THE HIBBERT LECTURES,
1888.

The Hibbert Trustees cannot add this volume to their
series without a few lines of grateful acknowledgment.
It is impossible to forget either the courteous readiness
with which the accomplished author undertook the task
originally, or the admirable qualities he brought to it.
When he died without completing the MS. for the press,
the anxiety of the Trustees was at once relieved by the
kind effort of his family to obtain adequate assistance.
The public will learn from the Preface how much had to
be done, and will join the Trustees in grateful apprecia
tion of the services of the gentlemen who responded to
the occasion. That Dr. Hatch's friend, Dr. Fairbairn,
consented to edit the volume, with the valuable aid of
Mr. Bartlet and Professor Sanday, was an ample pledge
that the want would be most efficiently met. To those
gentlemen the Trustees are greatly indebted for the
learned and earnest care with which the laborious
revision was made.

THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 1888.
THE
INFLUENCE OF GEEEK IDEAS
AND USAGES
UPON THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

BY THE LATE
EDWIN HATCH, D.D.
READER IN ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
EDITED BY
A. M. FAIEBAIEN, D.D.
PRINCIPAL OP MANSFIELD COLLEGE, OXFORD.
FOURTH EDITION.

WILLIAMS AND-NOEGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;
Ahd 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1892.
[AU Rights reserved.}

LONDON !
PRINTED BY 0. OREEN AND SOK,
178, STRAND,

PREFACE.

The fittest introduction to these Lectures will be a
few words of explanation.
Before his death, Dr. Hatch had written out and sent
to press the first eight Lectures. Of these he had cor
rected six, while the proofs of the seventh and eighth,
with some corrections in his own hand, were found among
his papers. As regards these two, the duties of the editor
were simple : he had only to correct them for the press.
But as regards the remaining four Lectures, the work
was much more arduous and responsible. A continuous
MS., or even a connected outline of any one of the
Lectures, could not be said to exist. The Lectures had
indeed been delivered a year and a half before, but the
delivery had been as it were of selected passages, with
the connections orally supplied, while the Lecturer did
not always follow the order of his notes, or, as we know
from the Lectures he himself prepared for the press, the
one into which he meant to work his finished material.
What came into the editor's hands was a series of note-

VI PREFACE.
books, which seemed at first sight but an amorphous mass
or collection of hurried and disconnected jottings, now in
ink, now in pencil ; with a multitude of cross references
made by symbols and abbreviations whose very significance
had to be laboriously learned ; with abrupt beginnings
and still more abrupt endings ; with pages crowded with
successive strata, as it were, of reflections and references,
followed by pages almost or entirely blank, speaking of
sections or fields meant to be further explored ; with an
equal multitude of erasures, now complete, now incom
plete, now cancelled; with passages marked as trans
posed or as to be transposed, or with a sign of interroga
tion which indicated, now a suspicion as to the validity
or accuracy of a statement, now a simple suspense of
judgment, now a doubt as to position or relevance, now
a simple query as of one asking, Have I not said this, or
something like this, before ? In a word, what we had
were the note-books of the scholar and the literary work
man, well ordered, perhaps, as a garden to him who
made it and had the clue to it, but at once a wilderness
and a labyrinth to him who had no hand in its making,
and who had to discover the way through it and out of
it by research and experiment. But patient, and, I will
add, loving and sympathetic work, rewarded the editor
and his kind helpers. The clue was found, the work
proved more connected and continuous than under the

PREFACE. Vll
conditions could have been thought to be possible, and
the result is now presented to the world.
A considerable proportion of the material for the ninth
Lecture had been carefully elaborated ; but some of it,
and the whole of the material for the other three, was in
the state just described. This of course added even more
to the responsibilities than to the labours of the editor.
In the body of the Lectures most scrupulous care has
been taken to preserve the author's ipsissima verba, and,
wherever possible, the structure and form of his sen
tences. But from the very necessities of the case, the
hand had now and then to be allowed a little more free
dom ; connecting words, headings, and even here and
there a transitional sentence or explanatory clause, had
to be added ; but in no single instance has a word,
phrase or sentence been inserted in the text without
warrant from some one part or another of these crowded
Bote-books. With the foot-notes it has been different.
One of our earliest and most serious difficulties was to
find whence many of the quotations, especially in the
ninth Lecture, came. The author's name was given, but
often no clue to the book or chapter. We have been, I
think, in every case successful in tracing the quotation
to its source. Another difficulty was to connect the
various references with the paragraph, sentence or state
ment, each was meant to prove. This involved a new

Viii PREFACE.
labour; the sources had to be consulted alike for the
purposes of verification, and determination of relevance?
and place. The references, too, in the note-books were
often of the briefest, given, as it were, in algebraics, and
they had frequently to be expanded and corrected^
while the search into the originals led now to the making
of excerpts, and now to the discovery of new authorities
which it seemed a pity not to use. As a result, the
notes to Lecture IX. are mainly the author's, though all
as verified by other hands ; but the notes to Lecture X.,
and in part also XL, are largely the editor's. This is
stated in order that all responsibility for errors and
inaccuracies may be laid at the proper door. It seemed
to the editor that, while he could do little to make the
text what the author would have made it if it had been
by his own hand prepared for the press, he was bound,
in the region where the state of the MSS. made a discreet
use of freedom not only possible but compulsory, to
make the book as little unworthy of the scholarship and
scrupulous accuracy of the author as it was in his power
to do.
The pleasant duty remains of thanking two friends
who have greatly lightened my labours. The first is
Yernon Bartlet, M.A.; the second, Professor Sanday.
Mr. Bartlet's part has been the heaviest; without him
the work could never have been done. He laboured at

PREFACE. IX
the MSS. till the broken sentences became whole, and
the disconnected paragraphs wove themselves together ;
and then he transcribed the black and bewildering pages
into clear and legible copy for the printer. He had
heard the Lectures, and had happily taken a few notes,
which, supplemented from other sources, proved most
helpful, especially in the way of determining the order
to be followed. He has indeed been in every way a
most unwearied and diligent co-worker. To him we also
owe the Synopsis of Contents and the Index. Professor
Sanday has kindly read over all the Lectures that have
passed under the hands of the editor, and has furnished
him with most helpful criticisms, suggestions, and emen
dations. The work is sent out with a sad gratitude. I am
grateful that it has been possible so far to fulfil the
author's design, but sad because he no longer lives to
serve the cause he loved so well. This is not the place
to say a word either in criticism or in praise of him or
his work. Those of us who knew him know how little
a book like this expresses his whole mind, or represents
all that in this field he had it in him to do.
The book is an admirable illustration of his method ;
in order to be judged aright, it ought to be judged

X PREFACE.
formal factors that conditioned a given process and de
termined a given result; but it deals throughout solely
with these formal factors and the historical conditions
under which they operated. He never intended to dis
cover or discuss the transcendental causes of the process
on the one hand, or to pronounce on the value or validity
of the result on the other. His purpose, like his methodj
was scientific ; and as an attempt at the scientific treatment
of the growth and formulation of ideas, of the evolution
and establishment of usages within the Christian Churchy
it ought to be studied and criticised. Behind and be
neath his analytical method was a constructive intellect
and beyond his conclusions was a positive and co-ordi
nating conception of the largest and noblest order. To
his mind every species of mechanical Deism was alien ;
and if his method bears hardly upon the traditionsV
and assumptions by which such a Deism still lives in
the region of early ecclesiastical history, it was only
that he might prepare the way for the coming of a faith
and a society that should be worthier of the Master he
loved and the Church he served.
A. M. Fairbairn.
Oxford, July, 1890.

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.

Lecture I.
INTEODUCTOEY.
The Problem : page
How the Church passed from the Sermon on the Mount to
the Mcene Creed ; the change in spirit coincident with
a change in soil ... ... ... ... ... 1,2
The need of caution : two preliminary considerations ... 2
1. A religion relative to the whole mental attitude of an age :
hence need to estimate the general attitude of the Greek
mind during the first three centuries a.d. ... ... 3, 4
2. Every permanent change in religious belief and usage
rooted in historical conditions : roots of the Gospel in
Judaism, but of fourth century Christianity — the key
to historical — in Hellenism ... ... ... ... 4,5
The Method :
Evidence as to process of change scanty, but ample and
representative as to ante-Mcene Greek thought and
post-Nicene Christian thought. Eespects in which evi
dence defective ... ... ... ... ... 5 — 10
Two resulting tendencies :
1. To overrate the value of the surviving evidence.
2. To under-estimate opinions no longer accessible or known
only through opponents ... ... ... ... 10
Hence method, the correlation of antecedents and consequents 11 — 13
Antecedents : sketch of the phenomena of Hellenism ... 13, 14
Consequents : changes in original Christian ideas and usages 14

Xii SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. PAGE
Attitude of mind required  15
1. Demand upon attention and imagination  15,16
2. Personal prepossessions to be allowed for ... ••• 17,18
3. Need to observe under-currents, e.g.
(a) The dualistic hypothesis, its bearing on baptism
and exorcism ... ... ... •¦• ... 19, 20
(&) The nature of religion, e.g. its relation to conscience 21
History as a scientific study : the true apologia in religion 21 — 24
Lecture II.
GEEEK EDUCATION.
The first step a study of environment, particularly as literary.
The contemporary Greek world an educated world in a special
literary sense .. . ... ... ... ... ... 25 — 27
I. Its forms varied, but all literary :
Grammar ... ... ... ... ... 28 — 30
Ehetoric ... ... ... ... ... 30—32
A "lecture-room" Philosophy ... ... 32 — 35
II. Its influence shown by :
1. Direct literary evidence ... ... ... 35 — 37
2. Eecognized and lucrative position of the teaching
profession ... ... ... ... 37 — 40
3. Social position of its professors ... ... 40 — 42
4. Its persistent survival up to to-day in general
education, in special terms and usages ... 42 — 48
Into such an artificial habit of mind Christianity came ... 48, 49
Lecture III.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN EXEGESIS.
To the Greek the mystery of writing, the reverence for antiquity,
the belief in inspiration, gave the ancient poets a unique
value  50, 51

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. Xlll
PAGE
Homer, his place in moral education ; used by the Sophists in
ethics, physics, metaphysics, &c. ... ... ... 52 — 57
Apologies for this use culminate in allegory, especially
among the Stoics ... ... ... ... 57 — 64
The Allegoric temper widespread, particularly in things religious.
Adopted by Hellenistic Jews, especially at Alexandria ;
Philo  ' 65—69
Continued by early Christian exegesis in varied schools,
chiefly as regards the Prophets, in harmony with Greek
thought, and as a main line of apologetic ... 69 — 74
Application to the New Testament writings by the Gnostics
and the Alexandrines ... ... ... ... ... 75, 76
Its aid as solution of the Old Testament problem, especially in
Origen  77—79
Eeactions both Hellenic and Christian : viz. in
1. The Apologists' polemic against Greek mythology
2. The Philosophers' polemic against Christianity
3. Certain Christian Schools, especially the Antiochene
Here hampered by dogmatic complications
Use and abuse of allegory — the poetry of life . . .
Alien to certain drifts of the modern spirit, viz.
1. Historic handling of literature .. .
2. Eecognition of the living voice of God

% Lecture IV.
GEEEK AND CHRISTIAN EHETOEIC.
The period one of widely diffused literary culture.
The Ehetorical Schools, old and new  86—88
Sophistic largely pursued the old lines of Ehetoric, but also
philosophized and preached professionally ... ... 88 — 94
Its manner of discourse ; its rewards ... ... 94 — 99
Objections of earnest men; reaction led by Stoics like Epic-
tetus  99—105

' u1

80

81,

82

82

82,

83

84

84,

85

xiv SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.

PAGE 105

Significance for Christianity ... ... ••• •••
Primitive Christian "prophesying" v. later "preaching."
Preaching of composite origin : its essence and. form, e.g. in
fourth century, A.D. : preachers sometimes itinerant 105—113
Summary and conclusions  H* 115
Lecture V.
CHEISTIANITY AND GEEEK PHILOSOPHY.
Abstract ideas among the Greeks, who were hardly aware of the
different degrees of precision possible in mathematics and
philosophy ... ... ... ••• ••• ••¦ 116 — 118
Tendency to define strong with them, apart from any
criterion; hence dogmas ... ... ... 118 — 120
Dogmatism, amid decay of originality : reaction towards doubt;
yet Dogmatism regnant ... ... ••• ••¦ 120 — 123
" Palestinian Philosophy," a complete contrast ... 123, 124
Fusion of these in the Old Catholic Church achieved through
an underlying kinship of ideas ... ... ... 125,126
Explanations of this from both sides ... ... 126 — 128
Philosophical Judaism as a bridge, e.g., in allegorism. and
cosmology  128,129
Christian philosophy partly apologetic, partly speculative.
Alarm of Conservatives : the second century one of tran
sition and conflict ... ... ... ... 130 — 133
The issue, compromise, and a certain habit of mind ... 133,134
Summary answer to the main question ... ... ... 134
The Greek mind seen in :
1. The tendency to define  135
2. The tendency to speculate  ... 136
3. The point of emphasis, i.e. Orthodoxy  137
Further development in the West. But Greece the source of
the true damnosa hereditas ... ... ... „.. 137 133

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. XV

Lecture VI.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN ETHICS. PAGE
The average morality of the age: its moral philosophy 139, 140
An age of moral reformation ... ... ... ... 140 — 142
1. Eelation of ethics to philosophy and life ... ... 142
Eevived practical bent of Stoicism; Epictetus 143 — 147
A moral gymnastic cultivated ... ... ... ... 147
(1) Askesis (aa-K-rjULs) : Pliilo, Epictetus, Dio
Chrysostom  148—150
(2) The "philosopher" or moral reformer ... 150 — 152
2. The contents of ethical teaching, marked by a religious
reference. Epictetus' two maxims, " Follow Nature,"
"Follow God"  : 152—155
Christian ethics show agreement amid difference ; based upon
the Divine command ; idea of sin : agreement most empha
sized at first, i.e. the importance of conduct ... 158, 159
1. Tone of earliest Christian writings : the "Two Ways :"
Apostolical Constitutions, Bk. i. ... ... 159 — 162
2. Place of discipline in Christian life : Puritan ideal v.
later corpus permixtum ... ... ... 162 — 164
Further developments due to Greece :
1. A Church within the Church : askesis, Monas-
ticism  164 — 168
2. Eesulting deterioration of average ethics : Ambrose of
Milan   168, 169
Complete victory of Greek ethics seen in the basis of modern
society ... ... ... ... ... ... 169, 170

XT! SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
Lecture VII.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN THEOLOGY.
I. The Creator.

page

The idea of One God, begotten of the unity and order of the
world, and connected with the ideas of personality and mind.
Three elements in the idea — Creator, Moral Governor, Abso
lute Being  171—174
Growth of idea of a beginning : Monism and Dualism 174, 175
1. Monism of the Stoics : natura naturata and naturans :
a beginning not necessarily involved ... 175 — 177
2. Dualism, Platonic : creation recognized ... 177 — 180
Syncretistic blending of these as to process : Logos idea common.
Hence Philo's significance : God as Creator : Monistic and
Dualistic aspects ; his terms for the Forces in their plurality
and unity : after all, God is Creator, even Father, of the
world  180—188
Early Christian idea of a single supreme Artificer took perma
nent root ; but questions as to mode emerged, and the first
answers were tentative ... ... ... ... 188  190
1. Evolutional type ; supplemented by idea of a lapse 190—194
2. Creational type accepted ... ... ... ... 194
There remained :
(i.) The ultimate relation of matter to God : Dualistic
solutions : Basilides' Platonic theory the basis of the
later doctrine, though not at once recognized 194  198
(ii.) The Creator's contact with matter : Mediation hypo
thesis: the Logos solution  ... 193  200
. <iii.) Imperfection and evil: Monistic and Dualistic answers,
especially Marcion's  200 201
But the Divine Unity overcomes all : position of Irenajus, &c,
widely accepted: Origen's cosmogony a theodicy. Prevalence
of the simpler view seen in Monarchianism ... 202—207
EeSults  207,208

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. XVII

Lecture VIII.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN THEOLOGY.
II. The Moral Governor.
A. — TJie Greek Idea. page
1. Unity of God and Unity of the world : will and order 209
Order, number, necessity and destiny : intelligent force
and law  209—211
The Cosmos as a city-state (ttoAis) ... ... 211,212
2. New conceptions of the Divine Nature : Justice and
Goodness in connection with Providence ... 213 — 215
Thus about the Christian era we find Destiny and Providence,
and a tendency to synthesis — through two stages — in the use
of the term God  215—217
3. The problem of evil emerges : attempts at solution.
(a) Universality of Providence denied (Platonic and
Oriental)  217
(b) Eeality of apparent evils denied (Stoic) 217 — 220
This not pertinent to moral evil, hence :
(c) Theory of human freedom ... ... 220,221
Its relation to Universality of Providence : the
Stoical theodicy exemplified in Epictetus 221 — 223
B. — The Christian Idea.
Primitive Christianity a contrast : two main conceptions.
1. Wages for work done ... ... ... ... ... 224
2. Positive Law — God a Lawgiver and Judge ... ... 225
Difficulties in fusing the two types.
(i.) Forgiveness and Law ... ... ... ... ... 22ft
Marcion's ditheism  227,228
Solution in Irenseus, Tertullian, &c. : result 228 — 230-
(ii.) The Moral Governor and Free-will.
Marcion's dualistic view of moral evil ... 230, 23L
Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenseus  231,232'
Tertullian and the Alexandrines  232
Origen's comprehensive theodicy by aid of Stoicism
and Neo-Platonism  233—237
b

XV111 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
Lecture IX.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN THEOLOGY.
III. God as the Supreme Being. pagb
Christian Theology shaped by Greece, though on a Jewish
basis  238, 239
A. — The Idea and its Development in Greek Philosophy.
Parallel to Christian speculation in three stages.
1. Transcendence of God.
History of the idea before and after Plato ... 240 — 243
Its two forms, transcendent proper and supra-cosmic 244
Blending with religious feeling, e.g. in Philo ... 244, 245
2. Eevelation of the Transcendent.
Through intermediaries :
(i.) Mythological  246
(ii.) Philosophical, e.g. in Philo  246, 247
3. Distinctions in the nature of God.
Philo's Logos  _ 247,248
Conceived both raonistically and dualistically in rela
tion to God ... ... ... ... ... 249
But especially under metaphor of generation ... 250
E. — The Idea and its Development in Christian Theology.
1. Here the idea of Transcendence is at first absent 250—252
Present in the Apologists  252 253
¦^ But God as transcendent (v. supra-cosmic) first empha
sized by Basilides and the Alexandrines ... 254—256
2. Mediation ( = Eevelation) of the Transcendent, a vital
Problem  256,257
Theories of modal manifestation  257 258
Dominant idea that of modal existence :
(i.) As manifold : so among certain Gnostics ... 258
(ii.) As constituting a unity  259

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. xix
page
Its Gnostic forms  259,260
Eelation of the logoi to the Logos, especially in
Justin  260—262
The issue is the Logos doctrine of Irenseus ... 262, 263
3. Distinctions in. the nature of God based on the Logos.
(i.) Theories as to the genesis of the Logos, ana
logous to those as to the world ... 263, 264
Theories guarding the "sole monarchy," thus endangered,
culminate in Origen's idea of eternal generation 265 — 267
(ii.) Theories of the nature of the Logos determined
by either the supra-cosmic or transcendental
idea of God  267,268
Origen marks a stage — and but a stage— rin the contro
versies  268, 269
Greek elements in the subsequent developments.
Ousia ; its history  269 — 272
Difficulty felt in applying it to God  273, 274
As also with homoousios: need of another term ... 274, 275
Hypostasis: its history ... ... ... ... 275 — 277
Comes to need definition by a third term (irpoo-u-irov) 277, 278
Eesume of the use of these terms; the reign of dogma
tism  278—280
Three underlying assumptions — a legacy of the Greek spirit 280, 281
1. The importance of metaphysical distinctions.
2. Their absolute truth.
3. The nature of God's perfection.
Conclusion ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 282

XX SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
Lecture X.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES UPON
CHEISTIAN USAGES. PAGE
A. — The Greek Mysteries and Related Cults.
Mysteries and religious associations side by side with ordinarv
Greek religion.
1. The Mysteries, e.g. at Eleusis  283,284
(i.) Initial Purification, through confession and lustra
tion (baptism)  285—287
(ii.) Sacrifices, with procession, &c. ... ... 287,288
(iii.) Mystic Drama, of nature and human life 288 — 290
2. Other religious associations : condition of entrance, sacri
fice and common meal ... ... ... 290,291
Wide extent of the above  291,292
B. — The Mysteries and the Church.
Transition to the Christian Sacraments ; influence, general and
special  292—294
1. Baptism :
Its primitive simplicity  294,295
Later period marked by :
(i.) Change of name  295,296
(ii.) Change of feme and conception  296,297
Minor confirmations of the parallelism  298  300
2. The Lord's Supper :
Stages of extra-biblical development, e.g. in Didache,
Apost. Const., the "altar," its offerings as "mys-
teries"  300—303
Culmination of tendency in fifth century in Dionysius 303—305
The tendency strongest in the most Hellenic circles, viz.
Gnostics  305,306
Secrecy and long catechumenato  306 307
Anointing  ... 307^308
Eealistic change of conception ... ... ... ono onq
Conclusion  „„q

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. XXI

Lecture XI.

THE INCOEPOEATION OF CHEISTIAN IDEAS,
AS MODIFIED BY GEEEK, INTO A
BODY OF DOCTEINE.

PAGE

" Faith" in Old Testament = trust — trust in a person.
In Greek philosophy = intellectual conviction 310, 311
In Philo, these blend into trust in God — in His vera
city, i.e. in the Holy Writings  311, 312
Contemporary longing for certainty based on fact

Here we have the germs of (1) the Creed, (2) the New Testa
ment Canon ...

312 313

1. At first emphasis on its ethical purpose and revealed
basis ; then the latent intellectual element emerges,
though not uniformly ... ... ... ... 315
The baptismal formula becomes a test.
Expansion by "apostolic teaching" ... 316,317
The "Apostles' Creed" and the Bishops 317—319
2. Eelated question as to sources of the Creed and the
materials for its interpretation.
Value of written tradition : influence of Old Testament
and common idea of prophecy : apostolicity as
limit  „. ... 319, 320
Marcion and the idea of a Canon ... ... 320, 321
" Faith" assumes the sense it had in Philo ... ... 321
3. But the speculative temper remained active upon the
"rule of faith:" yvuxrvs alongside snorts, especially
at Alexandria : Origen ... ... ... 321 — 323
Hence tendency to :
(1) Identify a fact with speculations upon it ... 323, 324
(2) Check individual speculations in favour of those of the
majority ... ... ... ... ... 324 — 326

XXII SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
Eesults : PAGE
(i.) Such speculations formulated and inserted in the Creed,
formally as interpretations : belief changed, but not
the importance attached to it ... •¦• 327,328
(ii.) Distinction between "majority" and "minority" views
at a meeting, on points of metaphysical speculation 329
Eesume of the stages of belief  329,330
Underlying conceptions to be noted  330,331
(1) Philosophic regard for exact definition.
(2) Political belief in a majority.
(3) Belief in the finality of the views of an age so ascer
tained.
Development, if admitted, cannot be arrested ... ... 332
Place of speculation in Christianity ... ... ... 332, 333
Lecture XII.
THE TEANSFOEMATION OF THE BASIS OF CHEISTIAN
UNION : DOCTEINE IN THE PLACE OF CONDUCT.
Association at first voluntary, according to the genius of Chris
tianity  334, 335
Its basis primarily moral and spiritual: Holiness its charac
teristic : the " Two Ways," Apost. Const. (Bk. i.), the
Elchasaites  335—337
Also a common Hope : its changing form ... 337, 338
Coincident relaxation of bonds of discipline and change in idea
of the Church  338,339
Growing stress also upon the intellectural element ... 339, 340
Causes for this, primary and collateral  340,341
(1) Importance given to Baptism realistically conceived :
its relation to the ministrant ... ... 341 342
(2) Intercommunion : the necessary test at first moral
(e.g. Didache), subsequently a doctrinal for-
mula  343—345

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. XX1U PAGE
This elevation of doctrine due to causes internal to the Christian
communities : but an external factor enters with case of Paul
of Samosata : its results ... ... ... ... 345 — 347
Lines of reaction against this transformation :
(1) Puritan or conservative tendency : Novatianism 347,348
(2) Formation of esoteric class with higher moral ideal :
Monachism  348, 349
Conclusion :
The Greek spirit still lives in Christian Churches: the
vital question is its relation to Christianity . . . 349, 350
Two theories — permanence of the primitive, assimilative
development: no logical third .. . ... ... 350,351
On either theory, the Greek element may largely go ... 351
The problem pressing : our study a necessary preliminary and
truly conservative ... ... ... ... ... ... 352
New ground here broken : a pioneer's forecast : the Christianity
of the future ... ... ... ... ... .«. 352, 353

Lecture I.
INTKODUCTOKY.

It is impossible for any one, whether he be a student
of history or no, to fail to notice a difference of both
form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and
the Mcene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the
promulgation of a new law of conduct ; it assumes beliefs
rather than formulates them ; the theological conceptions
which underlie it belong to the ethical rather than the
speculative side of theology; metaphysics are wholly
absent. The Mcene Creed is a statement partly of his
torical facts and partly of dogmatic inferences ; the meta
physical terms which it contains would probably have
been unintelligible to the first disciples ; ethics have no
place in it. The one belongs to- a world of Syrian
peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers.
The contrast is patent. If any one thinks that it is
sufficiently explained by saying that the one is a sermon
and the other a creed, it must be pointed out in reply
that the question why an ethical sermon stood in the
forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a meta
physical creed in the forefront of the Christianity of the
fourth century, is a problem which claims investigation.
It claims investigation, but it has not yet been inves-
B

2 I. INTRODUCTORY.
tigatcd. There have been inquiries, which in some cases
have arrived at positive results, as to the causes of par
ticular changes or developments in Christianity — the
development, for example, of the doctrine of the Trinity,
or of the theory of a Catholic Church. But the main
question to which I invite your attention is antecedent
to all such inquiries. It asks, not how did the Christian
societies come to believe one proposition rather than
another, but how did they come to the frame of mind
which attached importance to either the one or the other,
and made the assent to the one rather than the other a
condition of membership.
In investigating this problem, the first point that is
obvious to an inquirer is, that the change in the centre
of gravity from conduct to belief is coincident with the
transference of Christianity from a Semitic to a Greek
soil. The presumption is that it was the result of Greek
influence. It will appear from the Lectures which follow
that this presumption is true. Their general subject is,
consequently, The Influence of Greece upon Christianity^
The difficulty, the interest, and the importance of the
subject make it incumbent upon us to approach it with
caution. It is necessary to bear many points in mind
as we enter upon it ; and I will begin by asking your
attention to two considerations, which, being true of
all analogous phenomena of religious development and
change, may be presumed to be true of the particular
phenomena before us.
1. The first is, that the religion of a given race at a
given time is relative to the whole mental attitude of

I. INTRODUCTORY. 6
that time. It is impossible to separate the religious
phenomena from the other phenomena, in the same way
that you can separate a vein of silver from the rock in
which it is embedded. They are as much determined by
the general characteristics of the race as the fauna and
flora of a geographical area are determined by its soil,
its climate, and its cultivation ; and they vary with the
changing characteristics of the race as the fauna and
fiora of the tertiary system differ from those of the chalk.
They are separable from the whole mass of phenomena,.
not in fact, but only in thought. We may concentrate
our attention chiefly upon them, but they still remain
part of the whole complex life of the time, and they
cannot be understood except in relation to that life. If
any one hesitates to accept this historical induction, I
will ask him to take the instance that lies nearest to him,
and to consider how he could understand the religious
phenomena of our own country in our own time — its
doubts, its hopes, its varied enterprises, its shifting
enthusiasms, its noise, its learning, its sestheticism, and
its philanthropies — unless he took account of the growth
of the inductive -sciences and the mechanical arts, of the
expansion of literature, of the social stress, of the com
mercial activity, of the general drift of society towards
its own improvement.
In dealing, therefore, with the problem before us, we
must endeavour to realize to ourselves the whole mental
attitude of the Greek world in the first three centuries
of our era. We must take account of the breadth and
depth of its education, of the many currents of its philo
sophy, of its love of literature, of its scepticism and its
b2

4 I. INTRODUCTORY.
mysticism. We must gather together whatever evidence
we can find, not determining the existence or measuring
the extent of drifts of thought by their literary expres
sion, but taking note also of the testimony of the monu
ments of art and history, of paintings and sculptures, of
inscriptions and laws. In doing so, we must be content,
at any rate for the present and until the problem has
been more fully elaborated, with the broader features
both of the Greek world and of the early centuries. The
distinctions which the precise study of history requires
us to draw between the state of thought of Greece proper
and that of Asia Minor, and between the age of the
Antonines and that of the Severi, are not necessary for
our immediate purpose, and may be left to the minuter
research which has hardly yet begun.
2. The second consideration is, that no permanent
change takes place in the religious beliefs or usages of
a race which is not rooted in the existing beliefs and
usages of that race. The truth which Aristotle enun
ciated, that all intellectual teaching is based upon what
is previously known to the person taught,1 is applicable
tp a race as well as to an individual, and to beliefs even
more than to knowledge. A religious change is, like a
physiological change, of the nature of assimilation by,
and absorption into, existing elements. The religion
which our Lord preached was rooted in Judaism. It
came " not to destroy, but to fulfil." It took the Jewish
1 ,rSo-a SiSao-KaAi'a Kal nwa p.d9r]^ Siavorj-n/d) lK 7rpovTrapXo-6ar,S {
yivtTai yvdoreus (Arist. Anal. post. i. 1, p. 71). John Philoponus, in
his note on the passage, points out that emphasis is laid upon the word
SiavorjTLrf, in antithesis to sensible knowledge, f, yd.p al<x9VTiK}) yvSots
ovk ex€l TrpovTroKeiuevnjv yvQxrw (Schol. ed. Brandis, p. 196 ft)

I. INTRODUCTORY. 5
conception of a Father in heaven, and gave it a new
meaning. It took existing moral precepts, and gave
them a new application. The meaning and the applica
tion had already been anticipated in some degree by the
Jewish prophets. There were Jewish minds which had
been ripening for them ; and so far as they were ripe for
them, they received them. In a similar way we shall
find that the Greek Christianity of the fourth century
was rooted in Hellenism. The Greek minds which had
been ripening for Christianity had absorbed new ideas
and new motives ; but there was a continuity between
their present and their past; the new ideas and new
motives mingled with the waters of existing currents;
and it is only by examining the sources and the volume
of the previous flow that we shall understand how it is
that the Mcene Creed rather than the Sermon on the
Mount has formed the dominant element in Aryan
Christianity. The method of the investigation, like that of all inves
tigations, must be determined by the nature of the evi
dence. The special feature of the evidence which affects
the method is, that it is ample in regard to the causes,
and ample also in regard to the effects, but scanty in
regard to the process of change.
We have ample evidence in regard to the state of
Greek thought during the ante-Mcene period. The
writers shine with a dim and pallid light when put side
by side with the master-spirits of the Attic age; but
their lesser importance in the scale of genius rather adds
to than diminishes from their importance as representa-

6 I. INTRODUCTORY.
tives. They were more the children of their time. They1
are consequently better evidence as to the currents of its
thought than men who supremely transcended it. I will
mention those from whom we shall derive most informa
tion, in the hope that you will in course of time become
familiar, not only with their names, but also with their
works. Dio of Prusa, commonly known as Dio Chry-
sostom, " Dio of the golden mouth," who was raised above
the class of travelling orators to which he belonged, not
only by his singular literary skill, but also by the nobility
of his character and the vigour of his protests against
political unrighteousness. Epictetus, the lame slave, the
Socrates of his time, in whom the morality and the reli
gion of the Greek world find their sublimest expression,
and whose conversations and lectures at Nicopolis, taken
down, probably in short-hand, by a faithful pupil, reflect
exactly, as in a photograph, the interior life of a great
moralist's school. Plutarch, the prolific essayist and
diligent encyclopaedist, whose materials are far more
valuable to us than the edifices Avhich he erects with
them. Maximus of Tyre, the eloquent preacher, in whom
the cold metaphysics of the Academy are transmuted into
a glowing mysticism. Marcus Aurelius, the imperial
philosopher, in whose mind the fragments of many phi
losophies are lit by hope or darkened by despair, as the
clouds float and drift in uncertain sunlight or in gathered
gloom before the clearing rain. Lucian, the satirist and
wit, the prose Aristophanes of later Greece. Sextus
Empiricus, whose writings— or the collection of writings
gathered under his name— are the richest of all mines
for the investigation of later Greek philosophy. Philo-

I. INTRODUCTORY. 7
stratus, the author of a great religious romance, and of
many sketches of the lives of contemporary teachers. It
will hardly be an anachronism if we add to these the
great syncretist philosopher, Philo of Alexandria ; for, on
the one hand, he was more Greek than Jew, and, on the
other, several of the works which are gathered together
under his name seem to belong to a generation subse
quent to his own, and to be the only survivors of the
Judseo-Greek schools which lasted on in the great cities
of the empire until the verge of Christian times.
We have ample evidence also as to the state of Chris
tian thought in the post-Nicene period. The Fathers
Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of
Nyssa, and Cyril of Jerusalem, the decrees of general
and local Councils, the apocryphal and pseudonymous
literature, enable us to form a clear conception of the
change which Greek influences had wrought.
But the evidence as to the mode in which the causes
operated within the Christian sphere before the final
effects were produced is singularly imperfect. If we
look at the literature of the schools of thought which
ultimately became dominant, we find that it consists for
the most part of some accidental survivals.1 It tells us
about some parts of the Christian world, but not about
others. It represents a few phases of thought with
1 Tertullian (adv. Valentin, c. 5) singles out four writers of the
previous generation whom he regards as standing on an equal footing :
Justin, Miltiades, Irenaeus, Proculus. Of these, Proculus has entirely
perished ; of Miltiades, only a few fragments remain ; Justin survives
in only a single MS. (see A. Harnack, Texts und Uniersuchungen, Bd. i. 1,
die Ueberlieferung dergriechischen Apologeten des zweitenJahrhunderts);
and the greater part of Irenasus remains only, in a Latin translation.

8 I. INTRODUCTORY.
adequate fulness, and of others it presents only a few
fossils. In regard to Palestine, which in the third and
fourth centuries was a great centre of culture, we have
only the evidence of Justin Martyr. In regard to Asia
Minor, which seems to have been the chief crucible for
the alchemy of transmutation, we have but such scanty
fragments as those of Melito and Gregory of Neocsesarea.
The largest and most important monuments are those of
Alexandria, the works of Clement and Origen, which
represent a stage of singular interest in the process of
philosophical development. Of the Italian writers, we
have little that is genuine besides Hippolytus. Of Gal-
lican writers, we have chiefly Irenseus, whose results are
important as being the earliest formulating of the opinions
which ultimately became dominant, but whose method is
mainly interesting as an example of the dreary polemics
of the rhetorical schools. Of African writers, we have
Tertullian, a skilled lawyer, who would in modern times
have taken high rank as a pleader at the bar or as a
leader of Parliamentary debate ; and Cyprian, who sur
vives chiefly as a champion of the sacerdotal hypothesis,
and whose vigorous personality gave him a moral influ
ence which was far beyond the measure of his intellectual
powers. The evidence is not only imperfect, but also
insufficient in relation to the effects that were produced. ?
Writers of the stamp of Justin and Irenseus are wholly
inadequate to account for either the conversion of the
educated world to Christianity, or for the forms which
Christianity assumed when the educated world had
moulded it.
And if we look for the literature of the schools of

I. INTRODUCTORY. U
thought which were ultimately branded as heretical, we
look almost wholly in vain. What the earliest Christian
philosophers thought, we know, with comparatively in
significant exceptions, only from the writings of their
opponents. They were subject to a double hate — that
of the heathen schools which they had left, and that of
the Christians who were saying " JNon possumus" to
philosophy.1 The little trust that we can place in the
accounts which their opponents give of them is shown
by the wide differences in those accounts. Each oppo
nent, with the dialectical skill which was common at the
time, selected, paraphrased, distorted, and re-combined
the points which seemed to him to be weakest. The
result is, naturally, that the accounts which the several
opponents give are so different in form and feature as
to be irreconcilable with one another.2 It was so also
with the heathen opponents of Christianity.3 With one
1 Marcion, in the sad tone of one who bitterly felt that every man's
hand was against him, addresses one of his disciples as " my partner
in hate and wretchedness" (o-u/t/uoW/tei'oj' ko.1 a-vvTaXaumipov, Tert.
adv. Marc. 4. 9).
2 Examples are the accounts of Basilides in Clement of Alexandria
and Hippolytus, compared with those in Irenaaus and Epiphanius ; and
the accounts of the Ophites in Hippolytus, compared with those of
Irenseus and Epiphanius. The literature of the subject is considerable :
see especially A. Hilgenfeld, die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums
(e.g. p. 202) ; E. A. Lipsius, zur Quellenhrilik des Epiphanios ; and
A. Harnack, zur Quellenkritik der Geschichte des Gnosticismus.
3 The very names of most of the heathen opponents are lost : Lac-
tantius (5. 4) speaks of "plurimos et multis in locis et non modo
Graecis sed etiam Latinis litteris." But for the ordinary student, Keim's
remarkable restoration of the work of Celsus from the quotations of
Origen, with its wealth of illustrative notes, compensates for many
losses (Th. Keiin, Celsus' Wahres Wort, Zurich, 1873).

10 I. INTRODUCTORY.
important exception, we cannot tell how the new religion
struck a dispassionate outside observer, or why it was
that it left so many philosophers outside its fold. Then,
as now, the forces of human nature were at work. The
tendency to disparage and suppress an opponent is not
peculiar to the early ages of Christianity. When the
associated Christian communities won at length their
hard-fought battle, they burned the enemy's camp.
This fact of the scantiness and inadequacy of the
evidence as to the process of transformation has led to
two results which constitute difficulties and dangers in
our path.
1. The one is the tendency to overrate the value of
the evidence that has survived. When only two or three
monuments of a great movement remain, it is difficult to
appreciate the degree in which those monuments are
representative. We tend at almost all times to attach
an exaggerated importance to individual writers; the
writers who have moulded the thoughts of their contem
poraries, instead of being moulded by them, are always
few in number and exceptional. We tend also to attach
an undue importance to phrases which occur in such
writers ; few, if any, writers write with the precision of
a legal document, and the inverted pyramids which have
been built upon chance phrases of Clement or Justin are
monuments of caution which we shall do well to keep
before our eyes.
2. The other is the tendency to under-estimate the
importance of the opinions that have disappeared from
sight, or which we know only iu the form and to the
extent of their quotation by their opponents. If we were

I. INTRODUCTORY. 11
to trust the histories that are commonly current, we
should believe that there was from the first a body of
doctrine of which certain writers were the recognized
exponents ; and that outside this body of doctrine there
was only the play of more or less insignificant opinions,
like a fitful guerilla warfare on the flanks of a great
army. Whereas what we really find on examining the
evidence is, that out of a mass of opinions which for a
long time fought as equals upon equal ground, there was
formed a vast alliance which was strong enough to shake
off the extremes at once of conservatism and of specu
lation, but in which the speculation whose monuments
have perished had no less a share than the conservatism
of which some monuments have survived.
This survey of the nature of the evidence enables us
to determine the method which we should follow. We can
trace the causes and we can see the effects ; but we have
only scanty information as to the intermediate processes.
If the evidence as to those processes existed in greater
mass, if the writings of those who made the first tenta
tive efforts to give to Christianity a Greek form had been
preserved to us, it might have been possible to follow in
order of time and country the influence of the several
groups of ideas upon the several groups of Christians.
This method hasbeen attempted, with questionable success,
by some of those who have investigated the history of
particular doctrines. But it is impossible to deprecate
too strongly the habit of erecting theories upon historical
quicksands ; and I propose to pursue the surer path to
which the nature of the evidence points, by stating the

12 I. INTRODUCTORY.
causes, by viewing them in relation to the effects, and
by considering how far they were adequate in respect of
both mass and complexity to produce those effects.
There is a consideration in favour of this method which
is in entire harmony with that which arises from the
nature of the evidence. It is, that the changes that took
place were gradual and at first hardly perceptible. It
would probably be impossible, even if we were in posses
sion of ampler evidence, to assign a definite cause and a
definite date for the introduction of each separate idea.
For the early years of Christianity were in some respects
like the early years of our lives. It has sometimes been
thought that those early years are the most important
years in the education of all of us. We learn then, we
hardly know how, through effort and struggle and inno
cent mistakes, to use our eyes and our ears, to measure
distance and direction, by a process which ascends by
unconscious steps to the certainty which we feel in our
maturity. We are helped in doing so, to an incalculable
degree, by the accumulated experience of mankind which
is stored up in language ; but the growth is our own, the
unconscious development of our own powers. It was in
some such unconscious way that the Christian thought
of the earlier centuries gradually acquired the form which
we find when it emerges, as it were, into the developed
manhood of the fourth century. Greek philosophy helped
its development, as language helps a child ; but the assi
milation of it can no more be traced from year to year
than the growth of the body can be traced from day to
day. We shall begin, therefore, by looking at the several

I. INTRODUCTORY. 13
groups of facts of the age in which Christianity grew,
and endeavour, when we have looked at them, to estimate
their influence upon it.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of
education: we shall find that it was an age that was
penetrated with culture, and that necessarily gave to all
ideas which it absorbed a cultured and, so to speak,
scholastic form.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of
literature : we shall find that it was an age of great lite
rary activity, which was proud of its ancient monuments,
and which spent a large part of its industry in endea
vouring to interpret and to imitate them.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of
philosophy : we shall find that it was an age in which
metaphysical conceptions had come to occupy relatively
the same place which the conceptions of natural science
occupy among ourselves; and that just as we tend to
look upon external things in their chemical and physical
relations, so there was then, as it were, a chemistry and
physics of ideas.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of
moral ideas : we shall find that it was an age in which
the ethical forces of human nature were struggling with
an altogether unprecedented force against the degradation
of contemporary society and contemporary religion, and
in which the ethical instincts were creating the new
ideal of "following God," and were solving the old
question whether there was or was not an art of life by
practising self-discipline.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of

14 I. INTRODUCTORY.
theological ideas : we shall find that it was an age in
which men were feeling after God and not feeling in,
vain, and that from the domains of ethics, physics, meta
physics alike, from the depths of the moral consciousness,
and from the cloud-lands of poets' dreams, the ideas of
men were trooping in one vast host to proclaim with a
united voice that there are not many gods, but. only One,
one First Cause by whom all things were made, one
Moral Governor whose providence was over all His
works, one Supreme Being " of infinite power, wisdom,
and goodness."
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of
religion : we shall find that it was an age in which the
beliefs that had for centuries been evolving themselves
from the old religions were showing themselves in new
forms of worship and new conceptions of what God
needed in the worshipper ; in which also the older ani
malism was passing into mysticism, and mysticism was
the preparation of the soul for the spiritual religion of
the time to come.
We shall then, in the case of each great group of ideas,
endeavour to ascertain from the earliest Christian docu
ments the original Christian ideas upon which they acted;
andthen compare the later with the earlier form of those
Christian ideas ; and finally examine the combined result
of all the influences that were at work upon the mental
attitude of the Christian world and upon the basis of
Christian association.
I should be glad if I could at once proceed to examine
some of these groups of facts. But since the object

I. INTRODUCTORY. ]/}
which I have in view is not so much to lead you to any
conclusions of my own, as to invite you to walk with me
in comparatively untrodden paths, and to urge those of
you who have leisure for historical investigations to
explore them for yourselves more fully than I have been
able to do — and since the main difficulties of the investi
gation lie less in the facts themselves than in the attitude
of mind in which they are approached — I feel that I
should fail of my purpose if I did not linger still upon
the threshold to say something of the "personal equa
tion" that we must make before we can become either
accurate observers or impartial judges. There is the
more reason for doing so, because the study of Christian
history is no doubt discredited by the dissonance in the
voices of its exponents. An ill-informed writer may
state almost any propositions he pleases, with the certainty
of finding listeners ; a well-informed writer may state
propositions which are as demonstrably true as any his
torical proposition can be, with the certainty of being
contradicted. There is no court of appeal, nor will there
be until more than one generation has been engaged
upon the task to which I am inviting you.
1. In the first place, it is necessary to take account of
the demand which the study makes upon the attention
and the imagination of the student. The scientific, that
is the accurate, study of history is comparatively new.
The minute care which is required in the examination
of the evidence for the facts, and the painful caution
which is required in the forming of inferences, are but
inadequately appreciated. The study requires not only
attention, but also imagination. A student must have

16 I. INTRODUCTORY.
something analogous to the power of a dramatist before
he can -realize the scenery of a vanished age, or watch,
as in a moving panorama, the series and sequence of its
events. He must have that power in a still greater
degree before he can so throw himself into a bygone
time as to be able to enter into the motives of the actors,
and to imagine how, having such and such a character,
and surrounded by such and such circumstances, he
would himself have thought and felt and acted. But
the greatest demand that can be made upon either the
attention or the imagination of a student is that which is
made by such a problem as the present, which requires
us to realize the attitude of mind, not of one man, but of
a generation of men, to move with their movements, to
float upon the current of their thoughts, and to pass with
them from one attitude of mind into another.
2. In the second place, it is necessary to take account
of our own personal prepossessions. Most of us come to
the study of the subject already knowing something
about it. It is a comparatively easy task for a lecturer
to present, and for a hearer to realize, an accurate picture
of, for example, the religion of Mexico or of Peru,
because the mind of the student when he begins- the
study is a comparatively blank sheet. But most of us
bring to the study of Christian history a number of con
clusions already formed. We tend to beg the question
before we examine it.
We have before us, on the one hand, the ideas and
usages of early Christianity; on the other hand, the
ideas and usages of imperial Greece.
We bring to the former the thoughts, the associations.

I. INTRODUCTORY. 17
the sacred memories, the happy dreams, which have been
rising up round us, one by one, since our childhood.
Even if there be some among us who in the maturity of
their years have broken away from their earlier moorings,
these associations still tend to remain. They are not
confined to those of us who not only consciously retain
them, but also hold their basis to be true. They linger
unconsciously in the minds of those who seem most reso
lutely to have abandoned them.
We bring to the latter, most of us, a similar wealth of
associations which have come to us through our educa
tion. The ideas with which we have to deal are mostly
expressed in terms which are common to the early cen
turies of Christianity, and to the Greek literature of five
centuries before. The terms are the same, but their
meaning is different. Those of us who have studied
Greek literature tend to attach to them the connotation
which they had at Athens when Greek literature was in
its most perfect flower. We ignore the long interval of
time, and the new connotation which, by an inevitable
law of language, had in the course of centuries clustered
round the old nucleus of meaning. The terms have in
some cases come down by direct transmission into our
own language. They have in such cases gathered to
themselves wholly new meanings, which, until we con
sciously hold them up to the light, seem to us to form
part of the original meaning, and are with difficulty
disentangled. We bring to both the Christian and the Greek world
the inductions respecting them which have been already
made by ourselves and by others. We have in those
C

18 I. INTRODUCTORY.
inductions so many moulds, so to speak, into which we
press the plastic statements of early writers. We assume
the primitiveness of distinctions which for the most part
represent only the provisional conclusions of earlier gene
rations of scholars, and stages in our own historical edu
cation ; and we arrange facts in the categories which we
find ready to hand, as Jewish or Gentile, orthodox or
heretical, Catholic or Gnostic,- while the question of the
reality of such distinctions and such categories is one of
the main points which our inquiries have to solve.
3. In the third place, it is necessary to take account
of the under-currents, not only of our own age, but of
the past ages with which we have to deal. Every age
has such under-currents, and every age tends to be un
conscious of them. We ourselves have succeeded to a
splendid heritage. Behind us are the thoughts, the
beliefs, the habits of mind, which have been in process1
of formation since the first beginning of our race. They
are inwrought, for the most part, into the texture of our
nature. We cannot transcend them. To them the mass
of our thoughts are relative, and by them the thoughts1
of other generations tend to be judged. The importance*
of recognizing them as an element in our judgments of
other generations increases in proportion as those genera^
tions recede from our own. In dealing with a country1
or a period not very remote, we may not go far wrong in
assuming that its inheritance of ideas is cognate to our
own. But in dealing with a remote country, or a remote'
period of time, it becomes of extreme importance to allow
for the difference, so to speak, of mental longitude. The
men of earlier days had other mental scenery round thenv

I. INTRODUCTORY. 19
Fewer streams of thought had converged upon them.
Consequently, many ideas which were in entire harmony
with the mental fabric of their time, are unintelligible
when referred to the standard of our own ; nor can we
understand them until we have been at the pains to find
out the underlying ideas to which they were actually
relative. I will briefly illustrate this point by two instances :
(a) We tend to take with us, as we travel into bygone
times, the dualistic hypothesis — which to most of us is no
hypothesis, but an axiomatic truth — of the existence of
an unbridged chasm between body and soul, matter and
spirit. The relation in our minds of the idea of matter
to the idea of spirit is such, that though we readily con
ceive matter to act upon matter, and spirit upon spirit,
we find it difficult or impossible to conceive a direct
action either of matter upon spirit or of spirit upon
matter. When, therefore, in studying, for example, the
ancient rites of baptism, we find expressions which seem
to attribute a virtue to the material element, we measure
such expressions by a modern standard, and regard them
as containing only an analogy or a symbol. They belong,
in reality, to another phase of thought than our own.
They are an outflow of the earlier conception of matter
and spirit as varying forms of a single substance.1
1 This was the common view of the Stoics, probably following
Anaxagoras or his school ; cf. Plutarch [Aetius], de Plac. Philos. 4. 3
(Diels, Doxographi Graxi, p. 387). It was stated by Chrysippus,
ovStv d(rio/j.aTOV <rvfnrd.cr)(ei crtojuari ov&e dcra>/taTG> a-wjia dXX.a crw/ia
crayum" <rv/«raa"X« 8e ij ^XV TV ord/ian .... crwp.a apa rj ^v)^q
(Chrysipp. Fragm. ap. Nemes. de Nat. Horn. 33) ; by Zeno, in Cie.
c2

20 I. INTRODUCTORY.
"Whatever acts, is body," 'it was said. Mind is the
subtlest form of body, but it is body nevertheless. The
conception of a direct action of the one upon the other
presented no difficulty. It was imagined, for instance,
that demons might be the direct causes of diseases^
because the extreme tenuity of their substance enabled
them to enter, and to exercise a malignant influence
upon, the bodies of men. So water, when exorcized from
all the evil influences which might reside in it, actually
cleansed the soul.1 The conception of the process as
symbolical came with the growth of later ideas of the
relation of matter to spirit. It is, so to speak, a ration
alizing explanation of a conception which the world was
tending to outgrow.
Academ. 1.11.39; by their followers, Plutarch [Aetius], de Plac. Philos.
1. 11. 4 (Diels, p. 310), ot 2to)ikoi jrai/ra Ta ama cra^a-riKa" Trvtviunta. '.
ydp; so by Seneca, Epist. 117. 2, "quicquid facit corpus est;'; so
among some Christian writers, e.g. Tertullian, de Anima, 5.
1 The conception underlies the whole of Tertullian's treatise, de Bap-
tismo : it accounts for the rites of exorcism and benediction of both
the oil and the water which are found in the older Latin service-books,
e.g. in what is known as the Gelasian Sacramentary, i. 73 (in Muratori,
Liturgia Romano, vetus, vol. i. p. 594), " exaudi nos omnipotens Deus
et in hujus aquce substantiam immitte virlutem ut abluendus per earn
et sanitatem simul et vitam mereatur seternam." This prayer is imme
diately followed by an address to the water, " exorcizo te creatura aauie
per Deum vivum . . . adjuro te per Jesum Christum filium ejus unicum
dominum nostrum ut efficiaris in eo qui in te baptizandus erit fons
aquse salientis in vitam seternam, regenerans eum Deo Patri et Filio et
Spiritui Sancto . . ." So in the Gallican Sacramentary published by
Mabillon (de Liturgia Gallicana libri tres, p. 362), " exorcizo te fons
aquse perennis per Deum sanctum et Deum verum qui te in principio
ab arida separavit et in quatuor fluminibus terrain rigore prtecepit : sis
aqua sancta, aqua benedicta, abluens sordes et dimittens peccata. . . ."

I. INTRODUCTORY. 21
(b) We take with us in our travels into the past the
underlying conception of religion as a personal bond
between God and the individual soul. We cannot believe
that there is any virtue in an act of worship in which
the conscience has no place. We can understand, how
ever much we may deplore, such persecutions as those of
the sixteenth century, because they ultimately rest upon
the same conception : men were so profoundly convinced
of the truth of their own personal beliefs as to deem it
of supreme importance that other men should hold those
beliefs also. But we find it difficult to understand why,
in the second century of our era, a great emperor who
was also a great philosopher should have deliberately per
secuted Christianity. The difficulty arises from our over
looking the entirely different aspect under which religion
presented itself to a Eoman mind. It was a matter which
lay, not between the soul and God, but between the indi
vidual and the State. Conscience had no place in it.
Worship was an ancestral usage which the State sanc
tioned and enforced. It was one of the ordinary duties
of life.1 The neglect of it, and still more the disavowal
1 These conceptions are found in Xenophon's account of Socrates,
who quotes more than once the Delphic oracle, rj re yap Hvdta ro/xy
ttoAcws dvaiptl iroiovvTa<s tvcref3£>s &v ttolcTv, Xen. Mem. 1. 3. 1, and
again 4. 3. 16 : in Epictet. Ench. 31, cnrevSeiv Si /ecu Bveiv kcu dirdp-
X«crc9cu Kara ra Trdrpia eKacrrois TrpocrrJKet : repeatedly in Plutarch, e.g.
de Defect. Orac. 12, p. 416, de Comm. Notit. 31. 1, p. 1074 : in the
Aureum Carmen of the later Pythagoreans, dda vdrovs p*v irpGna 6 toy's
v6p.(j> cos SiaKeivrai, tl/jux. (Frag. Philos. Grata, i. p. 193) : and in the
Neoplatonist Porphyry (ad Marcell. 18, p. 286, ed. Nauck), outos yap
jucyio-Tos Kapirbs eucre/Seias rt/tav to Oelov Kara. to. Trdrpia. The intel
lectual opponents of Christianity laid stress upon its desertion of the
ancestral religion; e.g. Csecilius in Minucius Felix, Octav. 5, "quanto

22 I. INTRODUCTORY.
of it, was a crime. An emperor might pity the offender
for his obstinacy, but he must necessarily either compel
him to obey or punish him for disobedience.
It is not until we have thus realized the fact that the
study of history requires as diligent and as constant an
exercise of the mental powers as any of the physical
sciences, and until we have made what may be called the
"personal equation," disentangling ourselves as far as
we can from the theories which we have inherited or
formed, and recognizing the existence of under-currents
of thought in past ages widely different from those which
flow in our own, that we shall be likely to investigate
with success the great problem that lies before us. I
lay stress upon these points, because the interest of the
subject tends to obscure its difficulties. Literature is
full of fancy sketches of early Christianity; they are
written, for the most part, by enthusiasts whose imagi
nation soars by an easy flight to the mountain-tops which
the historian can only reach by a long and rugged road;
they are read, for the most part, by those who give them
only the attention which they would give to a shilling
hand-book or to an article in a review. I have no desire,
and I am sure that you have no desire, to add one more
to such fancy sketches. The time has come for a precise
study. The materials for such a study are available.
The method of such a study is determined by canons
which have been established in analogous fields of re
search. The difficulties of such a study come almost
venerabilius ac melius .... majorum excipere disciplinam, religiones
traditas colere;" and Celsus in Origen, c. Cels. 5. 25, 35 • 8. 57.

I. INTRODUCTORY. 23
entirely from ourselves, and it is a duty to begin by
recognizing them.
For the study is one not only of living interest, but
also of supreme importance. Other history may be more
or less antiquarian. Its ultimate result may be only to
gratify our curiosity and to add to the stores of our
knowledge. But Christianity claims to be a present
guide of our lives. It has been so large a factor in the
moral development of our race, that we cannot set aside
its claim unheard. Neither can we admit it until we
know what Christianity is. A thousand dissonant voices
are each of them professing to speak in its name. The
appeal lies from them to its documents and to its history.
In order to know what it is, we must first know both
what it professed to be and what it has been. The study
of the one is the complement of the other ; but it is with
the latter only that we have at present to do. We may
enter upon the study with confidence, because it is a scien
tific inquiry. We may hear, if we will, the solemn tramp
of the science of history marching slowly, but marching
always to conquest. It is marching in our day, almost
for the first time, into the domain of Christian history.
Upon its flanks, as upon the flanks of the physical
sciences, there are scouts and skirmishers, who venture
sometimes into morasses where there is no foothold, and
into ravines from which there is no issue. But the
science is marching on. "Vestigia nulla retrorsum."
It marches, as the physical sciences have marched, with
the firm tread of certainty. It meets, as the physical
sciences have met, with opposition, and even with con
tumely. In front of it, as in front of the physical

24 I. INTRODUCTORY.
sciences, " is chaos ; behind it is order. We may march
in its progress, not only with the confidence of scientific
certainty, but also with the confidence of Christian faith.
It may show some things to be derived which wc thought
to be original ; and some things to be compound which
we thought to be incapable of analysis ; and some things
to be phantoms which we thought to be realities. But
it will add a new chapter to Christian apologetics; it
will confirm the divinity of Christianity by showing it to
be in harmony with all else that we believe to be divine;
its results will take their place among those truths which
burn in the souls of men with a fire that cannot, be
quenched, and light up the darkness of this stormy sea
with a light that is never dim.

Lecture II.
GEEEK EDUCATION.

The general result of the considerations to which I
have already invited your attention is, that a study of
the growth and modifications of the early forms of Chris
tianity must begin with a study of their environment.
For a complete study, it would be necessary to examine
that environment as a whole. In some respects all life
hangs together, and no single element of it is in absolute
isolation. The political and economical features of a
given time affect more or less remotely its literary and
philosophical features, and a complete investigation would
take them all into account. But since life is short, and
human powers are limited, it is necessary in this, as in
many other studies, to be content with something less
than ideal completeness. It will be found sufficient in
practice to deal only with the proximate causes of the
phenomena into which we inquire ; and in dealing, as we
shall mainly do, with literary effects, to deal also mainly
with those features of the age which were literary also.
Tfeermost general- siimmaryjafr tkase features TS, that
the* Greek world ¦^the^^aieaii^Faai''- third centuries was>
in a sense which, though not without some just demur,
has tended to prevail ever since, a-n educated world. It

26 n. greek education.
was reaping the harvest which many generations had
sown. Five centuries before, the new elements of know
ledge and cultured speech had begun to enter largely
into the simpler elements of early Greek life. It had
become no longer enough for men to till the ground, or
to pursue their several handicrafts, or to be practised in
the use of arms. The word cro<p6s, which in earlier
times had been applied to one who was skilled in any of
the arts of life, who could string a bow or tune a lyre or
even trim a hedge, had come to be applied, if not exclu
sively, yet at least chiefly, to one who was shrewd with
practical wisdom, or who knew the thoughts and sayings
of the ancients. The original reasons, which lay deep .
in the Greek character, for the element of knowledge
assuming this special form, had been accentuated by the
circumstances of later Greek history. There seems to be
little reason in the nature of things why Greece should
not have anticipated modern Europe in the study of
nature, and why knowledge should not have had for its
chief meaning in earlier times that which it is tending to
mean now, the knowledge of the phenomena and laws of
the physical world. The tendency to collect and colligate
and compare the facts of nature appears to be no less
instinctive than the tendency to become acquainted with
the thoughts of those who have gone before us. But
Greece on the one hand had lost political power, and on
the other hand possessed in her splendid literature an
inalienable heritage. She could acquiesce with the greater %
equanimity in political subjection, because in the domain
of letters she was still supreme with an indisputable
supremacy. It was natural that she should turn to letters.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 27
It was natural also that the study of letters should be
reflected upon speech. For the love of speech had become
to a large proportion of Greeks a second nature. They
were a nation of talkers. They were almost the slaves
of cultivated expression. Though the public life out of
which orators had grown had passed away with political
freedom, it had left behind it a habit which in the second
century of our era was blossoming into a new spring.
Like children playing at "make-believe," when real
speeches in real assemblies became impossible, the Greeks
revived the old practice of public speaking by addressing
fictitious assemblies and arguing in fictitious courts. In
the absence of the distractions of either keen political
struggles at home or wars abroad, these tendencies had
spread themselves over the large surface of general Greek
society. A kind of literary instinct had come to exist.
The mass of men in the Greek world tended to lay stress
on that acquaintance with the literature of bygone gene
rations, and that habit of cultivated speech, which has
ever since been commonly spoken of as education.
Two points have to be considered in regard to that
education before it can be regarded as a cause in relation
to the main subject which we are examining : we must
look first at its forms, and secondly at its mass. It is
not enough that it should have corresponded in kind to
certain effects ; it must be shown to have been adequate
in amount to account for them.
I. The education was almost as complex as our own.
If we except only the inductive physical sciences, it
covered the same field. It was, indeed, not so much
analogous to our own as the cause of it. Our own comes

28 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
by direct tradition from it. It set a fashion which until
recently has uniformly prevailed over the whole civilized
world. We study literature rather than nature because
the Greeks did so, and because when the Eomans and
the Boman provincials resolved to educate their sons,
they employed Greek teachers and followed in Greek
paths. The two main elements were those which have been
already indicated, Grammar and Ehetoric.1
1. By Grammar was meant the study of literature.2
In its original sense of the art of reading and writing,
it began as early as that art begins among ourselves.
" We are given over to Grammar," says Sextus Empiri.
cus,3 " from childhood, and almost from our baby-clothes."
But this elementary part of it was usually designated by
another name,4 and Grammar itself had come to include
1 The following is designed to be a short account, not of all the
elements of later Greek education, but only of its more prominent and
important features : nothing has been said of those elements of the
eyKu/cAios 7rcuSei'a which constituted the mediaeval quadrivium. The
works bearing on the subject will be found enumerated in K. F. Her
mann, Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitaten, Bd. iv. p. 302, 3teaufL
ed. Blumner : the most important of them is Grasberger, ErzieJmng
und Unterricht im classischen Alterthum, Bd. i. and ii. Wurzburg, 1864:
the shortest and most useful for an ordinary reader is Ussing, Erziehung
und Jugendunterricht bei den Griechen und Romern, Berlin, 1885.
2 Litteratura is the Latin for ypa/i/iariKiJ : Quintil. 2. 1. 4.
3 Adv. Gramm. 1. 44.
4 ypapiutTurriKTJ, which was taught by the ypafipaTurrfa whereas
ypap.pM.TiKr] was taught by the ypafip.aTi.K6s. The relation between the
two arts is indicated by the fact that in the Edict of Diocletian the fee
of the former is limited to fifty denarii, while that of the latter rises to
two hundred : Edict. Dioclet. ap. Haenel, Coipus Legum, No. 1054,
p. 178.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 29
all that in later times has been designated Belles Lettres.
This comprehensive view of it was of slow growth ; con
sequently, the art is variously defined and divided. The
division which Sextus Empiricus1 speaks of as most free
from objection, and which will sufficiently indicate the
general limits of the subject, is into the technical, the
historical, and the exegetical elements. The first of these
was the study of diction, the laying down of canons of
correctness, ttosHdisfeHction between IMfenismg and Bar^
bsHS&SMis. Upon this as much stress was laid as was laid
upon academic French in the age of Boileau. " I owe
to Alexander," says Marcus Aurelius,2 "my habit of not
finding fault, and of not using abusive language to those
who utter a barbarous or awkward or unmusical phrase."
" I must apologize for the style of this letter," says the
Christian Father Basil two centuries afterwards, in writing
to his old teacher Libanius ; " th®tfTOstih is, I have been in!
the company of Moses and Elias, and men of that kind,§
who tell us no doubt what is true, but in aHbarbarous •
dialect, so that your instructions have quite gone out of
my head."3 The second element of Grammar was the
study of the antiquities of an author : the explanation of
the names of the gods and heroes, the legends and his
tories, which were mentioned. It is continued to this
day in most notes upon classical authors. The third
1 Adv. Gramm. 1. 91 sqq., cf. ib. 250. This is quoted as being most ,
representative of the period with which these Lectures have mainly to
do. "With it may be compared the elaborate account given by Quin-
tilian, 1. 4 sqq.
2 1. 10.
3 The substance of Basil's letter, Ep. 339 (146), torn. iii. p. 455.
There is a charming irony in Libanius's answer, Ep. 340 (147), ibid.

30 II. GREEK EDUCATION.'
element was partly critical, the distinguishing between
true and spurious treatises, or between true and false
readings ; but chiefly exegetical, the explanation of an
author's meaning. It is spoken of as the prophetess of
the poets,1 standing to them in the same relation as the
Delphian priestess to her inspiring god.
The main subject-matter of this literary education was
the poets. They were read, not only for their literary,
but also for their moral value.2 They were read as we
read the Bible. They were committed to memory. The
minds pf men were saturated with them. A quotation'
from Homer or from a tragic poet was apposite on all
occasions and in every kind of society. Dio Chrysostoarf
in an account of his travels, tells how he came to the
Greek colony of the Borysthenitse, on the farthest borders
of the empire, and found that even in those remote settle
ments almost all the inhabitants knew the Iliad by heart/
and that they did not care to hear about anything else.3
.2. Grammar was succeeded by Ehetoric — the study
of literature by the study of literary expression and quasi-
forensic argument. The two were not sharply distin
guished in practice, and had some elements in common.
The conception of the one no less than of the other had
widened with time, and Ehetoric, like Grammar, was
variously defined and divided. It was taught partly by
precept, partly by example, and partly by practice. The
professor either dictated rules and gave lists of selected
1 7rpo<f>r}Tis, Sext. Emp. adv. Gramm. 1. 279.
2 Strabo, 1. 2. 3, ov ifivxayuyias Xa/w 8rJ7rov6ev tpiXr)* dkka. <ru<l>-
povicrpov. 8 Dio Chrys. Oral, xxxvi. vol. ii. p. 51, ed. Dind.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 31
passages of ancient authors, or he read such passages
with comments upon the style, or he delivered model
speeches of his own. The first of these methods has its
literary monument in the" hand-books which remain,1 The
second survives as an institution in modern times, and
on a large scale, in the University "lecture," and it has
also left important literary monuments in the Scholia
upon Homer and other great writers. The third method
gave birth to an institution which also survives in modern
times. Each of these methods was followed by the stu
dent. He began by committing to memory both the
professor's rules and also selected passages of good
authors : the latter he recited, with appropriate modula
tions and gestures, in the presence of the professor. In
the next stage, he made his comments upon them. Here
is a short example which is embedded in Epictetus : 2 the
student reads the first sentence of Xenophon's Memora
bilia, and makes his criticism upon it :
" ' I have often wondered what in the world were the grounds
on which
Eather . . . . ' the ground on which . . . .' It is neater."
From this, or concurrently with this, the student pro
ceeded to compositions of his own. Beginning with mere
imitation of style, he was gradually led to invent the
1 These are printed in Walz, Rhetores Greed, vol. i. : the account
here followed is mainly that of the Progymnasmata of Theo of Smyrna
(circ. a.d. 130). There is a letter of Dio Chrysostom, printed among
his speeches, Oral. xvii. irept Aoyov do-Kiycrewg, ed. Dind. i. 279, con
sisting of advice to a man who was beginning the study of Ehetoric
late in life, which, without being a formal treatise, gives as good a view
as could be found of the general course of training.
2 Diss. 3. 23. 20.

32 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
structure as well as the style of what he wrote, and to*
vary both the style and the. subject-matter. Sometimes he
had the use of the professor's library;1 and though writ
ing in his native language, he had to construct his periods
according to rules of art, and to avoid all words for which
an authority could not be quoted, just as if he were an
English undergraduate writing his Greek prose. The
crown of all was the acquisition of the art of speaking
extempore. A student's education in Ehetoric was finished
when he had the power to talk off-hand on any subject
that might be proposed. But whether he recited a pre
pared speech or spoke off-hand, he was expected to show
the same artificiality of structure and the same pedantry
of diction. " You must strip off all that boundless length
of sentences that is wrapped round you," says Charon to
the rhetorician who is just stepping into his boat, "and
those antitheses of yours, and balancings of clauses, and
strange expressions, and all the other heavy weights of
speech (or you will make my boat too heavy)."2
To a considerable extent there prevailed, in addition
to" Belles Lettres and Ehetoric, a teaching of Philoso
phy. It was tfefTfig^e&Ufil^wfft in the education of
the average Greek of the period. Logic, in the form
of Dialectic, was common to Philosophy and Ehetoric.
Every one learnt to argue : a large number learnt, in
addition, the technical terms of Philosophy and the out
lines of its history. Lucian3 tells a tale of a country
gentleman of the old school, whose nephew went home
from lecture night after night, and regaled his mother
1 Philostr. V.S. 2. 21. 3, of Proclus.
2 Lucian, Dial. Mart. 10. 10. s Ihrmolim. 81.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 33
and himself with fallacies and dilemmas, talking about
"relations" and "comprehensions" and " mental presen
tations," and jargon of that sort ; nay, worse than that,
¦saying, " that God does not live in heaven, but goes
about among stocks and stones and such-like." As far
as Logic was concerned, it was almost natural to a Greek
mind: Dialectic was but the conversation of a sharp-
witted people conducted under recognized rules. But
it was a comparatively new phase of Philosophy that it
should have a literary side. It had shared in the common
•degeneracy. It had come to take wisdom at second-hand.
It was not the evolution of a man's own thoughts, but
an acquaintance with the recorded thoughts of others.
It was divorced from practice. It was degraded to a
¦system of lectures and disputations. It was taught in
the same general way as the studies which preceded it.
But lectures had a more important place. Sometimes
the professor read a passage from a philosopher, and gave
his interpretation of it ; sometimes he gave a discourse
of his own. Sometimes a student read an essay of his
ewn, or interpreted a passage of a philosopher, in the
presence of the professor, and the professor afterwards
pronounced his opinion upon the correctness of the rea
soning or the interpretation.1 The Discourses of Epictetus
have a singular interest in this respect, apart from their
contents; for they are in great measure notes of such
1 There is a good example of the former of these methods in
Maximus of Tyre, Dissert. 33, where § 1 is part of a student's essay,
and the following sections are the professor's comments ; and of the
latter in Epictetus, Diss. 1. 10. 8, where the student is said dvayv&vai,
legcre, the professor hravayvSvai, preelcgcrc. D

34 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
lectures, and form, as it were, a photograph of a philo
sopher's lecture-room.
Against this degradation of Philosophy, not only the
Cynics, but almost all the more serious philosophers pro
tested. Though Epictetus himself was a professor, and
though he followed the current usages of professorial
teaching, his life and teaching alike were in rebellion
against it. "If I study Philosophy," he says, "with a
view only to its literature, I am not a philosopher, but
a litterateur ; the only difference is, that I interpret
Chrysippus instead of Homer."1 They sometimes pro
tested not only against the degradation of Philosophy,
but also against the whole conception of literary educa
tion. "There are two kinds of education," says Dio
Chrysostom,2 "the one divine, the other human; the
divine is great and powerful and easy; the human is
mean and weak, and has many dangers and no small
deceitfulness. The mass of people call it education
(TraiSeiav), as being, I suppose, an amusement (TraiSlav),
and think that a man who knows most literature^
Persian and Greek and Syrian and Phoenician — is-
the wisest and best-educated man; and then, on the
other hand, when they find a man of this sort to he
vicious and cowardly and fond of money, they think the
education to be as worthless as the man himself. The
other kind they call sometimes education, and sometimes
manliness and high-mindedness. It was thus that the
men of old used to call those who had this gopd kind
of education — men with manly souls, and educated as
1 Enchir. 49 : see also Diss. 3. 21, quoted below, p. 102.
s Or at. iv. vol. i. p. 69, ed. Dind.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 35
Herakles was— sons of God." And not less significant
as an indication not only of the reaction against this kind
of education but also of its prevalence, is the deprecation
of it by Marcus Aurelius : " I owe it to Eusticus," he
says,1 " that I formed the idea of the need of moral refor
mation, and that I was not diverted to literary ambition,
or to write treatises on philosophical subjects, or to make
rhetorical exhortations .... and that I kept away from
rhetoric and poetry and foppery of speech."
II. I pass from the forms of education to its extent.
The general diffusion of it, and the hold which it had
upon the mass of men, are shown by many kinds of
evidence. 1. They are shown by the large amount of literary
evidence as to scholars and the modes of obtaining edu
cation. The exclusiveness of the old aristocracy had
broken down. Education was no longer in the hands of
"private tutors" in the houses of the great families. It
entered jpufefodafe, and in doing so left a record behind
it. It may be inferred from the extant evidence that
there were grammar-schools in almost every town. At
these all youths received the first part of their education.
But it became a common practice for youths to supple
ment this by attending the lectures of an eminent pro
fessor elsewhere. They went, as we might say, from
school to a University.2 The students who so went away
1 i.7.
2 This higher education was not confined to Eome or Athens, but
was found in many parts of the empire : Marseilles in the time of
Strabo was even more frequented than Athens. There were other
great schools at Antioch and Alexandria, at Ehodes and Smyrna, at
Ephesus and Byzantium, at Naples and Nlcopolis, at Bordeaux and
d2

36 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
from home were drawn from all classes of the community.
Some of them were very poor, and, like the "bettel-
studenten" of the mediaeval Universities, had sometimes
to beg their bread.1 "You are a miserable race," says
Epictetus2 to some students of this kind; "when you
have eaten your fill to-day, you sit down whining about.
to-morrow, where to-morrow's dinner will come from."
Some of them went because it was the fashion. The
young sybarites of Eome or Athens complained bitterly
that at Nicopolis, where they had gone to listen to Epic
tetus, lodgings were bad, and the baths were bad, and
the gymnasium was bad, and "society" hardly existed.3
Then, as now, there were home-sick students, and mo
thers weeping over their absence, and letters that were
looked for but never came, and letters that brought bad
news ; and young men of promise who were expected to
return home as living encyclopaedias, but who only raised
doubts when they did return home whether their educa
tion had done them any good.4 Then, as now, they went
Autun. The practice of resorting to such schools lasted long. In the
fourth century and among the Christian Fathers, Basil and Gregory -
Nazianzen, Augustine and Jerome, are recorded to have -followed'it :
the general recognition of Christianity did not seriously affect the cur
rent educational system : " Through the whole world," says Augustine
(de utilitate credendi, 7, vol. viii. 76, ed. Migne), " the schools of the
rhetoricians are alive with the din of crowds of students."
1 There is an interesting instance, at a rather later time, of the
poverty of two students, one of whom afterwards became famous,
ProhEeresius and Hephajstion : they had only one ragged gown between
them, so that while one went to lecture, the other had to stay at home
in bed (Eunap. Prohceres. p. 78).
2 Diss. 1. 9. 19. s IL 2. 21. 12; 3. 24. 54.
- lb. 2.21. 12, 13, 15; 3. 24. 22,24.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 37
from the lecture-room to athletic sports or the theatre ;
"and the consequence is," says Epictetus,1 "that you
don't get out of your old habits or make moral progress."
Then, as now, some students went, not for the sake of
learning, but in order to be able to show off. Epictetus
draws a picture of one who looked forward to airing his
logic at a city dinner, astonishing the "alderman" who sat
next to him with the puzzles of hypothetical syllogisms.2
And then, as now, those who had followed the fashion
by attending lectures showed by their manner that they
were there against their will. " You should sit upright,"
says Plutarch,3 in his advice to hearers in general, "not
lolling, or whispering, or smiling, or yawning as if you
were asleep, or fixing your eyes on the ground instead
of on the speaker." In a similar way Philo,4 also speak
ing of hearers in general, says: "Many persons who
come to a lecture do not bring their minds inside with
them, but go wandering about outside, thinking ten
thousand things about ten thousand different subjects —
family affairs, other people's affairs, private affairs, ....
and the professor talks to an audience, as it were, not of
men but of statues, which have ears but hear not."
2. A second indication of the hold which education
had upon the age is the fact that teaching had come to
be a recognized and lucrative profession. This is shown
not so much by the instances of individual teachers,5 who
1 lb. 3. 16. 14, 15. 2 lb. 1. 26. 9.
3 De audiendo, 13, vol. ii. p. 45. The passage is abridged above.
* Quis rer. div. heres. 3, vol, i. p. 474.
5 For example, Verrius Flaccus, the father of the system of " prize
essays," who received an annual salary of 100,000 sesterces from

38 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
might be regarded as exceptional, as by the fact of the
recognition of teachers by the State and by municipalities.
The recognition by the State took the double form of
endowment and of immunities from public burdens.
(a) Endowments probably began with Vespasian, who
endowed teachers of Ehetoric at Eome with an annual
grant of 100,000 sesterces from the imperial treasury.
Hadrian founded an Athenseum or University at Eome,
like the Museum or University at Alexandria, with an
adequate income, and with a building of sufficient im
portance to be sometimes used as a Senate-house. He
also gave large sums to the professors at Athens : in this
he was followed by Antoninus Pius : but the first per
manent endowment at Athens seems to have been that of
Marcus Aurelius, who founded two chairs in each of the
four great philosophical schools of Athens, the Academic,
the Peripatetic, the Epicurean, and the Stoic, and added
one of the new or literary Ehetoric, and one of the old
or forensic Ehetoric.1
Augustus (Suet, de illustr. Gramm. 17). The inscriptions of Asia
Minor furnish several instances of teachers who had left their homes
to teach in other provinces of the Empire, and had returned rich
enough to make presents to their native cities.
1 The evidence for the above paragraph, with ample accounts of.
additional facts relative to the same subject, but unnecessary for the
present purpose, will be found in F. H. L. Ahrens, de Athenarum
statu politico et literario inde ab Achaici foederis interitu usque ad
Antoninorum tempora, Gbttingen, 1829 ; K. O. Miiller, Quam curam
respublica apud Grcecos et Romanos Uteris doctrinisque colendis et
promovendis impendent, Gbttingen (Programm zur Sacularfeier), 1837;
P. Seidel, de scholarum quae florente Romanorum imperio Athenis
exstiterunt conditione, Glogau, 1838 ; C. G. Zumpt, Ueber den Bestand
der philosophischen Schulen in Athen und die Succession der Scholar-
then, Berlin (Ahhandl. der Akademie der Wissenschaften), 1843; L.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 39
(b) The immunities of the teaching classes began with
Julius Csesar, and appear to have been so amply recog
nized in the early empire that Antoninus Pius placed
them upon a footing which at once established and limited
them. He enacted that small cities might place upon
the free list five physicians, three teachers of rhetoric,
and three of literature ; that assize towns might so place
seven physicians, three teachers of rhetoric, and three of
literature; and that metropolitan cities might so place
ten physicians, five teachers of rhetoric, and five of lite
rature ; but that these numbers should not be exceeded.
These immunities were a form of indirect endowment.1
They exempted those whom they affected from all the
"Weber, Commentatio de academia liter aria Aiheniensium, Marburg,
1858. There is an interesting Boman inscription of the end of the
second century a.d. which almost seems to show that the endowments
were sometimes diverted for the benefit of others besides philosophers :
it is to an athlete, who was at once "canon of Serapis," and entitled to
free commons at the museum, vewKopov tov p.eyd\\ov 2a/>a7riS]os kcxi
t!ov iv rif Movo-etij) \creiTov\p.kvu>v areAcor <pi\oo-6cpu>v, Corpus Inscr.
Graec. 5914.
1 The edict of Antoninus Pius is contained in L. 6, § 2, D. de ex-
cusat. 27. 1 : the number of philosophers is not prescribed, " quia rari
sunt qui philosophantur :" and if they make stipulations about pay,
¦"Hide iam manifesti fient non philosophantcs." The nature of the
immunities is described, ibid. § 8 : "a ludorum publicorum regimine,
ab sedilitate, a sacerdotio, a reception o militum, ab emtione f rumen ti,
•olei, et neque judicare neque legatos esse neque in militia numerari
nolentes neque ad alium famulatum cogi." The immunities were some
times further extended to the lower classes of teachers, e.g. the ludi
magistri at Vipascum in Portugal : cf. Hiibner and Mommsen in the
Ephemeris Epigraphica, vol. iii. pp. 185, 188. For the regulations of
the later empire, see Cod. Theodos. 14. 9, de studiis liber alibus urbis
Rotnce et Constantwopolitance ; and for a good popular account of the
whole subject, see G. Boissier, L'instruction publique dans I'empire
Romain, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, mars 15, 1884.

40 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
burdens which tended in the later empire to impoverish
the middle and upper classes. They were consequently
equivalent to the gift from the municipality of a consi
derable annual income.
3. A third indication of the hold of education upon
contemporary society is the place which its professors
held in social intercourse. They were not only a recog
nized class ; they also mingled largely, by virtue of their
profession, with ordinary life. If a dinner of any pre
tensions were given, the professor of Belles Lettres must
be there to recite and expound passages of poetry, the
professor of Ehetoric to speak upon any theme which
might be proposed to him, and the professor of Philoso
phy to read a discourse upon morals. A " sermonette"
from one of these professional philosophers after dinner
was as much in fashion as a piece of vocal or instrumental
music is with us.1 All three kinds of professors were
sometimes part of the permanent retinue of a great house
hold. But the philosophers were even more in fashion
than their brother professors. They were petted by great
ladies. They became " domestic chaplains." 2 They were
1 Lucian's Convivium is a humorous and satirical description of
such a dinner. The philosopher reads his discourse from a small-
fihely- written manuscript, c. 17. The Deipnosophistm of Athenajns,
and the Quastiones Conviviales of Plutarch, are important literary
monuments of the practice.
2 An interesting corroboration of the literary references is afforded
by the mosaic pavement of a large villa at Hammam Grous, near Milev,
in North Africa, where "the philosopher's apartment," or "chaplain's
roQm" (filosophi locus), is specially marked, and near it is a lady (the-
mistress of the house 1) sitting under a palm-tree. (The inscription is
given in the Corpus Inscr. Lot. vol. viii. No. 10890, where reference
is made to a drawing of the pavement in Bousset, Les Bains de Pom-
peianus, Constantine, 1879).

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 41
sometimes, indeed, singularly like the chaplains of whom
we read in novels of the last century. Lucian, in his
essay " On Persons who give their Society for Pay," has
some amusing vignettes of their life. One is of a philo
sopher who has to accompany his patroness on a tour :
he is put into a waggon with the cook and the lady's-
maid, and there is but a scanty allowance of leaves
thrown in to ease his limbs against the jolting.1 Another
is of a philosopher who is summoned by his lady and
complimented, and asked as an especial favour, "You
are so very kind and careful : will you take my lapdog
into the waggon with you, and see that the poor creature
does not want for anything ?" 2 Another is of a philoso
pher who has to discourse on temperance while his lady
is having her hair braided : her maid comes in with a
billet-doux, and the discourse on temperance is suspended
until she has written an answer to her lover.3 Another
is of a philosopher who only gets his pay in doles of two
or three pence at a time, and is thought a bore if he asks
for it, and whose tailor or shoemaker is meanwhile wait
ing to be paid, so that even when the money comes it
seems to do him no good.4 It is natural to find that
Philosophy, which had thus become a profession, had
also become degenerate. It afforded an easy means of
livelihood. It was natural that some of those who adopted
it should be a disgrace to their profession. And although
it would be unsafe to take every description of the great
satirist literally, yet it is difficult to believe that there
is not a substantial foundation, of truth in his frequent
1 Lucian, de mere. cond. 32. •
2 jj. 34. a ^ 36. * lb. 38.

42 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
caricatures. The fact of their frequency, and also the
fact that such men as he describes could exist, strengthen
the inference" which other facts enable us to draw, as
to the large place which the professional philosophers,
occupied,in contemporary society. The following is his
picture of Thrasycles : 1
" He comes along with his beard spread out and his eyebrows
raised, talking solemnly to himself, with a Titan-like look in his
eyes, with his hair thrown back from his forehead, the very
picture of Boreas or Triton, as Zeuxis painted them. This is
the man who in the morning dresses himself simply, and walks
sedately, and wears a sober gown, and preaches long sermons
about virtue, and inveighs against the votaries of pleasure : then
he has his bath and goes to dinner, and the butler offers him a
large goblet of wine, and he drinks it down with as much gusto
as if it were the water of Lethe : and he behaves in exactly the
opposite way to his sermons of the morning, for he snatches all
the tit-bits like a hawk, and elbows his neighbour out of the
way, and he peers into the dishes with as keen an eye as if he
were likely to find Virtue herself in them ; and he goes on
preaching all the time about temperance and moderation, until '
he is so dead-drunk that the servants have to carry, him out.
Nay, besides this, there is not a man to beat him in the way of
lying and braggadocio and avarice : he is the first of flatterers
and the readiest of perjurers : chicanery leads the way, and
impudence follows after : in fact, he is clever all roirnd, doing
to perfection whatever he touches."
4. But nothing could more conclusively prove the
great hold which these forms of education had upon their
time than the fact of their persistent survival. It might
be maintained that the prominence which is given to
them in literature, their endowment by the State, and
1 Timon, 50, 51.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 43
their social influence, represented only a superficial and
passing phase. But when the product of one generation
spreads its branches far and wide into the generations
that succeed, its roots must be deep and firm in the
generation from which it springs. No lasting element
of civilization grows upon the surface. Greek education
has been almost as permanent as Christianity itself, and
for similar reasons. It passed from Greece into Africa
and the West. It had an especial hold first on the Eoman
and then upon the Celtic and Teutonic populations of
Gaul ; and from the Gallican schools it has come, proba
bly by direct descent, to our own country and our own
time. Two things especially have come :
(i.) The place which literature holds in general edu
cation. We educate our sons in grammar, and in doing
so we feed them upon ancient rather than upon English
literature, by simple continuation of the first branch of
the mediseval trivium, which was itself a continuation of
the Greek habit which has been described above.
(ii.) The other point, though less important in itself,
is even more important as indicating the strength of the
Greek educational system. It is that we retain still its
technical terms and many of its scholastic usages, either
in their original Greek form or as translated into Latin
and modified by Latin habits, in the schools of the West.
The designation "professor" comes to us from the
Greek sophists, who drew their pupils by promises : to
"profess" was to "promise," and to promise was the
characteristic of the class of teachers with whom in the
fourth century B.C. Greek education began. The title

44 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
lost its original force, and became the general designation'
of a public teacher, superseding the special titles, "phi
losopher," "sophist," "rhetorician," "grammarian," and
ending by being the synonym of "doctor."1
The practice of lecturing, that is of giving instruction
by reading an ancient author, with longer or shorter
comments upon his meaning, comes to us from the schools
in which a passage of Homer or Plato or Chrysippus was
read and explained. The " lecture" was probably in the
first instance a student's exercise : the function of the
teacher was to make remarks or to give his judgment
upon the explanation that was given : it was not so much
leg ere as prtvlegere, whence the existing title of " prse*
lector."2 The use of the word " chair" to designate the teacher's
office, and of the word "faculty" to denote the branch
of knowledge which he teaches, are similar survivals of
Greek terms.3
1 Profiteri, professio, are the Latin translations of ra-ayyeAAecrflcu,
eirayyeXta : the latter words are found as early as Aristotle in connect
tion with the idea of teaching, tci 8e TrokiTiKa hrayyiXXovrai fiev
SlSoxtkuv ot ctoc/ho-tcu irpaTTti S avrZv oiScis, Arist. Eth. N. 10. 10,
p. 1180 J, and apparently tow errayyeWopevovs is used absolutely for
"professors'' in Soph. Elench. 13, p. 172 a. The first use of profiteri
in an absolute sense in Latin is probably in Pliny, e.g. Ep. 4. 11. 1,
"audistine V. Licinianum in Sicilia profiteri," "is teaching rhetoric."
2 See note on p. 33 : an early use of prcelegere in this sense is
Quintil. 1. 8. 13.
3 Facultas is the translation of 6wa/us in its meaning of an art or a
branch of knowledge, which is found in Epictetus and elsewhere, e.g.
Diss. 1. 8 tit., 8, 15, chiefly of logic or rhetoric : a writer of the end
of the third century draws a distinction between '8vvdp,eis and Tex"01'
and classes rhetoric under the former : Menander, ILepl eiriSeiKTiKUK, ;
in Walz, Rhett. Gr. voL ix. 196. " •

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 45
The use of academical designations as titles is also
Greek : it was written upon a man's tombstone that he
was "philosopher" or "sophist," "grammarian" 01
"rhetorician," as in later times he would be designated
M.A. or D.D.1 The most interesting of these designations
is that of " sophist." The long academical history of the
word only ceased at Oxford a few years ago, when the
clauses relating to "sophistee generales" were erased as
obsolete from the statute-book.
The restriction of the right to teach, and the mode of
testing a man's qualifications to teach, have come to us
from the same source. The former is probably a result
of the fact which has been mentioned above, that the
teachers of liberal arts were privileged and endowed.
The State guarded against the abuse of the privilege, as
in subsequent times for similar reasons it put limitations
upon the appointment of the Christian clergy. In the
case of some of the professors at Athens who were en
dowed from the imperial chest, the Emperors seem to
have exercised a certain right of nomination, as in our
own country the Crown nominates a "Eegius Professor;" 2
1 Instances of this practice are : (1) grammaticus, in Hispania Tar-
raconensis, Corpus Inscr. Lat. ii. 2892, 5079 ; magister artis gram
matical, at Saguntum, ibid. 3872 ; magister grammaticus Graicus, at
Cordova, ibid. 2236 ; grammaticus Grcecus, at Trier, Corpus Inscr.
Rhenan. 801: (2) philosophus, in Greece, Corpus Inscr. Grwc. 1253;
in Asia Minor, ibid. 3163 (dated a.d. 211), 3198, 3865, add. 4366 if 2;
in Egypt, ibid. 4817; sometimes with the name of the school added,
e.g. at Chreronea, cj>i.\6o-o<pov ILXaruviKov, ibid. 1628; at Brundisium,
philosophus Epicureus, ibid. 5783.
2 Marcus Aurelius himself nominated Theodotus to be "Eegius
Professor of Ehetoric," but he entrusted the nomination of the Pro
fessors of Philosophy to Herodes Atticus, Philostrat. V. S. 2. 3, p. 245;
and Commodus nominated Polydeuces, ibid. 2. 12, p. 258.

46 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
but in the case of others of those professors, the nomina
tion was in the hands of "the best and oldest and wisest
in the city," that is, either the Areopagus, or the City
Council, or, as some have thought, a special Board.1
Elsewhere, and apparently without exception in later
times, the right of approval of a teacher was in the hands
of the City Council, the ordinary body for the adminis
tration of municipal affairs.2 The authority which con
ferred the right might also take it away : a teacher who
proved incompetent might have his licence withdrawn.3
The testing of qualifications preceded the admission to
1 Lucian, Eunuchus, 3, after mentioning the endowment of the chairs,
says, e'Stt Se awodavovTOl dvrZv tivos aWov dvTiKaOunatrdai, Sokljuut-
Bh/Ta \lsr)<p(p t5>v dplo-rtoy, which last words have been variously
understood : see the treatises mentioned above, note 1, p. 38, especially
Ahrens, p. 74, Zumpt, p. 28. In the case of Libanius, there was a
il/faivpa (Liban. de fort, sua, vol. i. p. 59), which points to an assimi
lation of Athenian usage in his time, to that which is mentioned in the
following note.
2 This was fixed by a law of Julian in 362, which, however, states
it as a concession on the part of the Emperor : "quia singulis civitati-
bus adesse ipse non possum, jubeo quisquis docere vult non rcpente
nee temere prosiliat ad hoc munus sed judicio ordinis probatns decretum
curialium mereatur, optimorum conspirante consilio," Cod. Theoiot.
13. 3. 5 ; but the nomination ,was still sometimes left to the Emperor
or his chief officer, the prefect of the city. This has an especial interest
in connection with the history of St. Augustine : a request was sent
from Milan to the prefect of the city at Eome for the nomination of a
magister rhetorics: St. Augustine was sent, and so came under the
influence of St. Ambrose, S. Aug. Confess. 5. 13.
3 This is mentioned in a law of Gordian : " grammaticos seu oratores
decreto ordinis probatos, si non se utiles studentibus prsebeant, clenuo
ab eodeni ordine reprobari posse incognitum non est," Cod. Justin,
10. 52. 2. A professor was sometimes removed for other reasons
besides incompetency, e.g. Prohaeresius was removed by Julian for
being a Christian, Eunap. Prohceres. p. 92.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 47
office. It was sometimes superseded by a sort of conge*
d'elire from the Emperor ; 1 but in ordinary cases it con
sisted in the candidate's giving a lecture or taking part
in a discussion before either the Emperor's representative
or the City Council.2 It was the small beginning of that
system of " examination" which in our own country and
time has grown to enormous proportions. The successful
, candidate was sometimes escorted to his house, as a mark
of honour, by the proconsul and the " examiners," just
as in Oxford, until the present generation, a "grand
compounder" might claim to be escorted home by the
Vice-chancellor and Proctors.3 In the fourth century
appear to have come restrictions not only upon teaching,
but also upon studying : a student might probably go to
a lecture, but he might not formally announce his devo
tion to learning by putting on the student's gown without
the leave of the professors, as in a modern University a
student must be formally enrolled before he can assume
the academical dress.4
The survival of these terms and usages, as indicating
1 Alexander of Aphrodisias, de Fato, 1, says that he obtained his
professorship on the testimony, vtto rrjs papTvpla?, of Severus and
Caracalla. 2 The existence of a competition appears in Lucian, Eunuchus, 3, 5 :
the fullest account is that of Eunapius, Prohceres. pp. 79 sqq.
s Eunapius, ibid. p. 84.
4 Olympiodorus, ap. Phot. Biblioth. 80; S. Greg. Naz. Orat. 43 (20).
15, vol. i. p. 782; Liban. de fort, sua, vol. i. p. 14. The admission
was probably the occasion of some academical sport : the novice was
marched in mock procession to the baths, whence he came out with his
gown on. It was something like initiation into a religious guild or
order. There was a law against any one who assumed the philosopher's
dress without authority, "indebite et insolenter," Cod. Tlieodos. 13. 3. 7.

48 II. GREEK EDUCATION.
the strength of the system to which they originally'
belonged, is emphasized by the fact that for a long
interval of time there are few, if any, traces of them.1
They are found in full force in Gaul in the fifth and
sixth centuries: they are found again when education
began to revive on a large scale in the tenth century*
they then appear, not as new creations, but as terms and
usages which had lasted all through what has been called
« the Benedictine era," 2 without special nurture and with
out literary expression, by the sheer persistency of their
original roots.
This is the feature of the Greek life into which Chris
tianity came to which I first invite your attention. There
was a complex system of education, the main elements in
which were the knowledge of literature, the cultivation
of literary expression, and a general acquaintance with
the rules of argument. This education was widely dif
fused, and had a great hold upon society. It had been
at work in its main outlines for several centuries. Its
1 The last traces are in the Christian poets : for example, in Sidonius
Apollinaris (+482), Carm. xxiii. 211, ed. Luetjohann, " quicquid rhe
torical institutionis, quicquid grammaticalis aut palaestrae est;'' in
Ennodius (+521), Carm. cexxxiv. p. 182, ed. Vogel, and in Ep. 94,
which is a letter of thanks to a grammarian for having successfully
instructed the writer's nephew ; in Venantius Eortunatus (+ 603), who
speaks of himself as " Parvula grammaticse lambens refluamina guttffi,
Rhetorici exiguum proslibans gurgitis haustum," V. Martini, i. 29, 30,
ed. Leo ; but there are traces in the same poets of the antagonism
between classical and Christian learning which ultimately led to the
disappearance of the former, e.g. Fortunatus speaks of Martin as
"doctor apostolicus vacuans ratione sophistas," V. Martini, i. 139.
2 " La periode benedictine," Leon Maitre, Les ecoles episcopates d
monastiques de V Occident, p. 173.

II. GREEK EDUCATION. 49
effect in the second century of our era had been to create
a certain habit of mind. When Christianity came into
contact with the society in which that habit of mind
existed, it modified, it reformed, it elevated, the ideas
which it contained and the motives which stimulated it
to action ; but in its turn it was itself profoundly modi
fied by the habit of mind of those who accepted it. It
was impossible for Greeks, educated as they were with
an education which penetrated their whole nature, to
receive or to retain Christianity in its primitive sim
plicity. Their own life had become complex and arti
ficial : it had its fixed ideas and its permanent categories :
it necessarily gave to Christianity something of its own
form. The world of the time was a world, I will not
say like our own world, which has already burst its bonds,
but like the world from which we are beginning to be
emancipated — a world which had created an artificial
type of life, and which was too artificial to be able to
recognize its own artificiality — a world whose schools,
instead of being the laboratories of the knowledge of the
future, were forges in which the chains of the present.
were fashioned from the knowledge of the past. And if,.
on the one hand, it incorporated Christianity with the
larger humanity from which it had at first been isolated,
yet, on the other hand, by crushing uncultivated earnest
ness, and by laying more stress on the expression of ideas
than upon ideas themselves, it tended to stem the very
forces which had given Christianity its place, and to
change the rushing torrent of the river of God into a
broad but feeble stream.

Lecture III.
GEEEZ AND CHEISTIAN EXEGESIS.

Two thousand years ago, the Greek world was nearer
than we are now to the first wonder of the invention of
writing. The mystery of it still seemed divine. The fact
that certain signs, of little or no meaning in themselves,
could communicate what a man felt or thought, not only
to the generation of his fellows, but also to the generations
that came afterwards, threw a kind of glamour over
written words. It gave them an importance and an im
pressiveness which did not attach to any spoken words,
They came in time to have, as it were, an existence of
their own. Their precise relation to the person who first
uttered them, and their literal meaning at the time of
their utterance, tended to be overlooked or obscured. ,
In the case of the ancient poets, especially Homer,
this glamour of written words was accompanied, and
perhaps had been preceded, by two other feelings.
The one was the reverence for antiquity. The voice
of the past sounded with a fuller note than that of the
present. It came from the age of the heroes who had
become divinities. It expressed the national legends ,
and the current mythology, the primitive types of noble
life and the simple maxims of awakening reflection,, the

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 51
"wisdom of the ancients," which has sometimes itself
taken the place of religion. The other was the belief in V
inspiration. With the glamour of writing was blended
the glamour of rhythm and melody. When the gods
spoke, they spoke in verse.1 The poets sang under the
impulse of a divine enthusiasm. It was a god who gave
the words : the poet was but the interpreter.2 The belief
was not merely popular, but was found in the best minds
of the imperial age. " Whatever wise and true words
were spoken in the world about God and the universe,
came into the souls of men not without the Divine will
and intervention through the agency of divine and pro
phetic men." 3 " To the poets sometimes, I mean the very
ancient poets, there came a brief utterance from the
Muses, a kind of inspiration of the divine nature and
truth, like a flash of light from an unseen fire."4
The combination of these three feelings, the mystery
of writing, the reverence for antiquity, the belief in
inspiration, tended to give the writings of the ancient
poets a unique value. It lifted them above the common
limitations of place and time and circumstance. The
verses of Homer were not simply the utterances of a
particular person with a particular meaning for a par-
1 "Dictae per carmina sortes," Hor. A. P. 403. But it may be inferred
from the title of Plutarch's treatise, Ilepl tou pi) \P^V tp-perpa vvv t^v
TLvOtav, that the practice had ceased in the second century.
2 Cf. e.g. Pindar, Frag. 127(118), p.avrevto p.oi<ra Trpo<paTevo-<0 8
iyw; and, in later times, iElius Aristides, vol. iii. p. 22, ed. Cant.
3 Dio Chrysostom, Orat. i. vol. i. p. 12, ed. Dind.
4 Id. Orat. xxxvi. vol. ii. p. 59 : kcu ttov tb eirtirvoia fotas <f>vcrcw
T€ koi dXrjddas KaOdirep avyr) 7rupos k£ dtpavovs Xapij/avTos.
e2

52 III. GREEK and christian exegesis.
ticuiar time. They had a universal validity. They were
the voice of an undying wisdom. They were the Bible
of the Greek races.1
When the unconscious imitation of heroic ideals passed
into a conscious philosophy of life, it was necessary that
that philosophy should be shown to be consonant with
current beliefs, by being formulated, so to speak, in terms
of the current standards ; and when, soon afterwards, the
conception of education, in the sense in which the tenia
has ever since been understood, arose, it was inevitable
that the ancient poets should be the basis of that educa
tion. Literature consisted, in effect, of the ancient poets.
Literary education necessarily meant the understanding
of them. " I consider," says Protagoras, in the Platonic
dialogue which bears his name,2 " that the chief part of a
man's education is to be skilled in epic poetry ; and this
means that he should be able to understand what the

1 It was a natural result of the estimation in which he was held that
he should sometimes have been regarded as being not only inspired,
but divine : the passages which refer to this are collected in G. Cuper,
Apotheosis vel consecratio Homeri (in vol. ii. of Polenus's Supplement
to Gronovius's Thesaurus), which is primarily a commentary on the,
bas-relief by A rchelaus of Priene, now in the British Museum (figured,
e.g. in Overbeck, Geschichte der griechischen Plastik, ii. 333). The
idea has existed in much more recent times, not indeed that he was
divine, but that so much truth and wisdom could not have existed
outside Judaea. There is, for example, a treatise by G. Croesus, en
titled, oprjpos eppaios sive historia Hehrceorwm, ab Homer o Hebraicis
nominibus ac sententiis conscripta in Odyssea et Iliade, Dordraci, 1704,
which endeavours to prove both that the name Homer is a Hebrew
word, that the Iliad is an account of the conquest of Canaan, and that
the Odyssey is a narrative of the wanderings of the children of Israel
up to the death of Moses.
a Plat. Protag. 72, p. 339 a.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 53
poets have said, and whether they have said it rightly
or not, and to know how to draw distinctions, and to
give an answer when a question is put to him." The
educators recognized in Homer one of themselves: he,
too, was a " sophist," and had aimed at educating men.1
Homer was the common text-book of the grammar-schools
as long as Greek continued to be taught, far on into
imperial times. The study of him branched out in more
than one direction. It was the beginning of that study
of literature for its own sake which still holds its ground.
It was continued until far on in the Christian era, partly
by the schools of textual critics, and partly by the suc
cessors of the first sophists, who sharpened their wits by
disputations as to Homer's meaning, posing difficulties
and solving them : of these disputations some relics sur
vive in the Scholia, especially such as are based upon the
Questions of Porphyry.2 But in the first conception, lite
rary and moral education had been inseparable. It was
impossible to regard Homer simply as literature. Literary
education was not an end in itself, but a means. The
end was moral training. It was imagined that virtue, no
less than literature, could be taught, and Homer was the
basis of the one kind of education no less than of the
other. Nor was it difficult for him to become so. Eor
though the thoughts of men had changed, and the new
1 Ibid. 22, p. 3176 : 6p.o\oy£> T€ <roc/>«rr>)s eTvai kcu TraiStveiv dv6pi!>-
irovs. Eor detailed information as to the relation between the early
•sophists and Homer, reference may be made to a dissertation by W. 0.
Friedel, de sophistarum studiis Homericis, printed in the Dissertationes
philologicce Halenses, Halis, 1873.
2 Cf. H. Schrader, uber die porphyrianischen Ilias-Scholien, Ham
burg, 1872.

54 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
education was bringing in new conceptions of morals,
Homer was a force which could easily be turned in new
'directions. All imaginative literature is plastic when it
is used to enforce a moral ; and the sophists could easily
preach sermons of their own upon Homeric texts. There
was no fixed traditional interpretation ; and they were
but following a current fashion in drawing their own
meanings from him. He thus became a support, and
not a rival. The Ilippias Minor of Plato furnishes as
pertinent instances as could be mentioned of this educa
tional use of Homer.
The method lasted as long as Greek literature. It is
found in full operation in the first centuries of our era.
It was explicitly recognized, and most of the prominent
writers of the time supply instances of its application.
"In the childhood of the world," says Strabo,1 "men,
like children, had to be taught by tales ; " and Homer
told taleswith a moral purpose. ' ' It has been contended,"
he says again,2 "that poetry was meant only to please:""
on the contrary, the ancients looked upon poetry as a
form of philosophy, introducing us early to the facts of
life, and teaching us in a pleasant way the characters
and ieelings and actions of men. It was from Homer
that moralists drew their ideals : it was his verses that
were quoted, like verses of the Bible with us, to
enforce moral truths. There is in Dio Chrysostom3
a charming "imaginary conversation" between Philip
and Alexander. "How is it," said the father, "that
Homer is the only poet you care for : there are others
1 Strab. 1. 2. 8. 2 Id. 1. 2. 3.
8 Dio Chrys. Orat. 2, vol. i. pp. 19, 20.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 55
who ought not to be neglected?" "Because," said the
son, "it is not every kind of poetry, just as it is not
every kind of dress, that is fitting for a king; and the
poetry of Homer is the only poetry that I see to be truly
noble and splendid and regal, and fit for one who will
some day rule over men." And Dio himself reads into
Homer many a moral meaning. When, for example,1 the
poet speaks of the son of Kronos having given the staff
and rights of a chief that he might take counsel for the
people, he meant to imply that not all kings, but only
those who have a special gift of God, had that staff and
those rights, and that they had them, moreover, not for
their own gratification, but for the general good; he
meant, iu fact, that no bad man can be a true master
either of himself or of others — no, not if all the Greeks
and all the barbarians join in calling him king.
It was not only the developing forms of ethics that
were thus made to find a support in Homer, but all the
varying theories of physics and metaphysics, one by one.
The Heracliteans held, for example, that when Homer
spoke of
" Ocean, the birth of gods, and Tethys their mother,"
he meant to say that all things are the offspring of
flow and movement.2 The Platonists held that when
Zeus reminded Hera of the time when he had hung
her trembling by a golden chain in the vast concave of
heaven, it was God speaking to matter which he had
1 Dio Chrys. Orat. 1, vol. i. p. 3.
2 Plat. Thecet. 9, p. 152 d, quoting Horn. II. 14. 201—302. In later
times, the same verse was quoted as having suggested and supported'
the theory of Thales, Irenaeus, 2. 14 ; Theodoret, Gmc. Affect. Cur. 2. 9.

56 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
taken and bound by the chains of laws.1 The Stoics read
into the poets so much Stoicism, that Cicero says, in good-
humoured banter, that you would think the old poets,
who had really no suspicion of such things, to have been
Stoical philosophers.2 Sometimes Homer was treated as a
kind of encyclopaedia. Xenophon, in his Banquet? makes
one of the speakers, who could repeat Homer by heart, say
that " the wisest of mankind had written about almost
all human things ;" and there is a treatise by an unknown
author of imperial times which endeavours to show in
detail that he contains the beginning of every one of
the later sciences, historical, philosophical, and politi
cal.4 When he calls men deep-voiced and women high-
voiced, he shows his knowledge of the distinctions of
music. When he gives to each character its appropriate
style of speech, he shows his knowledge of rhetoric. He
is the father of political science, in having given exam
ples of each of the three forms of government — monarchy,
aristocracy, democracy. He is the father of military ,
science, in the information which he gives about tactics
and siege-works. He knew and taught astronomy and
medicine, gymnastics and surgery; "nor would a man
be wrong if he were to say that he was a teacher of
painting also."
This indifference to the actual meaning of a writer,
1 Celsus in Origen, c. Cels. 6. 42, referring to Horn. II. 15. 18 sqq.
2 Cic. N. D. 1. 15 : "ut etiam veterrimi pcetse, qui haec ne quidem
suspicati sint, Stoici fuisse videantur."
3 Xen. Sympos. 4. 6 ; 3. 5.
4 Ps-Plutarch, de vita etpoesi Homeri, vol. v. pp. 1056 sqq., chapters
148, 164, 182, 192, 216.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 57
and the habit of reading him by the light of the reader's
own fancies, have a certain analogy in our own day in
the feeling with which we sometimes regard other works
of art. We stand before some great masterpiece of paint
ing — the St. Cecilia or the Sistine Madonna — and are,
as it were, carried off our feet by the wonder of it. We
must be cold critics if we simply ask ourselves what
Eaffaelle meant by it. We interpret it by our own emo
tions. The picture speaks to us with a personal and
individual voice. It links itself with a thousand memo
ries of the past and a thousand dreams of the future. It
translates us into another world — the world of a lost and
impossible love, the dreamland of achieved aspirations,
the tender and half -tearful heaven of forgiven sins : we
are ready to believe, if only for a moment, that Eaffaelle
meant by it all that it means to us ; and for what he did
actually mean, we have but little care.
But these tendencies to draw a moral from all that
Homer wrote, and to read philosophy into it, though
common and permanent, were not universal. There was
an instinct in the Greek mind, as there is in modern
times, which rebelled against them. There were literal-
ists who insisted that the words should be taken as they
stood, and that some of the words as they stood were
clearly immoral.1 There were, on the other hand, apolo-
1 The earliest expression of this feeling is that of Xenophanes, which
is twice quoted by Sextus Empiricus, adv. Gramm. 1. 288, adv. Phys.
9. 193 : irdvTa, 6eois dveOrjKav Oprjpos 6 Ho-ioSos re
wra-a Trap dvBpunrouriv oveiSta Kal ^oyos tort.

58 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
gists who said sometimes that Homer reflected faithfully
the chequered lights and shadows of human life, and
sometimes that the existence of immorality in Homer
must clearly be allowed, but that if a balance were struck
between the good and the evil, the good would be found
largely to predominate.1 There were other apologists who
made a distinction between the divine and the human
elements: the poets sometimes spoke, it was said, on
their own account: some of their poetry was inspired,
and some was not : the Muses sometimes left them :
" and they may very properly be forgiven if, being men,
they made mistakes when the divinity which spoke
through their mouths had gone away from them."2
But all these apologies were insufficient. The chasm
between the older religion which was embodied in the
poets, and the new ideas which were marching in steady
progress away from the Homeric world, was widening
day by day. A reconciliation had to be found which
had deeper roots. It was found in a process of inter
pretation whose strength must be measured by its per
manence. The process was based upon a natural tendency.
The unseen working of the will which lies behind all
voluntary actions, and the unseen working of thought
which by an instinctive process causes some of those
actions to be symbolical, led men in comparatively early
times to find a meaning beneath the surface of a record
or representation of actions. A narrative of actions, no
less than the actions themselves, might be symbolical.
It might contain a hidden meaning. Men who retained
1 Plutarch, de aud. poet. c. 4, pp. 24j 25;
2 Lucian, Jupit confut. 2.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 59
their reverence for Homer, or who at least were not pre
pared to break with the current belief in him, began to
search for such meanings. They were assisted in doing
so by the concomitant development of the " mysteries."
The mysteries were representations of passages in the
history of the gods which, whatever their origin, had
become symbolical. It is possible that no words of ex
planation were spoken in them ; but they were, notwith
standing, habituating the Greek mind both to symbolical
expression in general, and to the finding of physical or
religious or moral truths in the representation of fantastic
or even immoral actions.1
It is uncertain when this method of interpretation
began to be applied to ancient literature. It was part of
the general intellectual movement of the fifth century b.c
It is found in one of its forms in Hecatseus, who explained
the story of Cerberus by the existence of a poisonous
snake in a cavern on the headland of Tsenaron.2 It was
elaborated by the sophists. It was deprecated by Plato.
1 The connection of allegory with the mysteries was recognized :
Heraclitus Ponticus, c. 6, justifies his interpretation of Apollo as the
sun, Ik tZv pwcrTiKtov Aoycoi/ ovs al aTropprjToi TeAfTcu dtoXoyovcri :
ps-Demetrius Phalereus, de interpret, c. 99, 101, ap. Walz, Rhett. Gr.
IX. p. 47, peyaXetov t'i 1<tti Kal t) dXXrjyopia . . . irav yap to wrovoov-
pevov <j>o/3epaiTaTOV Kal aAAos eiKafa dXXo ti . . . Sio Kal ra pvcrrf^pia
ev aXXrjyopiais Xkyerai Trpos eKTrXy/^iv Kal (ppiKrjv : so Macrobius, in
¦ Somn. Scip. 1. 2, after an account of the way in which the poets veiled
truths in symbols, " sic ipsa mysteria figurarum cuniculis operiuntur nr
vel haec adeptis nuda rerum talium se natura praebeat.'' That a phy.
sical explanation lay behind the scenery of the mysteries is stated else-
where, e.g. by Theodoret, Greec. Affect. Cur. i. vol. iv. p. 721, without
being connected with the allegorical explanation of the poets.
2 Pausan. 3. 25. 4—6.

60 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS,
" If I disbelieved it," he makes Socrates say,1 in reference
to the story of Boreas and Oreithyia, " as the philoso
phers do, I should not be unreasonable : then I might
say, talking like a philosopher, that Oreithyia was a girl
who was caught by a strong wind and carried off while
playing on the cliffs yonder ; . . . . but it would take a
long and laborious and not very happy lifetime to deal
with all such questions : and for my own part I cannot
investigate them until, as the Delphian precept bids me,
I first Know myself." Nor will he admit allegorical
interpretation as a sufficient vindication of Homer: 2 " The
chaining of Hera, and the flinging forth of Hephaestus
by his father, and all the fightings of gods which Homer
has described, we shall not admit into our state, whether
with allegories or without them." But the direct line of
historical tradition of the method seems to begin with
Anaxagoras and his school.3 In Anaxagoras himself the
allegory was probably ethical : he found in Homer a
symbolical account of the movements of mental powers
and moral virtues: Zeus was mind, Athene* was art.
But the method which, though it is found in germ among
earlier or contemporary writers, seems to have been first
formulated by his disciple Metrodorus, was not ethical
1 Plat. Phcedr. p. 229 c.
2 Plat. Resp. p. 378 d.
3 Diogenes Laertius, 2. 11, quotes Favorinus as saying that Anaxa
goras was the first who showed that the poems of Homer had virtue
and righteousness for their subject. If the later traditions (Georg,
Syncellus, Chronogr. p. 149 c) could be trusted, the disciples of Anaxa
goras were the authors of the explanations which Plato attributes to
ol vvv mpl "Oprjpov Seivol, and which tried by a fanciful etymology to
prove that Athene" was vovv n Kal Sidvoiav (Plat. Cratyl. 407 b). ¦

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 61
but physical.1 By a remarkable anticipation of a modern
science, possibly by a survival of memories of an earlier
religion, the Homeric stories were treated as a symbolical
representation of physical phenomena. The gods were
the powers of nature : their gatherings, their movements,
their loves, and their battles, were the play and inter
action and apparent strife of natural forces. The method
had for many centuries an enormous hold upon the Greek
mind ; it lay beneath the whole theology of the Stoical
schools ; it was largely current among the scholars and
critics of the early empire.2
Its most detailed exposition is contained in two writers,
of both of whom so little is personally known that there
is a division of opinion whether the name of the one was
Heraclitus or Heraclides,3 and of the other Cornutus or
1 Diog. Laert. 2. 11 : Tatian, Orat. ad Grmcos, c. 21, MrjrpoSwpos
8e 6 A.ap\f/aKr)vbs Iv tcJ> Trepl Opvqpov Xtav evr)6(as SieiXeKTai Trdvra els
dXXrjyoptav p,erdy(ov. A later tradition used the name of Pherecydes :
Isidore, son of Basilides, in Clem. Alex. Strom. 6, p. 767.
2 On the general subject of allegorical interpretation, especially in
regard to Homer, reference may be made to N. Schow in the edition of
Heraclitus Ponticus mentioned below ; L. H. Jacob, Dissertatio phi-
losophica de allegoria Homerica, Halae, 1785 ; C. A. Lobeck, Aglao-
phamus, pp. 155, 844, 987 ; Grafenhau, Geschichte der klassischen
Philologie, Bd. i. p. 211. It has been unnecessary for the present
purpose to make the distinction which has sometimes (e.g. Lauer,
Litterarischer Nachlass, ed. Wichmann, Bd. ii. p. 105) been drawn
between allegory and symbol.
3 The most recent edition is Heracliti Allegoria; Homerica;, ed. E.
Mehler, Leyden, 1851 : that of N. Schow, Gbttingen, 1782, contains a
Latin translation, a good essay on Homeric allegory, and a critical letter
by Heyne. It seems probable that the treatise is really anonymous,
and that the name Heraclitus was intended to be that of the philoso
pher of Ephesus : see Diels, Doxographi Grwci, p. 95 n.

62 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
Phornutus;1 but both were Stoics, both are mosfprobably
assigned to the early part of the first century of our era,
and in both of them the physical is blended with an
ethical interpretation.
1. Heraclitus begins by the definite avowal of his
apologetic purpose. His work is a vindication of Homer
from the charge of impiety. " He would unquestionably,
be impious if he were not allegorical;"2 but as it is,
"there is no stain of unholy fables in his words: they
are pure and free from impiety."3 Apollo is the sun;
the " far-darter" is the sun sending forth his rays : 'when
it is said that Apollo slew men with his arrows, it is
meant that there was a pestilence in the heat of summer
time.4 Athene" is thought : when it is said that Athene*
came to Telemachus, it is meant only that the young
man then first began to reflect upon the waste and pro
fligacy of the suitors : a thought, shaped like a wise old
man, came, as it were, and sat by his side.5 The story
of Proteus and Eidothea is an allegory of the original
formless matter taking many shapes : 6 the story of Ares
and Aphrodite and Hephaestus is a picture of iron sub
dued by fire, and restored to its original hardness by
Poseidon, that is by water.7
1 The most recent, and best critical, edition is by C. Lang, ed. 1881,
in Teubner's series. More help is afforded to an ordinary student by
that which was edited from the notes of de Villoison by Osann, Gbt
tingen, 1844.
2 C 1 , TrdvTbis yap rjo-efirjcrev et prjSkv dXXr]y6pr)o~ev i he defines
allegory, c. 5, 6 pev yap dXXa pev dyopevav Tpoiros 'irepa Se cov Aey«
o-rjpalvtov iwtovvpios dXXrjyopia KaXeirai.
8 C 2. 4 C. 8. 6 C. 61.
6 c 66. 7 c 69.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 63
2. Cornutus writes in vindication not so much of the
piety of the ancients as of their knowledge : they knew
as much as men of later times, but they expressed it
at greater length and by means of symbols. He rests
his interpretation of those symbols to a large extent
upon etymology. The science of religion was to him, as
it has been to some persons in modern days, an extension
of the science of philology. The following are examples :
Hermes (from ipetv, " to speak") is the power of speech
which the gods sent from heaven as their peculiar and
distinguishing gift to men. He is called the "conductor,"
because speech conducts one man's thought into his
neighbour's soul. He is the "bright-shiner," because
speech makes dark things clear. His winged feet are
the symbols of "winged words." He is the "leader of
souls," because words soothe the soul to rest; and the
"awakener from sleep," because words rouse men to
action. The serpents twined round his staff are a symbol
of the savage natures that are calmed by words, and
their discords gathered into harmony.1 The story of
Prometheus ("forethought"), who made a man from
clay, is an allegory of the providence and forethought
of the universe : he is said to have stolen fire, because
it was the forethought of men found out its use : he is
said to have stolen it from heaven, because it came down
in a lightning-flash : and his being chained to a rock is
a picture of the quick inventiveness of human thought
chained to the painful necessities of physical life, its liver
gnawod at unceasingly by petty cares.2
* c. 16. 2 c. IS.

G4 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
Two other examples of the method may be given from
later writers, to show the variety of its application.
The one is from Sallust, a writer of the fourth century
of our era. He thus explains the story of the judgment.
of Paris. The banquet of the gods is a picture of the
vast supra-mundane Powers, who are always in each
other's society. The apple is the world, which is thrown
from the banquet by Discord, because the world itself
is the play of opposing forces ; and different qualities
are given to the world by different Powers, each trying
to win the world for itself ; and Paris is the soul in its
sensuous life, which sees, not the other Powers in the
world, but only Beauty, and says that the world is the
property of Love.1
The other is from a writer of a late but uncertain age.
He deals only with the Odyssey. Its hero is the picture;
of a man who is tossed upon the sea of life, drifted this
way and that by adverse winds of fortune and of passion::
the companions who were lost among the Lotophagi are
pictures of men who are caught by the baits of pleasure
and do not return to reason as their guide : the Sirens
are the pleasures that tempt and allure all men who pass
over the sea of life, and against which the only counter-
charm is to fill one's senses and powers of mind full of
divine words and actions, as Odysseus filled his ears
with wax, that, no part of them being left empty,,
pleasure may knock at their doors in vain.2
1 Sallust, de diis et mundo, c. 4, in Mullach, Fragmenta Philoso-
phorum Gracorum, vol. iii. p. 32.
2 Incerti Scriptoris Grxci Fabula; aliquot Homerica de Vlixis error!-
bus ethice explicate, ed. J. Columbus, Leiden, 1745.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 65
The method survived as a literary habit long after its
original purpose failed. The mythology which it had
been designed to vindicate passed from the sphere of
religion into that of literature ; but in so passing, it took
with it the method to which it had given rise. The
habit of trying to find an arriere pensee beneath a man's
actual words had become so inveterate, that all great
writers without distinction were treated as writers of
riddles. The literary class insisted that their functions
were needed as interpreters, and that a plain man could
not know what a great writer meant. "The use of
symbolical speech," said Didymus, the great grammarian
of the Augustan age, " is characteristic of the wise man,
and the explanation of its meaning."1 Even Thucydides
is said by his biographer to have purposely made his
style obscure that he might not be accessible except to
the truly wise.2 It tended to become a fixed idea in the
minds of many men that religious truth especially must
be wrapped up in symbol, and that symbol must contain
religious truth. The idea has so far descended to the
present day, that there are, even now, persons who think
that a truth which is obscurely stated is more worthy
of respect, and more likely to be divine, than a truth
which "he that runs may read."
The same kind of difficulty which had been felt on a
, 1 Clem. Alex. Strom. 5. 8, p. 673.
8 Marcellinus, Vita Tliucydidis, c. 35, dcra<pios 8e Xeyiav dvr)p «rmj-
<5es iVa pi) Trotriv eir) jSaros p.r]8e tvTeXi)s <j>atvr]Tai Travrl tcJ! jSovAo/ieVc^
voovpevos eu^epus dAAa tois Xiav croc/>ois oWi/ta£o/xeyos Trapa tovtois
B-avpa^rah r

66 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
large scale in the Greek world in regard to Homer, was
felt in no less a degree by those Jews who had become
students of Greek philosophy in regard to their own
sacred books. The Pentateuch, in a higher sense than
Homer, was regarded as having been written under the
inspiration of God. It, no less than Homer, was so
inwrought into the minds of men that it could not be
set aside. It, no less than Homer, contained some
things which, at least on the surface, seemed inconsistent
with morality. To it, no less than to Homer, was
applicable the theory that the words were the veils of
a hidden meaning. The application fulfilled a double
purpose : it enabled educated Jews, on the one hand, to
reconcile their own adoption of Greek philosophy with
their continued adhesion to their ancestral religion, and,
on the other hand, to show to the educated Greeks with
whom they associated, and whom they frequently tried
to convert, that their literature was neither barbarous,
nor unmeaning, nor immoral. It may be conjectured ¦
that, just as in Greece proper the adoption of the allego
rical method had been helped by the existence of the
mysteries, so in Egypt it was helped by the large use in
earlier times of hieroglyphic writing, the monuments of
which were all around them, though the writing itself
had ceased.1
The earliest Jewish writer of this school of whom any
remains have come down to us, is reputed to be Aristo-
bulus (about b.c 170 — 150).2 In an exposition of tha
1 The analogy is drawn by Clem. Alex. Strom. 5, chapters 4 and 7.
2 It is impossible not to mention Aristobulus : he is quoted by
Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 1. 15, 22; 5. 14; 6. 3), and extracts

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 67
Pentateuch which he is said to have addressed to Ptolemy
Philometor, he boldly claimed that, so far from the Mosaic
writings being outside the sphere of philosophy, the
Greek philosophers had taken their philosophy from them.
"Moses," he said, "using the figures of visible things,
tells us the arrangements of nature and the constitutions
of important matters." The anthropomorphisms of the
Old Testament were explained on this principle. The
"hand" of God, for example, meant His power, His
" feet," the stability of the world.
But by far the most considerable monument of this
mode of interpretation consists of the works of Philo.
They are based throughout on the supposition of a hidden
meaning. But they carry us into a new world. The
hidden meaning is not physical, but metaphysical and
spiritual. The seen is the veil of the unseen, a robe
thrown over it which marks its contour, "and half con
ceals and half reveals the form within."
It would be easy to interest you, perhaps even to
amuse you, by quoting some of the strange meanings
which Philo gives to the narratives of familiar incidents.
But I deprecate the injustice which has sometimes been
done to him by taking such meanings apart from the
historical circumstances out of which allegorical inter
pretation grew, and the purpose which it was designed
to serve. I will give only one passage, which I have
chosen because it shows as well as any other the contem-
from him are given by Eusebius (Prap. Evang. 8. 10; 13. 12; but
the genuineness of the information that we possess about him is much
controverted and has given rise to much literature, of which an account
will be found in Schiirer, Geschichte des judischen Volkes, 2er Th.
p. 760; Drummond, Philo-Judaus, i. 242.
F2

68 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
porary existence of both the methods of interpretation of
which I have spoken — that of finding a moral in every
narrative, and that of interpreting the narrative symboli
cally: the former of these Philo calls the literal, the
latter the deeper meaning. The text is Gen. xxviii. 11,
" He took the stones of that place and put them beneath
his head ;" the commentary is : 1
"The words are wonderful, not only because of their alle
gorical and physical meaning, but also because of their literal
teaching of trouble and endurance. The writer does not think
that a student of virtue should have a delicate and luxurious
life, imitating those who are called fortunate, but who are in
reality full of misfortunes, eager anxieties and rivalries, whose
whole life the Divine Lawgiver describes as a sleep and a dream.
These are men who, after spending their days in doing injuries
to others, return to their homes and upset them — I mean, not
the houses they live in, but the body which is the home of the
soul — by immoderate eating and drinking, and at night lie
down in soft and costly beds. Such men are not the disciples
of the sacred word. Its disciples are real men, lovers of tempe
rance and sobriety and modesty, who make self-restraint and
contentment and endurance the corner-stones, as it were, of
their lives : who rise superior to money and pleasure and fame :
who are ready, for the sake of acquiring virtue, to endure hunger
and thirst, heat and cold: whose costly couch is a soft turf,
whose bedding is grass and leaves, whose pillow is a heap of
stones or a hillock rising a little above the ground. Of such
men, Jacob is an example : he put a stone for his pillow : a little
while afterwards (v. kO), we find him asking only for nature's
wealth of food and raiment : he is the archetype of a soul that
disciplines itself, one who is at war with every kind of effemi
nacy. " But the passage has a further meaning, which is conveyed
in symbol. You must know that the divine place and the holy
1 Philo, de somniis, i. 20, vol. i. p. 639.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 69
ground is full of incorporeal Intelligences, who are immortal
souls. It is one of these that Jacob takes and puts close to his
mind, which is, as it were, the head of the combined person,
body and soul. He does so under the pretext of going to sleep,
but in reality to find repose in the Intelligence which he has
chosen, and to place all the burden of his life upon it."
In all this, Philo was following not a Hebrew but a
Greek method. He expressly speaks of it as the method
of the Greek mysteries. He addresses his hearers by
the name which was given to those who were being
initiated. He bids them be purified before they listen.
And in this way it was possible for him to be a Greek
philosopher without ceasing to be a Jew.
The earliest methods of Christian exegesis were con
tinuations of the methods which were common at the
time to both Greek and Grseco-Judeean writers. They
were employed on the same subject-matter. Just as
the Greek philosophers had found their philosophy in
Homer, so ¦ Christian writers found in him Christian
theology. . When he represents Odysseus as saying,1
" The rule of many is not good : let there be one ruler,"
he means to indicate that there should be but one God ;
and his whole poem is designed to show the mischief
that comes of having many gods.2 When he tells us
that Hephaestus represented on the shield of Achilles
"the earth, the heaven, the sea, the sun that rests not,
and the moon full-orbed," 3 he is teaching us the divine
1 Horn. II. 2. 204.
2 Ps-Justin (probably Apollonius, see Draseke, in the Jahrb. f. pro.
\estant. Tlieologie, 1885, p. 144), c. 17.
3 Horn. II. 18. 483.

70 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
order of creation which he learned in Egypt from the
books of Moses.1 So Clement of Alexandria interprets
the withdrawal of Oceanus and Tethys from each other
to mean the separation of land and sea;2 and he holds
that Homer, when he makes Apollo ask Achilles, " Why
fruitlessly pursue him, a god," meant to show that the
divinity cannot be apprehended by the bodily powers.3
Some of the philosophical schools which hung upon the
skirts of Christianity mingled such interpretations of
Greek mythology with similar interpretations of the" Old
Testament. For example, the writer to whom the name
Simon Magus is given, is said to have " interpreted in
whatever way he wished both the writings of Moses
and also those of the (Greek) poets;"4 and the Ophite
writer, Justin, evolves an elaborate cosmogony from a
story of Herakles narrated in Herodotus,5 combined with
the story of the garden of Eden.6 But the main applica
tion was to the Old Testament exclusively. The reasons
given for believing that the Old Testament had an alle
gorical meaning were precisely analogous to those which
1 Ps-Justin, c. 28.
2 Horn. II. 14. 206; Clem. Al. Strom. 5. 14, p. 708.
3 E. 2 2. 8 ; Olem. Al. Strom. 5. 1 4, p. 7 1 9 ; but it sometimes required
a keen eye to see the Gospel in Homer. For example, in Odyss. 9. 410,
the Cyclopes say to Polyphemus :
et pev 8rj pr) Tts ere /JiofeTai owv kovTO,
vovtrov y ov 7ru>s ecrn Atos peydXov dXtao-Bai.
Clement (Strom. 5. 14) makes this to be an evident " divination" of
the Father and the Son. His argument is, apparently, pyTis=/"JT«;
but prJTis = XSyos : therefore the vdcros Atos, which = pyns - (by a
/wivTetas ei<rTO)(ov) the Son of God.
4 Hippol. Philosophumena, 6. 14.
* Herod. 4. 8—10. « Hippol. 5. 21.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 71
had been given in respect to Homer. There were many
things in the Old Testament which jarred upon the
nascent Christian consciousness. " Far be it from us to
believe," says the writer of the Clementine Homilies,1
" that the Master of the universe, the Maker of heaven
and earth, 'tempts' men as though He did not know —
for who then does foreknow ? and if He ' repents,' who
is perfect in thought and firm in judgment ? and if He
* hardens' men's hearts, who makes them wise? and if
He 'blinds' them, who makes them to see? and. if He
-desires 'a fruitful hill,' whose then are all things? and
if He wants the savour of sacrifices, who is it that
needeth nothing? and if He delights in lamps, who is
it that set the stars in heaven ?"
One early answer to all such difficulties was, like a
similar answer to difficulties about the Homeric mytho
logy, that there was a human as well as a divine element
in the Old Testament : some things in it were true, and
some were false : and " this was indeed the very reason
why the Master said, 'Be genuine money-changers,'2
testing the Scriptures like coins, and separating the good
from the bad." But the answer did not generally prevail.
The more common solution, as also in the case of Homer,
was that Moses had written in symbols in order to
conceal his meaning from the unwise ; and Clement of
Alexandria, in an elaborate justification of this method,
mentions as analogies not only the older Greek poetry,
but also the hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians.3 The
Old Testament thus came to be treated allegorically.
1 Chmentin. Horn. 2. 43, 44. 2 lb. 2. 51.
8 Clem. Alex. Strom. 5. 4, p. 237.

72 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
A large part of such interpretation was inherited. The
coincidences of mystical interpretation between Philo and
the Epistle of Barnabas show that such interpretations
were becoming the common property of Jews and Judseo-
Christians.1 But the method was soon applied to new
data. Exegesis became apologetic. Whereas Philo and
his school had dealt mainly with the Pentateuch, the
early Christian writers came to deal mainly with the
prophets and poetical books; and whereas Philo was
mainly concerned to show that the writings of Moses
contained Greek philosophy, the Christian writers endea
voured to show that the writings of the Hebrew preachers
and poets contained Christianity ; and whereas Philo had
been content to speak of the writers of the Old Testament,
as Dio Chrysostom spoke of the Greek poets, as having
been stirred by a divine enthusiasm, the Christian writers
soon came to construct an elaborate theory that the poets
and preachers were but as the flutes through which the
Breath of God flowed in divine music into the souls of
men.2 The prpphets, even more than the poets, lent them
selves easily to this allegorical method of interpretation.
The nabi was in an especial sense the messenger of God
and an interpreter of His will. But his message was
often a parable. He saw visions and dreamed dreams;
He wrote, not in plain words, but in pictures. The
1 These are given by J. G. Eosenmiiller, Historia Interpretations
librorum sacrorum in ecclesia Christiana, vol. i. p. 63.
2 Athenag. Legat. c. 19 : ps- Justin (Apollonius), Cohort, ad. Gnzc.
c. 8, uses the analogous metaphor of a harp of which the Divine Spirit
is the plectrum.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 73
meaning of the pictures was often purposely obscure.
The Greek word " prophet" sometimes properly belonged,
not to the nabi himself, but to those who, in his own
time or in after time, explained the riddle of his message.
When the message passed into literature, the interpreta
tion of it became linked with the growing conception of
the foreknowledge and providence of God : it was be
lieved that He not only knew all things that should
come to pass, but also communicated His knowledge to
men. The nabi, through whom He revealed His will as
to the present, was also the channel through whom He
revealed His intention as to the future. The prophetic
writings came to be read in the light of this conception.
The interpreters wandered, as it were, along vast corri
dors whose walls were covered with hieroglyphs and
paintings. They found in them symbols which might
be interpreted of their own times. They went on to
infer the divine ordering of the present from the coin
cidence of its features with features that could be traced
in the hieroglyphs of the past. A similar conception
prevailed in the heathen world. It lay beneath the
many forms of divination. Hence Tertullian1 speaks of
Hebrew prophecy as a special form of divination, " divi-
natio prophetica." So far from being strange to the
Greek world, it was accepted. Those who read the Old
Testament without accepting Christianity, found in its
symbols prefigurings, not of Christianity, but of events
recorded in the heathen mythologies. The Shiloh of
Jacob's song was a foretelling of Dionysus : the virgin's
son of Isaiah was a picture of Perseus : the Psalmist's
1 Tertull. adv. Marc. 3. 5.

74 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
"strong as a giant to run his course" was a prophecy of
Herakles.1 The fact that this was an accepted method of inter
pretation enabled the Apologists to use it with great.
effect. It became one of the chief evidences of Chris
tianity. Explanations of the meaning of historical events
and poetical figures which sound strange or impossible
to modern ears, so far from sounding strange or imposr
sible in the second century, carried conviction with them.
When it was said, " The government shall be upon his
shoulder," it was meant that Christ should be extended
on the cross;2 when it was said, "He shall dip his
garment in the blood of the grape," it was meant that
his blood should be, not of human origin, but, like the
red juice of the grape, from God ;3 when it was said that
" He shall receive the power of Damascus," it was meant
that the power of the evil demon who dwelt at Damascus
should be overcome, and the prophecy was fulfilled when
the Magi came to worship Christ.4 The convergence of
a large number of such interpretations upon the Gospel
history was a powerful, argument against both Jews and
Greeks. I need not enlarge upon them. They have
formed part of the general stock of Christian teaching
ever since. But I will draw your attention to the fact
that the basis of this use of the Old Testament was not
so much the idea of prediction as the prevalent practice
of treating ancient literature as symbolical or allegorical
The method came to be applied to the books which
1 Justin M. Apol. i. 54. 2 lb. i. 35.
3 It. i. 32. « lb. Tryph, 78.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 75
were being formed into a new volume of sacred writings,
side by side with the old. It was so applied, in the first
instance, not by the Apologists, but by the Gnostics. It
was detached from the idea of prediction. It was linked
with the idea of knowledge as a secret. This extension
of the method was inevitable. The earthly life of Christ
presented as many difficulties to the first Christian philo
sophers as the Old Testament had done. The conception
of Christ as the Wisdom and the Power of God seemed
inconsistent with the meanness of a common human
life ; and that life resolved itself into a series of sym
bolic representations of superhuman movements, and the
record of it was written in hieroglyphs. When Symeon
took the young child in his arms and said the Nunc
dimittis, he was a picture of the Demiurge who had
learned his own change of place on the coming of the
Saviour, and who gave thanks to the Infinite Depth.1
The raising of Jairus' daughter was a type of Achamoth,
the Eternal Wisdom, the mother of the Demiurge, whom
the Saviour led anew to the perception of the light which
had forsaken her. Even the passion on the Cross was a
setting forth of the anguish and fear and perplexity of
the Eternal Wisdom.2
The method was at first rejected with contumely.
Irenseus and Tertullian bring to bear upon it their bat
teries of irony and denunciation. It was a blasphemous
invention. It was one of the arts of spiritual wickedness
against which a Christian must wrestle. But it was
deep-seated in the habits of the time ; and even while
Tertullian was writing, it was establishing a lodgment
1 Iren. 1. 8. 4, of the Valentinians. i lb. 1. 8. 2.

76 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
inside the Christian communities which it has never
ceased to hold. It did so first of all in the great school
of Alexandria, in which it had grown up as the recon
ciliation of Greek philosophy and Hebrew theology.
The methods of the school of Philo were applied to the
New Testament even more than to the Old. When Christ
said, "The foxes have holes, but the Son of Man hath
not where to lay his head," he meant that on the believer
alone, who is separated from the rest, that is from the
wild beasts of the world, rests the Head of the universe,
the kind and gentle Word.1 When he is said to have
fed the multitude on five barley-loaves and two fishes, it
is meant that he gave mankind the preparatory training
of the Law, for barley, like the Law, ripens sooner than
wheat, and of philosophy, which had grown, like fishes,
in the waves of the Gentile world.2 When we read of
the anointing of Christ's feet, we read of both his teach
ing and his passion ; for the feet are a symbol of divine
instruction travelling to the ends of the earth, or, it
may be, of the Apostles who so travelled, having received
the fragrant unction of the Holy Ghost; and the oint
ment, which is adulterated oil, is a symbol of the traitor
Judas, "by whom the Lord was anointed on the feet,
being released from his sojourn in the world : for the
dead are anointed."3
But it may reasonably be doubted whether the alle
gorical method would have obtained the place which it
did in the Christian Church if it had not served an other
than exegetical purpose. It is clear that after the first
1 Clem. Al. Strom. 1. 3, p. 329.
8 lb. 6. 11, p. 787. » Id. Padag. 2. 8, p. 76. •

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 77
conflicts with Judaism had subsided, the Old Testament
formed a great stumbling-block in the way of those who
approached Christianity on its ideal side, and viewed it
by the light of philosophical conceptions. Its anthro
pomorphisms, its improbabilities, the sanction which it
seemed to give to immoralities, the dark picture which
it sometimes presented of both God and the servants of
God, seemed to many men to be irreconcilable with both
the theology and the ethics of the Gospel. An important
section of the Christian world rejected its authority alto
gether : it was the work, not of God, but of His rival,
the god of this world: the contrast between the Old
Testament and the New was part of the larger contrast
between matter and spirit, darkness and light, evil and
good.1 Those who did not thus reject it were still con
scious of its difficulties. There were many solutions of
those difficulties. Among them was that which had been
the Greek solution of analogous difficulties in Homer.
It was adopted and elaborated by Origen expressly with
an apologetic purpose. He had been trained in current
methods of Greek interpretation. He is expressly said
to have studied the books of Cornutus.2 He found in the
hypothesis of a spiritual meaning as complete a vindica
tion of the Old Testament as Cornutus had found of the
Greek mythology. The difficulties which men find, he
tells us, arise from their lack of the spiritual sense.
Without it he himself would have been a sceptic.
1 This was the contention of Marcion, whose influence upon the
Christian world was far larger than is commonly supposed. By far
the best account of him, in both this and other respects, is that of
Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, ler Th. B. i. c. 5.
2 Euseb. H.E. 6. 19. 8.

78 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
" What man of sense," he asks,1 " will suppose that the first
and the second and the third day, and the evening and the
morning, existed without a sun and moon and stars ? Who is
so foolish as to believe that God, like a husbandman, planted'a
garden in Eden, and placed in it a tree of life, that might he
seen and touched, so that one who tasted of the fruit by his
bodily lips obtained life? or, again, that one was partaker of
good and evil by eating that which was taken from a tree ? And
if God is said to have walked in a garden in the evening, and
Adam to have hidden under a tree, I do not suppose that any one
doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries,
the history being apparently but not literally true  Nay,
the Gospels themselves are filled with the same kind of narra
tives. Take, for example, the story of the devil taking Jesus up
into a high mountain to show him from thence the kingdoms of
the world and the glory of them : what thoughtful reader would
not condemn those who teach that it was with the eye of the
body — which needs a lofty height that even the near neigh
bourhood may be seen — that Jesus beheld the kingdoms of the
Persians, and Scythians, and Indians, and Parthians, and the
manner in which their rulers were glorified among men V
The spirit intended, in all such narratives, on the one
hand to reveal mysteries to the wise, on the other hand
to conceal them from the multitude. The whole series
of narratives is constructed with a purpose, and subordi
nated to the exposition of mysteries. Difficulties and
impossibilities were introduced in order to prevent men
from being drawn into adherence to the literal meaning.
Sometimes the truth was told by means of a true narra
tive which yielded a mystical sense : sometimes, when
no such narrative of a true history existed, one was
invented for the purpose.2
In this way, as a rationalizing expedient for solving
1 Origen, deprincip. 1. 16. 2 lb. c. 15.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 79
the difficulties of Old Testament exegesis, the allegori
cal method established for itself a place in the Christian
Church : it largely helped to prevent the Old Testament
from being discarded : and the conservation of the Old
Testament was the conservation of allegory, not only for
the Old Testament, but also for the New.
Against the whole tendency of symbolical interpreta
tion there was more than one form of reaction in both
the Greek and the Christian world.
1. It was attacked by the Apologists in its application
to Greek mythology. With an inconsequence which
is remarkable, though not singular, they found in it a
weapon of both defence and offence. They used it in
defence of Christianity, not only because it gave them
the evidence of prediction, but also because it solved
some of the difficulties which the Old Testament pre
sented to philosophical minds. They used it, on the
other hand, in their attack upon Greek religion. Alle
gories are an after-thought, they said sometimes, a mere
pious gloss over unseemly fables.1 Even if they were
true, they said again, and the basis of Greek belief were
as good as its interpreters alleged it to be, it was a work
of wicked demons to wrap round it a veil of dishonour
able fictions.2 The myth and the god who is supposed
to be behind it vanish together, says Tatian: if the
myth be true, the gods are worthless demons; if the
myth be not true, but only a symbol of the powers of
nature, the godhead is gone, for the powers of nature
1 Clement. Recogn. 10. 36. * Clement. Horn. 6. 18,

80 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
are not gods since they constrain no worship.1 In a
similar way, in the fourth century, Eusebius treats it
as a vain attempt of a younger generation to. explam
away (Qepairevaai) the mistakes of their fathers.2
2. It was attacked by the Greek philosophers in its
application to Christianity. There are some persons,
says Porphyry,3 who being anxious to find, not a way
of being rid of the immorality of the Old Testament, but
an explanation of it, have recourse to interpretations
which do not hold together nor fit the words which they
interpret, which serve not so much as a defence of Jewish
doctrines as to bring approbation, and credit for their
own. It is a delusive evasion of your difficulties, said
in effect Celsus ;4 you find in your sacred books narratives
which shock your moral sense ; you think that you get
rid of the difficulty by having recourse to allegory ; but
you do not : in the first place, your scriptures do not
admit of being so interpreted ; in the second place, the
explanation is often more difficult than the narrative
which it explains. The answer of Origen is weak:
it is partly a Tu quoque : Homer is worse than Genesis,
and if allegory will not explain the latter, neither will
it the former : it is partly that, if there had been no
secret, the Psalmist would not have said, "Open thou mine
eyes, that I may see the wondrous things of thy law."
1 Tatian, Orat. ad. Grate. 21.
2 Euseb. Praip. Evang. 2. 6, vol. iii. p. 74 : Bipamia became a tech
nical term in this sense ; cf. Grafenhan, Geschichte des Mass. Philologie
im Alterthum, vol. i. p. 215.
8 Porphyr. ap. Euseb. H. E. 6. 19. 5.
* OrigeD, c. Cels. 4. 48—50.

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 81
3. The method had opponents even in Alexandria itself.
Origen1 more than once speaks of those who objected to
his "digging wells below the surface;" and Eusebius
mentions a lost work of the learned Nepos of Arsinoe,
entitled "A Befutation of the Allegorists."2 But it
found its chief antagonist in the school of interpretation
which arose at the end of the fourth century at Antioch.
The dominant philosophy of Alexandria had been a fusion
of Platonism with some elements of both Stoicism and
revived Pythagoreanism : that of Antioch was coming to
be Aristotelianism. The one was idealistic, the other
realistic : the one was a philosophy of dreams and mys
tery, the other of logic and system : to the one, Bevela
tion was but the earthy foothold from which speculation
might soar into infinite space ; to the other, it was " a
positive fact given in the light of history." 3 Allegorical
interpretation was the outcome of the one ; literal inter
pretation of the other. The precursor of the Antiochene
school, Julius Africanus, of Emmaus, has left behind a
letter which has been said " to contain in its two short
pages more true exegesis than all the commentaries and
homilies of Origen."4 The chief founder of the school
was Lucian, a scholar who shares with Origen the honour
1 Origen, in Gen. Horn. 13. 3, vol. ii. p. 94 ; in Joann. Horn. 10. 13,
vol. iv. p. 178.
2 Euseb. H. E. 7. 24.
3 Kihn, Theodor von Mopsuestia und Junilius Africanus als Exe-
geten, Freib. im Breisg. 1880, p. 7.
4 J. G. Eosenmiiller, Hist. Interpret, iii. p. 161. The letter is printed,
with the other remains of Julius Africanus, in Eouth, Reliquice Sacrce,
vol. ii.

82 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
of being the founder of Biblical philology, and whose
lifetime, which was cut short by martyrdom in 311, just
preceded the great Trinitarian controversies of the Nicene
period. His disciples came to be leaders on the Arian
side: among them were Eusebius of Nicomedia and Arius
himself. The question of exegesis became entangled
with the question of orthodoxy. The greatest of Greek
interpreters, Theodore of Mopsuestia, followed, a hundred
years afterwards, in the same path ; but in his day also
questions of canons of interpretation were so entangled
with questions of Christology, and the Christology of the
Antiochene school was so completely outvoted, at the
great ecclesiastical assemblies by the Christology of the
Alexandrian school, that his reputation for scholarship
has been almost wholly obscured by the ill-fame of his
leanings towards Nestorianism. It has been one of the
many results of the controversies into which the meta
physical tendencies of the Greeks led the churches of the
fourth and fifth centuries, to postpone almost to modern
times the acceptance of " the literal grammatical and his
torical sense" as the true sense of Scripture.
The allegorical method of interpretation has survived
the circumstances of its birth and the gathered forces of
its opponents. It has filled a large place in the literature
of Christianity. But by the irony of history, though it'
grew out of a tendency towards rationalism, it has come
in later times to be vested like a saint, and to wear an
aureole round its head. It has been the chief instrument
by which the dominant beliefs of every age have con-

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 83
structed their strongholds.1 It was harmless so long as
it was free. It. was the play of innocent imagination on
the surface of great truths. But when it became autho
ritative, when the idea prevailed that only that poetical
sense was true of which the majority approved, and when
moreover it became traditional, so that one generation
was bound to accept the symbolical interpretations of its
predecessors, it became at once the slave of dogmatism
and the tyrant of souls. Outside its relation to dogma
tism, it has a history and a value which rather grow than
diminish with time. It has given to literature books
which, though of little value for the immediate purpose
of interpretation, are yet monuments of noble and inspir
ing thoughts. It has contributed even more to art than
to literature. The poetry of life would have been infi
nitely less rich without it. For though without it Dante
might have been stirred to write, he would not have
written the Divine Comedy ; and though without it Eaf
faelle would have painted, he would not have painted the
St. Cecilia ; and though without it we should have had
Gothic cathedrals, we should not have had that sublime
symbolism of their structure which is of itself a religious
education. It survives because it is based upon an ele
ment in human nature which is not likely to pass away :
whatever be its value in relation to the literature of the
past, it is at least the expression in relation to the present
that our lives are hedged round by the unknown, that
1 See the chapter on "Scripture and its Mystical Interpretation" in
Newman's " Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine," espe
cially p. 324 (2nd ed.), "It may almost be laid down as an historical
fact that the mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall
together."
g2

84 III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
there is a haze about both our birth and our departure,
and that even the meaner facts of life are linked to
infinity. But two modern beliefs militate against it.
] . The one belief affects all literature, religious and
secular alike. It is that the thoughts of. the past are
relative to the past, and must be- interpreted by it. The
glamour of writing has passed away. A written word is
no more than a spoken word ; and a spoken word is taken
in the sense in which the speaker used it, at the time at
which he used it. There have been writers of enigmas
and painters of emblems, but they have formed an infi
nitesimal minority. There have been those who, as
Cicero says of himself in writing to Atticus, have written
allegorically lest open speech should betray them; but
such cryptograms have only a temporary and transient
use. The idea that ancient literature consists of riddles
which it is the business of modern literature to solve,
has passed for ever away.
2. The other belief affects specially religious litera
ture. It is that the Spirit of God has not yet ceased to
speak to men; and that it is important for us to know,
not only what He told the men of other days, but also
what He tells us now. Interpretation is of the present
as well as of the past. We can believe that there is a
Divine voice, but we find it hard to believe that it has
died away to an echo from the Judean hills. We can
believe in religious as in other progress, but we find it
hard to believe that that progress was suddenly arrested
fifteen hundred years ago. The study of nature and the
study of history have given us another maxim for reli-

III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS. 85
gious conduct and another axiom of religious belief. They
apply to that which is divine within us the inmost secret
of our knowledge and mastery of that which is divine
without us: man, the servant and interpreter of nature, is
also, and is thereby, the servant and interpreter of the living
God.

Lecture IV.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN EHETOEIC.

It is customary to measure the literature of an age by
its highest products, and to measure the literary excel
lence of one age as compared with that of another by the
highest products of each of them. We look, for example,
upon the Periclean age at Athens, or the Augustan age
at Eome, or the Elizabethan age in our own country, as
higher than the ages respectively of the Ptolemies, the
Caesars, or the early Georges. The former are " golden ;"'
the latter, " silver." Nor can it be doubted that from
the point of view of literature in itself, as distinguished
from literature in its relation to history or to social life,,
such a standard of measurement is correct. But the
result of its application has been the doing of a certain
kind of injustice to periods of history in which, though
the high-water mark has been lower, there has been a
wide diffusion of literary culture. This is the case with
the period with which we are dealing. It produced no-
writer of the first rank. It was artificial rather than
spontaneous. It was imitative more than original. It
was appreciative rather than constructive. Its literature
was born, not of the enthusiasm of free activity, but
rather of the passivity which comes when there is no

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 87
hope. But as to a student of science the after-glow is
an object of study no less than the noon-day, so to a
student of the historical development of the world the
silver age of a nation's literature is an object of study
no less than its golden age.
Its most characteristic feature was one for which it is
difficult to find any more exact description than the
paradoxical phrase, "a viva-voce literature." It had its
birth and chief development in that part of the Empire
in which Christianity and Greek life came into closest
and most frequent contact. It was the product of the
rhetorical schools which have been already described. In
those schools the professor had been in the habit of illus
trating his rules and instructing his students by model
compositions of his own.1 Such compositions were in the
first instance exercises in the pleading of actual causes,
and accusations or defences of real persons. The cases
were necessarily supposed rather than actual, but they
had a practical object in view, and came as close as possi
ble to real life. The large growth of the habit of studying
Ehetoric as a part of the education of a gentleman, and the
increased devotion to the literature of the past, which came
partly from the felt loss of spontaneity and partly from
national pride,2 caused these compositions in the rhetorical
1 I have endeavoured to confine the above account to what is true
of Greek Ehetoric : the accounts which are found in Boman writers,
especially in Quintilian, though in the main agreeing with it, differ in
some details. The best modern summary of Greek usages is that of
Kayser's Preface to his editions of Philostratus (Zurich, 1844; Leipzig,
1871, vol. ii.).
2 E. Eohde, der griee7mche Roman und seine Vorldufer, Leipzig,
1876, p. 297.

88 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
schools to take a wider range.1 They began on the one
hand to be divorced from even a fictitious connection with
the law-courts, and on the other to be directly imitative of
the styles of ancient authors. From the older Ehetoric,
the study of forensic logic and speech with a view to the
actual practice in the law-courts, which necessarily still
went on, there branched out the new Ehetoric, which
was sometimes specially known as Sophistic.
Sophistic proceeded for the most part upon the old
lines. Its literary compositions preserved the old name,
"exercises" (/xeXirai), as though they were still the
rehearsals of actual pleadings. They were divided into
two kinds, Theses and Hypotheses, according as a subject
was argued in general terms or names were introduced.2
The latter were the more common. Their subjects were
sometimes fictitious, sometimes taken from real history.
Of the first of these there is a good example in Lucian's
1 There is a distinction between rd SiKaviKa. and t& dp<pl /teXenjv,
and both are distinguished from rd jroAtTuca in Philostratus, V. S.
2. 20, p. 103. Elsewhere Philostratus speaks of a sophist as being
SiKavLKov piv o-o<£ioTi/ccjTe/>os (TO<f>urTOv Se 8iKaviKu>Tepos, " too much of
a litterateur to be a good lawyer, and too much of a lawyer to be a
good litterateur," 2. 23. 4, p. 108.
2 Beo-is is denned by Hermogenes as dp4>uTf5r)Tqpivov irpdypaTos
fjjnjo-ts, Progymn. 11, Walz, i. p. 50: xnr6Be<ris as iw eirl pepovs
(fj-rrjcris, Sext. Emp. adv. Geom. 3. 4 : so tois eis ovopa vrrodeo-us,
Philostr. V. S. prooem. The distinction is best formulated by Quintilian,
3. 5. 5, who gives the equivalent Latin terms, "infinitae (qurestiones)
sunt quae remotis personis et temporibus et locis cseterisque similibus
in utramque partem tractantur quod Graeci Bia-iv dicunt, Cicero propo
situs . . . finitas autem sunt ex complexu rerum personarum temporum
cseterorumque : haj iwoflecrcis a Graecis dicuntur, caussse a nostris, in
his omnis qusestio videtur circa res personasque consistere."

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 89
Tyrannicide : the situation is, that a man goes into the
citadel of a town for the purpose of killing a tyrant : not
finding the tyrant, the man kills the tyrant's son : the
tyrant coming in and seeing his son' with the sword in
his body, stabs himself : the man claims the reward as a
tyrannicide. Of the second kind of subjects, there are
such instances as "Demosthenes defending himself against
the charge of having taken the bribe which Demades
brought," x and "The Athenians wounded at Syracuse beg
their comrades who are returning to Athens to put them
to death."2 The Homeric cycle was an unfailing mine
of subjects : the Persian wars hardly less so. " Would
you like to hear a sensible speech about Agamemnon,
or are you sick of hearing speeches about Agamemnon,
Atreus' son ?" asks Dio Chrysostom in one of his Dia
logues.3 " I should not take amiss even a speech about
Adrastus or Tantalus or Pelops, if I were likely to get
good from it," is the polite reply. In the treatment
of both kinds of subjects, stress was laid on dramatic
consistency. The character, whether real or supposed,
was required to speak in an appropriate style.4 The
"exercise" had to be recited with an appropriate into-
1 Philostr. V. S. 1. 25. 7, 16.
2 H. 2. 5. 3.
3 Dio Chrysost. lvi. vol. ii. p. 176.
4 TpoirtoTroToua, for which see Theon. Progymnasmata, c. 10, ed.
Spengel, vol. ii. 115 : Quintil. 3. 8. 49 ; 9. 2. 29. The word im-oKpl-
varBai was sometimes applied, e.g. Philostr. V. S. 1. 21. 5, of Scope-
lianus, whose action in subjects taken from the Persian wars was so
vehement that a partizan of one of his rivals accused him of beating a
tambourine. " Yes, I do," he said ; " but my tambourine is the shield
of Ajax."

90 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
nation.1 Sometimes the dramatic effect was heightened
by the introduction of two or more characters: for
example, one of the surviving pieces of Dio Chrysostom2
consists of a wrangle in tragic style, and with tragie
diction, between Odysseus and Philoctetes.
This kind of Sophistic has an interest in two respects,
apart from its relation to contemporary life. It gave
birth to the Greek romance, which is the progenitor of the
mediaeval romance and of the modem novel : 3 a notable
example of such a sophistical romance in Christian litera
ture is the Clementine Homilies and Eecognitions ; in
non-Christian literature, Philostratus's Life of Apollonius
of Tyana. It gave birth also to the writings in the style
of ancient authors which, though commonly included in
the collected works of those authors, betray their later
origin by either the poverty of their thought or inadver
tent neologisms of expression : for example, the Eryxias
of Plato.4
But though Sophistic grew mainly out of Ehetoric,
it had its roots also in Philosophy. It was sometimes
1 " They made their voice sweet with musical cadences, and modu
lations of tone, and echoed resonances :" Plut. de aud. 7, p. 41. So
at Borne Favorinus is said to have " charmed even those who did not
know Greek by the sound of his voice, and the significance of his look,
and the cadence of his sentences :" Philostr. V.S. 1. 7, p. 208.
2 Orat. lix.

3

Bohde, pp. 336 sqq.

* This trained habit of composing in different styles is of importance
in relation to Christian as well as to non-Christian literature. A good
study of the latter is afforded by Arrian, whose "chameleon-like style"
(Kaibel, Dionysios von Halikarnass und die Sophistik, Hermes, Bd. xx.
1875, p. 508) imitates Thucydides, Herodotus, and Xenophon, by
turns.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 91
defined as Ehetoric philosophizing.1 It threw off alto
gether the fiction of a law-court or an assembly, and
discussed in continuous speech the larger themes of
morality or theology. Its utterances were not "exer
cises" but " discourses" (SiaXegeis).2 It preached sermons.
It created not only a new literature, but also a new profes
sion. The class of men against whom Plato had inveighed
had become merged in the general class of educators :
they were specialized partly as grammarians, partly as
rhetoricians : the word " sophist," to which the invectives
had failed to attach a permanent stigma, remained partly
as a generic name, and partly as a special name for the
new class of public talkers. They differed from philo
sophers in that they did not mark themselves off from
the rest of the world, and profess their devotion to a
higher standard of living, by wearing a special dress.8
They were a notable feature of their time. Some of them
had a fixed residence and gave discourses regularly, like
1 Philostratus, V. S. 1. p. 202, Tr)v dpyalav <ro<pUTTiKr)v pr)TOpiKr)v
fjyeikrBai %pi) <piXoo~o<povo-av. SiaXeyeTai p.kv yap vrrep b)v ol <piXo-
votpovvTes a Se execVoi ras eyacoTjjcrets v7roKaBrjp,evoi Kal to. (rpuKpa. tu>v
fyjTovpeviiiv irpofiifidfovTes ovwai (pacrl yiyvdxrKziv raura 6 iraAaio?
<ro<j>UTTrjs dis eiScos Xiya : ib. p. 4, o-ocpurTas 8e ol waXaiol lir<i>v6p.a£ov
ov povov tSv prjTophiv toiis vrrepcpavovvTds Te Kal Xap.Trpovs, dXXa. /cat
Ttov <fiiXov6<f>u>i> tovs £vv tvpota epp.r]vevovTas.
2 On the distinction, see Kayser's preface to his editions of Philo
stratus, p. vii.
3 Philostratus, V. S. 2. 3, p. 245, says that the famous sophist Aris-
tocles lived the earlier part of his life as a Peripatetic philosopher,
"squalid and unkempt and ill-clothed," but that when he passed into
the ranks of the sophists he brushed off his squalor, and brought luxury
and the pleasures of music into his life. On the philosopher's dress,
see below, Lecture VI. p. 151.

92 IV. GREEK AND CHEISTIAN RHETORIC.
the " stated minister" of a modern congregation : some
of them travelled from place to place. The audience
was usually gathered by invitation. There were no
newspaper advertisements in those days, and no bells;
consequently the invitations were personal. They were
made sometimes by a "card" or "programme," some
times by word of mouth : " Come and hear me lecture
to-day." x Sometimes a messenger was sent round ; some
times the sophist would go round himself and knock at
people's doors and promise them a fine discourse.2
The audience of a travelling sophist was what might
be expected among a people who lived very much out of
doors. When a stranger appeared who was known by
his professional dress, and whose reputation had preceded
him, the people clustered round him — like iron filings
sticking to a magnet, says Themistius.3 If there was a
resident sophist, the two were pitted together; just as
if, in modern times, a famous violinist from Paris or
Yienna might be asked to play at the next concert with
1 Epictetus, Diss. 3. 21. 6; 3. 23. 6, 23, 28 : so Pliny, Epist. 3. 18
(of invitations to recitations), "non per codicillos (cards of invitation),
non per libellos (programmes, probably containing extracts), sed 'si
commodum esset,' et 'si valde vacaret' admoniti." Cf. Lucian, Her-
motimus, 11, where a sophist is represented as hanging up a notice-
board over his gateway, " No lecture to-day."
2 Philostratus, V. S. 2. 10. 5, says that the enthusiasm at Eome
about the sophist Adrian was such that when his messenger (tov rfs
d/cpoa'o-ews dyyiXov) appeared on the scene with a notice of lecture, the
people rose up, whether from the senate or the circus, and flocked to
the Athemeum to hear him. Synesius, Dio (in Dio Chrys. ed. Dind,
vol. ii. 342), speaks of BvpoKorfo-avTa Kal eVayyei'AavTa rot* iv ao-TV.
pupaKtois aKpoapa «ri8e£tov.
3 Orat. 23, p. 360, ed. Dind.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 93
the leading violinist in London. It was a matter not
only of professional honour, but also of obligation. A
man could not refuse. There is a story in Plutarch1
about a sophist named Niger who found himself in a
town in Galatia which had a resident professor. The
resident made a discourse. Niger had, unfortunately, a
fish-bone in his throat and could not easily speak ; but
he had either to speak or to lose his reputation : he spoke,
and an inflammation set in which killed him. There is a
much longer story in Philostratus2 of Alexander Peloplato
going to Athens to discourse in a friendly contest with
Herodes Atticus. The audience gathered together in a
theatre in the Ceramicus, and waited a long time for
Herodes to appear: when he did not come, they grew
angry and thought that it was a trick, and insisted on
Alexander coming forward to discourse before Herodes
arrived. And when Herodes did arrive, Alexander sud
denly changed his style — sang tenor, so to speak, instead
of bass — and Herodes followed him, and there was a
charming interchange of compliments: "We sophists,"
said Alexander, "are all of us only slices of you,
Herodes." Sometimes they went to show their skill at one of the
great festivals, such as that of Olympia. Lucian3 tells a
story of one who had plucked feathers from many orators
to make a wonderful discourse about Pythagoras. His
object was to gain the glory of delivering it as an ex
tempore oration, and he arranged with a confederate that
its subject should be the subject selected for him by the
1 De sanit. prax. 16, p. 131.
8 V. S. 2. 5. 3. s Pseudolog. 5 sqq.

94 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
audience. But the imposture was too barefaced : some
of the hearers amused themselves by assigning the dif
ferent passages to their several authors ; and the sophist
himself at last joined in the universal laughter. And
Dio Chrysostom1 draws a picture of a public place at
Corinth during the Isthmian games, which he alleges
to be as true of the time of Diogenes as of his own:
*' Tou might hear many poor wretches of sophists shout
ing and abusing one another, and their disciples, as they
call them, squabbling, and many writers of books reading
their stupid compositions, and many poets singing their
poems, and many jugglers exhibiting their marvels, and
many soothsayers giving the meaning of prodigies, and
ten thousand rhetoricians twisting law-suits, and no small
number of traders driving their several trades."
Of the manner of the ordinary discourse there are many
indications. It was given sometimes in a private house,
sometimes in a theatre, sometimes in a regular lecture-
room. The professor sometimes entered already robed
in his "pulpit-gown," and sometimes put it on in the
presence of his audience. He mounted the steps to his
professorial chair, and took his seat upon its ample
cushion.2 He sometimes began with a preface, some
times he proceeded at once to his discourse. He often
gave the choice of a subject to his audience.3 He was
1 Orat. viii. vol. i. 145.
2 Epict. Diss. 3. 23. 35, ev KopipCo ittoAicj) r) Tpifiwvi<$ dvafidvTa hrl
TrovXfiivov : but Pliny, Epist'. 2. 3. 2, says of IsDeus, " surgit, amicitur,
incipit," as though he robed himself in the presence of the audience.
b Pliny, Epist. 2. 3, says of Isseus : " praefationes tersae, graciles,
•dulces : graves interdutn et erectee. Poscit controversias plures, eleo
tionem auditoribus permittit, ssepe etiam partes." Philostratus, V. S.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 95
ready to discourse on any theme ; and it was part of his
art either to force the choice of a subject, or so to turn
the subject as to bring in something which he had
already prepared. "His memory is incredible," says
Pliny of Isseus; "he repeats by heart what he appears
to say extempore ; but he does not falter even in a single
word."1 "When your audience have chosen a subject
for you," says Lucian,2 in effect, in his satirical advice to
rhetoricians, " go straight at it and say without hesita
tion whatever words come to your tongue, never minding
about the first point coming first and the second second :
the great thing is to go right on and not have any
pauses. If you have to talk at Athens about adultery,
bring in the customs of the Hindoos and Persians : above
all, have passages about Marathon and Cynsegirus — that
is indispensable. And Athos must always be turned
into sea, and the Hellespont into dry land, and the
sun must be darkened by the clouds of Median arrows
.... and Salamis and Artemisium and Platsea, and so
1. 24. 4, tells a story of Mark of Byzantium going into Polemo's lec
ture-room and sitting down among the audience : some one recognized
him, and the whisper went round who he was, so that, when Polemo
asked for a subject, all eyes were turned to Mark. " What is the use
of looking at a rustic like that?" said Polemo, referring to Mark's
shaggy beard ; " he will not give you a subject." " I will both give
you a subject," said Mark, "and will discourse myself." Plutarch,
deaudiendo, 7, p. 42, advises those who go to a "feast of words" to
propose a subject that will be useful, and not to ask for a discourse on
the bisection of unlimited lines.
1 Plin. Epist. 2. 3. 4; cf. Philostr. V.S. 1. 20. 2. His disciple
Dionysius of Miletus had so wonderful a memory, and so taught his
pupils to remember, as to be suspected of sorcery : Philostr. V. S. 1.
22. 3.
2 Rhet.prcec. 18.

96 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
forth, must come in pretty frequently ; and, above all,
those little Attic words I told you about must blossom
on the surface of your speech^ — arret {atta) and Sriirovdev
(depouthen) — must be sprinkled about freely, whether
they are wanted or not : for they are pretty words, even
when they do not mean anything."
It was a disappointment if he was not interrupted
by applause. "A sophist is put out in an extempore
speech," says Philostratus,1 "by a serious-looking audi
ence and tardy praise and no clapping." " They are all
agape," says Dio Chrysostom,2 "for the murmur of the
crowd .... like men walking in the dark, they move
always in the direction of the clapping and the shouting."
" I want your praise," said one of them to Epictetus.3
"What do you mean by my praise?" asked the philo
sopher. " Oh, I want you to say Bravo ! and Wonder
ful ! " replied the sophist. These were the common cries ;
others were not infrequent — "Divine!" "Inspired!"
" Unapproachable !"4 They were accompanied by clap
ping of the hands and stamping of the feet and waving
of the arms. " If your friends see you breaking down,"
says Lucian in his satirical advice to a rhetorician,5 " let
them pay the price of the suppers you give them by
stretching out their arms and giving you a chance of
1 V. S. 2. 26. 3. 2 Orat. xxxiii. vol. i. p. 422.
3 Epict. Diss. 3. 23. 24.
4 Plut. de audiendo, 15, p. 46, speaks of the strange and extravagant
words which had thus come into use, 'Bellas' Kal ' Beo$opr)Tt»s' Kal
' dirpoo-iTus,' the old words, to{3 'kuAcV Kal toC ' crocks' Kal tov
'dXtjBws? being no longer strong enough.
6 Rhet. prcec. 21.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 97
thinking of something to say in the interval between the
rounds of applause." Sometimes, of course, there were
signs of disapproval. " It is the mark of a good hearer,"
says Plutarch,1 " that he does not howl out like a dog
at everything of which he disapproves, but at any rate
waits until the end of the discourse."
After the discourse, the professor would go round:
"'What did you think of me to-day?'" says one in
Epictetus.2 " ' Upon my life, sir, I thought you were
admirable.' ' What did you think of my best passage ?'
'Which was that?' 'Where I described Pan and the
Nymphs.' ' Oh', it was excessively well done.' " Again,
to quote another anecdote from Epictetus:3 " 'A much
larger audience to-day, I think,' says the professor.
'Yes; much larger.' 'Five hundred, I should guess.'
< Oh, nonsense ; it could not have been less than a thou
sand.' ' Why that is more than Dio ever had : I wonder
why it was : they appreciated what I said, too.' ' Beauty,
sir, can move even a stone.' "
They made both money and reputation. The more
eminent of them were among the most distinguished men
of the time. They were the pets of society, and some
times its masters.4 They were employed on affairs of
state at home and on embassies abroad.5 They were
1 De audiendo, 4, p. 39. s Diss. 3. 23. 11.
3 Diss. 3. 23. 19.
4 tTvpdwei ye tZv 'AByvav, says Eunapius of the sophist Julian,
Vit. Julian, p. 68.
5 Philostr. V.S. 1. 21. 6, of Scopelianus, fiao-tXtioi 8e avrov Trpecr-
(Seicu TroXXal p'ev, Kal yap Tts Kal dyaBi) TvXn Zvvr)KoXo{>Bei wpeo-fievovTi:
ib. 1. 24. 2, of Mark of Byzantium : 1. 25. 1, 5, of Polemo : 2. 5. 2, of
Alexander Pelpplaton. H

98 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
sometimes placed on the free list of their city, and lived
at the public expense. They were sometimes made
senators— raised, as we might say, to the House of Lords.
— and sometimes governors of provinces.1 When they
died, and sometimes before their death, public statues
were erected in their honour.2 The inscriptions of some
of them are recorded by historians, and some remain:
" The Queen of Cities to the King of Eloquence," was
inscribed on the statue of Prohseresius at Eome.3 " One
of the Seven Wise Men, though he had not fulfilled
twenty-five years," is inscribed on an existing base of
a statue at Attaleia ;4 and, beneath a representation of
1 Philostr. V. S. 1. 22, of Dionysius of Miletus, 'ASpiavbs o-ar/oajrijv
pev avTov aTre<prjvev ovk d<pav>ov eBvwv eyKaTeXe£e 8e tois Sr/pocria iTTjrev-
oucri Kal tchs ev tcJ Mowet<j> o~iTovp.evois : so of Polemo, ib. 1. 25. 3.
2 The inscription of one of the statues which are mentioned by
Philostratus, V. S. 1. 23. 2, as having been erected to Lollianus at
Athens, was found a few years ago near the Propyla?a : Dittenberger,
C. I. A. vol. iii. No. 625 : see also Welcker, Rhein. Mus. N. F. i. 210,
and a monograph by Kayser, P. Hordeonius Lollianus, Heidelberg,
1841. It is followed by the epigram :
dptfroTepov prjTrjpa SikQv p.eXeTrjo~l T dpivTOv
A.oXXiavbv ttXtjBvs evyeveiav erdp(ov.
el 8 ec9eAets tives eicri Sar/pevat, ovvopa rraTpbs
Kal TraTptjs, avrmv r ovvopa Sutkos «X£'-
Philostratus, V..S. 1. 25. 26, discredits the story that Polemo died at
Smyrna, because there was no monument to him there'; whereas if he
had died there, " not one of the wonderful temples of that city would
have been thought too great for his burial."
* r) fiao-iXevovo-a Fwpi) tov fiao-tXevovTa tQv X6yu>v, Eunap. Vit.
Prohceres. p. 90.
4 MdSeo-TOS o-o<purTr)s els p-era. tcuv ottA o-0(pmv p,i) yep'iaras ei/cocri
ir'evTe erij, Bulletin de correspondence Hellenique, 1886, p. 157.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 99
crowning, the words, "He subjects all things to elo
quence," are found on a similar base at Parion.1
They naturally sometimes gave themselves great airs.
There are many stories about them. Philostratus tells
one of the Emperor Antoninus Pius on arriving at Smyrna
going, in accordance with imperial custom, to spend the
night at the house which was at once the best house
in the city and the house of the most distinguished
man. It was that of the sophist Polemo, who happened
on the Emperor's arrival to be away from home ; but he
returned from his journey at night, and with loud excla
mations against being kept out of his own, turned the
Emperor out of doors.2 The common epithet for them is
aXatyv — a word with no precise English equivalent, de
noting a cross between a braggart and a mountebank.
But the real grounds on which the more earnest men
objected to them were those upon which Plato had ob
jected to their predecessors: their making a trade of
knowledge, and their unreality.
1. The making of discourses, whether literary or moral,
was a thriving trade.3 The fees given to a leading sophist
were on the scale of those given to a prima donna in our
1 os irdvra Xoyois wroTaWei, Mittheilungen des deutsches archaol.
Institut, 1884, p. 61.
2 Philostratus, V. S. 1. 25. 3, p. 228, narrates the incident with
graphic humour, and adds two anecdotes which show that the Emperor
was rather amused than annoyed by it. It was said of the same sophist
that "he used to talk to cities as a superior, to kings as not inferior,
and to gods as an equal," ibid. 4.
3 Dio Cassius, 71. 35. 2, Trap.irXr}Oels c/>iAo<roc/>e?i/ kirXaTTovTo Iv xnr
awou irXovTifyovTai.
h2

100 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
own day.1 But the objection to it was not so much the
fact of its thriving, as the fact of its being a trade at all.
"If they do what they do," says Dio Chrysostom,2 "as
poets and rhetoricians, there is no harm perhaps; but
if they do it as philosophers, for the sake of their own
personal gain and glory, and not for the sake of benefiting
you, there is harm." The defence which Themistius3
makes for himself is more candid than effective : " I do
make money," he says; "people give me sometimes one
mina, sometimes two, sometimes as much as a talent:
but, since I must speak about myself, let me ask you
this — Did any one ever come away the worse for having
heard me ? Mark, I charge nothing : it is a voluntary
contribution." 2. The stronger ground of objection to them was their
unreality. They had lost touch with life. They had
made philosophy itself seem unreal. "They are not
philosophers, but fiddlers," said the sturdy old Stoic
Musonius.4 It is not necessary to suppose that they
were all charlatans. There was then, as now, the irre
pressible young man of good morals who wished to air
his opinions. But the tendency to moralize had become
divorced from practice. They preached, not because
1 For example, the father of Herodes Atticus gave Scopelianus a fee
of twenty-five talents, to which Atticus himself added another twenty-
five: Philostr. V. S. 1. 21. 7, p. 222.
2 Dio Chrysost. Orat. xxxii. p. 403 : so Seneca, Epist. 29, says of
them, " philosophiam honestius neglexissent quam vendunt:" Maximus
of Tyre, Diss. 33. 8, dyopa. Tr/id/ceiTou dpeTrjs, oji/iov to wpay/ia.
3 Orat. xxiii. p. 351. The whole speech is a plea against the dis
repute into which the profession had fallen.
4 ap. Aul. Gell. 5. 1. 1.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 101
they were in grim earnest about the reformation of the
world, but because preaching was a respectable profes
sion, and the listening to sermons a fashionable diver
sion. " The mass of men," says Plutarch,1 " enjoy
and admire a philosopher when he is discoursing about
their neighbours; but if the philosopher, leaving their
neighbours alone, speaks his mind about things that are
of importance to the men themselves, they take offence
and vote him a bore ; for they think that they ought to
listen to a philosopher in his lecture-room in the same
bland way that they listen to tragedians in the theatre.
This, as might be expected, is what happens to them in
regard to the sophists; for when a sophist gets down
from his pulpit and puts aside his MSS., in the real busi
ness of life he seems but a small man, and under the
thumb of the majority. They do not understand about real
philosophers that both seriousness and play, grim looks
and smiles, and above all the direct personal application
of what they say to each individual, have a useful result
for those who are in the habit of giving a patient atten
tion to them."
Against this whole system of veneering rhetoric with
philosophy, there was a strong reaction. Apart from the
early Christian writers, with whom " sophist" is always
a word of scorn, there were men, especially among the
new school of Stoics, who were at open war with its
unreality.2 I will ask you to listen to the expostulation
1 De audiendo, 12, p. 43.
2 It is clear that the word "sophist" had under the Early Empire,
as in both earlier and later times, two separate streams of meaning. It

102 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
which the great moral reformer Epictetus addresses to a
rhetorician who came to him :
" First of all, tell yourself what you want to be, and then act
accordingly. For this is what we see done in almost all other
cases. Men who are practising for the games first of all decide
what they mean to be, and then proceed to do the things
that follow from their decision  So then when you say,
Come and listen to my lecture, first of all consider whether
your action be not thrown away for want of an end, and then
consider whether it be not a mistake, on account of your real
end being a wrong one. Suppose I ask a man, ' Do you wish
to do good by your expounding, or to gain applause?' There
upon straightway you hear him saying, ' What do I care for the
applause of the multitude ?' And his sentiment is right : for iu
the same way, applause is nothing to the musician qua musician,
or to the geometrician qua geometrician.
" You wish to do good, then," I continue ; " in what particular
respect? tell me, that I too may hasten to your lecture-room.
was used as a title of honour, e.g. Lucian, Rhet. Prcbc. 1, to o-epvoraTov
tovto Kal TrdvTipov ovopa o-o<f>io-Trjs ', Philostr. V. S. 2. 31. 1, when
./Elian was addressed as o-oc/hctttjs, he was not elated vrrb tov oVo/mitos
oii'tco peydXov ovtos ; Eunap. Vit. Liban. p. 100, when emperors offered
Libanius great titles and dignities, he refused them, <f>rjo-as tov o-o<purTi)v
etvai pelfrva. But the disparagement of the class to whom the word
was applied runs through a large number of writers, e. g. Dio Chrys.
Orat. iv. vol. i. 70, ayyoourn Kal dXa£6vi o-ocpio-TrJ; ib. viii. vol. i. 151,
they croak like frogs in a marsh; ib. x. vol. i. 166, they are the
wretchedest of men, because, though ignorant, they think themselves
wise; ib. xii. vol. i. 214, they are like peacocks, showing off their
reputation and the number of their disciples as peacocks do their tails.
Epict. Diss. 2. 20. 23 ; M. Aurel. 1. 16 j 6. 30. Lucian, Fugitiv. 10,
compares them to hippocentaurs, o~6vder6v ti Kal puktov ev peo-ip dXa-
(ovelas Kal <piXoo-o<plas TrXa^opevov.' Maximus Tyr. Diss. 33. 8, to twv
trotpurrlov yevos, to 7roAu/mt9es tovto Kal TroXvXoyov Kal TroXXiav peo-Tov
paB-qparw, KaTTTjXevov Tavra Kal a7re/it7roAo{!i' tois 8eop.evots. Among
the Christian Fathers, especial reference may be made to Clem. Alex.
Strom. 1, chapters 3 and 8, pp. 328, 343.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 103
But can a man impart good to others without having previously
received good himself ?
" No : just as a man is of no use to us in the way of carpen
tering unless he is himself a carpenter.
" Would you like to know, then, whether you have received
good yourself? Bring me your convictions, philosopher. (Let
us take an example.) Did you not the other day praise so-and-
so more than you really thought he deserved? Did you not
flatter that senator's son ? — and yet you would not like your
own sons to be like him, would you ?
"God forbid!
" Then why did you flatter him and toady to him ?
" He is a clever young fellow, and a good student.
" How do you know that ?
" He admires my lectures.
" Yes ; that is the real reason. But don't you think that these
very people despise you in their secret hearts ? I mean that
when a man who is conscious that he has neither done nor
thought any single good thing, finds a philosopher who tells him
that he is a man of great ability, sincerity, and genuineness, of
course he says to himself, ' This man wants to get something out
of me !' Or (if this is not the case with you), tell me what
proof he has given of great ability. No doubt he has attended
you for a considerable time : he has heard you discoursing and
expounding: but has he become more modest in his estimate of
himself — or is he still looking for some one to teach him ?
" Yes, he is looking for some one to teach him.
" To teach him how to live ? No, fool ; not how to live, but
how to talk : which also is the reason why he admires you.
* * * *
" [The truth is, you like applause : you care more for that than
for doing good, and so you invite people to come and hear you.]
" But does a pldlosopher invite people to come and hear him ?
Is it not that as the sun, or as food, is its own sufficient attract
tion, so the philosopher also is his own sufficient attraction to
those who are to be benefited by him ? Does a physician invite
people to come and let him heal them 1 .... (Imagine what a

104 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
genuine philosopher's invitation would be) — 'I invite you to
come and be told that you are in a bad way — that you care for
everything except what you should care for — that you do not
know what things are good and what evil — and that you are
unhappy and unfortunate.' A nice invitation ! and yet if that is
not the result of what a philosopher says, he and his words alike
are dead. (Musonius) Rufus used to say, ' If you have leisure
to praise me, my teaching has been in vain.' Accordingly he
used to talk in such a way that each individual one of us who
sat there thought that some one had been telling Eufus about
him : he so put his finger upon what we had done, he so set
the individual faults of each one of us clearly before our eyes.
" The philosopher's lecture-room, gentlemen, is a surgery :
when you go away you ought to have felt not pleasure but pain.
For when you come in, something is wrong with you : one man
has put his shoulder out, another has an abscess, another a
headache. Am I — the surgeon — then, to sit down and give you
a string of fine sentences, that you may praise me — and thei«
go away — the man with the dislocated arm, the man with the
abscess, the man with the headache — just as you came ? Is it
for this that young men come away from home, and leave their
parents and their kinsmen and their property, to say ' Bravo !'
to you for your fine moral conclusions ? Is this what Socrates-
did — or Zeno — or Cleanthes ?
" Well, but is there no such class of speeches as exhortations ?
" Who denies it ? But in what do exhortations consist ? In
being able to show, whether to one man or to many men, the
contradiction in which they are involved, and that their thoughts
are given to anything but what they really mean. For they
mean to give them to the things that really tend to happiness ,
but they look for those things elsewhere than where they really
are. (That is the true aim of exhortation) : but to show this, is
it necessary to place a thousand chairs, and invite people to
come and listen, and dress yourself up in a fine gown, and ascend
the pulpit— and describe the death of Achilles ? Cease, I implore
you, from bringing dishonour, as far as you can, upon noble
words and dpeds. There can be no stronger exhortation to duty,

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 105
I suppose, than for a speaker to make it clear to his audience
that he wants to get something out of them ! Tell me who,
after hearing you lecture or discourse, became anxious about or
reflected upon himself? or who, as he went out of the room,
said, ' The philosopher put his finger upon my faults : I must not
behave in that way again' ?
"You cannot : the utmost praise you get is when a man says
to another, ' That was a beautiful passage about Xerxes,' and the
other says, ' No, I liked best that about the battle of Thermo
pylae.' "This is a philosopher's sermon I"1

I have dwelt on this feature of the Greek life of the
early' Christian centuries, not with the view of giving a
complete picture of it, which would be impossible within
the compass of a lecture, but rather with the view of
establishing a presumption, which you will find amply
justified by further researches, that it was sufficient, not
only in its quality and complexity, but also in its mass,
to account for certain features of early Christianity.
In passing from Greek life to Christianity, I will ask
you, in the first instance, to note the broad distinction
which exists between what m4h© primitive churches was
known as " pMf&gggwkg," and that which in sutonquent
timm came to be known as "^Miaidaim^" I lay the more
stress upon the distinction for the accidental reason that,
in the first reaction against the idea that "prophecy"
necessarily meant "prediction," it was maintained — and
with a certain reservation the contention was true — that
a "prophet" meant a "preacher." The reservation is,
that tliiiii^wnfttT'l was not merely a preacher but a spon»
1 Epict. Diss. 3. 23.

106 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
teneofflP preacher. a^^Bwkei^^ewBnB-^KWwri**^
help mi, bMHise ^^^^mmif^a^^^^^^^^^^'
within *hi»'wkieh -must '«ggirtffla®fflB*siffl!eran^'. It is
in this sense that the prophets of the early churches were
preachers. They were not church officers appointed to
discharge certain functions. They were the possessors
of a charisma, a divine gift which was not official but
personal. "No prophecy ever came by the will of man;
but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy
Ghost." They did not practise beforehand how or what!
they should say; for "the Holy Ghost taught them in]
that very hour what they should say." Th*S*i»^wi@el
was«@#f?@9* f r^^no^b?S^i@ii&iiaiifei^iid^^£@^w' 8@^^^i!^^b«^««nesaiiw@t(^iiaal@,
a barbaf-SW^aTOS* The.tv«^«eiK@aigriQg^^£« tk^ rules
both ffr^tylfc^^^gsBWid^^. TlasgiSwpaidwafiwJag®^»4o
refinements ®i«spw»SDfe The greatest preacher of them
all claimed to have come among his converts, in a city
in which Ehetoric flourished, not with the persuasiveness
of human logic, but with the demonstration which was
Of that "prophesying" of the primitive churches it is
not certain, that we possess any monument. The Second
Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude are perhaps
representatives of it among the canonical books of the
New Testament. The work known as the Second Epistle
of Clement is perhaps a representative of the form which
it took in the middle of the second century ; but though
it is inspired by a genuine enthusiasm, it is rather more
artistic in its form than a purely prophetic utterance is
likely to have been.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 107
taneity of utterance.. di§d^ almost entirely amsap. It may
almost be said to have died a violent death. The domi
nant parties in the Church set their faces against it. The
survivals of it in Asia Minor were formally condemned.
The Montanists, as they were called, who tried to fan
the lingering sparks of it into a flame, are ranked among
heretics. And Tertullian is not even now admitted into
the calendar of the Saints, because be believed the Mon
tanists to be in the right.
It was inevitable that it should be so. The growth
of a confederation of Christian communities necessitated
the definition of a basis of confederation. Such a defi
nition, and the further necessity of guarding it, were
inconsistent with that free utterance of the Spirit which
had existed before the confederation began. Prophesy*
injpted'when the -C^h^flflte'ChTCEPch' was formed.
k^tee,eslUiP^'(l^^ing'«6afflie preadsrag. And preach
ing is the result of the gradual combination of different
elements.' In the formation of a great institution it
is inevitable that, as time goes on, .different elements
should tend to unite. To the original functions of a
bishop, for example, were added by degrees the func
tions—which had originally been separate--of teacher.1
In a similar way were fused together, on the one hand,
teaching— ^that is, the tradition and exposition of the
1 The functions are clearly separable in the Teaching of the Apostles,
15, avTol [sc. errio-Korroi Kal Sicucovoi] yap e'uriv ol Texipnpevoi vpiov,
peTa, tu>v TrpotpTjTZv Kal ScSao-KaXwv ; but they are combined in the
Second book of the Apostolical Constitutions, pp. 16, 49, 51, 58, 84,
edj Lagarde. •¦-''.'¦

108 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
sacred books and of the received doctrine ; and, on the
other hand, exhortation — that is, the endeavour to raise
men to a higher level of moral and spiritual life. Each
of these was a function which, assuming a certain natural
aptitude, could be learned by practice. Each of them
was consequently a function which might be discharged
by the permanent officers of the community, and dis
charged habitually at regular intervals without waiting
for the fitful flashes of the prophetic fire. We conse
quently find that with the growth of organization there
grew up also, not only a fusion of teaching and exhor
tation, but also the gradual restriction of the liberty of
addressing the community to the official class.
It was this fusion of teaching and exhortation that
constituted the essence of the homily : its form came
from the sophists. Eor it was natural that when addresses,
whether expository or hortatory, came to prevail in the
Christian communities, they should be affected by the
similar addresses which ?filled a large place in contempo
rary Greek life. It was not only natural but inevitable
that when men who had been trained in rhetorical methods
came to make such addresses, they should follow the
methods to which they were accustomed. It is probable
that Origen is not only the earliest example whose writ
ings have come down to us, but also one of the earliest
who took into the Christian communities these methods
of the schools. He lectured, as the contemporary teachers
seem to have lectured, every day: his subject-matter
was the text of the Scriptures, as that of the rhetoricians
and sophists by his side was Homer or Chrysippus : his

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 109
addresses, like those of the best professors, were carefully
prepared : he was sixty years of age, we are told, before
he preached an extempore sermon.1
When the Christian communities emerge into the
clearer light of the fourth century, the influence of the
rhetorical schools upon them begins to be visible on a
large scale and with permanent effects. The voice of the
prophet had ceased, and the voice of the preacher had
begun. The greatest Christian preachers of the fourth
century had been trained to rhetorical methods, and had
themselves taught rhetoric. Basil and Gregory Nazi-
anzen studied at Athens under the famous professors
Himerius and Prohseresius : Chrysostom studied under
the still more famous Libanius, who on his death-bed
said of him that he would have been his worthiest suc
cessor "if the Christians had not stolen him."2 The
discourses came to be called by the same names as those
of the Greek professors. They had originally been called
homilies — a word which was unknown in this sense in
pre-Christian times, and which denoted the familiar in
tercourse and direct personal addresses of common life.
They came to be called by the technical terms of the
schools — discourses, disputations, or speeches.3 The dis
tinction between the two kinds of terms is clearly shown
by a later writer, who, speaking of a particular volume of
1 Euseb. H. E. 6. 36. 1. 2 Sozora. H. E. 8. 2.
3 Eusebius, II. E. 6. 36. 1, speaks of Origen's sermons as SiaXegeis,
whereas the original designation was opiXiai. So in Latin, Augustine
uses the term disputationes of Ambrose's sermons, Confess. 5. 13, vol. i.
118, and of his own Tract, lxxxix. in Johann. Evang. c. 5, vol. iii.
pars 2, p. 719.

110 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
Chrysostom's addresses, says, " They are called 'speeches'
(Xo'yot), but they are more like homilies, for this reason,
above others, that he again and again addresses his hearers
as actually present before his eyes." 1 The form of the
discourses tended to be the same : if you examine side by
side a discourse of Himerius or Themistius or Libanius,
and one of Basil or Chrysostom or Ambrose, you will
find a similar artificiality of structure, and a similar
elaboration of phraseology. They were delivered under
analogous circumstances. The preacher sat in his official
chair: it was an exceptional thing for him to ascend
the reader's ambo, the modern "pulpit:"2 the audience
crowded in front of him, and frequently interrupted him
with shouts of acclamation. The greater preachers tried
to stem the tide of applause which surged round them :
again and again Chrysostom begs his hearers to be silent:
what he wants is, not their acclamations, but the fruits of
his preaching in their lives.3 There is one passage which
not only illustrates this point, but also affords a singular
analogy to the remonstrance of Epictetus which was
quoted just now :
1 Phot. Biblioth. 172.
2 Sozomen. H. E. 8. 5. Augustine makes a fine point of the analogy
between the church and the lecture-room (schola) : " tanquam vobis
pastores sumus, sed sub illo Pastore vobiscum oves sumus. Tanquam
vobis ex hoc loco doctores sumus sed sub illo Magistro in hac schola
vobiscum condiscipuli sumus :" Enarrat. in Psalm, cxxvi. vol. iv. 1429,
ed. Ben.
3 Adv. Jud. 7. 6, vol. i. 671 ; Cone. vii. adv. eos qui ad lud. circ.
prof. vol. i. 790 ; Horn. ii. ad pop. Antioch. c. 4, vol. ii. 25 ; adv. eos
qui ad Collect, non occur, vol. iii. 157; Horn. liv. in cap. xxvii. Genes.
vol. iv. 523 ; Horn. lvi. in cap. xxix. Genes, vol. iv. 541.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. Ill
" There are many preachers who make long sermons : if they
are well applauded, they are as glad as if they had obtained a
kingdom : if they bring their sermon to an end in silence, their
despondency is worse, I may almost say, than hell. It is this
that ruins churches, that you do not seek to hear sermons that
touch the heart, but sermons that will delight your ears with
their intonation and the structure of their phrases, just as if you
were listening to singers and lute-players. And we preachers
humour your fancies, instead of trying to crush them. We act
like a father who gives a sick child a cake or an ice, or some
thing else that is merely nice to eat — just because he asks for
it ; and takes no pains to give him what is good for him ; and
then when the doctors blame him says, ' I could not bear to hear
my child cry.'  That is what we do when we elaborate beautiful
sentences, fine combinations and harmonies, to please and not to
profit, to be admired and not to instruct, to delight and not to
touch you, to go away with your applause in our ears, and not to
better your conduct. Believe me, I am not speaking at random :
when you applaud me as I speak, I feel at the moment as it is
natural for a man to feel. I will make a clean breast of it. Why
should I not ? I am delighted and overjoyed. And then when
I go home and reflect that the people who have been applauding
me have received no benefit, and indeed that whatever benefit
they might have had has been killed by the applause and praises,
I am sore at heart, and I lament and fall to tears, and I feel as
though I had spoken altogether in vain, and I say to myself,
What is the good of all your labours, seeing that your hearers
don't want to reap any fruit out of all that you say ? And I have
often thought of laying down a rule absolutely prohibiting all
applause, and urging you to listen in silence."1
And there is a passage near the end of Gregory Nazi-
anzen's greatest sermon, in which the human nature of
which Chrysostom speaks bursts forth with striking
force: after the famous peroration in which after bid-
1 S. Chrys. Horn. xxx. in Act. Apost. c. 3, vol. ix. 238.

112 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
ding farewell one by one to the church and congregation
which he loved, to the several companies of his fellow-
workers, and to the multitudes who had thronged to hear
him preach, he turns to the court and his opponents the
Arian courtiers —
" Farewell, princes and palaces, the royal court and household
— whether ye be faithful to the king I know not, ye are nearly
all of you unfaithful to God." (There was evidently a burst of
applause, and he interrupts his peroration with an impromptu
address.) " Yes — clap your hands, shout aloud, exalt your orator
to heaven : your malicious and chattering tongue has ceased : it
will not cease for long : it will fight (though I am absent) with
writing and ink : but just for the moment we are silent." (Then
the peroration is resumed.) " Farewell, 0 great and Christian
city  W1
I will add only one more instance of the way in which
the habits of the sophists flowed into the Christian
churches. Christian preachers, like the sophists, were
sometimes peripatetic; they went from place to place,
delivering their orations and making money by delivering
them. The historians Socrates and Sozomen2 tell an in
structive story of two Syrian bishops, Severianus of Gabala
and Antiochus of Ptolemais (St. Jean d'Acre). They were
both famous for their rhetoric, though Severianus could
not quite get rid of his Syrian accent. Antiochus went
to Constantinople, and stayed there a long time, preach
ing frequently in the churches, and making a good deal
of money thereby. On his return to Syria, Severianus,
hearing about the money, resolved to follow his example :
he waited for some time, exercised his rhetoric, got toge
ther a large stock of sermons, and then went to Constan-
1 Greg. Naz. Orat. xlii.
8 Socrates, HE. 6. 11; Sozomen, HE. 8. 10.

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 113
tinople. He was kindly received by the bishop, and soon
became both a great popular preacher and a favourite at
court. The fate of many preachers and court favourites
overtook him: he excited great jealousy, was accused
of heresy and banished from the city ; and only by the
personal intercession of the Empress Eudoxia was he
received back again into ecclesiastical favour.
Sawfe are 'gome *oj^h^in^iea4ioi]s ¦s»Mi©' influence of
(^gefesHMAsraeiqron^he eaiiljKdflMWibss. It created the
Qngig^am serme*. It added to the functions of church
officers a function which is neither that of the exercise
of discipline, nor of administration of the funds, nor
of taking the lead in public worship, nor of the simple
tradition of received truths, but tha^of- either such an
esa§esi» e*v-tfee«saered mbaafegi as the SopMsts gave of
Homer^ or suoh elabapj^wfegBiaiBses* as ifelRspalso gave
up®H*fee ^iii*l«Mve and. ethawtl sawpecfe' of religion. The
result was more far-reaching than the creation of either
an institution or a function. If you look more closely
into history, you will find that Khwtorie killed" Philosophy.
Philosophy died, because for all but a small minority it
ceased to be real. It passed from the sphere of thought
and conduct to that of exposition and literature. Its
preachers preached, not because they were bursting with
truths which could not help finding expression, but
because they were masters of fine phrases and lived in an
age in which fine phrases had a value. It died, in short,
because it had become sophistry. But sophistry is of no
special age or country. It is indigenous to all soils upon

114 IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
which literature grows. No sooner is any special form of
literature created by the genius of a great writer than there
arises a class of men who cultivate the style of it for the
style's sake. No sooner is any new impulse given either
to philosophy or to religion than there arises a class of
men who copy the form without the substance, and try
to make the echo of the past sound like the voice of the
present. So it has been with Christianity. It came into
the educated world in the simple dress of a Prophet of
Eighteousness. It won that world by the stern reality of
its life, by the subtle bonds of its brotherhood, by its
divine message of consolation and of hope. Around it
thronged the race of eloquent talkers who persuaded it
to change its dress and to assimilate its language to their
own. It seemed thereby to win a speedier and completer
victory. But it purchased conquest at the price of reality.
With that its progress stopped. There has been an ele
ment of sophistry in it ever since ; and so far as in any
age that element has been dominant, so far has the
progress of Christianity been arrested. Its progress is
arrested now, because many of its preachers live in an
unreal world. The truths they set forth are truths of
utterance rather than truths of their lives. But if Chris
tianity is to be again the power that it was in its earliest
ages, it must renounce its costly purchase. A class of
rhetorical chemists would be thought of only to be ridi
culed : a class of rhetorical religionists is only less ano
malous because we are accustomed to it. The hope of
Christianity is, that the class which was artificially
created may ultimately disappear ; and that the sophis-

IV. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 115
tical element in Christian preaching will melt, as a
transient mist, before the preaching of the prophets of
the ages to come, who, like the prophets of the ages that
are long gone by, will speak only "as the Spirit gives
them utterance."

Lecture V.
CHRISTIANITY AND GEEEK PHILOSOPHY.

The power of generalizing and of forming abstract
ideas exists, or at least is exercised, in varying degrees
among different races and at different times. The
peculiar feature of the intellectual history of the Greeks
is the rapidity with which the power was developed,
and the strength of the grasp which it had upon them.
The elaboration of one class of such ideas, those of
form and quantity, led to the formation of a group of
sciences, the mathematical sciences, which hold a per
manent place. The earliest and most typical of these
sciences is geometry. In it, the attention is drawn away
from all the other characteristics of material things, and
fixed upon the single characteristic of their form. The
forms are regarded in themselves. The process of abstrac
tion or analysis reaches its limit in the point, and from
that limit the mind, making a new departure, begins the
process of construction or synthesis. Complex ideas are
formed by the addition of one simple idea to another,
and having been so formed can be precisely defined.
Their constituent elements can be distinctly stated, and a
clear boundary drawn round the whole. They can be
so marked off from other ideas that the idea which one

V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 117
man has formed can be communicated to and represented
in another man's mind. The inferences which, assuming
-certain "axioms" to be true and certain "postulates"
to be granted, are made by one. man, are accepted by
another man or at once disproved. There is no ques
tion of mere probability, nor any halting between two
opinions. The inferences are not only true but certain.
The result is, that there are not two sciences of geo
metry, but one : all who study it are agreed as to both
its definitions and its inferences.
The elaboration of another class of abstract ideas,
those of quality, marched at first by a parallel road. To
a limited extent such a parallel march is possible. The
words which are used to express sensible qualities sug
gest the same ideas to different minds. They are applied
by different minds to the same objects. But the limits
of such an agreement are narrow. When we pass from
the abstract ideas of qualities, or generalizations as to
substances, which can be tested by the senses, to such
ideas as those, for example, of courage or justice,, law
or duty, though the words suggest, on the whole, the
same ideas to one man as to another, not all men would
uniformly apply the same words to the same actions.
The phenomena which suggest such ideas assume a dif
ferent form and colour as they are regarded from different
points of view. They enter into different combinations.
They are not sharply marked out by lines which would
be universally recognized. The attention of different
men is arrested by different features. There is conse
quently no universally recognized definition of them.
Nor is such a definition possible. The ideas themselves

118 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
tend to shade off into their contraries. There is a fringe
of haze round each of them. The result is that assertions
about them vary. There is not one system of philosophy
only ; there are many.
Between these two classes of generalizations and
abstractions, those of quantity and those of quality or
substance, many Greek thinkers do not appear to have
made any clear distinction. Ideas of each class were
regarded as equally capable of being defined ; the canons
of inference which were applicable to the one were con
ceived to be equally applicable to the other: and the
certainty of inference and exactness of demonstration
which were possible in regard to the ideal forms of
geometry, were supposed to be also possible in regard
to the conceptions of metaphysics and ethics.1
The habit of making definitions, and of drawing deduc
tions from them, was fostered by the habit of discussion.
Discussion under the name of dialectic, which implies
1 An indication of this may be seen in the fact that words which
have come down to modern times as technical terms of geometry were
used indifferently in the physical and moral sciences, e.g. theorem
(Oeioprjpa), Philo, Leg. alleg. 3. 27 (i. 104), Betoprjpacri rots irepl Koo-pov
koI tuv p,ep<av avTov : Epict. Diss. 2. 17. 3 ; 3. 9. 2 ; 4. 8. 12, &c, of
the doctrines of moral philosophy : sometimes co-ordinated or inter
changed with 86ypa, e.g. Philo, defort. 3 (ii. 377), 8ia XoyiKw koX
rj&iKtov Kal <pvo-iK(av SqypaTwv Kal Beiaprjp.aT<ov : Epictet. Diss. 4. 1.
137, 139, and as a variant Ench. 52. 1. So definition (opio-pos) is
itself properly applicable to the marking out of the boundaries of
enclosed land. So also drroSei^is was not limited to ideal or " neces
sary "matter, but was used of all explanations of the less by the more
evident; e.g. Musonius, Frag. ap. excerpt, e Joann. Damme, in Stob.
Ed. ii. 751, ed. Gaisf., after denning it, gives as an example a proof
jthat pleasure is not a good.

V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 119
• ttiat.it was but a regulated conversation, had a large
place, not only in the rhetorical and philosophical schools,
but also in ordinary Greek life. It was like a game of
cards. The game, so to speak, was conducted under
strict and recognized rules; but it could not proceed
unless each card had a determined and admitted value.
The definition of terms was its necessary preliminary ;
and dialectic helped to spread the habit of requiring defi
nitions over a wider area and to give it a deeper root.
There was less divergence in the definitions themselves
than there wasjin the propositions that were deduced from
them. That is to say, there was a verbal agreement as to
definitions which was not a real agreement of ideas : the
same words were found on examination to cover different
areas of thought. But whether the difference lay in the
definitions themselves or in the deductions made from
them, there was nothing to determine which of two con
trary or -contradictory propositions was true. There was
no universally recognized standard of appeal, or criterion,
as it was termed. Indeed, the question of the nature of
the criterion was one of the chief questions at issue.
Consequently, assertions about abstract ideas and wide
generalizations could only be regarded as the affirmations
of a personal conviction. The making of such an affirm
ation was expressed by the same phrase which was used
for a resolution of the will — " It seems to me," or " It
seems (good) to me" (Soice! /noi) : the affirmation itself, by
the corresponding substantive, dogma (86yp.a). But just
as the resolutions of the will of a monarch were obeyed
by his subjects, that is, were adopted as resolutions of
the. will of other persons, so the affirmations of a thinker

120 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
might be assented to by those who listened to him, that
is, might become affirmations of other persons. In the
one case as in the other, the same word dogma was
employed.1 It thus came to express (1) a decree, (2) a
doctrine. The latter use tended to predominate. The
word came ordinarily to express an affirmation made by
a philosopher which was accepted as true by those who,
from the fact of so accepting it, became his followers and
formed his school. The acquiescence of a large number
of men in the same affirmation gave to such an affirma
tion a high degree of probability ; but it did not cause
it to lose its original character of a personal conviction,
nor did it afford any guarantee that the coincidence of
expression was also a coincidence of ideas either between
the original thinker and his disciples, or between the
disciples themselves.2
1 6 8k vopos f3acriXeo>s 86yp.a, Dio Chrys. vol. i. p. 46, ed. Dind.
2 The use of the word in Epictetus is especially instructive : SoypaTa
fill a large place in his philosophy. They are the inner judgments of
the mind (KplpaTa V,^X'5S> Diss. 4. 11. 7) in regard to both intellectual
and moral phenomena. They are especially relative to the latter. They
are the convictions upon which men act, the moral maxims which form
the ultimate motives of action and the resolution to act or not act in
a particular case. They are the most personal and inalienable part of
us. See especially, Diss. 1. 11. 33, 35, 38; 17. 26; 29. 11, 12; 2. 1.
21, 32 ; 3. 2. 12 ; 9. 2 ; Ench. 45. Hence drrb 8oyp,dToyv XaXeiv, "to
speak from conviction," is opposed to dwb tw x«tA5v XaXetv, " to speak
with the lip only," Diss. 3. 16. 7. If a man adopts the Soy/ja of
another person, e.g. of a philosopher, so as to make it his own, he is
said, 86ypaTi o-vpiraBrjo-ai, "to feel in unison with the conviction,"
Diss. 1. 3. 1. Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrh. Hypot. 1. 13, distinguishes
two philosophical senses of Soy pa, (1) assent to facts of sensation, to
eiSoKeiv tivi TrpdypaTt,, (2) assent to the inferences of the several
sciences : in either sense it is (a) a strictly personal feeling, and (b) a

V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 121
Within these limits of its original and proper use, and
as expressing a fact of mind, the word has an indis
putable value. But the fact of the personal character
of a dogma soon became lost to sight. Two tendencies
which grew with a parallel growth dominated the world
in place of the recognition of it. It came to be assumed
that certain convictions of certain philosophers were not
simply true in relation to the philosophers themselves,
and to the state of knowledge in their time, but had a
universal validity: subjective and temporary convictions
were thus elevated to the rank of objective and eternal
truths. It came also to be assumed that the processes
of reason so closely followed the order of nature, that a
system of ideas constructed in strict accordance with the
laws of reasoning corresponded exactly with the realities
of things. The unity of such a system reflected, it was
thought, the unity of the world of objective fact. It
followed that the truth or untruth of a given proposition
was thought to be determined by its logical consistency
or inconsistency with the sum of previous inferences.
These tendencies were strongly accentuated by the
decay of original thinking. Philosophy in later Greece
was less thought than literature. It was the exegesis
of received doctrines. Philosophers had become pro
fessors. The question of what was in itself true had
become entangled with the question of what the Master
firm conviction, not a mere vague impression : it was in the latter of
the two senses that the philosophers of research laid it down as their
maxim, pi) SoypaTifav : they did away, not with to. tpaivopeva, but
with assertions about them, ibid. 1. 19, 22 : their attitude in reference
to tci a8i)Xa was simply ovx opitja, " I abstain from giving a definition
of them," ibid. 1. 197, 198.

122 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
had said. The moral duty of adherence to the traditions
of a school was stronger than the moral duty of finding
the truth at all hazards. The literary expression of a
doctrine came to be more important than the doctrine
itself. The differences of expression between one thinkpr
and another were exaggerated. Words became fetishes.
Outside the schools were those who were litterateurs
rather than philosophers, and who fused different eler
ments together into systems which had a greater unity
of literary form than of logical coherence. But these
very facts of the literary character of philosophy^.' and
of the contradictions in the expositions. of it^ served to
spread it over a wider area. They tendedcon the one
hand to bring a literary acquaintance with philosophy
into the sphere of general education, and on the other
hand to produce a propaganda. Sect rivalled sect in
trying to win scholars for its school. The result was
that the ordinary life of later Greece was saturated with
philosophical ideas, and that the discordant theories of
rival schools were blended together in the average mind
into a syncretistic dogmatism.
Against this whole group of tendencies there was
more than one reaction. The tendency to dogmatize
was met by the tendency to doubt.; and the tendency to
doubt flowed in many streams, which can with difficulty
be traced in minute detail, but whose general course
is sufficiently described for the ordinary student in the
Academics of Cicero. In the second and third centuries
of our era there had come to be three main groups of
schools. " Some men," writes Sextus Empiricus,1 " say
1 Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hypot. 1. 3.

V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 123
that they have found the truth ; some say that it is impos
sible for truth to be apprehended ; some still search for
it. The first class consists of those who are specially
designated Dogmatics^ the followers of Aristotle and
Epicurus, the Stoics, and some others : the second class
consists of the followers of Clitomachus and Carneades,
and other Academics: the third class consists of the
Sceptics." They may be distinguished as the philosophy
of assertion, the philosophy of denial, and the philosophy
/of research.1 But the first of these was in an overwhelming
majority. The Dogmatics, especially in the form either
of pure Stoicism or of Stoicism largely infused with
Platonism, were in possession of the field of educated
thought. It is a convincing proof of the completeness
with which that thought was saturated with their methods
and their fundamental conceptions, that those methods
and conceptions are found even among the philosophers
of research who claimed to have wholly disentangled
themselves from them.2 1
The philosophy of assertion, the philosophy of denial, ;i
and the philosophy of research, were a& alike ouMde the
eariittifciarnis of^fihaistianity. In those forms the moral
and spiritual elements were not only supreme but exclu
sive. They reflected the philosophy, not of Greece, but
Ibid. 4, 8oyp,aTiKr], dKaSrjpa'LKrj, o~KetrTiKr).
2 For example, Sextus Empiricus, in spite of his constant formula1,
pvx p/ufo), maintains the necessity of having definable conceptions,
T&v kvvoovpeviov rjpuv Trpayp.aT(i>v Tas ovo-ias eTTivoelv 6(j>eiXop,ev, and
he argues that it is impossible for a man to have an eVvoia of God
because He has no admitted ova-la, Pyrrh. Hypot. 3. 2, 3.

124 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
of Palestine. That philosophy was almost entfreTy'etflM,
It dealt with fes problems, not of being m^m'abskm^;
but of human 4*fe. It was stated for the most part. in
short antithetical sentences, with a symbol or parable to
enforce them. It was a ¦pfeifeeis^fejwsrtP^PtwwM'. It had
no eye for the •fflflsrerter anatomy "Of LlTouglA. Jit-hooU no
system^- fw-tfee* sense ofTSystcnp'waiB-Ttot ~yeT awafee»&d.
It had no taste for verbal distinctions. It was content
with the symmetry of balanced sentences, without attempt
ing to construct a perfect whole. It reflected as in a
mirror, and not unconsciously, the difficulties, . the con
tradictions, the unsolved enigmas of the world of fact.
When this Palestinian philosophy became more self-
conscious than it had been, it remained still within its
own sphere, the enigmas of the moral world were still
its subject-matter, and it became in the Fathers of the
Talmud on the one hand fatalism, and on the other
casuistry. The earliest forms of Christianity were not only out
side the sphere of Greek philosophy, but they also
appealed, "en the one hand, mimilif^'WS^^SSS' ,jwkmlat
philosophy did not Tmfo$ and, on the other hand, 4».-a
standard whJQh^fihjjlja&ffl^feyMdi^-U'flt recog@*B#. " Not
many wise men after the flesh" were called in St. Paul's
time : and more than a century afterwards, ($$t®m sar
castically declared the law of admission to the Christian
communities to be — "Let no educated man enter, no
wise man, no prudent man, for such things we deem
evil ; but whoever is ignorant, whoever is unintelligent,
whoever is uneducated, whoever is simple, let him come

V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 125
and be welcome."1 It proclaimed, moreover, that "the
philosophy of the world was foolishness with God." It
appealed to prophecy and to testimony. "Instead of
logical demonstration, it produced living witnesses of the
words and wonderful doings of Jesus Christ." The
philosophers from the point of view of "worldly educa
tion" made sport of it: Celsus2 declared that the Chris
tian teachers were no better than the priests of Mithra
or of Hekat^, leading men wherever they willed with the
maxims of a blind belief.
\ It is therefore the more remarkable that within a cen
tury and a half after Christianity and philosophy first
came into close contact, the ideas and methods of philo- j
sophy had flowed in such mass into Christianity, and ;
filled so large a place in it, as to have made it no less a
philosophy than a religion.
The question which arises, and which should properly
be discussed before the influences of particular ideas are
traced in particular doctrines, is, how this result is to be
accounted for as a whole. The answer must explain
both how Christianity and philosophy came into contact,
and how when in contact the one exercised upon the
other the influence of a moulding force.
The explanation is to be found in the fact that, in
spite of the apparent and superficial antagonism, between
certain leading ideas of current philosophy and the lead
ing ideas of Christianity there was a special and real
1 Origen, c. Cels. 3. 44 : see also the references given in Keim,
Celsus' wahres Wort, pp. 1 1, 40.
2 Origen, c. Cels. 1. 9.

126 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
kinship. Christianity gave to the problems of philosophy
a new solution which was cognate to the old, and to its
doubts the certainty of a revelation. The kinship of
ideas is admitted, and explanations of it are offered by
both Christian writers and their opponents. "We teach
the same as the Greeks," says Justin Martyr,1 "though
we alone are hated for what we teach." " Some of our
number," says Tertullian,2 "who are versed in ancient
literature, have composed books by means of which it
may be clearly seen that we have embraced nothing new
or monstrous, nothing in which we have not the support
of common and public literature." Elsewhere3 the same
writer founds an argument for the toleration of Chris
tianity on the fact that its opponents maintained it to be
but a kind of philosophy, teaching the very same doc
trines as the philosophers — innocence, justice, endurance,
soberness, and chastity : he claims on that ground the
same liberty for Christians which was enjoyed by philo
sophers. The general recognition of this kinship., .of ideas is
even more conclusively shown by the fact that explana
tions of it were offered on both the one side and the
other. (a) It was argued by some Christian apologists that
the best doctrines of philosophy were due to the inwork-
ing in the world of the same Divine Word who had
become incarnate in Jesus Christ. " The teachings of
Plato," says Justin Martyr,4 " are not alien to those of
Christ, though not in all respects similar. ... Eor all
1 Apol. i. 20. 2 De testim. animce, 1.
8 Apol. 46. « Apol. 2. 13.

V. CHRISTIANIT5T AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 127
the writers (of antiquity) were able to have a dim vision
of realities by means of the indwelling seed of the im
planted Word." It was argued by others that philo
sophers had borrowed or "stolen" their doctrines from
the Scriptures. "From the divine preachings of the
prophets," says Minucius Felix,1 "they imitated the
shadow of half-truths." " What poet or sophist," says
Tertullian,2 " has not drunk at the fountain of the pro
phets? From thence it is, therefore, that philosophers
have quenched the thirst of their minds, so that it is the
very things which they have of ours which bring us into
comparison with them." "They have borrowed from
our books," says Clement of Alexandria,3 "the chief
doctrines they hold, both on faith and knowledge and
science, on hope and love, on repentance and temperance
and the fear of God : " and he goes in detail through
many doctrines, speculative as well as ethical, either to
show that they were borrowed from revelation, or to
uphold the truer thesis that philosophy was no less the
schoolmaster of the Greeks than the Law was of the
Jews to bring them to Christ.
(b) It was argued, on the other hand, by the opponents
of Christianity that it was a mere mimicry of philosophy
or a blurred copy of it. " They weave a web of mis
understandings of the old doctrine," says Celsus,4 "and
sound them forth with a loud trumpet before men, like
hierophants booming round those who are being initiated
in mysteries." Christianity was but a misunderstood
Platonism. Whatever in it was true had been better
1 Octav. 34. 2 Apol. 47.
8 Strom. 2. 1. * Origen, c. Cels. 3. 16.

128 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
expressed before.1 Even the striking and distinctive
saying of the Sermon on the Mount, " Whosoever shall
smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also," was but a coarser and more homely way of saying
what had been extremely well said by Plato's Socrates.2
It was through this kinship of ideas that Christianity
was readily absorbed by some of the higher natures in
the Greek world. The two classes of ideas probably
came into contact in philosophical Judaism. For it is
clear on the one hand that the Jews of the dispersion
had a literature, and on the other hand that that litera
ture was clothing itself in Greek forms and attracting
the attention of the Greek world. Some of that literature
was philosophical. In the Sibylline verses, the poem of
Phocylides, and the letters of Heraclitus, there is a
blending of theology and ethics : in some of the writings
which are ascribed to Philo, but which in reality bridge
the interval between Philo and the Christian Fathers,
there is a blending of theology and metaphysics. None
of them are " very far from the kingdom of God." The
hypothesis that they paved the way for Christian philo
sophy is confirmed by the fact that in the first articulate
expressions of that philosophy precisely those elements
are dominant which were dominant in Jewish philosophy.
Two such elements may specially be mentioned : (1) the
allegorical method of interpretation which was common to
both Jews and Greeks, and by means of which both the
1 Origen, c. Cels. 5. 65; 6. 1, 7, 15, 19 : see also the references in
Keim, p. 77.

2

Ibid. 7. 58. So Minucius Felix, in Keim, p. 157.

V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 129
Gnostics who were without, and the Alexandrians who
were within, the pale of the associated communities, were
able to find their philosophy in the Old Testament as
well as in the New ; (2) the cosmological speculations,
which occupied only a small space in the thoughts of
earlier Greek thinkers, but which were already widening
to a larger circle on the surface of Greek philosophy,
)and which became so prominent in the first Christian
(philosophies as to have thrust aside almost all other
'elements in the current representations of them.
The Christian philosophy which thus rose out of
philosophical Judaism was partly apologetic and partly
speculative. The apologetic part of it arose from the
jnecessity of defence. The educated world tended to
scout Christianity when it was first presented to them, as
an immoral and barbarous atheism. It was necessary to
show that it was neither the one nor the other. The
defence naturally fell into the hands of those Christians,
who were versed in Greek methods ; and they not less
naturally sought for points of agreement rather than of
difference, and presented Christian truths in a Greek
form. The speculative part of it arose from some of its
elements having found an especial affinity with some of
the new developments of Pythagoreanism and Platonism.
Inside the original communities were men who began to
build great edifices of speculation upon the narrow basis
of one or other of the pinnacles of the Christian temple ;
and outside those communities were men who began to
coalesce into communities which had the same moral
aims as the original communities, and which appealed
K

130 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
in the main to the same authorities, but in which the
simpler forms of worship were elaborated into a thauma-
turgic ritual, and the solid facts of Scripture history
evaporated into mist. They were linked on the one
hand with the cults of the Greek mysteries, and on the
other with philosophical idealism. The tendency to
conceive of abstract ideas as substances, with form and
real existence, received in them its extreme development.
Wisdom and vice, silence and desire, were real beings :
they were not, as they had been to earlier thinkers, mere
thin vapours which had floated upwards from the world
of sensible existences, and hung like clouds in an uncer
tain twilight. The real world was indeed not the world
of sensible existences, of thoughts and utterances about
sensible things, but a world in which sensible existences
were the shadows and not the substance, the waves and
not the sea.1
It was natural that those who held to the earlier
forms of Christianity should take alarm. "I am not
unaware," says Clement of Alexandria, in setting forth
the design of his Stromateis,2 " of what is dinned in our
ears by the ignorant timidity of those who tell us that
1 The above slight sketch of some of the leading tendencies which
have been loosely grouped together under the name of Gnosticism has
been left unelaborated, because a fuller account, with the distinctions
which must necessarily be noted, would lead us too far from the main
track of the Lecture : some of the tendencies will re-appear in detail
in subsequent Lectures, and students will no doubt refer to the brilliant
exposition of Gnosticism in Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, i. pp. 186—
226, ed. 2.
2 Strom. 1.1: almost the whole of the first book is valuable as a
vindication of the place of culture in Christianity.

V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 131
we ought to occupy ourselves with the most necessary
matters, those in which, the Faith consists : and that we
should pass by the superfluous matters that lie outside
them, which vex and detain us in vain over points that
contribute nothing to the end in view. There are others
who think that philosophy will prove to have been intro
duced into life from an evil source, at the hands of a
mischievous inventor, for the . ruin of men." " The
simpler-minded," says H^ViftWfo^ "not to say ignorant
and unlearned men, who always form the majority of
believers, are frightened at the Economy" [the philo
sophical explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity].
"These men," says a contemporary writer,2 of some of
the early philosophical schools at Eome, " have fearlessly
perverted the divine Scriptures, and set aside the rule of
the ancient faith, and have not known Christ, seeking
as they do, not what the divine Scriptures say, but what
form of syllogism may be found to support their godless
ness ; and if one advances any express statement of the
divine Scripture, they try to find out whether it can form
a conjunctive or a disjunctive hypothetical. And having
deserted the holy Scriptures of God, they study geometry,
being of the earth and speaking of the earth, and ignor
ing Him who comes from above. Some of them, at
any rate, give their minds to Euclid : some of them arc-
admiring disciples of Aristotle and Theophrastus : as for
Galen, some of them go so far as actually to worship
him." The history of the second century is the history of
the ^mhms^m»mMi^ between these new mystical and
1 Adv. Prax. 3. 2 Quoted by Euseb. H. E. 5. 28. 13.
k2

132 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
philosophical elements of Christianity and its earlier
forms. On the one hand were the majority of the
original communities, holding in the main the conception
of Christianity which probably finds its best contem
porary exposition in the first two books of the Apos
tolical Constitutions, a religion of stern moral practice
and of strict moral discipline, of the simple love of God
and the unelaborated faith in Jesus Christ. On the
other hand were the new communities, and the new
members of the older communities, with their conception
of knowledge side by side with faith, and with their
tendency to speculate side by side with their acceptance
of tradition. The conflict was wj^^ffaJaJaa. In the current
state of educated opinion it would have been as impos
sible for the original communities to ignore the existence
of philosophical elements either in their own body, or in
the new communities which were growing up around
them, as it would be for the Christian churches of our
own day to ignore physical science. Sfae-reswlt of the
conflict was, that the extreme wing of each of the con
tending parties dropped off from the main body. The
old-fashioned Christians, who would admit of no com
promise, and maintained the old usages unchanged, were
gradually detached as Ebionites, or Nazarseans. The old
orthodoxy became a new heresy. In the lists of the
early hand-books they are ranked as the first heretics.
The more philosophical Gnostics also passed one by one
outside the Christian lines. Their ideas gradually lost
their Christian colour. They lived in another, but non-
Christian, form. The true Gnostic, though he repudiates
the name, is Plotinus. The logical development, of the

V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 133
thoughts of Basilides and Justin, of Yalentinus and the
Naassenes, is to be found in Neo-Platonism — that splendid
ision of incomparable and irrecoverable cloudland in
which the sun of Greek philosophy set.

•v

The struggle really ended, as almost all great conflicts
end, in a compromise. There was apparently so com
plete a victory of the original communities and of the
principles which they embodied, that their opponents
seem to vanish from Christian literature and Christian
history. It was in reality a victory in which the victors
were the vanquished. There was so large an absorption
by the original communities of the principles of their
flpponents as to destroy the main reason for a separate
existence. The absorption was less of speculations than k
of the tendency to speculate. The residuum of per- *
manent effect was mainly a certain habit of mind. This
is at once a consequence and a proof of the general argu
ment which has been advanced above, that certain ele
ments of education in philosophy had been so widely
diffused, and in the course of centuries had become so
strongly rooted, as to have caused an instinctive tendency
to throw ideas into a philosophical form, and to test
assertions by philosophical canons. The existence of
such a tendency is shown in the first instance by the
mode in which the earliest " defenders of the faith" met
their opponents ; and the supposition that it was instinc
tive is a legitimate inference from the fact that it was
unconscious. For Tatian,1 though he ridicules Greek.
philosophy and professes to have abandoned it, yet builds
1 Orat. ad Cncc. 2.

134 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
up theories of the Logos, of free-will, and of the nature
of spirit, out of the elements of current philosophical
conceptions. Tertullian, though he asks,1 "What re
semblance is there between a philosopher and a Chris
tian, between a disciple of Greece and a disciple of
heaven?" expresses Christian truths in philosophical
terms, and argues against his opponents — for example,
against Marcion — by methods which might serve as
typical examples of the current methods of controversy
between philosophical schools. And Hippolytus,2 though
he reproves another Christian writer for listening to
Gentile teaching, and so disobeying the injunction, " Go
not into the way of the Gentiles," is himself saturated
with philosophical conceptions and philosophical litera
ture.
[ The answer, in short, to the main question which has
been before us is that Christianity came into a ground
which was already prepared for it. Education was widely
diffused over the Greek world, and among all classes of
the community. It had not merely aroused the habit
of inquiry which is the foundation of philosophy, but
had also taught certain philosophical methods. Certain
elements of the philosophical temper had come into exist
ence on a large scale, penetrating all classes of society
and inwrought into the general intellectual fibre of the
time. They had produced a certain habit of mind-
When, through the kinship of ideas, Christianity had
been absorbed by the educated classes, the habit of mind
1 Apol. 46. * Refut. omn. hares. 5. 18.

V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 135
which had preceded it remained and dominated. It
showed itself mainly in three ways :
1. The first of these was the tendehey tffdefine. The
earliest Christians had been content to believe in God
and to worship Him, without endeavouring to define
precisely the conception of Him which lay beneath their
faith and their worship. They looked up to Him as their
Father in heaven. They thought of Him as one, as
beneficent, and as supreme. But they drew no fence of
words round their idea of Him, and still less did they
attempt to demonstrate by processes of reason that their
idea of Him was true. But there is an anecdote quoted
with approval by Eusebius1 from Ehodon, a controver
sialist of the latter part of the second century, which
furnishes a striking proof of the growing strength at
that time of the philosophical temper. It relates the
main points of a short controversy between Ehodon and
Apelles. Apelles was in some respects in sympathy
with Marcion, and in some respects followed the older
Christian tradition. He refused to be drawn into the
new philosophizing current ; and Ehodon attacked him
for his conservatism. "He was often refuted for his
errors, which indeed made him say that we ought not to
inquire too closely into doctrine ; but that as every one
had believed, so he should remain. Eor he declared that
those who set their hopes on the Crucified One would be
saved, if only they were found in good works. But tho
most uncertain thing of all that he said was what he said
about God. He held no doubt that there is One Prin
ciple, just as we hold too: but when I said to him, ' Tell
1 H. E. 5. 13.

136 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
us how you demonstrate that, or on what grounds you
are able to assert that there is One Principle,'  he
said that he did not know, but that that was his convic
tion. When I thereupon adjured him to tell, the truth, he
swore that he was telling the truth, that he did not know
how there is one unbegotten God, but that nevertheless
so he believed. Then I laughed at him and denounced
him, for that, giving himself out to be a teacher, he did
not know how to prove what he taught."
2. The see6'Bd'»manifestation of the philosophical habit
of mind was the tendency to spjsewl^ey that is, to diftfw
inferences- from defiMfewrats, to weave -the irrfBTWrroes-JHtif
systems, and to t©»tiassertioiis 'By'their ^^redfwlil'SilS'tBfflBy
or inconsistency with those systems. The earliest Chris
tians had but little conception of a system. The incon
sistency of one apparently true statement with another did
not vex their souls. Their beliefs reflected the variety
of the world and of men's thoughts about the world.
It was one of the secrets of the first great successes of
Christianity. There were different and apparently irre
concilable elements in it. It appealed to men of various
mould. It furnished a basis for the construction of
strangely diverse edifices. But the result of the ascen
dency of philosophy was, that in the fourth and fifth
centuries the majority of churches insisted not only
upon a unity of belief in the fundamental facts of Chris
tianity, but also upon a uniformity of speculations in
regard to those facts. The premises of those speculations
were assumed; the conclusions logically followed: the
propositions which were contrary or contradictory to
them were measured, not by the greater or less pro-

V.. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 137
bability of the premises, but by the logical certainty of
the conclusions ; and symmetry became a test of truth.
3. The new habit of mind manifested itself not less
in the importance which came to be attached to it. The|
holding of approved opinions was elevated to a position
at first co-ordinate with, and at last superior to, trust in
God and the effort to live a holy life. There had been
indeed from the first an element of knowledge in the
conception of the means of salvation. The knowledge
/of the facts of the life of Jesus Christ necessarily precedes
faith in him. But under the touch of Greek philosophy,
knowledge had become speculation : whatever obligation
attached to faith in its original sense was conceived to
attach to it in its new sense : the new form of knowledge
was held to be not less necessary than the old.
The Western communities not only took over the
greater part of the inheritance, but also proceeded to
assume in a still greater degree the correspondence of
ideas with realities, and of inferences about ideas with
truths about realities. It added such large groups to
the sum of them, that in the dogmatic theology of Latin
and Teutonic Christendom the content is more Western
than Eastern. But the conception of such a theology
and its underlying assumptions are Greek. They come
from the Greek tendency to attach the same certainty
to metaphysical as to physical ideas. They are in reality
built upon a quicksand. There is no more reason to
suppose that God has revealed metaphysics than that
He has revealed chemistry. The Christian revelation is,
at least primarily, a setting forth of certain facts. It

138 V. CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
does not in itself afford a guarantee of the certainty of
the speculations which are built upon those facts. All
such speculations are dogmas in the original sense of the
word. They are simply personal convictions. To the
statement of one man's convictions other men may assent:
but they can never be quite sure that they understand
its terms in the precise sense in which the original framer
of the statement understood them.
The belief that metaphysical theology is more than
this, is the chief bequest of Greece to religious thought,
and it has been a damnosa hereditas. It has given to
later Christianity that part of it which is doomed to
perish, and which yet, while it lives, holds the key of
the prison-house of many souls.

Lecture VI.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN ETHICS.

It has been common to construct pictures of the state
of morals in the first centuries of the Christian era from
the statements of satirists who, like all satirists, had a
large element of caricature, and from the denunciations
of the Christian apologists, which, like all denunciations,
have a large element of exaggeration. The pictures so
constructed are mosaics of singular vices, and they have
led to the not unnatural impression that those centuries
constituted an era of exceptional wickedness. Ic is no
doubt difficult to gauge the average morality of any age.
It is questionable whether the average morality of civi
lized ages has largely varied : it is possible that if the
satirists of our own time were equally outspoken, the
vices of ancient Eome might be found to have a parallel
in modern London; and it is probable, not on merely
a priori grounds, but from the nature of the evidence
which remains, that there was in ancient Eome, a3 there
is in modern London, a preponderating mass of those
who loved their children and their homes, who were
good neighbours and faithful friends, who conscientiously

140 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
discharged their civil duties, and were in all the current
senses of the word "moral" men.1
It has also been common to frame statements of the
moral philosophy which dominated in those centuries,
entirely from the data afforded by earlier Avriters, and
to account for the existence of nobler elements in con
temporary writers by the hypothesis that Seneca, Epic
tetus, and Marcus Aurelius, had come into contact with
Christian teachers. In the case of Seneca, the belief in
such contact went so far as to induce a writer in an imi
tative age to produce a series of letters which are still
eommonly printed at the end of his works, and which
purport to be a correspondence between him and St. Paul.
It is difficult, no doubt, to prove the negative proposition
that such writers did not come into contact with Chris
tianity ; but a strong presumption against the idea that
such contact, if it existed, influenced to any considerable
extent their ethical principles, is established by the de
monstrable fact that those principles form an integral part
of their whole philosophical system, and that, their system
is in close logical and historical connection with that of
their philosophical predecessors.2
It will be found on a closer examination that the age
in which Christianity grew was in reality an age of moral
1 The evidence for the above statements has not yet been fully
gathered together, and is too long to be given even in outline here :
the statements are in full harmony with the view of the chief modern
writer on the subject, Friedlander, Darstellungen aus der Sitten-
geschichte Roms, see especially Bd. iii. p. 676, 5te aufl.
2 This is sufficiently shown by the fact, which is in other respects
to be regretted, that in most accounts of Stoicism the earlier and later
elements are viewed as constituting a homogeneous whole.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 141
reformation. There was the growth of a higher religious
morality, which believed that God was pleased by moral
action rather than by sacrifice.1 There was the growth
of a belief that life requires amendment.2 There was a
reaction in the popular mind against the vices of the
great centres of population. This is especially seen in
the large multiplication of religious guilds, in which
purity of life was a condition of membership : it pre
pared the minds of men to receive Christian teaching,
and forms not the least important among the causes which
led to the rapid dissemination of that teaching : it affected
the development of Christianity in that the members of
the religious guilds who did so accept Christian teaching,
brought over with them into the Christian communities
many of the practices of their guilds and of the conceptions
which lay beneath them. The philosophical phase of the
reformation began on the confines of Stoicism and Cynic
ism. For Cynicism had revived. It had almost faded into
insignificance after Zeno and Chrysippus had formed its
nobler elements into a new system, and left only its
" dog-bark " 3 and its squalor. But when the philosophical
descendants of Zeno and Chrysippus had become fashion
able litterateurs., and had sunk independence of thought
and practice in a respectability and "worldly conformity"
1 "How am I to eat?" said a man to Epictetus : "So as to please
God," was the reply (Diss. 1. 13)- The idea is further developed in
Porphyry, who says : " God wants nothing (281. 15) : the God who is
evl irao-iv is dvXos ; hence all tvvXov is to Him aKaBaprov, and should
therefore not be offered to Him, not even the spoken word (163. 15).
2 M. Aurelius owed to Eusticus the idea that life required 8i6p9<a<ris
and Bepaixeia (i. 7 and ii. 13).
8 to hXaKTelv, Philostr. 587.

142 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
which the more earnest men felt to be intolerable, Cynic
ism revived, or rather the earlier and better Stoicism
revived, to re-assert the paramount importance of moral
conduct, and to protest against the unnatural alliance
between philosophy and the fashionable world.
It is to this moral reformation within the philosophical
sphere that I wish especially to draw your attention. Its
chief preacher was Epictetus. He was ranked among
the Stoics ; but his portrait of an ideal philosopher is the
portrait of a Cynic.1 In him, whether he be called Stoic
or Cynic, the ethics of the ancient world find at once
their loftiest expression and their most complete realiza
tion : and it will be an advantage, instead of endeavouring
to construct a composite and comprehensive picture from
all the available materials, to limit our view mainly to
what Epictetus says, and, as far as possible, to let his
sermons speak for themselves.
r The reformation affected chiefly two points: (1) the
place of ethics in relation to philosophy and life ; (2) the
contents of ethical teaching.
1. The Stoics of the later Eepublic and of the age
of the Csesars had come to give their chief attention to
logic and literature. The study of ethics was no longer
supreme ; and it had changed its character. Logic, which
in the systems of Zeno and Chrysippus had been only its
servant, was becoming its master : it was both usurping
its place and turning it into casuistry. The study of
literature, of what the great masters of philosophy had
taught, was superseding the moral practice which such
1 The title of Diss. 3. 22, in which the ideal philosopher is described,
is rrepl ltwio-pov.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 143
study was intended to help and foster. The Stoics of
the time could construct ingenious fallacies and compose
elegant moral discourses ; but they were ceasing to regard
the actual "living according to nature" as the main object
\ of their lives. The revival of Cynicism was a re-assertion
of the supremacy of ethics over logic, and of conduct
over literary knowledge. It was at first crude and
repulsive. If the Stoics were "the preachers of the
salon," the Cynics were "the preachers of the street."1
They were the mendicant friars of imperial times. They
were earnest, but they were squalid. The earnestness
was of the essence, the squalor was accidental. The
former was absorbed by Stoicism and gave it a new
impulse : the latter dropped off as an excrescence when
Cynicism was tested by time. Epictetus was not carried
as far as the Cynics were in the reaction against Logic.
The Cynics would have postponed the study of it inde
finitely. Moral reformation is more pressing, they said.2
Epictetus holds to the necessity of the study of Logic
as a prophylactic against the deceitfulness of arguments
and the plausibility of language. But he deprecates the
exaggerated importance which had come to be attached
to it. The students of his day were giving an altogether
disproportionate attention to the weaving of fallacious
arguments and the mere setting of traps to catch men
in their speech. He would restore Logic to its original
subordination. Neither it nor the whole dogmatic phi-
1 H. Schiller, Geschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit, Bd. i. 452.
" Diss. 1. 17. 4, hteiyei pdXXov Bepaireveiv, the interpolated remark
of a student when Epictetus has begun a lecture upon Logic : the addi
tion, Kal to opoia, seer.is to show that the phrase was a customary one.

144 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
losophy of which it was the instrument was of value in
itself. And moreover, whatever might be the place of
such knowledge in an abstract system and in an ideal
world, it was impossible to disregard the actual condi
tions of the world as it is. The state of human nature
is such, that to linger upon the threshold of philosophy
is to induce a moral torpor. The student who aims at
shaping his reason into harmony with nature has to
begin, not with unformed and plastic material, which he
can fashion to his will by systematic rules of art, but
with his nature as it is shaped already, almost beyond
possibility of unshaping, by pernicious habits, and beguil
ing associations of ideas, and false opinions about good
and evil. While you are teaching him logic and physics,
the very evils which it is his object to remedy will be
gathering fresh strength. The old familiar names of
"good" and "evil," with all the false ideas which they
suggest, will be giving birth at every moment to mistaken
judgments and wrong actions, to all the false pleasures
and false pains which it is the very purpose of philosophy
to destroy. He must begin, as he must end, with practice.
He must accept precepts and act upon them before he
learns the theory of them. His progress in philosophy
must be measured by his progress, not in knowledge,
but in moral conduct.
This view, which Epictetus preaches again and again
with passionate fervour, will be best stated in his own
words : 1
"A man who is making progress, having learnt from the phi
losophers that desire has good things for its object and undesire
1 Diss. 1. 4.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 145
evil things, — having learnt moreover that in no other way can
contentment and dispassionateness come to a man than by his
never failing of the object of his desire and never encountering the
object of undesire, — banishes the one altogether, or at least post
pones it, while he allows the other to act only in regard to those
things which are within the province of the will. For he knows
that if he strives not to have things that are without the province
of the will, he will some time or other encounter some such
things and so be unhappy. But if what moral perfection pro
fesses is to cause happiness and dispassionateness and peace of
mind, then of course progress towards moral perfection is pro
gress towards each one of the things which moral perfection
professes to secure. For in all cases progress is the approaching
to that to which perfection finally brings us.
" How is it, then, that while we admit this to be the definition
of moral perfection, we seek and show off progress in other
things ? What is the effect of moral perfection 1
"'Peace of mind?'
"Who then is making progress towards it ? He who has read
many treatises of Chrysippus ? Surely moral perfection does
not consist in this — in understanding Chrysippus: if it does,
then confessedly progress towards moral perfection is nothing
else than understanding a good deal of Chrysippus. But as it
is, while we admit that moral perfection effects one thing, we
make progress — the approximation to perfection — effect another.
" ' This man,' some one tells us, ' can now read Chrysippus even
by himself.'
'"You are most assuredly making splendid progress, my
friend,' he tells him.
" Progress indeed ! why do you make game of him ? Why do
you lead him astray from the consciousness of his misfortunes ?
Will you not show him what the effect of moral perfection is,
that he may learn where to look for progress towards it ?
"Look for progress, my poor friend, in the direction of the
effect which you have to produce. And what is the effect which
you have to produce ? Uever to be disappointed of the object
of your desire, and never to encounter the object of your unde-
L

146 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
sire : never to miss the mark in your endeavours to do and not
to do : never to be deceived in your assent and suspension of
assent. The first of these is the primary and most necessary
point : for if it is with trembling and reluctance that you seek
to avoid falling into evil, how can you be said to be making
progress ?
" It is in these respects, then, that I ask you to show me your
progress. If I were to say to an athlete, ' Show me your muscles,
and he were to say, ' See here are my dumb-bells,' I should reply,
' Begone with your dumb-bells ! What I want to see is, not them,
but their effect.' (And yet that is just what you do :) ' Take the
treatise On Effort' (you say), ' and examine me in it.' Slave ! that
is not what I want to know ; but rather how you endeavour to
do or not to do — how you desire to have and not to have —
how you form your plans and purposes and preparations for
action — whether you do all this in harmony with nature or not.
If you do so in accordance with nature, show me that you do so,
and I will say that you are making progress ; but if not, begone,
and do not merely interpret books, but write similar ones your
self besides. And what will you gain by it ? Don't you know
that the whole book costs five shillings, and do you think the man
who interprets the book is worth more than the book itself costs ?
"Never, then, look for the effect (of philosophy) in one place,
and progress towards that effect in another.
" Where, then, is progress to be looked for 1 If any one of you,.
giving up his allegiance to things outside him, has devoted him
self entirely to his will — to cultivating and elaborating it so as
to make it at last in harmony with nature, lofty, free, unthwarted,
unhindered, conscientious, self-respectful : if he has learned that
one who longs for or shuns what is not in his power can neither
be conscientious nor free, but must be carried along with the
changes and gusts of things — must be at the mercy of those
who can produce or prevent them : if, moreover, from the moment
when he rises in the morning he keeps watch and guard over
these qualities of his soul— bathes like a man of honour, eats
like a man who respects himself— through all the varying inci
dents of each successive hour working out his one great purpose,

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 147
as a runner makes all things help his running, and a singing-
master his teaching: — this man is making progress in very
truth — this man is one who has not left home in vain.
"But if, on the other hand, he is wholly bent upon and labours
at what is found in books, and has left home with a view to
acquiring that, I tell him to go home again at once, and not
neglect whatever business he may have there : for the object
which has brought him away from home is a worthless one.
This only (is worth anything), to study to banish from one's life
sorrows and lamentations and ' Alas !' and ' Wretched me !' and
misfortune and failure — and to learn what death really is, and
exile and imprisonment and the hemlock-draught, so as to be
able to say in the prison, ' My dear Crito, if so it please the gods,
so let it be.' "
This new or revived conception of philosophy as the
science of human conduct, as having for its purpose the
actual reformation of mankind, had already led to the
view that in the present state of human nature the study
and practice of it required special kinds of effort. It
was not only the science but also the art of life.1 It
formed, as such, no exception to the rule that all arts
require systematic and habitual training. Just as the
training of the muscles which is necessary to perfect
bodily development is effected by giving them one by
one an artificial and for the time an exaggerated exercise,
so the training of the moral powers was effected, not by
reading the rules and committing them to memory, but
by giving them a similarly artificial and exaggerated
exercise. A kind of moral gymnastic was necessary. The
aim of it was to bring the passions under the control of
reason, and to bring the will into harmony with the will
of God. 3 Sext, Emp. iii. 239.
l2

148 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
(1) This special discipline of life was designated by
the term which was in use for bodily training, askesis
(ao-ioio-is).1 It is frequently used in this relation in Philo.
He distinguishes three elements in the process of attain
ing goodness — nature, learning, discipline.2 He distin
guishes those who discipline themselves in wisdom by
means of actual works, from those who have only a
literary and intellectual knowledge of it.3 He holds
that the greatest and most numerous blessings that a
man can have come from the gymnastic of moral efforts.4
Its elements are "reading, meditation, reformation, the
memory of noble ideals, self-restraint, the active practice
of duties:"5 in another passage he adds to these prayer,
and the recognition of the indifference of things that are
indifferent.6 In the second century, when the idea of
moral reformation had taken a stronger hold, this moral
discipline was evidently carried out under systematic
rules. It was not left to a student's option. He must
undergo hardships, drinking water rather than wine,
sleeping on the ground rather than on a bed; and
1 The Stoics defined wisdom as Beimv re Kal dvBptaTrlvtnv emo-Tr)pr)v,
and philosophy as do-Kijo-iv eTriTrjSelov Teyy-qs, Plutarch (Aetius), plac.
phil. 1. 2; Galen, Hist. Phil. 5; Diels, Doxogr. Gr. pp. 273, 602.
2 De Abraham. 11 (ii. 9); de Joseph. 1 (ii. 41); de praem. et poen.
8, 11 (ii. 416, 418). Philo is quoted because his writings are in some
respects as faithful a photograph of current scholastic methods as those
of Epictetus. It is also possible that some of the writings that stand
under Philo's name belong to the same period.
8 Quod det. potior. 12 (i. 198, 199) : so de congr. erud. cans. 13
(i. 529) j de mut. nom. 13 (i. 591).
4 De congr. erud. caus. 28 (i. 542).
5 Leg. alleg. 3. 6 (i. 91).
* Quis rer. div. heres. 51 (i. 509).

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 149
sometimes even subjecting himself to austerities, being
scourged and bound with chains. There was sometimes
n cstentation of endurance. Marcus Aurelius says that
he owed it to Eusticus that he did not show off with a
striking display either his acts of benevolence or his
moral exercises.1 " If you drink water," says Epictetus
in his Student's Manual,2 " don't take every opportunity
of saying, I drink water  And if you resolve to
exercise yourself in toil and hardship, do it for yourself
alone, and not for the world outside. Don't embrace
statues (in public, to cool yourself); but if ever your
thirst become extreme, fill your mouth with cold water
and put it out again — and tell no one." Epictetus him
self preferred that men should be disciplined, not .by
bodily hardships, but by the voluntary repression of
desire. The true " ascetic " is he who disciplines himself
against all the suggestions of evil desire : 3 "an object of
desire comes into sight : wait, poor soul ; do not straight
way be carried off your feet by it : consider, the contest
is great, the task is divine ; it is for kingship, for free
dom, for calm, for undisturbedness. Think of God : call
Him to be your helper and to stand by your side, as
sailors call upon Castor and Pollux in a storm : for yours
is a storm, the greatest of all storms, the storm of strong
suggestions that sweep reason away." In a similar way
Lucian's friend Nigrinus condemns those who endeavour
to fashion young men to virtue by great bodily hardships
1 M. Aurel. 1. 7.
2 Erichir. 47 : cf. Diss. 3. 14. 4. In Diss. 3. 12. 17, part of the
above is given as a quotation from Apollonius of Tyana.
3 Diss. 2. 18. 27 : cf. 3. 2. 1 ; 3. 12. 1 ; 4. 1. 81.

150 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
rather than by a mingled discipline of body and mind :
and Lucian himself says that he knew of some who had
died under the excessive strain.1
This moral gymnastic, it was thought, was often best
practised away from a man's old associations. Conse
quently some philosophers adAdsed their students to leave
home and study elsewhere. They went into "retreat,"
either in another city or in solitude. Against this also
there was a reaction. In a forcible oration on the subject,
Dio Chrysostom argues, as a modern Protestant might
argue, against the monastic system. 2 " Ccelum non
animum mutant," he says, in effect, when they go from
city to city. Everywhere a man will find the same
hindrances both within and without : he will be only like
a sick man changing from one bed to another. The true
discipline is to live in a crowd and not heed its noise, to
train the soul to follow reason without swerving, and not
to " retreat " from that which seems to be the immediate
duty before us.
The extent to which moral discipline and the system
of "retreats" went on is uncertain, because they soon
blended, as we shall see, with Christianity, and flowed
with it in a single stream.
(2) But out of the ideas which they expressed, and the
ideals which they held forth, there grew up a class of men
which has never since died out, who devoted themselves
"both by their preaching and living" to the moral re
formation of mankind. Individual philosophers had had
imitators, and Pythagoras had founded an ascetic school,
1 Nigrin. 27.
2 Orat. xx. vol. i. pp. 288 sqq. (Dind.), Trepl 'AvaXa>prjo-etos.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 151
but neither the one nor the other had filled a large place
in contemporary society. With the revived conception
of philosophy as necessarily involving practice, it was
necessary that those who professed philosophy should be
marked out from the perverted and degenerate world
around them, in their outer as well as in their inner life.
" The life of one who practises philosophy," says Dio
Chrysostom, " is different from that of the mass of men :
the very dress of such a one is different from that of
ordinary men, and his bed and exercise and baths and all
the rest of his living. A man who in none of these
respects differs from the rest must be put down as one of
them, though he declare and profess that he is a philo
sopher before all Athens or Megara or in the presence of
the Lacedaemonian kings." 1
The distinction was marked in two chief ways :
(1) A philosopher let his beard grow, like the old
Spartans. It was a protest against the elaborate atten
tion to the person which marked the fashionable society
of the time.
(2) A philosopher wore a coarse blanket, usually as his
only dress. It was at once a protest against the preva
lent luxury in dress and the badge of his profession.
" Whenever," says Dio Chrysostom, "people see one
in a philosopher's dress, they consider that he is thus
equipped not as a sailor or a shepherd, but with a view
to men, to warn them and rebuke them, and to give not
one of them any whit of flattery nor to spare any one of
them, but, on the contrary, to reform them as far as he
* Vol. ii. p. 240.

152 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. .
possibly can by talking to them and to show them who
they are."1
The frequency with which this new class of moral
reformers is mentioned in the literature of the time shows
the large place which it filled.
2. The moral reformation affected the contents of
ethical teaching chiefly by raising them from the sphere
of moral philosophy to that of religion. In Epictetus there
are two planes of ethical teaching. The one is that of
orthodox and traditional Stoicism : in the other, Stoicism
is transformed by the help of religious conceptions, and
the forces which led to the practice of it receive the
enormous impulse which comes from the religious emo
tions. The one is summed up in the maxim, Follow
Nature ; the other in the maxim, Follow God.
On the lower plane the purpose of philosophy is stated
in various ways, each of which expresses the same fact.
It is the bringing of the will into harmony with nature^
It consists in making the " dealing with ideas" what it
should be, that is, in dealing with them according to
nature.2 It is the thorough study of the conceptions of
good and evil, and the right application of them to par
ticular objects.3 It is the endeavour to make the will
1 Vol. ii. p. 246. 2 Ench. 4, 13, 30.
3 The yjprjtris <pavTao-i!nv is an important element in the philosophy
of Epictetus. Every object that is presented to the mind by either the
senses or imagination tends to range itself in the ranks of either good
or evil, and thereby to call forth desire or undesire : in most men this
association of particular objects with the ideas of good or evil, and the
consequent stirring of desire, is unconscious, being the result of educa
tion and habit : it is the task of the philosopher to learn to attach tha

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 153
unthwarted in its action,1 to take sorrow and disappoint
ment out of a man's life,2 and to change its disturbed
torrent into a calm and steady stream. The result of the
practice of philosophy is happiness.3 The means of
attaining that result are marked out by the constitution
of human nature itself and the circumstances which
surround it. That nature manifests itself in two forms,
desires to have or not to have, efforts to do or not to do.*
The one is stimulated by the presentation to the mind of
an object which is judged to be "good," the other by
that of one which is judged to be " fitting." The one
mainly concerns the individual man in himself, the other
concerns him in his relations with other men. The
" state according to nature" of desire is that in which it
never fails of gratification, the corresponding state of
effort is that in which it never fails of its mark. Both the
one and the other are determined by landmarks which
nature itself has set in the circumstances that surround
us. The natural limits of desire are those things that
idea of good to what is really good, so that desire shall never go forth
to what is either undesirable or unattainable : this is the " right dealing
with ideas." Diss. 1. 28. 11 ; 1. 30. 4; 2. 1. 4 ; 2. 8. 4; 2. 19. 32 ;
3.21. 23 j 3. 22. 20, 103.
1 e(j>app.oyr) tojv TrpoXr)\peii)v tois IttI p.epovs, Diss. 1. 2. 6; 1. 22. 2, 1;
2. 11. 4, 7; 2. 17. 9, 12, 16; 4. 1. 41, 44 : TrpoXrj^eis are the ideas
formed in the mind by association and blending.
2 Ding. 1. 1. 31 ; 1. 4. 18 j 1. 17. 21 ; and elsewhere.
3 Diss. 1. 4. 23.
4 The distinction between (1) opegis, ckkXio-ls, the desire to have or
not to have, and (2) bppq, dcpopp-r), the effort to do or not to do, is of
some importance in the history of psychology. It probably runs back
to the Platonic distinction between to emBvprjTiKbv p.epos and to
Ovpoules pipos.

154 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
are in our power : the direction of effort is determined by
our natural relations.
Eor example : 1
" Bear in mind that you are a son. What is involved in being
a son ? To consider all that he has to be his father's property,
to obey him in all things, never to disparage him to any one,
never "to say or do anything to harm him, to stand out of his way
and give place to him in all things, to help him by all means in
his power.
" Next remember that you are also a brother : the doing of
what is fitting in this capacity involves giving way to him,
yielding to his persuasion, speaking well of him, never setting
up a rival claim to him in those things that are beyond the
control of the will, but gladly letting them go that you may have
the advantage in those things which the will controls.
" Next, if you are a senator of any city, remember that you are
a senator : if a youth, that you are a youth : if an old man, that
you are an old man : if a father, that you are a father. For in
each of these cases the consideration of the name you bear will
suggest to you what is fitting to be done in relation to it."
This view of right moral conduct as being determined
by the natural relations in which one man stands to
another, and as constituting what is Fitting in regard
to those relations, had overspread the Eoman world.
But in that world the philosophical theory which lay
behind the conception of the Fitting was less prominent
than the conception itself, and two other terms, both of
which were natural and familiar to the Eoman mind,
came into use to express it. The one was borrowed from
the idea of the functions which men have to discharge in
the organization of civil government, the other from the
idea of a debt. The former of these, " officium," has not

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 155
passed in this sense outside the Latin language : the
latter, " debitum," is familiar to us under its English form
"duty." On the higher plane of his teaching Epictetus expresses
moral philosophy in terms of theology. Human life begins
and ends in God. Moral conduct is a sublime religion.
I will ask you to listen to a short cento of passages, strung
loosely together, in which his teaching is expressed : —
"'We also are His offspring.' Every one of us may call him
self a son of God.1 Just as our bodies are linked to the material
universe,2 subject while we live to the same forces, resolved when
we die into the same elements,3 so by virtue of reason our souls
are linked to and continuous with Him, being in reality parts
and offshoots of Him.4 There is no movement of which He is
not conscious, because we and He are part of one birth and
growth ;5 to Him ' all hearts are open, all desires known ;'6 as we
walk or talk or eat, He Himself is within us, so that we are His
shrines, living temples and incarnations of Him.7 By virtue of
this communion with Him we are in the first rank of created
things :8 we and He together form the greatest and chiefest and
most comprehensive of all organizations.9
"If we once realize this kinship, no mean or unworthy
thought of ourselves can enter our souls.10 The sense of it forms
a rule and standard for our lives. If God be faithful, we also
must be faithful : if God be beneficent, we also must be benefi
cent. If God be highminded, we also must be highminded, doing
and saying whatever we do and say in imitation of and union
with Him.11
"Why did He make us?
"He made us, first of all, to complete His conception of the
universe : He had need for such completion of some beings who
1 1. 9. 6, 13. 2 1. 14. 6. 3 3. 13. 15.
4 1. 14. 6; 1. 17. 27; 2. 8. 11. 5 1. 14- 6.
6 2. 14. 11. 7 2.8.12—14. s 1.9. 5; 2. 8. 11.
« 1. 9. 4. 10 1. 3. 1. " 2. 14. 13.

156 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
should be intelligent.1 He made us, secondly, to behold and
understand and interpret His administration of the universe : to
be His witnesses and ministers.2 He made us, thirdly, to be
happy in ourselves : like a true Father and Guardian, he has
placed good and evil in those things which are within our own
power.3 What He says to each one of us is, ' If thou wilt have
any good, take it from within thyself.'4 To this end He has given
us freedom of will ; there is no power in heaven or earth that can
bar our freedom.5 We cry out in our sorrow, '0 Lord God,
grant that I may not feel sorrow ;' and all the time He has given
us the means of not feeling it.6 He has given us the power of
bearing and turning to account whatever happens, the spirit of
manliness and fortitude and highmindedness, so that the greater
the difficulty, the greater the opportunity of adorning our
character by meeting it. If, for example, fever comes, it brings
from Him this message, ' Give me a proof that your moral train
ing has been real.' There is a time for learning, and a time for
practising what we have learnt : in the lecture-room we learn :
and then God brings us to the difficulties of real life and says to
us, ' It is time now for the real contest.' Life is in reality an
Olympic festival : we are God's athletes, to whom He has given
an opportunity of showing of what stuff we are made.7
" What is our duty to Him 1
"It is simply to follow Him :8 to be of one mind with Him:9
to acquiesce in His administration :10 to accept what His bounty
gives, to resign ourselves to the absence of what He withholds.11
The only thought of a good man is, remembering who he is, and
1 1. 6. 13 : cf. 1. 29. 29.
2 1. 9. 4; 1. 17. 15; 1. 29. 46, 56; 2. 16. 33; 4. 7. 7.
3 3. 24. 2, 3. * 3. 24. 3.
6 4. 1. 82, 90, 100. e 2. 16. 13.
7 1. 24. 1, 2; 1. 29. 33, 36, 46; 3. 10. 7; 4. 4. 32.
8 i. 12. 5, 8; 1. 20. 15.
9 opoyvwpoveiv tu> Bey, 2. 16. 42; 2. 19. 26.
10 eva/Ofo-mi/ t# Beta Sioi/ojo-ei, 1. 12. 8; 2. 23. 29, 42.
11 4. 1. 90, 98.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 157
whence he came, and to Whom he owes his being, to fill the place
which God has assigned to him,1 to will things to be as they are,
and to say what Socrates used to say, ' If this be God's will, so be
it.'2 Submissiou must be thy law : thou must dare to lift up
your eyes to God and say, 'Employ me henceforth for what
service Thou wilt : I am of one mind with Thee : I am Thine : I
ask not that Thou shouldest keep from me one thing of all that
Thou hast decreed for me.'3
' Lead Thou me, God, and Thou, 0 Fate,
Thy appointment I await :
Only lead me, I shall go
With no flagging steps nor slow :
EVen though I degenerate be,
And consent reluctantly,
None the less I follow Thee.'4
" We can only do this when we keep our eyes fixed on Him,
joined in close communion with Him, absolutely consecrated to
His commandments. If we will not do it, we suffer loss. There
are penalties imposed, not by a vindictive tyranny, but by a self-
acting law. If we will not take what He gives under the
conditions under which He gives it, we reap the fruit of wretched
ness and sorrow, of jealousy and fear, of thwarted effort and
unsatisfied desire.5
" Above all, we must bide His time. He has given to every
one of us a post to keep in the battle of life, and we must not
leave it until He bids us.6 His bidding is indicated by circum
stances. When He does not give us what our bodies need, when
He sends us where life according to nature is impossible, He, the
Supreme Captain, is sounding the bugle for retreat,7 He, the
Master of the Great Household, is opening the door and saying
to us, 'Come.'8 And when He does so, instead of bewailing your
misfortunes, obey and follow : come forth, not murmuring, but
1 3. 24. 95. 2 1. 29. 18; 4. 4. 21. 3 2. 16. 42.
4 Enchir. 52 : Diss. 4. 1. 131 ; 4. 4. 34 : a quotation from Cleanthcs.
6 2. 16. 46; 3. 11. 1; 3. 24. 42; 4. 4. 32.
* 1. 9. 16. 7 1. 29. 29. s 2. 13. 14.

158 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
as God's servant who has finished His work, conscious that He
has no more present need of you.1
" This, therefore, should take the place of every other pleasure,
the consciousness of obeying God. Think what it is to be able
to say, 'What others preach, I am doing : their praise of virtue is a
praise of me : God has sent me into the world to be His soldier and
witness, to tell men that their sorrows and fears are vain, that to
a good man no evil can happen whether he live or die. He
sends me at one time here, at another time there : He disciplines
me by poverty and by prison, that I may be the better witness
to mankind. With such a ministry committed to me, can I any
longer care in what place I am, or who my companions are, or
what they say about me : nay, rather, does not my whole nature
strain after God, His laws and His commandments ?' "2
Between the current ethics of the Greek world and the
ethics of the earliest forms of Christianity were many
; joints both of difference and of contact.
The main point of difference was that Christianity
rested morality on a divine command. It took over the
undamental idea of the Jewish theocracy.3 Its ultimate
ppeal was not to the reasonableness of the moral law in
itself, but to the fact that God had enacted it. Greek
morality, on the contrary, was " independent." The idea
ithat the moral laws are laws of God is, no doubt, found
in the Stoics ; but they are so in another than either the
j Jewish or the Christian sense : they are laws of God, not
as being expressions of His personal will, but as being
laws of nature, part of the whole constitution of the
world. 1 3. 24. 97; cf. 3. 5. 8-10; 4. 10. 14 sqq. 2 3. 24. 110-114.
3 Katvos vopos, Bam. 2. 6, and note, in Gebhardt and Harnack's
edition.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 159
Consequent upon the conception of the moral law
as a positive enactment of God, the breach of moral
law was conceived as sin. Into the early Christian
conception of sin several elements entered. It was
probably not in the popular mind what it was in the
mind of St. Paul, still less what it became in the mind
of St. Augustine. But one element was constant. It
was a trespass against God. As such, it was on the one
hand something for which God must be appeased, and
on the other hand something which He could forgive. To
the Stoics it was shortcoming, failure, and loss : the chief
sufferer was the man himself : amendment was possible
for the future, but there was no forgiveness for the past.
Beyond these and other points of difference there was
a wide area of agreement. The former became accen
tuated as time went on : it was by virtue of the latter
that in the earliest ages the minds of many persons had
been predisposed to accept Christianity; and that, having
accepted it, they tended to fuse some elements of the new
teaching with some elements of the old. The agreement
is most conspicuous in those respects which were the chief
aims of the contemporary moral reformation ; and above
all in the importance which was attached to moral con
duct. This importance was overshadowed in the later
Christian communities by the importance which came to
be attached to doctrine : its existence in the earliest
communities is shown by two classes of proofs.
1. The first of these proofs is the place which moral
conduct holds in the earliest Christian writers. The docu
ments which deal with the Christian life are almost wholly
moral. They enforce the ancient code of the Ten Words.

1G0 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
They raise those Ten Words from being the lowest and
most necessary level of a legal code, to being the expres
sion of the highest moral ideal, expanding and amplifymg
them so as to make them embrace thoughts and desires
as well as words and actions. The most interesting of
such documents is that which is known as the "Two
Ways."1 It has recently acquired a fresh significance
by having been found as part of the Teaching of the
Apostles. It is there prefixed to the regulations for
ceremonial and discipline which constitute the new part
of that work. It proves to be a manual of instruction to
be taught to those who were to be admitted as members
of a Christian community. It may thus be considered to
express the current ideal of Christian practice. In the
" Way of Life" which it sets forth, doctrine has no place.
It is summed up in the two commandments: " First, thou
shalt love God who made thee ; secondly, thy neighbour
as thyself: whatsoever things thou wouldest not have
done to thyself, do not thou to another."2 These com
mandments are amplified in the spirit of the Sermon on
the Mount. "Thou shalt not forswear thyself: thou
shalt not bear false witness: thou shalt not speak evil:
thou shalt not bear malice : thou shalt not be double-
minded nor double-tongued, for double- tonguedness is a
snare of death. Thy speech shall not be false or hollow,
but filled to the full with deed. Thou shalt not be covet
ous, nor rapacious, nor a hypocrite, nor evilly disposed,
nor haughty : thou shalt not take mischievous counsel
1 See especially Harnack, die Apostellehre und die Jiidischen Beiden
Wege, Leipzig, 1886.
2 Teaching of the Apostles, 1. 1.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 161
against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not hate any man,
but some thou shalt rebuke, and for some thou shalt pray,
and some thou shalt love more than thine own soul.1 . . .
My child, be not a murmurer, for murmuring is on the
path to blasphemy : nor self-willed nor evil-minded, for
from all these things blasphemies are born. But be thou
meek, for the meek shall inherit the earth: be long-suffer
ing, and pitiful, and guileless, and quiet, and kind, and
trembling continually at the words which thou hast heard.2
.... Thou shalt not hesitate to give, nor in giving shalt
thou murmur ; for thou shalt know who is the good pay
master of what thou hast earned. Thon ' shalt not turn
away him that needeth, but thou shalt share all things
with thy brother and shalt not say that they are thine
own ; for if ye be fellow-sharers in that which is immortal,
how much more in mortal things."3
Another such document is the first book of the collec
tion known as the Apostolical Constitutions : it begins at
once with an exhortation to morality.
"Listen to holy teaching, ye who lay hold on His
promise, in accordance with the command of the Saviour,
in harmony with his glorious utterances. Take heed,
ye sons of God, to do all things so as to be obedient
to God and to be well-pleasing in all things to the Lord
our God. For if any one follow after wickedness and
do things contrary to the will of God, such a one will
be counted as a nation that transgresses against God.
1 Teaching of the Apostles, 2. 2—7. 2 Itid. 3. 6—8.
3 Ibid. 4. 7, 8. M

162 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
Abstain then from all covetousness and unrighteous'*
ness."1 i 2. The second proof is afforded by the place which
discipline held in contemporary Christian life. The
Christians were drawn together into communities. Iso
lation was discouraged and soon passed away. To be a
/Christian was to be a member of a community. The
basis of the community was not only a common belief,.
but also a common practice. It was the task of the
community as an organization to keep itself pure. The
offences against which it had to guard were not only the
open crimes which fell within the cognizance of public
law, but also and more especially sins of moral Conduct
and of the inner life. The qualifications which in later
times were the ideal standard for church officers, were
also in the earliest times the ideal standard for ordi
nary members. " If any man who has sinned sees the
bishop and the deacons free from fault, and the flock
abiding pure, first of all he will not venture to enter
into the assembly of God, being smitten by his own
conscience: but if, secondly, setting lightly by his sin
he should venture to enter, he will forthwith be taken to
task .... and either be punished, or being admonished
by the pastor will be drawn to repentance. For looking
round upon the assembly one by one, and finding no
blemish either in the bishop or in the ranks of the people
1 Const. Apost. 1. 1, p. 1, ed. Lagarde. This may be supplemented
by the conception of Christianity as a new law in Barnabas ii. 6,
Justin passim, Clem. Alex. E. T. i. 97, 120, 470 : see Thomasius,
Dogmengesch. i. 110 sqq.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 163
under him, with shame and many tears he will go out
in peace, pricked in heart, and the flock will have been
cleansed, and he will cry with tears to God and will
repent of his sin, and will have hope : and the whole
flock beholding his tears will be admonished that he who
has sinned and repented is not lost."1 In other cases
expulsion was a solemn and formal act : the sinful
member was cast into outer darkness : re-admission was
accompanied with the same rites as the original admis
sion. In other words, the earliest communities endea
voured, both in the theory which they embodied in their
manuals of Christian life, and in the practice which they
enforced by discipline, to realize what has since been
known as the Puritan ideal. Each one of them was a
community of saints. " Passing their days upon earth,
they were in reality citizens of heaven."2 The earthly
community reflected in all but its glory and its ever-
lastingness the life of the "new Jerusalem." Its bishop
was the visible representative of Jesus Christ himself
sitting on the throne of heaven, with the white-robed
elders round him : its members were the " elect," the
"holy ones," the "saved." "Without were the dogs,
and the sorcerers, and the murderers, and the idolators,
and every one that loveth and maketh a lie :" within
were "they which were written in the Lamb's book of
life." To be a member of the community was to be in
reality, and not merely in conception, a child of God. and
heir of everlasting salvation : to be excluded from the
community was to pass again into the outer darkness,
the realm of Satan and eternal death.
1 Const. Apost. 2. 11, p. 22. 2 Ep. ad Diogn. 5.
M2

164 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
Over these earliest communities and the theory which
they embodied there passed, in the last half of the second
century and the first half of the third, an enormous
change. The processes of the change and its immediate
causes are obscure. The interests of contemporary writers
are so absorbed with the struggles for soundness of doc
trine, as to leave but little room for a record of the
struggles for purity of life. In the last stages of those
struggles, the party which endeavoured to preserve the
ancient ideal was treated as schismatical. The aggregate
of visible communities was no longer identical with the
number of those who should be saved. The dominant
party framed a new theory of the Church as a corpus
permixtum, and found support for it in the Gospels them
selves. Morality became subordinated to belief in Chris
tianity by the same inevitable drift by which practice
had been superseded by theory in Stoicism.
In both the production of this change and its further
developments Greece played an important part. The
net result of the active forces which it brought to bear
upon Christianity was, that the attention of a majority
of Christian men was turned to the intellectual as dis
tinguished from the moral element in Christian life. And
when the change was effected, it operated in two further
ways, which have survived in large and varied forms to
the present day.
1. The idea of moral reformation had from the first
seized different men with a varying tenacity of grasp.1
There were some men who had a higher moral ideal than
1 Side by side with the average ethics were the Pauline ethics, which
had found a certain lodgment in some.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 165
others : there were some whose natures were stronger :
there were some to whom moral life was not the perfec
tion of human citizenship, but the struggle of the spirit
to disentangle itself from its material environment, and
to rise by contemplation to fellowship with God. There
are proofs of the existence in the very earliest Christian
communities of those who endeavoured to live on a
higher plane than their fellows. Abstinence from mar
riage and from animal food were urged and practised as
"counsels of perfection." In some communities there
was an attempt to make such counsels of perfection obli
gatory. In the majority of communities, though they
were part of "the whole yoke of the Lord,"1 and were
specially enjoined at certain times upon all church mem
bers, they were not of universal or constant obligation.
Those who habitually practised them were recognized as
a church within the Church. The practice of them was
known by a name which we have seen to be common in
the Greek philosophical schools. It was relative to the
conception of life as an athletic contest. It was that of
bodily training or gymnastic exercise (aV^o-i?).2
, The secession of the Puritan party left much of this
element still within the great body of confederated com
munities. At the end of the third century it became
important both within them and without. It was in
creased, partly by the growing influence of the ideas
which found their highest expression outside Christianity
in Neo-Platonism; partly by the growing complexity
of society itself, the strain and the despair of an age
1 Teaching of the Apostles, 6. 2.
2 Of a type of Gnosticism, Harnack, Dogmengesch. 202.

166 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
of decadence ; partly also by the necessity of finding a
new outlet, when Christianity became a legal religion,
for the passionate love of God which had led men to a
sometimes ecstatic martyrdom. It was joined by the
parallel tendency among professors of philosophy. It
soon took a new form. Hitherto those who followed
counsels of perfection lived in ordinary society, undis
tinguished except by their conduct from their fellow-
men. The ideal "Gnostic" of Clement of Alexandria
takes his part in ordinary human affairs, "acting the
drama of life which God has given him to play, knowing
both what is to be done and what is to be endured."1
But early in the fourth century the practice of the ascetic
life in Christianity came to be shown in the same out
ward way, but with a more marked emphasis, as the
similar practice in philosophy. It was indeed known as
philosophy.2 It was most akin to Cynicism, with which
it had sometimes already been confused, and its badges
were the badges of Cynicism, the rough blanket and the
unshorn hair. To wear the blanket and to let the hair
grow was to profess divine philosophy, the higher life of
self-discipline and sanctity. It was to claim to stand on
-1 Strom. 7. 11.
2 e.g. Euseb. Dem. Ev. 3. 6 : " Not only old men under Jesus Christ
practise this mode of philosophy, but it would be hard to say how
many thousands of women throughout the whole world, priestesses, as
it were, of the God of the universe, having embraced the highest
wisdom, rapt with a passion for heavenly knowledge, have renounced
the desire of children according to the flesh, and giving their whole
care to their soul, have given themselves up wholly to the Supreme
King and God of the universe, to practise (do-Krjo-ao'Bai,) perfect purity
and virginity." So also id. de Vit. Constant. 4. 26, 29 ; Sozom. 6. 33,
of the Syrian monks.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 167
a higher level and to be working out a nobler ideal than
average Christians. The practice soon received a further
(development. Just as ordinary philosophers had some-
' times found life in society to be intolerable and had gone
into "retreat," so the Christian philosophers began to
withdraw altogether from the world, and to live their
lives of self-discipline and contemplation in solitude.
The retention of the old names shows the continuity of
the practice. They were still practising discipline, olo-kjio-k,
er philosophy, <piXoo~o<p!a. So far as they retired from
society, they were still said " to go into retreat," avaxwpeiv,
whence the current appellation of ava^wp^ral, "anchorets."
The place of their retreat was a "school of discipline,"
ao-Kijrripiov, or a " place for reflection," cppavrianjpiov.1 To
these were soon added the new names which were rela
tive to the fact that moral discipline was usually practised
in solitude. Those who retired from the world were
¦"solitaries," p.ova^pl, and the place of their retirement
was a "place for solitude," p-ovaarripiov. When the prac
tice was once firmly rooted in Christian soil, it was
largely developed in independent ways for which Greece
was not primarily responsible, and which therefore cannot
properly be described here; but the independence and
enormous overgrowth of these later forms cannot wipe
away the memory of the fact that to Greece, more than
to any other factor, was due the place and earliest con
ception of that sublime individualism which centred all
a man's efforts on the development of his spiritual life,
1 do-KriTrjpiov, Socrat. i. 11 ; distinguished from pavao-Tijpiov, ibid.
4. 23, as the smaller from the larger : <ppovTicTr)piov, Evagr. i. 21.

168 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
and withdrew him from his fellow-men in order to bring
him near to God.
2. It was inevitable that when the Puritan party had
left the main body, and when the most spiritually-minded
of those who remained detached themselves from the
common life of their brethren, there should be a de
terioration in the average moral conceptions of the
Christian Churches. It was also inevitable that those
conceptions should be largely shaped by Greek influences.
The Pauline ethics vanished from the Christian world.
For the average members of the churches were now the
average citizens of the empire, educated by Greek
methods, impregnated with the dominant ethical ideas.
They accepted Christian ideas, but without the enthusiasm
which made them a transforming force. As in regard to
metaphysics, so also in regard to ethics, the frame of mind
which had been formed by education was stronger than
the new ideas which it absorbed. The current ideals re
mained, slightly raised : the current rules of conduct
continued, with modifications. Instead of the concep
tions of righteousness and holiness, there was the old
conception of virtue : instead of the code of morals which
was "briefly comprehended in this saying, namely,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," there was
the old enumeration of duties. At the end of the fourth
century the new state of things was formally recognized
by ecclesiastical writers. Love was no more " the hand
book of divine philosophy:"1 the chief contemporary
theologian of the West, Ambrose of Milan, formulated
the current theory in a book which is the more important
1 Clem. Alex. Pcedag. 3. 11.

VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 169
because it not merely expresses the ideas of his time and
seals the proof of their prevalence, but also became the
basis of the moral philosophy of the Middle Ages.. But
the book is less Christian than Stoical.1 It is a rechauffee
of the book which Cicero had compiled more than three
centuries before, chiefly from Pansetius. It is Stoical,
not only in conception, but also in detail. It makes
virtue the highest good. It makes the hope of the life
to come a subsidiary and not a primary motive. Its ideal
of life is happiness : it holds that a happy life is a life
according to nature, that it is realized by virtue, and that
it is capable of being realized here on earth. Its virtues
are the ancient virtues of wisdom and justice, courage
and temperance. It tinges each of them with a Christian,
or at least with a Theistic colouring ; but the conception
of each of them remains what it had been to the Greek
moralists. Wisdom, for example, is Greek wisdom, with
the addition that no man can be wise who is ignorant of
God: justice is Greek justice, with the addition that
its subsidiary form of beneficence is helped by the
Christian society.
The victory of Greek ethics was complete. While
Christianity was being transformed into a system of doc
trines, the Stoical jurists at the imperial court were slowly
elaborating a system of personal rights. The ethics of
the Sermon on the Mount, which the earliest Christian
communities endeavoured to carry into practice, have been
transmuted by the slow alchemy of history into the ethics
1 P. Ewald, der Einftuss der stoisch-ciceronianischen Moral auf . . .
Ambrosius, Leipzig, 1881 ; Draseke in the Rivista difilologia, Ann. v.
1875-6.

170 VI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
| of Eoman law. The basis of Christian society is not
\ Christian, but Eoman and Stoical. A fusion of the Eoman
conception of rights with the Stoical conception of rela
tions involving reciprocal actions, is in possession of
practically the whole field of civilized society. The trans
mutation is so complete that the modern question is not
so much whether the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount
are practicable, as whether, if practicable, they would be
desirable. The socialistic theories which formulate in
modern language and justify by modern conceptions such
an exhortation as " Sell that thou hast and give to the
poor," meet with no less, opposition within than without
the Christian societies. The conversion of the Church
to Christian theory must precede the . conversion of the
world. to Christian practice. But meanwhile there is
working in Christianity the same higher morality which
worked in the ancient world, and the maxim, Follow
God, belongs to a plane on which Epictetus and Thomas
a Kempis meet.

Lecture VII.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN THEOLOGY.
I. The Creator.

Slowly there loomed through the mists of earlier
Greek thought the consciousness of one God.
It came with the sense of the unity of the world.
That sense had not always been awakened. The varied
phenomena of earth and sea and sky had not always
been brought under a single expression. The groups
into which the mind tended to arrange them were con
ceived as separate, belonging to different kingdoms and
controlled by independent divinities. It was by the
unconscious alchemy of thought, working through suc
cessive generations, that the separate groups came to be
combined into a whole and conceived as forming a uni
verse. It came also with the sense of the order of the world.
The sun which day by day rose and set, the moon which
month by month waxed and waned, the stars which
year by. year came back to the same stations in the sky,
were like a marshalled army moving in obedience to a
fixed command. There was order, not only above, but
also beneath. The sea, which for all its storms and

172 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
murmurings, could not pass its bounds, the earth upon
which seed-time and harvest never failed, but spring
after spring the buds burst into blossom, and summer
after summer the blossom ripened into fruit, were part
of the same great system. The conception was that not
merely of a universe, but of a universe moving in obe
dience to a law. The earliest form of the conception is
probably that of Anaxagoras, which was formulated by
a later writer in the expression, " The origins of matter
are infinite,, the origin of movement and birth is one."1
This conception of an ordered whole was intertwined,
as it slowly elaborated itself, with one or other of two
kindred conceptions, of which one had preceded it and
the other grew with it.
The one was the sense of personality. By a transfer
ence of ideas which has been so universal that it may
be called natural, all things that move have been invested
with personality. The stars and rivers were persons.
Movement meant life, and life meant everywhere some
thing analogous to human life. It was by an inevitable
application of the conception that when the sum of
movements was conceived as a whole, it should be also
conceived that behind the totality of the phenomena
and the unity of their movements there was a single
Person. The other was the conception of mind. It was a con
ception which had but slowly disentangled itself from
that of bodily powers. It was like the preaching of a
revelation, and almost as fruitful, when Epicharmus
1 Theophrastus ap. Simplic. inphys. f. 6 (Diels, Doxographi Graeci,
p; 479).

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 173
proclaimed : 1 "It is not the eye that sees, but the mind :
it is not the ear that hears, but the mind: all things
except mind are blind and deaf." It was the mind that
not only saw but thought, and that not only thought
but willed. It alone was the real self: and the Person
who is behind nature or within it was like the personality
which is behind the bodily activities of each one of us :
His essence was mind.
There was one God. The gods of the old mythology
were passing away, like a splendid pageantry of clouds
moving across the horizon to be absorbed in the clear
and infinite heaven. " But though God is one," it was
said,2 "He has many names, deriving a name from each
of the spheres of His government  He is called the
Son of Kronos, that is of Time, because He continues
from eternity to eternity; and Lightning -God, and
Thunder-God, and Eain-God, from the lightnings and
thunders and rains ; and Fruit-God, from the fruits (which
he sends) ; and City-God, from the cities (which he pro
tects); and the God of births, and homesteads, and
kinsmen, and families, of companions, and friends, and
armies  God, in short, of heaven and earth, named
after all forms of nature and events as being Himself
the cause of all." " There are not different gods among
different peoples," says Plutarch,3 "nor foreign gods
and Greek gods, nor gods of the south and gods of the
1 voos bprj ko.1 voos aKoveC TaXXa Ktixpa. Kal TV<f>Xd, quoted in Plut.
de fort. 3, p. 98, de Alex. magn. fort. 3, p. 336, and elsewhere : cf.
Lucret. 3. 36 ; Cic. Tusc. Disp. 1. 20.
2 Pseudo-Arist de mundo, 7, p. 401 a.
8 De Isid. et Osir. 67, p. 378.

174 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
north; but just as sun and moon and sky and earth and
sea are common to all mankind, but have different names
among different races, so, though there be one Season
who orders these things and one Providence who ad
ministers them .... there are different honours and
appellations among different races ; and men use con
secrated symbols, some of them obscure and some more
clear,' so leading their thoughts on the path to the
Divine : but it is not without risk ; for some men, wholly
missing their foothold, have slipped into superstition,
and others, avoiding the slough of superstition^ have
in their turn fallen over the precipice of atheism."
In the conception of God as it thus uncoiled, itself in
Greek history, three strands of thought are constantly
intertwined— the thought of a Creator, .the thought; of
a Moral_Gpvernor, and the thought of a Supreme or
Absolute Being. It is desirable to trace the history of
each of these thoughts, as far as possible, separately,
and to consider their separate effects upon the develop
ment of Christian theology. The present Lecture will
deal mainly with the first : the two following Lectures
with the other two.
It was at a comparatively late stage in its history
that Greek thought came to the conception of ajbegin-
ning_e£^ll_ftings. The conception was first formulated
by Anaximander, in the sixth century B.C.1 The
earlier conception was that of a chaos, out of which gods
and all things alike proceeded. The first remove from
1 Theophrast. ap. Simplic. in phys. f. 6 (Diels, p. 476), irparoi
tovto Tovvopa Kopuras Trjs dpxrjs : so Hippol. Philosoph. 1. 6.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 175
that earlier conception was hylozoism, the belief that life
and-jnatter were the same. The conception of mind
was not yet evolved. When it was evolved, two lines
of thought began to diverge. The one, following the
conception of human personality as absolutely single,
conceived of both reason and force as inherent in matter :
it is the theory which is known as Momsm. The other,
following the conception of human personality as a
separable compound, body and soul, conceived of reason
and force as external to matter: it is the theory which
is known as Dualism. These two theories run through
all subsequent Greek philosophy.
1. The Chief philosophical expression of Monism was
Stoicism. The Stoics followed the lonians in believing
that the world consists of a single substance, They
followed Heraclitus in believing that the movements and
modifications of that substance are due neither to a blind
impulse from within nor to an arbitrary impact from
without. It moved, he had thought, with a kind of
rhythmic motion, a fire that was kindling and being
quenched with regulated limits of degree and time.1
The substance is one, but immanent and inherent in it
is aibree that acts with intelligence. The antithesis
between the two was expressed by the Stoics in various
forms. It was sometimes the bare and neutral contrast
of the Active and the Passive. For the Passive was
sometimes substituted Matter, a term which, signifying,
as it originally does, the timber which a carpenter uses
1 Heraclit. ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. 5. 14, Kocprnv tov avrbv airdvTtav
ovTe tis Beuiv ouVe dvBpimwv eTtoinvev' dXX' rjv del Kal eorai irvp aeiQ&ov,
amopevov pirpa Kal dTroo-fJ(vvvp.evov p.€Tpa.

176 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
for the purposes of his craft, properly belongs to another
order of ideas ; and for the Active was frequently-sub
stituted the term Logos, which, signifying as it does, on
the one hand, partly thought and partly will, and, on
the other hand, also the expression of thought in a sen
tence and the expression of will in a law, has no single
equivalent in modern language. But the majority of
Stoics used neither the colourless term the Active, nor
the impersonal term the Logos. The Logos was vested
with personality : the antithesis was between matter -
and God. This latter term was used to cover a wide
range of conceptions. The two terms of the antithesis
being regarded as expressing modes of a single substance,
separable in thought and name but not in reality, there
was a natural drift of some minds towards regarding
Godas a-mode of matter, and of othersjtowards regarding
matter as a mode^of_God. The former conceived of Him
as the natura naturata : " Jupiter est quodcunque vides
quodcunque moveris."1 The latter conceived of Him as
the natura naturans. This became the governing con
ception. He is the sum of an infinite number of rational
forces which are continually striving to express them
selves through the matter with which they are in union.
He is through them and in them working to realize an
end. The teleological idea controls the whole conception.
He is always moving with purpose and system, and
always thereby producing the world. The products are
all divine, but not all equally divine. In His purest
essence, He is the highest form of mind in union with
the most attenuated form of matter. In the lowest form
1 Lucan, Phars. 9. 579.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 177
of His essence, He is the cohesive force which holds
together the atoms of a stone. Between these two poles
are infinite gradations of being. Nearest of all to the
purest essence of God is the human soul. It is in an
especial sense His offspring : it is described by the meta
phors of an emanation or outflow from Him, of a sapling
which is separate from and yet continues the life of its
parent tree, of a colony in which some members of the
mother state have settled.1
If all this were expressed in modern terms, and by
the help of later conceptions, it would probably be most
suitably gathered into the proposition that the world is
the self-evolution of God. Into such a conception the
idea of a beginning does not necessarily enter : it is con
sistent with the idea of an eternal process of differentia
tion : that which is, always has been, under changed and
changing forms : the theory is cosmological rather than
cosmogonical : it rather explains the world as it is than
gives an account of its origin.
2. The chief philosophical expression of Dualism wa&
1 droppoia, M. Anton. 2. 4 : drroovao-pa, Epict. Diss. 1. 14. 6 ; 2.
8. 11; M. Anton. 5. 27: diroiKia, Philo, de mund. opif. 46 (i. 32).
The co-ordination of these and cognate terms in Philo is especially
important in view of their use in Christian theology : de mund. opif.
51 (i. 35), irds dvBpunros KaTa. p.ev ttjv Siavoiav (pKemyrai Belip Xoytp,
Tr)s paKapias <pvo-eu>s eKp.ayeiov r] aTzdoTzaxTpa. r} airavyacrpa ¦yeyoi/ciis :
he considers the term eKpayeiov to be more appropriate to theology,
tijs tov ttovtos ^X^s dTroo~jrao-pa r) orrep oo~iwrepov enreiv tois KaTa
Momnjv <piXoo-o<povo-iv, e'tKovos Betas eKpayeiov ep.<pepes, de mutat. nom.
39 (i. 612) : and he is careful to guard against an inference that
airoa-irao-pa implies a breach of continuity between the divine and the
human soul, diroo-Traa-pa rpi ov StaipeTov' TepveTai yap ouSev tov Belov
kxt aTrdpTrja-iv, dXXa. p£vov eKretveTai, quod det. pot. insid. 24 (i. 209).
N

178 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Platonism, Plato followed Anaxagoras in believing that
mind is separate from matter and acts upon it : he went
beyond him in founding, upon this separation a universal
distinction between the real and the phenomenal, and
between God and the world. God was regarded as being
outside the world. The world was in its origin only
potential being (ro fur; 6V). The action of God upon it
was that of a craftsman upon his material, shaping it as
a carpenter shapes wood, or moulding it as a statuary
moulds clay. In so acting, He acted with reason, follow
ing out thoughts in His mind. Sometimes His reason^
or His mind, is spoken of as being itself the fashioner of
the world.1 Each thought shows itself in a group of
material objects. Such objects, so far as they admit of
being grouped, may be viewed as imitations! or embodi
ments of a form or pattern, existing either as a thought
in the mind of the Divine Workman, or as a fprGe. pro*
ceeding from His mind and acting outside it. As the
conception of these forms was developed more and more,
they tended to be regarded in the latter light rather
than in the former. They were cosmic forces which
had the power of impressing themselves upon matter.
They were less types than causes. They came midway
between God and the rude material of the universe, so
that its changing phenomena were united with an un
changing element. They were themselves grouped in a
vast gradation, reaching its highest point in the Form of
Perfection, which was higher than the Form of Being.
The highest and most perfect of types is conceived as the
1 Phileb. 16, p. 28 e, vovv Kal <pp6vrjo-(v Tiva Bavpao-T-qv : in the
post-Platonic Epinomis, p. 986 c, Ao'yos o TrdvTwv BuoTaros.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 179
most powerful and most active of forces. In the elabo
rate cosmology of the Timceus, it is further conceived as
a person. The creativjjenergy_oi._God ,igLSDoken_of as
the Demiurgus, who himself made an ideal world, and
employed- subordinate agents in the construction of the
actual world. The matter upon which the Demiurgus
or his agents work is sometimes conceived as potential
being,1 the bare capacity of receiving qualities and
forms, and sometimes as chaotic substance which was
reduced to order.2 The agents were gods who, having
been themselves created, were bidden to create living
ibeings, capable of growth and decay.3 The distinction
between the two spheres of creation, that of a world in
which nothing was imperfect since it was the work of a
1 The best account of Plato's complex, because progressive, theory
of matter is that of Siebeck, Plato's Lehre von der Materie, in his
JJntersuchungen der 'Philosophic der Griechen, Freiburg im Breisg. 1888.
The conception of it which was current in the Platonist schools, and
which is therefore important in relation to Christian philosophy, is
given in the Placita of Aetius, ap. Stob. Eel. 1. 11 (Diels, p. 308), and
Hippol. PhUosoph. 1. 19.
2 Plat. Tim. p. 30, irai/ oo-ov r)v opaTov TrapaXafiiiv ovk r)o-v)(tav dyov
dXXa. Ki.vovp.evov TrXrjp,p,eXios Kal aTaKTtdS £'S Ta£iv avTo rjyayev Ik ttjs
aTajias. 3 In Tim. p. 41, the Beol BeZv are addressed at length by 6 toSe to
sray yevvrjo-as ( = 6 Srjpiovpyos) : the most pertinent words are, Iv ovv
tivrjTd Te rj to Te irav ovtcus d-xav -g, Tperreo-Be KaTa <pvo-iv vpeTs em tt\v
twv fdicov 8t]piovpyiav, p,ipovpevot, tt)v epi)v Svvapiv rrepl tt)v ipuv yevecriv.
iThe whole theory is summed up by Professor Jowett in the Introduc
tion to his translation of the Timceus (Plato, vol. ii. p. 470) : " The
Creator is like a human artist who frames in his mind a plan which he
executes by means of his servants. Thus the language of philosophy,
,which speaks of first and second causes, is crossed by another sort of
,phraseology, ' God made the world because he was good, and the demons
ministered to him.'"
n2

180 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Perfect Being, and that of a world which was full of
imperfections as being the work of created beings, came,
as we shall see, to be of importance in some phases of
Christian thought.
It was inevitable, in the syncretism which results
when an age of philosophical reflection succeeds an age
of philosophical origination, that these two great drifts
of thought should tend in some points to approach each
other. The elements in them which were most readily
fused together were the theories of the processes by
which the actual world came into being, and of the
nature of the forces which lay behind those processes.
In Stoicism, there was the theory of the one Law or
Logos expressing itself in an infinite variety of material
forms: in Platonism, there was the theory of the one
God, shaping matter according to an infinite variety of
patterns. In the one, the processes of nature were the
operations of active forces, containing in themselves the
law of the forms in which they exhibit themselves,
self-developing seeds, each of them a portion of the
one Logos which runs through the whole.1 In the
other, they were the operations of the infinitely various
and eternally active energy of God, moving always in
the direction of His thoughts, so that those thoughts
1 A.oyoi o-ireppaTiKol, frequently in Stoical writings, e.g. in the defi
nition of the irvp TeyyiKov, which is the base of all things, as given in
the Placita of Aetius, reproduced by Plutarch, Eusebius, and Stobseus,
Diels, p. 306, epTrepieiXrj(f>os 7ravT<xs toijs oireppaTtKovs Aoyous KaB' ovs
eVacrra KaB elpappevqv ylverai. The best account of this important
element in later Stoicism is in Heinze, die Lehre vom Logos in der
griechischen Philosophie, 1872, pp. 110 sqq.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 181
might themselves be conceived as the causes of the
operations.1 In both the one theory and the other, the
processes were sometimes regarded in their apparent
multiplicity, and sometimes in their underlying unity:
and in both also the unity was expressed sometimes by
the impersonal term Logos, and sometimes by the per
sonal term God.
But while the monism of the Stoics, by laying stress
upon the antithesis between the two phases of the one
substance, was tending to dualism, the dualism of the
Platonists, by laying stress upon the distinction between
the creative energy of God and the form in the mind of
God which His energy embodied in the material universe,
; was tending to introduce a third factor into the concep
tion of, creation. It became common to speak, not of
two principles, but of three — -God, Matter, and the Form,
or Pattern.2 Hence came a new fusion of conceptions.
The Platonic Forms in the mind of God, conceived, as
they sometimes were, as causes operating outside Him,
1 Hence the definition which Aetius gives : I8ea ea-Tlv ova-la da-tapa-
tos, avri) pev v<f>eo-Tb)a-a KaB' avri)v eiKovi^ovo-a 8e Tas dpop<f>ovs
iSAas Kal a'nia yivop.evr] Trjs tovtihv Set^ews, ap. Plut. de plac. philos.
1. 10; Euseb. praip. evang. 15. 45; with additions and differences in
Stob. Eel. 1. 12 (Diels, p. 308).
2 The three dp\al are expressed by varying but identical terms :
God, Matter, and the Form (l&ea), or the By "Whom, From What,
In view of What (y(j> ov, l£ ov, Trpbs o), in the Placita of Aetius,
1. 3. 21, ap. Plut. de placit. phil. 1. 3, Stob. Ed. 1. 10 (Diels, p. 288),
and in Timseus Locrus, de an. mundi 2 (Mullach F P G 2. 38) : God,
Matter, and the Pattern (xapd8eiyp.a), Hippol. Philosoph. 1. 19, Herm.
Irris. Gent. PhU. 11 : the Active (to ttoiovv), Matter, and the Pattern,
Alexand. Aphrod. ap. Simplic. in phys. f. 6 (Diels, p. 485), where
Simplicius contrasts this with Plato's own strict dualism.

182 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
were more or less identified with the Stoical Logoi, and,,'
being viewed as the manifold expressions of a single
'Logos, were expressed by a singular rather than a plural
term, the Logos rather than the Logoi of God.
I It is at this point that the writings of Philo become
of special importance. They gather together, without
fusing into a symmetrical system, the two dominant
theories of the past, and they contain the. seeds of
nearly all that afterwards grew up on Christian soil.
It is possible that those writings cover a much larger
period of time than is commonly supposed, and that if
we could find a key to their chronological arrangement,,
we should find in them a perfectjbridge from philoso
phical Judaism to Christian theelogy. And even without
such a key we are able to see in them a large representa
tion of the processes of thought that were going on, and
can better understand by the analogies which they offer
both the tentative theories and those that ultimately
became dominant in the sphere of Christianity. It is.
consequently desirable to give a brief account of the
view which they present.
The ultimate cause of the world is to be found in the
nature of God. As in Plato, though perhaps in a dif
ferent sense, God is regarded as good. By His goodness-
He was impelled to make the world: He was able to-
make it by virtue of His power. " If any one wished
to search out the reason why the universe was made, I
think that he would not be far from the mark if he were
to say, what, in fact, one of the ancients said, that the
Father and Maker is good, and that being good He did
not grudge the best kind of nature to matter (ova-la)

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 183
which of itseK had nothing excellent, though it was
capable of becoming all things."1 And again: "My
soul once told me a more serious story (than that of the
Greek mythology), when seized, as it often was, with a
divine ecstasy  It told me that in the one really
existing God there are two chief and primary faculties,
Goodness and Power, and that by Goodness He begat
the universe, and by Power He governs it."2 God is
thus the Creator, the Fashioner and Maker of the world, l
its Builder and Artificer.3 But when the conception of
His relation to the world is more precisely examined, it
is found to be based upon a recognition of a sharp dis
tinction between the world of thought and that of sense ;
and to be monistic in regard to the one, dualistic in
regard to the other. God is mind. From Him, as from
a fountain, proceed all forms of mind and reason. Eeason,
whether unconscious in the form of natural law, or con
scious in the form of human thought, is like a river that
1 De mundi opif. 5 (i. 5) : cf. Plat. Tim. p. 30 (of God), dyaBbs i]v
dyaBQ 8e ovSels irepl ov8evbs ov8eiroTe iyylyveTai <f>B6vos' tovtov 8
Iktos <ov Trai/ra OTipAXuna efSovX-qB-q yevea-Bai TTapawX-qo-La avr$.
2 De cherub. 9 (i. 144) : cf. ib. 35 (i. 162).
3 The most frequent word is Srjptovpyos, but several others are used,
e.g. TrXdanqs, de confus. ling. 38 (i. 434) ; TexviTrjs, ibid. ; Koo-poTrXdo-
ttjs, de plant Noe, 1 (i. 329) ; Koo-p.orroi.6s, ibid. 31 (i. 348), ov tcxvIttjs
povov dXXa. Kal TraTr)p twv yiyvopevutv, Leg. alleg. 1. 8 (i. 47). The
distinctions which became important in later controversies do not
appear in the writings which are probably Philo's own, but are found
in those which probably belong to his school : the most explicit
recognition of them is de somn. 1. 13 (i. 632), 6 Bebs to. irdvTa
yevvrp-as ov povov els to ep.<j>aves rjyayev dXXa kcu a irpoTepov ovk -qv
arolrjo-ev, ov Sr/ptcovpybs p.6vov dXXa /cat kt'uttt)S avrbs w : cf. also de
monarch. 3 (ii. 216), Bebs eis «tti Kal ktkttjjs Kal iroi-qT-qs tc3i> 6'Awv.

184 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
flows forth from Him and fills the universe.1 In man
the two worlds meet. The body is fashioned by the
Artificer from the dust of the earth : " The soul came
from nothing that is created, but from the Father and
Leader of all things. For what He breathed into Adam
was nothing else than a divine breath, a colony from
that blissful and happy nature, placed here below for
the benefit of our race; so that granting man to be
mortal in respect of his visible part, yet in respect of
that which is invisible he is the heir of immortality."2
And again : " The mind is an offshoot from the divine
and happy soul (of God), an offshoot not separated from
Him, for nothing divine is cut off and disjoined, but
only extended."3 And again, in expounding the words,
" They have forsaken me, the fountain of life" (Jeremiah
ii. 13), he says : " Only God is the cause of soul and
life, especially of rational soul and reasonable life ; but
He Himself is more than life, being the ever-flowing
fountain of life."4
j This is monistic. But the theory of the origin of the
sensible world is dualistic. The matter upon which He
acted was outside Him. " It was in itself without order,
without quality, without soul, full of difference, dispro
portion, and discord: it received a change and trans
formation into what was opposite and best, order, quality,
animation, identity, proportion, harmony, all that is
1 Desomn. 2. 37 (i. 691).
2 De mundi opif. 46 (i. 32) : cf. ib. 51 (i 35) : quod dens immut. 10
(i. 279), and elsewhere.
8 Quod det. pot. ins. 24 (i. 208, 209).
4 Deprofug. 36 (i. 575).

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 185
characteristic of a better form."1 He himself did not
touch it. " Out of it God begat all things, Himself not
touching it : for it was not right that the all-knowing
and blessed One should touch unlimited and confused
matter: but He used the unbodied Forces whose true
name is the Forms (iSicu), that each class of things should
receive its fitting shape."2 These unbodied Forces,
which are here called by the Platonic name of Forms,
are elsewhere spoken of in Stoical language as Eeasons
(Xoyoi), sometimes in Pythagorean language as Numbers
or Limits, sometimes in the language of the Old Testa-/
ment as Angels, and sometimes in the language of/
popular mythology as Dsemons.3 The use of the two
1 De mundi opif. 5 (i. 5) : this is the most explicit expression ol
his theory of the nature of matter. It may be supplemented by de
plant Noe, 1 (i. 329), tt)v ovo-lav draKTOV Kal a-vyKexypevqv ovo-av e£
avTrjs els Ta£iv e£ dVa£tas Kal eK a-vyxyo-ews els SiaKpiaiv aytov 6
Koa-poTrXdo-Trjs pop^ovv rjp^aTo : quis rer. div. her. 27 (i. 492) : de
somn. 2. 6 (i. 665) : ovo-ia is the more usual word, but vXr) is sometimes
found, e.g. de plant Noe, 2 (i. 330) : the conception underlying either
word is more Stoical than Platonic, i. e. it is rather that of matter
having the property of resistance than that of potential matter or
empty space : hence in de profug. 2 (i. 547), t-qv d-irowv Kal dvelSeov
Kal da-xripaTia-Tov ovo-lav is contrasted, in strictly Stoical phraseology,
with to kivovv aiTiov.
* De sacrif. 13 (ii. 261).
8 The terms Xoyoi and ISeai are common. Instances of the other
terms are the following : angels, de confus. ling. 8 (L 408), tw Beltov
Ipywv Kal Adyoiv oi!s KaXelv eBos dyyeAous : de somn. i. 19 (i. 638),
dflavdYois Aoyots oxs KaXetv eBos dyyeAous : Leg. alleg. 3. 62 (i. 122),
tous dyyeAovs Kal Aoyous avrov : Salpoves, de gigant. 2. 2 (i. 263),
oi!s aAAoi <piX6a-o<poi 8aip.ovas, dyyeXovs Muvo-fjs etmBev ovo/id^eiv:
so, in identical words, de somn. 1. 22 (i. 642) : dpiBp.ol and peTpa,
quis rer. div. heres. 31 (i. 495), ttoo-iv dpiBpols Kal irdo-cus Tats irpbs
reAetoT^To (Seats naTaxpi]o-ap,evov tov jreffotijKOTos : de mund. opif. 9

186 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
names Force and Form, with the synonyms which are
interchanged with each of them, expresses the two sides
of the conception of them. They are at once the agents
or instruments by means of which God fashioned the
world, and also the types or patterns after which He
fashioned it.1
In both respects they are frequently viewed, not in
the plurality of their manifestations, but in the unity of
their essence. On the one hand, they collectively form
the world which the Divine Architect of the great City
of the Universe fashioned in His mind before His thought
went outside Him to stamp with its impress the chaotic
and unformed mass. The place of this world is the
Logos, the Eeason or Will or Word of God : more pre
cisely, it constitutes that Logos in a special form of its
activity : 2 for in the building of an ordinary city the
ideal which precedes it "is no other than the mind of
the architect, planning to realize in a visible city the
(i. 7), t8eai Kal perpa Kal tvttoi Kal a-<ppayi8es : cf. de monarch. 6
(ii. 219), to. aTreipa Kal dopuna Kal do-xrjpdTiora TrepaTowrai Kal
Trepiopi£ovo-ai Kal o-xqpaTitfivo-ai.
1 The clearest instance of the identification is probably in de monarch.
6 (ii. 218, 219), where God tells Moses that so far from Himself being
cognizable, not even the powers that minister to Him are cognizable in
their essence; but that as seals are known from their impressions,
Toiauras wroAijjTTeov Kat Tas Trepl epe 8vvdpets dVotots 7rotoTijTas (tat
pop<f>as dpoptpois Kal prjSev Trjs di'Stou <ftvo-e(OS p,eTaXXopevas pryre
peiovpevas. 2 De mund. opif. 6 (i. 5), ov8ev dv eTfpov «&roi tov voijtov etvai
Koo-pov i\ Beov Apyov ij'Sij KooyiOTroio-Gi/Tos : vit. Mos. 3. 13 (ii. 154),
tQ>v do-a>p.aT(av Kal irapaSeiypaTiKlov tSeaiv e£ <Sv 6 voijtos exdyn Kocrpos :
so de confus. ling. 34 (i. 431) : cf. the Stoical definition of Aoyos in
Epictet. Diss. 1. 20. 5, as o-vo-r-qpa Ik ttoiQv (pavTao-iSiv.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 187
city of his thought  The archetypal seal, which we
call the ideal world, is itself the archetypal pattern, the
Form of Forms, the Eeason of God." 1 On the other hand,
the Eeason of God is sometimes viewed not as a Form
but as a Force. It is His creative energy.2 It is the
instrument by which He made all things.3 It is the
"river of God" that is "full of waters," and that flows
forth to "make glad the city of God," the universe.4
From it, as from a fountain, all lower Forms and Forces
flow. By another and even sublimer figure, it, the
eldest born of the "I am," robes itself with the world
as with a vesture, the high-priest's robe, embroidered by
all the Forces of the seen and unseen worlds.5
But in all this, Philo never loses sight of the primary
truth that the world was made not by inferior or opposing
beings, but by God. It is the expression of His Thought.
His Thought went forth from Him, impressing itself in
infinite Forms and by means of infinite Forces : but
though His Thought was the charioteer, it is God
1 De mund. opif. 4 (i. 4) : the same conception is expressed in less
figurative language in Leg. alleg. 1. 9 (i. 47), irplv dvaTetXai KaTa. pApos
aurBrjTa, r/v to yeviKov alo-Br/Tov vpoprjBela tou irerrovq kotos.
2 8vvapis Koo-punroirjTiKr), de mund. opif. 5 (i. 5) ; Svvapis jtohjtik^'
deprofug. 18 (i. 560).
Leg. alleg. 1. 9 (i. 47), to) yap 7repi<paveo-TaT(p Kal TrjXavyeo-TaTbt
X6y(p, prjpaTi, 6 Bebs dpupoTepa (i. e. both heaven and earth) 7rotet :
quod deus immut. 12 (i. 281), Aoy(j> xP("At£I'0s vTrr/peTy Swpewv <j> koX
tov Koo-pov eipyd(eTo : more expressly, it is the instrument, opyavov,
Leg. alleg. 3. 31 (i. 106), de cherub. 35 (i. 162).
* De somn. 2. 37 (i. 691).
6 De profug. 20 (i. 562), de migrat. Abr. 18 (i. 452) : cf. "Wisdom,
18. 24.

188 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Himself who gives the orders.1 By a different concep
tion of the genesis of the world, and one that is of
singular interest in view of the similar conceptions which
we shall find in some Gnostic schools, God is the Father
of the world:2 and the metaphor of Fatherhood is
expanded into that of a marriage : God is conceived as
the Father, His Wisdom as the Mother: "and she,
receiving the seed of God, with fruitful birth-pangs
brought forth this world, His visible son, only and well-
beloved."3 We have now the main elements of the current
conceptions out of which the philosophers of early Chris
tianity constructed new fabrics.
i Christianity had no need to borrow from Greek philo
sophy either the idea of the unity of God, or the belief
that He made the world. Its ultimate basis was the
belief in one God. It rode in upon the wave of the
reaction against polytheism. The Scriptures to which
it appealed began with the sublime declaration, " In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It
accepted that declaration as being both final and com
plete. It saw therein the picture of a single supreme
Artificer: and it elaborated the picture by the aid of
anthropomorphic conceptions : " By. His almighty power
He fixed firm the heavens, and by His incomprehensible
1 Deprofug. 19 (i. 561).
2 6 tuv oAuv TraTrjp, de migrat. Abrah. 9 (i. 443) ; 6 Bebs to. jrdvTa
yevvrjo-as, de somn. 1. 13 (i. 632), and elsewhere.
8 De ebriet. 8 (i. 361).

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 189
wisdom He set them in order : He separated the earth
from the water that encompassed it ... . and last of all
He formed man with His sacred and spotless hands, the
impress of His own image."1
The belief that the one God was the Creator of heaven
and earth came, though not without a struggle, to be a
foremost and permanent element in the Christian creed.
The various forms of ditheism which grew up with it
and around it, finding their roots in its unsolved pro
blems and their nutriment in the very love of God which
it fostered, gradually withered away. But in proportion
as the belief spread widely over the Greek world, the
simple Semitic cosmogony became insufficient. The
questions of the mode of creation, and of the precise
relation of God to the material world, which had grown
with the growth of monotheism as a philosophical doc
trine, were asked not less instinctively, and with an even
keener-sighted enthusiasm, when monotheism became a
religious conviction. They came not from curiosity, but
as the necessary outgrowth among an educated people
of that which, not less now than then, is the crucial
question of all theistic philosophy : How, if a good and
almighty God made the world, can we account for imper
fection and failure and pain ?
These questions of the mode of creation and of the
relation of God to the material world, and the underlying
1 1 Clem. Eom. 33. 3, 4 : but it is a noteworthy instance of the con
trast between this simple early belief and the developed theology which
had grown up in less than a century later, that Irenseus, lib. 4, prof.
c. 4, explains the ' hands' to mean the Son and Spirit : " homo . . . per
manus ejus plasmatus est, hoc est per Filium et Spiritum quibus et
dixit Faciamus hominem."

190 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
/question which any answer to them must at the same time
'solve, fill a large place in the history of the first three
1 centuries. The compromise which ultimately resulted
has formed the basis of Christian theology to the present
day. The first answers were necessarily tentative. Thinkers
of all schools, within the original communities and out
side them, introduced conceptions which were afterwards
discarded. One group of philosophers, treating the facts
of Christianity as symbols, like the tableaux of the
mysteries, framed cosmogonies which were symbolical
also, and fantastic in proportion as they were symbolical.
Another group of- philosophers, dealing rather with the
ideal than with the actual, framed cosmogonies in which
abstract ideas were invested with substance and per
sonality. The philosophers of all schools were met, not
only by the common sense of the Christian communities,
but also by caricature. Their opponents, after the man
ner of controversialists, accentuated their weak points,
and handed on to later times only those parts .of the
theories which were most exposed to attack, and which
were also least intelligible except in relation to the
whole system. But so far as the underlying conceptions
can be disentangled from the details, they may be clearly
seen to have drifted in the direction of the main drifts
of Greek philosophy.
1. There was a large tendency to account for the
world by the hypothesis of evolution. In some way it
had come forth from God. The belief expressed itself
in many forms. It was in all cases syncretist. The

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 191
same writers frequently made use of different metaphors ;
but all the metaphors assumed vast grades and distances
between God in Himself and the sensible world. One
metaphor was that of an outflow, as of a stream from its
source.1 Other metaphors were taken from the pheno
mena of vegetable growth, the evolution of a plant from
a seed, or the putting forth of leaves by a tree.2 The
metaphors of other writers were taken from the pheno
mena of human generation : 3 they were an elaboration
of the conception of God as the Father of the world.
They were sometimes pressed: there was not only a
Father, but also a Mother of the world, Wisdom or Silence
or some other abstraction. In one elaborate system it
was held, that, though God Himself was unwedded, all
the powers that came forth from Him came forth in
pairs, and all existing things were the offspring of their
union.4 That which came forth was also conceived in
1 Derivatio : Iren. 1. 24. 3, of Basilides (or rather one of the schools
of Basilidians).
2 This is probably the metaphor involved in the common word
irpo[3oXrj, e.g. Hippol. 6. 38, of Epiphanes.
3 The conception of the double nature of God, male and female, is
found as early as Xenocrates, Aetius ap. Stob. Eel. 1. 2. 29 (Diels,
p. 304) ; and commonly among the Stoics, e.g. in the verses of Valerius
Soranus, which are quoted by Varro, and after him by S. Augustine, '
de civit. Dei, 7. 9 :
Jupiter omnipotens regum rex ipse d'eusque
Progenitor genitrixque deum, deus unus et omnis.
So Philodemus, de piet. 1 6, ed. Gomp. p. 83 (Diels, p. 549), quotes
Zeis appqv, Zeis BfjXiis ; and Eusebius, prop. Evang. 3. 9, p. 100 b,
quotes the Orphic verse :
Zeis apo-qv yevero, Zevs dp/3poTos eVAeTO vvp<f>r).
4 TheValentiniansin,e.g., Hippol. 6. 29 j 10. 13: so of Simon Magus,
ib 6. 12, feyovevai 8e ras pt£as <pqo-l koto crvfvytas drrb tou Trvpbs.

192 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
various ways. The common expression in one group of
philosophers is ceon (alu>v), a term which is of uncertain
origin in this application. In other groups of philo
sophers the expressions are relative to the metaphor of
growth and development, and repeat the Stoical term
seed. In the syncretism of Marcus the several expres
sions are gathered together, and made more intelligible
by the use of the synonym logoi;1 the thoughts of God
were conceived as active forces, embodying themselves in
material forms. In the conception of one school of thinkers,
the invisible forces of the world acted in the same way
that the art of a craftsman acts upon his materials.2 In
the conception of another school, the distinction between
intellectual and material existence tended to vanish.
The powers which flowed forth from God were at once
intellectual and material, corresponding to the monistic
conception of God Himself. They were subtler and
more active forms of matter acting upon its grosser
but plastic forms. In the conception of another school,
God is the unbegotten seed of which the Tree of Being
is the leaves and fruit,3 and the fruit again contains
1 Hippol. 6. 43 (of Marcus), to. 8e ovopaTa tZv aroixeuov to koivo
kch pqTa, alSvas Kal Adyous Kal ptfas Kat o-7repp.aTa Kal jrAn-
p<ap,aTa Kat Kapirovs uvopao-e.
2 Hippol. 5. 19 (of the Sethiani), ttoV o ti vorjo-ei emvoeTs r) Kal
wapaXelireis pi) voqB'ev, tovto eKao~rq tQv dpx&v Tre<j>vKe yeveo-Bai ois ev
dvBpo>7rlvr) faxy waco: ijtictoOv 8i8ao-Kopevq Teyv?;.
8 Hippol. 8. 8 (of the Docetas), Bebv etvai tov irp&Tov olovel o-ireppa
o-VKrjs p.ey'eBei p\v eXaxiarov tovtsAws Svvdpei 8e direipov : ibid. C. 9,
to 8e TrpioTov a-ireppa eKetvo, oBev yeyovev r) o-VKrj, ottiv dyevvijTov. A
similar metaphor was used by the Simonians, Hippol. 6. 9 sqq., but it
is complicated with the metaphor of invisible and visible fire (heat and
flame). It is adopted by Peter in the Clementines, Horn. 2. 4, where
God is the pl£a, man the Kaprros.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 193
in itself infinite possibilities of renewing the original
seed.1 The obvious difficulty which the actual world, with
its failures and imperfections, presents to all theories of
evolution which assume the existence of a good and
perfect God, was bridged over by the hypothesis of a
lapse. The "fall from original righteousness" was
carried back from the earthly Paradise to the sphere of
divinity itself. The theory was shaped in various ways,
some of which are expressed by almost unintelligible
symbols. That of the widely-spread school of Valentinus
was, that the Divine Wisdom herself had become subject
to passion, and that, having both ambition and desire, she
had produced from herself a shapeless mass, in ignorance
that the TJnbegotten One alone can, without the aid of
another, produce what is perfect. Out of this shapeless
mass, and the passions that came forth from her, arose
the material world and the Demiurgus who fashioned it.2
Another theory was that of revolt and insurrection among
the supernal powers.3 Both theories simply pushed the
difficulty farther back: they gave no solution of it:
they were opposed as strongly by philosophers outside
Christianity as they were by polemical theologians within
it : 4 they helped to pave the way for the Augustinian
1 Ibid. 8. 8, .... 6 Kaprrbs ev (S to d-weipoy Kal to dvegapffl 'prjTOv
Qqo-avpi£6pevov <pvXdo-o-eTai o~irepp.a o-vkt)s.
2 The chief authorities for this theory, which was expressed in lan
guage that readily lent itself to caricature, are the first seven chapters
of the first book of Irenaeus, and. Hippolytus 6. 32 sqq.
8 This was especially the view of the Peratee, Hippol. 5. 13.
* Notably by Plotinus, Enn. ii. 9. 2—5.
0

194 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
theology of succeeding centuries, but they did not them
selves win permanent acceptance either in philosophy or
in theology, in either the Eastern or the Western world.
2. Side by side with these hypotheses of evolution
was a tendency, which ultimately became supreme, to
account for the world by the hypothesis of creation. It
was the result of the action of God upon abeady existing
matter. It was not evolved, but ordered or shaped.
God was the Builder or Framer: the universe was a
work of art.1
But this, no less than the monistic hypothesis, con
tained grave difficulties, arising partly from the meta
physical conception of God, and partly from the conception
of moral evil. Three main questions were discussed in
connection with it : (i.) What was the ultimate relation
of matter to God ? (ii.) How did God come into contact
with it so as to shape it ? (iii.) How did a God who was
almighty as well as beneficent come to create what is
imperfect and evil ?
f (i.) The dualistic hypothesis assumed a co-existence of
matter and God. The assumption was more frequently
tacit than explicit. The difficulty of the assumption
varied according to the degree to which matter was
regarded as having positive qualities. There was a
universal belief that beneath the qualities of all existing
things lay a substratum or substance on which they
1 The conception appears in Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 10, rravra Tqv
dpxijv dyaBbv ovra S-qpiovpyrjo-ai omw e£ dp£p<pov vXqs : ib. C. 59,
vXqv dpop<pov ova-av aTptyavTa tov Bebv Koapov Troiqo-ai : but Justin,
though he avowedly adopts the conception from Plato, claims that
Plato adopted it from Moses.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 195
were grafted, and which gave to each thing its unity.
But the conception of the nature of this substance varied
from that of gross and tangible material to that of empty
and formless space. The metaphysical conception of
substance tended to be confused with the physical con
ception of matter. Matter was sometimes conceived as
a mass of atoms not coalescing according to any principle
or order of arrangement:1 the action of the Creator
upon them was that of a general changing a rabble of
individuals into an organized army. It was sometimes
conceived as a vast shapeless but plastic mass, to which
the Creator gave form, partly by moulding it as a potter
moulds clay, partly by combining various elements as a
builder combines his materials in the construction of a
house.2 Both these conceptions of matter tended to
regard it as more or less gross. It was plastic in the
hands of the Divine Workman, but still possessed the
quality of resistance. With Basilides, the conception of
matter was raised to a higher plane. The distinction of
subject and object was preserved, so that- the action of
the Transcendent God was still that of creation and not
of evolution ; but it was " out of that which was not " that
He made things to be. That which He made was
expressed by the metaphor of a seed which contained in
1 Plutarch, de anim. procreat. 5. 3, ov yap Ik toC pi) ovros i) y'evea-is
dXX' eK toS p.i) KaXZs p.q8' iKavws ex0VT0S '¦ *'^# <*K0<7'/U'a 7<V iv T"
rrpb Trjs tov Koo-pov yeveo-eajs : cf. Mb'ller, Zosmologie, p. 39.
2 "Wisdom, 11. 18, KTurao-a tov Koo-pov e£ dpop4>ov vXqs ¦ Justin M.
Apol. 1. 10. 59 (quoted in note, p. 194) : Athenag. Legal. 15, cos ydp
6 Kepapevs Kal 6 ir-qXos, vX-q pev 6 5r?/Aos, Texvirqs 8e 6 Kepapevs, Kal 6
Bebs aqpiovpyos, viraKovowra Se avT$ r) vX-q rrpbs Tr)v Texvqv.
o 2

196 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
itself possibilities, not only of growth, but of different
kinds of growth. Three worlds were involved in it:
the world of spirit, and the world of matter, and between
the two the world of life. The metaphor is sometimes
explained by the help of the Aristotelian conception of
genera and species} The original seed which God made
is the ultimate summum genus. The process .by which
all things came into being followed in inverse order the
process of our knowledge. The steps by which our
ideas ascend, by an almost infinite stairway of subor
dinated groups, from the visible objects of sense to the
highest of all abstractions, the Absolute Being and the
Absolute Unity, are the steps by which that Absolute
Being and Absolute Unity, who is God, evolved or made
the world from that which was not. The basis of the
theory was Platonic, though some of the terms were
borrowed from both Aristotle and the Stoics. It became
itself the basis of the theory which ultimately prevailed
in the Church. The transition appears in Tatian. In
him, God is the author, not only of the form or qualities,
but also of the substance or underlying ground of all
things.2 "The Lord of the universe being Himself the
substance of the whole, not yet having brought any
creature into being, was alone : and since all power over
both visible and invisible things was with Him, He
Himself by the power of His word gave substance to all
1 Hippol. 7. 22 (of Basilides), towo Ioti to o-weppa 8 eX« ev eavry
wdo-av Tr)v iravowepplav 6 cpqaiv ' Apio-TOTeX-qs yevos eTvai els dwelpovs
Tepvopevov ISeas (os Tepvopev d™ tov faov {Sow, ittttov, av&ponrov orrep
so-Ttv ovk 6'v. Cf. ib. 10. 14.
2 Orat. ad Graec. 5 (following the text of Schwartz).

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 197
things with Himself." This theory is found in another
form in Athenagoras : x he makes a point in defence of
Christianity that, so far from denying the existence of
God, it made Him the Author of all existence, He alone
being unborn and imperishable. It is found also in
Theophilus,2 who, however, does not lay stress upon it.
But its importance was soon seen. It had probably
been for a long time the unreasoned belief of Hebrew
monotheism : the development of the Platonic conception
within the Christian sphere gave it a philosophical form :
and early in the third century it had become the prevail
ing theory in the Christian Church. God had created
matter. He was not merely the Architect of the universe,
but its Source.3
1 Suppl. pro Christ. 4.
2 Ad Autol. 2. 5 and 10 ; but in the former of these passages he
adds, Tt 8e p.eya el 6 Bebs e£ VTTOKeipevqs vXrjs eiroiet tov Koo-pov.
3 The most important passage is Hermas, Mand. 1, which is expressed
in strictly philosophical language, 6 Bebs b to. rrdvTa Krlo-as Kal KaTap-
Turas Kal jrotijcras eK tov p.i) ovtos eis to e?vat to. rravra (the pas
sage is quoted as Scripture by Irenseus, 4. 20. 2 = Eusebius, H. E.
5. 8. 7: Origen, de princip. 1. 3. 3, vol. i. p. 61, 2. 1. 5, p. 79, and
elsewhere) : this must be read by the light of the distinctions which
are clearly expressed by Athenagoras, Legat. 4 and 19, where to ov =
to voqTov, which is dyevqTov : to ovk ov = to alo-BqTov, which is
yevtjTov, dpx6p.evov eivai Kal rravopevov : the meaning of to pi) ov
appears from the expression, to ov ov ytverat dXXa. to pi) ov, whence
it is clear that to p) ov = to Swdp.ei ov, or potential being (see Moller,
Kosmologie, p. 123). In some of the other passages in which similar
phrases occur, it is not clear whether the conception is more than that
of an artist who, by impressing form on matter, causes things to exist
which did not exist before : 2 Maccab. 7. 28, «£ ovk 6'vtuv e-n-ol-qcev
aura 6 0eos : 2 Clem. i. 8, eKaAeo-ev yap -qpds ovk ovtos Kal rjBeXrja-ev
(K pi) ovtos eivai i)p£s : Clementin. Horn. 3. 32, t<3 to. pi) 6'vto as to

198 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
But the theory did not immediately win its way to
acceptance. It rather set aside the moral difficulties
than solved them. It was attacked by those who felt
those difficulties strongly. There are two chief lite
rary records of the controversy : one is the treatise of
Tertullian against Hermogenes, the other is a dialogue
of about the same date which is ascribed to an otherwise
unknown Maximus.1 Both treatises are interesting as
examples not only of contemporary polemics, but of the
insoluble difficulties which beset any attempt to explain
the origin of moral evil on metaphysical grounds. The
attempt was soon afterwards practically abandoned. The
solution of the moral difficulties was found in the doctrine
of Free-will : the solution of the metaphysical difficulties
was found in the general acceptance of the belief that
God created all things out of nothing.
(ii.) How, under any conception of matter, short of its
having been created by God, did God come into contact
with it so as to give it qualities and form ? The difficulty
of the question became greater as the tide of thought
receded from anthropomorphism. The dominant idea
etvat o-vo-Tqo-apevo), ovpavbv 8-qpiovpyrja-avTi, yrjv iriXwravri, BaXao-aav
7re/3to/Dto"avTt, t<x ev a8rj Tapievo-avTi Kat Tot -irdvTa depi irXqpiIio-avTi, :
Hippolyt. in Genes. 1, tjj pev TrpioTy i)pepa eTrol-qo-ev o Bebs oo-a eirouqo-ev
eK pi) ovtwv Tats 8e a'AAats ovk Ik pi] 6'vtojv. In Theophilus, these
expressions are interchanged with that of r) wroKeipevq vX-q in such a
way as to suggest their identity : 1. 4; 2. 10, <?£ ovk ovtwv to, iravTa
errolqo-ev : 2. 4, tI 8e p'eya el o Bebs e£ v7TOKeip.evqs SX-qs e-rrolei tov
Koo-pov .... tva e£ ovk ovtwv Ta rrdvTa eTrol-qo-ev. In the later books
of the Clementine Homilies,.™ p.r) ov = void space : the whole passage,
17. 8, gives a clear and interesting exposition.
1 In Euseb. Praep. Evang. 7. 22, and elsewhere : reprinted in Eouth,
Reliquiae Sacrae, ii. 87.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 199
was that of mediation. Sometimes, as in Philo, the
mediation was regarded from the point of view of the
plurality and variety of the effects, and the agents were
conceived as being more than one in number. They
were the angels of the Hebrews, the daemons of the
Greeks. Those who appealed to Scripture saw an indica
tion of this in the use of the plural in the first chapter
of Genesis, "Let us make man."1 Another current of
speculation flowed in the channel, which had been first
formed by the Timceus of Plato, of supposing a single
Creator and Euler of the world who, in subordination to
the transcendent God, fashioned the things that exist.
In some schools of thought this theory was combined
with the theory of creation by the Son.2 The uncon
trolled play of imagination in the region of the unknown
constructed more than one strange speculation which it
is not necessary to revive.
The view into which the Christian consciousness ulti
mately settled down had meanwhile been building itself
up out of elements which were partly Jewish and partly
Greek. On the one hand, there had long been among
the Jews a belief in the power of the word of God:
and the belief in His wisdom had shaped itself into a
conception of that wisdom as a substantive force. On
the other hand, the original conception of Greek philo-
1 Justin M. Tryph. 62; Iren. 1. 24, 25; Hippol. 7. 16, 20: so
Philo, de profug. 13 (i. 556), where, after quoting the passage of
Genesis, he proceeds, following the Platonic theory, 8taAeyerat pev ovv
6 twv SAwv rraT-qp Tats eavrov 8vvdp.ea-iv ats to BvqTov r)p!ov Trjs yj/vxrjs
pepos e8u>Ke SiairXaTTetv, p.ipovp,evais ttjv avTOu Texvqv.
2 The Perat* in Hippol. 5. 17.

200 VII. GREEK. AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Isophy that Mind or Eeason had marshalled into order
the confused and warring elements of the primaeval
chaos, had passed into the conception of the Logos as a
mode of the activity of God. These several elements,
which had a natural affinity for each other, had already
been combined by Philo, as we have seen, into a com
prehensive system : and in the second century they were
entering into new combinations both outside and inside
the Christian communities.1 The vagueness of conception
which we have found in Philo is found also in the earliest
expressions of these combinations. It is not always
clear whether the Logos is regarded as a mode of God's
activity, or as having a substantive existence. In either
view, God was regarded as the Creator ; His supremacy
was as absolute as His unity : there was no rival, because
in either view the Logos was God.
(iii.) How could a God who was at once beneficent
and almighty create a world which contained imperfection
and moral evil? The question was answered, as we
have seen, on the monistic theory of creation by the
^hypothesis of a lapse. It was answered on the dualistic
theory, sometimes by the hypothesis of evil inherent in
matter, and sometimes by the hypothesis of creation by
subordinate and imperfect agents.
The former of these hypotheses came rather from the
East than from Greece; but it harmonized with and
was supported by the Greek conception of matter as the
seat of formlessness and disorder.
1 The Jew through whom Celsus sometimes speaks says, "If your
Logos ii the Son of God, we also assent to the same." Origen, c Cels.
2. 31.

YII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY, 201
•
The latter hypothesis is an extension of the Platonic
distinction between the perfect world which God created
directly through the operation of His own powers, and
the world of mortal and imperfect existences the crea
tion of which He entrusted tp inferior agents. In the
Platonic conception, God Himself, in a certain mode of
His activity, was the Creator (Demiurgus), and the
inferior agents were beings whom He had created.1
In the conception which grew up early in the second
century, and which was first formulated by^arcion, the
Creator was detached from the Supreme God, and con
ceived as doing the work of the inferior agents. He
was subordinate to the Supreme God and ultimately
derived from Him : 2 but looming large in the horizon of
finite thought, He seemed to be a rival and an adversary.
The contradictions, the imperfections, the inequalities of
both condition and ability, which meet us in both the
material and the moral world, were solved by the
hypothesis of two worlds in conflict, each of them moving
under the impulse of a separate Power. The same solu
tion applied also to the contrast of the Old and New
^Testaments. It had been already thought that the God
of the Jews was different from the Father of Jesus
Christ; but, with an exaggerated Paulinism, Marcion
made so deep a chasm between the Law and the Gospel,
the Flesh and the Spirit, that the two were regarded as
inherently hostile, and the work of the Saviour was
1 Cf. Origen, c. Cels. 4. 54.
2 Hippol. c. Noet. 11.

202 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
regarded as bringing back into the world from which
he had been shut out the God of love and grace.1
The objection to all this was that, in spite of its
reservations and safeguards, it tended to ditheism. The
philosophical difficulties of monotheism were enormous,
but the knot was not to be cut by the hypothesis of
either a co-existent and resisting matter or an indepen
dent and rival God. The enormous wave of belief in
the Divine Unity, which had gathered its strength from
the whole sea of contemporary thought, swept away the
barriers in its path. The moral difficulty was solved, as
we shall see in the next Lecture, by the conception of
free-will : the metaphysical difficulties of the contact of
God with matter were solved, partly by the conception
that God created matter, and partly by the conception
that He moulded it into form by His Logos, who is also
His Son, eternally co-existent with Him.
The first patristic statement of this view is in Irenseus ;
it stands in the forefront of his theology : and it seems
to have been so generally accepted in the communities
of which he was cognizant, that he states it as part of
the recognized "rule of truth:" the following is only
one of several passages in which he so states it : 2
"There is one Almighty God who created all things by His
Word and fashioned them, and caused that out of what was not
1 It is not the least of the many contributions of Professor Harnack
to early Christian history that- he has vindicated Marcion from the
excessive disparagement which has resulted from the blind adoption of
the vituperations of Tertullian : see especially his Dogmengeschichte,
Bd. i. pp. 226 sqq., 2te aufl.
2 1. 22 : cf. 4. 20.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 203
all things should be: as saith the Scripture, By the Word of
the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by
the Breath of His mouth : and again, All things were made by
Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.
There is no exception : the Father made all things by Him,
whether visible or invisible, objects of sense or objects of intel
ligence, things temporal or things eternal. He made them not
by angels or by any powers separated from His Thought : for
God needs none of all these beings : but it is by His Word and
His Spirit that He makes and disposes and governs and presides
over all things. This God who made the world, this God who
fashioned man, this God of Abraham, and God of Isaac, and
God of Jacob, above whom there is no other God, nor Beginning
nor Power nor Fulness: this God, as we shall show, is the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."
The same view is expressed with equal prominence
and emphasis by a disciple of Irenseus, who shows an
even stronger impress of the philosophical speculations
of his time : 1
" The one God, the first and sole and universal Maker and
Lord, had nothing coeval with him, not infinite chaos, not
measureless water, or solid earth, or dense air, or warm fire, or
subtle breath, nor the azure cope of the vast heaven : but He
was one, alone by Himself, and by His will He made the things
that are, that before were not, except so far as they existed in
His foreknowledge  This supreme and only God begets
Pieason first, having formed the thought of him, not reason as a v
spoken word, but as an internal mental process of the universe.
Him alone did He beget from existing things : for the Father
himself constituted existence, and from it came that which was
begotten. The cause of the things that came into being was the
Pieason, bearing in himself the active will of Him who begat
him, and not being without knowledge of the Father's thought 
so that when the Father bade the world come into being, the
1 Hippol. 10. 32, 33.

204 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Eeason brought each thing to perfection one by one, thus pleasing
God." This creed of Irenseus and his school became the
basis of the theology of later Christendom. It appealed,
as time went on, to a widening sphere, and summed up
the judgment of average Christians on the main philo
sophical questions of the second century. The questions
were not seriously re-opened. The idealists of Alexandria,
no less than the rhetoricians of Gaul, accepted, with all
its difficulties, the belief that there was one God who
revealed Himself to mankind by the Word by whom He
had created them, and that this Word was manifested in
Jesus Christ. But the Alexandrians were concerned
less Avith the metaphysical than with the moral diffi
culties ; and their view of those difficulties modified also
their view of creation. The cosmogony of Origen was a
theodicy. His aim was less to show in detail how the
world came into existence, than to "justify the ways of
God to man." He proceeded strictly on the lines of the
older philosophies, justifying in this part of his theology
even more than in other respects the criticism of Porphyry,1
that though in his manner of life he was a Christian, in
his opinions about God he was a Greek. He followed
the school of Philo in believing that the original creation
was of a world of ideal or "intelligible" existences,
and that the cause of creation was the goodness of God.2
He differed from, or expanded, the teaching of that
school in believing that the Word or Wisdom of God,
by whom He made the world, was not impersonal, but
His Son, and that both the existence of the Son and the
1 ap. Euseb. HE. 6. 19. « Deprincip. 2. 9. 1, 6.

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 205
creation of the ideal world had been from all eternity.1
For it is impious to think that God ever existed without
His Wisdom, possessing the power to create but not the
will ; and it is inconceivable either that Wisdom should
ever have been without the conception of the world that
was to be, or that there should ever have been a time at
which God was not omnipotent from having no world to
govern.2 The relation of each to the world is stated in
varying ways : one mode of statement is, that from the
Father and the Son, thus eternally co-existent, came the
actual world ; the Father caused it to be, the Son caused
it to be rational:3 another is, that the whole world,
visible and invisible, was made by the agency of the
only begotten Son, who conveyed a share in himself to
certain parts of the things so created and caused them
thereby to become rational creatures.4 This visible world,
which, as also Philo and the Platonists had taught, is a
copy of the ideal world, took its beginning in time : but
it is not the first, nor will it be the last, of such worlds.5
The matter of it as well as the form was created by
God.6 It was made by Him, and to Him it will return.
The Stoical theory had conceived of the universe as
analogous to a seed which expands to flower and fruit
and withers away, but leaves behind it a similar seed
which has a similar life and a similar succession : so did
one universal order spring from its beginning and pass
through its appointed period to the end which was like
the beginning in that after it all things began anew.
1 Deprincip. 1. 2. 2. 2 Ibid. 1. 2. 2, 10.
8 Ibid. 1. 3. 5, 6, 8. 4 Ibid. 2. 6. 3.
s Ibid. 3. 5. 3. • Ibid. 2. 9. 4.

206 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Orio-en's theory was a modification of this: it recognized
an absolute beginning and an absolute end: both the
beginning and the end were God: poised as it were
between these two divine eternities were the worlds of
which we are part. In them, all rational creatures were
originally equal and free : they are equal no longer
because they have variously used their freedom: and
the hypothesis of more worlds than one is a complement,
on the one hand of the hypothesis of human freedom,
on the other hand of the hypothesis of the divine justice,
because it accounts for the infinite diversities of condition,
and gives scope for the discipline of reformation.
Large elements of this theory dominated in the theo
logy of the Eastern Churches during the fourth century.
But ultimately those parts of it which distinguished it
from the theory of Irenseus faded away. The mass of
Christians were content with a simpler creed. More
than one question remained unsolved ; and the hypothesis
of creation by a rival God was part of the creed of a
Church which flourished for several centuries before it
faded away, and it also left its traces in many inconsis
tent usages within the circle of the communities which
rejected it. But the belief in the unity of God, and in
the identity of the one God with the Creator of the
world, was never again seriously disturbed. The close
of the controversy was marked by its transference to a
different, though allied, area. It was no longer Theolo
gical but Christblogical. The expression "Monarchy,"
which had been used of the sole government of the one
God, in distinction from the divided government of many
gods, came to be applied to the sole government of the

VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 207
Father, in distinction from the " economy" of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In this new area of con
troversy the old conceptions re-appear. The monistic
and dualistic theories of the origin of the world lie
beneath the two schools of Monarchianism, in one of
which Christ was conceived as a mode of God, and in
the other as His exalted creature. In the determination
of these Christological controversies Greek philosophy
had a no less important influence than it had upon the
controversies which preceded them : and with some ele
ments of that determination we shall be concerned in a
future Lecture.
We may sum up the result of the influence of Greece
on the conception of God in His relation to the material
universe, by saying that ii found a reasoned basis for
Hebrew monotheism. It helped the Christian commu
nities to believe as an intellectual conviction that which
they had first accepted as a spiritual revelation. The
moral difficulties of human life, and the Oriental influ
ences which were flowing in large mass over some parts
of the Christian world, tended towards ditheism. But
the average opinion of thinking men, which is the
ultimate solvent of all philosophical theories, had for
centuries past been settling down into the belief in the
unity of God. With a conviction which has been as
permanent as it was of slow growth, it believed that the
difficulties in the hypothesis of the existence of a Power
limited by the existence of a rival Power, are greater
even than the great difficulties in the belief in a God
who allows evil to be. The dominant Theistic philosophy

208 VII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
of Greece became the dominant philosophy of Chris
tianity. It prevailed in form as well as in substance.
/ It laid emphasis on the conception of God as the Artificer
and Architect of the universe rather than as its immanent
Cause. But though the substance will remain, the form
may change. Platonism is not the only theory that is
consistent with the fundamental thesis that "of Him,
and through Him, and to Him, are all things : " and it
is not impossible that, even after this long lapse of cen
turies, the Christian world may come back to that con
ception of Him which was shadowed in the far-off ages,
and which has never been wholly without a witness,
that He is " not far off but very nigh ;" that " He is in
us and we in Him;" that He is changeless and yet
changing in and with His creatures ; and that He who
"rested from His creation," yet so "worketh hitherto"
that the moving universe itself is the eternal and unfold
ing manifestation of Him.

Lecture VIII.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN THEOLOGY.
II. The Moral Governor.

A. The Greek Idea.
1. The idea of the unity of God had grown, as we
have already seen, in a common growth with the idea of
the unity of the world. But it did not absorb that idea.
The dominant element in the idea of God was personality:
in the idea of the world it was order. But personality
implied will, and will seemed to imply the capacity to
change ; whereas in the world, wherever order could be
traced, it was fixed and unvarying.
The order was most conspicuous in the movements of
the heavenly bodies. It could be expressed by numbers.
The philosopher of numbers was the first to give to the
world the name Cosmos, the "order" as of a marshalled
army.1 The order being capable of being expressed by
numbers, partook of the nature of numerical relations.
Those relations are not only fixed, but absolutely unalter
able. That a certain ratio should be otherwise than what
it is, is inconceivable. Hence the same philosopher of
1 Aetius ap. Plut. deplac. phil. 2. 1. 1 (Diels, p. 327), UvBayopas
irpuros ivopao-e tt)v tuv oXtav -irepioxijv Koo-pov Ik ttjs ev airy Ta£e<as.

210 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
numbers who had first conceived of the Cosmos, conceived
of it also as being "invested with necessity," and the
metaphysicians who followed him framed the formula,
" All things are by necessity."1
This conception linked itself with an older idea of Greek
religion. The length of a man's life and his measure of
endowments had been spoken of as his " share" or " por
tion." Sometimes the assigning of this portion to a man
was conceived as the work of Zeus or the other gods :
sometimes the gods themselves had their portions like
men ; and very commonly the portion itself was viewed
actively, as though it were the activity of a special being.
It was sometimes personal, sometimes impersonal : it was,
in any case, inevitable.2 Through its character of inevi-
tableness, it fused with the conception of the unalterable-
ness of physical order. Hence the proposition, "AH
things are by necessity," soon came to be otherwise ex
pressed, "All things are by destiny."3
1 Aetius, ibid. 1. 25 (Diels, p. 321), UvBayopas dvdyK-qv e<f>q ttepi-
Kelo-Bai t<J> Koo-p<£ ILappevlS-qs Kal AqpoKpiTOS -rrdvTa koto. dvdyKqv.
2 Por the numerous passages which prove these statements, reference
may be made to Nagelsbach, Homerische Theologie, 2. 2. 3; NacJir
homerische Theologie, 3. 2. 2.
3 Aetius, ut supra, 1. 27 (Diels, p. 322), 'Hpa'/cWos Trdvra KaB'
elpappAvqv, Tr)v Se avTrjv mdpxeiv Kal dvdyK-qv : the identification of
dvdyK-q and elpappevq is also made by Parmenides and Democritus in
a continuation of the passage quoted above. But in much later times
a distinction was sometimes drawn between the two words, dvdyK-q
being used of the subjective necessity of a proposition of which the
contradictory is unthinkable : Alex. Aphrodis. Qucest. Nat. 2. 5 (p. 96,
ed. Spengel), reco-apa youv to. 81s Svo e£ dvdyk-qs, ov p,r)v Ka6' elpap-
piv-qv el ye ev toIs yevopevois to Ka& elpappivqv ; but, on the other
hand, o?s KaB elppbv a'lTi&v yivop.evois to dvTiKelp.tvov d8vva.Tor, jraira
«ij av KaB' elpapp,evqv.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 211
Over against the personal might of Zeus there thus
came to stand the dark and formless fixity of an imper
sonal Destiny.1 The conception was especially elaborated
by the Stoics. In the older mythology from which it
had sprung, its personifications had been spoken of some
times as the daughters of Zeus and Themis, and some
times as the daughters of Mght.2 The former expressed
its certainty and perfect order ; the other, the darkness of
its working. The former element became more promi
nent. It was an " eternal, continuous and ordered move
ment."3 It was "the linked chain of causes."4 The
idea of necessity passed into that of intelligent and in
herent force : the idea of destiny was transmuted into
that of law.
This sublime conception, which has become a perma
nent possession of the human race, was further elaborated
into the picture of the world as a great city. The Greek
xo'Xj?, the state, whose equivalent in modern times is not
civil but ecclesiastical, was an ideal society, the embodied
type of a perfect constitution or organization (avcmma).5
Its parts were all interdependent and relative to the
1 Mgelsbach, Nachliomerische Theologie, p. 142.
2 Hesiod, Theog. 218, 904.
3 Chrysippus, ap. Theodoret. Gr. affect, curat. 6. 14, eivai 8e Tr)v
eipappivqv Kiv-qo-iv dtSiov crvvexrj Kal TeTayp.evqv : SO, in other words,
ap. Aul. Gell. 6. 2. 3.
4 Aetius ap. Plut. de placit. philos. 1. 28, ol Stohkoi elppbv alTimv.
Philo, de mut. nom. 23 (i. 598), aKoXovBla Kal dvaXoyla tZv o-vprrdv-
Ttav, elppbv c^ouo-a dSidXvTov : Cic. de divin. 1. 55, ' ordinem seriemque
causarum cum causa causae nexa rem ex so gignat.'
6 The Stoical definition of a iroAis was o-ucnqpa Kal TrXrjBos dvBpd-
vrmv iw-6 vopov 8ioLKovp.evov, Clem. Alex. Strom, 4. 26 ; cf, Arius
Cidymus, ap. Diels, p. 464.
p2

212 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
whole: the whole was flawless and supreme, working
out without friction the divine conception which was
expressed in its laws. The world was such an ideal
society.1 It consisted of gods and men : the former were
its rulers ; the latter, its citizens. The moral law was-
a reason inherent in human nature, prescribing what
men should do, and forbidding what they should not do :
human laws were but appendages of it.2 In this sense
man was a " citizen of the world."3 To each individual
man, as to every other created being, the administrators
had assigned a special task. " Thou be Sun: thou hast
the power to go on thy circuit and make the year and
the seasons, to make fruits grow and ripen, to stir and
lull the winds, to warm the bodies of men : go thy way,
make thy circuit, and so fulfil thy ministry alike in small
things and in great  Thou hast the power to lead
the army to. Ilium : be Agamemnon. Thou hast the
power to fight in combat with Hector : be Achilles." To
this function of administration the gods were limited.
The constitution of the great city was unchangeable.
1 The idea is found in almost all Stoical writers : Plutarch, de Alex.
Magn. virt. 6, speaks of r) iroXv &avpa£op.evq rroXiTela tov Tr)v IraucSv
alpeo-iv KaTafiaXopivov Z-qvtavos: Chrysippus ap. Phsedr. Epicur. de
nat. Deorum, ed. Petersen, p. 19 : Muson. Frag. 5, ed. Peerlk. p. 164
(from Stob. Flor. 40), tov Atos TroXetas ij o-vveo-T-qKev e£ dvdpdmw Kal
Beav : Epict. Diss. 1. 9. 4 ; 2. 13. 6 j 3. 22. 4 ; 3. 24. 10 : most fully
in Arius Didymus ap. Euseb. Prcep. Evang. 15. 15. 4, ovtu Kal b
Koo-pos oiovet 5roA,is eo-Tlv Ik Bewv Kal dvBpbnrmv o-vveo-rZo-a, tZv pev
Beutv T-qv -qyep.ovi.av exovrtav tZv 8' dvBpunrutv viroTeTaypeviiiv.
* Philo, de JosepJio, 6 (ii. 46), Aoyos 8e eo-Ti <f>vo-eias ttjooo-toiktikos
pev oil/ irpaKTeov d-irayopevriKbs 8e iav ov irpaKTeov .... Trpoo-dTJKai pev
yap ol Kara. n-dAets 'vopoi tov Trjs <f>vo-eus opBov Xoyov.
8 Epict. Diss. 3. 22. 5

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 213
The gods, like men, were, in the Stoical conception,
bound by the conditions of things.
" That which is best of all things and supreme," says Epictetus,
¦"have the gods placed in our power— the faculty of rightly deal
ing with ideas : all other things are out of our power. Is it that
they would not ? 1 for my part think that if they had been able
they would have placed the other things also in our power ; but
they absolutely could not. ... For what says Zeus ? 'Epictetus,
if it had been possible, I would have made thy body and thy
possessions free and unhindered. But as it is, forget not that
thy body is not thine, but only clay deftly kneaded. And since
I could not do this, I gave thee a part of myself, the power of
making or not making effort, the power of indulging or not in
dulging desire ; iu short, the power of dealing with all the ideas
of thy mind.'"1
2. Side by side with this conception of destiny were
growing up new conceptions of the nature of the gods.
The gods of wrath were passing away. The awe of the
forces of nature, of night and thunder, of the whirlwind
and the earthquake, which had underlain the primitive
religions, was fading into mist. The meaner conceptions
which had resulted from a vividly realized anthropomor
phism, the malice and spite and intrigue which make
some parts of the earlier mythology read like the chronique
scandaleuse of a European court, were passing into the
region of ridicule and finding their expression only in
burlesque. Two great conceptions, the elements of which
had existed in the earliest religion, gradually asserted
their supremacy. The gods were just, and they were
also good. They punished wicked deeds, not by an arbi
trary vengeance, but by the operation of unfailing laws.
1 Epict. Diss. 1. 1. 10 j cf. Seneca, de Provid. 5. 7, 'non potest
artifex mutare materiaui.' But Epictetus sometimes makes it a ques
tion, not of possibility, but of will, e.g. Diss. 4. 3. 10.

214 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
The laws were the expression of the highest conceivable
morality. Their penalties were personal to the offender,
and the sinner who did not pay them in this life paid
them after death. The gods were also good. The idea
of their kindness, which in the earlier religion had been
a kindness only for favoured individuals, widened out to
a conception of their general benevolence.1 The. con
ception of their forethought, which at first had only been
that of wise provision in particular cases, linked itself
with the Stoical teleology.2 The God who was the Eeason
of the world, and immanent in it, was working to an end.
That end was the perfection of the whole, which was also
the perfection of each member of the whole. In the
sphere of human life, happiness and perfection, misery
and imperfection, are linked together. The forethought
or "Providence" of God was thus beneficent in regard
both to the universe itself and to the individual. It
worked by self-acting laws. "There are," says Epic
tetus,3 "punishments appointed as it were by law to
those who disobey the divine administration. Whoever
thinks anything to be good that is outside the range of
his will, let that man feel envy and unsatisfied longing ;
let him be flattered, let him be unquiet ; whoever thinks
anything to be evil that is outside the range of his will,
let him feel pain and sorrow, let him bemoan himself and
be unhappy." And again: "This is the law— divine ,
1 The data for. the long history of the moral conceptions of Greek
religion which are briefly indicated above are far too numerous to be
given in a note : the student is referred to Nagclsbach, Die Nach-
homerische Theologie, i. 17—58. One may note the list of titles applied
to God, e.g. in Dio Chrysostom, and the diminishing use of IXdo-Keo-Bat.
2 Epict. Diss. 1. 6. 3 jq^ 3 n j_

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 215
and strong and beyond escape — which exacts the greatest
punishments from those who have sinned the greatest
sins. For what says it ? The man who lays claim to
the things that do not concern him, let him be a braggart,
let him be vainglorious : the man who disobeys the divine
administration, let him be mean-spirited, let him be a
slave, let him feel grief, and jealousy, and pity ; in short,
let him bemoan himself and be unhappy." x
There were thus at the beginning of the Christian era
two concurrent conceptions of the nature of the super
human forces which determine the existence and control
the activity of all created things, the conceptions of
Destiny and of Providence. The two conceptions, though
apparently antagonistic, had tended, like all conceptions
which have a strong hold upon masses of men, to approach
each other. The meeting-point had been found in the
conception of the fixed order of the world as being at
once rational and beneficent. It was rational because if
was the embodiment of the highest reason ; and it was
beneficent because happiness is incident to perfection,
and the highest reason, which is the law of the perfec
tion of the whole, is also the law of the perfection of the
parts. There were two stages in this blending of the
two conceptions into one : the identification, first of Des
tiny with Eeason;2 and, secondly, of Destiny or Eeason
1 Diss. 3. 24. 42, 43.
2 Destiny is Eeason : Heraclitus ap. Aet. Placit. in Plut. de placit.
philos. 1. 28. 1; Stob. Eel. 1. 5. 15 (Diels, p. 323), ovo-lav elpappev-qs
Aoyov tov 8ia Trjs ovo-las tov iravTos SirJKovra : Chrysippus, ibid.
eipappevq &ttIv 6 tov Koo-p.ov Xoyos r\ Xoyos t5>v ev Tip Koo-p.t$ irpovoia
8u>iKovp,evoiv ij Aoyos KaB' ov ra p£v yeyovora yeyove to. 8e yivop.eva

216 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
' with Providence.1 The former of these is found in He
raclitus, but is absent from Plato, who distinguishes
what comes into being by necessity, from what is wrought
by mind: the elaboration of both the former and the
latter is due to the Stoics, growing logically out of their
conception of the universe as a single substance moved
by an inherent law. It was probably in many cases a
change rather of language than of idea when Destiny or
Eeason or Providence was spoken of as God ; 2 and yet
sometimes, whether by the lingering of an ancient belief
or by an intuition which transcended logic, the sense of
personality mingles with the idea of physical sequence,
and all things that happen in the infinite chain of immu-
ylveTai to. 8e yevqo-opeva yevrjcreTai : Zeno ap. Ar. Did. Epit. phys. 20,
in Stob. Eel. 1. 11. 5 (Diels, p. 458), tov tov iravrbs Xoyov ov evioi
hpappev-qv KaXovcriv.
1 Destiny, or Eeason, is Providence : Chrysippus, in the quotation
given in the preceding note : Zeno ap. Aet. Placit. in Stob. Eel. 1. 5.
15 (Diels, p. 322).
2 Destiny, Eeason, Providence, is God, or the Will of God : Chry
sippus in Plut. de Stoic, repug. 34. 5, oti 8' r) Koivi) <pv<ris Kal 6 koivos
Trjs 4>vo-ews Xoyos elpappevq Kal rrpbvoia Kal ZeiJS eo~Tiv ovSe tow avTi-
TroSas XeXqBe' rravTaxou yap Tavra BpvXeiTai vtt avrZv' Kal 'Atos 8*
eTeXeleTO BovXi)' Tov"Op-qpov elpqKevai <jiqo-lv [sc. 6 Xpvo-iTnros] 6p6!as>
em T-qv eipappevqv dvatpepovTa Kal Tr)v twv 6Xo>v (pvo-tv KaB' -qv Trdvra
SioiKeirai : id. de commun. not. 34. 5, ov8e TovXaxio-rov eWi t5k pepwv
«X«v dXXtos dXX' rj Kara. Tr)v tov Aids fiovXqo-iv : Arius Didymus,
Epit. ap. Euseb. Prcep. Ev. 15. 15 (Diels, p. 464) : Philodemus, de
piet. frag. ed. Gompertz, p. 83 (Diels, p. 549). The more exact state
ment is in the summary of Aetius ap. Plut. de placit. philos. 1. 7. 17,
Stob. Eel. 1. 2. 29 (Diels, p. 306), where God is said to comprehend
within Himself tous o-rreppaTiKovs Aoyovs KaB' ous d-n-avra KaB' elpap-
pevrjv ylverai. The loftiest form of the conception is expressed by
Lucan, Pharsal. 2. 10, 'se quoque lege tenens:' God is not the slave
of Pate or Law, but voluntarily binds Himself by it.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 217
table causation are conceived as happening by the will of
God. 3. But over against the conception of a perfect Eeason
or Providence administering the world, was the fact of
the existence of physical pain and social inequality and
moral failure. The problems which the fact suggested
filled a large place in later Greek philosophy, and were
solved in many ways.
The solution was sometimes found in the denial of the
universality of Providence. God is the Author only of
good: evil is due to other causes.1 This view, which
found its first philosophical expression in the Timceus of
Plato, was transmitted, through some of the Platonic
schools, to the later syncretist writers who incorporated
Platonic elements. In its Platonic form it assumed the
existence of inferior agents who ultimately owed their
existence to God, but whose existence as authors of evil
He permitted or overlooked. In some later forms the
view linked itself with Oriental conceptions of matter as
inherently evil.
The solution was more commonly found in a denial
1 Plat. Rep. 2, pp. 379, 380 ; Tim. p. 41. Philo, de mund. opif.
24 (i. 17), de confus. ling. 35 (i. 432), 6e$ yap t<j> Travqyepovi ep.Trpe7res
ovk e8o£ev ecvai Tr)v hrl KaKiav b8bv ev ^XV ^¦°ylK'0 S' eavTov 8qpiovp-
yrjo-aC ov X°-Piv T0's /*eT' o-v-bv eTreTpeij/e Tr)v tovtov tov pepovs KaTao—
Kevqv: de profug. 13 (i. 556), dvayKaiov ovv -qyqo-aTO Tr)v KaKmv yeveo-iv
eTepois drrovetpai 8-qp.iovpyois Tr)v 8e tQv dya&Zv eavrtp povip : so also
in the (probably) post-Philonean de Abraham. 28 (ii. 22). The other
phase of the conception is stated by Celsus, not as a philosophical solu
tion of the difficulty, but as one which might be taught to the vulgar,
f£apKet 8e els TrXrjBos elprjo-Bai ois Ik Beov p,ev ovk eo-Ti KaKa. vX-Q 81
trpoa-KeiTai.

218 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
of the reality of apparent evils. They were all either
forms of good, or incidental to its operation or essential
to its production. This was the common solution of the
Stoics. It had many phases. One view was based upon
the teleological conception of nature. The world is march
ing on to its end : it realizes its purpose not directly but
by degrees : there are necessary sequences of its march
which seem to us to be evil.1 Another view, akin to the
preceding, was based upon the conception of the world
as a whole. In its vast economy there are subordina
tions and individual inconveniences. Such subordina
tions and inconveniences are necessary parts of the plan.
The pain of the individual is not an evil, but his contri
bution to the good of the whole. " What about my leg
being lamed, then ?" says Epictetus,2 addressing himself
in the character of an imaginary objector. " Slave ! do
you really find fault with the world on account of one
bit of a leg ? will you not give that up to the universe ?
will you not let it go ? will you not gladly surrender it
to the Giver ?" The world, in other words, was regarded
as an economy (otKovo/j.ty, like that of a city, in which
there are apparent inequalities of condition, but in which
1 This is one of the solutions offered by Chrysippus : the concrete
form of the difficulty, with which he dealt, was el al twv dv8pi!nn>v voo-oi
KaTa. (pvo-iv ylvovrai, and his answer was that diseases come KaTa wap-
aKoXovB-qu-iv, ' non per naturam sed per sequellas quasdam necessarian,'
Aul. Gell. 7 (6). 1. 9. So also in the long fragment of Philo in Euseb.
Prcsp. Ev. 8. 13 (Philo, ii. 643, 644), Bebs yap ov8evbs curios kokoSto
Traparrav dXX at, Ttoi/ o-Toixetwv p,eTa[SoXal TavTa yevvlao-Lv, ov irpoqyov-
p.eva epya <pvcreu>s dXX e7rop.eva tois dvayKalois Kal tois irpoqyovpivois
eiraKoXovBovvTa. 2 Diss. 1. 12. 24.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 210
such inequalities are necessary to the constitution of the
whole.1 "What is meant, then," asks Epictetus, "by distinguishing
the things that happen to us as ' according to nature ' and ' con
trary to nature ' ? The phrases are used as if we were isolated.
For example, to a foot to be ' according to nature ' is to be clean;
but if you consider it as a foot, a member of the body, and not
as isolated, it will be its duty both to walk in mud, and to tread
on thorns — nay, sometimes even to be cut off for the benefit of
the whole body ; if it refuse, it is no longer a foot. We have to
form a similar conception about ourselves. What are you ? A
man. If you regard yourself as isolated, it is 'according to
nature ' to five until old age, to be rich, to be in good health ;
but if you regard yourself as a man, a part of a certain whole, it
is your duty, on account of that whole, sometimes to be ill,
sometimes to take a voyage, sometimes to run into danger, some
times to be in want, and, it may be, to die before your time.
Why then are you discontented ? Do you not know that, as in
the example a discontented foot is no longer a foot, so neither
are you a man. For what is a man ? A member of a city, first
the city which consists of gods and men, and next of the city
which is so called in the more proximate sense, the earthly city,
which is a small model of the whole. 'Am I, then, now,' you
say, ' to be brought before a court : is so-and-so to fall into a
fever : so-and-so to go on a voyage : so-and-so to die : so-and-so
to be condemned V Yes ; for it is impossible, considering the
sort of body we have, with this atmosphere round us, and with
these companions of our life, that different things of this kind
should not befall different men.2
" It is on this account that the philosophers rightly tell us
that if a perfectly good man had foreknown what was going to
happen to him, he would co-operate with nature in both falling
1 Chrysippus, de Diis, 2, ap. Plut. de Stoic, repug. 35, ttotI pev to.
8vo-xp-qo-Ta o-vp.palvei Tots dyaBois ov"x uorrep rots 4>avXot.s KoXacrems
X°-pw dXXa Kar dXXrjv o'iKovop.lav taorrep ev Tats iroXeo-iv.
2 Diss. 2. 5. 24.

220 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
sick and dying and being maimed, being conscious that this is
the particular portion that is assigned to him in the arrangement
of the universe, and that the whole is supreme over the part,
and the city over the citizen."1
This Stoical solution, if the teleological conception which
underlies it be assumed, may have been adequate as an
explanation both of physical pain and of social inequality.
But it was clearly inadequate as an explanation of misery
and moral evil. And the sense of misery and moral evil
was growing. The increased complexity of social life
revealed the distress which it helped to create, and the
intensified consciousness of individual life quickened also
the sense of disappointment and moral shortcoming. The
solution of the difficulties which these facts of life pre
sented, was found in a belief which was correlative to
the growing belief in the goodness of God, though logi
cally inconsistent with the belief in the universality of
His Providence. It was, that men were the authors of
their own misery. Their sorrows, so far as they were
not punitive or remedial,, came from their own folly or
perversity. They belonged to a margin of life which
was outside the will of the gods or the ordinances of fate.
The belief was repeatedly expressed by Homer, but does
not appear in philosophy until the time of the Stoics : it
is found in both Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and the latter
also quotes it as a belief of the Pythagoreans.2 Out of
it came the solution of a problem not less important than
that from which it had itself sprung. The conception
that men were free to bring ruin upon themselves, led
to the wider conception that they were altogether free.
1 Diss. 2. 10. 5. » Aul. Gell. 7 (6). 2. 12—15.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 221
There emerged for the first time into prominence the
idea which has filled a large place in all later theology
and ethics, that of the freedom of the will. The 'freedom
which was denied to external nature was asserted of
human nature. It was within a man's own power to do
right or wrong, to be happy or miserable.
" Of all things that are," says Epictetus,1 " one part is in our
control, the other out of it ; in our control are opinion, impulse
to do, effort to obtain, effort to avoid — in a word, our own proper
activities ; out of our control are our bodies, property, reputation,
office — in a word, all things except our proper activities. Things
in our control are in their nature free, not liable to hindrance in
the doing or to frustration of the attainment ; things out of our
control are weak, dependent, liable to hindrance, belonging to
others. Bear in mind, then, that if you mistake what is depen
dent for what is free, and what belongs to others for what is
your own, you will meet with obstacles in your way, you will
be regretful and disquieted, you will find fault with both gods
and men. If, on the contrary, you think that only to be your
own which is really your own, and that which is another's to be,
as it really is, another's, no one will thwart you, you will find
fault with no one, you will reproach no one, you will do no single
thing against your will, no one will harm you, you will not have
an enemy."
The incompatibility of this doctrine with that of the
universality of Destiny or Eeason or Providence — the
"antinomy of the practical understanding" — was not
always observed.2 The two doctrines marched on parallel
lines, and each of them was sometimes stated as though
it had no limitations. The harmony of them, which is
indicated by both Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and which
underlies a large part of both the theology and the ethics
1 Each. 1. s E.g. Sext. Empir. Pyrr. 3. 9.

222 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
of Epictetus, is in effect this : The world marches on to
its end, realizing its own perfection, with absolute cer
tainty. The majority of its parts move in that march
unconsciously, with no sense of pleasure or pain, no idea
of good or evil. To man is given the consciousness of
action, the sense of pleasure and pain, the idea of good
and evil, and freedom of choice between them. If he
chooses that which is against the movement of nature,
he chooses for himself misery ; if he chooses that which
is in accordance with that movement, he finds happiness.
In either case the movement of nature goes on, and the
man fulfils his destiny : " Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem
trahunt."1 It is a man's true function and high privilege
so to educate his mind and discipline his will, as to think
that to be best which is really best, and that to be avoided
which nature has not willed : in other words, to acqui
esce in the will of God, not as submitting in passive
resignation to the power of one who is stronger, but as
having made that will his own.2
If a man realizes this, instead of bemoaning the diffi
culties of life, he will not only ask God to send them,
but thank Him for them. This is the Stoical theodicy.
The life and teaching of Epictetus are for the most part
a commentary upon it.
1 Seneca, Ep. 107. 11 : a free Latin rendering of one of the verses
of Cleanthes quoted from Epictetus in Lecture VI. p. 157.
2 Seneca, Dial. 1. 5. 8 : quid est boni viri? praebere se fato. grande
solatium est cum universo rapi. quicquid est quod nos sic vivere, sic
mori jussit, eadeai necessitate et deos adligat. inrevocs bilis humana
pariter ac divina cursus vehit. ille ipse omnium cond*! tor et rector
scripsit quidem fata, sed sequitur. semper paret, semel jussit.

VHI. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 223
" Look at the powers you have ; and when you have looked at
them, say, ' Bring me, 0 God, what difficulty Thou wilt ; for I
have the equipment which Thou hast given me, and the means
for making all things that happen contribute to my adornment.'
Nay, but that is not what you do : you sit sometimes shuddering
at the thought of what may happen, sometimes bewailing and
grieving and groaning over what does happen. Then you find
fault with the gods ! For what but impiety is the consequence
of such degeneracy ? And yet God has not merely given you
these powers by which we may bear whatever happens without
being lowered or crushed by it, but also, like the good King and
true Father that He is, has given to this part of you the capacity
of not being thwarted, or forced, or hindered, and has made it
absolutely your own, not even reserving to Himself the power
of thwarting or hindering it."1
" What words are sufficient to praise or worthily describe the
gifts of Providence to us ? If we were really wise, what should
we have been doing in public or in private but sing hymns to
God, and bless Him and recount His gifts (tcis x«/"t<is) ? Digging
or ploughing or eating, ought we not to be singing this hymn to
God, 'Great is God for having given us these tools for tilling the
ground ; great is God for having given us hands to work with
and throat to swallow with, for that we grow unconsciously and
breathe while we sleep ' ? This ought to be our hymn for every
thing: but the chiefest and divinest hymn should be for His
having given us the power of understanding and of dealing
rationally with ideas. Nay — since most of you are utterly blind
to this — ought there not to be some one to make this his special
function, and to sing the hymn to God for all the rest ? What
else can a lame old man like me do but sing hymns to God ? If
I were a nightingale, I should do the work of a nightingale ; if
a swan, the work of a swan; but being as I am a rational being,
I must sing hymns to God. This is my work : this I do : this
rank— as far as I can — I will not leave ; and I invite you to join
with me in this same song."2
1 Epict. Diss. 1. 6. 37—40.
» Ibid. 1. 16. 15—21.

224 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
B. The Christian Idea.
In primitive Christianity we find ourselves in another
sphere of ideas : we seem to be breathing the air of Syria,
with Syrian forms moving round us, and speaking a lan
guage which is not familiar to us. For the Greek city,
with its orderly government, we have to substitute the
picture of an Eastern sheyk, at once the paymaster of
his dependents and their judge. Two conceptions are
dominant, that of wages for work done, and that of posi
tive law.
1, The idea of moral conduct as work done for a
master who will in due time pay wages for it, was a
natural growth on Semitic soil. It grew up among the
fellahin, to whom the day's work brought the day's wages,
and whose work was scrutinized before the wages were
paid. It is found in many passages of the New Testa
ment, and not least of all in the discourses of our Lord.'
The ethical problems which had vexed the souls of the
writers of Job and the Psalms, are solved by the teaching
that the wages are not all paid now, but that some of
them are in the keeping of the Father in heaven. The
persecuted are consoled by the thought, " Great are your
wages in heaven."1 Those who do their alms before men
receive tbeir wages in present reputation, and have no
wages stored up for them in heaven.2 The smallest act
of casual charity, the giving of a cup of cold water, will
not go without its wages.3 The payment will be made
at the return of the Son of Man, whose " wages are with
1 S. Matthew, 5. 12 ; S. Luke, 6. 23. 2 Ibid. 6. 1.
8 Ibid. 10.42; S.Mark, 9. 41.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 225
him to give to every man according as his work is."1
So fundamental is the conception that "he that cometh
to God must believe," not only " that He is," but also
that He "pays their due to them that seek after Him."2
So also in the early Christian literature which moved
still within the sphere of Syrian ideas. In the "Two
Ways," what is given in charity should be given without
murmuring, for God will repay it : 3 in the Epistle of
Barnabas, the conception of the paymaster is blended
with that of the judge.4 "The Lord judges without
respect of persons : every one shall receive according as
he has done : if he be good, his righteousness shall go
before him : if he be wicked, the wages of his wicked
ness are before his face."
2. God is at once the Lawgiver and the Judge. The
underlying conception is that of an Oriental sovereign
who issues definite commands, who is gratified by obe
dience and made angry by disobedience, who gives pre
sents to those who please him and punishes those with
whom he is angry. The punishments which he inflicts
are vindictive and not remedial. They are the mani
festation of his vengeance against unrighteousness. They
are external to the offender. They follow on the offence
by the sentence of the judge, and not by a self-acting
law. He sends men into punishment.
The introduction into this primitive Christianity of
1 Eevelation, 22. 12 : so Barnab. 21. 3 : eyyus 6 Kvpios Kal 6 pio-Bbs
avTov. 2 Hebrews, 11. 6.
8 Didache, 4. 7, yv(oo~Q yap tis ecrnv 6 tou p.io-Bov KaXbs dvTaTro8oTqs.
4 Barnab. 4. 12. Q

226 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
the ethical conceptions of Greek philosophy, raised diffi
culties which were long in being solved, if indeed they
can be said to have been solved even now. The chief of
these difficulties were, (i.) the relation of the idea of
forgiveness to that of law ; (ii.) the relation of the con
ception of a Moral Governor to that of free-will.
(i.) The Christian conception of God on its ethical side
was dominated by the idea of the forgiveness of sins.
God was a Sovereign who had issued commands: He
was a Householder who had entrusted His servants with
powers to be used in His service. As Sovereign, He
could, at His pleasure, forgive a breach of His orders :
as Householder, He eould remit a debt which was due
to Him from His servants. The special message of the
Gospel was, that God was willing to forgive men their
transgressions, and to remit their debts, for the sake of
Jesus Christ. The corresponding Greek conception had
come to be dominated by the idea of order. The order
was rational and beneficent, but it was universal. It
could not be violated with impunity. The punishment
of its violation eame by a self-acting law. There was a
possibility of amendment, but there was none of remis
sion. Each of these conceptions is consistent with itself :
each by itself furnishes the basis of a rational theology.
But the two conceptions are apparently irreconcilable
with each other ; and the history of a large part of early
Christian theology is the history of endeavour's to recon
cile them. The one conception belonged to a moral
world, controlled by a Personality who set forces in
motion ; the other to a physical world, controlled by a
force which was also conceived as a Personality. Stated

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 227
in Christian terms, the one resolved itself into the pro
position, God is good; the other into the proposition,
God is just. The two propositions seemed at first to be
inconsistent with each other : on the one hand, the infi
nite love of God excluding the idea of punishment ; on
the other hand, His immutable righteousness excluding
the idea of forgiveness.1 The difficulty seemed insoluble,
except upon the hypothesis of the existence of two Gods.
The ditheism was sometimes veiled by the conception
that the second God had been created by the first, and
was ultimately subordinate to Him. In the theology of
Marcion, which filled a large place in the Christianity of
both the second and the third centuries, ditheism was
presented as the only solution of this and all the other
contrasts of which the world is full, and of which that of
Law and Grace is the most typical example.2 The New
1 These conceptions of the earliest Christian philosophers are stated,
in order to be modified, by Origen, deprinc. 2. 5. 1 : existimant igitur
bonitatem affectum talem quemdam esse quod bene fieri omnibus debeat
etiam si ihdignus sit is cui beneficium datur nee bene consequi merea-
tur . . . . Justitiam vero putarunt affectum esse talem qui unicuique
prout meretur retribuat . . . . ut secundum sensum ipsorum Justus
malis non videatur bene velle sed velut odio quodam ferri adversus eos.
2 The title of Marcion's chief work was ' AvTiBeo-eis, ' Contrasts': the
extent to which his opinions prevailed is shown both by contemporary
testimonyj e.g. Justin M. Apol. 1. 26, os koto 7rav y'evos dvBpwrraiv Sta
Tqs tSv 8aip.oviav o~vXXrppeu>s ttoXXovs ireTroiqKe /3Xao-(j}rjpias Xeyeiv,
Iren. 3. 3. 4, and also by the fact that the Churches into which his
adherents were organized flourished side by side with the Catholic
Churches for many centuries (there is an inscription of one of them,
dated a.d. 318, in Le Bas et Waddington, vol. iii. JSTo. 2558, and they
had not died out at the time of the Trullan Council in a.d. 692, Cone.
Quinisext. c. 95) : the importance which was attached to him is shown
by the largo place which he occupies in early controversies, Justin
Martyr, Irenseus, the Clementines, Origen, Tertullian, being at pains
to refute him. Q o

228 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Testament was the revelation of the good God, the God
of love ; the Old Testament was that of the just God,
the God of wrath. Eedemption was the victory of for
giveness over punishment, of the God who was revealed
by Jesus Christ over the God who was manifested in the
Law. The ditheistic hypothesis was itself more difficult than
the difficulties which it explained. The writers who
opposed it were helped, not only by the whole current
of evangelical tradition, but also by the dominant ten
dencies of both philosophy and popular religion. They
insisted that justice and goodness were not only com
patible but necessarily co-existent in the Divine nature.
Goodness meant not indiscriminating beneficence ; justice
meant not inexorable wrath : goodness and justice were
combined in the power of God to deal with every man
according to his deserts, including in the idea of deserts
that of repentance.
The solution is found in Irenseus, who argues that in
the absence of either of the two attributes, God would
cease to be God :
" If the God who judges be not also good, so as to bestow
favours on those on whom He ought, and to reprove those whom
He should, He will be as a Judge neither wise nor just. On the
other hand, if the good God be only good, and not also able to
test those on whom He shall bestow His goodness, He will be
outside goodness as well as outside justice, and His goodness
will seem imperfect, inasmuch as it does not save all, as it should
do if it be not accompanied with judgment. Marcion, therefore,
by dividing God into two, the one a God who judges, and the
other a God who is good, on both sides puts an end to God."1
1 Iren. 3. 25. 2.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 229
It is found in Tertullian, who, after arguing on a priori
grounds that the one attribute implies the other, passes
by an almost unconscious transition from physical to
moral law: just as the "justice" of God in its physical
operation controlled His goodness in the making of an
orderly world, so in its moral operation it has, since the
Fall, regulated His dealings with mankind.
"Nothing is good which is unjust; all that is just is good 
The good is where the just is. From the beginning of the world
the Creator has been at once good and just. The two qualities
came forth together. His goodness formed the world, His justice
harmonized it. It is the work of justice that there is a separa
tion between light and darkness, between day and night, between
heaven and earth, between the greater and the lesser lights 
As goodness brought all things into being, so did justice distin
guish them. The whole universe has been disposed and ordered
by the decision of His justice. Every position and mode of the
elements, the movement and the rest, the rising and the setting
of each one of them, are judicial decisions of the Creator. ....
When evil broke out, and the goodness of God came hence
forward to have an opponent to contend with, the justice also of
God acquired another function, that of regulating the operation
of His goodness according to the opposition to it : the result is
that His goodness, instead of being absolutely free, is dispensed
according to men's deserts ; it is offered to the worthy, it is
denied to the unworthy, it is taken away from the unthankful,
it is avenged on all its adversaries. In this way this whole
function of justice is an agency for goodness : in condemning, in
punishing, in raging with wrath, as you Marcionites express it,
it does good and not evil."1
It is found in the Clementines,2 the " Eecognitions "
going so far as to make the acceptance of it an element
1 Tert. c. Marc. 2. 11, 12.
* Homil. 4. 13; 9. 19; 18. 2,3.

230 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
in " saving knowledge :" " it is not enough for salvation
to know that God is good ; we must know also that He
is just."1 It is elaborated by both Clement of Alex
andria2 and Origen ; but in the latter it is linked closely
with other problems, and his view will be best considered
in relation to them.3 The Christian world in his time
was settling down into a general acceptance of the belief
that goodness and justice co-existed, each limiting the
other in the mind of God : the general effect of the con
troversy was to emphasize in Christianity the conception
of God as a Moral Governor, administering the world by
-laws which were at once beneficent and just.
(ii.) But this problem of the relation of goodness to
justice passed, as the corresponding problem in Greek
philosophy passed, into the problem of the relation of a
good God to moral evil. The difficulties of the problem
were increased in its Christian form by the conception
of moral evil as guilt rather than as misery, and by the
emphasis which was laid on the idea of the Divine fore
knowledge. The problem was stated in its plainest form by Marcion :
" If God is good, and prescient of the future, and able to avert
evil, why did He allow man, that is to say His own image and
likeness, nay more, His own substance, to be tricked by the
devil and fall from obedience to the law into death ? For if He
had been good, and thereby unwilling that such an event should
happen, and prescient, and thereby not ignorant that it would
happen, and powerful, and thereby able to prevent its happening,
it would certainly not have happened, being impossible under
these three conditions of divine greatness. But since it did
1 Recogn. 3. 37. 2 Especially Ptsdag. 1. 8, 9.
3 See below, p. 233.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 231
happen, the inference is certain that God must be believed to be
neither good nor prescient nor powerful."1
The hypothesis of the existence of two Gods, by which
Marcion solved this and other problems of theology, was
consistently opposed by the great mass of the Christian
communities. The solution which they found was almost
uniformly that of the Stoics : evil is necessary for the
production of moral virtue : there is no virtue where
there is no choice : and man was created free to choose.
It was found, in short, in the doctrine of free-will.
This solution is found in Justin Martyr :
" The nature of every created being is to be capable of vice
and virtue : for no one of them would be an object of praise if it
had not also the power of turning in the one direction or the
other."2 It is found in Tatian :
" Each of the two classes of created things (men and angels)
is born with a power of self-determination, not absolutely good
by nature, for that is an attribute of God alone, but brought to
perfection through freedom of voluntary choice, in order that the
bad man may be justly punished, being himself the cause of his
being wicked, and that the righteous man may be worthily
praised for his good actions, not having in his exercise of moral
freedom transgressed the will of God."3
It is found in Irenseus :
" In man as in angels, for angels also are rational beings, God
has placed the power of choosing, so that those who have obeyed
might justly be in possession of what is good ; and that those
who have not obeyed may justly not be in possession of what is
good, and may receive the punishment which they deserve 
But if it had been by nature that some were bad and others
1 ap. Tert. c. Marc. 2. 5. 2 Apol. 2. 7.
3 Tatian, Orat. ad Grcec. 7.

232 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
good, neither would the latter be deserving of praise for being
good, inasmuch as they were so constituted ; nor the others of
blame for being bad, inasmuch as they were born so. But since
in fact all men are of the same nature, able on the one hand to
hold fast and to do what is good, and again on the other hand
to reject it and not do it, it is right for them to be in the one
case praised for their choice of the good and their adherence to
it, and in the other case blamed and punished for their rejection
of it, both among well-governed men and much more in the sight
of God."1 It is found in Theophilus2 and Athenagoras,3 and, as a
more elaborate theory, in Tertullian and the philosophers
of Alexandria. Just as Epictetus and the later Stoics
had made freedom of will to be the specially divine part
of human nature, so Tertullian4 answers Marcion's objec
tion, that if God foreknew that Adam would fall He
should not have made him free, by the argument that
the goodness of God in making man necessarily gave him
the highest form of existence, that such highest form
was " the image and likeness of God," and that such
image and likeness was freedom of will. And just as
Epictetus and the later Stoics had conceived of life as a
moral discipline, and of its apparent evils as necessary
means of testing character, so the Christian philosophers
of Alexandria conceive of God as the Teacher and Trainer
and Physician of men, of the pains of life as being dis
ciplinary, and of the punishments of sin as being not
vindictive but remedial.5
1 Iren. 4.37. 2 Ad Autol. 2. 27.
3 Legat. 31. * c. Marc. 2. 5.
6 Eg. Clem. Alex. Pmdag. 1. 1; Origen, deprinc. 2. 10. 6; c. CcU.
6. 56 : so all o Tert. Scorp. 5.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 233
There was still a large margin of unsolved difficulties.
The hypothesis of the freedom of the will, as it had
hitherto been stated, assumed that all beings who pos
sessed it were equal in both their circumstances and their
natural aptitudes. It took no account of the enormous
difference between one man and another in respect of
either the external advantages or disadvantages of their
lives, or the strength and weakness of their characters.
The difficulty was strongly felt by more than one school
of Christian philosophers, the more so because it applied,
not only to the diversities among mankind, but also to
the larger differences between mankind as a whole and
the celestial beings who rose in their sublime gradations
above it.
"Very many persons, especially those who come from the
school of Marcion and Valentinus and Basilides, object to us that
it is inconsistent with the justice of God in making the world to
assign to some creatures an abode in the heavens, and not merely
a better abode, but also a loftier and more honourable position ;
to grant to some principality, to others powers, to others domi
nations ; to confer upon some the noblest seats of the heavenly
tribunals, to cause others to shine out with brighter rays, and to
flash forth the brilliance of a star ; to give to some the glory of
the sun, and to others the glory of the moon, and to others the
glory of the stars ; to make one star differ from another star in
glory  In the second place, they object to us about terrestrial
beings that a happier lot of birth has come to some men than to
others ; one man, for example, is begotten by Abraham and born
according to promise ; another is the son of Isaac and Bebekah,
and, supplanting his brother even in the womb, is said even before
he is born to be beloved of God. One man is born among the
Hebrews, among whom he finds the learning of the divine law ;
another among the Greeks, themselves also wise and men of no
small learning ; another among the Ethiopians, who are canni-

234 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
bals ; another among the Scythians, with whom parricide is legal;
another among the Taurians, who offer their guests in sacrifice.
" They consequently argue thus : If this great diversity of
circumstances, this varied and different condition of birth— a
matter in which free-will has no place — is not caused by a
diversity in the nature of the souls themselves, a soul of an evil
nature being destined for an evil nation, and a soul of a good
nature for a good one, what other conclusion can be drawn than
that all this is the result of chance and accident ? And if that
conclusion be admitted, it will no longer be credible either that
the world was made by God or that it is governed by His pro
vidence : and consequently neither will the judgment of God
upon every man's doings seem a thing to be looked for."1
It is to this phase of the controversy that the ethical
theology of Origen is relative. In that theology, Stoicism
and Neo-Platonism are blended into a complete theodicy :
nor has a more logical superstructure ever been reared
on the basis of philosophical theism.
It is necessary to show the coherence of his view as a
whole, and it is advisable, in doing so, to use chiefly his
own words : 2
" There was but one beginning of all things, as there will be
but a single end. The diversities of existence which have sprung
from a single beginning will be absorbed in a single end.3 The
causes of those diversities lie in the diverse things themselves.4
They were created absolutely equal ; for, on the one hand, God
had no reason in Himself for causing inequalities ; 5 and, on the
other hand, being absolutely impartial, He could not give to one
being an advantage which He did not give to another.6 They
1 Origen, de princ. 2. 9. 5.
2 The passage which follows is, with the exception of one extract
from the contra Celsum, a catena of extracts from the de principiis.
. 3 De princ. 1. 6. 2. * 1. 8. 2; 2. 9. 7.
5 2. 9. 6. « 1. 8. 4.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 23'5
were also, by a similar necessity, created with the capacity of
being diverse ; for spotless purity is of the essence of none save
God; in all created beings it must be accidental, and' conse
quently liable to lapse.1 The lapse, when it takes place, is
voluntary ; for every being endowed with reason has the power
of exercising it, and this power is free ; 2 it is excited by external
causes, but not coerced by them.3 For to lay the fault on external
causes and put it away from ourselves by declaring that we are
like logs or stones, dragged by forces that act upon them from
without, is neither true nor reasonable. Every created rational
being is thus capable of both good and evil ; consequently of
praise and blame ; consequently also of happiness and misery ; of
the former if it chooses holiness and clings to it, of the latter if
by sloth and negligence it swerves into wickedness and ruin.4
The lapse, when it has taken place, is not only voluntary but
also various in degree. Some beings, though possessed of free
will, never lapsed : they form the order of angels. Some lapsed
but slightly, and form in their varying degrees the orders of
' thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers.' Some lapsed
lower, but not irrecoverably, and form the race of men.5 Some
lapsed to such a depth of unworthiness and wickedness as to be
opposing powers ; they are the devil and his angels.6 In the
temporal world which is seen, as well as in the eternal worlds
which are' unseen, all beings are arranged according to their
merits ; their place has been determined by their own conduct.7
"The present inequalities of circumstance and character are
thus not wholly explicable within the sphere of the present life.
But this world is not the only world. Every soul has existed
from the beginning ; it has therefore passed through some worlds
abeady, and will pass through others before it reaches the final
consummation. It comes into this world strengthened by the
victories or weakened by the defeats of its previous hfe. Its
place in this world as a vessel appointed to honour or to dis
honour is determined by its previous merits or demerits. Its
1 1.5. 5; 1.6. 2. 2 3. 1.4.
3 3. L 5. 4 1. 5. 2, 5. • 1. 6. 2.
« 1. 6. 3. 7 3. 3. 5 ; 3. 5. 3.

236 VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
work in this world determines its place in the world which is to
follow this.1
" All this takes place with the knowledge and under the over
sight of God. It is an indication of His ineffable wisdom that
the diversities of natures for which created beings are them
selves responsible are wrought together into the harmony of the
world.2 It is an indication not only of His wisdom but of His
goodness that, while no creature is coerced into acting rightly,
yet when it lapses it meets with evils and punishments. All
punishments are remedial. God calls what are termed evils into
existence to convert and purify those whom reason and admo
nition fail to change. He is thus the great Physician of souls.3
The process of cure, acting as it does simply through free-will,
takes in some cases an almost illimitable time. For God is Ion"-
suffering, and to some souls, as to some bodies, a rapid cure is
not beneficial. But in the end all souls will be thoroughly
purged.4 All that any reasonable soul, cleansed of the dregs of
all vices, and with every cloud of wickedness completely wiped
away, can either feel or understand or think, will be wholly God:
it will no longer either see or contain anything else but God :
God will be the mode and measure of its every movement : and
so God will be ' all.' Nor will there be any longer any distinc
tion between good and evil, because evil will nowhere exist ; for
God is all things, and in Him no evil inheres. So, then, when
the end has been brought back to the beginning, that state of
things will be restored which the rational creation had when it
had no need to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil ; all sense of wickedness will have been taken away ; He
who alone is the one good God becomes to the soul ' all,' and
that not in some souls but 'in all.' There will be no longer
1 3. 1. 20, 21 : but sometimes beings of higher merit are assigned
to a lower grade, that they may benefit those who properly belong to
that grade, and that they themselves may be partakers of the patience
of the Creator, 2. 9. 7.
2 1. 2. 1. 3 c. Cels. 6. 56; de princ. 2. 10.
4 De princ. 3. 1. 14, 17.

VIII. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 237
death, nor the sting of death, nor any evil anywhere, but God
will be* all in ail.'"1
Of this great theodicy, only part has been generally
accepted. The Greek conceptions which underlie it,
and which preceded it, have survived, but in other
forms. Free-will, final causes, probation, have had a
later history in which Greece has had no share. The
doctrine of free-will has remained in name, but it has
been so mingled on the one hand with theories of human
depravity, and on the other with theories of divine grace,
that the original current of thought is lost in the marshes
into which it has descended. The doctrine of final causes
has been pressed to an almost excessive degree as proving
the existence and the providence of God ; but His govern
ment of the human race has been often viewed rather as
the blundering towards an ultimate failure than as a
complete vindication of His purpose of creation. The
Christian world has acquiesced in the conception of life
as a probation ; but while some of its sections have con
ceived of this life as the only probation, and others have
admitted a probation in a life to come, none have admitted
into the recognized body of their teaching Origen's sub
lime conception of an infinite stairway of worlds, with
its perpetual ascent and descent of souls, ending at last
in the union of all souls with God.
1 3. 6. 3.

Lecture IX.
GEEEK AND CHEISTIAN THEOLOGY.
III. God as the Supreme Being.

It was in the Gentile rather than in the Jewish world
that the theology of Christianity was shaped. It was
built upon a Jewish basis. The jjgjn'ah. .communities of
the great cities-anti along ih& commercial routes of the
empire had paved the way for .Christianity by their
active propaganda of monotheism. Christianity won its
way among the educated classes by virtue of its satisfy
ing not only their moral ideals, but also their highest
intellectual conceptions. On jis_£thical side it had, as
we have seen, large elements, in common with reformed
Stoicism; on its-theological -side it moved in harmony
with the new movements of Platonism.1 And those
movements reacted upon it. They gave a philosophical.
form to the simpler Jewish faith, and especially to those
elements of it in which the teaching of St. Paul had
already given a foothold for speculation. The earlier
conceptions remained; but blending readily with the
philosophical conceptions that were akin to them, they
were expanded into large theories in which metaphysics
1 Cf. Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 2.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 239
and dialectics had an ample field. The conception, for
example, of the one God whose kingdom was a universal
kingdom and endured throughout all ages, blended with,
and passed into, the philosophical conception of a Being
who was beyond time and space. The conception that
"clouds and darkness were round about Him," blended
with, and passed into, the philosophical conception of a
Being who was beyond not only human sight but human
thought. The conception -.of. His .transcendence obtained
the stronger hold_because it^confirmed the prior concep
tion of His unity ; and that of His incommunicability,
and of the consequent need of a mediator, gave a philo
sophical explanation of the truth that Jesus Christ was
His Son.
A. The Idea and its Development in Greek Philosophy.
But the theories which in the fourth century came to
prevail, and which have formed the main part of specu
lative theology ever since, were the result of at least two
centuries of conflict. At every stage of the conflict the
conceptions of one or other of the forms of Greek philo
sophy played a decisive part ; and the changing phases
of the conflict find a remarkable parallel in some of the
.philosophical schools.
¦ The conflict may be said to have had three leading
stages, which are marked respectively by the dominance
of speculations as to (1) the transcendence of God, (2)
His revelation of Himself, (3) the distinctions in His
nature. (1) The Transcendence of God. — Nearly seven hun-

240 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
dred years before the time when Christianity first
came into large contact with Greek philosophy, the
mind of a Greek thinker, outstripping the slow infer
ences of popular thought, had leapt to the conception
of God asthe Absolute Unity. He was the ultimate
generalization, olall . things, expressed as the ultimate
abstraction of number:1 He was not limited by parts
or by bodily form: "all of Him is sight, all of Him
is understanding, all of Him is hearing." But it is
probable that the conception in its first form was rather
oj|^materjalJthan_o£ an. ideal. unity :2 the basis of later
metaphysics was first securely laid by a second form of
the conception which succeeded the first half-a-century
afterwards. The conception was that of Absolute Being.
Only the One really is: it was not nor will be: it is
now, and is everywhere entire, a continuous unity, a
perfect sphere which fills all space, undying and immov
able. Over against it are the Many, the innumerable
objects of sense : they are not, but only seem to be : the
knowledge that we seem to have of them is not truth,
but illusion. But the conception, even in this second
form, was more consistent with Pantheism than with
Theism. It was lifted to the higher plane on which it
has ever since rested by the Platonic distinction between
the world of sense and the world of thought. God be
longed to the latter, and not to the former. Absolute
1 The more common conception of the earliest Greek philosophy
was that of rots ev8iqkovo-as tols aroixei'ois rj T0's <r<*>pao-i Svvdpeis,
Aetius ap. Stob. Eel. Phys. 2. 29.
2 The form in which it is given by Sextus Empiricus, in whose time
the distinction was clearly understood, implies this : ev elvat. to ttS.v
Kal tov Beov o-vptpvrj Tracri, Pyrrh. Hypotyp. 225,

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 241
Unity, Absolute Being, and all the other terms which
expressed His unique supremacy, were gathered up in
the conception of Mind; for njirid_in_the_ highest phase
of its existence is self-contemplative : the modes of its
expression are numerous, and perhaps infinite: but it
can itself go behind its modes, and so retire, as it were,
a step farther back from the material objects about which
its modes employ themselves. In this sense God is
transcendent (eireiceiva tjJ? ow-j'a?), beyond the world of
sense and matter. " God therefore is Mind, a form sepa
rate from all matter, that is to say, out of contact with it,
and not involved with anything that is capable of being
acted on."1
This great conception of the transcendence of God
filled a large place in later Greek philosophy, even out
side the Platonic schools.2 The history of it is beyond
our present purpose ; but we shall better understand the
relation of Christian theology to current thought if we
take three expressions of the conception at the time when
that theology was being formed — in Plutarch, in Maxi-
mus of Tyre, and in Plotinus.
1 This is a post-Platonic summary of Plato's conception ; into the
inner development, and consequently varying expressions, of it in
Plato's own writings it is not necessary to enter here. It is more
important in relation to the history of later Greek thought to know
what he was supposed to mean than what he meant. The above is
taken from the summary of Aetius in Plut. deplac. philos. 1. 7, Euseb.
Prcep. evang. 14. 16 (Diels, Doxographi Groeei, p. 304). The briefest
and most expressive statement of the transcendence of God (to dyaBov)
in Plato's own writings is probably Republic, p. 509, ovk ovo-las ovtos
tou dyaBov, dXX' en eireKewa Trjs orcrtas Trpeo-/3eia Kal 8vvap,ei vrep-
tXdVTos. 2 It was a struggle between this and Stoicism.
R

242' IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Plutarch says :
"What, then, is that which really exists? It is the' Eternal;
the Uncreated, the Undying, to whom time brings no change^
For time is always flowing and never stays : it is a vessel charged
with birth and death : it has a before and after, a 'will be' and
a 'has been:' it belongs to the 'is not' rather than to the 'is.'
But God is : and that not in time but in eternity, motionless,
timeless, changeless eternity, that has no before or after : and
being One, He fills eternity with one Now, and so really 'is,'
not 'has been,' or 'will be,' without beginning and without
ceasing."1 Maximus of Tyre says :
" God, the Father and Fashioner of all things that are, He
who is older than the sun, older than the sky, greater than time
and lapse of time and the whole stream of nature, is unnamed
by legislators, and unspoken by the voice and unseen by the
eyes : and since we cannot apprehend His essence, we lean upon
words and names and animals, and forms of gold and ivory and
silver, and plants and rivers and mountain-peaks and springs of
waters, longing for an intuition of Him, and in our inability
naming by His name all things that are beautiful in this world
of ours."2 And again :
" It is of this Father and Begetter of the universe that Plato
tells us : His name he does not tell us, for he knew it not : nor
does he tell us His colour, for he saw Him not ; nor His size, for
he touched Him not. Colour and size are felt by the touch and
1 Plutarch, de Ei ap. Delph. 18; cf. Ocellus Lucanus in the Augustan
Age, ap. Diels, 187, Mullach, i. p. 383 sq. The universe has no begin
ning and no end : it always was and always will be (1. 1. p. 388). It
comprises, however, to ttoiovv and t6 irdo-xov, the former above the
moon, the latter below, so that the course of the moon marks the limit
between the changing and changeless, the del B'eovTos Belov and the
del peTaBdXXovTOS yevqTov (2. 1, p. 394, 2. 23, p. 400)J
2 Max. Tyr. Diss. 8. 9.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 243
seen by the sight : but the Deity Himself is unseen by the sight,
unspoken by the voice, untouched by fleshly touch, unheard by
the hearing, seen only — through its likeness to Him, and heard
only — through its kinship with Him, by the noblest and purest
and clearest-sighted and swiftest and oldest element of the soul."1
Plotinus similarly, in answer to the old problem, "how
from the One, being such as we have described Him>
anything whatever has substance, instead of the One
abiding by Himself," replies :
" Let us call upon God Himself before we thus answer — not
with uttered words, but stretching forth our souls in prayer to
Him, for this is the only way in which we can pray, alone to Him
who is alone. We must, then, gaze upon Him in the inner part
of us, as in a temple, being as He is by Himself, abiding still
and beyond all things (breKeiva aTrdvTwv). Everything that moves
must have an object towards which it moves. But the One has
no such object ; consequently we must not assert movement of
Him  Let us not think of production in time, when we
speak of things eternal. . . . What then was produced was pro
duced without His moving : .... it had its being without His
assenting or willing or being moved in anywise. It was like the
light that surrounds the sun and shines forth from it, though the
sun is itself at rest : it is reflected like an image. So with what
is greatest. That which is next greatest comes forth from Him,
and the next greatest is vovs; for voCs sees Him and needs Him
alone."2 1 Max. Tyr. 17. 9.
s Plotinus, Enneades, 5. 1. 6 ; cf. 1 1. 8, where vows is dpepio-Tos,
distinguished from r) rrepl to\ cr^ara pxpurrij (pvcrla). We are between
the two, having a share of both. The Kd8apo-is of the soul consists in
o/Wuxns Trpbs Be6v, 1. 2. 3 ; the love of beauty should ascend from that
ef the body to that of character aud laws, of arts and sciences, dirb 8e
t£v dpeTuv -qSq dvaBalveiv hrl vovv, errl to oV, K&Kti £o8«rr&v t^v im
iropeiav, 1. 3. 2.
b2

244 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
But the conception of transcendence is capable of
taking two forms. It may be that of a God who passes
beyond all the classes into which sensible phenomena are
divisible, by virtue of His being pure Mind, cognizable
only by mind ; or it may be that of a God who exists
extra flammantia moenia mundi, filling the infinite space
which surrounds and contains all the spheres of material
existence. The one God is transcendent in the proper
sense of the term ; the other is supra-cosmic. In either
case He is said to be unborn, undying, uncontained ; and
since the same terms are thus used to express the ele
ments of both forms of the conception, it is natural that
these forms should readily pass into each other, and
that the distinction between them should not always be
present to a writer's mind or perceptible in his writings.
But the conception in one or other of its forms fills a
large place in later Greek philosophy. It blended in a
common stream with the new currents of religious feel
ing. [The process is well illustrated by Philo.]
The words " I am thy God" are used not in a proper but in a
secondary sense. For Being, qua Being, is out of relation : itself
is full of itself and sufficient for itself, both before the birth of
the world and equally so after it.1 He transcends all quality,
being better than virtue, better than knowledge, and better even
than the good itself and the beautiful itself.2 He is not in space,
but beyond it ; for He contains it. He is not in time, for He
is the Father of the universe, which is itself, the father of time,
since from its movement time proceeds.3 He is " without body,
1 De mut. nom. 4 ; i. 582, ed. Mangey.
2 De mund. op. 2 ; i. 2.
Depost. Cain, 5; i. 228, 229.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 245
parts or passions" : without feet, for whither should He walk
who fills all things : without hands, for from whom should He
receive anything who possesses all things : without eyes, for how
should He need eyes who made the light.1 He is invisible, for
how can eyes that are too weak to gaze upon the sun be strong
enough to gaze upon its Maker.2 He is incomprehensible : not
even the whole universe, much less the human mind, can contain
the conception of Him :3 we know that He is, we cannot know
ivhat He is:4 we may see the manifestations of Him in His
works, but it were monstrous folly to go behind His works and
inquire into His essence.6 He is hence unnamed: for names
are the symbols of created things, whereas His only attribute is
to Z>e.8 (2) The Eevelation of the Transcendent. — Side by side
with this conception of the transcendence of God, and
intimately connected with it, was the jdea of beings or
forces Qoming._betW-.eeiL- God and men. A transcendent
God was in Himself incommunicable : the more the con
ception of His transcendence was developed, the stronger'
was the necessity for conceiving of the existence of inter
mediate links.7
1 Quod deus immut. 12; i. 281. 2 De Abrah. 16; ii. 12.
3 i. 224, 281, 566; ii. 12, 654; Frag, ap Joan. Dam. ii. 654.
4 De proem, et pcen. 7; ii. 415. 5 Depost. Cain, 48; i. 258.
« Demut. nom. 2; i. 580; cf. 630, 648, 655; ii. 8-9, 19, 92-93,
597. Cf. in general Heinze, Die Lehre vom Logos in der griechischen
Philosophic, Oldenburg, 1872, pp. 206, 207, n. 6.
7 The necessity for such intermediate links is not affected by the
question how far, outside the Platonic schools, there was a belief in a
Teal transcendence of God, or only in His existence outside the solar
system. In this connection, note the allegory in the Phwdrus. The
Epicureans coarsely expressed the transcendence of God by the express
ion, SijpqTai r) ovo-la, Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. p. 114, § 5; cf. Ocellus
Lucanus, cited above, p. 242. Hippolytus describes Aristotle's Meta
physics as dealing with things beyond the moon, 7. 19, p. 354; cf.

246 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
i. A basis for such a conception was afforded in the
popular mythology by the belief in dgaions — spirits
inferior to the gods, but superior to men. The belief
was probably "a survival of the primitive psychism
which peopled the whole universe with life and anima
tion." 1 There was an enormous contemporary develop
ment of the idea of daemons or genii. They are found
in Epictetus, Dio Chrysostom, Maximus, and Celsus.
In the latter some are good, some bad, most of them of
mixed nature ; to th_mi_is__ii4e-the-e¥eati0_i-ef all things
p.-gp.p.pt the, human soul ; they are the rulers of day and
night, of the sunlight and the cold.2
ii. A philosophical basis for the theory was afforded
by the Platonic Ideai or Forms, and the Stoical Logoi
or Eeasons. We have already seen the place which those
Forms, viewed also as Forces, and those Eeasons, viewed
also as productive Seeds, filled in the later Greek cosmo
logies and cosmogonies. They were not less important
in relation to the theory of the transcendence of God.
The Forms according to which He shaped the world, the
Forces by which He made and sustains it, the Eeasons
which inhere in it and, like laws, control its movements,
Origen's idea of the heavens in de princ. ii. 3, 7, and Celsus' objection
that Christians misunderstand Plato by confusing his heaven with the
Jewish heavens. Origen, c. Cels. vi. 19; cf. Keim, p. 84.
1 Benn, Greek Philosophers, 2. 252.
2 Cf. Hesiod in Sext. Emp. ix. 86. Similarly, Thales, to -irdv ep\pvxov
apa Kal 8aipov<ov TrXrjpes (Diels, 301); Pythagoras, Empedocles in
Hippolytus, SiotKovvTes to KaTa rr)v yrjv (Diels, 558) ; Plato and the
Stoics (Diels, 307), e.g. Plutarch, Epictetus, 1. 14. 12; 3. 13. 15 (Diels,
1307) ; Athenagoras, 23 ; Philo, ii. 635 ; Frag. ap. Eus. Prop. Evan.
8. 13; see references in Keim's Celsus, p. 120; cf. Wachsmuth, Die
Ansichten der Stoiker iiber Mantik u. Damonen, Berlin, 1860.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 247
are outflows, from and... reflexions of. His nature, and
communicate a knowledge of it to His intelligent crea
tures. In the philosophy of Philo, these philosophical
conception^are^ojnbjned. with .both the Greek-conception
of Da3mon^^jid.±hfiJHebrew -conception, of Angels. The
four conceptions, Forms, Logoi, Daemons, and Angels,
pass into one another, and the expressions which are
relative to them are interchangeable. The most common
expression for them is Logoi, and it is more commonly
found in the singular, Logos.
(3) The Distinctions in the Nature of God. — T^Logos
is able to reveal the nature of God because it is itself
the reflexion of that nature. It is able to reveal that
nature to intelligent creatures because the human intelli
gence is itself an offshoot of the Divine. As the eye of
sense sees the sensible world, which also is a revelation
of God,1 since it is His thought impressed upon matter,
so the reason sees the intelligible world, the world of
His thoughts conceived as intelligible realities, existing
separate from Him.
"The wise man, longing to apprehend God, and travelling
along the path of wisdom and knowledge, first of all meets with
the divine Eeasons, and with them abides as a guest ; but when
he resolves to pursue the further journey, he is compelled to
abstain, for the eyes of his understanding being opened, he sees
that the object of his quest is afar off and always receding, an
infinite distance in advance of him."2 "Wisdom leads him first
into the antechamber of the Divine Eeason, and when he is there
he does not at once enter into the Divine Presence; but sees
Him afar off, or rather not even afar off can he behold Him, but
1 Philo, de confus. ling. 20 (i. 419).
2 De post. Cain. 6 (i. 229),

248 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
only he sees that the place where he stands is still infinitely far
from the unnamed, unspeakable, and incomprehensible God."1
What he sees is not God Himself but the likeness of
Him, "just as those who cannot gaze upon the sun may
yet gaze upon a reflexion of it."2 The_ Logos, reflecting
not only the Divine nature^but ualso the Divine will and
the Divine goodness, becomes to men a jnessenger of
help ; like the angel to Hagar, it brings advice and
encouragement;3 like the angel who redeemed Jacob
(Gen. xlviii. 16), it rescues men from all kinds of evil;4
like the angel who delivered Lot from Sodom, it succours
the kinsmen of virtue and provides for them a refuge.5
"Like a king, it announces by decree what men ought to do;
like a teacher, it instructs its disciples in what will benefit
them ; like a counsellor, it suggests the wisest plans, and so
greatly benefits those who do not of themselves know what is
best ; like a friend, it tells many secrets which it is not lawful
for the uninitiated to hear."8
And standing midway between God and man, it not only
reflects God downwards to man, but also reflects man
upwards to God.
"It stands on the border-line between the Creator and the
creation, not unbegotten like God, not begotten like ourselves,
and so becomes not only an ambassador from the Euler to His
subjects, but also a suppliant from mortal man yearning after
the immortal."7
The relation of the Logos to God, as distinguished
from its functions, is expressed by several metaphors, all
1 De somn. 1. 11 (i. 630). 2 Ibid. 1. 41 (i. 656).
3 De profug. 1 (i. 547); so de Cherub. 1 (i. 139).
* Leg. Alleg. 3. 62 (i. 122). « De somn. 1. 15 (i. 633).
« Ibid. 1. 33 (i. 649). t Quis rer. div. her. 42 (i. 501).

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 249
of which are important in view of later theology. They
may be gathered into two classes, corresponding to the
two great conceptions of the relation of the universe to
God which were held respectively by the two great
sources of Philo's philosophy, the Stoics and the Plato-
nists. The one class of metaphors belongs to the monistic,
the other to the dualistic, conception of the universe.
In the former,- the Logos is evolved from God ; in the
other^ created by Him.1 The chief metaphors of the
former class are those of a phantom, or image, or outflow :
the Logos is projected by God as a man's shadow or
phantom was sometimes conceived as thrown off by his
body,2 expressing its every feature, and abiding as a
separate existence after the body was dead; it is a
reflexion cast by God upon the space which He contains,
as a parhelion is cast by the sun ; 3 it is an outflow as
from a spring.4 The chief metaphor of the second class
1 De sacrif. Abel, et Cain. 18 (i. 175), 6 yap Bebs Aiywi' dpa errolei
pqSev peTa^v dpcpoiv TiBels' el 8e xpi) 86ypa Kivelv dXqBeo-Tepov, 6 Aoyos
epyov avTov : de decern orac. 11 (ii. 188), commenting on the expression
of the LXX. in Exodus xx. 18, 6 Aaos eiipa Tr)v <j>u>vrjv, he justifies it
on the ground oti oo-a dv Xeyg 6 Bebs ov p-qpaTa eo-Tiv dXX epya, d-irep
6<j>8aXpol Trpb uTtov 8iopl£ovo-i : de mund. opif. 6 (i. 5), ov8ev dv erepov
ehroi tov votjtov eivai Koo-pov ij Beov Xoyov qSrj Koo-porroiovvTos.
2 The word cna'a seems to be used, in relation to the Logos, not of
the shadow cast by a solid object in the sunlight, but rather, as in
Homer, Odyss. 10. 495, and frequently in classical writers, of a ghost
or phantom : hence God is the Trapd8eiypa, the substance of which the
Logos is the unsubstantial form, Leg. Alleg. 3. 31 (i. 106) : hence also
o-Kta is used as convertible with e'iK<ov (ibid.), in its sense of either a
portrait-statue or a reflexion in a mirror : in de confus. ling. 28 (i. 427),
the Logos is the eternal e'lKiov of God.
3 De somn. 1. 41 (i. 656). 4 Quod det. pot. ins. 23 (i. 207).

250 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
is that of a son ; the Logos is the first-begotten of God;1
and by an elaboration of the metaphor which reappears
in later theology, God is in one passage spoken of as its
Father, "Wisdom as its Mother.2 It hence tends some
times to be viewed as separate from God, neither God
nor man, but " inferior to God though greater than man." 3
The earlier conception had already passed through several
forms: it had begun with that which was itself the
greatest leap that any one thinker had yet made, the
^"•"Cffpti'oTi t-1™* ^MmTI ma.A/a .fhp world : the conception
of Eeason led to the conception of God as Personal
Eoason: out of that grew thejkhojight ef-God as greater
than Eeason and using, it as His instrument : and at last
had come the conception of the Eeason of God as in some
way detached from Him, working in the world as a sub
ordinate but self-acting law. It was natural that this
should lead to the further conception of Eeason as the
offspring of God and Wisdom, the metaphor of a human
birth being transferred to the highest sphere of heaven.
B. The Idea and its Development in Christian
Theology.
(1) The Transcendence of God. — All the conceptions
which we have seen to exist in the sphere of philosophy
were reproduced in the sphere of Christianity. They
1 De agric. 12 (i. 308): de confus. ling. 28 (i. 427) : spoken of as
yevv-qBels, ibid. 14 (i. 414).
2 De profug. 20 (i. 562) : so God is spoken of as the husband of
o-o(j>la in de Cherub. 14 (i. 148). But in de ebriet. 8 (i. 361), God is
the Father, Knowledge the Mother, not of the Logos but of the
universe. 8 Quod a Deo mit. somn. i. 683.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 251
are sometimes relative to God, in contrast to the world
of sensible phenomena : phenomena come into being,
God is unbegotten and without beginning: phenomena
are visible and tangible, God is unseen and untouched.
They are sometimes relative to the idea of perfection :
God is unchangeable, indivisible, unending. He has no
name: for a name implies the existence of something
prior to that to which a name is given, whereas He is
prior to all things. These conceptions are all negative :
the positive conceptions are that He is the infinite depth
(/3u'0o?) which contains and embosoms all things, that He
is self-existent, and that He is light. "The Father of
all," said one school of philosophers,1 "is a primal light,
blessed, incorruptible, and infinite." " The essence of
the unbegotten Father of the universe is incorruptibility
and self-existing light, simple and uniform."2
Fromthe earliest ChrigtiaB. teach-in.a:, indeed, the con
ception of the j^anscjndence, of jGod, , isu absent. God is
near to men and speaks to them : He is angry with them
and punishes them : He is merciful to them and pardons
them. He does all this through His angels and prophets,
and last of all through His Son. But he needs such
mediators rather because a heavenly Being is invisible,
than because He is transcendent. The conception which
underlies the earliest expression of the belief of a Chris
tian community is the simple conception of children:
" We give Thee thanks, Holy Father, for Thy holy name which
Thou hast caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge
and faith and immortality which Thou hast made known to us
through Jesus Christ, Thy servant. To Thee be glory for ever.
1 i.e. Sethiani ap. Iren. 1. 30. 1. * Ptolemaeus, ad Flor. 7.

252 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Thou, Almighty Master, hast created all things for Thy name's
sake, hast given food and drink to men for their enjoyment, that
they may give thanks to Thee : and upon us hast Thou bestowed
spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Thy servant.
Before all things we give Thee thanks for that Thou art mighty :
to Thee be glory for ever."1
In the original sphere of Christianity there does not
appear to have been any great advance upon these simple
conceptions. The doctrine upon which stress was laid
was, that God is, that He is one, that He is almighty
and everlasting, that He made the world, that His mercy
is over all His works.2 There was no taste for meta
physical discussion: there was possibly no appreciation
of metaphysical conceptions. It is quite possible that
some Christians laid themselves open to the accusation
which Celsus brings, of believing that God is only cog
nizable through the senses.3 They were influenced by
Stoicism, which denied all intellectual existences, and
regarded spirit itself as material.4 This tendency resulted
in Adoptian Christology.5
But most of the philosophical conceptions above de
scribed were adopted by the Apologists, and through
such adoption found acceptance in the associated Chris
tian communities. They are for the most part stated,
not as in a dogmatic system, but incidentally. For
example, Justin thus protests against a literal inter-
1 Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, 10. 2 — 4.
2 Cf. the Ebionites, Alogi, and the Clementines.
3 Origen, c. Cels. 7. 36; cf. de princ. 1. 1. 7.
Con. Cels. 7. 37, Kal 8oypaTl£eiv TrapaTrX-qo-lias rols dvaipovo-i
voqTas ovo-ias Stou/cois ; cf. Keim, p. 100. See also Orig. in Gen. vol. ii.
p. 25 (Delarue), and Eus. H. E. iv. 26, for a view ascribed to Melito.
5 Harnack, Dogmengesch. p. 160.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 253
protation of the anthropomorphic expressions of the Old
Testament :

"You are not to think that the unbegotten God 'came down'
from anywhere or ' went up.' For the unutterable Father and
Lord of all things neither comes to any place nor walks nor sleeps
nor rises, but abides in His own place wherever that place may
be, seeing keenly and hearing keenly, not with eyes or ears, but
with His unspeakable power, so that He sees all things and
knows all things, nor is any one of us hid from Him : nor does
He move, He who is uncontained by space and by the whole
world, seeing that He was before the world was born."1
And Athenagoras thus sums up his defence of Chris
tianity against the charge of atheism :
" I have sufficiently demonstrated that they are not atheists
who believe in One who is unbegotten, eternal, unseen, impas
sible, incomprehensible and uncontained : comprehended by mind
and reason only, invested with ineffable light and beauty and
spirit and power, by whom the universe is brought into being
and set in order and held firm, through the agency of his own
Logos."2 Theophilus replies thus to his heathen interlocutor who
asked him to describe the form of the Christian God :
" Listen, my friend : the form of God is unutterable and in
describable, nor can it be seen with fleshly eyes : for His glory
is uncontained, His size is incomprehensible, His loftiness is
inconceivable, His strength is incomparable, His wisdom is un
rivalled, His goodness beyond imitation, His beneficence beyond
description. If I speak of Him as light, I mention His handi
work : if I speak of Him as reason, I mention His government :
if I speak of Him as spirit, I mention His breath : if I speak of
Him as wisdom, I mention His offspring : if I speak of Him as
strength, I mention His might: if I speak of Him as providence,
1 Dial, c. Tryph. c. 127. 2 Legatio, 10.

254 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
I mention His goodness : if I speak of His kingdom, I mention
His glory."1
It is not easy to determine in regard to many of these
expressions whether they are relative in the writer's mind
to a supra-cosmic or to a transcendental conception of
God. The case of Tertullian clearly shows that they are
compatible with the former conception no less than with
the latter ; for though he speaks of God as " the great
Supreme, existing in eternity, unborn, unmade, without
beginning, and without end,"2 yet he argues that He is
material ; for " how could one who is empty have made
things that are solid, and one who is void have made
things that are full, and one who is incorporeal have
made things that have body?"3 But there were some
schools of philosophers in which the transcendental cha
racter of the conception is clearly apparent. The earliest
of such schools, and the most remarkable, is that of Basi
lides. It anticipated, and perhaps helped to form, the
later developments of !Neo-Platonism. It conceived of
God as transcending being. He was absolutely beyond
all predication. Not even negative predicates are predi-
cable of Him. The language of the school becomes para
doxical and almost unmeaning in the extremity of its
effort to express the transcendence of God, and at the
same time to reconcile the belief in His transcendence
with the belief that He is the Creator of the world.
" When there was nothing, neither material, nor essen
tial, nor non-essential, nor simple, nor compound, nor
1 Ad Autolycum. 1. 3; cf. Minuc. Eelix, Octavius, 18, andNovatian,
ie Trin. 1. 2.
2 Adv. Marc. 1. 3. * Adv. Prax. 7.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 255
unthoughfc, nor unperceived, nor man, nor angel, nor god,
nor absolutely any of the things that are named or per
ceived or thought, .... God who was not (om &v 0eo'?),
without thought, without perception, without will, with
out purpose, without passion, without desire, willed to
make a world. In saying ' willed,' I use the word only
because some word is necessary, but I mean without
volition, without thought, and without perception; and'
in saying ' world,' I do not mean the extended and divi
sible world which afterwards came into being, with its
capacity of division, but the seed of the world."1 This
was said more briefly, but probably with the same mean
ing, by Marcus : There is no conception and no essence
of God.2
These exalted ideas of His_ transcendence, which had
especially .thriven jon Alexandr,ian„soil. were further ela
borated at the end of the second century by the Christian
philosophers of the Alexandrian schools, who inherited
the wealth at once of regenerated Platonism, of Gnos
ticism, and of theosophic Judaism. Clement anticipated
Plotinus in conceiving of God as being "beyond the
One and higher than the Monad itself,"3 which was the
highest abstraction of current philosophy.4 There is no
name that can properly be named of Him : " neither the
One, nor the Good, nor Mind, nor Absolute Being, nor
Father, nor Creator, nor Lord." No science can attain
1 ap. Hippol. 7. 21, p. 358.
2 dveworjTos Kal dvovo-ios, ibid. 6. 42, p. 302; cf. 12 ff., pp. 424 ff.,
for Monoi'mus, and also Ptolemaeus, ad Floram, 7.
3 Pcedag. 1. 8.
4 Mbller, Kosmologie, p. 26, cf. 124 129, 130.

256 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
unto Him; "for all science depends on antecedent prin
ciples ; but there is nothing antecedent to the Unbegot
ten."1 Origen expressly protests against the conceptions
of God which regarded Him as supra-cosmic rather than
transcendent,2 and as having a material substance though
not a human form.3 His own conception is that of a
nature which is absolutely simple and intelligent, or
which transcends both intelligence and existence. Being
absolutely simple, He has no more or less, no before or
after, and consequently has no need of either spa°e or
time. Being absolutely intelligent, His only a tri >ute
is to know and to be known. But only "like knows
like." He is to be apprehended through the intelligence
which is made in His image : the human mind is capable
of knowing the Divine by virtue of its participation in it.
But in the strict sense of the word He is beyond our
knowledge : our knowledge is like the vision of a spark
as compared with the splendour of the sun.4
(2) Revelation or Mediation of the Transcendent. — But
as in Greek philosophy, so also in Christian theology,
the doctrine whether of a supra-cosmic or of a tran
scendent God necessitated the further question, How
could He pass into the sphere of the phenomenal ? The
rougher sort of objectors ridiculed a God who was " soli
tary and destitute" in his unapproachable uniqueness:5
the more serious heathen philosophers asked, If like
knows like, how can your God know the world? and
1 Strom. 5. 12. 2 c, Cels. 6. 19 sqq.
8 De princ. 1. 1. 2, 5, 7.
* Ibid. 1. I, passim; cf. 4. 1. 36.
* e.g. Min. Felix, c. 10 ; cf. Keim, Celsus, 158.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 257
the mass of Christian philosophers,1 both within and
without the associated communities, felt this question,
or one of the questions that are cognate to it, to be the
cardinal point of their theology.2
The tentative answers were innumerable. One early
group of them maintained the existence of a capacity in
the Supreme Being to manifest Himself in different forms. '
The conception had some elements of Stoical and some of
popular Greek theology, in both of which anthropomor
phism had been possible.3 It came to an especial promi
nence in the earlier stages of the Christological contro
versies, as an explanation of the nature of Jesus Christ.
It lay beneath what is known as Modal Mouareliifln.igrnj
the theory that Christ was a temporary mode of the
existence of the one God. It was simply His will to
exist in one mode rather than in another.4
" One and the same God," said Noetus, " is the Creator and
Father of all things, and, because it was His good pleasure, He
1 The older sort, who clung to tradition pure and simple, were
dubious of the introduction of dialectic methods into Christianity : see
Eus. v. 28; cf. v. 13. "Expavescunt ad oiKovoplav," Tert. adv. Prax.
3. Cf. Weingarten, p. 25.
2 Pantsenus, when asked by outside philosophers, " How can God
know the world, if like knows like 1" replied (Kouth.iM Sac. i. p. 379) :
pryre aurB-qTSs to, alo-BrjTa. p/qre voepSs to votjtoV ov yap eivai SvvaTov
tov vwep to. ovTa Kara. to. SvTa tSJv ovtoiv Xap,Bdveo~Bai, dXX us 181a
BeXrjpaTa yivuuTKeiv avrbv to. ovTa <pap.ev . . . for if he made all things
by His will, no one can deny that He knows His own will, and hence
knows what His will has made. Cf. Julius Africanus (Kouth, ii. 239),
XeyeTat, yap dp(i>vvp.m b Bebs irao-i tois e£ avTOV, eTrei8i) ev irao-iv eo-Tiv.
3 ylvopai o BeXm ko.1 elp.1 o up.1, as used by the Naassenes, ap. Hipp.
5.7. 4 Cf. Harnack, art. in Encycl. Brit. "Sabellius."
S

258 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
appeared to righteous men of old. For when He is not seen He
is invisible, and when He is seen He is visible : He is uncon
tained when He wills not to be contained, and contained when
He is contained  When the Father had not been born, He
was rightly styled Father : when it was His good pleasure to
undergo birth, He became on being born His own son, not
another's."1 But the dominant conception was in a line with that
of both Greek philosophy and Greek religion. From
the Supreme God came forth, or in Him existed, special
forms and modifications by which He both made the
world and revealed Himself to it.
(i.) The speculations as to the nature of these forms
varied partly with the large underlying variations in the
conception of God as supra-cosmic or as transcendental,
and partly with the greater or less development of the
tendency to give a concrete shape to abstract ideas.
They varied also according as the forms were viewed
in relation to the universe, as its types and formative
forces; or in relation to the Supreme Being and His
rational creatures, as manifestations of the one and means
of knowledge to the other. The variations are found to
exist, not only between one school of philosophers and
another, but also in the same school. For example, Ter
tullian distinguishes between two schools of Valentinians,
that of Yalentinus himself and that of his great, though
independent, follower Ptolemy.2 The former regarded
the iEons as simply modes of God's existence, abiding
within His essence : the latter, in common with the great
1 Hipp. 9.10; Schmid, Dogmeng. 47, n.
2 Tert. c. Valent. 4 ; cf. SiaBeo-eis of Ptol. ap. Iten. I. 12. 1 .

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 259
majority of the school, looked upon them as " personal
substances" which had come forth from God and re
mained outside Him. And again, most philosophers of
the same school made a genealogy of iEons, and fur
nished their opponents thereby with one of their chief
handles for ridicule : but Colorbasus regarded the pro
duction of the JEons as a single momentary act.1 Some
times, however, the expressions, which came from dif
ferent sources, were blended.
Almost all Jhese conceptions of. .the, means by which
God communicated- Himself, to the world were relative
tc the concejJtion_of Him as Mind. It is as inherent
a necessity for thought to reveal itself as it is for light
to shine. Following the tendency of current psychology
to regard the different manifestations of mind as relative
to different elements in mind itself, some schools of phi
losophers gave a separate personality to each supposed
element in the mind of God. There came forth thought
and reflexion, voice and name, reasoning and intention : 2
or from the original Will and Thought came forth Mind
and Truth (Eeality) as visible forms and images of the
invisible qualities (StaOeo-ewv) of the Father.3
(ii.) But side by side with this tendency to indivi
dualize and hypostatize the separate elements or modes
of the Divine Mind, there was a tendency to regard the
mind of God as a unity existing either as a distinct
element in His essence or objective to Him. On one
theory, mind is the only-begotten of God.4 He alone
1 ap. Iren. 1. 12. 3. 2 Hipp. 6. 12.
3 Ptolemy ap. Iren. 1. 12. 1; cf. Hipp. c. Noet. 10, ttoXvs i]v.
4 ap. Iren. 1. 2. 1, 5 (Valentinians).
s 2 "

260 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
knows God and wishes to reveal Him. On another
theory, mind is born from the unborn Father, and from
Mind are born Logos and Prudence, "Wisdom and Force,
and thence in their order all the long series of Powers
by whom the universe was formed.1 Another theory,
that of Marcus, probably contains the key to some of the
others ; the meaning of the conception of Mind as the
only -begotten of God, is that Mind is the revelation of
God to Himself : His self-consciousness is, so to speak,
projected out of Him. It is at once a revelation and a
creation — the only immediate revelation and the only
immediate creation. The Father, "resolving to bring
forth that which is ineffable in Him, and to endow with
form that which is invisible, opened His mouth and sent
forth the Logos" which is the image of Him, and revealed
Him to Himself.2 The Logos, or "Word, which was so
sent forth was made up of distinct utterances: each
utterance was an ceon, a logos, a root and seed of being :
in other words, each was a part and phase of God's
nature which expressed and reflected itself in a part and
phase of the world, so that collectively the logoi are
equivalent to the Logos, who is the image and reflection
of God.
The theory is not far distant from that which is found
in the earlier Apologists, and which passed through more
than one phase before it won its way to general accept
ance. The leading point in both is the relation of the
individual logoi to the Logos. "We have already become
1 ap. Iren. 1. 24. 3 (Basilides) : cf. Clem. Al. Protrep. 10, the Logcs
is the Son of yoi>s.
2 Iren. 1. 14. 1, irporjKaTo Xoyov opotov avrQ.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 261
acquainted with the syncretism which had blended the
Platonic ideas with the Stoical logoi, the former being
regarded as forces as well as forms, and the latter being
not only productive forces, but also the laws of thoso
forces ; and which had viewed them both in their unity,
rather than in their plurality, as expressions of a single
Logos. "We have also seen that the solution of the
problem, How could God create ? was found in the doc
trine that He created by means of His Logos, who im
pressed himself in the innumerable forms of created
things. The solution of the metaphysical difficulty, How
can a transcendent God know and be known ? was found
to lie in the solution which had already been given to
the cosmogonical difficulty, How could God come into
¦contact with matter?1 The Forces were also Eeasons:
they were activities and also thoughts : in men they
woke to consciousness : and the mind of man knew the
mind of God, as. like, knows like, by virtue of -containing
within it " a seed of the Logos, n a particle, of the divine
Logos itself. That divine Logos " of which the whole
human race is partaker," "which had at one time ap
peared in the form of fire, and at another in the form of
angels, now by the will of God, on behalf of the human
race, had become a man, and endured to suffer all that
the daemons effected that he should suffer at the hands
of the foolish Jews."2 The difference between Christ
and other men was thought to be, thatothgc. men have
1 As compared with Philo, who emphasizes the Logos in relation to
the work of creation, Justin lays stress on the Logos as Eevealer,
making known to us the will of God : cf. diroo-ToXos, Tryph. 61.
2 Justin, Apol. i. 63.

262 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
only^a "jiGed-jof the Logos," whereas in him the whole
Logos was maniffifit„:.^ndthe. difference between Chris
tians and-philosophers was, -that the latter- lived by the
light of a^4iari_jQjaJ^_jnl.iheuli¥ine, Logos^. whereas the
former lived by the Jinawledge and contemplation of the
whole Logos}
"Within half a century after these tentative efforts,51
and largely helped by the dissemination of the Fourth
Gospel, which had probably at first only a local influence,
the mass of Christians were tending to acquiesce not only
in the belief of the transcendental nature of God, but
also in the belief that, in some way which was not yet
closely defined, Jesus Christ was the Logos by whom the
world had been made, and who revealed the unknown
Father to men.
The form in which the belief is stated by Irenaeus is
the following :
" No one can know the Father except by the Word of God,
that is by the Son revealing Him : nor can any one know the
Son except by the good pleasure of the Father. But the Son
performs the good pleasure of the Father : for the Father sends.
and the Son is sent and comes. And His Word knows that the
Father is, as far as concerns us, invisible and unlimited: and
since He is ineffable, He himself declares Him to us : and, on
the other hand, it is the Father alone who knows His own Word :
both these truths has the Lord made known to us. Wherefore
the Son reveals the knowledge of the Father by manifesting
Himself: for the manifestation of the Son is the knowledge of
i Apol. ii. 8.
2 It would be beyond bur present purpose to go into Christology.
It will be sufficient to indicate three theories : (1) Modal Monarchian
ism; (2) Dynamical Monarchianism; (3) Logos theory. Cf. Harnack,
Dogmeng. i. 161, 220, for Gnostic Christology.

IX. GREEK AND CHEISTIAN THEOLOGY. 263
the Father: for all things are manifested by the Word  The
Father therefore has revealed Himself to all by making His
Word visible to all : and conversely the Word showed to all the
Father and. the Son, since He was seen by all. And therefore
the righteous judgment of God comes upon all who, though they
have seen as others, have not believed as others. For by means
of the creation itself the Word reveals God the Creator ; by means
of the world, the Lord who is the Fashioner of the world ; and
by means of His handiwork (man), the Workman who formed it;
and by the Son, that Father who begat the Son."1
(3) The Distinctions in the Nature of God, or the Media
tion and Mediator. — It was by a natural process of deve
lopment that Christian philosophers, while acquiescing
in the general proposition that Jesus Christ was the Logos
in human form, should go on to frame large theories as
to the nature of the Logos. It was an age of definition
and dialectic. It was no more possible for the mass of
educated men to leave a metaphysical problem untouched,
than it is possible in our own days for chemists to
leave a natural product unanalyzed. Two main questions
engaged attention : (i.) what was the genesis, (ii.) what
was the nature, of the Logos. In the speculations which
rose out of each of these questions, the influence of Greek
thought is even more conspicuous than before.
(i.) The question of the genesis of the Logos was
mainly answered by theories which were separated from,
one another by the same broad line of distinction which
separated theories as to the genesis of the world.
The philosophers of the school of Basilides, who, as
we have seen, had been the first to formulate the doctrine
of an absolute creation, that is, of a creation of all things
1 Iren. 4. 6. 3, 5, 6 ; cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. 7. 2.

264 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
out of nothing, conceived that whatever in their theory
corresponded to the Logos was equally included with all
other things in the original seed. Hence came the defi
nite proposition, which played a large part in the contro
versies of the fourth century, that the Logos was made
"out of the things that were not."1
But the majority of theories expressed under various
metaphors the idea, which was relative to the other theory
of creation, that in some way the Logos had come forth
from God. The rival hypotheses as to the nature of
creation were reconciled by the hypothesis that, though
the world was created out of nothing, it was so created
by the Logos, who was not created by God, but came
forth from Him. The metaphors were chiefly those of
the "putting forth" (irpo/3o\ri, prolatio), as of the leaves
or fruit of a plant, and of the begetting of a son. They
were in use before the doctrine of the Logos had esta
blished itself, and some of them were originally relative,
not to the Logos, but to other conceptions of mediation
between God and the world. They' were supplemented
by the metaphors, which also were in earlier use, of the
flowing of water from a spring, and of the radiation of
light.2 That there was not originally any important
distinction between them, is shown both by the express
disclaimer of Irenseus and by the fact of their use in
combination in the same passages of the same writers.
The combination was important. The metaphors supple
mented each other. Each of them contained an element
1 Cf. Hipp. 7. 21, 22; Schmid, Dogm. 52.
* Tert. Apol. 51 ; Hipp. c. Noet. p. 62.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 265
in the theory which ultimately expressed the settled
judgment of the Christian world.
The main diffixailly^which. they presented was that of
an apparent ineon&isteney- with the belief- in-4he- unity
ofjjcd. The doctrine of the "sole monarchy" of God,
which had been strongly maintained against those who
explained the difficulties of the world by the hypothesis
of two Gods in conflict, seemed to be running another
kind of danger in the very ranks of its defenders. The
Logos who reflected God and revealed Him to rational
creatures, who also contained in himself the form and
forces of the material world, must be in some sense God.
In Athenagoras there is a pure monism : " God is Him
self all things to Himself, unapproachable light, a perfect
universe, spirit, force, logos."1 But in other writers the
idea of development or generation, however lightly the
metaphor might be pressed, seemed to involve an exist
ence of the Logos both outside God and posterior to
Him.2 He was the "first-born," the "first offspring of
God," the " first force after the Father of all and the Lord
God;" for "as the beginning, before all created things,
God begat from Himself a kind of rational Force, which
is called by the Holy. Spirit (Le. the Old Testament)
sometimes 'the Glory of the Lord,' sometimes 'Son,'
1 Leg. 16; cf. Clem. Al. Strom. 5. 1; cf. Theophilus, 2. 22, for
distinction of Xoyos Trpo<popiKos as well as evSidBeTos, denied by Clement
(loc. cit.), but repeated in Tert. adv. Prax. 5; cf. Hipp. c. Noet. 10.
See Zahn's note in Ign. ad Magn. 8. 2, on irpoeXBibv in relation to
eternal generation.
2 Philo applied the phrase " Son of God" to the world : cf. Keim,
Celsus, 95.

266 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
sometimes '"Wisdom,' sometimes 'Angel,' sometimes
'God,' sometimes ' Lord and Logos? sometimes he speaks
of himself as ' Captain of the Lord's host : ' for he has
all these appellations, both from his ministering to the
Father's purpose and from his having been begotten by
the Father's pleasure."1 It follows that "there is, and
is spoken of, another God and Lord beneath the Maker
of the universe."2 The theory thus formulated tended
to ditheism and was openly accused of it.3 It was saved
from the charge by the gradual formulating of two dis
tinctions, both of which came from external philosophy,
one of them being an inheritance from Stoicism, the other
from Neo-Platonism.4 The one was that the generation
or development had taken place within the sphere of
Deity itself: the generation had not taken place by the
severing of a part from the whole, as though the Divine
nature admitted of a division,5 but by distinction o
function or by multiplication, as many torches may be
1 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 61 A, cf. 62 E, TrpoBXqBev yevv-qpa; and
Hipp. c.Noet. 8, 10, 16; Tatian, c. 5 ; Irenasus ap. Schmid, p. 31.
2 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 56 C, p. 180.
3 Hipp. 9. 12 ; Callistus, while excommunicating the Sabellians
(cf. Schmid, 48; Weing. 31), also called Hippolytus and his party
ditheists. For Callistus' own view, cf. ibid. 9. 11. See Schmid, p. 50 ;
also p. 45 for Praxeas ap. Tert.
4 The Gnostic controversies in regard to the relation to God of the
Powers who were intermediate between Him and the world, had helped
to forge such intellectual instruments.
6 Justin, c. Tryph. 128 : Svvdpei Kal BovX-g avTov dXX' ov kgit d-n-o-
Toprjv &s dTrop.epi£opev-qs Trjs tou rraTpbs ovo-las ; cf. Plotinus ap. Harn.
Dogm. 493 : KaTa p.epio-p6v ov k<xt dvoTopJqv in Tatian, 5, is different;
cf. Hipp. c. Noet. 10.

IX GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 267
lit from one without diminishing the light of that one.1
The other was that the generation had been eternal. In
an early statement of the theory it was held that it had
taken place in time : it was argued that " God could not
have been a Father before there was a Son, but there
was a time when there was not a Son."2 But the influ
ence of the other metaphors in which the relation was
expressed overpowered the influences which came from
pressing the conception of paternity. Light, it was
argued, could never have been without its capacity to
shine.3 The Supreme Mind could never have been with
out His Thought. The Father Eternal was always a
Father, the Son was always a Son.4
(ii.) The question of the nature of the eternally-be
gotten Logos was answered variously, according as the
supra-cosmic or the transcendental idea of God was domi
nant in a writer's mind.5 To Justin Martyr, God is con-
1 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 61 C, where the metaphor of "speech"
is also employed.
2 ap. Tert. c. Hermog. 3.
8 For metaphor of light, cf. Monolmus ap. Hipp. 8. 12 ; also Tatian,
c. 5.
4 There is uncertainty as to eternal generation in Justin ; see Engel-
hardt, p. 118. It is not in Hippolytus, c. Noet. 10. Though implied
in Irenseus (Ham. p. 495), it is in Origen that this solution attains
clear expression, e.g. de princ. 1. 2 ff., though his view is not through
out steady and uniform. Emanation seemed to him to imply division
into parts. But he hovers between the Logos as thought and as
substance. For Clement and Origen in this connection, see Harnack,
pp. 579, 581.
5 God unchangeable in Himself comes into contact with human
affairs : t$ vpovola Kal t-$ o'tKovopla, c. Cels. 4. 14. His Word changes
according to the nature of the individuals into whom he comes, c. Cels.
4.18.

268 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
ceived as supra-cosmic. He abides " in the places that
are above the heavens : " the " first-begotten," the Logos,
is the "first force after the Father: " he is "a second
God, second numerically but not in will," doing only
the Father's pleasure.1 It is uncertain how far the idea
of personality entered into this view. There is a similar
uncertainty in the view of Theophilus, who introduced
the Stoical distinction between the two aspects of the
Logos, thought and speech — "ratio" and "oratio;"2
while Tertullian still speaks of "virtus" side by side
with these.
It was only gradually that the subject was raised to
the higher plane, from which it never afterwards de
scended, by the spread and dominance of the transcen
dental as distinguished from the supra-cosmic conception
of God. It came, as we have already seen, mainly from
the schools of Alexandria. It is in Basilides, in whom
thought advanced to the belief that God transcended not
merely phenomena but being, that the conception of a
quasi-physical influence emanating from Him is seen to
be first expressly abandoned.3 But the place of the later
doctrine in the Christian Church is mainly dye tn j^rigrm.
He uses many of the same expressions as Tertullian, but
with another meaning. The Saviour is God, not by par
taking, but by essence.4 He is begotten of the very
essence of the Father. The generation is an outflow as
of light from light.
1 Justin, Apol. i. 22. 23. 32, c. Try. 56. 2 ad Autolyc. ii. 22.
3 He held that side by side with God existed, not egovo-la, but
ova-la, <£wns, vrroo-Tao-is : see Clem. Alex. Strom, 5. 1.
4 Cf. Hainack, Dogmeng. p. 580.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 269
But the controversies did not so much end with Origen
as begin with him. From that time they were mostly
internal to Christianity. But their elements were Greek
in origin. The conceptions which were introduced into
the sphere of Christian thought were the current ones of
philosophy. In Christian theology that philosophy has
survived. But although it would be beyond our present purpose
to describe the Christological controversies which fol
lowed the final dominance in the Church of the tran
scendental idea of God, it is within that purpose to point
out the Greek elements, confining ourselves as far as
possible to the later Greek uses of the terms.
Ousia (ovo-la.') is used in at least three distinct senses :
the distinction is clearly phrased by Aristotle.1
(«) It is used as a synonym of hyle, to designate the
material part of a thing. The use is most common among
the Stoics. In their monistic conception of the universe,
the visible world was regarded as the ousia of God.2 In
the same way Philo speaks of the blood as the material
vehicle, ro ovo-iwSe?, of the vital force.3 Hence in both
philosophical and Christian cosmologies, ousia was some-
1 oio-la r) Te u'A.rj Kal to eiSos Kal to Ik tovtoiv, Metaph. 6. 10,
p. 1035 a, " ousia is matter, form, and the compound of matter and
form." 2 ovo-lav 8e Beov Zrjvtov p.ev <f>qo-i tov bXov Koo-pov Kal tov ovpavov,
bpolas 8e Kal XpArimros . . • Kal Uoa-eiSdvios, Diog. L. 7. 148 : so in
M. Anton, e.g. 4, 40, ev £5ov tov koV/uov plav ova-lav Kal ipvxqv p.lav
hrexov, paraphrased in the well-known lines of Pope :
"All are but parts of one stupendous Whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul."
8 tjjs fuTiKijs 8wdp.e(os, Quod det. pot. insid. 25, i. 209.

270 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
times used as interchangeable with hyle, to denote the
matter out of which the world was made.
(b) It is used of matter embodied in a certain form :
this has since been distinguished as the substantia concreta.
In Aristotle, a sensible material thing, a particular man
or a particular horse, which in a predication must always
be the subject and cannot be a predicate, is an ousia in
the strictest sense.1
(c) It is used of the common element in the classes
into which sensible material things may be grouped:
this has since been distinguished as the substantia ab-
stracta : in the language of Aristotle, it was the form
(elSos), or ideal essence (rb rl nv e«/at).2 This sense branched
out into other senses, according as the term was used
by a realist or a nominalist: to the former it was the
common essence which exists in the individual members
of a class (rb eTSos rb evov),s and not outside them (since
aovvarov -^wpts eivai rrp> ovo-lav /cat ov rj ovcria) ' i or which
exists outside them, and by participation in which they
are what they are: this latter is Plato's conception of
el8o$,5 and of its equivalent ovo-la.
To a nominalist, on the other hand, ousia is only the
1 ovo-la 8e ea-Tiv r) KvpuuTaTa Te Kal TrpwTins Kal p,dXioTa Xeyop,evq rj
p.i)re KaB' imoKeipevov tivos Xeyerac prjTe ev wroKei/ieVy tlvI ea-Tiv' otov
o tIs avBpoiTros Kal o tIs ittttos, Categ. 5, p. 2 a : but in the Metaphysics
a different point of view is taken, and the term -n-pdiq ovo-la is used iu
the following sense, i.e. of the form, e.g. 6, 11, p. 1037.
2 Frequently in the Metaphysics, e.g. 6. 7, p. 1032 b, 7. 1, p. 1042 a.
3 Arist. Metaph. 6. 11, p. 1037 a.
i Ibid. 12. 5, p. 1079 b.
^ 6^ e.g. Parmen. p. 132 e : ol 8' dv Ta bpoia peTeXovTa Spoia ?j, ovk
ti<ewo ecrTcu avTO to eiSos.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 271
common name which is predicable in the same sense to a
number of individual existences.1
The Platonic form of realism grew out of a distinction
between the real and the phenomenal, which in its turn
it tended to accentuate. The visible world of concrete
individuals was regarded as phenomenal and transitory :
the invisible world of intelligible essences was real and
permanent: the one was genesis, or "becoming;" the
other, ousia, or "being." 2 The distinction played a large
part in the later history of Platonism : 3 and whereas in
the view of Aristotle the species, or smaller class, as being
nearer to the concrete individuals, was more ousia than
the genus, or wider class, in the later philosophy, on the
contrary, that was ousia in its highest sense which was
at the farthest remove from the concrete, and filled the
widest sphere, and contained the largest number of other
classes in itself: it was the summum genus.1 Hence
Plotinus says that in respect of the body we are farthest
from ousia, but that we partake of it in respect of our
soul ; and our soul is itself a compound, not pure ousia,
but ousia with an added difference, and hence not abso
lutely under our control.5
1 ovo-la eo-Tlv bvop.a kolvov Kal dopioTov KaTa -Kao-lav Twv wr avniv
viroo-Tdo-ewv bpoTlpois <f>ep6p,evov, Kal crvvuvvptas KaTqyopovpevov,
Suidas, s.v.
2 vo-qTO, <xttcl Kat do-(op.aTa el8q . . . Tr)v dXqBivi]V ovcrlav etvaC ra 8e
eKetvwv o-w/icn-a . . . yevecriv dvT ova-las (pepopevqv Tivd Trpoo-ayopevovai,
Plat. Sophist, p. 246.
3 e.g. it is stated by Celsus and adopted by Origen : Origen, c. Cels.
7. 45 sq.
4 r) ovo-la dvwTaTia ova-a, tw pr)8ev eivai Trpo avrrjs, y'evos i]v to
yeviK&TaTov, Porphyr. Eisag. 2. 24.
* «Wtos pev r)p.uv KaTa pev to vZpa Tr6ppia dv eiq ovcrlas, KaTa. Ss

272 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Of these two meanings of ousia, namely " species "
and " genus," the former expressing the whole essence
of a class-name or concept, the latter part of the essence,
the former tended to prevail in earlier, the latter in later
Greek philosophy. In the one, the knowledge of the
ousia was completely unfolded in the definition, so that
a definition was itself defined as "a proposition which
expresses the ousia:"1 in the latter, it was only in part
so unfolded, so that it is necessary for us to know not
only the ousia of objects of thought, for example, whether
they fall within or without the class "body," but also
the species («&;).2
But in the one meaning as in the other, the members
of the same class, or the sub-classes of the same wider
class, were spoken of as homoousioi: for example, there
was an argument that animals should not be killed for
food, on the ground that they belong to the same class
as men, their souls being homoousioi with our own : 3 so
men are homoousioi with one another, and Abraham
washed the feet of the three strangers who came to
him, thinking them to be men "of like substance" with
himself.4 tt)v \pvxi)v, Kal o pdXio-Ta eo-pkv, peTexopev ova-las, Kal ecrpiv Tts ovo-la.
tovto 8e eo-Tiv olov o-vvdeTov ti eK 8ia<j>opds Kal ovo-las, ovkovv Kvpuas
ovo-la oi58 avroova-la' 810 ovSe Kvpioi tijs avrw ovcrlas, Plotin. Enn-
6. 8. 12.
1 Arist. Anal. post. 2. 3, p. 90 b ; Top. 5. 2, p. 130 6; Metaph. 6. 4,
p. 1030 b.
' Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hypotyp. 3. 1. 2.
3 e'l ye opoova-ioi al tZv fauv \[/vxal Tats -qpeTepais, Porphvr. de
Abstin. 1. 19.
4 tous Tro8as dis bpoovo-liav dvBpdmiav avBptmoi tviibav, Clement,
Horn. 20. 7, p. 192.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 273
The difficulty of the whole conception in its application
to God was felt and expressed. Some philosophers, as
we have already seen, denied that such an application
was possible. The tide of which Neo-Platonism was the
most prominent wave placed God beyond ousia. Origen
meets Celsus's statement of that view by a recognition of
the uncertainty which flowed from the uncertain meaning
ef the term.1 The Christological controversies of the
fourth century were complicated to no small extent
from the existence of a neutral and conservative party,
who met the dogmatists on both sides with the assertion
that neither ousia nor hypostasis was predicable of God.2
And, in spite of the acceptance of the Mcene formula,
the great Christian mystic who most fully represents Neo-
Platonism within the Christian Church, ventured more
than a century later on to recur to the position that God
has no ousia, but is hyperousios? Even those who main
tained the applicability of the term to God, denied the
possibility of defining it when so applied to Him. In this
they followed Philo : " Those who do not know the ousia
of their own soul, how shall they give an accurate account
of the soul of the universe ?" 4 But in spite of these diffi
culties, the conservative feeling against the introduction
1 c. Cels. 6. 64.
2 e.g. in S. Athanas. ad Afr. episc. 4, vol. i. 714.
3 Dionys. Areop. de div. nam. 5.
i Philo, Leg. Alleg. 1. 30, vol. i. 62 ; cf. de post. Cain. 8, vol. i. 229 :
there is a remarkable Christian application of this in a dialogue between
a Christian and a Jew who was curious as to the Trinity, Hieronymi
Theologi Grseci, Dialogus de sancta Trinitate, in Gallandi, Vet. Pair,
Bibl. vol. vii., reprinted in Migne, Patrol. Gr. vol. xl. 845.
T

274 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
of metaphysical terms into theology, and the philosophical
doctrine of absolute transcendence, were overborne by tbe
practical necessity of declaring that He is, and by the
corollary that since He is, there must be an ousia of Him.
But when the conception of the one God as transcend
ing numerical unity became dominant in the Christian
Church, the term homoousios (6fioovo-ios) was not unnatu
rally adopted to express the relation of God the Father
to God the Son. It accentuated the doctrine that the
Son was not a creature (/cTtV/xa) ; and so of the term as
applied to the Holy Spirit. Those who maintained that
the Holy Spirit was a creature, thereby maintained that
He was severed from the essence of the Father.1 The
term occurs first in the sphere of Gnosticism, and expresses
part of one of the two great conceptions as to the origin
of the world.2 It was rejected in its application to the
world, but accepted within the sphere of Deity as an
account of the origin of His plurality. But homoousios,
though true, was insufficient. It expressed the unity,
but did not give sufficient definition to the conception of
the plurality. It was capable of being used by those
1 Sir/p-qpevov eK Trjs ova-las tov TraTpos, Athan. ad Antioch, 3, vol. i.
616. 2 Cf. Harnack, i. 191, 219, 476 sqq., 580. In the Valentinian
system, the spiritual existence which Achamoth brought forth was of
the same essence as herself, Iren. 1.5. 1. In that of Basilides, the
three-fold sonship which was in the seed which God made, was koto.
irdvTa Tig ovk- ovti Be$ bpoovo-ios, Hippolytus, 7. 22 : so as regards
to ev in Epiphanes (Valentinian?), ap. Iren. 1. 11. 3 (Hipp. 6. 38),
it o-vvmapxei' TrJ povoT-qri as 8vvapis bpoovaios dvTrj. Cf. Clem. Horn.
20.7; Iren. ap. Ham. 481, "ejusdem substantias;" Tert. Apol. 21,
"ex utiitate substantias;1' Ham. 488, 491.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 275
who held the plurality to be merely modal or phenome
nal.1 It thus led to the use of another term, of which it
is necessary to trace the history.
The term ousia in most of its senses had come to be
convertible with two other terms, hypostasis (inroo-rao-i?)
and hyparxis (v-wap^is). The latter of these played but a
small part in Christian theology, and may be disregarded
here.2 The term hypostasis is the conjugate of the verb
iKpia-ravat, which had come into use as a more emphatic
form than etvai. It followed almost all the senses of ousia.
Thus it was contrasted Avith phenomenal existence not
merely in the Platonic but in the conventional sense ;
e.g. of things that take place in the sky, some are appear
ances, some have a substantial existence, icad' v7r6o-rao-tv.3
It also, like ousia, is used of that which has an actual as
compared with a potential existence ;4 also of that which
has an objective existence in the world, and not merely
exists in the thinking subject.5 Hence when things
came into being,, ovo-la was said ixpio-ravat.6 Moreover, in
one of its chief uses, namely that in which it designated
the permanent element in objects of thought, the term
1 It was expressly rejected at the Council of Antioch in connection
with Paul of Samosata; and Basil, Ep. 9, says that Dionysius of Alex
andria gave it up because of its use by the Sabellians : cf. Ep. 52 (300).
2 It is found, e.g., in Athan. ad Afr. episc. 4, vol. i. 714, r) yap
wroo-Tao-is Kal -q ova-la vTrap^is Jerri. The distinction is found in Stoical
writers, e.g. Chrysippus says that the present time vrrapx^h the past
and future vfyurravTai. Diels, Doxogr. Groeei. 462. 1.
3 Diels, ibid. 372 ; cf. 363, where it is contrasted with <pavTaala.
4 Sext. Empir. p. 192, § 226.
6 Diels, 318.
6 Ib. 469. 20 : SO KaTa T-qv Trjs ova-las VTroa-Taa-iv, p. 462, 26.

276 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.

ovo-ia

had sometimes been replaced by the term viroo-Ta™.1
When, therefore, the use of ousia in its Neo-Platonic
sense prevailed, there arose a tendency to differentiate
the two terms, and to designate that which in Aristotle
had been vpwrri ovo-la by the term viroo-raais. This is
expressed by Athanasius when he says : " Ousia signifies
community," while " hypostasis has property which is
not common to the hypostases of the same ousia ;"2 and
even more clearly by Basil.3
There was the more reason for the growth of the dis-
tinction, because the term homoousios lent itself more
readily to a Sabellian Christology. This was anticipated
by Irenseus in his polemic against the Yalentinian heresy
of the emission of iEons. Ousiai, in the sense of genera
and species, might be merely conceptions in the mind :
the alternative was that of their having an existence of
their own.4 So that hypostasis came in certain schools
1 Epict. 1. 14. 2.
2 Ath. Dial, de Trin. 2 : rj ovo-la T-qv KoivorqTa a-qpawei, while
vKoa-Taa-is ISioTqra e'x« tjtis ovk eaTi Kowi) t£>v Trjs avrrjs ovo-ias
vTroo-Tao-eiav. He elsewhere identifies it with irpoo-iaTov in Ath. et
Cyril, in Expos, orthod.fid. : mroo-Taa-ls ea-Tiv ovo-la p.eTa tivwv ISua-
p,aTti)V dpiBplp tw bpoei8G>v 8ia(pepovaa' Tovrea-Ti Trpoo-timov bpoovo-iov.
Still the identity of the two terms was allowed even after they were
tending to be differentiated : cf. Athan. ad Afr. Ep. 4, vol. i. 714, 17 Se
iijrooTao"is ovo-ia ea-Ti Kal ouSev dXXo o-qpaivopevov «x« rj avro to ov.
So ad Antioch, 6. (i. 617), he tolerates the view that there was only
one vrrba-Taa-is in the Godhead, on the ground that -wroWao-is might
be regarded as synonymous with ovo-la. Cf. objection at Council of
Sardica, against three vrroaTao-eis in the Godhead, instead of one
vTroo-rao-is, of Father, Son and Spirit.
3 Cf. Ham. Dogm. 693.
4 ISlav vTroa-Taa-iv, Sext. Empir. de Pyrrh. 2. 219.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 277
of thought to be the term for the substantia concreta, the
individual, the ovo-la oVo^o? of Galen.1 The distinction,
however, was far from being universally recognized. The
clearest and most elaborate exposition of it is contained
in a letter of Basil to his brother Gregory, who was evi
dently not quite clear upon the point.2 The result was,
that just as \nr6o-rao-i<s had been used to express one of the
senses of ovo-la, so a new term came into use to define
more precisely the sense of inr6o-rao-is. Its origin is pro
bably to be traced to the interchange of documents be
tween East and "West, which leading to a difficulty in
regard to this use of inr6o-rao-i$, ended in the introduction
of a third term.
So long as ovo-la and Woa-rao-is had been convertible
terms, the one Latin word substantia, the etymological
equivalent of inroo-raa-n, had sufficed for both. When the
two words became differentiated in Greek, it became
advisable to mark the difference. However, the word
essentia, the natural equivalent for ovo-la, jarred upon a
Latin ear.3 Consequently substantia was claimed for
ovo-la, while for v-n-oo-rao-is a fresh equivalent had to be
sought. This was found in persona, whose antecedents
may be those of " a character in a play," or of " person"
in the juristic sense, a possible party to a contract, in
which case Tertullian may have originated this usage.4
1 Ed. Ktthn, 5. 662. 2 Ep. 210; Ham. Dogm. 693.
3 Cf. Quintilian, who ascribes it in turn to Plautns and to Sergius
Flavius, 2. 14. 2; 3. 6. 23; 8. 3. 33 : Seneca, Ep. 58. 6, to Cicero,
and more recently Fabianus. For substantia, cf. Quint. 7. 2. 5, " nam
et substantia ejus sub oculos cadit."
4 Cf. Harnack, 489, 543 ; for its use by Sabellius, &c, ib. 679 ; also
Orig. de princ. 1. 2. 8.

278 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
Such Western practice would tend to stimulate the em
ployment of the corresponding Greek term vpoo-wTrov,
whose use hitherto seems to have been subordinate to
that of vTroo-rao-is.1 And, finally, the philosophic terms
(pvo-K and natura came into use. In the second century
cpvo-is had been distinct from ovo-la and identical with
Eeason.2 But in the fourth century it came to be iden
tified with ovo-la,s and afterwards again distinguished from
it, whereas the Monophysites identified it with inroo-rao-is.
To sum up, then. We have in Greek four terms, ova-la,
uTrocnao-ii, irpoo-oi-wov, tpvo-is, and in Latin three, substantia,
persona, natura, the two series not being actually parallel
even to the extent to which they are so in appearance.
Times have changed since Tertullian's4 loose and vague
usage caused no remark; when Jerome, thinking as a
Latin, hesitates to speak of rpek v-woo-rao-ens, by which he
understood tres substantias, and complains that he is
looked upon as a heretic in the East in consequence.
There is a remarkable saying of Athanasius which is
capable of a wider application than he gave it : it runs
1 E.g. Ath. et Cyr. in Expos, orth. fid., iVocrrao-is = rrpoa-imov ipo-
ovo-wv. In Epictetus, 1. 2. 7, 14, 28, it denotes individuality of cha
racter, that which distinguishes one man from another.
2 In Ath. ad. Ant. 7. 25, -q to. bXa 8wiKovo-a <pvo-is is distinguished
from ovala tu>v oXutv : so 7. 75, r) tov oXov <pvo-is errl Tr)v Koo-p.oirouav
wpp-qo-ev. For <pva-i.s in Philo, see Leg. All. 3. 30 (i. 105).
3 Leontius of Byzantium says that both ovo-la and <£ixris = etSos,
Pat. Grctc. Ixxxvi. 1193.
4 E.g. adv. Prax. 2 (E. T. ii. 337), where he makes the distinctions
within the ceconomia of the Godhead to be gradu, forma, specie, with
a unity of substantia, status, potestas ; cf. Bp. Kaye, in E. T. ii.
p. 407.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 279
as follows:1 "They seemed to be ignorant of the fact
that when we deal with words that require some training
to understand them, different people may take them in
senses not only differing but absolutely opposed to each
other."2 Thus there was an indisposition to accept ovo-la.
The phrase was not understanded of the people.3 A reac
tion took place against the multiplicity of terms ; but the
simple and unstudied language of the childhood of Chris
tianity, with its awe-struck sense of the ineffable nature
of God, was but a fading memory, and on the other hand
the tendency to trust in and insist upon the results of
speculation was strong. Once indeed the Catholic doc
trine was formulated, then, though not till then, the
majority began to deprecate investigations as to the
nature of God.
But I do not propose to dwell upon the sad and weary
history of the way in which for more than a century
these metaphysical distinctions formed the watchwords
ef political as well as of ecclesiastical parties — of the
strife and murder, the devastation of fair fields, the flame
and sword, therewith connected. For all this, Greek
philosophy was not responsible. These evils mostly came
from that which has been a permanently disastrous fact
in Christian history, the interference of the State, which
gave the decrees of Councils that sanction which elevated
1 De Sententia Dionys. 18, quoted in Diet, of Christ. Biog. under
Homoousios. 2 Thus the Eoman Dionysius, in a fragment against the Sabellians
(Kouth, Reliq. iii. pp. 373, 374), objects to the division of the p,ovapxla
into Tpels 8vvdp.eis Tivas Kal p.ep.epio-p.evas ixoo-Tao-eis Kal BeiOTqras
Tpeis. 3 dyvoovptvov hrb riov XaQv, Athan. de Synod. 8 (i. 577).

280 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
the resolutions of the majority upon the deepest subjects
of human speculation to the factitious rank of laws which
must be accepted on pain of forfeiture, banishment or
death. Philosophy branched off from theology. It became
its handmaid and its rival. It postulated doctrines
instead of investigating them. It had to show their
reasonableness or to find reasons for them. And for
ages afterwards philosophy was dead. I feel as strongly
as you can feel the weariness of the discussions to which
I have tried to direct your attention. But it is only by
seeing how minute and how purely speculative they are,
that we can properly estimate their place in Christian
theology. "Whether we do or do not accept the conclu
sions in which the greater part of the Christian world
ultimately acquiesced, we must at least recognize that
they rest upon large assumptions. Three may be indi
cated which are all due to the influence of Greek philo
sophy.1 1 [As this summing up never underwent the author's final revision,.
and the notes which follow stand in his MS. parallel with the corre
sponding portion of the Lecture as originally delivered, it has been
thought well to place them here. — Ed.]
(1) The tendency to abstract has combined with the tendency to
regard matter as evil or impure, in the production of a tendency to
form rather a negative than a positive conception of God. The majority
of formularies define God by negative terms, and yet they have claimed
for conceptions which are negative a positive value.
(2) We owe to Greek philosophy — to the hypothesis of the chasm
between spirit and matter — the tendency to interpose powers between
the Creator and His creation. It may be held that the attempt to
solve the insoluble problem, how God, who is pure spirit, made and
sustains us, has darkened the relations which it has attempted to
explain by introducing abstract metaphysical conceptions.

IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 281
(1) It is assumed that metaphysical distinctions are
important. I am far from saying that they are not : but it is not
less important to recognize that much of what we believe
rests upon this assumption that they are. There is other
wise no justification whatever for drawing men's thoughts
away from the positive knowledge which we may gain
both of ourselves and of the world around us, to contem
plate, even at far distance, the conception of Essence.
(2) The second is the assumption that these metaphy
sical distinctions which we make in our minds correspond
to realities in the world around us, or in God who is
beyond the world and within it.
Again, I am far from saying that they do not ; but it
is at least important for us to recognize the fact that, in
speaking of the essence of either the world or God, we
are assuming the existence of something corresponding
to our conception of essence in the one or the other.1
(3) The third assumption is that the idea of perfection
which we transfer from ourselves to God, really corre
sponds to the nature of His being.
It is assumed that rest is better than motion, that
passionlessness is better than feeling, that changelessness
is better than change. We know these things of our
selves : we cannot know them of One who is unlike our
selves, who has no body that can be tired, who has no
1 It may be noted that even in the later Greek philosophy there
was a view, apparently identical with that of Bishop Berkeley, that
matter or substance merely represented the sum of the qualities.
Origen, de Princ. 4. 1. 34.

282 IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
imperfection that can miss its aim, with whom unhindered
movement may conceivably be perfect life.
I have spoken of these assumptions because, although
it would be difficult to over-estimate the importance of
the conceptions by which Greek thought lifted men from
the conception of God as a Being with human form and
human passions, to the lofty height on which they can
feel around them an awful and infinite Presence, the time
may have come when — in face of the large knowledge of
His ways which has come to us through both thought
and research — we may be destined to transcend the as
sumptions of Greek speculation by new assumptions,
which will lead us at once to a diviner knowledge and
the sense of a diviner life.1
1 These Lectures are the history of a genesis : it would otherwise
have been interesting to show in how many points theories which have
been thought out in modern times revive theories of the remote past of
Christian antiquity.

Lecture X.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTEEIES UPON
CHEISTIAN USAGES.

A. The Greek Mysteries and related Cults.
Side by side in Greece with the religion which was
openly professed and with the religious rites which were
practised in the temples, not in antagonism to them, but
intensifying their better elements and elaborating their
ritual, were the splendid rites which were known as the
Mysteries. Side by side also with the great political
communities, and sheltered within them by the common
law and drawn together by a stronger than political
brotherhood, were innumerable associations for the prac
tice of the new forms of worship which came in with
foreign commerce, and for the expression in a common
worship of the religious feelings which the public religion
did not satisfy. These associations were known as dlao-oi,
epavoi or opyewves.
I will speak first of the mysteries, and then of the
associations for the practice of other cults.
1. The mysteries were probably the survival of the
oldest religions of the Greek races and of the races which
preceded them. They were the worship not of the gods

284 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
of the sky, Zeus and Apollo and Athene, but of the gods
of the earth and the under- world, the gods of the pro
ductive forces of nature and of death.1
The most important of them were celebrated at Eleusis,
near Athens, and the scattered information which exists
about them has been made more impressive and more
intelligible to us by excavations, which have brought to
light large remains of the great temple — the largest in
Greece — in which they were celebrated. It had been
a cult common to the Ionian tribes, probably borrowed
from the earlier races among whom they had settled.
It was originally the cult of the powers which produce
the harvest, conceived as a triad of divinities — a god
and two goddesses, Pluto, Demeter and Kore, of whom
the latter became so dominant in the worship, that the
god almost disappeared from view, and was replaced by
a divinity, Iacchus, who had no place in the original
myth.2 Its chief elements were the initiation, the sacri
fice, and the scenic representation of the great facts of
natural life and human life, of which the histories of
the gods were themselves symbols.3
1 For what follows, reference in general may be made to Keil,
Attische Culte aus Inschriften, Philologus, Bd. xxiii. 212 — 259, 592 —
G22 : and Weingarten, Histor. Zeitschrift, Bd. xlv. 1881, p. 441 sqq.,
as well as to the authorities cited in the notes.
2 Foucart, Le culte de Pluton dans la religion eleusinienne, Bulletin
de Correspondance Hellenique, 1883, pp. 401 sqq.
3 The successive stages or acts of initiation are variously described
and enumerated, but there were at least four : KaBapo-is — the preparatory
purification; o-vcrratrvs — the initiatory rites and sacrifices; TeXeri) or
pvqa-is — the prior initiation ; and orojrm'a, the higher or greater
initiation, which admitted to the TrapdSoa-is twv lepZv, or holiest act of
the ritual Cf. Lobeck, Aglaoph. pp. 39 ff.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 285
(i.) The main underlying conception of initiation was,
that there were elements in human life from which the
candidate must purify himself before he could be fit to
approach God. There was a distinction between those
who were not purified, and those who, in consequence
of being purified, were admitted to a diviner life and
to the hope of a resurrection. The creation of this
distinction is itself remarkable. The race of mankind
was lifted on to a higher plane when it came to be
taught that only the pure in heart can see God. The
rites of Eleusis were originally confined to the inhabitants
of Attica : but they came in time to be open to all Greeks,
later to all Eomans, and were open to women as well as
to men.1 The bar at the entrance came to be only a
moral bar.
The whole ceremonial began with a solemn proclama
tion : " Let no one enter whose hands are not clean and
whose tongue is not prudent." In other mysteries it
was : " He only may enter who is pure from all defile
ment, and whose soul is conscious of no wrong, and who
has lived well and justly."2
The proclamation was probably accompanied by some
words or sights of terror. "When Nero went to Eleusis
and thought at first of being initiated, he was deterred
by it. Here is another instance of exclusion, which is
not less -important in its bearing upon Christian rites.
ApoUonius of Tyana was excluded because he was a
1 An interesting inscription has recently come to light, which shows
that the public slaves of the city were initiated at the public expense.
Foucart, I.e. p. 394.
2 Cf. Origen, c. Cels. 3. 59.

286 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
magician (yoV) and not pure in respect of ra. Saipovia —
he had intercourse with other divinities than those of
the mysteries, and practised magical rites.1
"We learn something from the parody of the mysteries
in Lucian's romance of the pseudo-prophet Alexander.
In it Alexander institutes a celebration of mysteries and
torchlights and sacred shows, which go on for three suc
cessive days. On the first there is a proclamation of a
similar kind to that at Athens. "If any Atheist or
Christian or Epicurean has come as a spy upon the festi
val, let him flee ; let the initiation of those who believe
in the god go on successfully." Then forthwith at the
very beginning a chasing away takes place. The prophet
himself sets the example, saying, " Christians, away ! "
and the whole crowd responds, " Epicureans, away ! "
Then the show begins — the birth of Apollo, the marriage
of Coronis, the coming of iEsculapius, are represented ;
the ceremonies proceed through several days in imitation
of the mysteries and in glorification of Alexander.2
The proclamation was thus intended to exclude notorious
sinners from the first or initial ceremonial.3 The rest was
1 Philostratus, Vita Apoll. 4. 18, p. 138. 2 Alex. 38.
3 Cf. Lobeck, Aglaoph. pp. 39 ff. and 89 ff. ; Welcker, Griech. Got-
terl. ii. 530 — 532. " The first and most important condition required
of those who would enter the temple at Lindus is that they be pure in
heart and not conscious of any crime." — Professor "W. M. Eamsay in
Ency. Brit. s. v. " Mysteries." For purification before admission to the
worship of a temple, see, in C.I. A. iii. Pt. i. 73. 74, instances of regu
lation prescribed at the temple of Men Tyrannus at Laurium in Attica, ,
e.g. p-qBeva aKaBapTov rrpoo-dyeiv, various periods of purification being
specified. Cf. Reinach, Traite d'JEpigr. Grecque, p. 133, on the inscr.
of Andania in Messenia, b.o. 91 ; the mysteries of the Cabiri in Le Bas
and Foucart, Inscr. du Peloponnese, ii. § 5, p. 161; and Sauppe, die
Mystc.rieninschr. von Andania.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 287
thrown upon a man's own conscience. He was asked
to confess his sins, or at least to confess the greatest
crime that he had ever committed. " To whom am I to
confess it ?" said Lysander to the mystagogoi who were
conducting him. " To the gods." " Then if you will
go away," said he, " I will tell them."
Confession was followed by a kind of baptism.1 The
candidates for initiation bathed in the pure waters of the
sea. The manner of bathing and the number of immersions
varied with the degree of guilt which they had confessed.
They came from the bath new men. It was a KaOapo-is,
a Xovrpbv, a laver of regeneration. They had to practise
certain forms of abstinence : they had to fast ; and when
they ate they had to abstain from certain kinds of food.2
(ii.) The purification was followed by a sacrifice — which
was known as o-wrripia — a sacrifice of salvation : and in
addition to the great public sacrifice, each of the candi
dates for initiation sacrificed a pig for himself.3 Then
1 Tertullian, de Baptismo, 5, " Nam et sacris quibusdam per lava-
crum initiantur . . . ipsos etiam deos suos lavationibus efferunt;'' Clem.
Alex. Strom. Bk. 5.4: " The mysteries are not exhibited incontinently
to all, but only after certain purifications and previous instructions."
Ibid. 5. 11 : "It is not without reason that in the mysteries that obtain
among the Greeks, lustrations hold the first place, as also the laver among
the Barbarians. After these are the minor mysteries, which have some
foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is to
come after; and the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be
learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature
and things." We have thus a sort of baptism and catechumenate.
2 The fast lasted nine days, and during it certain kinds of food were
wholly forbidden. Cf. Lobeck, Aglaoph. pp. 189 — 197.
* There was a lesser and a greater initiation : " It is a regulation of
law that those who have been admitted to the lesser should ngain be
initiated into the greater mysteries.'' Hippol. 5, 8 : see the whole
chapter, as also cc. 9, 20.

288 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
there was an interval of two days before the more solemn
sacrifices and shows began. They began with a great
procession — each of those who were to be initiated
carrying a long lighted torch, and singing loud paeans
in honour of the god.1 It set out from Athens at sunrise
and reached Eleusis at night. The next day there was
another great sacrifice. Then followed three days and
nights in which the initiated shared the mourning of
Demeter for her daughter, and broke their fast only by
. drinking the mystic miceoav — a drink of flour and water
and pounded mint, and by eating the sacred cakes.2
(iii.) And at night there were the mystic plays: the
scenic representation, the drama in symbol and for sight.
Their torches were extinguished : they stood outside
the temple in the silence and the darkness. The doors
opened — there was a blaze of light — and before them
was acted the drama of Demeter and Kore* — the loss
of the daughter, the wanderings of the mother, the birth
of the child. It was a symbol of the earth passing
through its yearly periods. It was the poetry of Nature.
It was the drama which is acted every year, of summer
and winter and spring. Winter by winter the fruits
and flowers and grain die down into the darkness, and
spring after spring they come forth again to new life.
Winter after winter the sorrowing earth is seeking for
1 Cf. Clem. Alex. Protrept. 12: "0 truly sacred mysteries! 0
stainless light ! My way is lighted with torches and I survey the
heavens and God : I am become holy whilst I am initiated. The Lord
is the hierophant, and seals while illuminating him who is initiated," &c.
Ib. 2 : " Their (Demeter's and Proserpine's) wanderings, and seizure,
and grief, Eleusis celebrates by torchlight processions;" and again p. 32.
So iElius Aristid. i. p. 454 (ed. Canter), to.s <£a)o-<£o/oous vvKTas.
2 "I have fasted, I have drunk the cup," &c. Clem. Alex. Protrept. 2.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 289
her lost child ; the hopes of men look forward to the new
blossoming of spring.
It was a drama also of human life. It was the poetry
of the hope of a world to come. Death gave place to
life. It was a purgatio anivice, by which the soul
might be fit for the presence of God. Those who had
been baptized and initiated were lifted into a new life.
Death had no terrors for them. The blaze of light after
darkness, the symbolic scenery of the. life of the gods,
were a foreshadowing of the life to come.1
There is a passage in Plutarch which so clearly shows
this, that I will quote it.2
" When a man dies, he is like those who are being initiated
into the mysteries. The one expression, TeXevrdv — the other,
TeXeio-Bai, correspond. . . . Our whole life is but a succession of
wanderings, of painful courses, of long journeys by tortuous
ways without outlet. At the moment of quitting it, fears, terrors,
quiverings, mortal sweats, and a lethargic stupor, come over us
and overwhelm us ; but as soon as we are out of it, pure spots
and meadows receive us, with voices and dances and the
solemnities of sacred words and holy sights. It is there that
man, having become perfect and initiated — restored to liberty,
really master of himself — celebrates, crowned with myrtle, the
most august mysteries, holds converse with just and pure souls,
looking down upon the impure multitude of the profane or
uninitiated, sinking in the mire and mist beneath him — through
fear of death and through disbelief in the life to come, abiding
in its miseries."
There was probably no dogmatic teaching — there
were possibly no words spoken — it was all an acted
1 Cf. iElius Aristid. i. 454, on the burning of the temple at Eleusis.
The gain of the festival was not for this life only, but that hereafter
they would not lie in darkness and mire like the uninitiated.
2 Fragm. ap. Stob. Florileg. 120. Lenormant, Cont. Rev. Sept.
1SS0, p. 430. u

290 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
parable.1 But it was all kept in silence. There was an
awful individuality about it. They saw the sight in com
mon, but they saw it each man for himself. It was his
personal communion with the divine life. The glamour
and the glory of it were gone when it was published to-
all the world.2 The effect of it was conceived to be a
change both of character and of relation to the gods.
The initiated were by virtue of their initiation made
partakers of a life to come. "Thrice happy they who
go tp the world below having seen these mysteries : to-
them alone is life there, to all others is misery."3
2. In time, however, new myths and new forms of
worship were added. It is not easy to draw a definite line
between the mysteries, strictly so called, and the forms of
worship which went on side by side with them. Not only
are they sometimes spoken of in common as mysteries, but
there is a remarkable synCretist painting in a non-Chris
tian catacomb at Eome, in which the elements of the
Greek mysteries of Demeter are blended with those of
Sabazius and Mithra, in a way which shows that the
worship was blended also.4 These forms of worship
1 Synes. Orat. p. 48 (ed. Petav.), ov paBetv ti 8elv dXXa iraBelv Kal
8iaTe6rjvai yevopevovs 8-qXovoTt. e-TriTqSelovs. But the p.vo-Taycayol pos
sibly gave some private instruction to the groups of p.varai who were
committed to them.
2 Cf. Lenormant, Cont. Rev. Sept. 1880, p. 414 sq.
3 Soph. frag. 719, ed. Dind. : so in effect Pindar, frag, thren. 8;
Cic. Legg. 2. 14. 36 ; Plato, Gorg. p. 493 B, Phcedo. 69 C (the lot of the
uninitiated). They were bound to make their life on earth correspond
to their initiation ; see Lenormant, ut sup. p. 429 sqq. In later times
it was supposed actually to make them better; Sopatros in Walz,
Rhet. Gr. viii. 114.
4 See Garrucci, Les Mysthes du Syncretisms Phrygien dans les
Catacombes Romaines de Prcetextat, Paris, 1854.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 291
also had an initiation : they also aimed at a pure religion.
The condition of entrance was: "Let no one enter the
most venerable assembly of the association unless he be
pure and pious and good." Nor was it left to the
individual conscience : a man had to be tested and
examined by the officers.1 But the main element in
the association was not so much the initiation as the
sacrifice and the common meal which followed it. The
offerings were brought by individuals and offered in com
mon : they were offered upon what is sometimes spoken
of as the "holy table." They were distributed by the
servants (the deacons), and the offerer shared with the rest
in the distribution. In one association, at Xanthos in
Lycia, of which the rules remain on an inscription, the
offerer had the right to half of what he had brought.
The feast which followed was an effort after real fellow
ship.2 There was in it, as there is in Christian times, a
sense of communion with one another in a communion
with God.
During the earliest centuries of Christianity, the
mysteries, and the religious societies which were akin
to the mysteries,3 existed on an enormous scale throughout
the eastern part of the Empire. There were elements
in some of them from which Christianity recoiled, and
against which the Christian Apologists use the language
1 There was a further and larger process before a man was TeXeios.
Tert. adv. Valent. c. 1, says that it took five years to become TeXeios-
2 The most elaborate account is that of the Arval feast at Kome :
cf. Henzen, Actafratrum Arvalium.
3 pva-rai is used of members of a religious association at Teos
(Inscr. in Bullet, de Corresp. Hellenique, 1880, p. 164), and of the
Eoman Monarchians in Epiph. 55. 8 ; cf. Harnack, Dogm. 628.
U 2

292 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
of strong invective.1 But, on the other hand, the majority
of them had the same aims as Christianity itself — the
aim of worshipping a pure God, the aim of living a pure
life, and the aim of cultivating the spirit of brotherhood.2
They were part of a great religious revival which distin
guishes the age.3
B. The Mysteries and the Church.
It was inevitable when a new group of associations
came to exist side by side with a large existing body
of associations, from which it was continually detaching
members, introducing them into its own midst with the
practices of their original societies impressed upon their
minds, that this new group should tend to assimilate,
with the assimilation of their members, some of the
elements of these existing groups.4 This is what we
1 Clem. Alex. Protrep. 2 ; Hippol. 1, procem. Cf. Philo, de sacrif.
12 (ii. 260), tI yap el KaXd Tavr «ttiv <o pvo-Tai k. t. X.
2 They also had the same sanction — the fear of future punishments,
cf. Celsus in Orig. 8. 48. Origen does not controvert this statement,
but appeals to the greater moral effect of Christianity as an argument
for its truth. They possibly also communicated divine knowledge.
There is an inscription of Dionysiac artists at Nysa, of the time of the
Antonines, in honour of one who was BeoXbyos of the temples at
Pergamos, as Bavpao-Tov BeoXoyov and tu>v ajropp-qTUiv pvo-T-qv. Bull.
de Corr. Hellen. 1885, p. 124, 1. 4; cf. Porphyry in Eusebius, Prmp.
Ev. 5. 14.
3 This revival had many forms, cf. Harnack, Dogm. p. 101.
4 Similar practices existed in the Church and in the new religions
which were growing up. Justin Martyr speaks of the way in which,
under the inspiration of demons, the supper had been imitated in the
Mithraic mysteries : oirep Kal ev tois tov MlBpa pvcnqpiois TrapeStaKav
ylvea-dai pipqa-dpevoi ol Trovqpol Salpoves : Apol. 1. 66. Tertullian
points to the fact as an instance of the power of the devil (de prcesc.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 293
find to have been in fact the case. It- is possible tbat
they made the Christian associations more secret than
before. Up to a certain time there is no evidence that
Christianity had any secrets. It was preached openly
to the world. It guarded worship by imposing a moral
bar to admission. But its rites were simple and its
teaching was public. After a certain time all is changed :
mysteries have arisen in the once open and easily acces
sible faith, and there are doctrines which must not be
declared in the hearing of the uninitiated.1 But the in-
hcer. 40) : " qui ipsas quoque res sacramentorum divinorum idolorum
mysteriis semulatur." He specifies, inter alia, " expositionem delictorum
de lavacro repromittit .... celebrat et panis oblationem." Celsus, too,
speaks of the p-va-T-qpia and the TeAerai of Mithras and others : Orig.
c. Cels. 6. 22.
1 The objection which Celsus makes (c. Cels. 1.1; Keim, p. 3) to the
secrecy of the Christian associations would hardly have held good in
the apostolic age. Origen admits (c. Cels. 1. 7) that there are exoteric
and esoteric doctrines in Christianity, and justifies it by (1) the philo
sophies, (2) the mysteries. On the rise of this conception of Christian
teaching as something to be hidden from the mass, cf. the Valentinians
in Tert. c. Valent. 1, where there is a direct parallel drawn between
them and the mysteries : also the distinction of men into two classes—
irvevpaTiKol and ypvx^ol or vXikoI— among the Gnostics : Ham. Dogm.
222, cf. Hipp. 1, procem, p. 4, who condemns to, dn-opp-qTa p.vo-T-qpia
of the heretics, adding, Kat Tore SoKipda-avTes Sea-p-iov eivai Trjs apapTias
pvovo-i to TeXeiov twv KaKuv TrapaSiSbvTes, bpKOis 8-qa-avTes pqTe egenreTv
pfa T(£ TVX0Vti p.eTa8ovvai k.t.X. Yet this very secrecy was naturalized
in the Church. Cf. Cyril Hier. Catech. vi. 30; Aug. in Psalm ciii., Horn.
xcvi. in Joan. ; Theodoret, Qucest. xv. in Num., and Dial. ii. (Inconfusus) ;
¦ Chry. Horn. xix. in Matt. Sozomen's (1. 20. 3) reason for not giving
the Nicene Creed is significant alike as regards motive and language :
eva-eBZv 8e <plXxov Kal to. ToiauTO. eirio-T-qpovuv, ofa 8e p.va-Tais Kal
.pAia-Taywyois pavoLS 8eov:Td8e:Xeyeiv Kal' aKovew v<j>r)yovpev<ov, eirgvea-a
Ti)v BovX-qv- ov yap direiKOS Kal w dp.vrJTmv Ttvas. TrjSe Trf/3lfiXf
evTvx^v-

294 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
fluence of the mysteries, and of the religious cults which
were analogous to the mysteries, was not simply general ;
they modified in some important respects the Christian
sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist — the practice,
that is, of admission to the society by a symbolical puri
fication, and the practice of expressing membership of
the society by a common meal. I will ask you to con
sider first Baptism, and secondly the Lord's Supper, each
in its simplest form, and then I will attempt to show
how the elements which are found in the later and not
in the earlier form, are elements which are found outside
Christianity in the institutions of which I have spoken.
1. Baptism. In the earliest times, (1) baptism followed
at once upon conversion ; (2) the ritual was of the sim
plest kind, nor does it appear that it needed any special
minister. The first point is shown by the Acts of the Apostles ;
the men who repented at Pentecost, those who believed
when Philip preached in Samaria, the Ethiopian eunuch,
Cornelius, Lydia, the jailor at Philippi, the converts at
Corinth and Ephesus, were baptized as soon as they were
known to recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah.1 The
second point is also shown by the Acts. It was a bap
tism of water.
A later, though still very early stage, with significant
modifications, is seen in the ' ' Teaching of the Apostles : " 2
(1) no special minister of baptism is specified, the vague
"he that baptizeth" (6 /3cnrTi'£&w) seeming to exclude a
1 Acts ii. 38, 41; viii. 12, 13, 36, 38; x. 47, 48; xvi. 15, 33;
xviii. 8 ; xix. 5.
2 c. 7.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 295
limitation of it to an officer ; (2) the only element that
is specified is water; (3) previous instruction is implied,
but there is no period of catechumenate defined; (4) a
fast is enjoined before baptism.
These were the simple elements of early Christian
baptism. When it emerges after a period of obscurity —
like a river which flows under the sand — the enormous
¦changes of later times have already begun.
(i.) The first point of change is the change of name.
(a) So early as the time of Justin Martyr we find a
name given to baptism which comes straight from the
Greek mysteries — the name "enlightenment" (cpwrio-fjLos,
•tpwri^eo-Qai).1 It came to be the constant technical term.2
(b) The name " seal" (o-cppayh), which also came both
from the mysteries3 and from some forms of foreign cult,
was used partly of those who had . passed the tests and
who were "consignati," as Tertullian calls them,4 partly
ef those who were actually sealed upon the forehead in
sign of a new ownership.5
1 Apol. 1. 61; cf. Otto, vol. i p. 146, n. 14; Engelhardt, p. 102.
2 Clem. Alex. Posdag. 1. 6 ; Can. Laod. 47, Bruns, p. 78; Greg.
!Naz. Orat. xl. pp. 638, 639. Hence oi <j><i>Ti£6pevoi = those being pre
pared for baptism, ol cfxoTio-BevTes = the baptized. Cf. Cyr. Hier.
•Catech. 13. 21, p. 193 et passim.
8 Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 36, cf. 31 ff.
4 Apol. 8 : talia initiatus et consignatus = p.epvqp.evos Kal eo-cppayta--
fievos. See Otto, vol. i. p. 141; cf. ad Valent. 1.
6 For the seal in baptism, cf. Clem. Al. Strom. 2. 3; Quis dives,
42, ap. Euseb. Hist. 3. 23; Euseb. Vita Const. 1. 4. 62; Cyr. Hier.
Catech. 5 ; Greg. Naz. Orat. 40, p. 639 ; Orig. c. Cels. 6. 27. For the
oise of imagery and the terms relating to sealing — illumination — initia
tion — from the mysteries, Clem. Al. Protrep. 12. The effect of baptism
is illumination, perfection, Pcedag. 1. 6; hence sins before and after

296 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
(c) The term nvo-rypiov is applied to baptism,1 and with
it comes a whole series of technical terms unknown to
the Apostolic Church, but well known to the mysteries,
and explicable only through ideas and usages peculiar to
them. Thus we have words expressive either of the rite
or act of initiation, like m«V'?,2 TeAeTv,3 reAe/wo-jj,4 mio-ra-
ywy la ;5 of the agent or minister, like /nvo-raywyos ; 6 of the
subject, like fivo-raywyovp.evoi,7 /j.ep.vrip.evos, pvyOels, or, with
reference to the unbaptized, apvqros.8 In this terminology
we can more easily trace the influence of the mysteries
than of the New Testament.9
(ii.) The second point is the change of time, which
involves a change of conception. («) Instead of baptism
"being given immediately upon conversion, it came to be
in all cases postponed by a long period of preparation,
baptism, i.e. enlightenment, are different, Strom. 2. 13. Early instances
of o-<ppayls are collected in Gebhardt on 2 Clem. pp. 168, 169; cf. also
Cyr. Hier. Catech. 18. 33, p. 301.
1 Greg. Xaz. Orat. 39, p. 632 ; Chrys. Horn. 85 in Joan. xix. 34 ;
Sozomen, ii. 8, 6.
2 Sozomen, i. 3. 5. 3 Dion. Areop. Eccles. Hierar. 3, p. 242.
* Clem. Alex. Pcedag. 1. 6, p. 93; Athan. Cont. Ar. 3, p. 413 C;
Greg. Naz. Orat. 40, p. 648 ; Dion. Areop. Eccles. Hier. 3, 242.
5 Chrys. Horn. 99, vol. v. ; Theod. in Cantic. 1.
6 Dion. Areop. Eccles. Hier. 1. 1 ; Mys. Theol. 1. 1.
7 Chrys. Horn. 1 in Act. p. 615 ; Horn. 21 ad popul. Antioch;
Sozomen, ii. 17. 9.
8 Sozomen, i. 3. 5 ; ii. 7. 8 ; iv. 20. 3; vi. 38. 15; vii. 8. 7, et passim.
These examples do not by any means exhaust or even adequately repre
sent the obligations in the sphere of language, and of the ideas it at
once denotes and connotes, which the ecclesiastical theory and practiee
•of baptism lies under to the mysteries ; but they may help to indicate
the degree and nature of the obligation.
9 For the sphere of the influence of the mysteries on the language
and imagery of the New Testament, see 1 Cor. ii. 6 ff. ; cf. Heb. vi. 4.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 297
and in some cases deferred until the end of life.1 (b) The
Christians were separated into two classes, those who
had and those who had not been baptized. Tertullian
regards it as a mark of heretics that they have not this
distinction: who among them is a catechumen, who a
believer, is uncertain : they are no sooner hearers than
they "join in the prayers;" and "their catechumens
are perfect before they are fully instructed (edocti)."2
And Basil gives the custom of the mysteries as a reason
for the absence of the catechumens from the service.5
(c) As if to show conclusively that the change was due
to the influence of the mysteries, baptized persons were,
as we have seen, distinguished from unbaptized by the
very term which was in use for the similar distinction in
regard to the mysteries — initiated and uninitiated, and
the minister is nvo-rayaiyos, and the persons being baptized
are p.vcrraywyovp.a/01. I dwell upon these broad features,
and especially on the transference of names, because it
is necessary to show that the relation of the mysteries
to the sacrament was not merely a curious coincidence ;
and what I have said as to the change of name and the
change of conception, might be largely supplemented
by evidence of parallelism in the benefits which were con-
1 Apost. Const. 8. 32. Cf. passages quoted from Clem. Alex, and
others, supra, p. 287, note 1; p. 295, notes 2 and 5. See Bingham,
vol. iii. pp. 443 — 446.
2 Deprcesc. hcer. 41. Cf. Epiphan. 41. 3; Apost. Const. 8. 12.
3 a ovoe eTro-n-Teveiv egeo-Ti tois dpvqTOis, de Spir. Sonet. 27; cf. Orig.
c. Cels. 3. 59 ad fin. and 60, e.g. "then and not before do we invite
them to participation in our mysteries," and " initiating those already
purified into the sacred mysteries." Cf. Diet. Christian Antiquities,
s.v. Disciplina Arcani.

298 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
ceived to attach to the one and the other. There are
many slighter indications serving to supplement what has
been already adduced.
(a) As those who were admitted to the inner sights
of the mysteries had a formula or pass-word [o-vp.^6Xov
or avvOrifxa), so the catechumens : had a formula which
was only entrusted to them in the last days of their
catechumenate — the baptismal formula itself and the
Lord's Prayer.1 In the Western rites the traditio symboli
occupies an important place in the whole ceremony.
There was a special rite for it. It took place a week or
ten days before the great office of Baptism on Easter-eve.
Otherwise the Lord's Prayer and the Creed were kept
secret and kept so as mysteries ; and to the present day
the technical name for a creed is a-v/xfioXov or pass-word.
(/3) Sometimes the baptized received the communion
at once after baptism, just as those who had been initiated
at Eleusis proceeded at once — after a day's fast — to
drink of the mystic kvkcwv and to eat. of the sacred cakes.
(7) The baptized were sometimes crowned with a
garland, as the initiated wore a mystic crown at Eleusis.
The usage was local, but lasted at Alexandria until
modern times. It is mentioned by Vansleb.2
(§) Just as the divinities watched the initiation from
out of the blaze of light, so Chrysostom pictures Christian
baptism in the blaze of Easter-eve ; 3 and Cyril describes
1 See p. 293, note 1 ; also Diet. Christian Antiquities, s. vv. Baptism,
Catechumens, especially p. 318, and Creed.
2 Histoire de Veglise d'Alexandrie, p. 12 : Paris, 1677.
3 De baptismo Christi, 4. ii. 374, TovXpurrov irapovTos, tZv dyyeXav
wapeo-TitiTWV, Tqs <ppiKT.qs T.avrrjs Tparre^qs irpoKeipevqs, twv d8eX<j>Qv o~ov
p.vo-Tay<ayovp,ev(av cti. Cyril, Prafatio ad Catech, 15.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 299
the white-robed band of the baptized approaching the
doors of the church where the lights turned darkness
into day.
(e) Baptism was administered, not at any place or
time, but only in the great churches, and only as a
rule once a year — on Easter-eve, though Pentecost was
also a recognized season. The primitive "See here is
water, what doth hinder me to be baptized?" passed
into a ritual which at every turn recalls the ritual of the
mysteries. I will abridge the account which is given of
the practice at Eome so late as the ninth century.1 Pre
paration went on through the greater part of Lent. The
candidates were examined and tested : they fasted : they
received the secret symbols, the Creed and the Lord's
Prayer. On Easter-eve, as the day declined towards
afternoon, they assembled in the church of St. John
Lateran. The rites of exorcism and renunciation were
gone through in solemn form, and the rituals survive.
The Pope and his priests come forth in their sacred vest
ments, with lights carried in front of them, which the
Pope then blesses : there is a reading of lessons and a
singing of psalms. And then, while they chant a litany,
there is a procession to the great bath of baptism, and the
water is blessed. The baptized come forth from the water,
are signed with the cross, and are presented to the Pope
one by one, who vests them in a white robe and signs
their foreheads again with the cross. They are arranged
in a great circle, and each of them carries a light* Then
a vast array of lights is kindled ; the blaze of them, says
a Greek Father, makes night continuous with dawn. It
1 Mabillon, Com. prxv. ad. ord.Rom.; Musceum Hal. II. xcix.

300 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
is the beginning of a new life. The mass is celebrated—
the mystic offering on the Cross is represented in figure ;
but for the newly baptized the chalice is filled, not with
wine, but with milk and honey, that they may understand,
says an old writer, that they have entered already upon
the promised land. And there was one more symbolical
rite in that early Easter sacrament, the mention of which
is often suppressed — a lamb was offered on the altar —
afterwards cakes in the shape of a lamb.1 It was simply
the ritual which we have seen already in the mysteries.
The purified crowd at Eleusis saw a blaze of light, and
in the light were represented in symbol life and death
and resurrection.
2. Baptism had felt the spell of the Greek ritual:
not less so had the Lord's Supper. Its elements in the
earliest times may be gathered altogether apart from the
passages of the New Testament, upon which, however
clearly we may feel, no sensible man will found an argu
ment, and which, taken by themselves, possibly admit of
more than one meaning.
The extra-biblical accounts are :
(1) " The Teaching of the Apostles ; " 2 which implies :
(a) Thanksgiving for the wine. " We thank Thee, our
Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant, which
Thou hast made known to us through Jesus Christ Thy
Servant. To Thee be glory for ever."
(b) Thanksgiving for the broken bread. "We thank
Thee, our Father, for the life which Thou hast made
1 It was one of the points to which the Greeks objected in the dis
cussions of the ninth century.
2 c. 9.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 301
known to us through Jesus Thy Servant. To Thee be
glory for ever."
After the thanksgiving they ate and drank: none
eould eat or drink until he had been baptized into the
name of the Lord. After the partaking there was
another thanksgiving and a prayer of supplication.
(2) There is a fragmentary account which has been
singularly overlooked, in the Apostolical Constitutions,1
which carries us one stage further. After the reading
and the teaching, the deacon made a proclamation which
vividly recalls the proclamation at the beginning of the
Mysteries. " Is there any one who has a quarrel with
any ? Is there any one with bad feeling" (iv viroKplo-ei) ?
(3) The next stage is found in the same book of the
Apostolical Constitutions.2 The advance consists in the
fact that the catechumens and penitents go out, just as
those who were not yet initiated and those who were
impure were excluded from the Greek Mysteries.
This marked separation of the catechumens and the
baptized, which was possibly strengthened by the philo
sophic distinction between ol TrpoKoirrovres and ol reXeioi,
lasted until, under influences which it would be beyond
our present purpose to discuss, the prevalence of infant
baptism caused the distinction no longer to exist.3
1 Bk. ii. 57, p. 87: cf. viii. 5, p. 239, lines 18, 19.
2 viii. 11. 12, p. 248.
3 Origen, c. Cels. 3. 59. Persons who have partaken of the Eucha
rist are ot TeXeo-BevTes (Chrys. de compunct. ad Demet. 1. 6. i. p. 132),
and oi pepvqpevoL (id. Hom. vi. de beat. Phil. c. 3. i. p. 498, and in
Ep. ad Hebr. cap. x., Hom. xvii. 4, vol. xii. 169). Degrees and
distinctions came to be recognized within the circle of the very initiated
themselves, Apost. Const, vii. 44, viii. 13.

302 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
(4) In a later stage there is a mention of the holy
table as an altar, and of the offerings placed upon the
table of which the faithful partook, as mysteries.1
(a) The conception of the table as an altar is later
than the middle of the second century.2 It is used in
the Apostolic Fathers of the Jewish altar. It is used
by Ignatius in a Christian sense, but always meta
phorically.3 It may be noted that though the Apostolic
Constitutions (Bk. ii.) speak of a 6vo-la, they do not speak
of a Ovo-iao-rjipiov* This use of dvo-iao-rypiov is probably
not earlier than Eusebius.5
(b) The conception of the elements as uvo-rrjpia is even
later;6 but once established,, it became permanent, like
the Latin term " sacramentum."
1 The earlier offerings were those of Irenseus, 4. 17. 5, where he
speaks of Christ " suis discipulis dans consilium, primitias Deo offerre
ex suis creaturis;" and again the Church offers "primitias suorum
munerum in Novo Testamento ei qui alimenta nobis praestat." The
table in the heathen temple was important ; upon it were placed the
offerings : Th. Homolle in Bulletin de Corresp. Hellen. 1881, p. 118.
For the Eucharist itself as a mystery, cf. <ppiK0}8eo-TaTr] rekeri), Chrys.
de sacerdot. 3. 4, vol. i. 382. He argues for silence on the ground
that they are mysteries, de bapt. Christ. 4. ii. 375. Cf. Greg. Naz.
Orat. 44, p. 713 ; Cone. Laod. 7, Bruns, p. 74.
2 Found in Chrys. e.g. Horn, in Ep. ii. ad Corinth, v. c. 3, vol. x.
470 : TOiavrg to Bvo-iao-T-qpiov eKeivo <j>oivlcraeTai o-(payrJ.
3 Ad Ephes. 5 ; see Lightfoot's note. Cf. Trail. 7 ; Philad. 4 ;
Mag. 7; Rom. 2.
4 Ap. Const, ii. 57, p. 88. But see for Bvo-iao-T-qpiov in a highly
figurative sense, iii. 6, iv. 3.
5 H. E. x. 4, 44.
0 Isid. Pelus. Epist. 3. 340, p. 390, Trpoo-rjXOe p.ev t<£ a-emi? Bvcriao-
Tqpuo Ttav Belmv pva-Tqpiw peTaXq^opevos ) also 4. 181, p. 516, to
Beia pi) 8i86crBai pvaTrjpia. Cf. Chrys. de comp. ad Demet. 1. 6, vol. i.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 303
(5) The conception of a priest — into which I will not
now enter — was certainly strengthened by the mysteries
and associations.
The full development or translation of the idea is
found in the great mystical writer of the end of the fifth
century, in whom every Christian ordinance is expressed
in terms which are applicable only to the mysteries. The
extreme tendency which he shows is perhaps personal to
him; bnt he was in sympathy with his time, and his
influence on the Church of the after-time must count
for a large factor in the history of Christian thought.
There are few Catholic treatises on the Eucharist and few
Catholic manuals of devotion into which his conceptions
do not enter.1
I will here quote his description of the Communion
itself : "All the other initiations are incomplete without
this. The consummation and crown of all the rest is
p. 131; Theodoret, dial. 2, vol. iv. 125. There was a saered formula.
Basil says that no saint has written down the formula of consecration :
de Spir. Sancto, 66, vol. iv. pp. 54, 55. After saying that some doc
trines and usages of the Church have come down in writing, t<x 8e eK
Trjs Ttiiv cHrocrToAtoi/ TrapaSoo-eois 8ia8oBevTa r)p.lv ev p.va-T-qp£<p Trape8e£d-
peBa, he instances the words of the Eucharistic invocation as among
the latter ; to. Trjs hnKX-qa-eias prjpaTa hrl Tg dvaSel^ei tov aprov Trjs
evxapia-Tias Kal tov iroTqpiov Trjs luAoytas Tts tuiv aylwv eyypdcjxas
•qplv KaTaXeXonrev.
1 In Dionysius Areop. (s. v. lepdpxqs, ed. Corderius, i. 839), the
bishops are TeXeo-Tal, lepoTeXeo-Tal, TeXeo-Tapxai, pvaTayoiyol, TeXeo--
rovpyoi, TeXea-TiKol ; the priests are ^xhtio-tikoI ; the deacons, KaBap-
tikoI; the Eucharist is lepoTekeo-TLKutTaTT) (c. 4). The deacon, cMroKa-
Balpei tovs djekeo-Tovs (c. 5, § 3, p. 233), i.e. dips them in the water ;
the priest, <pu>Tayioyel tous KaBapBevTas, i.e. leads the baptized by the
hand into the church; the bishop, a7roTeA«oi tovs Tif Behp <p<otI
KeKoivwvqKOTas.

304 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
the participation of him who is initiated in the thearchio
mysteries. For though it be the common characteristic
of all the hierarchic acts to make the initiated partakers
of the divine light, yet this alone imparted to me the
vision through whose mystic light, as it were, I am
guided to the contemplation (eiro-^lav) of the other sacred
things." The ritual is then described. The sacred bread
and the cup of blessing are placed upon the altar. " Then
the sacred hierarch (lepdpx\w) initiates the sacred prayer
and announces to all the holy peace : and after all have
saluted each other, the mystic recital of the sacred lists
is completed. The hierarch and the priests wash their
hands in water; he stands in the midst of the divine
altar, and around him stand the priests and the chosen
ministers. The hierarch sings the praises of the divine
working and consecrates the most divine mysteries,
(iepovpyel ra. Oeiorara), and by means of the symbols
which are sacredly set forth, he brings into open vision
the things of which he sings the praises. And when he
has shown the gifts of the divine working, he himself
comes into a sacred communion with them, and then
invites the rest. And having both partaken and given
to the others a share in the thearchic communion, he
ends with a sacred thanksgiving ; and while the people
bend over what are divine symbols only, he himself,
always by the thearchic spirit, is led in a priestly man
ner, in, purity of his godlike frame of mind (ev KaOaporqn
rrjs OeoeiSoCs e£ew?), through blessed and spiritual contem
plation, to the holy realities of the mysteries."1
1 Dion. Areop. Eccles. Hier. c. 3, par. 1, §§ 1, 2, pp. 187, 188.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 305
Once again I must point out that the elements— the
conceptions which he has added to the primitive prac
tices—are identical with those in the mysteries. The
tendency which he represented grew: the Eucharistic
sacrifice came in the East to be celebrated behind closed
doors : the breaking of bread from house to house was
changed into so awful a mystery that none but the
hierophant himself might see it. The idea of prayer
and thought as offerings was preserved by the Neo-
Platonists. There are two minor points which, though interesting,
are less certain and also less important, (a) It seems
likely that the use of Blirrvxy. — tablets commemorating
benefactors or departed saints — was a continuation of
a similar usage of the religious associations.1 (b) The
blaze of lights at mysteries may have suggested the use
of lights at the Lord's Supper.2
It seems fair to infer that, since there were great
changes in the ritual of the sacraments, and since the
new elements of these changes were identical with ele
ments that already existed in cognate and largely diffused
forms of worship, the one should be due to the other.
This inference is strengthened when we find that the
Christian communities which were nearest in form and
spirit to the Hellenic culture, were the first in which
1 For in the decree mentioned in a previous note (p. 292, n. 2),
among other honours to T. iElius Alcibiades, he is to be TrpHrrov to?s
Sitttvxois evypatpopevov.
2 Cf. for the use of lights in worship, the money accounts, from a
Berlin papyrus, of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at Arsinoe, a.d>.
215, in Hermes, Bd. xx. p. 430. X

306 X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
these elements appear, and also those in which they
assumed the strongest form. Such were the Valentinians,
of whom Tertullian expressly speaks in this connection.1
We read of Simon Magus that he taught that baptism
had so supreme an efficacy as to give by itself eternal
life to all who were baptized. The Xovrpbv fytjs was
expanded to its full extent, and it was even thought that
to the water of baptism was added a fire which came
from heaven upon all who entered into it. Some even
introduced a second baptism.2
So also the Marcosians and some Yalentinian schools
believed in a baptism that was an absolute sundering of
the baptized from the corruptible world and an emanci
pation into a perfect and eternal life. Similarly, some
other schools added to the simple initiation rites of a less
noble and more sensuous order.3
It was but the old belief in the effect of the mysteries
thrown into a Christian form. So also another Gnostic
school is said to have not only treated the truths of
Christianity as sacred, but also to have felt about them
what the initiated were supposed to feel about the
mysteries — "I swear by Him who is above all, by the
1 Adv. Valent. 1. Hippolytus (1, procem; 5. 23, 24) says the
heretics had mysteries which they disclosed to the initiated only after
long preparation, and with an oath not to divulge them: so the
Naassenes, 5. 8, and the Peratse, 5. 17 (ad fin.), whose mysteries
" are delivered in silence." The Justinians had an oath of secrecy
before proceeding to behold " what eye hath not seen" and " drinking
from the living water," 5. 27.
2 Eg. Marcus, in connection with initiation into the higher mysteries.
Hipp. 6. 41, and the Elkasaites as cleansing from gross sin, 9. 15.
3 Eus. H.E. iv. 7.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 307
Good One, to keep these mysteries and to reveal them
to no one;" and after that oath, each seemed to feel the
power of God to be upon him, aB it. were the password
of entrance into the highest mysteries.1 As soon as the
¦oath had been taken^ he sees what no eye has seen, and
hears what no ear has heard, and drinks of the living
water — which is their baptism, as they think, a spring
of water springing up within them to everlasting life.
Again, it is probably through the Gnostics that the
period of preparation for baptism was prolonged. Ter
tullian says of the Yalentinians tbat their period of pro
bation is longer than their period of baptized life, which
is precisely what happened in the Greek practice of the
fourth century.
The general inference of the large influence of the
Gnostics on baptism, is confirmed by the fact that another
element, which certainly came through them, though its
source is not certain and is more likely to have been
Oriental than Greek, has maintained a permanent place
in most rituals — the element of anointing. There were
two customs in this matter, one more characteristic of
the East, the other of the West — the anointing with (1)
the oil of exorcism before baptism and after the renun
ciation of the devil, and (2) the oil of thanksgiving,
which was used immediately after baptism, first by the
presbyter and then by the bishop, who then sealed the
candidate on the forehead. The very variety of the
custom shows how deep and yet natural the action of
the Gnostic systems, with the mystic and magic customs
3 Hipp. 5. 27, of the Justinians. Cf. Hilgenfeld, Ketzergesch. p. 270.
x 2

SOS X. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES
of the Gnostic societies or associations, had been on the
practices and ceremonies of the Church.1
But beyond matters of practice, it is among the
Gnostics that there appears for the first time an attempt
to realize the change of the elements to the material
body and blood of Christ. The fact that they were so
regarded is found in Justin Martyr.2 But at the same
time, that the change was not vividly realized, is proved
by the fact that, instead of being regarded as too awful
for men to touch, the elements were taken by the com
municants to their homes and carried about with them
on their travels. But we read of Marcus that in his
realistic conception of the Eucharistic service the white
1 For the Eastern custom, see Cyril Hier. Catech. Myd. ii. 3, 4,
p. 312 : the candidate is anointed all over before baptism with exor
cised oil, which, by invocation of God and prayer, purifies from the
burning traces of sin, but also puts to flight the invisible powers of
the evil one. Cf. Apost. Const, vii. 22, 41, iii. 15, 16; the Coptic
Constitutions, c. 46 (ed. Tattam), cf. Boetticher's Gr. translation in
Bunsen's Anal. Ante-Nic. ii. 467; Clem. Recog. 3. 67; Chrys. Hom.
6. 4, in Ep. ad Col. xi. 342, dXelcperai wo-irep ol dBX-qTal els o-TaSiov
epBqo-opevoi, here also before baptism and all over ; Dionys. Areop.
Eccles. Hier. 2. 7; Basil, de Spir. Sancl. 66, vol. iv. 55. For earlier
Western as distinct from Eastern thought on the subject, cf. Tert. de
bapt. 6 and 7 ; de resurr. carnis. 8 ; adv. Marc. i. 1 4 ; Cyprian, Ep.
70. For the later Western usage, introduced from the East, see Cone.
Rom. 402, c. 8, ed. Bruns. pt. ii. 278 ; Ordo 6, ad fac. Catech. in
Martene, de ant. eccl. rit. i. p. 17; Theodulfus Aurel. de ord. bapt. 10;
unction of the region of the heart before and behind, symbolizing the
Holy Spirit's unction with a view to both prosperity and adversity
(Sirmond, vol. ii. 686); Isid. Hisp. de off. eccl. 2. 21 ; Catechumens
exorcizantur, sales accipiunt et unguntia;*the salt being made ut eorum
gustu condimentum sapientice percipiant, neque desipiant a sapore Christi
(Migne, Ixxxiii. col. 814, 815); Cses. Arelat. serm. 22.
2 Apol. 1. 66.

UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES. 309
wine actually turned to the colour of blood before the
eyes of the communicants.1
Thus the whole conception of Christian worship was
changed.2 But it was changed by the influence upon
Christian worship of the contemporary worship of the
mysteries and the concurrent cults. The tendency to
an elaborate ceremonial which had produced the magni
ficence of those mysteries and cults, and which had
combined with the love of a purer faith and the tendency
towards fellowship, was based upon a tendency of human
nature which was not crushed by Christianity. It rose
to a new life, and though it lives only by a survival, it
lives that new life still. In the splendid ceremonial of
Eastern and Western worship, in the blaze of lights, in
the separation of the central point of the rite from com
mon view, in the procession of torch-bearers chanting
their sacred hymns — there is the survival, and in some
cases the galvanized survival, of what I cannot find it in
my heart to call a pagan ceremonial ; because though it
was the expression of a less enlightened faith, yet it was
offered to God from a heart that was not less earnest in
its search for God and in its effort after holiness than
our own.
1 ap. Hipp. 6. 39.
1 Tert. ad Scap. 2, holds that sacrifice may consist of simple prayer.

Lecture XL
THE INCOEPOEATION OF CHEISTIAN IDEAS,
AS MODIFIED BY GEEEK, INTO
A BODY OF DOCTEINE.

The object which I have in view in this Lecture is
to show the transition by which, under the influence of
contemporary Greek thought, the word Faith came to
be transferred from simple trust in God to mean the
acceptance of a series of propositions, and these propo
sitions, propositions in abstract metaphysics.
The Greek words which designate belief or faith are
used in the Old Testament chiefly in the sense of trust,.
and primarily trust in a person. They expressed con
fidence in his goodness, his veracity, his uprightness.
They are as much moral as intellectual. They implied
an estimate of character. Their use in application to
God was not different from their use in application to>
men. Abraham trusted God. The Israelites also trusted
God when they saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea
shore. In the first instance there was just so much of
intellectual assent involved in belief, that to believe God
involved an assent to the proposition that God exists.

XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS. 311
But this element was latent and implied rather than
conscious and expressed. It is not difficult to see how,
when this proposition came to be conscious and expressed,
it should lead to other propositions. The analysis of
belief led to the construction of other propositions besides
the bare original proposition that God is. Why do I
trust God ? The answer was : Because He is wise, or
good, or just. The propositions followed : I believe that
God is wise, that He is good, that He is just. Belief
in God came to mean the assent to certain propositions
about God.1
In Greek philosophy the words were used rather of
intellectual conviction than of moral trust, and of the
higher rather than of the lower forms of conviction.
Aristotle distinguishes faith from impression — for a man,
he says, may have an impression and not be sure of it.
He uses it both of the convictions that come through the
senses and of those that come through reason.
There is in Philo a special application of this philo
sophical use, which led to even more important results.
He blends the sense in which it is found in the Old
Testament with that which is found in Greek philosophy.
The mass of men, he says, trust their senses or their
reason. The good man trusts God. Just as the mass
of men believe that their senses and their reason do not
deceive them, so the latter believes that God does not
deceive him. To trust God was to trust His veracity. But
the occasions on which God spoke directly to a man were
rare, and what He said when He so spoke commanded
an unquestioning acceptance. He more commonly spoke
1 Cf. Celsus' idea of faith : Orig. c. Cels. 3. 39 ; Keim, p. 39.

312 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
to men through the agency of messengers. His angels
spoke to men, sometimes in visions of the night, some
times in open manifestation by day. His prophets spoke
to men. To believe God, implied a belief in what He
said indirectly as well as directly. It implied the accept
ance of what His prophets said, that is to say, of what
they were recorded to have said in the Holy Writings.
Belief in this sense is not a vague and mystical senti
ment, the hazy state of mind which precedes knowledge,
but the highest form of conviction. It transcends reason
in certainty. It is the full assurance that certain things
are so, because God has said that they are so.1
In this connection we may note the way in which
the Christian communities were helped by the current
reaction against pure speculation — the longing for cer
tainty. The mass of men were sick of theories. They
wanted certainty. The current teaching of the Christian
teachers gave them certainty. It appealed to definite
facts of which their predecessors were eye-witnesses. Its
simple tradition of the life and death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ was a necessary basis for the satisfaction '
of men's needs. Philosophy and poetry might be built
upon that tradition ; but if the tradition were shown to
be only cloudland, Christian philosophy was no more
than Stoicism.
We have thus to see how, under the new conditions,
faith passed beyond the moral stage, or simple trust in a
person, to the metaphysical stage, or belief in certain
propositions or technical definitions concerning Him, His
1 Philo's view of faith is well expressed in two striking passages,
Quis rer. div. Heres, 18, i. 485 ; and de Abrah. 46, ii. 39.

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 313
nature, relations and actions. In this latter we may
distinguish two correlated and interdependent phases or
forms of belief, the one more intellectual and logical, the
other more historical and concrete, namely, (1) the con
viction that God being of a certain nature has certain
attributes ; (2) the conviction that, God being true, the
statements which He makes through His prophets and
ministers are also true.1 The one of these forms of belief
was elaborated into what we know as the Creed; the
other, into the Canon of the New Testament.
We shall first deal with these phases or forms of belief,
and then with the process by which the metaphysical
definitions became authoritative.
1. In the first instance the intellectual element of
belief was subordinated to the ethical purpose of the
religion. Belief was not insisted upon in itself and for
itself, but as the ground of moral reformation. The main
content of the belief was "that men are punished for
their sins and honoured for their good deeds:"2 the
ground of this conviction was the underlying belief that
God is, and that He rewards and punishes. The feature
which differentiated Christianity from philosophy was,
1 Cf. " He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that
He is a rewarder of them that seek Him," Heb. xi. 6 ; and " He that
is of God heareth God's words," John viii. 47.
2 It was one of Celsus' objections to Christianity that its preachers
laid more stress on belief than on the intellectual grounds of belief :
Orig. c. Cels. 1. 9. Origen's answer, which is characteristic rather of
his own time than expressive of the belief of the apostolic age, is that
this was necessary for the mass of men, who have no leisure or incli
nation for deep investigation (1. 10), and in order not to leave men
altogether without help (1. 12).

314 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
that this belief as to the nature of God had been made
certain by a revelation. The purpose of the revelation
was salvation — regeneration and amendment of life. By
degrees stress came to be laid on this underlying element.
The revelation had not only made some propositions cer
tain which hitherto had been only speculative, it had also
added new propositions, assertions of its distinctive or
differentiating belief. But it is uncertain, except within
the narrowest limits, what those assertions were. There
are several phrases in the New Testament and in sub-
apostolic writings which read like references to some
elementary statements or rule.1 But none of them con
tain or express a recognized standard. Yet the standard
may be gathered partly from the formula of admission
into the Christian community, partly from the formulae
in which praise was ascribed to God. The most impor
tant of these, in view of its subsequent history, is the
former. But the formula is itself uncertain ; it existed
at least in two main forms. There is evidence to show
that the injunction to baptize in the name of the three
Persons of the Trinity, which is found in the last chapter
of St. Matthew, was observed.2 It is the formula in the
Teaching of the Apostles.3 But there is also evidence,
side by side with this evidence as to the use of the
1 Eg. Eom. vi. 17, els ov TrapeSoBqTe tvttov Stoats ; 2 John, 9, ev
Trj SiSaxH tov XpiaTov; 2 Tim. i. 13, {m-OTvrrwo-LV ?xe vyiaivovTtov
Xoyav w -n-ap' ep.ov qKovaas ; 1 Tim. vi. 12, a)p,oX6y-qo-as ttji/ KaXijv
bpoXoylav; Jude 3, r) cm-ag irapa8oBeura tols aylois irtaris. Polycrates,
ap. Eus. H E. 5. 24, <5 Kavibv Trjs rrlo-Teas : see passages collected in
Gebhardt and Harnack's Patres Apost. Bd. i. th. 2 (Barnabas), p. 133.
2 Cf. Schmid, Dogmeng. p. 14, Das Taufsymbol.
3 c. 7. 4.

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 315
Trinitarian formula, of baptism into the name of Christ,
or into the death of Christ.1
The next element in the uncertainty which exists is
as to how far the formula, either in the one case or the
other, was conceived to involve the assent to any other
propositions except those of the existence of the divine
Persons or Person mentioned in the formula. Even this
assent was implied rather than explicit. It is in the
Apologists that the transition from the implicit was made.
The teaching of Jesns Christ became to them important,,
especially in Justin Martyr.2 The step by which it
became explicit is of great importance, but we have
no means of knowing when or how it was made.3 It
is conceivable that it was first made homiletically, in
the course of exhortation to Christian duty.4 When the
intellectual contents of the formula did become explicit,
the formula became a test. Concurrently with its use as-
a standard or test of belief, was probably the incorpo
ration in it of so much of Christian teaching as referred
to the facts of the life of Jesus Christ. But the facts
were capable of different interpretations, and different
1 See Acts viii. 16, xix. 5, with which compare Eom. vi. 1 — 11,
Acts xxii. 16. Didache, 9. 5, ol BamiaBevTes els ovopa Kvplov ; and
Apost. Const. Bk. ii. 7, p. 20, ol BairTiaBevres els tov Bdvarov tov-
Kvplov 'I-qa-ov ovk 6<pelXovo-iv dp.apTavew ol towvtoi' <ds yap ot
diroBavovTes dvevepyqTOi rrpbs dp.apTiav vrrdpxovo-iv, ovtws kcu ot o-vva-
TroBavbvTes t<J> Xjoioto? drrpaKTOi irpbs dpapTiav ; cf. 148. 7, and else
where, in composite form. Against this Cyprian wrote, in Ep. 73,
ad Jubaianum, 16 — 18; cf. Harnack, Dogmeng. 176.
2 Cf. von Engelhardt, Das Christenthum Justins, p. 107.
3 Cf. Harnack, Dogmeng. p. 130 ff.
4 Cf. Clement's account of Basilides' conception of faith in contrast
to his own, Strom. 5. 1.

316 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
propositions might be based upon them. In the first
instance, speculation was free. Different facts had a
different significance. The same facts of the life were
interpreted in different ways. There was an agreement
as to the main principle that the Christian societies were
societies for the amendment of life. It is an almost ideal
picture which the heathen Celsus draws of the Christians
differing widely as to their speculations, and yet all
agreeing to say, " The world is crucified to me, and I
unto the world."1 The influence of Greek thought,
partly by the allegorizing of history, partly by the con
struction of great superstructures of speculation upon
slender bases, made the original standard too elastic to
serve as the basis and bond of Christian society. When
theories were added to fact, different theories were added.
It is at this point that the fact became of special impor
tance that the Gospel had been preached by certain
persons, and that its content was the content of that
preaching. It was not a philosophy which successive
generations might modify. It went back to the definite
teaching of a historical person. It was of importance to
be sure what that teaching was. It was agreed to recog
nize apostolic teaching as the authoritative vehicle and
interpretation of Christ's. All parties appealed to it.2
But there had been more than one apostle. The teaching
was consequently that, not of one person, but of many.
Here was the main point of dispute. All parties
within the Church agreed as to the need of a tribunal,
but each party had its own. Each made its appeal to a
1 Orig. c. Cels. 5. 65.
2 Cf. Ptolemseus ad Floram, c. 7, ed. Pet.

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 317
different apostle. But since, though many in number,
they were teachers, not of their own opinions, but of the
doctrine which they had received from Jesus Christ, the
more orthodox or Catholic tendency found it necessary
to lay stress upon their unity. They were spoken of in
the plural, ol cnroo-roXoi.1 While the Gnostics built upon
one apostle or another,2 the Catholics built upon an
apostolic consensus. Their tradition was not that of
Peter or of James, but of the twelve apostles. The irlo-rtg
was cnroo-roXtKr)} an attribute which implies a uniform
tradition.3 It was at this point that organization and confederation
became important : the bishops of the several churches
were regarded as the conservators of the tradition: 4 while
the bishops of the apostolic churches settled down to a
1 See instances in Harn. Dogm. p. 134.
2 Thus Basuides, ap. Hippol. 7. 20, preferred to follow a tradition
from Matthias, who was said to have been specially instructed by the
Saviour. The Naassenes, ib. 10. 9, traced their doctrine to James, the
Brother of the Lord. Valentinus, Clem. Alex. Strom. 7. 17, was said
to-be a hearer of Theudas, who was a pupil of Paul. Hippol. 1, proasm,
argued against all heretics that they had taken nothing from Holy
Scripture, and had not preserved the tivos dyiov 8ia8o\i]v. Cf. Tert.
c. Marc. 1.21. But see the very remarkable statement of Origen as
to the cause of heresies, c. Cels. 3. 12; cf. Clem. Al. Strom. 7. 17.
3 Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. 7. 17, p.la . . . wapaSoo-is, and the conten
tion of Tert. de prase, hmr. 32, Sicut apostoli non diversa inter se
docuissent, ita et apostolici non contraria apostolis edidissent ; Harnack,
pp. 133 ff., especially note 2, pp. 134—136. Eusebius, HE., 4. 7.
mentions that very many contemporary church writers had written in
behalf t?Js ajroo-ToAiKrJs Kat eKKX-qo-iao-TiKqs 86£r)s, against Basilides,
especially Agrippa Castor.
4 Adamantius (Origen, ed. Delarue, i. 809) says that the Marcion-
ltes had otio-kottoiv, p.dXXov 8e tf/evSeirio-KOTnyv Sia8oxai.

318 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
general agreement as to the terms of the apostolic tradi
tion.1 In distinction from the Gnostic standards, there
came to be a standard which the majority of the churches
— the middle party in the Church — accepted. It is quite
uncertain when the rule came to be generally accepted,
or in what form it was accepted. But it is in the main
preserved for us — with undoubtedly later accretions — in
the Apostles' Creed. Tertullian' s contention is that this
rule is not only apostolic and binding, but also adequate
— a complete representation of apostolic teaching — that
there were no necessary truths outside it.2 The additions
were made by the gradual working of the common sense,
the common consciousness, of the Christian world. They
were approved by the majority; they were accepted by
the sees which claimed to have been founded by the
apostles. The earliest form is that which may be gathered
from several writers as having been generally accepted in
Eome and the West : it is a bare statement. " I believe
in God Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son our Lord,
who was born of a virgin, crucified under Pontius Pilate,
the third day rose again from the dead, sitteth on the
right hand of the Father, from whence he is coming to ¦
judge the living and dead; and in the Holy Spirit."
The term Son came to be qualified in very early times
by "only begotten;" and after "the Holy Spirit," "the
1 For the TrapdSoais eKKXrjo-iao-TiKrj, especially of "ecclesiaa apos-
tolicse," cf. Tert. de prase, hem: cc. 21. 36; Iren. 3. 1—3; Orig. de
princ. ; praf. 2 : for the Kaviov Trjs jrtorecBs, Iren. 1. 9. 4 ; Tert. adv.
Marc. 1. 21 (rcgula sacramenti); de Virg. vel. 1; adv. Prax. 2; de prase.
liar. cc. 3. 12. 42; de monog. 2. In general, see Weingarten, Zeittafeln,
e. 17. 19. J '
2 De prase, liar. cc. 25. 26.

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 319
Holy Church, the remission of sins, and the resurrection
of the flesh," were added.
2. Side by side with this question of the standard or
authentic minimum of traditional teaching, and growing
necessarily with it and out of it, was the question of
the sources from which that teaching could be drawn,
and of the materials by which the standard might be
interpreted. The greater part of apostolic teaching had
been oral. The tradition was mostly oral. But as the
generations of men receded farther from the apostolic
age, and as the oral tradition which was delivered came
necessarily to vary, it became more and more uncertain
what was the true form and content of the tradition.
Written records came to be of more importance than
oral tradition. They had at first only the authority
which attached to tradition. Their elevation to an inde
pendent rank was due to the influence of the Old Testa
ment. There had been already a series of revelations of
God to men, which having once been oral had become
written. The revelation consisted of what was then
known as the Scriptures, and what we now know as the
Old Testament. The proofs of Christianity consisted to
a large extent in its consonance with those Scriptures.
But the term Holy Scriptures was less strictly used than
is sometimes supposed. The hedge round them had
gaps, and there were patches lying outside what has
since come to be its line. It was partly the indefinite-
ness of the Old Testament canon which caused the
term Scripture to be applied to some writings of the
apostolic age. But the question, Which writings ? was

320 XI. THE . INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
only answered gradually. The spirit of prophecy had
only gradually passed away. It was the common ground
for the reception of the Old Testament and the New
Testament; as the spirit of prophecy was common to
both, it was but natural that both should have the same
attributes. But prophecy was not in the first instance
conceived as having suddenly ceased in the Church. The
term Scripture (t ypacprj) is applied to the Shepherd of
Hermas by Irenseus.1 The delimitation of the body of
writings that could be so denoted was connected with the
necessity of being sure about the apostolical teaching —
the TrapdSoo-is.2 The term Scripture was applied to the
recorded sayings of Jesus Christ (the Xoyia) without
demur.3 It came to be applied also to the records which
the apostles had left of the facts of the life of Christ.
Then, finally, it tended more gradually to be applied to
the writings of the apostles and of apostolic men.
But questions arose in regard to all these classes, which
were not immediately answered. There were several
recensions current both of the sayings of Jesus Christ
and of the memoirs of the apostles. There were many
writings attributed to apostles and apostolic men which
were of doubtful authority. But the determination was
slow, and the date when a general settlement was made is
1 4. 20.
2 See Overbed?, die Anfange der patrist. Literatur, in the Hist.
Zeitschrift, N.F. Bd. xii. 417—472.
3 Cf. Hegesippus, ap. Eus. HE. 4. 22. 3, ev eKao-TQ -rroXei ovtcos
e^ei <Ls o vopos Kqpvvo-ei Kal ol irpocprJTai Kal b K.vpws, for this practical
co-ordination; see Gebhardt and Harnack on 2 Clement, p. 132, for
examples; also Harnack, Dogm. 131.

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 321
uncertain.1 There is no distinction between canonical and
uncanonical books either in Justin Martyr or in Irenseus.
The first Biblical critic was Marcion : the controversy
with his followers, which reaches its height in Tertullian,
forced on the Church the first serious consideration of the
question, — Which recensions of the words and memoirs of
Christ, and which of the letters and other writings of the
apostles and apostolic men, should be accepted ? There
came to be a recognized list of the writings of the new
revelations, as there came to be — though it is doubtful
whether there had yet come to be — a list of the writings
of the earlier revelations to the Jews. Writings on the
recognized list came in as the voices of the Holy Ghost.2
They were, as the writings of the prophets had been,
the revelation of the Father to His children. Hence
faith or belief came to take in the Christian world the
sense that it had in Philo — of assent not only to the
great conceptions which were contained in the notion of
God, but also to the divine revelation which was recorded
in the two Testaments.
3. It might have been well if the Christian Church
had been content to rest with this first stage in the
1 Cf. Weingarten, Zeittafeln, p. 19, where be cites the Muratorian
fragment, Origen (ap. Eus. HE. 6. 25), and Athanasius, in the last of
whom he traces the first use of the term " canon" in our sense. But
we must carefully distinguish the idea of a canon and the contents
of the canon. It is uncertain whence the idea of a canon of Scripture
tame, whether from the ecclesiastical party or from the Gnostics; and
if from the latter, whether it was from Basilides, or Valentinus, or
Marcion. Most likely the last. Harnack, Dogm. 215 ff. ; cf, 237 —
240 for Marcion as the first Biblical critic.
2 Harnack, pp. 317 f. Y

322 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
transformation of the idea of belief, and to take as its
intellectual basis only the simple statements of the primi
tive creed interpreted by the New Testament. But the
conflict of speculations which had compelled the middle
party in the Christian churches to adopt a standard
of belief and a limitation of the sources from which the
belief might be interpreted, had also had the effect of
bringing into the Church the philosophical temper.1 In
the creed of the end of the second century, the age of
Tertullian, there are already philosophical ideas — the
creation of the world out of nothing, the Word, the
relation of the Creator to the world, of the Word or
Son to the Father, and of both to men. The Creed,
as given in the treatise against Praxeas, is equally
elaborate.2 With that Creed — traditional as he believed
it to be — Tertullian himself was satisfied. He depre
cates the " euriositas " of the brethren no less than
the "scrupulositas" of the heretics. He denies the
applicability of the text, " Seek and ye shall find," to
research into the content of Christian doctrine : it relates
only to the traditional teaching : when a man has found
that, he has all that he needs: further "seeking" is
incompatible with having found. In other words, as
among modern Ultramontanes, faith must rest not on
search but on tradition (authority).3 The absolute free
dom of speculation was checked, but the tendency to
speculate remained, and it had in the "rule of faith"
a vantage-ground within the Church. There grew up
1 Tertullian, though in his treatise de prase, liar, he abandons argu
ment with the Gnostics, yet in his adv. Marc. 1. 22, relaxes that line
of argument, and enters into formal discussion.
2 c. 2. 3 Tert. deprcescr. harr. cc. 8, 18.

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 323
within the lines that had been marked out a tendency
which, accepting the rule of faith, and accepting also,
with possibly slight variations, the canonical Scriptures,
tried to build theories out of them : yvwo-is took its place
side by side with Trlo-ns.1 It grew up in several parts of
Christendom. In Cappadocia, in Asia, in Edessa, in
Palestine, in Alexandria, were different small groups of
men who within the recognized lines were working out
philosophical theories of Christianity.2 We know most
about Alexandria. There was a recognized school — on the
type of the existing philosophical schools — for the study
of philosophical Christianity. Its first great teacher was
Clement. He was the first to construct a large philosophy
of Christian doctrine, with a recognition of the conven
tional limits, but by the help and in the domain of Greek
thought. But he is of less importance than his great
disciple Origen. In the De Principiis of the latter we
have the first complete system of dogma ; and I recom
mend the study of it, of its omissions as well as of its
assertions, of the strange fact that the features of it which
are in strongest contrast to later dogmatics are in fact its
most archaic and conservative elements.
It is not to my present purpose to state the results of
these speculations. The two points to which I wish to
draw your attention in reference to this tendency to phi
losophize, are these :
(1) The distinction between what was either an ori-
1 Theories were framed as to the relation of yvHa-is and ttIo-tls ; e. g.
the former was conceived to relate to the Spirit, the latter to the Son,
which Clem. Alex, denies (Strom. 5. 1).
2 See Harnack, 549.
y2

324 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
ginal and ground belief or a historical fact of which a
trustworthy tradition had come down, and speculations
in regard to such primary beliefs and historical facts,
tended to disappear in the strong philosophical current
of the time. It did not disappear without a struggle.
Tertullian, among others, gives indications of it. The
doctrine of the Divine Word had begun in his time to
make its way into the Creed : it was known as the " dis
pensation" (ceconomia). " The simpler-minded men," he
remarks, "not to say ignorant and uneducated, who
always constitute the majority of believers — since the
rule of faith itself transfers us from the belief in poly
theism to the belief in one only true God — not under
standing that though God be one, yet His oneness is to
be understood as involving a dispensation, are frightened
at this idea of dispensation."1 But the ancient conser
vatism was crushed. It came to be considered as impor
tant to have the right belief in the speculation as it
confessedly was to have it in the fact.
(2) The result of the fading away of this distinction,
and of the consequent growth in importance of the spe
culative element, was a tendency to check individual
speculations, and to fuse all speculation in the average
speculations of the majority. The battle of the second
century had been a battle between those who asserted
that there was a single and final tradition of truth, and
those who claimed that the Holy Spirit spoke to them as
truly as He had spoken to men in the days of the apos
tles. The victorious opinion had been that the revelation
was final, and that what was contained in the records of
3 Adv. Prase, 3.

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 325
the apostles was the sufficient sum of Christian teaching :
hence the stress laid upon apostolic doctrine.
The battle of the third century was between those who
claimed, as Marcion claimed, that inspired documents
were to be taken in their literal sense, and those who
claimed that they needed a philosophical interpreta
tion,1 — that while these monuments of the apostolic age
required interpretation,2 yet they were of no private
interpretation, and that theories based upon them must
be the theories of the apostolical churches. In other
words, the contention that Christianity rested upon the
basis of a traditional doctrine and a traditional standard,
was necessarily supplemented by the contention that the
doctrine and standard must have a traditional interpreta
tion. A rule of faith and a canon were comparatively
useless, and were felt to be so, without a traditionally
authoritative interpretation. The Gnostics were prepared
to accept all but this. They also appealed to tradition
and to the Scriptures.3 So far it was an even battle :
each side in such a controversy might retort upon the
other, and did so.4 If it were allowed to each side to
1 Which had been the contention of the heretics whom Tertullian
opposed: de prase, har. cc. 16, 17.
2 Origen (de princ, praf. 3) follows in the line of those who rested
upon apostolic teaching, but gives a foothold for philosophy by saying
(1) that the Apostles left the grounds of their statements to be inves
tigated ; (2) that they affirmed the existence of many things without
stating the manner and origin of their existence.
3 Yalentinus accepted the whole canon (integro instrumento), and
the most important work of Basilides was a commentary on the Gospel:
Tert. de prase, har. 38.
4 Tert. de prase, har. 18. It is important to contrast the arguments
of Tertullian with those of Clement of Alexandria, and of both with

326 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
argue on the same bases and by the same methods, each
side might claim a victory. A new principle had to be
introduced— the denial of the right of private interpreta
tion. In regard both to the primary articles of belief
and to the majority of apostolic writings, no serious dif
ference of opinion had existed among the. apostolical
churches. It was otherwise with the speculations that
were based upon the rule of faith and the canon. They
required discussion. The Christological ideas that were
growing up on all sides had much in common with the
Gnostic opinions. They needed a limitation and a
check. The check was conterminous with the sources
of the tradition itself; the meaning of the canon, as
well as the canon itself, was deposited with the bishops
of apostolical churches; and their method of enforcing
the check was the holding of meetings and the framing
of resolutions. Such meetings had long been held to
ensure unity on points of discipline. They came now to
be held to ensure unity on that which had come to be
no less important — the interpretation of the recognized
standard of belief. They were meetings of bishops.
Bishops had added to their original functions the func
tion of teachers (SiSdo-tcaXoiy and interpreters of the will
of God (irpocprjrai).1 Accordingly meetings of bishops
were held, and through the operation of political rather

the practice which circumstances rendered necessary. In Strom. 7.
16 and 17, Clement makes Scripture the criterion between the Church
and the heretics, though he assumes that all orthodox teaching is
apostolic and uniform.
1 The combination is first found in Apost. Const. Bk. ii. pp. 14, 10.
16, 25. 51. 17, 20. 58, 22.

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 327
than of religious causes their decisions were held to be
final. Two important results followed.
(i.) The first result was the formulating of the specula
tions in definite propositions, and the insertion of such
propositions in the Creed. The theory was that such
insertions were of the nature of definitions and interpre
tations of the1 original belief. The mass of communities
have never wandered from the belief that they rest upon
an original revelation preserved by a continuous tradi
tion. But a definition of what has hitherto been unde
fined is necessarily of the nature of an addition. Perhaps
the earliest instance which has come down to us of such
an expansion of the Creed, is in the letter sent by
Hymenseus, Bishop of Jerusalem, and his colleagues to
Paul of Samosata.1 The faith which had been handed
down from the beginning is "that God is unbegotten,
one, without beginning, unseen, unchangeable, whom no
man hath seen nor can see, whose glory and greatness it
is impossible for human nature to trace out adequately ;
but we must be content to have a moderate conception
of Him : His Son reveals Him .... as he himself says,
4 No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to
whomsoever the Son revealeth Him.' We confess and
proclaim His begotten Son, the only begotten, the image
of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature, the
wisdom and word and power of God, being before the
worlds, God not by foreknowledge but by essence and
substance." They had passed into the realm of metaphysics. The
hisitorieal facts of the earlier creed were altogether
1 Eouth, Rel. Sacr. iii. p. 290; Harnack, p. 644.

328 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
obscured. Belief was belief in certain speculations.
The conception of the nature of belief had travelled*
round a wide circuit. It will be noted that there had
been a change in the meaning of the word which has-
lasted until our own day. The belief in the veracity of
a witness, or in facts of which we are cognizant through
our senses, or the primary convictions of our minds — in
which I may include the belief in God — admit of a
degree of certainty which cannot attach to the belief in
deductions from metaphysical premises.1 Belief came to.
mean, not the highest form of conviction, but something-
lower than conviction, and it tends to have that meaning-
still. But with this change in the nature of belief, there
had been no change in the importance which was attached
to it. The acceptance of these philosophical speculations
was as important as the belief in God and in Jesus Christ,.
the Son of God. The tendency developed, and we find
it developing all through the fourth century. In the
Nicene Council the tendency was politically more impor
tant, but it was not theologically different from what
had gone before. The habit of defining and of making
inferences from definitions, grew the more as the philo
sophers passed over into the Christian lines, and logicians
and metaphysicians presided over Christian churches.
The speculations which were then agreed upon became
stamped as a body of truth, and with the still deeper
speculations of the Councils of Constantinople and
Chalcedon, the resolutions of the Nicene Fathers have
come to be looked upon as almost a new revelation, and
the rejection of them as a greater bar to Christian
1 Cf. the definitions of faith in Clem. Al. Strom. 2, cc. 2 and 3.

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 329
fellowship than the rejection of the New Testament
itself. (ii.) The second result was the creation of a distinction
between what was accepted by the majority at a meeting
and what was accepted only by a minority. The distinc
tion had long been growing. There had been parties
in the Christian communities from the first. And the
existence of such parties was admissible.1 They broke the
concord of the brethren, but they did not break the unity
of the faith. Now heretics and schismatics were iden
tified ; difference in speculative belief was followed by
political penalty. The original contention, still pre
served in Tertullian,2 that every man should worship
God according to his own conviction, that one man's
religion neither harms nor helps another man, was ex
changed for the contention that the officers of Christian
communities were the guardians of the faith. Contro
versy on these lines, and with these assumptions, soon
began to breed its offspring of venom and abuse. But I
will not pain your ears by quoting, though I have them at
hand, the torrents of abuse which one saint poured upon
another, because the one assented to the speculations of
a majority, and the other had speculations of his own.3
It was by these stages, which passed one into the
1 alpea-is is used in Clem. Al. Strom. 7. 15, of the true system of
Christian doctrine : r) t$ ovti dplo-T-q aipeo-is: as in Sext. Empir. (Pyrrh.
p. 13, § 16) it meant only adherence to a system of dogmas (no standard
implied). 2 Ad Scap. 2.
3 Philosophers had abused each other. Theologians followed in their
track. The "cart-loads of abuse they emptied upon one another"
(okas dp,d£as BXao-cpqpuwv Karea-KeSaa-av aXXrjXuv, Lucian, Eunucll. 2)
are paralleled in, e. g. Gregory of Nyssa.

330 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
other by a slow evolution, that the idea of trust in God,
which is the basis of all religion, changed into the idea
of a creed, blending theory with fact, and metaphysical
speculation with spiritual truth.
It began by being (1) a simple trust in God; then
followed (2) a simple expansion of that trust into the
assent to the proposition that God is good, and (3) a
simple acceptance of the proposition that Jesus Christ
was His Son ; then (4) came in the definition of terms,
and each definition of terms involved a new theory;
finally, (5) the theories were gathered together into
systems, and the martyrs and witnesses of Christ died
for their faith, not outside but inside the Christian
sphere ; and instead of a world of religious belief, which
resembled the world of actual fact in the sublime unsym-
metry of its foliage and the deep harmony of its discords,
there prevailed the most fatal assumption of all, that the
symmetry of a system is the test of its truth and a proof
thereof. I am far from saying that those theories are not true.
The point to which I would draw attention is, first, that
they are speculations ; secondly, that their place in Chris
tian thought arises from the fact that they are the specu
lations of a majority at certain meetings. The importance
which attaches to the whole subject with which we are
dealing, lies less in the history of the formation of a body
of doctrine, than in the growth and permanence of the
conceptions which underlie that formation.
(1) The first conception comes from the antecedent
belief which was rooted in the Greek mind, that, given
certain primary beliefs which are admitted on all sides
to be necessary, it is requisite that a man should define

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 331
those beliefs1 — that it is as necessary that a man should
be able to say with minute exactness what he means by
God, as that he should say, I believe in God. It is
purely philosophical. A philosopher cannot be satisfied
with unanalyzed ideas.
(2) The second conception comes rather from politics
than from philosophy. It is the belief in a majority of
a meeting. It is the conception that the definitions and
interpretations of primary beliefs which are made by the
majority of church officers assembled under certain con
ditions, are in all cases and so certainly true, that the
duty of the individual is, not to endeavour, by whatever
fight of nature or whatever illumination of the Holy
Spirit may be given to him, to understand them, but to
acquiesce in the verdict of the majority. The theory
assumes that God never speaks to men except through
the voice of the majority. It is a large assumption.
It is a transference to the transcendental sphere in which
the highest conceptions of the Divine Nature move, of
what is a convenient practical rule for conducting the
business of human society: "Let the majority decide."
I do not say that it is untrue, or that it has not some
arguments in its favour ; but I do venture to point out
that the fact of its being an assumption must at least be
reeognized. (3) The third conception is, that the definitions and
interpretations of primary beliefs which were made by
the majority, or even by the unanimous voice of a church
assembly, in a particular age, and which were both rela
tive to the dominant mental tendencies of that age and
adequately expressed them, are not only true but final.
1 See Lecture V. p. 135.

332 XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS
It is a conceivable view that once, and once only, did
God speak to men, and that the revelation of Himself in
the Gospels is a unique fact in the history of the universe.
It is also a conceivable view that God is continually
speaking to men, and that now, no less than in the early
ages of Christianity, there is a divine Voice that whispers
in men's souls, and a divine interpretation of the meaning
of the Gospel history. The difficulty is in the assump
tion which is sometimes made, that the interpretation of
the divine Yoice was developed gradually through three
centuries, and that it was then suddenly arrested. The
difficulty has sometimes been evaded by the further
assumption that there was no development of the truth,.
and that the Nicene theology was part of the original
revelation — a theology divinely communicated to the
apostles by Jesus Christ himself. The point of most
importance in the line of study which we have been
following together, is the demonstration which it affords
that this latter assumption is wholly untenable. We
have been able to see, not only that the several elements
of what is distinctive in the Nicene theology were gra
dually formed, but also that the whole temper and frame
of mind which led to the formation of those elements
were extraneous to the first form of Christianity, and
were added to it by the operation of causes which can be
traced. If this be so, the assumption of the finality of
the Nicene theology is the hypothesis of a development
which went on for three centuries, and was then suddenly
and for ever arrested. Such a hypothesis, even if it be
a priori conceivable, would require an overwhelming
amount of positive testimony. Of such testimony there
is absolutely none. But it may be that the time has

INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. 333
come in which, instead of travelling once more along the
beaten tracks of these ancient controversies as to parti
cular speculations, we should rather consider the prior
question of the place which speculation as such should
occupy in the economy of religion and of the criterion
by which speculations are to be judged. We have to
learn also that although for the needs of this life, for the
solace of its sorrow, for the development of its possibilities,
we must combine into societies and frame our rules of
conduct, and possibly our articles of belief, by striking
an average, yet for the highest knowledge we must go
alone upon the mountain-top ; and that though the moral
law is thundered forth so that even the deaf may hear,
the deepest secrets of God's nature and of our own are
whispered still in the silence of the night to the indivi
dual soul.
It may be that too much time has been spent upon
speculations about Christianity, whether true or false,
and that that which is essential consists not of specu
lations but of facts, and not in technical accuracy on
questions of metaphysics, but in the attitude of mind in
which we regard them. It would be a cold world in
which no sun shone until the inhabitants thereof had
arrived at a true chemical analysis of sunlight. And
it may be that the knowledge and thought of our time,
which is drawing us away from the speculative elements
in religion to that conception of it which builds it upon
the character and not only upon the intellect, is drawing
us thereby to that conception of it which the life of
Christ was intended to set forth, and which will yet
regenerate the' world.

Lecture XII.
THE TEANSFOEMATION OF THE BASIS OF
CHEISTIAN UNION: DOCTEINE IN THE
PLACE OF CONDUCT.

I spoke in the last Lecture of the gradual formation
under Greek influence of a body of doctrine. I propose
to speak in the present Lecture of that enormous change
in the Christian communities by which an assent to that
body of doctrine became the basis of union. I shall
have to speak less of the direct influence of Greece than
in previous Lectures: but it is necessary to show not
only the separate causes and the separate effects, but
also their general sum in the changed basis of Christian
communion. There is no adequate evidence that, in the first age of
Christianity, association was other than voluntary. It
was profoundly individual. It assumed for the first time
in human history the infinite worth of the individual
soul. The ground of that individual worth was a divine
sonship. And the sons of God were brethren. They
were drawn together by the constraining force of love.
But the clustering together under that constraining
force was not necessarily the formation of an association.

XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 335
There was not necessarily any organization.1 The ten
dency to organization came partly from the tendency of
the Jewish colonies in the great cities of the empire to
combine, and to a far greater extent from the large ten
dency of the Greek and Eoman world to form societies
for both religious and social purposes.
But though there is no evidence that associations were
in the first instance universal, there is ample evidence that,.
when once they began to be formed, they were formed on
a basis which was less intellectual than moral and spiritual..
An intellectual element existed : but it existed as an
element, not by itself but as an essential ingredient in
the whole spiritual life. It was not separable from the
spiritual element. Of the same spiritual element, " faith"
and "works" were two sides. The associations, like the
primitive clusters which were not yet crystallized into-
associations, were held together by faith and love and
hope, and fused, as it were, by a common enthusiasm.
They were baptized, not only into one body, bnt also by-
one spirit, by the common belief in Jesus Christ as their
Saviour, by the overpowering sense of brotherhood, by
the common hope of immortality. Their individual mem
bers were the saints, that is, the holy ones. The collective
unity which they formed — the Church of God — was holy.
It was regarded as holy before it was regarded as catholic.
The order of the attributes in the creed is historically
correct; — the holy Catholic Church. The pictures which
remain of the earliest Christian communities show that
there was a real effort to justify their name. The earliest
1 Socrates, HE. p. 177, evaa-is tov o-w/taTos, of the corporate unity
of a philosophical school.

336 XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
complete picture of a Christian community is that of the
''Two Ways." There are fragments elsewhere. From
the Acts of the Apostles and the canonical Epistles, and
the extra-canonical writings of the sub-apostolic age, it
is possible to put together a mosaic.
But in the " Two Ways" we have a primitive manual
of Christian teaching, and the teaching is wholly moral.
It professes to be a short exposition (SiSa^ of the two
commandments of love to God and love to one's neigh
bour. The exposition is partly a quotation from and
partly an expansion pf the Sermon on the Mount. "Bless
those that curse you, and pray for your enemies." " If
any one give thee a blow on the one cheek, turn to him
the other also." " Give to every one that asketh thee,
and ask not back." " Thou shalt not be double-minded
nor double-tongued." " Thou shalt not be covetous nor
grasping." "Thou shalt not be angry nor envious."
"Thou shalt not be lustful nor filthy-tongued." "But
thou shalt be meek and long-suffering and quiet and
guileless and considerate." J The ideal was not merely
moral, but it was also that of an internal morality, of a
new heart, of a change of character.
The book which is probably nearest in date, and which
is certainly most alike in character to this simple manual,
is the first book of the collection of documents known as
the Apostolical Constitutions. It pictures the aim of the
Christian life as being to please God by obeying His will
and keeping His commandments. " Take heed, 0 sons
of God, to do everything in obedience to God, and to
become well-pleasing in all things to the Lord our God." 2
1 DidachS, cc. 1 — 3. 2 Apost. Const, p. 1. 15 — 17.

BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 337
" If thou wilt please God, abstain from all that He hates,
and do none of those things that are displeasing to Him." 1
Individual Christians are spoken of as servants and sons
of God, as fellow-heirs and fellow-partakers with His
Son, as believers, i.e., as the phrase is expanded, "those
who have believed on His unerring religion." 2 The rule
of life is the Ten Commandments, expanded as Christ
expanded them, so as to comprehend sins of thought as
well as of deed. It was a fellowship of a common ideal
and a common enthusiasm of goodness, of neighbourliness
and of mutual service, of abstinence from all that would
rouse the evil passions of human nature, of the effort to
crush the lower part of us in the endeavour to reach
after God.3
It is even possible that the baptismal formula may
have consisted, not in an assertion of belief, but in a
promise of amendment; for a conservative sect made
the candidate promise — "I call these seven witnesses to
witness that I will sin no more, I will commit adultery
no more, I will not steal, I will not act unjustly, I will
not covet, I will not hate, I will not despise, nor will I
have pleasure in any evil."4
The Christian communities were based not only on the
fellowship of a common ideal, but also on the fellowship
of a common hope. In baptism they were born again,
and born to immortality. There was the sublime con-
1 lb. 5. 20—22. 2 lb. 1. 6.
3 " We Christians are remarkable," says Tertullian (Ad Scap. 2),
"only for the reformation of our former vices." The plea of the
Apologists was based on the fact that the Christians led blameless
lives : de causd innocentia consistam, Tert. Apol. c. 4.
4 The Elchasaites, ap. Hipp. 9. 15.
Z

338 XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
ception that the ideal society which they were endea
vouring to realize would be actually realized on earth.
The Son of Man would come again, and the regenerated
would die no more. The kingdoms of this world would
become the kingdom of the Messiah. The lust and hate,
the strife and conflict, the iniquity and vice, which
dominated in current society, would be cast out for ever ;
and over the new earth there would be the arching
spheres of a new heaven, into which the saints, like the
angels, might ascend. But as the generations passed,
and all things continued as they had been, and the sign
of the Son of Man sent no premonitory ray from the
far-off heaven, this hope of a new earth, without changing
its force, began to change its form. It was no longer
conceived as sudden, but as gradual. The nations of the
world were to be brought one by one into the vast com
munion. There grew up the magnificent conception of
a universal assembly, a KaOoXaJi eKKXtio-la.1 There would
be a universal religion and a universal society, and not
until then would the end come : it would be a transformed
and holy world.
The first point which I will ask you to note is, that
this very transformation of the idea of a particular reli
gion into that of a universal religion — this conception of
an all-embracing human society, naturally, if uncon
sciously, carried with it a relaxation of the bonds of
discipline. The very earnestness which led men to
preach the Gospel and to hasten the Kingdom, led them
1 Weingarten, Zeittafeln, p. 12. See also Lightfoot, Ignatius, vol ii.
pp. 310—312.

BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 339
also to gather into the net fish of every kind. There
was always a test, but the rigour of the test was softened.
The old Adam asserted itself. There were social influ
ences, and weakness of character in the officers, and a
•condonation by the community. It became less and less
practicable to eject every offender against the Christian
•code. It was against this whole tendency that Montanism
was a rebellion — not only against the officialism of Chris
tianity, but also against its worldliness.1 The earlier
•conception of that code, in which it embraced sins of
thought, came to be narrowed. The first narrowing was
the Imitation to open sins. The Christian societies fell
under the common law which governs all human organ
izations, that no cognizance can be taken of the secret
thoughts of the heart. The second limitation was, that
even when a man had committed an open sin, and had
been therefore excluded from the community, he might
be re-admitted. The limitation was not accepted without
a controversy which lasted over a great part of two cen
turies, and which at one time threatened to rend the whole
Christian communities into fragments. The Church was
gradually transformed from being a community of saints
— of men who were bound together by the bond of a
holy life, separated from the mass of society, and in
antagonism to it — to a community of men whose moral
ideal and moral practice differed in but few respects from
those of their Gentile neighbours. The Church of Christ,
which floated upon the waves of this troublesome world
was a Noah's ark, in which there were unclean as well
as clean. 1 Weingarten, p. 17.
z2

340 XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
Side by side with this diminution in the strictness of
the moral tests of admission and of continued member
ship, was a growth in the importance of the intellectual
elements, of which I spoke in a previous Lecture. The
idea of holiness and purity came to include in early times
the idea of sound doctrine. Hegesippus,1 in speaking of
a church as a virgin, gives as his reason, not its moral
purity, but the fact that it was not corrupted by foolish
doctrines. The growth, both within the Church and on
its outskirts, of opinions which were not the opinions of
the majority — the tendency of all majorities to assert their
power — the flocking into the Christian fold of the educated
Greeks and Eomans, who brought with them the intellec
tual habits of mind which dominated in the age — gave to-
the intellectual element an importance which it had not
previously possessed. Knowledge, which had always
been in some sort an element in Christianity, though not
as a basis of association, came to assert its place side by
side with love. Agreement in opinion, which had been
the basis of union in the Greek philosophical schools,
and later in the Gnostic societies, now came to form a
new element in the bond of union within and between
the Churches.2 But the practical necessity, when once
1 Eusebius, H. E. 4. 22, 4.
2 The very terms heresy and heterodox bear witness to the actioa
of the Greek philosophical schools on the Christian Church : a'pea-K
is used in Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. p. 13, of any system of dogmas, or the
principle which is distinctive of a philosophical school : cf. Diels,
Doxogr. Gr. pp. 276, 573, 388. In Clem. Alex. Strom. 7. 15, it is
used to denote the orthodox system. 'Et£/3oSo'£ous is used of the dog
matics from point of view of a sceptic : Sext. Empir. adv. Math. p. 771,
§ 40. Josephus uses it of the men of the other schools or parties as
distinguished from the Essenes, de Bell. Jud. 2. 8. 5. For the place

BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 341
an intellectual element was admitted, of giving some
limitations to that element by establishing a rule of faith
and a standard list of apostolic documents, caused stress
to be laid at once upon the intellect and the region
within which it moved. It was, that is to say, necessary
to ensure that the intellectual element was of the right
kind, and this of itself gave emphasis to the new temper
and tendency. The profession of belief in Christ which
had been in the first instance subordinate to love and
hope, and which had consisted in a simple recognition
of him as the Son of God, became enucleated and elabo
rated into an explicit creed; and assent to that creed
became the condition, or, so to speak, the contract of
membership. The profession of faith must be in the
words of the Christian rule.1 The teaching of the cate
chumens was no longer that which we find in the " Two
Ways" — the inculcation of the higher morality; it was
the traditio symboli, the teaching of the pass-word and of
its meaning. The creed and teaching were the creed
and teaching of the average members of the communities.
In religion, as in society, it is the average that rules.
The law of life is compromise.
¦of opinion in Gnostic societies, with its curious counterpart in laxity of
discipline, see Tert. de prase. 42 — 44. He speaks of the Valentinians,
¦adv. Vol., as " frequentissimum plane collegium inter hsereticos." Cf.
Harnack, 190 ff., also 211. The very cultivation of the Gnosis means
the supremacy of the intellect.
1 Tertullian, de Spectaculis, c. 4. If yvua-is was important as an
element in salvation side by side with tvIo-tis — or if rrlaTis included
yvCkris — then also the rejection of the right faith was a bar to salva
tion : hence heresy was regarded as involving eternal death : Tert. de
prase. 2.

342 XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
There were two collateral causes which contributed to
the change and gave emphasis to it.
(1) The one arose from the importance which was-
attached to baptism. There is no doubt that baptism
was conceived to have in itself an efficacy which in later
times has been rarely attached to it. The expressions
which the more literary ages have tended to construe
metaphorically were taken literally. It was a real wash
ing away of sins ; it was a real birth into a new life ;
it was a real adoption into a divine sonship. The renun-
ciatio diaboli — the abjuring of false gods and their wicked
worship — was also an important element.1 These elements-
were indeed even more strongly emphasized by certain
Gnostic societies than by the more orthodox writers ; but
they directly suggested a question which soon became
vital, viz. whether all baptism had this efficacy. Wa&
the mere act or ceremonial enough, or did it depend on
the place where, the person by whom, and the ritual witL
which it was administered ? In particular, the question
of the minister of baptism became important. It came
to be doubted whether baptism had its awful efficacy,
if the baptizer were cut off from the general society of
Christians on the ground of either his teaching or his-
practice. It became important to ensure that those who.
baptized held the right faith, lest the baptism they
administered should be invalid, and should carry with
it all the evil consequences of a vitiated baptism. The
rules which were laid down were minute. There were
grave controversies as to the precise amount of difference
of opinion which vitiated baptism, and the very fact of
1 Tert. de Spect. c. 4.

BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 343
the controversies about opinion accentuated the stress
whioh was laid upon such opinion. It drew away
attention from a man's character to his mental attitude
towards the general average of beliefs.
(2) There was another feature of early Christian life
which probably contributed more than anything else to
strengthen this tendency. It was the habit of inter
course and intercommunion. Christians, like Jews, tra
velled widely — more for trade and commerce than for
pleasure. The new brotherhood of Christians, like the
ancient brotherhood of the Jews, gave to all the travelling
brethren a welcome and hospitality. A test had been
necessary in the earliest times in regard to the prophets
and teachers. It is mentioned in the Teaching of the
Apostles. But the test was of moral rather than of
intellectual teaching. "Whoever comes to you and
teaches you all these things" (i.e. the moral precepts of
the " Two Ways"), receive him. But in case he who
teaches, himself turns and teaches you another teach
ing1 so as to destroy (this teaching), listen not to him :
but if he teaches you so as to add to your righteous
ness and knowledge of the Lord, receive him as the
Lord."2 So of the prophets: "Not every one who
speaks in the spirit is a prophet, but only he who has the
moral ways of the Lord (rovs rpo-rrov? Kvplov) : by these ways
shall be known the false prophet and the true prophet 
Every prophet who teaches the truth, if he does not what
he teaches, is a false prophet."3 So also of the travelling
1 SiSaxij, here expressly used of the moral precepts in c. 2. 1.
2 c. 11. 1, 2.
3 c. 11. 8, 10 ; cf. Herm. Mand. 11. 7 and 16.

344 XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
brethren: "Let every one who comes in the name of
the Lord be received ; afterwards ye shall test him and
find out .... If he wish to settle among you and is a
craftsman, let him work and so eat. If he be not a
craftsman, provide some way of his living among you as
a Christian, but not being idle. If he be unwilling so
to do, he is xpia"r&7rop°s — making a gain of godliness."1
The test here also is a test of character and not of belief.
But when the intellectual elements had asserted a pro
minence in Christianity, and when the acceptance of the
baptismal formula had been made a test of admission to
a Christian community, it gradually became a custom to
make the acceptance of that formula also a condition of
admission to hospitality.2 It was, so to speak, a tessera
or pass-word. By being a pass-word to hospitality, it
became also a form which a man might easily strain his
conscience to accept, and in religion no less than in
politics there are no such strenuous upholders of current
opinion as those who are hypocrites. The importance
of the formula as a passport attached not only to indi
viduals, but also to whole communities.3 The fact that
the Teaching of the Apostles makes the test personal and
individual, shows that in the country and at the time
when that book was written the later system had not
yet begun to prevail. This later system was for a com
munity to furnish its travelling members with a circular
1 c. 12. 1, 3—5.
2 The jura, i.e. the communicatio pads et appellatio fraternitatis et
contesseratio hospitalitatis, were controlled (regit) by the tradition of
the creed (unius sacramenti traditio), Tert. de prcesc. 20.
3 Communicamus cum ecclesiis apostolicis, quod nulla docirina diversa;
hoc est testimonium veritatis, Tert. ibid. 21.

BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 345
letter of recommendation. Such a letter served as a pass
port. The travelling Christian who brought it received
an immediate and ungrudging hospitality. But when
churches had wide points of difference, they would not
receive each other's letters. The points of difference which
thus led to the renunciation of fellowship, related in the
first instance to discipline or practice. They came to relate
to belief. Points of doctrine, no less than points of dis
cipline, came to be discussed at the meetings of the
representatives of the churches in a district, concerning
which I spoke in the last Lecture. Doctrine came to be
thus co-ordinate with character as the basis on which
the churches joined together in local or general confedera
tions, and accepted each other's certificates. The hier
archical tendency grew with it and out of it. The
position of the bishops, which had grown out of the
assumed desirability of guarding the tradition of truth,
tended to emphasize that tradition. It gave to tradition
not only a new importance, but also a new sanction. It
rested belief upon living authority. Men were no longer
free to interpret for themselves.
This elevation of doctrine to a co-ordinate position
with life in the Christian communities was the effect of
causes internal to those communities. Those causes were
in themselves the effects of other causes, the influence of
which I have traced in previous Lectures : but in their
direct operation within the churches they were altogether
internal. But that which gave importance to their
operation was not internal, but external. It was the
interposition of the State. The first instance of that

346 XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
interposition was in the days of Aurelian, in the case of
Paul of Samosata. The principle which was then esta
blished has been of enormous importance to the Christian
communities ever since. It is clear that confederation
of churches was so far established in Syria in the middle
of the third century, that the bishops of a district claimed
a right to interfere in the affairs of a neighbouring church.
There was not yet the complete confederation, on the basis
of the organization of the Empire, which we find after the
Nicene Council ; it was a question only of neighbourhood.
The Bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, who was a
statesman as well as a theologian, had a difference of
opinion with the leading bishops of Syria on one of the
new questions of the metaphysical theology, which was
forcing its way into the Christian churches. Meetings
were held, at the first of which there appears to have
been a compromise. At the second, Paul was condemned.
He was formally deposed from his see. He refused to
recognize the authority of the meeting, and probably
with the support of his people, remained in possession of
the church-buildings. An appeal as of "civil right"
was made by his opponents to the Emperor. The answer
of the Emperor determined the principle already referred
to. The tenant of the .buildings held them on condition
of being a Christian. The Emperor did not determine
what Christianity was. But he determined that what
ever was taught by the bishops of Italy might be properly
taken as the standard. This determined Eoman policy,
and it went far to determine Christian doctrine for the
future. When Christianity came to be recognized by the State,

BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 347
Constantine adopted the plan of assembling the bishops
on his own authority, and of giving whatever sanction
the State could give to their resolutions. He said in
effect, "I, as Emperor, cannot determine what Christian
doctrine is, but I will take the opinion of the majority,
and I will so far recognize that opinion that no one shall
have the privileges of Christians, a right to hold property
and an exemption from civil burdens, who does not assent
to that opinion." The succeeding Christian Emperors
followed in his track. The test of being a Christian was
conformity to the resolutions of the Councils. One who.
accepted them received immunity and privileges. One
who did not was liable to confiscation, to banishment, to
death. I need hardly draw out for you, who know what
human nature is, the importance which those resolutions
of the Councils assumed.
Against this whole transformation of the basis of union
there were two great lines of reaction.
1. The one was the reaction of the Puritan party in
the Church — the conservative party, which was always
smouldering, and sometimes burst forth into flame. The
most important of such reactionary outbursts were those
of the Novatians in the third century, and of the Donatists
in the fourth. I will speak now only of the former.
Its first cause was the action of the Eoman bishop,
Callistus, who allowed the return to the Church of those
who had been excluded on account of sins of the flesh,
and of return to idolatry. The policy was continued.
In 250, a determined stand was made against it. The
election of a bishop who belonged to the lax party forced

348 XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
on a schism. The schism was strong. It had sym
pathizers all over the Christian world — in Egypt, in
Armenia, in Asia Minor, in Italy and Spain. It involved
the whole theory of the Church — the power of the Keys.
It lasted long. It was so strong that the State had to
recognize it. It did not die out until at least five cen
turies after its birth. It lingered on in detached com
munities, but it ceased to be a power. The majority,
with the support not only of the State, but also of human
nature, dominated the Christian world.
2. The other reaction was stronger and even more
permanent. It consisted of the formation within the
Christian community of an inner class, who framed for
themselves and endeavoured to realize a higher than the
common ideal. They stood to the rest of the community
as the community itself stood to the rest of the world.
The tendency itself came, as I have tried to point out in
a previous Lecture,1 mainly from the Greek philosophical
schools, and was fostered to a large extent by the influ
ence on the main body of Christians of the philosophic
parties upon its borders. But it asserted its place as a
permanent element in the Christian world mainly as a
reaction against the change of the basis of the Christian
communities, and the lowering of the current standard
of their morality. Henceforward there was, side by side
with the rdy/xa rwv KXqpiKwv and the rdyp.a rwv Xalkwv,
a third rank, rdyp.a rwv do-Kqrwv. The ideal has been
obscured by its history : but that ideal was sublime. It
was impracticable and undesirable ; and yet sometimes in
human life room must be found for impossible ideals.
1 Lect. vi. p. 164 sq.

BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 349
And the blurred and blotted picture of it which has
survived to our own times, cannot take the place of the
historical fact that it began as a reaction against Chris
tianity as it was and as it is — an effort to regenerate
human society. But Monachism, by the very fact of
its separation, did not leaven the Church and raise the
current morality. The Church became, not an assembly
of devout men, grimly earnest about living a holy life. —
its bishops were statesmen ; its officers were men of the
world; its members were of the world, basing their
conduct on the current maxims of society, held together
by the loose bond of a common name, and of a creed
which they did not understand. In such a society, an
intellectual basis is the only possible basis. In such a
society also, in which officialism must necessarily have an
important place, the insistence on that intellectual basis
comes from the instinct of self-preservation. But it
checked the progress of Christianity. Christianity has
won no great victories since its basis was changed. The
victories that it has won, it has won by preaching, not
Greek metaphysics, but the love of God and the love of
man. Its darkest pages are those which record the story
of its endeavouring to force its transformed Greek meta
physics upon men or upon races to whom they were
alien. The only ground of despair in those who accept
Christianity now, is the fear — which I for one cannot
entertain — that the dominance of the metaphysical ele
ment in it will be perpetual.
I have now brought these Lectures to a close. The
net result is the introduction into Christianity of the

350 XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
three chief products of the Greek mind — Ehetoric, Logic,
and Metaphysics. I venture to claim to have shown
that a large part of what are sometimes called Christian
doctrines, and many usages which have prevailed and
continue to prevail in the Christian Church, are in reality
Greek theories and Greek usages changed in form and
colour by the influence of primitive Christianity, but in
their essence Greek still. Greece lives; not only its
dying life in the lecture-rooms of Universities, but also
with a more vigorous growth in the Christian Churches.
It lives there, not by virtue of the survival within them
of this or that fragment of ancient teaching, and this or
that fragment of an ancient usage, but by the continu
ance in them, of great modes and phases of thought, of
great drifts and tendencies, of large assumptions. Its
ethics of right and duty, rather than of love and self-
sacrifice ; its theology, whose God is more metaphysical
than spiritual — whose essence it is important to define ;
its creation of a class of men whose main duty in life is
that of moral exhortation, and whose utterances are not
the spontaneous outflow of a prophet's soul, but the
artistic periods of a rhetorician ; its religious ceremonial,
with the darkness and the light, the initiation and the
solemn enactment of a symbolic drama ; its conception
of intellectual assent rather than of moral earnestness as
the basis of religious society — in all these, and the ideas
that underlie them, Greece lives.
It is an argument for the divine life of Christianity
that it has been able to assimilate so much that was at
first alien to it. It is an argument for the truth of much
of that which has been assimilated, that it has been

BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 351
strong enough to oust many of the earlier elements. But
the question which forces itself upon our attention as the
phenomena pass before us in review, is the question of
the relation of these Greek elements in Christianity to
the nature of Christianity itself. The question is vital.
Its importance can hardly be over-estimated. It claims
a foremost place in the consideration of earnest men.
The theories which rise out of it are two in number. It
is possible to urge, on the one hand, that Christianity,
which began without them — which grew on a soil
whereon metaphysics never throve — which won its first
victories over the world by the simple moral force of the
Sermon on the Mount, and by the sublime influence of
the life and death of Jesus Christ, may throw off Hellen
ism and be none the loser, but rather stand out again
before the world in the uncoloured majesty of the Gospels.
It is possible to urge that what was absent from the early
form cannot be essential, and that the Sermon on the
Mount is not an outlying part of the Gospel, but its sum.
It is possible to urge, on the other hand, that the tree of
life, which was planted by the hand of God Himself in
the soil of human society, was intended from the first
to grow by assimilating to itself whatever elements it
found there. It is possible to maintain that Christianity
was intended to be a development, and that its successive
growths are for the time at which they exist integral and
essential. It is possible to hold that it is the duty of each
succeeding age at once to accept the developments of the
past, and to do its part in bringing on the developments
of the future.
Between these two main views it does not seem possible

352 XII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
to find a logical basis for a third. The one or the other
must be accepted, with the consequences which it involves.
But whether we accept the one or the other, it seems
clear that much of the Greek element may be abandoned.
On the former hypothesis, it is not essential ; on the latter,
it is an incomplete development and has no claim to
permanence. I believe the consideration of this question,
and practical action on the determination of it, to be the
work that lies before the theologians of our generation.
I claim for the subject which we have been considering
an exceptional importance, because it will enable us, if
on the one hand we accept the theory that the primitive
should be permanent, to disentangle the primitive from
the later elements, and to trace the assumptions on which
these later elements are based ; and if on the other hand
we adopt the theory of development, it will enable us, by
tracing the lines of development, to weld the new thoughts
of our time with the old by that historical continuity which
in human societies is the condition of permanence. I am
not unaware that there are many who deprecate the ana
lysis of Christian history, and are content to accept the
deposit. There has been a similar timidity in regard to the
Bible. It seemed a generation ago as though the whole
fabric of belief depended on the acceptance of the belief
that Genesis is the work of a single author. The timidity
has virtually ceased. The recognition of the fact that
the Book of Genesis was not made, but grew, so far from
having been a danger to religion, has become a new
support of the faith. So it will be with the analysis of
Christian doctrine and of Christian history ; and there
fore I am earnest in urging its study. For though the

BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. S53
Lectures are ended, the study of the subject has only
begun. I have ventured as a pioneer into comparatively
unexplored ground : I feel that I shall no doubt be found
to have made the mistakes of a pioneer ; but I feel also
the certainty of a pioneer — who after wandering by
devious paths through the forest and the morass, looks
out from the height which he has reached upon the fair
landscape — and speaking as one who has so stood and so
looked, I am sure that you will find the country to be in
the main what I have described it to be, and that you
will find also that it is but the entrance to a still fairer
landscape beyond. For though you may believe that I
am but a dreamer of dreams, I seem to see, though it be
on the far horizon — the horizon beyond the fields which
either we or our children will tread — a Christianity
which is not new but old, which is not old but new, a
Christianity in which the moral and spiritual elements
will again hold their place, in which men will be bound
together by the bond of mutual service, which is the bond
of the sons of God, a Christianity which will actually
realize the brotherhood of men, the ideal of its first
communities.

INDEX,
CONTAINING THE CHIEF TOPICS, PROPER NAMES, AND TECHNICAL
TERMS, REFERRED TO IN THE LECTURES.

Italicized subdivisions of a title are elsewhere treated in more detail as separate titles.

Abstract ideas, Greek tendency to, 116 —
118.
Moo, common Gnostic idea, 190 ; two
ways of viewing the iEons, 258 fin., 259.
Africanus, Julius, as an exegete, 81.
Alexandrine School, its philosophy, 81 ;
on moral probation, 232 ; on God's
transcendence, 255. See also Philo
and Origen.
Allegorism, 58 ff. ; connection -with the
"mysteries," 59, cf. 66; ethical, 60;
physical, 61 ; the Stoics, 61 — 63 ; later
exponents, 64. The temper widespread
in religion, 65 ; Hellenistic Jews, 65 ff.,
e.g. Aristobulus and Philo, 66—69, 72,
128 ; early Christian exegesis, especially
Gnostic, 69 ff. ; compared with Philo's,
72 ; prophecy its main subject, 72 —
74; an 0. T. Apologetic, 77—79. Re
actions, 79 — 82 ; dogmatic complica
tion, 82 ; irony of its history, ib. ; use
and abuse, 83 ; its place in modern life,
83—85.
Alogi, 252, n. 2.
Ambrose of Milan, his ethics Stoic, 169.
Antiochene School, its exegesis, 81, 82.
Apologists mark transition, e.g. 126 —
131 ; idea of creation, 196 ; free-will,
231 ; transcendence of God, 252, 253 ;
Logos doctrine, 261—263, 267, 268.
Apostolic doctrine, idea of, 316, 317;
"Apostles' Creed," 317—319.

Apostolical Constitutions, Bk. i., its ethical
type of teaching, 161, cf. 132, 336 ; Bk.
ii., on place of discipline, 162,. 163 ;
Bks. ii. and viii., on Lord's Supper, 301.
Aristobulus, his allegorism, 66 fin.
Aristotle, his use of ousia', 269, 270 ; of
pistis, 311.
Ashesis (ao-Kijcrie), Greek, 148 ff. : in Philo,
148; reduced to system, e.g. "retreats.
148—150. Christian, 164 ff. : its germ,
164, 165 ; ran parallel to Greek, 166,
167 ; Monachism, 167, 168.
Association at first voluntary, 334, 335.
Associations, Greek religious, 290 ff. Syn-
cretistic, akin to "mysteries," 290, 291 ;
purity of life required, 141 ; mixed
elements, 291, 292 ; effects on Chris
tianity, 292—295, cf. 141.
Athenagoras on absolute creation, 1 96 ;
transcendence of God, 253 ; his Monism,
265.
Baptism and dualism, 19. Primitive sim
plicity, 294, 295 ; its formula, 315 ; its
ethical character among the Elchasaites,
337 ; later change in name, 295, 296 ;
in time, 296, 297; minor features —
"symbolwm," lights, &c, 298, 299 ; late
ritual, 299, 300 ; Gnostic realism, 306 ;
and unction, 307. Its importance, 341,
342.
Basilides characterized, 9, n. J; his view

356

INDEX.

of creation, 195, 196 ; of transcendence,
254, 255; genesis of the Logos, 263.
Bishops, and the "rule of faith," 317,
318 ; speculative interpretation by con
sensus, 326, 327 ; results, 327 ff.
Canon of N. T., development of the idea,
319—321.
Catholic Church, its genesis, 11, 132 ; put
an end to "prophesying," 107; a fusion
of Christianity and Greek philosophy,
125; unconsciously Hellenized, 132 —
135; as a " corpus permixtum," 164.
Celsus, his and Porphyry's polemic against
Christian allegorism, 80 ; on relation of
Christianity and philosophy, 127, 128,
cf. 11 init.
Christianity, primitive : the New Law,
158—162 ; its ethical idea of God, 224,
225 ; its theological basis, 238, 239,
251, 252.
Church, its early character, 335 ; holiness,
335—337 ; hope, 337, 338.
Olement of Alexandria, his allegorism,
70 ; appeal to hieroglyphics, 71 ; and
N. T. allegories, 76 : on Christianity
and philosophy, 127 : on the Conserva
tives, 130, 131.
Clementines, the : their Old Testament
criticism, 71 ; God just and good, 229,
230.
Consecration of the elements : the formula
secret, 302, n. 6.
Conservatism : Clement and Tertullian on
it, 130, 131 ; in Ebionites and Elcha-
saites, 252, 337 ; often not recognized
as such (cf. Ebionites), e.g. in Origen,
323 ; the simpler sort, 324 ; Paul of
Samosata, 327, cf. 345, 346 ; in Puri
tanism, 347, 348 ; Monachism, 348,
349.
Creed, the, 313 ff: its germs, 313, 314;
the baptismal formula, 314, 315 ; be
comes a test, 31 5 ; expanded, 315, 31 6 ;
by "Apostolic teaching," 316, 317; the
"Apostles' Creed " of the Bishops (napa-
Soaig tKKXijffiaoruoj), 317 — 319.
Cyprian characterized, 8.
Damons, 246, especially n. *.

Definition among the Greeks, 118; influ.
ence on Catholic Church, 135, 330, 331.
Development not arrested, 332, 351, 352.
Dialectic, Greek, 118 fin.
Didache', the: the "Two Ways'' empha
sizes conduct, 160, 161, 335, 336 ; and
the idea of wages, 225 : its simple theo
logy, 251, 252 ; Baptism, 294, 295, cf.
315 ; the Lord's Supper, 300, 301 ; in
tercommunion based on moral test, 343,
344.
Dio Chrysostom characterized, 6 ; on
"askesis," 150.
Dionysius Areopagites sums up the influ
ence of the " mysteries," 303, 304.
Discipline, early Christian, 162 ff: in
Apost. Const. Bk. ii. 162, 163; its
Puritan ideal, 163; later " corpus per
mixtum" idea, 164.
Dogma (Soy pa), its original sense, 119,
120; later Dogmatism, 121—123; the
age of Dogmatism, 280.
Dualism and Baptism, 19 ; and Stoicism,
ib.; its basis, 175; Platonic, 177; vari
ously expressed, 178—180; later modi
fied, 181 ; in Christian theories of crea
tion, 194, 195; transition in Tatian,
195.
Ebionites become "heretics," 132; as
Conservatives, 252, n. 3.
Education, Greek, 26 ff.: its forms literary,
27 ; mainly Grammar and Rhetoric,
28 ff. ; the poets its main study, 30 ;
also a litterateur philosophy, 32 ff. ;
spite of protest, 34; its extent, 35 ff.
Epictetus characterized, 6 ; as moral re
former, 142 ff. ; his attitude, 143, 144 ;
quoted, 144—147; on " askesis" 1 49 ;
his two planes of ethics, 152 : "follow
Nature," 152—155; "follow God,"
155—158.
Essentia : its bad Latinity a source of dis
use, 277, especially n. 3.
Ethics, Greek, 139 ff.
Average morality, 139; philosophic
ethics, 140; moral reformation in first
centuries a.d., 140, 141 ; in religious
guilds and philosophy, 141 ; its relation
to Logic and Literature, 142, 143; in

INDEX.

357

Epictetus, 143 ff. ; moral gymnastic,
147; askesis, 148 ff.; the " philsopher,"
150 ff. ; contents of ethical teaching, e.g.
in Epictetus, 152 ff.
Ethics, Christian, 158—170.
Compared with Greek, 158; its basis
and characteristic idea (sin), 158, 159 ;
agreement upon value of conduct, 159 ;
the "Two Ways," 160, 161; Apost.
Const. Bk. i. 161 ; discipline, earlier
And later, 162 — 164 ; Christian askesis,
164 — 168 ; deterioration of average
ethics, 168, 169; victory of Greek
ethics in Roman Law of Rights, 169,
170.
Evolutionary ideas among the Gnostics, as
regards creation, 177, 190 — 193; reve
lation, 257 ff.; genesis of the Logos,
263 ff.
Exorcism in relation to Monism, 20, espe
cially n.; in Baptism, 307, 308, n.1.
Faith (rn'imj), history of its usage, 310 ff. :
in Old Testament, 310, 311; Greek
philosophy, 311 ; Philo, 311, 312.
Christian form issuing in the Creed,
313 ff. ; relation to New Testament
Canon, 319 ff Further speculative
development, 321, 322; "gnosis" by
the side of "pistis," 323 ff. and 339—
341 ; check found in consensus of
Bishops, 326 ; expansion of Creed, 327 ;
contrasted uses of term " belief, " 328 ;
majority and minority views, 329 ; re
capitulation, 330.
Fitting, the, as a Stoic category, 153, 154 ;
root of "qfficium" and "debitum," 154,
155.
¦" Generation, eternal," 267 ; essential, 268 ;
Origen's contributions, ib.
Gnosis (yvuiaio) as a tendency, 129, 130;
side by side with "pistis" in Catholi
cism, 130—134, cf. 323 ff. and 339—
341 ; as well as in Neo-Platonism, 133.
Gnosticism between two fires, 9 ; allego
rizes the Old Testament, 70 ; also the
Gospel, 75. Its cosmogonies, 190;
evolutional types, 190—193 ; hypothe
sis of a lapse, 193 ; opposition from

without and within, 193 fin.; Basilides
on matter and God, 195, 196. Idea of
transcendence, 251 : e.g. Basilides and
Marcus, 254. Modalism, 257 ff. Con
necting link with the Mysteries, 305 ff.;
e.g. unction and sacramental realism,
306, 308, 309. Attitude to tradition
and the Scriptures, 325.
Grammar in Greek education, 28 ff.
ypappanK!), and ypappanaTiKr), 28 fin. ;
its elements, 29, 30.
Guilds : see Associations.
Hellenism characterized, 13, 14.
Heresy, original use of term, 340, u. 2.
Hippolytus, 6; his theory of creation,
203.
History, its difficulties and rewards, 22 —
24.
Homer in Greek thought, 51 ff. ; in Chris
tian theology, 69, 70.
Homily, the, 109—113.
Homoousios (bpoovaioe) shared senses of
" ousia," 272 ; first used of God by the
Gnostics, 274 ; its ambiguity, 274 —
276.
Hyparxis {v7rapfrc.) = " hypostasis," 275,
especially n. 3.
Hypostasis (viroaraaic.), relation to " ou
sia," 275; gradually specialized =
irpdiTt] bvo-ia, 276 f. : further defined
by aid of "prosopon" (rrpoo-iinrov)
through use of "persona," 277, 278;
usage often doubtful, 278.
iepdpxve and cognate terms for minis-
trants, 303, n. *.
Immortality in the Mysteries, 289, 290.
Initiation (reXfri?) : its stages, 284, u.3;
its idea, 285. Proclamation, 285, 286 ;
confession and baptism (naBapotg, Xou-
rpoV), 287; sacrifice, procession, &c,
287, 288 ; mystic drama, its nature,
288—290.
Inspiration in Greece, connected with
rhythm, 51.
Irena?us, 8 : his theory of creation, 202,
203 ; on Justice and Goodness in God,
228 ; on free-will, 231 ; his Logos doc
trine, 262, 263, cf. 266, n.1, 267, n.4;

358

INDEX.

view of the Eucharistic elements, 302,
n.1.
Judaism as basis of Christian theology,
238, 239.
Justin Martyr, 8 ; on Christianity and
philosophy, 126 ; on free-will, 231 ; on
God's transcendence, 253 ; Logos doc
trine, 261, 262; genesis of the Logos,
266 ; nature of the Logos, 267, 268.
Logoi (Xoyoi), Stoical (= laws), 180 ;
compared with Platonic "ideas," 181,
182, cf. 180 ; appear in Philo's "forces,"
185; their sum the Logos, 176, 180,
182.
Logos, the, in Philo, 247 ff. ; relation to
God, 249,250; and "logoi," 259—261 ;
growth of Logos doctrine, 261 — 263 ;
genesis of the Logos, 263, 264; -npofo-
pucbg. and ivSiadtrog, 265, u.1; nature
of the Logos, 267, 268.
Lucian and the Antiochene exegesis, 81,
82.
Marcion, his ditheistic tendency, 227, 230 ;
his idea of a Canon, 321 ; his literal
method, 325.
Marcus : syncretistic grouping of meta
phors under term " logoi," 190 ; God's
transcendence, 255.
Maximus of Tyre, 6 ; quoted for God's
transcendence, 242.
Mediation of God's transcendence : see
Logos.
Metaphysics and revelation, 137, 138.
Modalism, its two types, 257 ff.
Monachism : parallel of Greek and Chris
tian, 167, 168 ; a reaction, 348, 349.
Monarchianism a witness to older " Mo-
narchia," 206, 207.
Monism, in baptism and exorcism, 20 ;
its basis, 175; Stoic, 175—177; self-
evolution of God, 177.
Montanism : a survival of " prophecy, "
107 ; a reaction, 339.
Mysteries : their connection with allegory,
66 ; Greek, 283 : initiation at Eleusis,
284 ff. ; together with religious guilds
affect Christianity, 292 ff. ; generally,
293 ; specially as to Baptism, 294 ff. ;

and Lord's Supper, 300 ff. ; culmina
tion of influence, 303—305; Gnostics
a bridge, 305 ff. General result, 309.
piriaiQ, pvarayuyoQ, 296, 297.
Natura : see tpio-ig.
vopoq icaivog, 158, cf. 159 — 162 (espe
cially note).
Novatianism a Puritan reaction, 347, 348.
Ocellus Lucanus on idea of transcendence
(supra-cosmic), 242, n. 1.
Origen, 8 : his apologetic use of allegorism,
77,78; defence of it, 80 ; his cosmogony
a theodicy, 204 — 206; its grand scale,
233—237 ; shapes Logos doctrine, 267
(especially n. 4), 268 ; his Deprincipiis
the first dogmatic system, 323.
Ousia (oiaia), three Aristotelian senses-
[(i.) =hyle; (ii.) = substantia concreta/
(iii.) = subst. abstracta], 269, 270. Its-
later history in Platonic realism, 271.
272. Difficulties in its application tn
God, 273 f. ; not popularly understood,
279.
Paul of Samosata, his case, 345, 346, cf.
326.
Persona appropriated for hypostasis, 277,
278.
Philo and Philonian writings a valuable1
bridge, 7, 128, 182 ; his allegorism,
67—69; his "literal" v. "deeper"
sense compared with Christian exegesis,
72; God the ultimate cause, 182, 183;
monistic elements, 183, 184; dualistic,
184, 185; his "forces," in plurality,
185, 186; and unity, 186, 187; but
God is Creator or Father, 187, 188;
God's transcendence, 244 ff. ; interme
diaries, 247 ; distinctions in God's na
ture, 247 ff.
Philosophy in Greek education, 32 ff. ; as
a profession, 40 ff. ; its " damnosa here-
ditas," 138 ; its decay amid dogma, and
legacy to Christendom, 280, 281.
Philosopher, the, as moral reformer, 150;
outward marks,- 151.
Platonism and Christianity, 81, 129; its
theological affinity, 233; Plato author

INDEX.

359

of transcendence proper, 240, 241, and
n. 1 ; God's transcendence, 241 — 243 ;
daemons, 246.
Plotinus on transcendence, 243 ; genesis
of Logos, 266, n. 5.
Plutarch, 6 ; quoted for transcendence,
242 ; immortality through " initiation,"
289.
Poetry, its place in the Greek mind, 51 ff.
Political analogies in the Church, 331.
Preaching and " prophesying," 105 ff. ; of
composite origin, 107—109; the "ho
mily," 109—113.
Prophecy and divination, 72, 73 ; and
apologetic, 74 ; died with formation of
Catholic Church, 107.
irpoaanrov, how used, 278, especially n. 1 :
see hypostasis.
Ptoleinseus, on God's transcendence, 251 ;
his idea of ".Eons," 258 fin., 259.
Puritanism in early Church, 347, 348.
Pythagoreanism and Christianity, 81, 129.
Keligion, its political aspect to the Roman,
21; connected with usage (vopog), 21, n.
Revelation and metaphysics, 137, 138.
Rhetoric, Greek, 87, 88.
"Rule of Faith:" see Faith.
ooQog, its later usage, 26.
Sophistic, its genesis, 87, 88 ; mainly on
lines of the older Rhetoric, 88 — 90;
popularized in 5ia\s£ag, 91 ; and itine
rant, 92 — 94; manner of discourse, 9 4 —
97 ; its rewards, 97, 98 ; and airs, 99.
Objections, 99—101; reaction led by
Stoics like Epictetus, 101—105.
Speculation, its true place in Christianity,
332, 333.
State, its interference with doctrine, 279 f.
345—347.
Stoicism : its view of substance, 19, n. ;
and the moral reformation, 141 ff. ; its
ethics in Ambrose, 169; ethical affini
ties with Christianity, 238 ; dasmons,
246.
Substantia at first = hypostasis, then
ousia, 277, cf. 278.

Supper, the Lord's: extra-biblical deve
lopments, 300 ff. ; in Didache, 300, 301 ;
Apost. Const. Bks. ii. and viii., 301 ;
the " altar," its " mysteries," the sacred
formula, 302 and n. 6; "priest," 303;
culmination in Dionysius, 303, 304;
realism first among Gnostics, 308, 309.
Symboli traditio, 298: cf. contesseratio,
344.
oippayig, of baptism, 295.
Tatian: his view of creation, 196 ; free
will, 231 ; on genesis of Logos, 266,
¦,. » and n. 3, 267, n. 3.
Teaching profession, 37 ff- ; endowed, 38 ;
excused public burdens, 39.
TiKi-rr), TiKiiaQai : see initiation, cf. 296.
Tertullian, 8; his Stoic view of substance,
19, n., 20, n., cf. 254; on Christianity
and philosophy, 126, 127 ; the Conser
vatives, 131, 257, n. 1 ; on creation,
197; on God as just and good, 229;
on free-will, 232 ; transcendence in him
supra-cosmic, 254 ; genesis of the Logos,
265, u.1; nature of the Logos, 268;
on ecclesiastical tradition and specula
tion, 322.
Theodore of Mopsuestia as exegete, 82.
Theophilus on creation, 196 ; God's tran
scendence, 253; on genesis of Logos,
265, n. \ cf. 268.
Transcendence, as of absolute Unity, Being,
Mind, 240 ; in Plutarch and Maximus,
242 ; Plotinus, 243 ; its two forms, 244 ;
Philo, 244, 245. Absent from earliest
Christian teaching, 251 f. ; appears in
Apologists, 252, 253 ; Gnostics, 254 f. ;
Alexandrines, 255 f. ; mediation of,
256 ff., especially 257, u. K
Unction of (1) exorcism, (2) thanksgiving,
307, 308, especially n. \
Qvcrtg (=natura), later use = ousia, 278 ;
sometimes = hypostasis, ib.
(puTurpog, of baptism, 295.
Writing as mysterious, 50.

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Kuenen (Professor A.) Lectures on National Eeligions and TJniveif'
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Laurie (Professor Simon) Metaphysica Nova et Yetusta : a Eetur*
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Eeville (Eev. Dr. A.) The Song of Songs, commonly called the
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Ehys (Prof. J.) On the Origin and Growth of Eeligion, as illustrated
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