused, that he might set himself up 
 against the higher world, and make himself an independent 
 Lord. ‘Thence came the desire of the Sophia to detach him 
 from the spiritual being which had accrued to him, and to draw 
 this latter again to herself, in order that Jaldabaoth, with his 
 whole creation, deprived of all reasonable being, might be de- 
 stroyed. On the contrary, according to the Valentinian scheme, 
 the Demiurgos forms, for all eternity, a subordinate grade of 
 rational and moral existence; subordinate indeed, but required 
 for the harmonious development of the whole. And yet, here 
 again, kindred ideas are found in the two systems, in the circum- 
 stance that the Demiurgos is obliged, without knowing it or 
 wishing it, to serve the Sophia, and to bring to pass the fulfilment 
 of her intentions, and in the end, even his own fall and annihila- 
 tion. 'This, however, is here no distinction for the Demiurgos, 
 as in the Valentinian system; but in this very circumstance he 
 is placed exactly on the same footing with the Absolute Evil (the 
 evil principle itself). It flows not from the excellence of his 
 nature, but from the omnipotence of the higher system of the 
 world. Even the Evil Spirit, the serpent-spirit, ὀφιομορῴος; 
 whose existence arose from the circumstance that Jaldabaoth, full 
 of hatred and envy against man, looked down into the ὕλη, and 
 formed a reflection and image of himself there, even this being 
 was obliged, against his will, to become only an instrument for 
 the accomplishment of her designs. ‘The doctrine of the origin 
 and of the destination of man, in this system, has, however, much 
 H 2 
 
100 THE NATURE OF THE SERPENT. 
 
 in common with the Valentinian, but at the same time, also, 
 much which belongs to another branch of the Gnostic systems. 
 In order to establish. himself as an independent Creator and 
 Lord, and to hold in subjection the six angels’ begotten by him, 
 and to distract them, so that they should not look up to and ob- 
 serve the higher Light of the world, Jaldabaoth required his six 
 angels to create man, as their common form, that such a work 
 might set the stamp upon their independent Divine power ’. 
 They now create man, who is, however, as their likeness, a mon- 
 strous mass of matter, but without a soul; he crawls upon the 
 earth, and is unable to hold himself upright. They bring, there- 
 fore, this helpless being, man, to their father, that he may bestow 
 upon him a soul. Jaldabaoth communicated to him a living 
 spirit °; and by that means the spiritual seed proceeded, without 
 his being aware of it, from out of his being into the nature of 
 man, whereby he himself became deprived of this higher prin- 
 ciple of life: the Sophia had so decreed it. In man (ἰ. 6. in 
 those men who have received any portion of the spiritual seed), 
 the light, the soul, the reason of the whole creation, concentres 
 itself. Jaldabaoth is now seized with surprise and anger, because 
 he sees a being, created by himself, and dwelling within the 
 limits of his dominion, on the point of raising himself above him 
 and his kingdom. ‘Thence arose his endeavour, not to allow him 
 to come to a consciousness of his higher nature, and of the higher 
 world to which he is allied in virtue of that nature, and to keep 
 him in a state of dull unconsciousness, and thereby of slavish 
 servitude. It was from the jealousy of Jaldabaoth, who was thus 
 limited, that there proceeded that command to the first man; but 
 the soul of the world made use of the serpent-spirit (of the 
 ὀφιομορφος) as an instrument, in order to frustrate the design of 
 Jaldabaoth, while through it she enticed the first man to disobe- 
 dience. According to another view, the serpent was itself a 
 symbol, or a veiled appearance of the soul of the world*; and 
 those Ophites who held this doctrine are the persons, who, pro- 
 
 1 It must be observed, that according to the Ophitic system, Jaldabaoth and his 
 six angels are the spirits of the seven stars,—the sun, the moon, Mars, Venus, 
 Jupiter, Mercury, and Saturn: the same from which, in the books of the Zabians, 
 and in many systems of Jewish Theosophists, a variety of delusions and seductions 
 of mankind have proceeded. 
 
 2 Thus they explain the words of Genesis i. 26. 
 
 % This they thought they found in Genesis ii. 7. 
 
 * The serpent, an image of the Zwoyovog σοφια; the form of the intestines wind- 
 
THE FALL A SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 101 
 
 perly, bear the name of Ophites, because they worshipped the 
 serpent as an holy symbol, to which a kindred notion of the 
 Egyptian religion might have led them, because in that the ser- 
 pent is considered as the symbol of Kneph, or the ἀγαθοδαιμων;, 
 which was similar to the σοφία of the Ophites. At all events it 
 was the soul of the world, by which, either mediately or imme- 
 diately, the eyes of the first man were opened. 
 
 The fall by sin (which gives us a characteristic trait in the 
 Ophitic system) was the point of transition from a condition of 
 unconscious restriction to a condition of conscious knowledge. 
 Man, become a being of knowledge, now renounces his allegi- 
 ance to Jaldabaoth, who, being irritated at his disobedience, 
 pushes him out of the ethereal region, where he had hitherto 
 existed in an ethereal body, down into the dark earth, and 
 banishes him into a dark body. Man finds himself now in such 
 a condition, that on the one hand the seven star-spirits attempt to 
 keep him in imprisonment, and to overwhelm the higher principle 
 of consciousness within him,—while, on the other, the evil spirits 
 of a purely material nature, endeavour to seduce him to sin and 
 to idolatry, in order that he may become liable to the punish- 
 ments of the severe Jaldabaoth. But yet the Sophia constantly 
 strengthens anew the men who were of kindred nature with her- 
 self, by new communications of that higher spiritual nature ; and 
 she was able, during ail the destructions and storms, to preserve 
 a race of people belonging to herself from the time of Seth, 
 whom all Gnostics look upon as the representative of the mvev- 
 ματικοι, the men of a contemplative character, in which race she 
 preserves the seed of the spiritual nature. 
 
 The doctrines of the Ophites corresponded with those of Ba- 
 silides and the Valentinians, as to the relation of the psychical 
 Christ, or Jesus, to the Christ of the world of A£ons, who united 
 himself to the former at his baptism. ‘This only is peculiar to 
 them (the Ophites), that while the higher Christ descended 
 through the seven heavens of the seven angels, or traversed the 
 seven stars, in order to arrive at the earth, he appeared in each 
 heaven, in a form akin to that heaven, as an angel allied to it, 
 and that he concealed from them his higher nature, and attract- 
 
 ing itself represents the image of a serpent, a symbol of that wisdom of nature, that 
 soul of the world, which winds itself concealed through all the grades of life found 
 in nature. Theodoret. hzret. fab. vol. i. 14. One sees how far more the pantheistic 
 principle here shines through these notions. 
 
102 PANTHEISM OF THE OPHITES. 
 
 -ing to himself all which they still possessed of the spiritual seed, he 
 
 thus weakened their power. But now, when Jaldabaoth, the God 
 of the Jews, saw his expectations frustrated by his Messiah, and 
 when this Messiah did not further his kingdom as he had wished 
 and expected him to do, but announced the unknown father as 
 the instrument of the higher Christ, and destroyed the law of 
 Jaldabaoth, or rather Judaism, Jaldabaoth then brought about his 
 crucifixion. Jesus remained eighteen months on earth after his 
 resurrection, obtained through the inspiration of the Sophia a 
 clear knowledge of the higher truth, and then communicated it 
 only to a few of his disciples, whom he knew competent to 
 receive such mysteries. Jesus is now raised by the heavenly 
 Christ into heaven, and sits at the right hand of Jaldabaoth, with- 
 out the latter being conscious of it, in order that he may attract 
 to himself, and receive into himself, all the spiritual substance, 
 which is set free and purified by the operation of redemption 
 among mankind, as soon as that substance has been detached 
 from its covering of flesh. The more Jesus, by this drawing to 
 himself all that is akin to him, is enriched in his own spiritual 
 nature, so much the more is Jaldabaoth denuded of all higher 
 ‘qualities. The object of all this is to set free all the spiritual 
 life which is held captive in nature, and to re-conduct it to its 
 original source,—to the soul of the world from which all pro- 
 ceeded: Jesus is the channel through which this happens. ‘The 
 stars also must at last be deprived of all being gifted with reason 
 which is found in them. 
 
 In this family of Gnostics there were some who maintained 
 even a more consistent pantheism, and supposed that the same 
 soul was extended throughout the whole of nature, animate and 
 inanimate, and that, in consequence, all the life which was scat- 
 tered abroad and held in imprisonment by the bonds of matter in 
 the limited state of individual existence, would at last be attracted 
 by the original source, the soul of the world, the Sophia, from 
 which it had flowed forth, and thus flow back again into it 
 through this channel. Such persons would say, when we use the 
 objects of nature to our sustenance, we draw to ourselves seed 
 which are scattered over them, and we raise them with us to the 
 original source of all things?. Therefore, in an apocryphal gospel 
 of this sect, the soul of the world, or the supreme Being himself, 
 
 1 Epiphan. heres. 26. c. 9. 
 
OPHITES; ANTI-CHRISTIAN OR NOT? 103 
 
 spoke to the initiated thus: “Thou art I, and I am thou; and 
 where thou art; there am I, and I am spread over every thing. 
 Where thou wilt thou canst collect me, and where thou collectest 
 me, there thou collectest thyself.” (Chap. iii.) 
 
 Pantheism, and the intermixture of the natural and the Divine 
 which flowed from it, by their very nature could not be very 
 exacting in a moral point of view, although in those men who had 
 embraced Pantheism, their previously-existing moral sentiments 
 might communicate even to the system itself a moral spirit which 
 was foreign to its own nature. Pantheism, and a wild enthusias- 
 tic spirit of defiance towards Jaldabaoth, and his pretended re- 
 strictive statutes, appear in fact to have misled a part of these 
 Ophites into the most unnatural excesses’. 
 
 It is of great importance towards the history of the Gnostic 
 sects to inquire, although the inquiry be difficult of solution, 
 whether these Ophites sprouted forth from a religious sect, which 
 originally had no connexion at all with Christianity, and whether, 
 on that account, as a part of this sect had already appropriated to 
 itself much which was Christian, a party existed also of those 
 Ophites, who were quite out of the pale of Christianity, and who 
 rather set themselves in hostility to it? The latter appears to be 
 attested by an account given by Origen, who says, that the 
 Ophites were no Christians, and that they suffered no one who 
 did not curse Christ to enter into their assemblies. He names a 
 certain Euphrates, who may have lived before the birth of Christ, 
 as the founder of their sect*. The Ophitic pantheism may very 
 
 1- As the accounts of Epiphanius in this matter agree with those of Clement of 
 Alexandria, a person more worthy of credit, and of Porphyry, about similar Gnos- 
 tic sects, and as they bear an entirely characteristic stamp upon them, we are by no 
 means justified in calling their correctness into question. Nor can the fact alleged 
 here be considered a thing to astonish us at all; similar excesses, arising from a 
 pantheistic mysticism, have been often found, not only in the east, but in the west 
 also, as the history of the sects of the middle ages and of modern times will prove, 
 The latest examples may be found in De Potter’s Vie de Ricci. v. 1. 
 
 The instances are too well-known to readers of any general information to require 
 specification. No references will, therefore, be given. It is enough to state the 
 fact as illustrating a mental and spiritual phenomenon, but it is unfit to dwell upon, 
 
 [Other instances might be found in modern days where what was originally, per- 
 haps, only a highly-wrought speculative doctrine, became subject to this dreadful 
 perversion. They could easily be cited, but it is needless, and perhaps improper, as 
 it might lead to enquiry on a subject, which could end only in disgust. It is enough 
 to state the fact as a mental] phenomenon, and to leave any specification till the asser- 
 tion iscalled in question. H. R.] 
 
 2 Origen c. Cels. lib. vi..c. 28, &c. The obscure and uncritical Philaster, who sets 
 the Ophites at the head of the anti-Christian sects, cannot be valid as an authority. 
 
. 104 PSEU DO-BASILIDIANS. 
 
 probably have been borrowed from an older Oriental system of 
 religion, and have been set in opposition to Christianity only by 
 some, while it may have been clothed in a Christian garb by the 
 others. The remarkable likeness between the Ophitic system, 
 those of the Sabians, and the Manicheans may indicate an older 
 and a common source in an anti-Christian Gnosis. But, on the 
 other hand, it cannot be denied, that the Ophitic formule of 
 adjuration, which Origen quotes immediately after this declara- 
 tion, plainly contain allusions to Christian notions. And it may 
 still be the case, that although the Ophitic sect appeared from 
 the very first as a Christian sect, yet the contrast to the nature of 
 Christianity which lay in its peculiar constitution also constantly 
 became outwardly more prominent; and that, as the contrast 
 between the Demiurgos and the Supreme God was so strongly 
 brought forward by them, so also, in consequence of the distine- 
 tion between the psychical and the pneumatical Christ, there 
 arose at last in some portion of the Ophites, a hostile opposition 
 to the former’ (the psychical) ; so that, to curse the finite Mes- 
 siah of the psychici, became in the end a token to show that men 
 were disciples of the higher Christ. Something similar is found 
 in the sect of the Sabians, who referred much which they took 
 out of the history of Christ to a heavenly genius, the angel of life, 
 Mando di Chaje, whom they worshipped as the proper Christ, 
 from whom the true baptism proceeded, while they referred the 
 rest to the anti-Christ Jesus, (who had counterfeited the baptism 
 of John), who was sent by the star-spirits for the seduction of 
 mankind, 
 
 (b.) Pseude-basilidians. 
 
 As we see in the Ophitic system how entirely different a direc- 
 tion the principles allied to the Valentinian system may receive 
 by a slightly different modification and application, so we find 
 a similar circumstance in the relations borne by a variety of the 
 Basilidian scheme, the doctrines of which are often confused with 
 those of the genuine Basilidians. ‘The calm and moderate spirit 
 of the Basilidian system ἢ was here entirely extinguished, and the 
 
 1 T am indebted for this observation to the profound critique on my work about 
 the Gnostics, written. by Dr. Gieseler. 
 
 2 Were it not that Clement of Alexandria spoke of practical errors in pretended 
 followers of Basilides, similar to those found in this sect, we might be led to suspect 
 that those whom I[renzeus calls Basilidians had nothing whatever to do with Basilides. 
 
SETHITES AND CAINITES. 105 
 
 direct opposition to the Demiurgos and the Antinomianism, 
 which was connected with it, degenerated here into a wild dreami- 
 ness that made light of all that is most holy. According to their 
 theory, the redeeming Spirit’ could enter into no connexion 
 with the detested dominions of the Demiurgos, and he took upon 
 himself only the semblance of a corporeal form. When the Jews 
 were minded to crucify him, he, as a highly-gifted Spirit, know- 
 ing how to clothe himself in every kind of corporeal appearance, 
 and to cast every sort of illusion before the eyes of the gross- 
 minded multitude, caused Simon of Cyrene (Mark xv.) to appear 
 to the Jews in his likeness; he himself took the form of this 
 Simon, and raised himself up unencumbered into the invisible 
 world, making a mockery of the deluded Jews. ‘To these men 
 the doctrine of the Cross was foolishness; and in the conceit of 
 their theosophic pride, they mocked those who confessed it as the 
 confessors of a mere illusory phantom. ‘ Such men,” they would 
 say, “‘are no Jews; neither are they Christians.” They despised 
 the martyrs as men who gave up their life merely to confess in 
 the name of a phantom. ‘“ Those who are initiated into the true 
 mysteries know well, that only one out of thousands can under- 
 stand them: as your vove was able to make himself invisible to 
 all men, so could they ’ also, like this your νοῦς» hide themselves 
 in all kinds of phantoms, and pretend to take a part in every 
 thing, in order to deceive the gross multitude, and to withdraw 
 from their persecutions *.” 
 
 (c.) Sethites and Cainites. 
 
 Tue example of the Sethites and Cainites, who most probably are 
 derived from the same source as the Ophites, teaches us how the 
 same Gnostic principles, by being differently applied, may pro- 
 duce an opposite kind of Gnosis. The jfirst of these two sects 
 maintained, that from the beginning fwo human pairs were cre- 
 ated, the one by the angels of darkness, from which the race of 
 
 1 The νους. See above, on the system of Basilides. 
 
 ? This ἃ Ὁ of becoming invisible is among the Cabbalistic arts also. <A very re- 
 markable instance of this fancy is to be found in Maimonides’ history of his own 
 life; and there are generally many interesting echoes of Gnosticism to be found in 
 the later Jewish sects, which Beer has delineated in his instructive history of the 
 Jewish sects. (Briinn, 1822.) 
 
 8 Trenzus i. 24. 
 
106 SATURNINUS. 
 
 χοικοι or ὕλικοι arose, the other, by the angels of the Demiur- 
 gos, from which the race of ψυχικοι was derived; that Cain 
 sprung from the first, Abel from the second ; and, the two oppo- 
 site natures contending together, that the weaker psychical nature 
 was overborne ; but that then Sophia allowed Seth to be born in 
 his stead, in whom (viz. Seth) she had implanted the higher spi- 
 ritual seed, by which he was rendered capable of overcoming the 
 hylic principle. From Seth the πνευματικοι derived their origin ; 
 but, the opposing powers now seeking constantly to defile the 
 propagation of this spiritual race by the intermixture of ungodly 
 natures, Sophia, on this account, produced the deluge, in order 
 again to purify the degenerated race; but her adversaries con- 
 trived to suffer a Ham to insinuate himself among those who 
 were saved out of the mass of mankind that was destroyed, and 
 by him their dominion was again to be set up and extended. 
 Thence came new mixtures and disorders, and again Sophia had 
 to endeavour to produce new purifications: Seth appeared at 
 last in the person of the Messiah ’. 
 
 The Cainites, on the contrary, were abominable Antinomians ; 
 they went to such a length in their hatred to the Demiurgos and 
 to the Old Testament, that they made all those whom they found 
 represented in the latter (the Old Testament) in the worst 
 colours, their Coryphei, as being sons of Sophia and enemies of 
 the Demiurgos; and hence they claimed Cain for their party. 
 It was these persons who, while they considered the rest of the 
 Apostles as narrow-minded men, ascribed the higher Gnosis to 
 Judas Iscariot, who effected the death of Jesus, because he knew, 
 in virtue of his superior illumination, that the destruction of the 
 dominion of the Demiurgos would by this means be brought 
 about. 
 
 (d.) Saturmnus. 
 
 WE recognize a peculiar branch of the Gnostic systems in the 
 doctrines of Saturninus, who lived at Antioch in the reign of 
 Hadrian ; but we have, it must be confessed, in both the princi- 
 pal sources of information’, too imperfect data, to be able to 
 recognize this system in its whole connexion. (We pass over 
 without mention whatever he has in common with the Gnosties, 
 
 1 See above the representation of the doctrines of the Clementine. 
 2 Epiphanius and Irenzus. 
 
SATURNINUS. 107 
 
 whom we have already described, as to the emanation-doctrines, 
 and as to those of dualism.) 
 
 In the lowest grade of the emanation-world, on the very bor- 
 ders between the domain of light and the region of darkness, or 
 of (Hyle) ὕλη, stood the seven lowest angels, those star-spirits ; 
 they unite together in order to win from the region of darkness a 
 land on which they may carry on an independent kingdom. 
 Thus arose our world, the earth, into different parts of which 
 these star-spirits apportioned themselves, the God of the Jews 
 being αὐ their head: they carry on a constant war against the 
 reign of darkness and Satan its prince, who will not suffer their 
 dominion to be extended at the expense of his, and who con- 
 stantly attempts to destroy that which they construct. Only a 
 faint gleam from the higher regions of light shone down upon 
 them here. This gleam of light filled them with desire of it, 
 and they wished to possess themselves of it, but were too weak 
 to do so: it constantly recedes again, just as they desire to lay 
 hold of it. They unite, therefore, in order to drive these higher 
 beams of light into their dominion by means of a form cast after 
 the image of that form of light which played before them. But 
 the form of the angel is unable to raise himself into heaven; he 
 cannot stand upright’; he is a lump of matter without a soul. 
 The supreme Father, from the kingdom of light, at last takes 
 compassion on man, being thus helpless, although made in his 
 likeness; he communicates a spark of his own divine nature to 
 him, and man, now for the first time, becomes a being endued 
 with a soul, and can lift himself up to heaven. In the human 
 natures, into which it is transplanted, this divine seed of life is to 
 develope itself till it arrives at independence, and after a certain 
 time to return to its original source. Those men who, bearing 
 this Divine seed within them, are destined to reveal the Supreme 
 God on earth, are constantly opposed to those who bear within 
 them only the hylie principle, as being the instruments of the 
 kingdom of darkness. The Supreme God, therefore,—in order to 
 destroy both the kingdom of the star-spirits, of the God of the 
 Jews, which endeavoured to render itself independent, and that 
 of darkness also, and in order to set free those men who were 
 akin to him (the Supreme God), by means of the Divine seed of 
 life, from the imprisonment of the star-spirits, and to procure 
 them a victory over the kingdom of darkness,—the Supreme God 
 
 1 See above, in the history of the Ophites. 
 
108 TATIAN. | 
 
 sent his Afton νους down; this AZon being unable to enter into 
 union in any way with the kingdom of the stars, or with the 
 material world, could hence only show himself in the phantom 
 (or semblance) of a corporeal form. ‘The doctrines of Saturninus 
 led to a strict system of asceticism, and to the precept of celibacy, 
 which was possibly, however, observed only in its strictness by 
 those who were peculiarly initiated into the sect, and not by its 
 ordinary members. 
 
 (e.) Tatian, and the Eucratites. 
 
 Tarian, of Assyria, lived in Rome as a rhetorician, and was 
 there converted to Christianity by Justin Martyr, who had much 
 in common with him, in virtue of the similar mental education 
 he had undergone, as having formerly been a Platonist. As long 
 as Justin lived he adhered to the doctrines of the Church. And 
 even farther, after the death of Justin, he composed an apologetic 
 writing 1 conceived in the same tone of thought, in which, how- 
 ever, there was much which might afterwards afford an open- 
 ing for Gnosticism. ‘Tatian in this writing, as his master Justin 
 had done, received, after Philo, the Platonic doctrine about mat- 
 ter, in its whole extent, into his system, little calculated as that 
 doctrine was to suit his system, as he at the same time maintained 
 the notion of a creation out of nothing. This Platonic theory 
 also prevailed upon him to maintain the notion of an undivine 
 spirit of life, united with and akin to matter, a reason-counteract- 
 ing soul; and hence he deduced evil spirits, whom he represents 
 as πνευματα ὑλικα; little as this theory was in accordance with the 
 Christian doctrine of the nature of the evil spirit, and of the 
 origin of evil. Even in this writing he already maintained a 
 proposition which was elsewhere transplanted by many of the 
 first Christian Fathers from the Jewish theology; viz., that the 
 souls of men, like every thing else, are formed out of matter, and 
 are akin to it’, and therefore, by their nature, mortal; that the 
 first man, living in communion with God, had within himself a 
 principle of divine life, of a more elevated nature than this soul, 
 sprung from matter, and that this principle was properly the image 
 of God*, whereby he was immortal. By losing this through sin, 
 he fell under the power of matter, and was subject to mortality. 
 
 1 His Λογος προς ‘BAAnvac. 
 2 A mvevpa ὑλικον. 3 Θεοῦ εἰκων και ὁμοιωσις. 
 
DUALISM.—ASCETICISM. 109 
 
 It is easy to see how these opinions, which, according to Tatian’s 
 system, were not very consistent with each other, might serve as 
 a means of introduction to the Gnostic ideas of the ὕλη, and of 
 the difference between the ψυχικὸν and the πνευματικον ; and a 
 system of asceticism, which strove after a complete detachment 
 from the things of sense’, might be the result*. According to 
 the account of Irenzeus * he formed for himself a system of /Zons, 
 like that of the Valentinians ; but this is not a sufficient ground 
 to conclude with certainty that his system was connected with 
 the Valentinian. According to Clement of Alexandria‘ he be- 
 longed to the class of anti-Jewish Gnostics ; he referred the con- 
 trast made by St. Paul between the old and the new man to the 
 relation between the Old and the New Testaments; but this 
 also he might express according to the Valentinian Gnosis, which 
 sets by no means an absolute opposition between the two systems 
 of religion. A remark of Tatian, which has been preserved, 
 appears to indicate, that he by no means so entirely detached the 
 Demiurgos, the God of the Old Testament, from connexion with 
 the higher world*®. The words of Genesis, ‘“ Let there be light,” 
 he considered an instance, by the way, of his arbitrary mode of 
 Scriptural interpretation; not as the words of a commandment 
 given by the Creator, but as the words of prayer. ‘The Demiur- 
 gos, sitting in dark chaos, prays that light may shine down from 
 above. His wild, ascetic turn, however, may have arisen from 
 the following circumstance, namely, that he made a more direct 
 opposition between the creation of the Demiurgos and the higher 
 world, and hence, also, between the Old and the New Testa- 
 ments, than could find place according to the principles of tlie 
 Valentinian school; for that practical opposition to the creation 
 of the Demiurgos was usually founded in a theoretical one. 
 Tatian wrote a book on Christian perfection after the example of 
 our Saviour °, in which he sets forth Christ as the ideal of a single 
 
 1 [Entsinnlichung. H. R.] 
 
 2 According to Irenzus, i. 28. he maintained at first the condemnation of the 
 first man, which would harmonize well enough with the difference we have remarked 
 between the ψυχικὸν and the πνευματικὸν in the nature of the first man, which 
 latter [i. 6. the πνευματικὸν} he lost by sin. 
 
 3 Comp. Clem. Strom. iii. 465. C. [Sylb. p. 200. Pott. p. 553. Klotz. vol. ii. 
 p- 265. ] 
 
 * Stromat. lib. iii. 460. Ὁ. [Sylb. p.197—8. Potter, p. 548. Klotz. vol. ii. p. 
 259. ] 
 
 5 Theodot. didascal. anatol. fol. 806. Origines de Oratione, c. 24. 
 
 ® Περι τοῦ κατὰ τὸν σωτηρα καταρτισμου. 
 
110 JULIUS CASSIANUS. 
 
 and abstinent life. If in this he kept simply to our canonical 
 gospels, and used no apocryphal narratives’, in which the picture 
 of Christ had already been drawn after a theosophico-ascetic 
 model, much must have met him here in such direct opposition, 
 that it might have removed him from this mode of thinking. But 
 we see by an example how Tatian was able, by means of his illo- 
 gical mode of interpretation, to explain into an accordance with 
 his opinions the passages of Scripture the most unfavourable to 
 him, since he could find in the passage in 1 Cor. vii. 5, that St. 
 Paul sets marriage and ineontinency on the same footing, and 
 calls them both a service of Satan’. As the disposition for such 
 a theosophic asceticism was then, having arisen in the east, widely 
 diffused, it cannot surprise us to find that there were different 
 sects of such continentes*, who had no immediate connexion with 
 Tatian. 
 
 To these belonged Julius Cassianus, who considered Adam as 
 the symbol of souls sunk down out of a heavenly condition into the 
 world of bodies, and he, therefore, made it a chief point that man 
 should detach himself from matter by a strict asceticism, and on 
 that very account also would not allow any appearance of Christ 
 in the world of bodies; he was, therefore, one of the Docete. 
 He may probably have been an Alexandrian Jew ; his peculiar 
 opinions, his doctrines of the materialization* of souls and about 
 
 1 We should know more of this matter, if the εὐαγγελιον δια τεσσαρων had been 
 preserved. This writing appeared to the ancients to be a short harmony of the four 
 Gospels, Euseb. iv. 29; but it is a question whether Tatian did not use, for that 
 work, many apocryphal Gospels at least ; as, according to the notice of Epiphanius, 
 p. 26.—which is, however, very indefinite—this collection appears to have had some 
 similarity to the evayyedvoy καθ᾽ “EBpatove. Theodoret found more than two hun- 
 dred copies of this writing in use in his Syrian diocese, and he found a necessity for 
 sending them out of use, because, probably, he found much that was heretical in 
 them. Theodoret. heret. fab. i. 20. Tatian. 
 
 2 St. Paul gives permission in that passage only apparently; he withdraws again 
 instantly from that which he permits, by saying, that those who follow his per- 
 mission serve two masters. By their mutual abstinence united with prayer they 
 would serve God; by the opposite conduct they would serve immodesty, lust, and 
 Satan. Strom. iii. p. 460. (See note to p. 109.) According to Eusebius iv. iv. 29, 
 he was accused of having made many changes in St. Paul’s expressions; but from 
 the words of Eusebius, τίνας αὐτὸν peradpacat φωνας, we ἐπιδιορθουμενον» αὐτων 
 THY THC φρασεως συνταξιν, we cannot see plainly whether they were changes in 
 favour of his own doctrinal and ethical principles, or changes from Hebraistic ex- 
 pressions into purer Greek; and then one is led to inquire whether Tatian really 
 allowed himself to use such licence as a critic (which. may have been the case), or 
 whether he had only different readings. 8 Βγκρατιται, ἀποτακτικοι. 
 
 4 Einkorperung ; Lit. Embodying, Incorporation.. 
 
SEVERIANI.—ANTINOMIANS. 111 
 
 matter, and his docetism, which last theory Philo had already 
 applied to the Theophaniz (appearances of God) of the Old Tes- 
 tament', fitted on remarkably well to notions which had long 
 been current among the Alexandrian Jews; and in his ἐξηγη- 
 τικα ᾿ he endeavoured apparently to introduce these notions into 
 the Old Testament by an allegorizing mode of interpretation, an 
 example of which is to be found in his explanation of Gen. iii. 21, 
 by applying it to the material bodies in which fallen souls are 
 clothed. 
 
 Such also were the persons who, after a certain Severus, called 
 themselves Severiani, of whom we know nothing more than that 
 they rejected the epistles of St. Paul and the acts of the Apostles. 
 The first of these circumstances might lead us to suppose that 
 they were derived from the Jewish Christians; but this cannot be 
 considered as a proof, because it is also possible that, instead of 
 taking refuge in forced and arbitrary interpretations, in order to 
 bring the authority of those writings into harmony with their 
 own principles, they found it an easier plan to throw away those 
 writings entirely and at once *. 
 
 (72) Eclectic Antinomian Gnostics ; Carpocrates and Epiphanes, 
 Prodicians, Antitacti, Nicolaitans, Simonians. 
 
 As, on the one hand, we observe a tendency of Gnosis to a 
 strict asceticism, which opposes itself to Judaism as to a sensuous 
 and carnal religion,—so we remark, on the other, that it has also 
 a tendency to a wicked antinomianism, which, confusing Christian 
 freedom and unbridled licence, set Christianity in opposition not 
 only to the killing letter of a law, whose commands are out- 
 wardly, but to the very inward nature of the law itself, and which 
 therefore contended against Judaism, and with Judaism also 
 against all moral law, as a thing too limiting for the inward life, 
 and as proceeding from the limited and limiting Demiurgos. 
 This was a misunderstanding against which St. Paul had given 
 warning, when he developed the doctrine of Christian freedom ἡ. 
 We recognise in this a pantheistic mysticism, which opposed 
 
 1 See Philo on Exod. xxiv. 13. Opp. Ed. Mang. t. ii. p. 679. 656. de Abra- 
 hamo, 366. Ed. Francof. 
 
 ? Clem. Strom. lib. i. 320. [Sylb. p. 138. Potter, p. 378. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 71.) 
 3 Theodoret. hzret. fab. i. 21. 
 4 Galat. v. 13. et alibi. 
 
112 CARPOCRATES AND EPIPHANES.—PANTHEISTIC MYSTICISM. 
 
 itself under various forms to the popular religions of the East, 
 which had now mingled itself with the doctrines of the Greek 
 philosophers at Alexandria, in consequence of the then inter- 
 mixture of Oriental and western modes of thought, and which 
 imagined that, in Christianity, as a common religion for all man- 
 kind, which destroyed the Jewish exclusiveness, and the old 
 popular religions, it could find a point on which it might engraft 
 itself. Such an antinomian Gnosis is shown in the system of 
 Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes. ‘The first probably lived in 
 the reign of the emperor Hadrian, at Alexandria, where, at that 
 time, there was a religious eclecticism which had struck the em- 
 peror himself’. He laid out a system of religion, which was 
 propagated and extended by his son Epiphanes, a young man, 
 who, by the perverse turn of mind given to him by his father, 
 had abused great talents, but who died in the seventeenth year of 
 his age. As Clement of Alexandria says, Carpocrates had 
 busied himself much with the Platonic philosophy, and had in- 
 structed his son in it. ‘The Platonic notions of the pre-existence 
 of souls of higher knowledge, as being the remembrance brought 
 from a former existence in heaven, are prominent parts in this 
 system; and the originators of this system seem to have appro- 
 priated to themselves much out of the Phedrus of Plato. ‘They 
 made their Gnosis to consist in the recognition of one supreme 
 first existence *, from which all being proceeds, and to which all 
 being strives to return. ‘The finite spirits, which had rule over 
 the individual places of the earth, endeavoured to counteract 
 this universal endeavour after unity ; and from their influence, 
 their laws, and their institutions, proceeded every thing which 
 restrains, every thing which destroys and checks, the original and 
 fundamental connection *, which is found in nature, considered as 
 the revelation of that Supreme Unity. ‘These spirits endeavour 
 to retain under their subjection those souls, which, having flowed 
 from out of the Supreme Unity are akin to it, but have sunk 
 down into the material world, and are imprisoned in the body, so 
 as to compel them, after death, to enter into new bodies, and to 
 
 1 See his Letter to the consul Servianus in Flavii Vopisci Vita Saturnini, c. ii. 
 Illi, qui Serapin colunt, Christiani sunt et devoti sunt Serapi, qui se Christi Epis- 
 copos dicunt. 
 
 2 Hence comes the phrase γνωσις μοναδικὴ, which occurs in Clement of Alexan- 
 
 dria. 
 3. [Gemeinschaft, communion, common nature. ] 
 
ABOMINABLE AN'TINOMIANISM. 113 
 
 render them unable to raise themselves up in freedom to their 
 original source. From these limiting spirits of the world proceed 
 all popular religions. _ But those souls, which, by the remem- 
 brance they retain of their former higher condition, elevate them- 
 selves to the contemplation of that Supreme Unity, attain the true 
 freedom and tranquillity, which nothing again can limit or destroy, 
 and such souls raise themselves above the popular gods and 
 popular religions. They considered a Pythagoras, a Plato, and 
 an Aristotle, among the heathen, to belong to this class of men, 
 and Jesus among the Jews. ‘To him they ascribed only a pecu- 
 liarly pure and powerful soul, by means of which, through 
 reminiscences brought from his former existence, he raised him- 
 self up to the loftiest contemplation, freed himself from the 
 limiting laws of the Jewish God, and destroyed the religion 
 which had been established by that God, although he himself was 
 brought up in it. By his union with the μονας he obtained 
 Divine power, in virtue of which he was able to triumph over 
 the spirits of the world, and the laws which they had imposed on 
 nature, to perform miracles, and to endure suffering in undis- 
 turbed tranquillity. By this divine power he was afterwards 
 enabled in freedom to raise himself up again to the Supreme 
 Unity, beyond the power of the spirits of the world. Thus this 
 sect put no difference between Christ and other sages of all 
 nations; they taught that every other soul also which could 
 elevate itself to the same height of contemplation, was to be put 
 on the same level with Christ. This sect hardly deserved the 
 name of a Christian sect, since they only appropriated to them- 
 selves some propositions, taken at their own will and pleasure, 
 out of Christianity, and then connected them with other ideas 
 totally foreign to them. ‘They perverted, after their own Pan- 
 theistic mysticism, the assertions made by St. Paul of the nothing- 
 ness of the merit of works, and about justification, not by works, 
 but by faith ; for under the name of faith they understood nothing 
 but that mystical brooding over the absorption of tlie spirit into 
 the original Unity. It needs only faith and love, they said; all 
 outward things are indifferent ; he who introduces a moral mean- 
 ing into outward things, makes himself dependent upon them, 
 and remains subject to the dominion of the spirits of the world, 
 from whom all religious, moral, and political ordinances are de- 
 rived, he cannot raise himself up after his death, out of the mere 
 VOL. II. J 
 
114 CARPOCRATIAN INSCRIPTIONS. 
 
 circle of Metempsychosis. But he who gives himself up to all 
 kinds of pleasure, without being affected by it, and so despises 
 the laws of those spirits of the world, he raises himself up to 
 union with the OnE First Being, with whom, being already united 
 here below, he has made himself free from all that can limit 
 his nature’. Epiphanes wrote a book on righteousness, wherein 
 he carries out the principle, that universal nature reveals a 
 struggle after unity and communion; and that the laws of men, 
 which are against this law of nature, but which are unable to 
 conquer the desires planted by the Creator himself in the heart 
 of man, first produced sin. ‘Thus did he pervert what St. Paul 
 had said of the insufficiency of the law to make man holy, and of 
 its object, viz. to call forth the consciousness of guilt, in order 
 that, with profligate pride, he might despise the ten command- 
 ments. These sects used to traffic much in magical arts, which 
 they deduced from the power of their union with the First One, 
 who is victorious over all the world-spirits; they worshipped 
 an image of Christ, which was said to have come from Pilate, 
 together with the images of heathen philosophers, who, like 
 Christ, had raised themselves above the popular religion; and 
 
 they worshipped it with heathen ceremonies, which latter cer- 
 tainly were not in accordance with the system of Carpocrates 
 
 and Epiphanes, but proceeded from the superstition of their 
 followers. At Same, the chief town of the island ef Cepha- 
 lonia, in the Ionian sea, from which the maternal ancestors of 
 Epiphanes were sprung, this young man is supposed to have 
 made so great an impression on the multitude, that they erected 
 a temple, a museum, and altars to him, and offered him Divine 
 worship. As Clement of Alexandria’, a writer by no means of 
 great credulity, relates this circumstance, which appears by no 
 means incredible, if we take into account the circumstances of 
 those times, we have no reason to doubt the fact. But perhaps 
 it was only some members of this sect, which might have found 
 peculiar success on the island, who offered this honour to him, as 
 one of the greatest sages ’*. 
 
 1 Tren. 1. 25. 
 
 2 Strom. iii. 428. [Sylb. p. 183—4. Potter, p. 511. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 214—15. | 
 
 3 The spirit of these antinomian, eclectic Gnostics, who arbitrarily jumbled toge- 
 ther all religions, and all systems of philosophy, in which they could find a point 
 whereon to fix their own system, as they might do in separate tenets detached from 
 that with which they are connected, is shown in a marked manner in two inscriptions 
 which were found very lately in the territory of Cyrene, and which prove the propaga- 
 
PRODICIANS. PES 
 
 To these unbridled Antinomians belongs the sect of the Anti- 
 tacti (whose fundamental principle it was to set themselves in 
 opposition to the Demiurgos, or the God of the Jews, who had 
 sown evil, imperfection, and weeds, among the works of the 
 Father of good'*,) and the Prodicians, the followers of a certain 
 Prodicus. These last maintained that they, as sons of the 
 Supreme God, and as the royal race, were bound to no law, 
 because for the king there was no written law; and hence they 
 were lords of the Sabbath, lords over all ordinances. They 
 apparently placed the worship of God only in the inward con- 
 templation of the Divine nature; they rejected prayer, and 
 probably all external worship, as fit only for puny spirits, who 
 were still under the dominion of the Demiurgos; and they 
 appealed to apocryphal writings that went under the name of 
 Zoroaster *. 
 
 tion of this sect to have lasted till the sixth century. They were published and ex- 
 plained by Gesenius in his Christmas thesis, 1825 [in dem Weihnachtsprogramm). 
 
 The first of them, in which the sect conceals itself under general expressions, 
 which may, however, be taken in an innocent sense, ascribes the following words to 
 Simon of Cyrene, whom the pseudo-Basilidians, who had the same sentiments, made 
 a subject of their fictions: Θωθ (Hermes Trismegistus, under whose name there 
 exist spurious writings containing much Gnosticism), Kpovoc, Zwpoacrpne, Πυθαγο- 
 pac, Ἐπίκουρος, Μασδακης. (Masdek, the founder of a Persian sect in the time of 
 the Emperor Justinian, who appears, like Prodicus, to have drawn from Apocryphal 
 writings that went under Zoroaster’s name. See Gesenius, ]. c. p. 17.) ἸἸωαννῆς, 
 Χριστὸς TE Kat οἱ ἡμετεροι Κουραναικοι καθηγηται (with which last Clement ]. c. 
 p- 722, also classes Prodicus) συμῴφωνως ἐντελλωσιν ἡμιν, μηδὲν οἰκειοποιεισθαι, 
 τοις δενομοις ἀρηγειν, (they understood by these words, according to their sense of 
 them, the νομὸς aypagoc, which is derived from the Supreme, is implanted in 
 nature, and strives after communion and unity, with which (i. 6. the νομὸς ἀγραφος) 
 the separating and limiting ordinances of the Demiurgos, the spirits of the world 
 and of men, are at variance,) kat τὴν παρανομιαν καταπολεμειν. τοῦτο yap ἡ τῆς 
 δικαιοσυνης πηγὴ (δικαιοσυνὴ here has the meaning of the divine natural justice, 
 founded on that vopog θειος, on which Epiphanes wrote a treatise), τοῦτο τὸ paka- 
 ριως ἐν κοινῃ ζῳῃν. 
 
 The other inscription, in which the sect comes forward without disguise, is in the 
 following terms: ἡ taowy οὐσιων και γυναικων κοινοτης πηγὴ THE θειας ἐστι 
 δικαιοσυνῆη ς, εἰρηνὴ τετελεια τοις του τυφλου ὀχλοῦυ ἐκλεκτοις 
 ἀγαθοις ἀνδρασιν, ovg Zapadne τε και Πυθαγορας, των ἱεροφαντων ἀριστοι, Kowy 
 συμβιωτειν συνιεντο. We cannot, however, exactly maintain more decidedly, that 
 these inscriptions proceed from the sect of Carpocratians, because so many similar 
 sects, as the Prodicians, the pseudo-Basilidians, the Nicolaitans, &c., had the same 
 principles. 
 
 1 To ἀντιτασσεσθαι. 
 
 2 Clem. Strom. i. 304. [Sylb. p. 131. Potter, p. 357. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 50.) 11]. 
 438. [sce Sylb. p. 189, et seq. Potter, p. 526, et seq. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 230.] vii. 722. 
 [Sylb. p. 306—7. Potter, p. 854—5. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 236.] 
 
 ry 
 
110 NICOLAITANS. 
 
 To this family of Gnostics belong also the Nicolaitans, if the 
 existence of any such sect can be proved.  Irenzeus, indeed, 
 names such a sect as existing in his time, deducing them from 
 Nicolaus the deacon mentioned in the Acts, and he believed that 
 he found their portraiture in the second chapter of the Revela- 
 tions’. But it may be doubted whether Ireneus has really 
 penetrated the meaning of the Revelations in this case, and 
 whether the name of Nicolaitans is the proper name of a sect, 
 and still farther, whether it is the name of a Gnostic sect. The 
 passage relates to such persons as seduced the Christians to par- 
 take in the heathen feasts at a sacrifice, and the excesses conse- 
 quent upon them, as the Jews had formerly suffered themselves 
 to be seduced by the Moabites. (Num. xxv.) The name of 
 Nicolaitans might also be a merely symbolical name, as such an 
 usage of it would suit very well with the whole character of the 
 Revelations: ‘destroyer of the people,” “seducer of the peo- 
 ple,” like Balaam, and thus Nicolaitans might mean Balaamites in 
 this sense”. Now it was a favourite idea with Irenzus, that the 
 Apostle St. John had actually contended with many different 
 sorts of Gnosties; and he was in the habit of searching for re- 
 marks which were meant to oppose the Gnostics, in the writings 
 of St. John. As he found several of those errors, which are 
 blamed in the Revelations, among the Gnostics of his own day, 
 he concluded that the practical errors contended against by the 
 Apostle had also had their foundation in a theoretical Gnosticism, 
 and the name induced him to deduce them from the well-known 
 Nicolaus. But, in fact, we find in Ireneus only such indefinite 
 expressions in regard to this sect, that it by no means follows 
 necessarily that he wrote from any decided view of them. If we 
 had only the account given by Irenzus, we must acknowledge it 
 as possible that the story of this sect may have arisen solely out 
 of a misunderstanding of the Revelations. Although it might 
 then surprise us that Irenzeus, without any external evidence to 
 induce him, should have made a man, distinguished by having a 
 public office conferred on him by the Apostles, the founder of a 
 
 1 Trenzus i. 26. This refers to their practical errors: qui indiscrete (adtapopwe) 
 vivunt.—In loc. cit. iii. 11. he speaks of their speculative errors, but he does not 
 altogether separate them from other Gnostics, in order to bring forward what is 
 peculiar to them. ᾿ 
 
 2 Balaam, that is, νικολαος ; according to the etymology which deduces this name 
 
 from ya and Ὅν. 
 
NICOLAITANS. 117 
 
 heretical sect. But such a mistake could never be laid to the 
 charge of that learned Alexandrian Clement, an unprejudiced 
 man, and one accustomed to historical criticism; and he appeals 
 to facts which could not have been invented. There were people 
 who had the corrupt principles which we have mentioned before, 
 viz. that man must conquer his desires by giving himself up to 
 them and not allowing himself to be affected by them, and that he 
 must abuse his flesh and annihilate it by its own instrumentality, 
 in order to show his contempt for it: their motto was words to 
 this effect, which they ascribed to the deacon Nicolaus!. The 
 same Clement afterwards, in another passage, quotes another 
 trait out of the life of this Nicolaus, which this sect used in order 
 to justify their own excesses’. ‘The Apostles, it would seem, had 
 reproached him with his jealousy about his wife, and in order to 
 show how little this reproof would attach to him he brought her 
 forward and said, ‘* Let him that will, marry her.” But Clement 
 was far from holding Nicolaus to be the founder of this sect, 
 although the sect itself claimed him. He clears the character of 
 that man of the Apostolic Church, and quotes the tradition, that 
 this Nicolaus lived in unspotted wedlock to the end of his days, 
 and left children, whose conduct was irreproachable, behind him. 
 We see, therefore, that Irenzeus did not err in supposing the exis- 
 tence of such a sect, but only in not examining more carefully its 
 pretences. It was the fashion for such sects, as we have often 
 before remarked, to engraft themselves to some great man or 
 other of antiquity, in their choice of whom they were often 
 guided by accidental circumstances. Tlius the Nicolaitans made 
 Nicolaus, the deacon, their founder, without any fault of his. 
 Clement thought that they had only corrupted his words and 
 actions in a perverted manner, and he endeavours to explain both 
 one and the other in a more favourable mode; but one is led to 
 inquire whether Clement has viewed it in a sufficiently critical 
 manner, All which is here ascribed to Nicolaus bears a very 
 apocryphal stamp upon it; and perhaps that sect had a life of 
 that Nicolaus, in which all this was found, put together by them- 
 selves or by others from fictions and unauthentie traditions. If 
 this sect be not the same which was in existence in the Apostolic 
 times, a point which cannot be decided with certainty *, the name 
 
 1 To dew παραχρήσασθαι ry capt. Strom. ii. p. 411. 
 2 Strom. iil. p. 436. 
 3. Even supposing that the name Nicolaitans in the Apocalypse should be really 
 
118 SIMONIANS. 
 
 of the Nicolaitans in the Apocalypse may have induced the later 
 sect to name itself after Nicolaus. But as they probably be- 
 longed to the party of anti-Judaizers, and therefore acknowledge 
 only St. Paul as an Apostle, they would also be induced by what 
 they read in the Apocalypse to maintain the antiquity of their 
 sect, as one which the Judaizing St. John had opposed; and the 
 name induced them naturally to deduce it (i. e. the sect) from 
 that Nicolaus. We have before found instances in which the 
 Gnostics chose for their founders persons who appear in an 
 unfavourable light either in the Old or the New ‘Testament. 
 
 The Simonians are also to be mentioned here, an eclectic sect, 
 which it is difficult to bring into any one definite class, because 
 they appear to have attached themselves, sometimes to heathen- 
 ism, sometimes to Judaism, or to the religious opinions of the 
 Samaritans; and appear to have been sometimes strict ascetics, 
 sometimes wild despisers of all moral laws (the Entychites). 
 Simon Magus was their Christ, or at least a form assumed by the 
 redeeming spirit which had appeared also in Christ, whether it 
 was that in their first origin they had really proceeded from the 
 party founded by that Goeta (magician) mentioned in the Acts, 
 or whether the sect which arose later, merely to please their own 
 fancies, had made Simon Magus, whom the Christians abomi- 
 nated, their Corypheeus, and had forged under his name pre- 
 tended books relating to the higher wisdom. What some learned 
 men have supposed, viz. that another Simon, distinct from that 
 old Simon Magus, founded their sect, and that he was confused 
 with that older Simon Magus, is too arbitrary a supposition, and 
 is by no means required for the elucidation of the historical phe- 
 nomenon presented to us’. 
 
 the proper name of a party founded by a person named Nicolaus, and that the mere 
 existence of the name there had given occasion for allusions to Balaam, it would 
 still not be a necessary deduction from these premises that this party which was 
 then in existence was a Gnostic sect. 
 
 1 This Simon Magus, to whom properly no place belongs among the founders of 
 Christian sects, has obtained an undeserved importance in the Old Church, by being 
 made the father of the Gnostic sects. As the representative of the whole theo- 
 sophico-goetic character, in opposition to the simple faith in revelation, he has become 
 in the same manner a mythical personage, and given rise to many fables; as, for in- 
 stance, that of his disputation with St. Peter, and his unhappy attempt at the art of 
 flying ; and the Clementine is the place where the fable is most ingeniously con- 
 ducted. But it was an extraordinary circumstance that Justin Martyr, in his second 
 apology before the Roman Emperor, should appeal to the fact, that there was a 
 statue at Rome to this Simon Magus on an island in the Tiber (ἐν τῳ TeBepe wora- 
 
MARCION. 119 
 
 (g.) Marcion and his School. 
 
 Marcion forms the most natural close to the series of the Gnos- 
 tics, because he belongs to the Gnostics only on one side, and, on 
 another, rather forms a contrast to them: he stands on the boun- 
 dary between the Gnostic turn of mind, where speculation was 
 the prevailing characteristic, and a character of mind thoroughly 
 opposed to speculative Gnosticism. Christian feeling is far more 
 appealed to by him than by other Gnostics, because his whole 
 being was far more deeply rooted in Christianity, because Chris- 
 tian feeling was the keynote of his whole inward life, and his 
 whole religious and theological character, while among the rest of 
 the Gnostics this (although sometimes the prevailing turn of 
 mind) formed only one of the dispositions belonging to them, and 
 was intermixed with much of a different character. It is instruc- 
 tive to mark how an endeavour, which proceeded from the very 
 depths of Christianity, could receive an un-Christian turn by 
 means of a gross partiality ; it is a warning and a startling cir- 
 cumstance to see a man, whose errors themselves were connected 
 
 μῳ μεταξυ των δυο γεφυρων) with the inscription Simoni Deo Sancto. Although 
 such Goete at that time found much acceptance even with the highest classes, yet 
 one can hardly believe that it could have amounted to the erection of such a statue 
 and to a decree of the senate, by which Simon Magus was received into the number 
 of the Dii Romani. We should be obliged to question the correctness of Justin’s 
 assertion, even if we were not able to explain the cause of his error. But this 
 seems now to be ascertained, as in the year 1574, at the place designated by Justin 
 Martyr, a stone was dug up, which seemed to have been the pedestal of a statue, 
 and it bore the inscription “ Semoni Sango Deo Fidio Sacrum.’”’ Now certainly this 
 statue was not erected by the Roman senate or Emperor, but by one Sextus Pom- 
 peius ; but Justin, full of the histories then current about Simon Magus, overlooked 
 this, and confused the Semo Sancus (a Sabine Roman Deity, which might have re- 
 mained unknown to Justin, well acquainted with the Greek, but not with the Roman 
 mythology) with Simo Sanctus, especially as in the surname of that deity Sanctus 
 was sometimes written instead of Sancus. Tertullian, indeed, as better acquainted 
 with the Roman antiquities, might have been able to form a better judgment on the 
 matter, but in such cases he was too prejudiced, and too little inclined to the critical 
 art, to investigate any farther an account which was to his own taste, and came also 
 from a man of reputation. The more critical Aleandrians do not mention the cir- 
 cumstance, and Origen, lib. i. contr. Cels. c. 57, by saying that the name of Simon 
 Magus was known beyond Palestine only to the Christians, who knew him from the 
 Acts of the Apostles, seems himself to stamp the story of a statue erected to him at 
 Rome as a fiction. The Samaritan Goetze and founders of sects, Dositheus and 
 Menander (who is made out to be a disciple of Simon Magus) are even less deserving 
 still of any particular mention in a history of Christian sects. 
 
90 MARCION’S PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 with a spirit of love, only that it was a mistaken spirit, and a 
 man, to whom the Christ who filled his heart was one and all, 
 misunderstood and called a heretic by most of the Christians of 
 his own day, because they were unable to understand his mode 
 of conception, and indeed chiefly by those who might have dwelt 
 in the most intimate communion with him, in virtue of that which 
 they bore within their hearts, if any other mode of communica- 
 tion had existed besides those of words and definite ideas (be- 
 griff): any other mode than by that which is only a dim reflection 
 of the inward life,—a source of so many misunderstandings and 
 mutual mistakes among men, which would be removed if one 
 man could read the inward life and conscience of another! What 
 Marcion had in common with the Gnostics, and particularly in 
 common with the Gnosties of this class, was partly the distinction 
 which he made between the God of nature and of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and the God of the Gospel, and the distinction between 
 the Divine and the human generally, as well as many speculative 
 elements, which he connected with his system of religion. And 
 yet he had evidently arrived at that which he had in common 
 with them by an entirely different road. It was in Christ that he 
 first found his God; and that glory of God which had revealed 
 itself to him in Christ, he was never able to find again in nature 
 and in -history. The speculative elements, which he borrowed 
 from other Gnostics, were to him only necessary aids to fill up 
 the gaps which his system, being founded on an entirely different 
 and a wholly practical plan, would necessarily have. It was evi- 
 dently not his intention, like that of other Gnostics, that Christ- 
 ianity should be completed by means of the speculative conclu- 
 sions of other doctrinal systems, but he wished originally only 
 to restore again to its purity Christianity, which had, in 1118 
 opinion, been adulterated by admixtures foreign to its nature. 
 The partial point of view, from which he set out with this dispo- 
 sition, was the occasion of most of his errors. 
 
 He did not make a secret doctrine the source of the knowledge 
 of this genuine Christianity ; but he would not suffer himself to 
 be bound by a general Church tradition, because, in his opinion, 
 foreign matter had already mixed itself in such a tradition with 
 pure Apostolic Christianity. As a genuine Protestant (if we 
 may transfer to an ancient day this appellation which arose in- 
 deed later, but denoted a genuine primitive Christian turn of mind) 
 he wished to consider the word of Christ and of his genuine dis- 
 
MARCION NO PRESUMPTUOUS CHRISTIAN. 12] 
 
 ciples [i. e. original Apostles, Tr. ] the only valid source of a 
 knowledge of the true Gospel. He certainly, instead of recog- 
 nizing the many-sidedness of Christianity from the variety of the 
 instruments selected for its propagation, allowed himself to make 
 an arbitrary division between them, founded on a one-sided view. 
 His endeavour to find the genuine documents of pure original 
 Christianity, led him into historical and critical investigations, 
 which were far removed from the contemplative disposition of the 
 other Gnostics. But he gives us here a warning example, how 
 such inquiries, as soon as they are swayed by the pre-conceived 
 doctrinal opinions, in which the thoughts are fettered, must lead 
 to unhappy results, and how easily an arbitrary hypercriticism is 
 formed in opposition to an uncritical credulity ; how easily, in 
 short, man, in struggling against one class of doctrinal prejudices, 
 falls into another. 
 
 The other Gnostics united a mystical allegorizing interpreta- 
 tion of Scripture with their theosophic idealism. 'The single- 
 hearted Marcion was a zealous enemy of this artificial mode of 
 interpretation. He was, on the contrary, a warm adherent of the 
 literal interpretation which was in vogue among the opponents of 
 the Gnostics ; and it was shown in his case, how even this mode 
 of interpretation, if it is not combined with other hermeneutic 
 principles, and if it is carried to the extreme, must lead to arbi- 
 trary results. 
 
 The opposition between πίστις and γνωσις» between an exote- 
 ric and an esoteric Christianity, belonged to the essential attri- 
 butes of the other Gnostic systems; but it was impossible that 
 such an opposition could be recognized by Marcion, whose at- 
 tachment was chiefly to the practical St. Paul. With him πίστις 
 was the common source of Divine life for αἱ Christians ; he knew 
 nothing higher than the illumination which all Christians ought to 
 have: that which he recognized as true Christianity was to be 
 known and recognized as such by all who were generally capable 
 of receiving Christianity ; and the only difference he could make 
 was that between mature Christians, and those who still needed 
 further instruction in Christianity (i. 6. Catechumens). ‘This 
 characteristic of Marcion’s doctrine, so wholly unlike the usual 
 spirit of Gnosticism, leads us to conclude that it received its 
 development also in a wholly different mode. But, alas, we have 
 no authentic accounts of the life of Marcion, so as to enable us 
 
122 MARCION’S RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 to inquire into that point satisfactorily. Many gaps in that life 
 can only be filled up by conjecture. 
 
 He was born in Pontus in the first half of the second century. 
 If the account of Epiphanius is founded in fact, his father was 
 bishop of that Church; but even then, if it be true, it is still 
 most probable that he was elected to that office when Marcion 
 was already a youth or arrived at the age of manhood; for it is 
 most probable, if we may judge from the development of his sys- 
 tem, that Marcion lived the early part of his life as a Heathen, 
 and afterwards turned to Christianity from the free impulse of his 
 own heart. Like many others, he felt himself, in the first glow 
 of faith and love, impelled to renounce every thing earthly ; he 
 bestowed his goods or a part of them on the Church, and began 
 to live’ as a continens or ἀσκητὴς " in strict self-denial. His con- 
 tempt of nature, which was at first only of a practical and ascetic 
 kind, proceeding from a falsely-conceived opposition between the 
 natural and the Divine, might now, under a variety of different 
 influences, lead a man of a soul so impetuous in its apprehensions 
 and so abrupt in its determinations as his, to a theoretically-con- 
 ceived separation between the God of nature and the God of the 
 Gospel. Nature appeared so cold and stiff to his heart, filled and 
 glowing with the image of the God of love and mercy, as he 
 appeared in Christ. He was, doubtless, right in the belief that the 
 contemplation of nature cannot lead to the knowledge of that Father 
 of love and mercy ; he was right in his opposition against the Deist, 
 who sets the preaching of nature on the same level with that of the 
 Gospel, and who finds in nature alone and by itself a temple of 
 eternal love; but Marcion was always inclined to push matters to 
 the extreme. Even in history, Marcion, full of the glory of the 
 Gospel, thought that he could find no trace of the God who had 
 revealed himself to him there (i. e. in the Gospel) ; he, like many 
 other zealous Christians, would look back into the Heathen world 
 only with horror, and it appeared to him nothing but the kingdom 
 of Satan ; but even in the Old Testament he could not find again 
 
 * Pecuniam in primo calore fidei Ecclesie contulit. Tertull. adv. Marcion. lib. 
 iv.c.4. When Epiphanius calls Marcion a povaZwy, he is only making a confu- 
 sion between the circumstances of his own and of earlier times; and by the word 
 μοναζων we must understand an doxnrne. Ephraem Syrus blames Marcion for 
 acquiring a delusive reputation through his asceticism. Opp. Ed. Lat. Sermo i. 
 p: 438, and seq. 2 See above. 
 
MARCION’S ENMITY TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, 123 
 
 his God and his Christ: his fiery and impatient spirit, which was 
 too deficient in calmness and reflection, to be able properly to 
 investigate the relation between the Old and New Testament, 
 was now at once struck with the contrast between the two forms 
 of religion. He had no notion of a gradual (literally peedagogi- 
 cal) development of the Divine revelation, and Judaism appeared 
 to him too carnal to have proceeded from the same source as the 
 spiritual religion of Christianity ; and he believed that that same 
 God of love, of mercy, and compassion, whom he knew from the 
 Gospel, was not to be recognized here (i. e. in the Old Testa- 
 ment). It is easy to see that (after this notion of the contrast 
 between the Old and the New Testament had once become the 
 prevailing idea in his soul), if he, standing in this position, con- 
 sidered the Old Testament, he would be able to find many points 
 on which he could rest this opinion. We must add also, that, 
 according to his principles of a thoroughly literal interpretation 
 of the Bible, he believed that all the anthropomorphical and 
 anthropopathical expressions of the Old ‘Testament must be 
 maintained to the very letter, without distinguishing the idea 
 from the dress in which it is clothed. 
 
 A man of Marcion’s character would naturally be induced by 
 opposition only to develope himself more strikingly in his partial 
 views, and to harden himself in them. In reality he had to con- 
 tend with such an opposition, and this contention had, no doubt, 
 a remarkable influence on the formation of his religious and doc- 
 trinal views. There was, in existence, to say the truth, at that 
 time, particularly in Asia Minor, a false turn of mind, which in- 
 terpreted the Old Testament without sufficient spirituality, which 
 did not sufficiently distinguish between the different positions 
 taken in the two dispensations, and which in many doctrines (as, 
 for example, the doctrine of Christ’s kingdom, the idea of a mil- 
 lenarian kingdom,) mixed up a carnal Judaism with Christianity. 
 This disposition he combated with violent zeal, and blamed, not 
 wholly without foundation, those who were its slaves with adulte- 
 rating the Gospel, and hence there might easily arise in his mind 
 a suspicion of the genuineness of the whole traditional system of 
 the Church (παραδοσις); and of the Biblical documents which he 
 had received from that tradition; and hence, also, he may have 
 been induced to endeavour, by his own inquiries, to form for him- 
 self a Christianity, purified from all that was foreign to its nature. 
 His contention with this too Jewish disposition then drove him 
 
 7 
 
194 MARCION AT ROME. 
 
 also constantly to conceive the contrast between the Old and the 
 New Testament more and more sharply, and in many things to 
 suppose unjustly that Christianity had been adulterated by Juda- 
 ism. This enmity of his towards the Old Testament, and many of 
 his opinions connected with it, were, probably, the cause of his 
 being excommunicated at Sinope. On this he travelled to Rome, 
 with a view of seeking whether he could not, in the Church of 
 the metropolis of the world, discover friends to his opinions, 
 which, he was fully persuaded, were the principles of genuine 
 Christianity ; and the number of anti-Jewish feelings then pre- 
 vailing in the Roman Church’ might give him hopes of success. 
 If the account of Epiphanius is to be relied on, Marcion must 
 have inquired of the Roman clergy how they explained the pas- 
 sage in Matt. ix. 17, in order to elicit from their own mouth the 
 avowal that the new wine of Christianity cannot be poured into 
 the old bottles of Judaism without destroying them. But in 
 Rome also his Dualism in the doctrine of the revelation of God 
 could meet with nothing but contradiction, because the acknow- 
 ledgment of the one same God and of the one same Revelation 
 in the Old and in the New Testament was a portion of the Cath- 
 olic doctrine of the Church. Rejected here also by the Church, 
 he was driven into forming his anti-Church dispositions into a 
 firm determinate system, and founding an independent commu- 
 nity. Up to this time his system had been only founded on 
 practical considerations: the conviction that Christianity had 
 appeared in human nature as something wholly new, unexpected, 
 and unforeseen; that it had communicated to human nature a 
 Divine life, to which there had hitherto been nothing akin in 
 man; that the God, who appeared in Christ, had never before 
 revealed himself, either by nature, by reason, or by the Old Tes- 
 tament, and that nothing bore witness to him, nothing was his work 
 but Christianity ;—this was the conviction from which Marcion 
 set out. (It may be a question, whether he had at that time car- 
 ried out his system farther than this.) But these persuasions, 
 proceeding from his inward Christian life, must have led a think- 
 ing man to many inquiries which he could not answer. A Gnos- 
 tic system would be able to fill up these gaps in his doctrinal 
 views: he might there learn to acknowledge a Demiurgos, dif- 
 ferent from the perfect God, as the God of nature and of the Old 
 
 1 See above, in the history of the Cultus. 
 
MARCION AT ROME. 125 
 
 Testament; and a contempt for nature, and a hatred towards 
 matter, as the source of evil, would correspond to his ascetic 
 dispositions. The Syrian Gnosis, which, as we have remarked, 
 maintained these points very definitely, would naturally suit him 
 exactly. And thus it happened that he joined himself to one 
 Cerdo, a teacher of this Gnosis, who came from Antiochia, and 
 he borrowed from him the principles needed for the completion 
 of his dogmatical system. 
 
 The very nature of Marcion’s opinions necessarily implied 
 that he would labour for the propagation of his principles with 
 more zeal and activity than other Gnostics; for, while others 
 believed that they could impart their higher knowledge only to a 
 small portion of Christians, to the spiritual, Marcion, on the con- 
 trary, was persuaded that his was no other than the original 
 Christian doctrine, which ought to belong to all mankind; and 
 he would therefore feel himself impelled to communicate to all 
 Christians the light of truth which had been imparted to him, 
 He therefore made several voyages; he spent his life in many 
 struggles both with Heathens and with Christians; to be hated 
 and to suffer he considered as the destination of Christians. «* My 
 fellows in being hated, my fellow-sufferers,” (συμμισουμενοι και 
 συνταλαιπωροι) was his usual address to his disciples’. Perhaps 
 he was at Rome, when Polycarp, the aged bishop of Smyrna; 
 visited Anicetus, bishop of Rome?*. Marcion, who, in his youth, 
 apparently had lived on terms of friendly intercourse with the 
 former, and saw him again now after a long lapse οἵ years, went 
 up to him and addressed him thus, ‘* Dost thou remember me, 
 Polycarp?” But this old man, otherwise so full of charity, 
 refused to receive none but the enemies of the Gospel into his 
 kindly affections ; and such Marcion appeared to him, for he was 
 unable to recognize in him the Christian character, which was in 
 fact the very foundation of his errors. He answered him there- 
 fore, “ Yes; I know the first-born of Satan!” ‘Tertullian*® re- 
 lates that Marcion at length testified his regret at the schism 
 which had arisen in the Church; that he had prayed to be again 
 received into the communion of the Church, and that this prayer 
 had been granted, on the condition that he should bring back to 
 the Church those who had been seduced away by him, a condi- 
 
 1 Tertullian, c. M. iv. 36. iv. 9. 2 See above. 
 3 Prescript. ο, 30. 
 
126 MARCION.—GNOSTIC PRINCIPLES. 
 
 tion which his too early death prevented him from fulfilling. It 
 must be avowed that we cannot implicitly trust this account, nor 
 are we able to say whether there be any foundation for it in 
 truth; nor even in that case, what foundation there is. Since 
 with Marcion every thing proceeded from the heart, it might 
 easily happen that while he sighed after Christian communion 
 and perceived the evil consequences of schisms, he should at last 
 be softened as his age increased, and should seek again to attain 
 peace with the majority of Christians. 
 
 It still remains for us to consider somewhat more closely the 
 system formed by an union between the practical disposition of 
 Marcion, and the Gnostic principles of Cerdo. In its funda- 
 mental principles this system harmonized with the other Gnostic 
 systems of this second class, only with the distinction, that it was 
 always made pre-eminently clear, that he conceived every thing 
 more from a practical than from a speculative point of view, and 
 that he was not so deeply interested in what was merely specu- 
 lative. He assumed three fundamental principles :— 
 
 1. A ὕλη, which had existed from all eternity. 
 
 2. The perfect, almighty, holy God; the God who is Eternal 
 Love, the Good, 6 ἀγαθος; who alone is to be called God in any 
 proper sense; who, in virtue of his holy essence, cannot come 
 into any contact whatever with matter; who forms only through 
 communication of himself a life akin to himself, and does not act 
 on that which is without. 
 
 3. The Demiurgos, a subordinate Being, of limited power, 
 standing between good and evil, who is named a God only in an 
 improper sense (as the name of God is transferred also to other 
 beings, Ps. lxii.'), who is in avowed enmity with matter, and en- 
 deavours to bring it into subjection to himself, and te form it, 
 but is never able wholly to subdue its opposition*. ‘The ungodly 
 Being of matter, which resists all fashioning and forming, is the 
 source of all evil; and this ungodly Being, concentrated in that 
 power of blind impulse which is associated with matter, is Satan. 
 The distinction he draws between true moral perfection, which 
 consists in holiness and love, whose essence it is only to impart 
 itself, only to bless, to make happy, to redeem—and bare right- 
 eousness, justice, or uprightness, which weighs every one accord- 
 
 1 Clem. Strom. lib. iii. p. 425. Tertull. c. M. lib. i. ο. 7—15. 
 2 Ephr. Syr. Orat. 14. p. 468, Ὁ. 
 
JUSTICE AND HOLINESS CONTRASTED. 137 
 
 ing to merit—rewards and punishes, recompenses good with 
 good, and evil with evil, and which brings forth only outward 
 propriety of conduct,—this was the fundamental practical notion, 
 on which all Marcion’s other notions rested. Whilst some’ 
 formed to themselves assuredly too gross anthropopathical repre- 
 sentations of the retributive justice of God, which could not well 
 be reconciled with the idea of a God, who is Love. Marcion, in 
 combating these representations, (as he was generally, from his 
 impetuous and rugged nature, inclined, in controversy, to carry 
 matters to the utmost extremity,) made out an absolute contra- 
 diction between justice and holiness, so that it was impossible, ,in 
 his opinion, that both attributes should exist side by side in the 
 same being. It must be confessed, that while he opposed justice 
 to holiness, and under the former name collected together all the 
 marks which he believed that he could find in the Old Testament 
 (when interpreted and considered in his own prejudiced views), 
 as characteristic of the Demiurgos; he made to himself a concep- 
 tion of justice, which was by no means consistent or tenable; 
 intimate consistency, with him, always depended more on the 
 heart than on abstract conceptions. 
 
 As far as our present means of information extend, the mode 
 in which Marcion considered the relation of the Demiurgos to 
 the perfect God, in reference to the origin of the latter, appears 
 very indefinite. As we find elsewhere, among the Gnostics, 
 nothing but Dualistic systems, and none in which three princi- 
 ples, wholly independent on each other as to their origin, were 
 acknowledged, it seems most natural to look on the matter in the 
 following light, viz. that Marcion also deduced the origin of the 
 imperfect Demiurgos, according to a certain line of development, 
 from the perfect God—and certainly it is the notion which comes 
 most readily into the human mind, to deduce that which is imper- 
 fect from that which is perfect. There is nothing to contradict 
 this supposition ; for, even if we grant that no passage is found 
 in ancient authors, from which it can strictly be proved that 
 Marcion derived the origin of the Demiurgos from the Supreme 
 God *, yet, at any rate, there is no passage, in any writer worthy 
 of credit, on such a point, from which the contrary can be 
 
 1 See Part I. 
 2 And yet one of the Fathers, Rhodon ap. Euseb. v. 13. says that Marcion 
 acknowledged only δυο apyac. 
 
128 THE DEMIURGOS AND MAN. 
 
 proved. We can only say, that the indefiniteness in the accounts 
 of ancient writers arises from the circumstance that Marcion, 
 interested only in the practical view of these subjects, has not 
 declared himself with sufficient definiteness, in a speculative 
 point of view, on the relation of the Demiurgos to the Supreme 
 God. 
 
 The point, then, which Marcion deemed of practical import- 
 ance, was to maintain the doctrine of a wholly new creation, by 
 means of Christianity, and to cut in sunder that thread, by which 
 Christianity might be connected with the world, as it was in its 
 earlier condition. The Demiurgos, therefore, of Marcion, did 
 not act in obedience to more lofty ideas, to which he was subser- 
 vient, as an instrument, although unconsciously, or even against 
 his own will, but he was an entirely independent, self-existent, 
 Creator of an imperfect world, which corresponded to his own 
 limited nature. On this account Marcion did not assume, with 
 the other Gnostics, that to man, as the image of the Demiurgos, 
 a still higher principle of life was imparted by the Supreme God ; 
 but he recognized in the whole nature of man, as a work of the 
 Demiurgos, only such elements as could proceed from such a 
 Creator. The Demiurgos created man, as the highest work of 
 his creation, after his own image, to represent and to reveal it. 
 The body of man he formed out of matter, whence its evil 
 desires; to this body he imparted, out of his being, a soul akin 
 to himself. He gave him a law, in order to prove his obedience, 
 and to reward or to punish him according to his desert. But the 
 limited Demiurgos could never have imparted to man a Divine 
 principle of life, capable of triumphing over evil. Man yielded 
 to the temptations of sensual pleasure, and thereby was sub- 
 jected, with his whole race, to the dominion of matter, and the 
 evil spirits, which were its offspring. Out of the whole race of 
 degraded man, the Demiurgos chose only one people for his own 
 especial guidance. He revealed liimself peculiarly to this people, 
 the Jews, and gave them a religious code, consisting—as it cor- 
 responded to his own nature and character—on the one hand of a 
 ceremonial religion, which busied itself only in externals, and on 
 the other of a positive (literally, commanding, ) imperfect morality, 
 without an inward Divine life, without any power to produce a 
 true inward sanctification, without the spirit of love. He rewarded 
 those who faithfully observed this law, with a happy condition 
 
CHRISTOLOGY.—REDEMPTION. 129 
 
 after death, adapted to their limited nature, in company with 
 their pious forefathers 1, 
 
 The Demiurgos was not powerful enough to make his people 
 the ruling nation, and to extend his dominion over the whole 
 earth; but he promised to those who were devoted to him, a 
 Redeemer, a Messiah, through whom he would at last obtain this 
 object in a contention with the hostile powers of the ὕλη» and 
 through whom he would gather together the scattered Jews, 
 exercise a severe judgment over the heathen and sinners, and 
 lead his people to an undisturbed enjoyment of all earthly hap- 
 piness, in a kingdom that should rule over the whole earth. But 
 the perfect God, whose nature is compassion and love, could not 
 allow this severe sentence, upon men who were overcome by their 
 own weakness, to take effect. It is consistent with his character 
 not to look to merit, like the Demiurgos, but out of free love to 
 take care of those who are altogether alien to him, of the lost ; 
 and not to begin with proposing a law, on the observance or 
 non-observance of which the fate of man should depend, but 
 to reveal and impart himself, as the source of all holiness and 
 blessedness, to those who are but willing to receive him. The 
 appearance of Christ was the self-revelation® of the Supreme God 
 hitherto wholly hidden from this lower creation. Perhaps before 
 Marcion became a Gnostic, he had, in his own country, embraced 
 that form of the so-called Patripassianism*® which was current in 
 Asia Minor, which maintained that the same Divine subject was 
 betokened by different names only as spoken of under different 
 relations ; as the Father, when spoken of as hidden,—as the Son, 
 or the Logos, when self-revealing ; and that it was only this self- 
 revealing God who had united himself with a human body. 
 At all events this view was the most suited to the system and the 
 mind of Marcion. It was a welcome thing to him, to remove 
 the distinction which the Church doctrine acknowledged between 
 Christ and the Supreme Being; he was thoroughly imbued with 
 the conviction, that Christ and Christianity are nothing but a 
 communication of the Supreme God himself to man in his limited 
 condition. (It is well to remark, generally, that among the 
 
 1 Apud inferos in sinu Abrahami. Tertull. c. M. lib. iii. ο. 24. Clem. Strom. 
 lib. v. f. 546. [Sylb. 233. Potter, 645. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 4.] 
 
 3 Tertullian, c. M. lib. i. c. 11. 
 
 3 Of which we shall speak more at large in our section relative to the formation 
 of the Church doctrines. 
 
 VOL. Il. K 
 
130 DOCETISM.—-CHRIST NOT THE PROMISED MESSIAH. 
 
 Patripassians the practical view of Christianity was especially 
 the predominant one.) As now Marcion, in the character of a 
 Patripassian, would admit of no perfect human personality in 
 Christ, it was the more easy for Docetism to insinuate itself into 
 his views. This Docetism was not only founded in his view of 
 matter, but it was thoroughly suited to the whole nature and 
 spirit of his dogmatic views in every respect. Christianity, ac- 
 cording to him, was to appear as a fragmentary thing, entirely 
 without preparations for it, and not to be attached to any thing 
 else; as Tertullian excellently said, with Marcion every thing 
 is to be sudden. His Gospel, therefore, began with the journey of 
 Christ to Capernaum in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, 
 and his sudden appearance as a teacher *. 
 
 According also to the theory of Marcion, Jesus was not the 
 Messiah promised by the Demiurgos through the prophets, as 
 many of the tokens of the Messiah contained in them are want- 
 ing in him; and, on the contrary, that. which is peculiar in his 
 character, and in fis operations, is by no means to be found 
 among the Messianic traits delivered to us in the prophets. 
 Marcion endeavoured to go through with the contrast between 
 Christ, as the history of the Gospel represents him, and the 
 Christ of the Old Testament: even in this we see how deeply 
 the image of Christ had stamped itself upon his warm heart ; but 
 even that very circumstance rendered him unjust, by leading him 
 to expect that the fore-type, which was given to the prophetic 
 view under a veil, which was to be for a time, should fully equal 
 the reality that appeared. It was then to be considered only as 
 an accommodation, when Jesus called himself the Messiah, in 
 order to find a point by which the Jews might unite themselves 
 to him; to win their confidence through a form which was familiar 
 to them, and then to insinuate the higher things into this form”. It 
 was natural enough that Christ, who pre-supposed only a sense of 
 the needfulness of that which had hitherto been wanting to man, a 
 feeling of the need in which man stands of help and redemption, and 
 required only an acceptance, in childlike faith, of the divine source 
 of life which he communicated toman ; it was natural, according to 
 these views, that he should findno acceptance with the self-righteous 
 servants of the Demiurgos, self-contented in their own limited 
 
 1 Tertull. iv. 17. 
 2 Ut per solenne apud eos et familiare nomen irreperet in Judzeorum fidem, 
 Cae 10; } 
 
DOCETISM.—THE PASSION. 131 
 
 nature, and should find a more ready entrance into the hearts of 
 the heathen, who had abandoned themselves to the feeling of 
 their misery. The Demiurgos would of course necessarily attack 
 him, as one that wished to destroy his kingdom, under the pretence 
 of being the Messiah promised by him. He wished to bring about 
 his death through the Jews, who were devoted to him, [i. 6. the 
 Demiurgos, Tr.] but he could effect nothing against the surpassing 
 power of the supreme God. The passion of Christ would serve only 
 for the fulfilment of his [i. 6. Marcion’s, Tr.] benevolent designs, 
 in respect to human nature: the heart of Marcion must have been 
 interested ina love, that suffered, and obtained the victory through 
 suffering ; in him, whom alone he acknowledged as our apostle, he 
 found a great deal about the sufferings of Christ for human nature, 
 —and yet this did not well consist with his Docetism. Marcion 
 appropriated to himself the doctrine which already existed in the 
 tradition of the Church about the descent of Christ into the world 
 below’; but one is inclined to enquire whether he can have taken 
 a doctrine on the mere authority of the tradition of the Church; 
 and it will surely prove to be the case, that he has been willing to 
 overlook that which would not otherwise be satisfactory to him in 
 this authority, for the sake of its value in a dogmatical point of 
 view, because its doctrine suited so well with his whole system. 
 This doctrine is, indeed, distinctly proclaimed in the first Epistle 
 of St. Peter; but with the ultra-Pauline Marcion, St. Peter was 
 no genuine apostle. Still, he might think perhaps that he found 
 this doctrine in an Epistle of St. Paul himself, namely, in Ephes. 
 iv. 9. Other Gnostics gave it a different application, because with 
 them this earth itself was the lower world [unterwelt, under- 
 world] into which Christ descended, in order to set free the cap- 
 tives. Marcion understood the expression, lower world, in the 
 sense given to it by the Church doctrine, namely, the general 
 abode of departed spirits. Only he did not receive the common 
 opinion, that Christ descended, in order to place the saints of the 
 Old Testament in connection with himself. These were, like the 
 Jews on earth, incapable of enjoying the blessings of a redeem- 
 ing, eternal love, in consequence of their self-righteousness, and 
 the enjoyment of a happiness which satisfied their limited nature. 
 But Marcion, the friend of the heathen, could never have adopted 
 the notion, that so many heathens who had died previously should 
 
 1 The Descensus Christi ad inferos. 
 
 Ka 
 
199 TWO-FOLD KINGDOM OF THE MESSIAH. 
 
 be given up to the power of the Demiurgos, and be excluded 
 from the benefits of redemption; Christ, therefore, descended 
 below, in order to preach the Gospel to the heathen, who were 
 dead, and to bless them’. 
 
 It would seem, although it cannot be decided upon with abso- 
 lute certainty, that Marcion taught that the Messianic prophe- 
 cies of the Old Testament would still be fulfilled with reference 
 to the believers in the Demiurgos. The Messiah promised by 
 the Demiurgos was to appear, and would execute a severe penal 
 sentence against those who were not freed from his power by 
 faith in the higher Christ, would raise up the dead saints of the 
 Old ‘Testament, and unite all in a millennial reign of earthly 
 happiness. The eternal heavenly kingdom, to which Christians 
 belonged, would then form the proper contrast to the transitory 
 earthly kingdom. 'The souls of the Christians would lay aside their 
 gross bodies, as the chicken raises itself out of the egg, as the 
 kernel throws away the shell, or leaves the outer covering in the 
 earth, and raises itself up free into the light of day; as the ripe 
 fruit falls away from the stalk *. 
 
 A doctrinal system like that of Marcion, in which the contrast 
 between the Law and the Gospel was thus declared, could be 
 followed only by a holy, moral system; for he made out the dif- 
 ference between the two to consist in this, that the first (the Law) 
 could communicate to man no true inward sanctification, no power 
 for victory over evil; but the second (the Gospel) brought man, 
 through faith, into connection with a divine source of life; which 
 connection would necessarily reveal itself through the conquest 
 of evil, and through the sanctification of the life. Even the most 
 zealous opponents of Marcion, who were glad to rake together 
 all the evil they could possibly accuse him of, and who did not 
 recognise the essential difference between the system of Marcion 
 and all other Gnostic systems, could not deny that the Marcion- 
 ites were entirely distinguished by their conduct from those 
 Gnostic antinomians, who preached up a life of lawlessness after 
 man’s own fancies; they could not deny, for instance, that they 
 (the Marcionites) were on a par with the strictest Christians in 
 their abhorrence of the heathen theatres and public pleasures *. 
 While. many Gnostics, throagh their doctrine, that an accommo- 
 
 1 See Irenzeus, i. c. 27. ὃ 2. c. i. 24. 
 2 Tertullian, iii. 3, 4. & 24; iv. 29; iii. 29. Eph. Syr. Orat. 52. 6. p. 551, 552. 
 3 Tertull. c. M. i. 28. 
 
MARCION’S MORAL DOCTRINES.—ASCETICISM.—S'. PAUL. 133 
 
 dation to the predominant errors of the times is allowable, or 
 through the principle, that outward things are a matter of no 
 consequence, made it a very easy thing to escape the duty of 
 martyrdom; the Marcionites, on the contrary, certainly believed 
 themselves bound to give their witness to Christianity *, which 
 was deeply engrafted in their hearts. But how all that belongs 
 to our nature is sanctified and ennobled by Christianity, was a 
 truth which Marcion could not acknowledge, because he did not 
 recognize the God in Christ as the God of Nature. In this 
 point of view, the teachers of the Church might justly make this 
 reproach against him, that his Dualism, in union with Christ- 
 ianity, which always pursues the view of an ennoblement of na- 
 ture through a divine principle of life, is practically illogical; as, 
 for example, in the celebration of the Sacraments. The ascetic 
 turn which Marcion had, even when he was a member of the 
 Catholic Church, and in which, as we have before observed, his 
 system had found a natural point to engraft itself upon, was 
 now again still more furthered and strengthened by his more 
 fully formed views of nature, and of the creation of the Demiur- 
 gos. He reckoned a mode of life, such as was led in the Catholic 
 Church only by certain classes of ascetics, to be an essential part 
 of Christianity: Christians were, even here below, to lead a hea- 
 venly life, entirely freed from all defilement through matter; he 
 who was incapable of leading such a life, must remain in the class 
 of Catechumens, and could not yet be admitted to Baptism’. 
 Whether Marcion recognized only St. Paul as a genuine apostle; 
 and condemned, after the fushion of ultra-Paulites, all the rest of the 
 apostles, as Judaizing adulterators of Christianity ; or whether he 
 only declared the writings that were published under their names to 
 be spurious documents, counterfeited by Judaizing Christians, cannot 
 be decided with certainty from the unsatisfactory nature of the 
 existing accounts; but the first is the most probable. This sup- 
 position suits best with the character of the abrupt and violent 
 Marcion, who was more ready to make points of contrast than to 
 look for means of accommodation. It is certain that he acknow- 
 ledged as the genuine sources of Christian knowledge nothing 
 but the Epistles of St. Paul, and an original Gospel, which, by 
 
 1 See, for example, Euseb. iv. 15; vii. 12. De Martyr. Palestine, c. 10. 
 
 2 Tertull. c. M. lib. iv. c. 34. Quomodo nuptias dirimis ? nec conjungens marem 
 et feminam, nec alibi conjunctos ad sacramentum baptismatis et eucharistize admit- 
 tens, nisi inter se conjuraverint adversus fructum nuptiarum. 
 
134. MARCIONITE SECTS.—MARCUS—LUCANUS—APELLES. 
 
 mistaking a passage, he supposed to have been cited by St. Paul. 
 But as he set out from the settled opinion, that these documents 
 were no longer found in their original condition, but had been 
 adulterated by the Judaizers, whose form seems to have haunted 
 him like a spectre, he allowed himself to use criticism ad libitum, 
 in order to restore them to their original form. His pretended 
 original Gospel, used (as he fancied) by St. Paul, had arisen 
 from a mutilation of the Gospel of St. Luke’ Certainly his 
 criticism was by no means logical; for much remained, which 
 nothing but a forced system of exegesis, through ignorance of 
 right hermeneutic principles, could possibly bring into harmony 
 with the system of Marcion. 
 
 Marcionite Sects. 
 
 While among other Gnostics the caprice and the multifarious- 
 ness of their speculations and fictions caused the later disciples, 
 in many respects, to depart from the doctrines of their Master ; on 
 the contrary, in the system of Marcion, the predominance of a prac- 
 tical turn, and the meagreness of the speculative part in compari- 
 son of the other Gnostic systems, were the cause of the changes 
 which his disciples, among whom a practical disposition was not 
 so predominant as with him, made in his doctrines. Many appro- 
 priated to themselves the elements of other Gnostic systems, 
 which did not suit that of Marcion, in order to fill up the gaps 
 which they believed they found in it. Many, like the Marcionite 
 Marcus *, received the doctrines of the Syrian Gnosis, relative to 
 the creation of man*; namely, that the supreme God had com- 
 municated to man something of his own Divine Life (the πνευμα); 
 but that man had lost it by sin,—a view which was repugnant to 
 the whole character of the Marcionitish system; for, according to 
 the ideas of Marcion, until the appearance of Christ, nothing 
 whatever that was akin to the supreme God could have been in 
 existence in this world. While Marcion would not make any 
 further conclusions relative to the ultimate fate of the Demiurgos 
 
 ! An elaborate discussion of Marcion’s Canon of the New Testament would be 
 out of place here, but on this subject see more in the learned and acute investiga- 
 tions of my friends Hahn and Olshausen, and in my: Genetic Development of the 
 Gnostic systems 
 
 2 In the Dialog. de Recta Fide. See the Opp. Origen. T. i. 
 
 5 See above, in the account of the Ophites and Saturninus. 
 
 ---- 
 
CHARACTER OF APELLES. 135 
 
 and of the Psychici; on the contrary, Lucanus the Marcionite 
 determined that all which is Psychical, is perishable, and that 
 nothing but the πνευματικον; which has become participative of 
 the Divine nature, is immortal '. 
 
 Apelles had for a season withdrawn himself from the predomi- 
 nant practical turn of Marcion, and had indulged in many specu- 
 lations, entirely foreign to the original Marcionite system ; but 
 at length the original practical disposition broke forth again, and 
 became prominent in him in a remarkable manner. ‘Tertullian’ 
 gives an unfavourable account of the morals of this man; but a 
 teacher of the Catholic Church, at the beginning of the third 
 century, named Rhodon, whose testimony is unsuspicious as 
 being that of an enemy, defends him against this reproach, for 
 he represents him as a man generally respected on account of 
 his conduct*. Probably there was no other origin to these accu- 
 sations, than the entirely innocent intercourse of Apelles with a 
 female philosopher, named Philumene, as people were always 
 ready to lay every thing that is evil to the charge of a person 
 who has once been branded as a heretic. Philumene can only be 
 reproached with having forgotten her calling as a woman, and 
 having, in consequence, fallen into a sort of dreamy enthusiasm, 
 and Apelles, with having encouraged her in this, and looking on 
 her fantastic essays, which proceeded from an unhealthy condi- 
 tion, as revelations, which he took the trouble to interpret‘. But 
 the notice which Tertullian gives us is of considerable use, viz. that 
 his long sojourn at Alexandria superinduced a change in his 
 originally Marcionitish views ; for all which we can deduce from 
 the scattered accounts in Tertullian, Origen, Epiphanius, and in 
 the treatise of Ambrose de Paradiso, indicates the remodelling of 
 his system through the influence of the Alexandrian Gnosis. 
 And hence it arises, that he set the visible and the invisible 
 order of the world, the Demiurgos and the supreme God, and 
 the Old and New Testaments, in more connection with each 
 other than the system of Marcion permitted. While he set out 
 from the principle, that the Old Testament comes from different 
 origins,—partly from the inspiration of the Soter, partly from 
 that of the Demiurgos, and partly from that of the evil spirit, 
 who has every where troubled and defiled the Revelations of the 
 
 1 See Tertullian de Resurrect. Carn. c. 2. Orig. c. Cels. lib. iii. ο. 27. 
 * Prescript. Heeret. c. 30. 3 Euseb. v. 13. 
 * His book of φανερωσεις, which is no longer extant. 
 
136 APELLES AND RHODON.—GNOSTIC WORSHIP. 
 
 Divine ';—he was desirous of culling out in all cases that which 
 is good. I use all the writings of the Old Testament, he says, 
 while I gather together that which is useful’. He appealed to 
 that declaration, so often quoted by the ancients, and which 
 is, perhaps, attributed to our Saviour, in the EvayyeAvov καθ᾽ 
 ‘EBpaove, ““ Be ye trusty money-changers, who are able, uni- 
 versally, to distinguish between the genuine and the counterfeit 
 gold, the true and the false.” (Τινεσθε Soxmor τραπεζιται.) In 
 age, Apelles, finding no satisfactory conclusion in his specula- 
 tions upon the incomprehensible, took refuge in the faith which 
 obeys an inward necessity without being able to solve every dif- 
 ficulty to itself (difficulties which, in his case, met him even in 
 that which he could not choose but to recognize) ; he could do no 
 other, he said; he felt himself obliged to delieve in one eternal 
 God, as the original cause of all existence, but he could not sci- 
 entifically prove how all existence was necessarily to be traced 
 back to the one original principle. The Church teacher, Rhodon, 
 to whom he made these communications in confidence, laughed at 
 him, as one who pretended to be a teacher, but only believed what 
 he taught, and acknowledged that he could not prove it; but one 
 is inclined to ask, whether the laugher in this case was wiser than 
 the man whom he laughed at, and whether Rhodon himself, in 
 the strict sense of the word, could prove that which Apelles 
 avowed that he only believed. Apelles appeared to have no 
 more taste for controversy on these subjects. ‘ Every one,” he 
 said, “ may keep to his own faith ; for every one who places his 
 confidence on him that was crucified, will come to the bliss of 
 heaven, provided only he shows his faith by good works.” 
 
 ADDITIONAL REMARKS. 
 
 On the Cultus of the Gnosties. 
 
 We have hitherto considered the Gnostic sects only in refer- 
 ence to their faith and moral systems; it will be instructive, how- 
 ever, just cursorily to compare their different dispositions in 
 regard to their modes of worship (their Cultus). Even here also 
 we find the differences, which were often repeated in after times. 
 
 1 In a work which he called Conclusions (Συλλογισμοι), he endeavoured to indi- 
 cate the contradictions to be found in the Old Testament. 
 2 Xow ἀπὸ πασὴς γραφης, ἀναλέγων ra xpnoy.a, Epiphan. Heeres. 44. ὃ 2. 
 
MARCOSIANS AND CAIANS. 137 
 
 Many Gnostics—as, for example, Ptolemeeus—in virtue of their 
 more inward Christianity and their predominantly intellectual 
 character, were able to conceive the relation of all exterior ob- 
 servances of religion to its real essence, more justly than other 
 Church teachers, who could not separate the outward from the 
 inward, in religion, with such clearness of conviction and view. 
 There were, besides, some, who, like the Jewish religious ideal- 
 ists? at Alexandria, out of their theosophic idealism rejected all 
 exterior worship, as only fit for the Psychici, who are still impri- 
 soned in the bonds of their senses, and are unable to raise them- 
 selves up to the pure spiritual view [anschauung]; and these 
 persons would allow nothing to be availing but a religion of the 
 inward spiritual view [Geistesanschauung] raised above all that 
 is outward and sensuous. ‘These persons would say, that man 
 cannot represent the overwhelming and divine mysteries by sen- 
 suous and transitory things, and that real redemption consists 
 only in knowledge’. But the same theosophiec disposition might 
 also bring with it a symbolic Cultus, full of mystic pomp, as we 
 see in the case of the Marcosians*, from whom Irenzeus traces 
 those idealists, who threw aside all outward religious observances. 
 In accordance with the distinction between a psychical and pneu- 
 matical Christianity, they made a distinction also of a twofold 
 baptism : 
 
 1. The baptism into Jesus, the Messiah of the Psychici, through 
 which the believing Psychici obtained remission of their sins, and 
 the hope of an eternal life in the kingdom of the Demiurgos. 
 
 2. The pneumatical baptism, a baptism into the heavenly Christ 
 who was united with Jesus, through whom spiritual natures attain 
 to a self-consciousness, and to perfection, and enter into commu- 
 nion with the Pleroma. Their ceremonies, and the formule they 
 used in baptism, were probably different, according as a person 
 obtained the first or the second baptism, and was received into 
 the class of Psychici or Pneumatici. The latter was apparently 
 
 1 See Part I. p. 50. 
 
 * Tren. I. ο. 24. ὃ 4. Theodoret. Heret. fab. i. c. 10. If the Caians, against whom 
 Tertullian writes in his book De Baptismo, were identical with the Gnostic Cainites, 
 with whom they are sometimes confounded, then we must place these latter in the 
 same class, which well suits their whole character; but the grounds on which those 
 Caians determined against the necessity of the external rite of baptism, do not look 
 like the wild dreamy spirit of the Cainites ; and besides, there is nothing peculiarly 
 Gnostic in them [namely, the Caians]. 
 
 8 Followers of Mark. 
 
138 BAPTISMAL RITES.—EXTREME UNCTION. 
 
 accompanied with more pomp than the other. According to the 
 Gnostic idea (see above), viz. that the baptized and redeemed 
 pneumatical nature entered into a spiritual marriage (a syzygy) 
 with its other half in the world of spirits, the angel which makes 
 one whole with it;—according to this idea they celebrated bap- 
 tism as a marriage feast, and adorned the chamber where it was 
 to take place as a marriage chamber. One of the formule used 
 in the baptism of a Pneumaticus, was this: [You are baptized] 
 «Into the name which is hidden from all the Divinities and 
 Powers (of the Demiurgos), the name of ‘Truth +, which Jesus of 
 Nazareth hath drawn up into the Light-Zones of Christ, the liv- 
 ing Christ through the Holy Spirit, for the angelic redemp- 
 tion ?,—that name through which all attains its perfection.” 
 The baptized person then said, “I am confirmed and redeemed ὃ: 
 I am redeemed in my soul from this world, and from all which 
 proceeds from it, through the name of Jehovah, who has redeemed 
 the soul of Jesus *, through the living Christ.” ‘Then the assem- 
 bled throng spoke thus: ‘ Peace (or health) to all, over whom 
 this name rests.” Then also they imparted to the baptized the 
 consecration to the Christian priesthood, which was used also in 
 the Church, by means of anointing; but in this case it was per- 
 formed with costly ointment (balsam), for the widely extending 
 perfume of this was to be a symbol of the overpowering delight 
 of the Pleroma, which the redeemed were destined to enjoy. 
 Among these Marcosians we find, at first, the use of extreme 
 unction; they anointed the dying man with that ointment mixed 
 with water, and used with it formule, to the purport that the souls 
 of the departed must be able to raise themselves up free from the 
 Demiurgos and all his powers, te their mother, the Sophia’. ‘The 
 
 1 The aera, the self-revelation of the Bythos. 
 
 2 Eic λυτρωσιν ἀγγελικην. For the redemption of that, of which this spiritual 
 nature, as well as the angel which belonged to it, must become a partaker, in order that 
 both together might become capable of entering into the Pleroma, which was only 
 possible to them in their mutual union, and not in their state of separation. 
 
 3 ’Eornorypat και λελυτρωμαι. See above, about Horus. 
 
 41 think, that in that formula we must read τοὺ Ἴησου, instead of αὐτου. 
 
 5 Tren. I. 21. Exorcism in baptism also, was well suited to the Gnostic theory of 
 the in-dwelling of manifold πνευματα ὑλικα [spirits of a gross and sensuous nature, 
 derived from their connexion with matter. H. R.], till the redemption [of the indi- 
 vidual]. Exorcism (vdwp éZopetZouevoy) makes its appearance at first, even earlier 
 than in the North African Church (see above), in the Didascal. Anatol. p. 800, col. 
 iv. D. But here it may be quoted as being a custom of the Alexandrian Church in 
 general, and not as a custom peculiarly Gnostic. 
 
BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD. 139 
 
 Ophites, also, had these same forms of adjuration for the departed. 
 And that mystical table of the same sect, which contains a 
 symbolical representation of their system (their διαγραμμα); is 
 well known. 
 
 As Marcion in his whole character and spirit was essentially 
 different from the rest of the Gnostics, so also did he differ from 
 them in respect to his principles about the ordinances of worship. 
 By his simple and practical turn of mind, he was far removed 
 from that mysticism that delighted in outward pomp; but then he 
 was far removed, also, from that proud contemplative idealism. 
 His endeavour was here also to bring back the original Christian 
 simplicity of the service of God; and he combated many new 
 ordinances, as corruptions of that original simplicity 1. And thus, 
 with respect to the practice which was then about in its com- 
 mencement, of dividing divine service into two parts’, the one, 
 which the Catechumens were to stay out, and the other, at the 
 commencement of which they were to be dismissed, he appears 
 to have contended against it, as an innovation foreign to the 
 spirit of Christianity. He said, Just as in any other good thing, 
 fet the mature Christians suffer those who are yet under instruc- 
 tion, such as the Catechumens, to take part in prayer also: they 
 must not reserve anything from them on this account; nor ex- 
 clude them on it from participation in the prayers of the 
 Church ὃ. 
 
 We must, however, limit the praise which has been bestowed 
 upon Marcion, if he was really the original author of the super- 
 stitious custom, founded on a misunderstanding of the passage in 
 Scripture, 1 Cor. xv. 29, namely, the custom of bestowing bap- 
 tism on a living person, which was to be availing to a Catechu- 
 men who had died without baptism; but it is altogether without 
 foundation, that the introduction of such a mistaken baptism has 
 
 1 Apparently Tertullian had the Marcionites especially in his view, when he says of 
 the heretics, Praescript. c. 41, “ Simplicitatem volunt esse prostrationem discipline, 
 cujus penes nos curam lenocinium vocant.” 
 
 2 Afterwards called the Missa Catechumenorum, and the Missa Fidelium. 
 
 3 Marcion, according to Jerome, Comment. in Ep. ad Galat., appealed to Galat. vi. 6, 
 while with a thorough disregard of the context in that passage, he understands kot- 
 vwvey in an intransitive sense, and translates the verse; ‘‘ Let the Cat‘echumen par- 
 take of all that is good, together with his instructor.’’ Hence, the notion of the Gnos- 
 tics was also present to the mind of Tertullian, when he reproached the heretics, 
 l.c. in this manner; “ Imprimis quis catechumenus, quis fidelis incertum est. 
 Pariter adeunt (ecclesiam), pariter audiunt, pariter orant.”’ 
 
140 CHARACTER OF MANICHEEISM. 
 
 been laid to the charge of Marcion, to whose simple evangelical 
 spirit such superstition was entirely unsuited. If such a super- 
 stition prevailed afterwards among the Marcionites, who had 
 spread themselves among the country people of Syria, in the 
 fifth century, we can only say that it is not fair to charge the 
 founder of the sect with that which is found among men, who are 
 certainly very unlike him’. 
 
 II. Manes? and the Manichees. 
 
 Tue power of the simple Gospel had by degrees triumphed over 
 Gnosticism, although the remains of Gnostic sects maintained 
 themselves in the East down to later centuries. Gnosticism had 
 produced the effects it was calculated to produce ; it had, by the 
 struggle that took place, awakened the powers of the soul, and by 
 the contrast it offered it had brought the meaning of the chief doc- 
 trines of Christianity into a clearer consciousness and acknow- 
 ledgment*. But in the third century a new and remarkable 
 phenomenon, thoroughly akin to Gnosticism, arose out of the in- 
 termixture of oriental theosophy with Christianity, namely, Mani- 
 cheeism. No essential difference is to be found between this 
 system and those of the Gnostics, especially of the second class, 
 except that here the Christian element was far more crushed 
 by the intermixture of strange materials than in most of the 
 Gnostic systems, and Christianity was properly used only as a 
 symbolical covering for ideas foreign to it, so that one might 
 often throw away the Christian terms which are used, and find 
 notions, which, in their application here, appear to resemble a 
 mixture of Parsic, Brahminical, and Buddhist religious doctrines, 
 more than Christianity. And further, the oriental element is not 
 at all mixed, as it is in the Gnostic systems, with Jewish theo- 
 
 1 Tertullian, De Resurr. Carnis, c. 48. & Adv. Marcion. lib. ν. c. 10. by no means 
 speaks as if, in his time, such a baptism, which violates the passage on which it is 
 founded, had been actually in use in any place ; only he supposes the possibility that 
 such a custom may have existed in the time of the Apostle, who may have alluded 
 to that ; and in the latter passage he considers another explanation of 1 Cor. xy. 29. 
 to be more probable. But what Chrysostom remarks upon this passage can only be 
 applied to many ignorant Marcionites of his time, and not, by any means, to Marcion 
 himself, and the older Gnostics. ἢ 
 
 2 [Neander constantly uses the name Mani, but as I believe Manes is the form 
 usually adopted in English, I have changed it. H. R.] 5 
 
 % See the section below on the development of the Church doctrine. 
 
ACTS OF ARCHELAUS. 141 
 
 logy and Platonic philosophy. ‘The comparison of the Mani- 
 chean system with the Basilidian, the Saturninian, and the 
 Ophitic, and with the religious system of the Zabians, hardly 
 allows us to escape recognising one common source for all. 
 
 As far as relates to the history of Manes, the founder of this sect, 
 we have two kinds of sources of information, which coincide with 
 each other only in a very few circumstances, and in all besides 
 are entirely different; these are the Greek and the Oriental sources. 
 The accounts of Cyril of Jerusalem, of Epiphanius, and of the ec- 
 clesiastical historians of the fourth and fifth centuries, point our 
 attention to one common source!, ‘This source is the Acts of a 
 disputation said to have been held with Manes by Archelaus, 
 bishop of Cascar*. But these Acts are preserved to us in at least 
 a very unsatisfactory form, as they have descended to us, with 
 the exception of some fragments in Greek, only in the Latin 
 translation from a Greek writing, which perhaps itself is only an 
 unfaithful translation from a Syriac original*. ‘These Acts plainly 
 contain a narration, which hangs together ill enough, and bears 
 a tolerably fabulous appearance. Even supposing there is some 
 truth as a foundation for these Acts, which may well be as there is 
 much in the mode of bringing forward the doctrines which bears 
 marks of truth, and is confirmed by a comparison with other re- 
 presentations, yet still the Greek writer appears to have mixed 
 with it much that is false, from ignorance of oriental languages 
 and customs, by intermingling and confusion of different narra- 
 tions, and by exaggeration and a deficiency in critical qualifica- 
 tions*, We are well aware how difficult it was to a Greek to 
 
 ' Eusebius, who wrote before this document was promulgated, was unable to 
 relate anything of the personal history of Manes. 
 
 2 Kaskar ; if the name be not a corruption. It may, perhaps, (although on the 
 evidence of a very uncertain conjecture) be a corruption for Charra in Mesopotamia 
 
 Ta. 
 3 Jerome, De Vir. Illustr. 72, informs us that these Acts were originally written in 
 Syriac; but among the Orientals the first Father to whom these Acts were known 
 is Severus, bishop of Asmonina, in Egypt, who wrote about the year a.D. 978. See 
 Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandr. p. 40. His relation of the matter differs in 
 many respects from the edition of these Acts which has descended to us, and it is far 
 simpler, which seems to indicate that the Acts of which he made use, were not ours, 
 but another document akin to it, and that perhaps which furnished the foundation 
 of ours. Heraclian, bishop of Chalcedon, in Photius cod. 95, says that a person 
 named Hegemonius drew up these Greek Acts. 
 
 * Beausobre has properly discarded the Western accounts, which he was well 
 
142 SCYTHIANUS—-BUDDHA. 
 
 place himself in the condition of a people totally foreign to his 
 own nation, and to conceive it altogether justly. 
 
 In some points, even from the scanty means which we have for 
 the unravelling of this historical enigma, we are enabled to detect 
 traces of the mistakes which have formed the foundation of these 
 accounts. The first origin of the Manichean doctrines is derived 
 from a Saracenic merchant, called Scythianus, who is represented, 
 during long travels in Asia, Egypt, and Greece, to have acquired 
 great riches, and procured himself an intimate acquaintance both 
 with Oriental and Grecian philosophy. This Scythianus is re- 
 presented to have lived near the Apostolic age; but this, even 
 according to this narrative itself, appears to be an anachronism, 
 for Manes himself is not made to live till some generations after 
 that age. Still, in this Seythianus we recognize an historical per- 
 sonage really connected with Manes; we find letters of Manes 
 addressed to a man of this name, who was also probably an 
 oriental Theosophist*. The heir and disciple of this Scythianus 
 appears to have been one Terebinth, who was afterwards called 
 Buddas. The name Buddas’ reminds us of the old system of 
 religion, opposed to Brahminism, which took its origin from 
 Eastern India, which is still prevalent in Ceylon, Thibet, and the 
 Birman Empire, and has extended its influence even to the tribes 
 of Tartary. ‘The relation of the miraculous birth of Buddas re- 
 minds us of the similar accounts given of the birth of the Indian 
 Buddha. The pantheistic portion of Manicheeism may be com- 
 pared, in many respects, with the pantheistic parts of the old Bud- 
 dhaism. Manes is represented, in fact, to have travelled to the 
 East Indies and China, and many of the later Manichees appeal 
 to the circumstance that Manes, Buddhas, Zoroaster, Christ, and 
 the Sun (the higher Spirit which animated the Sun), are the 
 same; that is to say, all these founders of a religion are only dif- 
 
 persuaded were untenable, and confined himself wholly to the Oriental. There is 
 nothing striking in what Mosheim has advanced against him in this matter. 
 
 1 See Fabricii Biblioth. Greece. vol. vii. 316. 
 
 * It has been justly remarked, that the Greek Τερεβινθος, is perhaps only a 
 translation of the Chaldee xQu1a by which the Hebrew ΤῚΝ is rendered in the Targum, 
 and which the Alexandrian translators render by Τερεβινθος. And besides, Tere- 
 binth, or Buddas, like Scythianus, may have been an historical person, to whom 
 much that belongs to the Indian Buddha may have been transferred. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MANES’ CHARACTER. 143 
 
 ferent incarnations of the Sun', and, therefore, there is, in these 
 different systems, only one religion under different forms. 
 
 In the Oriental accounts there is far more internal connexion ; 
 but these are found in writers very much later than the Greek 
 documents. The Orientals have, however, without doubt, made 
 use of earlier documents, and in their use of them they were not 
 exposed to the same causes of error, as those which led the Greeks 
 astray 2. 
 
 In order properly to appreciate the phenomenon presented by 
 the appearance of a man like Manes, we must compare together 
 the circumstances and the relations under which he was formed. 
 Manes was born a Persian, but we are led to inquire whether 
 this geographical term is to be used in its strictest limits, or whe- 
 ther we are only to understand by it some one province of the 
 great Persian empire. ‘The latter view is supported by the cir- 
 cumstance that Manes composed his writings in the Syriac lan- 
 guage, from which we might be led to conclude that he derived 
 his origin from one of those provinces of the Persian empire, 
 where Syriac was the language of the country. But this argu- 
 ment is not entirely demonstrative ; for without this supposition it 
 may well be conceived, from the intimate connexion between the 
 Persian Christians and the Syrian Church, the Syrian language 
 might already by that time have become the language of theo- 
 logical books among the Persian religious teachers, and that 
 Manes also might, in consequence, have been induced to make 
 use of it, although it was not his mother tongue, more especially 
 as he might thereby hope to further a more general reception of 
 his doctrines in other districts. If these accounts, indeed, are to 
 be relied on, Manes was born in a family of the class of Magi 
 (the priests of the Persian religion), was converted to Christianity 
 in the days of manhood, and became the presbyter of a Christian 
 congregation at Ehvaz, or Ahvaz, the chief town of the Persian 
 province Huzitis. At all events, it is most probable that Manes 
 
 1 The later offsets of the Manichees, when they entered into the Catholic Church, 
 were obliged to condemn the doctrines before maintained by them: τὸν Zapaday 
 και Bovday καὶ Tov Χριστον και Toy Μανιχαιον ἕνα και τὸν αὐτον εἶναι. See 
 Jacob. Tollii Insignia Italic. Traject. 1696. p. 134. 
 
 2 The Oriental accounts are to be found in Herbelot, Bibliothéque Orientale, sub 
 v. Mani; in the History of the Sassanide, by the Persian historian, Mirkhond, ap. 
 Silvestre de Sacy, Mémoires sur diverses Antiquités de la Perse: Paris, 1793; in 
 Abulpharage, and Pocock, Specimen Histor. Arab. 
 
144 PARSISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 was brought up in the religion of Zoroaster, and afterwards 
 embraced Christianity. 
 
 We do not know enough of the progress of his life to be able 
 to decide whether he was at first fairly and thoroughly converted 
 from the religion of his fathers to Christianity, but that afterwards 
 being repulsed by the form in which the latter appeared to him 
 in the doctrines of the Church, he freshened up the fundamental 
 ideas of his earlier religious habits of thought again in his soul, 
 and then believed that the true light could not be given to 
 Christianity till it was united with them; ...... or whether 
 from the very first he had been attracted by the analogy of 
 Christianity to many Persian notions, without remarking the 
 essential difference between similar ideas in Christianity and in 
 the Persian religion according to their peculiar conception and 
 connexion in each, so that from the very first he had only formed 
 a peculiar religious system for himself by an amalgamation of the 
 Persian and the Christian. It is easy to explain, in any case, 
 how a man brought up in the Persian religion believed that he 
 could observe a striking connexion between the ideas of a king- 
 dom of Ormuzd and Ahriman, and those of a kingdom of Light 
 and Darkness, of God and Satan; between the Persian doctrine 
 which allows man to struggle for the kingdom of Ormuzd against 
 the kingdom of Ahriman, and the Christian doctrine, which would 
 make man struggle in the service of Christ against the kingdom 
 of Satan. In the Persian religion, the centre-point of all was the 
 idea of redemption out.of the kingdom of Ahriman, and the final 
 triumph of the kingdom of Ormuzd. In Christianity he found 
 the tidings of a triumphant appearance of Ormuzd himself upon 
 the earth, through which the complete triumph of the kingdom 
 of Light, and the complete destruction of the kingdom of Dark- 
 ness were prepared. 
 
 Exactly at the time in which Manes appeared, after the Persians 
 had freed themselves from the Parthian dominion, and re-esta- 
 blished their old kingdom under the dynasty of the Sassanide, 
 the endeavour was again awakened among them to purify the old 
 religion of Zoroaster from the foreign admixtures which had 
 made their way into it during a foreign rule, and to restore it 
 again to its original purity and glory. But contests had now 
 arisen as to what the pure doctrine of Zoroaster was, especially 
 on those points on which the Zend books contained only hints, 
 (e. g. on the relation of the good and the evil principle to each 
 
 12 
 
MANES THE PARACLETE. 145 
 
 other). Councils were held, in order to decide the disputes, at 
 which pretended prophets appeared, who professed to decide 
 everything according to Divine illumination’, The religion of 
 Zoroaster, thus refreshed with new power, and setting itself up in 
 hostility to all foreign religions, which had hitherto been tolera- 
 ted, now also entered on a contest with Christianity, which under 
 the Parthian domination had been able to propagate itself with- 
 out obstruction. Under such circumstances, it was easy for 
 a man of an ardent and bold spirit, like Manes, to indulge 
 the thought of establishing the identity of Christianity, 
 purified, as he would think, from all extraneous matter, with the 
 pure doctrine of Zoroaster, and by this means to be the first to 
 make clear the proper meaning of the Christian doctrine, and at 
 the same time to further the extension of Christianity in the Per- 
 sian empire; he wished to be looked upon as the Reformer, both 
 of Christianity and Parsism, called and enlightened by God. 
 Christianity appeared to Manes to be far more akin to the doc- 
 trine of Zoroaster than to Judaism. He derived the adulteration 
 of the doctrine of Christ from the mixture of Christianity with 
 Judaism, which was entirely foreign to its nature. He was shut 
 out from the communion of the Christian Church, and turned 
 himself now to Christians and believers in the religion of Zo- 
 roaster, with the desire that they should recognize him as an in- 
 spired (Jit. enlightened) reformer of religion. He maintained, 
 like Mahomet in later times, that he was the Paraclete’ promised 
 by Christ, and under this name he by no means understood the 
 Holy Ghost, but a human person, an inspired teacher promised 
 by Christ, who should carry on further the religion revealed by 
 Christ in his Spirit (i. e. the Spirit of Christ), should purify it 
 from the mixture made in it by Ahriman, especially from those 
 corruptions which proceeded from its amalgamation with Judaism, 
 and should make known those truths which mankind in earlier 
 times had not been in a condition to understand. Through him 
 Christianity was to be set free from all connexion with Judaism, 
 which had proceeded from Ahriman; and that which the evil 
 spirit, in order to adulterate Divine truth, had intermingled with 
 the New Testament, which by no means contained the uncor- 
 
 1 See Hyde, Hist. Relig. vet. Pers. p. 276 ; Mémoires sur diverses Antiquités de 
 la Perse, par S. de Sacy, p. 42. 
 
 * See Mirkhond ap. Sacy, p. 294.—Tit. Bost. c. Manich. lib. iii. in Canisii 
 Lection. antiq. ed. Basnage, and Bibl. Patr. Galland, τ. v. p. 326. 
 
 VOL, IJ, L 
 
140 MANES THE PARACLETE. 
 
 rupted doctrine of Christ, was to be separated from it. Through 
 him that perfect knowledge was to be given, of which St. Paul 
 had spoken as of something reserved against a future season (1 
 Cor. xiii. 10). Thus Manes might name the promised Para- 
 clete and the Apostle of Christ at the same time, as he began 
 the letter in which he wished to develop the fundamental doc- 
 trines of his religion (the Epistola Fundamenti, so celebrated 
 among the Manichees), with these words :—* Manes, chosen to 
 be an Apostle of Jesus Christ, through the choice of God the 
 Father. These are the words of salvation out of the living and 
 eternal source’.” 
 
 It was in the latter part of the reign of the Persian king 
 Shapur I. (Sapores), about the year 270, that he first came forward 
 with these pretensions. With an ardent and profound spirit, and 
 with a lively imagination, he united varied knowledge and talents 
 for the pursuits of art and science, which he used for the propa- 
 gation of his doctrines. He is represented as having been dis- 
 tinguished among his contemporaries and countrymen as a mathe- 
 matician and astronomer®; the fame of his skill in painting was 
 long remembered in Persia. At first he succeeded in obtaining 
 the favour of that prince; but when his doctrines which, in the 
 opinion of the magi, were heretical, became known, he was ob- 
 liged to seek safety from persecution by flight. He now made 
 ἘΠΕῚ journeys to the East Indies, as far as China, and probably 
 used these journeys towards the enriching of his religious eclec- 
 ticism. He remained for a time in the province of Turkistan, and 
 prepared there a series of beautiful pictures, which contained a 
 symbolical representation of his doctrine,—the book which was 
 named by the Persians Ertenki-Mani. It may probably have 
 happened that he withdrew into solitude in order to receive the 
 revelations of God, as he declared that he devised these images 
 (which represented his conceptions) amidst calm reflection in a 
 cavern, and maintained that he received them in his mind ὁ from 
 
 1 See the Acta cum Felice Manicheo, lib. i. 9, opp. Augustin. t. vili. 
 
 * Augustin. c, Epistol. Fundamenti, ec. 5. 
 
 5 It must, however, be acknowledged that they possessed no great knowledge in 
 these subjects. It is in the highest degree probable that much in his system, even 
 if we cast away the mythical dress in which it is Envelopes, was closely connected 
 with an imperfect knowledge of these sciences. 
 
 4 [In seinem Sinne.. This may be explained, as meaning impressions on the 
 sensorium. I have used the word mind, taken a lax sense.—H. J. R.] 
 
MANES THE FOUNDER OF A SECT. 147 
 
 heaven. Whether it be true, as the Orientals relate, that in order 
 to deceive the credulous populace, he gave out that he raised 
 himself in the body up to heaven, and thence brought down 
 those emblems with him', we must at least leave undecided. 
 After the death of Sapor, in the year 272, he returned to Persia, 
 and found a good reception for himself and his pictures at the 
 hands of his successor, Hormuz (Hormisdes). This prince as- 
 signed him as a secure residence, a castle called Deskereth, at 
 Khuzistan, in Susiana. But after this prince had reigned two 
 years not quite complete, Behram succeeded him (Baranes). 
 This prince showed himself favourable to him at first, but perhaps 
 only out of dissimulation, in order to give him and his adherents 
 a feeling of security. He caused a disputation to be held be- 
 tween him and the magi, of which the result was that Manes was 
 declared a heretic. As he would not retract, he was’ flayed alive 
 in the year 277°, and his skin stuffed and hung up before the 
 gates of the town Djondischapur, in order to intimidate his fol- 
 lowers. 
 
 The main point of dispute among the Persian theologians 
 which was treated of at the restoration of the original religion by 
 the founders of the dynasty of the Sassanidz, was one which is 
 most obscurely expressed in the documents of the Zoroastrian 
 creed (the Zend-avesta), namely, the inquiry, whether we are to 
 believe in an absolute Dualism, and consider Ormuzd and Ahriman 
 as two self-existing beings from all eternity opposed to each 
 other, or whether one original being is to be supposed *, from whom 
 Ormuzd and Abriman received their existence, and that Ahriman 
 is an originally-good being, but a fallen one. The former doc- 
 trine was that of the Magusaic sect*®, among the Persians, which 
 Manes joined; for it was his object to represent the opposition of 
 light and darkness as absolute and irreconcileable, although either 
 consciously or inconsciously, a pantheism, which was enveloped in 
 a mystical dress, might be at the bottom of this Dualism, in 
 which the idea of evil was conceived more in a physical than in 
 
 1 He must secretly have caused himself to be supplied with provisions in the 
 cavern, where he remained, according to some, four years, according to others, one 
 year. 
 
 2 A cruel mode of putting criminals to death, common in the East. 
 
 3 The chronology is, it must be confessed, very uncertain here. 
 
 * Zervan Akarene, the time that has neither beginning nor end, answering to the 
 αἰων, βυθος. 
 
 5 Schahristan. ap. Hyde, p. 295. 
 
 ς Ι, 2 
 
148 DUALISM OF MANES.—PARSISM. 
 
 an ethical light. He imagined, therefore, two principles abso- 
 lutely opposed to each other together with their creations of an 
 opposite character also: on the one hand, God, the original good, 
 from whom nothing but good can proceed, from whom every idea 
 of destroying, of punishing, and of corruption is far removed, the 
 original Light, from which pure light flows; . . . . on the other 
 hand, the original evil, which can only destroy and undo, and 
 whose very being is wild confusion that fights against itself,— 
 matter, darkness, from which powers strictly corresponding to 
 itself proceed, a world full of smoke and vapour, and at the same 
 time full of fire, which only burns and cannot give light*. ‘These 
 two kingdoms originally existed entirely separate from each 
 other. ‘The Supreme God, the King of the kingdom of Light, 
 existed as the original source of the world of emanations akin to 
 himself, and those A¢ons, the channels through which light was 
 propagated from the original source of light, were most closely 
 connected with him; and to these, as representatives of the 
 Supreme God, his very name was transferred, which were thence 
 ealled Divinities, without prejudice to the honour due only to the 
 first of Beings*®. In the epistle in which Manes brought forward 
 the fundamental doctrines of his religion‘, he thus portrays this 
 Supreme God at the head of his kingdom of Light’:— 
 
 “ Over the kingdom of Light ruled God the Father, eternal 
 in his holy nature (geschlechte, lit. generation, or race, or kind, 
 species, genus), glorious in his power, the TRUE, by the very 
 nature of his being, always holy in his own eternal existence, 
 who carries within himself wisdom and the consciousness of his 
 life, with which he comprehends the twelve members of his Light, 
 that is to say, the overflowing riches of his own kingdom. In 
 every one of these members there are hidden thousands of innu- 
 merable and immeasurable treasures. But the Father himself, 
 who is splendid in his glory and incomprehensible in his great- 
 ness, has connected with him holy and glorious Atons, whose 
 number and greatness cannot be reckoned, with whom this holy 
 
 1 See above, the Introduction to the History of the Gnostic sects. 
 
 2 The emblems under which Manes represented the kingdom of evil bear the 
 most striking resemblance to those which we meet with in the religious system of 
 the Sabians. It was said, and not badly, by Alexander of Lycopolis, in his treatise, 
 moc τας Menyatov δοξας, c. ii., that Manes, under the word ὕλη, understood τὴν 
 ἐν ἑκαστῳ των ὀντων ἀτακτον κινησιν. 
 
 3 As the Amschaspands, Ized of the Religion of the Papers 
 
 4 The Epistola Fundamenti. 
 
 * Augustin. contra Epist. Fundamenti, c. 13. 
 
DOMINION OF LIGHT’. 149 
 
 all-glorious Father lives, for in his lofty kingdom none dwells 
 subject either to want or to weakness. His resplendent king- 
 doms, however, are founded on the blessed earth of light in such 
 a manner, that they can neither be rendered weak, nor shaken 
 at all.’ The powers of darkness fell together in wild confusion, 
 until in their blind career of strife they came so close to the kingdom 
 of light, that at length a gleam out of this kingdom, which had 
 hitherto been entirely unknown to them, streamed upon them, 
 They now left off their contention against one another, and, in- 
 voluntarily attracted by the shining of the Light, they united 
 together to force their way into the kingdom of Light, and 
 to appropriate to themselves some portion of this Light’. It 
 appears here somewhat inconsistent in Manes, who ascribes an 
 imperturbable firmness to the kingdom of Light, to say, ““ But 
 when the Father of the most blessed Light saw a great devasta- 
 tion arise from the darkness, and threaten his holy Atons, had he 
 not sent a special Divine power*® to conquer and annihilate the 
 race of darkness at once, in order that after its annihilation peace 
 might be the portion of the dwellers in the light*.” Simplicius 
 and Euodius have reproached him here with a contradiction to 
 himself; but this accusation relates rather to the mythical or sym- 
 bolical mode of representation, than to the train of thought which 
 it envelopes. The fundamental notion of Manes, as of the 
 Gnostics, was this, that the blind power of nature which opposed 
 the Divine Being, being tamed and conquered by mixture with 
 it, would be rendered utterly powerless. 
 
 The King of the kingdom of Light caused the Aon, the 
 Mother of Life’, to emanate from him to protect its borders. The 
 
 1 This earth of light Manes did not conceive as anything distinct from the ori- 
 ginal Supreme Being, but all was only a different modification of the one Divine 
 Being of Light. 
 
 2 We recognise the idea which is the foundation of this, namely, that Evil is at 
 enmity with itself, and unites only when it engages in a contest with Good, which is 
 the attractive power with which Good acts upon Evil itself; a thing which certainly 
 is a contradiction to the Dualistic dogma of an Absolute Evil. 
 
 3 Aliquod nimium ac preclarum et virtute potens numen. In the system of 
 Zoroaster also the Amschaspands is represented as an armed champion for the 
 kingdom of light. 
 
 4 The Epistola Fundamenti in the Book de fide contra Manichaos, c. 11., which, 
 perhaps, proceeded from the pen of Euodius, bishop of Uzala in Numidia. (This is 
 to be found in the Appendix to the viiith tome of the Benedictine edition of 
 Augustine ) 
 
 > μητὴρ τῆς Gwe. 
 
150 THE MOTHER OF LIGHT. 
 
 very name of this Genius shows that it represents ‘the supreme 
 soul of the world,’ that the Divine light giving up the unity of the 
 kingdom of light, was now to divide itself into a multitude, and 
 develope itself in the struggle against the ungodly into separate 
 beings, each with a peculiar existence. The Mother of Light, 
 like the ἄνω σοφια of the Valentinian system, may not have been 
 affected as yet by the kingdom of darkness... . and herein 
 would also lie the difference between the higher soul of the world, 
 
 belonging to the kingdom of light, and a reflection of it, which 
 had mingled itself with the kingdom of darkness’. This Mother 
 of Light produced the First-man (original-man) in order to set 
 him in opposition to the kingdom of darkness . . . . and here is 
 the idea of the dignity of human nature, which we observed 
 among the Gnostics*. The First man sets out upon the contest 
 with the five pure elements, fire, light, air, water, and earth*. 
 We here also recognise the character of Parsism, the veneration 
 of an originally-pure nature, which was troubled only by being in- 
 termixed with Ahriman; and according to the Parsie doctrines, a 
 life streaming forth from the kingdom of light is acknowledged 
 among the original elements, and they are called forth through 
 its fruitful and enlivening power, as fellow-champions against the 
 destroying influence of Ahriman. 
 
 But that First Man was conquered in the contest, and became 
 in danger of falling into the kingdom of Ahriman; he prays to 
 the King of the kingdom of Light, who causes the Living Spirit 
 to emanate in order to assist him*. ‘This lifts him up again into 
 the kingdom of Light; but the powers of darkness had already 
 succeeded in destroying a portion of the armour of the First Man, 
 and swallowing up a portion of his existence as a being of light ; 
 
 ‘ Simplicius in Epictet. p. 187. ed. Salmas. gives an excellent portraiture of the 
 Manichzan doctrine in this respect; odre τὸ Towroy ἀγαθον κακυνεσθαι λεγουσιν, 
 ovre Ta ἀλλα Ayala Ta TOOCEXWE αὖτ @ συνόντα, THY μητερα THE ζωης, και Tov 
 δημιουργον (the ζων πνευμα) και Tove ἐκει αἰωνας. 
 
 2 The zpwroc ἀνθρωπος of Manes is to be compared with the προὼν ἀνθρωπὸος 
 of the Valentinians, the Adam Kadmon, and especially the Kajomorts of the Zend- 
 avesta, about whom there are many points of resemblance. It is most highly pro- 
 bable that Manes received this Parsic idea into his system. 
 
 % According to the notion of Manes, everything which exists in the kingdom of 
 Light has its counterpart in the kingdom of Darkness. The dark earth stands op- 
 posed to the earth of light, and the five elements of darkness are opposed to the five 
 pure elements. 
 
 4 The ζων mvevua in the Gnostic Acta Thome, which contain much that re- 
 sembles Manicheeism, 
 
THE SOUL OF THE WORLD. Ὕλη. 15] 
 
 and thus we arrive at the notion of the Soul of the World mixed 
 with matter’. Here we find also an affinity with the Gnostic 
 notions, according to which the karw σοφία was saved out of the 
 kingdom of Hyle by means of the Soter sent to her assistance ; 
 but still it was, nevertheless, a seed of the Divine Life, fallen 
 down into the matter, which (7. e. the seed) must be purified and 
 developed’. This must necessarily happen; through the magical 
 power of the Divine Life, of the Light of the Soul, the wild 
 stormy kingdom of Darkness is to become involuntarily softened, 
 and at last rendered powerless. The taming of that stormy, 
 blind, power of Nature is just the very object of the formation of 
 the world. Manes is said to have attempted to make his doctrine 
 intelligible by the following parable:—A good shepherd sees a 
 lion fall upon his flock, he digs a pit, and throws a he-goat into 
 it; the lion runs up eagerly in order to devour the goat; but he 
 falls into the pit and cannot get out of it again. The shepherd, 
 however, succeeds in drawing up the goat again, while he leaves 
 the lion shut up in the pit, and thereby renders him harmless to 
 his flock *;—just as the kingdom of Darkness becomes harmless, 
 and the souls swallowed up by it are at last saved, and brought 
 back again to their kindred habitation. But now after the Living 
 Spirit had raised man again to the kingdom of Light, he began 
 preparations for the process of purifying the soul that is inter- 
 mingled with the kingdom of Darkness, and this is the cause of the 
 whole creation of the world, and the object of all the whole course 
 of the world*. That portion of the soul which had not been 
 affected by connection with matter, or with the Being of Dark- 
 ness, he raised up above the earth, so that it should have its place 
 in the sun and in the moon, and thence should spread forth its 
 influence, in order to free the souls which were akin to it, and 
 which were held captive by the kingdom of Darkness, and spread 
 abroad over all nature, through the purifying process of the de- 
 velopment of the vegetative and animal life, and thus to attract 
 them to itself again. 
 
 ' The ψυχὴ ἁπαντων. 
 
 2 Titus of Bostra, lib. i. c. Manich. c. 12. thus excellently portrays the Mani- 
 cheean doctrine: ὁ ἀγαθος duvapw ἀποστελλει Twa, φυλαξουσαν μεν δηθεν τους 
 ὁρους, τὸ δ᾽ ἀληθες δέλεαρ ἐσομενὴν εἰς ἀκουσιον Ty ὕλῃ σωφρονισμον, ἐδεθη 
 τροποὸν τινα ὡσπερ θηριον. 
 
 % Disputat. cum Archelao, c. 25. This parable bears altogether the stamp of 
 genuineness, at least it is in the spirit of Manicheeism. 
 
 4 Just as in the Valentinian scheme, the Soler operates after he has first raised 
 the Sophia. 
 
152 MANES’ MYSTICAL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Manes also, in a manner similar to the Parsic conception 
 of the universe, beheld the same struggle between Ormuzd and 
 Ahriman, and the same process of purification in the physical as 
 well as in the moral world. In contradiction to the spirit of 
 Christianity, he mixed the physical with the religious and ethic, 
 founded doctrines of belief and morals on speculative cosmogonies, 
 and a natural philosophy, which being deduced more from inward 
 conceptions than from experimental knowledge, must often have 
 been unintelligible. Such a mixture was alike prejudicial to 
 religion, which became flooded by a multitude of things wholly 
 foreign to it and to knowledge, which thus is compelled to lose 
 that soberness of understanding which is necessary to her’. Just 
 as in the Parsic system of religion, in the struggle between 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman in the physical and the spiritual world, the 
 sun and the moon perform an important part in the conduet of the 
 general system of development and purification, so also was it in 
 the system of Manes. Almost what the Zoroastric system taught 
 of Mithras as the Genius (Ized) of the Sun, was attributed by 
 Manes to his Christ, the pure soul, whose operations proceeded 
 from out of the sun and the moon. As he derived this soul from 
 the original man, he made this the explanation of the Bible-name, 
 the Son of Man (υἱος ἀνθρωπου)ὴ. and as he distinguished the 
 pure, free soul, whose throne is in the sun, from the soul which is 
 akin to it, and extendeth throughout all nature, but defiled and 
 imprisoned by its mixture with matter; he also made a distinc- 
 tion between a Son of Man elevated above all connection with 
 matter, and subject to no suffering, and a Son of Man crucified, 
 
 1 How little Manicheeism understood the interests of religion and the nature of 
 Christianity ; how little it understood the one thing needful for man, is shown by the 
 remarkable words in which Felix, the Manichee, endeavoured to prove that Manes 
 was the reformer of religion (the Paraclete) promised by Christ. ‘ Et quia venit 
 Manicheeus et per suam predicationem docuit nos initium, medium et finem ; docuit 
 nos de fabrica mundi, quare facta est et unde facta est, et qui fecerunt; docuit nos 
 quare dies et quare nox; docuit nos de cursu solis et lune; quia hoc in Paulo nec 
 in ceterorum apostolorum Scripturis, hoc credimus, quia (dass, that) ipse est Para- 
 cletus.”,—Augustin. Acta c. Felice Manichzo, lib. i. ο. 9. In Alexander of Lycopo- 
 lis, in Egypt, the opponent of Manicheeism in the beginning of the fourth century, 
 we find the opposite error to this of a dilution of Christianity, which, mistaking its 
 peculiar and essential features, refers it only to certain general religious and moral 
 truths, torn away from that with which they are connected in Christianity. With 
 him the chief matter of Christianity is the doctrine of an Eternal God, as Creator, 
 and good morality for the people. See the beginning of his treatise against the 
 Manichees. 
 
CHRIST CRUCIFIED EVERYWHERE. 153 
 
 as it were, in matter, and subject to suffering’. Where the seed 
 sown burst forth out of the dark bosom of the earth, and deve- 
 loped itself into plants, blossoms, and fruit, there Manes saw the 
 victorious development of the principle of Light freeing itself by 
 degrees from the fetters of matter; and he saw here that the 
 living soul, as it were, which is kept bound in the limbs of the 
 Princes of Darkness, being released from them, soars up aloft in 
 freedom, and mingles in the pure atmosphere’, where the souls, 
 which are perfectly purified, ascend the Ships of Light (of the sun 
 and of the moon), which are prepared to conduct them to their 
 native place. But that which bears upon it multifarious stains is 
 by degrees and in small quantities distilled from them® by the 
 power of heat, and mingles itself with all trees, plants, and vege- 
 tables. 
 
 These were samples of his mystical philosophy of nature, which 
 were brought forward sometimes in singular myths, which, al- 
 though occasionally indecent, were nothing very remarkable to 
 the imagination of Oriental people, and sometimes under the 
 covering of Christian expressions. Thus the Manichees could 
 ‘speak of a suffering Son of Man who hangs on every tree, of a 
 Christ crucified in every soul and in the whole world, and they 
 could explain the symbols of the suffering Son of Man in the Last 
 Supper according to their own sense. Just as well, also, or 
 rather with greater justice—for this intermixture of religion 
 with the knowledge of nature was more heathen than Christian 
 —the Manichees might use heathen myths as a covering for 
 their ideas; and thus the boy, Dionysos, torn to pieces by 
 the Titans, as celebrated in the Bacchic mysteries, is nothing but 
 the soul swallowed up by the powers of darkness, the Divine life 
 divided into pieces by matter*. 
 
 ' The vioc ἀνθρωπου ἐμπαθῆης, and the vioc ἀνθρωπου ἀπαθῆης. 
 
 2 The pure holy air, which is exactly in accordance with the Parsic worship of 
 Nature, and a common term in the Zend-avesta. 
 
 3 [I have some doubt as to the construction of the original sentence. But I con- 
 ceive the ‘ihnen,’ ‘ from them,’ to refer to the purified souls,—that these stains are 
 separated from them. H. J. R.] 
 
 4 See Alexand. Lycopol. c. 5. The following are a few peculiarly characteristic 
 Manicheean passages, as proofs of the exposé given above. In the Thesaurus of 
 Manes the following passage occurs: “ Viva anima, que earundem (adversarum 
 potestatum) membris tenebatur, hac occasione lunata evadit, et suo purissimo aeri 
 miscetur: ubi penitus abluta anime adcendunt ad lucidas naves, que sibi ad evec- 
 tionem atque ad sue patriz transfretationem sunt praeparate. Id vero quod adhuc 
 
 adversi generis maculas portat, per wstum atque calores particulatum descendit, 
 atque arboribus, czterisque plantationibus ac satis omnibus miscetur.” Euodius de 
 
154 NATURE’S BANISHED SOULS.—MAN. 
 
 The Powers of Darkness were now threatened by the danger, 
 that by means of the operation of the Spirit of the Sun upon the 
 purifying process of Nature, all the Light and Life kept prisoners 
 in their members would be by degrees withdrawn from them, 
 namely, the soul which had been seized upon by them, which 
 struggles after a release, and which is always attracted by the 
 kindred spirit of the Sun, constantly frees itself more and more 
 and flees away, so that at last the kingdom of Darkness, robbed 
 of all its stolen Light, should be wholly abandoned to its own in- 
 ward hatefulness and to its death. What then was to be done ? 
 A Being was to be produced, into which the Soul of Nature, that 
 struggles to free itself, should be driven and fast bound, in which all 
 the scattered Light and Life of Nature, all which the Powers of 
 Darkness kept imprisoned in their members, and which was con- 
 stantly more and more enticed away from them by the power of 
 the Sun, is concentrated; this is The Man, the image of the 
 Original Man, and therefore already destined through his form 
 to rule over Nature’. The matter stands thus. The Lofty Light- 
 Form of the original Man (which was also apparently peculiar 
 to the Son of Man dwelling in the Sun’) sends down light from 
 the Sun into the kingdom of Darkness, or the Material World ; 
 the Powers of Darkness are seized with desire after the Light- Form, 
 but with confusion also. ‘Their Prince now speaks to them: ‘ What 
 think ye that great Light to be which rises up yonder? Behold! 
 how it shakes the pole, how it strikes to earth many of our 
 
 Fide, c. 14. From the Letter of Manes to the maiden Menoch, we have this passage: 
 “‘agnoscendo ex quo genere animarum emanaveris, quod est confusum omnibus 
 corporibus, et saporibus et speciebus variis coheret.’’ Augustin. opus imper- 
 fectum contra Julian. lib. iii. ὃ 172. There is also a passage of Faustus, the Mani- 
 chee, who lived in the first half of the fifth century, in which the Holy Ghost is re- 
 presented as the enlivening and sanctifying power of God, working through the air 
 towards the purifying process of Nature; and the doctrine of the birth of Christ from 
 the Virgin (which the Manichees, being Docete, cannot agree to in its proper sense) 
 is represented as a symbol of the birth of that patibilis Jesus from the virgin bosom 
 of the earth through the operation of the power of the Holy Ghost: “Spiritus 
 sancti, qui est majestas tertia, aeris hunc omnem ambitum sedem fatemur ac diver- 
 sorium, cujus ex viribus ac spiritali profusione terram quoque concipientem gignere 
 patibilem Jesum, qui est vita ac salus hominum, omni suspensus ex ligno. Qua- 
 propter et nobis circa universam (i. ὁ. all productions of Nature, considered as reve- 
 lations of the same Divine principle of life, suffering under the imprisonment of mat- 
 ter, revelations of the same Jesus patibilis) et vobis similiter erga panem et calicem 
 par religio est.’ August. c. Faust. c. xx. 
 
 1 Compare the parallel doctrines of the Ophites. 
 
 * Alexand. Lycopolit.c. 4. elkova δὲ ἐν ἡλιῳ ἑωρασθαι τοιαυτὴν, οἷον ἐστι To 
 του ἀνθρωπου εἰδος. 
 
 12 
 
MAN A MICROCOSM. 155 
 
 Powers! Therefore is it fitting, that ye should rather bestow on 
 me whatsoever ye have of Light in your powers; and then I will 
 make an image of that Great One, which appears full of glory, 
 through which we may rule, and may hereafter free ourselves 
 from our abode in Darkness.” ‘Thus human nature is the image, 
 in this dark world, of higher existence, through which the higher 
 (everything of a higher nature) may be attracted hither and held 
 fast. After they had heard this, and had consulted together for 
 a long time, they thought it best to fulfil his desire, for they did 
 not believe that this Light could long maintain itself among them’, 
 and therefore they considered it best to offer it to their Prince, 
 because they did not doubt that by this means they should obtain 
 the predominance. ‘The Powers of Darkness now paired them- 
 selves, and begat children, in whom their common natures and 
 powers were again represented, and in whom everything which 
 they had of the essence of Light and Darkness in them repro- 
 duced itself. All these children of theirs the Prince of Darkness 
 devours, and by this means concentrates in himself all the Light- 
 Existence which was spread abroad among the individual Powers 
 of Darkness, and he produced Man, in whom all the powers of 
 the kingdoms of Darkness and of Light, which had here inter- 
 mingled with each other, assembled together. Hence Man is 
 considered as a microcosm,—a reflection of the whole world of 
 Light and of Darkness, a mirror of all the Powers of the Heaven 
 and of the Earth’. 
 
 1 This is the most important matter. 
 
 2 Manes, Ep. Fundamenti; Augustin. de Natura Boni, c. 46. Construebantur 
 et continebantur omnium imagines, ccelestium ac terrenarum virtutum: ut pleni vi- 
 delicet orbis, id quod formabatur, similitudinem obtineret. We must not here sup- 
 press the fact, that in respect to the main matter of the formation of man, a somewhat 
 different construction of the Manicheean system is possible, which Mosheim, with 
 his peculiar acuteness, has thoroughly worked out, and for which certainly something 
 of weight may be advanced. Unfortunately, the gaps which have been left in the ex- 
 tant fragments of Manes, which are the most secure foundation for any account of his 
 system, are too great to allow us to decide the inquiry by his own words. We have 
 followed that mode of construction by which man was supposed to be created later 
 than the rest of Nature, in order to keep fast in Nature the soul whose tendency 
 was to escape. The last-quoted words of Manes appear to support this representa- 
 tion. So also does the Disputat. Archelai, § 7., as well as the words of Alexander of 
 Lycopolis, about the form of man shedding down light from the sun. It would then 
 be the same Spirit of the Sun, who, after the first separation of Light from Dark- 
 ness, operating upon the purifying process of Nature, had put the Powers of Dark- 
 ness (who feared tu be thereby robbed of all their spiritual being which constantly 
 escaped from them) into confusion, and which afterwards appeared in Christ as the 
 
156 DOMINION OF THE SOUL OVER MATTER. 
 
 That which is here described, is repeated constantly in the course 
 of Nature, when at the birth of a man, the wild powers of Matter, 
 the Powers of Darkness, pairing themselves together, produce a 
 human Nature, in which they mingle together whatsoever they have 
 both of the higher and of the lower Life, and in which they endea- 
 vour to fetter the Soul of Nature, which, while it struggles after 
 freedom, is held prisoner by them’. 
 
 Also, according to the Manicheean scheme, the Powers of 
 Darkness are involuntarily subservient to a higher law, and by 
 their machinations against the kingdom of Light, prepare de- 
 struction for themselves. ‘The Light, (it. Light Nature, or par- 
 ticles partaking of the essential attributes of Light) or the Soul, 
 concentrated in man’s nature, thereby only arrives the sooner at a 
 consciousness of itself, and at the development of its own peculiar 
 nature. As the common Soul of the World endeavours to subject 
 to itself all existing Matter, 7. 6. the great Body of the World, so 
 
 Redeemer. To this the passage of Alexand. Lycop. appears to point, c. 4. τον dn 
 Χριστον εἶναι vovy, ob On και αφικομενον ποτε (then, when the Powers of Darkness 
 endeavoured, by the formation of man, to retain the soul which threatened to escape 
 from them, and thus to frustrate the work of the Spirit of the Sun) πλειστον τι τῆς 
 δυναμεως TavTncg προς τον Θεον λελύυκεναι Kat On TO τελευταιον, &c. The 
 fragments also of a Manichee in the preface to the II Ird Division of Titus of Bostra, 
 may be conveniently explained in the same manner. 
 
 But we might also, with Mosheim, set the formation of man in the system of 
 Manes before the whole creation of the world. The Powers of Darkness were disturbed 
 at the appearance of the ζωνπνευμα, which threatened to tear away from them all the 
 souls they had seized upon. Hence they now united themselves in order to form Man, 
 after the image of that original Man, whom they saw shining from afar (this was that 
 ‘ille magnus qui gloriosus apparuiv’ ), in order that they might through him enchant and 
 hold fast the souls which the Living Spirit threatened to rob them of. It was, then, 
 after the intention of the Living Spirit, to free at once the imprisoned souls, had 
 been frustrated by these machinations, that he for the first time thought of the crea- 
 tion of the world, in order to effect by degrees, what he had been prevented from accom- 
 plishing at once. The words of Alexander of Lycopolis, who, however, did not find 
 himself quite at home in the train of thought belonging to the Manichean system, 
 appear to support this view, when he accuses the Manicheean system of incon- 
 sistency (Inconsequenz): c. 23. ἐν ἡλιῳ Oe τὴν εἰκονα (του ἀνθρωπου) ἑωρασθαι 
 λεγουσιν, O¢ ἐγενετὸο κατ᾽ αὐτους ἀπο τῆς προς THY DANY VOTE- 
 ρον διακρισεῶως, for, according to these words, (if Alexander has understood 
 Manes properly, or the Manichee whose works he read, has properly represented 
 the doctrines of his master) Manes must have imagined the separation of the soul 
 unaffected by Matter, or of the Spirit of the Sun, to have taken place before the rest 
 and after the formation of man. 
 
 ! The words of Manes, ]. c., are these, “ sicuti etiam nunc fieri videmus, corporum 
 formatricem naturam mali inde vires sumentem figurare.”” These words seem im- 
 portant as a hint, which indicates the symbolical meaning of the whole narration. 
 
ALLEGORICAL MEANING OF PARADISE. 10 
 
 must this Soul, derived as it is from the same origin as that, 
 govern this miniature material world. ‘The first soul,” says 
 Manes’, “ which flowed forth from the God of Light, received 
 this form of the body, in order that it might govern the body by 
 its restraints (lit. bridle).” The soul of the First Man’, as stand- 
 ing nearer to the Original Source of the kingdom of Light, was 
 therefore endued with pre-eminent powers. But yet, in conse- 
 quence of its double descent, the Nature of the First Man con- 
 sisted of two opposite parts; the one a soul akin to the kingdom of 
 Light, already in possession of the fulness of its power, and the 
 other a body akin to the kingdom of Darkness, together with 
 a blind matter-born capability of desire, which it derived from 
 the same kingdom’. 
 
 Under these circumstances, all depended, with the Powers of 
 Darkness, on their being able to oppress the Light-Nature which 
 had been superinduced on man, and to retain it in a condition of 
 unconsciousness. They invited man to eat of all the trees of 
 Paradise, that is, to enjoy all earthly desires, while they only 
 wished to restrain him from eating of the tree of the knowledge 
 of Good and Evil, that is, from attaining to a consciousness of the 
 opposition between Light and Darkness, or between the Divine 
 and the Ungodly in his own nature, and in the whole world *. 
 But an angel of Light, or rather the Spirit of the Sun himself, 
 persuaded man to transgress the commandment, that is, he led 
 him to that consciousness which the Powers of Darkness wished 
 to withhold from him, and thereby secured him the victory over 
 them.. This is the truth, which is the foundation of that narrative 
 of Genesis, only we must change the persons engaged in the 
 transaction, and instead of God we must put the Prince of Dark- 
 ness, and instead of the Serpent we must put the Spirit of the 
 Sun’. 
 
 1 In the letter quoted above, 186. 
 
 * “ Quasi de prime facta flore substantiz,” says Manes, l. c. 
 
 3 The Wuxn ἄλογος. 
 
 4 See Disputat. Archelai, c. 10. 
 
 5 This would be the explanation of the doctrine of Manes, if the representation 
 given by the Manichee in Titus of Bostra (at the end of the preface to the third 
 book) be the original one; and it may be said that it suits the Manicheean system 
 extremely well, and dovetails in with the account given of it in the Disputation of 
 Archelaus. It may, perhaps, surprise us, that Manes, who was brought up in the 
 Parsic religion, should have made the serpent, which among the Parses is the symbol 
 of Ahriman, into the symbol of the Good Spirit ; but according to the view given 
 
 above this consideration forms no difficulty. As he saw iu the religious documents 
 of the Jews so many corruptions derived from the Spirit of Darkness, he saw his 
 
158 ALLEGORICAL MEANING OF PARADISE. 
 
 As now the kingdom of Light had triumphed over the Powers 
 of Darkness, the latter made use of a new means, in order to take 
 prisoner the Light-Nature, which had now attained to self-con- 
 sciousness, and to detach it from its connexion with its original 
 Source. ‘They seduced the First Man, by means of the Eva be- 
 stowed upon him as a companion, into giving himself up to fleshly 
 desires, and thereby, becoming untrue to his nature as a Being of 
 Light, to make himself the servant of a foreign domination'. 
 The consequence which flowed thence was, that the Soul, which 
 by its original power ought to raise itself into the kingdom of 
 Light, divided itself by propagation, and became enclosed anew 
 in material bodies, so that the Powers of Darkness could for 
 ever repeat what they had done at the production of the First 
 Man. 
 
 Every man also has now the same destination as the first, 
 namely, to rule by means of the power of the Spirit over matter. 
 Every one consists of the same two parts, of which the nature of 
 the first man consisted, and, therefore, all depends upon this, 
 that man, remembering his origin, should know how to separate 
 these two parts properly from each other. He who thinks that 
 he has received his sensuous nature, (sinnlichkeit) together with 
 its appetites, from God,—he who does not know from the very first 
 origin of human nature, that it (viz. this sinnlichkeit, or his cor- 
 poreal and sensuous endowments,) proceeds from the kingdom of 
 Darkness, will easily allow himself to be seduced into serving 
 his senses, and thereby lose his higher Light-Nature, and become 
 unfaithful to the kingdom of Light. ‘Therefore does Manes say in 
 his Letter of Principles (Epistola Fundamenti), ‘If it had been 
 given to man to know clearly the whole condition of Adam’s and 
 Eve’s origin, they would never have been subjected to decay and 
 death.” And hence, also, he writes to the virgin Menoch’ thus : 
 «¢ May our God himself enlighten thy soul, and reveal to thee 
 
 corruptions and falsifying influence exerted also in a wilful corruption of this nar- 
 rative, by changing the places of those engaged in the transaction. 
 
 1 As we have no accounts of the arrangement of these events in the Manichean 
 system as to the time of their occurrence, we may also place their relations to each 
 other in a different manner. It may be supposed that Adam first allowed himself to 
 be seduced into sin, but afterwards being brought by the influence of the Sun-Spirit 
 to a consciousness of the opposition between the flesh and the Spirit, and Light and 
 Darkness, that he began a more holy life. See Augustin. de Moribus Manichzorum, 
 lib. ii. c, 19. 
 
 2 Augustin. op. imperfect. c. Julian,, lib. iii. § 172. 
 
DESTINATION OF MAN. 159 
 
 thy righteousness, because thou art the fruit of a godly stem’. 
 Thou also hast become Light, by recognising what thou wast be- 
 fore, and from what race of Souls thou art sprung, which being in- 
 termingled with all bodies is connected with various forms; for as 
 souls are engendered by souls, so is the form of the body com- 
 posed of the nature of the body. That also, which is born of the 
 flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. But 
 know that the spirit is the soul, soul of soul, flesh of flesh’.” He 
 then appealed to the custom of infant baptism, which was even 
 then prevalent in the Parsic Church, as a proof that Christians 
 themselves, by their mede of proceeding, took for granted such 
 an original defilement of man’s nature. TI inquire,” he says, in 
 the Letter* we have quoted, “whether all evil is actual evil? 
 Wherefore, then, does any one receive purification by means of 
 water, before he has done any evil, as he cannot possibly have 
 been obnoxious to evil in his own person? But inasmuch as he 
 has been the subject of no evil, and yet must be purified, they 
 point out ipso facto, a descent from an evil race; even they them- 
 selves, whose fancy will not allow them to understand what they 
 say, nor what they assume.” 
 
 The particle of Light (literally, the Light-Nature) which from 
 its removal from the source of that concentrated Existence-of- 
 Light (literally, Light-Being) in the person of Adam, from which 
 all souls emanated, was constantly becoming more and more de- 
 filed through its continued connexion with matter,—so that it now 
 remained no longer in possession of the original power which it 
 had, when it first flowed forth fresh from the original source of 
 the kingdom of Light. The Law, however, presupposes the 
 original power of the Light-Nature, to be still in existence, in 
 order that it (the Law) may be put in practice. “The Law is 
 holy,” says Manes, “ but it is holy for holy souls, the command- 
 ment is upright and good, but for upright and good souls’.” He 
 says in another passage’, “If we do good, it is not the work of 
 the flesh, for the works of the flesh are manifest (Gal. v. 19); or 
 
 ! The Revelation consists in man’s being brought to a consciousness of his Light- 
 Nature. 
 
 2 According to the Light-Emanation System adopted by Manes, he could not 
 make any difference between the Spirit of God and the spirit of man, between spirit 
 and soul. 
 
 3 Augustin. op. c. Julian. imperfect., lib. iii. ὃ 187. 
 
 4 TL. c. c. Julian., 111. 186. J 5.171. 
 
100 INCARNATION OF CHRIST.—~THE SUN-SPIRIT. 
 
 if we do evil, then it is not the work of the soul, for the fruit of 
 the Spirit is peace, joy. And the Apostle exclaims, in the 
 Epistle to the Romans, “The good which I would I do not, but 
 the evil which I would not that I do.” Ye perceive therefore 
 the voice of the contending soul, which defends its freedom 
 against lust, for it was distressed, because Sin, that is, Satan, had 
 worked all lust in it. The reverence for the Law discovers all its 
 evil, because the Law blames all its practices, which the flesh δά- 
 mires and esteems; for all bitterness in the renunciation of lust 
 is sweet for the soul, which is nourished thereby and thereby 
 attains to strength. At last the Soul of him who withdraws him- 
 self from every gratification of lust, is awake, it becomes mature, 
 and increases; but the gratification of lust is usually the means 
 of loss to the soul’. And now, in order at last to free the souls 
 which are akin to him from the power of Darkness, to animate 
 them anew, to give them a perfect victory over it, and to attract 
 them to himself, the same Spirit of the Sun, who has hitherto 
 conducted the whole process of purification for Nature and for the 
 spiritual world, (which two, according to the principles of Manes 
 here laid down, make up only one whole) must reveal himself in 
 human nature *. 
 
 But between Light and Darkness no communion is possible. 
 ‘‘The Light shines in Darkness,” said Manes, using the words 
 of St. John, after his own interpretation, * but the Darkness can- 
 not comprehend it.” The Son of the Original Light, the Spirit 
 of the Sun, could not ally himself with any material body; he 
 could only envelop himself in a phantomic form, perceptible by 
 the senses, in order that he might be perceived by man as a 
 creature of sense. ‘‘ While the Supreme Light,” Manes writes‘, 
 ‘“‘put himself on a footing with his own people as to his nature, 
 he assumed a body among material bodies, although he himself 
 is every thingy and only one whole nature.” By an arbitrary 
 mode of interpretation, he appealed for a proof of his Docetism, 
 
 a Moai. U7 7 
 
 2 On the Incarnations of the Sun in the old Oriental religions, see Kreuzer’s 
 Symbolik, (New edition, 2nd Part, 53. 207.) It was quite consistent, according to 
 the Manichean System, for the Manichees to say, (ap. Alexander of Lycopolis, c. 24.) 
 that Christ, as the νους, was Ta ὀντα παντα. So also inthe Acts of Thomas, 
 p- 10, κυριε, ὁ ἐν πασιν wy και διερχομενος διαπαντων Kat ἐγκειμενος race 
 τοις ἐργοις σου και δια της παντων ἐνεργειας φανερουμενος. 
 
 3 In the Letter to one Adas or Addas. Fabricii Biblioth. Grzeca, ed. nov. vol. vii. 
 p. 316. 
 
THE SUN-SPIRIT. 161 
 
 to the cireumstance, that Christ once, (John viii. 59.) when 
 the Jews wished to stone him, escaped through the midst of 
 them without their being able to lay hold on him, and also that 
 Christ at his transfiguration appeared to his disciples in his true 
 Light-Form'. He assumed improperly the name Christ or 
 Messias, in accommodating himself to the notions of the Jews’. 
 The Prince of Darkness endeavoured to effect the crucifixion of 
 Jesus, because he did not know him as the being elevated above 
 all suffering ; and this crucifixion was, of course, nothing but an 
 apparent one. This appearance represented the crucifixion of 
 the Soul overwhelmed with matter, which the Spirit of the Sun 
 desired to elevate to himself. As the crucifixion of that soul 
 which was spread over all matter only served to facilitate the 
 annihilation of the Kingdom of Darkness, so also still more did 
 that apparent crucifixion of the Supreme Soul. ‘Therefore Manes 
 said, “ The adversary, who hoped that he had crucified the 
 Saviour, the Father of the righteous, was crucified himself; that 
 which happened, and that which seemed to happen in this case, 
 were two different things*.” The Manicheean view, which 
 made the doctrine of Christ crucified merely symbolical, is clearly 
 displayed in an apocryphal writing about the travels of the Apostles*. 
 While John is in anxiety during the passion of Christ, the latter 
 appears to him and tells him, that all this happens only for the 
 lower multitude in Jerusalem*®. ‘The human person of Christ 
 now disappears, and instead of him there appears a cross of pure 
 light, surrounded by various other forms, which, nevertheless, re- 
 presented only one form and one image (as a symbol of the various 
 forms under which the one Soul appears). From above the cross 
 there proceeded a divine and cheering voice, which said to him, 
 ** The Cross of Light will, for your sake, be called, sometimes 
 the Logos, sometimes Christ, sometimes the Door, sometimes the 
 
 ' See the Fragment from the Epistles of Manes, 1. c. 
 
 2 ἡ του Χριστου προσηγορια ὄνομα ἐστι καταχρήστικον. 1. c. 
 
 3 From the Epistola Fundamenti, Euod. de fid. ο. 28. τὴν δυναμιν τὴν θειαν 
 ἔνηρμοσθαι, ἐνεσταυρωσθαι Ty ὕλῃ. Alex. Lycopolit. c. 4. Christus in omni mundo 
 et omni anima crucifixus. Secundin. Ep. ad Augustin. The words of Faustus the 
 Manichee are these: Augustin. c. Faustum, lib. xxxii. Crucis ejus mystica fixio, 
 qua nostrz anime passionis monstrantur vulnera. 
 
 4 περιοδοι ἀποστόλων. Concil. Nic. II. actio v. ed. Mansi, t. xiii. p. 167. 
 
 5 τῳ KaTw ὅλῳ. 
 
 VOL. II. M 
 
162 ἸῊΕ FINAL FATE OF EVIL. 
 
 Way, sometimes Jesus, sometimes the Father, sometimes the 
 Spirit, sometimes Life, sometimes the Truth, sometimes Faith, 
 and sometimes Grace.” 
 
 As Manes joined those among the Parses who maintained an 
 absolute dualism, he did not propose as the object of the whole 
 course of the world a reconciliation between the good and the evil 
 principle, which would not have suited his theory, but an entire 
 separation of Light from Darkness, and an utter annihilation of the 
 power of the latter. After matter had been deprived of all Light 
 and Life, which did not belong to her, she was to be burnt up into 
 a dead mass’. All souls might become partakers of redemption in 
 virtue of their Light-Nature ; but if they voluntarily gave them- 
 selves up to the service of evil or of Darkness, by way of punish- 
 ment, after the general separation of the two kingdoms, they 
 were to be driven into the dead mass of matter, and set to keep 
 watch over it. Manes in his Lpistola Fundamenti expressed him- 
 self thus on this point: those souls which have allowed themselves 
 to be seduced from their original Light-Nature through love of 
 the World, and have become enemies of the holy Light, that is, 
 which have armed themselves openly for the destruction of the 
 Holy Element, which serve the fiery Spirit, and have oppressed 
 by hostile persecution the Holy Church’ and the elect to be found 
 in it*, that is, the observers of the commandments of heaven— 
 these souls will be detained far from the blessedness and the 
 glory of the Holy Earth. And because they have suffered them- 
 selves to be conquered by evil, they will remain in company 
 with this family of evil, so that that Earth of peace and those 
 regions of immortality are closed against them. That will 
 happen to them for this reason, that, because they gave 
 themselves up to evil works, they became estranged from the 
 Life and Freedom of the Holy Light. Thus, they cannot be 
 received into that kingdom of peace, but are chained down into 
 that terrible mass (of matter left to itself, or Darkness) for 
 which a guard is necessary. These Souls will thus remain 
 entangled among those things, which they have loved, for they 
 
 1 Tit. Bostr. 1. c. 30. Alex. Lycopol. c. 5. 
 
 2 That is, the Manicheean sect. 
 
 3 A persecution of the Brahmins of the Manichees, or the Electi, which was a 
 special crime ; all this was in full accordance with the oriental ideas of the priest- 
 hood. 
 
CRITICAL NOTIONS OF FAUSTUS. 163 
 
 did not separate themselves from them, while they had the 
 opportunity ". 
 
 In regard to the Manicheean view of the sources of know- 
 ledge of religion, the revelations of the Paraclete or Manes, were 
 the highest, the only infallible sources, by which all others must 
 be judged. They set out from the principle that the doctrines 
 of Manes include the absolute truths, which are evident to our 
 reason ; whatever does not accord with them, is contrary to reason, 
 and false, wherever it may be found. But they now accepted 
 also the writings of the New Testament in part; but, while 
 they judged of them according to the paramount principle stated 
 above, they allowed themselves a very arbitrary line of criticism 
 in respect to their dogmatical and ethical use*. Partly, they 
 maintained that the original documents of religion had been adul- 
 terated by various interpolations of the Prince of Darkness * (the 
 tares amidst the good wheat); partly, Jesus and the Apostles 
 were supposed to accommodate themselves to the opinions pre- 
 valent among the Jews, in order, gradually, to render men capa- 
 ble of receiving truth in its purity; and partly, the Apostles 
 themselves were supposed on their first entrance upon the office 
 of teachers, to have been under the influence of many Jewish 
 errors. Thence they gathered that it was only by the instruction 
 of the Paraclete, that men could learn to separate the true from 
 the false in the New Testament. Faustus, the Manichee, thus 
 brings forward the principles of Manicheeism in this respect +: 
 «ς We only receive that part of the New Testament, which was 
 spoken to the honour of the Son of Glory, either by himself or 
 by the Apostles, and even then, only that which was spoken when 
 they were already Perfect or Believers. We will take no account 
 of the rest, neither what was spoken by the Apostles in simplicity 
 and ignorance, while they were as yet unacquainted with the truth, 
 nor of that which was attributed to them with evil intentions by 
 their enemies, nor of that which was imprudently maintained by 
 their writers °, and handed down to their successors. I think, 
 
 1 De Fide, c. 4. 
 
 2 Titus of Bostra says this of them in the very beginning of his third book. 
 
 3. See above, the similar principles used in the Clementine in regard to the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 * Ap. Augustin. lib. 32. 
 
 5 Namely the Evangelists, who were not Apostles. 
 
 mM 2 
 
104 SOCIETY—AUDITORES. 
 
 however, that HE was born of a woman in sin, was circumcised 
 as a Jew, that he sacrificed as an Heathen, that he was baptized 
 in an inferior manner, and was carried about the wilderness by the 
 Devil, and exposed to the most painful trials.” The same Mani- 
 chees who were content that their reason should be fettered by all 
 the decisions of Manes as divine revelations, were zealous for the 
 rights of reason, and wished to be looked upon as the only rea- 
 sonable men, when they employed themselves in separating what 
 is conformable to reason in the New Testament from that which 
 contradicts it. Faustus, the Manichee, speaks to one, who be- 
 lieves without critical discrimination in al/ which is contained 
 in the New Testament, “ Thou, that believest all blindly ; thou, 
 that dost banish reason, the gift of nature, out of mankind ; thou, 
 that makest it a scruple to yourself to judge between truth and false- 
 hood! and thou, that art not less afraid to separate good from its 
 contrary, than children are afraid of ghosts*!” 
 
 The Manichees had a composition of their religious society, 
 entirely peculiar to themselves, in which the character of Oriental 
 Mysticism may be recognized. Manes separated himself wholly, 
 as it follows from what is said above, from the greater number 
 of the Gnostic founders of sects, as these latter wished to change 
 nothing in the existing Christian Church, but only to introduce a 
 secret doctrine of the πνευματικοι» to run parallel with the Church- 
 belief of the ψυχικο. Manes, on the contrary, wished to be 
 looked upon as a Reformer of the whole Church, sent from God 
 and endued with Divine authority; he wished to give anew form 
 to the Church, which he thought entirely dislocated by the inter- 
 mixture of Judaism and Christianity’; there was to be only one true 
 Christian Church, which was to be moulded after the doctrines 
 and principles of Manes. In this, only two orders were to exist, 
 according to the distinction between an exoteric and an esoteric 
 doctrine, which was a fundamental feature of the Oriental systems 
 of religion. ‘The auditores were to form the great mass of the 
 exoterics; the writings of Manes were read to these, and the 
 doctrines laid before them in their symbolical and mystical cloth- 
 ing, but they received no explanation as to their interior and 
 
 1 Augustin. c. Faust. lib. xviii. and also lib. xi. 
 2 Hence he called other Christians, not Christians, but Galileans. Fabric. 
 Bibl. Gr. vol. vii. p. 316. 
 
ELECTI.—SACRAMENTS— BAPTISM. 165 
 
 hidden meaning ἡ. We can easily imagine how the expectation 
 of the auditores was put to the stretch, when they heard these 
 enigmatical and mysterious high-sounding things laid before 
 them, and, as it often happens, hoped that they should find lofty 
 wisdom in what was enigmatical and unintelligible! ‘The esoterics 
 were the Electi, or Perfecti®, the Caste of Priests ,—the Brahmins 
 of the Manichees*. ‘They were to lead, in celibacy, a strictly 
 ascetic and wholly contemplative life; they were to refrain from 
 all strong liquors, and from all animal food; they were to be dis- 
 tinguished by a holy innocence, which injures no living crea- 
 ture, and a religious veneration for the Divine Life which is 
 spread abroad throughout all nature; and, hence, they were not 
 only, neither to kill nor wound any animal, but not even to 
 pull any vegetable, nor to pluck any fruit or flower. ‘They 
 were to be provided with all that was needful for their sub- 
 sistence by the auditores, by whom they were to be honoured as 
 beings of a superior kind. From this caste of priests the leaders 
 of the whole religious society were chosen. As Manes wished 
 to be looked uponas the Paraclete, promised by Christ, he chose 
 twelve apostles also after the example of Christ. And this arrange- 
 ment was to be constantly maintained, that twelve such persons, 
 under the name of Magistri, should lead the whole sect. Above 
 these twelve stood a thirteenth, who, as the head of the whole 
 sect, represented Manes. Under these stood seventy-two bishops, 
 who were to answer to the seventy or seventy-two‘ disciples of 
 Jesus, and then below these, presbyters and deacons, and lastly, 
 roving missionaries of the faith ἡ. 
 
 There is considerable obscurity about the question, what the 
 Manichees held as to the celebration of the sacraments. This 
 arises from the circumstance, that, naturally enough, no authentic 
 account could be known of that which took place in the assem- 
 blies of the Zlecti, which were held very secretly; and as the 
 auditores might be supposed to answer to. the catechumens, and 
 
 1 Tt certainly follows from this, that the writings of Manes must contain a certain 
 interior meaning, understood only by the electi. 
 
 2 σελείοι, according to Theodoret, an appellation which re-appeared again among 
 the Gnostic- Manicheean sects of the middle ages. 
 
 3. Faustus, as quoted by Augustine, calls them the “ Sacerdotale Genus.” 
 
 4 According to the well known varia lectio. 
 
 5 Augustin. de Heres. c. 46. 
 
166 SACRAMENTS-—BAPTISM. 
 
 the Electi to the Fideles of the general Church, it may at once be 
 imagined that the sacrament could only be celebrated among the 
 Electi. The belief, that we are justified, in consequence of the 
 inference, which has been quoted, as made by Manes from the 
 prevailing custom of infant-baptism, in supposing that infant- 
 baptism prevailed among the Manichees, is unsound, as Mosheim 
 has already shown; in that passage, Manes intended to contro- 
 vert his adversaries out of their own conduct in respect to prin- 
 ciples, which that conduct necessarily pre-supposed, without in- 
 tending to convey any approbation of that conduct. And besides 
 the use of baptism might appear to the Manichees, according to 
 their own theory of the pure and holy Elements, as a suitable 
 ceremony for initiation into the interior of the sect, or for re- 
 ception into the number of the e/ecti. And yet it may also be 
 thought that they were not favourable to this symbol, as being a 
 Jewish one, which came from John the Baptist; perhaps from the 
 very beginning no other kind of initiation was practised among 
 them, than that which we find afterwards among the offsets of the 
 Manichees in the middle ages; and perhaps the use of baptism had 
 only proceeded in certain parts of the sect from an adherence to the 
 prevailing custom of the Church’. The celebration of the Sacrament 
 of the Lord’s Supper might be perfectly well interpreted according 
 
 1 From the words of Felix the Manichee, lib. i.c. 19. ut quid baptizati sumus ? 
 we cannot prove that the Manichees considered baptism as a necessary initiatory 
 ceremony, for here also the Manichee is rather using an argumentum ad hominem, 
 and he may have received baptism before his conversion to Manicheeism. From the 
 passages in the Commonitorium, quo modo sit agendum cum Manicheis (to be 
 found in the Appendix to the 8th vol. of the Benedictine edition of St. Augustine) 
 where a distinction is made between those Manichees, who had been received, at 
 their conversion to the Catholic Church among the Catechumens, and those who 
 were received, as being already baptized, into the number of the Peenitentes, 
 it is also entirely impossible to draw the conclusion, that baptism was in use 
 among the Manichees; and still less does it follow, because such a distinction 
 is made between baptized and unbaptized among the electi themselves, who 
 transgressed, that baptism was voluntarily received only by a certain part of 
 the electi; for here also the author may be speaking only of such persons as had 
 received baptism in the Catholic Church before their conversion to the Mani- 
 cheean sect. The passage in Augustin. de Moribus Ecclesize Catholice, c. 35, 
 where he makes the Manichees offer it as a reproach to Catholic Christians, that 
 even fideles et jam baptizati lived in marriage and in the various relations of 
 family life, and possessed and administered earthly property, by no means proves 
 that among the e/ecti there was a class of persons, who, having voluntarily sub- 
 mitted to baptism, were the only persons who, through an inviolable engagement 
 
FESTIVALS. 167 
 
 to the mystical natural philosophy ἡ of the Manichees. Augustine, 
 as one of the auditores among the Manichees, had heard that the 
 electi celebrated the Lord’s Supper; but he knew nothing of the 
 mode in which it was done*. It is only certain, that the electz 
 could drink no wine, but whether they used water like the 
 Encratites, the so-called jdo0ragacrara, or what other measures 
 they took, we have no means of determining. The sign of re- 
 cognition among the Manichees was the giving of the right hand 
 to each other when they met, as a symbol of their common re- 
 demption from the kingdom of Darkness through the freeing 
 power of the Spirit of the Sun; while that was repeated in them, 
 which had taken place in their Heavenly Father the Original 
 ‘Man, when he was in danger of sinking down into the kingdom 
 of Darkness, and was again lifted up through the right hand of 
 the Living Spirit °. 
 
 In regard to the festivals of the Manichees, we may observe 
 that they celebrated Sunday, not as commemorating the resur- 
 rection of Christ, which did not suit their Docetism,but as the day 
 consecrated to the Sun *, who was in fact their Christ. In con- 
 tradiction to the prevailing usage of the Church, they fasted on 
 this day. The festivals in honour of Christ, of course, did not 
 suit the Docetism of the Manichees. While, indeed, according 
 to the account of Augustine, they sometimes celebrated the 
 festival of Laster in accordance with the prevailing usage of the 
 Church, yet the lukewarmness with which this celebration took 
 place, may be explained from the circumstance that they could 
 not be touched by any of those feelings, which gave so much 
 holiness to this festival in the eyes of other Christians. On this 
 account they celebrated the more solemnly the martyrdom of 
 their founder, Manes, which took place in the month of March. 
 It was called Βημα (suggestus, Cathedra) the festival of the Chair 
 
 were bound to a strict ascetic life ; for the FIDELES and the BAPTIZATI, two exactly 
 equivalent expressions, here have a general correspondence with the electi of the 
 Manichees. Mosheim’s distinction, therefore, between baptized and unbaptized 
 electi, however natural it may appear when abstractedly considered, seems altogether 
 arbitrary. 
 
 1 In accordance with the notion that the fruits of nature represented the Son of 
 Man crucified in nature. 
 
 2 Augustin. contra Fortunatum, lib. i. in the addendum. 
 
 3. Disputat. Archelai, c. 7. 
 
 * Besides many other passages, see Augustin. c. Faustum, lib. xviii. ¢. 5. ‘* Vos 
 in die, quem dicunt solis, solem colitis.” 
 
168 PERSECUTION OF THE MANICHEES. 
 
 of the Teacher, the festival dedicated to the memory of the 
 teacher illuminated by God. A teacher’s chair gaily ornamented 
 and enveloped in costly cloths, was placed in the room where 
 their assemblies were held, and five steps, apparently as a symbol 
 of the five pure Elements, led the way to this chair. All the 
 Manichees testified their reverence for this chair, by falling down 
 before it to the earth, after the Oriental fashion ’. 
 
 As far as the moral character of the Manicheean sect is con- 
 cerned, since it is necessary on this point accurately to distinguish 
 between the different periods in the history of a sect, we have 
 too scanty notices of the first adherents to it, to allow us to pro- 
 nounce any definite opinion on the point. Thus much only may 
 be asserted, that Manes intended to maintain a severity of morals 
 in his doctrine; but it must be acknowledged, that the mystical 
 language in which it was conveyed, which was occasionally 
 indecent, might introduce among uneducated and unrefined men 
 the intermixture of a sensuous extravagance, likely to prove 
 dangerous to purity of morals. 
 
 Almost immediately that the Manichees began to spread in 
 the Roman empire, a violent persecution broke out against them. 
 They were peculiarly obnoxious to the Roman government as a 
 sect, which drew its origin from the Persian empire, then at war 
 with the Roman, and which was connected with the religion of 
 the Parses. The Emperor Diocletian (A.D. 296.) issued a law 
 (which has been quoted in vol. i. p. 146.) against this sect, by 
 which the leaders of it were condemned to be burnt, and their 
 other associates, if they were of an ordinary rank of life, were 
 to be beheaded and suffer a forfeiture of their estates”. 
 
 1 Augustin. contra Epist. Fundamenti, c. 8. c. Faustum, lib. xviii. c. 5. 
 
 * In regard to the train of thought and the language, in which the edict is com- 
 posed, it contains all the internal marks of genuineness. It is difficult to conjecture 
 by whom and with what intention such an edict could have been invented in this 
 form. A Christian, who might have been inclined to palm such an edict upon the 
 world, in order to drive the emperors toa persecution of the Manicheean sect, would 
 not exactly have chosen Diocletian, and still less have attributed such language to 
 him. Although the later Christians, in their notions of a dominant religion, trans- 
 mitted traditionally to them through the Fathers, had much that was analogous to 
 the thoughts of the Heathen, yet a Christian would never have expressed himself 
 altogether in this fashion. 
 
 Why should not the Manicheean sect already have been able by that time to extend 
 itself towards Proconsular Africa; for the Gnostics had been preparing the way 
 there, the Manichees certainly were at an early period spread abroad in these dis- 
 
DEVELOPMENT BY OPPOSITION. 169 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF 
 CHRISTIANITY AS A SYSTEM OF DOCTRINES IN THE CATHOLIC 
 CHURCH, WHICH FORMED ITSELF IN OPPOSITION TO THE SECTS. 
 
 (1.) Lhe genetic development of Church Theology in general, and 
 the characteristic of the individual religious and dogmatical dis- 
 positions which have peculiarly influenced it. 
 
 Lire in religion, as elsewhere, precedes understanding, and this 
 latter forms itself out of the former. Christianity had at first 
 taken root in the inward life, and had here become the ruling 
 principle; but then the full import of the doctrines of that faith, 
 into which man had been at first led through a new life within, and 
 the power of which he had first experienced in his spiritual life, 
 was necessarily to be brought out into a full and clear conscious- 
 ness, by means of a form of thought corresponding to this inward 
 life, and expressed in definite ideas, with constantly increasing 
 clearness and distinctness. As we have before observed, this end 
 was peculiarly furthered by the struggle against those tendencies 
 of the religious spirit, which, although they were in some degree 
 touched by the influence of Christianity, yet constantly adulte- 
 
 tricts, and the chronological data relative to the first history of this sect are so un- 
 certain? It is said in the law, “ si qui sane etiam honorati aut cujuslibet dignitatis 
 vel majoris persone ad hance sectam se transtulerunt,” but it does not necessarily 
 follow from this, that the emperor had any certain account of the propagation 
 of this sect among the first classes, and it would not be surprising in the then 
 attachment of persons of distinction, (who are always glad enough, besides, to have 
 something that implies distinction in religion,) to Theurgical studies, and to endea- 
 vours after sublime determination relative to the World of Spirits, if a mysterious 
 religion of this kind, with such lofty pretensions, found a ready acceptance with 
 them. Besides, the argumentum e silentio, in historical criticism, is very uncertain; 
 if no particular circumstances conspire to give it greater weight, and the fact that 
 the ancient Fathers of the Church did not quote a decree of Diocletian against the 
 Manichees, easily admits of a satisfactory explanation. And yet this decree is 
 quoted as early as Hilarius, who wrote a commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul, 
 in the comment. on 2 Tim, iii. 7. 
 
170 OPPOSITION TO GNOSTICISM. 
 
 rated real Christianity on one side or the other; and which, 
 therefore, by means of their opposition, still more called forth the 
 endeavour to set this (7. 6. pure Christianity) in a clear light, 
 and to hold it steady. 
 
 The opposition against Judaism and Heathenism, from the 
 very nature of things, could influence only the most general 
 development of Christian knowledge ; but the opposition against 
 those Judaizing, Orientalizing, and Hellenizing tendencies, 
 which laid hold even of the inward life of the Church, and 
 threatened to corrupt it, had this effect, that the import of 
 the peculiarly Christian doctrines were unfolded and brought 
 before the mind of man with more clear and distinct conscious- 
 ness. But yet, as Christianity was constantly limiting its pro- 
 pagation more and more to the territory of heathenism, and 
 passing out of the circle of Judaism, the connection of the Catholic 
 Church, as it formed itself with Judaism, must have become less 
 and less, while its connection with Gnosticism, the more Christ- 
 ianity was spread among the educated heathens, to whose views 
 the more free Gnostic conception of it would be most consonant, 
 would become constantly more predominant, and of itself, the 
 influence of the deep and comprehensive Gnosticism, would be 
 more important, more prolific, and more lasting, than that of the 
 meagre and dry Judaism. No phenomenon of this age had so 
 general an influence on the development of the Christian Faith 
 and Theology, as Gnosticism had, by means of the opposition 
 which it excited. 
 
 As far as regards this influence in general, without reference, 
 however, to the most important doctrines, (of which we shall 
 hereafter speak more at large,) men were necessarily induced, 
 through their opposition to the Gnostics, to give an account to 
 themselves of the sources from which a knowledge of the 
 Christian faith was to be obtained, for the Gnostics denied the 
 authenticity, or at least the sufficiency of the documents, which 
 alone had hitherto been silently received in the Catholic 
 Church, namely, the received body of Scripture, as well as 
 of the traditions of the Church, and in opposition to these 
 they set up a different source of knowledge in a pretended secret 
 doctrine, transmitted down from Christ and his Apostles, or 
 from a chosen number among the Apostles. And since, besides, 
 the Gnostics, by means of a capricious and allegorizing mode of 
 interpretation, or by a literal one, which was just as capricious, 
 
 7 
 
POSSIBILITY OF UNION. 171 
 
 and which did not regard the context in ascertaining the sense of 
 words, and which set at nought all laws of thought and speech, 
 made it easy for themselves by these means to introduce all their 
 unbiblical meanings into the Holy Scriptures, and to deceive the 
 unwary who heard them adduce so many passages of Holy 
 Writ; so their adversaries were obliged to oppose this capricious 
 mode of interpretation, by establishing the objective grounds of a 
 logical and grammatical interpretation. and thus the first seeds 
 of a biblical hermeneutic proceeded from these controversies. 
 When the Gnostics transferred to the Christian religion that 
 contrast between a religion of the people and a religion of the 
 initiated *, which had been removed by Christianity, and which 
 was contrary to its very nature, the opposition to this error was 
 the first cause that an essential religious faith, independent 
 of philosophy, and not interwoven into any mythology, but clear 
 in itself and self-sufficient, was brought before the light as the 
 foundation of a higher life for all mankind, and more distinctly 
 defined. While the Gnostics were here applying the position 
 of the earlier religions to Christianity, their opponents were 
 obliged on that very account to bring the peculiar religious 
 position of the latter more clearly before their own minds. 
 
 And yet, while on the one side an opposition to Gnosticism 
 would naturally arise here, yet on the other, this struggle, which 
 was right in itself, and quite in union with the spirit of Christ- 
 ianity, would present a point on which Gnosis might engraft itself. 
 This was a struggle after a deeper knowledge of the inward 
 connection of the doctrines of the Christian faith, a struggle to 
 proceed forth from the position which Christianity takes up, and 
 thence attain to a mode of viewing human and divine things, 
 which should form one systematic whole. Gnosis of itself was 
 not necessarily false, but that false pride of Gnosis was so, which, 
 instead of going forth from the foundation of faith, and unfolding 
 thus the import and the connection of that which had been 
 acquired in a lively manner through faith, thought to be able to 
 raise itself above a life in faith ; and considering this life in faith 
 as valid only for a subordinate position, thought that it could 
 bestow something of a higher kind. Abrupt contradiction can 
 never persuade the erring, and never effectually stem the pro- 
 gress of any false views which happen to exist in any particular 
 
 1 [Literally “ the perfect.” H. J. R.] 
 
172 TRUE AND FALSE PARTS OF GNOSTICISM. 
 
 age. Abrupt contradiction, which condemns the true together 
 with the false, is more likely to provoke more fiercely an errone- 
 ous opposition party which is conscious of having some grounds 
 founded in truth; and therefore such a contradiction furthers the 
 propagation of these errors, inasmuch as it lends them an appear- 
 ance of justice, and a point on which to attach themselves in the 
 real wants of human nature; and this was also shown then in 
 the propagation of the Gnostic sects. The best means of success- 
 fully combating errors, which arise from a fundamental disposi- ἢ 
 tion of human nature which has only been led astray, is always 
 to recognise this disposition with its just rights, and to satisfy its 
 demands in the mode that nature dictates. This would have 
 happened in regard to the Gnostics if men, while they maintained 
 the dignity and the independence of faith, had yet acknowledged 
 the just and right feeling on which that struggle after a Gnosis was 
 founded, and if they had endeavoured to set forth such a Gnosis 
 as proceeded from faith, and was only the natural production of 
 faith in human reason enlightened by that faith. Thus the germ 
 of a Christian Dogmatic (system of doctrines) systematically 
 hanging together, and of a Christian philosophy, would be 
 formed ; and these two, like many other dissimilar elements of 
 the new spiritual world of Christianity, which was first conceived 
 in its chaotic stage of development, might by and by be separated 
 from each other. 
 
 The establishment of a faith independent of speculation, of 
 the practical nature and the practical tendency of Christianity, 
 on one hand, and on the other, the development of a Gnosis 
 built on the foundation of faith, these were the two corner- 
 stones from which the formation of the Churchly theology 
 proceeded, and here its two proper chief divisions may be 
 recognised. Here also the progress of the development of 
 human nature brought this consequence with it, that these two 
 dispositions did not immediately work together harmoniously, and 
 did not immediately fall into the just and natural relations which 
 ought to exist between them, but that by mutual departure from 
 the just harmonious mean, and by a partial love of dominion in 
 both of them, those two tendencies of the Christian spirit, the one, 
 a predominantly realistic, the other, a predominantly idealistic 
 turn, fell into collision with each other: as well in the development 
 of the Church doctrine, as in opposition to it; only with this 
 difference, that here both dispositions set out from the self-same 
 
REALISTIC DISPOSITION. 173 
 
 foundation of Christianity, and were united together by the one 
 spirit of that Christianity. ‘Thus was Christianity to prepare the 
 way for its own development in the midst of the contradictions 
 of human nature, which find in it their reconciliation. 
 
 The jirst of these was originally the prevailing tendency 
 in the development of Churchly theology, for this theology 
 originally formed itself from a realistic and practically Christian 
 spirit, the desire of defending the unchangeable ground-work of 
 the Christian faith against the caprice of Gnostic speculation. 
 We find this disposition among the first Fathers of Asia Minor, 
 in Polycarp of Smyrna, Papias of Hierapolis in Phrygia, Melito 
 of Sardis, and in Irenzeus, who was formed in the school of Asia 
 Minor, and having transferred the sphere of his activity to Lyons 
 and the western Church in the latter half of his life, transplanted 
 that disposition thither also. ‘These Fathers of Asia Minor 
 acted as pastors of these Churches, in which they endeavoured to 
 maintain the pure and simple apostolic doctrine, and to defend it 
 against corruption. ‘They were, hence, compelled to enter into 
 controversy with the Gnostic sects which were spreading around 
 them in Asia Minor. A truly Christian consciousness animated 
 them in their struggle against the idealism of Gnosticism; but 
 yet they often opposed to it only a grossly sensuous, anthropo- 
 morphic, anthropopathical apprehension of spiritual matters, 
 which arose from a deficient and ignorant cast of mind, not suffi- 
 ciently penetrated and illuminated by the Spirit of Christianity. 
 Although there were among them men of a variety of isolated 
 literary acquirements, yet they were deficient in the essentials of 
 a learned and systematic training of the mind. We further find 
 this disposition in the Western or Romish Church, under which we 
 reckon all those countries in which the Latin language prevailed. 
 Although the peculiar character of the Romish people received 
 a different modification under the influence of different climates, 
 and according to the nature of the original inhabitants on which 
 it was engrafted *, as, for instance, among the Carthaginian people 
 in the hot part of Africa; yet we may look upon the peculiar 
 character of the Romans as the generally prevailing character 
 here, and in the influence it had upon the conception of Christian 
 
 1 Although we must take far less account of these circumstances in the case of 
 Christian churches in large towns, because in them fewer traces of the old inhabi- 
 tants remained. 
 
174 PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN DISPOSITION—IREN 5. 
 
 doctrine, we cannot but recognise the prevailing realism of the 
 less variable Romish spirit, which stiffly holds fast what it has 
 once received. 
 
 We may consider Irenzus as a representative of that first 
 practical Christian disposition which opposed itself to Gnosticism. 
 He is distinguished as a partaker in all the ecclesiastical events 
 of his days, and, as a dogmatic writer, by his sobriety and his 
 moderation in holding fast the essential foundations of the 
 Christian faith, as well as by maintaining what is practically im- 
 portant in his treatment of all individual Christian doctrines. In 
 his chief work against the Gnostics, he says of the one unchange- 
 able essential fundamental doctrine of Christianity, to which the 
 agreement of all Churches gives witness, and which every un- 
 prejudiced person could himself adduce from Scripture’, 
 “‘ Although scattered over the whole world, the Church as carefully 
 maintains this faith as if it inhabited only one house. It believes 
 these things as if it had one soul and the same heart, and it 
 preaches’ them as harmoniously as if it had only one mouth..... 
 As the Sun, the creature of God, is one and the same over all 
 the world, so also the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, 
 and illuminates all men who are willing to come to the know- 
 ledge of the truth. He among the presidents of the Churches, 
 who is mighty in eloquence, can preach nothing else but this 
 (for no one is above the teacher); nor does he that is weak in 
 preaching diminish the doctrine delivered to him; for as the 
 faith is one and the same, he who is able to speak much con- 
 cerning it, can add nothing to it, and he who is able to say but 
 little, cannot diminish it*”’ He thus opposes the speculative 
 sophistry of this principle *. “‘ Sound’, unsuspecting, pious reason, 
 that loves the truth, will with joy meditate on what God has 
 given into the power of man, and subjected to our knowledge, 
 
 1 Lib. i. 3. [I.c. x. § 2. Ed. Massuet. p. 49. The previous section, which con- 
 tains this universal creed, is one of very great value, as it sets forth one of the 
 most ancient confessions of faith in language very closely resembling the Apostles’ 
 Creed.—H. J. R.] 
 
 2 [“ It preaches, it teaches, and it hands down” is the exact translation of the 
 Greek phrase.—H. J. R. ] 
 
 8 [This is evidently an allusion to the manna, Exod. xvi. 18. See Massuet’s 
 note.—H. J. R.] 
 
 4 Lib. ii. c. 45. [c. xxvii. Ed. Massuet. ] 
 
 5 [ἀκινδυνος, sicher ihres Weges gehende. } 
 
1ΠΕΝΖ 1. 175 
 
 and he will advance in it, rendering the learning of it easy to 
 himself by daily exercise. Now this consists of those things 
 that fall under our own eyes, and those things that are expressly 
 said in the Holy Scriptures openly and unambiguously.” “ It is 
 better and more advantageous,” says the same writer’, “ to be 
 ignorant and to come near to God by love, than for a man, who 
 seems to be a man of great learning and knowledge, to be found 
 blaspheming against his own Master. ‘Therefore did Paul exclaim, 
 ‘knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. Not as if he had 
 blamed the real knowledge that comes from God, for then he would 
 have accused himself the first; but because he knew that many, 
 elated by the pretence of knowledge, departed from the love of 
 God.....It is better, therefore, that a man should know 
 nothing, should not know the cause of any one of created things, 
 why it was created, but believe in God and persevere in love 
 of him, than’ that being puffed up by this kind of know- 
 ledge, he should fall away from the love that makes man living, 
 it is better to wish to know nothing else than Jesus Christ, the 
 Son of God, who was crucified for us, than ® to fall into impiety 
 by subtile questions and petty cavillings at words.” It is 
 no wonder,” says Irenzeus *, “if we find many difficulties which 
 we cannot remove, in spiritual and heavenly things, in those 
 which are known to us only by revelation, when in that which 
 lies before our feet, 1 mean in that which we perceive by the 
 senses, much escapes our knowledge, and these things we leave 
 to God, who must be elevated above every thing. But if in the 
 things of the creation, something is within the reach of our 
 knowledge, and other things are reserved for the knowledge of 
 God, how can we think it a difficulty, that out of those things that 
 are sought in the Holy Scripture, the whole of which is spiritual, 
 we should be able to unravel some by the grace of God, while 
 others are still reserved to the knowledge of God, and that too, 
 not only in the present world, but in that which is to come; in 
 order that God may always teach, and man may always learn 
 from God.” ‘ They complain,” says Irenzus of the Gnostics, 
 
 1 Lib. ii. c. 45. [c. 26. Ed. Massuet, p. 154.] 
 
 2 [This part has unfortunately only. come down to us in a Latin translation, where 
 the translator has evidently rendered ἡ by aut instead of quam. Neander has very 
 properly translated it as if it were quam.—H. J. R.] 
 
 3 See last note. 
 
 4 Lib. ii. c, 47. [c. 28, Ed. Massuet, p. 156. ] 
 
170 MONTANISM, 
 
 ‘¢ of the ignorance of the holy presbyters ', because they do not 
 consider of how much greater value a pious common man is, than 
 a blaspheming and impudent sophist *.” 
 
 We may consider Montanism as one of the forms of error which 
 this anti-Gnostic religious realism assumed, because, where it was 
 carried to the extreme, it opposed the predominance of extrava- 
 gant speculation by the predominance of extravagant feelings. 
 It was a system, which, while it professed to have a source of 
 illumination besides the Holy Scripture, and the reason, as en- 
 lightened by those Scriptures, became, in a different way, a prey 
 to the self-deceptions of a caprice which confused what belongs 
 to man with what belongs to God. 
 
 With regard to Montanus himself, from whom it arose, we 
 have, alas, too slender documents to allow us satisfacterily to 
 explain psychologically the course of his religious development, 
 and the origin of his peculiar religious opinions. But the 
 personal history of this man cannot be here of the same impor- 
 tance, as the scandal which he brought upon a habit of mind 
 then prevalent, in consequence of the effects which it produced. 
 The idea proclaimed by Montanus was no new idea; it was one, 
 which had in many persons arisen from a one-sided turn of mind in 
 regard to Christianity, and had become to them the centre-point 
 of their inward life, without their being aware of it. It was 
 only by means of Montanus that this idea became the centre 
 of a compact and separate set of opinions, and the point of union 
 for a Church party which formed itself upon that set of opinions. 
 What had probably been brought forward by Montanus only in 
 a fragmentary manner in the language of feeling, was conceived 
 by the spirit of a Tertullian with a more clear consciousness, 
 and was worked up into a systematic whole. We must, there- 
 fore, in order to characterize the opinions of Montanus, use also 
 the writings of Tertullian, although we should not be justified in 
 attributing to the less formed and cultivated mind of Montanus 
 all the thoughts expressed by one like Tertullian, whose more 
 advanced development of mind renders his views more definite 
 and of more importance. 
 
 1 Trenzeus uses the word “ holy” here in the sense in which the New Testament 
 applies it to all true Christians. 
 
 2 Lib. v. c. 20. [Neander has translated “ Idiota’” by Idiot, which may answer 
 in German, but would lead to a wrong notion in English.—H. J. R.] 
 
CHARACTER OF MON'TANISM. "71 
 
 The one side of Christianity, the idea of a communication of a 
 Divine life to human nature as a means of reforming it; the idea 
 of a new Divine creation, which should reform everything, and of 
 an overpowering dominion of the Divinity in man’s nature ; this 
 idea, which forms a key-note to Christianity, was predominant 
 in Montanism, and made its centerpoint; but the other side of 
 Christianity, the idea of the harmonious amalgamation of the 
 Divine and the human* in man’s nature when renewed by the 
 Divine principle of life, the idea of the free and independent 
 development of the ennobled faculties of man’s nature as a neces- 
 sary consequence of this amalgamation, this idea and the other 
 key-note of Christianity which flows from it, were thrown into 
 the back ground. In this system (Montanism) the influence 
 of the Divine power appears as a magical power, taking an 
 irresistible hold on man, and overwhelming all his human quali- 
 ties; while that which is human appears to be only a blind in- 
 strument involuntarily borne on. Montanism, when carried to 
 the extreme, would necessarily lead men to set Christianity in 
 hostile array against all knowledge and art, as if either were an 
 adulteration of that which is Divine by man’s inter-mingling his 
 own activity with it. 
 
 Montanus was a new convert in a village of Mysia, called An- 
 daban (Ardabau) on the confines of Phrygia. What happens to 
 individual men, happened here with provinces in a body, that 
 their way of conceiving Christianity bears the stamp of their pre- 
 vious national peculiarities, just as with individual peculiarities, 
 whether it be that these subordinate themselves to the spirit of 
 Christianity and rise up again in it in an ennobled form, or whether 
 they mingle themselves in a disturbing manner with the energies 
 of Christianity, and that the former iniquities break out again, 
 only covered with a Christian garb. Of the latter process many 
 traces are to be found in regard to the Phrygian national pecu- 
 liarities. In the old national religion of the Phrygians we recog- 
 nize the character of this mountain-people, inclined to fanaticism 
 and superstition, and easily induced to believe in magic and en- 
 chantment; nor can we wonder if in the ecstasies and somnambu- 
 lism of the Montanists we find again the Phrygian spirit, which 
 showed itself in the ecstasies of the Priests of Cybele and Bacchus. 
 
 As many in the first ardent zeal of conversion gave up all their 
 
 {! Durchdringung. Literally penetration—interpenctration. H. J. R. | 
 VOL. II. N 
 
178 EXPLANATORY CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 earthly goods, and devoted themselves to a strict ascetic life, such 
 an ascetic zeal also seized Montanus as a new convert. We must 
 remember, that he was living in a country where there was a 
 widely extended expectation, that the Church on the scene of its 
 sufferings, and on earth itself before the end of all earthly things 
 would enjoy a thousand years of triumphant empire—the expecta- 
 tion of a final reign of Christ upon the earth for a thousand years 
 (chiliasm as it was called)—and where many images of an enthusi- 
 astic imagination about the nature of this expected kingdom, were 
 then current’. The time at which he lived—either during those 
 calamitous natural events of which we have spoken above, (vol. 
 i, p. 100 and seq.) and the persecutions of the Christians which 
 followed upon them, or during the bloody persecutions of Marcus 
 Aurelius’, was altogether calculated peculiarly to promote such an 
 excitement of feeling, and such a turn of the imagination. There 
 was just at that season a violent contest in Asia Minor, between 
 the speculative Gnostics, and the defenders of the old simple 
 doctrines, and men were speaking much of impending corruptions 
 of Christianity. All this might work upon the mind of the newly 
 converted Phrygian, inclined, as he was, to fantastic excitement of 
 the feelings. The transition was then just taking place from the 
 time of the first preternatural influences of the Divine Spirit on — 
 the nature of man, to the season in which the new Divine prin- 
 ciple of life was to be developed by the natural channels and in a 
 
 1 Papias, of Hierapolis, having lived in Phrygia, had already been active there, and 
 many passages of the Pseudo-Sibyllines point to Phrygia also. There are certainly no 
 grounds for supposing, with Longuerue and Blondel, that these passages came from 
 Montanus or the Montanists, for there are no ideas whatever peculiar to Montanism in 
 those Pseudo-Sibylline oracles. We should rather here recognize that selfsame peculiar 
 Phrygian spirit, which is also reflected in Montanism. If Mount Ararat be supposed 
 transplanted to Phrygia, we should recognize here the same prejudice among the 
 Phrygians in favour of their native land, for which they claimed the credit of being the 
 oldest country on earth, as when Montanus makes the village Pepuza in Phrygia the 
 seat of the Millenarian empire. 
 
 2 We are without sufficient and trustworthy data, to determine with precision, any-= 
 thing certain with regard to the time, in which Montanus first appeared ; but from the 
 very nature of the thing, the beginning of a matter like this is always difficult to be 
 determined. Eusebius, in his Chronicon, places the first appearance of Montanus in 
 the year 171. But if we suppose that the Roman Bishop, whom Praxeas induced to 
 excommunicate Montanus, was not Victor, but Eleutheros, (for which opinion I have 
 stated the reasons in my work on Tertullian, p. 486) it would follow, that Montanus 
 had appeared in the time of the Roman Bishop Anicetus, who died in the year 161. 
 
 Apollonius (ap. Euseb, v. 18) and Epiphanius, who place the appearance of Montanus 
 in the year 157, are both in favour of the earlier date. 
 
ERRORS OF MONTANUS. 179 
 
 quiet harmonious manner, in man’s nature sanctified by that very 
 principle of life as an instrument affecting it; and it was natural 
 that this transition should be accompanied by many disturbing 
 circumstances, and that a disposition should arise, which, opposing 
 the development of Christianity in man’s nature in a manner con- 
 sonant to its usual course, should wish to keep that first season of 
 the appearance of Christianity as an abiding condition of things, 
 and then to the genuine working of the Divine Spirit there would 
 be joined an overheated excitement of the mind which imitated 
 that working, but was in fact a violent excitement of the imagina- 
 tion. All this must be taken into the account in order to explain 
 the rise of a character like Montanus. 
 
 We do not desire to deny, that Montanus had experienced 
 something of the more spiritual (literally higher) life of Chris- 
 tianity ; that mixture of truth and error could hardly have existed 
 without this in the soul of Montanus, but in individuals as well as 
 in whole masses the old proverb is sure to be found true; “ where 
 God builds himself a temple, the Devil builds himself a chapel 
 near it.” The old Phrygian nature crept in unperceived so as to 
 trouble the pure Christian feelings, and Montanus took for an in- 
 spiration of the Spirit, what really was from the flesh: while no 
 one of sound judgment with a Christian care for his soul warned 
 him against the mixture of light and darkness, and brought him 
 back to sobriety; or perhaps, if they did, the admiration of the 
 multitude, who reverenced him as a Prophet, made a greater im- 
 pression upon him ; and thus apparently the most dangerous source 
 of all self-deception and all enthusiasm, vanity, was added to these 
 disadvantages. He used to fall into a kind of transport, during 
 which, without consciousness, but as the passive instrument, as he 
 thought, of a higher power, he announced new persecutions in 
 enigmatical and mystical expressions '; he exhorted Christians to 
 a more strict ascetic life, and to an undaunted confession of their 
 faith ; he praised the blessedness of martyrdom, and incited Chris- 
 tians to use their utmost endeavours to obtain it; and during 
 
 1 ἕενοφωνιαι is the expression of a contemporary, ap. Euseb. v. 16. yAwaoa. See 
 Plutarch on the ancient oracular responses, de Pyth. Orac. c. 24. [I find only the verb 
 ξενοφωνειν, not the word ξενοφωνιαι applied here to Montanus. The word Entziickun- 
 gen, which I have translated transports, expresses any kind of ecstasy, transport, or 
 trance, the Greek phrase in Euseb. v. 16. παρεκστασις is used here for a state of ex- 
 citement, in which a person is beside himself. See Valesius in loc. H. J. R.] 
 
 N 2 
 
180 ERRORS OF MONTANUS. 
 
 these transports he also announced the near approach of God’s 
 judicial punishment of the Persecutors of the Church, as well as 
 of the second coming of Christ, and the establishment of the 
 Millenarian kingdom, the blessedness of which he painted in 
 attractive colours. At last he desired to be looked upon as a pro- 
 phet sent from God for the whole Church, as an enlightened 
 reformer of the whole religious life of the Church—the Christian 
 Church was through him to be raised to a higher degree of per- 
 fection in conduct, and a higher moral doctrine was to be revealed 
 through him for the manhood of the Church in its state of matu- 
 rity—and he referred to himself the promise of Christ, that through 
 the Holy Ghost he would reveal things, which the men of that 
 time were unable to comprehend. He also believed himself called 
 to communicate new decisions with respect to doctrinal points, in 
 order to clear up the doctrinal controversies then particularly 
 common in those regions, and to preserve the doctrines of the 
 Faith against the attacks of Heretics. 
 
 It is likely enough that Montanus did not aspire to all this αὖ 
 once, but that his views with regard to his own person and calling, 
 and his claims in regard to what he was to be to the Church, 
 were gradually formed and extended under the influence of 
 circumstances, in consequence of the acceptance which his pre- 
 tended oracles obtained; but the information we have is not 
 sufficient to enable us to deduce from it a genetic development of 
 the history of Montanus. ‘Two women, Prisca or Priscilla, and 
 Maximilla, who also desired to be looked upen as prophetesses, 
 joined themselves to Montanus '. 
 
 Montanism maintained the doctrine of a gradual advance of the 
 Church according to a general law of the development of the king- 
 dom of God. In the works of Grace, say the Montanists, as well as 
 in the works of nature, both of which come from the same Creator, 
 everything developes itself according toa certain gradation: from 
 the seed first comes a shrub, which gradually increases to a tree; 
 the tree first obtains leaves, then follows the bloom, and out of 
 this comes the fruit, which also attains to ripeness only by degrees. 
 
 1 All the doctrines which the Montanistic party brought forward, were not alto- 
 gether peculiar to it; they were often only ideas which had been in existence for a 
 long time, and were current in the Church just at that time, and which, being carried 
 to the extreme by the Montanists, called forth also an opposition to them. 
 
SPIRIT OF MONTANISM. 18] 
 
 Thus also the kingdom of righteousness developes itself by certain 
 degrees; first came the fear of God in accordance with the voice 
 of nature without a revealed law (the Patriarchal Religion) ; then 
 came its infancy under the Law and the Prophets, then its youth 
 under the Gospel, then its development to the maturity of man- 
 hood through the new outpouring of the Holy Ghost, together 
 with the appearance of Montanus, and through the new teaching 
 of the promised Paraclete '. How could the work of God stand 
 sill, and not develop itself progressively, when the kingdom of 
 the wicked one was always extending itself in all directions, and 
 always acquiring new powers? ‘They maintained, therefore, 
 a progressively advancing action of the Holy Ghost in redeemed 
 man; the progressive revelation of the Divine opposed to the 
 progressive revelation of the Evil one. ‘They opposed those who 
 would place arbitrary limits to the operation of the Holy Ghost, 
 as if his extraordinary operations had been confined entirely to 
 the time of the Apostles, as it is said in a Montanistic writing’, 
 “lest any weakness or want of faith should lead us to believe 
 that the Grace of God was efficacious only among the ancients, 
 for God always works what He has promised, as a sign to the 
 unbelieving, and as a mercy to believers.” ‘They appealed to 
 the promise made by Christ himself, that He would give to the 
 faithful the Revelations through the Paraclete, as the perfecter 
 of his Church, through whom He would reveal what men at that 
 time were unable to comprehend. ‘They did not, however, by 
 any means, wish to maintain, that this promise did not refer to 
 the case of the Apostles, to whom all others referred it; but 
 merely that it did not refer to the case of the Apostles alone, in 
 whom it was not fulfilled in its whole extent, and that it had 
 reference also to the new revelations through the Prophets, who 
 were now raised up, and that these last were necessary, in order to 
 the completion and advancement of the first revelation®. They 
 declared expressly that the new Prophets must distinguish them- 
 selves from false teachers, and certify their Divine calling by their 
 agreement with the doctrines preached by the Apostles, as they 
 
 1 Tertullian de Virgg. Velandis, c. 1. 
 
 2 Acta Perpetuz et Felicitatis, Pref. 
 
 {Ruinart, in his preliminary observations, endeavours to show that this is not a 
 Montanistic writing, and to explain this passage, as merely comparing the then 
 workings of God with former ones, but not with those recorded in Scripture.—H. J. R.] 
 
 3 Tertullian de Pudicit. ς, 12. 
 
182 NEW OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRI'T, 
 
 had been disseminated in all Churches. The essential funda- 
 mental doctrines recognized in the whole Church, they recog- 
 nized also as unalterable foundations of the development of the 
 Church; but the whole system of Christian morality, and the 
 whole religious life connected with the Church system, was to 
 be farther advanced by these new revelations; for men who were 
 just converted from heathenism, and only just emerging from an 
 entirely carnal state, were unable to receive the whole demands 
 of Christian perfection. And further also, the Christian doctrines 
 which were attacked by the heretics, who were now extending 
 themselves in every direction, were to be firmly established by 
 these new revelations. While these heretics, by means of arbi- 
 trary and false explanations, made the Holy Scriptures, out of 
 which they might have been best confuted, speak their language, 
 these new revelations were to offer the means of opposing them 
 with settled authority. Lastly, these new revelations were 
 to communicate decisions and determinations respecting those 
 matters of doctrine and practice which were then made the sub- 
 ject of controversy’. ‘The Montanist Tertullian, therefore, at 
 the conclusion of his treatise, concerning the Resurrection, calls 
 thus to those who desire to draw from the well of these new 
 revelations, “ye shall not thirst after any instruction; no in- 
 quiries shall torment you.” 
 
 This notion of a progressive development of the Church led 
 the Montanists, on the one hand’, to a genuine evangelical oppo- 
 sition against a narrow-hearted and stiff Church view, which clung 
 only to outward things ; a view which was unable to distinguish 
 between what is changeable and what is unchangeable in the 
 Church (churchly life literally), and which looked upon those of 
 its forms, its outward ordinances and usages, which might properly 
 change with time and circumstances, as grounded upon apostolical 
 tradition, and settled irrevocably for all ages. ‘The Montanists, on 
 the contrary, were better able to distinguish between the change- 
 able and the unchangeable in the development of the Church, 
 because they would allow of nothing but the immutability of 
 the dogmatic tradition ; they maintained, that the arrangements and 
 ordinances of the Church might be changed and improved, accord- 
 
 4 Tertullian de Virgg. Velandis, as the administratio Paracleti, quod disciplina diri- 
 gitur, quod Scripture revelantur, quod intellectus reformatur. 
 4 [See the counterbalancing error a page or two further on.—H. J. R. | 
 
MONTANISTIC VIEWS, ETC. 183 
 
 ing to the necessities of the times, by means of the progressive 
 instruction of the Paraclete*. And further, while the ecclesi- 
 astical view considered the bishops as the only organs for the 
 shedding abroad of the Holy Spirit in the Church, as the succes- 
 sors of the Apostles, and the heirs of their spiritual power, Mon- 
 tanism, on the contrary, although, upon the whole, it acknow- 
 ledged the existing order in the Church as one founded by God, 
 yet maintained that there are still higher organs to conduct the 
 development of the Church than these ordinary ones, namely, the 
 extraordinary organs, the prophets inspired by the Holy Ghost. 
 These alone, according to the Montanistic view, were the suc- 
 cessors of the Apostles in the highest sense, the heirs of their 
 perfect spiritual power. ‘Tertullian, therefore, sets the Church of 
 the Spirit, which reveals itself by means of men enlightened by the 
 Holy Spirit, in opposition to the Church, which consists in its 
 number of bishops*. Thus those who followed the voice of the 
 Holy Ghost, speaking through the new Prophets, as being the 
 spiritually-minded, the genuine Christians, were considered to 
 make up the Church; while, on the contrary, they called the op- 
 ponents of the new revelations, the carnally-minded (Psychici). 
 Montanism, therefore, which made the inward fact of the opera- 
 tion of the Holy Ghost the mark of the true Church, when con- 
 trasted with Catholicism **, whose characters are too external **, 
 leads to a more spiritual conception of the notion of the Church, 
 and one whose view was more directed to inward things. ‘Ter- 
 tullian says*, ** The Church, in the peculiar and the most 
 excellent sense, is the Holy Ghost, in which the Three are One, 
 and therefore the whole union of those who agree in this belief 
 
 1 Tertull. de Corona Mil. c. 3. 
 
 2 De Pudicit. c, 21. Ecclesia spiritus per spiritalem hominem, non ecclesia numerus 
 episcoporum. 
 
 3* [ Literally, “ contrasted with the too outward Catholicism.” H.J.R.] 
 
 4 [Nam et Ecclesia proprie et principaliter ipse est Spiritus in quo est trinitas unius 
 divinitatis Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Illam Ecclesiam congregat, quam 
 Dominus in tribus posuit. Atque ita exinde etiam numerus omnis qui in hane fidem 
 conspiraverint, Ecclesia ab auctore et consecratore censetur. Test. de Pudicit. ὃ xxi. 
 Comp. also de Baptismo, vi.; where, after mentioning the Church, Tertullian adds, 
 “‘quoniam ubi tres, id est, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, ibi Ecclesia, que trium 
 corpus est.” Tertullian himself, in another passage, supplies an excellent antidote to 
 the heretical notion of an appeal to any inward gifts being of themselves sufficient 
 marks of the true Church. His rule, though directed against other heresies, applies to 
 this notion also. See the well-known passage de Prescript. Hzret. “ Edant origines 
 suas,” ὅς, H. J. R.] 
 
 7 
 
18. CONFUSION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 (viz. that God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one), 
 is named the Church, after its founder and sanctifier (the Holy 
 Ghost).” 
 
 As further, according to the Montanistic theory, Prophets might 
 be raised up out of every class of Christians,—as the Monta- 
 nists looked upon it expressly as something characteristic of this 
 last epoch of the development of the kingdom of God, that, 
 according to the prophecies of Joel, ch. iii. [ch. ii.] then in course of 
 fulfilment’, the gifts of the Spirit should indifferently be shed 
 abroad over all classes of Christians of both sexes,—and as those 
 requirements, with respect to Christian conduct, which had till 
 then been limited to the Clergy, were extended by these new 
 revelations to all Christians as such, they were induced by these 
 circumstances to bring forward the idea of the “dignity of the 
 Christian calling in general, and of the dignity of the Priesthood 
 as belonging to all Christians.” 
 
 But although, on one side, the idea of the Church was conceived 
 here in a more free and spiritual manner, although Montanism 
 opposed the idea of a progressive development of the Church to 
 that form-bound system, which was more Jewish than Evangelical, 
 yet, on another side, this idea fell, even still more than the Catholi- 
 cism of the Church, into a confusion between the theocratic views of 
 the Old and New Testaments ; for, according to the Montanistie 
 notions, that progressive development was not, as the nature of 
 the Gospel would require, to proceed from within outwards, by 
 the development of the self-sufficient principle of Christianity in 
 the nature of man, in virtue of the Divine power indwelling in it, 
 but they (7. ὁ. the Montanists) maintained that this progressive 
 development of the Church must be promoted by new outward 
 additional and extraordinary communications of God; they 
 maintained that the Church must be further fashioned and com- 
 pleted by means of a completion of the Apostolical instruction, 
 through Prophets, who would be excited and enlightened in an ex- 
 traordinary manner by the Holy Ghost, and they ascribed to the 
 declarations of these Prophets a positive authority, which bound 
 men to obey them. In fact, they transferred the prophetical 
 government of the Old Testament to the Christian Church. And 
 it is worthy of observation, that by the Catholic Church, which 
 
 ! Preefat. act. Felicit. 2 As, e. g. Tertullian de Monogamia. 
 
MONTANISTIC PROPHECY. 185 
 
 afterwards in a general way received much which it had at first 
 justly and on right evangelical principles blamed in the Monta- 
 nists, much of what the Montanists maintained, about the relations 
 of the new revelations through their Prophets to the foundation 
 of scriptural tradition and scriptural doctrine, was applied to the 
 relation of the doctrinal decrees of General Councils to both these 
 particulars (1. e. tradition and scripture). 
 
 The Montanistic view of this new prophetic gift [Propheten- 
 thum), and of the mode of the operation of the Holy Ghost in it, 
 was also peculiar. It was in accordance with this whole cast of 
 thought, that the Montanists should altogether exclude from the 
 true prophetic gift [Prophetenthum] the co-operation of any 
 human faculty, endowed with self-consciousness, and serving as 
 a free instrument for a Divine communication, and that they 
 should assume an operation of the Holy Ghost, which entirely 
 destroyed all individual agency on the part of man; the condi- 
 tion of a complete ecstasy was reckoned by them as an indispens- 
 able mark of a true prophet. ‘Therefore, in the Montanistic 
 oracles, it is not man speaking in the name of God, but God 
 speaking through the voice of man. Thus, the Holy Ghost says 
 through Montanus’, “ Behold! man is like a lyre, and I flutter 
 over him like the instrument which sets the lyre in motion. ‘The 
 man sleeps, but I awake. See, it is the Lord who sets the hearts 
 of men out of themselves, and gives the heart to man;” and in 
 another oracle he says, “" No angel comes, no messenger, but I 
 the Lord, God the Father, am come’.” This idea of inspiration 
 was certainly nothing new in the Church, it was the oldest con- 
 ception of the idea of inspiration which existed in the theological 
 schocls of the Jews, and which we find in Philo, in the legend of 
 the origin of the Septuagint version, and it passed from the Jews 
 to the Christian fathers (teachers), just as they received with the 
 Old Testament the idea of inspiration also first from the Jews. 
 But this whole view of the matter came under suspicion, in con- 
 sequence of the manner in which the Montanists pushed their 
 notion of ecstatic possession (Jit. ecstasy) to extremes. ‘The con- 
 
 1 Epiphan. Heres. 48. § 4. 
 
 2 The definition of such an ecstasy in the Montanistic spirit is to be found in Ter- 
 tullian c. Marcion. YY. 22. ‘In spiritu homo constitutus, preesertim cum gloriam 
 Dei conspicit, vel cum per ipsum Deus loquitur, necesse est excidat sensu, obumbratus 
 scilicet virtute divina.” 
 
186 LAST OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 troversies with them introduced more accurate investigations, 
 concerning the idea of Divine inspiration, and concerning the 
 difference between a genuine and a counterfeit inspiration (or as 
 it was then called an inspiration by evil spirits), Unhappily, none 
 of the writings, in which these controversies were handled, have 
 come down to us. ‘The Montanists might justly be accused of 
 having prized beyond their value these unusual conditions of 
 the mind during an extraordinary inward excitement, in which 
 the common consciousness of man is set aside, the same accusa- 
 tion which St. Paul makes against the Corinthians, in 1 Cor. xii. 
 where he speaks against overprizing the πνευματι or γλωσσῃ 
 AaAew (the speaking in the spirit, or with tongues); it might 
 justly be said, that these conditions of mind belonged more to the 
 economy of the Old Testament, in which the influence of the 
 Divine Spirit on the mind was rather of a transient and a frag- 
 mentary nature, than to that of the New Testament, in which the 
 Divine life enters as an enlivening, and leavening (dit. pene- 
 trating) spirit into the natural development of man’s nature; or 
 it might be said that such conditions of mind belonged peculiarly 
 to those epochs of the Christian Church, in which the new life, 
 which Christianity brings with it, is for the first time communi- 
 cated to an entirely unprepared (lit. rowgh) portion of mankind ; 
 or when a new era of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost follows 
 upon a long reign of ungodliness and worldliness. But the violent 
 opponents of the Montanists' appear to have fallen just into the 
 opposite extreme, by condemning altogether every thing, which 
 bore the appearance of an ecstasy in the Montanistic sense, and by 
 wishing to limit to one form all the operations of the Holy 
 Ghost. They rejected at once the whole Montanistic idea of a 
 prophet, and on the contrary, they afterwards maintained with 
 regard to the prophets of the Old Testament, that they had 
 already possessed a clear knowledge of the Christian economy 
 predicted by them’. 
 
 It appears also to have been the doctrine of the Montanists, 
 that the season of the last and richest outpouring of the Holy 
 Ghost would form the last age of the Church, and precede the 
 second coming of Christ, and be the fulfilment of the prophecy of 
 
 τ As Miltiades in the book πέρι του μὴ δειν προφητὴν εν ἐκστάσει λαλειν. 
 2 E. g. Origen. in Joh. T. VI. ὃ 2. προπέτως ἀποφηνασθαι περι προφητων, ὡς οὐ 
 σοφων, εἰ μη VEVONKAGL τα ATO ίδιου στόματος. 
 
MONTANISTIC MORALS. 187 
 
 Joel, ch. iii. ὁ (eh. ii.] ; the only doubtful point is, whether according 
 to the Montanistic doctrine, this last outpouring of the Holy Ghost 
 was to be closed by the appearance of Montanus, and his prophet- 
 esses, or whether other prophets were to succeed after him. Max- 
 imilla indeed, as quoted in Epiphanius, says, “that no other 
 prophetess would follow after her, but that the end of the world 
 would immediately take place;” but a question arises, as to 
 whether the Montanistic oracles were always exactly in harmony 
 with themselves, and with one another, unless perhaps Monta- 
 nus and his two prophetesses were looked upon pre-eminently 
 as oracles for the whole Church. It is besides certain from the 
 writings of Tertullian, as we may also infer from the use made 
 by the Montanists of the prophetic passage quoted above, that 
 they supposed that all Christians would be partakers in those 
 extraordinary spiritual gifts. In the Montanistic congregations, 
 it was chiefly among females, a circumstance easily explained, 
 that people expected to find in these preternatural communica- 
 tions, such a knowledge of Divine things, as no sound practical 
 Christian feeling would ever induce men to expect at all, or at 
 least to look for any where else than in Scripture, or in the 
 Reason, enlightened by Scripture.. It was a punishment for 
 despising the just limits of that-which-naturally-belongs-to-man 
 (lit. the Naturally-Human), which will assert its own rights and 
 be recognized and cultivated in its own place,—it was a punish- 
 ment for such contempt, that this latter (the Naturally- Human) 
 should thrust itself into a higher region and trouble it, and that 
 the symptoms of a morbidly excited nature should be promoted, 
 and should be honoured, as the inspiration of the Spirit®. In 
 this manner the heathen system of oracles and auguries might be 
 introduced under a Christian garb into the Christian Church. 
 As the attainment of perfection in Christian conduct, of which 
 Montanism was inclined to lay the foundation, was not deduced 
 
 1 Prefat. in acta Perpetue : majora reputanda, nobiliora queque ut novissimiora, 
 secundum exuberationem gratia in ultima seculi spatia decretam. 
 
 2 Thus in a Montanistic congregation at Carthage in the case of a Christian female, 
 who during the service had fallen into an ecstasy, which resembled those described as 
 the effect of Magnetic Somnambulism, they expected to obtain from her, not only the 
 healing of diseases, as the Heathens did in their incubations in the Temple of Escula- 
 pius, but also information concerning the invisible world. See Tertullian de Anima, 
 Code 
 
188 MONTANISTIC MORALS. 
 
 from the nature of Christianity, working outwardly from a prin- 
 ciple within, but was to repose on new commands, which were 
 added to Christianity through a pretended Divine authority, and 
 were first delivered outwardly ; so this pretended perfecting of 
 the moral doctrine of Christianity might in fact be only an error, 
 deduced from the essential nature of Christianity itself, according 
 to which all is contained in Love, and Love is the fulfilling of the 
 Law ; it might become only a counterfeit of that by means of a 
 new legal opus operatum. Even on this side, Montanism joined 
 itself to an already existing tendency of Christianity, which it 
 only carried to the extreme. ‘That ascetic tendency, which at- 
 tributed a merit to certain outward works of abstinence, and 
 which would make the essence of humility, whose foundations 
 are within, consist in certain outward gestures, by which humility 
 would easily be feigned (was also taken up by Montanism’). 
 The Montanistic prophets, wished to prescribe as binding on 
 all Christians, the fasting on the dies Stationum, which up to 
 that time (see above), had been considered as left to their free 
 choice, and they commanded this fast to be extended to three 
 o'clock in the afternoon. For two weeks in the year they pre- 
 scribed for all Christians, as a compulsory ordinance, such a spare 
 diet as the continentes, or ἀσκηται observed from free inclination 2. 
 Against these Montanistic positions the spirit of evangelical 
 freedom expressly and becomingly remonstrated; but in later 
 times, in this respect also the spirit, which then gave utterance 
 to its sentiments in Montanism, passed over into the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 That enthusiatic tendency, which induced many Christians to 
 give themselves up to martyrdom, was carried by Montanism to 
 
 1 [The words in a parenthesis have been added to the original in which the sense is 
 left quite incomplete. The sentence stands thus: “ Jene ascetische Richtung, welche 
 gewissen ausserlichen Werken der Enthaltung ein Verdienst beilegte, welche das Wesen 
 der im Innern begriindeten Demuth an gewisse ausserliche Gebarden, wodurch leicht 
 die Demuth erheuchelt werden konnte, binden wollte.” H.J. R.] 
 
 2 The Xerophagia, as they were called, Sunday and Saturday, were exempted from 
 this fast. ‘The Montanists were also in controversy (see above) with the Romish 
 Church, about not fasting on the Saturday. In the time of Jerome, in which, however, 
 the Montanists appear to have departed considerably from their original views (e. δ. in 
 the matter of the constitution of the Church), they had three weeks of Xerophagie. 
 These may be compared with the Quadragesimal Fasts of the later church, a name, in- 
 deed, which Jerome applies to them. Ep. 27. ad Marcellum, “ illi tres in anno faciunt 
 quadragesimas.”’ 
 
THEIR VIEWS ON MARRIAGE. 189 
 
 its farthest height. The Montanists condemned flight in seasons 
 of persecution, and other innocent means of saving life, while 
 they laid down a principle, which, if consistently carried out, 
 would have overwhelmed every social constitution, and destroyed 
 all activity on the part of man, viz., that man giving himself up 
 wholly to the will of God, must use no means in order to avoid 
 the persecutions which the will of God has permitted to impend 
 over Christians, for the trial of their faith’. The Montanistic 
 prophetic spirit incited men to strive to win the martyr’s crown 
 for themselves. We recognize that morbidly-excited, over- 
 wrouvht state of feeling, which was altogether deficient in Chris- 
 tian reverence for all that is pure in human nature, and in 
 Christian tenderness of feeling, in this expression of Montanus: 
 ** Desire not to die upon your beds, or in childbirth, or in the 
 debility of a fever, but desire to die as martyrs, that he may be 
 glorified who died for you.” ‘Thus Montanism went to the very 
 farthest point in an abrupt rejection of all customs, which, though 
 they were to be looked upon as mere civil institutions, could in 
 no wise be deduced from an heathen origin, and in a neglect of 
 all the prudential measures by which the jealousy of heathen 
 rulers might be obviated’. It appears to have been objected, 
 among other things, to the Montanists, that, by their frequent 
 assemblies for prayer, combined with their fasts, they violated 
 the law of the state against secret assemblies *. 
 
 Although the ascetic spirit of Montanism promoted a false 
 over-estimate of celibacy ἡ, we must still acknowledge that 
 Montanism expressly brought prominently forward the Christian 
 view of marriage as a spiritual union, sanctified by Christ. The 
 Montanists considered it essential to a genuine Christian mar- 
 riage, that it should be accompanied by a religious sanction, and 
 
 1 See Tertullian de Fuga in Persecutione. 
 
 2 [We may observe from the History of St. Paul, that he did not sanction this disre- 
 gard of prudence, as on more than one occasion he asserted his privileges as a Roman 
 citizen: see e.g. Acts xxii. 25; xxv. 11, yet no mancan accuse him of shrinking from 
 persecution, or fearing Martyrdom. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 De Jejuniis, c. 13. 
 
 + Priscilla expressly declares in an oracular response, (which is to be found in Ter- 
 tullian de Exhortatione Castitatis, c. 11, but only in the edition of Rigault,) that the 
 genuine servant of the Temple, who is an instrument of the Holy Ghost, must live in 
 celibacy. In this also Montanism led the way for the Catholic Church. [1 have 
 searched this treatise in Rigault’s edition of 1695, but am unable to verify the 
 quotation. H. J. ΒΗ. 
 
190 MORAL ZEAL. 
 
 that it should be celebrated in the Church in the name of Christ : 
 a marriage celebrated in any other manner they looked upon as 
 an unpermitted union’. From this view of marriage it would 
 follow also, that Montanism would admit of no second marriage 
 after the death of the first husband or wife ; for marriage, as an 
 indissoluble union in the spirit, and not in the flesh only, was to 
 endure beyond the grave’. Here also the Montanists only 
 carried a view to which others were inclined, to the extreme, 
 in consequence of their legal spirit *, [1. 6. their inclination to 
 bind down everything by compulsory rules.] The Montanists 
 also belonged to the zealots for the strict principles of penance, 
 as were afterwards the Novatianists (see above), and there 
 was here shown by the Montanistic teachers an ardent zeal for 
 sanctification, and an honest apprehension, lest men should make 
 themselves secure in their sins by a false reliance on priestly 
 absolution; but it must be confessed that the Montanists might 
 easily have come to an explanation with their opponents * by 
 means of candid discussions on what is objective in the forgive- 
 ness of sin, and on the relation of absolution to that (see above). 
 The zeal for sanctification, as opposed to a false reliance on the 
 forgiveness of sins, without any entrance into an inward Spiritual 
 communion [ Literally, Life-communion, or communion of the 
 Life] with Christ, is beautifully expressed in those words with 
 which the Montanist Tertullian opposes those who appealed to 
 1 John i. 7, in their opposition to the severer doctrines of 
 penance. John says, ‘so we walk in the Light, as he is in the 
 Light; so have we communion one with the other, and the Blood 
 
 1 Tertullian de Pudicitia, c. 4. Penes nos occult quoque conjunctiones, id est non 
 prius apud ecclesiam profess, juxta meechiam et fornicationem judicari periclitantur, 
 nec inde consertz obtentu matrimonii crimen eludunt. According to the principles of 
 Montanism, the essence of a true marriage in a Christian sense would consist in this, 
 (Tertullian de Monogamia, c. 20): “Cum Deus jungit duos in unam carnem aut 
 junctos deprehendens in eadem conjunctionem signavit.”” (Where to a marriage con- 
 cluded between two parties while they were yet heathens, the sanctifying consecration 
 of Christianity was added.) Montanism prepared the way for the notion of considering 
 Matrimony as a sacrament. 
 
 2 See Tertullian de Monogamia, and his Exhortat. Castitatis. 
 
 3 Athenagoras Legat. pro Christian. p. 37, ed. Colon. calls γαμος δευτερος εὐπρεπὴς 
 μοιχεια. Origen, Hom. in Matt. fol. 363, says that Paul had given the permission for a 
 second marriage after the death of the first husband, or the first wife, πρὸς τὴν 
 σκληροκαρδιαν ἠ ἀσθηνειαν. ; 
 
 4 The book of Tertullian de Pudicitia treats of this controversy. 
 
VIEWS ON MARTYRDOM. 19] 
 
 of Jesus Christ, his Son, makes us free from all sin. But do we 
 sin also, while we walk in the Light, and shall we be purified, 
 if we sin in the Light? By no means. For he who sins, is not 
 in the Light, but in darkness. He shows also, how we may 
 become purified from all sin, if we walk in the Light, in which no 
 sin can take place .. . for such is the efficacy of the blood of Christ, 
 that those whom it has purified from sin, and thus raised to the 
 Light, it thenceforth preserves from sin, if they continue to walk 
 in the Light’ It is true, that Montanism, as we observed 
 above, promoted a wild enthusiasm for martyrdom, and honoured 
 the over-estimate of martyrdom as an opus operatum, for, accord- 
 ing to the Montanistic doctrines, martyrs were to have the 
 advantage of attaining immediately after death to a higher state 
 of blessedness’, to which other believers had no access ; but never- 
 theless, the struggle for the severity of penitential discipline 
 led the Montanist Tertullian to contend against an exaggerated 
 reverence for the martyrs. For while many, to whom Monta- 
 nism refused absolution, could obtain it in the Catholic Church 
 by the interposition of the confessors*, ‘Tertullian thus expressed 
 himself against a false reliance on the sentence pronounced in 
 their favour by these confessors, and against their spiritual pre- 
 sumption. ‘ Let it be sufficient for the martyrs to have cleansed 
 themselves from their own sins. It is unthankfulness or pride, 
 to lavish upon others also what a man must think it a great 
 thing to have obtained for himself. Who has atoned for the 
 death of another by his own, except the Son of God alone..... 
 For it was for this purpose that He came, that He himself being 
 pure from sin, and perfectly holy, might die for sinners. Thou, 
 therefore, who endeavourest to rival Him in the forgiveness of 
 sins, suffer for me, if thou hast never sinned thyself! But, if 
 thou art a sinner thyself, how can the oil of thy little lamp be 
 sufficient for me and for thyself too *?” 
 
 If the Montanists laid especial stress upon the doctrine of an 
 approaching Millenarian reign of Christ upon the earth, in this 
 part of their faith they agreed with a large portion of the rest of 
 the Christian world. 
 
 What promoted the spread of Montanism, was partly this cir- 
 
 1 De Pudicitia, c. 19. 
 2 That isto Paradise. See Tertullian de Anima, c. 56, 
 3 See vol. i. p. 246. 4 De Pudicitia, c. 22. 
 
192 CHURCH SYNODS ON MONTANISM. 
 
 cumstance, that it only carried to extremes such dispositions and 
 views as had already long been in existence with multitudes, and 
 partly that impulse of enthusiasm, which carries every thing 
 along with it, and the manner in which it nourished spiritual 
 pride, because all those who acknowledged the new prophets 
 seemed entitled to look upon themselves as really regenerated, 
 and as members of the elect assembly of the spiritually-minded, 
 and to despise all other Christians, as carnally-minded, and not 
 yet regenerated. Montanistic congregations were at first formed 
 in Asia Minor, but there arose up violent opponents to it among 
 the Church teachers of weight, authority, and influence, who placed 
 the Montanistic prophets in the same class with the Energumeni 
 (or possessed), and called attention to the danger which threatened 
 pure Christianity and the order of the Church, if this unclean 
 spirit should gain ground. It must be confessed that these 
 teachers, by their blind condemnation of Montanism altogether, 
 as a possession of the Evil Spirit, without separating what is false 
 from what is true in it, contributed exactly to this result, that the 
 enthusiastic spirit should harden itself more and more, and spread 
 still further. Synods were held for the investigation of these 
 matters, in which many declared themselves against Montanism : 
 the transactions of these synods were transmitted to more distant 
 Churches, and thus these latter were also implicated in the con- 
 troversy. But, unhappily, from the want of sufficient information, 
 great obscurity prevails with respect to these transactions, and 
 thence also with respect to the gradual formation of the Montanistic 
 party in the Church, and its relation to the rest of the Church. 
 Although the Montanists looked upon themselves alone as the 
 genuine Christians, and their adversaries only as imperfect ones, 
 who occupied a lower grade, and believed themselves raised up 
 above the rest of the Church, yet it does not appear that they 
 directly separated themselves from these latter, and renounced 
 communion with them; they only desired to be the ecclesia 
 spiritus, the spiritalis ecclesia in the carnalis. But it must be 
 acknowledged, certainly, that they could not be permitted to 
 remain in this relation to the rest of the Church, in which they 
 were continually endeavouring to extend themselves further, 
 without great danger to the Churchly life, for they claimed only 
 toleration at the first, in order to attain afterwards gradually to 
 domination. 
 
EXTERNAL HISTORY OF MONTANISM. 193 
 
 As the Church at Lyons (see above), when it was visited by 
 the sanguinary persecution under Marcus Aurelius, had at that 
 season many members of the Churches in Asia Minor, among 
 which the Montanistic movements had chiefly taken place, they 
 were induced thereby to take a lively sympathy in these cireum- 
 stances. It wrote a letter to Rome tu the Bishop Eleutheros, 
 and the Presbyter Irenzeus was the bearer of the letter. Much 
 light would be thrown on the transaction, if we had a more 
 distinct account of the contents of this letter, but Eusebius! says 
 merely, that their judgment in this matter was very pious and 
 orthodox. Now, as Eusebius decidedly looked upon the Monta- 
 nistic views as heretical, we may conclude, from this expression, 
 that the judgment delivered in the letter was against the Mon- 
 tanists. But in this case the letter could not have had the object 
 which Eusebius attributes to it, of adjusting the controversies. It 
 suits this object better, to suppose that in this letter the prevalent 
 sentiment was a spirit of Christian moderation, which endeavoured 
 to lower the importance of the differences, to rebut many ex- 
 aggerated accusations against the Montanistic Churches, and also 
 to maintain Christian unity while they differed in their estimation 
 of the value of the new prophetic gifts. If we suppose this, it can 
 easily be explained how Eusebius came to pass so favourable a 
 judgment on the contents of the letter, which could not have 
 happened, if the letter had spoken a decidedly Montanistic lan- 
 guage. ‘This coincides best also with the character of Irenzeus, 
 which we know to have been peaceful and moderate, as well as 
 with his habits of thought, which, though by no means decidedly 
 Montanistic, were not so entirely opposed to the Montanists. 
 Eleutheros was probably induced by this ambassage to conclude 
 on terms of peace with those Churches, but afterwards there came 
 from Asia Minor to Rome a violent opponent of Montanism, 
 named Praxeas, and he induced the Roman bishop, partly by 
 representing to him the opposite conduct of his two predecessors, 
 Anicetus and Soter, and partly by prejudicial representations of 
 the condition of the Montanistie Churches, to revoke all that he had 
 done. The Montanists now propagated themselves as a schismatical 
 party (literally, a separated Church party) : they were called Cata- 
 phrygians, from the country of their origin, and also Pepuzians, 
 
 Σ Tab. vc 3: 
 
 VOL. IIT. 0 
 
194 THE OPPONENTS OF MONTANISM. 
 
 because Montanus taught that a place called Pepuza, in Phrygia, 
 which was perhaps the first locality of a Montanistic Church, was 
 selected as the spot from which the Millenarian kingdom of Christ 
 was to proceed. 
 
 We must distinguish between the moderate and the violent 
 opponents of Montanism, who carried their opposition against it to 
 the very highest pitch. ‘There were some who, in their opposition 
 to it, not only condemned all Chiliasm as something altogether 
 unchristian, and as one of the unchristian doctrines which pro- 
 ceeded from the detested Cerinthus, but also maintained that the 
 gifts of prophecy, to which the Montanists attached so great 
 importance, were altogether foreign to the Christian economy, 
 inasmuch as the line of Prophets had necessarily been closed 
 by John the Baptist, after whom, the end and aim of all prophecy 
 had appeared. ‘The words, that the Law and the Prophets 
 should only last till John (Matt. xi. 13") were for ever in their 
 mouths; and certainly they were thus far in the right, that 
 Prophecy in the economy of the New Testament cannot be looked 
 upon as something essential and necessarily belonging to the 
 development of the whole, and that by the prophetic office of 
 Christ every other prophetic office is altogether done away with 
 as a necessary means for the formation and maintenance of the 
 Church. They therefore declared the Apocalypse, with which 
 the Montanists occupied themselves a great deal, and from which 
 they endeavoured to demonstrate the truth of their Chiliasm, to 
 be a spurious book, forged by Cerinthus, which was at variance 
 with the very nature of the Christian economy. They also con- 
 sidered the first season of the foundation of the Church, the time 
 of the Apostles, as the limit of those especial and extraordinary 
 operations of the Holy Ghost in the gifts of grace. ‘To the one- 
 sided state of feeling predominant among the Montanists, these 
 overwrought opponents of Montanism opposed a predominant 
 one-sided and cold state of mind, deficient in warmth of inward 
 Christian feelings; and in virtue of this they rejected much which 
 was of a genuine Christian character, from too great fear of fall- 
 
 1 Tertullian makes frequent allusion to this watch-word of the anti-Montanistic 
 party ; but we must confess that it would not be used by allin the same sense: many 
 would intend by it only in a general way to oppose that intermixture of Law and 
 Gospel, of that which belongs to the Old with that which belongs to the New Tes- 
 tament, which they found in Montanism. 
 
ALEXANDRIAN THEOLOGY. 195 
 
 ing into something mystical’. But this last disposition was too 
 strange to the prevailing spirit of the Christian Church, in its 
 youthful life, to allow of its finding much acceptance. 
 
 The second principal direction of the theological spirit proceeded 
 from the school of Alexandria. The peculiar spiritual life in this 
 city, then of so great importance as a middle point of union be- 
 tween the East and the West, communicated then, as it had done 
 formerly to the Jewish, a peculiar character to the Christian theo- 
 logy, which formed itself there. The Christian theology which 
 proceeded from Alexandria, bore the same relation to the different 
 directions of the Christian religious and theological spirit, that the 
 Jewish-Alexandrian theology had borne to the different directions 
 of the Jewish religious and theological spirit’, But a peculiar 
 institution of the Alexandrian Church had an especial influence 
 on the formation of this Christian- Alexandrian theology, I mean the 
 Alexandrian Catechetical School, about the early rise of which, 
 however, and its gradual completion, we are without authentic 
 information. It is natural to inquire, whether the original des- 
 tination of this School was merely to give instruction to those 
 heathens who were converted to Christianity, or who desired to be- 
 come better acquainted with it, or whether a sort of school for the 
 education of Christian ministers, a kind of spiritual theological 
 seminary, existed there from the very first. ‘The accounts of 
 Eusebius * and Jerome ἡ are too indefinite to decide this inquiry ; 
 and, indeed, both these fathers were scarcely in a condition to be 
 able to distinguish accurately between the state of this School in 
 their own days and that which it had originally. We must therefore 
 confine ourselves to the consideration of that which is known of 
 
 1 See the account of the Alogi, given hereafter. 2 See vol. i. p. 40, &c. 
 
 3 Lib. vi.c. 10. It appears that from ancient times there had existed there a 
 διδασκαλειον ἵερων λογων, which would, according to the ecclesiastical usage of terms, 
 most naturally be explained as “ a School for the interpretation of Scripture,” and this 
 is certainly insufficient to determine the nature and kind of the Alexandrian School ; 
 but when once one is acquainted with the nature and character of that school, these 
 words may be made to contain all that belongs to its theological studies. For its 
 Gnosis was intended to give the key tothe proper understanding of Scripture, and would 
 be deduced out of Scripture by allegorical interpretation. We cannot, in this age of the 
 Church, which as yet jumbled every thing together in a chaotic fashion, expect to find any 
 division of theological discipline into various classes, such as Exegesis, dogmatics, &c. 
 as Professor Hasselbach of Stettin has justly observed in the explanation of these words 
 in his treatise, ‘‘ de Schola, que Alexandriz floruit, Catechetica, Particul. i. p. 15.” 
 
 * De Viris Illustr. c. 36. 
 
 02 
 
190 REQUISITES FOR A CATECHIST. 
 
 the operations of individual catechists, as presidents of this 
 school, in order thence to gather some conclusions as to the 
 general circumstances of the school itself. We find, then, 
 originally at Alexandria only one person appointed as a catechist 
 by the bishop, whose business it was to communicate religious 
 instruction to the heathens, as well as to instruct the children of 
 the Christians of the place in their religion also’. Origen was 
 the first who, as catechist, divided with another person the duties 
 of his calling, which had become too much for him, while he was 
 desirous of prosecuting at the same time his learned labours in 
 theology; and on that account he formed his catechumens into 
 two classes. But although in other places the catechist might 
 not need to possess very high spiritual qualities and peculiar 
 knowledge, the case was different in Alexandria, where they 
 often had to instruct men of a literary and philosophical cast of 
 mind, who had already investigated a variety of systems, in order 
 to find out a system of religious truth adapted to their wants, and 
 where they were often obliged to converse with such men on 
 religious subjects, and philosophical matters which are connected 
 with them. 
 
 In that place men were required who possessed a learned ac- 
 quaintance with the Hellenic religion, and the philosophical 
 systems then peculiarly in vogue in the educated classes, among 
 which the Platonic-eclectic was chiefly predominant, and who 
 would thence be in a condition to set forth the insufficiency of 
 these things to meet the religious requirements of the heathens ; 
 to counteract the prejudices against Christianity which arose out 
 of their philosophical habits of thought, in a manner suitable 
 to them; to compare Christianity with the prevalent religious 
 and philosophical systems; to seek and to point out the part of 
 their philosophically-developed religious knowledge *, on which 
 Christianity might be engrafted; and generally to set before 
 them the Christian doctrines in a manner suited to their learn- 
 ing and cultivation of mind. It was not sufficient here, as it 
 was in other Churches, to bring forward the main doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity, according to the so-called παραδοσις, but it was necessary 
 with the better informed catechumens to trace things up to the 
 original source of religion in Scripture itself, and to endeavour to 
 
 1 Eusebius says, lib. vi. c. 6, that Origen, when a boy, had been the scholar of 
 
 Clement. 
 2 Bewusstseyn consciousness or knowledge ; is the wordin the German. H. J. R.] 
 
REQUISITES FOR A CATECHIST. 197 
 
 lead them to the understanding of Scripture; they desired a creed 
 which would bear a learned and enlightened investigation. One 
 of these very catechists, Clement, gives a hint of what is re- 
 quired for the successful discharge of the duties of the catechist 
 office, when he says *; ‘* He who desires generally to select that 
 which is useful for the advantage of the catechumens, and more 
 especially when there are Hellenists *, (but the earth is the Lord’s 
 and all that therein is,) he must not, like the beasts devoid of 
 reason, refuse to learn much; but he must seek to gather together 
 as many aids as possible for his hearers.” He shortly afterwards 
 adds*. < All cultivation is useful, and especially the study of the 
 Holy Scriptures is necessary, in order to be able to prove that 
 which we bring forward, and also, where the auditors are persons 
 of Hellenic education *.” It was therefore necessary that great 
 care should be used in the choice of these Alexandrian catechists, 
 and the office was assigned to men of literary and philosophical 
 attainments, who had themselves come over to Christianity after 
 a learned investigation of it, such as Pantznus (Πανταινος) who 
 is the first Alexandrian catechist, who is known to us; and such 
 also his disciple Clement. 
 
 Now, as these men formed the successors to their office out of 
 the circle of their scholars among the converted Heathens, and as 
 many of their scholars, incited by their lectures and conversation, 
 devoted their learning, as well as all they had besides, only to the 
 service of Christianity, and became afterwards zealous ministers 
 of the Church, and as many young Christians also joined them 
 and endeavoured to attain a learned well-grounded Christian 
 knowledge, as well as an aptitude to instil the same into others, 
 it happened of itself without endeavours for that object, that 
 their sphere of exertion enlarged itself, and a kind of theological 
 school, a learned seminary for ministers of the Church, was 
 formed around them. 
 
 In order properly to understand the development of the pecu- 
 
 1 Stromat. lib. vi. 659 B. [Pott. 785. Sylb. 279. Klotz, iii. 152.] 
 
 2 We may thus supply what is requisite to complete the sense: he need not fear to 
 seek even in Heathen literature the traces of truth, and appropriate to himself what is 
 useful there, for all comes from God, and as such is pure. 
 
 3. Strom. vi. 660 C. [See above, note 1. ] 
 
 4 We must here compare together generally, what Clement says of those with whom 
 the faith must receive a demonstration after the Hellenistic fashion. 
 
198 WIDE INFLUENCE OF THESE SCHOOLS. 
 
 liar theological spirit of this school, we must fully enter into its 
 elations with regard to the three different parties, in connection 
 with which, and in opposition to which, it was formed, and the 
 different spiritual dispositions of which it hoped to be able to 
 reconcile and to unite together by means of a higher principle, 
 which would smooth down the contradictions between them. 
 
 These relations were, 
 
 1. Their relation to the Greeks, who sought after wisdom, who 
 despised Christianity as a blind, reason-hating belief, and who 
 were only strengthened in their contempt of it, by the sensuous 
 conceptions of the uninformed and abruptly repulsive Christians 
 by which they were met. 
 
 2. Their relation to the Gnostics, then very common in Alex- 
 andria, who at the same time spoke with contempt of the blind 
 belief of the sensuous multitude, and by the promise of a higher 
 exoteric religious creed, attracted to themselves the Heathens 
 who were inquiring after wisdom, and the Christians who were 
 unsatisfied with the common instruction in religion. 
 
 3. Their relation to that first class of pastors of the Church, 
 whose views were of a Practical-realistic nature, and particularly 
 those among them who were very zealous, to whom from the spe- 
 culative pride and presumption of the Gnostics, all speculation and 
 philosophizing, and every attempt at anything like a Gnosis, were 
 objects of suspicion, and were always fearful of the intermixture 
 of foreign philosophical elements with Christianity. 
 
 By means of a Gnosis’, proceeding from faith, and engrafting 
 itself on that faith in harmony with it, the Alexandrians expected 
 to avoid the onesided and false views of these three dispositions, 
 and to appropriate to themselves whatever there was of truth in 
 each of them, nay, even to be able to reconcile them to each 
 other. 
 
 In their theory of the relation of γνωσις to πιστις they differed 
 from the Gnostics in this respect, that they recognized πίστις as 
 the foundation of the higher life for αἰ Christians, as the common 
 bond, by which all, however they might differ from each other in 
 intellectual culture, might be united into one Divine community. 
 They even also opposed the unity of the Catholic Church, founded 
 on this faith, to the discrepancies of the Gnostic schools (διατριβαι), 
 
 1! yvwoic ἀληθινὴ opposed to the ψευδωνυμος. 
 
ALEXANDRIAN IDEA OF FAITH. 199 
 
 the one with the other, and they did not assume different sources 
 of knowledge for πίστις and γνωσις, but the same for both; 
 namely, the tradition of the main doctrines of Christianity, ex- 
 isting in all Churches, and Holy Scripture; they ascribed to 
 Gnosis only the work, of bringing into full consciousness, that 
 which was first acquired by faith and received into the inward 
 life, of developing it according to its full extent and its internal 
 connection, of grounding it upon knowledge, and presenting it to 
 others with knowledge, of proving that this is the genuine doctrine, 
 which came from Christ, of giving a reason for it, and of defend- 
 ing it against the reproaches of its adversaries among the heathen 
 philosophers and heretics. ‘They used here for their motto the 
 passage of Isaiah, which appears already to have been used as a 
 motto in more ancient days, and which afterwards was the motto 
 to designate the relation between faith and knowledge from the 
 days of Augustine to those of the scholastic theology formed 
 upon Augustine—the passage found in Isaiah vii. 9. This pas- 
 sage, indeed, if taken only in the Alexandrian version, and with- 
 out reference to the context, may bear this meaning’ : ἐαν μὴ πισ- 
 τευσητε, οὐδὲ μη συνητε; if ye believe not, neither will you attain 
 to knowledge—which words they first took in this sense: whoso- 
 ever does not believe in the Gospel, cannot attain to an insight into 
 the spirit of the nature of the Old ‘Testament; and ¢hen in the 
 sense which is akin to it: without faith in Christianity man cannot 
 penetrate into the deeper knowledge of the nature of the Christian 
 doctrines’. ‘Thus Clement says, “ Faith is as necessary for the 
 spiritual life of the Gnostic, as breath is for the animal life *.” 
 They endeavoured to make good the substantial nature, the dignity 
 and power of Faithagainst the heathen and heretics. Clement com- 
 bats the notion, that Faith isa mere arbitrary opinion. Faith with 
 
 1 Just as in later times, many passagess of the translation of the Bible by Luther 
 have become current, as proofs, for some proposition which had reference to Christian 
 faith, or Christian life, although this application of them was not in conformity with 
 the meaning of the original. 
 
 [ How oftene. g. have the words ‘ search the Scriptures,’ been cited as a command, by 
 persons who did not dream that the original would bear a very different sense, ‘ Ye 
 search the Scriptures;’ and that some distinguished critics have maintained that the 
 latter sense is the more appropriate.—See Bp. Jebb’s Sermon on this text. H. J. R.] 
 
 2 Stromat. lib. ii. 362 A; lib. i. 273 A; lib. iv. 528 B; and Origenes in Mattn. 
 Ed. Huet. p. 424. [The passages of Clement are in Pott. p. 432. 320. 625; in Sylb. 
 156. 117. 226.] 
 
 3 Stromat. lib. ii. 373. 
 
900 THE πίστις OF THE ALEXANDRIANS. 
 
 him is a free apprehension of the Divine, preceding all demon- 
 stration’, a practical assent, in virtue of the feeling of truth im- 
 planted in the nature of man, and in virtue of the natural dis- 
 position to a belief in the truth that reveals itself to man; 
 unbelief is therefore, in his opinion, a deficiency on the part of 
 man’; and he says in another passage, “ He who believes on the 
 Son, has eternal life. Since then the believers have life, what 
 higher thing remains for them, than the possession of eternal 
 life? But nothing is deficient in Faith, which is perfect and 
 self-sufficient in itself*.” Clement here sets forth as the cha- 
 racteristic of Faith, that it brings with it the pledge of the 
 future, that it takes beforehand the future as a present posses- 
 sion ἡ, How a deeper knowledge of that which is believed proceeds, 
 by means of the enlightenment of the reason, from a Faith, 
 which passes into the interior life, while that which is believed 
 is enacted in life (lit. becomes lived), is beautifully explained 
 by Origen in the passage quoted above *, where he says, after 
 quoting a narrative from the Gospel, “* He who believes and 
 understands what is written in Isaiah vii. 9, will have received 
 understanding, from his faith; according to the measure of his 
 faith, and when he has received this, let him say what he has 
 aright to say after the foundation of his faith, in the spirit 
 of these words: J believe and therefore I speak, ψ. exvi. 10; 
 Rom. x. 10°. Let such an one believe not merely in Jesus, and 
 on that which is written in this place, but let him recognize the 
 sense that is included in it ; for he who remains in the truth of 
 faith, and lives in the word by works corresponding to the word, 
 learns the truth, as Jesus promised, and is made free by the 
 truth.” What Clement also says about the new powers of per- 
 
 1 Toon Puc εὐγνώμονος προκαταληψεως. Stromat. lib. ii, 371. [Pott. 444. Sylb. 
 159. ] 
 
 2 Stromat. lib. ii. 384. [Pott. 459. Sylb. 165. ] 3 Pxdagog. lib. i. c. 6. 
 
 4 ἔκεινο δὲ To (Tw) πιστευσαι ἠδὴ προειληφοτες ETOMEVOY, μετα THY ἀναστασιν 
 ἀπολαμβανομεν yEevomevor. 
 
 5 Compare also Stromat. vil. 731. (Pott. 804. Sylb. 310.] Faith is a good indwelling 
 in the soul (ἐνδιαθετον re [τι] ἀγαθον), while it acknowledges God, and values Him, 
 without an effort, and therefore must man, proceeding from this faith, and increasing 
 in it, by the grace of God attain as far as possible the knowledge of him (God). 
 
 ® These words also are not used properly, according to the Alexandrian version, 
 and in conformity with the context; but the sense which Origen attaches to them, and 
 the theory built upon them, are clear; Al! deeper development of the sense of Holy 
 Scripture, or of the doctrines of the faith, must proceed from a life in faith. 
 
SUBJECTIVE NATURE OF ALEX. GNOSIS. 201 
 
 ception for Divine things, proceeding from this inward life of 
 faith, is beautiful: ‘ See, says the Logos (Isaiah xliii. 9), 1 will 
 make a new thing, which no eye hath seen, and no ear hath 
 heard, and hath not entered into the heart of any man, 1 Cor. 
 ii. 9. Which may be beheld, received, and comprehended with 
 a new eye, with a new ear, with a new heart, by faith and under- 
 standing, in as much as the disciples of the Lord speak, under- 
 stand, and act spiritually *.” 
 
 This is exactly the peculiar Christian feature in this Alexan- 
 drian theory, that they do not conceive Gnosis to be a matter of 
 mere speculation, but as something proceeding from a new in- 
 ward living power, produced by faith, and shown in conduct, as a 
 habitus practicus animi; and thus Clement says’: “ As the 
 doctrines, so must the conduct also be, for the tree is known by 
 the fruits, not by the blossoms and leaves; and Gnosis comes also 
 from the fruits and the conduct, not from the doctrine and the 
 blossoms ; for we say that Gnosis is not only doctrine, but a 
 Divine knowledge, that light, which arises in the soul out of 
 obedience to the commandment, which makes all things clear, 
 and teaches man to know what there is in creation and himself, 
 and how he can stand in communion with God, for what the eye 
 is to the body, that Gnosis is in the soul.” No knowledge of 
 Divine things can exist, without a life in them, which comes 
 from faith ; here knowledge and life become one *. 
 
 This is therefore in the Alexandrian theory, the sudjective 
 condition and the subjective nature of Gnosis; as far as regards 
 the objective sources of knowledge, from which the ‘ Gnostikos’ 
 was to endeavour constantly to learn with greater clearness and 
 
 1 Clem. Stromat. lib. ii. 365 B. [Pott. 436. Sylb. 156. ] 
 
 2 Stromat. lib. iii, 444. [Pott. 531. Sylb. 191.] 
 
 3 Clem. Stromat. lib. iv. 490: ὡς μηκετι ἐπιστήμην exe καὶ γνωσιν κεκτησθαι 
 (τον yyworikoy) ἐπιστημὴν δὲ εἰναι και γνωσιν. [Pott. 581. Sylb. 210.] 
 
 He might certainly have obtained this idea from what the Neo-Platonic philosophy, 
 which is older than Plotinus, taught, concerning the identity of subject and object in 
 the case of the highest condition of intuitive perception; but he might have drawn the 
 thing itself from his inward Christian experience and conceptions, without our as- 
 suming any other hypothesis to explain the circumstance, and he need not be supposed 
 to have borrowed anything from the Neo-Platonic philosophy, except the form in 
 which he represented his notions. And besides, since the influence of spiritual phe- 
 nomena, which lay hold deeply of the life of their age, extends far wider than is 
 immediately perceptible, and cannot be mechanically reckoned, who can determine 
 
 how far Christianity had already influenced the spiritual atmosphere, in which certain 
 ideas became current ? 
 
202 OBJECTIVE SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 depth the truths received through faith by him into his inward 
 life: these were, according to Clement—the Holy Scriptures. 
 Although many who were deficient in the education requisite for 
 the purpose of investigating Scripture for themselves, only held 
 fast the essential fundamental truths, which had been commu- 
 nicated to them at their first instruction, in accordance with tra- 
 dition; the Gnostikos was to distinguish himself from the common 
 race of believers, by proving these truths by a comparison of 
 Scripture with itself, and supplying all that was needful to them, 
 by knowing how to combat from the same Scriptures the errors 
 which opposed them, and thus a faith grounded on much Biblical 
 knowledge, was in his case to take the place of a belief on the 
 authority of the Church. Clement uses the following language ἦ. 
 ** Faith is, then, the shortly-expressed knowledge of that which is 
 essential, but Gnosis is the strong and firm demonstration of the 
 things received by faith, grounded on faith by means of the 
 teaching of our Lord, by which faith is raised to an enlightened 
 belief not to be shaken *.” And, in opposing the proofs grounded 
 on the undeceiving touchstone of Scripture to the reproach of 
 the Heathens and Jews, that it is impossible, from the many sects 
 among the Christians to know where truth may be found; the 
 same writer says, ““ We do not confide on men, who only pro- 
 claim their own judgment, to whom we might, in like manner, 
 oppose our own judgment. But since it is not enough, merely 
 to express our own opinion, but we must support what we say, 
 we do not wait for the witness of men, but we support what we 
 say, by the word of the Lord, which is the most worthy of con- 
 fidence of all modes of proof, or rather which is the only one, by 
 the knowledge of which, those who have only just tasted the 
 Scriptures, are Believers—those who have gone further and are 
 more accurately acquainted with the truth, are ‘ Gnostics’ * ! 
 Hence Clement calls the Gnosis, which proceeds from a com- 
 parison of different passages of Scripture with one another, and 
 developes the consequences which flow from the recognized doc- 
 
 1 Stromat. vii. 732. [Pott. 865—6. Sylb. 311.] 
 
 2 ἡ μὲν οὖν πιστις συντομος ἐστιν, WE ἐπὸος εἰπειν, των κατεπειγοντων γνῶσις, 
 ἡ γνωσις δὲ ἀποδειξις των δια πιστεως παρειλημμενων ἰσχυρα και βεβαιος, δια THE 
 κυριακὴς διδασκαλιας ἐποικοδομουμενὴ TY πίστει, εἰς τὸ ἀμεταπτωτον καὶ μετ᾽ 
 ἐπιστημὴς καταληπτον παραπεμπουσα. ; 
 
 3 Stromat. vii. 707. [Pott. 891. Sylb. 322.] 
 
GNOSIS REQUIRES PREPARATION. 208 
 
 trines of faith, a faith according to knowledge (literally a knowing 
 faith)". With him therefore, the Gnostic is one, who has grown 
 grey in the study of the Holy Scriptures, and whose life is 
 nothing else than works and words, which correspond to the 
 Divine truths received traditionally *. But is only to the Gnostic 
 that the Holy Scripture brings such a knowledge of Divine 
 _things, because it is he only, who brings to it a believing sense 
 (or capacity )—a sense capable of receiving that which is Divine. 
 Where a man wants this sense, Scripture appears unfruitful ὅς 
 This inward sense is nevertheless not sufficient to deduce out of 
 the Scriptures the truths contained in them, to develope their 
 whole extent, and to unite them into a systematized whole, so as 
 to defend them against Heathens and Heretics, and to apply 
 them to all which had hitherto been objects of human knowledge. 
 For this there was needed a previous learned preparation, and 
 such could not have been created anew at once by Christianity ; 
 but Christianity was obliged to engraft itself here on the class 
 of learning and cultivation of mind here in vogue, just as it had 
 grown up into existence and was ready for it, in order that Chris- 
 tianity, as the leaven for all mankind *, might by degrees pene- 
 trate it, and give its own peculiar turn to this cultivation of mind. 
 The Alexandrian Gnosis by this, now attracted to itself a mul- 
 titude of reproaches from the other party, which compelled it 
 thoroughly to justify its method of proceeding. ‘This contest, 
 which has often been repeated in history, is an interesting one. 
 It was objected to the Alexandrian party, that the Prophets and 
 the Apostles had no philosophical education and attainments. Cle- 
 ment answered— “The Apostles and Prophets spoke certainly 
 as disciples of the Spirit, what it inspired them to say; but we 
 cannot reckon on a guidance of the Holy Spirit that stands in the 
 place of all human means of information, in order to unravel the 
 
 1 ἐπιστημονικὴ πιστις. Stromat. ii. 381. [Pott. 454. Sylb. 164.] 
 
 2 Stromat. vii. 762, 63. [Pott. 896. Sylb. 323.] 
 
 3 Stromat. vii. 756. τοις γνωστικοις κεκυηκασιν al γραφαι. 
 
 4 Clement has beautifully alluded to this parable of the leaven. ‘‘ The power of the 
 word, given to us, which does much with small means, which attracts every one, who 
 receives it unto him, to itself in a secret and invisible manner, and conducts his whole 
 nature to an unity (literally a one-ness).” ἡ ἰσχυς του Aoyou, ἡ δοθεισα ἡμιν, συντομὸς 
 ovoa και δυνατη, παντα τον δεἕαμενον και ἔντος ἑαυτου κτησαμενον αὐτὴν, ἐπικε- 
 κρυμμένως τε και ἀφανως προς ἑαυτὴν ἕλκει καὶ TO παν αὐτου συστημα εἰς ἑνοτητα 
 cuvayet. Stromat. lib. v. p. ὅ87. [Pott. 694. Sylb. 249.] 
 
 7 
 
204 RELATION OF PHILOSOPHY TO CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 hidden sense of their words. The training of the mind by learning, 
 must make us capable of developing the whole intention of the sense 
 communicated to them by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 
 He who wishes to become enlightened in his thought by the power 
 of God, must already be accustomed to philosophize on spiritual 
 matters; he must already have attained for himself the proper 
 frame of thought, which may be then illuminated by a higher 
 Spirit. He needs a dialectic education of the mind, in order to 
 be able sufficiently to distinguish the ambiguous and synonymous 
 terms of Holy Scripture’.” Against those who maintain that 
 man ought to content himself with faith, and who cast away all 
 the knowledge, which men wish to use in the service of faith, he 
 says—‘ As if, without even using any care towards the culture of 
 the vine, they expected at once to obtain the grapes. ‘The Lord 
 is represented to us under the image of a vine, from whom we must 
 harvest fruit with the reasonable carefulness and the skill of the 
 husbandman. He must cut, dig, bind up, and do everything of that 
 kind, he needs the hook, the axe, and other tools of husbandry 
 for the care of the Vine, in order that it may preserve fruit that 
 we may enjoy’.” He had to defend the Alexandrian Gnosis 
 against the reproach, that Divine revelation is not allowed to be 
 the self-sufficing source of truth; that it is made to need com- 
 pletion and support from foreign sources; and that those who are 
 not well informed and highly educated, are excluded from a know- 
 ledge of it. He says in reply *—“ If we are to make a distine- 
 tion for the sake of those, who are always ready to complain, we 
 should call philosophy something, which co-operates towards the 
 knowledge of truth: an endeavour after truth—a preparatory 
 training of the Gnostic, and we do not make the co-operating 
 principle the original cause, nor the chief. Not as if that last 
 could not exist without philosophy, for certainly all of us, 
 without a general and encyclopedical instruction ἡ, and without 
 the Hellenic philosophy, but many also, even without being able 
 to read and write, being laid hold of by the Divine philosophy, 
 which comes from the Barbarians, have received by the power 
 of God through faith, the doctrine concerning the being and attri- 
 
 1 Stromat. i. 292. [ Pott. 342. Sylb. 126. N.B.—This passage is not exactly tran- 
 slated from Clement, but paraphrased and a little altered. H.J. R.] 
 2) Lac. p. 291. 3 Stromat. i. 318. [Pott. 376.  Sylb. 138. | 
 
 4 q é λ αιδεια 
 ἀνεὺυ της ἐγκυκλιου παιδειας. 
 
CLEMENT AND THE ANTI-GNOSTICS. 205 
 
 butes of God, (literally the doctrine about God). The doctrine 
 also of our Saviour is perfect in itself and self-sufficing, as the 
 power and wisdom of God; but the Hellenic philosophy which is 
 added to it, does not make the truth more powerful, it only 
 renders ineffectual the sophistical attacks against it; and as it 
 wards off delusive machinations against the truth, it is called the 
 proper ward and fence of the vineyard’. ‘The truth of the faith 
 is as it were the bread necessary for life; the form under which it 
 is represented to us, is to be compared with that which is eaten 
 with the bread, and is like the dessert.” 
 
 While, on the whole, Clement is distinguished by the mildness 
 and moderation with which he opposed the adversaries of the 
 Alexandrian Gnosis, he himself was well aware how much their 
 anxiety was awakened by the adulterations of simple Christianity 
 among so many sects, who mixed with the Gospel elements the 
 most uncongenial to its nature; and he well knew, also, how 
 natural it is for men to confound the abuse and the right use of 
 the same thing with each other. ‘The zeal, however, of his adver- 
 saries, which was certainly often a blind zeal, and the persuasion, 
 that this too sensuous, and one-sided disposition stood much in the 
 way of the Spirit of Christianity, which endeavoured to ennoble 
 all human things, and that many were thereby deterred from 
 Christianity, led him to speak somewhat too sharply against their 
 opponents, and did not suffer him to do becoming justice to their 
 pious zeal, as when he says’, “It is not unknown to me, what 
 many ignorant and clamerous persons® constantly say, that our 
 faith must confine itself to the most necessary and essential points, 
 and must let go all foreign and superfluous matters, whereby we 
 are detained with things that do not contribute towards our 
 object.” And in another passage‘ where he says: ‘The multi- 
 tude in their anxiety lest they should be carried away by the 
 Hellenic philosophy ἡ, dread it, as children dread masks. But 
 
 1 What the ancients said generally of Dialectics in relation to philosophy, that they 
 
 were its fence, was applied by the Alexandrians to the relation of philosophy itself to 
 the Christian Gnosis. 
 
 2 Stromat. i. 278. [ Pott. 326. Sylb. 120.] 3 ἀμαθὼς ψοφωδεις. 
 4 vi. 655. [Pott. 780. Sylb. 278.] 
 5 In Stromat. vi. 659, Clement, in a manner full of spirit, says: ‘‘ Most Christians 
 
 handle the doctrines after a clownish manner, like the companions of Ulysses, who got 
 out of the way, not of the Sirens, but of their music and song, by shutting their ears 
 out of ignorance ; because they knew, that if they have once given their ear to the Hel- 
 
 lenistic knowledge, there is no chance of their turning again from them.”’ [See above, 
 p- 197.] 
 
206 DEFENCE OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 if their faith is of such a kind (for I cannot call that knowledge) 
 as to be overturned by plausible discourses, then it may just as 
 well be overturned, in regard to these people, for they them- 
 selves confess, that they have not the truth; for the truth cannot 
 be overturned, false opinions may.” Now this is dealing outa 
 hard and unjust sentence, if we refer it to persons; for all worth 
 was not to be denied to the faith of these persons, although they 
 did not feel confidence in their own ability, to enter into a con- 
 test with a spirit of understanding prejudiced against the faith, 
 and although they were afraid of being constantly disquieted in 
 the enjoyment of that, which was to them their dearest possession. 
 But if we look at it objectively, it is a great and an instructive 
 truth for all ages, which the free spirit of Clement here pro- 
 claimed; that Christianity need fear nothing from any opposition, 
 but that the truth, when placed in opposition to that which is false, 
 only shines forth the brighter. In conformity with that declaration, 
 which is ascribed to our Saviour in the Apocryphal Gospels, 
 γίνεσθε δοκιμοι τραπεζιται (be ye skilful money-changers), the 
 Gnosticos, according to Clement, ought to be able universally to 
 distinguish mere appearances from the truth, as he would false 
 money from genuine ; and hence, to fear no might of false appear- 
 ances. He needed an acquaintance with the Grecian philosophy, 
 just to be able to point out to the philosophically educated Hea- 
 thens, its errors and unsatisfactoriness, to battle with them on 
 their own ground, and thence to lead them to the knowledge of 
 the truth. Clement says '— ‘Thus much I say to those who are 
 desirous of finding fault, that even if philosophy be useless, yet 
 the study of it is useful, because it is useful fully to prove that it 
 (philosophy) is useless. For we cannot condemn the Heathens 
 by a mere prejudice against their doctrines, unless we go into the 
 development of particulars with them, until we compel them to 
 accede to our sentence: for a refutation combined with a know- 
 ledge of the matter before us, is the most likely mode of obtaining 
 their confidence.” And in another passage he says *—* For we 
 must give to the Greeks who ask for that wisdom, which is in 
 esteem among them, such things as they are accustomed to, in 
 order that they may be brought to a belief in the truth by the 
 
 1 J, 278. [i.e. Ed. Paris. In Sylburg. ed. p. 120. in. Potter, vol. i. p. 327. Klotz, 
 vol. ii. p. 15.] 
 2 V.554, [Pott. 656, Sylb. 237. ] 
 
DEFENCE OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 207 
 
 most easy way, through their own proper method. ¢ For I be- 
 came’, says the Apostle, ‘all things to all men, that I might 
 win all.’” 
 
 The most eager antagonists of this free spirit, in order wholly to 
 condemn the occupying ourselves with the Grecian philosophy, ap- 
 pealed to the Jewish tale related in the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, 
 that all the higher branches of knowledge had come to the Heathens 
 in an unlawful manner, through the communications of fallen 
 spirits, and they looked upon all heathen philosophers without dis- 
 tinction, as instruments of the evil Spirit. They either considered 
 the whole ante-Christian world only in stern opposition to Chris- 
 tianity ; they confounded that which is heathen with that original 
 and divine system, without which the heathenism that only adulter- 
 ated and troubled this original system, could never even have ex- 
 isted at all; they would not so much as hear of any point through 
 which Christianity could be engrafted on a nature and qualities in 
 man, which are akin to the Divinity, and which beam through it 
 constantly even in its worst corruption; and yet without such a 
 point, Christianity could never have propagated itself upon the 
 heathen soil ;—Or else, like the impetuous, fiery Tertullian—the 
 friend of nature, and of all the original revelations of life, the 
 enemy of art, and of all perversion (of such revelation)—they 
 saw in philosophy only the hand of Satan, that adulterates and 
 mutilates the original nature of man. Clement endeavoured to 
 refute this party also on their own principles. ‘ Even if this 
 view were just,” he says, “yet could Satan deceive men only 
 when he clothed himself as an angel of light: he must attract man 
 by the appearance of truth, and by the intermixture of truth 
 and falsehood; and man must always seek the truth, and acknow- 
 ledge it, let it come from whom it may. And even this commu- 
 nication can only take place in accordance with God’s will, and 
 therefore must have been contemplated in the plan of education 
 proposed for humanity by God’.” 
 
 But this view, however, which was so exceedingly contra- 
 dictory to the natural development and progress of human 
 nature, was thoroughly repugnant to his own sentiments; and 
 he expresses himself very strongly against it, when he speaks in 
 
 1 This is the substance of passages found in vi. 647. [Pott. 773. Sylb. 274.] 
 andi. 310. [Pott. 367. Sylb. 134.] 
 
208 PHILOSOPHY PDAGOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 conformity with his own views. “Is it not then absurd,” he 
 says, “while we attribute disorder and sin to Satan, to make him 
 the giver of a good thing, i. e. philosophy ? for he appears, under 
 this point of view, to have been more benevolent towards good 
 men among the Greeks than Divine Providence’.” 
 
 Clement was inclined rather to seek in the progress of the Greek 
 philosophy the work of God in his care for the improvement of 
 man, and a preparation for Christianity adapted to the peculiarities 
 of the Greek character; as it is impossible to deny’ that the 
 philosophical development of the human mind, which proceeded 
 from the Greeks, tended both negatively and positively to render 
 the soil capable of the reception of the Gospel. The idea of the 
 Divine education of manas a great whole, was Clement’s favourite 
 idea, and he conceived the object of this great scheme to be Chris- 
 tianity; and to this he attributed the dealings of God, not only 
 with the Jewish people, but also those with the heathen world, 
 although not in the same manner. The Alexandrians combated 
 that confined view [lit. particularism] which would limit the 
 government of God, in whom we live, and move, and are, only to 
 the narrow limits of the Jewish people. ‘Thus Clement says, 
 ἐς Every good impulse comes from God; he uses those men who 
 are fit to lead and to instruct other men *, as instruments for [the 
 improvement of] the greater mass of mankind. Such men were 
 the better class of Greek philosophers. Philosophy, which forms 
 man to virtue, cannot be a work of evil; it can only be a work of 
 God, whose work every impulse to good is. And all, which is given 
 by God, must be given and received with advantage. Philosophy 
 is not found in the hands of the wicked, but it was given to the 
 best among the Greeks; and it is therefore evident, whence it 
 was given,—it must have been given by Providence, which gives to 
 every man that which is adapted to his peculiar condition. [0 is 
 clear also that the law was given to the Jews, and philosophers to 
 the Greeks, till the appearance of our Lord; andhence proceeds the 
 universal call to a peculiar people of righteousness, in virtue of the 
 doctrine which we receive by faith, as the one God of both, the 
 
 1 Lc. vi. 693. [Potter, vol. ii. p. 822. Sylburg, 294. Ed. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 198.] 
 2 See above, in the general introduction, vol. i. 
 3 The ἡγεμονῖκοι and παιδευτικοι. 
 
PHILOSOPHY A TRANSITION POINT. 209 
 
 Greeks and the barbarians, or rather of the whole race of man, 
 brought all together through the one Lord’.” “ Before the appear- 
 ance of our Lord, philosophy among the Greeks was necessary 
 for righteousness, but now it is useful for the furtherance of holi- 
 ness, as a kind of preparation for the demonstration of the faith ; 
 for thy foot will not stumble, if thou trace up every good thing, 
 
 whether it belongs to the heathen, or to us—to Providence ; for 
 God is the cause of every good thing, but partly in an especial 
 manner, as (he is the cause) of the Old and the New Testa- 
 ment, and partly in a more remote (or derivative) manner, as he 
 is of philosophy. But, perhaps, even this was also given in an 
 especial manner to the Greeks at that time, before the Lord 
 called the heathen also, for it educated the heathen as the law 
 did the Jews for Christianity, and thus philosophy was a degree 
 of preparation for him, who was to be brought to perfection 
 by Christ ’.” When Clement speaks here of a righteousness to 
 be attained by philosophy, he does not mean to say that phi- 
 losophy can impart to man the disposition requisite to the fulfil- 
 ment of his moral destination, and the attainment of the happi- 
 ness of heaven; he makes a distinction between a doctrine justi- 
 fying man, which with him can be only the Gospel, and such a 
 one as can merely prepare him for that*. He makes a dis- 
 tinction between a certain degree of awakenment in the moral 
 and religious conscience, as well as of excitement to moral en- 
 deavours, and of moral preparation ; and between the universal 
 perfect righteousness, which is the object of the whole nature of 
 man *, and is opposed to that cultivation of man’s nature which is 
 only partially adapted for a certain condition of human develop- 
 
 1 yi. 393, 4, [Potter. vol. ii. p. 822, 823. Ed.Sylb p. 294. Ed. Par. 693,694. Ed. 
 Klotz. ὃ 158, 159, vol. iii. p. 197, 198. The passage is abridged. 1 have followed 
 the German.—H. J. R.] 
 
 2 Strom. i. 282. [i. 6. ed. Paris, vol. i. p. 331. Ed. Pott. p. 121,122. Ed. Sylburg. 
 vol. ii. p. 20. Ed. Klotz. } 
 
 3 Διδασκαλια ἡ τε δικαιουσα, ἡ TE εἰς TOUTO χειραγωγουσα και συλλαμβανουσα, 
 vi. 844. 
 
 [The context is here important. Clement says, that as every relation (πατριαὶ) 
 ultimately ascends to God the Creator, so also to the Lord must be referred, ἡ των 
 καλων διδασκαλία, ἡ τε, ὅς. Potter’s edit. vol. ii. p. 770. Sylburg. p. 274. Klotz, 
 vol. iii. p. 134.—H. J. R.] 
 
 4 ἡ καθολου δικαιοσυνη, Strom, i. 319. (Potter. vol. i. p. 377. Sylb. p. 137. Klotz, 
 vol. ii. p. 70. | 
 
 Ὁ 1% Ρ 
 
210 PHILOSOPHY A TRANSITION EOINT. 
 
 ment: he himself says of the Greek philosophy’, that it is too 
 weak to practise the commandments of God, and that it makes 
 men capable of receiving the most majestic doctrines only by enno- 
 bling their morals, and by furthering their belief in the superin- 
 tendence of Providence’®. ‘As God,” says Clemens, “ willed 
 the salvation of the Jews, by giving them Prophets, so also he 
 separated the most pre-eminent among the Greeks from the 
 mass of ordinary men, by making them come forward as their 
 own Prophets in their own language, inasmuch as they were 
 capable of receiving the blessing of God..... As now the preach- 
 ing of the Gospel has come at a convenient season *, so also were 
 the law and the Prophets bestowed upon the Jews, and philoso- 
 phy upon the Greeks at the proper time, in order to accustom 
 their ears to the Gospel message +.” 
 
 Clemens had observed, from intercourse with many who had 
 received a philosophical education, and perhaps had learned also 
 from his own experience, that previous philosophical culture 
 might become a means of facilitating conversion (/it. a transition- 
 point) to Christianity, as he appeals for proof of what has been 
 alleged to the circumstance, that those who received the faith, 
 whether prepared for it by the Greek philosophy, or by the 
 Jewish law, were both led to the one race of the redeemed 
 people δ. As the Pharisees, who had mixed the law of God with 
 human traditions, by Christianity attained to a right knowledge 
 of the law; so the philosophers, who had defiled the revelation of 
 Divine truth to the soul of man by the partial and imperfect 
 views to which human nature is liable (dit. by human one-sided- 
 ness) attained to true philosophy by means of Christianity °. 
 Clement, in order to represent the ennoblement of philosophy 
 
 11. 309. [Pott. i. p. 366, Sylb. p. 133. Klotz, vol. ii. p. 57.] 
 
 53 ᾿Αμηγεπὴ σωφρονιζουσα τὸ ἦθος και (al. καὶ To 00¢) προτυπουσα Kat 
 προστυφουσα εἰς παραδοχὴν τῆς ἀληθειας τὴν προνοιαν δοξαζουσα. [Ita ap. 
 Neand. δοξἕαζοντα Potter, Klotz, &c., which seems the right reading.—H. J. R.] 
 
 3 κατὰ καιρον, i, 6. after human nature had been prepared for it by the previous 
 dealings of God. 
 
 4 rac ἀκοας ἐθιζουσα προς To Knovypa. Strom. vi. 636. [Potter. vol. ii. p. 761— 
 2. Sylb. p.270. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 123.] 
 
 5 vi. 636, 637. [Potter, vol. ii. p. 761—763. Sylb. p. 270. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 122, 
 123.1] 
 
 6 vi. 644, [ Potter, vol. ii. p. 769, 770. Sylb. p. 273. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 133.] 
 
RECONCILIATION OF OPPOSITE DISPOSITIONS. PAUL 
 
 afforded by Christianity, uses the simile of a graft which had 
 been used by the Apostle in a kindred sense, and was very ex- 
 pressive and well adapted to denote the ennoblement of human 
 nature by Christianity. The wild olive-tree' is not deficient in 
 sap, but in the power of properly concocting the juices which 
 circulate through it. Now, when the germ of garden olive is 
 ingrafted upon the wild stem, the former obtains more sap, 
 which it appropriates to itself, and the latter the power to assi- 
 milate (or digest) it. ‘Thus also the philosopher, who is com- 
 pared to the wild olive-tree, has much which is undigested, 
 because he is full of the versatile spirit of inquiry, and longs 
 after the noble nourishment of truth; and if he now receives 
 Divine power through faith, then he will be able to digest the 
 nourishment imparted to him, and becomes a garden olive-tree.” 
 He beautifully illustrates the difference between the pure revela- 
 tion of truth in Christianity, and those individual beams of truth 
 which are dimmed by an intermixture of human imperfection, by 
 a comparison drawn from the light artificially imprisoned in a 
 burning lens, as contrasted with the pure and clear sunshine ’. 
 The Alexandrians were full of the great idea, which now, when 
 Christianity began to unfold its essential nature to the thinking 
 mind, for the first time revealed itself in a passing manner, and 
 was unable as yet to become the principle which, carried out into 
 every individual application, should be the life-giving principle 
 of Christian theology and of a Christian consideration of history, 
 the idea which alone gives the right key to the contemplation of 
 
 1 vi. 671. [vi. 672. Potter. vol. ii. p. 799. Sylb. p. 285. Klotz, vol. iii. p.170. The 
 German is hardly an exact translation of the Greek. It is rather a condensation of the 
 text of Clement. I have therefore followed the German. The word verdauen, to di- 
 gest or concoct, I have translated by assimilate, which is equally applicable to vegetable 
 and animal functions. (See Prout’s Bridgewater Treatise, part iii. especially p. 469.) 
 —H. J. R.] 
 
 2 ἡ μεν ἑλληνικὴ φιλοσοφια TY ἐκ THC θρυαλλιδὸς ἐοικε χλαμπηδονι, V. 560, vi. 688. 
 [Potter, vol. ii. p. 663. Sylb. p. 239. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 22, Now, I do not see any 
 mention in this passage of Brennglas, though the part of the sentence which fol- 
 lows should be given also ; it is this ἡν ἀναπτουσιν ἀνθρωποι, Tapa ἡλιοῦ κλεπτον- 
 τες ἐντέχνως τὸ φως. It seems to me only a comparison of the artificial and feeble 
 light of a lamp, which is, in fact, originally stolen from the sun, to the full clear light 
 of day. The Brennglas is taken from vi. 688, (Potter, vol. ii. p. 817. Sylb. p. 292. 
 Klotz, vol. iii. p. 191.) where a different simile is used, ὡς yap ποὺ τὸ ἀπὸ rou 
 ἡλιου φως OV ὑελου σκευους πλήρους ὑδατος μεθοδευει ἡ τεχνὴ εἰς πυρ, οὗτω καὶ ἡ 
 φιλοσοφια ἐκ της θειας γραφὴης To ἐμπυρευμα λαβουσα ἐν ὀλιγοις φανταζεται. H.J.R.] 
 
 p 2 
 
212 INTERMIXTURE OF PLATONISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 human nature and of history ; namely, that Christianity is, as it 
 were, the centre to all the rays of human imperfection ὁ (literally, 
 one-sidedness) ; that it proves itself the religion of human nature, 
 inasmuch as it reconciles with each other all the contending 
 dispositions which meet each other in human nature; that it 
 divides truth from falsehood in all human and imperfect systems, 
 that treat of Divine matters ; and that it teaches us to recognise 
 in errors the truth, which being misunderstood, has formed the 
 foundation of them. Such a light of the Spirit, according to the 
 idea of Clement, ought Christianity to have lighted for the 
 Gnostic, and thus ought he, standing on the ground of Chris- 
 tianity, through which he has attained the true centre for the 
 religious nature of man, to be able freely and securely to separate 
 truth and falsehood from each other in all the systems of Grecian 
 philosophers and Christian heretics. ‘Thus Clement says’, ‘ As 
 truth is one, for falsehood only has a thousand paths of error, in 
 which truth is dismembered, just as the Bacche dismembered the 
 body of Pentheus, thus the sects of the philosophy derived from 
 the barbarians (the Christian) and of the Hellenic philosophy 
 pride themselves upon that portion of truth which each happens 
 to possess, as if it were the whole truth, but all is enlightened at 
 the rising of the dawn. As,” he says, ‘eternal existence ὅ 
 represents that in one moment, which is broken by means of time 
 into past, present, and future, so also is truth able to collect 
 together the seeds which belong to her, even if they may have 
 fallen into a strange soil. ‘The Hellenic and the barbarian phi- 
 losophy have in some sort received portions of eternal truth; they 
 have received, not Dionysus, as in that mystical legend, but the 
 divine revelation of the eternal Logos, dismembered and divided 
 into fragments. But he who gathers together again that which 
 was torn asunder by them, and reinstates the Word in its per- 
 
 1 [I understand by this a point in which all human dispositions which are apt to run 
 into excess, each in one direction, and thus some in directions exactly opposite to each 
 other, may meet and be reconciled and united; e.g. extreme liberality tends to pro- 
 digality, extreme prudence to inhumanity ; Christianity alone gives the right direction 
 of the heart which shall unite the two properly. I have thought it necessary to add 
 this explanation, because I do not choose to incorporate a paraphrase with the text, 
 and the literal translation hardly gives an adequate notion of the meaning to the 
 English reader.—H. J. R. ] 
 
 21, 298. [Potter, i. p. 348. Sylb. p. 128. Klotz, vol. ii. p.43.—H J. R.] 
 
 3 «Das ewige Seyn.’ In the Greek it is ὁ atwy.—H. J. R. 
 
INTERMIXTURE OF PLATONISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 213 
 
 fection and unity, will without doubt learn the truth *.” This mode 
 of view peculiarly distinguished the Alexandrians, as compared 
 with the partial polemical views of other divines, and therefore 
 they alone were in a condition to appreciate, with less prejudice, 
 the opinions of heretics, to judge about them with more justice, 
 and in considering their systems, to separate not only the truth 
 from the falsehood which appeared in them, but the important 
 errors also from the unimportant’. 
 
 On the one side it may indeed also appear that Clement, far 
 from supporting the Gnostic distinction between an esoteric and 
 an exoteric Christianity made one life of faith in all Christians, 
 and understood by Gnosis nothing but a well-informed knowledge 
 and capacity of explaining the one faith, which was to belong to 
 all Christians. It is certain, in accordance with the connected 
 theory, which has been laid down above, and which may be 
 proved by many passages of Clement, that this alone was his im- 
 pression on the one side, but on the other side we find also indi- 
 cations, that he had no clear view of the bearing which different 
 forms of religious belief and knowledge had to the essential cha- 
 racter of the Christian life. Beautifully as he speaks in many 
 passages of the nature and the power of faith, yet he was not 
 always clearly conscious to himself of the full meaning of these 
 declarations, and they did not become principles, logically carried 
 out, of his dogmatical (doctrinal) opinions. There was mixed 
 up with that idea of faith which Clement had deduced from the 
 essential nature of Christianity, the idea which adhered to Cle- 
 ment from his former Platonism, namely, the idea of a mythical 
 
 1 Strom. i. 298, as above. [Potter punctuates and explains the latter part of the 
 sentence somewhat differently. Itis thus: 6 de ra dunonpeva συνθεις, και ἑνοποιη- 
 σας, τέλειον Tov Aoyoy ἀκινδυνὼως εὖ icf Ort κατοψεται, THY ἀληθειαν. He there- 
 fore makes τὴν ἀληθειαν in apposition with τέλειον τὸν A., but I apprehend Nean- 
 der’s is probably the more correct construction, for I think in the other case we should 
 have roy τέλειον Λόγον. Tedevoy is the predicate of a clause of the sentence.—H. J. R.] 
 
 2 Hist. as in Strom. vi. 675. [Pott. vol. ii. p. 802. Sylb. p.287. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 
 195.] The important distinction is made between ot περι Ta τῶν ἐν μέρει σφαλλο- 
 pevocand those ot εἰς τὰ κυριοτατα παραπιπτοντες. Clement also in vi. 647. [Pott. 
 vol. ii. p. 773. Sylb. p.275. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 138.] argues against the blind con- 
 demnation of all, which is said by heretical teachers, merely on account of the person 
 by whom it is said, without weighing the matter itself, and this he does particularly 
 with reference tothe Montanistic prophets. ‘‘ Nor must we, on account of the person 
 who speaks ignorantly, condemn before hand that which he says, which observation is 
 applicable to those who now pass as prophets, but we must prove that which is said, 
 whether it is conformable to the truth.” 
 
2]4 NOTIONS OF πίστις AND γνωσις. 
 
 popular faith’, in which fancy and truth are intermixed, as 
 contrasted with the pure religious knowledge of the philosophi- 
 cally educated, and this notion would have a close affinity with 
 the Gnostic ideas of the relation of γνωσις to πίστις. By many 
 explanations, which he gives, he appears to understand by πίστις 
 only a very subordinate stage of subjective Christianity, and of 
 the Christian life, a carnal faith, received upon authority and 
 clinging to the letter, a faith which is still far removed from the 
 true spirit and essence of Christianity, and which, as Clement 
 represents it, is essentially more able to repress the external out- 
 breaks of evil, than to produce true inward sanctification of the 
 heart (although he well knew that on this latter the very essence 
 of practical Christianity depends) ; but yvwore, on the contrary, is 
 in his language, an inward, living, spiritual Christianity, a Divine 
 life. If the mere Believer is impelled towards good by fear of 
 punishment and hope of future happiness, the Gnostic, on the 
 contrary, is animated toward all good by the inward, free impulse 
 of love, he needs no outward grounds to persuade him of the 
 Divine origin of Christianity, he lives in the consciousness and 
 in the perception ἢ of Divine truth and even already feels himself 
 blessed by its means. If the mere Believer (πιστικος) acts on the 
 dictates of uncertain feelings, and therefore at times fails in doing 
 that which is right, or does it, but not in the right way, the Gnos- 
 dic, on the contrary, acts always under the guidance of an enlight- 
 ened reason with clear Christian views and with a consciousness 
 of their clearness*. Where Clement speaks of the progressive 
 
 1 δοξἕα των πολλων. 
 
 2 [Anschauung. This word is variously used. It sometimes means merely contem- 
 plation, sometimes intuitive perception, sometimes the object of our perception. It is 
 here applied to the act, and therefore may be rendered perception, as showing that the 
 Gnostic has (in the view of Clement) as clear perceptions of Divine truth, as 
 men usually have of those ideas, which we call ideas of sensation. See the Edinb. Rev. 
 for Oct. 1832.—H. J. R.] 
 
 3 Clement, Stromat. 518,519. [Pott. vol. i. p. 612,615. Sylb. p.222, 223. Klotz, vol. 
 ii. p. 338, 341.] 645. [Pott. vol. ii. p. 770—1. Sylb. p. 274. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 138-- 
 4.1] 652. [Pott. vol. ii. p. 777—8. Sylb. p. 277. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 143.] where he 
 says that the πίστις γνωστικὴ has already received in anticipation, what to others is 
 still something future; through love, the future is to him already present; ἐστιν αὐτῳ 
 Ou ayarny ἐνέεστος ἠδὴ τὸ μελλον ; vi. 663. [Ροίί. vol. ii. p. 789. Sylb. p. 281. 
 Klotz, vol. iii. p. 158.] where he divides good into that which is worthy of being pur- 
 sued for its own sake, and that which is only a means to something higher. Gnosis 
 belongs to the first class, because we shall attain nothing else by means of it, when it is 
 attained, but only obtain the possession of itself, and be in the enjoyment of an unin- 
 
NOTIONS OF πίστις AND γνωσις. 215 
 
 enlargement of the Divine scheme for the education of man, 
 and represents the Logos as the Osoe παιδαγωγος, he says’, 
 * All men belong to him, some of them with a consciousness 
 of what he is to them, (κατ᾽ ἐπιγνωσιν) others without that con- 
 sciousness; some as friends, some as faithful servants, and others 
 merely as servants; it is the teacher, who leads the Gnostic by 
 the revelation of mysteries (the inward perception of truth), the 
 believer by good hopes, and the hardhearted by corrective disci- 
 pline, by appeals to the senses.” Now here Clement’s γνωστικὸς ap- 
 pears in many respects to resemble the πνευματικος of the Gnostics, 
 and his πίστικος their ψυχίικος, and in regard to their interior life 
 they both appear to bear the same relation to each other, but 
 there is nevertheless this great distinction, that amidst all the 
 differences which they held to exist in the subjective Christianity 
 of the two conditions, the Alexandrians maintained that there 
 was the self same foundation of objective Christianity, of which 
 they only admitted different conceptions, the one more spiri- 
 tual and the other more sensuous, nor did they, like the Gnos- 
 tics, make these two different subjective conditions dependant 
 on an original and ineffacable difference of human disposi- 
 tions. It may, indeed, be said, that, nevertheless, the two 
 different conditions of subjective Christianity which Clement dis- 
 tinguishes from each other, were really in existence in his day, 
 and are again found in other times, inasmuch as they are 
 founded in the very nature of man; and therefore that it can- 
 not be of so much consequence, by what name we distin- 
 guish the two conditions, nor can it make so great a difference 
 whether we consider them as two different stages in the develop- 
 ment of faith, and of the life under the influence of faith, or 
 whether we accord the true Spiritual life of faith only to Gnosis, 
 
 terrupted immediate knowledge*, and we shall make our way to this and through this, 
 [i. ὁ. a state to which we attain through itself—H. J. R.] | Faith belongs to the second 
 class, on account of the fear of punishment which arises from it, and on account of ad- 
 vantages, and the hope of reward; fear being a motive to the multitude to abstain from 
 sinning, and the promises a motive to strive after obedience, through which the happi- 
 ness of heaven is to be obtained. 
 
 1 viii. 702. [Potter, vol. ii. p. 831—2. Sylb. p. 298. Klotz, iii. 209, and seqq. ] 
 
 * Anschauung. See note above, p. 214, The last clause of the sentence is thus in the 
 German: dass wir uns in ununterbrochenen Anschauung befinden, und zu dieser und 
 durch diese uns durchkampfen ; by which I only understand that this state becomes a 
 means only to its own continuance, and not an introduction to a higher state.—H.J. R. 
 
216 COMPARISON OF THE ALEXANDRIANS AND THE GNOSTICS. 
 
 as Clement has done in many passages. And yet this difference 
 is by no means so unimportant, as it may seem at first view, but 
 its foundations lie deeper and its consequences are more impor- 
 tant. ‘The cause that the Alexandrians conceived the thing in 
 this way, lay partly in their own predominant turn of mind, and 
 partly in the manner, in which they viewed the faith of a large 
 class of Christian people. 
 
 As far as the first is concerned, the contemplative and specu- 
 lative turn of mind was far too predominant among the Alexan- 
 drians, and this prevented them from recognising in its full ex- 
 tent the independent practical power of faith in the reformation 
 of the interior life, and they were still under the influence of that 
 view, which preceeded from the Platonic School, and was natural 
 indeed generally to the whole of the ancient world, namely, that 
 the inward, spiritual, and religious life, in short, maturity in reli- 
 gion, could not exist without philosophical culture of the mind’. 
 
 As far as the second point is concerned, we must take into the 
 account the manner in which they (the Alexandrians) were often 
 accustomed to meet with faith in a certain class of uneducated 
 Christians, as a mere belief, received upon authority, united with 
 a sensuous Eudzemonism’, and a fear of hell, that presented to the 
 mind only images of horror derived from the senses. They could 
 not mistake the bettering influence of faith upon the life, even 
 where it appeared to them under this form, when they compared 
 what these men had become, as Christians, with what they had 
 been as heathens; but they did not believe that they could per- 
 ceive any traces of the ennobling influence of Christianity upon 
 the whole inward nature of man, or of a divine spiritual life ; and 
 this sensuous Christianity was in contradiction to their spiritual- 
 
 1 There is a remarkable passage in Clement, vi. 691. in which he distinguishes an 
 inward perception, [ Geistes-anschauung], a learned knowledge or Gnosis and faith, 
 from one another. The first, or νοήσις, consists in an immediate connection of the 
 Spirit with the highest origin of things, the mere ἐπιβαλλειν ; yvwouc is distinguished 
 from νοήσις by the addition of BeBaiovy Noy ἀποδεικτικῳ, the reception of the fun- 
 damental doctrines without the inward perception (anschauung) in regard to the prac- 
 tical exercise of them is Faith. (ἡ φρονησις) ἐν τοις εἰς εὐλαβειαν συντεινουσι 
 γενομένη, καὶ avev θεωριας παραδεξἕαμενὴ Tov ἀρχικὸν λογον κατα τὴν ἐν airy 
 εξεργάσιας τηρησιν πιστις λεγεται. 
 
 2 [Ππἀωιηοηΐδιη, The word in the original is Eudamonismus, which is a modern 
 coinage. It expresses a notion of the Deity being pleased with man and rewarding 
 him, especially in good that affects the body.—H. J. R.] 
 
SEPARATION OF πίστις AND γνωσις. 977 
 
 ized religious habits of thought. ‘They might therefore be inclined 
 to attribute a very low grade of the religious life to πίστις and to 
 the κοινὸς πιστικος. and to consider the higher life of Christianity, 
 of which they saw nothing in the κοινοὶ πιστίκοι, as fruit due only 
 to the γνωσις of the well-informed and highly cultivated. It must 
 indeed be avowed that they were very likely in this case to do 
 injustice to those, who were in an entirely different condition as 
 regarded both the turn of their mind, and the extent of its de- 
 velopment, if they passed judgment upon the more hidden 
 spiritual life of faith from the impure reflection of it in an habit 
 of thought, neither thoroughly formed, nor as yet thoroughly 
 penetrated by the leaven of Christianity. 
 
 The prejudicial consequences of this predominance of the 
 contemplative and speculative turn of mind, and of this extremely 
 sharp division of γνωσις from πίστις» show themselves in Clement 
 in a variety of ways. Instead of bringing forward the Gnosticos, 
 under the image of an humble minded Christian, living in the 
 constant conviction of the sinfulness that still adheres to him, 
 and constantly advancing in holiness, he often appears in Cle- 
 ment under the form of a Neoplatonic Theosopher, living in 
 contemplative self-sufficingness’, and unmoved by passions’, 
 although, even hither the Christian element has again made its 
 way, as may be seen by the circumstance, that the Gnostic 
 cannot feel himself entirely blessed in contemplation alone, and 
 living for himself, and shut up in himself alone; but is repre- 
 sented as actuated by the desire of working actively for the 
 benefit of others *. 
 
 Hence also it happened, that instead of contenting themselves 
 witha mere systematic (lit. organic) development of that which is 
 known in faith, the Alexandrians wished to transcend the bounds 
 
 1 [The word “ self-sufficiency”’ is soconstantly used in English in an idiomatic sense, 
 as implying merely conceit and vanity, that I have used a word which, if not a current 
 word, may be perhaps allowed.—H. J. R.] 
 
 2 See F. 748. [See Potter, vol. ii. pp. 881-2. Sylb. p. 318. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 268. ] 
 
 3% Clement says beautifully on this point: ‘‘ The Gnostic, who sees his own salvation 
 in the advantage of his neighbour, may justly be called a living image of the Lord ; 
 not with regard to the circumstances of his outward form, but from similarity to that 
 which he was in power, and from a resemblance to his preaching.’ ‘O γνωστικὸς ἰδιαν 
 σωτηριαν ἡγουμενος THY των πέλας ὠφελειαν, ἀγαλμα ἐμψυχον εἰκοτως ἀν TOU 
 Kuptov λέγοιτο, οὐ κατα τὴν τῆς μορφης ἰδιοτητα, ἀλλα κατα τὸ THC δυναμεως συμβο- 
 λον καὶ κατὰ τὸ τῆς κηρυἕεως ὁμοιωμα. 
 
218 ITS CONSEQUENCE. 
 
 of faith by their Gnosis, and lost themselves in the region of 
 Theosophy, which desired to comprehend divine things; so that 
 mistaking and overlooking the practical aim of Divine revelation 
 for the improvement and salvation of human nature, they endea- 
 voured to find the solution of speculative enquiries in Scripture. 
 When many came forward and opposed the speculative Gnosis with 
 this just argument: ‘ The wise man is persuaded that there is 
 much which is incomprehensible, and his wisdom even consists in 
 the very acknowledgement of the incomprehensibleness of the in- 
 comprehensible’ :” Clement answered, “ This is also common to 
 those, who are able tosee only a little way before them; the Gnostic 
 apprehends that which appears to be inapprehensible to the rest of 
 men, for he is persuaded that there is nothing which cannot be 
 apprehended by the Son of God; whence it follows that there is 
 nothing which cannot be taught [by him], for he who suffered out 
 of love to us, would debar us from nothing which could contribute 
 to the instruction of Gnosis.” One sees how indefiniteness here 
 becomes the source and foundation of great error, for this declara- 
 tion is true enough when understood of that only which it is 
 necessary for man to know for his salvation, but not when applied 
 to things, which serve only to the gratification of speculative and 
 ill-directed curiosity. 
 
 The notions of Clement in these matters, are repeated in those 
 of his great disciple Origen, only conceived in a peculiar manner 
 full of deep thought, and systematically worked out, but there is the 
 same connection of the ideas of Gnosis and Pistis in relation, as well 
 to different conditions of subjective Christianity, as to the diffe- 
 rent operations of a Divine scheme for the general instruction 
 of man, which lets itself down tc the varied wants which arise from 
 the variety of these conditions of man. In his controversies with 
 the heathen, who reproached Christians with their blind faith, 
 Origen often declares it to be a peculiarity of Christianity as a 
 revelation of a God who came for the salvation of all men, that it 
 is able to attract even the multitude which is incapable of scien- 
 tific investigation and knowledge, and in virtue of mere faith ὅ, 
 to work upon them to sanctification with divine power; and he 
 appeals to the experience of very many, as a testimony to this 
 
 1 vii. 649. [Potter, vol. ii. p. 775. Sylb. p. 276; Klotz, vol iii. p. 140, N.B. The 
 reference in Neander should be vi. 649, not vii. 649.—H. J. R.] 
 
 2 
 
 2 Wry πιστις, πιστις ἀλογος. 
 
ORIGEN ON FAITH. 919 
 
 efficacy of Christianity’. ‘Those who had attained to faith at 
 first only in this manner, might then become impelled of their 
 own accord to penetrate constantly more and more also into the 
 deeper sense of Scripture*. He makes πίστις the lowest stage of 
 Christianity, which must nevertheless have an existence, in order, 
 that “the simple, who give themselves up to holiness according 
 to their power, may be able to attain salvation ;” and above faith 
 he places both Gnosis and Sophia. ‘This Jast is that Divine 
 Wisdom, which is imparted to the souls, who are, by God’s grace, 
 capable of receiving it, and who have sought to obtain it from 
 God, by study of the Scriptures, and by prayer. Human wisdom, 
 the wisdom that belongs to our world, is only a preparatory 
 exercise of the soul, in order that it may become capable of 
 attaining that which is the real aim and object of its existence, 
 by means of cultivating its intellectual faculties *. 
 
 Origen, as well as Clement, in many places declares expressly 
 in reference to the nature of faith, that it is a fact of the inward 
 life, through which man enters into a real communion with divine 
 things, and he distinguishes this living faith from a belief, rest- 
 ing on authority, which clings only to outward things. Thus, 
 in explanation of John viii. 24‘, he says, ““ That faith brings with 
 it a spiritual communion with that on which we believe, and 
 hence there is generated a kindred condition of the heart *, which 
 must show itself in works. The object of our belief is received into 
 the inward life, and becomes a forming and fashioning principle 
 for it. In all the relations (ἐπινοίαι), under which Christ becomes 
 an object of faith, according to all these, the believer receives 
 Christ into his inward life; thus, for example, since Christ is 
 called the power of God, power to all good actions cannot be 
 wanting to him, who believes on Christ, as the source of divine 
 power.” Thus, in tom. xx. in Joh. 6. xxv. he makes a distinction 
 
 1 Compare 6. g. c. Celsum, lib. i. c. 10. 
 
 2 C. Celsum, lib. vi. Philocal. c. 15. pera τὴν ἁπαξἕ γενομενὴην eicaywyny φιλοτι- 
 μῆσασθαι προς To Kat βαθυτερα των κεκρυμμένων νοηματων ἐν ταις γραφαις κατα- 
 λαβειν. 
 
 3 C. Cels. vi. 13. [Ed. Spencer, p. 283.] Origen maintains that St. Paul sets those 
 graces, which are connected with knowledge, higher than the gift of working miracles. 
 ἐπει TOV λογον προετιμα των τεραστιων ἐνεργειων, δια τουτο ἐνεργηματα δυναμεων 
 και χαρισματα ἱαματων ἐν Ty κατωτερω τιθησι χωρᾷ παρα τὰ λογικα χαρισματα. 
 ς. Cels. iii. 46. [Ed. Spence. p. 139. ] 
 
 4 Tom. xix. Joh. ὃ 6. [See Origen. ed. Huet. vol. ii. pp. 284, 285.—H. J. R.] 
 
 5 διακεισθαι kara Tov λογον Kat συμπεφυκεναι αὐτῳ. 
 
 4 
 
220 ORIGEN ON FAITH. 
 
 between a sensuous belief in miracles, and a faith in the truth. 
 He compares John viii. 43, and 45, and says, that those sensuous 
 Jews were impressed by the miracles, and would have believed 
 on Jesus as a worker of miracles, but they were incapable of re- 
 ceiving Divine truth!, and never would have believed on Jesus 
 as a preacher of deep truth; and he adds, “ This may also be 
 seen in many, who look with wonder on Jesus, when they con- 
 sider his history, but who cannot have any further faith in him, 
 when a deep doctrine, which surpasses their comprehension, is 
 unfolded, but begin to cavil at it, and say that it is false. Therefore 
 let us take heed, lest hesay to us also, ¢ ye believe not me, because 
 I declare the truth.’” Nevertheless, the relation to what is de- 
 pendent on historical grounds, and the practical influence, which 
 is inherent in the idea of faith, as conceived by St. Paul, is clearly 
 thrown more into the background by Origen. That higher con- 
 dition of faith was, in his notions, at the same time a condition 
 in which Christianity was applied and conceived in a more 
 spiritual manner—a condition in which truth was more imme- 
 diately the object of interior perception; and this condition of 
 faith so exactly accorded with his notion of the condition of 
 Gnosis, that he often contrasts Gnosis with a mere historical 
 belief. * Faith may exist without a definite conception of the 
 thing believed*.” He ascribes this Gnosis to those who devote 
 themselves wholly to the contemplation of Divine matters, who 
 after they have cleared their spirit from foreign elements, behold 
 God with more godlike eyes. He finds also that such a Gnosis 
 is contrasted with mere faith, in John viii. 31, 32°. For this 
 distinction between Gnosis and Pistis he appeals also to 1 Cor. 
 xii. 9; where, however, faith being represented as a gift of grace, 
 cannot be that historical belief of which Origen speaks as opposed 
 to Gnosis, but where it is rather the designation of a peculiarly 
 practical power of faith. Origen places the condition of Gnosis 
 so far above that of faith, that he represents it, in speaking of 
 this contrast, as a life of sight. ‘ Those,” he says, “" who have 
 received the charisma of Gnosis and Sophia, no longer live in 
 
 1 As if our Saviour had intended to say, καθ᾽ ὁ μὲν τέρατα TOW, TLOTEVETE μοι, 
 καθ᾽ ὁ Oe τὴν ἀληθειαν λέγω, οὐ πιστευετε μοι. [The reference in the text has not 
 enabled me to consult the original passage.—H. J. R. | 
 
 2 [Erkenntnisse is the German word here used, which I have translated ‘ definite 
 conception.” See the Conversations Lexicon in verbo.—H. J. R.] 
 
 3 See t. xix.in Joh. c. J. 
 
ORIGEN ON FAITH. 921 
 
 faith, but in sight; the spiritually minded, who already dwell no 
 longer in the body, but even here below are already present with 
 the Lord. But those do still dwell in the body, and are not yet 
 present with the Lord, who do not understand the spiritual Sense 
 of Scripture, but cling wholly to its body (i. e. the letter, see be- 
 low). For how, since the Lord is the Spirit, should he not be far 
 from the Lord, who does not understand the life-giving spirit and 
 the spiritual sense of Scripture; such an one lives in faith!.” He 
 busies himself here very diligently in endeavouring to explain, 
 after his own notions, what St. Paul says in utter contradiction 
 to this view in 2 Cor. v. about the relation of faith to sight; and 
 not without sophistical arguments involving a confusion of ideas, 
 he contends against the just interpretation of most of the fathers, 
 who maintain that even Paul speaks of himself, as one who still 
 lived in faith, and had not yet arrived at living in sight. He 
 makes the expression, “ to dwell in the body,” entirely equiva- 
 lent to “living in the flesh, and according to the flesh ;” and 
 thus obtains asa result, that St. Paul said this, not in reference to 
 himself and all spiritually-minded persons, but only in reference to 
 those believers, who were still carnally-minded. He applies also 
 (and in him the application is consistent) what St. Paul says (1 
 Cor. xiii.) of the perfect, to the genuine Gnostics, as contrasted with 
 the mere believers, who are still in childhood, and still have only 
 the mere partial knowledge*®. This twofold condition, according 
 to the notion of Origen, corresponds with the twofold condition of 
 a spiritual and a fleshly Christianity *. He who is in the posi- 
 tion afforded by a fleshly Christianity, abides only by the letter of 
 Scripture, and by the historical account of Christ; he clings only 
 to the outward appearance of the Divine, without raising himself 
 up in Spirit to the inward essence, which is revealed in it; he 
 confines himself wholly to the earthly, temporal, and historical 
 appearance of the Divine Logos; he does not raise himself up to 
 the actual perception of the latter (the Logos) itself; he contents 
 himself with the mere shell of the Christian doctrines, without 
 penetrating to the interior kernel contained in them; he clings 
 
 1 Origen. t. xiii. Joh. c. 52. 
 
 2 In Matt. ed. Huet. frag. 213. He does not always remain consistent in this 
 respect; in another passage (in Matt. 271.), he properly refers τέλειθν to eter- 
 nal life. 
 
 3 A χριστιανισμος πνευματικὸς and ἃ χριστιάγισμος σωματικος, ἃ πνευματικως 
 and a σωματικὼς χριστιανιζειν. 
 
OD TWO-FOLD POSITION. 
 
 solely to the letter of Scripture, in which the spirit lies bound. 
 The spiritual Christian on the contrary, in the temporal appear- 
 ance and operations of Christ, sees the revelation and the repre- 
 sentation of the eternal government and operations of the Divine 
 Logos; with him, the letter of Scripture is only the covering of 
 the spirit, and he knows how to detach the spirit from this cover- 
 ing. With him, all that is temporal in the form, under which 
 Divine things are presented to us, is elevated into the in- 
 ward perceptions of the Spirit; with him the sensuous Gospel of 
 the letter ', becomes spiritualized into the revelation of the eternal 
 spiritual gospel *, and it is the highest question to which his soul 
 applies itself, to find the latter in the former, and to turn the 
 former into the latter; and to understand Holy Scripture as the 
 revelation of a continuous scheme of education, provided by the 
 Logos for human nature, and of his uninterrupted activity for 
 the salvation of man, a scheme of which the center-point is his 
 appearance among men (which is the sensuous representation of 
 his eternal and spiritual operation *), and the aim of which is to 
 bring back all fallen Being to God. While he refers everything 
 to this one view, the whole volume of Holy Scripture becomes 
 to him, by means of the Gospel, elevated and refined into Gospel. 
 Hence, Origen believes by means of spiritual communion with the 
 Logos, by the reception of the Spirit of Christ into the inward 
 life alone ‘, can any one attain to the true spiritual Christianity, 
 and to the right spiritual understanding of the whole Scripture. 
 Just then as the prophets before the temporal advent of Christ were 
 partakers in spiritual communion with the Divine Logos, and in 
 virtue of that communion were enabled to foretell that advent, 
 and the whole of Christianity beforehand, just as they therefore 
 had the spiritual understanding of the Old Testament, and in 
 some degree were Christians before the coming of Christ; so after 
 the temporal appearance of Christ, there are among Christians, 
 persons also, by whom this spiritual communion with the Divine 
 Logos has not been obtained, and they, like the Jews of old, still 
 cling to the outward covering; and the saying of St. Paul 
 about the Jews before the appearance of Christianity (Gal. iv.) ; 
 viz. * That they were still children, that the time appointed by 
 the Father for them, had not yet arrived, and that they were still 
 
 1 ro εὐαγγελιὸν αἰσθητον. 2 rov εὐαγγελιου πνευματικου, αἰωγιου. 
 
 3 The ἐπιδημια αἰσθητή, an image of the ἐπιδημία νοητὴ Tov λογου. 
 4 The ἐπιδημια νοητὴ του Χριστου. 
 
SPIRITUAL AND CARNAL CHRISTIANITY. 993 
 
 under guardians and governors,” is still applicable to them, as being 
 in a condition through which they must necessarily pass, in 
 order to be prepared and made capable of receiving the true 
 spiritual Christianity. ‘ Every soul,” says Origen, ‘ which enters 
 upon childhood, and proceeds on the road towards perfection, 
 until the time destined for its perfection shall arrive, requires a 
 teacher, and guardians, and stewards *.” 
 
 Whatever portion of truth there may be in this expression of 
 Origen, and however applicable it may be to the progress of the 
 development of the Christian Church, yet it cannot be denied, 
 that the meaning of historical Christianity, the intimate connec- 
 tion between historical and inward Christianity, appear to be ob- 
 secured in his representation. We will now hear him speak in 
 his own words’, “ We must know, that the spiritual appearance 
 of Christ, was communicated before his personal advent to the 
 perfect and to those who were not in the condition of infants,— 
 to those, who were no longer under schoolmasters and guardians, 
 and to whom the spiritual fulness of time had appeared, namely, 
 the Patriarchs, Moses, the Servants of God, and the Prophets, 
 who had seen the glory of Christ. Now just as he himself, be- 
 fore his visible and bodily appearance, appeared to the perfect, 
 thus also after his incarnation has been preached to those who are 
 still in a state of childhood, because they are under guardians 
 and stewards, and have not yet reached the fulness of time, to 
 them have the harbingers of Christ appeared, namely, the ideas 
 proper for the souls of children, of which (the ideas or notions) 
 it may be justly said, that they are advantageous for the instruc- 
 tions of such souls. But the Son himself, the Divine Logos, in 
 his majesty has never yet appeared to them, because he awaits 
 that preparation which must take place beforehand among the 
 men of God, who are to be capable of receiving his Godhead. 
 We must also know, that as there is a law, which contains the 
 shadow of good things to come, which good things are revealed 
 (in Christianity) by the preaching of the true law; so also the 
 shadow of the Christian mysteries is represented by that Gospel, 
 which all, who read it, think they understand. The Gospel, 
 
 1 Comm. in Matt. 213. raca ψυχὴ ἐρχομενὴ εἰς νηπιοτητα και ὁδευουσα ἐπι τὴν 
 τελειοτητα, δειναι μέχρις ἐνστῃ αὐτῃ TO πληρωμα TOV χρόνου, παιδαγωγου Kat 
 οἰκονομων και ἐπιτροπων. 
 
 ? Origen in Joh. tom. i. p. ix. [p. 8, 9. Ed. Huet, in which however the last sen- 
 tence of this quotation is imperfect.—H. J. R. ] 
 
924 THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL AND ITS TEMPORAL GARB. 
 
 on the contrary, which St. John calls an eternal Gospel, and which 
 ought properly to be called the spiritual Gospel, sets clearly be- 
 fore the eyes of those, who understand it, every thing which re- 
 gards the Son of God himself; the mysteries which were sha- 
 dowed forth in his language, and the things of which his actions 
 were the symbols. In conformity with what is here said, we must 
 also suppose that, as there is an outward Jew, and an outward cir- 
 cumcision, so also there is an outward Christian and an outward 
 baptism.” Origen here scripturally points to spiritual commu- 
 nion with Jesus Christ, as the source of systematic and lively 
 perception of that, which is only hinted at in Scripture; and 
 what he said, was certainly just when taken as said in opposition 
 to a blind and narrow-hearted zeal for an orthodoxy which ad- 
 hered merely to the letter, anda conceited, unprofitable acquaint- 
 ance with Scripture; but such declarations, if they were not 
 sufficiently defined and limited, might easily favour a specula- 
 tive habit of dealing arbitrarily with Scripture, which, under the 
 pretence of a higher truth, mystified the simplicity of the Gospel, 
 and did not recognise the depth which was united with that sim- 
 plicity. As for instance when he says, “I believe, that the whole 
 body of Holy Writ, even when understood very accurately, con- 
 tains only a very small part of the elements of Gnosis, and a very 
 brief introduction to 10. Thus in his allegorical explanations of 
 the conversation with the Samaritan woman, the well of Jacob is 
 the symbol of the Holy Scripture, and the living water which 
 Jesus gives, is the symbol of that, which transcends Scripture. 
 ἐς Scripture is then,” he says, “the introduction, and after we 
 have sufficiently understood that, we must raise ourselves up to 
 Jesus in order that he may bestow upon us the fountain of water 
 that bubbleth up into eternal life *.” 
 
 In his mind this theory of two different stages of Christianity 
 was closely connected with the theory of different forms of the 
 Revelation of Christ, or of the Divine Logos, in relation to 
 these two different conditions. ‘The Gnostics indeed, according 
 to the different conditions of the spiritual world, by reason of the 
 difference in the natures of men, were accustomed to divide’ the 
 revealing and the redeeming power of God among different hy- 
 
 1 Tom. 13. Joh. p.5 & 6. [Ed. Huet. vol. ii. p. 201, 202.—H. J. R. ] 
 2 See Part II. 3 
 
LOGOS REVEALED IN DIFFERENT FORMS. 225 
 
 postases ; they acknowledged a Monogenes, ἃ Logos, a Soter, an 
 ἄνω and a κατω Χριστος; a spiritual and a natural ἢ Christ, but, on 
 the contrary, Origen the unity of the being of Christ and of his 
 Divine-human appearance; the one Christ is everything to him, 
 he only appears under different predicates, in different modes of 
 conception, and in different relations to those, to whom he reveals 
 himself, according to their different capacities, their different re- 
 quirements; and hence he appears either in his heavenly dignity, 
 or his human state of abasement. The thought often occurs in 
 Origen, “that the Redeemer became all-things to all men in a 
 more Divine sense than St. Paul, in order to win all men?.” 
 **The Redeemer,” he says, ‘becomes much, or rather perhaps 
 everything, according as the whole creation, which is to be re- 
 leased by him, happens to require him *.” We must separate those 
 predicates, which belong to the Divine word, in virtue of his 
 nature, as the eternal Revealer of God for the whole spiritual 
 world, and the source of all truth and goodness, from those, which 
 he has taken upon him for the advantage of the fallen natures, 
 which are to be redeemed by him, in relation to the different 
 conditions in which those natures are found. ‘* Happy are they,” 
 says Origen *, ‘who have made such progress, that they need the 
 Son of God no longer as their physician that heals their sick, nor 
 as the shepherd, nor as their redemption, but require him only as 
 truth, as the Logos, as righteousness, and whatsoever he is besides 
 to those, who from their own perfection are able to conceive him 
 in the utmost splendour.” Christianity in its historical and prac- 
 tical form, the preaching of Christ crucified, was reckoned by 
 Origen only a subordinate condition, above which he placed the 
 wisdom of the perfect, which acknowledged Christ no longer in 
 the condition of a servant, but in his dignity as the Divine Logos, 
 although he recognised the former condition as a necessary pre- 
 
 1 [Pneumatischen and psychischen are the German terms, which are here opposed as 
 in St. Paul: the pneumatical meaning spiritual as belonging to the soul, and psychi- 
 cal meaning natural as required only to the animal soul or life of man. 
 
 The difference between the Gnostic view and that of Origen, may be shortly stated 
 in one sentence. They believed in an objective difference in Christ’s nature, and he 
 only in a subjective. H.J. R.] 
 
 2 Tom. 20. Joh. 28. 
 
 3 Tom. 1. Joh. 22. Where, I think, instead of καθαριζει, we must read καθ᾽ & 
 χρήζει αὐτου ἡ ἐλευθερουσθαι δυναμενὴ aca κτισις. 
 
 4 Joh. i. 22, 
 
 VOL. Ll. 0 
 
226 THE CROSS—AND THE WISDOM OF THE PERFECT. 
 
 paratory stage, in order to ascend from the temporal to the eternal 
 Revelation of God, in order that a man being purified through 
 faith in the crucified Redeemer, and sanctified by the following 
 after the Son of God who appeared in human form, should be 
 rendered capable of receiving the spiritual communications of his 
 Divine Being. ‘If thou canst understand,” says Origen ', “the 
 differences in the Divine word, according as it is announced in 
 the foolishness of preaching, or brought forward in wisdom to the 
 perfect, then you will see in what manner the Divine word has 
 the form of a servant to novices in Christianity...... but it 
 comes in the glory of the Father to the perfect, who are able to 
 say, ‘we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only begotten 
 Son of the Father, full of grace and truth;’ for to the perfect the 
 glory of the Word appears, as well as his being the only begotten 
 Son of the Father, and his being full of grace and truth also, 
 which they are unable to comprehend, who require the foolish- 
 ness of preaching to induce them to believe.” In another pas- 
 sage *, he says, ““1Ὸ those, who live in the flesh, he becomes 
 flesh; but to those who walk no longer after the flesh, he appears as 
 the Divine Logos, who was in the beginning with the Father, and 
 he reveals the Father to them.” He says of that preparatory 
 stage of belief*, “‘If any one also belongs to the class of the 
 Corinthians, among whom Paul will know nothing except the 
 crucified Jesus, and whom he teaches to acknowledge only him 
 who became man for our sakes, yet he may by means of the man 
 Jesus become a man of God, by the consequences of his death 
 may die to sin, and by consequences of his resurrection may rise 
 up to a Divine life.” So that Origen reverenced even that sub- 
 ordinate condition, and he denied that the Gnostics would let 
 themselves down ἡ to the weakness of those who were placed in 
 it, and avoid giving them offence and occasions of bitterness. 
 «Just as Paul,” he says, “could not be of service to those 
 who were Jews according to the flesh, if he had not, when he 
 had good reasons for his conduct, caused ‘Timothy to be circum- 
 cised, shorn his own hair, offered sacrifices, and became a Jew 
 to Jews, in order to gain the Jews; so also he, who is inclined to 
 
 1 In Matt. p. 290. Ed. Huet. 2 Commentar. in Matt. p. 268. 
 
 8 In Joh. i. c. 11. [2] 
 
 4 Thus also Clement on the οἰκονομία of the Gnostic. Stromat. vii. p. 730. [Potter, 
 
 p- 863. 864. Sylb. p. 310. Klotz, vol. iii. p. 246, 247.] Comp. the notions of Philo 
 given above, vol. i. p. 73, &c. ἶ 
 
AGAINST DESPISING THE SIMPLE. 227 
 
 be useful to many, cannot improve those who are still in the 
 school of sensuous Christianity, by spiritual Christianity alone, 
 nor lead them thus to a higher and better state, and he must 
 therefore unite spiritual and sensuous Christianity together '. And 
 where it is necessary to preach the sensuous Gospel, in virtue 
 of which among carnal men he can know nothing’, but Christ 
 crucified, he must also do this. But when they are grounded in 
 the faith and continue to bring forth fruit in the Spirit, then must 
 we bring forward to them the word, which, having appeared 
 among men, has raised itself again to that, which it was with God 
 in the beginning *.” Thus too, in his allegorical interpretation 
 and application of Matt. xiv. 10 ἡ, after he has deduced from the 
 passage, that a man must become a child to children, in order to 
 gain children to the kingdom of Heaven, just as Christ, though 
 he was in a Divine form, became a child, he says beautifully, 
 ** We must be well aware of this, in order that we may not, out 
 of a presumption of wisdom and advancement, as great ones in 
 the Church, despise the little ones, and children, but inasmuch as 
 we know that it is said, ‘ Of such is the kingdom of Heaven,’ we 
 ought to become such men, that through us the salvation of chil- 
 dren may be promoted. We must not only not hinder such from 
 being brought to Christ, but we must do his will by becoming 
 children with children, so that when those children arrive at sal- 
 vation, through us, who have become children, we may be exalted 
 by God, as men who have abased themselves.” Origen here 
 blames those, who, like the Gnostics, despised ordinary preachers 
 and teachers, who were destitute of spiritual culture of the higher 
 order, and who presented the simple Gospel in an unattractive 
 form, just as if such persons did something unworthy of so great 
 a Saviour and master®. ‘ Even if we were arrived at the very 
 highest and clearest perception [anschauung’] of the Logos and of 
 truth,” says Origen’, “ yet still we must not wholly forget the 
 
 1 πνευματικως και σωματικὼως χριστιανιζειν. 
 
 2 [It is difficult to imagine a text more tortured in its application than this passage. 
 It was written to show that the knowledge of Christ crucified, whereby we are led to 
 righteousness and to heaven, transcends all other knowledge, which St. Paul casts away 
 in comparison of it—it is applied to degrade that doctrine of Christ crucified, in com- 
 parison of other doctrines and revelations of the same Christianity. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 Tom. i. in Joh. p. 9. 4 In Matt. 1. c. 374. 375. 
 
 5 βλεπέτω οὖν τις τινας των ἐπαγγελλομενων κατηχῆσιν ἐκκλησιαστικὴν Kat 
 διδασκαλιαν, προσφεροντα Ta μωρα Tov κοσμου και Ta ἐξουδενωμενα και Ta ἀγενη. 
 
 6 Tom. ii, Joh. p. 4. [1] 
 
 ο 2 
 
223 TWOFOLD EXEGETICAL POSITION. 
 
 passion of Christ, for it is to that we owe our introduction into 
 this higher life during our abode on earth.” 
 
 With this twofold condition, namely, that of spiritual, and that 
 of sensuous Christianity, the theory of a two-fold condition of 
 Scriptural interpretation and the theory of different senses of 
 Holy Writ were closely connected, for spiritual Christianity 
 brought with it a penetration into the spirit of Scripture, and an 
 understanding of the eternal, spiritual Gospel, just as, on the con- 
 trary, sensuous Christianity abided by the letter of Scripture 
 alone. The highest problem of Scripture interpretation was in 
 his estimation the changing of the sensuous Gospel into the 
 spiritual ᾽ν just as the highest aim of Christianity was to elevate 
 itself from the earthly appearance of the incarnate Logos to com- 
 munion with him and to the contemplation of his Divine nature. 
 Thus he saw also in the whole body of Scripture ἃ letting-down of 
 the overwhelming heavenly Spirit to the human form, which was 
 incapable of containing it; a letting-down of the Divine Teacher 
 of man to the weakness and the wants of men, and all Scripture 
 was in like manner a revelation of the incarnation of the Logos. 
 Thus he says ἢ, “ All which is here called Word of God, is a reve- 
 lation of the Divine Word, which became flesh and emptied itself 
 in relation to its heavenly nature, and hence we see the Word of 
 God on earth when he became man, as a human Word, for the 
 Word constantly becomes flesh in Scripture, in order to dwell 
 among us*. But when we have lien on the breast of the Word 
 that became man, and are enabled to follow him as he climbs up 
 the high hill, (Matt. xvii.) then we may say, ‘ we have seen his 
 glory*’” He sets out from the principle of an analogy between 
 the Holy Scripture as a work of God, and the whole creation 
 which proceeds from the same God; a principle, which carried out 
 in his lively and spiritual manner, would at once become fruitful 
 for the right consideration of the two-fold revelation of God. 
 Thus he says, and the saying shows at once how thoroughly im- 
 
 1 ro μεταλαβειν τὸ αἰσθητον εὐαγγελιον εἰς TO πνευματικον. 
 
 2 See Philocal. c. 15. 
 
 3 Similarly also Clement says, that the character of the Holy Scripture is a paraboli- 
 cal one, as also the whole appearance of Christ is a parabolical one also—viz. the Di- 
 vine in an earthly garb. παραβολικὸς yap ὁ χαρακτὴρ ὑπαρχει των ypapwr, dStore 
 και ὁ Κυριος οὐκ ὧν KoopiKor, ὡς κοσμικος εἰς ἀνθρωποὺυς ἦλθεν.  Stromat. 
 vi. 677. 
 
 * The ennobling of Scripture for him, who learns to understand its spirit by a living 
 communion with Christ. 
 
HOW GOD REVEALS AND HIDES HIMSELF. 229 
 
 bued he was with the notion that the Holy Scripture is the Word 
 of God': We need not think it strange, if in every passage of 
 Holy Writ the super-human nature of the thought does not strike 
 the unlearned, for in the works of Providence, which extend over 
 the whole universe, some of them show manifestly, that they are 
 the works of Providence, while others are so concealed, as to give 
 occasion to incredulity in respect to God who governs all things 
 with inexpressible skill and power......... But just as we do 
 not dispute the doctrine of a Providence’, on account of those 
 things of which we are ignorant, when once we are justly per- 
 suaded of his existence, so we cannot doubt of the Divine autho- 
 rity of the Holy Scriptures, which extends to every portion of 
 them, because our weakness is unable in every case to come up to 
 the hidden glory of their doctrines, which is clothed in inade- 
 quate language, for we have the treasure in earthen vessels.” 
 And in another passage he says*: “* He who once admits that 
 these Scriptures are the work of the Creator of the world, must 
 be persuaded, that whatsoever phenomena in regard to the crea- 
 tion present themselves to those who attempt to give an account 
 of it, the same will also occur to him who inquires about the Scrip- 
 tures. There are now, for instance, in Scripture many things 
 which human nature may find difficult, or be unable to explain, 
 but we are not on that account, to accuse the Creator of tlie 
 Universe; as for example, when we are unable to explain the 
 cause why basilisks and other poisonous animals were created ; 
 for here it is the duty of a pious mind, taking into considera- 
 tion the weakness of man, and how it is impossible fully to 
 understand the creating wisdom of God, to reserve to God 
 the knowledge of such things, and he will afterwards, when we 
 are considered worthy of it, reveal to us that, about which we 
 have doubted in reverence.” How full he was of the belief in a 
 Divine Spirit which breathed throughout the whole of Scripture, 
 and how thoroughly persuaded he was that this could be received 
 only with an humble and a believing heart, is beautifully ex- 
 pressed in the following words of Origen*: “We must believe 
 that no tittle of Holy Scripture is deficient in the wisdom of God, 
 
 1 Philocal. c. i. p. 10. [p. 5. Ed. Spencer, 1658. Η. J. R.] 
 2 ov χρεοκοπειται ἡ προνοια. 
 
 3 Philocal. c. 11. p. 61. [p. 23. Ed. Spencer. H.J.R.] | 
 
 4 Lic.c. i. p. 51. [p. 19, 20. Ed. Spencer. H. J. R.] 
 
230 PRACTICAL NATURE OF REVELATION. 
 
 for He, who proclaimed to man, “ Thou shalt not appear empty 
 before me’ (Exod. xxxiv.), will himself far less utter any empty 
 word; for the prophets take what they say, out of his fulness; 
 therefore all parts are animated (/i¢. breathe) by this fulness, and 
 there is nothing in the Prophets, the Law, or the Gospel, or the 
 Apostolic Epistles, which does not proceed from this fulness. The 
 breath therefore of this fulness (7Anowua, Pleroma), descends on 
 those who have eyes, to see the revelations of the Divine ful- 
 ness, ears to hear it, and a sense to catch the sweet-smelling 
 savour, which proceeds from this fulness. But if, in reading 
 Scripture, you meet with a thought which, so to speak, is a 
 stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, blame yourself, for 
 be assured, that this stone of stumbling contains thoughts, by 
 which that saying shall come to pass, ‘He that believeth, shall not 
 be put to shame’ (Rom. x. 11). Believe first, and you shall 
 then find much holy assistance and support under that which 
 appeared to you an offence.” 
 
 But however just this principle of Origen might be, yet in 
 the application of it he was led astray by means of the false 
 position, from which he viewed the spirit and the object of Holy 
 Scripture, and of all Divine revelation through the Word; and 
 this false position was intimately connected with his false cen- 
 ception of the relation between faith and Gnosis (matic and yvw- 
 σις). In both respects he was led astray by the speculative 
 point of view, which was too prevalent, inasmuch as he did not 
 sufficiently distinguish the nature of a Christian system of faith, 
 and a Christian philosophy from each other, and he did not keep 
 sufficiently before his sight the essentially practical object of all 
 Divine revelations, and especially of Christianity. He did not 
 refer every thing to the one object, that affects all mankind—re- 
 demption, regeneration, sanctification, and the blessings result- 
 ing from them; but the practical object of man’s improvement 
 was, in his estimation, only a subordinate one, which was chiefly 
 of use to the great mass of believers, who were incapable of re- 
 ceiving anything of higher character. In his estimation, the 
 highest object was the speculative, the communicating the most 
 elevated truths to spiritual men who were capable of understand- 
 ing them, i.e. to the Gnostics. ‘These higher truths have re- 
 ference chiefly to the following points': * About God—about the 
 
 1 Philocal. i. 28. [p. 11. Ed. Spencer. H. J. R.] 
 
THREEFOLD SENSE OF SCRIPTURE. 231 
 
 nature of his only-begotten Son, and the mode in which he is 
 the Son of God—about the cause which impelled him to come 
 down and take upon him the nature of man—about the effects of 
 this incarnation, whom it affects—about the higher kinds of 
 reasonable beings who have fallen from a state of happiness, and 
 the causes of their fall—about the difference of souls, and whence 
 this difference arises—what the world is, and wherefore it was 
 created—why there is so much evil in the earth, and whether 
 evil is found only there, or elsewhere also.” As Origen made 
 it the chief object to find explanations and answers to these in- 
 quiries; many parts of Scripture, if he abided by their natural 
 interpretation, would naturally appear to him to be unfruitful 
 towards that which he considered its essential object. All narra- 
 tives embracing only earthly occurrences, all legislation bearing 
 only on earthly relations, he explained as being only the symbol- 
 ical guise of a higher history of the world of Spirits; and of 
 higher laws which related also to that world. Thus the higher 
 and the subordinate object of Scripture would be united together, 
 and the revelation of the higher class of truth would be hidden in 
 a literal form, adapted to the improvement of the general mass of 
 mankind. ‘The multitude of genuine and simple believers,” 
 says Origen, “ bears testimony to the usefulness, even of this 
 inferior understanding of the Scriptures.” Between these two 
 kind of senses included in Scripture, Origen imagined an inter- 
 mediate kind, an allegorical sense adapted for those who had not 
 yet arrived at that higher state of spiritual perception; this was a 
 general, moral, and instructive application of those passages of 
 Scripture, which relate to individual cases, though this applica- 
 tion was not of that elevated and profound class’; and he adduces 
 as examples of this, the explanation of 1 Cor. ix. 9; and most of 
 the allegorical interpretations of Scripture then commonly used, 
 eyen in the instruction of the people. Thus, the triple sense of 
 Scripture corresponded to the three parts of man’s nature, which 
 the theory of Origen acknowledged : that which is really Divine 
 in man, the Spirit which is directed towards the Eternal, and 
 finds its proper life in the perception and contemplation of Divine 
 things; the Soul, whose sphere of action is the temporal and the 
 finite; and the Body. While Philo agreed with Origen in the 
 
 1 [As in the higher class of interpretation, which he imagined. H. J. R. ] 
 
252 MYTHS IN SCRIPTURE. 
 essential and fundamental features of his view, he (Origen) 
 sought also on the whole to preserve the objective truth of the 
 literal and historical contents of the Scriptures’, which are given 
 as the dress in which the spiritual revelations are communicated. 
 And yet, he formed passages where the letter could not, in his 
 opinion be defended ; because he was destitute of right herme- 
 neutic principles, and of other necessary helps and aids; or be- 
 cause he did not know how to separate the divine from the 
 human in the Holy Scriptures’; or else, because (which is con- 
 nected with the remark we have just made), proceeding from an 
 exaggerated notion of inspiration, he could not entertain the 
 supposition of any contradiction in Scripture, even in unimportant 
 things; and then, he thought the only way to clear up the diffi- 
 culties was by a spiritual interpretation *. And, like Philo, he 
 united the supposition with his reverence for the Holy Scripture 
 in such a manner, as to induce him to say, that these things, the 
 literal acceptation of which cannot be maintained—this mythical 
 guise in which the higher wisdom is clothed—were strewed pur- 
 posely about as a stone of stumbling‘, in order to excite deeper 
 enquiry. 
 
 These principles Origen applied not only to the Old Testa- 
 ment, but expressly to the New; and expressly to the Gospel 
 history’. Thus he imagined that he was able to clear up many 
 difficulties, by supposing, that the Apostles represented® under 
 the outward form of various matters of fact, what they had to say 
 of a difference in the operations of the Divine Logos’. This prin- 
 
 1 το σωματικὸν τῶν γράφων, TO ἔνδυμα των πνευματικων. 
 
 2 As, for example, where he found it impossible to maintain the literal truth of the 
 history of Uriah, because in David he saw only the man inspired by the Spirit of 
 God, and not a frail and sinful man. 
 
 3 ἀναγωγὴ εἰς TO νοητον. 
 
 4 σκανδαλα, προσκομματα. 
 
 5 See the passage of the Philocalia quoted above; and also c. xv. p. 139. 
 
 6 Τὶ x. Joh. p. 4. προέκειτο αὐτους, ὁπου μὲν ἐνεχωρει ἀληθευειν πνευματικὼως 
 ἅμα και σωματικως, ὅπου μη ἐνεδέχετο ἀμφοτερως προκρινειν τὸ πνευματικὸν τοῦ 
 σωματικου, σωζομενου πολλαχις TOV ἀληθους πνευματικοῦυ ἐν τῳ σωματικῳ; ὡς ἀν 
 εἰποι τις, Ψευδει. 
 
 7 Of different communications of the ἐπιδημία νοητὴ Tov Χριστου. 
 
 [N.B. In a passage requiring some delicacy of touch in translating. I have used the 
 word outward for sinnlich, as I thought it gave the nearest idea to the English reader. 
 The ἐπιδημια αἰσθητὴ, or the abode of the Logos with us which could be perceived by the 
 senses, was only the type of the ἐπιδημια vonry the sojourn of the Logos or of Christ 
 in the spirit of man. This was explained above, p. 222,a reference to which will be of 
 
 service in considering this passage. H. J. R.] 
 
HIS PIETY EVEN IN HIS ERRORS. 933 
 
 ciple of interpretation, it must be avowed, gave an opportunity for 
 the exercise of every kind of subjective caprice, and was liable to 
 make historical Christianity entirely a thing of nought; as every 
 one could thus place whatever did not suit his subjective ideas and 
 feelings, in the class of those things which were not to be taken 
 literally. Origen felt with much force, what danger might arise 
 from this to objective Christianity ; and he therefore always de- 
 clared, that for the most part the spirit and the letter were both 
 alike to be maintained, and that the letter was to be abandoned 
 only after careful examination. But where were there any cer- 
 tain limits ? 
 
 And yet, we cannot but acknowledge, that in Origen the 
 caprice so prejudicial to objective Christianity, which might pro- 
 ceed from these principles, was softened down by the intimately 
 pious and believing feeling, which animated him, and the 
 thorough sense of the historical truth of Christianity with which 
 he was impressed. And we must also take care to remark, how 
 truth and error here were mingled together in a manner, which 
 must be explained by taking into consideration the peculiarities 
 of his own character, and his relation to his own times, which 
 were then agitated by a variety of contradictory opinions. He 
 saw how carnally-minded Jews, cleaving to the letter of the Old 
 Testament, were unable.to attain to a faith in the Gospel; how 
 carnally-minded Christians by that disposition too were led to rude 
 conceptions (/t. representations) of God and divine things. He 
 saw how Anti-Jewish Gnostics, in consequence of this very mode 
 of conception of the Old Testament, fell into the other error; so 
 that they would not recognize this God, who appeared thus car- 
 nally represented (7. 6. in the Old Testament), as the God of the 
 Gospel; which circumstance was an introduction for their whole 
 system of Dualism. Now Origen believed that he should be 
 able, by means of this spiritualizing mode of interpretation, to tear 
 up all these contradictory errors by the very roots’. He had not 
 in this the smallest intention of degrading that which is Divine in 
 Scripture into something human ; but he was more inclined to go 
 too far on the other side, by not recognizing in that which was 
 
 1 After mentioning all these errors, he says, Philocalia, c. i. p. 17. αἰτια δὲ πασι 
 τοις προειρημένοις ψευδοδοξιων Kat ἀσεβειων ἡ ἰδιωτικων περι Θεὸν Noywy οὐκ 
 ἀλλὴη τις εἶναι δοκει ἡ ἡ γραφὴ κατα Ta πνευματικὰ μὴ νενοημεένη, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς προς 
 το ψιλὸν γραμμα ἐξειλημμενη. 
 
934 HIS PIETY EVEN IN HIS ERRORS. 
 
 Divine, that which was properly and peculiarly human in the 
 mode in which it was brought forward; because, in accordance 
 with the general notions of that time, he deduced throughout 
 Scripture both form and matter from the inspiration of the Holy 
 Spirit. The Divine Spirit—such was the belief of Origen—had 
 so completely acted in reference to the higher wisdom, that in 
 many passages the spirit was given without the letter. 
 
 It must, however, be confessed, that the Alexandrian turn of 
 mind, if carried to the extreme, without any counter action, and 
 without the spirit of piety which imbued an Origen and a Cle- 
 mens, might lead to an Idealism, entirely subversive of all that is 
 historical and objective in Christianity ; and then, as the struggles 
 which the Origenian school had to undergo at the end of this 
 period indicate, we must look especially to the realistic tendency, 
 which proceeded from the Western Church, for a counterbalan- 
 cing power to meet that idealism; just as the Origenian school 
 was calculated to be efficacious in spiritualizing that Church. 
 Such is the general picture of the relation which existed between 
 the most remarkable and differing dispositions of mind; a picture, 
 which we shall be sure to find again in the different modes of 
 treating the chief points of Christian doctrine singly, just as this 
 consideration will give us a proof, that, even in the fundamental 
 truths of Christianity, these two dispositions, notwithstanding 
 their opposite nature, must touch each other and join together. 
 
 11. The Development of the great doctrines of Christianity con- 
 sidered separately. 
 
 We must always bear in mind, that Christianity did not deliver 
 to man isolated speculative ideas* of God and Divine things, nor 
 a ready-made dogmatic system in a settled form, but announced 
 the facts of a communication made by God to man, through which 
 man became placed in a new relation to his Creator, by the recog- 
 
 1[ Erkenntnisse. Like other words belonging to the metaphysical vocabulary of 
 Germany, this word is almost untranslatable. ‘ Cognitions’ would be the nearest if we 
 had the word. It expresses rather the acknowledgment of an idea to our own con- 
 sciousness than the ideas themselves. The representations of the mind (vorstellungen) 
 are its ideas, our erkenntnisse are our knowledge of these ideas, See the Conversations- 
 lexicon on the word.—See Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1832, p. 173. H. J. R.] 
 
DOCTRINES ABOUT GOD. 935 
 
 nition and application’ of which an entirely new direction and 
 formation of the religious feelings might be produced, through 
 which all that was before contained in it would receive an altera- 
 tion and modification. ‘The fact of the redemption of sinful man 
 by Christ, forms the central point of Christianity, and from the 
 influence which the application of this fact to the heart must pro- 
 duce on the inward life of man, this new form or condition of the 
 religious conscience arises, and from this again there results a new 
 state of thought about Divine things, which reflects the new world 
 formed within. The characteristic by which the Christian nature 
 of anything is determined, depends on its connection with this, 
 which forms the essential and fundamental ground of Christianity, 
 according to the manner in which dogmatic systems and individual 
 opinions are in relation to this one doctrine, so will be their relation 
 to Christianity in general, and in the same manner we must esti- 
 mate the importance or non-importance of errors as far as their 
 effects on Christian practice are concerned. If from the beginning 
 men had clearly conceived this relation of insulated doctrines to 
 the centre-point of Christianity, and maintained a full conscious- 
 ness of it, it would have been more easy for them to come to an 
 understanding as to unity in that, which forms the essential nature 
 of Christianity, and this unity would not have been so easily 
 destroyed by differences in speculative conceptions, to which 
 they attached in early times too much weight, exactly because 
 they were unacquainted with the true measure for estimating in 
 what Christianity *consists. 
 
 Even the common God-consciousness, the consciousness of the 
 God, in whom we live and move and have our being, received a 
 new impulse from Christianity ; the believer who lived in God be- 
 came filled with a new feeling of the undeniableness of God, and 
 even in Nature, he, on whom inward communion with God had 
 been bestowed through Christ, felt the Omnipresence of a God, 
 who filleth all things, with more liveliness and greater force. 
 While those Fathers, who in early life had been devoted to the 
 Platonic Philosophy, and had received through its influence the 
 shape of their mind and the form of their knowledge, developed 
 under this form their Christian God-consciousness, Tertullian, on 
 
 }(Aneignung. Literally appropriation.—i.e. application to the heart. H. J. R.] 
 
 2 ( Literally ‘ for the estimation of all which is Christian,’ meaning, how far any doc- 
 trine is essentially Christian or not. As Iam scrupulous about paraphrasing, I wish my 
 readers to know exactly the force of the idioms which 1 cannot render literally, H.J. R. } 
 
 8 
 
236 CLEMENT— THEOPHILUS. 
 
 the contrary, expressed in the original but uncultivated form of 
 his powerful and rugged peculiarity, that with which the anima- 
 tion of an inward deep Christian God-consciousness' inspired him. 
 On the whole, although the Fathers had not to contend with 
 Atheists, yet their controversial treatises against superstitious men 
 and idolaters often took such a turn, as might have been directed 
 against atheists also. Instead of endeavouring to prove the exist- 
 ence of God by logical inference’, they appealed to that which is 
 most immediate in the human spirit, and is antecedent to all 
 proof, they appealed to the originally-implanted consciousness 
 [of God] which human nature cannot deny: they appealed to an 
 original revelation of the one God, made to the human spirit, on 
 which every other revelation of God is founded. Clemens ap- 
 pealed to the fact, that every scientific proof presupposes some- 
 thing which is not proved, which can be conceived only through 
 an immediate agency on the spirit of man. He says’, “To the 
 Supreme, the simple Being, and the Being elevated above all 
 matter, faith alone can raise itself’ Therefore, he says, there 
 can be any knowledge or perception of God, only in as far as he 
 himself has revealed himself to man. God cannot be conceived 
 by means of demonstrative knowledge, for this proceeds only from 
 things previously acknowledged, and more known [to other things 
 which are less known] but nothing can be prior to the Eternal, and 
 hence it results, that it is only by Divine grace, and by the revela- 
 tion of his eternal word, that we can recognize the unknown; and 
 then he introduces the words which Paul spoke at Athens, with 
 reference to the knowledge of the unknown God *. And in another 
 passage also*, he says, ‘The First Cause is above space, and time, 
 and name, and conception. Therefore Moses says to God, ‘ Reveal 
 thyself to me’ (Exod. xxxiii. 18.) most clearly pointing out, that 
 no man can either teach or express what God is, but he can make 
 himself known only by his own power.” He recognizes also in 
 all men an outpouring from God, a Divine seed °, through which 
 
 '[Gottesbewusstseyn. God-consciousness. I have used this new word merely to 
 express the German term, which conveys the idea of ‘an inward recognition of God’s 
 existence, and a sense of his presence and operations ;’ a consciousness of his existence 
 and agency. H. J. R.] 
 
 2 [ἡ ὁ. The a posteriori argument, or the argument of design. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 ji, 364, [Sylb. 157. Pott. 435. ] 
 
 4 y, 588. [ Ed. Potter, 696. Sylb. p. 251. Klotz, iii. p. 60. H. J. R.] 
 
 ὅν, 582. [Ed. Potter, p. 689. Sylb. p. 248. Klotz, iii. p. 52. 
 
 ὃ ἀπορροια Oeikyn. Protrept. p. 45. 
 
TERTULLIANISM—TESTIMONY OF THE SOUL. 237 
 
 they are impelled, even against their own will, to acknowledge 
 the one Eternal God. As Origen reckoned the idea of the 
 one God according to the language of philosophy, among the 
 Kowvat idea (the ideas common to the conscience (or mind) of all 
 human nature), so he considers the consciousness of God in man’s 
 nature as a mark of his affinity to God ᾿. Theophilus, of Antioch, 
 recognizes a revelation of God in the whole of creation; but at 
 the same time he lays down the position, that a capability and 
 aptitude of the moral and religious nature of man is requisite for 
 the perception of this revelation. Where this nature is dulled 
 and dimmed, that revelation is unintelligible for man. To the 
 common inquiry of the sensuous heathen, “ Where then is your 
 God ? show him to us;” his answer was, ‘* Show me thy man, and 
 I will show thee my God; show me that the eyes of thy soul see, 
 that the ears of thy heart hear; all have eyes to see the Sun, 
 but the blind cannot see it. Just as the tarnished mirror will not 
 receive an image, so the unclean soul cannot receive the image 
 of God. But God has created all things in order that he may be 
 known by his works, just as the invisible soul is known by its 
 operation. All life reveals him, his breath animates all things ; 
 without him all would again sink back into nothingness; man 
 cannot speak without revealing him, but in the darkening of his 
 own soul lies the cause of his being unable to perceive this reve- 
 lation. He says therefore to man, ‘ give thyself to the physician 
 who is able to heal the eyes of thy soul; Give thyself to God *.’” 
 
 While Clement, the friend of philosophy, sought the revelation 
 of that seed of a nature akin to the Divine, in the philosophical 
 development of that original belief-in-God*, [literally God- 
 consciousness] ‘Tertullian, on the contrary, the friend of nature, 
 the enemy of art, and of the wisdom of the schools, in which he 
 saw not the developing handmaid, but the falsifer of that original 
 religious belief that is founded in our very nature, appealed to 
 the involuntary testimony of the soul, not as it is when trained in 
 schools, but in its simple, rude, uncultivated condition*. He 
 says, (Apologet. c. xvii.) ‘ Although shut up in the prison-house 
 of the body, although cramped by bad education, although ener- 
 vated by lusts and desires, although serving false gods, yet the 
 
 1 ¢. Cels. lib. i. c. 4. 
 
 2 Theoph. ad Autolye. lib. i.e. 2. [ The substance of this passage is found in ch. 
 iii. 11. (Ed. Wolf.) but the exact words are not taken from Theophilus. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 ἐν τοις περι λογοὺυς ἐνδιατριβουσιν. 1 De Testimonio Anime. 
 
2338 MARCION. 
 
 soul, when it awakes, as it were, from a debauch or a sleep, or 
 some disease, and attains to its healthy condition, the soul calls 
 on God as God, and with this name only, because it belongs to 
 the true God; ‘Great God! Good God! and what God hath 
 given,’ this is the outery of all men’. ‘They appeal to him also 
 as Judge, when they say, ‘God sees,’ ‘I commend it to God,’ 
 and ‘God will repay it to me. Oh! the witness of the soul 
 which is by its nature Christian! In fact, when it makes this ap- 
 peal it looks not to the Capitol, but up to Heaven, for it knows 
 the seat of the living God; from him and from thence it came 
 itself !” While others sought for testimonies to the truth which 
 Christianity presupposes to exist in the religious conscience of 
 man, among the treasures of ancient literature, and even in forged 
 writings *, Tertullian was more pleased to appeal to the clear tes- 
 timony which was near at hand and accessible to all, and whose 
 genuineness none could dispute, to those out-bursts of the soul 
 (eruptiones anime) the still and silent pledge of an innate persua- 
 sion and belief ® [literally conscience or consciousness]. Marcion, 
 
 1 [The reading of this passage varies considerably in the different editions of Tertul- 
 lian. 1 subjoin two—that of Cambridge, 1686, which runs thus. ‘‘ Deum nominat 
 hoc solo quia proprie verus hic unus Deus, bonus et magnus. Et quod Deus dederit, 
 omnium vox est’’—and that of Havercamp, 1718. ‘‘ Deum nominat, hoc solo nomine, 
 quia proprius Dei veri DEUS MAGNUS, DEUS BONUS, et quod DEUS DI- 
 DERIT, omnium vox est.’’ Neander follows the reading of Havercamp’s Edition. I 
 must ask my readers to compare the treatise Adversus Marcion, I. 10. where nearly 
 the same phrases occur, only ‘ si Deus dederit’ and quod Deo placet, are two of the collo- 
 quial phrases quoted there. The ‘si Deus dederit’ would rather indicate, If God hath so 
 disposed matters, &c. but the appeal to Deity is the same in each phrase. H. J. R.] 
 
 2 As especially in those under the name of Hermes ( Trismegistus) of the Egyptian 
 Thoth, of Hystaspes (the Persian Gushtaph) and of the Sibylls. Such writings originally 
 sprung, partly from heathen Platonists, and partly from Alexandrian Jews, and were 
 only interpolated with new additions with a view to Christianity. According to the 
 principle promulgated among Platonists and Theophists of every class, that the delu- 
 sion of the multitude is allowable for pious purposes, people thought themselves autho- 
 rized to promote such fictions. But we should be doing an injustice, if we attributed 
 this principle to the Fathers generally. As most of them, with the exception of the 
 Alexandrians and particularly of ORIGEN, were entirely destitute of critical attainments, 
 they might easily be deceived, especially where they were willing to be 80. Besides, 
 at the time in which the false Sibylline books first became current among the Chris- 
 tians, there was a party which did not approve of appealing to them, and gave to those, 
 who favoured them, the party-name of Sibyllists—perhaps, because their critical taste 
 discovered marks of spuriousness in the Pseudo-sibylline books, or rather, because on 
 doctrinal grounds they would not allow of the existence of any Prophetesses among the 
 heathen. See Origen. c. Cels. lib. v. §. 61. 
 
 3 De Test. Anime, c. 5, 
 
REALISTIC AND IDEALISTIC VIEWS OF GOD’S NATURE. 239 
 
 was the only one, who through a truth (see above) which he 
 misunderstood and conceived in a one-sided view, and through a 
 turn of Christian feelings, actually proceeding from a foundation of 
 truth, but only not sufficiently clear to himself, and carried to the 
 extreme, suffered himself to be seduced into mistaking or over- 
 looking that witness of the God of the Gospel in the creation and 
 in the common conscience of mankind. (See above.) Therefore 
 Tertullian makes this witness tell against him more forcibly 1, God 
 never will be hidden, God never will fail to the human race, he 
 will always be recognized, he will always be understood to exist, 
 [he will always be heard,] yea, he will even be seen, if he wills it. 
 God hath for a witness of himself, all that we are, and all in which 
 we are. ‘Thus he proves himself to be God, and to be the one 
 God, even by his being known to all, while another must first be 
 proved to exist?. The consciousness of God’s existence is the 
 original endowment of the soul, a gift the same and identical in 
 Egypt, in Syria, and in Pontus, for souls proclaim the God of the 
 Jews to be their God.” 
 
 While, however, we find this inward and deep conviction of the 
 universal acknowledgement of God by man’s conscience among 
 all the Fathers, we must not expect to find a spiritual mode of 
 thought about the nature of God corresponding to it in all of 
 them ; for the former proceeded from the most profound depths of 
 the inward life, on which the leaven of Christianity which was 
 thrown into the mass of mankind, produced its influence at first 
 and immediately, while, on the contrary, it was only gradually, and 
 in proceeding from this (i. 6. this first and immediate action on the 
 interior life] as a centre point and origin, that the enlightening 
 influence of Christianity could extend itself over the individual 
 ramifications of the spiritual nature of man *. The saying of our 
 Lord, ‘‘ God is a Spirit,” appears indeed to a reason, formed 
 
 Τρ, Marcion, lib. i. c. 10. comp. 18.19. 
 
 2 [Sic probatur et Deus et unus, dum non ignoratur; alio adhuc probari laborante. 
 This sentence and the next are transposed in Neander’s translation, at least if he follows 
 Rigault’s Edition. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 [This is the same view which is often enforced throughout these volumes, viz. 
 that Christianity first acted on the inward life of man, purifying his affections and dis- 
 positions &c., and then served to clear his intellectual conceptions of Divine things. 
 The first was an immediate effect of Christianity; the second, an effect produced by 
 means of the former. It is in this sense, as opposed to secondary, i. e. consequent on other 
 actions, or produced by mediate agency, that the word immediate (unmittelbar) is used 
 in the text. Our metaphysical vocabulary, slender as it is, has been so injured by the 
 
240 REALISTIC AND IDEALISTIC VIEWS OF GOD'S NATURE. 
 
 under the guidance of Christianity, at once to suggest the notion 
 of a pure Spirit, but a mode of thought, already spiritualized 
 through the practical influence of Christianity, or by the pray- 
 ing to God in spirit and in truth, was in fact needed, in order 
 to understand the meaning of this saying. ‘Those men, the form 
 and fashion of whose religious sentiments had been derived either 
 from a sensuous Judaism, or a heathenism occupied in the contem- 
 plation of Nature, could not at once justly interpret and develope 
 the idea contained in this saying, although their heart well under- 
 stood what it is, to pray to God in spirit and in truth. Accord- 
 ing to their former habits of mind, they would understand by 
 πνευμα nothing but a mere refined body of an etherial nature, as 
 contrasted with a body composed of gross earthly materials*, and 
 they became therefore the rather confirmed in their error by that 
 saying. The more lively their religious feeling, especially when 
 joined to lively and fiery powers of imagination, the more they 
 were imbued with the conviction that God is the most real of 
 Beings ; and the more deeply they were impressed by the feeling 
 of the omnipresence of God, the more likely, on that very ac- 
 count, was it to happen, that their conceptions of God would take 
 a sensuous shape, and the more difficult would it be to them to 
 lift themselves up above all objects of the senses, to that which 
 would seem to them a cold and negative abstraction. The reli- 
 gious Realism, as yet not sufficiently enlightened, which opposed 
 itself to an Idealism, inclined in religion too much to refine away 
 all things into insubstantiability, and reduce them to shadowy 
 nonentities ? would be inclined in the spirit of angry contrast too 
 far to sensualize everything, and the more spiritual conception of 
 the idea of God would then appear to such a disposition under a 
 somewhat suspicious point of view. And these indeed are the 
 very circumstances, which we meet with in Tertullian, who makes 
 corporeality and existence convertible terms’. 
 
 usage of its words in improper senses, that I feel it necessary sometimes to draw atten- 
 tion to the language, which is used in a sense different from that which it bears in com- 
 mon conversation and writings where no closeness is required. H.J.R.] 
 
 1 See Tertullian, adv. Praxeam, c. vii. Spiritus corpus sui generis. Comp. Lactant. 
 Institut. vii. 9. Origen, in Joh. t. xiii. ο. 21. 
 
 2 [Einem in der Religion alles zu sehr verdiinnende und verfliichtigenden Ideal- 
 ismus. Jit. To an Idealism in Religion too much inclined to thin away and volatilize 
 (or evaporate) everything. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 De Carne Christi, c. xi, Nihil incorporale, nisi quod non est. 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND ANTHROPOPATHISM. 241 
 
 Now, two different causes would operate towards introducing 
 a spirituality into the idea of God. These were, on the one hand, 
 a sober and chastened practical direction of the religious spirit, 
 proceeding immediately out of Christianity, and seeking to raise 
 itself up to God through the heart, rather than through specula- 
 tion and the power of the imagination; this was a Spirit which 
 acknowledged from the depths of the religious conscience the 
 truth, that the image of Divine things is only an image, and a 
 faint expression of that which is bestowed upon the believing soul 
 in its inward life,—and, on the other side, a style of thought, 
 which worked up the contents of the Christian doctrines after a 
 Jearned and scientific manner; such a turn of thought, in fact, as 
 we find in Clement and Origen, and generally in the Alexan- 
 drian school. ‘The former turn of mind is found in an Irenzeus 
 and a Novatian. Irenzeus says, * “ All which we predicate of 
 God, we speak as if in a kind of similitude [or comparison], they 
 are only images which love makes for itself, and our sentiments 
 and feelings throw into these images something more than 
 actually lies in them ;” and Novatian’ says of the nature of God, 
 ἐς What that is, that which he alone understands, that which 
 every human soul feels, though it is unable to express its feel- 
 ings*.” The same writer says, “that although Christ, because 
 the spirit of man must constantly be making progress in reli- 
 gious development, made less use of anthropomorphic images than 
 the Old Testament, yet that he could speak of the Being, who is 
 above all human representation and language, only in images, 
 which fell short of the thing itself.” 
 
 We must be careful to make a proper distinction between An- 
 thropomorphism in the representations of God, and Anthropo- 
 
 1 Το ii. c. 13. § 4. Dicitur quidem secundum hec per dilectionem, sentitur supra 
 hec secundum magnitudinem, 
 
 2 See ch. vi. and viii. 
 
 [The latter half of this sentence occurs p. 22. Ed. Welchman, ec. viii. “quem mens 
 omnis humana sentit, etiam si non exprimit.” The former seems to me most nearly 
 expressed in ch. v. *‘ Est enim simplex, et sine ulla corporea concretione, quidquid 
 illud est totus, quod se solus scit esse ; quandoquidem Spiritus sit dictus.’’ On the pas- 
 sage afterwards which makes every Spirit a creature, see Welchman’s note. The mean- 
 ing seems to be clearly ‘every mere Spirit ;’ i. e. that of which nothing else could be 
 predicated than that it is a Spirit, ‘ is a creature..—The whole passage to the end of ch, 
 viii. ought to be read, to enter into the writer’s meaning. The first quotation is the 
 same, as occurs in Neander’s next note, only with a different reading. H. J. R.] 
 
 % Quod mens omnis humana sentit, et si non exprimit. 
 
 VOL. II. R 
 
DAD ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND ANTHROPOPATHISM. 
 
 pathism*, The latter consists in that inclination of man to repre- 
 sent to himself the Supreme Being after the analogy of his own 
 spirit, and by it he is easily misled into attributing to God that 
 which is founded upon the limits and imperfections of his own 
 nature ; and even if that Anthropomorphism, of which we speak, 
 was obliged to yield by degrees to the spiritualizing influence 
 of Christianity, yet Christianity could not act upon Anthropo- 
 pathism in the same manner, because there is a foundation to it 
 (namely, Anthropopathism) which is inseparable from the nature 
 of man, which can never step beyond its own peculiar condition, 
 and can receive all which it does appropriate to itself, only in the 
 form allowed by that condition. A great truth is also at the 
 bottom of this Anthropopathism, inasmuch as the spirit of man is 
 destined to represent the image of the Supreme Spirit. Now, as 
 far as Anthropopathism is founded on the essential attributes of 
 human nature, Christianity must engraft itself upon it, but must 
 at the same time purify and ennoble it together with the rest of 
 man’s nature, because it revealed the perfect realization of the 
 image of God in the human nature of Christ, and renewed that 
 image of God in all mankind. Even here also all must arise and 
 develop itself from the fundamental consciousness of a renewed 
 communion between God and man. In the acknowledgment of 
 God as the Redeemer of human nature an opposition was at once 
 established to all false Anthropopathism in a moral point of view; 
 for here the holiness of God revealed itself in opposition to all sin, 
 as well as the eternal love of God towards a being entangled in sin, 
 whom a holy love desires to free from sin and to lead back to God. 
 
 The two opposite dispositions, which resolve themselves into 
 the common contrast of religious Realism and Idealism, were 
 here also opposed to each other (as we remarked in the general 
 introduction) among the Jews and the Heathens; namely,—an 
 impure sensuous corporeal conception? of God among the ruder 
 multitude, and a@ stripping off all human attributes*, by which the 
 idea of God was too subtilized and rendered untenable to the 
 human mind; the latter was found among the Platonists, who 
 placed only an abstract idea of perfection in the stead of that 
 he 1 use these two expressions in their proper senses, which are both etymologically 
 and historically widely different. 
 
 2 (Literally, a humanizing of God. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 [Literally, a de-humanixing of God, if I may coin such a word to represent the 
 German Entmenschlichung. H. J. R.] 
 
CONTRASTS—TERTULLIAN, MARCION. 243 
 
 of the living God. Between these two opposite extremes the 
 development of the idea of God was to be conducted by Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 One extreme constantly produced the other. The rude and 
 carnal anthropopathical ideas, which fleshly-minded Jews and un- 
 informed Christians, by clinging to the letter, made to themselves 
 out of passages from the Old ‘Testament, which they misunder- 
 stood, induced a Marcion to form to himself out of the God of 
 the Old Testament, exactly such a being as those people had 
 imagined their god to be. The carnal conceptions of the ideas 
 of Divine wrath and a Divine justice, which he found current, 
 impelled him to take up an opposite principle, by which he 
 entirely mistook and obliterated the fundamental and objective 
 truth, which really did belong to these notions, on account of 
 the form in which they were presented to him; and after 
 another mode of Anthropopathism, more in accordance with a 
 tender heart, he formed to himself the notion of a blessing and a 
 redeeming Love, entirely separate from the idea of that Holiness, 
 which is a consuming fire to the sinner’. As for Tertullian, 
 whose powerful Christian realism made him hold fast the funda- 
 mental truth of a Christian Anthrepopathism, although in the 
 feelings of his heart, and in the conception of his spirit, he fre- 
 quently had more than he was able neatly and clearly to express 
 in his uncultivated and carnal modes of expression, he justly re- 
 proaches Marcion, who thus separated the attributes of God, with 
 inconsistency in his belief about redemption: and says to him’, 
 ἐς Does not the forgiveness of sin pre-suppose the existence of sin 
 in-the eyes of God, who forgives sin?” and, on the contrary, he 
 maintains, that the goodness of God cannot be separated from his 
 righteousness ; that principle, which sets every thing in order, and 
 attributes to every one that which is his*®. “The goodness of 
 God has created the world, and his righteousness has duly ar- 
 ranged it.” In opposition to Marcion, he shows the necessity of an 
 Anthropopathism, which even Marcion himself, although uncon- 
 sciously to himself, could not avoid; but he shows also how a just 
 Anthropopathism must consist in this, that we should not let down 
 the attributes of God to human sinfulness and imperfection ; but, 
 by a restoration of the image of God in human nature, ennoble 
 
 1 See the representation of Marcion’s system, given in a former section. 
 
 2 Adv. Mare. ii. 26, 27. Pe aceiien uae 
 Rr 2 
 
244 CONTRASTS—TERTULLIAN, MARCION, 
 
 that which is human till it becomes a mirror of the Divine. He 
 says to Marcion, ““ Those are extremely foolish, who judge that 
 which is Divine according to that which ishuman. Why shouldest 
 thou imagine God to be partly human, and not wholly Divine? 
 .... + [Moreover while you acknowledge, that man became 
 a living soul, being breathed into by God, and not God by man’s 
 operation, ] it is perverse enough on your part, to let down God 
 to the nature of man, instead of elevating man to the image of 
 God ...... Why do ye consider long-suffering, mercy, and 
 the mother of all goodness itself; to be something Divine. And 
 yet, at the same time, all this is not in us in its perfection, 
 because God alone is perfect’.” ‘Tertullian recognizes in every 
 revelation of God a progressive condescension, the highest point 
 and the object of which is the incarnation of God*, ‘* Whatever 
 you may collect together, which speaks of inferiority, or weak- 
 ness, or anything that is unworthy of God, I will give you a 
 simple and consistent answer. God cannot enter into any as- 
 sociation with man, without attributing to himself human sensa- 
 tions and affections; and thus by his condescension he softens the 
 overwhelmingness of his majesty, which human weakness could 
 not bear ; and this is a condescension, which, however unworthy 
 of the Deity, is necessary for man, and therefore worthy of God; 
 because nothing is so worthy of God, as that which serves to 
 the salvation of man*..... God deals with man, as with one 
 like himself, in order that man may act towards God as with a 
 being like himself. God appeared in humility, in order that man 
 might be raised to the highest pinnacle of greatness. If thou art 
 ashamed of a God like this, I see not indeed how thou canst be- 
 lieve in a crucified God.” It must be acknowledged that the 
 latter charge of inconsistency did not apply to Marcion, because 
 the same principle which induced him to oppose the anthropopa- 
 thical conceptions of God belonging to the Old Testament, made 
 him also an opponent of the doctrine of a crucified Deity. 
 
 The Alexandrian Fathers distinguish themselves peculiarly, in 
 consequence of their philosophical culture, by endeavouring to 
 eradicate entirely a carnal Anthropopathism out of the Christian 
 system of doctrine ; but it was also very easy for them to carry their 
 
 1 [Tertull. Contr. Mare. ii. xvi. Ed. Rigalt. H. J. R.] 
 3. 1. δ}, 10; 5. ΤΟ ΟΣ 11,27. 
 
~ 
 
 ALEXANDRIAN SPIRITUALIZATION, &c. 245 
 
 notions too far in the contrary direction, and they were liable to 
 lower the doctrine of the Divine attributes and involve it too 
 completely in what is only subjective. Let us take as an in- 
 stance the following beautiful passage of Origen, in which, not- 
 withstanding all the beauty with which he speaks of God’s educa- 
 tion of man, he does not conceive with sufficient depth the sense 
 of the Biblical expression of the ‘wrath of God’ against sin. 
 Working upon the idea of Philo, as to the two systems in regard 
 to Divine things, the Humanizing, and the De-Humanizing 
 system '; he says’, “" When the Scriptures represent God, as God 
 in his Divine majesty *, and do not involve in their consideration 
 his dealings in relation to men, they declare that ‘he is not like a 
 man, for there is no end of his greatness.’ (Ps. exlv. 3.) And again, 
 ‘The Lord is a great God, a great king above all Gods. (Psal. 
 xev. 3.) ..... + But when his dealings with the human race 
 are interwoven with the subject, then God assumes the mind, the 
 fashion, and the language of man ; just as when we talk to a child 
 of two-years old, we lisp for the sake of the child ; for if we maintain 
 the dignity of mature age, in talking to children, and do not let 
 ourselves down to their language, they are unable to understand 
 us. Think, then, that God also acts in the same way, when he 
 lets himself down to the race of men, and especially to those, who 
 are still in their [intellectual] childhood. See now, how we 
 grown-up men alter even the name of things, when we com- 
 municate with children, and how we call bread by some peculiar 
 name, and also drinking we designate by some other term, because 
 we make use of the language of children, and not of grown-up 
 persons ...... If any one heard us talking thus, would he 
 say ‘ This old man is become foolish ? and thus also God speaks 
 [with us] as with children. ¢ Behold,’ says our Saviour, “1 and 
 the children whom God hath given to me,’ Heb, ii. 13....... 
 When you hear of the wrath of God, do not imagine that wrath 
 is a passion to which God is subject. It is a condescension of 
 language in order to convert and amend the child, for we our- 
 selves put on a look of severity and anger towards children, not 
 from feeling the passion ourselves, but designedly. If we pre- 
 
 1 See Part i. [p. 49.] 
 
 2 Hom. 18. in Jeremiam, ὃ 6. [p. 169. and seq. Ed. Huet. H. J. R.) 
 
 3. [θεολογωσι Tov Θεὸν Kar’ avroy, i. 6. speak of him absolutely and not in relation 
 toman. H. J. R.] 
 
246 ORIGEN. 
 
 serve our mildness of aspect, and testify our love of the child, 
 without changing our look, as the real interest of the child would 
 require us to do, we spoil it utterly. Thus also God is represented 
 to us as angry, in order to our conversion and improvement, 
 while in fact he is not subject to anger; but thou wilt undergo 
 the wrath of God, by drawing down upon thyself by thy wicked- 
 ness, sufferings hard to be borne, when thou art punished by 
 what is called the wrath of God.” Origen spoke thus in one of 
 his Sermons ; and also in another passage in his commentary on 
 Matthew, where he developes the same theory, he says’, “Much 
 may be said to those, who are not in a condition to be injured by 
 it, about the goodness of God and the abundance of his grace, 
 which he properly hides from those who fear him.” 
 
 The Alexandrians here also took a middle path between the 
 Gnostics and the rest of the Fathers. While these maintained 
 that there is no absolute retributive justice in God’, nay, set 
 aside the whole notion of justice as contradictory to the nature of 
 a perfect God, and opposed the God of justice to the God of 
 goodness, the Alexandrians, on the contrary, made the notion of 
 justice altogether into the notion of a Divine love, which educates 
 rational beings ina fallen state, according to their several capa- 
 cities and needs*. ‘Thus they might say, that the distinction 
 made by the Gnostics between a just and a good God, might be 
 applied in a certain true sense, by attributing the epithet of “the 
 just” peculiarly to Christ (the Divine Logos) as the educator and 
 the purifier of fallen beings, the aim of whose education was that 
 they might be rendered capable of receiving the goodness of their 
 everlasting heavenly Father, and thus becoming blessed *. 
 
 1 p. 378. Ed. Huet. [The phrase ‘ who fear him’ of course alludes to those whose 
 religious character is imperfect; who have not arrived at the point where they may 
 cast away fear. H. J. R.] 
 
 2 [The sentence in Neander runsthus. ‘ Wenn diese eine absolute Gerechtigkeit in 
 Gott setzten, ja den ganzen Gerechtigkeitsbegriff als einen dem Wesen des volkom- 
 menen Gottes widersprechenden umstiessen, und den gerechten Gott dem Guten 
 entgegensetzten,’ ἅς, ‘ While these acknowledged an absolute retributive justice in 
 God, and even further than this threw aside,’ &c. 
 
 As the two parts of the sentence are contradictory of each other, I conceive that 
 there is some mistake, and I have translated it as if keine stood in the place of eine. 
 13h di sel 
 
 3 A δικαιοσυνὴ σωτήριος. 
 
 4 Clemens, Pedagog. lib. i. p. 118, καθ᾽ ὁ μὲν πατὴρ νοειται ἀγαθὸς ὧν, αὐτο 
 
 9 N Sl) a ὁ ἢ : IGN ’ 2 ὲ 
 μόνον Ο ἔστι, ΚεΚΛΉΤαι αγαῦος, Κα 0 CE— vlog WY O ογος αὐτοῦ ἐν Ti πατρι ort, 
 
CREATION FROM NOTHING. 247 
 
 The doctrine of a creation out of nothing is closely connected 
 with the peculiar character of the Christian doctrine regarding 
 the Deity. In opposition to the notions of antiquity founded 
 upon a religion, which consisted of a deification of nature, which 
 either carried back a succession of causes and effects to a blind 
 unconscious chaos, or at least made God only the fashioner of an 
 inorganic, chaotic matter—in opposition to these notions, Chris- 
 tianity, which frees the consciousness of God’s existence from 
 everything like a connection with the deification of nature, pre- 
 sented the doctrine of the Creation as the object of a faith which 
 raised itself over the whole circle of causes and effects in the 
 world cognizable by sense [literally the appearance-world] up to 
 the free author of all existence. ‘The characteristic circumstance 
 here, and that which is of practical importance, is this; that the 
 incomprehensible was maintained to be incomprehensible, and that 
 which alone can be of any interest or importance towards affecting 
 our religious faith here, was separated from all the uncongenial 
 elements of poetry’and speculation, by which it had been conta- 
 minated in the old Oriental systems of religion. Christianity was 
 here destined to purify the religious faith as it had been already 
 revealed in the Old Testament, from all the strange additions it 
 had received by intermixture with the Platonic and the Oriental 
 systems. Thus in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chap. xi. it is pro- 
 claimed as an object of faith, that things visible came not from 
 things visible, but that the world was created by the Almighty 
 power of God. ‘This was negatively expressed in the doctrine of 
 a Creation out of nothing’, a conclusion which was altogether 
 misconceived by.the Gnostics *, when they opposed to it the old 
 saying, (ex nihilo nil fit,) “from nothing, nothing can come,” 
 because this doctrine has an antithetical foree only against the 
 supposition of matter, which should limit creation; and in this 
 doctrine it is not Nothing but the Supreme, absolute Being = 
 GOD which is declared to be the formation of all existence. It 
 
 δικαιος προσαγορευεται. And Origen t. i. in Joh. p. 40. in speaking of the difference 
 between the Θεὸς ἀγαθὸς and the δημιουργος δικαιος. 
 
 (rovro de) οἰμαι per’ ἐξετασεως ἀκριβους βασανισθεν δυνασθαι λεγεσθαι ἐπι 
 του πατρος και τοῦ υἱου, του μεν υἱου τυγχάνοντος δικαιοσυνης, του δὲ πατρος τους 
 ἐν ry δικαιοσυνῃ Tov υἱου παιδευθεντας μετα THY Χριστου βασιλειαν εὐεργετουντος. 
 
 1 κτισις ἐκ του μὴ ὀντος. 
 
 2 See above, Part ii. 
 
248 _ HERMOGENES. 
 
 must, however, be confessed, that this conclusion was intended to 
 exclude also a view, which declared all existence as a kind of 
 development of nature proceeding from God, subjected God toa 
 necessity arising from the course of nature, and went near to 
 destroy the notion of the absolute dependence of creation on 
 the Creator. But we have already remarked that those Oriental 
 Theosophists, the Gnostics, were unable to content themselves 
 with this negative conception of the incomprehensible Being. 
 They wished to explain it, and to make that intelligible and per- 
 ceptible to our ideas, which the doctrine of the creation out of 
 nothing only presented as an object of faith. 
 
 Hermogenes, who lived probably at Carthage, about the end 
 of the second and the beginning of the third century, agreed with 
 the Gnostics in their controversy against this portion of the 
 Chureh doctrine. He was essentially distinguished from the 
 Gnostics by the turn of his mind, which was more of a Western 
 east, for he was more addicted to Grecian speculation than to 
 Oriental intuition [Anschauung], and hence also his system, 
 which did not, like the Gnostic systems, set the powers of the 
 imagination to work, was not able to obtain so much acceptance 
 as theirs, and in fact we do not hear of any sect of Hermoge- 
 nians. Nor did he, like the Gnostics, sketch out for himself a 
 peculiar system of esoteric religious doctrines, but he departed 
 from the Church doctrine only in one point, which was, how- 
 ever, a point necessarily very influential on the whole system of 
 religion. He was a painter, and probably a very determined 
 opponent of the Montanism which was spreading over the north 
 of Africa; the artist was as little suited to the Montanistic sect, 
 as they were to the artist. Perhaps also Hermogenes’, while he 
 
 1 The obscure words of Tertullian, from which we are enabled to derive this account, 
 are as follows. Pingit illicite, nubit assidue, legem Dei in libidinem defendit, in artem 
 contemnit. The first sentence might be understood so as to convey the notion that 
 Tertullian looked on painting itself as something heathenish and sinful, but such a 
 judgment could not be confidently affirmed even of the Montanistic hatred of art in 
 Tertullian, and no proof in favour of such an explanation is to be found in his writings. 
 Neither do the words “he despises the law of God in reference to his art” favour this 
 interpretation, for one cannot think of any passage of Scripture, which Tertullian can 
 have considered as an entire prohibition of painting; but probably Tertullian com- 
 prised the Old Testament under the expression “‘ Lex Dei,” and alluded to the prohibi- 
 tion of idolatrous images: and the sense would then be, “ he despises the authority of 
 the Old Testament by the manner in which he plies his art, and yet he will make its 
 authority available to him to defend a second marriage, against the Montanists, who 
 
HERMOGENES ON MORAL EVIL. 249 
 
 opposed the harsh and gloomy character of the Montanists, went 
 into the other extreme of laxness in his estimation of what is 
 Christian and what unchristian ; he appears to have had no scru- 
 ple in representing the objects of the Heathen mythology in the 
 way of his art, because he considered them as mere objects of art, 
 independently of any reference to religion at all. 
 
 Hermogenes controverted the Emanation-doctrine of the 
 Gnostics, because it transfers sensuous images to the Being of 
 God, and because the idea of the holiness of God was irrecon- 
 cileable with the sinfulness of a nature which emanated from him. 
 But he also controverted the doctrine of a creation out of nothing, 
 because, if the world had had no other source than the will of 
 God, it would have corresponded to the nature of the perfect and 
 Holy God, and therefore would of necessity have been perfect and 
 holy; nothing imperfect nor evil could have found place in it, for 
 in a world whose only source was God, whence could anything arise 
 which was uncongenial to the nature of that God? Hermogenes, 
 no doubt, here partly followed, as the Gnostics did, a subjective 
 rule of too limited a nature in his estimation of the different 
 creatures according to the different grades of being, and partly he 
 omitted to take into consideration what is included in the very 
 idea of Creation. In respect to moral evil he was as little inclined 
 as the Gnostics to throw himself back upon the distinction be- 
 tween willing and permitting on the part of God, and he also with 
 justice abandoned the ground, that evil is necessary as the foil to 
 good, in order that the latter may be known by the contrast; 
 because this position denies the self-existence and independence 
 of good, and the very nature of evil would be destroyed, if it 
 were considered as something which is necessary to the harmony 
 of the whole. But Hermogenes fell into the very error which he 
 desired to avoid; because he still deduced the existence of evil 
 from a necessity inherent in nature. According to his theory, all 
 that is imperfect or evil in the world originates from this cause, 
 that God’s creation is limited in consequence of the eternal ex- 
 istence of inorganic matter. From all eternity two principles 
 have existed ; the one, the active, and the forming and fashioning 
 (the plastic) namely God; and the passive, the undeterminate 
 
 maintained that the authority of the Old Testament in this respect was superseded by 
 Christianity, and by the new revelations of the Paraclete.” 
 
950 PLASTIC GOD. 
 
 in itself’, and the formless—namely, matter. ‘This latter is an 
 infinite chaotic mass in constant motion, in which all opposite 
 qualities are present undeveloped and run into each other, full of 
 wild impulse, without law or order, and like the motion ofa cauldron 
 that boils up in every direction’. ‘This infinite chaos, thrown as it 
 was into endless and irregular motion, could not at any point be 
 laid hold of by a single act, brought to a stand-still, and compelled 
 to subject itself to be formed and fashioned. It was only through 
 the relation of his nature to that of matter, that God could work 
 upon this mass; as the magnet by some inherent necessity attracts 
 iron*®; as beauty exerts a natural force of attraction on all that ap- 
 proaches it, so God exerts a fashioning influence on matter by his 
 mere appearance, and by the superior power of his Divine Being ἡ, 
 According to these principles, he could not, with any consistency, 
 maintain a beginning of existence to the creation, and, in fact, he 
 does not appear to have assumed any such beginning, as we may 
 judge from the grounds which he alleges for his doctrine on this 
 subject; namely, that since dominion is a necessary attribute of 
 God, there must always have been matter for him to exercise that 
 dominion upon. In accordance with this view he maintained an 
 eternal influence of God upon matter, which consisted, according 
 to his system, in the victorious plastic power. From what has 
 been said, it follows, that we must not conceive that in his system 
 chaos was a separate thing existing by itself, and that the in- 
 fluence of this Divine plastic power had begun at some particular 
 instant, whereas [according to his system] it can exist only in con- 
 nexion with this organization, which is imparted to it [by God], 
 and they can be separated only in idea. I*rom the resistance of 
 this infinite matter, which was to be fashioned by degrees in all its 
 separate parts, against the fashioning power of God, which could 
 only penetrate it successfully by degrees, he deduced all that is im- 
 perfect and evil. Thus the old chaos manifests itself in all that is 
 hateful in nature, and all that is morally evil in the spiritual world®. 
 
 1 [Ὁ Das in sich selbst unbestimmte ;’ ‘ without power or purpose to throw itself into 
 any definite state or form.’ H. J. R.] 
 
 2 Inconditus, et confusus, et turbulentus motus, sicut ollz undique ebullientis. 
 
 3 We here recognize the painter. 
 
 4 Non pertransiens materiam facit Deus mundum, sed solummodo adparens et 
 adpropinquans ei, sicut facit qui decor, solummodo adparens, et magnes lapis solum- 
 modo adpropinquans. 
 
 5 [i.e. Physical deformity and moral evil are the phenomena which give testimony 
 to the existence of this Chaos, and they are its manifestations. H. J. R.] 
 
PLASTIC GOD. 251 
 
 That Hermogenes should maintain a progressive formation of 
 matter, co-existing with an eternal creation, was an inconsistency, 
 because no progressive development can be imagined without a 
 beginning. His inconsistency would be still more striking, if the 
 account of Theodoret is accurate, by which he is made to holda 
 final aim of this development. He maintained in fact then (if 
 this account be true), like the Manichees, that at last all evil 
 would resolve itself into matter, from which it originated, and 
 then also that a separation would take place between that part of 
 matter, which is capable of organization, and that which offered 
 an obstinate resistance to it’. Here the teleological and moral 
 element, which adhered to him from his Christianity, and did 
 not suit this heathenish natural view of evil, rendered him 
 inconsistent’. 
 
 Irenzeus and Tertullian maintained, the former against the 
 Gnostics, the latter against Hermogenes, the simple Christian 
 doctrine of the creation, without permitting themselves to enter 
 upon speculations concerning it. 
 
 Origen was distinguished also in this respect from these Fathers 
 by a system peculiar to himself, of which we must develope 
 the fundamental features, as far as they are connected with the 
 doctrine of the creation. In accordance with the character of his 
 Gnosis (see above), he founded his system on the belief generally 
 prevalent in the whole Church, and thought that his speculative 
 inquiries, which stepped beyond this, might be very consistently 
 united with it. He declared himself in favour of the doctrine of 
 a creation out of nothing, as far as the free action of Divine 
 power, unlimited by any condition inherent in pre-existent matter, 
 was indicated by this doctrine; and this he did, not merely with 
 
 1 Theodoret does not say this expressly, but such a doctrine is necessarily implied 
 in that, which, according to his account, Hermogenes held. Theodoret’s words (Heret. 
 fab. i. 19.) are these: τὸν δὲ διαβολον καὶ rove δαιμονας εἰς τὴν ὕλην ἀναχθη- 
 σεσθαι. 
 
 2 Theodoret ascribes to Hermogenes also the doctrine, that Christ deposited his body 
 inthe sun. A question would arise here, whether Theodoret has not confused his 
 doctrine with some others like it; and in what way his words are to be understood. 
 Perhaps Hermogenes taught that Christ, when he raised himself into his heavenly 
 existence, left behind him in the sun the garb which he had taken from the material 
 world. And yet it is difficult to attribute confidently so entirely fantastic an opinion 
 to Hermogenes, and the matter must be left in obscurity for want of evidence. Perhaps 
 also some meaning of Psal. xix. 4. with a messianic interpretation according to the 
 version of the LXX. may have led the way to this notion, 
 
252 ORIGEN. 
 
 acquiescence, but out of hearty persuasion’. He also acknow- 
 ledged a definite beginning to the limited and definite world now 
 in existence; but with regard to what preceded it, he conceived 
 that Scripture and the faith of the Church left him fully at liberty 
 to speculate. And here then he found those general grounds 
 for opposing any beginning of creation, which are sure to strike 
 any thinking mind, which is unwilling to be satisfied with a mere 
 belief in the incomprehensible. How can it happen that if 
 creating is suitable to the nature of God, anything which is suit- 
 able to that nature, should ever have been wanting ? How should 
 the qualities, which reside in the being of God, omnipotence and 
 goodness, fail to have been always active? The transition from 
 inaction to creation cannot be conceived without the notion of 
 change ; to which the Being of God is not liable. 
 
 Origen was also an opponent of the emanation doctrine, as it 
 was conceived by the Gnosties; because it appeared to him to 
 transfer sensuous representations to the being of God, and by the 
 supposition of an unity-of-substance (the ὁμοουσιον)ὴ, between 
 God, and the natures that emanated from him, appeared to 
 abolish the proper distinction between the Creator and the cre- 
 ation. But he assumed a system of emanation spiritually conceived 
 and abjuring all sensuous images, a spiritual world of a kindred 
 nature with God, and which beamed forth from him from all 
 eternity, above which he is however immeasurably exalted, and 
 in all these Spirits, was there the partial revelation, the partial 
 reflexion of the Glory of God?, as the Son of God is the collected 
 revelation of the Glory of God. 
 
 Origen here conceived the idea of an absolute dependence 
 without any beginning in time*; a causation, in which the 
 existence of the creation, as a thing which could not have a self- 
 existence, was founded from all eternity*. What he says of 
 
 1 See Preefat. Libb. 7. apy. p. 4. ibid. lib. ii. ο. i. § 4. Lib. iii. c. 5—Commentar. 
 Genes. init. 
 
 2 7. apy. lib. i.c. 2. ὃ 6. In Joh. t. 20. c. 16. Τ΄ 13. ο. 25. T. 32. ο. 18. ὁλης μὲν 
 οὖν της δοξης του Θεου ἀπαυγασμα εἰναι roy viov, φθανειν μὲν ToL γε ἀπὸ TOU 
 ἀπαυγασματος τῆς ὁλης δοξἕης μερικα ἀπαυγασματα ἐπι THY λοιπὴν λογικὴν κτισιν͵ 
 
 3 (‘Ohne ein zeitliches werden,’ literally ‘ without a temporal becoming or coming 
 into existence.’ 
 
 In the next clause of the sentence (‘as a thing,’ &c.) the original is ‘ als etwas sei- 
 nem Wesen noch nicht in sich selbst ruhendes,’ ‘as something according to the laws of 
 its nature not reposing on itself;’ ὁ, 6. not self-dependent, or self-existent. H. J. R.] 
 
 * Methodius represents faithfully the expressions of Origen, when he ascribes to him 
 
GOD}; ETERNAL ACTION. 253 
 
 the continuous regeneration of the pious, and of the generation 
 of the Son of God, may be applied in the sense in which he 
 uses it to this also; because the Divine Logos stands in the 
 same relation to the rest of the spiritual world as its source of 
 Divine light, as God stands in to him. He says, Jerem. Hom. 
 ix. § 4. [p. 106. ed. Huet. H. J. R.] “I will not say that the 
 righteous is born of God once for all; but that he is constantly 
 born of him in every good action. And if also I lay down to 
 you in reference to our Saviour, that the Father did not beget 
 the Son and then cease, but that he always begets him, I 
 should also maintain something similar in respect to the right- 
 eous. Let us then see who is our Saviour? The reflected 
 image of [God’s] glory. Now the image of glory is not pro- 
 duced once for all, and then ceases to be produced; but as 
 long as the light is efficient in creating the image of itself, so 
 long is the image of the glory of God constantly created. If 
 therefore thou hast the spirit of adoption (sonship), God con- 
 stantly begets thee in that same sonship, in every act and in 
 every thought, and thus thou art for ever being born as a son of 
 God in Jesus Christ *.” 
 
 Bishop Methodius, the adversary of Origen, whose theory of 
 creation was controverted by the Bishop in his work concerning 
 creatures, was by no means his equal in respect to a spirit of 
 speculation®. He had not a sufficient power of speculative per- 
 ception, justly to conceive the ideas of Origen, and he repre- 
 sented what he did not understand as foolish and impious. While 
 he himself compares the relations in which God stands to his 
 creatures with the relation between a human workman and the 
 works of his hands, he makes against the system of Origen ob- 
 jections, which could not justly lie against it. How little able he 
 was to understand that great man, whom in his blind zeal he calls 
 a Centaur, appears by the following argument, which he casts in 
 his teeth; viz. that, if the transition from non-creation to creation 
 implies a change in God, the transition from creation to non- 
 creation equally implies a change. Now God must have ceased 
 to create the world, when it was finished, and thus a change in 
 the doctrine of a yevnrov ἀει γενέσεως ἀρχην οὐκ ἔχον, and of an dvapywe κρατειν 
 του τεχνηματος. 
 
 1 Thus tom, i. in Joh. p. 32. we must not imagine that any limitation of time is 
 indicated, but ὁ συμπαρεκτεινων τῳ ἀγενητῳ Kat aidup ζω, ἵν᾽ οὗτως εἰπω, χρονος 
 
 ἡμέρα ἐστιν αὐτῳ σημερον, ἐν y γεγεννηται ὁ υἷος. 
 2 Extracts from the book of Methodius found in Photius, Cod. 235. 
 
254 ORIGEN ΟΝ OMNIPOTENCE. 
 
 God would clearly be implied. He did not observe, that with 
 Origen the conception of the upholding of the world was the con- 
 ception of a continuous creation, and he did not consider, that 
 just exactly by such a representation of creation, as is contained 
 in his own argument, a self-existence would be attributed to crea- 
 tures which is inconsistent with the idea of them as creatures. 
 He made another objection, which, although more directed against 
 an inaccurate expression of Origen, than against what he really 
 meant, was more correct; and it was this, that the idea of God’s 
 perfection actually implied, that it is a thing, whose foundation is 
 in itself; that it is dependent on nothing besides, and limited or 
 conditioned by nothing whatever *. 
 
 The doctrine of Origen relative to creation is intimately con- 
 nected also with his peculiar conception of the omnipotence of 
 God. It happened to him in this matter, as indeed in many other 
 respects, that, being entangled in the ideas of the philosophical 
 school, from which his learning and his education were derived, 
 he set out from those ideas, as if they were acknowledged truths. 
 Thus he set out from the principle, that an infinite line cannot be 
 conceived by any mind, into which the Neo-platonic school allowed 
 itself to be deluded, by their attempt to measure an absolute reason 
 by the limits of finite human thought”. From this Origen drew 
 the conclusion ; that we must not, in order to enhance the Divine 
 omnipotence, make it infinite, because then it would be unable to 
 comprehend itself*. Thus also God could create only a definite 
 and not an infinite number of beings endued with reason, because 
 otherwise they could not be embraced by his providence. We 
 recognize also in this error of Origen the leaning which he had 
 inthe matter of religion. ‘This doctrine is of great importance to 
 his whole system (as will be seen below) when taken in connexion 
 with his theory, that, since the number of reason-gifted beings is 
 definite, and is always the same, therefore it is only from the 
 
 1 τὸ αὖτο ov ἑαυτῳ éavrov πληρωμα by και αὐτο ἐν ἑαυτῳ μενον, TENELOY εἰναι 
 τουτὸ μονον δοξἕαστεον. 
 
 2 [N.B. The word here is Bewusstseyn, which will express that wherein our know- 
 ledge or our capacity of entertaining ideas resides, as well as our consciousness of those 
 ideas. In popular language, understanding would come the nearest; but it is so 
 desirable to keep the distinction between reason and understanding, as definite as 
 possible, that I would rather use thought or comprehension instead of it. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 ro ἀπειρον ἀπεριληπτον, and in Matth. Ed. Huet. p. 305, he says expressly : 
 ἀπειρα yap Ty φύσει οὐχ otovTe περιλαμβανεσθαι Ty περατουν» TEPUKV τὰ γινω- 
 σκομενα γνώσει. 
 
DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 255 
 
 change of will and intention among them that all other changes 
 can proceed. 
 
 The peculiar nature of Christianity reveals itself in the recog- 
 nition and worship of God, not merely as the Creator, but also as 
 the Redeemer and Sanctifier of human nature, in the belief that 
 God, who has created human nature pure, has redeemed it when 
 it became estranged from him by sin, and continues to sanctify it, 
 until it shall have attained in an eternal life to an untroubled and 
 beatified communion with him in perfect holiness. Without this 
 faith and knowledge, there is no lively worship of God, no worship 
 of God in spirit and in truth, because a lively worship of God 
 cannot exist without communion with him, and because this com- 
 munion cannot be shared by man, as long as he is estranged from 
 God by sin; as long as that, which separates him from God, is 
 not removed; and because the worship of God in spirit and in 
 truth, can only proceed from a soul which has been sanctified so 
 as to become a temple of God. This doctrine of God the Creator, 
 the Redeemer and the Sanctifier of human nature is the essential 
 import of the doctrine of the Trinity, and therefore since in this 
 latter doctrine the essence of all Christianity is contained, it could 
 not but happen, that, as this doctrine proceeded out of the depths 
 of Christian consciousness, it should be considered as the chief 
 doctrine of Christianity, and that even in the earliest Church the 
 essential import of the faith should be annexed to the doctrine of 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost’. This doctrine again 
 is nothing else than the doctrine of God, who has revealed and 
 imparted himself to sinful man in Christ; everything here reverts 
 to the doctrine of God’s being in Christ, for the working of God 
 in human nature redeemed by him, presupposes the inward rela- 
 tion, into which God has entered with human nature through 
 Christ, and all is here only the continuation and the consequence 
 of that [relation]; and therefore this doctrine is nothing else but 
 the perfect development of the doctrine about Christ, which the 
 Apostle Paul, 1 Corinth. iii. calls the foundation of all Chris- 
 tianity, the development of that which Christ himself designates 
 
 1 This is literally translated ; perhaps the meaning would be more nearly expressed 
 as follows,—that the acknowledgment of the doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost was considered to comprise the essentials of the Christian Faith. The original 
 is ‘ dass «.....++ der wesentliche Glaubensinhalt an die Lehre vom Vater, Solhine, und 
 Heiligen Geist angereiht wurde.’ H. J. R.] 
 
 7 
 
256 ITS SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL: ASPECT. 
 
 as the essential import of his doctrine; “This is Eternal Life 
 that they should know thee, that thon alone art the true God, and 
 Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” But the speculative doc- 
 trine of the Trinity is carefully to be distinguished from this its 
 essential Christian import, and men might agree in the latter, and 
 yet differ from each other in their conceptions of the former. 
 The former only set itself up as an human attempt to bring into 
 just harmony with the unity of the Divine Being, the exist- 
 ence of God in Christ, and through Christ in the faithful, as it is 
 represented in Holy Scripture, and out of that Holy Scripture 
 formed an image of itself in the inward life and the inward per- 
 ceptions of the faithful. But it was an evil, that, in this attempt, 
 men did not rightly divide the speculative and dialectic element 
 from that essential and practical foundation; the consequence of 
 which was, that men transplanted that doctrine from its proper 
 practical ground, in which it is rooted in the centrepoint of Chris- 
 tianity, into a speculative region foreign to it, which might give 
 an opportunity of mingling with it much extraneous matter, and 
 again might lead to setting Christianity, contrary to its peculiar 
 character, on a speculative instead of a practical foundation ; and 
 the consequence of this again was, on the one hand, that men, 
 overprizing the importance of speculative differences, tore asunder 
 the bond of Christian communion, where there was yet an agree- 
 ment in what is practical and essential; and on the other hand, 
 that men stinted the free development of the Christian doctrine by 
 the attempt to attain an uniformity of speculative conceptions’. 
 
 It is self-evident from what has been said, that the develop- 
 ment of this doctrine must first proceed from speculations on the 
 manner, in which the Divine nature in Christ was in relation 
 
 1[We must also be careful that in endeavouring to reconcile contending views we do 
 not depart from the great truth which is contained in the acknowledgment of the 
 Athanasian Creed, that each person is acknowledged ‘by himself to be both God and 
 Lord, and yet that no one should for a moment believe that there be “ three Gods or 
 three Lords.’’ We must take care that we do not explain the Divinity of the Son as 
 the mere indwelling of the Father in Jesus Christ; or believe that the Son is the mere 
 manifestation of the Father; or we shall fall into Sabellianism or Patripassianism at 
 once. The evil which Neander wishes to obviate seems to be the attempt to explain 
 this great truth speculatively, and creating differences in consequence of such attempts. 
 However wrong such attempts may be, in opposing them we must still be careful to 
 maintain that great Catholic truth, the Trinity in Unity, and the Unity in Trinity, 
 which is founded on the Scriptures and must be received by faith, though our finite 
 faculties are unable to explain its mysteries. H. J. R:] 
 
ITS SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL ASPECT. 257 
 
 with the Godhead of the Father. Providence had then so ex- 
 actly managed things in this respect, that in the Spiritual world 
 in which Christianity first made its appearance, many notions, at 
 least apparently of a kindred kind, were afloat, in which Chris- 
 tianity could find a point on which to attach the doctrine of a God 
 revealed in Christ, or which it might appropriate to itself as 
 general, intelligible forms, in which it might envelope that doc- 
 trine. In a discourse preserved to us by the Apostle John, Christ 
 himself has expressed with Divine confidence the consciousness of 
 his one-ness with God, an incomprehensible fact of his conscious- 
 ness (Matth. xi. 27), without founding his declaration on any of 
 the then notions of his age, but rather in opposition to the limited 
 representations, current among the Jews, of the Messiah as a 
 man, who proceeded from the ordinary development of human 
 nature. But the Apostles Paul and John, united with the doc- 
 trine of God revealed in Christ, the idea that was already in 
 existence in the Jewish theological schools, of a revealer of God 
 elevated above the whole creation, the perfect image of the 
 hidden Divine Being, from whom [the Word] all the communica- 
 tion of life from God proceeded, the image of the invisible God, 
 the Word, in whom the hidden God reveals himself, the First- 
 born before all creation—and they confirmed and established this 
 idea and applied it to Christ. John, in particular, by the brief 
 introduction prefixed to his Gospel, induced those among his 
 contemporaries who sought after a knowledge of Divine things, 
 who busied themselves with speculations on the self-revelation of 
 God in his own express image—the Word that expressed his 
 hidden nature, or the revealing and creating Reason—to give a 
 lively, an historical and a practical meaning to this idea, by 
 applying it to the appearance of Christ, instead of constantly 
 restraining it to the regions of speculation. By this means, 
 the development of the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity was placed 
 in connection with that speculative idea, which was already 
 to be found current, although under a different form, among the 
 Jewish Theologians, the Oriental Theosophists, and the Platonic 
 Philosophers. 
 
 But in the conception of this doctrine there existed already 
 among the Jews two different views. One party considered the 
 Divine Logos as a Spirit, which existed in an independent per- 
 sonality, although in the most intimate union with the Divine 
 
 VOL, II. 8 
 
258 IDEA OF THE LOGOS. 
 
 First Cause’, while another party rejected this notion of an Hy- 
 postasis, as inconsistent with strict Monotheism, and they con- 
 ceived to themselves, under the name of Logos, nothing but the 
 Reason, which is either hidden in God and only engaged in con- 
 templation ’, or else reveals itself both after the manner of thought, 
 which manifests itself in human speech, and also by its efficient 
 operation in the work of creation*—the Reason, which cannot be 
 divided from God, and which either concentrates itself in him or 
 beams forth from out of him‘. 
 
 While the former was the predominant mode of conception [as 
 to the Logos] in the doctrines as exhibited by the Church, the 
 other mode of conception made its appearance not unfrequently 
 during this season in opposition to the Church doctrine, and this 
 opposition served again, on the other hand, to promote the sys- 
 tematic formation and development of the former view. 
 
 Those who embraced the latter mode of conception, in their 
 controversy against the Church Doctrine of the Trinity, and in 
 their religious learning, were in agreement in one respect, 
 namely, that it was of the utmost importance to them, firmly 
 to maintain the doctrine of the Unity of God’, and to avoid 
 everything, which bore even the appearance of Polytheism®. 
 
 1 [Literally, Urwesen. Original Being. 
 
 It is impossible to express the idea with metaphysical accuracy; if we speak of 
 first, we give the idea of being prior to the Word, which is yet held to be eternal. 
 I use the word First-cause, therefore, relatively to other Beings, as it is used in 
 common parlance, not as expressing priority of existence in the Father relative to the 
 Son, or Word.—H. J. R.] 
 
 2 The Aoyoe ἐνδιαθετος. 
 
 [1 recommend those English readers, who wish for clear statements on this subject, to 
 consult Newman’s ‘ Arians of the Fourth Century,’ especially ch. ii.§ 3and 4. H.J.R.] 
 
 3 λογος προφορικος. 
 
 [The same Reason therefore was conceived under two different conditions. It 
 received the name of Aoyoc ἐνδιαθετος when considered as residing in God, and 
 delighting itself in contemplation, and that of λόγος προφορικος when considered as 
 emanating forth from Him and revealing God by spoken words or by the acts and the 
 works of creation.—H. J. R. ] 
 
 4 See Clementin. Homil. 16. c. xii. ry δὲ copig, ὥσπερ ἰδιῳ πνευματι ἀει συν- 
 ἐχαιρεν, ἥνωται μὲν ὡς ψυχὴ τῳ OE, ἐκτεινεται δὲ AT’ αὐτου ὡς χειρ δημιουρ- 
 γουσα τὸ παν, κατα ἐκτασιν και συστολὴν ἡ μονας δυας εἰναι νομιζεται. 
 
 5 The μοναρχία, the doctrine of the μονὴ ἀρχὴ, whence this party obtained the 
 name of Monarchians. 
 
 6 Tt was their term of distinction, the watchword of their party. Tertullian c. Pra- 
 xeam, c. iii. Monarchiam tenemus. Origen, in Joh. t. ii. § 2. τὸ πολλοὺς φιλοθεοὺυς 
 εἰναι εὐχομένους ταρασσον, εὐλαβουμένους, ἀναγορευσαι Ovo θεους. 
 
PATRIPASSIANS. 259 
 
 But in the manner in which they applied this theory to 
 Christ, they varied widely from each other, according as they 
 happened to be peculiarly interested in maintaining merely the 
 principles of the Monarchia, or were at the same time filled with 
 a belief in the Divinity of Christ, and although they controverted 
 the doctrine of an independent personality of the Logos, yet had 
 a lively interest in maintaining the Divinity of Christ; in fact, 
 according as they were under the direction of a dialectic and cri- 
 tical understanding, or*of an inward and practical Christian dis- 
 position. The former, together with the Church-doctrine of the 
 Trinity, controverted also that of the Divinity of Christ, though 
 they were nevertheless content to admit his godly nature [Gott- 
 heit, divinity ; Gottlichkeit, godly nature or godliness] in a cer- 
 tain sense; that is to say, they taught that Jesus was a man, like 
 all other men, but that from the very first he had been animated 
 and influenced, more than all other prophets and messengers of 
 God, by that Divine Power, the Reason or Wisdom of God, and 
 that, on this account, he was to be called the Son of God. ‘They 
 were distinguished from those, who embraced entirely Ebionite 
 sentiments, by not admitting that this connection of God with 
 Christ began at any one definite moment of his existence, but 
 they conceived it to be coeval with the development of the 
 human nature of Christ. | 
 
 The others, on the contrary, in regard to the doctrine about 
 Christ, were still more strongly opposed to this class of Monarch- 
 ianism than to the opinion adopted by the Church; not only a 
 leaning towards the doctrine of the Monarchia, in which even a 
 Jew might join with them, but also a leaning towards some of 
 the peculiar features of Christianity, made them hostile to the 
 doctrine of the Church. Not only did the manner, in which the 
 doctrine of the Unity of God was conceived in the Church doc- 
 trine, fail to meet their Monotheistic views, but also the manner, 
 in which the Divinity of Christ was there understood, was un- 
 suited to their peculiar Christian class of feelings and wants. 
 While the Logos, who became man in Christ, was usually repre- 
 sented as a Being, different in person from God the Father and 
 subordinate to him, although in the most intimate connection with 
 him, they thought this a disparaging representation of Christ, and 
 such a distinction between Christ and the supreme God was 
 offensive to their belief about Christ; to them he was the one, 
 
 s2 
 
260 PATRIPASSIANS. PRAXEAS. 
 
 supreme God himself, who in a way that he had never done be- 
 sides, had revealed himself in human nature, and had appeared in 
 a human body. It was only inasmuch as God was to be named 
 after two different considerations [or relations, ἐπινοιαι7--ἰ 6 
 hidden Being, as he was before the creation, the Father—and in 
 so far as he revealed himself, the Son of the Logos—it was only 
 in virtue of these considerations that Christ as the most perfect 
 revelation of God the Father, was called the Son of God. ‘They 
 maintained that their doctrine was most eminently calculated 
 to dignify Christ’. They were called Patripassians, because 
 they were accused of attributing the sufferings of Christ to the 
 Father ’. 
 
 The first name which occurs among the Patripassians is that of 
 Praxeas, of Asia Minor, the native region of the doctrine of the 
 Monarchia. Having made a confession of faith under torture, 
 during the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, he afterwards * tra- 
 velled to Rome, where Eleutheros was Bishop (see above), and 
 there he brought forward his doctrine without receiving any 
 obstruction, which perhaps arose from the Church-doctrine not 
 having as yet been so accurately defined, that the contradiction to 
 it by the doctrine of Praxeas could at once make any impression ; 
 
 17 οὖν κακον Tow, δοξαζων τον Χριστον ; said Noétus, an adherent of this theory, 
 when he was accused before a Synod. Hippolyt. c. Noét. c. ii And Origen, in 
 Matth. p. 420. ed. Huet, says, οὐ νομιστεον εἰναι ὑπερ αὐτου (Tov Χριστοῦ) (that ὁ 
 they are on his side) τους Ta ψευδη περι αὐτον φρονουντας, φαντασιᾳ TOV δοξα- 
 Levy αὐτον, drool εἰσιν οἱ συγχεοντες πατρος και υἱου ἐννοιαν᾽ καὶ TY ὑποστα- 
 cet ἕνα διδοντες εἰναι τον πατέρα και TOY υἷον, TH ἐπινοίᾳ μονῃ και τοις ὀνομασι 
 διαιρουντες To ἑν ὑποκειμενον (the one Divine Subject). And Origen, probably, had 
 this in his mind, when, like the Gnostics, he separated those who knew no higher God 
 than the God of the Old Testament, the Demiurgos, from those, who elevated them- 
 selves above him (the Demiurgos) to the knowledge of the Supreme God, and like 
 Philo also, separated those who knew God only in his mediate revelation, the viouc 
 του Aoyou, from those who elevate themselves above all mediate revelation to the 
 intellectual perception of the Divine Being, who are the vio του Θεοῦ ; and this is the 
 manner in which Origen arranges the two classes of men. 
 
 1. ot μεν Θεὸν ἐχουσι Tov των ὅλων Θεὸν, ἀνθρωποι οἰκειοι τῷ πάτρι, μεριδὸς 
 ὄντες αὐτου, 2. οἱ ἱσταμενοι ἐπι TOY υἱον του Θεου, TOY Χριστον αὐτου, οἱ ἐπι τον 
 σωτηρα φθασαντες και To παν ἐν αὐτῳ ἵσταντες. In Joh. t. ii. § 3. (Ed. Huet. 
 p- 49. In the above quotation μεριδος ought clearly to be μεριδες. The words are not 
 exactly copied throughout. H. J. R.] 
 
 2 Origen expressly distinguishes between these two classes of Monarchiani, particu- 
 larly in Joh. τ. ii, § 2. and t. ii. Joh. § 18. t. x. § 21. ς. Cels. 1. vill. c. 12. Onthe 
 obscure passage Commentar. in Tit. f. 695. t. iv. Ed. de la Rue, see below. 
 
 3 With regard to the chronological questions involved here see above. 
 
PATRIPASSIANS. NOETUS. 261 
 
 it may have been the case, that by his zeal for the Divinity of 
 Christ against the other party of Monarchiani, the Theodotians, 
 which had perhaps arisen at Rome by that time, Praxeas, who 
 must have been favourably looked upon in virtue of having been 
 a Confessor, won still greater favour for himself, and thence 
 therefore that men were more easily induced to overlook other 
 points of difference. He appears afterwards to have betaken 
 himself to Carthage, where he found followers, but where the 
 contrast between his doctrine and that which was predominant 
 attracted more observation. He wrote and published an explana- 
 tion which was looked upon, at least by his opponents, as an ex- 
 press recantation; but we cannot very accurately determine the 
 state of the case, because it may have happened that Praxeas 
 defended his doctrine only against consequences with which it 
 was unjustly charged, and misrepresentations of it. Tertullian, 
 who would not be favourably disposed towards Praxeas, as an 
 adversary of Montanism, wrote against him, and his book is the 
 only source from which we can learn the doctrine of this person 
 with any certainty. 
 
 But, if we take Tertullian as our guide, we might take two 
 different views of his doctrine. From some places it would 
 appear that Praxeas had taught the doctrine of the Patripassians, 
 in the manner in which we have before represented it. He 
 acknowledged the doctrine of a Divine Logos in a certain sense, 
 he applied the name of Son of God, not merely to Christ after 
 his appearance in the form of man, but he recognised from the 
 time of the creation of the world a difference between the hidden 
 invisible God, and that [God] who revealed himself outwardly 
 as well in the Creation, as in the ‘Theophaniz [appearances of 
 the Deity] of the Old Testament, and lastly in a human body in 
 Christ. In the latter respect he was called the Logos or the Son; 
 by extending his agency in a certain manner beyond himself and 
 thus begetting the Logos, he made himself into a Son to himself’. 
 On the contrary, in other passages, it appears as if he had denied 
 every distinction in regard to the Divine Being, and had applied 
 the name of Son of God only to the human nature of Christ’. We 
 may suppose, either that Tertullian has not always entered justly 
 into the tenour of the ideas of Praxeas, or else, that among the 
 
 1 See Tertullian, c. 10. 14. 26. 2 See c. 27. 
 
262 THEODOTUS AND ARTEMON. 
 
 adherents of this latter, different conceptions of his system had 
 arisen, because men of uncultivated understanding, whom this 
 doctrine suited, could not enter into those subtle distinctions. 
 
 Noétus, also, who appeared at Smyrna during the first half of 
 the third century, and was excommunicated for his unchurchly 
 theory, belongs ¢o this class of Patripassians. 'Theodoret gives, 
 as well as Hippolytus, the most characteristic traits of his 
 doctrine’, and he observes, with justice, that Noétus did not 
 bring forward any new-invented doctrine of his own, but that 
 others’? had made up such a system before his time. According 
 to this system, there is one God the Father, who is invisible 
 when he will, and appears (reveals himself) when he will; he is 
 visible and invisible, begotten and unbegotten *. 
 
 It might be asked whether Beryllus of Bostra ought not to be 
 placed in this class; and this question will be treated of here- 
 after. 
 
 Of the other class of Monarchiani, the first traces are found in 
 the end of the second century, in the Roman Church, whither 
 however, as the very name of the founder of the sect indicates, it 
 must have come from some other place, and that too from the 
 Oriental Church. A worker in leather, who came from Byzan- 
 tium, by name Theodotus, is named as the founder of this party. 
 Victor, the Bishop of Rome, must have excommunicated him at 
 the end of the second or the beginning of the third century; but 
 still his party extended itself in a state of separation from the 
 predominant Church, and it endeavoured to procure itself respect 
 on the ground that it was inclined to maintain Natalius, a Con- 
 fessor held in much honour, in the rank of Bishop. ‘This man 
 appears, however, to have been thrown into a state of conflicting 
 feelings, by thus falling away from the faith, which at an earlier 
 period had enabled him to endure suffering for its sake. The 
 uneasiness of his heart showed itself in fearful visions and dreams, 
 
 and at last he returned in sorrow and penitence to the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 1 Heret. fab. iii. c. 3. 
 
 2 Among whom he mentions two men who are unknown to us, Epigonius and 
 Cleomenes. 
 
 3 Theodoret refers this latter expression to the birth of Christ, but one is inclined to 
 ask, whether he has properly understood the meaning of Noétus, and whether Noétus 
 was not thinking of the γεννησις τοῦ Aoyov, and under that phrase meant nothing 
 but the agency of God extending outwards beyond himself. 
 
ARTEMON. 263 
 
 One Artemon came forward also, from another point, as founder 
 of such a party, which were called Artemonites after his name, 
 and continued for a long time to spread themselves abroad. For 
 about the middle of the third century, Novatian, the Roman 
 Presbyter, considered it necessary, in his development of the 
 Doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, to take especial notice of the 
 attacks of that party, and in the later controversies, arising from 
 Paul of Samosata, this party was spoken of as one that still 
 existed *. . 
 
 The Theodotians and the Artemonites are, no doubt, to be con- 
 sidered as holding that Christ is a mere man, and as having looked 
 upon him as being in no peculiar connection with the Father; but 
 as far as Theodotus is concerned, his own words, which Epiphanius, 
 his adversary, himself quotes, militate against this supposition. 
 It appears that in the words of the Angel, Luke i. 31, he would 
 not find any proof that the Spirit of God itself had appeared in 
 an human nature; but he saw clearly enough, that they implied 
 that the man Christ developed himself under the peculiar influ- 
 
 1 The relation between the Artemonites and Theodotus is involved in great obscu- 
 rity. One naturally asks how the Artemonites could appeal to it as a fact, that their 
 doctrine had been the predominant doctrine at Rome down to the time of Bishop Ze- 
 phyrinus, who was the first to corrupt the doctrine of the Church, if a sect existed at 
 Rome at that time, whose founder, Theodotus, had been excommunicated by Victor, 
 the predecessor of Zephyrinus, on account of professing that very doctrine. Although 
 one may imagine it likely enough, that where the maintenance of men’s dogmas is con- 
 cerned they should be inclined to misrepresent facts, or to refuse to acknowledge them, 
 yet both of these cases must have something, at least, on which they may be supported. 
 We can then only imagine, that the Artemonites did not choose to acknowledge Theo- 
 dotus as their predecessor, and that they thought they had reason to maintain, either that 
 Theodotus had been excommunicated for some other reason than his doctrinal opinions, 
 or that their doctrines were different from the Theodotion. Perhaps the following ac- 
 count may be given. The ancient author of the additions to Tertullian de Przscriptione, 
 says, l. 6. 6. 53, that Theodotus brought forward his pestilent opinions, after he had 
 denied Christ during the persecution. Although this account, which is prejudicial to 
 the character of Theodotus, coming from the mouth of an enemy, cannot be accepted 
 with confidence, yet it may be true, at least it is quite possible, that a man, who had 
 embraced Christianity more with the understanding than with the heart, should, for 
 that very reason, want the courage and the zeal to make a confession of it in the face 
 of death. Perhaps he was excommunicated on account of this denial of the faith, and 
 then, when he had nothing more to fear from the dominant Church which would 
 not acknowledge him as one of her members, he brought forward his doctrines in 
 public for the first time. This piece of truth may form the foundation of the old 
 account of the matter, although it is to be looked upon as a fable after the fashion of 
 Epiphanius, if the latter has only invented the opinions of Theodotus about Christ 
 in order to excuse his denial of the faith, 
 
264 THE ARTEMONITE VIEWS. 
 
 ence of that Spirit’. And as far as the Artemonites are con- 
 cerned, they professed that theirs was no new doctrine, but the 
 old doctrine of the Church, and that Bishop Zephyrinus was the 
 first who taught a different one in the Church. Now if they 
 would acknowledge nothing whatever that is Divine in Christ, 
 and utterly denied the doctrine of a Divine Logos, they had far 
 too clear a testimony of facts against them when they maintained 
 the high antiquity of their doctrines. But, on the contrary, if 
 they belonged to the other class of the Monarchiani, they might 
 very well make use of the indefinite nature of many old expres- 
 sions so as to favour their views, and they might perhaps find 
 some indefiniteness in a dogmatical point of view, in the state- 
 ments of the Roman Church, which would also serve their pur- 
 pose. And besides, the Samosatensians, who belonged to this 
 class of Monarchians, were afterwards classed together with the 
 Artemonites, a circumstance which favours the notion of a simi- 
 larity of doctrine between the two parties. 
 
 As to the turn of mind from which the doctrine of these Ar- 
 temonites proceeded, one of the accusations made against them 
 gives us some very instructive hints; they busied themselves 
 much with mathematics, dialectics, critical inquiries, with the 
 philosophy of Aristotle and with Theophrastus’, and thus their 
 disposition was one, in which the reflecting, the critical, and 
 dialectic elements predominated, and which would diminish in 
 their case the inwardness and depth of the Christian feeling; 
 they wanted a Christianity, which the understanding could fully 
 comprehend, and that which exceeds the bounds of the under- 
 
 1 It is not said yeynoerat ἐν σοι, but ἐπελευσεται ἐπὶ σε. He set out with the 
 notion of an ἐπέρχεσθαι Tov θειου πνευματος (or Tov Aoyov, if Theodotus admitted 
 the doctrine of the Λογος in any shape whatever) ἐπὶ roy Χριστον. As it is clear from 
 this quotation, that Theodotus admitted the first chapter of St. Luke as genuine, the 
 account given in the additamenta prescript., and by Theodoret, that he acknowledged 
 the supernatural birth of Christ, is more probable than that of Epiphanius, that he 
 denied it. 
 
 2 Not with the Philosophy of Plato, which exciting more the heart and the powers 
 of inward perception, led to a conception of Christianity, more based on inward per- 
 ceptions, and was exactly calculated to give a speculative form to the doctrine of the 
 Trinity. We here perceive the different influence, exercised by the different schools 
 of Philosophy, on the conception of Christianity by their adherents. The Neopla- 
 tonists, who were converted to Christianity, formed to themselves a speculative doc- 
 trine of Trinity ; the Aristotelian Dialecticians denied the doctrine of the Divinity of 
 Christ, and would represent the existence of God in Christ as something entirely capa- 
 ble of being comprehended, 
 
THE ALOGI ΙΝ IRENZUS, 265 
 
 standing, and must be assimilated into the life of man through 
 some other channel, found no place in their dialectic categories. 
 It was also made an accusation against them, that by means of a 
 system of criticism, which professed to restore the true text of the 
 Holy Scriptures, they allowed themselves to change at their own 
 will those passages of Scripture, which were opposed to their 
 doctrine. If we judge from their whole turn of mind, and from 
 the boldness, with which critical inquiries were often conducted 
 at this period so as to favour dogmatical prejudices, this accusa- 
 tion is likely enough to be a just one; and yet on the other hand 
 it cannot be denied, that men were then inclined at once to 
 accuse heretics of falsifying Scripture, when they only quoted a 
 various lection which was found in their manuscripts *. 
 
 One is inclined to inquire whether we are to assign to this 
 class certain opponents of the genuineness of the writings of St. 
 John, whom we shall designate by the name of Alogi, after the ex- 
 ample of Epiphanius, who has given them in one place this heretical 
 appellation, although the name is not particularly applicable ’. 
 The first trace of such opponents of the genuineness of St. John’s 
 Gospel is found in a remarkable passage of Irenzeus*. He says, 
 
 τ An example of an unjust polemical argument may be found in what is said by the 
 writer against the Artemonites in Eusebius, v. 28. ‘‘ Eitherthey do not believe that 
 the Holy Scripture is inspired by the Holy Ghost, and they are unbelievers, or else they 
 consider themselves wiser than the Holy Ghost,” as if those Artemonites, however 
 capricious their criticism might be, did not think that by it they were enabled to restore 
 the original, genuine text, just as it came from the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 2 ᾽Ἄλογοι, a word, which contains an allusion to their denial of the genuineness of 
 the Gospel which treats of the Logos, and thus contains a paronomasia on the word 
 Logos. ἄλογοι as denying the Logos, and as being unreasonable. 
 
 3 The passage is in Irenzus, lib. iii. c. xi. [towards the end. H.J.R.] Infelices 
 vere, qui Pseudo-prophetz quidem esse volunt, propheticam vero gratiam repellunt ab 
 ecclesia : similia patientes his, qui propter eos, qui in hypocrisi veniunt, etiam a fratrum 
 communicatione se abstinent. Datur autem intelligi, quod hujusmodi neque Aposto- 
 lum Paulum recipiunt. In ea enim epistola, que est ad Corinthios, de propheticis 
 charismatibus diligenter loquutus est, et scit viros et mulieres in Ecclesia prophetantes. 
 Per hec [igitur, Ed. Massuet.—H. J. R.] omnia peccantes in Spiritum Dei, in irremis- 
 sibile incidunt peccatum.”” According to the common reading, the first part of this 
 would mean, ‘‘ The truly unhappy persons, who wish themselves indeed to be false 
 prophets, but deny the grace of prophecy to the Church.” And this would give a sense, 
 which in itself is quite good, and which suits the severity of the rest of the passage 
 tolerably well. But the reading which has been accepted by my friend Dr. Olshausen, 
 and is, if I mistake not, an emendation proposed by Grabe, viz. pseudo-prophetas, has 
 the advantage of conformity with the part of the context which follows it. The sense 
 would then be, ‘‘ They suppose, indeed, that there are false prophets in the Church, but 
 from fear of false prophets, they go to the length of acknowledging no true prophets 
 
266 AND IN EPIPHANIUS—WERE THEY MONTANISTS ? 
 
 that they rejected the Gospel of St. John on account of the pro- 
 mise of the Paraclete, in order to cut off from the Monfanists 
 (see above) their appeal to this promise as a means of rendering 
 credible the new revelations of the Paraclete. They maintained 
 as a general position that there are no gifts of prophecy in the 
 Christian economy, and they declared all that pretended to them 
 to be false prophets. It was probably these same persons, against 
 whom Hippolytus defended the genuineness of St. John’s Gospel 
 and the Apocalypse. ‘The same persons occur again in Epipha- 
 nius: he describes them as warm opponents of Montanism and of 
 the prophetical gifts of the Spirit, who thought that the Gospel of 
 St. John was contradictory to the rest of the Gospels; and he re- 
 presents them, where he treats of them specifically, as orthodox 
 in other respects’. But he contradicts himself when he calls the 
 Theodotians an offset from them, and then at the same affirms 
 that they rejected the doctrine of the Logos. It may be said 
 indeed, and not without reason, that Epiphanius is more worthy 
 of credit, when he absolves from a charge of heresy, than when 
 he makes such a charge, but other grounds of judgment also 
 must be taken into the account. And, in fact, Epiphanius, when 
 he absolved them from the charge of heresy, may have had before 
 his eyes some writing of the Alogi, in which they had purposely 
 avoided dogmatical arguments. 
 
 If, in accordance with the expressions of Irenzeus, we suppose 
 
 either, and they resemble those schismatics, who, out of fear of hypocritical Christians, 
 withdraw themselves also from intercourse with genuine ones.” It is not necessary to 
 suppose that this passage must have proceeded from a Montanist, it is only requisite to 
 acknowledge as its author some person, who thought it of importance to maintain that 
 the out-pouring of the Holy Ghost revecled itself in the Christian economy by ‘ pro- 
 phetica charismata’—and it is clear from many of the expressions of Irenzus, that 
 such were his sentiments. And yet, nevertheless, the passage does bear rather a 
 Montanistic character. The latter part, especially, is wholly spoken in the tone ofa 
 Montanist, who sees an adversary of the Holy Ghost himself, in every one, who will 
 not acknowledge the new communications of the Paraclete. One can hardly attribute 
 to a man of the moderation of Irenzeus such violence in this matter, and one could 
 almost be induced to suspect, that the whole passage has been interpolated by a Mon- 
 tanist. The context would hold together entirely, if the whole passage were wanting, 
 and there would be nothing in it except in reference to the Gnostics, to whom alone 
 the whole section relates. 
 
 1 Heres. 44. § 4. δοκουσι ra abra ἡμιν πιστευειν. The passage, where he says 
 of them τὸν Noyor οὐ δέχονται τὸν παρα Iwavvov κεκηρυγμενον, does not make it 
 altogether certain that he meant here to charge them with a denial of the doctrine of 
 the Logos, because the word λόγος is ambiguous, 
 
THE ALOGI AND THEODOTIANS. 267 
 
 that the Alogi were seduced into the rejection of the Gospel of 
 St. John merely in consequence of their controversy with Mon- 
 tanism, yet still it is extremely improbable, that they should have 
 rejected a book of so great value and importance to every beliey- 
 ing Christian, (and which in its whole tendency is so Anti-mon- 
 tanistic) only in consequence of those few passages, the applica- 
 tion of which is so easily wrested from the Montanists by a right 
 interpretation, and indeed may so easily be turned against them 1. 
 The matter appears more capable of the following representation ; 
 when the Montanists appealed to that promise of the Paraclete, 
 the Alogi immediately answered that the whole Gospel was apo- 
 eryphal [Ziterally, not genuine], and from this their opponents 
 gathered that they denied its genuineness, only in order to avoid 
 recognising that promise. ‘The case, indeed, we must confess is 
 possible, that the Alogi may have belonged to the class of those 
 who, whenever they believed that they perceived contradictions 
 between the Gospels, immediately rejected that Gospel which 
 appeared to them to stand in contradiction to the rest?. But 
 still it is not probable, that in this age, in which the dogmatic 
 influence was so powerfully predominant, any one, to whom the 
 doctrine of the Divinity of Christ was of importance, could have 
 determined himself, for the sake of some difficulties, which struck 
 him, to give up the very chief book for the maintenance of this 
 doctrine, especially in this youthful season of the Church, in 
 which the immediate feeling bore far greater sway than re- 
 flection, and in which the immediate impression upon every one, 
 who was not just enslaved by a prejudice against the Christianity 
 of St. John, must have borne its testimony to the genuineness of 
 that Gospel. 
 
 On the contrary, everything is explained, if we abide by the 
 account of Epiphanius, which indicates a connection between the 
 Alogi and the Theodotians or Artemonites, although we would 
 not assert at once, that all the adherents of this party belonged 
 to the Alogi, and rejected the Gospel of St. John. ‘Their prin- 
 ciples made the latter course unnecessary, for, as they ad- 
 
 1 As for instance, if they said, as in fact the Church teachers did say, in answer to 
 the Montanists, that this promise had already been fulfilled in the case of the Apostles. 
 
 2 Origen, vol. iv. p. 160. t. 10. Joh. ὃ 2. speaks of this capricious critical conduct 
 in certain people of this age. The exaggerated view of inspiration promoted this 
 hypocritical conduct. 
 
268 THE ALOGI AND THEODOTIANS. 
 
 mitted a certain connection of God with Christ, they might also 
 admit the doctrine of a Divine Logos, who worked in him', and 
 they might also explain the Gospel of St. John after their own 
 notions, as it is clear from Novatian, that they explained many 
 passages which did not suit their doctrine, as merely referring to a 
 previous destination of Jesus as the Messiah, in the counsels of 
 God. ‘The unknown adversary of the Theodotians and Arte- 
 monites in Eusebius says, that they did not all misuse the Holy 
 Scriptures in the same way, and that, while some endeavoured 
 to bring it into accordance with their doctrinal opinions through 
 their own sort of criticism, others rejected whole books of Scrip- 
 ture. ‘The unnamed person here is certainly speaking, not of 
 the New, but of the Old Testament. He says, that while they 
 set the Gospel of grace in complete opposition to the Old Testa- 
 ment, they had cast away the Divine authority of the Law and of 
 the Prophets, and had torn asunder all connection between Chris- 
 tianity and Judaism *. But this account gives us reason to sus- 
 pect that they indulged in a critical system which judged accord- 
 ing to their dogmatical preconceived opinions, and which might 
 take different directions simply in consequence of their other dif- 
 ferences. Thus it is by no means improbable that to many 
 among these people, all, which was said of a Divine Logos, 
 appeared to be something Gnostical or too mystical, as we learn 
 from Epiphanius, that they felt themselves peculiarly at a loss in 
 regard to the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel; and the Gospel of 
 St. John, which, from its whole character, would probably cor- 
 respond but little to their predominantly dialectic and reflective 
 cast of mind, and might appear to them too theosophical, was 
 declared by them to be a forgery of the Gnostic Cerinthus. It 
 will be seen also, that this cast of mind must have made them 
 enemies of the prophetic gifts of the Montanists. In the same 
 way, what we hear of the rejection of the Old Testament by one 
 portion of this party, agrees with their violent opposition to 
 Montanism, which was often inclined to mingle together too 
 indiscriminately what belonged to the Old and what belonged to 
 the New Testament, and it accords also with their rejection of 
 the Apocalypse, although this last circumstance may easily be ex- 
 
 1 As the θειον πνευμα, of which the Angel spoke to Mary, as at that time the ideas 
 of the Holy Ghost and the Logos were joined together by many persons. 
 2 amAwWC ἀρνησαμενοι TOY TE VOMOY μαι τοὺς προφητας ...... προφάσει χαριτος. 
 
PAUL ΟΕ SAMOSATA, 269 
 
 plained on other grounds. That they attributed both the Gospel 
 of St. John and the Apocalypse to Cerinthus,shows, that, although 
 they ill understood the Gospel of St. John, because the sense for 
 its understanding was wanting in them, yet they knew Cerinthus 
 rightly for a Judaizing Gnostic. Nor can we leave it unobserved, 
 that the Montanistic prophetic spirit busied itself much with the 
 defence of the doctrine of the Trinity as received in the Church, 
 to which it may have been induced by the circumstance of the 
 Monarchians being violently opposed to it [. 6. this prophetic 
 spirit]. 
 
 To this class of Monarchians belongs also Paul of Samosata in 
 Syria, who became Bishop of the Church of Antioch at some time 
 between the years 260 and 270, a.p. The bishops, who con- 
 demned his doctrines, make a very unfavourable report of his 
 character’, and represent him as a proud, vain, and avaricious 
 man, who was inclined to concern himself with worldly matters. 
 Men however, being but little able to distinguish between per- 
 sons and opinions, opponents in faith, and more especially passion- 
 ate opponents, as these men appear to have been, deserve but 
 little credit for their accusations ; but these accusations contain, 
 nevertheless, too many special traits to have been wholly without 
 foundation, and alas! the picture drawn of him harmonizes well 
 with what we hear besides of the bishops of Antioch’, the great 
 metropolis of the Roman dominions in eastern Asia. The being 
 surrounded by earthly glory, pomp, and pride, has always been a 
 most dangerous circumstance to Christianity, and especially 
 dangerous to the clergy, if they allow themselves to be attracted 
 by the glitter and the show of the world, which they, of all men, 
 ought to despise in consequence of their elevated employment. 
 At that time Zenobia® had the sovereignty of those regions as 
 
 1 See Euseb. vii. c. 30. 
 
 2 See what Origen says in Matth. Ed. Huet. p. 420. “ We, who either do not 
 understand what the doctrine of Jesus here means, or else despise such expressive 
 exhortations of our Saviour, are of such a*kind, that sometimes we even exceed the 
 state of the wicked governors among the heathens, and want a body-guard like the 
 emperors, and make ourselves awful and inaccessible, especially to the poor. And in 
 many so-called Churches, and especially those of the greater towns, you may find 
 rulers of the Church of God; such that they would hardly acknowledge the best 
 among the disciples of Jesus to be their equals.” μηδεμιαν ἰσολογιαν ἐπιτρέεποντας 
 ἐσθ᾽ Ort και τοις καλλιστοις των Ἴησου μαθητων εἶναι πρὸς αὐτους. 
 
 3. Wife of the celebrated Roman general, Odenatus, who had made himself inde- 
 pendent of the Roman empire. 
 
270 FAVOURED BY ZENOBIA. 
 
 queen of Palmyra, and appears always to have been friendly 
 towards Judaism'. Paul has been blamed, on the ground that, in 
 order to obtain favour with this queen, he endeavoured to present 
 the doctrines about Christ in a form more agreeable to the Jewish 
 style of thought; but there is no proof to warrant such an accu- 
 sation, as it was unnecessary to resort to this mode of explana- 
 tion’, and as the firmness of Paul in this persuasion, even after 
 political circumstances had changed, does not appear to bespeak 
 the truth of the charge. But intercourse with the Jews, who 
 were around the queen, with whom Paul, as a courtier, had 
 much influence, may very probably have worked upon this 
 tendency of his doctrinal views, although even this supposition 
 is not necessary to be made. It may also be the case that 
 his peculiar doctrinal views contributed to procure him favour 
 with the queen. He now made use of his connection with this 
 powerful patroness, in order to obtain influence and authority in 
 worldly things, and to keep up considerable state. In flat con- 
 tradiction to laws already publicly promulgated (see above) at 
 least in the western Church, he held a civil employment under 
 government *, which could scarcely be compatible with the epi- 
 scopal office. At Antioch it seems that the profane custom of 
 testifying approbation to preachers, by waving of handkerchiefs, 
 exclamations, and clapping of the hands, which sets preachers in 
 the same class with actors and declaimers for effect, had already 
 passed into the Church from the theatre, and from the exhibition- 
 schools of the rhetoricians. The vain Paul saw this with pleasure; 
 but the bishops, who were his accusers, were well aware that this 
 custom was contrary to the dignity and order which ought to 
 prevail i in the house of God. The Church hymns, which had 
 been in use since the second century, he banished as an innova- 
 
 1 Ἰουδαία ἡν Ζηνοβια και ἸΤαυλου προεστὴ Tov Σαμοσατεως. Athanas. hist. 
 Arianor. ad Monachos, ὃ 71. 
 
 2 [This expression is not entirely clear. I have translated it literally, and I suppose 
 it means that we need not resort to any supposition of a wish to procure the favour of 
 Zenobia, in order to explain the Judaizing form under which Paul presented Chris- 
 tianity. H. J.R.] 
 
 3 The office of a ducenarius procurator (which is not to be confused with that of 
 ducenarius judex) ; so called because the pay amounted to two hundred sestertia [about 
 30001. Η. 7. R.]. See Sueton. Claud. c. 34. Cyprian, Ep. 68. But it is also possible 
 that he was in possession of this office, when he was elected bishop; and then of 
 
 course the bishops would have themselves to accuse for having suffered such an 
 infraction of the laws of the Church. 
 
HIS DOCTRINES. 271 
 
 tion, apparently proceeding on the principle which has been set up 
 by others in later times, that only passages out of the Holy Scrip- 
 ture ought to be sung in the Church; and thus he probably suffered 
 nothing but Psalms to beused. There is no sufficient ground for 
 the suspicion, that Paul did this in order to pay court to his pa- 
 troness Zenobia, as being a Jewess. It is more probable that Paul, 
 who might be well aware how deeply the import of Church hymns 
 impresses itself upon the heart, when he banished those old hymns 
 (which spoke of Christ as the incarnate Logos), might hope also 
 to banish the doctrines they contained from the hearts of men. 
 When we find it stated, that the man who thus carefully removed 
 the expressions used to designate Christ, was delighted to receive 
 the incense of exaggerated expressions about himself, in poems 
 and declamations in holy places, and to be called in bombastic 
 rhetorical phrases an angel sent down from heaven, we cannot 
 receive such an accusation from the mouth of violent enemies as 
 one on which we can entirely depend, but we have no reason 
 whatever, for declaring it to be false. 
 
 As far as the doctrines of this man are concerned, he appears 
 to have had but little that was peculiar to himself; in accordance 
 with his Judaizing notions, he compared the Divine Logos to the 
 reason of man’, either as the hidden contemplative reason ’, 
 existing within the very nature of God, or as the reason that 
 reveals itself outwardly by word and by creation *. In the latter 
 sense, the Logos, as the reason of God, by its agency inspired 
 all the men of the Old ‘Testament, who were enlightened by God, 
 and thus would also inspire Christ; and whereas he was the most 
 illuminated of all mankind, this Logos dwelt in him, as it dwelt in 
 none besides ; but the difference of this indwelling was only in de- 
 gree and notin kind *. It wasin virtue of this pre-eminent degree 
 of illumination through the Divine wisdom, that the name of a Son 
 of God belonged to Jesus. When he used the phrase Jesus Christ, 
 who came from below, ’Incove Χριστος κατωθεν; he must have used 
 
 1 ὥσπερ ἐν ἀνθρωπου καρδιᾳ ὁ ἰδιος Aoyoc. ap. Epiphan. p. 67. 
 
 2 Noyoe ἐνδιαθετος. 3 Noyog προφορικος. 
 
 * ἐγοικησαι ἐν αὐτῳ την σοφιαν, ὡς ἐν οὐδενι ἀλλῳ. He taught οὐ συγγεγενῆσθαι 
 τῳ ἀνθρωπινῳ τὴν σοφιαν οὐσιωδως, ἀλλα κατα ποιοτητα. These words of Paul 
 are to be found in Leontius Byzantin. c. Nest. et Eutichen., a work which has hitherto 
 been known to us in a Latin translation ; but the fragment of Paul has been published 
 in Greek from the MSS. of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, by Erlich, in a Dissertatio 
 de erroribus Pauli Samosatensis. Lipsiw, 1745, p. 23. 
 
 7 
 
272 THE LOGOS. 
 
 it to imply, that the Logos did not receive any human body, but 
 that the human nature, which had already an independent exist- 
 ence, had been honoured by a peculiar influence and operation of 
 the Divine wisdom’. From the deficiency of authentic and accurate 
 information, it cannot be determined with certainty, but the point 
 is quite unimportant, whether he referred the name of Son of 
 God to Jesus only as a man, when he says of him, that, in 
 accordance with the Divine pre-determination, or the Divine 
 counsel, he existed before the creation’? ; or, whether, in the 
 sense which we have remarked above, he transferred the name of 
 Son of God to the Divine Reason also, inasmuch as it (the Divine 
 Reason) had equally called forth God out of himself into outward 
 activity in the creation of the world*; for his adversaries accused 
 him of having maintained the existence of two Sons of God, 
 one properly so called, the other improperly, although this may be 
 regarded only asa consequence from his propositions drawn by his 
 adversaries from their own point of view, and then charged on him. 
 It is very probable that when he wished to hold more closely 
 to the doctrines of the Church, he spoke, in his own sense, 
 of a Son of God, whom God had begotten before the creation 
 of the world; but on the contrary, when he expressed himself 
 freely without any such intention, he spoke only of the man 
 Jesus as the Son of God, for he expressly says that he knew 
 nothing of two Sons of God *. 
 
 Many synods were held on account of the controversies with 
 the Bishop Paulus at Antioch; but he probably availed himself of 
 
 1 See the Synodal Epistle in Euseb. vii. 30. 
 
 2 In the Synodal Epistle to Paul of Samosata, published by Turrian in Mansi’s 
 collection of Councils, i. 1034, which is the only authentic document among those made 
 known by him which refer to these transactions, the following antithesis occurs ; viz. 
 that the Son of God existed προ aiwywy οὐ προγνωσει ἀλλ᾽ οὐσιᾳ και ὑποστασει; 
 from which we might judge that Paul maintained the contrary, τὸν viov rou Θεοῦ οὐχ 
 ὑποστασει ἀλλα προγνωσει. 
 
 8 He might engraft his own opinions on the older expression in the Apologetic 
 writers éyevyynoe Toy λόγον προφορικον, by understanding this, so as not to include the 
 notion of an emanation which had the attribute of personality. The antithesis in the 
 Synodal Epistle quoted above, seems to support this explanation: dua τοὺ Noyou ὁ 
 πατὴρ παντα πεποιήῆκεν οὐχ ὡς δι’ dpyavov, οὐδ᾽ ὡς du ἐπιστημης ἀνυποστατου, 
 γεννήσαντος μὲν τοῦ πατρὸς τὸν vloy ὡς ζωσαν ἐνεργειαν καὶ ἐνυποστατον. 
 From this it may be concluded that Paul spoke of ἃ σοφια, ἐπιστημὴ ἀνυπόστατος, 
 and understood by the γεννήῆσις του Aoyov nothing but an évepyera ἀνυποστατος 
 of God the Creator. 
 
 4 un δυο ἐπιστασθαι viove. Leont. Byzant. 
 
EUSEBIUS ON BERYLLUS, 273 
 
 the indefiniteness of the ecclesiastical terminology, and the dif- 
 ferent polemical views under which different expressions might 
 be used, in order to hide his own opinions under ambiguous ex- 
 planations, so that no charge of erroneous doctrine could posi- 
 tively be fixed upon him. In the last synod, a.p.265, an able dia- 
 lectician, the Presbyter Malchion *, succeeded at last in forcing 
 him to an open declaration of his opinion. He was deposed and 
 his office bestowed on another; but as he was supported by a 
 party, and favoured by Zenobia, the matter could not be accom- 
 plished before she was conquered by the Emperor Aurelius, .p. 
 272. ‘This prince left the decision to the Bishop of Rome. (See 
 part i. p. 145.) 
 
 Besides these two classes of Monarchians, we find also a third, 
 which stands in certain respects between the other two; these 
 were such persons as approached the second class the most in their 
 theory of the Logos, as a power that beamed forth out of the Divine 
 nature, but receded from them again, and more nearly resembled 
 the Patripassians as to their representations of the humanity of 
 Christ. They were not satisfied with the idea of an influence 
 of the Divine Logos on Jesus as man, which differed only in 
 degree from the influence exerted on other enlightened and holy 
 men; but, on the other hand also, they did not accept the Patri- 
 passian view of an indwelling of the whole Divine Being in an 
 human body. ‘They agreed with the Patripassian theory, so far 
 as not to separate that which was Divine in Christ, from the 
 soul that resides within him. But they modified this view so far 
 that they supposed the Divine in Christ, the soul of his human 
 nature, not to be the Divine Being himself, but a certain emana- 
 tion [streaming out]from him, which formed itself to an indivi- 
 dual spiritual life. 
 
 Among the Patripassians, who will not admit of any distinction 
 in the Divine Being (see above, on Theodotus and Artemon,) 
 Beryllus, the Bishop of Bostra, in Arabia, comes the nearest to 
 this opinion. According to the theory of Beryllus, the personality 
 of the Son of God first arose through a beaming forth, or an 
 emanation out of the Being of God into an human body ὅ. 
 
 1 From the expressions of Eusebius, although Theodoret, to whom they appeared 
 very offensive, interprets them differently, we must conclude, that this clergyman also 
 practised the profession of a rhetorician, which was hardly compatible with his Spiri- 
 tual calling. 
 
 2 From the deficiency of clear and accurate accounts, the development of the 
 
 VOL, 11. 6" 
 
974 EUSEBIUS ON BERYLLUS. 
 
 In the year 244 a Synod was held respecting the affairs of 
 Beryllus, which was attended by the great Origen, who lived at 
 that time at Czesarea Stratonis. He discussed matters with him 
 very much, and apparently by his superiority of mind, his ability 
 and moderation, he succeeded in persuading him, that he had 
 erred. It is true, that in this case, we follow the account given 
 by Eusebius, an enthusiastic friend of Origen, and we have not 
 the means of consulting the document used by him, in order to 
 form an unprejudiced and independent judgment. And yet, we 
 
 doctrine of this man is one of the most difficult subjects of historical investigation, and 
 therefore we cannot expect to arrive at a perfectly certain result. The chief passage to 
 the point is in Euseb. vi. 33. τὸν cwrnoa μὴ προυφεσταναῖι Kar’ ἰδιαν οὐσιας περι- 
 γραφην προ τῆς εἰς ἀνθρωπους ἐπιδημιας, and in Origen ἰδια περιγραφὴ or οὐσια 
 κατα περιγραφὴν means an individual, proper, personal existence, the same as ὑποστα- 
 σις, to which is contrasted ἀνυπόστατος, εἶναι κατ᾽ ἐπινοιαν ἑτερου τινος. See Origen. 
 τ. i. Joh. p. 42. In this description of his doctrine two points are to be remarked : 
 (1.) Before the earthly appearance of Christ there was no Son of God, as a Being 
 personally different from God the Father, which is to be understood, either as assert- 
 ing that a Son of God existed only in an ideal Being, in the idea or the fore-ordain- 
 ing counsel [of the Father] (kata προγνωσιν, or Kata προορισμὸν Tou Ilarpoc) or 
 else, that the Logos existed at first only as a dependant (unselbstandige, lit. not-inde- 
 pendent) Power of God; (2.) That contemporaneously with the incarnation of 
 Christ, an existence of the Son of God also began, which was independently personal, 
 and distinct from the Being of God (an ὑφεσταναι κατ᾽ idtay οὐσιας περιγραφην). A 
 Patripassian could not assert the latter, for he could only speak of an existence of the 
 Father himself in the human nature, which existence was called the Son, from reveal- 
 ing itself. 
 
 And now we must add the second part of the representation of Eusebius, μηδὲ μὴν 
 Oeornra ἰδιαν ἔχειν ἀλλ᾽ ἐμπολιτευομένην αὐτῳ μονὴν την πατρικην. If what we 
 have above remarked is incompatible with the opinions of a Patripassian; so, on the 
 contrary, this last says too much to suit the doctrine of a Monarchian of the second 
 class. At the same time an opponent of this doctrine would certainly have been 
 more ready to charge it with representing Christ as a mere man, than to make it say 
 more than it really did say, of the Being of God in Christ. There remains, in order 
 to reconcile these contradictory statements, only the representation given of the 
 doctrine of Beryllus. We must therefore here bring forward the fragment occurring in 
 the Commentary of Origen, onthe Epistle to Titus. Origen, t. iv. p. 695. 
 
 ‘Sed et eos qui hominem dicunt Dominum Jesum precognitum, et predestinatum, 
 qui ante adventum carnalem substantialiter et proprie non extiterit, sed quod homo 
 natus Patris solam inse habuerit Deitatem, ne illos quidem sine periculo esse ecclesiz 
 numero sociari.’ As in this passage Origen joins together two classes of Monarchians, 
 and in the other member of the sentence, which has not been quoted here, the 
 Patripassians ; it may be supposed,if we should compare this passage with that 
 above quoted (some pages back, on the subject of the Patripassians) from the 
 Tom. on St. John, that Origen, in the first member of the sentence was de- 
 scribing the two classes of Monarchians, while in that passage from his writings on 
 St. John, he was opposing these two classes to each other. -I was myself deceived 
 formerly by this comparison of passages ; but it will not bear being carried out fully. 
 
ORIGEN ON BERYLLUS. 275 
 
 we must take into the account that as yet there was no state 
 Religion, and no state Church, which could compel Beryllus to a 
 recantation, although the authority of the Episcopal college had 
 already much, and indeed too much power over the Church. 
 But if the bishops had wished to overpower their colleague by 
 mere numbers, they would have had no occasion to call in the 
 services of a Presbyter who had been driven away and branded as 
 an heretic, and who had no other power than that which belongs 
 to knowledge. And besides, Origen was not the man to use the 
 weight of his name or of his superiority of mind for the purpose 
 of crushing an individual. 
 
 It is only among the men of the Alexandrian school that we 
 find instances of theological conferences, which, instead of intro- 
 ducing still greater divisions, produced unity of mind. To what 
 else can we attribute this, unless it be, that these men were not 
 blind zealots for the letter, but men of a liberal spirit, and united 
 the spirit of love and moderation with that zeal for the truth, 
 which would not wish to triumph, except through the force of 
 truth ! 
 
 Although in other respects the system which Origen opposed 
 to that of Beryllus was not free from error, and although per- 
 haps, it was not merely the superiority of the system, but the 
 mental superiority of Origen himself that contributed to effect 
 this triumph; yet still the system of Origen was in many points 
 of view when compared with the doctrine of his opponent, nearer 
 toa pure developement of the truth. 
 
 According to the account of Jerome’, Beryllus thanked Origen 
 
 Origen ascribes to those, of whom he is here speaking, too high an idea of the 
 Divine in Christ, for us to suppose that he has in view the doctrines we have remarked ; 
 and he also expresses himself too mildly about their relation to the Church, to suit 
 that supposition. So that these words most strikingly agree with those of Eusebius, 
 and both passages are most naturally to be explained in the same way. We must 
 suppose that Origen here speaks of a doctrine, with which he was unacquainted 
 before, and with which he had first become acquainted by means of bis trans- 
 actions with Beryllus of Bostra. And then by comparing Origen with Eusebius we 
 find, that Beryllus, under the words προυφεσταναι ἀνυποστάτως, understood a 
 προυφεσταναι κατὰ TOOYYWOLY και προορισμον Tov Ilarpoc. And thus also it is ex- 
 plained, why the Synod, as Socrates, b. ii. c. 6. informs us, should maintain against 
 Beryllus the doctrine of a reasonable human soul in Christ ; because Beryllus supplied 
 the place of such a soul, by the special οἰκονομία Tov θειου πνεύματος, out of which the 
 proper, and God-allied personality of Christ was formed. 
 1 De Vir. Ill. c. 60. 
 T2 
 
276 SABELLIUS ; 
 
 by letter for the instruction he had received. We have no cause 
 to doubt this, but the account of Jerome is not so authenticas that 
 of Origen. 
 
 The next to Beryllus of Bostra, is Sabellius, who lived at 
 Ptolemais, in Pentapolis, after the middle of the third century ; 
 and who may probably have maintained a doctrine more curiously 
 developed and perfected, than any other of this class; but 
 unfortunately, we have only an imperfect acquaintance with his 
 system as to the internal dependence of its various parts. The 
 account of Epiphanius, that Sabellius borrowed the germ of his 
 doctrine out of Apocryphal Gospels, and especially from one * 
 that was current in Egypt, and bore the stamp of the Jewish 
 Theosophy of Alexandria, is by no means to be rejected. In this 
 Gospel, Christ, as a teacher of Esoteric wisdom, communicated 
 this to his disciples, which entirely suited the ‘Theosophic dispo- 
 sition of a certain class: If the multitude, which cannot raise itself 
 up to the perception of the Supreme simple Unity, hold God the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost for different Divine beings, 
 they must acknowledge that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are 
 only one; that they are only three different forms, under which 
 the Supreme Unity is revealed’. As it is said in the Clementine® 
 that God is either a μονας» or a dvac, just according as the 
 Divine wisdom is hidden within him, as his soul; or as it works 
 
 1 From the evayyeduoy κατ᾽ Αἰγυπτιους. 
 
 2 Epiphan. Heres. 62. He says of this Gospel: ἐν αὐτῳ yap πολλα τοιαυτα ὡς 
 ἐν παραβυστῳ μυστηριωδως ἐκ προσωποῦυ TOU σωτηρος ἀναφερεται, ὡς avToY 
 δηλουντος τοις μαθηταις, Toy αὐτον εἶναι ἼΤατερα, τον αὐτον εἰναι vioy, τον αὐτον 
 εἶναι ἁγιον Uvevpa. This may be illustrated by apassage in Phil. de Abrahamo, f.367. 
 (Ed. Hoeschel.) where it is said, that the dy, from which his two supreme dvvapec, 
 the ποιητική; and the βασιλικὴ proceed, appears either one, or threefold, according to 
 the greater or less purified condition of the souls which contemplate it. If the soul has 
 elevated itself above the revelation of God in the creation to the intellectual perception 
 (anschauung), of the dv, then the Trinity glides into Unity to its view: it looks upon 
 one Light, from which at the same time two shades proceed, ὃ. e. God’s Being and 
 those two operative faculties [ Wiirkungsweisen. Lit. the modes of operation], are only 
 shades, that fall from his overpowering Light. rourrny φαντασιαν Evoc ὑποκειμένου 
 καταλαμβανει, Tov μὲν ὡς ὀντος, Tow δ᾽ ἀλλοιν δυοιν, ὡς ἀν ἀπαυγαζομενων ἀπο 
 τουτου σκιων. And then: παρέχει τῷ ὁρατικῃ διανοιᾳ τοτὲ μὲν ἕνος, ToTE δὲ τριων 
 φαντασιαν" ἕνος μεν, ὁταν ἄκρως καθαρθεισα ἡ ψυχὴ και μὴ povoy Ta πληθὴ των 
 ἀριθμων ἀλλα και THY γειτονα povadog δυαδα ὑπερβασα, &c. There is also ἃ re- 
 markable likeness between the mode of expression used by Sabellius, and that, which 
 is peculiar to the Clementine, a work which proceeded from a Judzo-Christian 
 theosophist. 
 
 8 Clementin. H. 16. ς, 12, κατα yap ἐκτασιν Kau συστολὴν ἡ μονας δυας εἶναι 
 γνομιζεται. 
 
SOURCES OF HIS DOCTRINES. 277 
 
 actively, proceeding forth from him, as the hand that creates the 
 world’; so also Sabellius said that God before the creation had 
 been the pure Unity’, as being entirely hidden within his own 
 Being, and not active through communication [of any of his at- 
 tributes, &c.] with anything beyond himself; and in this respect, 
 he called God the Father ; but, at the creation, this unity had 
 developed itself into a Trinity*. As, according to the apostle 
 St. Paul, there is one Spirit, and yet this one Spirit worketh se- 
 veral ways through manifold gifts and graces; thus also, he says, 
 is God the Father one and the same, but he pours himself 
 abroad in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, under which name 
 Sabellius means to designate only two different modes of ope- 
 ration of the same Divine subject; namely, God the Father. 
 Therefore he says also, it is one Divine Being, as to its self- 
 existence, which is designated by two different names, according 
 to these two different modes of operation—one Divine Subject, 
 which represents itself under different forms, according to the 
 necessity of each occasion, and sometimes speaks as the Father, 
 sometimes as the Son, and sometimes as the Holy Ghost. He 
 had therefore no scruple in using the language prevalent in the 
 Western Church, and saying that we must acknowledge one God 
 in three persons’; but then he understood under the word Per- 
 son, nothing but different parts, different personifications under 
 
 1 According as it may be said either συστέλλεσθαι, or ἐκτεινεσθαι. 
 
 2 ἡ ἀσυμπλοκος μονας, TO dy, according to Philo. 
 
 5 See Athanas. Orat, iv. c. 13: ἡ μονας πλατυνθεισα yeyove τριας. And yet, one 
 is inclined to enquire whether he supposed that the μονας unfolded itself immediately 
 at the Creation into a rotac, or whether it was not originally only into a dvac, so that 
 the τριας took its first origin from the emanation of the Logos into human nature. In 
 order to decide on this point, we must know more of the manner in which Sabellius 
 represented to himself the relation of the communication of the Holy Ghost to the in- 
 carnation of the Logos, and how he viewed the relation of God’s operation in the 
 New Testament, to that in the Old. It were much to be desired, that Origen had left 
 us more distinct aceounts of those whom he accuses, in the above-quoted fragment of 
 his Commentary on the Epistle to Titus, of making the Holy Ghost as relates to the 
 Prophets, and the Holy Ghost as regards the Apostles, two different things, and 
 whom he expressly distinguishes from the Gnostics ; to whom one would at first be 
 inclined to apply this passage, were it not for that express distinction. 
 
 6. ο, 25. ὥσπερ διαιρέσεις χαρισματων εἰσι, To δὲ αὐτο πνεῦμα, οὑτω και ὁ 
 Πατὴρ 6 abroc ἐστι, πλατυνεται δὲ εἰς Υἵἱον καὶ ἸΤνευμα. 
 
 5 Basil Ep. 210. τον αὐτον Θεὸν ἕνα rw ὑποκειμένῳ ὀντα προς Tag ἑκασ- 
 τοτε παραπιπτουσας χρειας μεταμορφουμενον νυν μὲν ὡς Πατέρα, νυν δὲ ὡς 
 Yiov, νυν ὡς τὸ ἁγιον Ivevpa διαλεγεσθαι. 
 
278 HIS LOGOS,— 
 
 which the one Divine Subject presented itself’. He made use 
 also of the following comparison: As in the Sun we must sepa- 
 rate his proper substance (the dy, the μονας), the round body, 
 from the warming and illuminating power that proceeds from it, 
 so also in God we must distinguish between his proper self- 
 existent Being, and the enlightening power, the Logos; and the 
 Holy Ghost, the power that warms, glows through, and vivifies 
 the hearts of believers’. 
 
 Sabellius spoke in the sense above given, of a λογος προφορι- 
 κος, and of a begetting of the Logos, which preceded the whole 
 creation, without which no creation could have taken place. No 
 Being could have existed, if the thinking Divine reason had not 
 become a speaking reason; if the Divine Monas, wrapt up in 
 itself, had not unfolded itself in the words of creation. In this 
 sense Sabellius said, ‘ God, being silent, is inoperative; but God 
 speaking, is effective *.” He considered, however, human souls 
 to be a revelation or a partial out-beaming of the Divine Logos, 
 in which idea he followed Philo and the Alexandrian churchmen ; 
 reason in man, in this view, is nothing but a feeble reflexion of 
 that reason of God, which is active in communicating itself. 
 Therefore, Sabellius applied what he had said of the creation in 
 general to man in particular, “ That we might be created,’ says 
 he, * the Logos proceeded forth from God (or was begotten), 
 and no sooner hath it gone forth from God, than behold! we are 
 in existence’*.” 
 
 For the purpose of redeeming the souls of men that were akin 
 to it, the Divine power of the Logos let itself down into human 
 nature; and the whole Spiritual personality of the Logos was 
 considered by Sabellius, as ἃ certain hypostatized out-beaming, 
 a peculiar modification of the Divine Logos. ‘The doctrine of a 
 class of Jewish Theologians, that God sends forth his revealing 
 power, the Logos, from himself, and recals it to himself again, as 
 the Sun sends forth its beams; that the appearances of angels, 
 
 1 ἐν τρισι προσωποις. 2 Epiphan. Heres. 62. 
 
 3 tov Θεὸν σιώωπωντὰά μὲν ἀνενεργητον, NadovyTa δὲ ἰσχύειν. 1. c. Athanas. 
 ἵν. Gy }}: 
 
 4 Athanas. iv. 25. ἵνα ἡμεις κτισθωμεν, προηλθεν ὁ λογος, καὶ προέελθοντος αὐτου 
 ἐσμεν. These words would take a different sense, if they are referred to the kawy 
 κτισις, and are understood of the incarnation of the Logos. But, both from the words 
 themselves, and from the context and the manner in which it is quoted by Athanasius, 
 the most natural interpretation is that givensabove. 
 
 7 
 
AN HYPOSTATIZED EMANATION. 279 
 
 and the Theophanies of the Old Testament, are nothing else than 
 different transient forms under which this one power of God 
 appeared’; this theory he applied to the Theophany in the ap- 
 pearance of Christ. He made use of the same metaphor, that 
 the Son was like a beam, that issued from the Sun, and returned 
 again into God, like the beam to the Sun. 
 
 It may be doubted, whether he used the name, “the Son of 
 God,” merely forthe human form under which the Logos appeared, 
 or whether he applied this name to the λογος προφορικος on its 
 first origin. Ashe spoke of an original generation of the Logos, 
 and was generally willing to take up the expressions used in the 
 Church, it would suit well with his whole theory, to suppose that 
 he would have no scruple in applying this term, in the sense 
 which we have observed, to the Logos’. 
 
 It is further certain, that Sabellius ascribed to the Ftedeemer no 
 eternally-enduring personality ; but it might be doubtful, whether 
 he maintained, that God did not recal again into himself the 
 beam that had proceeded from him, until the whole work of re- 
 demption with all its consequences (after the general resurrection) 
 was completed, or whether he supposed that God had taken back 
 to himself this beam immediately on the ascension of Christ. 
 The words of Sabellius support the first view: “ just as the 
 Logos was begotten for our sake, so also, does he return back 
 again after us, to that which he was before, so that he may be 
 what he was’, after we have attained to the union with God, to 
 which we are destined ;” (that is to say, after man through him 
 shall have attained to a Being in God, analogous to the Being of 
 the Logos in God) ; on the contrary, the account of Epiphanius, 
 who appears also to have had the words of Sabellius before his 
 eyes, especially if we compare it with the doctrines of that Jewish 
 sect, rather supports the second supposition. And there is some- 
 thing quite accordant with the whole Sabellian theory in the 
 idea, that after God, through the sinking down of this one perfect 
 
 1 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. 358. As the Light proceeds from the Sun, and returns to it, 
 οὕτως ὁ ΠΙατηρ, ὅταν βουληται δυναμιν αὐτου moorndgy Tote, και OTav βουληται 
 παλιν ἀναστελλει εἰς ἑαυτον. [p. 372. Ed. Jebb. Η. J. R.] 
 
 2 He pronounced an Anathema against those, who did not believe in Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost, which he might do in his own sense of those terms, See Arnobii 
 conflictus cum Serapione. Bibl. Patr. Lugd. τ, 8. 
 
 3 Lib. cit. ο. 12. μεθ᾽ ἡμας ἀνατρεχει, iva κα ὥσπερ iv. 
 
980 DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 beam into human nature, had again restored this to himself’, 
 he should in its stead communicate himself to the individual souls 
 of the faithful through individual separate beams of the same 
 Divine Life, by means of the Holy Ghost. ‘The words of Sa- 
 bellius in Athanasius might certainly refer to something else ; 
 namely, they might mean, that after every thing had been re- 
 stored to unity with God, the whole Spiritual creation would 
 be in immediate connexion with God, and then the Zrzas would 
 also subside into the Monas, the λογος προφορικος into the 
 λογος ἐνδιαθετος : and then nothing else would exist than the 
 One? simple Divine Being, at repose within itself with the blessed 
 Spirits reposing within him. But what opinion Sabellius may 
 have held with respect to the enduring personality of souls, we 
 cannot state with any certainty from the deficiency of any au- 
 thentic vouchers *. 
 
 The Church doctrine formed itself in opposition to both these 
 classes of Monarchians, and sought to- maintain the substantial 
 [selbstandig’] personal Being of the Logos. While those Monarch- 
 ians considered the self-revelation of God in the Aoyoe προφορικος; 
 as only a certain activity of the Divine nature, in which the whole 
 creation was called into existence; the Church teachers, on the 
 contrary, supposed a self-revelation of God, preceding the whole 
 creation, and forming the foundation of it; which self-revelation 
 consisted in a Being, emanating from God with the attribute of 
 personality, representing the Divine Being of God, and realizing 
 his first conceived ideas; this Being was the substantial Word, in 
 
 1 [The word ‘ dieselbe’ here translated ‘this,’ grammatically considered, refers to 
 human nature’ with which it agrees; but I apprehend it means the ‘ human nature of, 
 Christ, with its enlightening beam of Divine Light.’ H. J. R.] 
 
 2 In the εὐαγγελιον Kar’ Αἰγυπτιοῦυς also, which Sabellius used, the doctrine that all 
 opposites will at last be lost in unity, appears to be brought forward ; for there, in an- 
 swer to the enquiry of Solomon, when the kingdom of Christ was to come; Christ 
 gives the answer, ‘* when Two become One, and the outward like the inward, and 
 the male like the female ; when there is no further distinction of sexes.’’ 
 
 3 According to this view, we can understand how Dionysius of Alexandria (Euseb. 
 vii. 6.) might accuse Sabellius of having spoken injuriously of God the Father (as the 
 expression of the evolution of the Divine Monas into a Trias must have appeared to 
 a follower of Origen), and of great unbelief in regard to the Logos, who became man 
 (inasmuch as he looked upon Him as only a transient manifestation of Divine power), 
 and of great insensibility (ἀναισθησια) in respect to the Holy Ghost (because he 
 denied the reality, and the objectivity of the Holy Ghost, and understood under that 
 name only individual transient out-pourings of Divine power). 
 
ORIGEN’S DOCTRINES. 281 
 
 which the Divine thought came forth into creative activity *. They 
 said, ‘* While the word of man is only the transient expression of 
 his thought; on the contrary, out of the supreme and entirely 
 perfect Being, nothing can come forth as his self-revelation 
 (or the first act of the communication of Life from God), which 
 is not substantial, real, and objective.” They conceived to them- 
 selves this Logos as the most perfect outpouring of the Divine 
 Being, and they made the doctrine of the unity of God (the 
 povapxia) to consist in supposing the Divine Logos to be nothing 
 but an outpouring from the Divine First-Being [Urwesen], who 
 revealed himself through this Logos, and works by means of him. 
 But still by degrees this idea, in the conceptions formed of it, was 
 developed in two different and opposite ways ; the one prevailing 
 in the Western, the other in the Eastern Church. 
 
 In regard to the latter, the fashioning which this doctrine re- 
 ceived from the philosophical spirit of the Alexandrian school, 
 and especially of Origen, had a very great influence upon it, 
 and we cannot fail to recognize the influence also, which the 
 system, from which his philosophical notions were derived, had 
 exerted upon him. Although the Christian spirit had leavened his 
 speculative ideas, although his “ God the Father” is something 
 different from the supreme, simple principle of the Neo-Pla- 
 tonists, the 6v, which was to them a mere abstract idea of per- 
 fection, although his Logos is something different from the vove 
 of the Neo-Platonist, absorbed in ideal contemplation of itself; 
 yet the speculative form, under which he had viewed things from 
 this philosophy had certainly great effect in modifying his con- 
 ception of this doctrine. We shall now view the ideas of this 
 profound man, in their proper connection with each other. 
 
 That which is to be called God absolutely *, is the original 
 source of all being, the source of Divine life, and of blessed- 
 
 1 [Lest I should have failed to represent by a literal translation the meaning of my 
 author, I will merely state what appears to me to constitute the difference which he 
 wishes to establish between these two views. The first considers the creation itself to be 
 the act of this Divine energy of God set into activity, and thus the creation is the only 
 manifestation of the thought of God, and is the Aoyoe προφορικος. The second, on the 
 contrary, maintains that, previous to the creation, and independent of it, there was a 
 manifestation of God, and a conversion of the Aoyoc ἐνδιαθετος into the λογος προ- 
 φορικος. This Λόγος προφορικος has a personal existence, and by means of him 
 God created the world. H. J. R.] 
 
 2 The ἁπλως θεος, αὐτοθεος. 
 
282 ORIGEN AGAINST THE GNOSTICS. 
 
 ness for a blessed world of spirits which is akin to him, and 
 also elevated by communion with him above the bounds of 
 temporary existence, and thus rendered divine. The higher 
 spirits, in virtue of this Divine life, communicated to them by 
 means of their communion with that original Divine Being, may, 
 in a certain sense, be called Divine Beings or Gods’. But as the 
 αὐτοθεος is the original source of all being, and all Divine life, 
 so also is the Aoyoe, the indispensable medium through which all 
 communication of life from him must flow. This is the collected 
 revelation of the glory of God, the universal all-embracing image 
 of that glory, from out of which the partial beams of the Divine 
 glory spread themselves over the whole world of Spirits ”. 
 
 Now as there is only One Divine First Being’, there is also, 
 One Divine First Reason *, the Absolute Reason, through which 
 alone the eternal Supreme Being reveals himself to all other 
 beings, which is the source of truth to all them, the objective sub- 
 stantial truth itself. With Origen it is a great point to maintain 
 firmly, that every particular class of reasonable beings has not its 
 own subjective reason, nor every separate intelligence; but that 
 there is one objective Logos for all, just as there is one objective 
 absolute truth for all, the one truth of God-consciousness, which 
 unites man with all classes in the world of Spirits. ‘‘ Every one,” 
 he says, ‘‘ will concede that truth is One, and in respect of truth, 
 no one can venture to say, that there is one truth of God, ano- 
 ther truth of angels, another of men; for in the nature of things 
 there is One truth only in respect to every single thing. But 
 now if truth is One, so must also the development of truth, which 
 is wisdom, if thought of properly, be thought of as One also; 
 because every false appearance of wisdom embraces not the 
 truth, and does not deserve to be called wisdom. But if there 
 be then One truth, and One wisdom, the Logos, which reveals the 
 truth and wisdom to all who are capable of receiving it, will be 
 One also.” But although the Logos as to his nature and being, 
 is absolutely One ; yet he presents himself under a variety of 
 forms and modes of operation, according to the different con- 
 ditions and necessities of reasonable beings, to whom he is every 
 thing, which is needful for their salvation (see above). Where 
 the Gnostics, from the different modes of operation of the One 
 
 1 peroxy τὴς ἐκεινοὺ θεοτητος θεοποιουμενοι. 2 Joh.ii. c. ii. 32; c. 18 
 3 The αὐτοθεος. 4 The αὐτολυγος. 
 
ORIGEN ON THE LOGOS. 283 
 
 Redeemer, and according to the different conditions of his opera- 
 tions, supposed different hypostases, Origen reduced these differ- 
 ent hypostases to different conceptions and relations ; but just 
 as he opposed this fashion of hypostatizing every thing, so he 
 opposed himself also to the Monarchians who reduced the whole 
 Trias (or Trinity) only to different conceptions and relations 
 under which the One Divine Being is viewed. Whosoever de- 
 nied the substantial existence of the Divine Logos, appeared to 
 him to reduce every thing into that which is subjective, to deny 
 the existence of an absolute objective truth, and to make ita mere 
 abstract idea [abstractum], for he could not think of the Divine 
 Logos in any other way, thanas he had been accustomed to think ° 
 of the νους of the Neo-Platonists. “9 None of us,” says Origen, 
 c. Cels. viii. 12. * has so debased a mind, as to think that the 
 Being of truth * had no substantial existence before the appear- 
 ance of Christ on earth.” 
 
 As Origen explained all designations of the Logos as symbo- 
 lical, he looked upon the name Logos itself in this light, and he 
 spoke against those, who built exclusively upon this name, and 
 made the comparison with the Aoyoc προφορικος always applicable, 
 which to him as a philosophical thinker, appeared too human, and 
 one which would not allow the Logos to be represented as some- 
 thing having a substantial existence’. The representation which 
 up to this time had been current: that God before the creation 
 had caused the substantial Word to emanate from his Reason, in 
 which he had conceived the plan of the world, which was to be 
 executed by the Word, and that he had caused his thought to 
 become the Word, was banished, together with that comparison, 
 by the philosophical spirit of Origen; because he could not allow 
 the propriety of transferring in this manner the relations of time 
 to the Eternal. Acknowledging no beginning of creation, but 
 supposing an eternal creation, he could still less acknowledge a 
 beginning in this case, and he endeavoured to remove every con- 
 sideration of time from the idea of the generation of the Logos, 
 and to maintain that we must think of a “ present,” without any 
 determination of time [lit. a time-less present; an eternal now, ] 
 
 1 ἡ της ἀληθειας οὐσια. 
 
 2 ἐπει συνέχως χρωνται τῳ" ἐξηρευἕατο ἡ καρδια μου λογον ἀγαθον, W. 44. 1. 
 οἰόμενοι προφοραν πατρικὴν οἵονει ἐν συλλαβαῖς κειμενὴν εἰναι τὸν Υἷον Tov 
 Θεου. 
 
284 AGAINST THE HOMOUSION. 
 
 which he believed to be intimated in the “ to-day” of Psal. ii. 7. 
 What the Platonists said of the relation of the ὁν to the νους, that 
 the revelation of the former in the latter is contemporaneously 
 co-existent with the former, he applied to the relation of God the 
 Father to the Logos, that the reflection of the glory of God in 
 the Son is co-existent with its own existence; and thus, that 
 always this reflection had been present with the glory after a 
 manner, which is independent upon time’. And thus he was 
 peculiarly instrumental in establishing the notion of an eternal 
 generation. 
 
 While Origen endeavoured to conceive the idea of the genera- 
 tion of the Son after the most spiritual manner possible, he de- 
 clared himself strongly against all sensuous conceptions of it, and 
 against all such expressions as might give occasion to, or favour 
 them at all. On this account he rejected the phrase of a genera- 
 tion out of the substance of the Father? (which, on the contrary, 
 was used in the Western Church, in order to distinguish the Son 
 of God from all creatures), because this expression, it appeared 
 to him, might easily be used to favour the notion of a sensuous 
 partition of the Divine Being’. 
 
 As the idea of a generation out of the substance (lit. the Being) 
 of God appeared to Origen to be too sensuous, it was also a 
 concomitant of this caution on his part, that he thought it entirely 
 necessary to maintain strictly the absolutely superiority of God 
 the Father, the avrofzoc, in respect to his nature, over every 
 other Being, just as he had indeed been accustomed as a Platonist, 
 to consider the supreme ὧν as something incomparable with any 
 thing else, and as elevated in his nature, even above the vove 
 itself. It appeared to him therefore, injurious towards the Great 
 
 1 Joh. i. 32. T.ii.c. 1; ii. 9. in Jerem. iii. 181. 
 
 2 yevynate ἐκ τῆς οὐσιας του Θεου. 
 
 3 Tn opposition to those, who falsely explained the passage of St. John viii. 44. of 
 the generation of the Son. T. 20. Joh. ο. 16. ἀλλοι δὲ το" ἐξηλθον ἀπο Θεου, διηγη- 
 σαντο ἀντι TOU γεγεννημαι ἀπο TOV Θεου, οἷς ἀκολουθει ἐκ THE οὐσιας φασκειν TOU 
 Ilarpoc γεγεννῆσθαι τον Ὑἷον, οἵονει μειομένου και λειποντοῦ Ty οὐσιᾳ, ἡ προτερον 
 εἶχε δογματα ἀνθρώπων, μηδ᾽ ὀνὰρ φυσιν ἀορατον και ἀσωματον πεφαντασμενων. 
 In the report of a discussion between Origen and Candidus the Valentinian, a pas- 
 sage occurred, in which the former attacked an expression made use of by the more 
 ancient Church-doctors, as Justin for example (viz. a προβολὴ ἐκ τῆς οὐσιας Tov 
 πατρος), without any scruple,—ne Deus Pater dividatur in partes, and on the con- 
 trary, in order to remove the idea of a necessity resulting from the nature of things, 
 
 he maintained that the Son of God had received his existence from the will of the 
 Father. Lib. ii. adv. Rufin. t. iv. 413. 
 
CONSEQUENCES OF THIS VIEW. 285 
 
 First Being, to suppose any equality of nature or unity between 
 him and any other Being, were it even the Son of God him- 
 self. As the Son of God and the Holy Ghost are incompara- 
 bly elevated above every thing else, even above the highest 
 grades of the Spiritual world; so much, or more than this, is the 
 Father elevated above him’. This distinction between the nature 
 of the Son of God, and of the Father? would necessarily be 
 brought prominently forward by Origen against the Monarch- 
 ians, because they denied not only the difference of nature, 
 but even the distinction of the persons; and thus, on account of 
 the connected nature of his philosophical and Christian system 
 it was a point of practical importance to Origen to maintain 
 against them the personal substantiality of the Logos. Some- 
 times, in the course of this controversy, he distinguishes be- 
 tween unity of nature and a personal unity, or unity of substance 
 [subjects-einheit, lit. subject- or substance- unity] so that he only 
 undertakes to controvert the latter idea*. This was the matter 
 which was practically the most important to him to maintain, and 
 he must have been well aware that many Church-teachers, who 
 held a distinction of persons, at the same time maintained an unity 
 of nature ἡ. But in virtue of the intimate connection of his own 
 system, as a system, both these opinions would give way toge- 
 ther, and when he spoke as from the position taken by that 
 system, he maintained both the ἑτεροτης τῆς οὐσιας and the 
 ἑτεροτης TNC ὑποστασεως OF του ὑποκειμένου ἥ. 
 
 From this doctrine he drew the practical consequence, that we 
 must pray to the Father and not to the Son, from which it is 
 clear, how much in a Christian and practical point of view, the 
 Patripassians (whom Origen accused of knowing only the Son, 
 and being unable to raise themselves up to the Father) must 
 have thought themselves obliged to exert themselves against 
 such a system. But still Christ was nevertheless to Origen, as he 
 himself declared, with full conviction from the connection of his 
 
 1 T. 13. Joh. c. 25. 
 
 2 The doctrine of an ἑτεροτης τῆς οὐσιας maintained in opposition to that of the 
 ὁμοουσιον. 
 
 3 Τὶ 10. Joh. against those who said ἐν οὐ povoy οὐσίᾳ ἀλλα και ὑποκειμένῳ 
 τυγχανειν ἀμφοτερους. 
 
 4 [Wesen-einheit, one-ness of being. See Wilson on the New Testament, p. 521. 
 Η. J. R.] 
 
 5 In Joh. ii. t. ii. De Orat.c. 15. κατ᾽ οὐσιαν και καθ᾽ ὑποκειμενον ἐστιν ὁ υἷος 
 ἕτερος Tov ἸΙατρος. 
 
286 TERTULLIAN AND ORIGEN COMPARED. 
 
 philosophical and Christian system, the way, the truth, and the 
 life ; he knew no other way to the Father, no other source of truth, 
 and of Divine life for all creatures, than him, “the mirror, by 
 means of which Paul and Peter, and all who are like to them, be- 
 held God.” He says, that in some respects, we may agree with the 
 Gnostics, that the Father was not revealed before Christ revealed 
 him, that men till that time, had known only the Creator and the 
 Lord of the world, and that it was through the Son that they had 
 first known him as their Father, and by the spirit of adoption re- 
 ceived from him, had become capable of calling to him as to a 
 father ὁ. He acknowledged him to be the mediator, a confidence 
 in whom must penetrate the whole inward life of Christians and 
 unite them with God, in his name and through him, Christians 
 must always pray to God the Father. Origen says, ‘* How can 
 we in the sense of him, who said “ why dost thou call me good, 
 there is none good, save only God the Father ;” avoid saying 
 also, ““ Why dost thou pray to me? thou must pray only to the 
 Father, to whom I also pray! As ye have learnt from Holy 
 Scripture, ye must not pray to him who is appointed by the 
 Father to. be your high priest, and who has received from the 
 Father the office of being your advocate; but you must pray 
 through your high priest and your advocate, through him, who 
 can have sympathy with your feebleness, who was in all things 
 tempted like unto you, but by the gift of the Father without sin. 
 Learn also what a gift ye have received from my Father, by 
 receiving through a new birth in me the spirit of adoption, so as 
 to be called the sons of God, and my brethren *.” And thus from 
 the grounds already pointed out, as we see, by Origen, a con- 
 troversy arose against the dcctrine, that the Son of God was 
 begotten of the substance of the Father, and against that of an 
 unity of nature between them both, from which controversy, an 
 opposition was afterwards to arise between the Eastern and the 
 Western churches; for in the latter of these churches, the doctrine 
 of one Divine Being in three numerically different persons, was 
 already become predominant. 
 
 When we compare Origen and Tertullian together, we learn 
 how the conception of the same Christian truth may be formed 
 differently in persons, according to the difference of their spiri- 
 
 tT, aS. Τοῖς: 6. 26; 2 7.19. Joh. 1. iv. 286. 3 D. Orat. c. 15. 
 
COUNCIL OF ANTIOCH. 987 
 
 tual character and education. Tertullian accustomed to sensible 
 representations of the Supreme Being, could not find the difficul- 
 ties, which met the philosophizing Origen. With his sensuous 
 notions of emanation, he could easily make it clear to himself, 
 how the Divinity could cause a being to proceed out of his own 
 substance, which possessed this same substance, only in a smaller 
 degree, and bore the same relation to the Divinity that the sun- 
 beam does to the sun. Hence, he acknowledged one Divine 
 Being in three persons intimately united together ’. 
 
 The Son [according to this view] does not differ in number 
 from the Father in relation to the Divine Nature, inasmuch as 
 the same Nature of God is in the Son also; but he differs in de- 
 gree, inasmuch as he is a smaller portion of the common whole 
 of the Divine Being’. This became the prevailing view in the 
 Western Church; viz. one and the same Divine Nature in the 
 Father and the Son; but a subordination withal in the relation of 
 the Son to the Father. But while the interior Christian life 
 impelled men constantly to make the distinction between Christ 
 and all creatures, always more and more sharply defined, and 
 while on the other hand the idea of the Unity of God was con- 
 stantly more and more definitely conceived, particularly by the 
 spirit of the western people; so the notions of this subordination 
 would necessarily be more driven into the background. 
 
 The form of doctrine, which had formed itself in the Alexan- 
 drian school, was now again brought more prominently forward 
 in the second half of the third century, during the controversy 
 against the systems of Sabellius, and of Paul of Samosata. In 
 the controversy against the latter, the expression ὑμοουσιον was 
 condemned by a council at Antioch*, a circumstance which is of 
 importance as an introduction to the controversies of the next 
 century *. 
 
 1 Una substantia in tribus coherentibus. 
 
 2 Deus de Deo, modulo alter, non numero. Ady, Praxeam. 
 
 3 See e. σι Athanas. de Synod. ὃ 43. and Hilar. de Synodis, ὃ 86. 
 
 * As this may be explained so naturally by the doctrinal conceptions of the Alex- 
 andrian school, and also the ground brought forward by the council against this 
 expression of the Church is quite in accordance with this, this account has hence, an ἃ 
 priori probability. The Arians, from whom it comes, are, however, suspicious witnesses 
 in this respect ; but the circumstance that neither Athanasius, Hilary of Poictiers, nor 
 Basil of Czsarea, their bitter opponents, who quote from their mouths, contradict them 
 in the matter, may pass as a voucher for its credibility. 
 
9388 DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA AGAINST HOMOUSION. 
 
 We see already the seed of a controversy between the system 
 of Origen, and the system of the Unity’ in Trinity, which was 
 constantly becoming more strongly defined in the Romish Church, 
 and a protype of the doctrinal controversies of the fourth century. 
 Dionysius, the bishop of Alexandria, issued a pastoral letter against 
 the doctrines of Sabellius*, which were spreading themselves 
 abroad in the province of Pentapolis, a district, the churches of 
 which were under the superintendence of the Bishop of Alex- 
 andria. In this letter in contradiction to the Sabellian confusion 
 of persons [hypostases] he brought forward in consequence of that 
 heresy the difference between the Son of God and the Father 
 still more strongly, and made use of many inappropriate com- 
 parisons, and hard expressions, which he would not probably have 
 used, if he had not been carried to extremes by means of this 
 contrast between the two systems, and which might be so under- 
 stood, as if he acknowledged no essential difference of nature be- 
 tween the Son of God and created beings, and as if he ascribed a 
 temporal commencement of existence to the Son; he declared 
 himself against the word Homousion. Many, who were offended 
 _ by the expressions he used, complained of them to Dionysius, the 
 Bishop of Rome, who thereupon issued a letter, in which he 
 contradicted those who denied the unity of nature in the ‘Trinity 
 [Trias], who placed the Son of God in the rank of a creature, 
 and assigned him a beginning of existence in time, as well as the 
 Sabellians. If-Dionysius of Alexandria (who would easily be 
 able to show that people had fastened too severely on single ex- 
 pressions of his, instead of explaining these expressions according 
 to a general view of his ideas) had at once maintained obstinately 
 his opposition to the doctrine of the Roman Church, and had 
 proclaimed these points of difference more definitely, this would 
 have sounded a tocsin to a contest of doctrines, in which the 
 Eastern atid Western church might possibly have taken part. 
 But Dionysius acted in the spirit of moderation, which held fast 
 what is material, and avoided contests on incomprehensible Divine 
 things; a moderation which had passed from the great Origen to 
 his worthy scholar. Without manifesting any resentment against 
 his accusers, who had appealed to a foreign bishop, who was glad 
 
 1 [Wesenseinheit. Literally, Unity of Being, or nature. H. J. R. | 
 2 The letter to Ammonius and Nicanor. 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT. 289 
 
 enough to set himself up as a judge over other churches, with- 
 out manifesting any resentment towards the latter himself [the 
 Bishop of Rome}, who appears to have spoken more in the tone 
 of a judge, than in that of a colleague in the office of bishop, 
 he developed with composure and sound thought, the meaning of 
 his expressions which had been misunderstood, and endeavoured 
 while doing this, to avoid as much as possible any opposition to 
 the Roman doctrine. He supplied also, according to the mode of 
 Origen, what was requisite to complete the idea of the eternal 
 generation of the Logos. He was willing even to allow the va- 
 lidity of the word ὁμοουσιον; as far as it was applied only to 
 denote the affinity of nature between the Father and the Son, and 
 to separate the Son from all creatures, although he might say 
 against it, that this word had hitherto never been in use in the 
 Church, and did not occur in the Holy Scriptures ; which, however, 
 it must be acknowledged, is not a satisfactory objection to make 
 to a doctrinal expression; because the changes which take place 
 in the general development of mind in a doctrinal point of view, 
 and new errors arising in it, may render new expressions neces- 
 sary; and because the only point of any importance here is, 
 that the idea, which the doctrinal expression is to denote, can be 
 deduced from the Scriptures. By this self-denial of Dionysius 
 (in which he showed more of the spirit of Christ, and did more to 
 honour him, than if he had maintained the unity of nature by 
 dialectic rules), the controversy was put aside, and a division, which 
 might have torn asunder the bond of Christian communion, was 
 thus avoided’. 
 
 It will appear from what we have remarked above, that the 
 development of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost is closely con- 
 nected with that of the Son of God. Weseealso here, how com- 
 pletely religion is a thing of life, before it can obtain for itself an 
 adequate form of development in definite conceptions, and we 
 see the want of correspondence which must arise between the 
 inward life and conscience, and the conceptions of the mind, until 
 Christianity has penetrated the whole of man’s nature. In that 
 age of the first outpouring of the Holy Ghost on human nature ; 
 while the new life communicated by Christ to human nature, the 
 
 1 See the fragments of the letter of Dionysius to Ammonius and Euphranor, and of 
 the second letter under the title, ἔλεγχος καὶ a7roXoyva: in Athanasius de Sententia 
 Dionysii et de Decretis Synodi Nicene. 
 
 VOL. II. U 
 
290 DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 life in communion with God, was felt so powerfully, and while its 
 operations against the corrupted heathen world were so strongly 
 marked, there were generally wanting ideas of it, corresponding 
 to the nature of that Spirit, whose power was felt to be Divine. 
 The Churech-teachers, in virtue of the modes of mental con- 
 ception in those days, could not (if we except the Monarchians 
 above mentioned and Lactantius') maintain the reality and ob- 
 jective existence of the Holy Ghost in any other way, than by 
 representing it to themselves as a personal substantial} being. 
 They were therefore compelled by their system of subordina- 
 tion, to consider the Holy Ghost as a being subordinate both 
 to the Father and the Son. Justin Martyr, for example, who 
 certainly spoke with a just interior experience of that, which 
 the Holy Ghost is for the interior life of the Christian ; calls him 
 ἐς the angel of God, the power of God sent to us through Jesus 
 Christ, which defends them [Christians] from the assaults of the 
 evil spirit, and compels him to leave them’.” With a just 
 Christian view [Anschauung’] also, Origen calls the Holy Ghost— 
 as the source of the Divine life communicated to the Christian, 
 which, penetrating and sanctifying the natures of men, although 
 according to its nature it be One, still reveals itself in manifold 
 ways in the manifold qualities of human nature, and shows itself 
 efficient in acting upon them—*“ the substance of all gifts and 
 graces effected by God, and communicated through Christ, as 
 something substantial in the Holy Ghost.” According to his 
 system of subordination, which is of importance for the develop- 
 ment of the doctrine of the Greek Church in the following 
 period, the Holy Ghost is in his view, the first Being [or nature, 
 Wesen] produced by God the Father, through the Son. In this 
 respect also the Unity-system was already brought more pro- 
 minently forward in the Western Church during the last years of 
 
 1 Who appears to have declared the Holy Ghost to be the sanctifying power of the 
 Father and the Son, ‘‘eum vel ad Patrem referri vel ad Filium; et sanctificationem 
 utriusque personz sub ejus nomine demonstrari.” See Hieronym. ep. 4]. ad Pamach. 
 et Oceanum. 
 
 2 Dialog. c. Tryph. Jud. 344. ὁ ἀγγελος του Θεου, Tour’ ἐστιν ἡ δυναμις Tov 
 Θεου, ἡ πεμφθεισα ἡμιν δια ᾿Ιησου Χριστου, ἐπιτιμᾳ αὐτῳ και ἀφισταται ἀφ᾽ 
 ἡμων. This affords a key tothe passage in the Apolog. ii. ed. Colon. p. 56. which is 
 often found difficult: ‘‘ we reverence the Son of God, and all the host of the other 
 angels which follow Him, as especially the Holy Ghost ;’’ as this last is ranked among 
 angels, although considered to be elevated above all others. 
 
DOCTRINE CONCERNING HUMAN NATURE. 291 
 
 this period, especially in the letter of Dionysius the Bishop of 
 Rome to his namesake of Alexandria. (See above.) 
 
 From the ‘ Doctrines relating to God’ (Theology in the more 
 confined sense of the word) we pass to the Doctrines which 
 relate to the nature of man (Anthropology); two classes of 
 doctrines which stand together in close connexion, when con- 
 ceived after that mode of viewing them which belongs exclu- 
 sively to Christianity, just as both of them receive their properly 
 Christian character and significance, by their peculiar relation 
 to the Doctrine of Redemption, the centre-point of Christianity. 
 
 The Doctrine of Redemption, while it is indissolubly connected 
 with one mode of viewing human nature, is essentially contra- 
 dictory to other modes. It necessarily presupposes the recognition 
 of the truth, that human nature stands in need of redemption, 
 and hence, that there exists a schism and discord in it, and an 
 estrangement of it from God, through communion with whom 
 alone it can be rendered blessed. It stands in contradiction to 
 the stoic view of the moral self-sufficiency of man, as well as to 
 that heathen view of nature, which removed the opposition be- 
 tween sin and the holiness of God and deduced evil from the 
 natural organization of man, or from the influence of a blind 
 destiny. Christianity therefore necessarily introduced with itself 
 a new point of view for the consideration of human nature, and 
 this point of view was to be maintained against those conceptions 
 of it previously in existence. Christianity directed the attention 
 of the thoughtful to the struggle [Zwiespalt, division] between 
 good and evil in human nature, from which that nature must be 
 set free, and to such inquiries as the following :—‘‘ Whence this 
 struggle arose ? whence did evil originally come ? and how is it to 
 be considered in respect to the holiness of the Creator?” And in 
 the case of many men (see the Gnostics as described above), even 
 before this time speculation had taken the turn to these inquiries, 
 in consequence of the desire that had been awakened for some solu- 
 tion of the enigmas of the course of nature ; and in consequence of 
 the perception of the dis-harmony that exists, and the feeling of 
 commiseration for man’s misery, that had already been excited. 
 
 ‘Christianity united Anthropology with the Doctrines that re- 
 late to the nature of Spirits (Pneumatology), inasmuch as it 
 ascribed to man the same reasonable and moral nature, and the 
 same destination, as to all the spirits of a high order; it repre- 
 
 u2 
 
292 OPPOSITION TO GNOSTIC ANTHROPOLOGY. 
 
 sented man, on the one hand, as the companion of a race of 
 holy and blessed Spirits in a world to which he belongs, even 
 while here below, in virtue of his inward life; while on the other 
 hand, it threw back the origin of moral evil on this very world of 
 Spirits, by the doctrine of a fallen Spirit of a higher order, from 
 whom at first the origin of sin proceeded. This latter represent- 
 ation was of practical importance, in establishing the doctrinal 
 view of sin, inasmuch as by means of it, a more express and direct 
 contrast might be presented against the important error of the 
 moral judgment, which deduced evil from the mere nature of the 
 senses, and from the natural organization of man. 
 
 The Gnostics, however, did not merely neglect the practical and 
 Christian view in their union between Anthropology and Pneu- 
 matology, but they rather lost sight of it entirely in their idle 
 speculations. We observed before (see above), how their theo- 
 ries, intended to reconcile the holiness of God with the actual 
 presence of evil, necessarily disparaged alike the holiness and 
 the omnipotence of God, and tended altogether to remove the 
 notion of evil, which they traced finally up to a necessity arising 
 from the nature of things. The Christian doctrine of Satan’s 
 influence, &c. lost with them its whole characteristic importance ; 
 because in their estimation, Satan was nothing more than a mere 
 natural power, the culminating point of the power of the Ὕλη; 
 which resisted every Divine influence. 
 
 In contradiction to the Gnostics, the Church-teachers were 
 especially concerned to show, that evil was no necessary result of 
 the composition of nature, but had its origin in the free will of 
 beings, created by God for good, and also that there were no 
 natures either essentially wicked in consequence of their derivation 
 from one source, or essentially good in consequence of their de- 
 rivation from another; but that in consequence of their derivation, 
 equal moral capabilities were present in all, and the use or neglect 
 of them was wholly dependent on the free will of the individual. 
 There was no need, in arguing against the Gnostics, to prove, in 
 the first instance, that human nature had been defiled by some 
 element foreign to it; but on the contrary, the first point to make 
 good against them was, that this foreign admixture could not 
 have utterly destroyed man’s free will. Upon the whole, the 
 Church- teachers agreed unanimously in maintaining both the 
 free will of man, as a necessary condition for the existence of any 
 
NORTH-AFRICAN AND ALEXANDRIAN VIEWS CONTRASTED, 293 
 
 morality, without which there could be no righteous judgment on 
 the part of God, and also in maintaining, at the same time, the 
 necessity of Divine grace for the moral reformation of human 
 nature. The accurate investigation of the mutual relation between 
 these two things, was yet far from this period ; but still, amidst 
 this agreement in essentials, two tendencies in the development 
 of the doctrines pertaining to these points, which recede from 
 each other, are nevertheless to be found, when we compare the 
 doctrines of the North-African and the Alexandrian teachers with 
 each other. 
 
 The formation of the North-African system of Church doctrine 
 proceeded from Tertullian. He received from the then-existing 
 Church-doctrines the idea, that the first man, as he was created 
 by God, had every capability of manifesting the image of God 
 through his spiritual and moral nature ; but that these capabilities 
 were still undeveloped. Their development depended on the 
 free will of man. The nature of man was pure enough that no 
 obstruction was offered to the influence of God upon it; through 
 communion with God human nature would have been constantly 
 more and more ennobled and refined, and would have been enabled 
 to attain to a participation in a divine and imperishable life, so that 
 it would have been for ever removed out of the dominions of 
 death. But, by means of the first sin, which consisted in man’s 
 not subjecting his will to the will of God, but opposing it’, man 
 stepped out of this communion with God, and thus became sub- 
 jected to the mastery of sinfulness and perishableness*. As 
 the harmony between the Divine and the human will entailed 
 as its consequence:an harmony between all the parts of human 
 nature ; so the rent between the Divine and the human will 
 introduced a rent in the whole nature of man. Connexion with 
 an ungodly Spirit took the place of connexion with the Spirit of 
 God. The Father of the race of men communicated the Spirit 
 of this world [literally, the world-spirit] to all his descendants *. 
 
 But Tertullian’s theory about the mode of propagating this 
 first element of destruction to the nature of man, was peculiar to 
 himself, and connected with his theory, of the propagation of souls. 
 
 1 Electio sue potius quam divine sententia. 
 
 2 Among the Fathers of this period both of these notions were included in the idea 
 of φθορα: just the opposite term ἀφθαρσια with them signified divine, imperishable, 
 and holy life. 
 
 3 Spiritum mundi universo generi suo tradidit. 
 
294 TERTULLIAN. 
 
 In fact, he thought that original forefather of the race bore within 
 himself the undeveloped seed of all mankind ; that the soul of the 
 first man was the source of all other human souls, and that all 
 the qualities of human nature were only manifold modifications 
 of that one spiritual substance’. (This is a point of view, which, 
 although it was conceived in sensuous images by Tertullian, who 
 could not think of any thing except through the medium of images 
 drawn from the senses, was not necessarily connected with sen- 
 suous views.) Hence, the whole nature of man became corrupted 
 in our first forefather, and sinfulness was propagated together 
 with the souls of men’. 
 
 Tertullian was, in like manner, imbued with the conviction of 
 the sinfulness that adhered to man’s nature, and also the con- 
 viction of man’s nature being undeniably akin to God; and that 
 it was expressly in contrast to this latter element of his nature, 
 that sin manifested itself as sin. ‘* ‘The corruption of man’s nature,” 
 he says *, “is a second nature, which has its own God and Father ; 
 namely, the author of this corruption himself; but still in such a 
 way that good is also present in the soul, that original Divine and 
 genuine [Good] which is properly natural to it. For that which 
 is from God is not so much extinguished as dimmed. For it may 
 be dimmed, because it is not God, but it cannot be extinguished, 
 because it is from God. Wherefore as Light, which is obstructed, 
 nevertheless remains, but does not appear, if the obstruction is 
 sufficiently dense, so also the good which is in the soul, being 
 oppressed by the evil, in conformity to its own peculiar nature *, 
 either remains entirely inactive, whilst its Light remains hidden, 
 or when it finds its freedom, shines out where an opportunity is 
 given. Thus some are very good and some are very wicked, and 
 yet all souls are one race; and also in the very worst there is 
 something of good, and in the very best something of wickedness, 
 for God alone is without sin, and Christ is the only man wholly 
 
 1 De Anima, c. 10, and c. 19. 
 
 2 Tradux anime, tradux peccati. 3 De Anima, c. 41. 
 
 4 [Ita bonum in anima a malo oppressum, pro qualitate ejus, aut in totum vacat, 
 occultata luce, aut qua datur radiat, inventa libertate. 
 
 So auch ist das von dem Bosen, wie es dessen eigenthtimliches Wesen mit sich bringt, 
 unterdriickte Gute in der Seele ganz wirkungslos, &c. 
 
 It would seem, although it is rather ambiguous, from this, that Neander refers pro 
 qualitate ejus to the nature of evil, as opposed to good, and oppressing where it can ; 
 
 but (if Rigalt’s reading is correct) it seems to me to belong to good, which being like 
 jight in its nature, suffers either partial or entire obscuration. | 
 
TERTULLIAN’S ANTHROPOLOGY. 295 
 
 sinless, for Christ is also God. The Divine nature of the soul 
 breaks forth into anticipations in consequence of its original good- 
 ness, and its God-consciousness delivers a testimony........ 
 Therefore no soul is without guilt, because none is without the 
 seed of good.” 
 
 He considered every part and power of man’s nature as the 
 work of God, as something intrinsically good ; and hence, all that is 
 contrary to reason in it, only as the consequence of that first rent 
 produced in man by transgression; and he acknowledged the 
 justice of Plato’s division of the soul into the λογικὸν and the 
 aXoyov, not in reference to the original nature of man; but only 
 in regard to it in a state of corruption *. 
 
 With regard to the Gnostic doctrine of essential difference in the 
 natures of men, in consequence of which they maintained that no 
 Pneumaticus [or Spiritual man] could be formed from a Hylicus or 
 Choicus [a man of a low material or earthly nature] or vice versd— 
 Tertullian contrasted with this doctrine the omnipotence of grace, 
 and the changeableness of the human will. When the Gnostics 
 appealed to the declaration of Christ, that no good tree brings 
 forth evil fruit, and no evil tree good fruit, Tertullian answered 
 them thus’, “ If this be so, then God cannot raise up children to 
 Abraham out of stones, nor could the generations of vipers bring 
 forth fruits of repentance, and the Apostle was in error when he 
 wrote as follows: ‘ And we too once were darkness, and we also 
 once were the children of wrath, among whom ye were once also, but 
 ye are washed. But can the declarations of the Holy Spirit 
 stand in contradiction to each other? No! for the evil tree will 
 never bring forth good fruit, until it be graffed, and the good 
 tree will produce evil fruit, if it be not cultivated; and the stones 
 will become the children of Abraham, when they are fashioned 
 into the faith of Abraham, and the generation of vipers will bring 
 forth the fruits of repentance, when they have vomited out the 
 poison of wickedness. ‘This, the grace of God may effect, which 
 is certainly more powerful than nature, and to which the free will 
 of man is subordinate in us..... But as this will is also a part 
 
 1 De Anima, 16. Naturale enim rationale credendum est, quod anime a primordio 
 . sit ingenitum a rationali videlicet auctore; irrationale autem posterius intelligendum, 
 ipsum illud transgressionis admissum atque (quod) exinde inoleverit in anima, ad 
 instar jam naturalitatis, quia statim in nature primordio accedit. 
 2 De Anima, c. 21. 
 
296 ALEXANDRIAN ANTHROPOLOGY. 
 
 of our nature, and changeable, whithersoever it turns, thither our 
 nature leads us also.” ‘This remarkable passage may be taken by 
 some, as if Tertullian ascribed to grace an irresistible and attractive 
 power in reference to the corrupted will of man; and it might be 
 said, that he maintained the free will of man only in opposition 
 to the doctrine of a necessity of fate, and against the opinion of 
 an entire moral incapacity in certain natures; but that he did not 
 maintain it in reference to the nature-reforming principle of 
 grace. Montanism might easily lead to this result, that the over- 
 powering influence of the Divine nature should be exaggerated, 
 and the free will of man made only a blind passive instrument. 
 But still this view would be by no means supported by the con- 
 text, according to which Tertullian only wishes to make out, 
 that grace by its Divine influence on our corrupted nature, in 
 virtue of its free will can communicate to it a higher power than 
 that which resides in itself; and we are bound to take that ex- 
 planation, which best accords with the rest of Tertullian’s decla- 
 rations about free will. And even supposing that Montanism 
 necessarily exalts especially the doctrine of Divine grace, yet the 
 doctrine of an irresistible grace is anything but established by it 
 [ Montanism], for the very circumstance that Montanism attributes 
 such an influence to the case of prophets only, proves that it 
 does not maintain it in ordinary cases. 
 
 The other disposition we find in the Alexandrian Church. 
 Clement, without intending it, opposed the North-African Church- 
 doctrine, while he had in view only the Gnostic doctrine, that 
 birth is a work of the evil Spirit. “* As children may have sinned, 
 and fallen under the curse of Adam, while as yet they have never 
 done any action of their own'.” Clemens was particularly anxious 
 to maintain this point; that all the Divine operations of grace 
 went on the condition of the independence [{{{. self-determination, 
 self-choice] of the free will, as the ground of all moral develop- 
 ment. No doubt he went too far, (as any man is likely to do, 
 who always follows a single point of view,) in endeavouring to 
 define too accurately the limits which separate [in these operations 
 of grace] the Divine from the human; but at the same time he 
 did it only out of a wish to maintain the practical importance of 
 the moral independence of man; though it is still quite certain that 
 
 ἘΠ. ἢ 453. 469. [p. 541. 556-7. Ed. Pott. p. 194. 201. Ed. Sylb. ] 
 
ORIGEN’S VIEWS. 297 
 
 he was far from ascribing to the will of man, a self-sufficiency that 
 was independent of the reforming power of Divine grace. In one 
 passage he expresses himself thus, with respect to the mutual 
 relation of these two’: ““ When man seeks to free himself from 
 passions by his own discipline and his own endeavours he does 
 not succeed. But if he shows a right earnest desire and endea- 
 vour after this end, he will attain it by the assistance of God’s 
 power, for God communicates his Spirit to those souls that desire 
 it. But if they relax from their desire, then also the Spirit of 
 God which had been bestowed upon them, withdraws itself ..... 
 For the kingdom of God does not belong to those who sleep and 
 are lazy, but ‘the impetuous seize upon it.’” 
 
 The system of Origen in respect to this matter is altogether 
 peculiar to himself. We observed above, that he was attached to 
 an Emanation-scheme, spiritually conceived; but while the Gnos- 
 tics tried to explain the difference between reasonable creatures, 
 partly by a natural law deduced from the gradual development of 
 life from God, and partly by their descent from two fundament- 
 ally-different principles, Origen, on the contrary, endeavoured to 
 deduce all differences from moral freedom. “God,” he maintained, 
 ‘as the absolute unity can be the source of nothing but unity ; 
 inasmuch as all being is derived from him, the unity of its nature 
 must be shown therein. From him no difference and no variety [lit. 
 multifariousness] can arise, and it would be contrary to his love 
 and his justice, not to bestow on all his creatures the same mea- 
 sure of perfection and blessedness. Thus, God is to be conceived 
 originally as the first source ofa spiritual world, allied to him, and 
 rendered blessed by communion with him, and the members of 
 this world were all similar to each other. In the second book of his 
 work περὶ ἄρχων; he expresses himself as if he not only considered 
 all differences in the measure of powers and of blessedness, but also 
 generally all differences of proper and peculiar being, no original 
 difference, but as something which had proceeded in the first 
 instance from a difference in the moral direction of the will. 
 According to this, Origen will have considered the original cre- 
 ation to have been only one that consisted of beings altogether 
 alike, but only numerically distinct, and all peculiarity to have 
 been the consequence of alienation from God. This was, to say 
 
 1 Quis dives salvetur? c. 21. 
 
298 ORIGEN’S VIEWS. 
 
 the truth, a very limited representation of the creation, in relation 
 to the infinite Being of God; but, in contrast to Gnosticism and 
 to the Platonism by which Origen is usually directed, the pre- 
 dominance of the Christian point of view in his mind (although 
 this was conceived by him in a one-sided way) is here shown ina 
 characteristic manner, because he opposes the moral view, as the 
 highest, and as that which shall determine everything, to the 
 scheme of a natural necessity or fate. 
 
 It may, at the same time, be the case that Origen in later 
 days retracted this notion, as he did many other crude ideas, 
 which he had brought forward in that work of speculative doctrine. 
 He says, nevertheless, in a passage of later date *, that the Son of 
 God is the general reflection of the glory of God, but that in 
 part, the beams of this general reflection spread themselves over 
 the rest of the reasonable creation; for no created being can con- 
 tain the whole of the glory of God, and the inference to which 
 this would seem to lead is, that what is One in the Logos, in 
 the rest of the spiritual world develops itself into a variety of 
 individual properties, of which every one reflects and represents 
 the glory of God in some mode peculiar to itself, and thus the 
 collected totality of these individualities, which mutually supply 
 the deficiency of each other, would correspond to the collected 
 revelation of the glory of God in the Logos. ‘That would cer- 
 tainly be a just conclusion, if Origen had unravelled to himself 
 with a clear consciousness the full meaning of the thought, which 
 he expressed; but one is led to inquire whether this was the case. 
 He appears, in a passage of the same Commentary of St. John, 
 from which the first passage was quoted, to determine it as the final 
 aim of all this development, that all reasonable beings, in attain- 
 ing to God through the Logos, might have only one employment, 
 [Thatigkeit, activity] namely, the employment of the contem- 
 plation [Anschauung, perception or intuition] of God; and that 
 being fashioned through the knowledge of the Father, might thus 
 become perfectly, that which the Son is, as now none but the 
 Son hath known the Father’. As now according to this last 
 
 YT. xxxii. Joh. c. 18. 
 
 2 T. i. Joh. c. 16. Also the passage in Matt. 207. ‘ Then will the righteous no 
 longer shine after a different manner, as in the beginning, but all will shine as one 
 sun in the kingdom of their Father.’’—Matt. xiii. 43. But still this passage of 
 Origen may be understood to apply only to an equality of moral condition and 
 blessedness. 
 
ORIGIN OF EVIL. 299 
 
 doctrine of Origen, by means of this last completion ', everything 
 will return again to its original condition, it appears also to follow 
 as a consequence that according to this same doctrine such an 
 equality and unity also originally existed. 
 
 Origen still further concluded that God alone is good by his 
 very nature; but on the contrary, that all created beings are, 
 and remain good, only by means of their communion with the 
 original source of all good, the Logos. As soon as ever the 
 desire exists in any being gifted with reason, of being anything 
 for itself, there evil is sure to exist. ‘The good, which has 
 become so,” says Origen *, “cannot be like that which is good 
 by its nature; this however will never be wanting to him, who 
 receives in himself for his own preservation the bread of life, as it 
 is called. But wherever it is wanting to any one, it arises from 
 his own fault; because he has neglected partaking of the living 
 bread and the true drink, by which his wings being nourished and 
 moistened will grow®*.” Evil-is the only thing which has the 
 foundation of its being in itself, and not in God, and which 
 is therefore founded in no being, but is nothing else than an 
 estrangement from the true Being, and has only a subjective and 
 no objective existence at all, and is in itself Nothing*. ‘There- 
 fore he says: ‘ The proposition of the Gnostic, that Satan is no 
 creature of God *, has some truth for its foundation, namely this, 
 that Satan in respect to his nature is a creature of God, but not 
 as Satan °.” 
 
 When the will of the Spirits, who were blessed in a Divine 
 
 1 The ἀποκαταστασις. 
 
 2 c. Cels. vi. 44. [p. 305. Ed. Spencer. The two expressions are, To οὐσιωδως 
 ἀγαθον, and ἀγαθον τὸ kata συμβεβηκος ἀγαθὸν και cE ἐπιγεννηματος ἀγαθον. 
 The “ this,” in the text refers to this last; the adventitious good. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 An allusion to the Platonic myth, of the wings of the soul in the Phedrus. [We 
 must observe that Origen himself continues the sentence by alluding to the wings of 
 the eagle, mentioned by Solomon, Prov. xxiii. 5. which Origen rather alters. Butsee 
 Plat. Phed. ὃ 56. H. J. R.] 
 
 4 Origen gave a more ethical meaning to the metaphysical Platonic idea of the μὴ 
 év (according to which [namely, the Platonic notion] if we make the idea clear to 
 our own minds, evil is necessary as the limit to the development of life, and therefore 
 the idea of evil according to its moral import is really superseded). With him [i. ὁ. 
 Origen] the pm dv is here rather a privative than a negative. See t. ii. Joh. § 7. 
 ol μετέχοντες Tov ὄντος, μετεχοῦσι δὲ οἱ ἁγιοι, εὐλογως ἀν ὀντες χρηματιζοιεν" οἱ δὲ 
 ἀποστραφεντες τὴν του ὀντος μετοχὴν, τῳ ἐστερησθαι του ὀντος, γεγονασιν οὐκ 
 ὀντες. 
 
 5 See above in the account of the Gnostics. 6 In Joh. t. ii. c. 7. 
 
 7 
 
900 SOUL AND SPIRIT. 
 
 life, estranged itself from God, the original unity became dis- 
 solved, there arose a Disharmony, which needed now again 
 to be brought to unity by means of a process of purification and 
 improvement. The soul of the world is nothing else than the 
 power and wisdom of God, who knows how to bind up these 
 great moral differences in one living whole ; and which, subjecting 
 all these dissonances to a higher law, penetrates and vivifies the 
 whole’. We see before us only a fragment of the great course, 
 which the world will run, which embraces all moral differences 
 with all the consequences that develope themselves from them, 
 until their entire removal ; and hence our imperfect Theodicea’. 
 
 It follows necessarily from the doctrines of Origen, that even 
 human souls were originally altogether of a similar frame with all 
 higher Spirits, and that all differences between the former and 
 the latter, and between individuals of the former, proceeded only 
 from differences of the moral disposition of the will of all indivi- 
 duals, and that consequently all souls are fallen heavenly beings. 
 The whole temporal conscience moving itself between opposites, 
 the understanding, directed to what is finite, proceeded only out of 
 estrangement from that unity of the Divine life, the life of im- 
 mediate intuition, and it is the destiny of the soul that it should, 
 being purified, again raise itself up to that life, in the pure im- 
 mediate intuition of God; or that, just as through the cooling of 
 that heavenly fire, the life of spirit degenerated into the life 
 of the soul, so also the soul should again be elevated to the rank 
 of spirit *. 
 
 Origen set his theory of the pre-existence of souls in opposition 
 to Creatianism, which supposed individual souls to arise from the 
 immediate act of creation on the part of God; fer this theory 
 appeared to him irreconcileable with the love and justice of God, 
 which maintains itself equally towards all his creatures; and also 
 in opposition to the Traducianism of ‘Tertullian, for this theory 
 appeared to him too sensuous. ‘Thus, as he in order to be able 
 
 1 Τί, apy. 1. 11. ¢. i. 
 
 2 Homil. iv. in Jer. § 1. [Theodicea is perhaps a new word in English, although 
 known as the name of the essay of Leibnitz. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 Tapa τὴν ἀποπτωσιν καὶ τὴν pw τὴν ἀπὸ του ζῃν τῳ πνευματι yeyover 
 ἡ νυν γενομενὴ ψυχη" νους πως ody yeyove ψυχη, και ψυχὴ κατορθωθεισα γινεται 
 vouc. Lib. ii. c. 8. περι ἄρχων. Compare the similar view entertained by the Gnostics, 
 for which see the former part of this volume. 
 
ORIGEN AGAINST CREATIANISM, &c. 301 
 
 to maintain his theory of a creation which preceded this temporal 
 world, without prejudice to the Church-doctrine, appealed to the 
 circumstance that the Church-doctrine defined nothing concern- 
 ing this point ; so also did he appeal to the same circumstance, in 
 regard to his own peculiar speculative theory of the origin of 
 souls. 
 
 In the doctrine, however, ofa corruption and guilt that cleaved 
 to human nature from the beginning, he might, exactly as the 
 North-African Church-teachers expressed themselves,—he might 
 speak of a mystery of birth", according to which every one who 
 comes into the world needs purification, and he might quote 
 in favour of this view the passages of the Bible, which were 
 quoted by others in favour of the doctrine of original sin [Erb- 
 sunde—inherited iniquity—original, or birth-sin]. But he felt 
 himself obliged to deduce this condition of human nature from 
 another source ; namely, from the proper guilt of every individual 
 fallen heavenly Spirit, contracted in a former state of existence : 
 and hence, according to the theory of Origen, this corruption could 
 uot be alike in all, but its degree would depend on the degree 
 of the former guiltiness. Although he accounted Adam as an 
 historical person, yet he could be nothing else in his view, than 
 the first incarnate soul that sunk down from the heavenly state 
 of existence: he must have looked upon the history of paradise, 
 like the Gnostics, as being symbolical, so that it [paradise] was 
 to him the symbol of a higher spiritual world, and Adam was to 
 him at the same time, the type [image, or form] of all mankind, 
 of all fallen souls *. 
 
 Origen in his work περὶ apywv, agreeing also here with the Pla- 
 tonists, and many Gnostics, had considered * the doctrine, that the 
 fallen souls might, through entire decomposition, sink into the 
 bodies of animals, as at least something which was not to be ex- 
 actly rejected. But as his system was essentially distinguished from 
 the Neoplatonic by the predominance of the Christian, morally- 
 teleological point of view; so this point of view, always becoming 
 more and more fully formed, necessarily would lead fo the follow- 
 
 1 μυστηριον THC γενέσεως. 
 
 2 c. Cels. 1. iv. ὃ 40. οὐχ οὗτως περι ἕνος τινος, ὡς περι OAOV TOU γενους ταυτὰ 
 φάσκοντος του θειου λογου. Itis not inconsistent with this, that Origen should speak 
 of Adam, quite in accordance with the Church view, as int. i, Joh. ὃ 22. τ, xiii. ὃ 34; 
 he might place his own sense upon this; especially in Homilies, where Gnosis was out 
 of place. Η. 14. in Jerem. 
 
 8 See the Greek Fragment. 7. dpywy, lib. i. Origen. Ed. de Ja Rue, t.i. p. 76. 
 
302 Σαρκικοι---Ψυ χικοι---πνευματικοι. 
 
 ing result ; namely, at last entirely to throw away * the doctrine of 
 such an incorporation of souls, as inconsistent with the final pur- 
 pose of the purification, which pre-supposes a continuity of con- 
 sciousness. According to the same point of view, he opposed his 
 theory of the process of purification of souls, which was to con- 
 tinue to the last limit of the restoration, to the doctrine of a cycle 
 in the wanderings of the soul. 
 
 Origen, like the Gnostics, supposed three principles * in human 
 nature in its fallen state, the capxtxov, the ψυχικον, and the rvev- 
 ματικον, and also three different conditions of human nature, 
 corresponding to these principles. But he separated himself from 
 them in an essential point; namely, that as he recognised all 
 human souls as similar, he accordingly supposed the same princi- 
 ples in every one of them, and that he therefore considered their 
 different conditions to proceed, not from an original difference of 
 nature in them, but from the predominance of one or other of 
 those [three] principles in them, dependent on the different 
 directions of their will. The πνευμα is that portion of man’s 
 nature properly called the Divine, the power of the higher inward 
 intuition of that which is Divine, which originally formed the 
 essential nature of the Spirit, and is synonymous with νοὺς ; this 
 πνευμα can have no connexion with evil, and nothing evil can 
 proceed from it*®. But by the predominance of sensuousness, 
 and of the lower powers of the soul, which conduce to selfishness, 
 the activity of this πνευμα becomes depressed. Those, in whom, 
 on the contrary, this highest principle of human nature is the 
 predominant and animating one, are the πνευματικοι ἡ. He by no 
 means, as follows immediately from his general ideas on the 
 relation of human nature to God, ascribed an independent self- 
 existence to this principle of human nature; but he considered it 
 as the organ destined to receive in itself the operations of the 
 θειον πνευμα". The Psychici are, in the view of Origen, the more 
 
 1 See c. Cels. iii. c. 75 ; ii. 16. in Jerem. where he speaks of a Metempsychosis in a 
 parabolic sense, and guards himself carefully against any misunderstanding, which 
 could lead to taking this literally. 
 
 2 [I have used the word “ principle”? throughout this passage, as Princip is the word 
 in the original. Perhaps, to an English reader the word “ element” would better con- 
 vey the idea intended. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 T. xxxii. Joh. ο. 11. ἀνεπιδεκτον των χειρονων τὸ πνεῦμα. 
 
 4 Τίνευμα ro θειοτερον, οὐ κατα μετοχην ἐπικρατοῦσαν χρηματιζει ὁ πνευματικος. 
 In Joh. t. ii. c. 15. 
 
 5 Origen Comment. in Matt. Ed. Huet. p. 306. 
 
Σαρκικοι---ψυχικοι---πνευματικοι. 909 
 
 refined egotists, the men-of-understanding’, among whom ἃ mere 
 refined selfishness prevails, which does not manifest itself in open 
 outbreaks of sinful conduct and passions; who are, as he expresses 
 himself, neither hot nor cold ; and he throws out the inquiry, whe- 
 ther the σαρκικος cannot attain * more easily than the Ψψυχίκοὸς to a 
 consciousness of the misery of sin, and hence to a true conversion ; 
 an enquiry which may be changed into that other, whether the 
 publicans often might not be more easily converted than the 
 Pharisees. With this is connected the idea of Origen, that, just 
 as a skilful physician sometimes calls forth the sources of disease, 
 which are lying hid in the body, and produces an artificial evil, 
 in order that this source of disease which threatens to destroy the 
 whole fabric may by this means be driven forth out of the body; 
 so also Ged places men in such a condition, that the evil hidden 
 within them is called forth into open activity, in order that they 
 may thereby be led to a consciousness of their moral guilt and 
 its destructive consequences ; and then may be able to be healed 
 more easily and more completely*. And in this way he ex- 
 
 “plained the Scriptural phrase “‘ God hardened the heart,” and 
 others similar to it. 
 
 It is clear from the remarks we have made above on the An- 
 thropology of the Church teachers of this period, that the need 
 of redemption for human nature was generally recognised in their 
 system, and thus the Doctrine of the Redeemer, which forms the 
 peculiar essence of Christianity found in it [their system, or an- 
 thropology] a point on which it would naturally engraft itself. 
 As far as the development of this doctrine is concerned, its 
 essential import, the idea of a God-man, was deeply implanted in 
 the Christian conscience; but the different portions of which it 
 consists, which belong to the perfect development of the full con- 
 tents of this idea, could not come forward at once and imme- 
 diately with clearness in the Christian conscience. It was only 
 through the opposition called forth in controversy that the full im- 
 pression of what was comprehended in this idea, could be obtained 
 in definite conceptions ; namely, the clear and definite conscious- 
 ness of that, which we have to conceive in the assumption of human 
 
 1 [Verstandes-menschen ; where Verstand is opposed to Vernunft. H. J. R.] 
 
 2 Περι ἄρχων, |. iii. ς. 4. 
 
 3 See de Orat. c. 29; and the fragment of the Commentary on Exod. c. 10. 27; in 
 the 26th chapter of the φιλοκαλια, and in the 2nd Part [Band] of de la Rue’s 
 Edition, p. 3. 
 
904 Σαρκίκοι--- Ψψυχικοι--- πνευματικοί. 
 
 nature on the part of the Divine Logos. In the development of 
 this doctrine, realistic Christian views would be peculiarly called 
 forth by the opposition to all Gnostic attempts to set aside, or to 
 mutilate the one side of [the doctrine of ] the God-man, that is 
 the human part of it, to do away with the human nature of 
 Christ, or, at least either more or less to deprive it of the proper 
 attributes of humanity,—and especially by the opposition to 
 Docetism. The consciousness of the objective reality of the 
 human nature of Christ, and his appearance in the flesh, the 
 idea of the form of a servant taken upon him by Christ, was 
 declared during this opposition [to Gnosticism] strongly and 
 clearly. Thus, Ignatius of Antioch can find no words sufficiently 
 strong in his opinion, to express the confidence of the Christian 
 persuasion on this point, and he says in an original manner of the 
 Docetee, that they who would make Christ only an apparition, 
 were themselves only like apparitions’. ‘ How comes it that 
 thou makest Christ half a lie ?” says Tertullian’ to a Docetist: 
 ‘he was wholly truth !” And the same writer in another place’®, 
 ἐς It is offensive to you to think that the child is taken care of in 
 swaddling clothes and caressed ! Dost thou despise this reverence 
 shown to nature? and how wert thou born thyself?........ 
 Christ, at least, loved man born under these conditions [and 
 charged with these infirmities]. ... . For his sake he came 
 down, for his sake he let himself down to every humiliation, even 
 unto death. . . . . he loved, together with man, both his birth 
 and his flesh.” In opposition to Docetism, the idea of the form 
 of a servant, taken upon him by Christ, as it peculiarly suited this 
 primitive Christian spirit*, which opposed itself to heathenism 
 with all its rival show of beauty, was worked up so as to present 
 a contrast between the hidden Divine glory of Christ, and the 
 wretchedness of his outward form and appearance. ‘Tertullian 
 says °, ** This was the very thing which makes the rest about him 
 wonderful; for they said, ‘Whence came this man to such wisdom 
 
 1 αὖὐτοι τὸ δοκειν ὀντες ἀσωματοι Kat δαιμονικοι. 
 
 2 De Carne Christi, c. 5. 
 
 3 L.c.c. 14. [c. 4. Ed. Rigalt. In the passage as it is found at length in Tertullian, 
 the infirmities attendant on the birth and infancy of a child are enumerated and 
 mentioned, as things which Marcion looked upon with horror or contempt; and the 
 argument appears to be, ‘‘ though you consider these things derogatory to the dignity 
 of man’s nature, our Saviour did not; he loved the race of man, though encompassed 
 with all these weaknesses,” &c. In the portion selected by Neander, this, perhaps, is 
 not sufficiently apparent. TI. J. R.] 
 
 4 See Part II. 5 De Carne Christi, ο. 9. 
 
CLEMENT ON THE ἀπαθεία OF CHRIST. 305 
 
 and such works 2? That is the outery of those who despised also 
 his form 1.” 
 
 In Clement of Alexandria, pure Christianity was on this point 
 disturbed by intermixture with Neo-Platonic ideas. The Neo- 
 Platonic philosopher wished to have a Christ, freed from the wants 
 and imperfections of sense, and utterly unaffected by it, and this 
 Christ was to represent to him the Ideal of ἀπαθεια ; and there- 
 fore he must not be subjected to hunger and thirst, to the sensa- 
 tions of pain, to pleasure or displeasure. But in this case, how 
 could the form of the historical Christ of Scripture be maintained ? 
 The forced explanation was to be used, that Christ, although 
 not subject to those affections by his nature, had subjected him- 
 self to them voluntarily (κατ᾽ οἰκονομίαν) with a peculiar view 
 to the salvation of man’. Nevertheless, Clement in a remarkable 
 manner with this view, which does not accept the servant’s-form 
 of Christ in its full extent, united the other view, which carried 
 it to the extreme. But even this suited his philosophical ideas ; 
 “Ὁ the unsightliness and formlessness of Christ’s appearance ought 
 to teach men to look upwards towards the invisible, incorporeal 
 and formless nature of God *.” 
 
 But while from the beginning, the true and real humanity of 
 Christ was maintained; yet at first, the distinction between the 
 different parts which belong to the completeness of man’s nature, 
 was either not brought forward at all, or only brought forward 
 in individual cases, and even then with only a dim consciousness 
 about them. Under the notion of an assumption of man’s nature 
 nothing was thought of but the assumption of a human body, as 
 in Irenzeus we find this only clearly spoken of. Justin, on the 
 formation of whese mind the Platonic philosophy had some in- 
 fluence, appears to have formed to himself the following peculiar 
 chain of ideas: Christ, as the God-man, consists of three parts, 
 like every other man—of the body, the animal soul (the inferior 
 principle of life), and the thinking reason ; only with this differ- 
 ence, that the place of the fallible human reason, which is only a 
 beam of the Divine reason, of the Aoyoce’, is supplied ἢ in him by 
 
 1 Nec humane honestatis corpus fuit, nedum ccelestis claritatis. 
 
 2 Clemens, Strom. vi. 649-50. [Pott. 775. Sylb. 276. Klotz iii. 140.] 
 
 3 Strom. iii. 470. 6 Χριστος ἐν σαρκι ἀηδης dteAXnrvOwe Kar ἀμορῴφος, εἰς To 
 ἄειδες και ἀσωματον τῆς θειας αἰτιας ἀποβλεπειν Hpac διδασκει. [Pott. 559. Sylb. 
 202. Klotz ii. 271.] 
 
 4 The σπερμα λογικον, the λογος σπερματικος, the λογος κατα μερος. 
 
 5 Apol. II. ὃ 10. And yet one might suspect that the words καὶ σωμα και Aoyor 
 
 VOL. ΤΙ, xX 
 
306 TERTULLIAN ON THE SOUL OF CHRIST. 
 
 the general Divine reason the Aoyoc itself’; and hence in Christ- 
 ianity alone could the universal revelation of religious truth be 
 given, without being obscured by any one-sidedness ’. 
 
 Tertullian was the first who definitely and clearly proclaimed 
 the doctrine of a proper human soul in Christ, being led to this 
 by his view of the relation of the soul to the body in general, 
 and by the direction taken by his controversy about the person of 
 Christ in particular. He did not assume, like others, that there are 
 the three above-mentioned parts in human nature, he only acknow- 
 ledged two parts in it; he maintained that we must not consider 
 a mere animal soul distinct from the rational soul in man to be 
 the animating principle of the body, but that in all living beings 
 the animating principle [/iterally, being] is one only, but in the 
 case of man’s nature that this is furnished with higher powers, and 
 that the thinking soul itself is also the animating [soul] of the 
 human body*®. When Tertullian acknowledged only one soul as 
 the means of communication between the Divine Logos and the 
 body in Christ, he must necessarily have thought here of a 
 proper reasonable human soul. And further, he was in con- 
 troversy with a Valentinian sect, which taught that Christ, in- 
 stead of investing his soul with a gross material body, had so 
 modified the ~uyn, that it might become visible to the senses of 
 man [Jiterally, to the sensuous man] like a body. Against this 
 sect he maintains, that we must necessarily, in the person of 
 Christ, as in the case of every other man, distinguish between 
 soul and body, and the attributes of each, and that he [7.e. Christ], 
 in order to redeem man, must place a proper human soul in union 
 with himself, and indeed so much the more, inasmuch as the soul 
 composes the proper nature or man*. 
 
 Origen, however, had greater influence than Tertullian on 
 the development and the settlement of this doctrine in the doc- 
 trinal system of the Church. His struggles to attain an inward 
 living intuition into the doctrines of the faith, his peculiar philo- 
 sophical education, and his spirit that longed after a systematic 
 connection of ideas, led him to an erudite and scientific develop- 
 
 kat ψυχὴν were interpolated by a later hand, with the intention of making Justin 
 orthodox on this point, because this more precise determination on the matter does not 
 occur any where else in Justin, and does not seem altogether in its place here. But, 
 to say the truth, the first reason cannot be a very striking proof; nor indeed, the 
 second either, in the case of a writer, whose works are like those of Justin. 
 
 1 Noyucoy To ὁλον. 2 Justin is the predecessor of Apollinaris. 
 
 3 De anima, c. 12. 4 De carne Christi, c. 11. et seq. 
 
ORIGEN’S EFFORTS FOR SYSTEMATIC DOCTRINES. 307 
 
 ment of this doctrine. The communion of believers with Christ 
 afforded him an analogy for the union of the Divine Logos with 
 the human nature in Christ. From the derived Divine life of 
 believers, which is to appropriate to itself and penetrate by degrees 
 more and more their whole human nature, even to the comple- 
 tion [of this process] at the general restoration, from this Origen 
 reverted to the original source of this Divine propagation of life 
 in man’s nature, which, in his view, was Christ as the God-man. 
 If, as St. Paul says, believers become one spirit with the Lord; 
 this has happened [according to the view of Origen] in a far 
 higher manner with that soul, which the Logos has received into 
 an indissoluble union with himself. According to the theory of 
 Origen, it is the original destination of the soul, to be wholly 
 spirit (νους); and to find its life only in communion with the 
 Logos. That which happened with other souls only in the 
 highest concerns of the inward life, namely, that they enter 
 wholly into communion with the Logos, and wholly forget them- 
 selves in the intuition of the Divine, this had become with that 
 soul something constant and uninterrupted, so that its whole life 
 had passed into the communion with the Logos, and it had be- 
 come itself entirely made Divine '. 
 
 As Origen, still further, in every man distinguished the πνεῦμα 
 from the ψυχη in the stricter sense of the word; soalso he applied 
 this distinction to the human nature of Christ. Christ [in his 
 view] represents the Ideal of human nature in the very circum- 
 stance, that all activity, ali conduct, and all suffering in him pro- 
 ceeded from, and was surrounded in, that supreme [source], 
 which was in his whole human nature the animating principle. “ As 
 the holy man,” says Origen, “ lives in the wvevua, as that from 
 which his whole life, every action, every prayer, and the praise of 
 God proceeds, thus he does all which he does, in the Spirit; yea, 
 when he suffers, he suffers also in the Spirit. If this be so in 
 the case with the holy man, how much more must we affirm this 
 of Jesus, the fore-runner of all holy men, with whom, when he 
 took upon him the whole of man’s nature, the πνευμα set all the 
 rest of his human qualities into movement’.” 
 
 1 ob povoy κοινωνιαι ἀλλ᾽ ἕνωσις Kat ἀνακρασις, της ἐκείνου θεοτητος κεκοινωνῆ- 
 κεναι, cic Θεον μεταβεβηκεναι. 
 
 2 T. 32. Joh. ο. xi. This is ἃ just doctrinal remark, but it is one which Origen, 
 with whom this often happens, when he inserts his own doctrinal distinctions of ideas 
 
 oe 
 
308 SYSTEM OF ORIGEN. 
 
 But as we observed, it was a chief point in the system of 
 Origen, that all in the world of Spirits must be limited and sub- 
 jected to conditions dependent on the differences of the moral 
 direction of the will. From this general law of the order of the 
 world he was able to allow of no exception in the case of 
 this supreme dignity, to which a soul attained. That soul, 
 through the faithful direction of its will towards the Divine Logos, 
 and by affection to him, through which it had always remained 
 united with him, had deserved that it should after such a manner 
 become altogether One with him’. Thus all here corresponds 
 with the destination conformable to his nature; the soul, which 
 the Logos received into personal union with himself, has obtained 
 the highest destination attainable by any Spirit, and it is there- 
 fore become the instrument, through which the communication of 
 Divine Life by inward communion with the Logos, shall extend 
 itself also to all other souls. And again it suits the nature of the 
 soul, that it should unite itself with a body, and become the inter- 
 mediate connecting principle between this and the Logos. 
 
 As Origen supposed a peculiar connection to exist between 
 every soul, and the body which serves it as an instrument—(con- 
 sidering that every soul does receive such a body, which corre- 
 sponds to its condition as derived from a former state, either an 
 instrument which will willingly lend itself to spiritual activity ; 
 or such an one, as will specially impede and oppose it)—thus he 
 applied this principle to the relation between that soul and the 
 body which was bestowed upon it as an instrument. The noblest 
 soul was to appear in the noblest body, which was the purest and 
 most free instrument of the Spirit. But this dignity of the body 
 of Christ’s was, like the glory of the Logos at his appearance here, 
 a hidden glory. Here also the earthly life of Christ is an image 
 of the spiritual activity of the Logos. As the Logos (see above) 
 reveals himself in different ways to men, according to their 
 different capabilities; thus Christ appeared to the greatest num- 
 
 into Scripture, wishes to support by a passage to which it is altogether foreign, if we 
 look at the meaning of the words: viz. Joh. xiii. 21. érapayOn Ty πνευματι. 
 
 1 περι ἄρχων, L. ii. c. 6. 6. Cels.; L. ii. c. 9. and c. 23; L. iii. c. 41. In Joh. 
 t. i. 33; τ, xix. 5.; where he says altogether after a Platonic fashion, ἡ ψυχὴ Tov 
 Ἴησου ἐμπολιτευομενὴ τῳ ὅλῳ κοσμῳ ἐκεινῳ---ἰῃ6. κοσμος νοητος, των ἰδεων being 
 synonymous with νους, or the λογος itself—Kar παντὰ αὐτὸν ἐμπεριερχομενὴ Kat 
 χειραγωγουσα ἐπ᾽ αὐτον rove μαθητευομενους. In Matth. 344, 423. H. 15. in 
 Jerem. f. 147. 
 
THE BODY OF CHRIST. 309 
 
 ber in the unattractive form of a servant, but to those who had 
 eyes to perceive it, he showed himself in an ennobled form. Thus 
 Origen was able to unite with his theory of the correspondence 
 between the soul and body of Christ, even the common repre- 
 sentation of the unattractiveness of the outward appearance of 
 Christ, in fact, to reconcile Ps. xliii, 2. [xlv. 2?] and Isaiah liii. 
 3; the passage on which that common representation was founded. 
 This glory of the body of Christ, which was usually hidden here 
 below, and only shone forth on particular occasions to those who 
 were worthy of it, was to come forth fully after his glorification, 
 the body was then to be freed from the imperfections of sense, 
 and be ennobled into an etherial nature, more analogous to the 
 spirit. This change would be entirely conformable to the nature 
 of matter, which in its own nature is wholly indefinite, and 
 capable of receiving different forms and qualities ἡ. 
 
 By means of Origen, who wrought out this doctrine so system- 
 atically, the idea of a proper reasonable soul in Christ received 
 a new dogmatical importance. ‘This point, which up to this time 
 had been altogether untouched in the controversy with the Patri- 
 passians, was now for the first time expressly brought forward in 
 the Synod held against Beryllus of Bostra, a.p. 244; and the 
 doctrine of a reasonable human soul in Christ settled as a doctrine 
 of the Church. But as Origen was the first who so completely 
 carried out the theory of this distinction, as he found in the spiri- 
 tual communion of believers with the Redeemer an analogy for 
 the union of that soul with the Logos in Christ, so he drew upon 
 himself from those, who maintained the old mode of conceiving 
 the matter, the reproach that he, like many Gnostics, made a dis- 
 tinction between a higher and a lower Christ, or between a Jesus 
 anda Christ; or that he made Jesus to be a mere man, who only 
 differed from other holy men by a higher degree of communion 
 with the Logos, that is, differed from them only in degree *. Thus, 
 we perceive also here the germ of a difference, which entered 
 into the following period of the Church. 
 
 As far as relates to the work of redemption itself, we find 
 already existing in this period all the fundamental elements of 
 
 1 See c. Cels. i. 32; iv. 15; vi. 75. et seq.; ii. 23; iii. 42. On the Ubiquity of the 
 glorified body of Christ, see in Matt. iv, Ed. de la Rue, p. 887. 
 
 2 See many of the passages cited and referred to, and the Apology of Pamphilus for 
 Origen, t. iv. p. 38. 
 
910 DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 the development of this doctrine as held in the Church; only, 
 however, not so precisely defined and not so sharply separated. 
 For the most part the Church-teachers spoke, without striving 
 after any very sharp distinction of doctrinal conceptions, out of 
 the fulness of the Christian feeling, and the Christian intuition, 
 which had accrued to them from the lively appropriation of the 
 doctrines of the Bible. ‘The Doctrine of Redemption has two 
 sides, a negative and a positive side, in relation to the condition 
 from which mankind was set free, and in relation to the new con- 
 dition into which it is to be placed—the assumption of man’s 
 nature with all the consequences of sin, which had hitherto pre- 
 vailed in it, and with the guilt which burdened it [thus making] 
 a communion with sinful humanity, weighed down with a con- 
 sciousness of its own guilt—and the perfection of an ideal holiness 
 (literally, of the Ideal of holiness], in this human nature, hitherto 
 under the dominion of sin, [thus effecting] a communication of a 
 Divine life to this nature and ennobling it. Both these important 
 points, although at first they were not so sharply separated from 
 each other, were to be especially maintained against Docetism 
 and similar Gnostic views, through which Christ was more or 
 less withdrawn from communion with the real and true nature of 
 man. Irenzeus brings forward especially the latter point of view 
 with great strength, although the first is not wholly wanting [in 
 him]. We will now present a connected view of his ideas on this 
 subject’: ‘Only the Word of the Father could reveal the 
 Father to us, and we could not learn from him unless the Teacher 
 himself had appeared to us. Man must accustom himself to re- 
 ceive God into himself, God is to accustom himself to dwell in 
 human nature. The Mediator between the two must restore the 
 communication between them, by means of his affinity to both, 
 and he must pass through every age of life, in order to sanctify 
 every age (7. 6. human nature according to all its several degrees 
 of development) [by means of ] the perfect likeness of God, which 
 is perfect holiness’. In an human nature, which was that very 
 
 1 [Literally, we will represent his ideas according to their inward connection. 
 Haw. Ἐ.1 
 
 2 ὁμοιωσις Tov Θεοῦ according to the views [J/iterally, the connection of ideas] of 
 this Father is different from the εἰκὼν τοὺ Θεοῦ, which latter expression denotes only 
 the frame-work [Anlage] for a likeness to God, which has its foundation in the reason 
 and in the free-will. [ N.B. In the text I have supplied the words ‘[ by means of ]’ which 
 
IRENEUS.—JUSTIN MARTYR. 31) 
 
 nature that was bound captive by sin, he condemned sin, and 
 banished it, as now being condemned, out of human nature, 
 Rom. viii. 3. but he required of man to become like him. Men 
 were the prisoners of evil, and of Satan, Christ gave himself up 
 for the redemption of the prisoners. Evil reigned over us, who 
 belonged to God, God redeemed us not with might, but in a man- 
 ner consistent with justice, as he redeemed those who were his’. 
 Ifhe had not, as man, conquered the adversary of man, the enemy 
 would not have been conquered in a right manner; and on the 
 other side, if he had not, as God, given this salvation, then we 
 should not have it ina secure manner. Andif man had not been 
 united with God, then he could not have participated in an in- 
 corruptible life’. ‘Through the obedience of one man, must 
 many be made righteous, and obtain salvation, for eternal life is 
 the fruit of righteousness. What that means, that man is created 
 after the image of God, was hitherto not revealed *, for the Logos 
 was still invisible; and therefore, man easily lost even the like- 
 ness to God. But when the Logos became man, he sealed both. 
 He revealed truly the image, while himself was that which his 
 image was, and he represented in a secure manner the likeness of 
 man to God, while he made man like the invisible God*.” ‘The 
 other side is brought forward by Justin Martyr, when he says’, 
 
 seem to be necessary, from Irenzus, lib. ii. c. 22. Ed. Massuet. (39, in other editions) 
 which appears to me the passage referred to here. H. J. R.] 
 
 1 This thought often occurs in the Church-teachers [the Fathers ?] under different 
 forms. The just notion, which is the foundation of it, is this, that redemption is no act 
 of caprice ; but a method consonant to law and order, and answering the conditions 
 required by the moral order of the world, a method, by which God freed the beings, 
 who belonged to him by their original nature, from the dominion and consequences of 
 evil, and led them back to himself. 
 
 * 2 The communication of a Divine Life to man through Christ, the ἕνωσις πρὸς 
 ἀφθαρσιαν. 
 
 3 Two ideas are here to be taken together, which were already in existence in 
 Philo, that man, as the image of God, had been created after the image of the Logos, 
 and that God had already had for his aim as the original form of human nature, the 
 Ideal of the whole nature of man, represented in the person of the God-man, Limus 
 ille jam tum imaginem induens Christi futuri in carne, non tantum Dei opus, sed et 
 pignus filii, qui homo futurus certior et verior. Tertull. de carne Christi, c. 6. adv. 
 Praxeam, c. 12. 
 
 4 See Iren. lib. iii. c. 20. Massuet. (al. 22.) lib. iii. 18. (20.) 31; v. 16. [I have 
 not been able to verify and compare all these quotations, and I think there is some 
 error in the references. H. J. R.| 
 
 5 Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. ο. 30. p. 322. Ed. Col. 
 
312 JUSTIN MARTYR.—ORIGEN. 
 
 ‘¢ The law pronounced the curse upon all men, because no man 
 can fulfil it in its whole extent, Deut. xxvii. 26; Christ freed us 
 from this curse, by bearing it for us.” The author of the Letter 
 to Diognetus joins the two together: “ God, the Lord and 
 Creator of the universe, is not only full of love to man, but also 
 full of long-suffering. He was, and always is such a one, and 
 always will be such a one, the benevolent, the angerless and the 
 true, the only good! He made a great and inexpressible resolu- 
 tion, which he communicated only to his Son. As long as he 
 kept this resolution, as a secret one, to himself, so long he 
 appeared to have no care for us. During the time past, he suffered 
 us to follow our own lusts, as we chose, not as if in general he had 
 any pleasure in our sins, but in order that we, after we had proved 
 ourselves during that time through our own works unworthy of 
 life, might now become worthy through the grace of God, and in 
 order that we, after we had revealed our own inability to enter 
 into the kingdom of God, might become capable of that through 
 the power of God. But when the measure of our sins had become 
 full, and it had been fully revealed, that punishment and death 
 were before us as our recompense, he hated us not, but he proved 
 his long-suffering. He himself took our sins upon him, he him- 
 self gave his own Son as the ransom-price for us, the Holy one for 
 sins, for what else could our sins discover, but his righteousness ?” 
 
 Now Origen, according to the exposition of his views, given 
 above, considered that the highest object of the appearance and 
 operations of Christ on earth, was the following: to set forth the 
 Divine operation of the Logos, limited neither by time nor space, 
 for the healing and purification of the fallen beings, in order that 
 sensuous men, who were unable to lift themselves up to the 
 intuitive perception of the everlasting spiritual operation of the 
 Logos, might be able to raise themselves to [the consideration 
 of his] spiritual nature from his appearance in the flesh'; but 
 according to his theory, the individual actions of Christ, besides 
 this object of setting forth [these truths] have also, considered in 
 themselves, a special and salutary operation. And thus, also, 
 about the relation of the passion of Christ to sin, he might ex- 
 press that, which was acknowledged in the common consciousness 
 
 1 [ Literally, “ from the sensuous appearance to the spiritual Being,’ von der sinn- 
 
 lichen Erscheinung zum geistigen Wesen. This appears ambiguous. I have therefore 
 supplied what is requisite in English. H. J. R.] 
 
CONNECTION BETWEEN REDEMPTION AND SANCTIFICATION. 313 
 
 of Christians, although he might point it out in a manner pecu- 
 liar to himself. 
 
 Thus, he says’, “" He took upon himself our transgressions, and 
 bore our diseases, the transgressions of the soul, and the diseases 
 of the inner man; on account of which transgressions and diseases 
 which he bore away from us, he said his soul was troubled and dis- 
 turbed ;” and in another place he says’, ‘ This man, the purest 
 among all creatures, died for mankind; he, who took our sins and 
 diseases upon himself, as he was able to take upon himself and 
 abolish the sins of the whole world. His passion was the means of 
 purification for the whole world, which would have gone to de- 
 struction if he had not died for it.” 
 
 As far as relates to the particular opinion of Origen, he thought, 
 that according to secret causes in the nature of things, the suffer- 
 ing of a holy Being for the guilty had a sort of magic power, in 
 crippling the power of evil spirits, and freeing fie former [the 
 guilty] from the evils that impended over them, and he appealed 
 to the belief existing even among the heathen, that innocent 
 individuals by a voluntary sacrifice of themselves had saved 
 nations and cities from heavy calamities *. 
 
 As the whole nature of Christian life depends upon a living 
 appropriation of the redemption through Christ, as all depends 
 upon this, viz. that Christ should through faith become in man 
 all in all, a life-giving and a forming principle for his whole 
 nature; as therefore in Holy Scripture, the whole life of the 
 Christian is set forth as a fruit of faith, a superstructure raised 
 upon the foundation of faith in Christ, as the whole of practical 
 Christianity is nothing else than faith working by love, so every 
 thing required for the genuine conception of practical Christ- 
 ianity, both in theory and in Life, depended on this circum- 
 stance, that the right relation of Life to the appropriation of the 
 work of redemption in faith should be set forth in a clear manner. 
 It had, for the essential nature of Christian doctrines, and for the 
 true power of Christian morals, and thereby, at least in its con- 
 sequences, for the Christian life itself, the most prejudicial con- 
 
 1 In Joh. tom. ii. ο. 21. 2 Joh. tom, 28. c. 14. 
 
 3 See Origen, in Joh. t. vi. c. 34; t. 28. c. 14. Origen was certainly right in one 
 respect; that is, instead of deducing for himself a system of religious truth ἃ prioré 
 from abstract conceptions, he inquired after the voice of the universal religious con- 
 
 science of man, and quoted this as a witness for the Christian doctrine, although he did 
 not understand this testimony rightly in one of its bearings [Jiterally, on one side}. 
 
314 CLEMENT OF ROME. 
 
 sequences, when this intimate connection between the objective 
 and subjective in Christianity was not rightly brought forward. 
 It is therefore of great consequence, that, while we observe, how 
 that intimate connection was bestowed upon the original con- 
 dition of the Christian conscience, we should also recognise the 
 seed of the errors of later times, adhering to this connection, and 
 troubling this conscience. ‘The whole mode of conception of the 
 doctrine of redemption in this period, pledges for the recognition 
 of this intimate connection. Men recognised Christ as him who 
 had communicated an inward Divine Life! to human nature; 
 through faith in Christ this Divine Life was to be received by 
 man into himself, and to be appropriated to himself, and his whole 
 nature to be constantly more penetrated by it.—(It is only un- 
 fortunate, that men bound this belief up too much with the out- 
 ward things, which Christ, in consideration of the necessities of 
 the mixed nature * of man, had appointed as tokens to represent 
 the Invisible and the Divine, which faith apprehends, and it is 
 unfortunate also that men did not sufficiently separate from each 
 other the operations of faith, and of those outward things.)— 
 Men acknowledged Christ as the destroyer of the kingdom of 
 Satan, and they assigned all evil to this kingdom, and through 
 communion with Christ, by means of faith every one also was to 
 appropriate to himself the victory of Christ over the kingdom 
 of Satan; the Christian must therefore (see above), from a 
 miles Satane, become a miles Christi. The idea, also, of the 
 general calling of all Christians to a priesthood, has its root 
 here. 
 
 We might here bring forward separate living [contemporary ] 
 witnesses to the original Christian conviction and conscious- 
 ness of the intimate connection between redemption and sancti- 
 fication, Faith and Life. A man, of whom it cannot be said, 
 that he distinguished himself by any peculiar power of mind in 
 the elaboration of Christian doctrine, viz. Clement, the bishop of 
 Rome, after he had strongly expressed that no man could be 
 justified by his own righteousness and his own works, but 
 that all could be justified only through the grace of God and 
 faith, says, ““ And what shall we do then, Brethren? Shall we 
 
 1 The ἀφθαρσια, about which see above. 
 
 2 (Literally, ‘the spiritually-sensuous nature,’ ἑν e. a nature consisting partly of 
 spiritual, partly of sensuous elements. H, J. R.] 
 
IRENXUS. 315 
 
 be slack in doing good, and neglect love? The Lord would in 
 no wise suffer this to happen with us, but he induces us to 
 endeavour to fulfil all goodness with unabating zeal, for the 
 Creator and Lord of all delights himself in his works’.” The 
 author of the Epistle to Diognetus, after the beautiful passage 
 quoted above [vol. i. p. 61], says of the redemption : ‘* With what 
 delight wilt thou be filled, when thou recognisest this; or how 
 wilt thou love him, who hath first loved thee so much? But if 
 thou lovest him, thou wilt be a follower of his goodness.” Irenzeus 
 thus contrasts the free-obedience that flows from faith with the 
 servile obedience under the Law: ‘The Law given to servants 
 formed the soul through that which is outward and sensuous, by 
 attracting it to obedience to the commandments, as it were by 
 ΠΟΙ ΠΗ τ τις but the Word, that makes free, taught a free purifi- 
 cation of the soul, and through that of the body. After this had 
 happened, it was necessary that the chains of slavery, to which 
 man had become accustomed, should be taken away, and he must 
 follow God without chains. The requirements therefore of liberty 
 must be extended more widely *, and obedience towards the king 
 must become greater, that no one may turn back and appear 
 unworthy of his liberator...... for God hath not set us free, in 
 order that we may run away from him, as no one, who severs 
 himself from the source of all goodness in the Lord, can find the 
 nourish of salvation for himself, but in order that we should love 
 him the more; because we had obtained more...... To follow 
 the Saviour, is to partake of salvation; and to follow the Light, 
 is to partake of the Light *.” 
 
 It cannot, however, be denied that the genuine Pauline notion 
 of faith was soon obscured. In the stead of faith, in that peculiarly 
 Christian sense (viz. the living appropriation of that, which 
 Christ has effected for human nature, as a fact of the inward Life, 
 by means of which something altogether different results from 
 that [Life],) men placed the notion of a mere _belief-upon- 
 authority, which could only mediately introduce a new direction 
 of Life, but could not immediately produce it. And from this 
 
 1 See Ep. i. ad Corinth. ὃ 32. and 33. 
 
 2 [That is (see the context in the original), the law of freedom must even require 
 more of man than that of servitude, 6. g. where the latter forbids murder, the former 
 must prohibit even malice, ἅς. Η. J. R.] 
 
 3 Lib. iv. c. 13, 14. [In the last sentence Massuet reads percipere lumen, instead of 
 participare lumen. H. J. R.] 
 
916 JUDAIZING VIEWS OF FAITH. 
 
 error, the second necessarily followed, that men, instead of con- 
 sidering all good as the necessary revelation of the new Divine 
 Life planted with faith, spoke of good works which were to be 
 added to faith, and that they added to that belief-upon-authority, 
 the doctrine of a moral law that incited man to good; both of 
 these being more Jewish than Christian. Here, also, as well as 
 in the history of the formation of the Church, and of Christian 
 worship, a great source of the corruption of Christianity appears 
 in the intermixture of the Jewish and the Christian position, and 
 the Apostle Paul cries out to all ages, “Ye have received it 
 in the spirit, will ye fulfil it in the flesh?” . 
 
 The Gnostics, and in part, the Alexandrians had that false 
 notion of faith before them, when they overprized Gnosis in 
 respect to it. Marcion (see above) appears here clearly and 
 deeply to have conceived the Pauline idea of faith, and on this 
 side, not without reason, to have fought against the intermixture 
 of Jewish and Christian things; we may here cite the heretic as 
 a witness for Catholic truth. 
 
 The idea, indeed, of that Divine communion of Life with 
 Christ, as is clear from what has been said above, was a funda- 
 mental idea of the whole Church system of doctrine; but the 
 right point of view was thrown into the back-ground by the cir- 
 cumstance, that men were accustomed to annex this Divine com- 
 munion of Life, not to the inward facts of faith, but to the out- 
 ward things, which were meant to be for faith, only the outward 
 tokens of that which was present in the inward Life—a confusion 
 between the Inward and the Outward, of which we have already 
 had occasion to speak several times. 
 
 This shows itself particulariy in the doctrine about the Church 
 and the Sacraments. 
 
 In the doctrine concerning the Church, we have nothing to add 
 to that which we have said in the history of the formation of the 
 Church; we have already there pointed out the origin of the 
 confusion of the ideas and the predicates of the invisible and the 
 visible Church, and its prejudicial practical consequences. But 
 in regard to the doctrine of the Sacraments, as standing in close 
 connection with the history of the doctrine of the Church, we 
 have still much to add to that which we have already said in the 
 history of the Christian worship. 
 
 The source of the interchange between the Inward and the 
 
DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH—BAPTISM,. 317 
 
 Outward! was here the same as in the case of the doctrine con- 
 cerning the Church. Of that, which is the Divine matter in the 
 Sacrament, the teachers of the Church had a lively perception 
 from their own Christian experience; but the relation of this 
 Divine matter to the outward token was not so clear to them, and 
 with most of them the Spiritual and the Sensuous easily glided 
 into each other. 
 
 At first, as far as Baptism is concerned, the predominant idea 
 with most of them was this—the idea of a spiritual and sensuous 
 communion with the whole Christ, for the salvation of the whole 
 spiritual and sensuous nature of man. ‘ Asout of the dry wheat,” 
 says Irenzeus, ‘‘ neither one mass of dough, nor one mass of bread 
 could be made without moisture, so neither could we all become 
 One in Christ without the water, which is from heaven. And as 
 the dry earth brings forth no fruit, if it receives no moisture; so 
 neither could we, who are at first dry wood, ever bring forth 
 the fruit of Life, without the rain, which sheds itself freely from 
 heaven, for our bodies by Baptism, but our souls through the 
 Spirit, have received that communion with the incorruptible 
 Being’. ‘Tertullian says, beautifully, in respect to the operation 
 of Baptism*, ““ ΤΕ the soul comes to faith, and is formed again by 
 regeneration from the water and the power from above, there she 
 beholds, after the scales of the old corruption are removed, her 
 whole light. She is received into the communion of the Holy 
 Spirit, and the soul which unites itself with the Holy Spirit, is 
 followed by the body, which is no longer the servant of the soul, 
 but the servant of the Spirit.” But even Tertullian here 
 was unable rightly to distinguish between the Inward and the 
 Outward. While he defends the necessity of outward Baptism 
 against the sect of Caians (see Sect. II.), he ascribes to the 
 water a supernatural sanctifying power. And yet, even in the 
 case of Tertullian, we see the pure evangelical idea making its 
 way through the midst of this confusion of the Inward and the 
 Outward, and standing forth in contradiction to it—when he says, 
 
 1 See the section relating to the Sacraments in the history of the Cultus (or worship), 
 
 Section IT. 
 
 2 Tren. iii. 17. The Divine principle of Life, for soul and body in Christ, the ἕνωσις 
 προς ἀφθαρσιαν. 
 
 3. De Anima, c. 41. Compare the passage above cited on the corruption of human 
 
 nature, 
 
918 BAPTISM. 
 
 that Faith receives the forgiveness of sin in Baptism, and when 
 he says, while combating against haste in Baptism, that, where a 
 right faith is present, that faith is sure of salvation’. 
 
 We have observed already in the history of the Christian 
 worship [Cultus], the practically injurious consequences of that 
 confusion between the Inward and the Outward in Baptism. 
 While by a confusion between baptism and regeneration, re- 
 generation was considered as a magical thing completed at once, 
 and while a magical purification and abolition of sin was supposed 
 to take place at Baptism, it became usual to refer the forgiveness 
 of sins obtained through Christ, only especially to sins committed 
 before baptism, instead of maintaining, as they ought to have 
 done, that, as that which is objective in baptism retains its power 
 during the whole life of man; so also, the subjective appropri- 
 ation of it, by means of penitence and faith, must, as well as re- 
 generation, continue to develope itself more and more through the 
 whole life, until the Objective, and the Subjective, justification 
 and sanctification have become wholly blended into each other 
 (which does not happen in our life below). But according to 
 that false conception, since it could not fail to be remarked 
 that even in Christians the old corrupt nature preserved its power, 
 the question would necessarily arise: Whence do we obtain for- 
 giveness of sins committed after baptism ? And the answer was: 
 ‘ Since we have once for all obtained a satisfaction for the sins 
 committed before baptism, in the merit of Christ, so in order to 
 obtain satisfaction for those after baptism, voluntary penances 
 [exercises of repentance], and good works must be added’.” 
 This point of view is clearly presented to us in the following 
 
 words of Cyprian’, ‘‘ When tie Lord came and healed the wounds 
 
 1 Fides integra secura de salute. 
 
 2 See Tertullian’s Book de Pcenitentia. This writer introduced the expression, 
 satisfactio, into the doctrine of repentance from his system of jurisprudence; but we 
 must not on that account ascribe so great an influence in the formation of the Church 
 doctrinal notions on this point, to his mode of representing the doctrine derived from 
 his jurisprudence—nor indeed, generally ought we [to ascribe so great influence] 
 to the idea of any individual—for when once the zowrov Wevdoc was in existence, 
 all the consequences contained in it would necessarily, of their own accord, develope 
 themselves ; and more especially, as these consequences find so many points in human 
 nature, on which to attach themselves. 
 
 3 De Opere et Eleemosynis. {This passage is found, though not quite continuously, 
 in the first two pages of the Treatise. To judge, however, quite accurately of the 
 force of this passage we must compare it with the context. H. J. R.] 
 
 7 
 
DOCTRINE OF THE LORD’S SUPPER. 919 
 
 of Adam, he gave to the convalescent a law, and he commanded 
 him to sin no more, lest something worse should befal him. By 
 the condition of innocence being prescribed to us, we were limited 
 to a narrow range; and the infirmity of human weakness knew 
 not what it should do, if the grace of God had not come again to 
 its assistance, and showing to it the works of mercy, had opened 
 to ita way for the preservation of its health, so that we might 
 hereafter cleanse ourselves by alms from all the uncleanness 
 that afterwards cleaved to us. Since the forgiveness of sins has 
 once been bestowed in baptism; so also, by the constant per- 
 formance of good, which is like the renovation of baptism, man 
 obtains anew for himself the Divine forgiveness.” 
 
 With regard to the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, upon the 
 whole, the same remark may be made, as those made above upon 
 the doctrine of Baptism, only with the difference, that here, in 
 reference to the relation between the thing represented and the 
 outward sign, three different gradations may be observed in the 
 representations made of it. ‘The most predominant representation 
 was that, which we find as early as the time of Ignatius of An- 
 tioch, as well as in Justin M., and in Irenzeus; namely, that of a 
 supernatural penetration of the bread and wine, by the body and 
 blood of Christ, in virtue of which, those who partook of the 
 Lord’s Supper were penetrated by the Divine principle-of-life of 
 Christ in their whole nature, so that their body even then, became 
 thereby even now, a partaker of the power of an imperishable 
 life, and hence was prepared for the resurrection’. In the North- 
 African Church, on the contrary, in Tertullian and Cyprian we 
 find no representation at all implying such a penetration. Bread 
 and wine are represented rather as the symbols of the body and 
 blood of Christ, but not as symbols without efficacy ; a spiritual 
 communion with Christ in the holy Supper of the Lord is brought 
 forward, and at the same time a certain sanctifying association 
 with the body of Christ is also supposed’. The practice also of the 
 North-African Church proves that the belief in a supernatural 
 sanctifying power in the outward tokens of the Holy Supper 
 
 1 Therefore in Ignatius, Ep. ad Ephes. c. 20. the Holy Supper is called, φαρμακον 
 ἀθανασιας, ἀντιδοτον του μη ἀποθανειν, ἀλλα ζῃν ἐν Inoov Χριστῳ διαπαντος. 
 
 2 Tertull. c. Marcion. iv. 40. corpus meum, i. e, figura corporis mei. De Res. Carn. 
 c. 8. anima de Deo saginatur. De orat.c.6. The perpetuitas in Christo, is a constant 
 spiritual communion with him, and individuitas a corpore ejus. 
 
320 DOCTRINE OF THE LORD’S SUPPER. 
 
 prevailed in it, and hence came the daily communion’, and hence 
 also, together with infant-baptism, came infant communion’. While 
 Joh. vi. 53 was improperly understood, of the outward [sinnlich, 
 corporeal, or sensuous] participation in the Holy Supper, it was 
 concluded that no one could attain to salvation without such a 
 participation in it*, just as it had been concluded from a mis- 
 understanding of Joh. iii. 5, that no one could be saved without 
 outward baptism. 
 
 Among the Alexandrians, and especially in Origen, the distine- 
 tion is brought forward, even in his doctrine about the Sacraments, 
 as well as in his whole system of doctrine, between the inward 
 Divine thing, the invisible spiritual operation of the Logos*, and 
 the sensuous sign * which represents it. “ὁ Just as the miracles 
 of Christ,” says Origen, ‘as far as their highest object is con- 
 cerned, represent the healing power of the Logos, which operates 
 invisibly, but also at the same time an utility was annexed to the 
 outward deeds as such, because they led men to believe; so also, 
 is outward baptism, in regard to its highest object, a symbol of 
 the inward purification of the soul through the Divine power of 
 the Logos, which is the preparation for the general restoration ; 
 by the beginning of that in enigmas, and in a mirror, which 
 will be perfected face to face; but at the same time, in virtue 
 of the words of consecration then uttered, there is united with 
 the whole transaction of baptism, a supernatural healing; it is 
 the beginning of the operations of grace, which are bestowed 
 upon believers; but nevertheless, this is only for those who 
 through their disposition of heart are capable of receiving such 
 operations °.” 
 
 The same distinction he also makes in respect to the Lord’s 
 Supper. He distinguishes between that which in a metaphorical 
 sense is called the body of Christ’, and the true spiritual eating 
 of the Logos*; between the more Divine promise and the more 
 common understanding of the Lord’s Supper, as it was suited to 
 
 See above Vol. i. p. 387. 2 See Cyprian, Sermo de Lapsis. 
 
 See Cyprian, lib. 111, testimon. c. 25. 
 
 Compare what is said above of the ἐπιδημία aisOnrn, and the ἐπιδημία vonrn. 
 The vonroy, or πνευματικον, and the αἰσθητον. 
 
 See in Joh. vi. c. 17. and Matth. xv. ο. 23. 
 
 To σωμα Χριστου τυπικον και συμβολικον. 
 
 The ἀληθινὴ βρωσις του Λογου. 
 
 sN Oo nN 6 BD “μὲ 
 
DOCTRINE AS TO THE LORD’S SUPPER. 321 
 
 the more simple’. The first bears reference to the spiritual 
 participation in the Logos that became flesh, who is the true 
 heavenly bread of the soul. The outward supper of the Lord 
 can be enjoyed by the unworthy and the worthy, but not that 
 true heavenly bread, for it could not otherwise have been said, 
 that he who eats that bread will live eternally. Origen there- 
 fore says, that Christ in the true sense has designated as his 
 flesh and blood the word which proceeds from the Word, and the 
 bread from the heavenly bread, the living word of truth, through 
 which he communicates himself to the soul, just as the breaking 
 of the bread and the division of the wine is a symbol of the mul- 
 tiplication of the word, through which the Logos communicates 
 itself to the soul. Even in the outward supper of the Lord, as 
 well as in the outward baptism, he supposes a higher sanctifying 
 efficacy in virtue of the words of consecration then uttered, but 
 in such a manner that with the earthly elements considered by 
 themselves nothing Divine can unite itself; and, as in baptism, 
 no one without the inward capability of heart can become par- 
 taker of this higher efficacy. As it is not that, which enters into 
 the mouth, that can defile a man, although it might be held to 
 be unclean by the Jews, so also nothing, which enters into the 
 mouth, sanctifies the man, although by the simple the bread of 
 the Lord, as it is called, is held to be something that sanctifies. 
 Nor indeed, considered by itself, is any thing wanting to us by 
 the not eating the bread consecrated by prayer, and yet by the 
 mere eating it, considered by itself, we have somewhat more ; 
 but the cause of our receiving less is the evil heart of each indi- 
 vidual [partaker], and the cause of his receiving more is his good 
 heart and disposition. The earthly bread, in itself, is nothing 
 different from all other food. Origen was, however, desirous 
 only of contradicting in particular the fanciful notions of some 
 magical advantage in the Lord’s Supper, independent on the 
 heart of the recipient, which also the other Church-teachers were 
 far from maintaining; and yet his contradiction touches every 
 representation which supposes any higher signification and efficacy 
 whatever of the outward token, even such an one as that which 
 was received in the North African Church ’. 
 
 1 The coworepa περι τῆς εὐχαριστιας ἐκδοχὴ τοις ἁπλουστέροις, and that Kara 
 τὴν θειοτεραν ἐπαγγελίαν, which correspond to the two conditionsof γνωσις and πίστις. 
 
 2 The passages in Origen are found in t. xi. Matt. c. 14; t. 32. Joh. c. 16. In 
 Matt. 898. v. iii. Opp. 
 
 VOL, II. Y 
 
322 THE END OF THE WORLD. 
 
 As the Old Testament contains a forecast of the things of the 
 New, so Christianity also gives hints of a higher condition of 
 things, which is to be prepared by means of Christianity itself; 
 but faith must necessarily be inferior to actual knowledge and 
 perception of that condition. ‘The Divine revelations permit us 
 only to catch some isolated glimpses of that higher state of 
 things, which do not present a complete picture of it. As prophecy 
 is always obscure before its fulfilment, so also the last propaecies 
 of Christ about the fate of his Church must be obscure, until the 
 introduction of that higher condition of the world. Although so 
 many indications were made by our Saviour as to the gradual 
 activity and efficacy of Christianity in penetrating human nature, 
 yet these could not be understood by the first Christians. They 
 had no presentiment of the different kinds of contests, which the 
 Church had yet to encounter, before it could attain to its victorious 
 completion. ‘They were accustomed to consider the Church only 
 in its opposition to the heathen state, and it was far from entering 
 their thoughts, that by the natural development of circumstances 
 under the guidance of Providence, this opposition should here- 
 after cease. They believed that the struggle of the Christian 
 Church with the Heathen state would continue on, until the 
 victory should be conceded to it through the immediate inter- 
 position of God, and through the return of Christ. It was 
 - natural enough that the Christians should willingly employ their 
 thoughts on the prospect of this victory, during the seasons of 
 persecution. It was thus that many formed a picture to them- 
 selves, which had come to them from the Jews, and which 
 suited with their then condition. This was the idea of a mil- 
 lennial reign, which the Messiah should establish on earth as 
 the close of the whole career of the world, during which all 
 the saints of all ages were to live together in holy communion 
 with each other. As the world was created in six days, and 
 according to Ps. xc. 4, a thousand years in the sight of God is 
 but as one day, so the world was supposed to endure six thousand 
 years in its present condition; and as the Sabbath-day was the 
 day of rest, so this millennial reign was to form the seventh thou- 
 sand-year period of the world’s existence as the close of the 
 whole temporal dispensation connected with the world. In the 
 midst of persecution it was an attractive thought for the Chris- 
 tians to look to a period when their Chureh, purified and per- 
 
CHILIASM.—PAPIAS. 323 
 
 feeted, should be triumphant even on earth, the theatre of their 
 present sufferings. In the manner in which this notion was con- 
 ceived by many there was nothing unchristian in it. They 
 imagined the happiness of this period in a spiritual manner, and 
 one that corresponded well with the real nature of Christianity ; 
 for they conceived under that notion only the general dominion 
 of God’s will, the undisturbed and blessed’ union and intercourse 
 of the whole communion of saints, and the restoration of harmony 
 between man as sanctified, and all nature as refined and enno- 
 bled *. But the gross images, which the carnal sense of the Jews had 
 made to itself of the delights of the millennial reign, were trans- 
 ferred in part also to the Christians. Phrygia, the dwelling-place 
 of a spirit’, which took a fanciful turn, and would embody religi- 
 ous ideas in sensuous images, was also inclined te the propagation 
 of this gross Chiliasm. In that region, in the first half of the second 
 century, Papias was living, as the Bishop of the Church at Hiero- 
 polis, a man of plain piety, but, as the fragments of his writings 
 and historical notices tend to prove, of a very limited mind, and 
 a very uncritical credulity. He collected together, out of oral 
 traditions, certain notices about the lives and sayings of Christ 
 and the Apostles*; and among these he received much which was 
 misunderstood and false, and thus he was the means of propagat- 
 ing many unfounded notions about the enjoyments of the millen- 
 nial reign. ‘The injurious consequence of this was, that a relish 
 for sensual enjoyment, which was in contradiction to the Gospel, 
 was furthered, and that much prejudice against Christianity might 
 be engendered by it among educated and civilized heathens*. 
 
 In the mean time we must also be very careful not to pro- 
 nounce sentence about the Divine life itself from such isolated 
 representations, which are, perhaps, nothing but isolated admix- 
 tures of the carnal and sensuous mind, not thoroughly penetrated 
 and ennobled by the hidden Divine life. If we find in an Ire- 
 nus vital Christianity, and an elevated idea of blessedness, which 
 he made to consist in communion with God, notwithstanding the 
 accompaniment of those rash and speculative representations, we 
 must conclude that such sensuous representations might very 
 
 1 -So Barnabas, c. 15. 
 
 2 (Lit. ‘ of a religious-sensuous fanciful spirit τ᾿ where fanciful is used for indulgence 
 in the dreams of an uncurbed imagination—Schwdrmerische. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 In his book entitled Aoywy κυριακων ἐξηγησεις. 
 * See Orig. Select. in Ψ. p. 570. vol. ii. 
 
 y2 
 
994 ANTI-CHILIASTIC SPIRIT. 
 
 well exist in conjunction with, and be engrafted upon, an essen- 
 tially Christian habit of thought in those times, when the new 
 creation of Christianity had not yet been able thoroughly to 
 penetrate and imbue all things. With Irenzeus the millennial 
 kingdom was only a stage of preparation for the saints, who were 
 thus to be adapted gradually to a higher state of heavenly exist- 
 ence, and to the perfect revelation of the Divine glory’. It was 
 also exactly under this form that Christianity might be able to 
 find access to a class of sensuous men, whose habits of religious 
 thought would afterwards gradually continue to be more and more 
 spiritualized, by the practical influence of the Gospel, and the 
 inward change constantly produce in them its outward effects. 
 
 If we find, that Millenarianism [Chiliasmus] was then exten- 
 sively propagated, and are able to explain this by the circum- 
 stances of that period; yet, we are not to understand by this, that 
 it ever belonged to the universal doctrines of the Church. We 
 have too scanty documents from different parts of the Church in 
 those times, to be able to speak with certainty and distinctness 
 on that point. When we find Chiliasm in Papias, Irenzeus, J. 
 Martyr, all this indicates that it arose from one source, and was 
 propagated from one spot. The case is somewhat different with 
 those Churches which had—as for instance, the Romish Church 
 (see above)—an Anti-Jewish origin. We find, afterwards an Anti- 
 Millenarian feeling in Rome; and might not this feeling have 
 existed from the very first, and only been called into greater 
 publicity in the opposition which was made against Montanism ? 
 The same may also be said of an Anti-Millenarian feeling, which 
 Irenzeus combats, and which he expressly distinguishes from the 
 common Anti-Millenarian feelings of Gnosticism. But it was 
 natural enough that the zealots for Millenarianism should at first be 
 willing to represent every opposition to it as a Gnostic feeling ’. 
 
 Two causes co-operated together in causing a more general 
 repression of Millenarianism; on the one hand, the opposition to 
 Montanism, and on the other, the influence of the spirit, which 
 proceeded from the Alexandrian school. As the Montanists laid 
 much stress on Millenarian expectations, and, although they did 
 
 1 Tren. v. 35. Crescentes ex visione Domini, et per ipsum assuescent capere gloriam 
 Dei et cum sanctis Angelis conversationem Paullatim assuescent capere Deum, 
 cap. 32. 
 
 2 Iren. v. 32, Transferuntur quorundam sententiz ab hereticis sermonibus. 
 
SENSUOUS CHILIASM IN EGYPT. 325 
 
 not entirely conceive them after a gross and sensuous manner’, 
 still propagated in accordance with their fanciful dreams, 
 many extravagant representations’ of what should take place 
 during the millennium, the whole doctrine of Chiliasm lost all 
 respect and authority. An anti-Millenarian party, which had 
 been in existence considerably earlier, obtained an opportunity 
 by this means of attacking Chiliasm more violently; and the 
 most vehement opponents of Montanism appear to have com- 
 bated Millenarianism as one of the Montanistic doctrines. The 
 Presbyter Caius, at Rome, in his treatise against the Montanist 
 Proclus, endeavoured to brand Chiliasm as an heretical doctrine, 
 propagated by the abominable Gnostic, Cerinthus; and it is not 
 improbable, although not quite certain, that he declared the Apo- 
 calypse to be a book forged by Cerinthus for the promotion of 
 that doctrine. 
 
 The more spiritual and more learned character of the Alexan- 
 drian school, which had so great a general influence on the 
 spiritualization of the doctrines of our faith, would also tend to 
 further the spiritualization of the ideas about the kingdom of God 
 and Christ. Origen was a peculiarly zealous opponent of the 
 sensuous representations of the millennial kingdom, and endea- 
 voured to give a different meaning to the passages of the Old and 
 of the New Testament, on which the Chiliasts relied, and in which 
 they understood every thing quite literally. And besides this, 
 the allegorical interpretation of Scripture in vogue among the 
 Alexandrian school, was in general very widely opposed to the 
 literal and sensuous interpretation of the Chiliasts. The more 
 moderate Alexandrians, who were not inclined to extreme opinions 
 in criticism, did not reject the Apocalypse at once, as altogether 
 an unchristian book, in order to take away this support from 
 the Chiliasts; but they only combated the literal interpretation 
 of it. At the same time, it was natural that the spirit of the 
 Alexandrian school should not extend itself very easily from 
 Alexandria into the other regions of Egypt, which were so far 
 behind this flourishing seat of learning, as to spiritual advance- 
 ment and culture. <A pious bishop of the Arsenoite Nomos, 
 
 1 Tertullian at least places the happiness of the millenarian kingdom in the enjoy~ 
 ment of all spiritual goods—-spiritalia bona. 
 
 2 Such as that in Tertullian, of the wonderful city, the heavenly Jerusalem which 
 was to descend from Heaven. 
 
920 NEPOS. 
 
 in Egypt, named Nepos, was a zealous partisan of the sensuous 
 Millenarianism, and he wrote a defence of it against the Alex- 
 andrian school, under the title, ‘a Refutation of the Allegorists’ 
 (ἐλεγχος των ἀλληγοριστων)ὴ;» in which he appears to have thrown 
 out a theory of Chiliasm, according to his own anti-allegorical 
 mode of deciphering the Apocalypse. This book appears to have 
 been very popular among the clergy and laity of this region, as it 
 usually happens that men are better pleased to apply themselves 
 to things which busy and charm the powers of the imagination, 
 than to those, which sanctify, warm, and animate the heart, and 
 take the will into their government. They expected to find here 
 great mysteries, and explanations relative to the future, and many 
 occupied themselves more with the book and theory of Nepos, 
 than with the Bible and its doctrines. As it usually happens, by 
 their zeal for such favourite opinions, which had no connection 
 with the true nature of the Gospel, men became led away very 
 far from that which is the chief business of practical Chris- 
 tianity; that is, the Spirit of Love. ‘Those who would not enter 
 into these opinions, were denounced as heretics, and things went 
 so far, that whole regions separated themselves from communion 
 with the mother church of Alexandria. After the death of Nepos, 
 Korakion, the pastor of a country place stood at the head of this 
 party. If Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, had now chosen 
 to exert his ecclesiastical authority, and condemned these erro- 
 neous doctrines by an authoritative decree, the seed of a lasting 
 schism would have been sown, and the Chiliasm, which they 
 hoped to subdue by decrees, would probably have become only 
 more wild and fanatical in consequence of such a proceeding. 
 But Dionysius, the worthy disciple of the great Origen, showed 
 here, how charity, moderation, and true freedom of spirit, which 
 cannot consist except with charity, may attain, what cannot be 
 effected by any power, or any law whatever. As he did not, 
 like others, forget the Christian in the Bishop, his love for souls 
 induced him to repair in person to those Churches, and to call 
 the clergy, who defended the opinions of Nepos, together to a 
 conference, and he permitted all the laity of those Churches, who 
 were desirous of instruction in these subjects, to be present at 
 the conference. The book of Nepos was laid before them, and 
 the Bishop discussed its contents with those clergy for three days, 
 from morning to evening; he listened quietly to all their objec- 
 
DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION. 327 
 
 tions, endeavouring to answer them out of Scripture, and con- 
 ducting the discussion by quoting fully from Scripture on every 
 point; and the consequence was a result which seldom indeed 
 proceeds from theological disputes; namely, that the clergy were 
 thankful for the instruction they had received, and Korakion 
 himself, in the presence of them all, honestly retracted his 
 former opinions, and declared himself persuaded of the truth of 
 the contrary to them, a.p. 255". 
 
 After Dionysius had thus restored unity of faith among his 
 Churches, he wrote his work about the Promises (περὶ ἐπαγγε- 
 λιων)» for the confirmation of those, who had been persuaded by 
 his arguments, and for the instruction of others, who still held 
 the opinions of Nepos. Here also the Christian mildness and 
 moderation with which he speaks of Nepos deserves to be 
 remarked. He says, “ In many other respects I reverence and 
 love Nepos, for his faith, his diligence, his intimate acquaintance 
 with Holy Scripture, and on account of the many hymns com- 
 posed by him, in which many of the brethren still delight *, and 
 I honour the man the more, because he is already entered into 
 his rest. But the truth is dearer and of more value to me than 
 ought besides: we must praise him, and agree with him, when he 
 says anything which is right; but we must examine and set him 
 right, when he writes what does not appear to be true.” 
 
 In respect to the doctrine of the resurrection, the teachers of the 
 Church had to defend this doctrine especially against the Gnosties, 
 who, in part, explained the passages of Holy Scripture relating 
 to it in a very arbitrary manner, and made them mean only the 
 spiritual renovation effected by Christianity. In this controversy 
 they felt strongly how essentially this doctrine was bound up 
 with Christianity, inasmuch as Christianity brought with it, not 
 the annihilation, but the ennobling and the glorifying of that 
 which peculiarly belongs to human nature; and the de-human- 
 izing idealism of the Gnostics was wholly incompatible with this 
 fundamental principle of Christianity. But the opposition be- 
 tween these two often seduced them into conceiving this doctrine 
 
 1 Euseb. vii. 24. 
 
 2 τῆς πολλῆς ψαλμῳδιας, y μεχρι νυν πολλοι των ἀδελφων ἐνθυμουνται. This 
 passage may be taken in two ways; either as it has been translated above, which suits 
 well with the custom of those times (see Part ii.); or else it may be translated, “ in 
 
 consequence of the constant custom of Psalmody diligently introduced by him into the 
 Churches,” &c.; the first appears the most natural. 
 
328 DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 of the resurrection after too carnal a manner, and into making to 
 themselves too confined a representation of the identity between 
 the body after the resurrection, and the earthly body. Origen 
 endeavoured here also to find out a middle way between these 
 two opposite tendencies, by making more use of what St. Paul 
 (1 Cor. xv.) says of the relation between the earthly and the 
 glorified body, and by distinguishing the proper essential sub- 
 stance of the body [das eigentliche Grundwesen des Korpers], 
 which remains the same during all the changes of earthly life, 
 and is not annihilated even in death, from the changeable form 
 under which it appears at different times. ‘This essential sub- 
 stance of the body was to be awakened again by the influence of 
 Divine Omnipotence to a new and glorified form, such as would 
 be answerable to the glorified quality of the soul; so that, as the 
 soul had communicated its own peculiar impress to the earthly 
 body, it should communicate it to the glorified one also *. 
 
 It follows from what we have said above of the doctrine of the 
 Alexandrians about the Divine justice, that the Alexandrian 
 Gnosis must have considered, as the final aim of all things, a final 
 general redemption, the removal of all evil, and a general return 
 o the original unity of the Divine Life, from which all proceeded. 
 (This would be the general ἀποκαταστασις.) But Origen, in con- 
 sequence of his theory about the necessary changeableness of the 
 will in created beings, was seduced into supposing, that evil, 
 which is for ever sowing new seeds, would render necessary new 
 processes of purification, and new worlds destined for the purifi- 
 cation of fallen beings, until again all shall have returned again 
 from multiplicity to unity; and- thus, that there would be a con- 
 tinual alternation between fall and redemption, unity and multi- 
 plicity. To such a comfortless system did a notion, carried to 
 the extreme, lead this profound man! ‘This doctrine he has 
 expressed with confidence in his work περι ἄρχων ; but still it is 
 open to question, whether this be not one of the subjects on 
 which he afterwards changed his views; but still there are even 
 
 1 The εἰδος χαρακτηριζον in the σωμα πνευματικον, as in the cwua ψυχικον. In 
 part, he here made use of his doctrine of an ὑλη [or substance ; matter] which, un- 
 determinate [as to form and qualities, &c. Transl.] of itself, was capable of receiving 
 higher or lower qualities through the fashioning power of God; and in part he makes 
 use of the doctrine of a dynamical essential substance of the body, aXoyoc σπερματικος 
 (ratio ea que substantiam continet corporalem, que semper in substantia corporis salva 
 est.) See πέρι ἀρχ. 1. ii. c. 10. c. Cels. iv. 57. 
 
APOSTOLICAL FATHERS. 329 
 
 in his later writings traces of this opinion, though not perhaps 
 any which are altogether certain and definite '. 
 
 § IIL. The history of the most celebrated Fathers. 
 
 THE next ecclesiastical writers who come after the Apostles, 
 are the so-called Apostolical Fathers (Patres Apostolici), who 
 come from the Apostolic age, and must have been the disciples 
 of the Apostles. ‘The remarkable difference between the writings 
 of the Apostles and those of the Apostolical Fathers, who are yet 
 so close upon the former in point of time, is a remarkable pheno- 
 menon of its kind. While in other cases such a transition is 
 usually quite gradual, in this case we find a sudden one. Here 
 there is no gradual transition, but a sudden spring; a remark, 
 which is calculated to lead us to a recognition of the peculiar 
 activity of the Divine Spirit in the souls of the Apostles. The 
 time of the first extraordinary operations of the Holy Spirit was 
 followed by the time of the free development of human nature in 
 Christianity; and here, as elsewhere, the operations of Chris- 
 tianity must necessarily be confined, before it could penetrate 
 further, and appropriate to itself the higher intellectual powers 
 of man. 
 
 The writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers are, alas ! 
 come down to us, for the most part, in a very uncertain condition ; 
 partly, because in early times writings were counterfeited under 
 the name of these venerable men of the Church, in order to pro- 
 pagate certain opinions or principles; partly, because those 
 writings which they had really published were adulterated, and 
 especially so to serve a Judzo-hierarchical party, which would 
 fain crush the free evangelical spirit. 
 
 We should here, in the first place, have to name Barnabas, the 
 well-known fellow-traveller of St. Pau!, if a letter, which was 
 first known in the second century in the Alexandrian Church 
 under his name, and which bore the inscription of a Catholic 
 Epistle’, was really his composition. But it is impossible that 
 
 1 Origen, 7. apy. 1. ii. c. 3. c. Cels. iv. c. 69. He says merely, εἰ pera τον ἀφανισ- 
 μον τῆς κακιας λογον ἔχει, TO παλιν αὐτὴν ὑφιστασθαι ἡ μη, ἐν προηγουμένῳ λογῳ 
 Ta τοιαυτὰα ἐξετασθησεται. There is an obscure expression in Matth. f. 402. to this 
 effect, “ After the ἀποκατάστασις is fulfilled in certain AZons, παλιν ἀλλὴ apxn.” 
 
 2 ᾿Επιστολὴ καθολικὴ, that is to say, an epistle general in its destination aud con- 
 
330 LETTER OF BARNABAS, 
 
 we should acknowledge this Epistle to belong to that Barnabas, 
 who was worthy to be the companion of the Apostolic labours of 
 St. Paul, and had received his name from the power of his ani- 
 mated discourses in the Churches’. We find a different spirit 
 breathing throughout it, than that of such an apostolic man. We 
 perceive in it a Jew of Alexandrian education, who had embraced 
 Christianity, who was prepared by his Alexandrian education for 
 a spiritual conception of Christianity ; but who set too high a 
 value on his Alexandrian and Jewish Gnosis, who looked for 
 especial wisdom in a mystical and fanciful’ interpretation of the 
 Old Testament, more resembling the spirit of Philo than that of 
 St. Paul, or even that of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and who 
 indulged himself in such interpretations in a silly manner. We 
 cannot at all find in this epistle that view of the Mosaic ceremonial 
 law, as a means of religious education for man in a certain stage of 
 his development, which we perceive in- Paul; but such a view, as 
 gives evidence altogether of an Alexandrian turn of mind, such a 
 view as does not meet us again in the later Fathers, and which pro- 
 ceeds from the most extravagant idealists among the Alexandrian 
 Jews *; “ Moses spoke every thing ἐν πνευματι, that is to say, he 
 has only enveloped general spiritual truths in a symbolical form ; 
 but the carnal-minded Jews, instead of penetrating into the 
 meaning of the symbols, had understood every thing literally, and 
 believed that they must obey it to the letter; and thus the 
 whole ceremonial religion had proceeded from a misconception of 
 the carnal-minded multitude. It is said*, that an evil angel 
 guided them to this misunderstanding, just as we find in the 
 Clementine, and other similar writings, the supposition that the 
 original Judaism had been adulterated by foreign admixtures, 
 introduced by evil spirits. The writer of the Epistle will not 
 allow it to be true, that circumcision is a seal, or token of a 
 covenant; because, he says, on the contrary, it is found among 
 the Arabians, the Syrians, and an idolatrous priesthood (in 
 Egypt). But he argues that Abraham, by the circumcision of 
 the 318 men (Gen. xvii. and xiv. 14.), had prefigured the cruci- 
 
 tents, an hortatory piece, destined for many Churches; a description, which corre- 
 sponds to the contents of this letter. 
 
 1 ylog παρακλήσεως, vlog προφητειας. 
 
 2 [Spielenden, literally playing; a mode of interpretation, which caught at fanciful 
 resemblances, &c. and plays on words, ἅς, H. J. R.] 
 
 3 See above, vol. i. p. 50. Sacto: 
 
NOT GENUINE. 331 
 
 fixion of Jesus, and makes it out thus,—IH (18) the beginning 
 of the name of Jesus, and T (300), which stands as the token of 
 the Cross ;—an explanation founded on Greek letters and nume- 
 rals, which can only suit some Alexandrian Jew, unaccustomed to, 
 perhaps unacquainted with, the Hebrew language, who was only 
 at home in the Alexandrian translation, but certainly cannot 
 suit Barnabas, who assuredly was not such a stranger to the 
 Hebrew language, even if we could attribute such a spiritless 
 play on words to him. And yet the man, who could fall into 
 such trifling, held it for something extraordinary, and he adds 
 these pompous words, which are characteristic of the mystery- 
 mongering of the Jewish Alexandrian Gnosis: ‘* No one hath 
 received a more authentic doctrine from me, but I know that ye 
 are worthy of it *.” 
 
 The prevailing tendency of the Epistle is directed against carnal 
 Judaism, and carnal Judaism in Christianity. We recognise a 
 controversy against the latter, which had extended its doctrinal 
 influence even to the views entertained of the person of Christ, 
 when in chap. xii. it is particularly insisted upon, that Christ is 
 not only the son of Man, and the son of David, but also the 
 Son of God. 
 
 We find also nothing to induce us to believe, that the author 
 of the Epistle was desirous of being considered Barnabas. But 
 since its spirit and its mode of conception corresponded to the 
 Alexandrian taste, it may have happened, that as the author’s 
 name was unknown, and persons were desirous of giving it au- 
 thority, a report was spread abroad in Alexandria, that Barnabas 
 was its author. 
 
 After Barnabas, we come to Clement, perhaps the same whom 
 Paul mentions (Phil. iv. 3.) ; he was at the end of the first 
 century, Bishop of Rome. Under his name we have one Epistle 
 to the Church of Corinth, and the fragment of another. The 
 first was read in the first centuries aloud at divine service in 
 many churches, even with the writings of the New Testament ; 
 it contains an exhortation to unity, interwoven with examples 
 and general reflections, addressed to the Church at Corinth, which 
 was shaken by divisions. This letter, although, on the whole, 
 
 1 οὐδεὶς γνησιωτερον ἐμαθεν ἀπ᾽ ἐμου λογον" ἄλλα oida dre ἀξιοι tore ὑμεις. 
 
 [On the subject of this interpretation of the number 318, the reader is referred to the 
 Rev. S. R. Maitland’s “ Letter to a friend on the Tract for the Times, No. 89.” 1841.] 
 
992 CLEMENT OF ROME. 
 
 genuine, is nevertheless not free from important interpolations ; 
 6. 5. a contradiction is apparent, since throughout the whole 
 Epistle we perceive the simple relations of the earliest forms of a 
 Christian Church, as the Bishops and Presbyters are always put 
 upon an equality, and yet in one passage (§ 40 and following) 
 the whole system of the Jewish priesthood is transferred to the 
 Christian Church. The second Epistle, as itis called, is evidently 
 only the fragment of an homily. 
 
 Under the name of this Clement, two letters have besides 
 been preserved in the Syrian Church, and they were published 
 by Wetstein in an appendix to his edition of the New Testament. 
 They are two circulars, especially addressed to Christian men 
 and women living in celibacy. It cannot be adduced as a proof 
 against the Clementine origin of these Epistles, that this state of 
 life is held in special esteem in them, because this high estima- 
 tion of celibacy found admittance in-early time’. The high 
 antiquity of these Epistles is in some degree testified by the 
 non-appearance of any endeavour to support the pretensions of 
 the hierarchical party ; and by the circumstances, that the ideas 
 of the priesthood belonging to the Old Testament are not here 
 introduced into the Christian Church, as is the case in similar 
 writings of this kind ; that neither the separation of the priesthood 
 from the laity, nor the distinction of Bishops and Presbyters 
 occurs here; and that the gift of healing the sick, and especially 
 demoniacs, is considered as a free-gift, and not as a gift belonging 
 to one peculiar office. And yet this is no certain proof of the 
 high antiquity of the Epistles; because, even if it were of later 
 origin, all this might be explained from the idiosynerasy of 
 certain regions of the Kast. 
 
 As these Epistles must have been admirably suited to the 
 ascetic disposition of the Western Churches, especially the North- 
 African, and as in similar writings of practical import (against 
 similar abuses to those which are censured in these Kpistles) 
 occasion to make use of them must often have arisen, it is the 
 more remarkable that they were never quoted before the fourth 
 century *, which certainly must create a suspicion against their 
 genuineness. 
 
 These Epistles altogether bear the character of having been 
 
 1 See Part ii. 
 2 The first traces of them afe in Epiphanius and Jerome. 
 
CLEMENTINE CONSTITUTIONS. 333 
 
 counterfeited in the latter years of the second, or in the third 
 century, partly in order to enhance the value of celibacy, partly 
 in order to counteract the abuses which rose up under the cover of 
 a life of celibacy, especially the introduction of the συνείσακτοι ἷ 
 (see above). 
 
 Many writings were counterfeited under the name of this 
 Clement, to serve an hierarchical or a doctrinal purpose ; such, 
 for instance, are the writings which relate the history of Clement 
 himself, who is supposed there to be converted by the Apostle 
 Peter, and meets again with his father whom he had lost*,—the 
 Clementine, the peculiar Ebionitish character of which we have 
 before remarked,—as well as the collection of the Apostolic Con- 
 stitutions (διαταξεις, or διαταγαι ᾿Αποστολικαι), and the κανονες 
 ᾿Αποστολικοι. 
 
 The same thing may have occurred in regard to the origin of 
 these two collections, as took place with regard to the origin of 
 the Apostles’ Creed, as it is called. As it was usual originally to 
 speak of an apostolical tradition, without its being supposed, that 
 the Apostles had published a confession of faith; so in the same 
 manner, in regard to the constitution and customs of the Church, 
 an apostolical tradition was spoken of, without its being thought 
 that the Apostles had given laws in writing on the subject. And 
 when people had once become used to the expressions, ““ Apos- 
 tolical traditions,” ‘* Apostolical ordinances,” the pretence, or the 
 belief, at last attached itself to them, that the Apostles had written 
 down a collection of ecclesiastical laws, as they had a confession of 
 faith. And hence, under the influence of different interests, differ- 
 ent collections of this kind may have existed, as those, which Epi- 
 phanius quotes in many places, are evidently not identical with 
 our Apostolical Constitutions. ‘These latter appear to have arisen 
 gradually in the Oriental Church, out of different pieces, whose 
 ages extend from the latter part of the second to the fourth century. 
 
 Hermas would follow here, if he, as many of the ancients 
 thought, were the same with the Hermas mentioned in the 16th 
 chapter of the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans. We 
 have a work under his name, which bears the title of the Shep- 
 
 1 This abuse had spread itself in the Antiochian Church, as well as in the North- 
 African. See the Synodal Epistle against Paul of Samosata. Euseb. vii. 30. 
 
 2 Hence comes the name of the edition of this work, preserved to us in the trans- 
 lation of Ruffinus,—avayvwptopor, Recognitiones. 
 
5994 HERMAS.—IRENZEUS. 
 
 herd (ποιμην); 80 called, because in the second book, an angel is 
 represented as a shepherd, to whose guidance Hermas is en- 
 trusted. 
 
 It cannot be ascertained with certainty, whether the author 
 really believed that he had the visions, which he represents, or 
 whether he supposed them, in order to gain a more ready entrance 
 for the doctrines, especially those of a practical kind, inculeated by 
 him. The work was originally written in Greek, but it is preserved 
 to us in great measure, only in a Latin translation ; and it was 
 held in great reverence by Greek writers of the second century, 
 to which the name of Hermas and the renowned visions may have 
 deeply contributed. Irenzeus quotes the book under the name of 
 “‘ the Scripture :” and yet there are strong reasons to doubt of its 
 being derived from that Apostolic Hermas, although the other 
 tradition, (supported by the poem against Marcion ascribed to 
 Tertullian, and the fragment on the canon of the New Testament 
 published by Muratori’,) that the brother of the Roman Bishop 
 Pius, who obtained this office about the year 156, was the author, 
 is also very doubtful, because we cannot determine what credit 
 is due to these two writings, and because the high reverence 
 entertained for the book in the time ofan Irenzeus and a Clement 
 of Alexandria, can hardly be reconciled with so late an origin of 
 the work’. 
 
 Ignatius, Bishop of the Church at Antioch, in the time of the 
 Emperor Trajan, it would appear, was carried as prisoner to 
 Rome, where he expected to be exposed to wild beasts. On the 
 journey, it would seem, he wrote seven Epistles, six to the 
 Churches of Asia Minor, and one to Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. 
 Certainly, these epistles contain passages which at least bear 
 completely upon them the character of antiquity. This is par- 
 ticularly the case with the passages directed against Judaism and 
 Docetism ; but even the shorter and more trustworthy edition is 
 very much interpolated. 
 
 The epistle to Polyearp the Bishop of Smyrna appears the 
 most like a diligent compilation; and that to the Church of 
 Rome bears, the most, the stamp of individuality upon it. 
 
 1 Murat. Antiq. Ital. Jud. Aivi, t. iii. 
 
 2 It may be the case, that the Roman Bishop Pius really had a brother of this 
 name ; and that those, who wished to destroy the reverence paid to this work, for that 
 very purpose assigned to it so late an author. 
 
APOLOGISTS,—QUADRATUS, ARISTIDES. 835 
 
 We have already spoken before of Polyearp, Bishop of Smyrna. 
 An Epistle to the Church at Philippi is ascribed to him, the 
 genuineness of which there are no sufficient grounds to deny. 
 
 We shall now, after considering the Apostolic Fathers, notice 
 the Apologists, who follow immediately after them in chrono- 
 logical order. ‘The defence of Christianity against the heathens 
 first led the way to an union between Christianity and the know- 
 ledge and cultivation of those days. As under the government 
 of Hadrian, Christianity began to extend itself more among the 
 more cultivated classes, as heathens of a certain philosophical and 
 literary character came over to the Christian Church, they felt 
 themselves obliged to defend their faith against the accusations 
 which were spread abroad against it by false reports, and they used 
 their comprehensive and scientific education and knowledge in 
 order to represent the Christian doctrine to the more cultivated 
 heathens in a point of view more agreeable to their turn of mind. 
 
 Among these we must first name Quadratus, who was known 
 as an Evangelist’, and celebrated for his prophetic gifts. We 
 must not confound him, as Jerome has done, with a Quadratus 
 who was Bishop of a Church at Athens in the days of Marcus 
 Aurelius. His Apology, alas ! has not reached us, and Eusebius 
 has preserved to us only the following remarkable words: ‘ The 
 works of our Saviour were always present, because they were real 
 and true; those who were healed by him; those, who were raised 
 from the dead, who were to be seen, not only when they were 
 being healed and raised, but constantly; not only during the life- 
 time of our Saviour, but after his departure they were present 
 a considerable time, so that some of them have reached even 
 to our time *.” 
 
 The second Apologist, Aristides, even as a Christian still re- 
 tained the gown of the philosopher (zp:Bwy), in order to be able 
 to represent Christianity to the educated classes as the new 
 
 heavenly philosophy *. 
 
 1 We must understand this word in a sense agreeable to the New Testament, i. e. 
 a teacher, not appointed to one particular church, but a missionary travelling for the 
 purpose of propagating the Gospel. 
 
 2 Euseb. iii. 37; iv. 3; v. 17. 
 
 3 Hieronym. de Vir. Illust. c. 20. Ep. 83. ad Magnum: apologeticum contextum philo- 
 sophorum sententiis. The traveller de la Guilletiére says, that in a conyent about six 
 miles from Athens they profess to have a copy of this Apology. 
 
996 JUSTIN MARTYR. 
 
 Justin Martyr is remarkable,.as the first among these apolo- 
 gists whose writings have reached us, and as the first of those 
 better known to us, who became a teacher of the Christian 
 Church, in whom we observe an approximation between Christ- 
 ianity and the Grecian, but especially the Platonic philosophy ; 
 and in this respect he may be considered as the precursor of the 
 Alexandrian Fathers. We can obtain, for the most part, only 
 from his own writings any account of his life and education; and 
 here also we feel most certainty at first, by restricting ourselves 
 to his two Apologies, because these are the undoubted work of 
 Justin, and bear upon them the stamp of a peculiar character 
 of mind which cannot be mistaken; and the rest of his writings, 
 on the contrary, must in the first place prove their genuineness by 
 a comparison with these. 
 
 Flavius Justinus was born in the town Flavia Neapolis, for- 
 merly Sichem, in Samaria; it was then a Roman-Greek colony, 
 in which the Greek language prevailed. It was probably not a 
 predominantly speculative character of mind, which was not the 
 case with him, but an endeavour after a satisfactory religious 
 persuasion, which led him, as well as so many others of those 
 days, to the study of philosophy; and for this very reason, the 
 Platonic philosophy would have peculiar attractions for him. 
 Since it was rather a religious than a speculative interest which 
 led him on, it is possible, although some isolated and elevated 
 Platonic notions, like those of the relationship of the human 
 soul to God, and of the intuition of Divine things, animated him, 
 that he was not so taken by the system of the school, that his 
 heart should thence become incapable of those higher impres- 
 sions, which passed the bounds of the empire of this system. 
 How he became a Christian he relates himself’: ‘ While I still 
 found my delight in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Chris- 
 tians calumniated, but yet saw them fearless towards death, and 
 all that men account fearful; I learnt that it was impossible, 
 that they should live in sin and lust*. I despised the opinion of 
 the multitude; I was proud of being a Christian, and I endea- 
 voured with all my powers to remain one.” 
 
 Justin retained as a Christian, the philosopher’s cloke*, which 
 he had borne as a heathen philopher and ascetic; and he used 
 
 1 Apolog. i. p. 50, 51. 2 See Part i. 3 See Part ii, 
 
JUSTIN MARTYR. 337 
 
 this garb and mode of life, in order easily to be able to introduce 
 conversations on religious and philosophical subjects, and thus to 
 prepare a passage for the Gospel into the hearts of men; and he 
 was, as it were, a travelling Evangelist in the philosophic garb’. 
 It has been unsoundly concluded? that he was ordained to the 
 priesthood, from his own language in his representation of the 
 Christian faith in the second Apology, ‘“* We conduct the con- 
 vert, after we have baptized him, to the assembled brethren.” 
 There was at that time no such separation of the clergy from the 
 laity, that Justin might not have been able to say this from his 
 position, as sharing the priesthood common to all Christians. 
 But whether he was solemnly ordained to the calling of an 
 Evangelist in the name of the Church or not—an inquiry of no 
 importance—it is hardly to be supposed that his gifts were left 
 idle, whether for the propagation of the Gospel among the 
 heathen, or for the instruction of the Churches themselves. If 
 the account of the martyrdom of Justin were worthy of credit, it 
 would prove, that when he was resident in Rome, a part of the 
 Church, which understood the Greek language, used to assemble 
 in his house, in order to hear his discourses. 
 
 We observed in the first part of this history*, that after the 
 death of the Emperor Hadrian, persecutions arose against the 
 Christians in the beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius. 
 Thereby Justin, who was then resident at Rome, was induced to 
 address a writing in defence of the interests of the Christians to 
 the emperor. Since, however, in the superscription of this work, 
 he does not give the title of Czesar to M. Aurelius, it is probably 
 to be inferred, that it was written before his adoption into that 
 dignity, which took place a.p. 139 *. 
 
 1 Even if the Dialogus cum Tryphone were not genuine, we might nevertheless use 
 the account given in it; for we might presuppose that-the author of it had an accurate 
 knowledge of Justin’s life. Ἵ 
 
 2 By Tillemont. [The conclusion of Tillemont may be unwarranted by the ex- 
 pression of Justin, but surely at that time there was a separation of clergy and laity. 
 See note, vol. i. p. 180. H.J.R.] 3 See vol. i. p. 99. 
 
 4 The superscription is Avtoxparope Tirp Αἰλιῳ ᾿Αδριανῳ ᾿Αντονινῳ Ἐύσεβει 
 Σεβαστῳ Καισαρι και Οὐηρισσιμῳ vip φιλοσοφῳ και Λουκιῳ piocopy (according to 
 Eusebius φιλοσοφου) Καισαρος φύσει vip και Ἐὐσεβους εἰσποιητῳ ἐραστῃ παιδειας 
 ἵερᾳ τε συγκλητῳ και δημῳ παντι Ῥωμαιων. The first-named is Augustus Antoninus 
 Pius, who had then entered on his reign, the second M. Antoninus, philosophus, to 
 whom the Emperor Hadrian (in compliance with whose wishes Antoninus Pius 
 
 adopted him) had given the name Annius Verissimus, the third is Lucius Verus 
 Antoninus, afterwards the associate of M. Aurelius in the government, the son of 
 
 VOL. II. Z 
 
338 THE FIRST APOLOGY. 
 
 There are greater difficulties in the determination of the time, 
 at which the first Apology, as it is called, was written. The occa- 
 sion, which moved him to write for the Christians (an occasion 
 full of instruction, with regard both to the history of the active 
 efficacy of Christianity, and to that of the persecutions) was this, 
 —a woman in Rome, who had led a vicious life with her husband, 
 was converted, and refusing any longer to share the vices of her 
 husband, endeavoured to bring about his reformation. As, how- 
 ever, she was unable to effect this, and was unable, if she re- 
 mained any longer in union with her husband, to withdraw herself 
 from participation in his sins, and as she had, according to the 
 doctrines of our Lord, grounds sufficient to justify a separation, 
 she separated herself from him. In order to revenge himself, 
 the divorced husband accused her as a Christian. The accused 
 woman presented a petition to the emperor, that she might be 
 allowed first to arrange her family concerns, and then she was 
 willing to undergo her judicial trial. When her husband found 
 his revenge against his wife thus delayed, he turned his rage 
 against her instructor in Christianity, named Ptolemezeus. He was 
 arrested by a centurion, and carried before the Preefectus urbis. 
 As he openly declared before him, that he was a Christian, he 
 was condemned to death. Another Christian, by name Lucius, 
 who heard this sentence, said to the Prefect, ‘* Wherefore have 
 you sentenced to death this man, who has committed no murder, 
 no theft, no adultery; but only because he is a Christian? You 
 are acting in a manner, which is not becoming either to the 
 pious emperor, or the philosopher the son of the emperor ’.” 
 The Prefect concluded from this declaration that he was ἃ 
 Christian, and when he confirmed this, the Preefect sentenced him 
 in like manner to death. A third person shared the same fate. 
 
 Lucius Alius Verus, whom Hadrian had adopted and nominated as Cesar ; after the 
 early death of the latter, he (the son), as Hadrian wished, was adopted in the same 
 manner by Antoninus Pius, who had stepped into the place of his father. The reading 
 found in Eusebius is most likely the true one, for it is hardly to be supposed that 
 Lucius Verus should have had two epithets. The name of Philosopher is utterly out 
 of character fora boy of nine years of age, who might yet very well be called goaorne 
 παιδειας. It is more likely that the name of Philosopher should have been given to 
 fElius Verus, who was dead, whom Spartianus calls ‘‘ eruditus in literis.” 
 
 1 ob mperovra Ἐύσεβει αὐτοκρατορι οὐδὲ φιλοσοῴῳ (according to Eusebius, the 
 common reading is φιλοσοφου). [N.B. This expression is ambiguous,—the meaning 
 is, that Eusebius reads φιλοσοφῳ, and the common editions of Justin read φιλοσοφου. 
 See the note of Valesius. H. J. R.J 
 
THE TIME AT WHICH IT WAS WRITTEN. 339 
 
 The question is therefore, Whether this event suits best with the 
 reign of Antoninus Pius, or that of M. Aurelius ? We find here 
 nothing that would be absolutely inconsistent with the former ; 
 for, as we remarked’, the law of ‘Trajan was by no means abolished 
 by the rescripts of Hadrian and of Antoninus Pius, in accord- 
 ance with which law, the open avowal of Christianity might be 
 punished with death, although the mildness of the emperor per- 
 mitted a governor favourably disposed to Christians, to pass over 
 a great deal. But is it probable that a Christian should have 
 spoken thus to the Prefect, if the reigning emperor had himself 
 issued a severe law against the Christians, as Christians? Even 
 in the Apology itself, there is no trace of the existence of a new 
 law against the Christians, for the abolition of which Justin 
 entreated the emperor. It may be said, that it suits only the time 
 of M. Aurelius; for Justin says, that confessions had been extorted 
 from the servants, women, and children of the Christians, by which 
 the popular reports about unnatural practices in the assemblies 
 of Christians were declared to be true. It is certainly’ in the 
 reign of M. Aurelius that we first find examples of such conduct 
 towards the Christians quoted; but as popular fanaticism had, 
 ever since the reign of Nero, spread abroad such reports against 
 the Christians, that fanaticism may easily have found at an earlier 
 time many magistrates who gave credit to it, and ministered to 
 it. Even in the Apology, which according to the common sup- 
 position is placed in the time of Antoninus Pius, Justin at that 
 time is anxious, that people would only not give credit to the 
 blind reports of the people against Christians. But he says, that 
 the same things which happened at Rome under Urbicus, com- 
 monly took place elsewhere also; that the other Governors acted 
 as unreasonably; that everywhere, if any one was improved by 
 Christianity, one of his nearest relations or friends came forward 
 as his accuser; and this seems to agree better with the general 
 persecutions under M. Aurelius. But even in the time of 
 Antoninus Pius, many violent popular assaults had taken place 
 against the Christians, which moved him to issue the rescript, 
 which was calculated to allay the irritations of men’s minds. 
 This is also still further remarkable in the above- quoted desig- 
 nation of the reigning princes through Lucius, that the title of phi- 
 losopher, peculiarly appropriated to M. Aurelius, is not bestowed 
 
 1 See vol. i. 2 See vol. i. 
 
 Zz 2 
 
940 WRITTEN IN THE TIME OF ANTONINUS PIUS. 
 
 upon him, but transferred to Verus, whom it does not suit, 
 and to whom it is not elsewhere attributed, while the title of 
 Antoninus Pius is bestowed upon M. Aurelius, who is nowhere 
 spoken of during his life-time by this name. Even if we throw 
 away the reading of Eusebius we have quoted, the difficulty is 
 not removed, for the same titles are attributed at the end of 
 the Apology to both the emperors’. These grounds are an 
 argument to place this Apology, not according to the common 
 belief, which has however great names, e. g. Pagi, ‘Tillemont, 
 Mosheim, in its favour, but with Valesius and Longuerue in the 
 time of Antoninus Pius. 
 
 It is also a striking circumstance’, that Justin, twice® in this 
 Apology, appeals to that which he has before said, which yet does 
 not occur in this Apology, but in the first. He uses the same 
 formula, we προεφημεν; which he uses in other places, where 
 he quotes passages out of the same writing. 
 
 We do not, however, wish to deny, that the authority of 
 Eusebius is opposed to our supposition, because he certainly 
 appears to consider the first-mentioned Apology as written in the 
 reign of Antoninus Pius, and to place the second in that of M. 
 Aurelius‘; but still the authority of this historian is not decisive 
 here, for the proper relation of the second Apology, as it is called, 
 to the first, might be lost and forgotten in the time of Eusebius. 
 
 An idea, which afterwards re-appears among the Alexandrians, 
 is altogether peculiar to these two treatises; namely, that in 
 Christianity there is to be found the unclouded and unbroken 
 revelation of Divine truth, while on the contrary, in all human 
 systems, there are only to be found fragments of a revelation of 
 truth, clouded through the partial views of man. What Clement 
 says of the revelation of the Logos, torn in pieces like the body 
 
 1 Eun οὖν και ὑμας ἀξιως εὐσεβειας και φιλοσοῴφιας ra δικαια ὑπερ ἑαυτων 
 κριναι. That in the beginning of the Apology of Athenagoras the title of φιλόσοφος 
 is attributed, whether it be to L. Verus, or to Commodus, cannot be alleged to remove 
 this difficulty, because it is easy to understand that the titles, properly belonging only 
 to one emperor, should be attributed to two in common, as is the case here, 
 
 2 As the Benedictine Editor has already observed. 
 
 3 In the Benedictine Edition, ὃ 4, where he speaks of the enmity with God; §6, 
 where he speaks of the incarnation of the Logos; and § 8, where he speaks of 
 Heraclitus. 
 
 4 If we compare ii. 13. and iv. 16. (for iv. 11. is somewhat obscure,) and ch. 17. 
 with the preceding, we cannot donbt, that either the reading προτέρα is faulty, or 
 that Eusebius himself has only written thus from some oversight. 
 
VIEWS ON THE LOGOS. 341 
 
 of Dionysus (see above), had already been said by Justin in 
 other words. He supposes that there is in human nature some- 
 thing akin’ to the Divine Logos, that universal and absolute 
 Divine reason, from which the partial recognition of religious 
 and moral truth in the heathen philosophers proceeded. ‘The 
 revelation, however, of truth, which here is in broken fragments, 
 and is disturbed by the intermixture of what is human, was first 
 shown in its clearness and perfection, by the appearance of the 
 Logos itself in human nature. The same relation which exists 
 between it and the clouded, partial reason of man, exists also 
 between Christianity and all other systems of religious truth, 
 Certainly, this was an idea, extremely calculated to seek for 
 points in the common religious conscience of man, for Chirist- 
 ianity to attach itself upon, as well as to set forth the elevation of 
 the Gospel above all previous systems containing religious matter. 
 He hence says’, that all good, which has ever been spoken by 
 any, belongs to Christianity. He hence concludes, that in all 
 times those who have followed the inward revelation of the 
 Logos, and lived in accordance with it, were Christians ; although 
 they were called Atheists, as Abraham and Socrates, and that 
 such men were always persecuted by the enemies of the Logos 
 (those who live without reason). We certainly need not suppose 
 that Justin delivered these notions at Alexandria, and that they 
 have passed from him to the Alexandrian Fathers, or on the other 
 hand, that Justin has borrowed them from a previously-existing 
 Alexandrian theology. For certainly, every Platonist,—accus- 
 tomed to the ideas of the relation of the νοερὸν in man to the 
 supreme voue,—who was converted to Christianity, while he was 
 seeking for some medium between his former Platonic notions 
 and his newly acquired Christian ones, might easily be led to 
 these notions. 
 
 But it is indeed remarkable, that in the other writings of 
 Justin, we find no trace of the notions, which prevail so com- 
 pletely in the Apologies, as to the relation between that which is 
 divine in man to the self-revelation of the Divine Logos, and the 
 notions that are connected with these; namely, in regard to the 
 
 1 The σπερμα τοῦ Xoyou, or the λογος σπερματικος. 
 
 2 Apolog. ii. (commonly called i.) Ὅσα παρα act Kadwe εἰρηται, ἡμων των 
 
 Χριστιανων ἐστι. [In Grabe’s Edition [Oxford. 8vo. 1700—1703.} this is printed 
 as the second Apology. } 
 
9.2 NOT FOUND IN HIS OTHER WRITINGS. 
 
 relation between the scattered traces of truth found among the 
 heathen and Christianity. It may indeed be said, that he has 
 attributed these notions to himself only in furtherance of his 
 object, that by this means he might dispose the philosophical 
 emperor to be favourable to his proposals; but this is, neverthe- 
 less, not a natural supposition. We may especially remark, that 
 judging of Justin from his writings, we can hardly give him 
 credit for the adroitness of moving so freely in a circle of ideas, 
 taken up by him in appearance only. And besides, in his Apo- 
 logies he makes no scruple of blaming the religious doctrines of 
 the Stoics, although the stoicism of M. Aurelius was well known. 
 We may thence conclude, that he pretended also to no milder 
 opinion of the Grecian philosophy in general, than he really 
 held. And in other writings also, intended to facilitate the con- 
 version of the heathen, he might just as well have used this 
 method, as in the Apologies. Why therefore does he never use 
 it in those other writings? This circumstance would be still more 
 striking, if we suppose, according to the common view of the 
 matter, that Justin wrote these Apologies at such different 
 times. 
 
 We have under the name of Justin a treatise, with the title 
 of « An exhortation to the heathen” (παραινετικος προς ‘EXAnvac), 
 the object of which is, to persuade the heathen of the unsatis- 
 factory nature of their popular religion, and their philosophical 
 doctrines of religion, as well as of the necessity of some higher and 
 Divine instruction. It is most probably the same writing, as that 
 which is quoted by Eusebius and Photius, under the title of ““ The 
 Confutation” (ἐλεγχος), which suits its contents well enough. 
 
 In this treatise we find no trace of that mild and liberal 
 thought, which we remark in the Apologies, and no trace of that 
 peculiar circle of ideas, but far rather a contrary mode of thinking. 
 All knowledge of God is here deduced from outward revelation 
 only ; but there were many misunderstood accordances with truth, 
 recognised among the heathen; but these are all deduced froma 
 misunderstood and falsified tradition, according to the Judzeo-Alex- 
 andrian notion, that a knowledge of the doctrines communicated to 
 the Jews by Divine revelation, was conveyed to the Greeks from 
 Egypt. While in the Apologies men are acknowledged to have 
 existed among the heathen, who, following the revelation of the 
 λογὸς σπερματικος. were witnesses of the truth befure the appear- 
 
λογος προς 'Ἑλληνας. 343 
 
 ance of Christianity; here, on the contrary, it is said: “ Your 
 teachers also are compelled to say much for us about Divine 
 Providence, even against their will, and especially those who 
 dwelt in Egypt, and have received benefit from the religion of 
 Moses and his ancestors *.” 
 
 lt is impossible to suppose, that this treatise can have pro- 
 ceeded from the same cast of thought, as the two Apologies of 
 Justin. But if it is determined to attribute it to him, then we 
 must at least not consider it, in accordance with the common 
 supposition, as the first of his writings after his conversion ; but 
 far rather as one of the later. We must suppose that his ori- 
 ginal more liberal and milder habits of thought had latterly 
 become narrower and harsher, that the views which originally 
 prevailed with him, and proceeded from his own disposition, 
 those views of the connection between the revelations of the 
 Aoyoe σπερματικος to the revelation of the absolute λόγος, which 
 we find as the predominant views in the Apologies, were latterly 
 entirely driven into the background by the views imparted to 
 him by the Alexandrian Jews, of outward Revelation as the 
 source [of this knowledge among the heathen]*. Such a change 
 is no doubt possible, and examples of such changes are certainly 
 to be found, but one is led to inquire whether this treatise con- 
 tains sufficient evidence of the authorship of Justin, to drive us 
 to this explanation. 
 
 We have also under the name of Justin a short address to the 
 heathens (Aoyo¢ προς ‘EAXnvac); which none of the treatises enu- 
 merated in the list of Justin’s writings among the ancients suits, 
 but which, even if it does not proceed from him, as the style is 
 somewhat more rhetorical than his, yet bears the stamp of that 
 time upon it. It is a rhetorical exposition of the untenableness 
 of the heathen doctrines about the gods, in which the most 
 beautiful part is the conclusion: ὁ“ The power of the Logos 
 
 1 Cohortat. p. 15. 
 
 2 It cannot be denied, that this view occurs even in the Apologies, only that it is 
 more in the background, while the other is the predominant view. Apol. ii. p. 81. 
 “ All which, philosophers and poets have said of the immortality of the soul, of the 
 contemplation of Divine things, or of doctrines like these, they may have learnt and 
 developed, while they received the first hints from the Prophets. There seems there- 
 fore to be amongst all a Sun of truth, and it is clear, that they have not understood it 
 properly, because they contradict themselves.” So also, p. 92, Plato’s doctrine of the 
 Creation is deduced from Moses. 
 
944 DIALOGUS CUM TRYPHONE. 
 
 makes neither poets, nor philosophers, nor accomplished orators ; 
 but, while it forms us, it turns mortal men into immortal, mortal 
 men into gods. It lifts us from the earth above the bounds of 
 Olympus. Come, suffer yourselves to be formed. Become as I 
 am, for I was also like you; for this, even the divine nature of the 
 doctrines, the power of the Logos, has overcome me; for as a 
 skilful serpent-charmer entices and frightens away the terrible 
 animal from its lurking-place, so the Word banishes the terrible 
 passions of sensuality out of the most hidden corners of the soul. 
 And after the desires are banished, the soul becomes tranquil 
 and cheerful, and turns back to its Creator, freed from the evil 
 that adhered to it.” 
 
 We have also under the name of Justin, a treatise on the 
 unity of God (περι povapyxiac), containing, for the most part, 
 passages collected from the ancient literature of the Greeks, 
 especially from the poets; the object of the treatise is to convert 
 the heathen by means of their own literature. This writing is 
 perhaps only the fragment of a larger work, as the work which 
 Eusebius knew by this name contained more, and consisted of 
 arguments for the unity of God, taken partly from the Holy 
 Scriptures, and partly from Greek literature. 
 
 The greatest and most important work of Justin’s, which we 
 possess, after his Apologies, is his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 
 the business of which is to prove, that Jesus is the Messiah pro- 
 mised in the Old Testament, and to confute the then usual accusa- 
 tions of the Jews against Christianity. Justin meets, apparently 
 at Ephesus, with Trypho a Jew, whom the war, undertaken by 
 Barchochab, had driven out of Palestine, and who was travelling 
 about in Greece, and had there studied the Grecian philosophy, 
 and was much beloved. ‘The garb of the philosopher, worn by 
 Justin, induces ‘Trypho to address him in a retired walk, and a 
 conversation arises between them about the knowledge of God, 
 which conversation Justin turns to Christianity, and the treatise 
 consists of this conversation set down in writing. 
 
 The concordant testimony of antiquity assigns this piece to 
 Justin; the author gives himself out as Justin, who wrote the 
 Apologies, for he quotes a passage from the second (as it is 
 called), as coming from himself’. The author describes himself 
 in the introduction, as one who had left Platonism for Chris- 
 
 1S. Simon Magus in Dial. Tryph. 349, 
 
RELATION OF THE DIALOGUE TO OTHER WORKS, 345 
 
 tianity, which exactly suits Justin. No unprejudiced man can 
 deny that the treatise must have been written by a contemporary 
 of Justin, or at least by a man, the time of whose life approached 
 nearly to that age; now one cannot imagine any reasonable 
 cause, why aman, who could bear so much weight by his own per- 
 sonal qualities, as Justin could, if we judge of him from this book, 
 instead of writing it in his own name, should have allowed this 
 book to appear under the mask of a contemporary. Besides, we 
 find in this book no trace of the endeavour, elsewhere so apparent 
 in such counterfeited pieces, to bring certain favourite notions into 
 vogue. Its principal feature is controversy against the Jews and 
 Judaists, and this could obtain no new support with either 
 party by the name of the heathen from Samaria, the former 
 Platonist *. 
 
 The same circumstance will perhaps strike us here, as in the 
 above-mentioned controversial treatise against the heathen; but 
 the case is altered here. We saw there that Justin was endea- 
 vouring to show on the one hand, the affinity between Chris- 
 tianity and the best of Grecian philosophy; and on the other, 
 the unsatisfactoriness of the latter in regard to religion. If 
 therefore, the former point of view was likely to be most pro- 
 minent in the Apologies addressed to the philosopher M. 
 Aurelius, it would on the contrary, be wholly suppressed in a 
 treatise directed against the Jews, who sought in Grecian philo- 
 sophy a completion of the religious instruction of the Old 
 Testament. There appears also, nevertheless, an affinity of 
 ideas between the Dialogue and the Apologies, even in the 
 favourite notion of the Apologies, that of the Aoyoe σπερματικος. 
 As he says in the first Apology, that men would have been able 
 to excuse themselves in their sins, if the Λογος had revealed 
 himself to human nature, for the first time, only an hundred 
 and fifty years ago, and if he had not been in operation in all 
 ages by means of the λογος σπερματικος ; he says the same thing 
 
 1 The reasons against the genuinenessof this work are given by Wetstein, Prolegomena 
 in Nov. Test.; and Semler in his Edition of Wetstein, 1764. p. 174 (see an answer to 
 their arguments from the mode in which the Alexandrian version is cited, in Stroth 
 Repertorium fiir bibl. und Morgenland. Literatur. Bd. ii. §74,) and Koch in his Justini 
 Martyris dial. cum Tryphone secundum regulas criticas examinat. et ψνοθευσεως 
 convictus, 1700 (a work which I have never seen); and Lange in the first book of his 
 History of Opinions. ‘there is an admirable confutation of them by Miinscher. See 
 Commentationes Theologice, Ed. Rosenmiuller, Fuldner and Maurer, t. i. pt. ii. 
 
346 RELATION OF THE DIALOGUE TO OTHER WORKS. 
 
 here in regard to the moral ideas (φυσικαὶ évvorac) inseparable 
 from human nature, which compelled man universally to acknow- 
 ledge sins as sins; and which might have been extinguished and 
 overwhelmed rather than annihilated by the operations of the 
 evil spirit, and by bad education, customs, and laws. What he 
 here says of that, which has revealed itself in all ages, and in 
 accordance with its own nature, as Good, by which alone men 
 could please God, is said in opposition to the Ceremonial Law, 
 which was only calculated as a means of discipline and education 
 for the hard-heartedness of the Jews; or as a system of typical 
 prophecy’. ‘This leads us to the idea of that λογος σπερματικος: 
 through which a moral conscience was given to all mankind. 
 
 There is, indeed, in the Apologies no trace of Chiliasm (Mille- 
 narianism), but the spiritual ideas of eternal life, and of the reign 
 of Christ, which shine forth in the Apologies, are by no means 
 contradictory to this doctrine (see above) ; but we must certainly 
 consider, that the Chiliasts themselves, only considered the reign 
 of a thousand years as a point of transition to a higher grade of 
 life. It may easily be explained, why he should not quote this 
 doctrine, which was peculiarly offensive to the heathens; be- 
 cause, although important in his estimation, it did not belong to 
 the chief and fundamental doctrines of Christianity, which latter 
 he certainly brought forward without disguise, even when they 
 were offensive to the heathens. In a dialogue, intended to justify 
 the doctrines of Christianity against the reproaches of the Jews, 
 he had, on the contrary, particular occasion to bring forward this 
 doctrine, in order to show that Christians were orthodox, even in 
 this point, according to the Jewish notions. In both these works 
 an Anti-Gnostic and Anti-Marcionitish spirit is prominent, on 
 which Chiliasm would in those times easily be engrafted. 
 
 In the doctrine of the Logos, and the Holy Spirit, (see above, ) 
 there is a striking similarity between the Dialogue and the two 
 Apologies. ‘There are exhibited besides in thoughts and ex- 
 pressions, which occur in both works, even more significant 
 marks of the identity of the author’. 
 
 1 ra φύσει και der Kat Ov ὅλου Kaha καὶ δικαια καὶ ἀγαθα. See §?p. 247. 
 264. 320. 
 
 2 See the mystical explanation of the Messianic passage, Gen. xlix. 11, in Apol. ii. 
 4. “το yao πλυνων THY στολὴν αὐτου ἐν aipart σταφυλὴ ς᾽ προαγ- 
 γελτικὸν iv του παθους, οὗ πασχειν ἐμελλε, δι᾿ αἵματος καθαιρων τοὺς πιστεύοντας 
 
THE SPURIOUS LETTER ON THE WORSHIP OF GOD. 347 
 
 We cannot at all determine with certainty whether Justin 
 really held such a disputation with a Jew named Trypho; but at 
 least it is most probable, that many disputations with Jews gave 
 him an opportunity of writing such a dialogue, as he would by 
 that means have acquired such an acquaintance with the Jewish 
 theology of that day. He was always ready to give a reason of 
 his faith, both to Jews and to heathens. As we cannot ascertain 
 what is mere ornament, and what is real fact in this dialogue, we 
 cannot find any sufficient marks in it for a chronological decision ; 
 but it is certain, by the quotation from the first Apology, that 
 this dialogue was written later than that work, and apparently, 
 from what we have above said, than both the Apologies. 
 
 Justin in this dialogue speaks of the power of the Gospel from 
 his own experience, as he does in the Apologies: “1 found in 
 the doctrines of Christ,” he says, ‘the only sure and saving phi- 
 losophy, for it has in itself a power which commands reverence, 
 which restrains those, who depart from the right path, and the 
 sweetest tranquillity is the lot of those who practise it. It is 
 clear that this doctrine is sweeter than honey, because we who 
 have been formed by it, even to death, never deny his name.” 
 
 We have to lament the loss of a work of Justin against all the 
 heretical sects of his own day, as well as of his work against 
 Marcion. It is a matter of very great doubt, whether the frag- 
 ment of a work on the resurrection, which John of Damascus, 
 in the eighth century, has imparted to us under the name of 
 Justin, really belongs to him; Eusebius, Jerome, and Photius 
 knew nothing of such a work by him. 
 
 Among the most beautiful remains of Christian antiquity, is a 
 letter which is found among the works of Justin, on the charac- 
 
 teristics of Christian worship in relation to heathenism and 
 
 ait’ ἡ γαρ κεκλημενηὴ ὑπο του θειου πνευματος δια Tov προφητου στολὴ, οἱ 
 πιστευοντες αὐτῳ εἰσιν ἀνθρωποι, ἐν οἷς οἰκει τὸ παρα TOY Θεὸν σπέρμα, ὁ λογος, TO 
 δὲ εἰρημενον αἷμα της σταφυλῆς, σημαντικον Tov ἔχειν μὲν aia τὸν φανησομενον, 
 ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐξ ἀνθρωπειου σπερματος, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ θειας δυναμεως. Compare with this 
 the passage in Dial. Tryph. 273, which betrays the same author, who only in that pas- 
 sage made use of such expressions, which were rather borrowed from the language of the 
 Platonic philosophy, as his object required. ro τῳ αἵματι αὐτου ἀποπλύυνειν μελλειν 
 Tove πιστευοντας αὐτῳ ἐδηλου: στολὴν yap αὐτου ἐκαλεσε TO ἅγιον πνευμα τοὺς 
 Ov αὐτου ages ἁμαρτιων λαβοντας ἐν οἷς ἀει δυναμει μὲν παρεστι και ἔναργως 
 de παρεσται ἐν Ty δευτερᾳ αὐτου παρουσιᾳ" To δὲ aia σταφυλὴς εἰπεῖν τὸν λογον, 
 δεδηλωκεν, OTL aia μὲν ἔχει ὁ Χριστος οὐκ ἐξ ἀνθρωπου σπέρματος, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ τῆς 
 του Θεου δυναμεως. 
 
348 HIS MARTYRDOM. 
 
 Christianity. It contains that splendid portraiture of the Chris- 
 tian life, from which we have already quoted some passages. Its 
 language and thoughts, as well as the silence of the ancients, 
 prove that the letter does not proceed from Justin. But the 
 Christian simplicity which reigns in this letter bespeaks its high 
 antiquity, which is further supported by this circumstance, that 
 the author classes Judaism and heathenism together, and does not 
 appear to deduce the Jewish cultus from a Divine origin, and yet 
 there is nothing properly Gnostic in the treatise,—a phenomenon 
 which could only exist in a very early age. 
 
 We cannot, however, from the author’s speaking of the sacri- 
 fices of the Jews as an existing thing, show that he lived before 
 the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem; for in a lively 
 description he might very well present in such a manner what 
 really did not exist any longer. Nor does his calling himself the 
 disciple of the Apostles, give us any sure chronological mark, 
 because he might name himself thus as a follower of their 
 writings and doctrines ; even if this passage in the beginning of 
 § 11 really belongs to the genuine letter. 
 
 The part which follows it is clearly from another hand; that 
 which is there said of the Jewish people, of the Divine authority 
 of the Old Testament, and of orthodoxy, which fixes itself on the 
 determinations of the Fathers, by no means corresponds with the 
 character of mind and thought, which prevail in this letter. 
 
 Justin, as he himself says in the last-quoted Apology, expected 
 that his death would be compassed by a person, from one of the 
 then notorious classes of hypocritical professors of holiness,—a 
 Cynic, as he was called, named Crescens, who was much esteemed 
 by the people, and excited them against the Christians; for he 
 had peculiarly attracted the hatred of this man to himself by 
 exposing his hypocrisy. According to Eusebius, Cresceuns really 
 accomplished the purpose, with which he had threatened Justin ; 
 but Eusebius in support of this quotes a passage from Tatian ', 
 the scholar of Justin, which can by no means be used to prove it; 
 for Tatian there says only, that Crescens had endeavoured to 
 compass the death of Justin, from which it does not follow, that 
 he succeeded in that endeavour’. 
 
 Eusebius may, however, be quite right in affirming, that Justin 
 
 1 ἃ 19, orat. contra Grecos. 2 θανάτῳ περιβαλειν πραγματευσασθαι. 
 
TATIAN. 349 
 
 suffered martyrdom during the reign of M. Aurelius. This 
 account is in accordance with the relation of the martyrdom of 
 Justin and his fellow-traveller, which, although it does not come 
 from a source entitled to our confidence ', yet bears upon it many 
 internal marks, which speak more in favour of, than against its 
 authenticity *. 
 
 The next to Justin in order of time is Tatian of Assyria, his 
 disciple, of whom we have already spoken in the history of the 
 Gnostic sects*. He himself in the only writing which we have 
 of his, which we are about to mention, gives an explanation of 
 the progress of his religious development. He was brought up in 
 heathenism ; and frequent travels gave him an opportunity of 
 learning the multifarious sorts of heathen worship, which at that 
 time were existing together in the Roman empire. None, among 
 them all, could recommend itself to him as reasonable: not only 
 did he observe how religion in them was used to the service of 
 sin; but even the highly-wrought allegorical interpretations of 
 the ancient myths, as symbols of a speculative system of natural 
 philosophy, could not satisfy him, and it appeared to him a dis- 
 honourable proceeding for a man to attach himself to the popular 
 religion, who did partake in the common religious belief, and 
 who saw nothing in its doctrines about the gods, but symbols of 
 the elements and powers of nature. The mysteries into which 
 he suffered himself to be initiated, appeared to him also in the 
 same manner, not to correspond to the expectations, which they 
 awakened, and the contradictory systems of the philosophers 
 offered him no sure grounds of religious faith. He was rendered 
 mistrustful of them, by the contradiction, which he often observed 
 in those, who gave themselves out as philosophers, between the 
 seriousness which they exhibited for the sake of appearances in 
 their dress, mien, and language, and the levity of their conduct. 
 While he was in this condition, he came to the Old Testament, 
 to which his attention was drawn by what he had heard of the 
 
 1 Tn the collection of Symeon Metaphrastes. 
 
 ? These marks and grounds are the following: that it contains no miraculous tales, 
 and nothing exaggerated, nothing that contradicts the simple circumstances of 
 Christian Churches in those days, and that one reads nothing at all about Crescens in 
 it ; for one would expect a Greculus, who invented the history of such a martyrdom, 
 setting out from the supposition, that Crescens compassed the death of Justin, would 
 have made him an important personage, and told many tales about him. 
 
 3 See above, vol. ii. p. 108. 
 
350 ATHENAGORAS. 
 
 high antiquity of these writings, in comparison of the Hellenic 
 religions, as might easily be the case with a Syrian. He himself 
 says of the impression which the reading of this book made upon 
 him: “ These writings found acceptance with me because of the 
 simplicity of their language, the unstudiedness of the writer, the 
 intelligible history of the creation, because of the prediction of 
 the future, because of the wholesomeness of their precepts, and 
 because of the doctrine of the One God which prevails throughout 
 them'.” The impression which the study of the Old Testament 
 made upon him, would appear from this to have been with him 
 the preparation for a belief in the Gospel*. Coming in this 
 state of mind to Rome, he was converted to Christianity by 
 Justin, of whom he speaks with great reverence. 
 
 After the death of the latter, he wrote his ** Address to the 
 heathen,” in which he defends the φιλοσοφια των βαρβαρων 
 against the contempt of the Greeks, who had, nevertheless, 
 received the seeds of all knowledge and arts originally from the 
 Barbarians. In his view of the relation of the philosophy as well 
 as the religion of the Greeks to Christianity, we recognise far 
 more the Jater than the earlier Justin. We have already observed 
 (page 108), that even as early as in this treatise, the seeds of a 
 speculative and ascetic turn of thought are to be seen, which he 
 probably brought from Syria with him, as also its obscure style 
 betrays the Syrian. He says to the heathen: “ Wherefore will 
 ye excite your state-religion to battle against us? And where- 
 fore should I be hated as the most godless of men, because I will 
 not follow the laws of your religion? ‘The Emperor commands 
 taxes to be paid, I am ready to pay them. The Lord commands 
 me toserve him; I know how I have to serve him, for we must 
 honour men as becomes men, but fear God alone, who can be 
 seen by no human eye, and comprehended by no human art. It 
 is only when Iam commanded to deny him, that I refuse to obey, 
 but prefer to die, that I may not appear ungrateful and a liar.” 
 
 Next to Tatian comes Athenagoras, who addressed his Apology 
 (πρεσβεια περι Χριστιανων)ὴ. to the Emperor M. Aurelius, and 
 
 1 Tatian had already learnt the untenableness of Polytheism, and was already come 
 to the persuasion that none but a Monotheistic religion could be a true one. 
 
 2 It would in this case be remarkable, that Tatian should afterwards have become 
 an Anti-Jewish Gnostic; but we have remarked phone, that we are by no means 
 justified in this supposition, See p. 109. 
 
ATHENAGORAS. 351 
 
 his son Commodus’. We have no distinct account of this man’s 
 personal history. Only two among the ancients mention him, 
 Methodius and Philip of Sida, who was the last president of the 
 school of Catechists at Alexandria, the only person who relates 
 any thing of the history of the life of Athenagoras *; which, how- 
 ever, deserves no credit at all, because this writer is known to be 
 undeserving of our confidence, and because it contradicts other 
 creditable documents, and because of the suspicious circumstances 
 under which the fragment from him has come down to us. Neither 
 what Athenagoras (see above) says of a second marriage, nor 
 what he says of the ecstacy of the Prophets, who served as the 
 unconscious instruments of the operations of the Holy Spirit, 
 suffices to prove him a Montanist; because, as we remarked 
 above, the Montanists in this case said nothing altogether new, 
 but only carried an already existing mode of thought on religious 
 and moral matters to the extreme. 
 
 We have also a writing in Defence of the Resurrection, by the 
 same Athenagoras. 
 
 Together with the Apologists we may mention a writer who 
 is not otherwise known to us, Hermias, who wrote a short treatise 
 in ridicule of the heathen philosophers (διασυρμος των ἐξω φιλο- 
 σοφων)ὴ. He seeks to collect together a multitude of foolish and 
 mutually contradictory opinions of the Grecian philosophers, with- 
 out advancing anything positive himself,—a proceeding, which 
 could scarcely be of any utility ; for in order to persuade those who 
 had received a philosophical education, more would be required 
 than this declamation, and with the ignorant there was no need 
 either of such a caution against the errors of the philosophers, or of 
 such a negative preparation for the Gospel. We see in this Her- 
 mias, an example of one of those passionate enemies of the Grecian 
 philosophy, against whom Clement of Alexandria contends (see 
 above), who in accordance with Jewish fables, deduced the 
 Grecian philosophy from the communications of fallen angels. 
 This Hermias is called a philosopher in the superscription of his 
 book; it may be the case, that before his conversion he went 
 about in the garb of the philosopher, and then after his conver- 
 
 1 See the essay of Mosheim on the time at which this Apology was written, in the 
 first part of his Commentationes ad hist. eccles. pertinentes. 
 
 2 Published by Dodwell (Dissertt. in Irenzeum). He relates that Athenagoras lived in 
 the time of Adrian and Antoninus Pius, to whom he presented his Apology, and that 
 he was Catechist at Alexandria, before Clement. 
 
 7 
 
352 ATHENAGORAS. 
 
 sion he passed over from enthusiasm for the Grecian philosophy 
 to passionate hatred against it. According to the different con- 
 stitution of men’s minds, on a change of opinions, their new 
 habits of thought may be engrafted on their former, as in the 
 case of Justin and Clement of Alexandria, or they may produce a 
 violent and harsh abomination of their former sentiments. 
 
 The Church in the great metropolis of the Eastern part of 
 Roman Asia—a flourishing seat of literature—could not be at 
 a loss for teachers gifted with a learned education, and their 
 intercourse with well-educated heathens and Gnostics would 
 evidently spur on their activity as authors. ‘Theophilus was 
 Bishop of this Church in the time of M. Aurelius. After the 
 death of this Emperor, he wrote, during the reign of Commodus, 
 an apologetic work in three books, addressed to Autolycus, a 
 heathen, through whose reproaches against Christianity he 
 was induced to write this work, in which he shows himself a 
 thinking man, and full of knowledge. We have already quoted 
 some parts of this work. It is remarkable that this Theophilus, 
 who wrote against Marcion and Hermogenes, composed also a 
 commentary on the Holy Scripture. We see here the seed of 
 that exegetic disposition of the Antiochian Church, of which 
 we shall speak again at the end of this section’. 
 
 During the course of the second century a peculiar turn of 
 mind in theology was formed in the Church of Asia Minor. It 
 was here that the Anti-Gnostic, practical and realistic spirit 
 (which we have described in the general introduction to this 
 section) first took a definite form. The practical Christian 
 spirit, which had resulted from the long activity of the Apostle 
 John in these regions, often alloyed here, we freely confess with 
 
 1 Jerome c. 25. de vir. ill. quotes a commentary of his in evangelium (which may 
 denote the whole corpus evangeliorum), and on the Proverbs, but headds: “ qui mihi 
 cum superiorum voluminum elegantia et phrasi non videntur congruere.”’ But in his 
 preface to his Commentary on St. Matthew, he distinctly quotes Commentaries of 
 Theophilus; and in his letter to Algasia, t. iv. p. 197, he quotes, as it appears, an 
 explanatory harmony, or synopsis of the Gospels by him (qui quatuor Evange- 
 listarum in unum opus dicta compingens). All this may certainly be only notices of 
 the same work. We have nothing more of his (as the Latin fragments under the 
 name of Theophilus do not belong to him) unless the Catenz contain fragments of his, 
 The specimen which Jerome gives of his mode of interpretation is far from the 
 spirit of the late Antiochian school, for it shows a fanciful mode of allegorizing, 
 which might suit well enough with the Alexandrian cast of mind, which betrays 
 itself in the work first quoted. 
 
HEGESIPPUS. 353 
 
 a mixture of a carnal tendency, opposed itself to the speculative 
 caprice and licence of the Gnostic sects and schools, which made 
 especial progress in these places. A firm dependence on the 
 doctrines and declarations, which the oldest of the leaders of the 
 Church remembered to have heard from the mouth of St. John 
 himself, opposed a counter-balancing weight to Gnosticism; and 
 these men, of simple spirit and childlike piety, performed this 
 service towards the development of the Church, that through 
 them the extension of the pure fundamental principles of the 
 Gospel was secured, and the practical spirit of Christianity pre- 
 served unalloyed, although from the impure source of tradi- 
 tion, in which the Divine and the Human were often mingled 
 together, they received and attached importance to many ac- 
 companiments which were foreign to the essential nature of 
 Christianity. But then, if only the fundamental déctrines of 
 Christianity, and the genuine documents of the original, pure 
 communication of the word of God, were propagated, provision 
 was by that means made, that Christianity should be able to 
 cleanse itself by its inward divine power from such dross, as in the 
 stream of its temporal development it must constantly contract. 
 But could the spirit of Gnosticism have obtained the victory; 
 then, inasmuch as it destroys the essential foundations of Chris- 
 tianity, the collection of the holy original documents would have 
 been sacrificed to caprice, and the possibility of such a process 
 of purification would thus have been cut off. 
 
 It was the endeavour of these teachers of the Church to oppose 
 to the caprice of the Gnostics the concordant tradition of the 
 Christian Churches, especially of those of Apostolical origin. 
 From this endeavour, apparently proceeded the first beginning 
 of an Ecclesiastical History, the work of Hegesippus, a Jew of 
 Asia Minor, converted to Christianity, who lived during the 
 reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines, and who, perhaps in order 
 to reconcile differences between the usages of the Jewish and 
 heathen churches, or to persuade himself by ocular demonstra- 
 tion of the harmony of all old Churches in the essentials of 
 Christianity, undertook a journey to Rome in the days of Anto- 
 ninus Pius, and remained there for a season. ‘The result of his 
 enquiries and collections was his ‘ Five Books of Ecclesiastical 
 Events’ (revre ὑπομνηματα ἐκκλησιαστικων πραξεων). He may 
 perhaps here have inserted much impure tradition of Jewish 
 
 VOL. II. Aa 
 
354 HEGESIPPUS—HIS ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 origin, and have been influenced by many errors, proceeding 
 from a Judeo-Christian carnal mode of thought. The picture of 
 James, who was called the brother of the Lord, is painted by 
 him entirely in the taste of the Ebionites’. From a quotation, 
 however, made by Stephanus Gobarus ?, a monophysite writer of 
 the latter part of the sixth century, it may be concluded, that he 
 was, as a proper Ebionite, an opponent of the Apostle Paul 3 for 
 in the fifth book of his Ecclesiastical History, after citing the 
 words of 1 Cor. ii. 9. “ That which no eye hath seen, no ear 
 heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of any man;” he says 
 that this is false, and that those who said such things belied the 
 Holy Scriptures and the Lord, who said, “9 Blessed are your eyes, 
 for they see, and your ears, for they hear,” Matth. xiii. 16*. If we 
 refer these words of Hegesippus to the above-cited passage of 
 St. Paul, it appears to follow, that he accused him of false doctrine ; 
 nay, accused him of having quoted something under the name 
 of Scripture, which is not to be found there. But the content- 
 ment of Hegesippus with the general tradition of the Church, 
 and his connexion with the Church of Rome, oppose this suppo- 
 sition. According to this supposition, he must have been an 
 opponent of both. As far as we can judge (without knowing the 
 context that belongs to these words of Hegesippus) we should, 
 therefore, far rather conjecture, that he said this not in opposition 
 to St. Paul, but in his angry zeal against the opponents of 
 carnal Chiliasm, who might probably enough quote the above 
 passage of St. Paul, and similar ones, in order to oppose sensual 
 representations of the happiness of the world to come. 
 
 The contests about the time of Easter (see above), and con- 
 cerning the Montanistic spirit of prophecy, gave afterwards, as 
 well as the controversies against the Gnostics, and the Apologies 
 against the heathens, another circumstance to exercise the activity 
 of these Church-teachers, as authors. The list of the writings of 
 Melito, Bishop of Sardis, whom we have already mentioned as 
 the author of an Apology addressed to the Emperor M. Aurelius, 
 shows with what matters the Church-teachers of Asia Minor then 
 occupied themselves. We find among them the following treatises : 
 on Right Conduct, on the Prophets, of Prophecy, of the Church, of 
 
 1 Euseb. ii. 23. 2 In Photius, Cod. 235. 
 3 parny μὲν εἰρησθαι ravra, και καταψευδεσθάι τους TavTa φαμενους τῶν TE 
 θειων γραφων και Tov Kupiov λεγοντος, &c. 
 
MELITO OF SARDIS., 355 
 
 the Revelation of St. John (which writings may collectively refer to 
 the circumstances of the Montanistic controversy), the Key (ἡ 
 κλεις), (perhaps this also refers to the keys of the Church ', in 
 reference to the controversies about penitence,) a treatise on 
 Sunday (perhaps in reference to the controversies between the 
 Jewish and heathen Christians about the festival of the Sabbath, 
 or Sunday), on the Corporeality of God, a defence of that sensuous 
 Anti-Gnostic conception®. The contents of the following treatises 
 may also refer to the controversies against Gnosticism: on the 
 Nature of Man, on the Creation of the Soul, or on the Body, or on 
 the Spirit, on the Birth of Christ, on Truth, on Faith, on the Senses, 
 of the obedience of Faith*. The importance of the subjects, and 
 their deep hold upon the life of the Church in those times, make 
 us regret the more the loss of these writings. 
 
 Claudius Apollinaris, whom we mentioned above, Bishop of 
 Hierapolis, in Phrygia, was a contemporary of Melito; his 
 
 1 [The Power of the Keys is the more usual English phrase, but this would 
 
 include more than the subject of penitence. H. J. R.] 
 
 2 περι ἐνσωματου Θεου. These words might be taken to mean, concerning the 
 appearance of God in the flesh ; or, concerning the incarnation of God. But a com- 
 parison with the account of the trustworthy Origen, on the contents of the book 
 (fragment. Commentar. in Gen. vol. ii. Opp. fol. 25.) compels us to the explanation we 
 have given. 
 
 3 The list of writings is to be found in Eusebius, iv. 26. [The expression in 
 Neanderis, ‘ von den Sinnen des glaubigen Gehorsams ;’ which appears to me to be only 
 capable of the above translation, or of this, ‘about the senses of faithful obedience ;’ i. ὁ. 
 about the senses, by which we perceive and accede to the doctrines of the faith; mean- 
 ing, perhaps, our inward means of perception, &c. On referring, however, to Eusebius, 
 I see that the title of the work is ὁ περι ὑπακοὴς πίστεως αἰσθητηριων, on which 
 in Heinichen’s edition, I find the following note extracted (I believe) from Valesius. 
 “Ὁ περι ὑπακοῆς, &c. Apud Nicephorum legitur ὁ περι ὑπακοῆς πιστεως" καὶ ὁ περι 
 αἰσθητηριων, ut duo fuerint Melitonis libri; alter de obedientia fidei, alter de sensibus, 
 idque confirmant Hieronymus et Rufinus. In omnibus tamen nostris codicibus legitur 
 και ὁ περι ὑπακοης πίστεως aicAnTnOLWY absque distinctione, quam R. Stephanus 
 post vocem πίστεως addidit. Ἐπὶ igitur hic Melitonis liber ita inscriptus: De 
 obedientia sensuum fidei; seu quod idem est, de obedientia fidei, que fit a sensibus. 
 Quidam enim heretici aiebant, animales quidem seu psychicos sensuum opera, 
 spiritales vero per rationem. Ita Heracleo explicabat locum illum ex Joannis evangelio : 
 Nisi signa et prodigia videritis, non credetis, Que Christi verba aiebat Heracleo dici 
 proprie ad eos, qui per opera et sensus naturam habeant obediendi, non autem credendi 
 per rationem. Refert hee Origenes enarrationum in Joannis Evangelium tomo xiii., 
 ubi id refutat, docetque tam spiritales quam animales non posse nisi per sensum 
 credere.” This title is therefore differently understood by others, and made to mean 
 on the acceptance of the faith by means of the senses. On Heracleon, see Grabe Spicil. 
 vol. ii. p. 80. N.B. The titles of the works are altogether uncertain, from the various 
 lections in this passage. H. J. R.] 
 
 Aa 
 
356 IRENZEUS, 
 
 writings, although not so numerous, were occupied with several 
 similar matters’. 
 
 From the school of these Church-teachers of Asia Minor, pro- 
 ceeded Irenzeus; who, after the martyrdom of Pothinus, became 
 Bishop of the Church of Lyons and Vienne (see above). He 
 remembered, even in his advanced age, what he had heard in his 
 youth from the mouth of Polycarp, about the life and doctrine of 
 Christ and the Apostles. Ina piece, addressed to Florinus, an 
 heretical teacher, with whom he had been in his youth with 
 Polycarp, he says, “These doctrines, the Elders, who preceded 
 us, and were in habits of intercourse with the Apostles, have not 
 delivered to you ; for when I was a boy, I saw you’ with Polyearp 
 in Asia Minor, for I remember what then happened better than 
 things of the present day; what we have learnt in childhood 
 grows up with the soul, and becomes one with it, so that I could 
 describe the place in which the holy Polycarp used to sit and 
 talk, his out-going and his in-coming, his mode of life, his per- 
 sonal appearance, the discourses he addressed to the multitude, 
 and his own account of his intercourse with John, as well as with 
 the rest of those who had seen the Lord; and how he remembered 
 their conversations, and the account they gave of the Lord’s 
 miracles and doctrines. While he related all from the accounts 
 of eye-witnesses of his life, he related it in entire accordance with 
 the Scripture. This I heard at that time with earnestness by 
 reason of the grace of God imparted to me, writing it down, not 
 on paper, but on my heart, and I am able by the grace of God, 
 constantly to bring it with freshness into my memory. I can 
 also testify before God, that if that blessed and apostolic Pres- 
 byter had heard any such thing, he would have cried out at once 
 and stopped his ears, and have said according to his custom, ‘Oh! 
 good God! for what a time hast thou preserved me, that I should 
 endure this!’ and he would have left the place, where he was 
 sitting or standing, when he heard such language’®.” ‘The spirit, 
 
 1 If in ‘the Catenz, especially in the Catena of Nicephorus on the Octateuchus, 
 published at Leipzig, 1772, the fragments which belong to this Apollinaris were 
 properly separated from those which belong to Apollinaris of Laodicea, and the 
 fragments in Eusebius, and the Chronicon Paschale Alexandrinum, were compared 
 with them, the character of this Church-teacher might be drawn more definitely. 
 
 2 [Neander has here omitted a part of the sentence. λαμπρως πράττοντα ἐν Ty 
 βασιλικῃ addy, και πειρωμενον εὐδοκιμεῖν παρ᾽ αὐτῳ. H. J. R.] 
 
 3 Euseb. v. 20. 
 
IRENZUS—NOT A MONTANIST. 357 
 
 which here speaks out, was inherited by Ireneus. We have 
 already spoken of his peculiar practical disposition in his con- 
 ception and mode of handling the doctrine of Faith, his zeal for 
 the essentials of Christianity, and his moderation and liberality in 
 controversies about external, non-essential things. We observed 
 above (see p. 193), that he apparently came forward as a peace- 
 maker between the Montanists and their most violeut adversaries. 
 This supposition suits best with the spirit of his writings; for his 
 having many opinions and dispositions, which agreed with the 
 spirit of Montanism, and which would therefore contribute par- 
 ticularly to endear him to a Tertullian, cannot, after the ob- 
 servations we made above, about the relations of Montanism 
 and the opinions of the Church, at all serve as a proof that 
 he was a Montanist. Had he been a zealous Montaunist, 
 whenever he touched upon a darling theme of Montanism, he 
 could scarcely have omitted to appeal to the new explanations 
 communicated by the Paraclete ; but he always appeals only to 
 Scripture, or to the traditions of those elders of Asia Minor. 
 But we cannot possibly suppose, that where he speaks of the 
 condemnation of false prophets, he means by that the Montanistic 
 prophets, for he was probably too favourable to the Montanists 
 for this; but as a zealous Montanist, he would hardly have 
 omitted to mention, with the false prophets, also the opponents 
 of the true prophets; because he is here reckoning up everything 
 deserving of condemnation. Instead of this, a passage follows, 
 which far more characterizes the peace-loving spirit of Irenzeus, 
 which endeavoured to prevent a schism between the Montanistic 
 and other Churches, as it made peace in the controversies about 
 _ Easter: “The Lord will also judge those, who create schisms, 
 who have not the love of God, and seek their own advantage, 
 not the unity of the Church; who, for slight reasons cut in pieces 
 the great and glorious body of Christ, and, as much as in them 
 lies, destroy it, who really do strain out a gnat and swallow a 
 camel. But no advantage which they can offer, can counter- 
 balance the evil of schism’.” These were the principles on which 
 he acted also in the controversies about Easter (see above) ἢ. 
 
 1 L, iv. ο. 33.§ 6. [L.iv. ο. 62. Ed. Bill. and Feuard. Paris, 1675.] 
 
 2 It may be concluded also, from the manner in which Tertullian adv. Valentinian. 
 c. 5. speaks of Irenzeus, that he was no Montanist, for otherwise he would have called 
 him “ noster ” as he does call Proculus immediately after. 
 
358 CHIEF WORK OF IRENZEUS. 
 
 ‘The chief work of Irenzeus, which for the most part has only 
 descended to us in the old literal Latin translation, with important 
 fragments of the original Greek, is his Confutation of the Gnostic 
 Systems, in five books, which has preserved to us the most graphic 
 picture of his mind. 
 
 Many of the writings of Irenzeeus we know only by name. 
 He himself cites a writing in which he has treated of a matter, 
 which seems to be quite foreign to this Father’s turn of mind; 
 viz. of the peculiarities of St. Paul’s style, the hyperbata which 
 so often occur in his writings’. It is probable that this treatise 
 was not expressly upon the peculiar language of this Apostle, 
 but that Irenzeus incidentally touches upon this subject, while he 
 is combating the capricious nature of the Gnostic exegesis, which, 
 no doubt, despised with theosophic contempt (see above) the 
 simple rules of all just interpretation. He justly observes, that 
 the origin of this peculiarity in St. Paul’s style lies in the over- 
 whelming press of thoughts that arise in his ardent spirits’; a 
 remark which, as it pre-supposes a recognition of the natural 
 peculiarities of man’s character while under the influence of the 
 Holy Spirit, is founded upon a more liberal and just concep- 
 tion of inspiration, although Irenzeus may not have been aware 
 of it. 
 
 It will besides be seen by this example, as we have before ob- 
 served, that the opposition to Gnosticism promoted the growth of 
 sound hermeneutical principles, although they were not always 
 justly used, but their application was sometimes led astray to serve 
 the purpose of a moment in regard to some doctrinal controversy, 
 as was the case with Irenzeus in the passage we have quoted. 
 
 Among the writings of this Father, which we find named by 
 the ancients, we shall only mention two letters, which have an 
 historical importance in consequence of their subject, because 
 schisms in the Romish Church were to be healed up by them. 
 One is addressed to Blastus, who was probably a presbyter of the 
 Romish Chureh. The account in the additions to Tertullian de 
 Preescriptione* is likely enough to be true, viz. that Blastus had 
 
 1 L. ILI. c. 7. quemadmodum de [ea al. edit. H. J. R.]| multis et alibi ostendimus 
 eum utentem, 
 
 2 Propter velocitatem sermonum suorum et propter impetum, qui in ipso est, spiritus. 
 
 [Ita Neander. I find the passage he alludes to in the addition found in the MS. 
 of Agobardus to the treatise de Prascriptione Hereticorum, § lili. | 
 
HIPPOLYTUS. 359 
 
 introduced a schism into the Romish Church by his adherence 
 to the usage of Asia Minor in regard to the time of the Paschal 
 festival. ‘This suits perfectly well with the time of Victor, Bishop 
 of Rome; and perhaps also many other Jewish notions were 
 interwoven with this opinion about Easter. 
 
 The other letter was addressed to a presbyter, named Florinus, 
 with whom Irenzeus in early youth had lived with the aged Poly- 
 carp; and who, it would seem, carried Monarchianism, or the 
 doctrine of one God, as the Creator of all Being, to such an 
 extreme, that he made God the origin of evil’. 
 
 Hippolytus is named as a disciple of Irenzeus by Photius’, and 
 took a prominent place among the ecclesiastical writers of the 
 
 1 It is difficult to judge from the title of the book, as itis quoted by Eusebius, v. 26, in 
 what the peculiarity of the opinions of Florinus consisted. The title is wept povapytac 
 ἡ περι Tov μὴ εἶναι τον Θεον ποιητὴν κακων. The first part of this title may be taken 
 to mean that Florinus, as a Gnostic Dualist, had denied the doctrine of the μοναρχία; 
 but then this will not suit the second part, fur this cannot be understood as if Florinus 
 had maintained the existence of an absolute evil principle [i. e. an independent one, 
 H.J. R.] or aDemiurgos, as the author of an imperfect universe, for in this case the title 
 must have run thus, περι τοῦ μὴ εἶναι Θεον τὸν ποιητην κακων 1. It can therefore 
 only be understood to mean, that Irenzeus wished to show how we must maintain the 
 doctrine of the Unity (the Monarchia), without making the pra ἀρχη the ἀρχὴ των 
 kakwy, and also that Florinus had made God the Creator of evil, whether it.was in 
 accordance with a doctrine of absolute predestination, which many uninformed Chris- 
 tians had imagined from passages of the Old Testament, which they understood too 
 literally, (according to Origen, Philocal. c. i. p.17. τοιαυτα ὑπολαμβανοντες περι 
 Tov Θεου, ὁποια οὐδὲ περι TOV ὠμοτατου και ἀδικωτατου ἀνθρωπου, forming such 
 opinions of God as they would not of the most unjust and cruel of men), or whether 
 it was, that he made God the Creator of an absolute evil principle, whether a con- 
 scious or an inconscious one (an vA). But further, had Florinus only held one of 
 the common Gnostic doctrines about the origin of evil, Irenzeus would not have said, 
 that no heretic even had ventured to bring forward such a doctrine. Sinee Euse- 
 bius says, that Florinus afterwards allowed himself to be carried away by the Valen- 
 tinian doctrines, and that Ireneus was in consequence induced to write his book περε 
 ὀγδοαδος against him (see above, in the account of the Gnostic systems), it would 
 seem to follow from this, that the earlier doctrines of Florinus were no Gnostic doctrines. 
 One is inclined therefore to think that, while Florinus acknowledged the untenableness 
 of a theory, which placed the cause of evil in God, he fell into the opposite extreme, 
 and supposed a self-existent independent principle of evil out of God. 
 
 2 Cod. 121. 
 
 ' [See Middleton on the Greek Article, p. 50, in the edition of 1833, by my late 
 brother. Thisis only in accordance with the well-known rule, that in such propositions 
 the subject has the article, and the predicate has not. The translation of the first title 
 would be on the Unity of God, or an essay to show that God is not the creator of evil. 
 Of the second it would be—to show that the creator of evil (i. e. the Demiurgos, or 
 whosoever it may be whose existence is assumed as creator of evil) is not God. H. J. R.] 
 
360 HIPPOLYTUS. 
 
 first half of the third century; but unfortunately only a very 
 small portion of his works has remained to us. ‘The testimony, 
 however, of Photius taken by itself, is not sufficient to establish 
 the account, that he was a disciple of Irenzeus; but since, as 
 appears from his quotation, expressions of Hippolytus himself 
 about his connexion with Irenzeus lay before his eyes, and since 
 in the turn of mind of Hippolytus, so far as we can judge of it 
 from the fragments and titles of his works, (inasfar as these 
 give us any means of drawing conclusions as to their contents, 
 and the tendency of his exertions as an author,) there is nothing 
 to oppose such a supposition, but rather, on the contrary, much 
 to favour it, we may fairly give credit to this account. 
 
 Hippolytus was a bishop. But since neither Eusebius nor 
 Jerome were able to indicate the city in which he was bishop, 
 we cannot state any thing definite on the subject, nor do the 
 later accounts, which place his see in Arabia}, nor the others, 
 which place it in the neighbourhood of Rome’, deserve con- 
 sideration, Certainly there is much to prove that the sphere of 
 his exertions was in the East, and much, on the contrary, to fix 
 it in the West. Both these points may be reconciled by intro- 
 ducing the supposition of different times; and this very circum- 
 stance, that he was occupied at different times in different coun- 
 tries, may have given rise to the indistinctness of the ancient 
 accounts of him. 
 
 We may obtain a perfect catalogue of his writings, by com- 
 paring together the citations of Eusebius and Jerome, the specifica- 
 tion of his works found upon the marble statue* to his memory, 
 which was dug up at Rome, cn the road to Tivoli, a.p. 1551, the 
 account of Photius, and the catalogue of Ebedjesu *, the Nestorian 
 writer of the thirteenth century. We see from these indications, 
 that he wrote various exegetical, doctrinal, polemico-doctrinal and 
 chronological works, and homilies. 
 
 1 According to one supposition it was Porus Romanus, or Aden, in Arabia, to which 
 report perhaps only a misunderstanding of the passage in Eusebius, vi. 20, may have 
 yiven rise. 
 
 2 Portus Romanus—Ostia. ᾿ 
 
 3. In which he is represented as sitting on his Episcopal seat, the καθεδρα or θρονος, 
 and underneath him is the sixteen-year Cycle of Easter prepared by him, κανὼν 
 ἑκκαιδεκαετηρινος, of which there is a full investigation in the second part of Ideler’s 
 Handbuch der Chronologie, p. 214, &c. The monument itself is published in the first 
 
 part of the edition, by Fabricius, of the works of Hippolytus. 
 * In Assemani Bibliotheca Orientalis, t. iii. p. 1. 
 
HIPPOLYTUS ON THE WRITINGS OF ST. JOHN. 361 
 
 We shall mention only those of his writings, the subject of 
 which gives them an historical importance. In regard to Exe- 
 gesis, Jerome hints that he preceded Origen in giving an example 
 of an accomplished interpretation of Scripture, and that Ambro- 
 sius (see below), the friend of Origen, had urged him to follow 
 this example. He must somewhere, whether it was at Alex- 
 andria, in Palestine, or in Arabia, have met with Origen, because 
 Jerome cites an homily by Hippolytus in praise of our Saviour, 
 which he had delivered in the presence of Origen’. His exe- 
 gesis, judging from the few fragments that remain, was of the 
 allegorizing kind. 
 
 In the enumeration of his writings on that old monument, a 
 work occurs ὑπερ Tov κατα Iwavyny εὐαγγελίου Kat ἀποκαλυψεως. 
 This can hardly be a commentary on these two books of the 
 Bible, although Jerome seems to quote a commentary of Hippo- 
 lytus on the Revelations; but this title would far more indicate 
 a piece written in defence of those two books. ‘This is also in 
 accordance with the title, which Ebedjesu gives to this work. 
 We must therefore suppose it a defence of the genuineness of 
 these scriptural books, and a justification of them from the 
 reproaches of the Alogi. If Hippolytus in this appears as an oppo- 
 nent of the Ultra Anti-Montanists, this agrees with the fact, that 
 he wrote a book on the Charismata*. We may here refer to the 
 circumstance that Stephanus Gobarus, in Photius, 1. 6.5 opposes to 
 each other the opinions of Hippolytus and Gregory of Nyssa, 
 about the Montanists, from which we may conclude, that the 
 former belonged to the defenders of the Montanists. We have 
 no means of determining with certainty whether the xepadaa 
 προς 'aov, which Ebedjesu ascribes to him, are to be brought 
 into the account in this matter. (If, in fact, this Caius was the 
 violent opponent of Moutanism.) 
 
 A work of Hippolytus is quoted against the two-and-thirty 
 heresies, which (according to Photius) closed with the heresy of 
 Noetus. He declares, as Photius has quoted him, that he has in 
 this work made use of the contents of a series of discourses by 
 
 1 Had this discourse been preserved, it would perhaps have given us a great deal of 
 information on the history of the festivals of the Epiphany and Christmas. 
 
 2 It cannot be entirely ascertained with certainty whether this work bore the title 
 ἀποστολικὴ παραδοσις περι χαρισματων, or whether the work on the Charismata, 
 and the exposition of the Apostolical Tradition, were two separate works. 
 
362 THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 Irenzeus against these heresies’. We have already quoted his 
 writing against Noetus, which is still preserved, which probably 
 formed the conclusion of this work. 
 
 We have also an unimportant piece by him on the Antichrist, 
 which was also known to Photius. The same writer mentions a 
 commentary on Daniel by him, out of which he quotes the remark- 
 able circumstance’, that he placed the end of the world at 500 
 years after the birth of Christ. His placing this event later than it 
 was usual to represent it in the earliest ages of the Church, may 
 be attributed to the season of tranquillity, which the Church was 
 then enjoying, under Alexander Severus. 
 
 In the list of the writings of Hippolytus on the monument, a 
 TpoTpeMTiKov προς Σε[βηρειναν occurs. It is hardly to be doubted 
 that this is the very treatise, from which Theodoret, in his ἐρα- 
 νίστης, quotes several passages under the title of a Letter to the 
 Queen or Empress (προς βιασιλιδα), which Fabricius has collected 
 in his edition of Hippolytus. Its contents answer to the title, 
 which the writing mentioned in the monument bore ; it is a dis- 
 cussion of the doctrines of the Christian faith, for the advantage 
 of a heathen woman. That Severina must also have been a queen 
 or an empress. But the name Severina can hardly be correct; it 
 must be Severa, and it is in the highest degree probable to 
 suppose it addressed to Severa, who was wife of the emperor 
 Philippus Arabs. (See above.) 
 
 An entirely peculiar character marks the theological develop- 
 ment of the North-African Church, whose theological spirit was 
 constantly taking a more definite form from the time of Tertullian 
 to that of St. Augustin, and afterwards obtained the greatest 
 influence over the whole Western Church, by means of St. 
 Augustine. 
 
 Tertullian is a writer of peculiar importance, both as the first 
 representative of the theological character of the North-African 
 Church, and as the representative of the Montanistic opinions. 
 He was a man of ardent mind, warm disposition, and deeply 
 
 1 The words of Photius are as follows: ravrag (rag αἱρεσεις) δὲ φησιν ἐλέγχοις 
 ὑποβληθηναι ὁμιλουντὸος Bionvarov. wy καὶ συνοψιν 6 Ἵππολυτος ποιουμένος 
 τοδὲ τὸ βιβλιον φησι συντεταχέναι 
 
 2 Cod. 202, 
 
OF THE, NORTH-AFRICAN CHURCH. 363 
 
 serious character’, accustomed to give himself up with all his 
 soul and strength to the object of his love, and haughtily to reject 
 all which was uncongenial to that object. He had a fund of great 
 and multifarious knowledge, but it was confusedly heaped up in 
 his mind, without scientific arrangement. His depth of thought 
 was not united with logical clearness and judgment; a warm 
 ungoverned imagination, that dwelt in sensuous images, was his 
 ruling power. His impetuous and haughty disposition, and his 
 early education as an advocate or a rhetorician, were prone to 
 carry him, especially in controversy, to rhetorical exaggerations. 
 When he defends a thing, of the truth of which he is persuaded, 
 one often sees in him the advocate who only collects together all 
 the arguments, by which his cause may be advanced, both just 
 arguments and sophisms, that deceive by a mere dazzling appear- 
 ance; his very richness of fancy at times leads him astray from 
 the perception of the simple truth. The circumstance which 
 renders this man a phenomenon of so much importance to the 
 Christian historian, is this, that Christianity is the soul of his life 
 and thought, that by Christianity there was opened to him an 
 entirely new and fertile interior world, but not until the leaven 
 of Christianity could wholly penetrate and ennoble his ardent, 
 powerful, and somewhat rugged nature: we find the new wine in 
 an old cask; so that the taste, which it has received in that cask, 
 might easily deceive one that is not a connoisseur. Tertullian 
 had often more within him, than he could express; an adequate 
 form was wanting to the overflowing spirit. He was compelled 
 first to create a language for the new spiritual matter (and that, 
 too, out of the rough Punic Latin), without the advantage of 
 a logical and grammatical training, and to create it just as he 
 was carried on in his ardour by the stream of his thoughts 
 and feelings. Hence come the difficulties and obscurities to be 
 found in his mode of writing, but hence also come its originality 
 and liveliness. Hence, this great lather, who united great gifts 
 with great faults, has been often misunderstood by those who 
 could not acquaint themselves with his spirit through the rough 
 and uncultivated unassisted form in which it is presented to us. 
 Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, was born in the latter 
 years of the second century, probably at Carthage, and was the 
 
 1 [ Literally, of a fiery and deep spirit, of a warm and deep disposition. H. J. R. ] 
 
364 LIFE OF TERTULLIAN. 
 
 son of a centurion in the service of the Pro-consul at Carthage. 
 He was at first an advocate or a rhetorician, and arrived at man- 
 hood before he was converted to Christianity; and he then 
 obtained, if the account given by Jerome is correct, the office of 
 a Presbyter. It is doubtful, however, whether it was at Rome 
 or Carthage. The latter is, in itself, the most probable; because 
 in different writings, composed at different times, he speaks as if 
 he were settled at Carthage; although * the accounts of Eusebius 
 and Jerome may be taken to favour the former supposition. The 
 accession of Tertullian to Montanism may be sufficiently ex- 
 plained from its affinity to the early character of his mind and 
 disposition. His writings relate to the most varied points of 
 Christian doctrine and of Christian life: it is here a matter of 
 great importance, to separate those among them, which bear the 
 stamp of Montanism, from those which contain no trace of it’. 
 
 1 The words of Eusebius, ii. 2. των μαλιστα ἐπὶ Ῥωμης λαμπρων, do not exactly 
 assert, that as a Christian he obtained an important place in the Roman Church, but 
 taken in conjunction with the context they may very well imply, that before his con- 
 version to Christianity he was in great estimation at Rome, as a Juris-consultus (for 
 the arbitrary translation of Rufinus, ‘inter nostros scriptores admodum clarus,’ must 
 at all events be rejected) ; but we might then also conclude, that if Tertullian lived at 
 Rome as an heathen, and was so much esteemed, it is also probable that he was there 
 also first invested with a spiritual office. Jerome says that the jealousy and injuries of 
 the Romish clergy moved him to change to Montanism. But such stories, which the 
 ancient Church-teachers used to set about, are always very suspicious, because men 
 were universally too much inclined to attribute to external causes a conversion from 
 the Roman Church to heretical opinions,—and Jerome in particular, although he 
 reverenced the Catheda Petri in the Roman Church, was notwithstanding, inclined to 
 speak evil of the Roman Clergy, who did him so much injury during his residence at 
 Rome, especially after the death of Damasus, and to accuse them, in particular, of 
 jealousy against great talents. 
 
 2 [ have given a more elaborate investigation of this subject in my treatise on 
 Tertullian. [Anti-Gnostikus, Geist des Tertullian. Berlin, 1825. H. J. R.] 1 shall 
 here only add something in regard to the objections made by Dr. Colln to my con- 
 clusions. He finds a mark of Montanism in what Tertullian says, de Patientia c. 1. 
 ““ bonorum quorundam, sicuti et malorum intolerabilis magnitudo est, ut ad capienda 
 et prestanda ea, sola gratia divine inspirationis operatur.” I must here certainly 
 retract the declaration made in my Tertullian, p. 161, that there is nothing con- 
 tained in this passage but the common Christian doctrine, which attributes to the 
 Holy Spirit the operation of all good in believers. The following is the idea contained 
 in the passage : ‘ But for all good, we need not only human exertions, but the commu- 
 nication of the Holy Spirit. The higher the grade of goodness is, the more man needs 
 the operation of the Holy Spirit. But there are grades of goodness so exalted, qualities 
 and gifts of such elevation, that man can do nothing whatever towards attaining them. 
 They are entirely the free gift of the Holy Spirit, and man in these cases is only 
 passive, in regard to the work of the Holy Spirit. Such are the Charismata, which 
 
LIFE OF TERTULLIAN. 365 
 
 It is difficult to decide the question, whether Tertullian re- 
 mained always in the same connexion with the Montanistic 
 : party; or whether he afterwards again inclined more to the 
 Catholic Church, and endeavoured to forma middle way between 
 the two parties. The narratives of Augustine *, and of Predes- 
 tinatus *, as well as the account given by the latter * of a Montan- 
 istic work of Tertullian, in which he endeavours to lessen the 
 number of the points of difference between the two parties, are 
 favourable to the latter notion, and on this supposition, many of 
 
 are to be separated from the common Christian virtues.’ I acknowledge that there is 
 something here besides the doctrine, which every Christian must deduce from the 
 Bible; but it need not therefore be called Montanistic. Such a view might proceed 
 from the original character of Tertullian’s mind. We have already observed above, 
 that the Montanistic notion of certain operations of the Holy Spirit, under which 
 man is only passive, was by no means a new view; but that it engrafted itself on a 
 mode of representation which had long been in existence. 
 
 The passage about fasts and abstinence cannot in any way be looked upon as a proof 
 of Montanism, for a voluntary aoxyovce had already found acceptance with many, who 
 were no Montanists (see above). The words, ‘jejunia conjungere,’ might indeed, 
 although not necessarily, be understood of a superpositio, by no means Montanistic 
 (superpositio is a continuation of the Friday's fast to Saturday, on which day no 
 Montanist fasted. See above, vol. i. p. 339). And besides, the whole manner in 
 which penance is here treated, the whole spirit of mildness which breathes here, is not 
 Montanistic. 
 
 As far also as regards the work de Prescriptione, I find myself by no means induced 
 to change my opinion of its non-Montanistic origin. The words ‘alius libellus hune 
 gradum sustinebit,’ contr. Marcion. 1]. i. c. 2. might be used by Tertullian of a piece 
 already written, whether by himself or another, by representing it (the book) person- 
 ified as a defender. It does not at all follow, from his particularly bringing forward the 
 doctrine of a creation out of nothing, in his quotation of the Creed, c. 13, that he had 
 already had to sustain a contest with Hermogenes; because even in the controversy 
 against the Gnostics this definition must have been brought forward; and the connexion 
 in which these words there stand, far more favours the supposition that he was think- 
 ing of the Gnostics, than that he had Hermogenes in his thoughts. It is, indeed, 
 quite certain, from c. 30, that before Tertullian wrote this book, Hermogenes had 
 brought forward his peculiar views; but it cannot at all be proved, that Hermogenes 
 bad not already published his doctrines a long time before Tertullian wrote his book 
 against him. From the very cursory manner in which Tertullian mentions him in 
 the treatise de Prescriptione, we might be inclined to suspect, that Hermogenes was, 
 at that time, by no means a person of sucli importance in his eyes, and that it was his 
 additional interest in the matter as a Montanist in later times, which moved him to 
 enter into an elaborate refutation of the doctrines of Hermogenes. The manner in 
 which he speaks of the emanation of the Logos, cannot be called Montanistic, for he 
 represents it in the same manner in the Apologeticus, c. 21,—a treatise acknowledged 
 not to be Montanistic. [Those who are desirous of seeing a condensed statement of 
 Neander’s views on Tertullian’s writings may consult the able preface to Bp. Kaye’s 
 work on Tertullian, 2nd Edition, 1826. H. J. R.] 
 
 1 Heres. 86. 2 Heres. 86. 3 Heres. 26. 
 
566 CYPRIAN, 
 
 the writings of Tertullian, which are moderately Montanistic, or 
 border upon Montanism, might be assigned to a different epoch. 
 But these accounts are not sufficient to challenge our belief in 
 them. From the disposition of Tertullian one is led to think, 
 that he was not unlikely to keep to his opinions, when they were 
 once formed, and when opposed, constantly the more to harden 
 himself in them. ‘The peculiar sect of the Tertullianists, which 
 is found at Carthage in the fifth century, is no proof of the 
 supposition we have mentioned ; because it is possible, that this 
 sect, which adhered closely to the peculiar opinions of Tertullian, 
 was first formed in later times, when it was cut off from communi- 
 cation with the Montanistic Churches in Asia. 
 
 The study of the writings of Tertullian had plainly a peculiar 
 influence on the doctrinal development of Cyprian. Jerome 
 relates, after a tradition, supposed to come from the secretary of 
 Cyprian, that he daily read some part of Tertullian’s writings, 
 and was accustomed to call him by no other name than that of 
 Master’. 
 
 We have already spoken sufficiently in various places of the 
 character, the activity, and the most important writings of 
 Cyprian. We shall here mention only one more remarkable 
 writing of Cyprian, his three books of Testimonia, a collection of 
 the most important passages of Scripture, to prove, that Jesus is 
 the Messiah promised in the Old Testament, and to form the 
 foundation of Christian faith and morals. The collection was 
 destined for a certain Quirinus, who had entreated the Bishop to 
 make him such an abridgment of the essential contents of the 
 Bible in regard to faith and morals, for his daily use and for the 
 assistance of his memory. Since Cyprian addresses him as ‘my 
 son,’ he cannot have been a Bishop or a Presbyter, for whom 
 Cyprian threw together this collection in order to assist him in com- 
 municating religious instruction Ὁ. By comparing the introduction 
 
 1 He would say to his secretary, Da mihi magistrum. Hieron. de Viris illustribus 
 c. 53. In order to see how he used the writings of Tertullian, the treatises of Cyprian 
 de Oratione Dominica, and de Patientia, in particular should be compared with those 
 of Tertullian on the same subjects, and that de Idolorum vanitate with the Apolo- 
 gelicus. 
 
 2 It might be concluded that this was the case, from the words at the beginning : 
 quibus non tam tractasse, quam tractantibus materiam prebuisse videamur. We 
 could then only suppose, that he had composed this book as an aid to a Deacon, or a 
 Catechist, a doctor audientium. But the words which follow show, that the collection 
 
 Law 
 ‘ 
 
HIS LIBRI TESTIMONIORUM. 367 
 
 to the second and third books, it will appear extremely probable, 
 that the person, to whom Cyprian wrote, was a layman belonging 
 to his Church, to whom he wished to give the means of making 
 his own the important practical truths, and the most important 
 rules for all the chief relations of Christian life’. This collection 
 then will give us a proof of the intimate union subsisting between 
 the Bishop and the members of his Church, who were troubled 
 about the salvation of their souls, and show how much he had it 
 at heart, to lead every individual to an intimate acquaintance 
 with the Divine Word,—a wish, which peculiarly breaks forth in 
 the beautiful words with which he closes the preface to the first 
 book: ‘ More strength will be granted to thee, and the view of 
 the understanding will constantly be more and more fully formed, 
 if thou searchest more perfectly the Old and the New Testament, 
 and runnest through every part of the Holy Scripture; for I 
 have only poured out a little to thee from the Divine fountains, 
 in order to satisfy thee for a time. ‘Thou canst drink more 
 plentifully and satisfy thyself, if thou also comest with us to the 
 same fountains of the Divine fulness, in order to drink as we 
 do.” 
 
 The particular rules, which Cyprian brings forward and sup- 
 ports by passages from the Bible, show how anxious he was to 
 counteract the notion, that a mere outward confession, anda com- 
 pliance with the forms of Christian worship, would satisfy the 
 demands of the Gospel, and serve to obtain salvation; but at the 
 same time, we freely acknowledge that they show also, how im- 
 portant he thought it, to impress upon the laity a veneration for 
 the priesthood, according to the notions of the Old Testament. 
 
 We must here cursorily mention a person, who is of importance 
 in many respects for the history of Christian morals and worship ; 
 particularly in the North-African Church, that is to say Commo- 
 dianus, who is known by his ‘ Instructions adapted for heathens, 
 and all classes of Christians’ (Instructiones. Exhortations and 
 Reproofs), and written in verse. He was born of Christian 
 parents, who troubled themselves but little about giving him a 
 was also intended to infix upon the memory the chief passages and doctrines of the 
 Bible, by constantly reading them over. The collection must, therefore, in this case 
 have been intended at the same time as a guide for the teachers of religion, and a book 
 of aid for the Catechumens; but the view taken above is more natural. 
 
 1 Que esse facilia et utilia legentibus possunt, dum in breviarium pauca digesta et 
 velociter perleguntur et frequenter iterantur. 
 
908 COMMODIANUS. 
 
 Christian education, and hence he joined in the heathen worship, 
 without their being aware of it, until he was led away from 
 heathenism and to Christianity, by means of reading the Bible 
 (Ego similiter erravi tempore multo | Fana prosequendo, paren- 
 tibus insciis ipsis | Abstuli me tamen inde, legendo de lege. 
 This passage would, no doubt, bear another interpretation, if we 
 were to put a stop after prosequendo, and connecting the words 
 immediately after it with what follows; but this is not so natural 
 a supposition as the other. 
 
 In his Christian notions, and the picture of manners painted by 
 him, as well as in his latinity, we recognise a North-African who 
 lived not long after the time of Cyprian. The Christians at that 
 time, after some persecutions that had taken place (apparently 
 under Decius and Valerianus), were enjoying a state of outward ἡ 
 prosperity under Gallienus; but outward prosperity had also 
 exercised again a prejudicial influence on the inward life, both 
 among the clergy and laity. The Christians participated in the 
 pleasures of the heathens, and many teachers of the Church gave 
 in too much to them, being influenced by presents, or by fear of 
 giving personal offence. (57. Si quidam doctores, dum expectant 
 munera vestra | Aut timent personas, laxant singula vobis.) 
 
 Commodian shows great zeal for the strictness of Christian 
 morals, and he speaks against the delusion of a false estimation 
 of martyrdom, as of an opus operatum; he declares, on the con- 
 trary, that every man might become a martyr, even in a season 
 of peace, by genuine Christian virtue; and that on the contrary, 
 many, who were proud of having vanquished Satan’by their 
 blood, and did not remember that Satan is always Satan—had 
 afterwards suffered themselves to be conquered by him. But 
 with all this, Commodian held a very gross system of Chiliasm, 
 which bears upon it the colouring of carnal Judaism. The 
 chiefest princes of the world were, in the first place, to become 
 the slaves of the pious in the kingdom of the Millennium; and all 
 the vanity of the world under the influence of an unchristian 
 imagination is transferred to that kingdom. (See Instruct. 80.) 
 
 We have here also to mention Arnobius, as belonging to the 
 same Church, although he showed a more peculiar doctrinal 
 turn of mind, and the spirit of the North- African Church appears, 
 at least in the time that he came forward as a Christian writer, to 
 have exerted no influence upon him,—a fact which is apparent, 
 
ARNOBILUS—HIS CONVERSION. 369 
 
 » ἢ 
 See 
 
 from the liberal and independent manner in which he seems to 
 have come to Christianity through the reading of the New ‘Testa- 
 ment, especially the Gospels. He was a rhetorician at Sikka, in 
 Numidia, during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian’. His 
 writings give testimony to the literary acquirements, which a 
 rhetorician in so respectable a town would be required to have. 
 Jerome, in his Chronicle, relates that Arnobius, who had pre- 
 viously always opposed Christianity, was moved by dreams to a 
 faith in it, but that the Bishop, to whom he applied, did not 
 trust him, because he knew his former enmity against Chris- 
 tianity ; and that Arnobius, in order to prove the sincerity of his 
 intentions, wrote his Apologetic work (the septem libros dis- 
 putationum contra gentes). This narrative has been suspected 
 of being a mere interpolation by another hand,—for it is, at all 
 events, not in its proper place; it is an evident anachronism to 
 suppose that all this should have taken place in the twentieth year 
 of Constantine, a.p. 326. And further, Arnobius appears to have 
 been a man who would be led to believe by a detailed examina- 
 tion, and not one who would have been thus influenced by the 
 sudden impression made by dreams. In his work, we recognise, 
 not the novice who was still a Catechumen, but the man already 
 matured in his conviction, although not one who was orthodox in 
 the sense the Church would affix to that word. 
 
 And yet one is not led by these arguments entirely to reject 
 the narrative. We have already observed (p. 67 et seqq.), how 
 the conversion of many was facilitated by such impressions; but 
 in saying this, it is not declared, that his whole conversion pro- 
 ceeded from these impressions, for his work would certainly 
 contradict such a supposition. But if Arnobius, as will clearly 
 appear from a passage we are about to quote, was devoted to 
 blind heathenish superstition, it is on that account less unlikely 
 that many more outward impressions were needed, to lead the 
 zealous heathen to an inquiry into Christianity. It may, indeed, 
 have been the case, that he had been convinced some time before 
 he offered himself for baptism, which is easily to be explained by 
 the circumstances of those times. His Apologetic work, however, 
 appears certainly to have been written in compliance with some 
 inward impulse, and not in consequence of any external excite- 
 
 1 Hieronymus de vir. illustr. ο, 79. 
 VOL. Il. Bb 
 
970 ARNOBIUS—HIS CONVERSION. 
 
 ment. But it may also be the case, that his determination to 
 make a public confession of Christianity, and to come forward as 
 a public defender of it, were formed at the same time in his soul— 
 and that he then went with this resolution to the Bishop. In after- 
 times, the Bishops were often inclined to be too little suspicious 
 towards those, who became Christians from external motives. 
 But it is by no means so improbable, that a Bishop in these 
 unhappy times of the Church, when he saw before him a man 
 who had been so violent an enemy to Christianity, should fear in 
 him an evil-minded informer. And then, in order to destroy his 
 doubts at once, Arnobius shows him his writing in defence of 
 Christianity. He himself thus speaks of the change that was 
 effected in him by Christianity *: ‘Oh, blindness! it is not long 
 ago, that I worshipped even the images that came from the forge, 
 the gods that were made on the anvil and by the hammer; when I 
 saw a stone that had been polished and besmeared with oil, I 
 testified my veneration, I addressed it as if a living power had 
 been there, and I begged for benefits for myself from the insen- 
 tient stone, and I even did the gods, whom I took to be gods, 
 the injury of believing them to be wood, or stone, or bones, or I 
 thought that they dwelt in such things. Now,as I have been led on 
 the way of truth by so great a teacher, 1 know whatall that is.” 
 As far as relates to the period, at which Arnobius wrote his 
 book, he himself determines it, when he says’, that Rome had 
 been built 1050 years, or not much less. According to the era 
 Varroniana then in vogue (Rome built, 753), this would tally 
 with the year a.p. 297. But this is not entirely satisfactory, 
 because there are in the work, evident traces of those persecu- 
 tions under Diocletian, which did not break out (see above) 
 before the year a.pD. 303. We must therefore suppose, either 
 that Arnobius has made use of an era different from the usual 
 one of that day, or that the exact number did not occur to him®*, 
 or that he wrote the work at different times. He says to the 
 heathen *: “If a pious zeal for your religion animated you, 
 you would far rather have long ago burnt those writings, and 
 
 1 Lib. i. c. 39. Ά. ἸΛῺῸΣ 11: Cagis 
 
 3. This is the most natural supposition, for the chronology of Arnobius is certainly 
 not very exact; for in I. i. c. 13. he says: trecenti sunt anni ferme, minus vel plus 
 aliquid, ex quo ceepimus esse Christiani. 
 
 * Lib. iv. c. 36. 
 
ROMISH CHURCH. 371 
 
 destroyed those theatres, in which the disgrace of the gods is daily 
 published in scandalous plays. For, wherefore have our writings 
 deserved to be delivered up to the fire? wherefore have our 
 assembling-houses deserved to be destroyed, in which the Su- 
 preme God is adored, peace and grace are implored for governors, 
 for the armies, for the emperors,—joy and peace are implored for 
 the living and for those freed from the fetters of the body,—in 
 which nothing is ever heard, but what tends to make men 
 humane, mild, discreet, modest, generous in giving of their own, 
 and akin to all those, whom the one bond of brotherhood em- 
 braces ?” 
 
 The objection also of the heathen against Christianity, which 
 moved Arnobius to write (as he himself says), indicates the time, 
 at which he wrote; for it was the very accusation which had 
 occasioned the persecutions under Diocletian; namely, the public 
 calamities which took place, because the reverence for the gods 
 had been supplanted by Christianity, and hence protection and aid 
 were no longer afforded by these gods. Arnobius justly says in 
 reply to this charge: “If men instead of trusting to their own 
 wisdom and following their own opinion, would only endeavour 
 to follow the doctrines of Christ, which bring salvation and peace, 
 how soon would the form of the world be changed, and iron, instead 
 of being required for war, would be used in peaceful works !” 
 
 However important the Roman Church became by its outward 
 ecclesiastical influence, and by the influence of the element of the 
 Roman political spirit upon the progress of the Church, it was 
 proportionably poor from the beginning in regard to theological 
 attainments. The anxiety for the outward existence of the Church, 
 which predominated here, appears early to have depressed the 
 scale of theological knowledge. Only two distinguished writers 
 appear among the Roman clergy, neither of whom, perhaps, can 
 be compared with a Tertullian, a Clement, or an Origen; they 
 are the Presbyter Caius, whom we have already named as an 
 opponent of the Montanists, and the Presbyter Novatian, also 
 mentioned before. Of the writings of the first, nothing has been 
 preserved to us; of the second, we have only short expositions of 
 the essential meaning of the Christian doctrines ; especially of the 
 doctrines of the Divinity of Christ, and of the Trinity. Accord- 
 
 Bb2 
 
ΩΡ NOVATIAN—MINUCIUS FELIX. 
 
 ing to Jerome, § 70, this work was an extract from a greater one 
 of Tertullian. But at all events, this writer was something more 
 than a mere copyist of another man’s mind, we should far rather 
 say that he showed a character of his own; he had not the power 
 and depth of Tertullian, but a more spiritual disposition *. 
 
 We have also a treatise by him on the Jewish laws about food, a 
 paronomastic allegorical interpretation of them, intended to show, 
 that they are no longer binding upon Christians’. We see from 
 this treatise, that it was written by a Bishop separated from his 
 Church by the persecution, who maintained a constant inter- 
 change of letters with this Church, and endeavoured to preserve 
 it from the seductions offered to it by heathens, Jews, and 
 heretics: every thing about it answers well to a Roman Church, 
 for many Jews dwelt at Rome. Only then, this treatise can 
 hardly have proceeded from a Presbyter; the author speaks, as 
 only a Bishop could have spoken at that time to his Church. 
 And we know also from the letter of Cornelius, that Novatian 
 did not remove from Rome during the persecution under Decius. 
 We must therefore call to mind the relation between Novatian 
 and the Church which recognised him as its Bishop, and we 
 shall naturally suppose that this piece was written under the 
 first persecution of Valerianus (see above), during which so many 
 Bishops were separated from their Churches. 
 
 There belonged also to the Roman Church a man, who de- 
 serves a conspicuous place among the Apologists of this age for 
 his sensible, ingenious, and graphic dialogue, animated throughout 
 by genuine Christian feeling, and taken from the life,—I mean 
 Minucius Felix, who, according to Jerome, was celebrated as an 
 advocate at Rome, before his conversion to Christianity ; he lived 
 apparently in the first half of the third century, but before Cyprian, 
 who made use of his writings. We have already quoted some 
 portion of this Apologetic dialogue under the name of Octavius. 
 
 We now pass to the teachers of the Alexandrian school, of 
 whose influence over the progress of the development of the 
 
 1 Novatian’s opponent Cornelius, the Bishop of Rome, appears evidently (in Euseb. 
 vi. 43.) to allude to this treatise, when he calls Novatian, ὁ δογματιστης, ὁ της ἐκκλη- 
 σιαστικης ἐπιστημὴης ὑπερασπιστὴς. This is certainly a hint, that such a phenomenon 
 was not common among the Roman clergy. 
 
 2 Jerome mentions this as one of his writings, as well as two others, on the Sabbath 
 -~y 
 
 ( 
 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, 373 
 
 Church we have already spoken. We have no written monument 
 of him, who is named to us as the first teacher of this school who 
 was held in much estimation, Pantzenus (Ilavrawoc), the Philo- 
 sopher, who was converted to Christianity. We know him only 
 through his scholar, Clement. 
 
 Titus Flavius Clemens was arrived at the age of manhood 
 before he became a Christian; for he numbers himself among 
 those who came from the service of sin in heathenism to the 
 Redeemer, and received from him forgiveness of their sins’. He 
 persuaded himself of the truth of Christianity by a free inquiry, 
 as he was one who had attained a great knowledge of all the 
 systems of religion and philosophy about Divine matters, that 
 were known to the more cultivated world of his days®. This 
 free spirit of inquiry, which had brought him to Christianity, 
 impelled him also, after he became a Christian, to seek out dis- 
 tinguished Christian teachers of different characters of mind in 
 different countries. He himself says*, that he had several dis- 
 tinguished men for his teachers; in Greece an Ionian; in Magna 
 Grecia (the lower part of Italy), one from Ccelesyria, and 
 another from Egypt; in the east of Asia (probably Syria), an 
 Assyrian, and in Palestine a person of Jewish origin. He 
 remained at last in Egypt, where he found the greatest Gnostic, 
 who had penetrated most deeply into the spirit of Scripture. 
 This last was no other than Pantenus. Eusebius does not con- 
 fine himself to this statement, but he appeals‘ to a passage also in 
 the Hypotyposeis of Clement, where he calls him his teacher. 
 Perhaps, when Panteznus entered upon the missionary journey 
 mentioned above, Clement followed him in the character of a 
 catechist, and at the same time, or later, was a Presbyter 
 in the Alexandrian Church. The persecution under Septimius 
 Severus, A.p. 202, probably compelled him to absent himself 
 from Alexandria*®. But great obscurity envelopes the history 
 of his life, and the place of his abode at this period. We only 
 know, that in the beginning of the reign of the Emperor 
 
 and on Circumcision, which Novatian quotes as two letters, that had preceded this letter 
 to his Church, in which he had been desirous of showing que sit vera circumcisio, et 
 quod verum sabbatum. 
 
 1 Pedagog. 1. ii. c. 8. p. 176. [Pott. 205. Sylb. 76.] 
 
 2 ravrwy δια πειρας ἐλθων ἀνηρ. Euseb. Preparat. Evangel. |. 11. c. 2. 
 
 3 Stromat. |. i. 274. [Pott. 322. Sylb. 118. ] 4 vi. 13. 5 Euseb. vi. c 3. 
 
374 CLEMENT—HIS WORKS. 
 
 Caracalla he was at Jerusalem, whither at that time many 
 Christians, especially clergy, had been accustomed to betake 
 themselves, partly in order to become eye-witnesses of places 
 sanctified by religious remembrances, and partly in order to make 
 use of a more accurate knowledge of these places for the better 
 understanding of Scripture. Alexander, the Bishop of Jerusalem, 
 who was then imprisoned for the faith, commended him to the 
 Church at Antioch, whither he was travelling, by a letter, in 
 which he called him a virtuous and approved man, and took it 
 for granted, that he was already known to the Antiochians’*. 
 
 We have three works written by him, and dependent in some 
 sort on each other; because he sets out from the idea, that the 
 instructor of mankind, the Logos, first leads the rude heathens 
 sunk in sin and idolatry to believe, then continually improves 
 their lives by moral precepts, and lastly, elevates those who had 
 been purified in morals to a deeper knowledge of Divine matters, 
 i. e. to Gnosis. Thus the Logos appears, as first exhorting the 
 sinner to repentance and converting the heathens (προτρεπτικος), 
 next as forming by his discipline the conduct of the converted 
 (wadaywyoc), and then as the teacher of the Gnosis to the 
 purified’. His three works, which we still have, are formed on 
 this fundamental notion, the apologetic work, the Protrepticos, 
 next the ethical work, the Pedagogus, and then the work con- 
 taining the elements of Gnosis, the Στρωματεις (Στρωματα) ὃ. 
 Clement was not a man of a systematic mind; many multifarious 
 elements of mind and ideas, which he had received from his 
 intercourse with minds of varied character, were heaped up in 
 him, as one sees at times in his Stromata, and as must have been 
 shown still more strongly in his Hypotyposeis, which we shall 
 have to mention hereafter, if Photius has understood him properly. 
 It is beyond doubt that by isolated flashes of mind he must have 
 exercised an animating influence on his disciples and his readers, 
 as we see particularly shown in the case of Origen. Many ideas 
 unconnectedly thrown out by him, in a manner full of the loftiest 
 conceptions,—ideas which contain the germ of a complete and 
 
 1 Kuseb. vi. ο, 11. 
 
 2 καθαραν πρὸς γνωσεως ἐπιτηδειοτητα εὐτρεπιζων τὴν ψυχὴν Svvapevny 
 χώρησαι THY ἀποκαλυψιν του Λογου. Ῥαάᾶδρορ. |. i. ο. 1. 
 
 3 Just like the κεέστος, a word of similar import, which was commonly used to 
 
 denote a work of mixed contents. 
 
Στρωματα---Ὑποτυπωσεις. 375 
 Owe 
 
 systematic theological course of thought, are found in him 
 scattered among a multitude of insignificant discussions. 
 
 As far as regards his Srpwpara, it was here, nevertheless, his 
 intention, as he testifies in many places, to place together con- 
 fusedly truth and error from the Greek philosophers and the 
 systems of Christian sects, as well as fragments of the true 
 Gnosis. Every one was to find out that which was adapted to 
 himself; he wished rather to excite than to teach, and often 
 purposely only to give a hint in those cases where he might fear 
 to give offence to the πιστικοὶ, who were as yet unable to com- 
 prehend these ideas. The eighth book of this work is lost; for 
 the fragment of dialectic investigations, which now goes under 
 the name of the eighth book of the Stromata, evidently does not 
 belong to this work. Indeed the eighth book was lost as early 
 as the time of Photius’. 
 
 We have to regret the loss of the “Yroturwoee’? of Clement, in 
 which apparently he gave doctrinal and exegetical investigations 
 and views on the principles of the Alexandrian Gnosis. Frag- 
 ments from this work, the short explanations of some of the 
 Catholic Epistles, which have descended to us in the Latin trans- 
 lation’, and perhaps also the fragment of the ἐκλογαι ἐκ των 
 προφητικων, belong to this class. ‘Vhe fact is, that people made 
 for themselves extracts out of the larger work for common use on 
 different parts of Scripture, and some of these extracts have been 
 preserved to us, while this very custom may have contributed to 
 effect the loss of the whole work. 
 
 Obscure as it is in its nature, the fragment of the extracts from 
 the writings of Theodotus and of the διδασκαλία ἀνατολικὴ (that is, 
 of the Theosophic doctrines of Eastern Asia), which has remained 
 to us among the works of Clement, is of the highest importance 
 for the knowledge of the Gnostic systems. It is perhaps a 
 fragment of a critical collection, which Clement had made during 
 his sojourn in Syria. We have already spoken of the treatise of 
 Clement on the time of Easter‘, and of his work τις 6 σωζομενος 
 
 1 See Cod. 111. 
 2 This word would probably be best translated thus: sketches, shadows, general 
 
 outlines. Rufinus translates it, adumbrationes. 
 
 3 See the second volume of Potter’s Edition. 
 
 4 The writing also which Eusebius quotes under the title, κανὼν ἐκκλησιαστος ἡ 
 προς TOUS ᾿Ιουδαιζοντας, was on a similar subject. 
 
376 ORIGEN. 
 
 πλουσιος. Which is of importance in regard to the history of 
 Christian Ethics. 
 
 Clement, in his Stromata’, intimates his intention of writing a 
 work περι προφητειας: in which he would treat of the nature of the 
 Holy Spirit, and on the mode of his communication, as well as of 
 the proper judgment to be made about the Montanistic prophets. 
 As the subject of this work involves so important and interesting 
 a portion of the doctrinal controversies of his day, and as we 
 might expect from Clement, a more unprejudiced and moderate 
 judgment of the Montanists than from any other man of those 
 times, we have had a very great loss in losing this work, if he 
 really carried into execution his intention of writing it’. 
 
 Origen, who bore also the additional name of Adamantios*, 
 was born at Alexandria, A.p. 185. [{ is of importance, in regard 
 to his education, to remark, that his father Leonides, a pious 
 Christian, and probably a rhetorician, was in circumstances to 
 give him a good literary, as well as a Christian and pious educa- 
 tion. Both had an abiding influence on the disposition of his 
 interior life, the development of his intellect and of his heart went 
 side by side with him, and progressed together, and the longing 
 after truth and holiness remained as the influential dispositions of 
 his life. We have before observed, that the Bible then was not 
 reserved exclusively for the study of the clergy, but that it was 
 used also as a book for family edification ; and we see in the case 
 of Origen, that a judicious use was made of it also in education, 
 as well as the wholesome consequences of such a custom. Leo- 
 nides taught his son daily to learn by heart a portion of the Holy 
 Scriptures. The boy took great pleasure in this, and his deeply- 
 inquiring spirit soon showed itself. Not contented with the 
 explanation of the literal meaning, which his father gave him, he 
 desired to have his inquiries about the intention of the passages 
 
 1 L, iv. 511. [Pott. 605. Sylb. 219.] v. 591. [Pott. 699. Sylb. 252.] 
 
 2 If vi. 681. a. [Pott. 808. Sylb. 289.] δια τῆς πίστεως προσγενομενον ἁγιου 
 Ilvevparoc χαρακτηριστικον ἰδιωμα, be compared with iv. 591, it might be con- 
 cluded, although not with certainty, that Clement in the work which is lost denied the 
 personality of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 3 If this name was given to him after his death, yet we must not follow the forced 
 interpretation of it in Photius, c. 118, ‘ because the proofs of Origen were like bonds 
 of adamant,’ but far rather that of Jerome, that it was given to him ‘ from his iron 
 industry, as we often say,’ and thence he was also named συντακτὴς, and χαλκεντερος. 
 Eusebius, however, appears to quote this name as one which Origen bore from his 
 birth. 
 
ORIGEN—HIS EDUCATION. 377 
 
 he learnt by heart resolved; so that his father often found him- 
 self in difficulties from this cause. He blamed, however, his 
 curiosity, and advised him to content himself, as it became his 
 age, with the literal sense; but in secret he delighted himself 
 with the promising abilities of his son, and thanked God with a 
 grateful heart, that he had given him such a son. Often, when 
 his son lay asleep with his bosom bare, would he kiss that breast, 
 as a temple in which the Holy Ghost was willing to prepare 
 himself an habitation, and he thought himself happy to possess 
 such a son. 
 
 The trait, which we have mentioned, of the early life of Origen, 
 teaches us to recognise in him, even at that age, the mind that 
 sought the overpowering spirit in the earthly guise,—a mind 
 which afterwards plainly showed itself in his allegorical mode of 
 Scripture interpretation, and which, had it been accompanied by 
 sound and well-informed judgment, and been an enlivening spirit 
 grafted on a grammatical education, might have made of him a 
 well-grounded and profound interpreter of Scripture. This mind 
 was rather repressed than encouraged by his father. But if 
 Origen had been early determined by the influence of the theo- 
 logical school of Alexandria in regard to his intellectual and 
 spiritual character, this mind must soon have found encouragement, 
 and have completed its own formation. As we afterwards learn to 
 know Origen from his own writings, the influence which Clement 
 had exerted on his theological development is undeniably shown 
 most conspicuously; we find in him the predominant ideas of the 
 latter systematically developed. Now it is certain ἡ that, as a boy, 
 he was at least ascholar of Clement asa Catechist’.. But a youth- 
 ful impatience in Origen (on which we shall hereafter touch), 
 
 . 
 
 1 According to Eusebius, vi. 6.—Alexander, the Bishop of Jerusalem, who either 
 originally came from Alexandria, or had been thither in his youth, in order to receive 
 the instruction of the Catechists there, appears in his letter to Origen to hint that he 
 had been in the habit of intercourse with Pantznus, although he does not directly say 
 that he was his disciple: ‘‘ We acknowledge as our Fathers those blessed men, who 
 have gone before us, Panteenus and Clement, who was my master, and was of service 
 to me, and who belongs to these men, through whom I became acquainted with you.” 
 Euseb. vi. 14. Unfortunately, however, there is an obscurity spread over the early 
 influence of these men on the formation of Origen’s character, which, from a deficiency 
 of documents, we cannot remove. 
 
 2 We may conclude from this passage of Eusebius, that the Alexandrian Catechists 
 not only gave private instruction in religion to heathen adults, but also public religious 
 instruction to Christian children. 
 
978 CONDUCT OF ORIGEN IN PERSECUTION. 
 
 proceeding from a carnal and literal interpretation of Scripture, 
 shows that in his youth he was yet far from that, his later theo- 
 logical turn of mind ; and he himself says of himself, while he 
 calls to mind this fault of his youth, “I who once knew Christ, 
 the Divine Logos only after the flesh and the letter, now know him 
 no longer in this way’.” It is clear from this, that the education 
 of his father had more influence on the first religious character of 
 Origen, than the instruction of Clement; and that the influence 
 of the Alexandrian theological spirit on him belongs to a later 
 period of his life, when his character was more developed. We 
 freely confess, that in the history of the formation of his mind 
 there is much obscurity, which we are unable entirely to dissipate, 
 from want of historical documents. The religion of the heart 
 was at first the predominant one with Origen. 
 
 The persecution which raged against the Christians in Egypt, 
 under the emperor Septimius Severus (see above), gave an oppor- 
 tunity to him, then a stripling of sixteen, of showing his faith and 
 zeal. ‘The example of the martyrs carried him away, and induced 
 him to wish to declare himself a Christian before the heathen 
 governor, and thus expose himself to death. Such was the feeling 
 of the high-spirited and ardent young Christian; but the reason- 
 able and soundly-informed man, who better understood the spirit 
 of Christianity, and the docrines and example of Christ, judged 
 otherwise 7.“ A temptation, which comes upon us without our 
 own co-operation,” he says, ‘in touching on this matter, we must 
 sustain with courage and with patience, but it is useless, when 
 we can avoid it, not to do so.” As the father of Origen was 
 thrown into prison, the son felt himself still more strongly urged 
 to join his father in death*. As all arguments and entreaties 
 had proved fruitless, his mother was unable to retain him in any 
 other way than by hiding his clothes. The love of Christ now 
 so completely overwhelmed all other feelings within him, that 
 when he found himself prevented in his first intention, of sharing 
 the imprisonment and death of his father, he wrote to him thus: 
 “Take care that thou changest not thy mind for our sakes.” 
 
 Leonides suffered martyrdom; and his property being confis- 
 cated, he left behind him an helpless widow with six children, none 
 
 1 T. xv. Matth. Ed. Huet. f. 369. ἡμεις δὲ Χριστον Θεου τον Λογον του Θεου κατα 
 σάρκα και κατὰ τὸ γραμμα ποτε νοησαντες, νυν οὐκετι γινωσκοντες. 
 2 He appeals to Matth. xiv. 13; x. 23. 3 In Matth, f. 231. 
 
ORIGEN AGAINST GNOSTICISM. 379 
 
 of whom, except Origen, were grown up. He found a friendly 
 reception in the house of a rich and well-esteemed Christian lady 
 of Alexandria. A characteristic trait here showed his firmness in 
 that which he acknowledged as the true faith, and how he prized 
 it above all besides. His patroness had devoted herself to one 
 of those Gnostics, who came so commonly out of Syria to Alex- 
 andria, and there propagated their systems, dressed up after the 
 Alexandrian fashion,—one Paulus of Antioch. She had received 
 him as a son, and allowed him to deliver lectures in her house, 
 which were frequented not only by the friends of Gnosticism in 
 Alexandria, but also by those of the orthodox, who were con- 
 stantly desirous of learning something new. The young Origen, 
 however, did not allow respect for his patroness to withhold him 
 from speaking out freely his abhorrence of the Gnostic doctrines, 
 and nothing could induce him to frequent these assemblies, 
 because he would then have been obliged to join in the prayers 
 of this Gnostic, and thus to testify his concurrence with him in 
 matters of faith. 
 
 He was soon able to release himself from this state of depend- 
 ence; his knowledge of the Greek language and literature, which 
 he had improved still more after the death of his father, put him 
 into a condition at Alexandria, where such knowledge was pecu- 
 liarly prized, to gain his livelihood by instruction in these subjects. 
 
 As he had made himself known even among the heathens by 
 his knowledge and intellectual endowments, by his zeal for the 
 things of the Gospel, and by his pure and strict life, and as 
 the office of a Catechist was vacant at Alexandria in consequence 
 of the persecution, many heathens who were desirous of instruc- 
 tion in Christianity applied to him, and by this stripling those 
 were brought to Christianity, who afterwards distinguished them- 
 selves as martyrs, or as teachers of the Church. By this activity 
 of his in the propagation of Christianity, he must have constantly 
 attracted to himself more and more the hatred of the fanatical 
 multitude, especially as he, without regarding his own danger, 
 showed such sympathy towards those who were imprisoned for 
 faith, that he not only visited them frequently in their dungeons, 
 but accompanied them to execution, and even in the face of 
 death encouraged them by the strength of his faith and his love. 
 Providence often saved him from imminent danger of his life, 
 when soldiers had surrounded the house in which he was dwelling, 
 
380 ORIGEN AN ASCETIC. 
 
 and he was obliged to betake himself secretly from one house to 
 another. Once a crowd of heathens seized him, put upon him 
 the dress of a heathen priest of Serapis, and led him in this 
 dress to the steps of the temple, and then gave him palm-branches, 
 that he might distribute them, after the usual manner, to those 
 who were entering into the temple. Origen said to those, to 
 whom he offered the palm-branches, “ Receive, not the palm of 
 the heathen gods, but the palm of Christ *.” 
 
 These effective exertions of Origen in the communication of 
 religious instruction called the attention of Demetrius, Bishop of 
 Alexandria, to him, and moved him to bestow on Origen the 
 office of a Catechist in the Alexandrian Church. At that time, how- 
 ever, no salary was attached to this office ; and as he now wished 
 to be able to devote himself entirely to the duties of his spiritual 
 calling, and his theological studies, without being interrupted and 
 called away by other employments, and as he was nevertheless 
 desirous that he should be dependent on no one for his support, 
 he sold a collection of beautiful manuscripts of old authors, which 
 he had been at much pains to make for himself, toa lover of litera- 
 ture, who was to pay him for this library four oboli daily for many 
 years. This must have been sufficient for the very limited personal 
 wants of Origen, for he led the same kind of life as the strictest 
 among the ascetics. He was, as we before observed, then devoted 
 to a literal interpretation of Scripture ; and, as he was actuated by 
 a serious and sacred zeal to act up to the Ideal of holiness set forth 
 by our Saviour, and endeavoured with conscientious fidelity to 
 apply to himself all the words of that Saviour, he must, in the 
 warmth of his youthful ascetic zeal, which was not accompanied by 
 a sound and judicious interpretation of Scripture, have been led 
 into many practical errors, where he understood literally the figu- 
 rative expressions of Christ, or maintained as applicable to all 
 times and circumstances, that which Christ had said only in refer- 
 ence to particular circumstances. ‘The most remarkable error of 
 this kind, which afterwards attracted much odium to him, was 
 that he was induced, by a literal interpretation of the passage in 
 
 1 See Epiphan. H. 64, This narrative may certainly, taken by itself, appear to be 
 improbable when we remember how such an address must have excited the fanatical 
 rage of the Alexandrian multitude, and when we take into account the untrustworthiness 
 of Epiphanius. But the first of these circumstances, although it may excite a doubt, is 
 
 no decisive argument, and Epiphanius is entitled to more credit when he repeats any 
 thing which tells to the advantage of one reputed to be an heretic. 
 
THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ORIGEN. B81 
 
 Matth. xix. 12, to practise in his own case what he believed pre- 
 scribed by these words to those, who wished to be quite certain 
 of admission into the kingdom of heaven. It was a mistake 
 which might easily arise from the partial views of asceticism, and 
 from this kind of scriptural interpretation, and which was encou- 
 raged by many writings then in circulation’. But through this 
 error there still shines forth conspicuously the earnest desire of 
 this young man, so ardent in his zeal for holiness, as well as his 
 intimate love for the Redeemer, whose every hint he wished to 
 follow so literally. Although, however, such an error, proceeding 
 as it did from that which is most holy in man, ought always to be 
 judged most mildly ; yet there are at all times many, who, having 
 only one measure for all things, judge all eccentric excesses of 
 this kind the more harshly, the further that principle, from which 
 alone such enthusiastic exaggeration could proceed, lies from their 
 own carnal feelings, or their own sobriety of intellect. Origen 
 speaks from his own experience when he speaks of those, who 
 by such mistakes and errors have got to themselves shame and 
 reproaches, not only among unbelievers, but with those who 
 would pardon every thing human, rather than such errors as 
 proceed from a misinformed fear of God, and an immoderate 
 desire after holiness*, When the Bishop Demetrius was first 
 made acquainted with this cireumstance, he honoured the intention 
 even in the error, but he afterwards used this false step of Origen 
 to his prejudice. 
 
 It would be of great importance if we could accurately deter- 
 mine the time when, and the mode in which, (to use the language 
 of the Alexandrian school) the point of transition from πίστις to 
 yvwore was effected in Origen. According to what we have 
 above remarked on the peculiar character of Clement’s mind, we 
 
 1 Philo, Opp. f. 186. ἐξευνουχισθηναι ἀμεινον, ἡ προς συνουσιας ἐκνομοὺυς λυτταν. 
 Again, one of the sentences (Gnomai) of Σεἕτος then very current among the Alex- 
 andrian Christians, No. 12. (according to the translation of Rufinus), omne mem- 
 brum corporis, quod suadet te contra pudicitiam agere, abjiciendum. These Gnome 
 certainly are neither the production of a Roman Bishop Sixtus (neither the first nor 
 the second), as Rufinus thought them, nor, as Jerome believed, (v. ep. ad Ctesiphon.) 
 of an heathen Pythagorean, but they are the work of some person, who out of the 
 Platonic and Gnostic sentiments, and by putting together detached passages of Scrip- 
 ture, had formed his own moral code, the highest aim of which was ἀπαθεια. A moral 
 code interpenetrated by the essential principles of the Gospel is not to be found in 
 them ;—they consist of many elevated sentiments, joined with many distorted notions, 
 
 2 Τί xv. Matth. ὃ 367. 
 
382 HIS STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 cannot doubt, that if Origen had been a scholar of Clement himself, 
 as a Theologian, he would have been incited by him from the first 
 to make himself accurately acquainted with the systems of the 
 Hellenic philosophers, and of the different heretics, as the liberal 
 spirit of Alexandrian theology would require. But apparently 
 Origen bad originally a far more uncouth and a narrower turn. 
 A literary education indeed accompanied his ascetic zeal and his 
 inward Christian life, but it was unconnected with that which was 
 the animating principle of that Christian life. He himself says, 
 that he was first induced by an outward necessity to busy him- 
 self with the Platonic philosophy, and generally to acquaint 
 himself more accurately with the systems of those who differed 
 from him, namely, because heretics and philosophically educated 
 heathens, attracted by his reputation, sought him for the purpose 
 of conversation on religious subjects, and he was compelled to 
 give them a reason of his faith, and to refute their objections to 
 it. He expresses himself on the subject in the following manner 
 in a letter, in which he justifies himself for being occupied with 
 the Grecian philosophy : ‘* When I had entirely devoted myself to 
 the preaching of the Divine doctrines, and the reputation of my 
 ability in these things had extended itself widely,—and sometimes 
 heretics, sometimes persons, who had pursued the Hellenic sciences, 
 and especially men from the philosophical schools, came to me, 
 —then it seemed necessary for me to investigate the doctrinal 
 opinions of heretics, and what the philosophers pretended to know 
 of truth.” He adds, that he then frequented the lectures of “ the 
 Teacher” of philosophical sciences, with whom Heracles, a convert 
 made by Origen, had passed five years. As he here indicates 
 the person, who was commonly known at Alexandria by the name 
 of “the Teacher of Philosophy,” chronology naturally leads us to 
 think of the celebrated Ammonius Sakkas, through whose means 
 the chaotic neo-platonic eclecticism, formed out of a mixture of 
 Greek and oriental elements, obtained a more defined and settled 
 form,—the master of the deep-thinking Plotinus. We may add, 
 that Porphyry, in his work against Christianity, expressly calls 
 Origen a scholar of this Ammonius ’. 
 
 1 For there can be no doubt that Porphyry, in Euseb. vi. 19, speaks of no other than 
 this Ammonius Sakkas, although Eusebius confounds him with Ammonius, teacher of 
 the Church, who wrote an harmony of the Gospels, which has been preserved, and a 
 book on the Agreement between Moses and Jesus. At nearly the same period there 
 
HIS LIBERALITY AND MODERATION. 383 
 
 From this time the great change in the theological character 
 of Origen unfolded itself. It was now his endeavour to seek out 
 the traces of truth in all human systems, to investigate every 
 thing, in order universally to distinguish falsehood from truth. 
 His life at Alexandria, where so many sects of various kinds met 
 together, his journey to Rome (a.p. 211), his journeys to Pales- 
 tine and about it, to Achaia, and Cappadocia, gave him an oppor- 
 tunity, as he himself says’, every where to seek out those who 
 pretended to any peculiar knowledge, and to attain a knowledge 
 of their doctrines, and a means of investigating them. It became 
 his principle, not to allow himself to be governed by the tra- 
 ditional opinion of the multitude, but to hold fast as truth that 
 only, which he found to be truth after an impartial investigation. 
 He expresses this in the following manner, in a practical applica- 
 tion of Matth. xxii. 19, 20. ‘* We learn here from our Saviour 
 not to stand under a pretence of piety upon that which is said by 
 the multitude, and is held therefore in great esteem, but upon 
 that which proceeds from investigation, and from the internal 
 connexion of truth; for we must remark, that when he was 
 asked whether it was lawful to give tribute to Cesar or not, he 
 did not simply express his opinion, but saying, ‘Show me the 
 tribute-money,’ he inquired ‘whose the image and superscrip- 
 tion was;’ and when they said that ‘they were Cesar’s,’ he 
 answered, that ‘they must render unto Cesar the things that 
 are Czsars, and not defraud him, under the pretence of piety, of 
 that which was his due ®.’” Hence comes the mildness with which 
 he could judge of those who are in error, as he expresses himself 
 in this beautiful remark on St. John xiii. 8. ‘It is clear that, 
 although Peter said this with a good and reverential feeling 
 towards the Master, he said it still to his own shame. Life is full 
 of this kind of sins, which happen to those who wish indeed to 
 
 were in Alexandria an heathen Ammonius, distinguished among the learned, a Christian 
 Ammonius, and Origen. When Porphyry elsewhere says of Origen : “Ἕλλην ἐν Ἕλλησι 
 παιδευθεις λογοις, προς To βαρβαρον ἐξωκειλε τολμημα (he became a renegado, and 
 joined the religion of the barbarians), one part alone of this account is true, namely, 
 that Origen had, from the first, an education in Hellenic literature; but Porphyry is 
 wrong in stating further that he was brought up in heathenism, which is notoriously 
 false. We cannot suppose that Porphyry, who knew both the persons who bore the 
 name of Origen, should have made a confusion between the two. 
 
 1 C. Cels. vi. 24. πολλοὺς ἐκπεριελθοντες τοποὺυς THC γῆς και τους πανταχου 
 ἐπαγγελλομενοῦς τι εἰδεναι ζητήσαντες. 
 
 2 c. Matth. f. 483. 
 
384 HIS LIBERALITY AND MODERATION. 
 
 be right in their faith, but out of ignorance say, or even do, that 
 which leads to the very contrary. Such are those who say 
 ‘touch not, taste not, handle not.’ Coloss. ii. 21,22....... 
 But what shall we say of those, who in sects are driven about by 
 every wind of doctrine, who call that which is destructive holy, 
 and who make to themselves false representations of the person 
 of Jesus, in order, as they think, to honour him? ’*” 
 
 By means of this liberality Origen succeeded in bringing back 
 many heretics, whom he met at Alexandria, especially Gnostics, 
 to the simple doctrines of the Gospel. A remarkable instance of 
 this is furnished by the case of Ambrose, a rich man at Alex- 
 andria, who, being dissatisfied by the manner in which Chris- 
 tianity was presented to him in the ordinary expositions of the 
 doctrines of the Church, had sought and fancied that he had 
 found a more spiritual conception of Christianity among the 
 Gnostics, until he was undeceived by the influence of Origen, 
 and rejoiced to find in that teacher the true Gnosis joined with 
 faith*®. He became now the most zealous friend of Origen, and 
 endeavoured particularly to forward his literary labours for the 
 advantage of the Church. 
 
 If Origen, after having learnt from his own experience the 
 errors of a carnal and literal interpretation of Scripture, and the 
 disadvantageous consequences resulting from it, passed over to 
 the other error of an arbitrary allegorizing mode of explanation, 
 he deserves on that account the greater esteem for his earnest 
 and conscientious endeavours to use all the means of assistance, 
 which could serve to restore the letter of Holy Writ to its original 
 condition, and to understand it accurately. For this purpose, after 
 arriving at the years of manhood, he learnt the Hebrew language, 
 which must have been difficult to a Greek; he undertook a cor- 
 rection of the MSS. of the Bible by means of a collation of 
 them; and he is the founder of a learned and scientific study 
 of the Bible among Christians, although his arbitrary herme- 
 neutical principles do not allow all the fruits, which otherwise 
 might have been produced, to arise from it. 
 
 As now the number of those who sought religious instruction 
 at his hands was constantly increasing, and at the same time his 
 
 1 [There is an omission here of two or three lines of the original. H. J. R.] 
 2 In Joh. xxxii. § 5. [vol. ii. p. 380, 381. Ed. Huet. ] 
 3 See the words addressed to Ambrosius, Tom. Evang. Joh. p. 99, as cited above. 
 
ORIGEN—BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION, 385 
 
 labours in biblical literature which became continually more 
 extensive, laid more and more heavy demands upon him, in 
 order to obtain more time, he shared his office of catechist with 
 his friend Heraclas ; he transferred to him the duty of giving the 
 preparatory instruction in religion, and reserved for himself the 
 more accurate instruction of those who were further advanced ', 
 apparently with respect to both the classes of catechumens men- 
 tioned above. (See above ’.) 
 
 The division of the duties of his office in this manner ena- 
 bled him to enlarge the sphere of his exertions in public teaching 
 with advantage tothe Church. Persuaded of the utility of a tho- 
 rough education in general knowledge for the right understanding 
 of the Scriptures, and the right application of their contents, and 
 persuaded also that this enlarged education would be the best and 
 most efficacious antidote, as well to a too sensuous belief, as to 
 the capricious and fantastic theosophy of the Gnostics, he endea- 
 voured to spread such an education among the young men who 
 joined themselves to him. He delivered lectures as well on that 
 which the Greeks called Encyclopzedic education, as on philo- 
 sophy. He explained to his scholars all the old philosophers, in 
 whom there were moral and religious principles; and he endea- 
 voured to form them to that freedom of mind, which should enable 
 them every where to separate truth from the admixture of false- 
 hood, and to preserve them also from becoming the slaves of a 
 school or a system*. And in all that he did his ultimate aim was 
 to point out to his scholars how they ought to use every thing to 
 the service of Christianity, and consider every thing with refe- 
 rence to that which is Divine; and he endeavoured to instil into 
 them the mind to do this. By these means he did great service 
 towards promoting a more free and enlightened Christian educa- 
 tion, as the school which originated from him will prove. He 
 succeeded also in leading many, whom the love of learning alone 
 had first brought to him, more and more to faith in the Gospel, 
 by first raising up in them a longing after divine things, then 
 proving to them the incompetence of the Greek systems of 
 
 1 Euseb. vi. 15. 
 
 2 [I apprehend Neander here alludes to a note a few passages back, The two classes 
 of catechumens are adult heathen converts, and Christian children. H. J. R. | 
 
 % His scholar, Gregory Thaumaturgus, has painted to us, in this point of view, the 
 method of instruction pursued by Origen in an oration of his to be quoted hereafter, 
 
 VOL. LI, cc 
 
986 AMBROSE THE ASSISTANT OF ORIGEN. 
 
 philosophy to satisfy the religious wants of man, and by present- 
 ing to them last of all the doctrines of Scripture about Divine 
 matters, and comparing these with the doctrines of the old philo- 
 sophers. ‘The completion of his instruction was thus his lectures 
 on the explanation of Scripture, with which in his case the whole 
 range of theology, and all Christian philosophy, all in short, 
 which he understood under the name of Gnosis, was connected ; 
 by which means we must allow, although he awakened in his 
 scholars reverence and love to that which is Divine in Scripture, 
 and preserved them from a mere dead knowledge of Scripture, 
 he introduced much foreign matter into Scripture, and in part 
 led his hearers away from its proper, simple, and at the same 
 time profound, meaning, rather than conducted them to it. Many 
 of those whom Origen was able to lead thus gradually to the 
 knowledge and the love of Scripture, afterwards became zealous 
 and successful teachers in the Church. 
 
 Ambrose, the above-named friend of Origen, took peculiar 
 interest in his learned labours, and Origen used to call him his 
 task-master. Not only did he, by his inquiries and demands, 
 drive him to many investigations, but he made use of his own 
 large fortune, in order to buy for his friend the means of pursuing 
 many of them that were expensive; as, for instance, in those 
 where the purchase and comparison of manuscripts was necessary. 
 He gave him seven rapid writers, who were to take turns with 
 each other in writing down from his dictation, and making a 
 clear copy of all that was written. Origen, in a letter, says of 
 this friend’, “ He who gave me credit for great diligence 
 and thirst after the Divine word, has, by his own diligence and 
 love of holy learning, convinced himself of the contrary’. He 
 has so completely surpassed me, that Iam in danger of being 
 unable to meet his demands. The comparison of manuscripts 
 leaves me no time to eat, and after my meals I cannot go out, 
 nor rest myself, but even at that time I am compelled to insti- 
 tute philological inquiries, and correct manuscripts. Even the 
 night is not allowed me for sleep, but my philological inquiries 
 occupy a considerable portion of it. I will not mention the time 
 from early in the morning till the ninth, and sometimes even the 
 
 1 Τὶ i. Opp. Ed. de la R. f. 3. 
 
 ? [This is not quite an exact translation of the original, which rather means, ‘ has 
 put me to shame, ἤλεγξε, coarguit me.’ H. J. R.] 
 
AMBROSE THE ASSISTANT OF ORIGEN. 387 
 
 tenth hour *, because all who have pleasure in such employments 
 use this time for the study of the Divine word and reading.” 
 Ambrose urged Origen, by making known his theological 
 labours, to extend their utility to the whole Church, and thus to 
 counteract the Gnostics, who had at first excited deeper inqui- 
 ries after Divine things among the Christians, and then were 
 enabled, under the pretext of a more profound interpretation of 
 Scripture, to introduce their philosophy into the Holy Scriptures 
 by means of arbitrary and allegorizing explanations. Origen 
 himself attributes this latter object to his labours in the end of 
 the fifth tomus of his Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, 
 which was in part directed against the Gnostic Heracleon. “ As 
 now,” he says, the ‘heterodox under the pretence of Gnosis, 
 rise up against the holy Church, and propagate works consisting 
 of many books, which promise explanations of the evangelic and 
 apostolic writings, they will, if we are silent, and set forth no 
 true and sound doctrines, get dominion over the hungry souls, 
 who, for want of wholesome food, run to that which is forbidden.” 
 He finished at Alexandria his Commentaries on Genesis, the 
 Psalms, the Lamentations of Jeremiah (of which writings only 
 fragments have been preserved), his five first Tomi [i. 6. sections] 
 on the Gospel of St. John, his Treatise on the Resurrection, his 
 Stromata, and his work περὶ ἄρχων, i. 6. probably not about the 
 fundamental principles of the Christian faith, but about the origin 
 of all Being’, a subject of which the controversies with the 
 Gnostics particularly treated. ‘The last-mentioned work became 
 of especial importance by the struggles between opposite theo- 
 logical dispositions which it set on foot, and by the influence 
 which it exerted over the fate of Origen and of his school. At 
 that time, even more than at a later season, Platonic philosophy 
 and the doctrines of the Christian faith were in him intermingled 
 together; his caprice of speculation was afterwards more mode- 
 rated by the influence of the Christian spirit, and many notions 
 which he (although more in a problematic than a decisive man- 
 ner) had thrown out, he afterwards retracted, although the prin- 
 ciples of his system remained always the same. He himself 
 afterwards declared, in a letter to Fabianus, the Bishop of Rome, 
 
 1 Till three or four o’clock in the afternoon, according to our reckoning. 
 2 λογος ἀρχικος, in the language of Clement, means a discourse which relates to 
 the doctrine of the ἀρχαι. See Strom. 1. iv. 510, a. [ Pott. Sylb. ] 
 cce2 
 
388 JEALOUSY OF DEMETRIUS. 
 
 to whom his system had probably been denounced as heretical, 
 that in this book he had brought forward much, which he now no 
 longer considered true, and that his friend Ambrose had made 
 the book known against his will*. 
 
 And yet, as it often happens, the dispute between Origen and 
 the party of the Church zealots would not have come to an open 
 rupture so soon, without an external occasion, and without the 
 accession of personal and improper passions, especially as Origen 
 was far from having the pride, which commonly so easily attaches 
 itself to a theological turn of mind like his, and as he always 
 shows so much tenderness towards those whose religious and 
 theological views and condition are different from his own. The 
 authority of his Bishop Demetrius was a great support to him ; 
 but this man, who was animated by the hierarchical pride, which 
 we find subsisting at this age, especially among the Bishops of 
 the great Metropolitan sees, was excited to jealousy against him, 
 by the great reputation of Origen, and the honour which he 
 obtained on particular occasions. 
 
 One especial cause of this jealousy was the honour showed to 
 Origen by his two friends, Alexander, the Bishop of Jerusalem, 
 the friend of his youth, and Theoctistus, the Bishop of Ceesarea, 
 in Palestine. It had already much embittered the proud Deme- 
 trius against them, that they had permitted Origen, as a layman, 
 to preach in their Churches. (See Part 1.) As, however, in 
 obedience to the cal] of his bishop, he returned to Alexandria, 
 he was enabled to renew his former friendly relations with him. 
 But in the year 228 it happened that he travelled into Hellas *, on 
 account of some ecclesiastical matters, of which we have no exact 
 
 1 See Hieronym. ep. 41. t. iv. opp. ed. Martianay. 
 
 2 There were apparently, in the year 216, hostile incursions upon Alexandria 
 (according to Euseb. vi. 19) which made then an abode there no longer safe for 
 him—perhaps, when the fanciful Caracalla, departing for the Parthian war, gave 
 up this town to plunder and to slaughter at the mercy of his soldiers (Ail. 
 Spartian. vi. 6); and one is inclined to think, that the rage of the heathen soldiers 
 would peculiarly attack the Christians. Origen then betook himself to Palestine, to 
 visit his old friends ; and, as he himself says (Joh. t. vi. 24.), to investigate the spots 
 which had been trodden by Jesus, by his apostles, aud by the prophets. (ἐπὶ 
 ἵστοριαν των ἰχνων Ἴησου και των μαθητων αὐτοῦ και των προφητων.) 
 
 3 Perhaps he was called into these parts in order to dispute with the Gnostics who 
 were spread about there, because it was known how much he was an adept in this 
 business. His disputation with Candidus, the Valentinian, the Acts of which Jerome 
 quotes, might lead us to this conclusion. 
 
TWO SYNODS AGAINST ORIGEN. 3889 
 
 statement. On this journey he visited his friends in Palestine, — 
 and they ordained him a presbyter at Czesarea in the year 228. 
 
 Demetrius could not forgive the two bishops and Origen for 
 this transaction. After the return of Origen, he assembled 
 a synod, consisting of the presbyters of his diocese, and of 
 other Egyptian bishops, in which he used against Origen that 
 extravagant act of his youth, by which he was, undoubtedly, 
 according to the letter of the laws of the Church, excluded from 
 the clerical profession’. But they ought to have considered, 
 that he had become a different man since that time, and that he 
 had long condemned the step, to which his youthful enthusiasm 
 had led him. And yet he was for this deposed from the dignity 
 of presbyter, which had been conferred upon him, and the 
 administration of the office of public teaching in the Alexandrian 
 was forbidden to him’. After he had once so strongly attracted 
 to himself the jealousy and hatred of the pharisaical bishop, he 
 could no longer find any peace in Alexandria. Demetrius did not 
 content himself with this single attack upon him, but he began to 
 cast the imputation of heresy on the doctrines of Origen; to 
 which imputation perhaps, the expressions of the latter in his 
 disputes with the Gnostics had given some new occasion *. 
 
 Yet that which animated him, gave him tranquillity of mind 
 enough to finish his fifth tomus on the Gospel of St. John, 
 amidst the storms of Alexandria (for, as he says*, Jesus com- 
 manded the storms and waves of the sea), until at last he thought 
 it advisable to leave Alexandria, and to betake himself to his 
 friends at Czesarea, in Palestine. But Demetrius pursued him 
 
 1 It is in the highest degree probable that the ecclesiastical regulation which we find 
 in xvii. of the Canones Apostolici, was then in existence. It was there, however, by no 
 means unconditionally forbidden, in accordance with the law of the Old Testament, 
 Deut. xxiii. that any eunuch should enter into the clerical profession, but it was 
 expressly appointed that one, whom such a misfortune might have befallen without his 
 own instrumentality, might be allowed, if he was in other respects worthy, to become 
 a clergyman; it was only ὁ éavroy ἀκρωτηριασας μὴ γινέσθω κληρικος. It was 
 only to put a stop to such ascetic enthusiasm. 
 
 2 Photius, however, says that this synod had already forbidden Origen, not only to 
 exercise the office of a teacher, but even to remain at Alexandria. And yet it is 
 difficult to see, how a bishop at that time could effect the latter of these two 
 things. He could only exclude him from the communion of the Church, and it was 
 not until the second synod that this was done. Nor does the language of Origen 
 appear to hint, that he was compelled to leave Alexandria. 
 
 3 As we may conclude from the disputation with Candidus the Valentinian, 
 Hieronym, ady. Rufin. f. 414. vol. iv. 4 1. vi. Joh. ὃ. 1. 
 
990 TWO SYNODS AGAINST ORIGEN. 
 
 even thither with his persecutions; and he laid hold of a matter 
 as a pretext, wherein he could easily find associates, both in 
 Egypt and out of it, since the prevailing doctrinal spirit in many 
 parts of the Church was altogether hostile to the idealistic 
 tendency of the school of Origen, and since the book περὶ ἀρχων 
 was calculated to give occasion to so many accusations of heresy. 
 In a more numerous synod of Egyptian bishops, Demetrius ex- 
 communicated Origen, as an heretic, and the synod sent forth a 
 violent decree against him. It is in reference to this, that when 
 he began again at Ceesarea to continue his commentary on the 
 Gospel of St. John, Origen says, that “God, who once led his 
 people out of Egypt, had saved him also out of Egypt; but that 
 his enemy had assailed him with the utmost bitterness by his 
 recent letter, so utterly opposed to the Gospel, and that he had 
 raised up all the pestilential winds of evil in Egypt against 
 
 him'.” 
 
 1 We are without connected and trustworthy accounts of these important trans- 
 actions. We can only endeavour, by means of combining particulars,; to trace 
 the real progress of the matter. From the indications which Eusebius gives, "and 
 from the above-quoted words of Origen about the rash act of his youth, it is 
 certain, that this was then used against him; but it could have been used as a 
 ground only for excluding him from the clerical office. The other proceedings 
 against him must have arisen from another accusation against him. Photius, who 
 had read the Apology of Pamphilus for Origen, says Cod. 118, that Demetrius 
 made it a matter of reproach to him, that he had travelled to Athens without his 
 permission, and during this journey, undertaken without his permission, had allowed 
 himself to be ordained, which would certainly on the part of Origen, as well as of 
 the bishop who ordained him, have been a violation of the laws of the Church. 
 But supposing that Demetrius did make this accusation against Origen, we have 
 still to inquire, whether he had the right to do so. We see from the quotation of 
 Jerome de Vir. illustr. c. 62, that Alexander, the Bishop of Jerusalem, in reply to 
 Demetrius, might allege, that he had ordained Origen on the strength of an epistola 
 formata, brought by him from his own Bishop. The laws of the Church about these 
 circumstances were then perhaps so indefinite, that Alexander might believe himself 
 fully justified in ordaining a man, who was recommended to a foreign Church, and 
 yet that Demetrius might see in this an invasion of the rights of his episcopal office. 
 Be this as it may, even this could not be a sufficient ground for excommunicating 
 Origen. The sympathy, which the attack upon him found in other churches—the 
 accusations of heresy against Origen which continued after his death—what he said 
 afterwards in his own justification to Fabianus, the Bishop of Rome, in the letter we 
 have already cited (as he had also written to other bishops in defence of his orthodoxy. 
 See Eusebius, vi. 36.) ΑἹ] this points out, that his opinions [seine Dogmatik ], were 
 the cause of his excommunication. We see also from what Jerome (I. ii. adv. Rufin. 
 f. 41.) quotes out of the letter of Origen against Demetrius, that errors in the doctrines 
 of the faith had been charged against him, as he defends himself against the accusation 
 that he had maintained, that even Satan would hereafter be in bliss; although one 
 
TWO SYNODS AGAINST ORIGEN. 391 
 
 This personal contest became now a contest between the 
 opposite opinions of two parties. ‘The Churches in Palestine, 
 in Arabia, Phoenicia and Achaia declared themselves for Origen, 
 while the Roman Church declared herself against him’. The 
 judgment which Origen himself formed of those who branded 
 him with the name of heretic, will be seen from his expression 
 in the following passage’, where, after quoting 1 Cor. i. 25. he 
 says, ““ Had I said, ‘the foolishness of God,’ how would those 
 who love to accuse men of heresy *, have accused me! how should 
 I, who had said a thousand things, which they themselves approve 
 of, have been assailed for having said this one thing, ‘ the foolish- 
 ness of God?” In his defence against the synod, which had 
 excommunicated him, he quotes the denunciations of the prophets 
 against wicked priests and rulers, and then says, ‘‘ We must pity 
 them rather than hate them, pray for them rather than curse 
 them, for we are created for blessing, and not for cursing *.” 
 
 cannot well perceive, how he could deny this conclusion, which is grounded by a 
 necessary consequence on his system. Rufinus quotes passages out of a defence of 
 Origen’s, addressed to his friends at Alexandria, from which we see that a falsified 
 report [protokoll] of a disputation held between him and the heretics, had excited 
 astonishment in Palestine, even among his friends, at the opinions he expressed. They 
 had sent a messenger to him at Athens, and begged him to send them the genuine 
 original report. Even at Rome these adulterated copies had been propagated. See 
 Rufin, de Adulteratione Librorum Origenis, in opp. Hieronym. t. v. ed. Martianay, f. 
 251. Even if Rufinus is not really a faithful translator, this cannot have been 
 wholly invented by him. The disputes with the Gnostics would easily give an 
 opportunity of bringing forward the peculiar religious opinions of Origen, and to 
 those who had in him so powerful an antagonist, an opportunity of rendering -bis 
 orthodoxy suspicious in his own Church, would be welcome enough. 
 
 1 Hieronym. ep. 29. ad Paulam. Damnatus a Demetrio episcopo, exceptis Pales- 
 tine, et Arabiz, et Pheenicie, atque Achaiz sacerdotibus. He certainly adds, non 
 propter dogmatum novitatem : non propter hzeresin, sed quia gloriam eloquentize ejus 
 et scientize ferre non poterant. But this is not a fact, it is only a subjective interpre- 
 tation of motives, according to the bias which Jerome was under at that time. Comp. 
 also the remark made on the case of Tertullian. 
 
 2 Hom. viii. in Jerem. § 8. 3 οἱ φιλαιτιοι. 
 
 4 866]. c. Hieronym. iv. ἢ. 411. Compare what Origen says against the importance 
 [i. ὁ. validity, the German is Bedeutung. H. J. R.] of unjust excommunication. See 
 above, vol. i. p. 245. Comp. also on Matth. f. 445, where Origen, applying the passage 
 in Matth, xxi. 16. to the bishops of his own time, says: “ As these priests and scribes 
 are blameable according to the letter of this history, so according to spiritual applica- 
 tion, are also many high priests worthy of blame, who adorn not the name of the 
 episcopal rank by their lives, and have not clothed themselves with light and truth. 
 (Exod. xxviii.) These, while they behold the wonders of God, despise the little 
 ones and babes in the Church, who praise God and his Christ, and they are 
 angry at their advances in godliness, and they accuse them to Jesus, as doing 
 
392 CAUSES OF HIS CONDEMNATION. 
 
 The enemies of Origen were destined to contribute to the 
 further extension of the sphere of his exertions; his change of 
 residence to Palestine was assuredly followed by important con- 
 sequences; because an opportunity was thus afforded to him, of 
 effecting also from that point the propagation of a liberal and 
 enlightened spirit in the Church ; and the traces of his exertions 
 are to be found for a long time in these regions. Here also he 
 collected a body of young men around him, who educated them- 
 selves for theologians and teachers of the Church under his 
 influence ; among whom was Gregory, who afterwards became so 
 remarkably active in the preaching of the Gospel. (Of him we 
 shall afterwards speak more particularly.) He continued here also 
 his literary labours. Among other works he composed here his 
 already mentioned treatise on the use of prayer and on the 
 explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, which he addressed to his 
 friend Ambrose. He was here in a personal communication with 
 the most distingnished teachers of Cappadocia, Palestine, and 
 Arabia, and was constantly called upon to give his advice in 
 deliberations on any novel circumstances in the Church. 
 
 As, under the persecution of Maximinus Thrax, the friends of 
 Origen, the Presbyter Prototectus of Czsarea himself, and 
 Ambrose, had much to suffer; he addressed to these men, who 
 were as confessores, in prison awaiting the termination of their 
 sufferings, his treatise on Martyrdom, in which he exhorts them 
 to steadfastness in their confession, and endeavours to hold them 
 up by the promises of Scripture, and to refute the sophistry 
 of which many Gnostics, as well as heathens, who considered 
 
 wrong, while they really do no wrong; and they say to him, Hearest thou what these 
 say? And we shall understand this the better, if we consider, how it often happens 
 that men of an ardent spirit, who brave imprisonment by their bold confession 
 of faith before the heathen, who despise danger, and resolutely lead a strict life 
 of abstinence and celibacy; howit happens such men, being rude in speech * (ἰδίωται 
 Ty ee), are calumniated by the blame-worthy high priests as disorderly, and 
 how they are accused by them before Jesus, as if their own conduct was better than 
 that of these zealous and simple children! but Jesus gives his testimony to the children, 
 and, on the contrary, accuses the high priests of ignorance, when he says, Have ye 
 not read this, ‘ out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast prepared praise ?’” 
 Well might Origen here set before his mind the image of Demetrius, and other 
 bishops like him, who were inclined to judge the errors of a pious enthusiasm with 
 extreme severity. 
 
 * [In literis vero ignari.— Lat. translator. H. 4. R.] 
 
ACTIVITY OF ORIGEN IN PALESTINE. 393 
 
 religion as an affair of state, made use in order to persuade the 
 Christians that, without any prejudice to their belief, which no 
 man wished to take from them, they might satisfy the demands of 
 the laws of the state, in regard to the external things of religion. 
 But in this book the prevalent tone is at times more the spirit of 
 that philosophically ascetic, and dehumanizing morality, than 
 the spirit of that evangelical morality, which sanctions all that 
 is pure in human nature, and unites the consciousness of God’s 
 quickening power with the feeling of human weakness’; and 
 we find also in the same work the false notions of the opus ope- 
 ratum of martyrdom, to which we have before alluded; and yet 
 with all this the force of his faithful confidence and his evangelic 
 zeal for the faith is beautifully expressed in it. He says to the 
 two confessors *: “1 desired also, that, during the whole of the 
 present struggle, you should rejoice and be glad, when you 
 remember the great recompense, which is laid up in heaven for 
 those who suffer persecution and shame for righteousness’ sake, 
 and for the sake of the Son of Man, as the Apostles of old 
 rejoiced, that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the 
 name of Christ. But if at any time you feel anxiety in your 
 soul, let the Spirit of Christ, that dwells in you, speak to it 
 thus, when she for her part would trouble him, ‘ Why art thou 
 cast down, O my soul! and art so disquieted within me. ‘Trust 
 in God, for I will give thanks to him, forasmuch as he helps me 
 with his countenance.’ Ps. xlii. 6. . . Let it [never] be troubled ! 
 but even before the tribunal itself, and while the naked sword 
 impends over the neck, let it be guarded by the peace of God, 
 which passeth all understanding*.” He says to them in another 
 passage‘, ‘Since the Word of God is lively and powerful, and 
 sharper than any two-edged sword, and penetrates even to the 
 dividing asunder soul and spirit, marrow and bone, and is a judge 
 over the thoughts and the faculties of the heart, Heb. iv. 12; 
 this Divine Word now bestows on our souls the peace which 
 passeth all understanding, which it once shed over the souls of 
 
 1 In proof of this assertion we may particularly appeal to the manner, in which 
 Origen explained so artificially the simple sense of those words of Christ, which he 
 spoke in his agony, and which the spirit we allude to would not allow him to conceive 
 in their natural meaning, ὃ. 29. [pp. 189—191. in Wetstein’s Edition of the Dial. 
 cont. Marcion. et alia opuscula. Basile, 1673. H. J. R.J 
 
 2. 8 4. [p. 165. Ed. Wetstein. ] 3 § 37. [p. 201. Ed. Wetstein. ] 
 
 4 He applies this passage to the Logos. 
 
994 ACTIVITY OF ORIGEN IN PALESTINE. 
 
 Apostles, but it has thrown the sword between the earthly and 
 the heavenly form within us, in order that, for the present, it 
 may take our heavenly man to itself; and hereafter, when we are 
 so far advanced, as to need no further dividing’; it may make us 
 altogether heavenly. And he is come also, to bring not only a 
 sword on earth, but the jire also, of which he says, * I would that it 
 were already kindled,” Luke xii. 49. Let then this fire be kindled 
 also in you, and let it consume all your earthly thoughts, and 
 be ye baptized with the baptism, whereof Jesus spoke’. And 
 thou also! (Ambrose) who hast both wife and children, and 
 brethren and sisters, remember the words of the Lord: ‘if any 
 man cometh to me, and hateth not father, mother, wife, children, 
 brethren, sisters, he cannot be my disciple. But both of you 
 remember also the words, ‘If any man cometh to me and hateth 
 not also his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’ ” 
 
 It was, perhaps, this very persecution, which moved Origen to 
 leave for a time the place, which hitherto had been his abode. 
 Since the persecution, as we have before remarked, was only 
 local, it was easy to obviate it by a flight to regions where tran- 
 quillity at that moment prevailed. Origen betook himself to 
 Cesarea in Cappadocia, to his friend, the Bishop Firmilianus, 
 with whom he was in the habit of communicating on subjects of 
 theological learning *. 
 
 But, probably exactly about the time that he had settled 
 there, the above-mentioned persecution (see above) in Cappa- 
 docia broke out, and he was induced by it, to withdraw into the 
 house of Juliana, a Christian lady, who for two years kept him 
 hidden in her house, and maintained him. He there made a 
 discovery of great importance to his literary undertakings. For 
 some years he had already busied himself with a work, the object 
 of which wag, as well to correct the text of the Alexandrian 
 version of the Old Testament (which was then the translation 
 prevalent in the Church, and was looked upon by many Chris- 
 tians, in consequence of the old Jewish legend, as inspired, and 
 the MSS. of which differed very much from each other in their 
 
 1 No separation of holiness from ungodliness. 
 
 2 Luke xii. 50. 
 
 3 They used sometimes to visit each other, in order to converse on theological 
 subjects. Euseb. vi. 27. 
 
HIS IMPROVEMENT OF THE ΒΕΡΤΟΔΛΑΟΙΝΊ. 395 
 
 readings), as also to promote the improvement of the translation 
 itself, by comparing it with other old translations, and with the 
 Hebrew original. Origen, who constantly disputed much on 
 religious subjects with heathens and Jews, had learnt, as he him- 
 self says, how necessary a knowledge of the original text of the 
 Old Testament was, in order not to give openings to the Jews, 
 for they were in the habit of ridiculing the ignorance of the 
 heathen converts, who disputed with them, when they quoted 
 such passages from the Alexandrian version, as did not exist in 
 the Hebrew, or when they knew nothing of those, which were 
 only to be found in the Hebrew’. He had therefore made use 
 of the fortune of his friend Ambrose, and of his own frequent 
 journeys, in order to collect different manuscripts of the Alex- 
 andrian version and other old translations, wherever he could 
 find them. He had for instance, in rummaging everywhere, 
 found at Jericho in a barrel, an old translation of some books of 
 the Old Testament, which was elsewhere unknown. Now it 
 happened that his protectress Juliana had inherited the writings 
 of the Ebionite Symmachus, who possibly lived about the 
 beginning of that century, and he found in her house a com- 
 mentary by this writer on the evayyeAvov καθ᾽ éBpaove*, and a 
 translation made by him also of the Old Testament *. He was 
 now enabled to complete his great work of a collection of the 
 
 1 Origen, Ep. ad. African. ὃ 3. τοιαυτης οὐσης ἡμων προς abrove ἐν ταις 
 ζητησεσι παρασκευης, οὐ καταφρονησούυσιν, οὐδ᾽ ὡς ἐθος αὐτοις, γελασονται τοὺς 
 ἀπο των ἐθνων πιστευοντας, ὡς τ᾽ ἀληθὴ και παρ᾽ αὐτοις ἀναγεγραμμενα 
 ἀγνοουντας. 
 
 2 The following words of Eusebius, vi. 17, on the work of Symmachus (which he 
 afterwards reckons among his éppnvevag εἰς τας γραφας) “ εν οἷς δοκει προς TO κατα 
 Ματθαιον ἀποτεινομένος εὐαγγέλιον τὴν δεδηλωμενην αἵρεσιν (των ᾿Εβιωναιων) 
 κρατυνειν ;” from the context can hardly be taken to mean, as Valesius makes them, 
 that Symmachus endeavoured to maintain the Ebionitish doctrines against the Gospel 
 of St. Matthew ; but they must be understood to mean, that he wrote a commentary 
 on the Gospel according to St. Matthew (that is to say, probably, on the εὐαγγελιον 
 καθ᾽ Ἕβραιους which resembled St. Matthew’s) from which he endeavoured to establish 
 the Ebionitish doctrines. 
 
 3 Palladius (in the beginning of the fifth century) relates in his history of Mona- 
 chism (Aavovaka), ch. 147, that he had found in an old manuscript which had descended 
 from Origen, the words written by Origen himself, in which he narrated the circum- 
 stance mentioned in the text. This Palladius, however, in consequence of his 
 credulousness, is a very suspicious witness, but in the present case we have no grounds 
 to suspect his evidence, especially since it harmonizes well with the account given in 
 Eusebius, vi. 17. 
 
396 HIS IMPROVEMENT OF THE SEPTUAGINT. 
 
 then existing translations of the Old Testament, and a com- 
 parison of them with the Hebrew text’. 
 
 After the murder of the Emperor Maximinus, Origen was 
 able under Gordianus, a.p. 238, to return again to Cesarea, and 
 there again to begin his former course of activity. 
 
 As he had once before, on account of some ecclesiastical 
 affairs, been sent for from Alexandria by the Churches of Greece, 
 which esteemed him most highly, the same thing apparently took 
 place again. His way led him through Nicomedia in Bithynia, 
 where he staid some days with his old friend, Ambrose; who, if 
 the account of Jerome is correct, had in the mean time become a 
 deacon, although it does not appear whether Ambrose had em- 
 ployment in the Church of that city, or had only come thither 
 in order to meet Origen. He there received a letter from one of 
 his friends, Julius Africanus’, one among the distinguished Chris- 
 
 1 The Hexapla. It would be foreign to our purpose to enlarge on this and similar 
 works of Origen, for information on which we must refer to the Introductions to the 
 Old Testament. We only quote here the words of Origen himself on the comparison 
 instituted by him between the Alexandrian version and the other old translations of 
 the Old Testament. After he has spoken (Comment. in Matth, f. 381. Ed. Huet.) 
 of the differences between the copies of the New Testament, which had arisen, 
 partly from the negligence of transcribers, and partly from their boldness in 
 assuming a critical liberty of correcting the text, he adds the following words: 
 “As far as relates to the difference between the copies of the Old Testament, 
 we have found by God’s assistance a mode of remedying this inconvenience, by 
 using the other translations as a criterion. Wherever any thing was doubtful in 
 the version of the LXX. by reason of a difference in the manuscripts, we have 
 constantly retained that which agreed with the rest of the translations, and we have 
 marked a great deal, which was not found in the Hebrew, with an obelus (the critical 
 mark to denote an omission) because we did not venture to leave it out entirely. We 
 have added also some passages with the mark of an asterisk, to denote, that we have 
 added these passages, which are not found in the LXX. from the other translations, in 
 accordance with the Hebrew, and that he, who is inclined to do so, may receive them 
 into the text (I think we must read προσεται Ἐ), but he, who is offended at them. 
 may receive them or not, just as he pleases.” [Comp. Ep. ad African. p. 226, Ed. 
 Wetstein. H.J.R.] From these latter words we see how much Origen had to fear 
 those, who were ready to charge every one, who deviated from that which had been 
 received, with falsification of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 2 He was a man far advanced in years, as will appear immediately from his being 
 able to address Origen, at that time a person of fifty years of age, by the title of ‘my 
 son.’ He seems to have fixed his usual residence in the old decayed town of Emmaus, 
 or Nicopoli, in Palestine (as it was afterwards called by the Romans, in order to 
 distinguish it from the Emmaus of the New Testament, it being more distant from 
 Jerusalem than the latter; namely, about 176 stadia). The inhabitants of this 
 
 “ [The common reading is προηται. Η. J. R.] 
 
JULIUS AFRICANUS. 397 
 
 tian men of learning of this period. It appears that Origen, ata 
 conversation which took place in the presence of Africanus, had 
 cited the history of Susannah on the authority of the Septuagint 
 version, as a genuine piece belonging to Daniel. Africanus 
 expressed to him his surprise at this in a letter, distinguished 
 alike by the moderate, delicate, and learned tone of its argu- 
 ment, and by its unprejudiced criticism, and he begged him to 
 enter into a further discussion of the subject. Origen answered 
 him from Nicomedia, in a very elaborate writing. Not so unpre- 
 judiced as Africanus, he endeavoured to defend the authority of 
 the Alexandrian version and collection of the Holy Scriptures. 
 It is remarkable to observe how the free, inquiring spirit of 
 Origen, from a mistaken piety, and perhaps also from being 
 made fearful in consequence of the troubles which he had in- 
 voluntarily caused in the Church, fell back upon the authority 
 of a Church tradition, which was supposed to be under the guid- 
 ance of God; he says’, * But hath not that Providence, which 
 has given edification in the Holy Scripture to all the Churches 
 of Christ, taken care also for those who have been bought with 
 a price, for whom Christ died, whom [i. e. Christ] though he 
 
 decayed place chose him as their delegate to the Emperor Heliogabalus, to effect the 
 restoration of their town by this emperor, which he obtained for them. Hieronym. de 
 Vir. Illustr. c. 63. He is known as the first Christian compiler of a history of the 
 world (his χρονογραφια in five books, see Eusebius, vi. 31.) This work, which is 
 only known to us by the quotations of other writers, and fragments, proceeded from an 
 intention to compose something of an apologetic nature. He is known also to us, by 
 his letter to Aristides on the solution of the difference between the genealogies of 
 Jesus as given by St. Matthew and St. Luke, of which a portion is preserved by 
 Eusebius, Hist. i. 7. Another remarkable fragment of this letter has been published 
 by Routh, Reliquiz Sacre, vol ii. p. 115. In that he combats those, who maintained 
 that these different genealogies were given, in order to show clearly in this way the 
 truth, that Jesus is both a King and an High priest, as being descended from a royal 
 and a priestly race. He here also declares himself expressly against the theory of a 
 fraus pia.‘ May such an opinion never prevail in the Church of Christ that a falsehood 
 has been invented for the glory of Christ!” μη δὴ κρατοιὴ τοιουτὸος λογος, ἐν 
 ἐκκλησίᾳ Χριστου, ore Wevdog συγκειται εἰς αἶνον και δοξολογιαν Χριστου. Eusebius 
 ascribes a work to him, which, under the name of κεστοῦ, contains a kind of literary 
 miscellany, according to the then mode of unscientifically mingling together a variety of 
 historical materials. And yet among the fragments of this work, which are ascribed 
 to him, there is much which does not suit the views and principles, which we are 
 accustomed to ascribe to this man, from what we learn of him elsewhere. The most 
 natural supposition is, that he wrote that work before his habits of thought had 
 become decidedly Christian. 
 1 Ὁ. 4. [p. 227. Ed. Wetstein.] 
 
398 OTHER WRITINGS OF ORIGEN. 
 
 was his own Son, God, being love itself, spared not; but gave 
 him up for us all, that with him he might give us all things’. 
 Consider, therefore, whether it is not good to remember these 
 words, ‘Remove not the boundaries which thy fathers have 
 made ’.’” (Prov. xxii. 28.) He says then, “ that although he has 
 not neglected the other old translations, he has yet bestowed his 
 chief industry upon the Alexandrian version, in order that it 
 might not seem as if he wished to introduce a spurious innovation 
 into the Church, and in order that he might give no handle to 
 those who sought for opportunities, and who desired to calum- 
 niate those men, who were well known, and had obtained stations 
 of eminence in the Church *.” Athens was the point to which 
 the journey of Origen tended; he staid there some time, finished 
 his commentary on Ezekiel, and began that on the Song of 
 Solomon *. 
 
 Till the end of his life he busied himself in theological labours ; 
 
 1 These are arguments by which a free investigation of the canon of Scripture,—an 
 inquiry, Y freely grant, which ought, like all theological inquiries, to be animated by 
 a spirit of piety,—has often been opposed. But the arguments of Origen only prove 
 that God, who revealed in Christ his unspeakable love to man, without doubt must 
 have provided for all the wants implanted by himself in human nature. But the mode, 
 in which he has provided for them, must not be determined @ priori in accordance with 
 the prejudices of any existing system of opinions (einer stehenden dogmatik), nor ac- 
 cording to the measure of the limited faculties, the little faith, or the dulness of man. 
 Nay, after all, a mode by which truth comes forth victorious from the contest with 
 error, after a free inquiry, may be the mode most consonant to human nature itself. 
 It may be the plan of Providence, that Faith should fight the battle out herself without 
 any external support, by means of its own inward and Divine power, by means of its 
 own attractive power over the inmost heart of man. The incorrect conclusion, drawn 
 from these correct premises, would, if consistently carried out, lead to the supposition 
 of an outward visible Theocracy constantly guiding mankind, as in a state of infancy, 
 as alas! in after times the conclusion was pushed to this point. But it is far rather 
 true that human nature, in consequence of having had every thing given to it in 
 Christ, has grown up to the maturity of the years of manhood. 
 
 2 These words, which, taken as an unconditional and unlimited rule of life, have 
 so often since those times been used in support of old errors to the prejudice of 
 pure evangelical truths, contain the same principle, which the religio 4 majoribus 
 tradita of the heathen at first opposed to the new Gospel. See the First Part of this 
 work. The truth victorious through her Divine power—the answer, that could not be 
 refused, to inquiries based on the inmost being of human nature,—the satisfaction of 
 undeniable wants, required by human nature itself,—this needed no prejudice for its 
 support, no prejudicium, no prescriptio antiquitatis. 
 
 3 ἵνα μὴ τι παραχαραττειν δοκοιημὲν ταις ὑπο Tov obpavoy ἐκκλησιαις" καὶ 
 προφασεις διδωμεν τοις ζητουσιν ἀφορμας, ἐθελουσι Tove ἐν μέσῳ συκοφαντειν καὶ 
 των διαφαινομενων ἐν τῳ κοινῳ κατηγορειν. 
 
 + Euseb. vi. 32. 
 
OTHER WRITINGS OF ORIGEN. 399 
 
 and during the reign of Philip the Arabian, with whose family he 
 was connected, he wrote the work against Celsus, which we have 
 already mentioned, his Commentary on St. Matthew, &c. He 
 now permitted for the first time, being sixty years of age, his 
 sermons to be taken down by short-hand writers. In what reve- 
 rence he was held we may see clearly from the fact, that he was 
 called into council by synods of bishops in weighty ecclesiastical 
 affairs, on which people could not come to a decision; and we 
 have already spoken of the manner in which Beryllus, the Bishop 
 of Bostra, in Arabia, received instruction at his hand. We must, 
 however, still mention, that among the Christians of Arabia at 
 that time a party had caused a controversy, by maintaining that 
 the souls died with the body, and that they would be raised again 
 only at the general resurrection at the same time with the bodies. 
 It was an old Jewish notion (see above) that immortality was 
 not founded upon the nature of the soul, but a peculiar gift of 
 Divine grace; a representation which had been transferred from 
 Judaism to Christianity, traces of which we find in the theory 
 of the Gnostics about the nature of the Psychici, in the doctrine 
 of the Clementine, and in the opinions of Justin and Tatian. 
 Perhaps also in this district, the position of which placed it in 
 close connection with Jews, it was no new doctrine, but the pre- 
 dominant one from ancient times; and perhaps the influence of 
 Origen (in whose system the doctrine of the natural immortality 
 of the soul necessarily obtained a place) first effected the change 
 that this latter should obtain universal acceptance among the 
 Church-teachers of that district; and that the small party, which 
 still maintained the old opinion, should appear heretical, although 
 the predominant opinion had previously really pronounced itself 
 against it’ [the new opinion]. Hence we may understand, how 
 the convocation of a Great Synod was considered necessary, in 
 order to allay these controversies. When they were unable to 
 agree, Origen was invited by the synod, and his influence pre- 
 vailed upon the opposers of the doctrine of the natural immortality 
 of the soul to acknowledge their error, and renounce it. 
 
 Origen, who on account of his individual opinions was consi- 
 
 1 Eusebius (vi. 37) may perhaps judge the controversies of this period too much 
 according to his own subjective doctrinal system, and according to the Church-ortho- 
 doxy of his own times, when he represents the maintainers of this opinion as generally 
 acknowledged teachers of heresy, and propagators of a new opinion. 
 
 7 
 
400 DECIAN PERSECUTION—DEATH OF ORIGEN. 
 
 dered as an heretical opposer of the evangelical doctrines of 
 the Christian faith, was destined in the last days of a life, conse - 
 crated to labouring and struggling for that which he believed to 
 be the cause of Christ, to confute by facts the accusations of his 
 enemies, and to show how he was ready to sacrifice every thing 
 to his faith, and how he belonged to those who are ready to hate 
 even their own lives for the sake of the Lord. 
 
 As the fury of the enemies of Christianity in the Decian perse- 
 -eution fell chiefly upon those persons, who were distinguished 
 among the Christians by their offices, their virtues, or their know- 
 ledge, and their activity in the propagation of the faith ', so it 
 was natural that a man like Origen, should be especially a mark 
 for fanatical cruelty. After a stedfast confession he was thrown 
 into a dungeon, and it was endeavoured, according to the plan 
 pursued in the Decian persecution, to triumph over the weak- 
 ness of age by refined and gradually increasing tortures. But the 
 faith, which he bore in his heart, supported the feebleness of his 
 age, and enabled him to bear all the trials to which they put him. 
 After he had endured so much’, he wrote from his prison a 
 letter full of comfort and encouragement for others. The circum- 
 stances already related (see above), which in part softened this 
 persecution, and in part entirely put an end to it, obtained at 
 last for Origen also freedom and tranquillity. And yet the suffer- 
 ings undergone by him, perhaps, contributed to hasten his death. 
 He died about the year 254, aged sixty-nine ὃ, 
 
 The influence of Origen on the formation of a theological 
 system did not continue bound up in his own person, but re- 
 mained and developed itself independently of him, by means of 
 
 1 The persona insignes. 2 Euseb. vi. 39. 
 
 3 Euseb. vii. 2. According to Photius, cod. 118, there were two accounts of the 
 death of Origen, which differed both as to its circumstances, and the time of its occur- 
 rence. Pamphilus and many others, who had been personally acquainted with Origen, 
 related that he died at Czesarea as a martyr in the Decian persecution. Others related 
 that he lived to the times of Gallus and Volusianus, and then died at Tyre, and was 
 buried there; and the truth of this latter account was testified by the letters written 
 by Origen after the persecution, of the genuineness of which, however, Photius was 
 not decidedly convinced. But after that, which Eusebius, who certainly followed the 
 account of his friend and instructor Pamphilius, says in the above-cited passage of his 
 Church History, it can hardly be supposed that Pamphilius really gave the account al- 
 luded to by Photius. Perhaps Photius may have misunderstood Pamphilius, when by 
 the term martyrdom he meant only a confession under torture, or when he spoke of 
 the consequences of those sufferings as affecting Origen. 
 
SCHOLARS OF ORIGEN. 40] 
 
 his writings and his disciples, but not without a continuing con- 
 test with the opposite dispositions of the human mind. The 
 friends of Chiliasm, of the carnal and literal interpretation of 
 Scripture, and the anthropomorphical and anthropopathical mode 
 of representing Divine things connected with such a system of 
 interpretation, and the zealots for the letter of the doctrinal tradi- 
 tion of the Church, were enemies of the Origenistic school. The 
 contest between these opposing principles is the source of the most 
 marking phenomena for the theological development of the latter 
 portion of this period. We shall here first throw a glance upon 
 the Church, which was the original scene of the activity of 
 Origen, namely, the Alexandrian and the Egyptian Church. 
 
 Origen had left behind him disciples in this district who con- 
 tinued to work on in his spirit, although with a greater degree of 
 speculative moderation. ‘The Bishop Demetrius, as is shown by 
 what precedes, was rather a personal enemy to Origen than an 
 enemy to his theological opinions. ‘The opposition made by him 
 to these was apparently, in his case, only a pretext. He there- 
 fore allowed the disciples of Origen to continue their operations 
 undisturbed, and he himself died soon after the breaking out of 
 these controversies in the same year, 231. 
 
 Heraclas, the friend and scholar of Origen already mentioned, 
 who after his [Origen’s] departure had become the head of the 
 Catechetical school, was made successor to Demetrius in the 
 Episcopal office. In the year 247, Heraclas was succeeded in 
 his office of Catechist, and afterwards as Bishop, by Dionysius, 
 another worthy disciple of Origen, who constantly retained his 
 love and reverence for his master, to whom when in prison (see 
 above), during the Decian persecution, he wrote a letter of con- 
 solation. This man, as he himself says, had come to a belief in 
 the Gospel through the method of free investigation, by giving an 
 unprejudiced and thorough examination to all systems; and hence 
 he remained true to this principle, even as a Christian and a 
 Church-teacher. He read and examined in an unprejudiced 
 manner all writings of the heretics, and rejected their systems, 
 only after having learned to know them accurately, and after 
 having placed himself in a condition to confute them on just 
 grounds. A Presbyter of his Church warned him against the 
 ‘evil, which might happen to his soul from his employing himself 
 so repeatedly with these godless writings. But the Spirit of God 
 
 VOL. 11. pd 
 
402 HIEROCLES AND DIONYSIUS. 
 
 gave him confidence enough not to allow himself to be frightened 
 at this danger. He believed that he heard a voice which said to 
 him, “ Read all that falls into your hands, for you are able to 
 judge, and to examine every thing, and this has deen to you from 
 the very beginning a source of faith.’ Dionysius was strength- 
 ened by this encouragement in his resolution, and he thought it 
 corresponded with that precept of the Lord to those who are 
 strong, which is found in an Apocryphal Gospel, “ Be ye able 
 money-changers :” (γινεσθε δόκιμοι τραπεζιται) that is to say, be 
 capable of distinguishing genuine from counterfeit coins ἡ. 
 
 We have already on different occasions given examples of the 
 liberal mind and moderation of this man, and of the blessed effects 
 produced by it. His Christian moderation and mildness are 
 shown also in his Letter to an Egyptian Bishop, named Basilides, 
 which contains answers to inquiries concerning circumstances 
 relative to the discipline, and the rites of the Church*. The 
 Letter of Dionysius to this Bishop, who was subordinate to him, 
 concludes thus: “Thou hast not laid these inquiries before me, 
 as if thou wert ignorant in the matter, but in order to do me 
 honour, and that I might be of the same mind with you, as indeed 
 Iam. Ihave stated and explained my opinion to you not as a 
 teacher, but in all the openness with which we must speak to 
 each other. But it is now your business to judge about the 
 matter; and write to me then what seems to you better, or 
 
 whether you are also yourself satisfied that this is right *.” 
 
 1 Dionysius, in his Letter to the Romish Bishop Philemon (Euseb. vii. 7), appeals to 
 an heavenly vision and toa heavenly voice. He speaks of the thing so simply, and betrays 
 so little design, that we should do him an injustice to charge him with what is called 
 a fraus pia, although the somewhat tax principles of the Alexandrian school in this 
 respect (a laxity which is connected with their distinction between two different con- 
 ditions with regard to religion) might favour such an accusation; but we must here 
 take into the account also, that these pious men certainly were better guided by the 
 Christian spirit, which animated them, than by their theoretical principles. It may 
 easily be explained in a psychological way, by supposing that the truth, which the 
 Spirit of God caused him to acknowledge, presented itself again to his imagination in 
 this form, perhaps ina dream. The manner in which he speaks of it seems, however, 
 to indicate that he himself was not so firmly convinced of the Divine nature of the 
 vision, as of the truth of its purport, and of the declaration of Christ, his words being 
 these: ἀπεδεξαμην To ὅραμα, ὡς ἀποστολικῃ φωνῃ συντρεχον, TY λεγουσῃ, &e. 
 
 2 Which Letter maintains, in the Greek Church, a lawful reverence as an ἐπιστολή 
 καθολικη. The fragments which remain of it were last published by Routh, Reliquiz 
 Sacre, vol. ii. 
 
 3 A larger fragment of the work of this Dionysius “ On Nature,” in which he defends 
 
ORIGENISTS AND ANTI-ORIGENIS'S. 408 
 
 Afterwards also in the last period of the third century, Pierius 
 and Theognostus distinguished themselves as teachers of the 
 Alexandrian Church. In the fragments of their works (pre- 
 served in Photius) we recognise the peculiar doctrines of Origen. 
 
 We have already remarked, that in Egypt itself an opposition 
 existed between an Origenistic and an Anti-Origenistic party. 
 We find this opposition in the fourth century, especially among 
 the Egyptian monks, occurring again, and the parties named 
 Anthropomorphites and Origenists. Perhaps also this opposition 
 among the Egyptian monks is to be derived from the time of 
 which we have just been speaking. ‘There were, indeed, at this 
 time no monks; but as early as the end of the third century there 
 were in Egypt assemblies of ascetics, who lived in the country ’. 
 Among these Egyptian ascetics there appeared a man at the end 
 of this period, by name Hieracas, who was reckoned among the 
 heretics in the times that followed, because men judged of him 
 from the position assumed by the Church system of doctrine, as 
 this had formed itself in the fourth century, but who, during his 
 lifetime, would hardly have been considered as an heretic*. As 
 far as we can become acquainted with his turn of mind, and his 
 doctrines, from the fragmentary accounts preserved of him, for 
 which we are chiefly indebted to Epiphanius*, he had in his 
 peculiar views much that was akin to the Origenistic school, and 
 it may be the case that he himself was originally of that school ; 
 but we nevertheless find no swch similarity of doctrines, that it 
 cannot be explained any other way. Views similar to these 
 might easily be formed also in other parts of Egypt. 
 
 Hieracas lived in the town of Leontopolis*, in Egypt, as an 
 ascetic ; and, according to the practice of ascetics, he procured for 
 himself what was necessary for his livelihood, and means for the 
 exercise of his benevolence, by an art which was much prized, 
 
 faith in Providence against the Atomic theory of the Epicureans, is preserved to us by 
 Eusebius in the xivth Book of his Preparatio Evangelica, and it is printed in Routh, 
 1, c. vol. iv. 
 
 1 As we may perceive from the Life of Antony in Athanasius. More will be said on 
 this subject in the following period. 
 
 2 On this account—as in this work we can conceive the notion of heresy only in 
 its historical signification, we have not reckoned Hieracas among the heretics, as is 
 usually done. 
 
 3 Heres. 67. 
 
 4 Unless, perhaps, he was at the head of an ascetic body in the neighbourhood of 
 that town. 
 
 pd2 
 
404 HIERACAS. 
 
 and much used in Egypt, that of fine penmanship, in which he 
 was skilful, both as regarded the Greek and the Coptic character. 
 He must have lived to beyond the age of ninety years, which 
 may easily be explained from his simple mode of life, and to his 
 very end was in possession of his faculties, and therefore was 
 able to exercise his art to the latest hours of his life. He was 
 equally acquainted with the Greek and the Coptic literature; 
 and from this very cause it may have happened, that he mingled 
 with Christianity many elements foreign to it, drawn from both 
 those classes of literature. He wrote Commentaries on the Bible 
 both in the Coptic and the Greek language, and composed many 
 hymns for the Church. 
 
 He was addicted to the allegorizing interpretation of Scripture, 
 which was closely connected with a certain theosophical dispo- 
 sition. Like Origen he explained the account of Paradise in an 
 allegorical manner, and denied a material [stnnliches, sensuous] 
 Paradise. Probably, like Origen, he considered Paradise as the 
 symbol of a higher world of spirits, from which the heavenly 
 Spirit sunk down through an inclination for earthly matter. But 
 as men were by no means of one mind as to what was to be under- 
 stood symbolically in that narrative, and what literally, and also 
 as nothing had been finally settled (see above) in the prevailing 
 doctrine of the Church on the origin of souls, and, besides, as the 
 peculiar opinions of Origen had at that time in the Egyptian 
 Church many considerable advocates, he could not have been 
 generally set down as an heretic on that account. 
 
 From that theory of his concerning the incorporation of the 
 heavenly Spirit, which sunk down to an union with matter, it 
 may easily be explained how Hieracas must have despised the 
 earthly material body, and have made its renunciation and morti- 
 fication’ the chief business of Christian morality, and how he 
 must have contended against the doctrine that the soul once 
 freed, should again at the Resurrection become enclosed in this 
 prison-house of the body. In regard to the last subject, he may 
 very possibly have held that the soul would become enveloped 
 with a higher organ of ethereal matter (a σωμα πνευματικον). 
 And this opinion also he might dress up in such a manner that 
 
 1 [ Entdusserung. Perhaps a stronger phrase would more nearly translate Neander’s 
 word. It seems to express such a system of self-denial as would almost free us from 
 the body, even while we are init. H.J. R.] 
 
HIS ASCETIC CHARACTER. 405 
 
 he could not be said exactly to reject the doctrine of a resur- 
 rection of the body, but only to explain it after his own views. 
 
 As far as regards the first point, he pronounced that an unmar- 
 ried life of continence was an essential element in true Christian 
 perfection. In the recommendation of celibacy he placed the 
 characteristic difference between the moral position of the Old 
 and of the New Testament. Hieracas discovers the traces of 
 those false views of the nature of morality, and of the require- 
 ments of the moral law from human nature, (according to which 
 it might be supposed that this moral law could be so easily fulfil-» 
 led, and men could do even more than it required, viz. the opera 
 supererogationis,) when he inquires, ‘What new thing, then, has 
 the doctrine of the only-begotten One introduced? what new 
 good hath he planted in mankind? The Old Testament has 
 already treated of the fear of God, of envy, of covetousness, &c. 
 What new thing then remains, if it be not the introduction of 
 celibacy ?” This inquiry, we must acknowledge, shows that 
 Hieracas had no right conception either of the requirements of 
 the moral Law, or, which is closely connected with it, of that 
 which Christ is as the Redeemer of mankind, and of the nature 
 of redemption. From the view of human nature, and of the 
 requirements of the moral Law upon it, which we find here set 
 forth, a doctrine might easily be deduced, according to which 
 man has no need of a Redeemer. But it would be unjust on 
 that account to ascribe to Hieracas the doctrine that Christ was 
 only the founder of a more perfect moral system, and not the 
 Redeemer of mankind. A zealous Montanist might have said 
 something similar to what Hieracas advanced. And traces of 
 these false ethical and anthropological views, are besides found 
 also at this season, and particularly among the Alexandrians. 
 
 By means of passages, detached from their context, in the 
 7th chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, he endea- 
 voured to prove that St. Paul had permitted marriage only out 
 of a regard for the weakness of men, and only to avoid a worse 
 evil in the case of those who were weak. In the parable of 
 the virgins, Matth. xxv., he neglected the rule of interpreta- 
 tion, which indicates that we are not to seek a resemblance in 
 every particular, but only in the points of comparison ; and he 
 concluded from that parable that here virgins only were named, 
 
v 
 
 406 HIS CONDEMNATION OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 and that only unmarried persons could attain to a participation 
 in the kingdom of heaven. In his application of the passage, 
 in which it is said, that ‘* without holiness no man can see God,” 
 Heb. xii. 14, he sets out from his presumption that the nature of 
 holiness consists in a life of celibacy. 
 
 As Hieracas himself admits, that St. Paul permitted marriage 
 to those who are weak, it follows, that he by no means uncon- 
 ditionally condemned married Christians, and excluded them from 
 the number of Christians. It may be the case, that persons 
 drew too large conclusions from many of his exaggerations in his 
 recommendation of celibacy. Or else, when he said that only 
 those who lived in celibacy could attain to the kingdom of 
 heaven, he must by that expression have understood not the 
 blessedness of heaven generally, but only the highest grade of it; 
 which doctrinal expression, as peculiar to himself, appears likely 
 to have been thus used, from what we are now about to observe. 
 
 In virtue of his ascetic disposition Hieracas laid particular 
 Stress on this point, viz. every one was to obtain for himself a 
 participation in the kingdom of heaven by his own moral endea- 
 vours, and his own ascetic strictness. ‘This point, the laying 
 particular stress on man’s own endeavours, was also altogether 
 in accordance with the Alexandrian views. Now Hieracas, setting 
 out from the principle: ‘that participation in the kingdom of 
 heaven being only the recompense of a combat, he who has never 
 fought cannot attain the victor’s crown,’ came to this conclusion, 
 ‘children who die before they attain to knowledge and con- 
 sciousness, do not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ He could 
 hardly have intended thus to express an unconditional sentence 
 of condemnation upon them, but only to exclude them from the 
 highest grade of blessedness, which proceeds from communion 
 with God, and from the ennoblement of human nature by its 
 union with God in Christ : for the participation in this is only to 
 be attained by man through his own moral endeavours, when he 
 does more than the Law requires. He supposed a middle state 
 for these children, as was afterward supposed in the case of 
 unbaptized children by many Orientals and by Pelagius. If 
 Hieracas maintained this with regard to all children, even those 
 that were baptized, it follows from this that he denied a super- 
 natural operation, as existing in infant-baptism. Perhaps also 
 
GREGORIUS THAUMATURGOS. 407 
 
 in accordance with this principle he opposed infant baptism itself, 
 and pronounced it to be a rite of later origin, which was con- 
 trary to the intention of baptism and the nature of Christianity. 
 What we have here observed, serves also to the confirmation of 
 what we have said above, that Hieracas by no means reverenced 
 Christ merely as a moral teacher; it is clear from it, that he 
 recognised him as an ennobler of human nature, the obtainer of 
 the highest grade of blessedness, to which men could not have 
 attained by their own powers. 
 
 In the view of orthodoxy maintained by the Church in later 
 days, errors would be charged on Hieracas in regard to the 
 doctrines of the Trinity. He must have used the comparison 
 that the Son of God emanated from the Father, as the light of a 
 lamp is kindled from another lamp, or as a torch is divided into 
 two’. Such sensuous comparisons were, it must be granted, 
 contrary to the spiritual disposition of Origen; but the older 
 Church-teachers, Justin and Tatian, had been fond of them. He 
 maintained further, that the Holy Ghost was represented under 
 the image of Melchisedec, for he [the Spirit] is set forth both as 
 the advocate for men, Rom. viii. 26, and as a priest. He 
 represents the image of the Son, subordinate indeed to him, but 
 the most like to him among all beings, which representation was 
 entirely conformable to the Origenistic theory of subordination, 
 which maintained itself for a long time in the Oriental Church’. 
 
 The influence of Origen extended itself through the influence 
 of his friends and scholars from Palestine, as far as Cappadocia 
 and Pontus, as the three great Church-teachers of Cappadocia give 
 testimony to it even in the fourth century. We must here mention 
 particularly his great scholar Gregory, on whom the veneration 
 of Christians has conferred the name of wonder-worker (Θαυμα- 
 
 1 ὡς λυχνον ἀπὸ λυχνου, ἡ ὡς λαμπαδα εἰς δυο. Arius ad Alexandr. apud 
 Epiphan. Heres. 69. ὃ 7. Athanas. t. i. p. ii. 68. 
 
 2 He appeals to a passage of an Apocryphal writing, which is of importance for the 
 illustration of the doctrinal history of the earliest times, the ἀναβατικον ᾽Ἤσαιου ; 
 that is, the narrative of the ascension of Isaiah into different regions of the heaven, and 
 of what he saw there. After the accompanying angel has shown Isaiah the Son of God, 
 who stands at the right hand of God, the ἀγαπητος, Isaiah inquires καὶ τις ἐστιν ὃ 
 ἀλλος ὁ ὁμοιος αὐτῳ, ἐξ ἀριστερων ἐλθων ; και εἰπε" συ γινωσκεις, τουτ᾽ ἐστι TO 
 ἁγιον πνεῦμα To λαλουν ἐν σοι, και ἐν τοις προφηταις" και HY, φησι, ὅμοιον τῷ 
 ἀγαπητῳ. The passage is found in this work which has now been published in a 
 complete manner from the old Ethiopic translation, by R. Laurence, Oxford, 1819, 
 pp. 58, 59, v. 32—36. 
 
408 HIERACAS—HIS CONVERSION, AND 
 
 rovpyoc). His original name was Theodorus. He was descended 
 from a respectable and wealthy family at Neo-Cesarea in Pontus; 
 his father, a zealous heathen, educated him in the principles of 
 heathenism. But when he was fourteen years of age he lost his 
 father, and now he was first gained to the cause of Christianity, 
 as it often happened (see above, vol. i.) that the Gospel first 
 found entrance into families by means of children and women. He 
 however still knew Christianity only from the tradition of others, 
 he still remained unacquainted with Holy Scripture, his interest 
 in religion was still a subordinate feeling, and the endeavour after 
 a splendid career in the world was of more value in his eyes. 
 His mother used every means in her power to enable him to 
 learn whatever in those days would serve to promote the object 
 of his wishes in this respect. He therefore received a good 
 rhetorical education, so as to be able to advance himself, either 
 as arhetorician or an advocate; and he also learned Latin, the 
 language both of the governing power and of the courts of 
 law. His instructor in the Roman language showed him, how 
 very necessary to him a knowledge of the Roman law would be 
 for the attainment of the object he had in view. He began this 
 study, and had already formed a scheme to visit Rome, in order 
 to increase his acquaintance with the Roman jurisprudence. But 
 Providence had selected him for an instrument in a work of 
 higher importance, and as he himself remarks in his portraiture 
 of the events of his life, without his own desire or will, he was 
 prepared for that work. 
 
 His brother-in-law had been called to Cesarea as law-adviser 
 (assessor) to the Preeses of the province of Palestine. He had 
 left his wife at Neo-Cesarea, but she was now to follow him. 
 They requested his brother-in-law, the young Theodorus, to 
 conduct her to him, as he might then with great facility put in 
 execution his plan of studying Roman law, by going from 
 Cesarea to the celebrated neighbouring school of Roman juris- 
 prudence at Berytus in Phoenicia. Theodorus accepted the 
 offer; but this journey was attended by consequences different 
 from those which he had expected. He became acquainted 
 with Origen at Czsarea; Origen soon remarked the powers of 
 the young man, and endeavoured to win them to the service of 
 something higher than that which then animated him. Theo- 
 dorus felt himself attracted by Origen, as he worked upon his 
 
INTERCOURSE WITH ORIGEN. 409 
 
 spirit and his heart, exciting, warming, and encouraging them. 
 In spite of his own will he felt himself detained there ; he forgot 
 Rome, and Berytus, and the study of the law. Origen led him to 
 perceive the nothingness of his former endeavours and pursuits, he 
 lighted in the soul of the young man the holy fire of love to 
 truth and to godliness [/it. the Divine]. The noblest effort of 
 Origen, as Theodorus himself represents it in his farewell 
 address, was to excite in him a spiritual activity of his own, 
 and an unprejudiced spirit of inquiry and examination. After 
 he had allowed him to seek for the scattered beams of truth in 
 the systems of Greek philosophy he showed him the higher 
 thing which Revelation bestowed on him; he led him now to 
 the study of Holy Scripture and explained it to him. Theodorus 
 says of Origen’s exposition of Scripture: ‘I think he spoke this 
 in no other way than by the communion of the Holy Spirit, for 
 to be a prophet and to understand a prophet requires the selfsame 
 power. And none of the prophets can understand it, to whom 
 the Spirit himself, from whom the prophecies come, has not 
 given the understanding of his words. This man has received the 
 greatest gift of God, to be the interpreter for men, of the words of 
 God, to understand the word of God, as God speaks it, and so to 
 preach it to men, that they can understand it ’.” 
 
 After he had passed eight years with Origen, and apparently 
 received baptism also at Cesarea, and assumed also here the 
 name of Gregorius, he returned to his own country. It was 
 with sorrow that he left his instructor, on whom his whole sou! 
 hung: he compared the bond, which knitted him to Origen, with 
 the bond of friendship between a David and a Jonathan. He 
 testified his thankfulness to Origen, and to Providence, which had 
 conducted him to Origen without his knowledge or will, in his 
 farewell oration, in which he describes the events of his life, and 
 the methods of instruction and edification employed by Origen *. 
 
 1 Panegyric. in Orig. c. 15. 
 
 ? We have followed this oration, as the most trustworthy source, for the history of 
 the early life and education of Gregory. The accounts given by Gregory of Nyssa, in 
 his life of this Gregory, are in open contradiction to the narrative of this Gregory him- 
 self; and as Gregory of Nyssa dressed up rhetorically what he had taken from unau- 
 thentic inaccurate accounts, it would be an useless trouble to endeavour to reconcile 
 the contradictory narratives with each other. The Panegyricus of Gregory may be 
 found in the fourth volume of the works of Origen, by de Ja Rue, and in the third 
 volume of the Bibliotheca Patrum of Galland. 
 
410 HIS CONVERSION, 
 
 While he tears himself away with pain from intercourse with 
 his dear instructor, and from an unmixed employment about godly 
 things, and with sorrow and fear prepares to meet the occupations 
 of so different a character, to which he must devote himself in his 
 own country, he speaks thus:—* But why should I lament this? 
 We have, we know, a Saviour for all, even for those who are 
 half-dead, and fallen into the hands of robbers; One who cares 
 for all, and is a physician for all, the watchful protector of all 
 men. We have also the seed within us, of which, as bearing it 
 about within us, we became conscious through thee (Origen), and 
 the seed which we have received from thee, those glorious doctrines. 
 With this seed we depart, in tears indeed, because we are leaving 
 thee, but taking this seed with us. Perhaps the heavenly Pro- 
 tector will join himself to our company, and save us, but perhaps 
 we shall return to thee, and bring to thee also from that seed 
 fruits and grain,—not ripe ones, indeed, (for how can that be ?) 
 but such as can grow up amidst civil employments.” And turning 
 himself to Origen, he addresses him thus: *‘ But thou, dear head ! 
 stand up ! and dismiss us with thy prayer; as thou hast led us’ to 
 salvation by thy holy doctrines, while we were with thee, so lead 
 us, now that we are departing from thee, to salvation by thy 
 prayer. And transfer us and commend us, or rather only give 
 us back again to God, who led us to you. ‘Thank him for that 
 which he has hitherto done for us, but call upon him also, that 
 he may engraft his commands upon our Spirit, that he may pour 
 upon us the fear of God, and that this may serve as our best 
 corrector. For at a distance we can no longer hearken to him 
 with that freedom, with which we have done so, as long as we 
 have been with you. Pray to him to send us a good angel to 
 accompany us, as a consolation for our separation from you. But 
 entreat him also to conduct us back to you, for this alone will be 
 our chief consolation.” 
 
 After his departure also Origen retained him in his heart. We 
 have still a letter full of fatherly love, which he addressed to 
 him. (Philocal. c. 13.) He here says to him, that his distin- 
 guished qualities might make him an able Roman jurisconsult, 
 or a respected teacher of one of the celebrated philosophical 
 
 1 He speaks here in the plural number, because he probably had in his mind at the 
 same time his brother Athenodorus, who came with him to Origen, and also after- 
 wards became Bishop of the Church of Pontus. See Euseb. vi. 30. 
 
AND INTERCOURSE WITH ORIGEN. 41] 
 
 schools ; but he wished that Gregory should propose to himself 
 Christianity alone as his aim and object, and use his talents only as 
 means to the one great end. According to his principles, which 
 we have before detailed, as to the relation of different depart- 
 ments of knowledge, and especially of Philosophy, to Chris- 
 tianity, he incites him to appropriate to himself from the whole 
 circle of human knowledge, [/it. from the Encyclopeedical sci- 
 ences] and from philosophy, every thing, which he might be able 
 to use for the advantage of Christianity. By many beautiful alle- 
 gorical explanations of the narratives of the Old Testament he 
 endeavours to make it clear to him, that we must use every thing 
 to the service of godliness [/it. the Divine], and sanctify every 
 thing else by referring it to that; but not, as often happens, 
 forget godliness itself amidst these elements which are foreign to 
 it, and thus desecrate it by the admixture. He then addresses 
 him thus:—“ Do thou then, my son! above every thing study 
 the Holy Scriptures; but let it be a serious study to thee, for 
 Scripture requires a very serious study, in order that we may not 
 too hastily pronounce or judge any thing out of it. And if with a 
 believing heart, and a mind well pleasing to God, and pre-occu- 
 pied with him’, thou studiest the Scripture, then knock, where 
 any thing in it is shut up to you, and it will be opened to you 
 by the porter, of whom Jesus speaks, John x. 3, “ΤῸ him shall 
 the doorkeeper open.’ Seek with immoveable faith in God, the 
 sense of Holy Scripture which is hidden from the multitude. 
 But let it not be enough to thee to knock and to seek, for prayer 
 is especially necessary for the understanding of holy things, in 
 exciting us to which the Saviour has not only said, ‘ Knock, and 
 it shall be opened to you,’ and ‘seek, and ye shall find,’ but also, 
 ‘pray, and it shall be given to you.’” 
 
 He answered the expectations of his great teacher. While he 
 found in his native city, of which he became bishop, seventeen 
 Christians, the major part of the inhabitants was converted by 
 him, and Christianity extended far into Pontus. It is a matter 
 
 1 The Greek προληψις can hardly be rendered into German, for the German, 
 “ vorurtheil” [prejudice], according to the usage of our language, is generally taken 
 in a bad sense. We should rather use the word voraussetzung [presumption, or 
 presupposition]. Origen means that the reader of Scripture ought beforehand to be 
 filled with ¢he persuasion, that the Holy Scripture is embued with a Divine spirit, and 
 cannot lead him astray, even when in single passages its Divine nature does not make 
 itself apparent to him. 
 
412 HIS CONVERSION, 
 
 of regret, that we have no more accurate and authentic accounts 
 of the efficiency of this remarkable man, than the fabulous and 
 rhetorical life written by Gregory of Nyssa, a century after- 
 wards. Perhaps, while he followed the principles of the Alex- 
 andrian school in regard to the condescension to the weakness of 
 the many, and to the gradation in religious education, he was 
 nevertheless too yielding, in order to convert the heathen in greater 
 numbers ; perhaps he thought, that if once they only belonged 
 to the Christian Church, the spirit of the Gospel and the increas- 
 ing activity of their teachers might gradually carry them further 
 on. As he observed that many of the people, out of attachment 
 to their former festivities, which were interwoven with heathen- 
 ism, remained fettered to the religion of their ancestors, he wished 
 to give the newly-converted something to supply their place. 
 After the Decian persecution, during which many in this region 
 had died as martyrs, he appointed a general festival in honour of 
 the martyrs, and suffered the rugged multitude to celebrate this 
 with the same sort of feasts as those, which were usual at the 
 heathen commemorations of the dead (Parentalia), and other 
 heathen festivals. He thought that thus one obstacle to conver- 
 sion would be removed, and that if they had once become mem- 
 bers of the Christian Church, they would by degrees voluntarily 
 renounce sensuous indulgences, after their minds should have 
 become spiritualized through Christianity’. But he forgot what 
 an intermixture of heathen and Christian views, and rites, might 
 arise from this acquiescence in heathen customs, as really did 
 happen afterwards, and how difficult it is for Christianity to pene- 
 trate properly into the life, when it is debased from the begin- 
 ning with such an admixture *. 
 
 We have a simple and clearly written paraphrase of the Preacher 
 of Solomon [i. 6. Ecclesiastes], by Gregory. A confession of faith 
 in regard to the Trinity, which he was suppesed to have written 
 in consequence of a special revelation, was used in opposition to 
 the Arians in the fourth century. The circumstance that it was to 
 
 1 Vita Gregor. c. 27. 
 
 2 The canonical letter, which we have, of this Gregory, shows well that in the con- 
 version of large masses of people much may have been merely something external; 
 for he speaks here of persons, who made use of the confusion which arose from the 
 devastations of the Goths in the regions of Pontus, in order to reap advantage from 
 the general calamity, and even to plunder their own countrymen. This letter at the 
 same time gives evidence of Gregory’s watchful zeal for morality. 
 
AND INTERCOURSE WITH ORIGEN. 418 
 
 be found in the Church of Neoczesarea in his own handwriting, 
 was appealed to in proof of its genuineness. But although the first 
 part of the confession, in which the peculiar characteristics of the 
 Origenian doctrines appear, might be genuine, yet the second part 
 is clearly a later addition, for it contains decisions, which were 
 thoroughly foreign to the school of Origen, and which first pro- 
 ceeded from the controversies with the Arians in the fourth century. 
 
 Among the violent opponents of the Origenistic school we have 
 already mentioned Methodius, at first Bishop of Olympus in 
 Lycia, and afterwards of Tyre, a martyr in the persecution of 
 Dioclesian ; but still he appears not to have conducted himself 
 towards that school always in the same manner. Eusebius of 
 Cesarea, in his continuation of the Apology of Pamphilus, was 
 able to appeal to the circumstance, that Methodius contradicted 
 what he had formerly said in praise of Origen’. The ecclesiastical 
 historian Socrates, on the contrary, says’, that Methodius, who 
 had formerly declared against Origen, in his dialogue, entitled 
 Zevwy, had revoked it all, and had testified his admiration of him. 
 There must be some foundation in truth for this two-fold story. 
 Eusebius and Socrates deduced their judgment about Methodius 
 from his own expressions; but their chronological determinations 
 in regard to these writings apparently did not rest on historical 
 facts, but they here followed only their subjective notions, and in 
 such matters the ancients were not accurate. In the Symposion 
 of Methodius, which we are just about to mention, he appears by 
 no means an adherent of the letter of the Church-doctrine, but 
 there is shown in that work an inclination to theosophical views, 
 and a predominant affection for the allegorical interpretation of 
 the Bible, and there appears also much that is congenial to the 
 turn of Origen’s mind; there are certainly expressions which at 
 least favour the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls*. Much also 
 appears, which is altogether at variance with the doctrines of 
 Origen; as, for example, a certain Chiliasm*. It may easily be 
 imagined, that Methodius, a man of no systematic habit of thought, 
 was attracted at first by many of the views and the writings 
 of Origen, which corresponded to his own favourite opinions and 
 
 1 Apud Hieronym. |. i. adv. Rufin, Hieron. opp. Ed. Martianay, t. iv. f. 359.— 
 Quomodo ausus est Methodius nunc contra Origenem scribere, qui hec et hec de 
 Origenis loquutus est dogmatibus ? 
 
 2 Lib. iv. c. 13. 3 Orat. ii. Theophil. § 5. 4 Orat. ix. ὃ 5. 
 
414 HIS CONVERSION, 
 
 to his own taste, but was afterwards on that very account, the 
 more shocked by that, which in the system of Origen was con- 
 trary to his own disposition and his own doctrinal principles. 
 
 The most important and the most authentic written monument 
 of this Methodius is his Feast of the ten Virgins, in eleven 
 dialogues, containing a commendation of single life, which is often 
 highly exaggerated. 
 
 That treatise, however, which we have under the name of 
 Methodius on the freedom of the will (περι αὐτεξουσιου), belongs 
 rather to the Christian teacher Maximus, who lived in the time 
 of Septimius Severus’, than to Methodius’; it is an attack on the 
 Gnostic dualism. 
 
 The presbyter Pamphilus, a man of Czsarea in Palestine 
 distinguished by his zeal for piety and knowledge, came forward 
 as a defender of Origen against the charges of heresy brought 
 against him by Methodius. He founded at Cesarea an Eccle- 
 siastical library, which, as late as the fourth century, contributed 
 much to the promotion of-learned studies. Every friend of 
 knowledge, and especially every one to whom the thorough and 
 fundamental study of the Bible was an object, found with him 
 every kind of assistance, and he endeavoured to multiply ἧ, to 
 extend, and correct the manuscripts of the Bible. He made pre- 
 sents of many Bibles, even to women, whom he saw much busied 
 in the reading of Scripture *. He established a@ theological school*, 
 in which the study of Scripture was carried on with great earnest- 
 ness®. The learned Eusebius, who was indebted for every thing 
 to Pamphilus, and looked upon him as a friend, and almost as 
 a father, probably came forth from this school. Pamphilus 
 imparted to his scholars his own veneration for Origen, as the 
 promoter of Christian knowledge; and he endeavoured to oppose 
 
 1 Euseb. v.27. Hieronym. de Vir. Illust. c. 47. This Maximus can hardly be the 
 same as the Bishop of Jerusalem of the same name mentioned in Euseb. v. 12. 
 
 2 See on this subject my “ Genetic Development of the Gnostic Systems,” p. 206. 
 
 3 See Montfaucon. Catalog. MSS. Bibliothec. Coislinian. p. 261. 
 
 4 Eusebius says of him in life of him, ap. Hieronym. adv. Rufinum, I. i. p. 358, 
 359. vol. iv. : “ Quis studiosorum amicus non fuit Pamphili? si quos videbat ad victum 
 necessariis indigere, prebebat large que poterat. Scripturas quoque sanctas non ad 
 legendum tantum; sed et ad habendum tribuebat promptissime. Nec solum viris, sed 
 et feminis, quas vidisset lectioni deditas. Unde et multos codices praparabat, ut, 
 quam necessitas poscisset, volentibus largiretur. 
 
 5 Euseb. vii. 32, συνεστήσατο διατριβην. 6 Eus. de Martyr. Palestine, c. 4. 
 
 7 
 
AND INTERCOURSE WITH ORIGEN. 415 
 
 the narrow-minded spirit, which proceeded from those who 
 branded Origen with the name of heretic. While the blind zeal 
 of these people, as Pamphilus says, went so far, that they pro- 
 nounced sentence of condemnation at once on every one, who 
 only so much as busied himself with the writings of Origen, 
 Pamphilus during his imprisonment in the persecution of Dio- 
 cletian in the year 309', wrote in common with his scholar 
 Eusebius *, a work destined to the defence of Origen, and this 
 defence was addressed to the confessors condemned to labour in 
 the mines. After the martyrdom of Pamphilus, Eusebius added 
 a sixth book to the five already existing of the uncompleted work. 
 The first book of this Apology, with the exception of some Greek 
 fragments, we have in the free translation of Rufinus’®. 
 
 The example of Pamphilus shows us, how, from one like 
 Origen, who embraced and united so much together, not only 
 a speculative spirit in doctrinal matters proceeded, but also a 
 profound study of the Bible and a careful treatment of the letter 
 of the word, however much this letter may appear to be opposed 
 to his licentious method of allegorizing. Apparently also, the 
 instance of the Egyptian bishop Hesychius is to be traced to the 
 same source, who set on foot a new and corrected recension of 
 the text of the Alexandrian version, the prevalent one in Egypt ἡ, 
 and who suffered martyrdom‘, probably in the persecution of 
 
 1 A proof of the influence of Pamphilus on the neighbourhood around him is given 
 by the case of his slave Porphyrius, a young man of eighteen years of age, whom 
 he educated with parental affection, and for whose religious, moral, and spiritual 
 edification he provided in every way; and he had communicated to him an ardent 
 love for the Redeemer. When Porphyrius heard the sentence of death pronounced 
 against his beloved master, he prayed that it might be conceded to him to show the last 
 proof of love to him, by burying his corpse after the execution of the sentence had 
 taken place. This request at once excited the wrath of the fanatical governor. And 
 as he now stedfastly avowed, that he was a Christian, and was anxious to sacrifice 
 himself, he was most cruelly tortured, and at last, with his flesh entirely torn from his 
 bones, he was led to the stake. He bore every thing with firmness, after he had only 
 once, when the fire touched him for the first time, called to Jesus, the Son of God, for 
 help. Euseb. de Martyr. Palestine, c. ii. p. 338. 
 
 2 The accusation of the passionate Jerome, that Rufinus falsely attributes such a 
 work to Pamphilus, deserves no credit. 
 
 3 The loss of the Biography of Pamphilus by Eusebius is deeply to be lamented. 
 [N.B. The German word here translated ‘free,’ is willkiirlich—arbitrary, or capricious. 
 H.J. Β.] 
 
 4 Hieronym. adv. Rufin. 1. ii, 425. 
 
 5 Euseb., Hist. Eccles. 1. viii. ¢, 13, f. 308, 
 
416 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Diocletian, a.p. 310, or 311; and lastly, in part also to the 
 influence of Origen was owing the seed of a new theological 
 school at Antioch, which received its full development only in 
 the course of the fourth century, from which is derived the sound 
 hermeneutical and exegetical direction properly balanced between 
 the opposite extremes of a carnal and literal, and a capricious and 
 allegorizing, interpretation of the Bible. Learned presbyters in 
 the Antiochian Church, who busied themselves with particular 
 zeal in the study of Biblical interpretation, may be looked upon 
 as the first promoters of this school, especially Dorotheus and 
 Lucian, of whom the latter suffered martyrdom in the persecu- 
 tion of Diocletian, early in a. Ὁ. 312". 
 
 Thus we see here, as the result of the historical development 
 of this period, the formation, the transition into one another, and 
 the oppositions, of different theological dispositions, from the 
 co-operation and opposition of which with each other, the further 
 development of the Christian doctrine, as the leaven for the 
 whole nature of man, was destined to proceed; a development 
 and purifying process which passes on from one generation to 
 another, and which can be brought to its destined end by nothing 
 but the everlasting wisdom, which alone searches the depths of 
 the free spirit, and which alone the free spirit follows without 
 prejudice to its freedom. 
 
 1 Lucian made a new recension of the corrected text of the Alexandrian version, 
 and apparently also of the New Testament. The manuscripts prepared according to 
 this text are called Λουκειανεια. Euseb. [Hieronym.?] de Vir. Illustr. 77. adv. 
 Rufin. 1. ii. 425. vol. iv. We are unable to determine with certainty what is to be 
 believed about the early connexion between Lucian and Paul of Samosata, as the 
 account of it which we have, Theodoret. Hist. Eccles. 1. i. c. 4. from Alexander, bishop 
 of Alexandria, is suspicious on account of party-prejudices from controversial motives. 
 [In regard to Lucian, I find in the edition of Jerome by Victorius the following passage, 
 vol. i. p. 373, in the Catalogus Script. Eccles.:—Lucianus, vir disertissimus, Antio- 
 chenz ecclesiz presbyter, tantum in Scripturarum studio laboravit, ut usque nunc 
 quedam exemplaria Scripturarum Lucianea nuncupentur. This treatise is also cited 
 as Hieron. de Vir. Illustribus. H. J. R.] 
 
 THE END. 
 
 GILBERT ἃ Rivineton, Printers, St. John’s Square, London. 
 
Date Due 
 
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