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THE EARLY DAYS

OF

CHRISTIANITY.

BY
F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F. R.S.,
LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ;
CANON OP WESTMINSTER;
AKD CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN.

woKvfiepas ical iroKvrp6'rr<as. — Heb. i. 1.
rj wo\virolictKos (ro<pia rov ©eof). — Eph. iii. 10.

CASSELL, PETTER, G-ALPIN & CO.,
NEW YORK, LONDON & PARIS.

E. P. DUTTON & CO.,
NEW YORK.

ROBERT BROWNING, Esq.,
AUTHOR OF "A DEATH IN THE DESERT,"
AMD OS" MANY OTHER POEMS OF THE DEEPEST INTEREST TO ALL
STUDENTS OF SCRIPTURE,
I IBttiitaU
THIS VOLUME
WITS SINCERE ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM.

PREFACE.

I complete in this volume the work which has absorbed such leisure as
could be spared from many and onerous duties during the last twelve
years. My object has been to furnish English readers with a com
panion, partly historic and partly expository, to the whole of the New
Testament. By attention to the minutest details of the original, by
availing myself to the best of my power of the results of modern
criticism, by trying to concentrate upon the writings of the Apostles
and Evangelists such light as may be derived from Jewish, Pagan, or
Christian sources, I have endeavoured to fulfil my ordination vow and
to show diligence in such studies as help to the knowledge of the Holy
Scriptures. The " Life of Christ "• was intended mainly as a com
mentary upon the Gospels. It was written in such a form as should
reproduce whatever I had been able to learn from the close examination
of every word which they contain, and should at the same time set
forth the living reality of the scenes recorded. In the " Life of St.
Paul " I wished to incorporate the details of the Acts of the Apostles
with such biographical incidents as can be derived from the Epistles of
St. Paul ; and to take the reader through the Epistles themselves in a
way which might enable him, with keener interest, to judge of their
separate purpose and peculiarities by grasping the circumstances under
which each of them was written. The present volumes are an attempt
to set forth, in their distinctive characteristics, the work and the
wi'itings of St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude, St. John, and the author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews. If my effort has been in any degree
successful, the reader should carry away from these pages some con
ception of the varieties of religious thought which prevailed in the
schools of Jerusalem and of Alexandria, and also of those phases of
theology which are represented by the writings of the two greatest of
the twelve Apostles.

VI * PREFACE.
In carrying out this design I 'have gone, almost verse by verse,
through the seven Catholic Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
the Revelation of. St. John — explaining their' special difficulties, and
developing their general characteristics. Among many Christians
there is a singular ignorance of the Books of Scripture "as a whole.
With a wide knowledge of particular texts, there is a strange lack of
familiarity with the bearings of each separate Gospel and Epistle. I
hav8 hoped that by considering each book in connexion with all that we
can learn of its author, and of the circumstances under which it was
written, I might perhaps contribute to the intelligent study of Holy
Writ. There may be some truth in the old motto, Bonus textuovrius
lonus theologus ; but he whose knowledge is confined to " texts," and
who has never studied them, first with their context, then as forming
fragments of entire books, and lastly in their relation to the whole of
Scripture, incurs the risk of turning theology into an erroneous and
artificial system. It is thus that the Bible has been misinterpreted by
substituting words for things ; by making the dead letter an instrument
wherewith to murder the living spirit ; and by reading into Scripture a
multitude of meanings which it was never intended to express. Words,
like the chameleon, change their colour with their surroundings. The
very same word may in different ages involve almost opposite connota
tions. The vague and differing notions attached to the same term
have been the most fruitful sources of theological bitterness, and of the
internecine opposition of contending sects. The abuse of sacred
phrases has been the cause, in age after age, of incredible misery and
mischief. Texts have been perverted to sharpen the sword of the
tyrant and to strengthen the rod of the oppressor — to kindle the fagot
of the Inquisitor and to rivet the fetters of the slave. The terrible
wrongs which have been inflicted upon mankind in their name have
been due exclusively to their isolation and perversion. The remedy for
these deadly evils would have been found in the due study and compre
hension of Scripture as a whole. The Bible does not all lie at a dead
level of homogeneity and uniformity. It is a progressive revelation.
Its many -coloured wisdom was made known " fragmentarily and multi
fariously " — in many parts and in many manners.
In the endeavour to give a clearer conception of the books here
considered I have followed such different methods as each particular
passage seemed to require. I have sometimes furnished a very

PREFACE. vil
close and literal , translation ; sometimes a free paraphrase ; some
times a rapid abstract; sometimes, a running commentary. Avoiding
all parade of learned references, I have thought that the- reader
would generally prefer the brief expression of a definite opinion
to the reiteration of many bewildering theories. Neither in this,
nor in the previous volumes, have I wilfully or consciously avoided
a single difficulty. A passing sentence often expresses a conclusion
which has only been formed after the study of long and tedious
monographs. In the foot-notes especially I have compressed into
the smallest possible space what seemed to be most immediately
valuable for the illustration of particular words or allusions. In the
choice of readings I have exercised an independent judgment. If my
choice coincides in most instances with that of the Revisers of the
New Testament, this has only arisen from the fact that I have been
guided by the same principles as they were. This volume, like the
" Life of Christ '' and the " Life of St. Paul," was written before the
readings adopted by the Revisers were known, and without the assis
tance which I should otherwise have derived from their invaluable
labours. *
The purpose which I have had in view has been, I trust, in itself a
worthy one, however much I may have failed in its execution. A
living writer of eminence has spoken of his works in terms which, in
very humble measure, I would fain apply to my own. " I have made,"
said Cardinal Newman — in a speech delivered in 1879 — "many mis
takes. I have nothing of that high perfection which belongs to the
writings of the saints, namely, that error cannol be found in them.
But what I trust I may claim throughout all I have written is this — an
honest intention ; an absence of personal ends ; a temper of obedience ;
a willingness to be corrected ; a dread of error ; a desire to serve the
Holy Church; and" (though this is perhaps more than I have any
right to say) "through the Divine mercy a fair measure of success."

E. W. EAKRAR.

St. Margaret's Rectory, Westminster,
June 7th, 1882.

* I take this opportunity of thanking the Eev. John de Soyres and Mr. TV. B.
Brown for the assistance which they have rendered in preparing this book for the press.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Book I.
THE WORLD.
CHAPTER L
MOEAL CONDITION OF THE WOULD. PAGB
Degradations which accompanied the Decadence of Paganism — The Slaves — The Rich and
Noble — The Emperor — Fatal Degeneracy — Greekfings — Literature, Art, and Drama —
The Senate — Scepticism and Superstition — Stoic Virtue — The Holy Joy of Christiana • 1
CHAPTER n.
THE EISE OF THE ANTICHRIST.
The Nemesis of Absolutism— Reign of Nero — Christians and the Roman Government — St.
Paul and the Empire— Horrors of Ceesarism — Tlie Palace of the Antichrist — Agrippina
the "Younger — Infancy of Nero — Evil Auguries — Intrigues of Agrippina — Her Marriage
with Claudius — Her Career as Empress — Her Plots to Advance her Son — Her Crimes — '
Her Peril— Murder of Claudius — Accession of Nero  .10
CHAPTER in.
THE FEATURES OF THE ANTICHRIST.
Successful Guilt — Fresh Crimes — The " Golden Quinquennium " — Follies of Nero — Threats
of Agrippina — Jealousy of Britaunicus— Murder of Britannicus — Nero estranged from
Agrippina — Influence of Poppcea — Plot to Murder Agrippina — Burrus and Seneca-
Murder of Agrippina — A Tormented Conscience — Tbe Depths of Satan .... 20
CHAPTER IT.
THE BURNING OF ROME AND THE FIRST PERSECUTION.
The Era of Martyrdom— The Fire of Rome — Was Nero Guilty ?— Devastation of the City-
Confusion and Agony — The Golden House — Nero Suspected — The Christians Accused
— Strangeness of this Circumstance — Tn citus — Popular Feeling against tbe Christians —
Secret Jewish Suggestions — Popptea a. Proselyte — Incendiarism attributed to Christians
—.Esthetic Cruelty— A Huge Multitude— Dreadful Forms of Martyrdom— Martyrs on
the Stage— The Antichrist— Retribution— Awful Omens— Tbe Revolt of Vindex— Suicide
of Nero — Expectation of his Return  29

Book M.
ST. PETER AND THE CHURCH CATHOLIC.
CHAPTER V.
WRITINGS OF THE APOSTLES AND EARLY CHRISTIANS.
Annals of the Church— End of the Acts— Obscurity of Details— Little known about the
Apostles— St. Andrew— St. Bartholomew— St. Matthew— St. Thomas— St. James the
Less— St. Simon Zelotes— Judas— Late and Scanty Records— Writings of the Great
Apostles— Invaluable as illustrating different Phases of Christian Tnought— They
Explain the opposite Tendencies of Heretical Development— The Revelation— The

x CONTENTS. PAOH
Epistle to the Hebrews— The Seven Catholic Epistles— The Epistle of St. Jud»—
The Epistle of St. James— The Epistles of St. Petei^Catholicity of St. Peter— The
Three Epistles of St. John — Genuineness of these Writings— Contrasts between dif
ferent Apostles— Difference between St. Paul and St. John— Superiority of the New
Testament to the Writings of the Apostolic Fathers— The Epistle of St. Clemens— Its
Theological and Intellectual Weakness— The Epistle of Barnabas— Its exaggerated
Paulinism — Its Extravagant Exegesis — The Christian Church was not ideally Pure —
Tet its Chief Glory was in the Holiness of its Standard  45
CHAPTER yr.
ST. PETER.
Outline of his early Life— Events recorded in the Acts — Complete Uncertainty as to his
Subsequent Career — Legends — Domine quo vadisf—The Legends embellished and
Doubtful— Legend about Simon Magus— Was Peter Bishop of Rome ?— Improbability
of the Legend about his Crucifixion head downwards— His Martyrdom— His Visit to-
Some . i  60
a
CHAPTER "VTL
SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE FLBST EPISTLE OF ST. PETEB
Date of the Epistle — Its certain Genuineness— Style of the Epistle — A Christian Treatise —
Natural Allusions to Events in the Gospels — Vivid Expressions — Resemblance to tho
Speeches in the Acts — Allusions to the Law — Resemblances to St. Paul and St. James
— Plasticity of St. Peter's Nature— Struggle after Unity — Originality — His View of
Redemption— His View of Faith— His Views upon Regeneration and Baptism— Not
Transcendental but Practical — Christ's Descent into Hades — Great Importance of the
Doctrine— Attempts to Explain it away — Reference to the Epistle to the Galatians —
Addressed to both Jews and Gentiles — Crisis at whioh it was Composed— A Time of
Persecution— Keynote of the Letter— Analysis  . ; 67
CHAPTER VTH.
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETES.
Title which he Adopts — Address — Provinces of Asia— Thanksgiving — Exhortation to Hope
—Special Appeals — Duty of Blameless Living — Duty of Civil Obedience — Humble Sub
mission — Address to Servants— To Christian "Wives— Exhortation to Love and Unity —
Christ Preaching to the Spirits in Prison— Obvious Import of the Passage — Ruthless-
ness of Commentators — The approaching End— Address to Elders — Conclusion . . 83
CHAPTER XX.
PECUXIAMTIES OF THE SECOND EPISTLE.
Overpositiveness in the Attack and Defence of its Genuineness— Its Canonicity — Exaggera
tion of the Arguments urged in its Favour— Extreme "Weakness of external Evidence 
Tardy- Acceptance of the Epistle— Views of St. Jerome, &c— Cessation of Criticism 
The Unity of its Structure — Outline of the Letter— Internal Evidence— Resemblances
to First Epistle— Difference of Style — Peculiarity of its Expressions — Difference in
general Form of Thought— Irrelevant Arguments about the Style— Marked Variations.
— Dr. Abbott's Proof of the Resemblance to Josephus — Could Josephus have Read it ? 
Reference to the Second Advent— What may be Urged against these Difficulties 
Priority of St. Jude— Extraordinary Relation to St. Jude— Method of Dealing with the
stranger Phenomena of St. Jude's Epistle— Possible Counter-considerations— Allusion
to the Transfiguration— Anoientness of the Epistle — Superiority of the Epistle to the
Post-Apostolic "Writings— The Thoughts may have been Sanctioned and Adopted by
St. Peter  . 97
CHAPTER X.
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER.
Eeasons for offering a Literal Translation of the Epistle— Translation and Notes— Abrupt
Conclusion  » * • 11€
CHAPTER XI.
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE.

CONTENTS.

called forth the Epistle — Corruption of Morals— Who were the Offenders thus De
nounced ?— Resemblances to Second Epistle of St. Peter— Translation and Notes-
Style of Greek— Simplicity of Structure— Fondness for Apocryphal Allusions— Methods
of Dealing with these Peculiarities—" Verbal Dictation "— Rabbinic Legends— Corrupt,
Gnosticising Sects  122

33ook III.
APOLLOS, ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY, AND THE EPISTLE
TO THE HEBREWS.
, CHAPTER XII.
JUDAISM, THE SEPTUAGINT, ETC.
Unity of Christian Faith— Diversity in Unity— Necessity and Blessing of the Diversity—
Individuality of the Sacred Writers— Phases of Christian Tm.t'h^Alexwtidriam, Chris
tianity—^ The Jews and Greek Philosophy— Hebraism and Hellenism — Glories of Alexan
dria—Prosperity of the Jews in Alexandria — The Diapleuston — Favour shown the Jews
by the Ptolemies— The Septuagint — Delight of the Hellenists— Anger of the Hebraists-
Effects of Judaism — Bias of the Translators — Harmless Variations from the Hebrew —
Hagadoth— Avoidance.of Anthropomorphism and Anthropopathy — Deliberate Manipula-
i tion of the Original— Aristobulus— The Wisdom of Solomon— Semi-Ethnic Jewish
Literature— Philo not wholly Original  136
CHAPTER XITI.
PHILO AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS.
Family of Alexander the Alabarch— Life of Philo — Classification of his Works— Those
that bear on the Creation — On Abraham — Allegorising Fancies — The Life of Moses —
.Arbitrary Exegesis — Meanings of the word Logos — Personification of the Logos — The
High Priest — A Cupbearer — Other Comparisons — Vague Outlines of the Conception —
Contrast with St. John  146
CHAPTER XIV.
PHILONISM— ALLEGORY— THE CATECHETICAL SCHOOL.
Influence of Philo on the Sacred Writers — Sapiental Literature of Alexandria, — Defects of
Philonism — The School of St. Mark — Motto of the Alexandrian School— Allegory
applied to the Old. Testament— The Parties of the Kabbalists — History of Allegory in
the Alexandrian School— Allegory in the Western Church ...... 153
CHAPTER XV. ,
AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
Continuity of Scripture — Manifoldness of Wisdom — Ethnic Inspiration— the Epistle
Alexandrian— External Evidence — Summary — Superficial Custom — Misuse of Autho
rities—Later Doubts and Hesitations — Indolent Custom — Phrases common to the
Author with St. Paul — Differences of Style not Explicable — The Epistle not a
Translation — Fondness of the Writer for Sonorous Amplifications  157
CHAPTER XVT.
THEOLOGY OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
Difference from the Theological Conceptions of St. Paul— Three Cardinal Topics — " The
People" — Christianity and Judaism— Alexandrianism of ' the. Writer — Prominence of
the Jews — Method of treating Scripture— Indebtedness to Philo — Particular Expres
sions — '* the Cutter- Word " — Stern Passages — Melchizedek- Priesthood of Christ-
Superiority to Philo — Fundamental Alexandrianism — Judaism not regarded as a Law
but as a System of Worship — " The»Pattern shown thee in the Mount " — Effectiveness
of the Argument — A Prse-existent Ideal— The World of Ideas — View of Hope — Faith,
in. this Epistle and in St. Paul — Righteousness — Christology — Redemption — Pro
minence given to Priesthood and Sacrifice — Peculiar Sentences — The Author could
not have been St. Paul  166

Xli CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVXC.
WHO WROTE THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS ? PAGE
Absence of Greeting— Certainties about the Writer— by some known Friend of St. Paul-
Vet not by Aquila— Nor by Titus— Nor by Silas— Nor by St. Barnabas— Nor by St.
Clemens of Rome— Nor by St. Mark— Nor by St. Lttxe — Strong Probability that the .
Writer was Apollos — This would not necessarily be known to the Church of
Alexandria— Suggested by Lutber— Generally and increasingly Accepted— Date of the
Epistle— Allusion to Timothy— Addressed to Jewish Christians— Not Addressed to the
Church of Jerusalem— Nor to Corinth— Nor to Alexandria — May have been Addressed to
Rome — or to Ephesus—" They of Italy "—Apollos  182
CHAPTER XVILT,
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
Section L — The Superiority of Christ. — Comparison between Judaism and Christianity —
Outline of the Epistle— Its Keynotes— Striking Opening— Cbrist Superior to Angela-
Peculiar Method of Scriptural Argument— Use ot Quotations— An Admitted Method
— Partial Change of View — The Style of Argument less important to us . . . 101
Section II. — A Solemn Exhortation.— Translation and Notes— Christ Superior to Moses —
Parallelism of Structure— Appeal  198
Section III. — The Sigh Priesthood of Christ. — Transitional Exhortation — Qualifications of
High Priesthood— Sketch of the great Argument of the Epistle— Translation and
Notes — Explanation of Difficulties respecting the Nature of Christ — Digression — Post-
Baptismal Sin — Indefectibility of Grace — Calvinistic View of the Passage — Arminian
View — Neither View Tenable— Obvious Limitations of the Meaning of the Passage —
" Near a Curse *' — "For Burning"— A Better Hope . . . ... . . .203
Section IV. — The Order of Melchizedek. — Translation and Notes — All that is known of
Melchizedek — Salem — M EU6n — Allusion in Psalm ex. — Hagadoth — Philo — Mystery
attached to Melchizedek — Fantastic Hypotheses — Who Melchizedek was — Only
Important as a Type — Semitic Phraseology and Modes of Arguing from the Silence of
Scripture — Translation and Notes — Argument of the Passage — Superiority of the
Melchizedek to the Levitic Priesthood in Seven Particulars — Summary and Notes . 216
Section V. — The Day of Atonement.— Grandeur of the Day — Translation and Notes — A
New Covenant — Its Superior Ordinances of Ministration — Translation and Notes —
Symbolism of Service— The Tabernacle, not the Temple — " Vacua omnia'' — Contents of
the Ark— The Thumiaterion — Censer (?)— -Altar of Incense — Translation and Notes —
Meanings of the word Diathvlte — An obvious Play on its .Second Meaning of " Testa
ment" — Translation and Notes — Familiarity with the Hagadoth and the Halacha —
— Grandest Phase of Levitic Priesthood — h eeliugs Inspired by the Day — Careful Pre
paration of the High Priest — Legendary Additions to the Ritual— Peril of the Function
—Chosen as the Highest Point of Comparison— Superiority of. Christian Privileges in
every respect  226
Section VI. — A Recapitulation. — Translation and Notes — Triumphant Close of the
Argument — Summary  242
Section VTL— A Third Solemn Warning. — Exhortation— Its Solemnity— Translation and
Notes  245
Section VHL— The Glories of Faith. — Faith — What is Faith ?— Exhibited in its Issues —
Beginning of the Illustration— Instances from each Period of Sacred History— Transla
tion and Notes  248
Section IX. — Final Exhortations. — Exhortation to Endurance— God's Fatherhood— Transla
tion and Notes — Faith and Patience — Superior Grandeur of Christianity— Moral Appeal
of the last Chapter— Translation and Notes— Modern Controversies — " We have an
Altar" — Explanation ofthe Passage — Exhortation to Obedience — Final Clauses —Their
Bearing on the Authorship of the Epistle  254

BBoofc IV.
JUDAIC CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER XIX
THE LORD'S BROTHER.

A New Phase of Christianity— The Name " James "—The Author was not James the Son
of Zebedee— Untenable Arguments— Nor James the Son of Alphaeus— Untenable Argu
ments— Alphceus— He is James, Bishop of Jerusalem, and the Lord's Brother— Is he

CONTENTS. Xlll
PAGE
Identical with the Son of Alphgeus ?— " Neither did His Brethren Believe on Him" —
Paucity of Jewish Names— Helvidian Theory — The Simplest and Fairest explanation of
the Language of the Evangelists— The Language not Absolutely Decisive — D gma of
the Aei-parthenia — The Evangelists give no Hint of it— What the Gospels Say— Utter
Baselessness of the Theory of St. Jerome— Entirely Untrue that the Terms " Cousins "
and " Brothers " are Identical — The Theory an Invention due to d priori t onceptions —
Not a single Argument can be Adduced in its favour— Tendencies which Led to the
Dogma of the A evparth&nia — Unscriptural and Manichxean Disparagement of the
Sanctity of Marriage — The Theory arises from Apollinarian Tendencies — Theory of
Epiphanius — Derived from the Apocryphal Gospels — Their Absurdities and Dis
crepancies — Conclusion  265
CHAPTER XX.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ST. JAMES.
Inimitable Truthfulness of Scripture Narrative— Childhood and Training of St. James—
A Boy's Education— "A Just Man "— Levitic Precision— The Home at Nazareth —
Familiarity with Scripture — " Wisdom "—Knowledge of Apocryphal Books— Curious
Phenomenon— A Nazarite— Scrupulous Holiness — A Lifelong Vow— Shadows over the
Home at Nazareth— Alienation of Christ's "Brethren" — Their Interferences — His
Calm and Gentle Rebukes— Their Last Interference— Their Complete Conversion — Due
to the Resurrection — " He was Seen of James " — Legend in the Gospel of the Hebrews
— St. James and St. Paul — Death of the Son of Zebedee— James, Bishop of Jerusalem
—Deep Reverence for his Character— Obliam — St. James and St. Peter — Bearing of St.
James in the Synod of Jerusalem — Wisdom which he Showed — Importance of the
Question at Stake — HisJDecision — Its Results — " Certain from James " — A Favourite
of the Ebionites — Judaic Type of his Character and of his Views — The Results of his *
Training — (( The Just " — Title which he Adopts — Unfortunate Advice to St. Paul —
Martyrdom of St. James— Josephus — Hegesippus— Narrative of Hegesippus — Talmudic
Legends of St. James — Rapid Retribution  280
CHAPTER XXL
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES.
Canonicity of St. James — Judaic Tone of Thoiight — Absence of , Distinctively Christian
Dogmas — Luther's Rash Assertion— Ideal of St. James— Readers whom he had in View
— Date of the Epistle — Where Written— Phenomena of the Epistle Explained by its
Palestinian Origin— State of the Jewish Church at Jerusalem — Tyrannous Sadducean
Priests— Maledictions against them' in the Talmud— Their Greed and Luxury— St.
James in Writing to Christians was Thinking partly of Jews— And his Words would be
Respected by Jews as well as Christians— Asserted Essenism and Ebionism of St.
James— Orphic Colouring — Style of St. James— Outline of the Epistle— Its one Pre-
dorninant Thought— Controversial Aspect — Parties in the Christian Church— A Last
Appeal to Jews — Uniqueness of the Epistle — Its Usefulness and Grandeur . . . 307
CHAPTER XXTT.
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES.
The Title which he Adopts— The Dispersion— The Greeting— Translation and Notes-
Temptation and Trial— Need of Wisdom— Need of Prayer— Address to Rich and Poor
—Meaning of the Words addressed, to them— Transitoriness of Riches— Blessing of
Endurance— God always in the Meridian— A Pregnant Clause— The True Ritual-
Respect of Persons— Justification by Works— Translation and Notes— Oracular Egotism
—Sins of the Tongue — Heavenly Wisdom — Translation and Notes— State of the
Christian Communities— St. James is Thinking of Jerusalem— False Religionism—
"The Spirit that Dwelleth in us Lusteth to Envy" — Various Exhortations— Over-
confidence— Denunciation .of Greed— Of Whom is he Thinking ?— Sadducean Hierarchs—
The Impending Doom— The Murder of the "Just One"— Despised Warnings— Last
Exhortations— Efficacy of Prayer— Perversion of the Passage— A Last Exhortation . 324
CHAPTER XXni.
ST. JAMES AND ST. PAUL ON FAITH AND WORKS.
St. Paul and St. James Contrasted— Is there a Real Contradiction ?— Views of the Tubingen
School— Is St. James thinking of St. Paul at all?— The Questions often Discussed-
Jewish Reliance on the Benefit of Theoretic Monotheism— On Circumcision— On
National Privileges — On Externalism Generally— St. James probably Intended to
Correct Perversions of Pauline Teaching— St. Paul's Views Misrepresented even in his
Lifetime, and still often Perverted — No Intention to Refute St. Paul— Is the
Language of the Apostles Reconcilable ?— They are using the same Words in Different

T CONTENTS. PAGH
Senses—" Faith " in St. Paul and in St. James—" Works " in St. Paul and in St. James
—•' Justification " in St. Paul and in St. James — Illustrations drawn from different
Periods in the Life of Abraham — St. Paul was Dealing with the Vanity of Legalism, St.
James with the Vanity of Orthodoxy— Fundamental Agreement between the two
Apostles shown by what they say of Faith and of Works in other Passages — No Bitter
Controversy between them— They used Different Expressions, and looked on Chris-
tianity from Different Points of View — What Both would have Accepted — Blessing of
Truth revealed under Many Lights  349

93oo6. V.
THE EARLIER LIFE AND WORKS OF ST. JOHN.
CHAPTEE XXIV.
ST. JOHN.
The Pillar-Apostles — Individuality of Each — St. Paul Meets them at Jerusalem — The
Special Work of St. John — His Growth in Spiritual Enlightenment — Continuity of his
Godliness— His Boyhood — A Disciple of the Baptist — His Natural Gifts — Independence
of Galileans— Messianic Hopes — Becomes a Disciple of Jesus — Why St. John Lived at
Jerusalem — Teaching of the Baptist — Was St. John Married? — "Follow Me" —
Belonged to the Innermost Group of Apostles— Not Ideally Faultless — He had Much
to Unlearn — His Exclusiveness — His Intolerance at En Gannim — Mixture of Humane
• Motives with His Zeal — "As Elias did" — " Te Know not what Spirit ye are of"—
Christ's Last Journey to Jerusalem— Ambition of the Sons of Zebedee — The Cup and
the Baptism— Leaning on the Lord's Bosom— Flight at Gethsemane— The Earliest to
Rejoin This Lord — In the High Priest's Palace— A Witness of the Trials — A Witness of
the Crucifixion — "Behold thy Mother!" — "To his own Home " — Blood and Water —
At the Tomti — A Witness of the Resurrection — On the Lake of Galilee—" If I Will that
he Tarry till I Come" — Mistaken Interpretation of the Words  362
CHAPTEE XXV.
LIFE OS1 ST. JOHN AFTER THE ASCENSION.
In the Upper Eoom— Healing of the Cripple — Threatened and Scourged— With Peter in
Samaria — Tears of Contemplation — Once Mentioned by St. Paul — At the Synod of ~
Jerusalem — A Judaist — Recognised the Mission of St. Paul — Took no Part in the
Debate — No further Records of him in Scripture — At Patmos — Date of this Banishment
—Causes which led to his Departure from Jerusalem — Legends of his Banishment to
Patmos— The Boiling Oil and the Poison— Was he ever at Rome ?— Certainty that he
Resided in Asia Minor—" The Nebulous Presbyter '—John the Presbyter was John the
Apostle — The Quartodeciman Controversy— Greek of the Apocalypse — Eevealing
Effect of the Fall of Jerusalem— The Apocalypse Judaic in Tone— St. John at Ephesus
—Patmos  .381
CHAPTEE XXVX
LEGENDS OP ST. JOHN.
Legend of his Meeting Cen'nthus at the Thermoe— Reasons for believing the Story to be a
mere Invention— Spirit of Religious Intolerance in which the Story Originated— Strange
Legend about the Messianic (.rapes— Credulity of Papias— Possible Explanation of the
Story— Error of Ireneeus— Vehemence of Polycarp— Legend of St. John aud the Robber
—Legend ot St. John and the Tame Partridge— Tenderness to Animals— St John and
the Petalon— Other Legeuds— St. John's Last Sermons— Legends of the Death of St
John — Legends of his Immortality  39^
CHAPTEE XXVII.
GENERAL FEATURES OF THE APOCALYPSE.
The Earliest of St. John's Books— What we Lose by the Unohronblogical Arrangement of
the Book— The Apocalypse Written before the Fall of Jerusalem— Impossibility that it
should have been Written after the Gospel .  4A4
Section I.— Dato of (he Apocalypse.— The Apocalypse could Not have been Written in the
Time of Domition— Possible Causes of the Error of Irenueus— Key to the Apocalypse
found in the Neronian Persecution— Why the Book has been so grievously Misunderstood

CONTENTS. XV
PAG1
— Theological Romances of Commentary — The Neronian Persecution and the Jewish
War — Lesson of the Apocalypse — Nero the Antichrist — Nero amid the Ashes of Rome—
Ail Apocalypses deal with Events on^the Contemporary Horizon — Outbreak of the
Jewish War — The Temple still Standing— The Plight of the Christians to Pella — Tne
Date of the Apocalypse Implied in Rev. xiii. 3, and xvii. 10, 11 — Written in the Reign of
Galba — Or possibly a little later — The Woes of the Messiah— The Doom of Rome . . 407
Section II. — The lievoltnfjudcea. — Delinquencies of Pilate — Threatening Symptoms — Hatred
of the Jews for the Eomans — The Air full of Prodigies — Wickedness of Gessius Plorus
— Insolence of the Greeks at Csesarea — Disgraceful Tyranny of Plorus — The Jews Appeal
to Cestius Gallus — Rise of the Zealots — Seizure of tbe Tower of Antonia — Epidemic of
Mass icre — March of Cestius Gallus — His Pusillanimity — His Defeat at Bethhoron —
Vespasian Despatched to Judeea — Leading Citizens Involved in the Revolt — Josephus
in Galilee— Siege of Jotapata — Massacres — Siege of Gamala — Mount Tabor — Giscala—
Atrocities of the Zealots in Jerusalem — The Idumeans Admitted — Horrible Orgies —
Advance of Vespasian Marked by fresh ' Massacres — A River of Blood — Increasing
Horrors — Factions in Jerusalem — Dreadful Condition of the City — Aspect of the World
— Physically— Morally— Socially— Politically — Incessant Civil Wars— General Terror —
The Era of Martyrdoms— Style, Metaphors, and Meaning of the Apocalypse— Dislike
felt for the Book— Accounted for by the Perversions to which it has been subjected—
Strange Systems* of Interpretation — The Prseterists — The Futurists — The Historical
Interpreters — Gleams of Tradition as to the True View of the Book — Increasing Con
viction that it Dealt with Events mainly Contemporary — Multitudes of Fantastic
Guesses — Their Extreme Diversity— Essential Sacredness of the Book— Apocalyptic
Literature — Necessity for its Cryptographic Form  415
CHAPTER XXVIH.
THE APOCALYPSE.
St. John "The Theologian"  ... . 437
Section I.— The Letters to the Sevan Churches, — Only a1 Rapid Outline of the Apocalypse
offered — Sections of the Book — The Seven Churches— The Letters Normally Sevenfold—
Th ,i Letter to Ephesus, &c. — The Heresies alluded to — Theory that- they are Aimed at
the Followers of St. Paul — Absurdity of the Theory — The Nicolaitans — " The Depths of
Satan '* — " The False Apostles " — Volkmar — The Tubingen School — Extravagant
Opinions   438
Section II.— The Seals.— The Vision— The First Seal— The White Horse: The Messiah—
The Second Seal— The Red Horse : Slaughter— The Third Seal— The Black Horse :
Famine— " The Oil and the Wine " — The Fourth Seal — The Livid Horse: Pestilence —
The Fifth Seal — The Cry for Vengeance — The Sixth Seal — Universal Catastrophe —
Apocalyptic Style— The Pause— The Sealing of the 144,000— Symbols Iterative and
Progressive ....... ..... .... . . 443
Section in.— The Trumpets.— The Censer Hurled to Earth— The First Trumpet— Storms,
Earthquakes, Portents— The Second Trumpet — Tho Burning Mountain and the Sea
Turned into Blood— The Third Trumpet -The Star Absinth— The Fourth Trumpetr—
The Suiting of Sun, Moon, and Stars— The Eagle screaming "Woe!"— The Fifth
Trumpet— The Fallen Star— The Scorpion-Locusts— The Sixth Trumpet — Two Hundred
Million Horsemen ....  450
Section IV.-r-.4n Episode.— The Sunlike Angel— The Seven Thunders— The Book— The
Measuring— Character of the Symbols — The Two Witnesses — The Earthquake- Diffi
culties of Interpretation— Remarks on these Visions  4*55
Section V.—The Wild Beast from, the Sea,.— The Star-Crowned Woman; the Child; the
Dragon— Meaning of the Symbols— Flight of the Church to Pella— Certainty that by
the Wild Beast from the Sea is mainly meant the Emperor Nero— The Sixteen Dis
tinctive Indications — Every one of them Points Directly to Nero and the Roman Empire
—Especially in those Particulars which seem most Enigmatical—Widespread Belief
among Christians that Nero would Return — The Number of tbe Beast— Sole Element of
Difficulty— Ancient Guesses— Its Kabbalistic Character— Its Certain Solution — Common
ness of these Isopsephic Enigmas — The Solution Confirmed by the Ancient Various
Readings— The Belief about Nero Redwivus—A priori Dogmas— Domitian was a Nero
Rediwvviis .  461
Section VI.— The Second Beast and the False Prophet.— Absence of Definite Traditions—
' 'm Indications as to the Person Intended— Idle Guesses— Various Conjectures — The
Roman Augurial System— Simon Magus— Probability that Vespasian was Intended-
Remarkable Adaptation to him of every one of the Ten Indications, even in the most
unexpected Particulars— Possibility that it is a Composite Symbol— Nero and Domitian
¦ — The Name " Nero " often given to Domitian  • .474
Section VII.— The Vials.— The Remainder of the Apocalypse— The Vials— The Seventh
Vial— Judgment of the Harlot City— Psean over the Fall of Babylon— General Con-
oeption of the Apocalypse  ; • • «

XVI CONTENTS.
CHAPTEE XXIX.
THE FALL OF JERUSALEM. , PAGI
Sources of the History— Advance of Titus— Eage and Despair of the Jews— Destruction of
the Temple — Massacre and Devastation — A Second Advent— Close of the iEon —
Tremendous Significance of the Eveut— Eightly Apprehended by Ancient Christian
Historians— Effects of the Event on the Mind of St. John— How he came to Write the
Apocalypse — Eesemblance and Differences of the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel . 486
CHAPTEE XXX
THE GROWTH OF HERESY.
The Growth of Heresy Gradual— Original Meaning of the "Word— Eeal and Imaginary
Heretics — Sources of Heresy— Sects — Jewish Sects — Strange Vitality of Judaism —
Eabbinism— A Nomocracy — Jewish Sects — Nazarenes — Ebionites — Gentile Sects —
Simon Magus — Legends of him— An Antichrist — Cerinthus— His Errors — Gradual Eise
of Docetism — Gnostic Systems — Gnostics before Gnosticism — Opposite Tendencies —
How St. John met Heresy .  494
CHAPTEE XXXE.
LATER WRITINGS OF ST. JOHN.
The First Epistle of St. John — Christianity had Entered on a New Phase — Speculations
and Errors — St. John's Method of Argument — The Incarnation of the Divine —
Tradition about the Gospel — The Last of the Apostles — A New Era — Supreme Utter
ances — Righteousness, Sonship, Sanctification  504
CHAPTEE XXXII
THE STAMP OF FINALITY OK THE WRITINGS OF ST. JOHN
St. John sets the Seal to Former Eevelations — Stamp of Finality upon his Writings — The
Idea of Eternity — The Logos — " God is Eighteous " — " God is Light" — " God is Love"
— Importance of these Utterances — Simplification of Essential Elements— St. Paul and
St. John— The Gospel— The Epistle -Where Written— Tradition— Tone of the Epistle
— Dangers which St. John Contemplates— Calm of the Style  509
CHAPTEE XXXLII.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MIND AND STYLE OF ST. JOHN.
His Contemplativeness— His Eepose — His Style— His Sternness— How Accounted for — The
Personal Question — Ideas of Eighteousness and Love  519
CHAPTEE XXXTV.
OBJECT AND OUTLINE OF THE FIRST EPISTLE.
Object of the Epistle— Not Aphoristic— First Attempts at Analysis— Full Analysis of the
Epistle, showing its Eemarkable Symmetry — Illustrates the Characteristics of his
Methods— Prevalent Triplicity of Arrangement — Certain Genuineness of the Epistle—
An Epistle not a Treatise  525
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.
Section I.— Eternal Life. — Translation and Notes— Introductory Theme — An Apparent
Contradiction — " God is Light" — Meaning of the Phrase— " Walking in Light" 
Translation, Notes, Comments — Propitiation — Prevalent Misunderstandings as
to the Style and Manner of St. John — Symmetries of Statement — Parallels
— " Knowing God "—Love—" Abiding in God ''—The New and Old Commandment— In
what sense "New" and "Old"— The Ideal and the Actual— A Test of Professions—
"Little Children, Fathers, Young Men "—Meaning of the Passage— Warnins; against
Love of the World— What is Meant by " Antichrist " — Prevalence of Antichrists '
—The Unction from the Holy Spirit is the Christian's Seourity— Abiding in the
Truth.— Eternal Life  533
Section II. — Tho Confidence of Sonsiiip.— Confidence of Sonship a Sign that we Possess
Eternal Life— The "Manifestation" of Christ— " Children of God"— How it will be
Tested— Translation and Notes— Awful Conceptions of Sin— Severity of Language —

CONTENTS. XVll
*- PAGE
Doing Righteousness— Love to Man the Purpose of Revelation— Cain— Christ— Perfect
Love— Difficult Recapitulation— Self-condemnation — God's Judgments— Confidence to
wards God— Last Discourses of Christ  • .... 546
Section III.— The Source of Sonship.—" Abide in Him "—Denial of Christ— " Testing the
Spirits " — Confessing " Christ come in the Flesh "—Interesting Variation of Reading —
"What is meant by " Severing Jesus "—Argument for the Genuineness of the Reading—
The Recognition of God — "God is Love" — Summary and Gathering up of the leading
Conceptions  .... 554
Section TV.— Assurance. — The Witnesses— Spurious Verse— The Water and the Blood-
Sevenfold "Witnesses in the Gospel— Witnesses in the Epistle— No Direct Allusion to
the Sacraments — Distinct Reference to the Crucifixion — Meaning of the Passage — Con
firmation of the Divine Testimony .... ...... 561
Section V. — Conclusion. — Recapitulation— Aim of the Epistle— Prayer — " The Sin unto
Death" — No One Definite Sin — Desperate Apostasy — The Prayer Not Forbidden —
Parallels in the Old Testament — "Delivering to Satan" — The Limitation belongs to
the Realm of the Ideal— Rabbi Meier— Prayer for all Men— Conclusion of the Epistle —
" Little Children, keep yourselves from Idols "  567
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE SECOND EPISTLE OP ST. JOHN.
Brief Christian Epistles— Probability of their Genuineness— External Evidence— Internal
Evidence— John the Elder — To whom was the Second Epistle addressed— Electa ? —
Kyria ?— A Lady or a Church ? — Theory of Bishop Wordsworth— Founded on very
Uncertain Hypothesis — Theories of German Critics — Fantastic and Untenable — Impro
bability of the Letter being Addressed to a Church — The Address better understood in
its Simplest Sense — Where the Letter was "Written — Analysis — Translation and Notes — '
Keynotes of the Letter — Wrong Use made of One Passage— Sin of Dogmatic Intolerance
— Hatred can never be a Christian Virtue— "What St. John really Meant .... 575
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE THIRD EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN,
Gains — Commonness of the Name — Object of the Letter— Translation and Notes — Filioli,
diligite alterutrum  589

APPENDIX.
Excursus I. — Asserted Primacy of St. Peter ....••••.. 593
Excuesus H. — Patristic Evidence of St. Peter's Visit to Rome ...*.. 594
Excursus m. — Use of the name " Babylon " for Rome in 1 Peter, v. 13 . . . • . 595
Excuesus IV.— The Book of Enoch  597
Excursus V. — Rabbinic Allusions in St. Jude ..".••¦••. 598
Excursus VX— Specimens of Philonian Allegory  .600
Excursus VII.— Additional Illustrations of Philo's Views about the Logos .... 602
Excursus VIII. — Patristic Evidence as to the Authorsliip of the Epistle to the Hebrews . 603
Excuesus LX.— Minor Resemblances between the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Works
of Philo ...  611
Excuesus X. — " Salem " and Jerusalem  612
Excubsus XL — The Altar of Incense and the Holiest Place •  613
Excursus XH.— Ceremonies of the Day of Atonement  614
Excuesus XTTT, — Impressions left on the Minds of the Jews by the Ceremonies of the Day
of Atonement  615
Excuesus XTV.— The Identity of " John the Presbyter " with John the Apostle • • .618

THE
Early Days of Christianity.
Book J.
THE WOELD.

CHAPTER I.
MORAL CONDITION OF THE WORLD.

" Quern vocet divum populus mentis *
Imperi rebus ? prece qua f atigent
Virgines sanetae minus audientem
Carmina Vestam ? "
— Hok. Od. I. ii. 25.
" Nona aetas agitur pejoraque saecula ferri
Temporibus, quorum sceleri non inyenit ipsa
Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo."
— Jnv. Sat. xiii. 28—30.
" From Mummius to Augustus the Eoman city stands as the living mistress of a
dead world, and from Augustus to Theodosius the mistress becomes as lifeless as her
subjects." — Freeman's Essays, ii. 330.
The epoch which witnessed the early growth of Christianity was an
epoch of which the horror and the degradation have rarely been
equalled, and perhaps never exceeded, in the annals of mankind. Were
we to form our sole estimate of it from the lurid picture of its wicked
ness, which St. Paul in more than one passage has painted with a few
powerful strokes, we might suppose that we were judging it from too
lofty a standpoint. We might be accused of throwing too dark a
shadow upon the crimes of Paganism, when we set it as a foil
to the lustre of an ideal holiness. But even if St. Paul had
never paused amid his sacred reasonings to affix his terrible brand
upon the pride of Heathenism, there would still have been abundant
proofs of the abnormal wickedness which accompanied the decadence
of ancient civilisation. They are stamped upon its coinage, cut on. its
gems, painted upon its chamber-walls, sown broadcast over the pages of
its poets, satirists, and historians. "Out of thine own mouth will I
B

& THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
judge thee, thou wicked servant ! " Is there any age which stands so
instantly condemned by the bare mention of its rulers as that which
recalls the successive names of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, Galba,
Otho, and Vitellius, and which after a brief gleam of better examples
uflder Vespasian and Titus, sank at last under the hideous tyranny of
a Domitian 1 Is there any age of which the evil characteristics force
themselves so -instantaneously upon the mind as that of which we
mainly learn the history and moral condition from the relics of Pompeii
and Herculaneum, the satires of Persius and Juvenal, the epigrams of
Martial, and the terrible records of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion
Cassius % And yet even beneath this lowest deep, there is a lower deep ;
for not even on their dark pages are the depths of Satan so shamelessly
laid bare to human gaze as they are in the sordid fictions of Petronius
and of Apuleius. But to dwell Upon the crimes and the retributive
misery of that period is happily not my duty. I need but make a
passing allusion to its enormous wealth ; its unbounded self-indulgence ;
its coarse and tasteless luxury ; its greedy avarice ; its sense of in
security and terror ; 2 its apathy, debauchery, and cruelty ; : its hopeless
fatalism ; 3 its unspeakable sadness and weariness ; 4 its strange extra
vagances alike of infidelity and of superstition.5
At the lowest extreme of the social scale were millions of slaves,
without family, without religion, without possessions, who had no
recognised rights, and towards whom none had any recognised duties,
passing normally from a childhood of degradation to a manhood of
hardship, and an old age of unpitied neglect.6 Only a little above the
slaves stood the lower classes, who formed the vast majority of the
freeborn inhabitants of the Soman Empire. They were, for the most
1 2 Cor. vii. 10; " Interciderat sortis humanae commercium vi metus," Tac. Ann.
vi. 19; "Pavor internus occupaverat animos," id. iv. 76. See the very remarkable
passage of Pliny ("At Hercule homini plurima ex homine mala sunt," H. N. vii. 1).
2 Mart. Ep. ii. 66 ; Juv. vi. 491.
_ 3 Lucan, Phars. i. 70, 81 ; Suet. Tib. 69 ; Tao. Agric. 42 ; Ann. iii. 18, ir. 26 ; "Sed
mihi haec et talia audienti in incerto judicium est, f atone res mortalium et ¦ necessitate
immutabili an forte volvantur," Ann. vi. 22 ; Plin. H. N. ii. 7 ; Sen. De Bene}', iv. 7.
4 Tacitus, with all his resources, finds it difficult to vary his language in describing so
many suicides;
5 See my Witness of History to Christ, p. 101 ; Seekers after God, p. 38. The
" taurobolies " and "kriobolies" (baths in the blood of bulls and rams) mark the
extreme sensuality of superstition. See Dollinger, Gentile and Jew, ii. 179; De
Pressense, Trois Premiers Siecles, ii. 1 — 60, etc.
6 Some of the loci classici on Eoman slavery are : Cie. De Rep. xiv. 23 ; Juv. vi. 219,
x. 183, xiv. 16—24 ; Sen. Ep. 47 ; De Ira, iii. 35, 40 ; De Clem. 18 ; Controv. v. 33 ; De
VU- Beat. 17 ; Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 11 ; Plut. Cato, 21. Vedius Pollio and the lampreys
(Plin. H. N. ix. 23). In the debate on the murder of Pedanius Secundus (Tac. Ann.
xiv. 42 — 45) many eminent senators openly advocated the brutal law that when a master
was murdered, his slaves, often to the number of hundreds, should be put to death.
These facts, and many others, will be found collected in Wallon, De VEsclavage dam
VAntiquiU ; Friedlander, Siltengesch. Ronis ; Becker, Gallus, E. T. 199— 225 ; Dollinger,
Judenth. u. Heidenth. ix. 1, § 2. It is reckoned that in the Empire there cannot have
been fewer than 60,000,000 slaves (Le Maistre, Du Pape, i. 283). They were so
numerous as to be divided according to their nationalities (Tao. Ann. iii. 53), and every
slave was regarded as a potential enemy (Sen. Ep. xlvii.).

THE SLAVES. 3
part, beggars and idlers, familiar with the grossest indignities of an
unscrupulous dependence. Despising a life of honest industry, they
asked only for bread and the games of the circus, and were ready to
support any Government, even the most despotic, if it would supply
these needs. They spent their mornings in lounging about the Forum,
or in dancing attendance at the levees of patrons, for a share in whose
largesses they daily struggled.1 They spent their afternoons and evenings
in gossiping at the Public Baths, in listlessly enjoying the polluted
plays of the theatre, or looking with fierce thrills of delighted horror
at the bloody sports of the arena. At night they crept up to their
miserable garrets in the sixth and1 seventh storeys of the huge insulae —
the lodging houses of Rome — into which, as into the low lodging-
houses of the poorer quarters of London, there drifted all that was
most wretched and most vile.2 Their life, as it is described for us
by their contemporaries, was largely made up of squalor, misery, and
vice. Immeasurably removed from these needy and greedy freemen, and
living chiefly amid crowds of corrupted and obsequious slaves, stood the
constantly diminishing throng of the wealthy and the noble.3 Every
age in its decline has exhibited the spectacle of selfish luxury side by
side with abject poverty ; of —
" "Wealth, a monster gorged
Mid starving populations : " — •
but nowhere, and at no period, were these contrasts so startling as they
were in Imperial Rome. There a whole population might be trembling
lest they should be starved by the delay of an Alexandrian corn-ship,
while the upper classes were squandering a fortune at a single banquet,4
drinking out of myrrhine and jewelled vases worth hundreds of pounds,"
and feasting on the brains of peacocks and the tongues of nightingales.6
As a consequence, disease was rife, men were short-lived, and even
i Suet. Ner. 16 ; Mart. iv. 8, viii. 50 ; Juv. i. 100, 128, iii. 269, etc.
2 Juv. Sat. iii. 60 — 65 ; Athen. i. 17, § 36 ; Tac. Ann. xv. 44, " quo cuncta undique
atrocia aut pudenda confluunt ; " Vitruv. ii. 8 ; Suet. Ner. 38. There were 44,000
insulae in Bome to only 1,780 domus (Becker, Gallus, E. T., p. 232).
. 3 Among the 1,200,000 inhabitants of ancient Bome, even in Cicero's time, there
were scarcely 2,000 proprietors (Cie. De Off. ii. 21).
4 See Tac. Ann. iii. 55. 400,000 sesterces (Juv. xi. 19). Taking the standard of
100,000 sesterces to be in the Augustan age £1,080 (which is a little below the calculation
of Hultsch), this would be £4,320. 30,000,000 sesterces (Sen. Ep. xcv. ; Sen. ad. Helv.
9). In the days of Tiberius three mullets had sold for 30,000 sesterces (Suet. Tib. 34).
Even in the days of Pompey Eomans had adopted the disgusting practice of preparing
for a dinner by taking an emetic. Vitellius set on the table at one banquet 2,000 fishes
and 7,00Q birds, and in less than eight months sf>ent in feasts a sum that would now
amount to several millions.
6 Plin. H. N. viii. 48, xxxvii. 18.
6 " Portenta luxuriae," Sen. Ep. ex. ; Plin. H. N. ix. 18, 32, x. 51, 72. Petron. 93 ;
Juv. xi. 1—55, v. 92—100 ; Macrob. Sat. iii. 12, 13 ; Sen. Ep. lxxxix. 21 ; Mart. Ep.
lxx. 5; Lampridius, Elagab. 20; Suet. Vitell. 13. On the luxury of the age in general,
see Sen. De Brev. VU. 12; Ep. xcv. ,

4

THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

women became liable to gout.1 Over a large part of Italy most of the
freeborn population had to content themselves, even in winter, with a
tunic, and the luxury of the toga was reserved only, by way of honour,
to the corpse.2 Yet at this very time the dress of Roman ladies dis
played an unheard-of splendour. The elder Pliny tells us that he
himself saw Lollia Paulina dressed for a betrothal feast in a robe entirely
covered with pearls and emeralds, which had cost forty million sesterces,3
and which was known to be less costly than some of her other dresses.4
Gluttony, caprice, extravagance, ostentation, impurity, rioted in the
heart of a society which knew of no other means by which to break
the monotony of its weariness, or alleviate the anguish of its despair.
" On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell ;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Eoman noble lay ;
He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian "Way ;
He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers-
No easier nor no quicker past
The impracticable hours."
At the summit of the whole decaying system — necessary, yet
detested — elevated indefinitely above the very highest, yet living in
dread of the very lowest, oppressing a population which he terrified,
and terrified by the population which he oppressed5 — was an Emperor,
raised to the divinest pinnacle of autocracy, yet conscious that his life
hung upon a thread ;6 — an Emperor who, in the terrible phrase of
Gibbon, was at once a priest, an atheist, and a god.7
The general condition of society was such as might have been ex
pected from the existence of these elements. The Romans had entered
on a stage of fatal degeneracy from the first day of their close inter
course with Greece.8 Greece learnt from Rome her cold-blooded
cruelty ; Rome learnt from Greece her voluptuous corruption. Family
1 Sen. Ep. xcv. 15 — 29. At Herculaneum many of the rolls discovered were cookery
books. 2 Juv. i. 171 ; Mart. ix. 58, 8.
s £432,000.
4 Pliny, S. If. ix. 35, 56. He also saw Agrippina in a robe of gold tissue, id.
xxxiii. 19.
6 Juv. iv. 153 ; Suet. Domit. 17.
6 Tac. Ann. vi. 6 ; Suet. Claud. 35.
• " Coelium decretum," Tac. Ann. i. 73 ; " Dis aequa potestas Caesarls," Juv. iv. 71 ;
Plin. Paneg. 74—5, " Civitas nihil felicitati suae putat adstrui, posse nisi ut Di Caesarem
imitentur." (Cf. Suet. Jul. 88; Tib. 13, 58; Aug. 59; Calig 33; Vesp. 23 Domit. 13).
Lncan, vii. 456 ; Philo, Leg. ad Gaium passim ; Dion Cass, lxiii. 5, 20 ; Martial, passim;
Tert. Apol. 33, 34 ; Boissier, La Rei. Romaine, i. 122 — 208.
8 The degeneracy is specially traceable in their literature from the days of Plautus
onwards.

FAMILY LIFE. 5
life among the Romans had once been a sacred thing, and for 520 years
divorce had been unknown among them.1 Under the Empire marriage
had come to be regarded with disfavour and disdain3 Women, as
Seneca says, married in order to be divorced, and were divorced in- order
to marry ; and noble Roman matrons counted the years not by the
Consuls, but by their discarded or discarding husbands.3
To have a family was regarded as a misfortune, because the childless
were courted with extraordinary assiduity by crowds of fortune-hunters.4
When there were children in a family, their education was left to be
begun under the tutelage of those slaves who were otherwise the most
decrepit and useless,5 and was carried on, with results too fatally
obvious, by supple, accomplished, and abandoned Greeklings.6 But,
indeed, no system of education could have eradicated the influence of
the domestic circle. No care7 could have prevented the sons and
daughters of a wealthy family from catching the contagion of the
vices of which they saw in their parents a constant and unblushing
example.8 Literature and art were infected with the prevalent degradation.
Poetry sank in great measure into exaggerated satire, hollow declama
tion, or frivolous epigrams. Art was partly corrupted by the fondness
for glare, expensiveness, and size,9 and partly sank into miserable
triviality, or immoral prettinesses,10 such as those which decorated the
walls of Pompeii in the first century, and the Pare aux Cerfs in the
eighteenth. Greek statues of the days of Phidias were ruthlessly
decapitated, that their heads might be replaced by the scowling or imbe
cile features of a Gains or a Claudius. Nero, professing to be a con
noisseur, thought that he improved the Alexander of Lysimachus by
gilding it from head to foot. Eloquence, deprived of every legitimate
aim, and used almost solely for purposes of insincere display, was
tempted to supply the lack of genuine fire by sonorous euphony and
1 The first Boman recorded to have divorced his wife was Sp. Carvilius Buga,
B.C. 234 (Dionys. ii. 25 ; Aul. Gell. xvii. 21).
2 Hor. Od. hi. 6, 17. "Baraque in hoc aevo quae velit esse parens," Ov. Nux. 15.
Hence the Lex Papia Poppaea, the Jus trium liberorum, etc. Suet. Oct. 34 ; Aul. Gell.
i. 6. See Champagny, Les Chars, i. 258, seq.
3 " Non consilium numero sed maritorum annos suos computant," Sen. De Benef.
iii. 16; "Bepudium jam votum erat, et quasi matrimonii fructus," Tert. Apol. 6;
"Corrumpere et corrumpi saeculum vocatur," Tac. Germ, .19. Comp. Suet. Calixj. 34.
4 Tac. Germ. 20 ; Ann. xiii. 52 ; Plin. if. N. xiv. procem; Sen. ad Marc. Consol. 19 ;
Plin. Epp. iv. 16 ; Juv. Sat. xii. 114, seq.
5 Plut. De Lib. Educ.
6 Juv. vii. 187, 219.
7 Juv. Sat. xiv.
8 Juv. Sat. xiv. passim; Tac. De Orat. 28, 29; Quinct. i. 2; Sen. De Ira, ii. 22;
Ep. 95.
» It was the age of Colossi (Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 7; Mart. Ep. i. 71, viii. 44; Stat. ,
Sylv. i. 1, etc.).
10 "pio^o-ypai/>i«t. Cie. Att. xv. 16 ; Plin. xxxv. 37. See Champagny, Les Chars, iv.
138, who refers to Vitruv. vii. 5 ; Propert. ii. 5 ; Plin. S. N. xiv. 22, and xxxv. 10 (the
painter Arellius, etc.).

0 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
theatrical affectation. A training in rhetoric was now understood to be
a training in the art of emphasis and verbiage, which was rarely used for
any loftier purpose than to make sycophancy plausible, or to embellish
sophistry with speciousness.1 The Drama, even in Horace's days, had
degenerated into a vehicle for the exhibition of scenic splendour or inge
nious machinery. Dignity, wit, pathos, were no longer expected on the
stage, for the dramatist was eclipsed by the swordsman or the rope-
dancer.2 The actors who absorbed the greatest part of popular favour
were pantomimists, whose insolent prosperity was generally in direct
proportion to the infamy of their character.3 And while the shameless-
ness of the theatre corrupted the purity of all classes from the earliest
age,4 the hearts of the multitude were made hard as the nether millstone
with brutal insensibility, by the fury of the circus, the atrocities of the
amphitheatre, and the cruel orgies of the games.6 Augustus, in the |
document annexed to his will, mentioned that he had exhibited 8,000
gladiators and 3,510 wild beasts. The old warlike spirit of the Romans
was dead among the gilded youth of families in which distinction of any
kind was certain to bring down upon its most prominent members the
murderous suspicion of irresponsible despots. . The spirit which had
once led the Domitii and the Fabii "to drink delight of battle with
their peers " on the plains of Gaul and in the forests of Germany, was
now satiated by gazing on criminals fighting for dear life with bears and
tigers, or upon bands of gladiators who hacked each other to pieces on
the encrimsoned sand.6 The languid enervation of the delicate and dis
solute aristocrat could only be amused by magnificence and stimulated
by grossness or by blood.7 Thus the gracious illusions by which true
Art has ever aimed at purging the passions of terror and pity, were ex
tinguished by the realism of tragedies ignobly horrible, and comedies
intolerably base. Two phrases sum up the characteristics of Roman
1 Tao. Dial. 36—41 ; Ann. xv. 71 ; Sen. Ep. ovi. 12 ; Petron. Satyr, i. : Dion
Oass. lix. 20.
2 Juv. xiv. 250 ; Suet. Nero, 11 ; Galb. 6.
, s Mnester (Tac. Ann. xi. 4, 36) ; Paris (Juv. vi. 87, vii. 88) ; Aliturus (Jos. Vit. 3) ;
Pylades (Zosim. i. 6) ; Bathyllus (Dion Cass. liv. 17 ; Tac. Ann. i. 54).
4 Isidor. xviii. 39.
5 "Mera homicidia sunt," Sen. Ep. vii. 2 ; "Nihil est nobis . . . cum insania circi,
cum impudicitia theatri, cum atrocitate arenae, cum vanitate xysti," Tert. Apol. 38.
Cicero inclined to the prohibition of games which imperilled life (De Legg. ii. 15), and
Seneca (I.e.) expressed his compassionate disapproval, and exposed the falsehood and
sophism of the plea that after all, the suiferers were only criminals. Yet in the days of
Claudius the number of those thus butchered was so great that the statue of Augustus
had to be moved that it might not constantly be covered with a veil (Dion Cass. Ix. 13
who in the same chapter mentions a lion that had been trained to devour men). ' In
Claudius's sham sea-fight we are told that the incredible number of 19,000 men fought
each other (Tac. Ann. xii. 56). Titus, the "darling of the human race," in one day
brought into the theatre 5,000 wild beasts (Suet. Tit. 7), and butchered thou-ands of
Jews in the games at Berytus. In Trajan's games (Dion Oass. lxviii. 15) 11,000 animals
and 10,000 men had to fisjlit.
6 Suet. Claud. 14, 21, 34 ; Ner. 12 ; Calig. 35 ; Tac. Ann. xiii. 49 ; Plin. Paneg. 33
7 Tac. Ann. xv. 32.

THE SENATE. 7
civilisation in the days of the Empire — heartless cruelty, and unfathom
able corruption.1 >
If there had been a refuge anywhere for the sentiments of outraged
virtue and outraged humanity, we might have hoped to find it in the
Senate, the members of which were heirs of so many noble and austere
traditions. But — even in the days of Tiberius — the Senate, as Tacitus
tells us, had rushed headlong into the most servile flattery,2 and this
would not have been possible if its members had not been tainted by
the prevalent deterioration. It was before the once grave and pure-
minded Senators of Rome — the greatness of whose state was founded on
the sanctity of family relationships — that the Censor Metellus had de
clared in a.u.C. 602, without one dissentient murmur, that marriage
could only be regarded as an intolerable necessity.3 Before that same
Senate, at an earlier period, a leading Consular had not scrupled to
assert that there was scarcely one among them all who had not ordered
one or more of his own infant children to be exposed to death.4 In the
hearing of that same Senate in a.d. 59, not long before St. Paul wrote
his letter to Philemon, C. Cassius Longinus had gravely argued that the
only security for the life of masters was to put into execution the san
guinary Silanian law, which enacted that, if a master was murdered,
every one of his slaves, however numerous, however notoriously inno
cent, should be indiscriminately massacred.5 It was the Senators of
Rome who thronged forth to meet with adoring congratulations the
miserable youth who came to them with his hands reeking with the blood
of matricide.8 They offered thanksgivings to the gods for his worst
cruelties,7 and obediently voted Divine honours to the dead infant, four
months old, of the wife whom he afterwards killed with a brutal kick.8
And what was the religion of a period which needed the sanctions
and consolations of religion more deeply than any age since the world
began 1 It is certain that the old Paganism was — except in country-
places — practically dead. The very fact that it was necessary to
1 Eph. iv. 19 ; 2 Cor. vii. 10. Merivale, vi. 452 ; Champagny, Les Chars, iv. 161,
seq. Seneca, describing the age in the tragedy of Octavia, says : —
" Saeculo premimur gravi
Quo scelera regnant, saevit impietas furens," etc.
— Oct. 379-^37.
2 Tac. Ann. iii 65, vi. 2, xiv. 12, 13, ete.
3 Comp. Tac. Ann. ii.'37, 38, iii. 34, 35, xv. 19 ; Aul. Gell. N. A. i. 6 ; Liv. Epit. 59.
4 This abandonment of children was a normal practice (Ter. Seaut. iv. 1, 37 ; Ovid,
Amor. ii. 14 ; Suet. Calig. 5 ; Oct. 65 ; Juv. Sat. vi. 592 ; Plin. Ep. iv. 15 [comp. ii. 20] ;
Sen. ad Marciam, 19 ; Controv. x. 6). Augustine (De Civ. Dei, iv. 11) tells us that
there was a goddess Levana, so called "quia levat infantes ; " if the father did not take
the new-born child in his arms, it was exposed (Tac. Hist. v. 5 ; Germ. 19 ; Tert. ApoU
9 ; Ad Natt. 15 ; Minuc. Fel. Octav. xxx. 31 ; Stobaen's Eloril. Ixxv. 15 ; Epictet. i. 23 ;
Paulus, Dig. xxv. 3, etc. And see Denis, Idees morales dans I'Antiquite, ii. 203).
5 Tac. Ann. xiv. 43, 44 ; v. supra, p. 2.
6 Tac. Ann. xiv. 13, " festo cultu Senatum."
7 " Quotiens fugas et caedes jussit princeps, totiens grates Deis actas," Tac. Ann.
xiv. 64.
8 Tac. Ann. xvi. 6 ; Suet. Ner. 25 ; Dion Cass. lxii. 27.

o THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
prop it up by the buttress of political interference shows how hollow
and ruinous the structure of classic Polytheism had become.1 The
decrees and reforms of Claudius were not likely to reassure the faith of
an age which had witnessed in contemptuous silence, or with frantic
adulation, the assumption by Gaius of the attributes of deity after deity,
had tolerated his insults against their sublimest objects of worship, and
encouraged his claim to a living apotheosis.2 The upper classes were
" destitute of faith, yet terrified at scepticism." They had long learnt
to treat the current mythology as a mass of worthless fables, scarcely
amusing enough for even a schoolboy's laughter,3 but they were the
ready dupes of every wandering quack who chose to assume the
character of a mathematicus or a mo,ge.* Their official religion was
a decrepit Theogony; their real religion was a vague and credulous
fatalism, which disbelieved in the existence of the gods, or held
with Epicurus that they were careless of mankind.5 The mass
of the populace either accorded to the old beliefs a nominal
adherence which saved them the trouble of giving any thought to
the matter,6 and reduced their creed and their morals to a survival
of national habits ; or else they plunged with eager curiosity into
the crowd of foreign cults7 — among which a distorted Judaism took its
place8 — such as made the Romans familiar with strange names like
Sabazius and Anchialus, Agdistis, Isis, and the Syrian goddess.9 All
men joined in the confession that " the oracles were dumb." It hardly
needed the wail of mingled lamentations as of departing deities which
swept over the astonished crew of the vessel off Palodes to assure
the world that the reign of the gods of Hellas was over — that " Great
Pan was dead." 10
Such are the scenes which we must witness, such are the sentiments
with which we must become familiar, the moment that we turn away
1 Suet. Tib. 36.
2 Suet. Calig. 51. See Mart. Ep. v. 8, where he talks of the " edict of our Lord and
God," Le., of Domitian ; and vii. 60, where he says that he shall pray to Domitian, and
not to Jupiter. 3 " Esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna . . .
Nee pueri credunt nisi qui nondum aere lavantur. "
—Juv. Sat. ii. 149, 152.
4 Tac. H. i. 22 ; Ann. vi. 20, 21, xii 68 ; Juv. Sat. xiv. 248, iii. 42, vii 200, etc. ;
Suet. Aug. 94 ; Tib. 14 ; Ner. 26 ; Otho, 4 ; Domit. 15, etc.
s Lucr. vi. 445—455 ; Juv. Sat. vii. 189—202, x. 129, xiii. 86—89 ; Plin. H.N ii 21 •
Quinct. Instt. v. 6, § 3 ; Tac. H. i. 10—18, ii. 69-82 ; Agric. 13 ; Germ. 33 ; Ann. vi.
22, etc.
« Juv. Sat. iii. 144, vi. 342, xiii 75—83.
" "Nee turba deorum talis ut est hodie," Juv. Sat. xiii. 46; "Ignobilem Deorum
turbam quam longo aevo longa superstitio congessit," Sen. Ep. 110. See Boissier Les
Religions Etrangires (Rei. Rom. i. 374—450) ; Liv. xxxix. 8 ; Tac. Ann. ii. 85 ; Val.
Max. I. iii. 2.
» Juv. Sat. xiv. 96—106 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 3 ; Pers. Sat. v. ISO.
9 Cio. De Legg. ii. 8 ; De Div. ii. 24 ; Tert. ad Natt. i 10 ; Juv. Sat. xiv. 263
xv. 1—32.
i° Plut. De Def. Orac., p. 419. Some Christian writers connect this remarkable story
with the date of the Cruoifixion. See Niedner, Lehrbuch d. Chr. K. <?., p. 64.

STOICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 9
our eyes from the spectacle of the little Christian churches, composed
chiefly as yet of slaves and artisans, who had been taught to imitate a
Divine example of humility and sincerity, of purity and love. There
were, indeed, a few among the Heathen who lived nobler lives, and
professed a purer ideal than the Pagans around them. Here and there
in the ranks of the philosophers a Demetrius, a Musonius Rufus,
an Epictetus ; here and there among Senators an Helvidius Priscus,
a Paetus Thrasea, a Barea Soranus ; here and there among literary
men a Seneca or a Persius — showed that virtue was not yet extinct.
But the Stoicism on which they leaned for support amid the terrors and
temptations of that awful epoch utterly failed to provide a remedy
against the universal degradation. It aimed at cherishing an in
sensibility which gave no real comfort, and for which it offered no
adequate motive. It "aimed at repressing the passions by a violence so
unnatural that with them it also crushed some of the gentlest and
most elevating emotions. Its self-satisfaction and exclusiveness
repelled the gentlest and sweetest ¦ natures from its communion.
It made a vice of compassion, which Christianity inculcated as
a virtue ; it cherished a haughtiness which Christianity discouraged
as a sin. It was unfit for the task of ameliorating mankind,
because it looked on human nature in its normal aspects with
contemptuous disgust. Its marked characteristic was a despairing
sadness, which became specially prominent in its most sincere
adherents. Its favourite theme was the glorification of suicide, which
wiser, moralists had severely reprobated,1 but which many Stoics
belauded as the one sure refuge against oppression and outrage.2 It
was a philosophy which was indeed able to lacerate the heart with
a righteous indignation against the crimes and follies of mankind, but
which vainly strove to, resist, and which scarcely even hoped to stem,
the ever-swelling tide of vice and misery. For wretchedness it had
no pity ; on vice it looked with impotent disdain. Thrasea was
regarded as an antique hero for walking out of the Senate-house during
the discussion of some decree which involved a servility more than
usually revolting.3 He gradually drove his few admirers to the
1 Virg. JSii. vi. 450, seq. ; Tusc. Disp. i. 74 ; Cie. De Senect. 73 ; De Rep. vi. 15 ;
Somn. Seip. 3 ; Sen. Ep. 70. Comp. Epict. Enchir. 52.
2 Both Zeno and Cleanthes died by suicide. For the frequency of suicide under the
Empire see Tac. Ann. vi. 10, 26, xv. 60 ; Hist. v. 26 ; Suet. Tib. 49 ; Sen. De Benef. ii.
27 ; Ep. 70 ; Plin. Ep. i 12, iii. 7, 16, vi. 24. For its glorification, Lucan, Phars. iv. :—
" Mors utinam pavidos vitae subducere nolles,
Sed virtus te sola daret. "
" Mortes repentinae, hoc est summa vitae felicitas," Plin. H. N. vii. 53, cf. 51. The
practice of suicide became in the days of Trajan almost a "national usage" (see
Merivale, vii. 317, viii. 107). The. variety of Latin phrases for suicide shows the
frequency of the crime. On the pride of Stoicism see Tac. Ann. xiv. 57 : Juv. xiii. 93.
3 On the motion against the memory of Agrippina (Tac. Ann. xiv. 12). He had also
opposed the execution of Antistius (id- xiv. 48). It was further remembered against him
that he had not attended the obsequies of the deified Poppsea, or offered sacrifice for the
preservation of Nero's "divine voice."

10 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
conviction that, even for those who had every advantage of rank and
wealth, nothing was possible but a life of crushing sorrow ended by a
death of complete despair.1 St. Paul and St. Peter, on the other hand,
were at the very same epoch teaching in the same city, to a few
Jewish hucksters and a few Gentile slaves, a doctrine so full of
hope and brightness that letters, written in a prison with torture
and death in view, read like idylls of serene happiness and pseans
of triumphant joy. The graves of these poor sufferers, hid from the
public eye in the catacombs, were decorated with an art, rude indeed,
yet so triumphant as to make their subterranean squalor radiant
with emblems of all that is brightest and most poetic in the happiness
of man.2 "While the glimmering taper of the Stoics was burning pale,
as though amid the vapours of a charnel-house, the torch of Life upheld
by the hands of the Tarsian tent-maker and the Galileean fisherman had
flashed from Damascus to Antioch, from Antioch to Athens, from
Athens to Corinth, from Corinth t6 Ephesus, from Ephesus to Rome.

CHAPTER IL
THE RISE OF THE ANTICHRIST.
" Hie hostis Deum
Hominumque templis expulit superos suiB,
Civesque patria ; spiritum fratri abstulit
Hausit oruorem matris ; — et lucem videt! "
—Sen. Octav. 239.
" Praestare Neronem
Securum valet haec aetas." — Juv. Sat. viii. 173.
All the vice, all the splendour, all the degradation of Pagan Rome
seemed to be gathered up in the person of that Emperor who first
placed himself in a relation of direct antagonism against Christianity.
Long before death ended the astute comedy in which Augustus had
so gravely borne his part,3 he had experienced the Nemesis of
l Suet. Ner. 37.
2 " There the ever-green leaf protests in sculptured silence that the winter of the
grave cannot touch the saintly soul ; the blossoming branch speaks of vernal suns beyond
tho snows of this ohill world ; the good shepherd shows from his benign looks that the
mortal way so terrible to nature had become to those Christians as the meadow-path
between the grassy slopes and beside the stiU waters." (Martineau, Hours of Thought
p. 155). 8 On his death-bed he asked his friends " whether he had fitly gone through the play
of life," and, if so, begged for their applause like an actor on the point of leaving the
stage (Suet. Octav. 99).

CHRISTIANITY AND ROME. 11
Absolutism, and foreseen the awful possibilities which it involved.
But neither he, nor any one else, could have divined that four such
rulers as Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Nero — the first a sanguinary
tyrant, the second a furious madman, the third an uxorious imbecile,
the fourth a heartless buffoon — .would in succession afflict and horrify
the world. Yet these rulers sat upon the breast of Rome with the
paralysing spell of a nightmare. The concentration of the old
prerogatives of many offices in the person of one, who was at once
Consul, Censor, Tribune, Pontifex Maximus, and perpetual Imperator,
fortified their power with the semblance of legality, and that power
was rendered terrible by the sword of the Praetorians, and the deadly
whisper of the informers. No wonder that Christians saw the true
type of the Antichrist in that omnipotence of evil, that apotheosis
of self, that disdain for humanity, that hatred against all mankind
besides, that gigantic aspiration after the impossible, that frantic
blasphemy and unlimited indulgence, which marked the despotism of
a Gaius or a Nero. The very fact that their power was precarious as
well as gigantic — that the lord of the world might at any moment be
cut off by the indignation of the canaille of Rome, nay, more, by the
revenge of a single tribune, or the dagger-thrust of a single slave l —
did but make more striking the resemblance which they displayed to
the gilded monster of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Their autocracy,
like that visionary idol, was an image of gold on feet of clay. Of
that colossus many a Christian would doubtless be reminded when
he saw the huge statue of Nero, with the radiated head and the
attributes of the sun-god, which once towered 120 feet high on the
shattered pediment still visible beside the ruins of the Flavian
Amphitheatre.2 The sketch which I anr now presenting to the reader is the
necessary introduction to the annals of that closing epoch of the
first century, which witnessed the early struggle of Christianity with
the Pagan power. In the thirteen years of Nero's reign all the worst
elements of life which had long mingled with the sap of ancient
civilisation seem to have rushed at once into their scarlet flower. To
the Christians of that epoch the dominance of such an Emperor
presented itself in the aspect of wickedness raised to superhuman
exaltation, and engaged in an impious struggle against the Lord and
against His saints.
Till the days of Nero the Christians had never been brought into
collision with the Imperial Government. We may set aside as a
worthless fiction the story that Tiberius had been so much interested
in the account of the Crucifixion forwarded to him by Pontius Pilate,
as to consult the Senate on the advisability of admitting Jesus among
1 Out of 43 persons in Lipsius's Stemma Caesarum, 32 died violent deaths, i.e., nearly
75 per cent.
2 Suet. Ner. 31 ; Mart. Sped. Ep. 2.

12 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the gods of the Pantheon.1 It is very unlikely that Tiberius ever
heard of the existence of the Christians. In its early days the Faith
was too humble to excite any notice out of the limits of Palestine.
Gaius, absorbed in his mad attempt to set up in the Holy of Holies
" a desolating abomination," in the form of a huge image of himself,
entertained a savage hatred of the Jews, but had not learned to
discriminate between them and Christians. Claudius, disturbed by
tumults in the Ghetto of Jewish freedmen across the Tiber, had been
taught to look with alarm and suspicion on the name of Christus
distorted into " Chrestus ; " but his decree for the expulsion of the
Jews from Rome, which had been a dead letter from the first, only
affected Christianity by causing the providential migration of Priscilla
and Aquila, to become at Corinth and Ephesus the hosts, the
partners, and the protectors of St. Paul.2 Nero was destined to enter
into far deadlier and closer relations with the nascent Faith, and to
fill so vast a space in the horrified imaginations of the early Christians
as to become by his cruelties, his blasphemies, his enormous crimes,
the nearest approach which the world has yet seen to the " Man of
Sin." He was the ideal of depravity and wickedness, standing over
against the ideal of all that is sinless and Divine. Against the Christ
was now to be ranged the Antichrist, — the man-god of Pagan adulation,
in whom was manifested the consummated outcome of Heathen crime
and Heathen power.
Up to the tenth year of Nero's reign the Christians had many
reasons to be grateful to the power of the Roman Empire. St. Paul,
when he wrote from Corinth to the Thessalonians, had indeed seen
in the fabric of Roman polity, and in Claudius, its reigning representa
tive, the " check " and the " checker " which must be removed before
the coming of the Lord.3 Yet during his stormy life the Apostle had
been shielded by the laws of Rome in more than one provincial tumult.
The Roman politarchs of Thessalonica had treated him with humanity.
He had been protected from the infuriated Jews in Corinth by the
disdainful justice of Gallic In Jerusalem the prompt interference
of Lysias and of Festus had sheltered him from the plots of the
Sanhedrin. At Csesarea he had appealed to Caesar as his best security
from the persistent hatred of Ananias and the Sadducees. If we have
taken a correct view of the latter part of his career, his appeal had not
been in vain, and he owed the last two years of his missionary activity
to the impartiality of Roman Law. Hence, apart from the general
1 Ps. Clem. Horn. i. 6 ; Tert. Apol. 5 ; Euseb. H. E.H. 2 ; Jer. Chron. Paseh. i 430.
Braun (De Tiberii Christum in Deorum numerum referendi consilio, Bonn, 1834) vainly
tried to Bupport this fable. Tiberius, more than any Emperor, was "circa Deos et
religiones negligentior " (Suet. Tib. 69).
2 See Tert. Apol. 3 ; ad Natt. i. 3 ; my Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 559. I cannot
accept the view of Herzog (Real-Encykl., s.v. Claudius), that Chrestus was some seditious
Roman Jew.
» Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 584, fg.

THE EMPERORS. 13
<
principle of submission to recognised authority, he had special reason
to urge the Roman Christians " to be subject to the higher powers,"
and to recognise in them the ordinance of God.1 With the private
wickednesses of rulers the Christians were not directly concerned.
Rumours, indeed, they must have heard of the poisoning of Claudius
and of Britannicus ; of Nero's intrigues with Acte ; of his friendship
with the bad Otho ; of the divorce and legal assassination of Octavia ;
of the murders of Agrippina and Poppsea, of Burrus and Seneca.
Other rumours must have reached them of nameless orgies, of which
it was a shame even to speak. But knowing how the whole air of
the bad society around them reeked with lies, they may have shown
the charity that hopeth all things, and imputeth no evil, and rejoiceth
not in iniquity, by tacitly setting aside these stories as incredible or
false. It was not till a.d. 64, when Nero had been nearly ten years
on the throne, that the slow light of History fully revealed to the
Church of Christ what this more than monster was.
A dark spirit was walking in the house of the Caesars — a spirit of
lust and blood which destroyed every family in succession with which
they were allied. The Octavii, the Claudii, the Domitii, the Silani,
were all hurled into ruin or disgrace in their attempt to scale, by inter
marriage with the deified race of Julius, " the dread summits of
Caesarian power." It has been well said that no page even of Tacitus
has so sombre and tragic an eloquence as the mere Stemma Caesarum.
The great Julius, robbed by death of his two daughters, was succeeded
by his nephew Augustus,2 who, in ordering the assassination of
Caesarion, the natural son of Julius by Cleopatra, extinguished the
direct line of the greatest of the Caesars. Augustus by his three
marriages was the father of but one daughter, and that daughter
disgraced his family and embittered his life. He saw his two elder
grandsons die under circumstances of the deepest suspicion ; and being
induced to disinherit the third for the asserted stupidity and ferocity of
his disposition, was succeeded by Tiberius, who was only his stepson,
and had. not one drop of the Julian blood in his veins. Tiberius had
but one son, who was poisoned by his favourite, Sejanus, before his
own death. This son, Drusus, left but one son, who was compelled to
commit suicide by his cousin, Gaius ; and one daughter, whose son,
Rubellius Plautus, was put to death by order of Nero. The marriage
of Germanicus, the nephew of Tiberius, with the elder Agrippina,
grand-daughter of Augustus, seemed to open new hopes to the Roman
people and the imperial house. Germanicus was a prince of courage,
1 Rom. xiii 1 — 7.
2 It is characteristic of tbe manners of the age that Julius Csesar had married four •
times, Augustus thrice, Tiberius twice, Gaius thrice, Claudius six times, and Nero f
thrice. Yet Nero was the last of the Caesars, even of the adoptive line. No descendants
had survived of the offspring of so many unions, and, as Merivale says, " a large propor
tion, which it would be tedious to calculate, were the victims of domestic jealousy and
politic assassination " (Hist. vi. 366).

14 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
virtue, and ability, and the elder Agrippina was one of the purest
and noblest women of her day. Of the nine children of this virtuous
union six alone survived. On the parents, and the three sons in
succession, the hopes of Rome were fixed. But Germanicus was
poisoned by order of Tiberius, and Agrippina was murdered in banish
ment, after the endurance of the most terrible anguish. Their two
elder sons, Nero and Drusus, lived only long enough to disgrace
themselves, and to be forced to die of starvation.1 The third was
the monster Gaius. Of the three daughters, the youngest, Julia
Livia, was put to death by the orders of Messalina, the wife of her
uncle Claudius. Drusilla died in prosperous infamy, and Agrippina
the younger, after a life of crime so abnormal and so detestable
that it throws into the shade even the monstrous crimes of many
of her contemporaries, murdered her husband, and was murdered
by the orders of the son for whose sake she had waded through seas of
blood. That son was Nero ! Truly the Palace of the Caesars must have
been haunted by many a restless ghost, and amid its vast and solitary
chambers the guilty lords of its splendour must have feared lest they
should come upon some spectre weeping tears of blood. In yonder
corridor the floor was still stained with the life-blood of the murdered
Gaius ;2 in that subterranean prison, the miserable Drusus, cursing the
name of his great-uncle Tiberius, tried to assuage the pangs of hunger
by chewing the stuffing of his mattress ;3 in that gilded saloon Nero
had his private interviews with the poison-mixer, Locusta, whom he
salaried among "the instruments of his government;"4 in that splendid
hall Britannicus fell into convulsions after tasting his brother's poisoned
draught ; that chamber, bright with the immoral frescoes of Arellius,
witnessed the brutal kick which caused the death of the beautiful
Poppaea. Fit palace for the Antichrist — fit temple for the wicked
human god ! — a temple which reeked with the memory of infamies — a
palace which echoed with the ghostly footfall of murdered men !
Agrippina the Second, mother of Nero, was the Lady Macbeth of
that scene of murder, but a Lady Macbeth with a life of worse stains
and a heart of harder steel. Born at Cologne in the fourteenth year of
the reign of Tiberius, she lost her father, Germanicus, by poison when
she was three years old, and her mother, Agrippina, first by exile when
she was twelve years old, and finally by murder when she was seven
teen. She grew up with her wicked sisters and her wicked brother
Gaius in the house of her grandmother Antonia, the widow of the
elder Drusus. She was little more than fourteen years old when
1 Tac. Ann. v. 3, vi.. 24.
2 "The Verres of a single province sank before the majesty of the law, and the
righteous eloquence of his accuser ; against the Verres of the world there was no defence
except in the dagger of the assassin " (Freeman, Essays, ii. 330).
8 Tao. Ann. vii. 23. , 4 Tao. Ann. xii. 66, xiii. 5.

THE FATHER OF NERO. 15
Tiberius married her to Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. The Domitii
were one of the noblest and most ancient families of Rome, but from
the time that they first emerged into the light of history they had been
badly pre-eminent for the ferocity of their dispositions. They derived
the surname of Ahenobarbus, or brazen-beard, from a legend of their
race intended to account for their physical peculiarity. 1 Six generations
earlier the orator Crassus had said of the Domitius Ahenobarbus of
that day, " that it was no wonder his beard was of brass, since his
mouth was of iron and his heart of lead." But though the traditions of
cruelty and treachery had been carried on from generation to genera
tion,2 they seem to have culminated in the father of Nero, who added a
tinge of meanness and vulgarity to the brutal manners of his race.
His loose morals had been shocking even to a loose age, and men told
each other in disgust how he had cheated in his praetorship ; how he
had killed one of his freedmen only because he had refused to drink as
much as he was bidden ; how he had purposely driven over a poor boy
on the Appian Road ; how in a squabble in the Forum he had struck
out the eye of a Roman knight ; how he had been finally banished for
crimes still more shameful. It was a current anecdote of this man, who
was " detestable through every period of his life," that when, nine years
after his marriage, the birth of his son Nero was announced to him,
he answered the congratulations of his friends with the remark, that
from himself and Agrippina nothing could have been born but what
was hateful, and for the public ruin.
Agrippina was twenty-one when her brother Gaius succeeded to the
throne. Towards the close of his reign she was involved in the con
spiracy of Lepidus, and was banished to the dreary island of Pontia.
Gaius seized the entire property both of Domitius and of Agrippina.
Nero, their little child, then three years old, was handed over as a
penniless orphan to the charge of his aunt Domitia, the mother of
Messalina. This lady entrusted the education of the child to two
slaves, whose influence is perhaps traceable for many subsequent years.
One of them was a barber, the other a dancer.
On the accession of Claudius, Agrippina was restored to her rank
and fortune, and once more undertook the management of her child.
He was, as we see from Ids early busts, a child of exquisite beauty.
His beauty made him an object of special pride to his mother. From
this time forward it seems to have been her one desire to elevate the
boy to the rank of Emperor. In vain did the astrologers warn her that
his elevation involved her murder. To such dark hints of the future
1 Suet. Ner. 1 ; Plut. JEmil. 25.
2 " The grandfather of Nero had been checked by Augustus from the bloodshed of
his gladiatoriabshows . . . his great-grandfather, 'the best of his race," had changed
sides three times, not without disgrace, in the civil wars .... his great-great
grandfather had rendered himself infamous by cruelty and treachery at Fharsalia,
and was also charged with most un-Roman pusillanimity " (see Suet. Ner. 1 — 5 ;
Merivale, vi. 62, seq.).

16 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
she had but one reply — Occidat dum irnperet ! " Let him slay me, so
he do but reign ! "
By her second marriage, with Crispus Passienus, she further
increased her already enormous wealth. She bided her time. Claudius
was under the control of his freedmen, Narcissus and Pallas, and of the
Empress Messalina, who had borne him two children, Britannicus and
Octavia. The fierce and watchful jealousy of Messalina was soon suc
cessful in securing the banishment and subsequent murder of Julia, the
younger sister of Agrippina,1 and in spite of the retirement in which
the latter strove to withdraw herself from the furious suspicion of the
Empress, she felt that her own life and that of her son were in perpetual
danger. A story prevailed that when Britannicus, then about seven years
old, and Nero, who was little more than three years older,2 had ridden
side by side in the Trojan equestrian game, the favour of the populace
towards the latter had been so openly manifested that Messalina had
despatched emissaries to strangle him in bed, and that they had been
frightened from doing so by seeing a snake glide from under the pillow.3
Meanwhile, Messalina was diverted from her purpose by the criminal
pursuits which were notorious to every Roman with the single exception
of her husband. She was falling deeper and deeper into that dementa-
tion preceding doom which at last enabled her enemy Narcissus to head
a palace conspiracy and to strike her to the dust. Agrippina owed her
escape from a fate similar to that of her younger sister solely to the
infatuated passion of the rival whose name through all succeeding ages
has been a byword of guilt and shame.
But now that Claudius was a widower, the fact that he was her
uncle, and that unions between an uncle and a niece were regarded as
incestuous, did not prevent Agrippina from plunging into the intrigues
by which she hoped to secure the Emperor for her third husband.
Aided by the freedman Pallas, brother of Felix, the Procurator of
Judaea, and by the blandishments which her near relationship to
Claudius enabled her to exercise, she succeeded in achieving the second
great object of her ambition. The twice-widowed matron became the
sixth wife of the imbecile Emperor within three months of the execution
of her predecessor. She had now but one further design to accomplish,
and that was to gain the purple for the son whom she loved with all
the tigress affection of her evil nature. She had been the sister and the
wife, she wished also to be the mother of an Emperor.
The story of her daring schemes, her reckless cruelty, her incessant
intrigues, is recorded in the stern pages of Tacitus. During the five
years of her married life,4 it is probable that no day passed without
her thoughts brooding upon the guilty end which she had kept steadily
1 Suet. Claud. 29. 2 Tacitus says two years ; but see Merivale, v. 517, vi. 88.
8 Suetonius thinks that the story arose from a snake's skin which his mother gave
him as an amulet, and which for some time he wore in a bracelet (Ner. 6).
4 She was married in A.D. 49, and poisoned her husband in October, A. D. 54.

AGRIPPINA. 17
in view during so many vicissitudes. Her first plan was to secure for
Nero the hand of Octavia, the only daughter of Claudius. Octavia had
long been betrothed to the young and noble Lucius Junius Silanus, a
great-great-grandson of Augustus, who might well be dreaded as a strong
protector of the rights of his young brother-in-law, Britannicus. As a
favourite of the Emperor, and the betrothed of the Emperor's daughter,
Silanus had already received splendid honours at the hands of the Senate,
but at one blow Agrippina hurled him into the depths of shame and
misery. The infamous Vitellius — Vitellius who had once begged as a
favour a slipper of Messalina, and earned it in his bosom and kissed it
with profound reverence — Vitellius who had placed a gilded image of
the freedman Pallas among his household gods — trumped up a false
charge against Silanus, and, as Censor, struck his name off the list of the
Senate. His betrothal annulled, his prsetorship abrogated, the high-
spirited young man, recognising whose hand it was that had aimed this
poisoned arrow at his happiness, waited till Agrippina's wedding-day,
and on that day committed suicide on the altar of his own Penates.
The next step of the Empress was to have her rival Lollia Paulina
charged with magic, to secure her banishment, to send a tribune to kill
her, and to identify, by personal inspection, her decapitated head.
Then Calpurnia was driven from Rome because Claudius, with perfect
innocence, had praised her beauty. On the other hand, Seneca was
recalled from his Corsican exile, in order to increase Agrippina's popu
larity by an act of ostensible mercy, which restored to Rome its
favourite writer, while it secured a powerful adherent for her cause and
an eminent tutor for her son. The next step was to effect the betrothal
of Octavia to Nero, who was twelve years old. A still more difficult
and important measure was to secure his adoption. Claudius was
attached to his son Britannicus, and, in spite of his extraordinary
fatuity, he could hardly fail to see that his son's rights would be injured
by the adoption of an elder boy of most noble birth, who reckoned
amongst his supporters all those who might have natural cause to dread
the vengeance of a son of Messalina. Claudius was an antiquary, and
he knew that for 800 years, from the days of Attus Clausus downwards,
there had never been an adoption among the patrician Claudii. In vain
did Agrippina and her adherents endeavour to poison his mind by
whispered insinuations about the parentage of Britannicus. But he
was at last overborne, rather than convinced, by the persistence with
which Agrippina had taken care that the adoption should be pressed
upon him in the Senate, by the multitude, and even in the privacy of
his own garden. Pallas, too, helped to decide his wavering determination
by quoting the precedents of the adoption of Tiberius by Augustus, and
of Gaius by Tiberius. Had he but well weighed the fatal significance
of those precedents, he would have hesitated still longer ere he sacrificed
to an intriguing alien the birthright, the happiness, and ultimately
the lives of the young son and daughter whom he so dearly loved.
o

18 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
And now Agrippina's prosperous wickedness was bearing her along
full sail to the fatal- haven of her ambition. She obtained the title
of Augusta, which even the stately wife of Augustus had never borne
during her husband's lifetime. Seated on a lofty throne by her
husband's side, she received foreign embassies and senatorial deputa
tions. She gained permission to antedate the majority of her son,
and secured for him a promise of the Consulship, admission to various
priesthoods, a proconsular imperium, and the title of " Prince of
the Youth." She made these honours the pretext for obtaining a
largess to the soldiery, and Circensian games for the populace, and
at these games Nero appeared in the manly toga and triumphal
insignia, while Britannicus, utterly eclipsed, stood humbly by his
side in the boyish praetexta — the embroidered robe which marked
his youth. And while step after step was taken to bring Nero into
splendid prominence, Britannicus was kept in such deep seclusion,
and watched with such jealous eyes, that the people hardly knew
whether he was alive or dead. In vain did Agrippina lavish upon
the unhappy lad her false caresses. Being a boy of exceptional
intelligence, he saw through her hypocrisy, and did not try to conceal
the contemptuous disgust which her arts inspired. Meanwhile he
was a prisoner in all but name : every expedient was invented to keep
him at the greatest distance from his father ; every friend who loved
him, every freedman who was faithful to him, every soldier who seemed
likely to embrace his cause, was either secretly undermined, or removed
under pretext of honourable promotion. Tutored as he was by
adversity to conceal his feelings, he one day through accident or boyish.
passion returned the salutation of his adoptive brother by the name of
Ahenobarbus, instead of calling him by the name Nero, which was the
mark of his new rank as the adopted son of Claudius. Thereupon
the rage of Agrippina and Nero knew no bounds ; and such insolence
.—for in this light the momentary act of carelessness or venial outburst
of temper was represented to Claudius — made the boy a still more
defenceless victim to the machinations of his stepmother. Month after
month she wove around him the web of her intrigues. The Praetorians
were won over by flattery, gifts, and promises. The double praefecture
of Lucius Geta and Rufius Crispinus was superseded by the appoint
ment of Afranius Burrus, an honest soldier, but a partisan of the
Empress, to whom he thus owed his promotion to the most coveted
position in the, Roman army. From the all-powerful freedmen of "
Claudius, Agrippina had little to fear. Callistus was dead, and she
played off against each other the rival influences of Pallas and
Narcissus. Pallas was her devoted adherent and paramour ; Narcissus
was afraid to move in opposition to her, because the accession of
Britannicus would have been his own certain death-warrant, since
. he had been the chief agent in the overthrow of Messalina.
As for the phenomena on which the populace lboked with terror—

INTRIGUES OF AGRIPPINA. 19
the fact that the skies had seemed to blaze with fire on the day of.
Nero's adoption, and violent shocks of earthquake had shaken Rome on
the day that he assumed the manly toga — Agrippina cared nothing
for them. She would recognise no omen which did not promise success
to her determination. Nothing could now divert her from her purpose.
When Domitia, the aunt under whose roof the young Nero had been
trained, began to win his smiles by the contrast between her flatteries
and presents and the domineering threats of his mother, Agrippina
at once brought against her a charge of magic, and in spite of the
opposition of Narcissus, Dpmitia was condemned to death. The
Empress hesitated at no crime which helped to pave the way of
her son to power, but at the same time her ambition was so far selfish
that she intended to keep that son under her own exclusive influence.
Many warnings now showed her that the time was ripe for her
supreme endeavour. Her quarrel with Narcissus had broken out into
threats and recriminations in the very presence of the Emperor. The
Senate showed signs of indignant recalcitrance against her attacks
on those whose power she feared, or whose wealth she envied. Her
designs were now so transparent, that Narcissus began openly to show
his compassion for the hapless and almost deserted Britannicus. But,
worst of all, it was clear that Claudius himself was becoming conscious
of his perilous mistake, and was growing weary both of her and of
her son. He had changed his former wife for a worse. If Messalina
had been unfaithful to him, so, he began to suspect, was Agrippina, and
he could not but feel that she had changed her old fawning caresses for
a threatening insolence. He was sick of her ambition, of her intrigues,
of the hatred she always displayed to his oldest and most faithful
servants, of her pushing eagerness for her Nero, of her treacherous
cruelty towards his own children. He was heard to drop ominous
expressions. He began to display towards Britannicus a yearning
affection, full of the passionate hope that when he was a little older
his wrongs would be avenged. All this Agrippina learnt from her
spies. Not a day was to be lost. Narcissus, whose presence was
the chief security for his master's life, had gone to the baths of Sinuessa
to find relief from a fit of the gout. There lay at this time in prison,
on a charge of poisoning, a woman named Locusta, whose career recalls
the Mrs. Turner of the reign of James I., and the Marchioness de r-
Brinvilliers of the court of Louis XIV. To this woman Agrippina
repaired with the promise of freedom and reward, if she would provide
a poison which would disturb the brain without too rapidly destroying
life. Halotus, the Emperor's praegustator, or taster, and Xenophon,
his physician, had been already won over to share in the deed. The
poison was infused into a fine and delicious mushroom of a kind of
which Claudius was known to be particularly fond, and Agrippina gave
this mushroom to her husband with her own hand. After tasting it he
became very quiet, and then called for wine. He was carried off to

20 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
bed senseless, but the quantity of wine which he had drunk weakened
the effects of the poison, and at a sign from Agrippina the faithless
physician finished the murder by tickling the throat of the sufferer with
a poisoned feather. Before the morning of Oct. 13, a.d. 54, Claudius
was dead.
His death was concealed from the public and from his children,
whom Agrippina with hypocritical caresses and false tears kept by her
side in her own chamber, until everything was ready for the pro
clamation of Nero. At noon, which the Chaldseans had declared would
be the only lucky hour of an unlucky day, the gates of the palace
were thrown open, and Nero walked forth with Afranius Burrus by his
side. The Praetorian Pragfect informed the guard that Claudius had
appointed Nero his successor. A few faithful voices asked, " Where is
Britannicus 1 " But as no one answered, and the young prince was not
forthcoming, they accepted what seemed to be an accomplished fact.
Nero went to the Praetorian camp, promised a donation of 15,000
sesterces (more than a £130) to each soldier, and was proclaimed
Emperor. The Senate accepted the initiative of the Praetorians, and
by sunset Nero was securely seated on the throne of the Roman world.
The dream of Agrippina's life was accomplished. She was now the
mother, as she had been the sister and the wife of an Emperor ; and
that young Emperor, when the tribune came to ask him the watchword
for the night, answered in the words — Optimae Matri I " To the Best
of Mothers ! "

CHAPTER ILL
THE FEATURES OF THE ANTICHRIST.
*E(Txotoj AivfaSu'v /mjtpoktoVos fiye^ovevo-^t. — Orac. Sib. ap. Xiphilin. Ixii. p. 709.
" Nero . . . ut erat exsecrabilis ac nocens tyrannus, prosilivit ad excidendum
coeleste templum delendamque justitiam." — Lactant. De Mort. Pcrsec. 2.
" Quid Nerone pejus f " — Mart. Epig. vii. 34.
From the very moment of her success, the awful Nemesis began to fall
upon Agrippina, as it falls on all sinners — that worst Nemesis, which
breaks crowned with fire out of the achievement of guilty purposes. Of
Agrippina on the night of Claudius's murder it might doubtless have
been said, as has been said of another queen on the tragic night on
which her husband perished in the explosion at Kirk o' Fields, that she
"retired to rest— to sleep, doubtless — sleep with the soft tranquillity
of an innocent child. Remorse may disturb the slumbers of the man
who is dabbling with his first experiences of wrong. When the
pleasure has been tasted and is gone, and nothing is left of the crime

agrippina's crimes. 21
but the ruin it has wrought, then, too, the Furies take their seats upon |
the midnight pillow. But the meridian of evil is for the most part left
unvexed ; and when human creatures have chosen their road, they are /
left alone to follow it to the end."1
From the day that she had won her own heart's desires, Agrippina
found that her hopes had vanished, and that her life was to be plunged
in retributive calamities. She found that crime ever needs the support
of further crime ; that the evil spirits who serve the government of an
abandoned heart demand incessant sacrifices at their altar. She had
brought about the ruin of the young Lucius Junius Silanus. His elder
brother, Marcus, was a man of such a gentle and unassuming character
that Gaius had nicknamed him " the Golden Sheep ; " and though the
blood of the imperial family flowed in his veins, he excited so little
jealousy that he had been raised to the consulship, and even sent to
Asia with proconsular command. Yet Agrippina dreaded that he
might avenge the death of his brother, and, without the knowledge
of Nero, sent the freedman Helius, with P. Celer, a Roman knight, who
poisoned Silanus at a banquet, so openly that the whole world was
aware of what had been done.
The aged Narcissus was her next victim ; and more murders would
have followed had not Burrus and Seneca taken measures to prevent
them. Their influence was happily sufficient, since they were still
regarded as tutors of the young Caesar, who was only seventeen years
old. They also endeavoured to veil, and as far as possible to cloak, the
audacious intrusions into state affairs, which showed that Agrippina
was not content with the exceptional honours showered upon her. Of
those honours, strange to say, one of the chief was her appointment
to be a priestess of the now deified Emperor whom she had so recently
poisoned ! It is clear that, though she had again and again proved
herself to be the most ungrateful of women, she expected from her son a
boundless gratitude. Indeed, she so galled the vanity and terrified the
cowardice of his small and mean nature by her constant threats and
upbraidings, that he feared her far more than he had ever loved. The
consequence was that she had at once to struggle for her ascendency.
It was threatened on the one hand by the influence of Burrus and
Seneca, and on the other by the blandishments of bad companions and
fawning slaves. Bent on pleasure, fond of petty accomplishments,
flattered into the notion that he was a man of consummate artistic
taste, Nero occupied himself with dilettante efforts in sculpture,
painting, singing, verse-making, and chariot-driving, and was quite
content to leave to his tutors the graver affairs of state. His tiger
nature had not yet tasted blood. Seneca in his treatise on clemency,
written at the close of Nero's first year, had informed the delighted
world that the gentle youth, on being required to sign the order for
1 Froude, Hist. vii. 511.

22 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
a criminal's execution, had expressed the fervent wish that he had
never learnt to write. Seneca also composed for him the admired
speeches which he was now and then called upon to deliver. The
government of the world was practically in the hands of an upright
soldier and an able philosopher; and however glaring were the
inconsistencies of the latter, he had yet attained to a moral standard
incomparably superior to that professed by the majority of his
contemporaries. If the political machine worked with perfect smooth
ness, if Rome for five years was shocked by no public atrocities, if
informers to some extent found their occupation gone, if no noble blood
was wantonly shed, if the Senate was respected and the soldiers were
orderly, the glory of that " golden quinquennium " — which, in the
opinion of Trajan, eclipsed the merits of even the worthiest princes
— was due, not to the small-minded and would-be festhetic youth who
figured as Emperor, but to the tutors who kept in check the wild
passions of his mother, and directed the acts which Ostensibly
proceeded from himself.
But in order to keep him amused they thought it either inexpedient
or impossible to maintain too strict a discipline over his moral character.
Nero was nominally married to the daughter of Claudius, but from the
first they were separated from each other by a mutual and instinctive
repulsion. When he entered into an intrigue with Acte, a beautiful
Greek freedwoman, his tutors held it desirable to connive at vices which
the spirit of the age scarcely pretended to condemn. Agrippina,
however, treated him as though he were still a child, and, when she
observed his resentment, forfeited all his confidence by passing from
the extreme of furious reproach to the extreme of fulsome complaisance.
Hence, alike in affairs of state and in his domestic pleasures he was
alienated from his mother, and in his daily life he fell unreservedly
under the influence of corrupt associates like Marcus Otho and Claudius
Senecio, two bad specimens of the jeunesse doree of their day, the
dandies of an age when dandyism was a far viler thing than it is
in modern times.1 At last the quarrel between Nero and Agrippina
became so fierce that she did not hesitate to reveal to him all the crimes
which she had committed for his sake, and if she could not retain her
sway over his mind by gratitude, she terrified him with threats that she
who had raised him to the throne could hurl him from it. Britannicus
was the true heir ; Nero, but for her, would have remained a mere
Ahenobarbus. She was the daughter of Germanicus ; she would go
in person to the Praatorian camp, with Britannicus by her side, and
then let the maimed Burrus and the pedagogic Seneca see whether
they could prevent her from restoring to the throne of his fathers
the injured boy who had been ousted by her intrigues on behalf of an
adopted alien. "I made you Emperor, I can unmake you. Bri-
1 Niebuhr.

ALARM OF NERO. 23
tannicus is the true Emperor, not you." She dinned such taunts and
threats into the ears of a son who was already vitiated in character,
who already began to feel his power, until he too was driven to protect,
by the murder of a brother, the despotism which his mother had won
for him by the murder of a husband. Thus in every way she became
the evil angel of his destiny. She drove him into the crimes of which
she had already set the fatal example. It was her fault if he rapidly
lost sight of tho lesson which Seneca had so assiduously inculcated,
that the one impregnable bulwark of a monarch is the affection of
his people.1 Nero began to look on the young Britannicus as King John looked
on the young Arthur. Even civilised, even Christian ages have shown
how perilous is the position of a hated heir to a usurped throne. The
threats of Agrippina had deepened dislike into detestation, and uneasi
ness into terror. Britannicus was a fine, strong, well-grown boy, who
showed signs of a vigorous character and a keen intellect. A little inci
dent which occurred in December, a.d. 54, had alarmed Nero still
further. The Saturnalia were being celebrated with their usual effusive
joy, and at one of the feasts Nero — who had become by lot the Rex
bibendi, or Master of the Revel — had issued his mimic commands to
the other guests in a spirit of harmless fun ; but in order to put the shy
ness of Britannicus to the blush, he had ordered the lad to go out into
the middle of the room and sing a song. Without the least trepidation
or awkwardness Britannicus had stepped out and sung a magnificent
fragment of a tragic chorus, in which he had indicated how he was
expelled from his rights by violence and crime. The scene would have
been an awkward one under any circumstances ; it was rendered still
more so by the fact that in the darkening hall a deep murmur had ex
pressed the admiration and sympathy of the guests. Yet no steps could
be taken against a young prince whom it was impossible to put to death
openly, and against whom there was no pretence for a criminal accu
sation. But the first century, like the fifteenth, was an age of poisoners.
Locusta was still in prison, and Nero employed the Praetorian tribune
Julius Pollio to procure from her a poison which might effect a slow
death. There was no need to win over the praegustator, or the personal
attendants of the young prince. Care had long been taken that the
poor boy should only be surrounded by the creatures of his enemies.
The poison was administered, but it failed. Nero grew wild with alarm.
Stories, which probably gained their darkest touches from the horror of
,his subsequent career, told how he had threatened the tribune and struck
Locusta for her cowardice in not doing her work well, "as though he,
forsooth, need have any fear about the Julian law." Deadlier poison
was then concocted outside his own bed-chamber, and tried upon
1 " Unum est inexpugnabile munimentum amor civium " (Sen. De Clement, i 19, 5).

24 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
animals, until its effects were found to be sufficiently rapid. Setting
aside these stories as crude exaggerations, all authorities are agreed
as to the circumstances of the death of Britannicus. It was a custom
established by Augustus that the young princes of the imperial house
should sit at dinner with nobles of their own age at a lower and less
luxuriously served table than that at which the Emperor dined. While
Britannicus was thus dining, a draught was banded to him which had
been tasted by his praegustator, but was too hot to drink. He asked
for water to cool it, and in that cold water the poison was administered.
He drank, and instantly sank down from his seat silent and breathless.
The guests, among whom was the young Titus, the future Emperor of
Rome, started from the table in consternation. Tbe countenance of
Agrippina, working with astonishment, anguish, and terror, showed
that she at least had not been admitted into the terrible secret. Octavia
looked on with the self-possession which in such a palace had taught her
on all occasions to hide her emotions under a simulated apathy. The
banqueters were disturbed until Nero, with perfect coolness, bade them
resume their mirth and conversation. " Britannicus," he said, " will
soon be well. He has only been seized with one of the epileptic fits ta
which he is liable." It was no epileptic fit — the last of the Claudii was
dead. That night, amid storms which seemed to mark the wrath of
heaven, the corpse was carried with hurried privacy to a mean funeral
pyre on the Field of Mars. We may disbelieve the ghastly story that
the rain washed off the chalk which had been used to disguise the livid
indications of poison ; but it seems certain that the last rites were paid
with haste and meanness little suited to the last male descendant of a
family which had been famous for so many centuries — to the sole in
heritor of the glorious traditions of so many of the noblest lines.
The Romans acquiesced too easily in this terrible crime, because it
fell in with the Machiavellian policy which would gladly rid itself of a
source of future disturbances. But they were punished for their facile
tolerance by the change which every year developed in the character of
their Emperor. Agrippina felt that even-handed justice was indeed be
ginning to commend the ingredients of the poisoned chalice to her own
lips. Her enemies began to see that their opportunity was come. Her
prosperity was instantly swallowed up in the " chaos of hatreds " which
she had aroused by her unscrupulous ambition. The coward conscience
of the Emperor was worked upon by a plot, contrived by Silana and
Domitia Lepida, which charged Agrippina with the intention of raising
Rubellius Plautus to the throne. This plot she overbore by the force of
her own passionate indignation. Scornfully ignoring the false evidence
trumped up against her, she claimed an interview with her son, and
instead of entering on her own defence, demanded and secured the
death or exile of her enemies. But she had by this time been deprived
of her body-guard, of her sentinels, of all public honours, even of her
home in the palace. Her son rarely visited her, and then only among a

popp.ea. 25
number of centurions, and he always left her after a brief and chilling
salutation. She was living deserted by her friends, and exposed to
deliberate insults, in alarmed isolation amid the hatred of the populace.
Worse dangers thickened around her. Nero became deeply enamoured
of Poppaea Sabina, the wife of his friend Otho, and one of the most
cruel and cold-blooded intriguers amid the abandoned society of Roman
matrons. Nero was deeply smitten with her infantile features, the soft
complexion, which she preserved by daily bathing in warm asses/-milk,
her assumed modesty, her genial conversation and sprightly wit. He
was specially enchanted with the soft, abundant hair, the envy of
Roman beauties, for which he invented the fantastic, and, to Roman
writers, the supremely ludicrous epithet of " amber tresses." If Otho
was One of the worst corrupters of Nero's character, he was punished by
the loss of his wife, and Nero was punished by forming a connexion with
a woman who instigated him to yet more frightful enormities. Up to
this time his crimes had been mainly confined to the interior of the
palace, and his follies had taken no worse form than safe and cowardly
outrages on defenceless passengers in the streets at night, after the
fashion of the Mohawks of the days of Queen Anne. But from the
day that he first saw Poppaea a headlong deterioration is traceable in his
character. She established a complete influence over him, and drove
him by her taunts and allurements to that crime which, even among his
many enormities, is the most damning blot upon his character — the
murder of his mother.
That wretched princess was spending the last year of a life which
had scarcely passed its full prime in detested infamy, such as in our
own history attended the last stage in the career of the Countess of
Somerset, the wife of James's unworthy favourite, Robert Carr.
Worse than this, she lived in daily dread of assassination. Her
watchfulness evaded all attempts at poisoning, and she was partly
protected against them by the current fiction that she had fortified her
self by the use of antidotes. Plots to murder her by the apparently
accidental fall of the fretted roof in one of the chambers of her villa
were frustrated by the warning which she received from her spies. At
last, Anicetus, a freedman, admiral of the fleet at Misenum, promised
Nero to secure her end in an unsuspicious manner by means of a ship
which should suddenly fall to pieces in mid-sea. Nero invited her to a
banquet at Baiae, which was to be the sign of their public reconciliation.
Declining, however, to sail in the pinnace which had been surrepti
tiously fitted up for her use, she was carried to her son's villa in her
own litter. There she was received with such hilarity and blandish
ment, such long embraces and affectionate salutations, that her
suspicions were dispelled. She consented to return by water, and went
on board the treacherous vessel. It had not proceeded far when the
heavily-weighted canopy under which she reclined was made to fall
with a great crash. One of her ladies was killed on the spot. Imme-

26 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
diately afterwards the bolts which held the vessel together were pulled
out, and Agrippina, whose life had been saved by the projecting sides of
her couch, found herself struggling in the waves. A lady who was
with her, named Acerronia, thinking to save her own life, exclaimed
that she was the empress, and was instantly beaten down with poles and
oars. Agrippina kept silence, and, escaping with a single bruise on her
shoulder, she swam or floated safely till she was picked up by a boat
sent frpm the shore, which was glittering with lights and thronged with
visitors who were enjoying the cool evening air. The wretched victim
saw through the whole plot, but thought it best to treat the matter as
an accident, and sent one of her freedmen, named Agerinus, to
announce to Nero her fortunate escape. Nero had already received the
news with unfeigned alarm. Would the haughty, vindictive woman fire
the soldiery with the tale of her wrongs 1 would she throw herself on the
compassion of the Senate and the people 1 would she arm her slaves to
take vengeance on her murderer ? Burrus and Seneca were hastily sum
moned. To them the Emperor appealed in the extreme agitation of
unsuccessful guilt. In silence and anguish the soldier and the Stoic
felt, as they listened to the tale, how fatal to their reputation was their
prosperous complicity with the secrets of such a court. Seneca was the
first to break the silence. He asked his colleague " whether the
Praetorians should be ordered to put her to death." In that hour he
must have tasted the very dregs of the bitter cup of moral degradation.
Perhaps the two ministers excused themselves with the sophism that
things had now gone too far to prevent the commission of a crime, and
that either Agrippina or Nero must perish. But Burrus replied that
" the Praetorians would never lift a hand against the daughter of their
beloved Germanicus. Let Anicetus fulfil his promises." Miserable
soldier ! miserable philosopher ! Stoicism has been often exalted at the
expense of Christianity. Let the world remember the two scenes, in
one of which the polished Stoic, in the other the Christian Apostle
stood — the one a magnificent minister, the other a fettered prisoner — in
the presence of the lord of the world !
Anicetus rose to the occasion, and, amid the ecstatic expressions of '
Nero's gratitude, claimed as his own the consummation of the deed.
On the arrival of Agerinus with the message of Agrippina, Anicetus
suddenly flung a dagger at the wretched man's feet, and then, declaring
that Agrippina had sent him to murder her son, loaded him with
chains. By this transparent device he hoped to persuade the world
that Agrippina had been detected in a conspiracy, and had committed
suicide from very shame. The news of her recent peril had caused the
wildest excitement among the idlers on the shore. Anicetus, with his
armed emissaries, had to assume a threatening attitude, as he made his
way through the agitated throng. Surrounding the villa and bursting
open the door, he seized the few slaves who yet lingered near the
chamber of their mistress. Within that chamber, by the light of a

MURDER OF AGRIPPINA. 27
single lamp, Agrippina, attended by only one handmaid, was awaiting
in intense anxiety and with misgivings which became deeper and
deeper at every moment, the suspicious delay in the return of her faith
ful messenger. The slave-girl rose and left the room. ",Do you too
desert me 1 " she exclaimed ; and at that moment the door was darkened
by the entrance of Anicetus, with the trierarch Herculeius and the naval
centurion Obaritus. " If you have come to inquire about my health,"
said the undaunted woman, " say that I have recovered. If to commit
a crime, I will not believe that you have my son's orders ; he would not
command a matricide." Returning no answer, the murderers sur
rounded her bed, and the trierarch struck her on the head with his
stick. " Strike my womb," she exclaimed, as the centurion drew his
sword, " it bore a Nero." These were her last words before she sank
down slain with many wounds. There is no need to darken with
further and unaccredited touches of horror the dreadful story of her
end. Tlie old presage which she had accepted was fulfilled. She had
made her son an Emperor, and he had rewarded her by assassination.
Such was the awful unpitied end of one on whose birthday and in
whose honour in that very year altar's had smoked with sacrifices offered
at the feet of the god Honour and the goddess Concordia.1
When the crime was over, Nero first perceived its magnitude, and
was seized with the agony of a too brief terror and remorse. There is
in great crimes an awful power of illumination. They light up the
conscience with a glare which shows all things in their true hideousness.
He spent the night in oppressive silence. For the first time in his life
his sleep was disturbed by dreams. He often started up in terror, and
dreaded the return of dawn. The gross flattery and hypocritical
congratulations of his friends soon dissipated all personal alarm. But
scenes cannot change their aspect so easily as the countenances of men,
and there was to him a deadly look in the sea and shore. From the
lofty summit of Misenum ghostly wailings and the blast of a solitary
trumpet seemed to reach him from his mother's grave. He despatched
a letter to the Senate, full of the ingenious and artificial turns of
expression which betrayed, alas ! the style of Seneca ; and in it he
charged his mother's memory with the very crimes of which he had
himself been guilty. But though he recalled her enemies from exile,
and threw down her statues, and raked up every evil action of her life,
and insinuated that she had been the cause of the enormities which had
disgraced the reign of Claudius, men hardly affected to believe his
exculpation, and the very mob charged him with matricide in their
epigrams and scribblings on the statues and walls of Rome.2 But yet
when he returned to Rome, the whole populace, from the Senate down
wards, poured forth to give him a reception so enthusiastic and
1 As shown by inscriptions of the Fratres Arvales (De Rossi, Bull. Archiol. 1866).
See Champagny, Les Chars, ii. 194.
2 Suet. Ner. 3 ; Dion Cass, lxi 16.

28

THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

triumphant that every remnant of shame was dispelled from his mind.
Feeling for the first time that no wickedness was too abnormal to shake
his absolute power over a nation of slaves, he plunged without stint or
remorse into that career of infamy which has made his name the
synonym of everything which is degraded, cruel, and impure.1
Through the separate details of that career we need not follow him.
The depths2 into which he sank are too abysmal for utterance. Even
Pagan historians could not without a blush hold up a torch in those
crypts of shame.3 How he established games in which , he publicly
appeared upon the stage, and compelled members of the noblest Roman
families to imitate his degradation ; on how vast a scale, and with how
vile a stain, he deliberately corrupted the whole tone of Roman society ;
how he openly declared that the consummation of art was a false
aestheticism, corrupt and naked, and not ashamed ;4 how- he strove to
revive the flagging pulse of exhausted pleasure by unheard-of enormities,
and strove to make shame shameless by undisguised publicity ; how he
put to death the last descendant of Augustus,5 the last descendant of
Tiberius, and the last descendant of the Claudii ; how he ended the
brief but heartrending tragedy of the life of Octavia by defaming her
innocence, driving her to the island of Pandataria, and there enforcing
her assassination under circumstances so sad as might have moved the
hardiest villain to tears; how he hastened by poison the death of
Burrus, and entrusted the vast power of the Praetorian command to
Tigellinus, one of the vilest of the human race ; how, when he had
exhausted the treasures amassed by the dignified economy of Claudius,
he filled his coffers by confiscating the estates of innocent victims ; how
he caused the death of his second wife, Poppaea, by a kick inflicted on
her when she was in a delicate condition ; how, after the detection of
the conspiracy of Piso, he seemed to revel in blood ; how he ordered the
death of Seneca ; how, by the execution of Paetus Thrasea and Barea
Soranus, he strove to extinguish the last embers of Roman magnanimity,
and to slay " virtue itself ; "6 how wretches like Vatinius became the
cherished favourites of his court ; how his reign degenerated into one
perpetual orgy, at once monstrous and vulgar; — into these details,
fortunately, we need not follow his awful career. His infamous follies
and cruelties in Greece ; his dismal and disgraceful fall — a tragedy
without pathos, and a ruin without dignity — all this must be read in the
pages of contemporary historians. Probably no man who ever lived
has crowded into fourteen years of life so black a catalogue of iniquities
as this Collot d'Herbois upon an imperial throne. The seeds of innu
merable vices were latent in the soil of his disposition, and the hot-bed
' Tac. Ann. xiv. 13. 2 Rev. ii. 24. s 2 Cor iv 2
4 Suet. Ner. lxxx. 29, 30. Dion Cass. lxi. 4, 5.
5 A son of the M. Jun. Silanus whom Gaius called " the golden sheep " (Tac. Ann
xvi. 9).
6 Tac. Ann. xvi. 21.

NERO'S CRIMES. 29
of absolutism forced them into rank growth. To speak thus much of
him and of his reign has been necessary, because he was the epitome of the
age in which he lived — the consummate flower of Pagan degradation at
the time when the pure bud of Christian life was being nurtured into
beauty amid cold and storm. But here we must for the present leave
the general story of his reign, to give our attention to the one event
which brought him into collision with the Christian Church.

CHAPTER, IV.
THE BURNING OF ROME, AND THE FIRST PERSECUTION.
" Mira Nero de Tarpeya
A Roma como se ardia
Gritos dan nifios y viejos
Y el de nada se dolia.
Que alegre viata ! " — Spanish Song.
Had it not been for one crime with which all ancient writers have
mixed up his name, Christianity might have left Nero on one side, not
speaking of him, but simply looking and passing by, while he, on his
part, might scarcely so much as have heard of the v existence of
Christians amid the crowded thousands of his capital. That crime
was the burning of Rome ; and by precipitating the Era of Martyrdom,
it brought him into immediate and terrible connexion with the Church
of Christ. Whether he was really guilty or not of having ordered that
immense conflagration, it is certain that he was suspected of it by his
contemporaries, and has been charged with it by many historians of
his country.1 It is certain, also, that his head had been full for years
of the image of flaming cities ; that he used to say that Priam was
to be congratulated on having seen the ruin of Troy; that he was
never able to resist the fixed idea of a crime ;2 that the year following
he gave a public recitation of a poem called Troica, from the orchestra
of the theatre, and that this was only the burning of Rome under a
thin disguise ;3 and that just before his flight he meditated setting fire
i Tac. Ann. xv. 67 (cf. 38); Suet. Ner. 38; Dion Cass. lxii. 16; Pliny, H.N. xvii.
1, 1 ; followed by Orosius, Sulpicius, Severus, Eutropius, etc.
2 Renan, V Antechrist, p. 144.
8 Dion Cass. lxii. 29; Juv. viii. 221. Eutropius says that he burnt Rome: "Ut
spectaculi ejus imaginem cerneret quali olim Troja capta evaserat." Ampere says,
"Pour moi j 'incline al'admettre" (Hist. Rom. ii. 56). Renan thinks that this poem
may have originated the metaphor that he played his lyre over the ruins of his country —
which was afterwards taken literally.

30 THE EARLY DAYS- OF CHRISTIANITY.
to Rome once more.1 It was rumoured that when some one had told
him how Gaius used to quote the phrase of Euripides —
" "When I am dead,- sink the whole earth in flames ! "
he replied, " Nay, but while I live ! " He was accused of the ambition
of destroying Rome, that he might replace its tortuous and narrow
lanes with broad, regular streets and uniform Hellenic edifices, and
so have an excuse for changing its name from Rome to Neropolis.
It was believed that in his morbid appetite for new sensations he was
quite capable of devising a truly artistic spectacle which would thrill
his jaded aestheticism, and supply him with vivid imagery for the vapid
antitheses of his poems. It was both believed and recorded that
during the terrors of the actual spectacle he had climbed the Tower
of Maecenas, had expressed his delight at what he called " the flower
and loveliness of the flames," and in his scenic dress had sung on
his own private stage the " Capture of Ilium."2 It was said that
all attempts to quench the fire had been forcibly resisted ; that men had
been seen hurling lighted brands upon various buildings, and shouting
that they had orders for what they did ; that men of even Consular
rank had detected Nero's slaves on their own property with tow and
torches, and had not ventured to touch them ; that when the wind had
changed, and there was a lull in the conflagration, it had burst out
again from houses that abutted on the gardens of his creature
Tigellinus. At any rate, the Romans could hardly have been mistaken
in thinking that Nero might have done much more than he did
to encourage the efforts made to extinguish the flames. It was
remembered that, a few years earlier, Claudius, during a conflagration,
had been seen, two nights running, seated in a little counting-office
with two baskets full of silver at his side, to encourage the firemen, and
secure the assistance of the people and the soldiers. Nero certainly, in
this far more frightful crisis, did nothing of the kind. Even if some
of the rumours which tended to implicate him in having caused the
calamity had no better foundation than idle rumour, or the interested
plots of robbers, who seized the opportunity for promiscuous plunder,
they acquired plausibility from the whole colour of Nero's character
and conversation, and they seemed to be justified by the way in
which he used for his own advantage the disaster of his people. For
immediately after the fire he seized a much larger extent of ground
than he had previously possessed, and began to rear with incredible
celerity his " Golden House " — a structure unexampled in the ancient
world for gorgeous magnificence. It was in this amazing structure,
i Suet. Ner. 43.
a The one circumstanoe which tends to exculpate him from some of these motives is
that he was at Antium when the fire broke out, and did not arrive in Rome till the third
day, when the flames had rolled to the gardens of Mascenas, and his own "Domus
Transitoria" (Tac. Amu xv.). The late Mr. G. H. Lewes attempted to "rehabilitate"
the character of Nero ; but the evidence against him is too unanimous to be set aside.

THE BURNING OF ROME. 31
on which the splendour of the whole Empire was recklessly squandered,
that Nero declared, with a smirk of self-satisfaction, that now at
last he was lodged like a human being !
But whether Nero was guilty of this unparalleled outrage on
the lives and fortunes of his subjects or not, certain it is that on
July 19, A.p. 64, in the tenth year of his reign, a fire broke out in
shops full of inflammable materials which lined the valley between the
Palatine and Caelian Hills. For six days and seven nights it rolled
in streams of resistless flame over the greater part of the city,
licking up tbe palaces and temples of the gods which covered the
low hills, and raging through whole streets of the wretched wooden
tenements in which dwelt myriads of the poorer inhabitants who
crowded the lower regions of Rome. When its course had been
checked by the voluntary destruction of a vast mass of buildings
which lay in its path, it broke out a second time, and raged for three
days longer in the less crowded quarters of the city, where its spread
was even more fatal to public buildings and the ancient shrines
of the gods. Never since the Gauls burnt Rome had so deadly a
calamity fallen on the afflicted city. Of its fourteen districts, four
alone escaped untouched ; three were completely laid in ashes ; in
the seven others were to be seen the wrecks of many buildings, scathed
and gutted by the flames. The disaster to the city was historically
irreparable. If Nero was indeed guilty, then the act of a wretched
buffoon, mad with the diseased sensibility of a depraved nature, has
robbed the world of works of art, and memorials, and records, priceless
and irrecoverable. We can rather imagine than describe the anguish
with which the Romans, bitterly conscious of their own degeneracy,
contemplated the destruction of the relics of their national glory in
the days when Rome was free. What could ever replace for them
or their children such monuments as the Temple of Luna, built by
Servius Tullius ; and the Ara Maxima, which the Arcadian Evander
had reared to Hercules ; and ' the Temple of Jupiter Stator, built
in accordance with the vow of Romulus ; and the little humble palace
of Numa ; and the shrine of Vesta with the Penates of the Roman
people and the spoils of conquered kings? What structural mag
nificence could atone for the loss of . memorials which the song of
Virgil and of Horace had rendered still more dear1!1 The city might
rise more regular from its ashes, and with broader streets, but its
artificial uniformity was a questionable boon. Old men declared that
the new streets were far less healthy, in consequence of their more
scorching glare, and tney muttered among themselves that many an
object of national interest had been wantonly sacrificed to gratify the
womanish freak of a miserable actor.
But the sense of permanent loss was overwhelmed at first by the
1 Virg. JEn. viii 271 ; Hor. Od.

32 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
immediate confusion and agony of the scene. Amid the sheets of flame
that roared on every side under their dense canopy of smoke, the shrieks
of terrified women and the wail of infants and children were heard above
the crash of falling houses. The incendiary fires seemed to be bursting
forth in so many directions that men stood staring in dumb stupefaction
at the destruction of their property, or rushed hither and thither in
helpless amazement. The lanes and alleys were blocked up with, the
concourse of struggling fugitives. Many were suffocated by the smoke,
or trampled down in the press. Many others were burnt to death in
their own burning houses, some of whom purposely flung themselves into
the flames in the depth of their despair. The density of the population
that found shelter in the huge many-storeyed lodging-houses increased the
difficulty of escape ; and when they had escaped with bare life, a vast
multitude of homeless, shivering, hungry human beings — many of them
bereaved of their nearest and dearest relatives, many of them personally
injured, and most of them deprived of all their possessions, and destitute
of the means of subsistence — found themselves huddled together in
vacant places in one vast brotherhood of hopeless wretchedness. Inci
dents like these are not often described by ancient authors. As a rule,
the classic writers show themselves singularly callous to all details of
individual misery ; but this disaster was on a scale so magnificent that
it had impressed the imaginations of men who often treat the anguish of
multitudes as a matter of course.
Even if he had been destitute of every human feeling, yet policy and
necessity would have induced Nero to take what steps he could to
alleviate the immediate pressure. To create discontent and misery
could never have formed any part of his designs. He threw open the
Campus Martius, the Monumenta Agrippae, even his own gardens, to
the people. Temporary buildings were constructed ; all the furniture
which was most indispensable was brought from Ostia and neighbouring
towns ; wheat was sold at about a fourth of the average price. It was
all in vain. The misery which it was believed that his criminal folly
had inflicted kindled a sense of wrong too deeply seated to be removed
by remedies for the past or precautions for the future. The resentment
was kept alive by the benevolences and imposts which Nero now
demanded, and by the greedy ostentation with which he seized every
beautiful or valuable object to adorn the insulting splendour of a palace
built on the yet warm ashes of so wide an area of the ruined city.

Nero was so secure in his absolutism, he had hitherto found it so
impossible to shock the feelings of the people or to exhaust the terrified
adulation of the Senate, that he was usually indifferent to the pas
quinades which were constantly holding up his name to execration and
contempt. But now he felt that he had gone too far, and that his
power would be seriously imperilled if he did not succeed in diverting

NERO AS A PERSECUTOR. 33
the suspicions of the populace. He was perfectly aware that when the
people in the streets cursed those who set fire to the city, they meant to
curse him.1 If he did not take some immediate step he felt that he might
perish, as Gaius had perished before him, by the dagger of the assassin.
It is at this point of his career that Nero becomes a prominent
figure in the history of the Church. It was this phase of cruelty which
seemed to throw a blood-red light over his whole character, and led men
to look on him as the very incarnation of the world-power in its most
demoniac aspect— as worse than the Antiochus Epiphanes of Daniel's
Apocalypse — as the Man of Sin whom (in language figurative indeed,
yet awfully true) the Lord should slay with the breath of His mouth
and destroy with the brightness of His coming.2 For Nero endeavoured
to fix the odious crime of having destroyed the capital of the world upon
the most innocent and faithful of his subjects — upon the only subjects
who offered heart-felt prayers on his behalf3 — the Roman Christians.
They were the defenceless victims of this horrible charge ; for though
they were the most harmless, they were also the most hated and the
most slandered of living men.4
Why he should have thought of singling out the Christians has
always been a curious problem, for at this point St. Luke ends the Acts
of the Apostles, perhaps purposely dropping the curtain, because it
would have been perilous and useless to narrate the horrors in which the
hitherto neutral or friendly Roman Government began to play so dis
graceful a part. Neither Tacitus, nor Suetonius, nor the Apocalypse,
help us to solve this particular problem. The Christians had filled no
large space in the eye of the world. Until the days of Domitian we do
not hear of a single noble or distinguished person who had joined their
ranks.6 That the Pudens and Claudia of Rom. xvi. were the Pudens
and Claudia of Martial's Epigrams seems to me to be a baseless dream.6
If the " foreign superstition " with which Pomponia Grsecina, wife of
Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, was charged, and of which she
was acquitted, was indeed, as has been suspected, the Christian religion,
at any rate the name of Christianity was not alluded to by the ancient
writers who had mentioned the circumstance.7 Even if Rom. xvi was
addressed to Rome, and not, as I believe, to Ephesus, "they of the
household of Narcissus which were in the Lord " were unknown slaves,
as also were " they of Caesar's household." 8 The slaves and artisans,
1 Dion Cass. lxii. 18.
2 See Aug. De Civ. Dei, xx. 19 ; Lactant. Div. Instt. vii 16 ; De Mort. Persec. ii. ad
fin. j Chrysost. in 2 Thess., Horn. iv. ; Sulp. Sev. Hist. ii. 29 ; 40, 42; Dial. ii. ad Jin. ;
Jer. im, Dan. xi. ; Orac. Sibyll. iv. 135—138, v. 362, viii. 1, 153 ; Verses of Commodianus,
in Spicileg. of Solesmes, Paris, 1852.
* Rom. xiii. 1—7 ; Tit. iii. 1 ; 1 Pet. ii 13. See Tert. Apol. 29—33.
4 1 Pet. iii. 13—17, iv. 12—19.
6 Suet. Dom. 15.
6 See Life and Work of St. Paul, ii. 569.
1 Tac. Ann. xiii. 32.
» Rom. xvi. 11; Phil. iv. 22; Ufe and Work of St, Paul, ii 165.
D

34 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Jewish and Gentile, who formed the Christian community at Rome, had
never in any way come into collision with the Roman Government. They
must have been the victims rather than the exciters of the Messianic
tumults— for such they are conjectured to have been — which led to the
expulsion of the Jews from Rome by the futile edict of Claudius.1 Nay,-
so obedient and docile were they required to be by the very principles on
which their morality was based — so far were they removed from the fierce
independence of the Jewish zealots — that, in writing to them a few years
earlier, the greatest of their leaders had urged upon them a payment of
tribute and a submission to the higher powers, not only for wrath but
also for conscience' sake, because the earthly ruler, in his office of repress
ing evil works, is a minister of God.2 That the Christians were entirely
innocent of the crime charged against them was well known, both at the
time and afterwards.3 But how was it that Nero sought popularity, and
partly .averted the deep rage which was rankling in many hearts against
himself, by torturing men and women on whose agonies he thought that
the populace would gaze not only with a stolid indifference, but even
with fierce satisfaction ?
Gibbon has conjectured that the Christians were confounded with the
Jews, and that the detestation universally felt for the latter fell with
double force upon the former. Christians suffered even more than the
Jews because of the calumnies so assiduously circulated against them,
and from what appeared to the ancients to be the revolting absurdity of
their peculiar tenets. " Nero," says Tacitus, " exposed to accusation,
and tortured with the most exquisite penalties, a set of men detested for
their enormities, whom the common people called ' Christians.'
Christus, the founder of this sect, was executed during the reign of
Tiberius by the Procurator Pontius Pilate, and the deadly superstition,
suppressed for a time, began to burst out once more, not only through
out Judaea, where the evil had its root, but even in the city, whither
from every quarter all things horrible or shameful are drifted, and find
their votaries." The lordly disdain which prevented Tacitus from
making any inquiry into the real views and character of the Christians
is shown by the fact that he catches up the most baseless allegations
against them. He talks of their doctrines as savage and shameful,
when they breathed the very spirit of peace and purity. He charges
them with being animated by a hatred of their kind, when their
central tenet was an universal charity. The masses, he says, called
them " Christians ; " and while he almost apologises for staining his
page with so vulgar an appellation,4 he merely mentions, in passing,
1 Suet. Claud. 25. 2 Rom. xiii. S.
8 It is involved at once in the ' ' subdidit reos " of Tac. Ann. v. 44.
4 IPet.iv. 14; James ii. 7. There can be little doubt, as I have shown in the Life
and Work of St. Paul, i. 301, that the name "Christian" — so curiously hybrid, yet so
richly expressive — was a nickname due to the wit of the Antioohenes, which exercised
itself quite fearlessly even on the Roman Emperors. They were not afraid to affix nick
names to Caracalla, and to call Julian Cecrops and Victimarius, with keen satire of his

EXPIATIONS. 35
that, though innocent of the charge of being turbulent incendiaries,
on which they were tortured to death, they were yet a set of guilty
and infamous sectaries, to be classed with the lowest dregs of Roman
criminals.1 But the haughty historian throws no light on one difficulty — namely,
the circumstances which led to the Christians being thus singled out.
The Jews were in no way involved in Nero's persecution. To persecute
the Jews at Rome would not have been an easy matter. They were
sufficiently numerous to be formidable, and had overawed Cicero in the
zenith of his fame. Besides this, the Jewish religion was recognised,
tolerated, licensed. Throughout the length and breadth of the Empire,
no man, however much he and his race might be detested and despised,
could have been burnt or tortured for the mere fact of being a Jew.
We hear of no Jewish martyrdoms or Jewish persecutions till we come
to the times of the Jewish war, and then chiefly in Palestine itself. It
is clear that a shedding of blood — in fact, some form or other of human
sacrifice — was imperatively demanded by popular feeling as an expiation
of the ruinous crime which had plunged so many thousands into the
depths of misery. In vain had the Sibylline Books been once more
consulted, and in vain had public prayer been offered, in accordance
with their directions, to Vulcan and- the goddesses of Earth and Hades.
In vain had the Roman matrons walked in procession in dark robes,
and with their long hair unbound, to propitiate the insulted majesty of
Juno, and to sprinkle with sea-water her ancient statue. In vain had
largesses been lavished upon the people, and propitiatory sacrifices offered
to the gods. In vain had public banquets been celebrated in honour of
various deities. A crime had been committed, and Romans had
perished unavenged. Blood cried for blood, before the sullen suspicion
against Nero could be averted, or the indignation of heaven appeased.
Nero had always hated, persecuted, and exiled the philosophers, and no
doubt, so far as he knew anything of the Christians — so far as he saw
among his own countless slaves any who had embraced this supersti
tion, which the elite of Rome described as not only new, but " exe
crable " and "malefic"2 — -he would hate their gravity and purity, and
feel for them that raging envy which is the tribute that virtue receives
from vice. Moreover, St. Paul, in all probability, had recently stood
before his tribunal ; and though he had been acquitted on the special
charges of turbulence and profanation, respecting which he had appealed
beard (Herodian. iv. 9 ; Ammian. xxii. 14). It is clear that the sacred writers avoided
the name because it was employed by their enemies, and by them mingled with terms
of the vilest opprobrium (Tac. Ann. xv. 44). It only became familiar when the virtues
of Christians had shed lustre upon it, and when, alike in its true form, and in the
ignorant mispronunciation "Chrestians," it readily lent itself to valuable allegorical
meanings (Tert. Apol. 3 ; Just. Mart. Apol. 2 ; Clem. Alex. Strom, ii. 4, § 18 ; Bingham,
i. 1, § 11).
1 See, on the crime of being " a Christian," Clem. Alex. Strom, iv. 11, § 1.
2kMala, venefica, exitiabilis, execrabilis, prava, superstitio (Tac. Ann. xv. 44; Suet.
Ner. 16; Plin. Ep. 92).

36 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
to Caesar, yet during the judicial inquiry Nero could hardly have failed to
hear from the emissaries of the Sanhedrin many fierce slanders of a
sect which was everywhere spoken against. The Jews were by far the
deadliest enemies of the Christians; and two persons of Jewish pro
clivities were at this time in close proximity to the person of the
Emperor.1 One was the pantomimist Aliturus, tbe other was Poppaea,
the harlot Empress.2 The Jews were in communication with these
powerful favourites, and had even promised Nero that if his enemies ever
prevailed at Rome he should have the kingdom of Jerusalem.3 It is
not even impossible that there may have been a third dark and evil
influence at work to undermine the Christians, for about this very time
the unscrupulous Pharisee Flavius Josephus had availed himself of the
intrigues of the palace to secure the liberation of some Jewish priests. 4
If, as seems certain, the Jews had it in their power during the reign of
Nero more or less to shape the whisper of the throne, does not historical
induction drive us to conclude with some confidence that the suggestion
of the Christians as scapegoats and victims came from them? St.
Clement says in his Epistle that t.he Christians suffered i/wow^A jealousy.
Whose jealousy ? Who can tell what dark secrets lie veiled under that
suggestive word 1 Was Acte a Christian, and was Poppaea jealous of
her? That suggestion seems at once inadequate and improbable, espe
cially as Acte was not hurt. But there was a deadly jealousy at work
against the New Religion. To the Pagans, Christianity was but a reli
gious extravagance — contemptible, indeed, but otherwise insignificant.
To the Jews, on the other hand, it was an object of hatred, which never
stopped short of bloodshed when it possessed or could usurp the power,5
and which, though long suppressed by circumstances, displayed itself in
all the intensity of its virulence during the brief spasm of the dictator
ship of Barcochba. Christianity was hateful to the Jews on every
ground. It nullified their Law. It liberated all Gentiles from the
heavy yoke of that Law, without thereby putting them on a lower level.
1 Under previous Emperors we read of the Jewess Acme, a slave of Livia, and the
Samaritan Thallus, a freedman of Tiberius (Jos. Antt. xvii. 5, § 7 ; B. J. i. 33, §§ 6, 7).
2 According to John of Antioch (Excerpta Valesii, p. 808), and the Chronicon
Paschale (i. 459), Nero was originally favourable to the Christians, and put Pilate to '
death, for which the Jews plotted his murder. Comp. Euseb. H. E. ii. 22, iv. 26 ;
Keim, Rom und Christenthum, 179. Poppsea's Judaism is inferred from her refusing to
be burned, and requesting to be embalmed (Tac. Ann. xvi. 16) ; from her adopting the
custom of wearing a veil in the streets (id. xiii. 45) ; from the favour which she showed
to Aliturus and Josephus (Jos. VU. 3 ; Antt. xx. 8, § 11) ; and from the term tcomfhfc,
which Josephus applies to her.
8 Suet. Ner. 40. Tiberius Alexander, the nephew of Philo, afterwards Procurator of
Judaea, was a person of influence at Rome (Jos. B. J. ii. 15, § 1 ; Juv. i. 130) ; but he
was a renegade, and would not be likely to hate the Christians. It is, however, remark
able that legend attributed the anger of Nero to the conversion of his mistress and a
favourite slave.
4 Jos. VU. 3.
' Compare what St. Paul says about the virulence of Jewish enmity in 1 Thess. ii.
14 — 16; Phil. iii. 2. Yet Christianity grew up "sub umbraculo lioitae Judaeorum
religionis " (Tert. Apol. 21).

HATRED AGAINST CHRISTIANS. 37
It even tended to render those who were born Jews indifferent to the
institutions of Mosaism. It was, as it were, a fatal revolt and schism
from within, more dangerous than any assault from without. And,
worse than all, it was by the Gentiles confounded with the Judaism
which was its bitterest antagonist. While it sheltered its existence
under the mantle of Judaism, as a religio licita, it drew down upon the
religion from whose bosom it sprang all the scorn and hatred which
were attached by the world to its own especial tenets ; for however
much the Greeks and Romans despised the Jews, they despised still
more the belief that the Lord and Saviour of the world was a crucified
malefactor who had risen from the dead. I see in the proselytism of
Poppaea, guided by Jewish malice, the only adequate explanation of the
first Christian persecution. Hers was the jealousy which had goaded
Nero to matricide ; hers not improbably was the instigated fanaticism
of a proselyte which urged him to imbrue his hands in martyr blood.
And she had her reward. A woman of whom Tacitus has not a word
of good to say, and who seems to have been repulsive even to a
Suetonius, is handed down by the renegade Pharisee as "a devout
woman" — as a worshipper of God I1
And, indeed, when once the Christians were pointed out to the
popular vengeance, many reasons would be adduced to prove their con
nexion with the conflagration. Temples had perished — and were they
not notorious enemies of the temples 1 % Did not popular rumour charge
them with nocturnal orgies and Thyestaean feasts 1 Suspicions of incen
diarism were sometimes brought against Jews ; 3 but the Jews were not
in the habit of talking, as these sectaries were, about a fire which
should consume the world,4 and rejoicing in the prospect of that fiery
consummation.5 Nay, more, when Pagans had bewailed the destruction
of the city and the loss of the ancient monuments of Rome, had not
these pernicious people used ambiguous language, as though they
joyously recognised in these events the signs of a coming end 1 Even
when they tried to suppress all outward tokens of exultation, had
they not listened to the fears and lamentations of their fellow-citizens
with some sparkle in the eyes, and had they not answered with some
thing of triumph in their tones 1 There was a Satanic plausibility which
dictated the selection of these particular victims. Because they hated
the wickedness of the world, with its ruthless games and hideous idolar
1 Seouep,;; (Jos. Antt. xx. 7, § 11). The word means a " monotheist," or proselyte,
like o-eponwos (Acts xiii. 43, xvi. 14, etc.). See Huidekoper, Judaism at Rome, pp.
462—469. 2 As were also the Jews, who were confounded with them. Rom. ii. 22, "Dost thou
(a Jew) rob temples? " See Life and Work of St. Paul, ii. 202.
3 Jos. B. J. vii 3, § 2—4.
4 As St. Peter and St. John did at this very time. 1 Pet. iv. 17 ; Rev. xviii. 8.
Comp. 2 Pet. iii. 10—12 ; 2 Thess. i. 8.
5 St. Peter— apparently thinking of the fire at Rome and its consequences — calls the
persecution from which the Christians were suffering when he wrote his First Epistle
a inipoxro, or "conflagration." 1 Pet. iv. 12. Comp. 1 Pet. i 7 ; Heb. x. 27.

38 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
tries, they were accused of hatred of the whole human race.1 The
charge of incivismg, so fatal in this Reign of Terror, was sufficient to
ruin a body of men who scorned the sacrifices of heathendom, and
turned away with abhorrence from its banquets and gaieties.2 The culti
vated classes looked down upon the Christians with a disdain which
would hardly even mention them without an apology. The canaille of
Pagan cities insulted them with obscene inscriptions and blasphemous
pictures on the very walls of the places where they met.3 Nay, they
were popularly known by nicknames, like Sarmenticii and Semaxii — ¦
untranslatable terms of opprobrium derived from the fagots with which
they were burned and the stakes to which they were chained.4 Even
the heroic courage which they displayed was described as being sheer
obstinacy and stupid fanaticism.5
But in the method chosen for the punishment of these saintly
innocents Ner,o gave one more proof of the close connexion between
effeminate sestheticism and sanguinary callousness. As in old days,
"on that opprobrious hill," the temple of Chemosh had stood close
by that of Moloch, so now we find the spoliarum beside the fornices
¦ — Lust hard by Hate. The carnificina of Tiberius, at Capreae, ad
joined the sellariae. History has given many proofs that no man is
more systematically heartless than a corrupted debauchee. Like
people, like prince. In the then condition of Rome, Nero well
knew that a nation " cruel, by their sports to blood inured " would
be most likely to forget their miseries, and condone their suspicions,
by mixing games and gaiety with spectacles of refined and atrocious
cruelty, of which, for eighteen centuries, the most passing record has
sufficed to make men's blood run cold.
Tacitus tells us that " those who confessed were first seized, and then
on their evidence a huge multitude 6 were convicted, not so much on the
charge of incendiarism as for their hatred to mankind." Compressed
and obscure as the sentence is, Tacitus clearly means to imply by the
" confession " to which he alludes the confession of Christianity ; and
though he is not sufficiently generous to acquit the Christians abso-
1 Tac. Ann. xv. 44 ; Hist. v. 5 ; Suet. Ner. 16.
2 The tracts of Tertullian De ConmA Militis are the best commentary on these sentences.
3 Tertullian mentions one of these coarse caricatures — a figure with one foot hoofed,
wearing a toga, carrying a book, and with long ass's ears, under which was written,
"The God of the Christians, Onokoites." He says that Christians were actually charged
with worshipping the head of an ass (Apol. 16 ; ad Natt. i. 16). The same preposterous
calumny, with many others, is alluded to by Minucius Felix, Octav. i 9 : " Audio eos
turpissimae peciuhs caput asini . . . venerari. " The Christians were hence called
Asmarii. Analopms calumnies were aimed at the Jews. Tac. Hist. v. 4 ; Plut. Symp.
iv. 5, § 2 ; Jos. c. Apion. ii. 7.
4 Tert. Apol.M.
6 Epictetus, Dissert, iv. 7, § 6; Marc. Aurelius, xi. 3, >J<iAti imparls.
6 " Inyens multitudo." The phrase is identical with the no\i jrA>j6os of Clemens
Romanus (Ep. ad Cor. i. 6), and the <>xAos toAus of Rev. vii. 9, xix. 1, 6. Tertullian says
that "Nero was the first who raged with the sword of Caesar against this sect, which
was then specially rising at Rome " (Apol. 5).

THE CHRISTIAN MARTYRS. 39
lutely of all complicity in the great crime, he distinctly says that
they were made the scapegoats of a general indignation. The phrase
— " a huge multitude " — is one of the few existing indications of the
number of martyrs in the first persecution, and of the number of
Christians in the Roman Church.1 When the historian says that
they were convicted on the charge of "hatred against mankind" he
shows how completely he confounds them with the Jews, against
whom he elsewhere brings the accusation of " hostile feelings towards
all except themselves."
Then the historian adds one casual ^but frightful sentence — a
sentence which flings a dreadful light on the cruelty of Nero and
the Roman mob. He adds, "And various forms of mockery were
added to enhance their dying agonies. Covered with the skins of
wild beasts, they were doomed to die by the mangling of dogs, or by
being nailed to crosses ; or to be set on fire and burnt after twilight
by way of nightly illumination. Nero offered his own gardens for
this show, and gave a chariot race, mingling with the mob in the
dress of a charioteer, or actually driving about among them. Hence,
guilty as the victims were, and deserving of the worst punishments,
a feeling of compassion towards them began to rise, as men felt that
they were being immolated not for any advantage to the common
wealth, but to glut the savagery of a single man."2 ^
Imagine that awful scene, once witnessed by the silent obelisk in the
square before St. Peter's at Rome ! Imagine it, that we may realise
how vast is the change which Christianity has wrought in the feelings
of mankind ! There, where the vast dome now rises, were once the
gardens of Nero. They were thronged with gay crowds, among whom
the Emperor moved in his frivolous degradation — and on every side
were men dying slowly on their cross of shame. Along the paths of
those gardens on the autumn nights were ghastly torches, blackening
the ground beneath them with streams of sulphurous pitch, and each of
those living torches was a martyr in his shirt of fire.3 , And in the
amphitheatre hard by, in sight of twenty thousand spectators, famished
dogs were tearing to pieces some of the best and purest of men and
women, hideously disguised in the skins of bears or wolves. Thus did
Nero baptise in the blood of martyrs the city which was to be for ages
the capital of the world !
1 Compare Oros. Hist. vii. 7, "(Nero), primus Romae Christianos suppliciis et
mortibus affecit ac per omnes provincias pari persecutione excruciari imperavit ; ipsum
nomen exstirpare conatus beatissimos Christi apostolos Petrum cruce, Paulum gladio
occidit." 2 Hence the expressions " quaesitissimae poenae " and " crudelissimae quaestiones"
(Sulp. Sev. Hist. ii. 96)..
3 See, on this tunica molesta, Lucr. iii 1,017 ; Juv. viii. 235, i. 155, et ibi Schol.
Sen. Ep. xiv. 5, "Ulam tunicam alimentis ignium et illitam et textam." Mart. Spectac.
Ep. v., x. 25 ; Apul. iii. 9, x. 10 ; Tert. Apol. 15, 50 (aarmenticii . . . semaxii) ; ad Mart.
5 ; ad Scap. 4 ; ad Nat. i 18, " incendiati tunici." Friedlander, Sittengesch. Boms,
ii. 386.

40 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The specific atrocity of such spectacles — unknown to the earlier
ages which they called barbarous— was due to the cold-blooded selfish
ness, the hideous realism of a refined, delicate, aesthetic age. To please
these "lisping hawthorn-buds," these debauched and sanguinary dandies,
Art, forsooth, must know nothing of morality ; must accept and rejoice
in a "healthy animalism "; must estimate life by the number of its few
wildest pulsations ; must reckon that life is worthless without the most
thrilling experiences of horror or delight ! Comedy must be actual
shame, and tragedy genuine bloodshed.1 When the play of Afranius
called "The Conflagration" was put on the stage, a house must be
really burnt, and its furniture really plundered.2 In the mime called
" Laureolus," an actor must really be crucified and mangled by a bear,
and really fling himself down and deluge the stage with blood.3 When
the heroism of Mucius Scaevola was represented, a real criminal4 must
thrust his hand without a groan into the flame, and stand motionless
while it is being burnt. Prometheus must be really chained to his
rock, and Dirce in very fact be tossed and gored by the wild bull ;5 and
Orpheus be torn to pieces by a real bear ; and Icarus must really fly,
even though he fall and be dashed to death ; and Hercules must ascend
the funeral pyre, and there be veritably burnt alive ; and slaves and
criminals must play their parts heroically in gold and purple till the
flames envelope them. It was the ultimate romance of a degraded and
brutalised society. The Roman people, "victors once, now vile and
base," could now only be amused by sanguinary melodrama Fables
must be made realities, and the criminal must gracefully transform his
supreme agonies into amusements for the multitude by becoming a
gladiator or a tragedian. Such were the spectacles at which Nero loved
to gaze through his emerald eye-glass.6 And worse things than these —
things indescribable, unutterable. Infamous mythologies were enacted,
in which women must play their part in torments of shamefulness more
intolerable than death. A St. Peter must hang upon the cross in the
Pincian gardens, as a real Laureolus upon the stage. A Christian boy
must be the Icarus, and a Christian man the Scaevola, or the Hercules,
1 Champagny, Les Chars, iv. 159.
2 Suet. Califf. 57.
3 Juv. Sat. viii. 187, " Laureolum velox. etiam bene Lentulus egit," the actor " was
unable to fly over the cross." Mart. Spectac. vii., "Nuda Caledonio sic pectora praebuit
urso. Non falsa pendens in cruce Laureolus Vivebant laceri membris stillantibus
artus ... In quo quae fuerat fabula, poena fuit." See Suet. Caius, 57. Josephus
(Antt. xix. 1, § 3) alludes to this terrible incident, and so does Tertullian in an obscure
but remarkable passage, adv. Valent. 14, " nee habens supervo tare crucem . . . quia
nullum Catulli Laureolum fuerit exemtata."
4 Mart. vii. 8, 21, viii. 30, x. 25 ; cf. Searpi^coi, Heb. x. 33.
6 The Toro Farnese had been brought to Rome from Rhodes in the days of Augustus,
and may have set the fashion for this tableau vivant (Plin. xxxvi 5, 6 ; Apul. Metam.
vi. 127 ; Lucian, Lucius, 23 ; Renan, L'Antechrist, 171 ; Tert. Apol. 15 ; Plut. De Serd
Num. VLnd. 9 : Tvp ameVres ck Tljs avdivris CKeiVqs Kal woAut«Aous €<T0iJTOs; Schlegel, PhiloS d.
Gesch. I. ix., p. 332.
6 "Spectabat smaragdo" (Plin. H. N. xxxvii. 57).

DEEDS OF THE ANTICHRIST. 41
or the Orpheus of the amphitheatre ; and Christian women, modest
maidens, holy matrons, must be the Danaids,1 or the Proserpine, or
worse, and play their parts as priestesses of Saturn and Ceres, and
in blood-stained dramas of the dead. No wonder that Nero became
to Christian imagination the very incarnation of evil ; the Antichrist ;
the Wild Boast from the abyss ; the delegate of the great red
Dragon, with a diadem and a name of blasphemy upon his brow.2 No
wonder that he left a furrow of horror in the hearts of men, and that,
ten centuries after his death, the Church of Sta. Maria del Popolo had to
be built by Pope Pascal II. to exorcise from Christian Rome his restless
and miserable ghost !
And it struck them with deeper horror to see that the Antichrist, so
far from being abhorred, was generally popular. He was popular be
cause he presented to the degraded populace their own image and simili
tude. The froglike unclean spirits which proceeded, as it were, out of
his mouth3 were potent with these dwellers in an atmosphere of pesti
lence. They had lost all love for freedom and nobleness ; they cared
only for doles and excitement. Even when the infamies of a Petronius
had been superseded by the murderous orgies of Tigellinus, Nero was
still everywhere welcomed with shouts as a god on earth, and saluted on
coins as Apollo, as Hercules, as " The Saviour of the World."4 The
poets still assured him that there was no deity in heaven who would not
think it an honour to concede to him his prerogatives ; that if he did
not place himself well in the centre of Olympus, the equilibrium of the
universe would be destroyed.5 Victims were slain along his path, and
altars raised for him — for this wretch, whom an honest slave could not
but despise and loathe — as though he was too great for mere human
honours.6 Nay, more, he found adorers and imitators of his execrable
example — an Otho, a Vitellius, a Domitian, a Commodus, a Caracalla,
an Heliogabalus — to poison the air of the world. The lusts and hungers
and furies of the world lamented him, and cherished his memory, and
longed for his return.
And yet, though all bad men — who were the majority — admired and
even loved him, he died the death of a dog. Tremendous as was the
power of Imperialism, the Romans often treated their individual empe
rors as Nero himself treated the Syrian goddess, whose image he first
worshipped with awful veneration and then subjected to the most gro
tesque indignities. For retribution did not linger, and the vengeance
fell at once on the guilty emperor and the guilty city.
1 S. Clem, ad Cor. i 6, Bta. £rj\ov Siwxteicrru yvvaiices AacaiSe? leal AlpKat aiKurfiara Seira leai
avoana nadovaat. ein. rov -ri}i nitTTetos pefiaiov SpofLOV Ka-njvnjtrcw leal eAajSoe "yepas yewaiov ox aerfcvelS
Tu au.fia.Ti. 2 2 Thess. ii. 3 ; Rev. xi. 7, xii. 3, xiii 1, 6, xvi. 13, xvii. 8, 11.
3 Rev. xvi. 13.
4 Tw StoTljpi TTJS OHCOV^OTJS
6 Luc. Phars. vii
6 Tac. Ann. xv. 74, " Tamquam mortale fastigium egresso.''

42 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
«
" Careless seems the Great Avenger : History's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt false systems and the "Word ;
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own."
The air was full of prodigies. There were terrible storms ; the
plague wrought fearful ravages.1 Rumours spread from lip to lip.
Men spoke of monstrous births ; of deaths by lightning under strange
circumstances ; of a brazen statue of Nero melted by the flash ; of places
struck by the brand of heaven in fourteen regions of the city ;2 of sudden
darkenings of the sun.3 A hurricane devastated Campania; comets
blazed in the heavens ;4 earthquakes shook the ground.6 On all sides
were the traces of deep uneasiness and superstitious terror.6 To all
these portents, which were accepted as true by Christians as well as by
Pagans, the Christians would give a specially terrible significance. They
strengthened their conviction that the coming of the Lord drew nigh.
They convinced the better sort of Pagans that the hour of their deliver
ance from a tyranny so monstrous and so disgraceful was near at hand.
In spite of the shocking servility with which alike the Senate and
the people had welcomed him back to the city with shouts of triumph,
Nero felt that the air of Rome was heavy with curses against his name.
He withdrew to Naples, and was at supper there on March 19, A.D. 68,
the anniversary of his mother's murder, when he heard that the first
note of revolt had been sounded by the brave C. Julius Vindex, Praefect
of Farther Gaul. He was so far from being disturbed by the news, that
he showed a secret joy at the thought that he could now order Gaul to
be plundered. For eight days he took no notice of the matter. He was
only roused to send an address to the Senate because Vindex wounded
his vanity by calling him "Ahenobarbus," and "a bad singer." But
when messenger after messenger came from the provinces with tidings
of menace, he hurried back to Rome. At last, when he heard that Vir-
ginius Rufus had also rebelled in Germany, and Galba in Spain, he
became aware of the desperate nature of his position. On receiving this
intelligence he fainted away, and remained for some time unconscious.
He continued, indeed, his grossness and frivolity, but the wildest and
fiercest schemes chased each other through his melodramatic brain. He
would slay all the exiles ; he would give up all the provinces to plunder ;
1 Tac. Ann. xvi 13, " Tot facinoribus foedum annum etiam dii tempestatibus et
morbis insignivere," etc. ; pros. Hist. vii. 7, " Mox (after the martyrdom of Peter and
Paul) acervatim miseram civitatem obortae undique oppressere clades. Nam subsequente
auctumno tanta Urbi pestilentia incubuit, ut triginta millia funerum in rationem
Libitinae venirent."
2 Tac. Hist. i. 4, 11, 78, ii. 8. 95 ; Suet. Ner. 57 ; Otho, 7 ; Plut. De Sera Num.
Vimd. ; Pausan. vii. 17 ; Xiphilin. Ixiv ; Dion Chrysost. Oral. xxi.
8 Tac. Ann. xiv. 12.
4 Tao. Ann. xiv. 22, xv. 47 ; Sen. Qu. Nat. vii. 17, 21.
5 Tac. Ann. xv. 22.
« Suet. Ner. 36, 39 ; Dion Cass. lxi. 16, 18.

FLIGHT OF NERO. 43
he would order all the Gauls in the city to be butchered ; he would have
all the Senators invited to banquets, and would then poison them ;
he would have the city set on fire, and the wild beasts of the amphi
theatre let loose among the people ; he would depose both the Consuls,
and become sole Consul himself, since legend said that only by a
Consul could Gauls be conquered ; he would go with an army to the
province, and when he got there would do nothing but weep, and
when he had thus moved the rebels to compassion, would next day sing
with them at a great festival the ode of victory which he must at once
compose. Not a single manly resolution lent a moment's dignity to his
miserable fall. Sometimes he talked of escaping to Ostia, and arming
the sailors ; at others, of escaping to Alexandria, and earning his bread
by his " divine voice." Meanwhile he was hourly subjected to the dead
liest insults, and terrified by dreams and omens so sombre that his faith
in the astrologers who had promised him the government of the East
and the kingdom of Jerusalem began to be rudely shaken. When he
heard that not a single army or general remained faithful to him, he
kicked over the table at which he was dining, dashed to pieces on the
ground two favourite goblets embossed with scenes from the Homeric
poems, and placed in a golden box some poison furnished to him by
Locusta. The last effort which he contemplated was to mount the Rostra,
beg pardon of the people for his crimes, ask them to try him again, and,
at the worst, to allow him the Praefecture of Egypt. But this design he
did not dare to carry out, from fear that he would be torn to pieces be
fore he reached the Forum. Meanwhile he found that the palace had
been deserted by his guards, and that his attendants had robbed his
chamber even of the golden box in which he had stored his poison.
Rushing out, as though to drown himself in the Tiber, he changed his
mind, and begged for some quiet hiding-place in which to collect his
thoughts. The freedman Phaon offered him a lowly villa about four
miles from the city. Barefooted, and with a faded coat thrown over his
tunic, he hid his head and face in a kerchief, and rode away with "only
four attendants. On the road he heard the tumult of the Praetorians
cursing his name. Amid evil omens and serious perils he reached the
back of Phaon's villa, and, creeping towards it through a muddy reed-
bed, was secretly admitted into one of its mean slave-chambers by an
aperture through which he had to crawl on his hands and feet.
There is no need to dwell on the miserable spectacle of, his end —
perhaps the meanest and most pusillanimous which has ever been
recorded. The poor wretch who, without a pang, had caused so many
brave Romans and so many innocent Christians to be murdered, could
not summon up resolution to die. He devised every operatic incident
of which he could think. When even his most degraded slaves urged
him to have sufficient manliness to save himself from the fearful
infamies which otherwise awaited him, he ordered his grave to be dug,
and fragments of marble to be collected for its adornment, and water

44 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and wood for his funeral pyre, perpetually whining, " What an artist to
perish ! " Meanwhile a courier arrived for Phaon. Nero snatched his
despatches out of his hand, and read that the Senate had decided that
he should be punished in the ancestral fashion as a public enemy.
Asking what the ancestral fashion was, he was informed that he would
be stripped naked and scourged to death with rods, with his head thrust
into a fork. Horrified at this, he seized two daggers, and after
theatrically trying their edges, sheatl e 1 them again, with the excuse
that the fatal moment had not yet arrived ! Then he bade Sporus begin
to sing his funeral song, and begged some one to show him how to die.
Even his own intense shame at his cowardice was an insufficient
stimulus, and he whiled away the time in vapid epigrams and pompous
quotations. The sound of horses' hoofs then broke on his ears, and,
venting one more Greek quotation, he held the dagger to his throat.
It was driven home by Epaphroditus, one of his literary slaves. At
this moment the centurion who came to arrest him rushed in. Nero
was not yet dead, and, under pretence of helping him, the centurion
began to stanch the wound with his cloak. " Too late," he said ; " is
this your fidelity ? " So he died ; and the bystanders were horrified
with the way in which his eyes seemed to be starting out of his head
in a rigid stare. He had begged that his body might be burned without
posthumous insults, and this was conceded by Icelus, the freedman of
Galba. So died the last of the Caesars ! And as Robespierre was lamented
by his landlady, so even Nero was tenderly buried by two nurses who
had known him in the exquisite beauty of his engaging childhood, and
by Acte, who had inspired his youth with a genuine love.
But, as we shall see hereafter, his history does not end with his
grave. He was to live on in the expectation alike of Jews and
Christians. The fifth head of the Wild Beast of the Revelation was in
some sort to re-appear as the eighth ; the head with its diadem and its
names of blasphemy had been wounded to death, but in the Apocalyptic
sense the deadly wound was to be healed.1 The Roman world could not
believe that the heir of the deified Julian race could be cut off thus
suddenly and obscurely, and vanish like foam upon the water.2 The
Christians felt sure that it required something more than an ordinary
death-stroke to destroy the Antichrist, and to end the vitality of the
Wild Beast from the Abyss, who had been the first to set himself in
deadly antagonism against the Redeemer, and to wage war upon the
saints of God. ' Rev. xiii 3, xvii. 11. 1 Hos. x. 7.

ST. PETEE AND THE CHUECH CATHOLIC.

CHAPTER V.
WRITINGS OF THE APOSTLES AND EARLY CHRISTIANS
cA\t€v jucpoVwy
Tup ffa>^0fi4vuty,
He\dyovs Kaicias
IX^vs ayvoiis
Kdjiuros zxQpov
T\vKepjj £o>p Se\ei^a}V.
— Clem. Alex. Paed. iii. ad Jin.
When we turn from the annals of the world at this epoch to the annals
of the Church, we pass at once from an atmosphere heavy with misery
and corruption into pure and pellucid air. We have been reading the
account given us by secular literature of the world in its relations to the
Church. In the First Epistle of Saint Peter we shall read directions
which were written to guide the Church in its relations to the world.
We have been reading what Pagans said and thought of Christians ; in
the writings of Christians addressed to each other, and meant for no
other eye, we shall see what these hated, slandered, persecuted Christians
really were. In place of the turbulence laid to their charge, we shall
have proofs of the humility and cheerfulness of their submission. We
shall see that, so far from being resentful, they were taught unlimited
forgiveness ; and that, instead of cherishing a fierce hatred against all
mankind, they made it their chief virtue to cultivate an universal love.
But although we are so fully acquainted with the thoughts and
feelings of the early Christians, yet the facts of their corporate history
during the last decades of the first century, and even the closing details
in the biographies of their very greatest teachers, are plunged in entire
uncertainty. When, with the last word in the Acts of the Apostles, we
lose the graphic and faithful guidance of St. Luke, the torch of
Christian history is for a time abruptly quenched. We are left, as it
were, to grope amid the windings of the catacombs. Even the final
labours of the life of St. Paul are only so far known as we may dimly
infer them from the casual allusions of the pastoral epistles. For the
details of many years in the life of St. Peter we have nothing on which
to rely except slight and vague allusions, floating rumours, and false
impressions created by the deliberate fictions of heretical romance,

46 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
It is probable that this silence is in itself the result of the terrible
scenes in which the Apostles perished. It was indispensable to the
safety of the whole community that the books of the Christians, when
given up by the unhappy weakness of " traditors " or discovered by the
keen malignity of informers, should contain no compromising matter.
But how would it have been possible for St. Luke to write in a manner
otherwise than compromising if he had detailed the horrors of the
Neronian persecution 1 It is a reasonable conjecture that the sudden
close of the Acts of the Apostles may have been due to the impossibility
of speaking without indignation and abhorrence of the Emperor and the
Government which, between a.d. 64 and 68, sanctioned the infliction
upon innocent men and women of atrocities which excited the pity of
the very Pagans. The Jew and the Christian who entered on such
themes could only do so under the disguise of a cryptograph, hiding his
meaning from all but the initiated few in such prophetic symbols as
those of the Apocalypse. In that book alone we are enabled to hear
the cry of horror which Nero's brutal cruelties wrung from Christian
hearts. But if we know so little of Saint Peter that is in the least trust
worthy, it is hardly strange that of the other Apostles, with the single
exception of St. John, and — in the wider sense of the word " apostle "
— of St. James the Lord's brother, we know scarcely anything. To
St. Peter, St. John, and St. James the Lord's brother, it was believed
that Christ, after His resurrection, had " revealed the true gnosis," or
deeper understanding of Christian doctrine.1 It is singular how very
little is narrated of the rest, and how entirely that little depends upon
loose and unaccredited tradition. Did they all travel as missionaries 1
Did they all die as martyrs 1 Heracleon, in the second century, said
that St. Matthias, St. Thomas, St. Philip, and St. Matthew, died natural
deaths, and St. Clemens of Alexandria quotes him without contradiction.2
The only death of an Apostle narrated in the New Testament is
narrated in two words, aveiks p.*xalpc} — "slew with the sword." It is
the martyrdom of St. James the Elder, the son of Zebedee.3 Of St.
Philip we know with reasonable certainty that he lived for many years
as bishop, and died in great honour at Hierapolis in Phrygia. Eusebius
makes express mention of his daughters, of whom two were virgins,
and one was married and buried at Ephesus. It cannot be regarded as
certain that there has not been some confusion between Philip the
Apostle and Philip the Deacon ; but there is no reason why they should
not both have had virgin daughters, and Polycrates expressly says that
the Philip who was regarded as one of the great "lights of Asia " was
1 Clem. Alex; ap. Euseb. H. E. ii. 1.
2 Clem. Alex. Strom, i. 4. _ See Dollinger, First Age of the Church, p. 137.
3 He became the patron saint of Spain from the legends about the removal of his
body to Iria Flavia. Compostella is said to be a corruption of Giacomo Postolo (Voss).
See Cave, Lives of the Apostles, p. 150. The Bollandists still retain the legend, first
mentioned by "Wai. Strabo (Poem, de XII. Apost.), that he was martyred there.

OBSCURITY OF CHURCH HISTORY. 47
one of the Twelve.1 If we ask about the rest of our Lord's chosen
Twelve, all that we are told is of a most meagre and most uncertain
character. The first fact stated about them is that they did not separate
for twelve years, because they had been bidden by Christ in His parting
words to stay for that period in Jerusalem. Accordingly we find that
up to that time St. Paul is the only Apostle of whose missionary
journeys beyond the limits of Palestine we have any evidence, whereas
after that time we find James the Lord's brother alone at Jerusalem as
the permanent overseer of the Mother-Church.
We are told that, after the Ascension, the Apostles divided the
world among themselves by lot for the purpose of evangelisation,2 and
in the fourth century there was a prevalent belief that they had all
been martyred before the destruction of Jerusalem, excepting John.
This, however, can have only been an a priori conjecture, and there is
no evidence which can be adduced in its support.
The sum total, then, of what tradition asserts about these Apostles,
omitting the worst absurdities and the legendary miracles, is as
follows : —
St. Andrew, determining to convert the Scythians,3 visited on the
way Amynsus, Trapezus, Heraclea, and Sinope. After being nearly
killed by the Jews at Sinope, he was miraculously healed, visited Neo-
Caesarea and Samosata, returned to Jerusalem, and thence went to
Byzantium, where he appointed Stachys to be a bishop. After various
other travels and adventures he was martyred at Patrae by .ZEgeas,
Proconsul of Achaia, by being crucified on the decussate cross now
known as the cross of St. Andrew.4
St. Bartholomew (Nathaniel) is said to have travelled to India, and
to have carried thither St. Matthew's Gospel.5 After preaching in
Lycaonia and Armenia, it is asserted that he was either flayed or
crucified head downwards at Albanopolis in Armenia. The pseudo-
Dionysius attributes to him the remarkable saying that " Theology is
both large and very small, and the Gospel broad and great, and also
compressed." 6
St. Matthew is said to have preached in Parthia and ^Ethiopia,
and to have been martyred at Naddaber in the latter country.7 Accord
ing to St. Clemens, he lived only on herbs,8 practising a mode of life
which was Essene in its simplicity and self-denial.
1 Clem. Alex. Strom, iii., p. 448; Polycr. ap. Euseb. iii. 31; Dorotheus, De VU. et
Mort. Apost. ; Isidor. Pelus. Epp. i. 447, etc. Metaphrastes and Nicephorus add various
fables. 2 Socrates, HE. i. 19. a Origen ap. Euseb. iii. 1.
4 See Euseb. H. E. iii. 1 ; Nicephorus, H. E. ii. 39. In Hesychius ap. Photium, Cod.
269, is first found his address to his cross. The ActaAndreae (Tischendorf, Act. Apocr.,
p. 105 ff.) are among the best of their kind.
6 Euseb. v. 10 ; Sophronius ap. Jer. De Script. Eccl. 6 De Mystic. Theol. i. 3.
1 Niceph. I.e. ; Metaphr. ad Aug. 24 ; Fortunatus, De Senat. vii. Various fables are
added in Niceph. ii. 41.
8 Paedag. ii 1.

48 the early days of Christianity.
St. Thomas is called the Apostle of India, and is said to have
founded the Christian communities in India who still call themselves by
his name. But this seems to be a mistake. Theodoret says that the
Thomas who established these churches was a Manichee, and the " Acts
of Thomas " are Manichean in tendency. Origen says that the Apostle
preached in Parthia.1 His grave was shown at Edessa in the fourth
century.2 St. James the Less, the son of Alphaeus, who is distinguished by
the Greek Church from James the Lord's brother, is said to have been
crucified while preaching at Ostrakine in Lower Egypt.3
St. Simon Zelotes is variously conjectured to have preached and to
have been crucified at Babylonia or in the British Isles.4
Judas, Lebb^eus, or Thaddeus,. is said to have been despatched by
St. Thomas to Abgar, King of Edessa, and to have been martyred at
Berytus.5 Scanty, contradictory, late, and unauthenticated notices, founded for
the most part on invention or a sense of ecclesiastical fitness, and
recorded chiefly by writers like Gregory of Tours late in the sixth
century, and Nicephorus late in the fourteenth, are obviously valueless.
All that we can deduce from them is the belief, of which we see glimpses
even in Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen, that the Apostles preached
far and wide, and that more than one of them were martyred. It would
be strange if none of the Twelve met with such an end in preaching
among Pagan and barbarous nations ; and that they did so preach is
rendered likely by the extreme antiquity and the marked Judaeo-
Christian character of Churches which still exist in Persia, India,
Egypt, and Abyssinia.
But in the silence and obscurity which thus falls over the personal
history and final fate of the Twelve whom Christ chose to be nearest to
Him on earth, how invaluable is the boon of knowledge respecting the
thoughts, and to some extent even the lives, of such Apostles as St.
Peter, St. Paul, and St. John, as well as of St. Jude, and St James the
Lord's brother, and the eloquent writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
And the boon is all the richer from the Divine diversity of thought thus
preserved for us. For each of these Apostolic writers, though they are
one in their faith, yet approaches the hopes and promises of Christianity
from a different point of view ; each one gives us a fresh aspect of many-
sided truths.
Let us imagine what would have been our position if, in the providence
of God, we had not been suffered to possess these works, of which the
greater number belong to the closing epoch ofthe New Testament Canon.
The New Testament would then have consisted exclusively of the
works of five writers — the four Evangelists and St. Paul.
» Orig. ap. Euseb. iii. 1. 2 Chrys. Horn, in Hebr. xxvi.
8 Niceph. ii. 40. 4 Niceph. viii. 30.
* Dorotheus, De VU. Apost.; Niceph. ii. 40.

the books of the new testament. 49
The Synoptists, in spite of well-marked minor differences in their
point of view, present for the most part a single — mainly the external
and historical — aspect of the life of Christ. We find in them a com
pressed and fragmentary outline of the work of Christ's public ministry,
and even this is almost confined to details about one year of His work
and one region of His ministry,1 followed by a fuller account of His
Betrayal, Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. In the fourth Gospel
alone we have a sketch of the Judaean phase of the ministry, as well as
the doctrine of the Logos, and a yet deeper insight into the Nature and
Mind of Christ. But, with this exception, we should be left to St. Paul
alone for the theological development and manifold applications of
Christian truth. And yet in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the
Epistles of St. Paul himself, we should have found abundant traces that
his view of Christianity was in many respects independent and original.
Alike from his own pages, and those of his friend and historian St. Luke,
we should have learnt the existence of phases of Christianity, built
indeed upon the same essential truths as those which he deemed it the
glory of his life to preach, but placing those truths in a different per
spective, and regarding them from another point of view. We should
have heard the echoes of disputes so vehement and so agitating that
they even arrayed the Apostles in a position of controversy against one
another, and we should have found traces that though those disputes
were conducted with such Christian forbearance on both sides as to<
prevent their degenerating into schisms, they yet continued to smoulder
as elements of difference between various schools of thought. Taking
the Corinthian Church as a type of other Churches, we should have
found that there was a Kephas party, and an Apollos party, and a Christ
party, as well as a party which attached itself to the name of Paul ; and
even if we admitted that the Corinthian Church was exceptionally
factious, we should have learnt from the Epistle to the Galatians, and
other sources, that there were Jews who called themselves Christians,
and claimed identity with the views of James, by whom the name and
work of the Apostle of the Gentiles were regarded not only with
unsympathising coldness, but with positive disapproval and dislike.
We should have felt that we were not in possession of the materials
for forming any complete opinion as to the , characteristics of early
Christianity. We should have longed for even a few words to inform
us what were the special tenets which differentiated the adherents of St.
James, and St. Peter, and St. John, and Apollos, from those of the
Great Missionary who in human erudition and purely intellectual
endowments, no less than in the vast effects of his lifelong martyrdom,
so greatly surpassed them all. We should have been ready to sacrifice
no small part of classical literature for the sake of any treatise, however
brief, which would have furnished us with adequate data for ascertaining
1 See the remark of St. John " the Elder " (i.e., the Apostle) in Papias ap. Euseb. H. E.
iii. 24. E

50 the early days of Christianity.
the teaching of Apostles who had lived familiarly with the Lord by the
Lake of Galilee ; or of some other early converts who, like St. Paul
himself, formed their judgment of Christianity with the full powers of a
cultivated manhood. We should, indeed, have known how Christianity
was taught by one who had been living for years in Heathen communi
ties, whose Jewish training at the feet of Gamaliel had been modified by
bis early days in learned Tarsus, and still more by his cosmopolitan
familiarity with the cities and ways of men ; but we should have asked
whether the Faith was taught in exactly the same way — or, if not, with
what modifications — by a Peter and a John, who had known, as St. Paul
had never known, the living Jesus, and by a James the Lord's brother,
who spent so many years in the rigid practice of every Jewish observance.
We should have been lost in vain surmises as to the growth of heresies.
If Marcionism and Antinomianism sprang from direct perversion of the
teachings of St. Paul, what was the teaching on which Nazarenes, and
Ebionites, and Elchasaites, and Chiliasts professed to found their views 1
In fact, without the nine books of the New Testament, which will be
examined in these volumes, the early history of the Church would have
been reduced to a chaos of hopeless uncertainties. We should have felt
that our records were grievously imperfect ; that only in a unity wherein
minor differences were reconciled, without being obliterated — only in the
synthesis of opinions which were various, without contrariety — could we
form a full notion of the breadth and length, and depth and height of
sacred Truth.
Now this is the very boon which the Spirit of God has granted to
us. Besides the four Gospels, besides the thirteen Epistles of St. Paul,
we have nine books of the New Testament which are the works of five
different authors, and every one of these brief but precious documents
is marked by its own special characteristics.
1. Earliest, probably, of them all is the book which is unhappily
placed last, and therefore completely out of its proper order in our
New Testaments, The Revelation of St. John the Divine. It
marks the beginning of the era of martyrdoms. It is in many respects
exceptionally precious. It is precious as a counterpart to the Book
of Daniel in the Old Testament, and therefore as furnishing us
with, a splendid specimen of a Christian, as distinguished from a
Jewish, Apocalypse. It is precious as showing the effect produced
on the thoughts and hopes of Christendom by the first outburst of
Imperial persecution. It is especially precious as a Christian
Philosophy of History, and as giving a voice to the inextinguishable
hopes of Christians even in the midst of fire and blood. And besides
all this it is precious as furnishing the earliest insight into the mind
of the Beloved Disciple, in a stage of his career before the mighty
lessons involved in the Fall of Jerusalem and the close of the old
^Eon had emancipated him from the last fetters of Judaic bondage.
2. In The Epistle to the Hebrews, which is being more and

THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE. 51
more widely accepted as the work of Apollos, we have a specimen^
of Alexandrian Christianity. Valuable for its singular dignity and
eloquence, for the powerful argument which it elaborates, and for
the original truths with which it is enriched, it also possesses a very
special interest because it gives us a clear insight into the school of
thought which sprang from the contact of Judaism and Christianity
with Greek Philosophy. Of this Alexandrianism there are but
scattered indications in St. John and St. Paul, but it was destined
in God's providence to exercise a very powerful influence over the
growth and development of Christian doctrine, because it furnished
the intellectual training of some of the greatest of the Christian
Fathers. Our loss would have been irreparable if time had deprived
us of the earliest and profoundest Christian treatise which emanated
from the splendid school of Alexandrian Theology.
The remaining seven treatises of the New Testament are known
by the general name of the Seven Catholic Epistles. Various
untenable explanations of the name " Catholic " have been suggested ;
but in the third century it was used in the sense of "encyclical,"1
and there can be little doubt that these seven letters were so called
because they were addressed not to one city, or even to one nation, but
generally, to every Christian. In the West they were sometimes called
Epiistolae Canonicae, but this could not have been the original meaning
of Catholic, since Eusebius gives the name to the letters of Dionysius
of Corinth.2 Two of these letters — the Epistles of St. James and
St. Jude — belong to the Judaic school of Christianity ; two others — ¦
those of St. Peter — represent the moderate and mediating position of
Christians who wished to stand aloof, alike from Paulinists and
Judaists, on the more general grounds of a common Christianity ;
three — those of St. John — represent a phase of thought in which the
chief controversies which agitated the first decades of the Church's
history have melted into the distance, or have been solved for ever by
the Fall of Jerusalem. At that epoch Truth was beginning to be
assailed from without by new forms of opposition, or corroded from
within by fresh types of error.
As we are about to study these Epistles in detail, we may here
confine ourselves to a few general remarks respecting them.
3. The Epistle of St. Jude is the work of a non-Apostolic writer,
but of one who was known as brother of St. James the Bishop of
Jerusalem, and who evidently resembled his more eminent brother in
i Euseb. H. E. vii. 25.
2 Euseb. H. E. iv. 23; Leont. De Sect. 27. Theodoret says: "They are called
' Catholic, ' which is equivalent to encyclical, since they are not addressed to single
Churches, but generally (naUXov) to the faithful, whether to the Jews of the Dispersion,
as Peter writes, or even to all who are living as Christians under the same faith." The
word itself simply means "general. " Some scholars have argued that the Fathers use it
in the sense of "canonical," but this is a later usage. See Ebrard's Appendix to his
edition of 1 John.

52 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
intensity of character and vehemence of conviction. His brief letter is
interesting from its very peculiarities. It abounds in original and
picturesque expressions, and fearlessly utilises both the Jewish
Hagadoth and the apocryphal literature, with which the writer's
training had rendered him familiar. In the passionate vehemence of
its denunciations against Gnostic libertinism it reads like a page of
Amos or of Isaiah, and is evidently the work of one who, like so many
of the early Jewish Christians, had thought it both a national and
a religious duty in entering the Church to remain true to the
Synagogue. It is a sort of partial and anticipated Apocalypse, but it
rests content with isolated metaphors, instead of continuous symbols.
4. The same stern Judaic character, rendered still more unbending
by the asceticism of the writer, marks every page of The Epistle of
St. James. Living exclusively at Jerusalem, accurate as the Pharisees
themselves in the observance of the Mosaic Law — a scrupulosity which
had gained him his title of " the Just " — he was only called upon " to
be a Jew to the Jews," and this he was by nature, by temperament,
and by training. In the Synod at Jerusalem, where St. Peter proposed
emancipation, St. James — even in assenting — proposes restrictions ;
and while St. Peter, almost in Pauline language, declares that neither
Jew nor Gentile can be saved except "through the grace of the
Lord Jesus,"1 St. James, while holding the same faith, urges the claims
of Moses, and follows the indications of the Prophets. St. Peter never
mentions "the Law;" St. James never mentions "the Gospel." He
accepts it indeed with all his heart, but it still presents itself to him as
" the Law," though glorified from " a yoke that gendereth to bondage "2
into a perfect " law of liberty."3 In reading St. James we can realise
the sentiments of the Mother-Church of Jerusalem, and feel that there
is no discontinuity in the great stream of Divine Revelation. For him,
and for the Jewish Christians of whom he was the recognised leader,
Christianity is not so much the inauguration of the New as the
fulfilment of the Old.
5. It is necessary, and even desirable, that there should in all ages
be some whose mission it is to develop one special aspect of truth,
and to stamp the whole of their religious system with the impress
of their own powerful individuality. Such, respectively, were St. Paul
and St. James. Even in their lifetime there were some who
exaggerated and perverted the special truths which it was their work
to teach. After their death there were Marcionites and Antinomians
who perverted the doctrines of St. Paul, and there were Ebionites
and Nazarenes who falsely claimed the authority of St. James. But
happily there are Christians in all ages who, while they only
acknowledge a heavenly master, are anxious to accept truth by
whomsoever it is presented to them, yet at the same time to strip
i Acts xv. 11. 2 Gal. iv. 24. » James i 25, ii. 12.

THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 53
it of all mere party peculiarities. Such was St. Peter. He can see
the side of truth which either of his great contemporaries represents.
He is pre-eminently the Apostle of Catholicity. He had shown in
his conduct at Caesarea that his convictions leaned to the side of the
Apostle of the Gentiles; and at Antioch that he could not wholly
emancipate himself from the habits induced by lifelong training in
the principles of St. James. He was neither able nor willing wholly to
shake off the spell of personal ascendency exercised over him alike
by the great world-missionary and by the unbending Bishop of
Jerusalem. In The Epistles of St. Peter we are able to trace the
thoughts and expressions of both these great leaders. He dwells with
all the energy of St. James on the glory of practical virtue, and with
much of the fervour of St. Paul on the distinctively Christian motives
and sanctions. But it is no part of his object to follow St. Paul in the
logical development and formulation of Christian theology, nor yet
to dwell with the exclusiveness of St. James on Christian practice.
Even when using language which had been seized upon as the
shibboleth of partisans, he strips it of all partisan significance. He
was out of sympathy with the spirit which leads to disunion and
factiousness by the exclusive maintenance of antagonistic formulae.
It is interesting to see that the same distinctive peculiarities are
continued in later writers of the first and second centuries. In the
Epistle of the pseudo-Barnabas we have an exaggerated Paulinism ; in
the pseudo-Clementines an exaggerated Judaism, which makes a special
hero of St. James. St. Peter, standing between both extremes, was
claimed by both parties. Basilides, the anti-Judaic Egyptian Gnostic,
claimed to have been taught by Glaucias, the interpreter of St. Peter ;
and another apocryphal work, which uttered strong warnings against
Jewish worship, was called "The Preaching of Peter." On the other
hand, St. Peter shares, though in a degree subordinate to St. James, the
admiration of the Ebionite partisans whoi wrote the Clementine Homilies
and Recognitions. In a less objectionable way, but still with something
of exaggeration, Hermas, the author of the famous " Shepherd," reflects
the teaching of St. James ; while St. Clement of Rome, Catholic, like
St. Peter, in all his sympathies, "combines the distinctive features of all
the Apostolic Epistles," and "belonging to no party, he seemed to belong
to all."1 6. There remain The Three Epistles of St. John,2 which may be
regarded collectively as the last utterance of Christian Revelation in
the New Testament. They are the more interesting not only on this
account, but because they are the work of one who had been excep
tionally near to the heart of Christ, and had lived for many years face
to face with the great heathen world. They are also the work of one
1 Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 315.
2 I have gone through every fact and every detail of the Gospel of St. John in the
Life of Christ, and for that reason I do not touch upon it here.

54 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
who lived to see mighty changes in the growth and fortunes of the
Christian Church. He had perhaps been the only Apostle who had
seen Jesus die; he had been last beside the Cross, and first in the empty
tomb. As one who had watched the death-bed of the Mother of the
Lord, he had been one of the very few depositories of the awful mys
teries which it had been given to St. Luke partly to reveal, after they
had been pondered for many years in the holy reticence of the Virgin's
heart. He had been one of the scattered despairing band who had
spent in anguish the awful day in which they knew that Jesus was
lying dead, and did not yet understand that He should rise again. For
a quarter of a century he was the sole survivor, not only of those who
had heard the last discourses of the Lord on the evening of His
Passion, but even of any who could say, "That which we have seen
and our hands have handled of the Word of Life declare we unto
you." But his Epistles have yet a further interest as the writings
of one who, in his long and diversified experience, had undergone a
remarkable change ' alike of character and of views ; of one who had
passed from the Elijah-spirit to the Christ-spirit — from the narrower
scrupulosity of a Judaist, living in the heart of the Jewish capital
and attending thrice a day the Temple worship, to the breadth and
width and spirituality of Christian freedom. We have in the Apoca
lypse a work of his in the earlier stage of his Christian opinions,
when he stood for the first time face to face with the Heathen
world in its fiercest attitude of anti-Christian opposition. We have
in his Gospel and Epistles the sweetest and loftiest utterances of
Christian idealism ; the strains, as it were, of Divinest music in which
the voice of inspiration died away.
It may perhaps be said that our possession of these treasures —
especially of some of them — is disturbed by the growing suspicion
as to their genuineness. On this score Christianity has little to fear.
Every true and honourable man will regard it as a base and cowardly
unfaithfulness to defend as certain the genuineness of any book of the
Bible of which the spuriousness can be shown to be even reasonably
probable. In spite of the conflict which has raged around the Gospel
of St. John, we are deeply convinced that the arguments preponderate
in favour of those who accept it as the work of the Beloved Disciple. I
should find no difliculty in regarding the Apocalypse as being the
work of another John if, in spite of some acknowledged difficulties,
the Johannine authorship did not seem to be all but incontrovertible.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is not a work of St. Paul, but it is
pre-eminently worthy of its honoured place in the Canon. The first
Epistles of St. Peter and St. John may be said to stand above all
suspicion. The Epistles of St. James and St. Jude have less distinctive
value as parts of the Christian Revelation, but yet have their own
inestimable worth, and derive a deeper interest from being the works
of "brethren of the Lord." The second and third Epistles of St.

THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. 55
John are almost certainly genuine, but whether they be by the Apostle
or not is matter of minor importance, because of their extreme brevity,
and because they consist for the most part of recapitulated truths.
They are but corollaries to the first Epistle, and contain no doctrine
which is not found more fully in the Apostle's other writings. The
only one of the seven Catholic Epistles against the genuineness of
which strong arguments may be adduced is the Second Epistle of
St. Peter, which is in any case the book least supported by external
testimony. Its genuineness must be regarded as a question for still
further discussion, and the recent discovery of its affinity in some
passages to the works of Josephus requires careful attention.1 In
the introduction to each of these Epistles the evidence as to their
genuineness is discussed. Many, both in ancient and in modern days,
have doubted about some of them. Dionysius of Alexandria and
Eusebius, Gaius and Jerome, Erasmus and Cardinal Cajetan, Sixtus
Senensis and Luther,2 Zwingli, Calvin, GScolampadius, Grotius, and
many more, have regarded several of them as being at best deutero-
canonical — authentic (if at all) in a lower sense, and endowed with
inferior authority ; but though the Church of England has shown
herself wiser than the Council of Trent in not binding with an anathema
the necessary acceptance of the genuineness of every one of them, we
have every reason to rejoice that they were admitted by general consent
into the Christian Canon.
Enough, I trust, has been urged to show the varied and exceeding
preciousness of the writings which we are now about to examine. St.
Paul, as has been said, dwells, not of course exclusively, but predomi
nantly, on Christian doctrine, St. James on Christian practice, St. Peter
on Christian trials, and St. John on Christian experience ; — rSt. Paul
insists mainly on faith, St. James on works, St. Peter on hope, and St.
John on love ; — St. Paul represents3 Christian scholasticism, and St.
John Christian mysticism ; — St. Paul represents the spirit of Protes
tantism, St. Peter that of Catholicism, while St. James speaks in the
voice of the Church of the Past, and St. John in that of the Church of
the Future ; — St. Peter is the founder, St. Paul the propagator, St.
John the finisher ; — St. Peter represents to us the glory of power and
action, St. Paul that of thought and wisdom, St. James of virtue and
faithfulness, St. John of emotion and holiness.4 Again, to St. James
Christianity appears as the fulfilment of the Old Law, to St. Peter as
the completion of the old Theocracy, to St. Paul as the completion of
the old Covenant, to Apollos as the completion of the old Worship and
Priesthood, to St. John as the completion of all the truths which the
1 V. infra, pp. 105 — 8.
2 Luther was not by any means the only great theologian, either in ancient or modern
times, who adopted a subjective test. There were others also who "den Kanon im
Kanon suchten und fandcn. "
3 See Schaff, Hist, of the Church, 105—110.
4 See Stanley, Sermons on the Apostolic Age, pp. 4, 5.

56 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
world possessed.1 Such generalisations may be too seductive, and may
tend to mislead us by bringing into prominence only one special pecu
liarity of each writer, while others are for the time ignored. Yet they
contain a germ of truth, and they may help us to seize the more salient
characteristics. Two things, however, are certain : — One is, that in
every essential each of the sacred writers held the Catholic , faith, one
and indivisible, which is no more altered by their varying individuality
than Light is altered in character because we sometimes see it glowing
in the heavens, and sometimes flashing from the sea. The other is, that
in all these writers alike we see the beauty of holiness, the regenerating
power of Christian truth.
But among the writers of the New Testament two stand out pre
eminently as what would be called, in modern phraseology, original
theologians. They are St. Paul and St. John. On some of the special
differences between them we shall touch farther on. Meanwhile we
shall see at a glance the contrast between the dialectical method of the
one and the intuitive method of the other, if we compare the Epistle to
the Romans with the First Epistle of St. John. The richness, the
many-sidedness, the impetuosity, the human individuality of the one,
are as unlike as possible to the few but reiterated keynotes, the unity,
the sovereign calm, the spiritual idealism of the other. The difference
will be emphasised if we place side by side the fundamental conceptions
of their theology. That of St. Paul is :—
" But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God hath been manifested,
witness being borne thereto by the law and the prophets ; even the righteousness
of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe ;
for there is no distinction : for all sinned, and are falling short of the glory of God,
being accounted righteous freely by his grace through the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus" (Rom. iii. 21 — 24).
That of St. John is :—
' ' Herein is manifested the love of God in us, because he hath sent his only
begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him " (1 John iv. 9).
It requires but to read the two formulae side by side to perceive the
characteristic differences which separate the theological conceptions of
the two Apostles. It is a rich boon to possess the views of both.
We shall be still more inclined to value this precious heritage of
Christian thought when we notice that the least important of these
Catholic Epistles stands on an incomparably higher level than any of the
writings of the Apostolic Fathers. This will be shown by a glance at
the Epistle of St. Clement and the Epistle of Barnabas — writings so
highly valued in the ^Church that the first is found in the Alexan
drian Manuscript, and the second in the Sinaitic Manuscript, after the
Apocalypse, and both were publicly read in churches as profitable
"scriptures." 1 See Lange, Introduction to Catholio Epistles, Bibelwerk, ix.

THE EPISTLE OF ST. CLEMENT. 57
(1) The Epistle of St. Clement is thoroughly eclectic, but the
eclecticism is as devoid of genius and originality as an ordinary modern
sermon. It consists in a free usage of phrases borrowed promiscuously
from each of the great Apostles, rather than in a real assimilation of
their views. The piety and receptivity of the writer is very beautiful,
but it cannot be said that it is vivified by a single luminous or informing
idea. (a) St. Clement has read St. Paul and St. John, and St. James and
St. Peter, and as a pupil of the last he is animated by a genuine spirit
of catholicity; but he does not seem to have realised the essential dis
tinctions which separate their writings. The substance of his views is '
identical with that which we find in St. Peter and St. James, but he
clothes them in expressions borrowed from St. Paul. He says with St.
Paul, "We are not justified by ourselves, nor by works, but by faith"
(c. xxxii.), and he says with St. James, " being justified by works and
not by words" (c. xxx.) ; but he says nothing to bring into harmony the
apparent contradictions. His readiness to accept all moral exhortations
and all Apostolic phrases acts as a solvent in which the special meaning
of these phrases as parts of entire systems is apt to disappear. Three of
the sacred writers refer in different ways and for different purposes to
Abraham (Rom. iv. ; James ii. 21 ; Heb. xi. 8). In the syncretism of
St. Clement the allusions made by all three are mingled in one sentence.
Rahab, in St. Clement, is saved by her faith and by her hospitality,
which is a curious union of James ii. 25 and Heb. xi. 31 ; and the only
original observation which St. Clement adds is the allegorising fancy
that the red cord with which she let the spies down from the window
indicated the efficacy of the blood of Christ for all who believe and hope
in God {Ep. ad Cor. xii.). Thus the mechanical fusion of two quotations
is ornamented by a loose, poor, and untenable analogy, which enables
him to add " prophecy " to the faith and hospitality which distinguished
the harlot of Jericho.
(b) So, too, when St. Clement speaks of the Resurrection, we see
how immeasurably his theology has retrograded behind that of St. Paul.
He does not connect it immediately and necessarily with the Resurrection
of Christ, but proves it by Old Testament quotations, and illustrates its
possibility by natural analogies, especially by the existence and history
of the Phoenix ! How much would our estimate of inspiration have been
lowered — how loud would have been the scornful laugh of modern
materialists — had faith in the Resurrection been founded in the New
Testament on such arguments as these ! Tacitus, too, believed in the
Phoenix ; but Tacitus does not refer to the fable of its reappearance by
way of founding on it an inestimable truth. We are not comparing St.
Clement with Tacitus ; we love his gentleness and respect his piety ; we
are only endeavouring to show how far he stands below the level of St.
John and of St. Paul. ,
(c) But still more striking instances might be furnished of the theo-

58 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
logical and intellectual weakness of this ancient and saintly writer. He
never deviates into originality except to furnish an illustration, and his
illustrations, even when they are not erroneous, have but little intrinsic
value. The worth of his Epistle consists in its earnest spirit, and in its
historic testimony to the canonical Scriptures and to the constitution of
the early Church. • But how different is its diluted and transitional
Paulinism from the force and wealth of the first Epistle of St. Peter !
(2) Nor is it otherwise when we turn to the exaggerated and extrava
gant Paulinism of The Epistle of Barnabas. Here the inferiority is
still more marked : it even leads to decadent doctrine and incipient
heresy. (a) The writer has learnt from St. Paul the nullity of the Law as a
means of Salvation, but he has not learnt the true and noble function of
the Law in the Divine economy. He cannot see that there may be even
in that which is imperfect a relative perfection. He does not understand
the Divine value of Mosaism as God's education of the human race.
Not content with spiritualising the meaning of the Law, he speaks of its
literal meaning in terms of such contempt as almost to compromise the
authority of the Old Testament altogether. He ventures to say that the
circumcision of the flesh was an inspiration of "an evil angel" (c. ix.).
When a writer has gone so far as this, he is perilously near to actual
Gnosticism. In his attempt to allegorise the distinction between clean
and unclean animals (c. x.) he is seen at his very worst. A single
chapter so full of errors and follies, if found in any canonical book,
would have sufficed to drag down the authority of Scripture into the
dust. (b) Again, like the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Barnabas
— for that may have been his name, though he was not the Apostle — is
acquainted with Alexandrian methods of exegesis. But his use of them
is indiscriminate and unsatisfactory. The Israelites had been promised
a land flowing with milk and honey ; Barnabas proceeds to allegorise the
promise as follows : — Adam was made of earth ; the earth therefore
signifies the Incarnation of Christ ; milk and honey, which are suitable
to infants, signify the new birth. Thus the Old Testament is a prophecy
of the New ! On this demonstration the author looks with such special
complacency that he quotes it as a memorable example of true knowledge
(gnosis). (c) Again, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews had proved from
Scripture that there still remains a Sabbath-rest (Sabbatismos) for the
people of God. Barnabas connects this with what he calls an Etrurian
tradition, and originates the notion that the world is to be burned up in
the year 6000 after the Creation. Again, he has learnt the general con
ception of numerical exegesis (gematria) from Jewish and Alexandrian
sources, and he is specially proud of pressing Abraham's 318 servants
into a mystic prophecy of the Crucifixion, because 318 is represented by
HIT, of which IH stands for Jesus, and T for the cross. This is a style

THE EPISTLE OF ST. BARNABAS. , 59
of exegesis Rabbinic, but not Christian. No one can read the Epistle
of Barnabas after the Epistle to the Hebrews without seeing that the
former is not only immeasurably inferior, but that it is so inferior as to
tremble on the verge of dangerous heresy. Let the reader compare the
reference to the Day of Atonement in the Epistle of Barnabas (c. vii.)
with that in the Epistle to the Hebrews — let him contrast the numerous
errors and monstrously crude typology of the former with the splendid
spiritualism of the latter — let him notice how tasteless are the fancies of
this unknown Barnabas, and how absurd are many of his statements —
and he will see the difference between canonical and uncanonical books,
and learn to feel a deeper gratitude for the superintending Providence
which, even in ages of ignorance and simplicity, obviated the danger of
any permanent confusion between the former and the latter.1
We have already seen what the condition of the world was like, let
us sum up its points of contrast with the general picture presented by
the early Christian Church.
To represent the Christian Church as ideally pure, as stainlessly
excellent and perfect, would be altogether a mistake. The Christians
of the first days were men and women of like passions with our
selves. They sinned as we sin, and suffered as we suffer; they were
inconsistent as we are inconsistent, fell as we fall, and repented as
we repent. Hatred and partyispirit, rancour and misrepresentation,
treachery and superstition, innovating audacity and unspiritual retro
gressions were known among them as among us. And yet, with all
their faults and failings, they were as salt amid the earth's corruption ;
the true light had shined in their hearts, and they were the light of the
world. The lords of earth were such men as Tiberius and Caligula, and
Nero and Domitian ; the rulers of the Church were a James, a Peter, a
Paul, a John. The literary men of the world were a Martial and a
Petronius ; the Church was producing the Apocalypse, the Epistle to
the Hebrews, the Gospel of St. John. The art of the world was
degraded by such infamous pictures as those on the walls of
Pompeii ; that of the Church consisted in the rude but pure and
joyous emblems scrawled on the soft tufa of the catacombs. The
amusements of the world were pitilessly sanguinary or shamefully
corrupt ; those of the Christians were found in gatherings at once
social and religious, as bright as they could be made by the
gaiety of innocent and untroubled hearts. In the world infanticide
was infamously universal ; in the Church the baptised little ones
were treated as those whose angels beheld the face of our Father in
Heaven. In the world slavery was rendered yet more intolerable
by the cruelty and impurity of masters ; in the Church the Christian
1 The same result would follow from comparing the Shepherd of Hermas with the
Apocalypse. On these writings we may refer to Reuss, Thiol. Chrit. ii. ; Hilgenfeld,
Apost. Voter ; Schwegler, Nachap. Zeitalter ; Donaldson, Apostolical Fathers ; Lightf oot,
St. Clement of Rome ; Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, ii. ; Ritschl, Altkath. Kirche.

60 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
slave, welcomed as a friend and a brother, often holding a position of
ministerial dignity, was emancipated iii all but name. In the world
marriage was detested as a disagreeable necessity, and its very meaning
was destroyed by the frequency and facility of divorce ; in the Church
it was consecrated and honourable — the institution which had alone
survived the loss of Paradise — and was all but sacramental in its
Heaven-appointed blessedness. The world was settling into the sad
ness of unalleviated despair ; the Church was irradiated by an eternal
hope, and rejoicing with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. In the
world men were " hateful and hating one another " ; in the Church the
beautiful ideal of human brotherhood was carried into practice. The
Church had learnt her Saviour's lessons. A redeemed humanity was
felt to be the loftiest of dignities ; man was honoured for being
simply man ; every soul was regarded as precious, because for every
soul Christ died ; the sick were tended, the poor relieved ; labour was
represented as noble, not as a thing to be despised ; purity and resigna
tion, peacefulness and pity, humility and self-denial, courtesy and self-
respect, were looked upon as essential qualifications for all who were
called by the name of Christ. The Church felt that the innocence
of her baptised members was her most irresistible form of apology ;
and all her best members devoted themselves , to that which they re
garded as a sacred task — the breaking down of all the middle walls
of partition in God's universal temple, the obliteration of all minor
and artificial distinctions, and the free development of man's spiritual
nature.

CHAPTER VI.
ST. PETER.

EKKpiTos %v rwv k-KoeriXav Ktxl o-r6fia tuv naBrjTiav leal tcopv<pii tov x0P0«' 
Chrysost. in Joann. Horn. 88.
The early life of St. Peter cannot here be re-written, because in
two previous works1 I have followed the steps of his career so far
as it is sketched in the sacred volume. After his youth as a poor
and hardworked fisherman of the Lake of Galilee, we first find him
as one of the hearers of St. John the Baptist in the wilderness of
Jordan. Brought to Jesus by his brother Andrew, he at once accepted
the Saviour's call, and received by anticipation that name of Kephas
which he was afterwards to earn, partly by the stronger elements of
his character, and partly by the grandeur of his Messianic confession.
We have already tried to understand the significance of the scenes in
> The Ufe of Christ, 1874 ; Tlie Life of St. Paul, 1879.

SAINT PETER. 61
which he takes part. We have seen how he was called to active work
and the abandonment of earthly ties after the miraculous draught of
fishes. We have watched, step by step, the " consistently inconsistent "
impetuosity of his character, at once brave and wavering — first brave,
then wavering, but always finally recovering its courage and integrity.1
The narrative of the Gospel has brought before us his attempt to walk
to his Lord upon the water ; his first public acknowledgment of Jesus
as the Christ, the Son of the living God ; the magnificent promises
which, in his person, the Church received ; the subsequent presumption,
which his Lord so sternly rebuked ; the many eager questions, often
based upon mistaken notions, which he addressed to Christ, and which
formed the occasion of some of our Lord's most striking utterances ;
the incident of the Temple contribution ; the refusal and then the
eagerness to be washed by Christ ; the warnings addressed to him ;
the inability to " watch one hour " ; the impetuous blow struck at
the High Priest's servant ; his forsaking of Christ in the hour of
peril ; his threefold denial ; his bitter repentance and forgiveness ;
his visit . to the Sepulchre ; the message which he received from the
Risen Saviour; the exquisite scene at morning, on the shores of the
misty lake, when Jesus appeared once more to seven of His disciples,
and when,. having once more tested the love of His generous but un
stable Apostle, He gave him His last special injunctions to tend His
sheep and feed His lambs, and foretold to him his earthly end.
Similarly we have studied, in the narrative of the Acts of the
Apostles, the leading part which he took in the early days after the
death of Christ ; his speech on the day of Pentecost ; his miracles ; his
journey to Samaria and the discomfiture of Simon Magus ; his kind
ness to St. Paul ; his memorable vision at Joppa ; his baptism of
Cornelius ; his bold initiative of living and eating with Gentiles who
had received the gift of the Holy Ghost ; the dauntlessness with which
he faced the anger of the Jerusalem Pharisees ; his imprisonment and
deliverance, the manly outspokenness of his opinions in the Synod at
Jerusalem, when he declared himself unhesitatingly in favour of the
views of St. Paul as to the freedom of Gentile converts from the
burden of Mosaic observances. At this point — about a.d. 51 — he dis
appears from the narrative of the Acts. From this time forward he was
overshadowed — at Jerusalem by the authority of James the Lord's
brother, throughout the Gentile communities by the genius and energy
of St. Paul. This was naturally due to his intermediate position
between the extreme parties of Paulinists and Judaists. Among the
scattered Christian communities of the Circumcision he maintained a
high authority, although it is probable that Christian tradition has not
erred in indicating that even among the Jewish Christians of the Dis-
1 "Vrai contraste de pusillanimity et de grandeur, condamne a osciller toujours
entre la faute et le repentir, mais rachetant glorieusement sa faiblesse par son humility
et ses larmes" (Thierry, St. Jirome, i 176).

62 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
persion St. James still occupied the leading position. All that we can
further learn respecting him in Scripture is derived from his own
Epistles, and from one or two casual but important allusions in the ,
Epistles of St. Paul. In the Epistle to the Galatians we read the
description of the memorable scene at Antioch, which produced upon
the Church so deep an impression. Led away by the timidity which so
strangely alternated with boldness in his character, St. Peter, on the
arrival of emissaries from James, had suddenly dropped the familiar
intercourse with Gentiles which up to that time he had maintained.
Shocked by an inconsistency of which he would himself have been
incapable, St. Paul, the younger convert, the former persecutor, was
compelled by the call of duty publicly to withstand the great Apostle,
who by his own conduct stood condemned for inconsistency, and had
shown himself untrue to his own highest convictions. Further than
this, we learn that the name of Peter was elevated at Corinth (a.d. 57)
into a party watchword ; and that he was engaged in missionary
journeys, in which he was accompanied by a Christian sister, who (since
we know that he was married) was in all probability his wife. From
his own Epistles we learn almost nothing about his biography. Nearly
every inference which we derive from them is precarious, even when it
is intrinsically probable. He writes " to the elect sojourners of the
Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia," but we
cannot be certain that he had personally visited those countries.1 The
question whether his letter is addressed to the Jewish or the Gentile
converts is one which still meets with the most contradictory, although
at the same time the most confident, replies. He sends his letter by
Silvanus ; but we are not expressly told that this Silvanus is the
previous companion of St. Paul. He sends a salutation from " Marcus
my son " ; but there is nothing to prove that Marcus was not his real
son, 2 nor have we any certain information that he is referring to St.
Mark the Evangelist. In these instances we may, however, accept the
general consensus of Christian antiquity in favour of the affirmative
suppositions.3 If so, we see the deeply interesting fact that the chosen
friends and companions of St. Peter were also the chosen friends and
companions of St. Paul — a fact which eloquently refutes the modern
supposition of the irreconcilable antagonism between the two Apostles
and their Schools. But when we come to the closing salutation  " The
1 That he had done so is simply an inference from 1 Pet. i. 1. Origen only says, " He
seems to have preached there " (ap. Euseb. iii. 1). See Epiphan. Haer. xxvii. ; Jerome,
Catal. s. v. Petrus.
2 St. Clemens of Alexandria says (Strom, iii, p. 448) that he had sons of his own, but
their names are not preserved, and they were therefore probably unknown persons.
Tradition tells of a daughter, Petronilla (Aria. Sanct., May 31).
3 Some have supposed that an actual son of St. Peter's is meant, but Origen (ap •
Euseb. H. E. vi. 25), (Ecumenius, etc., are probably right in supposing that John Mark
(Acts xii. 25), the Evangelist, is meant, especially as Papias, Clemens of Alexandria,
Irenaras, and others, say that he was the follower, disciple, and interpreter of St Paul
(Euseb. H. E. iii. 39, vi. 14, etc. ; lien. Haer. iii 11).

SAINT PETER. 63
co-elect in Babylon saluteth you," the conclusions of each successive
commentator are widely divergent. It is still disputed whether " the
co-elect " is a Christian Church or a Christian woman ; and if the latter,
whether she is or is not Peter's wife; and whether Babylon is the great
Assyrian capital or a metaphorical allusion to the great western Baby
lon- — Imperial Rome.
Eminent as was the position of St. Peter,1 the real details of the
closing years of his life will never be known. But Christian tradition,
acquiring definitiveness in proportion as it is removed from the period
of which it speaks, has provided us with many details, which form the
biography of the Apostle as it is ordinarily accepted by Romanists.
We are told that he left Jerusalem in a.d. 33, and was for seven years
Bishop of Antioch, leaving Euodius as his successor ; that during this
period he founded the Churches to which his letter is addressed ; that
he went to Rome in a.d. 40, and was bishop there for twenty-five years,
though he constantly left the city for missionary journeys. The chief
events of his residence at Rome were, according to legend, his conver
sion of Philo and of the Senator Pudens, with his two daughters,
Praxedes and Pudentiana ; and his public conflict with Simon Magus.
The impostor, after failing to raise a dead youth — a miracle which St.
Peter accomplished — finally attempted to delude the people by asserting
that he would fly to heaven ; but, at the prayer of St. Peter and St. Paul,
he was deserted by the demons who supported him, and dashed bleed
ing to the earth.2 During the Neronian persecution the Apostle is said
to have yielded to the urgent requests of the Christians that he should
escape from Rome ; but when he had got a little beyond the Porta
Capena he met the Lord carrying his cross, and asked him, " Lord,
whither goest thou 1 " (Domine, quo vad.is 1) " I go to Rome," said
Jesus, "to be crucified again for thee." The Apostle, feeling the force
of the gentle rebuke, turned back, and was imprisoned in the Tulli-
anum. He there converted his gaoler, miraculously causing a spring to
burst out from the rocky floor for his baptism. On seeing his wife led
to execution, he rejoiced at her "journey homewards,"3 and, addressing
her by name, called to her in a voice of cheerful encouragement, " Oh,
remember the Lord ! " He was executed on the same day as St. Paul.
They parted on the Ostian Road, and St. Peter was then led to the top
of the Janiculum, where he was crucified, not in the ordinary position,
1 See Excursus I., on the Asserted Primacy of St. Peter.
2 There seems to have been a similar legend about Balaam, dimly alluded to by
the LXX. in the words iv rjj poirjj, Josh. xiii. 22, and in the Targum of Jonathan,
Num. xxxi. 6. See Frankl. Vorstudien, p. 187. For the whole legend of Simon
Magus see Justin. Mart. Apol. ii. 69 ; Iren. Haer. i. 20 ; Tert. Apol. 13 ; Euseb.
H. E. ii. 14 ; Const. Apost. vi. 8, 9 ; Arnob. adv. Gentes, ii. ; Epiphan. Haer. xxi. ;
Sulp. Sev. ii. ; Egesippus, De Excid. Hieros. iii. 2 (on Egesippus see Herzog, s. v.
Heg.); Nicephorus, H. E. ii. 14; Acta Petri et Pauli; Vs. Abdias, Acta Apost.
From these authors it is taken by Marcossius, De Haereticis, p. 444, and the Church
historians. 3 rrjs «s oIkoi/ iraK0f»i6% (Clem. Alex. Strom, vii.).

64 THE EARLY DAYS *0F CHRISTIANITY.
but, by his own request, head downwards, because he held himself
unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord.
In the whole of this legend, embellished as it is in current Martyr-
ologies with many elaborate details, there is scarcely one single fact on
which we can rely. For instance, the notion that Peter was ever Bishop
at Antioch between the years a.d. 33 — 40 is inconsistent with clear
statements in the narrative of the Acts, in which Paul and Barnabas
appear as the leaders and virtual founders of that Gentile Church.1
Again, if he had founded the Church of Rome, or had ever resided
there before a.d. 64, it is inconceivable that neither St. Luke in the
Acts, nor St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, nor again in the five
letters which he wrote from Rome during his first and second imprison
ments, should have made so much as the slightest allusion to him or to
his work. The story of his collision with Simon Magus is a romance.
It is founded on St. Peter's actual meeting with the sorcerer in Samaria,
which is developed In the Clementines into a series of journeys from
place to place, undertaken with the express view of thwarting this
" founder of all the heresies." The legend is partly due to a mistake of
Justin Martyr, who supposed that a statue dedicated to the Sabine god
Semo Sancus2 (of whom Justin had never heard) was reared in honour
of " Simon Sanctus."3 With these elements of confusion there is mixed
up a malignant Ebionite attempt to calumniate St. Paul in a covert way
under the pseudonym of Simon Magus, and to imply that St. Peter was
at the head of a counter-mission to overthrow the supposed heretical
teaching of his brother Apostle. The notion of this counter-mission is
derived from the actual counter-mission of Judaists who falsely claimed
the sanction of St. James.4 The circumstance which suggested the
legendary death of Simon in an attempt to fly was the actual death of
an actor, who was dashed to the ground at Nero's feet while trying, by
means of a flying machine, to sustain the part of Icarus.5 If the
youthful actor who was condemned to make this perilous attempt was a
Christian, who would otherwise have been executed in some other way,
we may well imagine that Christians would not soon forget an incident
which sprinkled the very Antichrist with the blood of martyrs.6 But
it is possible that the legend may rest on small basis of fact. Rome
abounded in Oriental thaumaturgists and impostors. Simon may have
1 Acts xi. 19. 2 Ov. Fast. vi. 213 ; Prop. iv. 9, 74, &o.
3 He was identified with Dins Fk/ius. The inscription was actually found in 1574,
in the popedom of Gregory XIII., on an island in the Tiber, as Justin said. Justin,
Apol. i. 26 ; Tert. Apol. 13 ; Baronius, Annal. ad an. 44 ; Gieseler, i. 49 ; Neander, ii.
162 ; Renan, Les Apotres, pp. 275—277. In this island, now called " The Island of St.
Bartholomew," there was a college of Tridentales in honour of Semo Sancus (Orelli
Inscr., 1860-61).
4 Acts xv. 24.
6 On this attempt to fly, see the commentators on Juv. Sat. viii. 1S6 ; Mart. Spectac.
vii. ; Suet. Nero, 12.
" "Icarus, primo statim oonatu, juxta oubioulum ejus decidit ipsumque oruore
respersit, Suet. I.e.

ST. PETERS CONNEXION WITH ROME. 65
been attracted to a city which naturally drew to itself all the villainy of
the world, and there he may once more have encountered St. Peter.1
But if they met at Rome, all the details of their meeting have been
disguised under a mixture of vague reminiscences and imaginary details.
The assertion that Peter was Bishop of Rome, but that he constantly
left it to exercise apostolic oversight throughout the world, is nothing
but an ingenious theory.2 ' The statement that he came to Rome in the
reign of Claudius, a.d. 42, is first found in the Chronicon of Eusebius,
nearly three centuries afterwards, and cannot be reconciled with fair
inferences from what St. Paul tells us about the Church. As late as
A.D. 52, St. Peter was at Jerusalem, and took an active part in the
Synod of Jerusalem (Acts xv. 7) ; and he was then labouring mainly
among the Jews (Gal. ii. 7, 9). In a.d. 57 he was travelling as a
missionary with his wife (1 Cor. ix. 5). He was not at Rome when St.
Paul wrote to that Church in A.d. 58, nor when St. Paul came there as
a prisoner in a.d. 61, nor during the years of St. Paul's imprisonment,
a.d. 61 — 63, nor when he wrote his last Epistles, a.d. 66 and 67. If
he was ever at Rome at all, which we hold to be almost certain, from
the unanimity of the tradition, it could only have been very briefly
before his martyrdom.3 And this is, in fact, the assertion of Lactantius4
(t 330), who says that he first came to Rome in Nero's reign ; and of
Origen (f 254), who says that he arrived there at the close of his life f
and of the Praedicatio Petri, printed with the works of St. Cyprian.6
His " bishopric " at Rome probably consisted only in his efforts about
the time of his martyrdom to strengthen the faith of the Church,7 and
especially of the Jewish Christians. Indeed, there is much to be said
in favour of the view that the Jewish and Gentile sections of the
Church in Rome were separated by unusually deep divisions, and
possessed their separate "presbyters" or "bishops" for some years.
Such a fact would account for some confusion in the names of the first
two or three Bishops of Rome. Eusebius — following Irenaeus and
Epiphanius — says that the first Bishops of Rome were Peter, Linus,
Cletus or Anencletus, and Clement.8 But Hippolytus (a.d. 225) seems
to regard Cletus and Anencletus as two different persons, and places
1 As asserted in Justin, Apol. i 26, 56 ; Iren. contra Haer. i. 23, § 1 ; Philosophumena,
vi. 20 ; Constt. Apost. v. ; Euseb. H. E. ii. 13, 14, etc.
2 It was first suggested by Baronius (Annal. ad. an. 39, § 25) and Fr. "Windisch-
mann (Vindiciae Petrinae, p. 112), and hastily adopted by Thiersch (N. Test. Canon,
p. 104). 3 This view is now accepted by Roman Catholics like Valesius, Pagi, Baluz, Hug,
Klee, Dollinger, "Waterworth, Allnatt. See Waterworth, Engl, and Rome, ii. ; Allnatt,
Cathedra Petri, p. 114. The Roman Catholic historian Alzog only speaks of the twenty-
five years' episcopate as an ancient report (i 104).
4 Lactant. De Mort. Persec. 2.
5 Origen ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 1.
6 Cypriani, Opp., p. 139, ed. Rigalt.
1 Clemens Romanus, third bishop of Rome, speaks even more of St. Paul than of St.
Peter (Ep. ad Cor. v.).
8 Euseb. H. E. iii. 2, 4, and 21 ; Iren. ap. Euseb. H. E. v. 6.

66 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Clement before Cletus ; and Tertullian (+218) says that Clement was
ordained by St. Peter.1
The notion of the Apostle's crucifixion head downwards is derived
from a passing allusion in Origen, and seems to contradict an expression
of Tertullian.2 It was possibly suggested by an erroneous translation
of some Latin expression for capital punishment. At any rate, it stands
condemned as a sentimental anachronism, bearing on its front the traces
of later and more morbid forms of piety rather than the simple humility
of the Apostles, who rejoiced in all things to imitate their Lord.3 Those
who accept these legends must do so on the authority of an heretical
novel, written with an evil tendency, not earlier than the beginning of
the third century ; or else on that of the apocryphal Acta Petri et Pauli,
which appeared at a still later date. All that we can really learn about
the closing years of St. Peter from the earliest Fathers may be summed
up in the few words, that in all probability he was martyred at Rome.4
That he died by martyrdom may be regarded as certain, because,
apart from tradition, it seems to be implied in the words -of the Risen
Christ to His penitent Apostle.5 That this martyrdom took place at
Rome, though first asserted by Tertullian and Gaius at the beginning of
the third century, may (in the absence of any rival tradition) be accepted
as a fact, in spite of the ecclesiastical tendencies which might have led
to its invention ; but the only Scriptural authority which can be quoted
for any visit of St. Peter to Rome is the one word, " The Church in
Babylon saluteth you."6
If, as I endeavour to show in the Excursus, there is reasonable
certainty that Babylon is here used as a sort of cryptograph for Rome,
the fair inferences from Scripture accord with the statements of tradition
in the two simple particulars that St. Peter was martyred, and that this
martyrdom took place at Rome. These inferences agree well with the
probability that Silvanus, of whom we last hear in company with St.
Paul at Corinth, and St. Mark, for whose assistance St. Paul had wished
during his Roman imprisonment, were also at Rome, and were now
acting in conjunction with the great Apostle of the Circumcision. The
belief that St. Mark acted as the " interpreter " (kpixnvevT^s) of St. Peter
may have arisen from the Apostle's ignorance of the Latin language,
and his need of some one to be his spokesman during his residence and
his legal trial in the imperial city.
i Tert. De Praesc. Haeret. 32.
2 "Ubi Petrus passioni dominicae adaequatur," De Praesc. 36.
3 Neander, Planting, p. 377. It is curious to watch the growth of this fiction. It
begins with Origen, who simply says that it was done " at his own choice " (ap. Euseb.
H. E. iii. 1). To this Rufinus adds, ' ' that he might not seem to be equalled to his Lord "
(ne exaequari Domino videretur), which contradicts the saying of Tertullian, that "he was
equalled to his Lord in the manner of his death." Lastly, St. Jerome says that he
was crucified with his head towards the earth and his legs turned upwards, " asserting
that he was unworthy to be crucified in the same way as his Lord " (De Vir. Illustr. 1).
4 See Excursus II. , on St. Peter's Visit to Rome. 6 John xxi 19.
6 See Excursus III., on the Use of the Name Babylon for Rome.

GENUINENESS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE. 67
CHAPTER Vn.
SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER.
" Then all himself, all joy and calm,
Though for a while his hand forego,
Just as it touched, the martyr's palm,
He turns him to his task below." — Keele.
The previous chapter has led us to conclude that the First Epistle
of St. Peter was written at Rome. The date at which it was written
cannot be fixed with certainty. The outburst of the Neronian per
secution took place in A.D. 64, but it is difficult to suppose that
St. Peter arrived accidentally in Rome on the very eve of the
conflagration. It seems more probable that he was either brought
there as a prisoner, or went to support the Jewish Christians during the
subsequent pressure of their terrible afflictions.1 In that case he wrote
the First Epistle shortly before his death, and he must have been
martyred in the year 67 or 68, about the same time as his great
brother-Apostle, St. Paul, with whom he is always united in the
earliest traditions.
That the First Epistle of St. Peter is genuine — a precious relic
of the thoughts of one of Christ's most honoured Apostles — we may
feel assured. Its authenticity is supported by overwhelming external
evidence. The Second Epistle, whether genuine or not, is at any
rate a very ancient document, and it unhesitatingly testifies to the
genuineness of the first. " The First Epistle is," says M. Renan, " one
of the writings of the New Testament which are the most anciently
and the most unanimously cited as authentic." Papias, Polycarp,
Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen,2 all furnish
indisputable evidence in its favour.3 The proof that the writer was
influenced by the Epistle to the Ephesians is in accordance with the
character of the age, for the early Christians, as was perfectly natural,
were in the habit of echoing one another's thoughts. Modern writers
1 St. Paul seems to have been absent from Rome for two full years before his second
imprisonment, and during this time the Christians must still have been liable to
oppression and martyrdom, even after the first attack upon them had spent its fury.
Tertullian asserts that laws were for the first time promulgated against the Christians by
Nero, which rendered Christianity a "religio tflicita " (ad Natt. 74 ; Apol. 5 ; Sulp. Sev.
Hist. ii. 29, § 3). This is rendered very doubtful by Pliny's letter to Trajan.
2 See Euseb. H. E. iii. 25, 39 ; iv. 14, v. 8, vi. 25 ; Polycarp, Ep. ad Philip. ; Iren.
contra Haer. iv. 9, § 2 ; Clem. M&tl. Strom, iii. 8, iv. 7 ; Tert. Scorp. 12. Besides this,
there are many distinct allusions to it in the Epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians.
Little importance, therefore, can be attached to its absence from the Muratorian Canon,
and its rejection by Theodore of Mopsuestia.
3 Keim (Rom und Christenthum, p. 194), without deigning to offer a reason, assigns it
to the time of Trajan. In this he follows Hilgenfeld.

68 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
do exactly the same. The words and thoughts of every writer who
makes any wide or serious impression are, consciously or unconsciously,
adopted by others exactly as if they were original and independent ;
and this is true to such an extent that an author's real success is often
obliterated by its very universality. The views which he originated
come to be regarded as commonplace, simply because all his con
temporaries have adopted them. But this was still more the case
in days when books were very few in number. The writings of the
Apostles are marked by mutual resemblances, and the works of men
like Ignatius, and Polycarp, and Clement of Rome, consist in large
measure of a mosaic of phrases which they have caught up from their
predecessors. The style of St. Peter in this Epistle resembles in many particulars
the style of his recorded speeches. It is characterised by the fire
and energy which we should expect to find in his forms of expression ;
but that energy is tempered by the tone of Apostolic dignity, and by
the fatherly mildness of one who was now aged, and was near the close
of a life of labour. He speaks with authority, and yet with none of
the threatening sternness of St. James. We find in the letter the plain
and forthright spirit of the man insisting again and again on a few
great leading conceptions. The subtle dialectics, the polished irony,
the involved thoughts, the lightning-like rapidity of inference and
suggestion, which we find in the letters of the Apostle of the Un-
circumcision, are wholly wanting in him. His casual connexions,
marking the natural and even flow of his thoughts, are of ¦ the simplest
character ; and yet a vigorously practical turn of mind, a quick
susceptibility of influence, and a large catholicity of spirit, such as we
know that he possessed, are stamped upon every page. He aims
throughout at practical exhortation, not at systematic exposition ; and
his words, in their force and animation, reflect the simple, sensuous,
and passionate nature of the impulsive Simon of whom we read in
the Gospels. Even if the external evidence in favour of the Epistle
had been less convincing, the arguments on which its authenticity has
been questioned by a few modern theologians have been so amply
refuted as to establish its authorship with completer certainty.
1. It is not so much a letter as a treatise, addressed to Christians
in general. It is mainly hortative, and its exhortations are founded
on Christian hope, and on the effects of the death of Christ. It is not
however, a scholastic treatise, but rather a practical address, at once
conciliatory in tone and independent in character. It may with equal
truth be called Pauline and Judaso-Christian. It is Judaeo-Christian
in its sympathies, yet without any Judaic bitterness. It is Pauline in
its expressions, yet with no polemic purpose. In both respects it
accords with the character and circumstances of the great Apostle. It
is completely silent about the Law, and enters into none of the once
vehement controversies about the relation of tlie Law to the Gospel

REMINISCENCES OF CHRIST. 69
or of Faith to Works. There is no predetermined attempt to reconcile
opposing parties, but all party watchwords are either impartially
omitted, or are stripped of their sterner antitheses.1
2. One proof that it was written by St. Peter results from the
natural way in which we can trace the influence of the most prominent
events which occurred during his association with his Lord.2 He does
not mention them ; he does not even in any marked way refer to them ;
and yet we find in verse after verse the indication of subtle
reminiscences such as must have lingered in, the mind of St. Peter.
Christ had said to him, " Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build
my Church," and he speaks of Christ as " a rock," the corner-stone of a
spiritual house, and of Christians as living stones built into it. Christ
had sternly reproved him when he made himself a stumbling-block, and
he sees how perilous it is to turn, the Lord's will into a rock of offence,3
using the two very words which he at the heart of those two conse
cutive moments which had been the crisis of his life.4 When he had
rashly pledged his Master to pay the Temple didrachm, our Lord
had indeed accepted the obligation, but at the same time had taught
him that the children were free ; and St. Peter here teaches the
Churches that, though free, they were still to submit for the Lord's
sake to every human ordinance.5 Bound by the quantitative con
ceptions of Jewish formalism, he had once asked whether he was
to forgive his brother up to seven times, and had been told he was
to forgive him up to seventy times seven ; and he has so well learnt the
lesson as to tell his converts that " Love shall cover the multitude
of sins."6 In answer to his too unspiritual question, " what reward
the Apostles should have for having forsaken all to follow Christ,"
he had heard the promise that they should sit on thrones ; and
throughout this Epistle his thoughts are full of the future glory and
of its "amaranthine crown."7 He had heard Jesus compare the
" days of Noah " to the clays of the Son of Man,8 and his thoughts
dwell so earnestly upon the comparison that he uses the expression in a
way which unintentionally limits the fulness of his revelation.9 He
had seen his Lord strip off His upper garment and tie a towel round
his waist, when, with marvellous self-abasement, he stooped to wash
His Disciples' feet;10 hence, when he wishes to impress the lesson
of humility, he is led insensibly to the intensely picturesque expression

1 See Schwegler, Nachap. Zeitalt. ii. 22 ; Pfleiderer, Paulinism. ii. 150, E. T.
2 Matt. xvi. 18 ; 1 Pet. ii. 4—8. This peculiarity of the Epistle has been worked out
and illustrated by no one so fully or with such delicate insight as by Dean Plumptre in
his edition of the Epistle iu the Cambridge Bible for schools, p. 13, seq.
3 1 Pet. ii. 8, irerpa (TKavSdKov.
4 Matt. xvi. 18, e*rl TavTTfl rfj irerpa ; 23, tTKavSa^otf fiov et.
s Matt. xvii. 24—27 ; l'Pet. ii. 13—16. 6 Matt, xviii. 22 ; 1 Pet. iv. 8.
< Matt. xix. 28 ; 1 Pet. i. 5, v. 4. 8 Matt. xxiv. 37.
9 Compare 1 Pet. hi. 20 with iv. 6.
10 John xiii. 1 — 6.

70 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
that they should, "tie on humility like a dress fastened with knots."1
Perhaps, too, from that washing, and the solemn lessons to which
it led, he gained his insight into the true meaning of Baptism, as
being not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the intercourse of
a good conscien6e with its God.2 At a very solemn moment of his life
Christ had told him that Satan had desired to have him and the other
Apostles, that he might sift them as wheat,3 and he warns the Church
of the prowling activity and power of the Devil, using respecting
him the word "adversary" (octi'Sikos), which occurs nowhere else in the
Epistles, but more than once in the sayings of the Lord.4 Again and
again on the last evening of the life of Christ he had been bidden
to watch and pray, and had fallen because he had not done so ; and
watchfulness is a lesson on which he most earnestly insists.5 He had
been one of the few faithful eye-witnesses of the buffets and weals
inflicted on Christ in His sufferings, and of His silence in the midst
of reviling, and to these striking circumstances he makes a very special
reference.6 He had seen the Cross uplifted from the ground with
its awful burden, and respecting that cross he uses a very peculiar
" expression.7 He had heard Jesus warn Thomas of the blessedness
of those who having not seen yet believed, and he quotes almost
the very words.8 He had. been thrice exhorted to tend and feed
Christ's sheerj, and the pastoral image is prominent in his mind and
exhortations.8 Lastly, he had been specially bidden when converted
to strengthen his brethren, and this from first to last is the avowed
object of his present letter.10
3. Again we recognise the true St. Peter by the extreme vividness
of his expressions. It has been a unanimous tradition in the Church
that the minute details recorded by St. Mark are due to the fact
that he wrote from information given him by St. Peter. Picturesque-
ness is as evidently a characteristic of the mind of St. Peter as it
is of the mind of St. Mark. In St. Mark it is shown by touches of
graphic description, in St. Peter by words which are condensed
metaphors.11 4. Such is the close analogy between the thoughts and expressions
of the Epistle and those which the Gospel story of the writer would have
1 1 Pet. V. 5, eyKOp.fJh}a-aa-9€.
2 1 Pet. iii. 21. For the "answer" of the A. V. the Revised Version suggests
"interrogation," " appeal," " inquiry," v. infra, p. 75. The verb eirepcuTov is common in
the Gospels, and always means " to ask further," but the substantive does not occur
elsewhere in the New Testament.
3 Luke xxii. 31. Here the common danger of the Apostles, " Satan has desired to
have you (vp-Ss), . ¦ . but I have prayed for thee (ere)," is restored by the Revised Version.
4 1 Pet. v. 8 ; Matt v 25 ; Luke xii. 58, xviii 3. 6 1 Pet. v. 8, seq.
6 1 Pet. ii. 20, KO\a$i£6p.evoi i 23, oiln aneAoiStipei ; 24, o{f Tto) !,,.:\,.,-, avrov.
" 1 Pet. ii. 24, avYjVeyxev ev T<5 0-Ap.aTt ejri to £v\ov. V. infra, p. 71
s 1 Pet. i. 8. 9 i Pet. ii. 25, v. 2. ft l pet. v. 12.
n 1 Pet. ii. 2, "guileless, unadulterated milk ; " iv. 4, "outpouring" (excess of riot):
iv. 15, " other-people's-bishop " (busybody in other men's matters).

THE LAW. 71
led us to expect. Nor is the resemblance between the speeches of the
St. Peter of the Acts and the style of the St. Peter of the Epistle less
striking. As in the Acts so in the Epistle, he refers to Isaiah's meta
phor of the rejected corner-stone ; l in both the witness of the Holy
Ghost is prominent ; 2 in both he speaks of the Cross as " the tree " ; 3 in
both he dwells on the position of the Apostles as " witnesses ; " 4 in both
he puts forward the death of Christ as the fulfilment of prophecy ; 5 in
both the Resurrection is made the main ground of faith and hope ; 6 in
both we find special mention of God as the Judge of quick and dead ; 7
in both the exhortation to repentance is based on the fact of man's
redemption ; 8 lastly, in both, as a matter of style, there is a prevalence
of simple relatival connexions, and as a matter of doctrine there is the
representation of God as one who has no respect for persons.9
5. Is it not, further, a very remarkable circumstance that in the
Acts St. Peter, in one of his outbursts of impetuous boldness, ventures
to call the Law " a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were strong
enough to bear ; " and in the Epistle — though he was a Jew, though he
was closely allied to St. James in many of his sympathies, though he
strongly felt the influence of the Pharisaic Christians at Jerusalem,
though he borrows the symbols of the theocracy to a marked extent 10 —
does not so much as once mention or allude to the Mosaic Law at all *!
Even if any of these peculiarities standing alone could be regarded as
accidental, their aggregate force is very considerable ; nor do we think it
possible that a forger — even if a forger could otherwise have produced
such an epistle as this — could have combined in one short composition so
many instances of subtle verisimilitude.11
6. A very remarkable feature of the Epistle, and one which must
have great prominence in leading us to a conclusion about its date,
characteristics, and object, is the extent to which the writer has felt the
influence both of St. James and of St. Paul.12 No one can compare the
1 1 Pet. ii. 7 ; Acts iv. 11. 3 1 Pet. i. 12 ; Acts v. 32.
3 1 Pet. ii. 24 ; Acts v. 30, x. 39.
4 1 Pet. i. 8, v. 1 ; Acts ii. 32, iii. 15, x. 41.
5 1 Pet. i. 10 ; Acts iii. 18, x. 43.
s 1 Pet. i. 3, 4, 21, hi. 21 ; Acts ii. 32—36, iii. 15, iv. 10, x. 40.
7 1 Pet. iv. 5 ; Acts x. 42.
8 1 Pet. ii. 24 ; Acts iii. 19—26. 9 1 Pet. i. 17 ; Acts x. 2.
i° 1 Pet. i. 2 (" sprinkling"), 18—20, ii. 9, 10 (Ex. xix. 5, 6>.
I1- To these might be added 1 Pet. i. 13 (" girding up the loins of your mind "), com
pared with Luke xii. 35; i. 12, "to stoop and look" (irapa/tui/nu), compared with Luke
xxiv. 12 ; ii. 15, "to put to silence" (tfuju-oOi/), compared with Luke iv. 35 ; and the use
of the word o-nokAs (ii. 18), as compared with his use of the same word in his recorded
speech (Acts ii. 40).
12 I pass over as very possibly accidental and independent the few points of resem
blance between the language of St. Peter and St. John (cf. 1 Pet. ii. 19, 22 with
1 John i. 7, iii. 3, iv. 11, and 1 Pet. ii. 9 with Rev. i. 6) ; nor do I think that much
importance can be attached to the few coincidences between 1 Pet. and Hebrews
(e.g., 1 Pet. i. 2 and Heb. ix. 13; 1 Pet. ii. 2 and Heb. v. 12, etc.). I regard the
attempt of Weiss, in his elaborate Petrinische Lehrbegriff, to prove the early date of the
Epistle, and the indebtedness of St. Paul to its expressions, as misleading and untenable,

72 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
number and peculiarity ofthe identical expressions adduced in the note,
without the conviction that they can only be accounted for by the
influence of the earlier writers on the later. At this epoch, both among
Jews and Christians, there was a free adaptation of phraseology which
had come to be regarded as a common possession. That St. Peter has
here been the conscious or unconscious borrower may be regarded as
certain, alike on chronological and on psychological considerations. If
the Epistle was written from Rome, we see the strongest reasons to
conclude that it was written later than the Epistle to the Ephesians, and
therefore after the death of St. James. The manner in which St. Peter
writes shows that he is often accepting the phraseology of others, but
infusing into their language a somewhat different shade of meaning.
When we consider the extreme plasticity of St. Peter's nature, the
emotional impressiveness and impetuous receptivity which characterise
his recorded acts ; when we remember, too, that it was his habit to
approach all subjects on the practical and not on the speculative side,
and to think the less of distinctions in the form of holding the common
faith, because his mind was absorbed in the contemplation of that
glorious Hope of which he is pre-eminently the Apostle, — we find an
additional reason for accepting the Epistle as genuine. We see in it the
simple, unsystematic, practical synthesis of the complementary — but not
contradictory — truths insisted on alike by St. Paul and St. James. St.
Peter dwells more exclusively than St. Paul on moral duties ; he leans
more immediately than St. James on Gospel truths.
7. There is no material difficulty in his acquaintance with these
writings of his illustrious contemporaries. Among the small Christian
if not as " altogether futile " (Pfleiderer, Paulinism. ii. 150). He has found very few
followers in his opinion. The resemblances are mainly to the Epistles to the Romans
and Ephesians : —
IPet. i. 1 Eph. i. 4—7
1 Pet. i. S Eph. i. 8
IPet. i. 14 Eph. ii. 8 Rom. xii. 2
1 Pet. ii. 6—10 Rom. ix. 25—32
1 Pet. ii. 11 Rom. vii. 23
1 Pet. ii. 13 Rom. xiii. 1 — i
1 Pet. ii. 18 Eph. vi. 5
1 Pet. iii. 1 Eph. v. 22
1 Pet. iii. 9 Rom. xvi. 17
1 Pet. iii. 22 Eph. i. 20 Rom. viii. 34
1 Pet. iv. 1 Rom. vi. 6
1 Pet. iv. 10 Rom. xii. 6
IPet. v. 1 Rom. viii. 18
1 Pet. v. 5 Eph. v. 21
The chief resemblances between St. Peter and St. James will be found in the following
passages : — IPet. i. 6—7 James i. 2-4
1 Pet. i. 24 James i. 10
1 Pet. iv. 8 James v. 20
1 Pet. v. 5, 9 James iv. 6, 7, 10
The supposed parallels between the Epistle and those to Timothy and Titus are not real
parallels, but arise from similarity of subject (1 Pet. iii. 1, v. 1, seq.). There is nothing
in these similarities to discredit the authenticity of the Epistle, and the absence of
Johannina phrases is another proof of its antiquity.

ORIGINALITY OF ST. PETER. 73
communities the letters of the Apostles were eagerly distributed. The
Judaists would have been sure to supply St. Peter with the letter of the
saintly Bishop of Jerusalem ; and such companions as Mark and Sil
vanus, both of whom had lived in intimate relationship with St. Paul,
and of whom the former had been expressly mentioned in the Epistle to
the Colossians, could not have failed to bring to St. Peter's knowledge
the sublimest and most heavenly of the Epistles of St. Paul. The
antagonism in which St. James and St. Paul had been arrayed by their
hasty followers would have acted with St. Peter as an additional reason
for, using indiscriminately the language of them both. It was time that
the bitterness of controversies should cease, now that the Church was
passing through the fiery storm of its first systematic persecution. It
was time that the petty differences within the fold should be forgotten
when the howling wolves were leaping into its enclosure from without.
The suffering Christians needed no impassioned arguments or eager
dialectics ; they mainly needed to be taught the blessed lessons of
resignation and of hope. These are the key-notes of St. Peter's Epistle.1
As they stood defenceless before their enemies, he points them to the
patient and speechless anguish of the Lamb of God.2 Patient endurance
in the present would enable them to set an example even to their
enemies ; the hope of the future would change their very sorrows into
exultant triumph.3 In the great battle which had been set in array
against them, Hope should be their helmet and Innocence their shield.4
8. And yet in teaching to his readers these blessed lessons St. Peter
by no means loses his own originality. The distinctions between the
three Apostles — -distinctions between their methods rather than their
views — may be seen at a glance. They become salient when we observe
that whereas St. James barely alludes to a single event in the life of
Christ, St. Peter makes every truth and exhortation hinge on His
example, His sufferings, His Cross, His Resurrection, and His exalta
tion ; 5 and that whereas St. Peter is greatly indebted to the Epistle to
the Romans, he yet makes no use of St. Paul's central doctrine of
Justification by Faith. Thus even when he is influenced by his prede
cessor's phraseology, he is occupied with somewhat different conceptions.
The two Apostles hold, indeed, the same truths, but, to the eternal
advantage of the Church, they express them differently. Antagonism
between them there was none ; but they were mutually independent.
The originality of St. Peter is not only demonstrated by the sixty
isolated expressions (hapax legomena) of his short Epistle, but also by
his modification of many of St. Paul's thoughts in accordance with his
own immediate spiritual gift. That gift was the x^Pl"lla Mfreprhatus —
i Resignation, 1 Pet. i. 6, ii. 13—25, iii. 1, 9—12, 17, 18, iv. 1—4, v. 6 ; Hope, 1 Pet. i.
4, 12, 13, 'iv. 6, 7, v. 1,4, 6, 10, 11.
2 1 Pet. i. 19, ii. 22—25. 3 Joy, 1 Pet. i. 6, 8, iv. 13, 14.
4 Innocence, 1 Pet. i. 13—16, 22, ii. 1, 2, 11, 12, iii. 13, 15, 21, iv. 15.
5 1 Pet. i. 3, 7, 13, iii. 22, iv. 11, 13.

74 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
that power of administrative wisdom which made his example so valuable
to the Infant Church. It was worthy of his high position and authority
to express the common practical consciousness of the Christian Church
in a form which avoided party disagreements. The views of St. Paul
are presented by St. Peter in their every-day bearing rather than in
their spiritual depths ; and in their moral, rather than their mystical
significance. St. Peter adopts the views of his great brother Apostles,
but he clothes them in simpler and in conciliatory terms.1 And if these
phenomena, from their very delicacy, constitute an almost irresistible
proof of the genuineness of the Epistle, how decisive is the evidence
which they furnish that there was none of that deadly opposition between
the adherents of Kephas and of Paul which has been assumed as the true
key to the Apostolic history ! How certain is it that " the wretched
caricature of an Apostle, a thing of shreds and patches, which struts and
fumes through those Ebionite romances, would not have been likely to
write with thoughts and phrases essentially Pauline flowing from his
pen at every turn." 2
9. It is important and interesting to illustrate still more fully this
indebted yet independent attitude of the Apostle ; this tone at once
receptive and original, at once firm and conciliatory, by which he was so
admirably qualified to be the Apostle of Catholicity.3
i. We see it at once in the language which he uses about Redemption.
St. Peter, of course, held, as definitely as St. Paul, thao " Christ suffered
for sin, once for all, the just on behalf of the unjust ; "* that " He Him
self, in His own body, took up our sins on to the cross;"5 that we were
"ransomed with the precious blood as of a lamb blameless and spotless,
even of Christ."8 But divine truth is many-sided and infinite; and
whereas St. Paul mainly dwells on the death of Christ as delivering us
from the Law, and from the curse of the Law, and from a state of guilt,
St. Peter speaks of it mainly as a liberation from actual immorality ;7 a
ransom from an empty, traditional, earthly mode of life ;8 a means of
abandoning sins and living to righteousness : — and these are to him the
consequences which are specially involved in that more general concep
tion that Christ died "to lead us to God."9 And besides this different
1 1 Pet. i. 12, 25, v. 12 (comp. 1 Cor. xv. 1).
2 Plumptre, St. Peter, p. 72.
* "Weiss's Lehrbegriff is entirely vitiated by his capricious effort to make out that St.
Peter was the original author of the thoughts which he adopted from others.
4 1 Pet. iii. 18, 7repi afiaprmv . . . un-ep adtKoiv.
fi 1 Pet. ii. 24 ; on this difficult verse, vide infra, p. 91.
6 1 Pet. i. 18, 19.
7 1 Pet. i. 18, U -rijs fLaraCas oeaoTpo^yjs TraTp07rapo5i5Tov.
8 1 Pet. ii. 24, !™ raU aftapriais aTroyenop.5i>oi rrj 8u«uo<n!i7) i^tToifuv. Mark alike the re
semblance to, and the difference from, the words of the discourse which the Apostle had
heard from the lips of St. Paul at a moment of deep personal humiliation (Gal. ii. 19,
20), "for I, through the Law, died unto the Law that I might live unto God. I have
been crucified with Christ ; yet I live." We have in St. Peter the essential Pauline
thought without the intensity of the Pauline expression.
9 1 Pet. iii. 18 ; cf. Rom. v. 2 ; Eph. ii. 18 ; Heb. x. 19.

REDEMPTION. 75
aspect of the object of the death of Christ, the means by whioh that ob
ject is effected are also contemplated from a different point of view. In
St. Paul's theology the Christian so closely partakes in the death of
Christ that, by that death, the flesh — the carnal principle of all sin — is
slain within him -,1 the old man is crucified with Christ, and the new
man, the hidden man of the heart, the spiritual nature, lives the life of
Christ by mystical union with Him. Now, St. Peter uses expressions
which at once remind us of those used by St. Paul, but he uses them
with a different scope. He too speaks of "a communion with the suf
ferings of Christ,"2 but it is only in the literal sense of suffering ;3 and
he never distinctly touches on (though he may doubtless assume and pre
suppose) the mystery of the Christian's identity with, incorporation with,
the life and death of the Saviour. Christ's sufferings are set forth as
producing their effect by the moral power of example, so that His life of
suffering and obedience is as the copy over which we are to write, the
track in which we are to walk ; and so we are to be released from sin by
the imitation of Christ.4 "He that hath died," says St. Paul, "hath
been justified from sin,"5 meaning by this that he who by baptism (vi. 4)
has been buried with Christ into His death, has also by baptism risen
with Him into a new life of communion, in which God's righteousness
has become man's justification. St. Paul means, in fact, all the deep
truth which he sets forth mystically in Rom. vi. 1 — 15, and which he
explains through the remainder of that chapter by more popular meta
phors. Now, St. Peter, in words which are doubtless an echo of St.
Paul's language, says that " he who hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased
from sin; "6 but the practical intellect of St. Peter had no resemblance
to the deeper genius of St. Paul, and the meaning of his words, as
developed in the following verses, is simply the truth that the suffering
life of the Christian has in it all the blessedness of trial ; and that, just
as the luxury and surfeit of heathen life (verse 3) is essentially a state
of sin, so the trials borne by the Christian warrior who is armed with
the mind of Christ, naturally put an end to the seductiveness of sin.
St. Paul dwells most on deliverance from guilt, St. Peter on deliverance
from sin. With St. Paul the death of Christ is the means of expiation ;
with St. Peter it is more prominently a motive of amendment. St. Paul,
in Rom. vi. 1 — 15, writes like a profound theologian. St. Peter, in
iv. 1 — 4, is using the simpler language of a practical Christian. The
union between the Christian and the death of Christ, in St. Paul is an
inner union. In St. Peter the connexion is more outward — a connexion
which rather invites our obedience than modifies our inmost nature.7
ii. We shall see similar differences in the use of other words. Faith,
i Rom. vi. 12—14, viii. 3 ; Gal. v. 24 ; 2 Cor. v. 14.
2 1 Pet. iv. 13. 3 As in Rom, viii. 13.
4 See Rom. vi. 1 J 1 Peter ii. 21, Xpioros eiraBev iirep iipAv, iip.lv imo\lp.TTavitiV VTroypapipov Iva.
ar.oKov8rj^rjTe toit Ixvco-w ait-rod, with the context of these passages.
« Rom. vi. 7. 6 1 Pet. iv. 1. 7 See Reuss, Thiol. Chrit. ii. 300.

76 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
for instance, is a prominent word with St. Peter,1 but neither he nor any
other writer of the New Testament uses it in that unique and trans
cendent sense which is peculiar to St. Paul. With St. Paul, as we have
already seen, it comes to mean an absolute oneness with Christ? St.
Peter, like the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and like St.
Clement, uses it as " the substance of things which are hoped for — the
conviction of unseen realities."3 It is, in fact, "a confidence in the
promises of God."4 It is hence nearly allied to Hope. In the Epistle
to the Romans the main object of faith is God's redeeming favour
evidenced by Christ's death ;5 in St. Peter faith is mainly directed to the
future salvation, of which Christ's resurrection is a pledge, and to which
His sufferings are a means. And although St. Peter dwells so much on
good works, that " to do good " (kyaBoirotiiv) occurs no less than nine
times in his Epistle,6 yet he is not in the least endeavouring to prove any
theory of Justification by works, but simply regards good works as St.
Paul does — namely, as the natural issue of the Christian calling. Nor,
when he speaks oifear, in i. 17,7 is there intended to be any opposition
to Rom. viii. 15,8 anymore than there is in 1 Johniv. 18.9 The "fear"
spoken of by St. Peter is only a fear of falling away from grace. There
is no contradiction between the Apostles, but there is a different gleam
in their presentation of the " many-coloured wisdom "10 of God.
iii. Again, we see a difference respecting Regeneration and Baptism,
and here once more St. Peter's view is predominantly moral and general,
St. Paul's is mystic and dogmatic. Regeneration with St. Paul means a
new creation, the beginning of a life which is not the human and indi
vidual life, but which is " Christ in us." But St. Peter, like St. James,
regards this new birth as produced by the living and abiding word of
God, producing the purification which springs from obedience to the
truth, and having as its objects a living hope and a sincere brotherly
love.11 And whereas Baptism is, with St. Paul, the beginning of the new
birth, and the communication of the Spirit, with St. Peter, on the other
hand — whatever may be the exact meaning of the difficult expression
which he uses18 — it is clear that his thoughts are mainly fixed on the
1 1 Pet. i. 5, <ppovpovp.eVov! Sia iritrrvas ; 7; 9, to Te'Xos Trjs irioreo)!, o-amjplav <jwxuiv ; 21;
V. 9, arepeol ttJ TrtO"Tet.
2 See Life and Work of St. Paul, ii. 209, seq.
3 1 Pet. i. 8 ; Heb. xi. 1 ; Clem. Ep. ad Cor. xxvi., xxvii. ; Pfleiderer, Paulinism.
ii. 140. 4 1 Pet. i. 3, 13, iii. 15. » Rom. iv. 25.
6 1 Pet. ii. 14, 15, 20, iii. 6, 11, 13, 16, 17, iv. 19.
7 " Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear."
8 "Ye reoeived not the spirit of bondage again to fear."
9 " Perfect love casteth out fear." io n-oAvTroi'mAos o-oAi'a.
" 1 Pet. i. 22, 23 ; Jas. i. 18.
12 1 Pet. iii. 21, eircpiurtjun ayaifc owet8,j(re,os «is %c6v. It has been taken to mean (1)
"pledge," "contract " (appafav, MX"X<>v, GLcum. ; stipulatio, Luther), as Tertullian calls
baptism obligatio Jidei, sponsio saluiis, fidei pactio, but this seems only to be a later
Byzantine meaning of the word; or (2) "the question and answer of baptism "—the
promise to renounce the devil, etc, and so to keep a good conscience ("Anima non

THE GOSPEL TO THE DEAD. 77
moral obligations which enter into baptism as being a type of our de
liverance by means of the resurrection of Christ.
10. But .while St. Peter brings down, as it were, the transcendental
divinity of 'St. Paul from heaven to earth — from the regions of a sublime
theology to those of practical Christian life — while the diversities of
gifts imparted by the same Spirit thus meet the individual needs of
every Christian — while the contemplation of truth from many different
points of view enables us to understand its solidity and perfectness—
St. Peter has one doctrine which is almost peculiar to himself, and
which is inestimably precious. In this he not only ratifies some of the
widest hopes which it had been given to his brother Apostle, if not to
reveal, at least to intimate, but he also supplements these hopes by
the new aspect of a much-disregarded, and, indeed, till recent times
half-forgotten, article of the Christian creed ; — I mean the object of
Christ's descent into Hades.1 In this truth is involved nothing less
than the extension of Christ's redeeming wOrk to the dead who died
before His coming. Had the Epistle contained nothing else but this,
it would at once have been raised above the irreverent charge of being
" secondhand and commonplace."2 I allude of course to the famous
passage in which St. Peter tells us (iii. 19, 20) that "Christ died for
sins once for all that He may lead us to God, slain indeed in the flesh
but quickened in the Spirit, in which also He went and preached to ihe
spirits in prison, once disobedient, when the long-suffering of God was
waiting,3 in the days of Noah, during the preparing of the ark, by
entering into which fevi, that is, eight souls, were brought safe through
water."4 So far is this from being a casual allusion, that St. Peter
returns to it as though with the object of making its meaning indis-
lavatione sed responsione sancitur," Tert. de Resurr. Cam. 48) — but eVepcSTjjua cannot bear
this sense ; or (3) joining eVepwT7jp.a with eis ®ebv, and taking the phrase eireptorav es in 2
Kings xi. 7 as explaining it — " the inquiry after God of a good conscience ; " or (4) " request
to God for a good conscience." Taking eirepuynjpa in this its natural sense, (the sense
it bears in the only passage of the LXX. in which it occurs, vide Dan. iv. 14,) I believe
this last view to be correct ; but if eis ®eov be taken with owei'STja-ts, as in Acts xxiv. 16,
then it will be "the entreaty for a good conscience towards God." This, indeed, may
seem an inadequate explanation of the saving power of baptism, but so (at first sight) is
every other sense which the words will at all bear ; and when we remember the practical
and non-mystical character of the Apostle's mind, much of the difficulty disappears, and
the entreaty involves its own fulfilment. [The Revised Version renders the word
"interrogation," and in the margin suggests the alternatives of "inquiry" or "appeal."
Archbishop Leighton says, "The word intends the whole correspondence of the con
science with God. . . . The word is judicial, alluding to the interrogation used in
law, etc."]
1 Minor original specialities are "into which things the angels desired to look " (i. 12) ;
Christ, "the chief Shepherd" (v. 4); the presentation of Christ's sufferings as an
example (ii. 21), etc. See Davidson, Introd. i. 423, and for peculiarities of phraseology,
id. p. 433.
2 Schwegler. ' Leg. ijreJeSe'xero.
4 In my Mercy and Judgment (pp. 75 — 81) I have given (with original quotations) a
full history of the exegesis of this passage in the Christian Church. What may be called
the mythological inferences from it, apart from the blessed truth which it generally
indicates, may be found in the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus.

78 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
putably plain. When he speaks of the perishing heathen who shall,
after lives of sin and self-indulgence, give account to the Judge of
quick and dead, he says — " For, for this cause also, even to the dead
was the Gospel preached ;" adding, as though to preclude any escape
from his plain meaning, "that they may be judged according to men
in the flesh, but may live according to God in the Spirit."1 Few
words of Scripture have been so tortured and emptied of their signi
ficance as these. In other passages whole theological systems, whole
ecclesiastical despotisms, have been built on the abuse of a metaphor,
on the translation of rhetoric into logic, on the ignorance and inca
pacity which will not interpret words by the universal rules of
literary criticism ; and yet every effort has been made to explain away
the plain meaning of this passage. It is one of the most precious
passages of Scripture, and it involves no ambiguity, except such as is
created by the scholasticism of a prejudiced theology. It stands almost
alone in Scripture, not indeed in the gleam of light which it throws
across the awful darkness of the destiny of sin, but in the manner in
which it reveals to us the source from which that gleam of light has
been derived. For if language have any meaning, this language means
that Christ, when His Spirit descended into the lower world, pro
claimed the message of salvation to the once impenitent dead. In the
first indeed of the two allusions to this truth, the preaching is formally
limited to those who had died in the Deluge. This is due to two
causes. St. Peter's mind is full of the Deluge as a type of the world's
lustration, first by death and then by deliverance, just as baptism
is a type of death unto sin and the new life unto righteousness. Also
he is thinking of Christ's comparison of the days of Noah to the days of
the Son of Man. But it is impossible to suppose that the antediluvian
sinners, conspicuous as they were for their wickedness, were the only
ones of all the dead who were singled out to receive the message of
deliverance. That restricted application is excluded by the second
passage. There the Apostle shows that he had only referred to those
who perished in the Deluge as striking representatives of a world of
sinners, judged as regards men in the flesh, but living as regards God in
the Spirit. For, in referring to the judgment which awaits the heathen,
he attempers the awful thought of their iniquities and of the future
retribution which awaited them by saying that, with a view to this very
state of things (eir toCto) the Gospel was preached to the dead ; — in
order that, however terrible might be the judgments which would befall
their human nature, the hope of some spiritual share in the divine life
might not be for ever excluded at the moment of death. Of the effects
of the preaching nothing is said. There is no dogma either of univer-
salism or of conditional immortality. All details, as in the entire
eschatology of Scripture, are left dim and indefinite; but no honest
1 1 Peter iv. 6.

THE GOSPEL TO THE DEAD. 79
man who goes to Holy Scripture to seek for truth, instead of going to
try and find whatever errors he may bring to it as a part of his
theological belief, can possibly deny that there is ground here to
mitigate that element of the popular teaching of Christendom against
which many of the greatest saints and theologians have raised their
voices.1 That teaching rests with the deadliest weight on all who have
sufficient imagination to realise the meaning of the phrases in which
they indulge, and sufficient heart to feel their awfulness. If Christ
preached to dead men who were once disobedient, then Scripture shows
us that the moment of death does not necessarily involve a final and
hopeless torment for every sinful soul. Of all the blunt weapons of
ignorant controversy employed against those to whom has been revealed
the possibility of a larger hope than is left to mankind by Augustine or
by Calvin, the bluntest is the charge that such a hope renders null the
necessity for the work of Christ ! As if it were not this very hope
which gives to the love 'of Christ its mightiest effectiveness ! We thus
rescue the work of redemption from the appearance of having failed to
achieve its end for the vast majority of those for whom Christ died.
By accepting the light thus thrown upon " the descent into Hell," we
extend to those of the dead who have not finally hardened themselves
against it the blessedness of Christ's atoning work. We thus complete
the divine, all-comprehending circuit of God's universal grace ! In these
passages, as has been truly said, " we may see an expansive paraphrase
and exuberant variation of the original Pauline theme of the univer-
salism of the evangelic embassage of Christ and of His sovereignty over
the world ; and especially of the passage in the Philippians,2 where all
they that are in heaven and on the earth, and under the earth, are
enumerated as classes ofthe subjects of the exalted Redeemer."
But alas ! human perversity has darkened the very heavens by
looking at them through the medium of its own preconceptions; and the
clear light of revelation has streamed in vain upon the awfulness of the
future. The attempts to make the descent of Jesus into Hades a visit
merely to liberate the holy patriarchs, or to strike terror into the evil
spirits, are the unworthy inventions of dogmatic embarrassment. The
interpretation of Christ's "preaching" as only a preaching of damnation3
is one of the most melancholy specimens of theological hardness trying
to blot out the hope of God's mercy from the world beyond the grave.
" It was," as Reuss says, " far better than all that : it was for the living
a new manifestation of the inexhaustible grace of God ; for the dead a
supreme opportunity for casting themselves into the arms of His mercy ;
and finally, for Christian theologians, so skilful in torturing the letter,
and so blind at seizing the spirit, it might have been the germ of a
sublime and fruitful conception, if, instead of compressing more and
1 See Mercy and Judgment, pp. 16—57. 2 Phil. ii. 9, 11.
3 It is needless to say that in the N. T. mjpiWai has no such meaning, and the parallel
passage, iv. 6, has euijyye\ur07). See Clem. Alex. Strom, vi. 6.

80 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
more the circle of life and light by their formulae and their anathemas,
they would have learnt from the teaching of the Apostle that this circle
is illimitable, and that the life-giving rays which stream from its centre
can penetrate even the most distant sphere of the world of spirits."

Having thus seen the authenticity, and the characteristics of the first
Epistle of St. Peter, we may proceed to ask, What was its object?
Clearly it was not meant as a system of theology. Some have supposed
that its scope was directly conciliatory — that by borrowing alike from
St. Paul and St. James, and endeavouring, as it were, to make them
both speak with the same mouth, x St. Peter wished to calm the con
troversies which had arisen, and tp show that the Christian faith,
whether preached by Judaists or Paulinists, was essentially the same.
Now there may have been in the mind of St. Peter some such under
current of intention. For he was addressing, among others, the
Churches of Galatia, which had been the scene of burning controversies ;
and he may have wished by his silence about the Law, and his omission
of such phrases as " Justification by Faith," to show that the essential
truths of Christianity might be disengaged from polemical bitterness.
There must have been something intentional in this silence, for no one
can read the words of St. Paul in Gal. v. 13 —
(1) "For ye were called for freedom, brethren,
(2) Only not freedom as a handle for the flesh,
(3) But by love serve (8ouA.<-i5eTe) one another."
side by side with those of St. Peter, in ii. 1 6 —
(1) " As free,
(2) And yet not using your freedom as a veil of baseness,
(3) But as slaves (SoOAoi) of God," —
without seeing that the/ resemblance is more than accidental.2 The
identity of structure, the similarity of rhythm, the echo of the thought,
prove decisively that St. Peter had read the Epistle to the Galatians.
It could not, therefore, have been without deliberate purpose that, in
addressing Galatians among others, he assumes, without the least con
troversial vehemence, the one startling proposition that faithful Gentiles
are the true Jews,3 an elect race, a holy nation, the true heritage of
God, and even the true priesthood,4 while yet he says no word about
Mosaism, or about the terms of communion between Jews and Gentiles.
Here, again, we may recognise the exact attitude of Peter as seen in the
Acts of the Apostles. He is a sincere and even a scrupulous Jew ; yet
i Reuss, La Thiol. Chrit. ii. 294.
2 The quotation is further interesting as being made from an Epistle in which his own
conduct is condemned.
3 1 Pet. iii. 6.
4 1 Pet. ii. 5, oTkos nrevfianicbs, Uparrevp.* ayiov\ 1 Pet. ii, 9, fiavtKeiov iepdrevfia (cf.
?<;rb njbijp, Ex. xix. 5, 6, and LXX.), k.t.x. Aabs els irepmmV'»' (n|{9> cf. Acts xx. 28.)

TO WHOM ADDRESSED. 81
he had been divinely taught that the practices which he might himself
continue to adopt as matters of national obligation were in no sense
binding on the Gentiles, and that their freedom did not place them in
a lower position in the eyes of God, who is no respecter of persons.
But though such thoughts may have been in his mind, they did not
furnish the motive of his address, which was, as he himself says, essen
tially hortatory. He wrote to testify and to exhort ;1 to confirm the
converts in the truths which they had already learnt from the missions
of St. Paul and his companions, and to comfort them under persecution
by encouragements, founded on the hopes of which they were partakers,
and on the example and effect of the sufferings of Christ.
As in other instances, the question has been raised whether St.
Peter intended to address Jews or Gentiles ; — and, as in other instances,
the true answer seems to be — neither class exclusively. The Dispersion
of which he is mainly thinking is a spiritual one. He is writing to all
Christians in the countries which he mentions.2 Why he selected the
Churches of Asia Minor, and did not include the Churches of Syria,
Macedonia, and Achaia, is a question which we cannot solve, seeing that
both in Greece and in Syria he was personally known. That he is
addressing Gentiles as well as Jews cannot be doubted by any uncon
ventional reader;3 but he regards them as alike pilgrims and sojourners
on earth, common members of the ideal Israel, common heirs of the
heavenly inheritance.4 Yet we need go no farther than the first line of
his letter, with its two distinctively Jewish expressions of "sojourners"
(Toshabim) and " the dispersion " (Galootha), to show that even to
Gentiles he is writing with the feelings and habits of a Jew.
It seems likely that the Epistle was written after the final imprison
ment of St. Paul, during whose activity St. Peter would hardly have
written to any of the Churches which had been exclusively founded by
the Apostle of the Gentiles. The condition of the Churches addressed
accords well with such a supposition. He is writing to those who,
although their faith was undergoing a severe test, like gold tried in the
fire, 6 were yet mainly liable to danger rather than to death. They were
1 1 Pet. V. 12, TrapaKakviv Kal eTripap-rvpCiv, K.T.\.
2 Weiss, in the interests of his arbitrary theory that the letter is one of the earliest
documents of Christianity, tries to prove that it was addressed exclusively to Jews. His
arguments (Petr. Lehroegr. 115, 116) are entirely inconclusive, and are sufficiently
answered in the text. This view has, however, found many supporters in all ages, as
Eusebius, Didymus, Jerome, Theophylact, and in modern times Erasmus, Calvin,
Grotius, Bengel, etc.
3 See 1 Pet. i. 14, 18, iii. 6, ii. 9, 10, iv. 3, 4. Many doubtless of these Gentiles had
passed into the Church through the portals of the Synagogue. Hence they would find
no difficulty in the casual allusions to the Old Testament (i. 15, 16, 23—25, ii. 6, 19,
iii. 10, iv. 18, v. 5), which, as Immer remarks (N. Test. Theol., p. 477), are not introduced
with any Rabbinic refinements.
4 1 Pet. i. 1, iii. 6, v. 9 (cf. Heb. xi. 13 ; Phil. iii. 20 ; Gen. xlvii. 9; 1| Ps. xxxix. 14) ;
"nachalath Jehovah," Jos. xiii. 23, etc. Similarly, Clemens Romanus, though aGentile,
talks of "our father, Abraham."
* 1 Pet. i. 7, iv. 12.
G

82 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
exposed to false accusations as malefactors,1 to revilings,2 threats,3 and a
general system of terrorism and suffering. 4 Now this is exactly the
state of things .which must have existed in the provinces after the
Neronian persecution. That crisis marked out the Christians for a-
special hatred above and beyond what they experienced as being, in the
eyes of the world, a debased Jewish sect. It even brought into promi
nence the name of " Christians," which, though invented by the jeering
populace of Antioch as early as a.d. 44, had not until this time come
into general vogue.5 It is true that Orosius6 is the first writer who
asserts that the persecution extended " through all the provinces," and
there is no authority for the assertion of Tertullian that Nero had made
the repression of Christians a standing law of the Empire. 7 Some have
attempted to prove that the state of things referred to could only have
existed during the persecution of Trajan (a.d. 101),8 which is of course
equivalent to saying that the Epistle is spurious. But, considering that
we find the traces of trials at least as severe as those to which St. Peter
alludes some time before the Neronian persecution had broken out,9 and
in the Apocalyptic letters to the seven Churches of Asia after it had
broken out, 10 the whole argument is groundless. The members of a sect
which was " everywhere spoken against," and for which even the
worthiest Gentile writers can find no better epithet than " execrable " —
a sect which from the first was supposed to involve a necessary connec
tion with the deadliest crimes11 — a sect which from the earliest days
seems to have been exposed to the insults of the vilest mural carica
tures12— were certainly as liable in the later years of Nero as they were
> 1 Pet. ii. 12, 15. 2 1 Pet. ii. 23, iii, 9, iv. 14. 3 1 Pet. iii 16, e^pe'c^Wres.
4 1 Pet. iii. 9, 14, 17, iv. 15, 19. Tacitus counts Christianity among the shameful
things (pudenda) which flowed Romewards (comp. Rom. i. 16).
6 See my Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 298. Tacitus (Ann. xv. 44) uses the word
" Christvtnos " with something of an apology. It is well known that in the N. T. it only
occurs three times, and always involves a hostile sense (Acts xi. 26, xxvi. 28), as it does
in iv. 16.
6 Oros. vii. 11, "per omnes provincias pari persecutione cruciari imperavit." The
Lusitanian inscription (Gruter, p. 238 ; Orelli, 730), which thanks Nero for purging the
province of some foreign superstition (novam humano generi superstitionem), is now
given up. See Merivale, i. 450 ; Gieseler, i. 28.
7 Ad Natt. i. 7, " sub Nerone damnatio invaluit." In the martyrologies, we read of
martyrs during the Neronian persecution at Milan, Aquileia, Carthage, etc. ; and St.
John mentions the martyr Antipas by name, at Pergamum (Rev. ii. 13), besides alluding
to others (Rev. xvi. 5).
8 See especially Schwegler, Nachap. Zeit. II. 2 — 29 ; Kostlin, Johann-Lehrbegr. 472
— 481 ; Baur, First Three Centuries, i. 133.
» For instance, in 1 Thess. ii. 15, iii. 4 ; 2 Thess. i. 4, iii. 2 ; Phil. i. 28, 30, etc.
J° Rev. i. 9, ii. 9, 10, 13, vi. 9, 11, xviii. 24, xx. 4.
11 Plin Ep. x. 97, "flagitia cohaerentia nomini;" Tac. Ann. xv. 44, "quos, per
flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat "
12 A celebrated graffito of the Palatine, representing an ass on a cross, has been sup
posed to be a mockery of the Crucifixion. It was found in 1856, and is now in the
library of the Collegio Romano. P. Garucci supposes that it was drawn towards the
close of the second century. Similar insults to Christians have been found on various
gems and wall-inscriptions at Pompeii, etc. See Renan, L'Antechrist, p. 40. Merivale,
Hist. vi. 442. These graffiti and calumnies are alluded to by Tertullian, Apol. 16 ; ad
Natt. i. 11; Minuc. Felix, Octav. ix. 28; Celsus, ap. Orig. c. Cels. vi. 31.

KEY-NOTE OF THE EPISTLE. 83
in the clays of Trajan to suffer such troubles as those to which St. Peter
alludes. 1 It ought to have been regarded as decisive against the later
elate thus suggested for the Epistle, that, like all the Epistles in the
New Testament, it is anterior to that rapid development of the power of
the Episcopate which is so prominent in the earliest of the extra-canonical
writings. The Churches of the Spiritual Dispersion are still under the
government of Presbyters, and St. Peter addresses them as their
"fellow-presbyter." The word " episkopos " occurs but once in his letter,
and that in its purely general and untechnical signification.2 Hence
the letter is addressed to the converts in general, with only a
special message to Presbyters at the end. Hope is the keynote of this
Epistle. Its main message is, Endure, submit, for you are the lieirs of
salvation. 3

CHAPTER VILL
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER.

'Emorrptyas cr-fipicrov roiis o\Be\(po6s, — Luke xxii. 32.
" Habet haec epistola Ti mpotiphv conveniens ingenio prinoipis apostolorum." —
Grotius. " Mirabilis est gravitas et alacritas Petrini sermonis, lectorem suavissime
retinens." — Benqel.
" Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ " — such is the simple and authori
tative designation which he adopts. He does not need to add any of
the amplifications of his title, or assertions of his claim to it, which
were often necessary to St. Paul, whose apostolic authority had been so
fiercely questioned. Nor does he need to adopt St. Paul's practice of
associating the names of his companions with his own, although both
Mark and Silvanus, so well known to the Asian Churches, were at this
time with him in Rome. His dignity as an Apostle was unquestioned.
1 Renan rightly says, " L'epitre de Pierre repond bien a ce que nous savons, surtout
par Tacite, de la situation des Chretiens a. Rome vers l'an 63 ou 64 " (L'Antechrist, p. xi.).
3 1 Pet. ii. 25, to the Bishop (or Overseer) of your souls.
3 The letter falls, like most of St. Paul's letters (see Life and Work of St. Paul, i.
605, 606) into two great divisions— doctrinal and practical. I. i. 1 — ii. 10, the blessings
of Christians. II. ii. 11 — v. 14, the duties of Christians. More in detail the outline of
the letter is as follows : — (I.) Greeting (i. 1, 2) ; thanksgiving, intended to console the
readers with the living Hope of that future inheritance on which, through God's mercy
and Christ's resurrection, they should enter after their brief sorrows on earth — that
salvation, to which all prophecy pointed, and into which angels desire to look (i. 3 — 12) ;
exhortation (a) to holy living in hope and obedience (i. 13 — 17), founded on the price paid
for their redemption (18 — 21) ; (/3) to brotherly love, founded on their new birth by the
eternal word of God (22 — 25) ; and (y) to Christian innocence, as babes desiring spiritual

84 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
His words needed no further weight than they derived from his
acknowledged position. It is not insignificant that he uses the name
which Christ had given him, and uses it in its Greek, not its Aramaic,
form. Had he been writing with any exclusive reference to the Jewish
Christians, it is more probable that he would have used his own name,
Symeon, by which James speaks of him to the Church of Jerusalem, or
the Aramaic " Kephas," by which St. Paul designates him, because he
was so called by the Judaists of Galatia and Corinth.1
" To the elect sojourners of the Dispersion of Pontus,2 Galatia, Cap-
padocia, Asia, and Bithynia." The Dispersion — in Greek, Diaspora; in
Aramaic, Galootha — was no doubt an essentially literal and geographical
expression ; but as St. Peter uses the unusual word " sojourners " (pare-
pidemoi) in a metaphorical sense for " pilgrims" in ii. ll,3 he probably
uses it in the same sense here, and not in its narrower sense of scattered
Jews. The Churches which he was addressing were composed of Jewish
and Gentile converts. Many of the latter had doubtless been proselytes.
Even those who had been converted direct from heathenism would have
been made familiar from the first with the existence of the Old Testa
ment, and with the truth which St. Paul had so powerfully established
in his letter to the Galatians, that the converted Gentiles constituted
the ideal Israel. Nothing, therefore, is more natural to a Jewish writer
than the half-literal, half-metaphorical expression, " the expatriated
elect of the Dispersion." The word "elect" marks them out as
Christians, being one of the terms by which Christians used to define
milk, and as living stones of a spiritual house (ii. 1 — 10). Then (TI.), after a special
entreaty to them to abstain from fleshly desires, so as to win their heathen neighbours to
glorify God by seeing their honourable mode of life — an entreaty specially applicable to
a period when " Christian " was regarded as a synonym of "malefactor" (11, 12), he
passes to a second series of exhortations, which have direct reference to the trials by
which they are surrounded (ii. 13 — iii. 7) : namely, to the spirit of submission (a)
generally (ii. 13—17); (P) in the position of servants (18 — 20) bearing in mind the meek
example of Christ their Redeemer (21 — 25) ; (y) in the position of Christian women, who,
in meek simplicity, are to imitate Sarah, their spiritual ancestress (hi. 1 — 6), and (S) of
Christian hmbancts (7). Then follows a, third series of exhortations (iii. 8 — iv. 19), (a) to
forgiveness and peaceful self-control as in God's sight (iii. 8 — 12) ; (/3) to calm endurance
of wrongful suffering — again with reference to the example of Christ (l3 — 18), who
preached even in Hades to those who were once disobedient (in the days of that deluge
from which Noah and his family were saved as we are saved by baptism) — but who is
now exalted at God's right hand (19—22) ; (y) to the abandonment of the old heathen
life, which would bring inevitable judgment (iv. 1 — 6) ; ($) to sobriety, love, hospitality,
a right use of gifts, that God may be glorified (7 — 10) ; (e) to the cheerful, innocent,
even thankful endurance of sorrow as a normal part of the Christian life (11 — 16), and
one in which, being far less to be pitied than the unfaithful, they might safely entrust
their souls to God (17—19). Then follow special exhortations (n) to Presbyters (v. 1 — 4) ;
IB) to younger members of the Church (5—7) ; and (y) to all alike, to watch and strive
(9, 10). The Epistle ends with a blessing (10, 11) and a few parting words about Silvanus
and the letter of which he is the bearer (12), and greetings (13, 14).
i That he wrote in Greek is certain from the style, which is far too animated to be a
translation. It is a most narrow view which assumes that St. Peter could not address
Gentiles without violating what is called "the Apostolic compact " (Gai. ii. 9).
2 Hence sometimes known as the Epistle ad Ponticos (Tert. Scorp. 12).
3 Ps. xxxix. 13, oxx. 5. Cf. Heb. xi. 13 ; Judith v. 18; 2 Mace. i. 27. Comp. John
xi. 52, and irapoucos in Acts vii. 6, 29.

THE DISPERSION. 85
themselves.1 Many of them, being Jews by birth, were literal members
of "the Dispersion;" all of them were strangers upon earth, exiles from
heaven their home, dwelling in Mesech and amid the tents of Kedar.
It is natural that the phrases of a Jewish writer should be pre
dominantly Jewish. Even the language of St. Paul, cosmopolitan as
were his views, is largely coloured by theocratic images and metaphors
belonging to the older dispensation.2
There seems to be no traceable significance in the order in which the
provinces of Asia Minor — to use a convenient later term — are men
tioned. Writing from Rome, he begins with the most, distant, Pontus,
flinging as it were to its farthest cast the net of the fisher of men. The
order of the rest, from north-east to south and west, must be due to
some subjective accident. The Churches of two of the provinces, Galatia
and Asia,3 — including some so important as Ancyra, Tavium, Pessinus,
and the famous Seven Churches — had been founded by St. Paul or his
companions. Jews of Pontus and Cappadocia had been present at the
great discourse of St. Peter on the day of Pentecost,4 and these districts
contained, among others, such wealthy towns as Tyana, Nyssa, Csesarea,
and Nazianzus. The Churches of Bithynia, which St. Paul had been
hindered from visiting by a Divine intimation, were forerunners of the
communities to whose simplicity and faithfulness, forty years later,
Pliny bore his impartial and memorable testimony in his letter to the
Emperor Trajan.
Having thus named the converts whom he meant specially to
address, he describes their election as due in its origin " to the fore
knowledge of God the Father," in its progress " to the sanctifying work
of the Spirit," and as having for its end " obedience, and sprinkling by
the blood of Jesus Christ."5 Thus, no less than St. Paul, he describes each
of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity as co-operant in the work
of man's salvation. In his salutation, " Grace unto you and peace," he
follows St. Paul in the comprehensive formula by which he unites the
Hellenic greeting of "joy," with the Hebrew greeting of "peace" — both
of them used in their deeper Christian sense,6 of a " peace " which
passeth understanding, and a "joy " which the world could neither give
nor take away. From the Book of Daniel, with which he was evi
dently familiar, he adopts the expression " be multiplied," which is
1 1 Thess. i. 4.
2 The Galatian Churches, for instance, were largely composed of Gentiles, yet St.
Paul's arguments to them are of a Judaic and sometimes even of a Rabbinic character.
3 Proconsular Asia, which included Mysia, Lydia, Caria, Phrygia, Pisidia, and
Lycaonia. 4 Acts ii. 9. Cf. Jos, Antt. xvi. 6.
5 pavna-piov, Heb. xii. 24, "Sprinkling," i.e., "Your being sprinkled." The allusion
is to the sprinkling of the people at the inauguration bf tbe Mosaic Covenant (Ex. xxiv. 8) ;
but there may be also the conception of purifying, as the vessels of the sanctuary were
purified by sprinkled blood. Cf Heb. ix. 13, 18 —28 ; Ex. xxiv. 6—8 ; Lev. xvi. 14 and
19, etc. Any allusion to the Lord's Supper, which Weiss (Petr. Lehrbegr. 273) assumes
as certain, is more than doubtful.
6 See my Ufe and Work of St. Paul, i. 580.

86 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
found in the letters of Darius and Nebuchadnezzar there recorded1
(i. 1-3). Then follows the rich and full thanksgiving, with its comprehensive
glance at the future (3 — 5), the present (6 — 9), and the past (10 — 12) :
— " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,2 Who
according to His great mercy, begat us again 3 to a living hope by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,4 to an inheritance incorrup
tible and stainless and unwithering,5 which has been reserved in heaven
for you,6 — who by the power of God are being guarded 7 by faith unto
a salvation ready to be revealed 8 at the last season. In which thought
ye exult,9 though for a little while at present, if need be, ye have been
grieved in various trials, that the tested genuineness of your faith — a
far costlier thing than gold which perisheth, and yet is tested by means
of fire10 — might prove to be for (your) praise and honour and glory11 at
the revelation of Jesus Christ; Whom though ye never saw ye love;12
on Whom — though ye still see Him not — yet believing, ye exult with
joy inexpressible and glorified ; carrying ofl' as a prize 13 the end of your
faith: — the salvation of souls.14 Respecting which salvation the prophets
diligently sought and searched, who prophesied concerning the grace
which was coming to you ; — searching as to what or what kind of
season the spirit of Christ in them15 was indicating, when it testified
1 Dan. iii. 31, iv. 1, vi. 25, whence the Rabbis probably derived it ("Wetst. ad Cor. ).
Cf. Jude 2 ; 2 Pet. i. 2. 2 Cf. Eph. i. 3.
3 'Ai'ayevi'jjcras, a word peculiar to St. Peter. But compare iiremnja-ei', James i. 18 ;
yevvao-dat avwdev, James hi. 3 ; ira^tyyevea-ta. Tit. hi. 5 ; K-rar9evTes eV Xp. Irja-ov, Eph. h. 10.
4 Here he strikes the key-note of the Epistle, Hope founded on the Resurrection;
not a dead, but an energising Hope, such as the Resurrection had wrought in the
Apostles by dispelling their despair ; a Hope living, life-giving, and looking to life (De
"Wette), of which the Resurrection was "not only the exemplar, but the efficient cause
(Leighton). 5 Eis. The Hope will end in the fruition of heritage, which is salvation and glory
(1 Pet. i. 5, v. 1) ; ajaapacTos (Wisd. vi. 12) not the same as apLapivrtvos in v. 4.
6 Arid therefore beyond the reach of danger.
7 " Haereditas servata est, haeredes custodiuntur " (Bengel). Cf. Phil. iv. 7. The
MSS. throughout the Epistle vary between "us" and "you," as is so often the case.
Here, as in almost every instance, iplx is the right reading («, A. B, C, K, L, etc. ),
though the E. V. usually adopts " us " and " we." The "you " is characteristic of the
Apostolic authority of the teacher.
8 Draw the curtain at the last time (Jude 18), and 'the salvation is already there,
behind the veil. See 1 Pet. iv. 5, 7.
9 Here he passes from the future to the present. The " salvation " in its complete
ness is future, the " exultation " (a word characteristically Petrine ; cf. 1 Pet., i. 8,
iv. 13 ; Matt. v. 12) is present, and the epithets applied to it are anticipatory only in
their fulness.
10 Hermas, Pastor, i. 4, p. 440 ; ed. Dressel.
n "Well done, good and faithful servant !" (Matt. xxv. 21). I2 Johnxx. 29.
13 Tbe prize is carried off by anticipation now; in reality hereafter. It is "glory
begun below." " The moods of the New Testament converge towards the present."
14 1 Pet. i. 6—9. The "salvation " is not from the sorrows and trials of life, but from
all sin. >« The remark in the Ep. of Barnabas (cap. v.) still remains the best comment on this
expression, "The prophets, having their gift from Him, prophesied about Him."
St. Peter was not likely to enter into such scholastic refinements as those which
separate the idea of " Christ " from that of " the Eternal Son."

EXHORTATION TO HOPE. 87
beforehand the sufferings which were to fall upon Christ,1 and the
glories that should follow them ; to whom it was revealed that not
mainly for themselves,2 but for you they were ministering these things,3
which have now been proclaimed to you4 by means of those who
preached to you the Gospel by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven ; 5
into which things angels desire to stop and look."6
" Therefore, girding up at once the loins of your understanding,'
being sober, lean with perfect hope upon the grace that is being
borne to you in the revelation, of Jesus Christ ; as children of obe
dience,8 not fashioning yourselves in conformity9 with the former
desires in your day of ignorance."10
This pregnant exhortation is supported by the motives (i.) of God's
holiness (15, 16) ; (ii.) of the fear due to Him as a Father and impartial
Judge (17) j11 and (iii.) of the fact that they were ransomed from their
empty traditional mode of life, not by mere .corruptible silver and gold,12
but by costly blood, as of a lamb blameless and spotless, even of Christ ;M
Who was pre-ordained before the world was, but has been manifested at
the end of the time14 for the sake of them who through Him believe on
God, who raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory, so that our
faith is also hope towards God.15
The exhortation to Hope founded on these motives is followed by an
exhortation to sincere and intense Love, as the natural result of the puri-
1 1 Pet. i. 11, Ta eis Xpiarbj/ TTad^para.
2 "As little children lisp and talk of Heaven,
So thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were given." Keble.
I insert the word " mainly " after "not " in accordance with a well-known idiom.
3 See Acts ii. 17, 31, iii. 24.
4 "You" and "ye" (not "us" and " we, " as in the E. V. ) are the best authorised
readings throughout the Epistle, except in i. 3, iv. 17, and ii. 24 (from Isaiah). This
seems to have been St, Peter's method (Acts xv. 7).
5 Mark the emphatic testimony to the teaching of St. Paul, by whom, directly or in
directly, most of these Churches had been founded.
6 1 Pet. i. 10 — 12. For the word irapattvtyai. see James i. 25 ; Luke xxiv. 12 ; John xx.
5, 11. Cf. Heb. ii. 16.
1 Luke xii. 25 ; Eph. vi. 14.
8 Cf . TeKva opyijs, Eph. ii. 3 ; <pwtos, v. 8 ; Kardpas, 2 Pet. ii. 14.
9 <rv0-XTjp-aTi£6p.eeoi, Rom. xii. 2.
10 "Ignorance ;" cf. Rom. i. 18 ; Acts iii. 17, xvii. 30.
n ei narepa eViKoAelcrfle — "If ye call on Him as 'Father,' Who " etc. Perhaps with
reference to the Lord's Prayer. In these verses notice dvavrpofyr), " mode of life,"
" con versa -ion " in its old sense, used also to render woXirevpa, "citizenship," in Phil. i.
27. The adv. a7rpo<roi7ro\^TrTws occurs here only, but the conception is thoroughly Petrine
(Acts x. 34). The "fear" here recommended is not the fear reprobated in 1 John iv.
18; Rom. viii. 15 ; 2 Tim. i. 7, but "godly fear," <po0os Te\eiioTiKbs, awful reverence
mixed with love, which " drowns all lower fears, and begets true fortitude " (Leighton),
13 Notice the Petrine contempt for dross (Acts iii. 6, viii. 20).
13 With special allusion to the deliverance secured by the Paschal Lamb (Ex. xii. 36) ;
general reference to the whiteness and harmlessness of the Lamb. See Life of Christ,
i. 143. 14 1 Pet. i. 20, eV etrxeow Tav xpoviav, B'O^J mTO (Gen. xlix. 1).
15 Or, "so that your faith and hope are in God," who raised Christ from the dead,
ete. Acts ii. 22 (i. 13—21).

00 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
fication of the soul by the Holy Spirit1 in the path of obedience ; and of
that new birth — not by human engendering, but by means of the living
word (K6yos) of God, which is not transient, as is the flower of human
life,2 but is an utterance (prjua) which abideth for ever — " And this is the
utterance preached to you as the Gospel."3
This is the starting-point to fresh exhortations. There were evidently
divisions between the members of the Churches, which led St. Peter to
impress on them the duty of fervent love. He proceeds to urge them
to lay aside,4 like some stained robe, all that is ruinous to brotherly
union — malice, guile, insincerities, envies, backbitings, which may easily
have arisen from such conditions as we have seen existing in the Churches
of Galatia.5 Born again, let them, as new-born babes, desire to be nur
tured into perfect growth by the unadulterated spiritual milk,6 since they
knew by tasting that the Lord is sweet.7 And then, changing the meta
phor,8 he bids them "come to Christ,9 a living stone, and be built upon
Him — as living stones upon a corner-stone — into a spiritual house, a holy
priesthood, to offer up10 spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus
Christ."11 The rejection of that precious stone by men, and its choice by
God, had long been prophesied.12 The preciousness of it should belong to
those who believed on Him ;13 to the others — "for which they were also
appointed " — He should be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.14
" But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood/5 a holy nation, a people for
1 Cf. Acts xv. 9, where, however, the verb is KaBapLfa, not dyec&i, as here and in
James iv. 8 ; 1 John hi. 3. (See John xi. 55 ; Acts xxi. 24.)
2 k^pivBr\ . . . efeVeow, gnoruic aorists — i.e., aorists expressive of a general fact. See
my Brief Greek Syntax, § 154.
3 1 Pet. i. 22—25. The "Logos" of this passage, if it has not yet risen to its
Johannine sense, hovers on the verge of it, as in Heb. iv. 12.
4 'AjroOeiJLevoi, 1 Pet. ii. 1.
5 See Life and Work of St. Paul, ii. 129, seq.
6 ri Xoyutbi/ (Rom. xii. 1), iSoAov (1 Pet. ii. 2), ydka (2 Cor. iv. 2).
7 Ps. xxxiv. 8, Xprjorbs, " sweet' (Aug. dulcis, Vulg. suavis). Cf. Luke v. 39, vi. 35.
Some have supposed a pleasant play of words, founded on itacism, between chrestos
(sweet) and Christos (Christ). See Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 301.
8 There is the same sequence of the same metaphors in 1 Cor. iii. 1, 10.
9 " Come (Trpoo-e'pxeo-Scu) as true proselytes (irpouijAvToi). " Though St. Peter here uses
lithos, " stone," not petra, he is perhaps thinking of the great promise to himself (Matt.
xvi 18).
10 ivevdyicai, "to offer once for once" (aor. ), (Rom. xii. 1.
11 Heb. xiii. 16.
12 Is. xxviii. 16. This citation, divergent from the LXX. in the two same particulars
(" I lay in Sion" and " on Him ") as in Rom. ix. 33, is a striking instanoe of the use of
that Epistle by St. Peter ; iicpoywvialov (Eph. ii. 20).
13 v ?<-py, 1 Pet. ii. 7, rendei ed in E. V. " he is precious. " " The honour " is that in
volved in the eVrip.ox, " honourable " (E V., " precious "), of the previous verse. For the
O. T. reference see Ps. cxviii. 22 ; Is. viii. 14. (Heb. and Rom. ix. 33.)
14 See Ps. exviii. 22 ; Is. viii. 14 ; Luke xx. 17, 18 ; Rom. ix. 32, 33 ; Matt. xvi. 23.
The allusion is to the course of God's earthly dealings, eg., as Roos says, " If Caiaphas,
Judas, etc., had been born in a different century, they could not have acted' as they
did." There is no decree of reprobation, nor is the future world even alluded to, in
eis 8 tal hiOxiaav. See Aots i. 16. On the whole subject see Ufe and Work of St Paul
ii. 242—244, 590. J '
is Ex. xix. 6, LXX.

MORAL DUTIES. 89
special possession,1 in order that ye may proclaim the excellence3 of Him
Who called you from darkness into His marvellous light : once not a
people, but now a people of God; once uncampassionated, but compas
sionated now."3
Having thus laid the sure foundations of Hope and Comfort in the
great doctrinal truths of Christianity, he devotes the rest of the Epistle
to the enforcement of the moral duties which result from our Christian
profession. ( 1 ) First comes the appeal to live purely and blamelessly.
" Beloved ! I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims to abstain from
the carnal desires which make war against the soul,4 keeping fair your
mode of life5 among the Gentiles, that, in the matter in which they
speak against you as malefactors,6 they may, in consequence of your fair
deeds, as they witness them, glorify God in the day of visitation."7
(2) A second special duty of Christians in those days was due respect,
in all things lawful, to the civil government. By Messianic exultation,
by eschatological enthusiasms, by the sense of the glory and the dignity
of redeemed manhood, by the revealed equality of all men in the sight
of Him Who is no respecter of persons, by the conviction of the dwind
ling littleness of human distinctions in the light of eternal life, they
might, if they were not warned, be naturally tempted to a demeanour
which would seem contemptuous towards earthly authority. Nay,
more ; the fearful spectacle of the power of the world wielded by those
who were but too manifest servants of the power of darkness — the sight
of Antichrist seated in his infamy upon the world's throne — the daily
proof of odious wickedness in high places — the constant expectation of
that archangelic trumpet which would shatter the solid globe, and of that
flaming epiphany which should destroy the enemies of Christ — might lead
them into defiant words and contumacious actions. Occasions there are
— and none knew this better than an Apostle who had himself set an
1 eis Trepin-oirjo-ii- (Eph. i. 14 ; 1 Thess. v. 9 ; Rev. i. 6 ; Acts xx. 28) ; rfop QS (Is. xliii.
21 ; Ex. xx. 5).
2 operas (a rare word, 2 Pet. i. 3), Is. xliii. 20, LXX. ; in Hebr., 'fAnn " my praise "
(Is. xlviii. 9).
3 1 Pet. ii. 1 — 10. Lo Ammi and Lo Ruhamah (Hos. ii. 23; Rom. ix. 25).
4 Jas. iv. 1 ; Rom. vii. 23.
5 dvatnpotbyi and aeao-Tpe'^eotfai occur ten times in 1 and 2 Pet.
6 At first the Christians were mainly charged with turbulence, moroseness,
" incivisrnc,' detestable superstition (Tacitus and Suetonius), and hard obstinacy (Pliny
and Marcus Aurelius). The charges of infant murder, cannibalism, and gross immorality
(Tert. Apol. 16, etc. ) belong to a later age, when the Lord's Supper and the Agapae
were misunderstood, and, perhaps, when Gnostic sects had really tallen into vile Anti-
nomianism. 7 1 Pet. ii. 11 , 12. " Day of visitation," when God comes to offer mercy (Gen. 1. 24 ;
Wisd. iii. 7 ; Luke i. 68, xix. 44). or to judge (Is. x. 3) ; not "when the heathen made
judicial inquiry into your conduct " (CEcumen., Bengel, etc.), nor "on the Judgment
Day " (Bede). Notice the large-hearted absence of any spirit of revenge. He only
desires that the heathen, when they find how base were their calumnies, how cruel their
conduct, may be led to glorify God ! No anathemas here. Pliny's celebrated letter to
Trajan (Ep. x. 93) is the best comment on this passage.

90 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
example of splendid disobedience to unwarranted commands1 — when
" we must obey God rather than men." But those occasions are excep
tional to the common rule of life. Normally, and as a whole, human law
is on the side of divine order, and, by whomsoever administered, has a
just claim to obedience and respect. It was a lesson so deeply needed by
the Christians of the day that it is taught as emphatically by St. John2
and by St. Peter as by St. Paul himself.3 It was more than ever needed
at a time when dangerous revolts were gathering to a head in Judaea ;
when the hearts of Jews throughout the world were burning with a fierce
flame of hatred against the abominations of a tyrannous idolatry ; when
Christians were being charged with "turning the world upside-down;"4
when some poor Christian slave led to martyrdom or put to the torture
might easily relieve the tension of his soul by bursting into Apocalyptic
denunciations of sudden doom against the crimes of the mystic Babylon ;
when the heathen, in their impatient contempt, might wilfully interpret
a prophecy of the Final Conflagration as though it were a revolutionary
and incendiary threat ; and when Christians at Rome were, on this very
account, already suffering the agonies of the Neronian persecution.5
Submission, therefore, was at this time a primary duty of all who
wished to win over the Heathen, and to save the Church from being
overwhelmed in some outburst of indignation which would be justified
even to reasonable and tolerant Pagans as a political necessity. Nor
does St. Peter think it needful to lay down exceptions to his general rule.
In his days the letter of Scripture had not yet been turned into a weapon
wherewith on every possible occasion to murder its spirit. He could not
have anticipated in even the humblest Christian convert that dull
literalism which in later ages was to derive from Such passages the
slavish doctrine of " passive obedience." He felt no apprehension that an
unreasoning fetish- worship would .fail to see that " texts " of Scripture
are to be interpreted, not as rigid and exclusive legal documents, but in
accordance with the general tenor of revelation. He was writing to
Christians who had not yet invented a dogma about " verbal dictation,"
which necessitated ingenious casuistry on the one hand, or unreasonable
folly on the other, and which turned both into a deadly engine of irre
sponsible tyranny.
" Submit therefore," the Apostle says, " to every human ordinance,"
for the Lord's sake, whether to the Emperor as supreme,7 or to
governors,8 as missioned by him for punishment of malefactors and
i Acts iii. 19, 31, v. 28—32, 40—42. 2 John xix. 11.
3 And yet Vollcmar sees in St. Paul the False Prophet of the Apocalypse, mainly
because he taught that "the powers that be are ord-tined of God " !
4 Acts xvii. 6.
5 Tertullian and other apologists were greatly aided in their appeals to heathen
clemency by referring to such passages as this. See Tert. Apol. 29 — 34.
ti KTicrie, lit. "creature." Tas apx^s Ae'yei Tas xetPOTOI',?rt'S iiirb Tun/ IWiAeW, K.T.K
(OEcumen.). 7 The name "king " was freely used of the Emperor in the Provinces.
8 Proconsuls, Procurators, Legates, Propraetors, eto.

SUBMISSION TO AUTHORITY. 91
praise to well-doers ; for this is the will of God, that by your well-doing
ye should gag1 the stolid ignorance of foolish persons ; as free, yet not
using your freedom for a cloak of baseness,2 but as slaves of God.
Honour all men," as a principle ; and as your habitual practice,3 " love
the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king."4
(3) These being the general rules, he applies them first to domestics?
whether slaves or freemen, bidding them with all fear to be submissive,
not only to kindly but even to perverse masters, and that as a matter of
conscience8 even in cases of unjust suffering. " For what kind of glory
is it if doing wrong and being buffeted ye shall bear it 1 but if doing
well and suffering ye shall bear it, this is thankworthy with God.7 For
to this ye were called, because Christ too" — Who was also "a servant"8
— " suffered on your behalf, leaving you a copy,9 that ye may follow in
His track ; Who did no sin, nor was guile found in His mouth ; Who
being reviled reviled not again, suffering threatened not, but gave up10 to
Him Who judgeth righteously j11 Who Himself carried up our sins in
His own body on to the tree,12 that becoming separated from our sins13 we
should live to righteousness ; by Whose bruise we were healed.14 For
ye were as wandering sheej}, but ye are now returned to the shepherd
and guardian of your souls."15
1 Qlhovv, Deut. xxv. 4, and in the Gospels.
2 "License they mean when they cry Liberty" (Milton). Calvin speaks of some
who "reckoned it a great part of Christian liberty that they might eat flesh on
Fridays " !
3 The first verb is an aor., Tinya-are. The others are presents, to imply continuance.
" All men," see Acts x. 28.
4 1 Pet. ii. 13—17.
5 oire'Tai. lhe prominence given to this class shows how numerous they were in the
early Church, and is an additional proof that St. Peter must be addressing Gentiles as
well as Jews. The Jews were rarely slaves, because their religion rendered them almost
useless to heathen masters.
6 Some would here render ovveLS-tjaeois, consciousness, or cognisance of God (mitwissen,
not erwissen). Cf. Col. hi. 23.
7 xip's. as in Luke vi. 32. Cf. ;n asn. Gen. vi. 8. " Is. liii. 9 ; Acts hi. 13.
9 viTo-ipap.pte — the letters over which children write. (Clem. Alex. Strom, v. 8—50)
10 TrapeStfiou SI. The subject is not expressed, but probably the verb has a quasi-
middle sense* — ' ' entrusted Himself and His cause. "
11 Luke xxiii. 46. The Vulg. reads " injuste," so that there seems to have been a
reading a8t»c«s — referring to Christ's submission to Pilate.
i2 I do not think that "He bore " (dvijveyKev, tulit et obtulit) can here have its sacrificial
sense (which it has in James ii. 21, Heb. ix. 28, and in the LXX. ). Christ is, indeed,
the High Priest, and the Cross may be metaphorically described as the Altar (Heb.
xiii. 10). But in what possible sense can " sins " be called a sacrifice ?, The only way to
Save this sense of avriveyicev is to Connect afiaprias very closely with ev tu vwp.ari avrov,
making the sacrifice His own body, in which He bare our sins (Isa. liii. 12): "Ita
tulisse peccata nostra ut ea secum obtulerit in altari " (Vitringa). But dvatpdpv often
has its ordinary sense in the New Testament (Mark ix. 2 ; Luke xxiv. 51, etc. ), and
there is no sacrificial sense in the verbs sabal and nasa of Isa. liii. 11, 12. The use of the
word "tree '' (&\ov) for " cross " is Hebraic (Deut. xxi. 23 ; Gal. iii. 13).
13 airoyev6p.evoi. This is, however, sometimes an euphemism for "being dead,"
Hdt. ii. 85 (cf. Rom. vi 2). "Righteousness is one ; sin is manifold. "
14 Is. Iii. 5, niuAojirt, "weal."
15 IPet. ii. 18 — 25, eirio-KOTros. Cf. Ez. xxxiv. IL Hitherto -they had been the other
sheep, not of this fold (John x. 16).

92 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
(4) But a word was also necessary on the subject of social as well as
political submission. Christian wives married to heathen husbands
might be led to treat them as inferior to themselves. The elevation of
their whole sex by the principles of the new revelation might tempt
them to extravagances of ornament or demeanour. To them therefore
St. Peter extends his exhortations, that, even if (to suppose the worst)
any of them be married to heathens who obey not the Word (i.e., the
Gospel), they may without word1 (i.e., by the eloquent silence of deeds)
be won by the chaste humility, the " delicate, timorous grace," of wives
whose adornment should not consist in elaborately braided hair,2 golden
jewels, or splendid robes, but in the inner soul,3 in " the incorruptible-
ness, of the meek and quiet spirit, which is in God's sight very precious."
It was thus that the holy women of old, hoping Godwards, adorned
themselves, submissive to their husbands as Sarah was,4 whose spiritual
children they would prove themselves to be by calm and equable well
doing, and by not living in a state of nervous scare.5 Christian hus
bands too are to be gentle and considerate to their fellow-heirs of
salvation, that no jarring discords might cut short their prayers.6 What
we have said in the first chapter will throw into relief the beauty and
wisdom of these exhortations. By the flagrancy of immorality, the
frequency of divorce, and the disgust for marriage which prevailed in
Rome, we may measure the blessedness of Christian matrimony. The
meanest Christian slave who was imprisoned in an ergastulum, and
would be buried in a catacomb, had no need to envy the splendid misery
of a Nero or the pathetic tragedy of an Octavia's life. The life of
many a Christian couple in the squalor of a humble slave-cell was
unspeakably more desirable than that of the Roman profligates in their
terror-haunted palaces.
" Oh if they knew how pressed those splendid chains,
How little would they mourn their humbler pains ! "
(5) Finally, it was the duty of all to be united, sympathising, fra
ternal, compassionate, humble-minded,7 requiting good for evil and
1 An interesting antanaclasis or intentional variation of meaning, in the use of Wyos
which the E. V. has missed. The Christian woman was not to be a preacher in her own
house. 2 1 Tim. ii. 9. Coins and allusions show how elaborate in this period was the adorn
ment of the hair among women of the world ; how many were their jewels, and how
extravagant their robes. See supra, p. 4.
3 "The hidden man of the heart "—a striking expression independently borrowed in
a different sense (for St. Peter never alludes to "the Christ within us," Gal. iv. 19)
from Rom. ii. 29, vii. 22 ; 2 Cor. iv. 1C ; Eph. iii. 16. For classical analogies see Plut.
Conjug. Praecept. 26 ; and see Clem. Alex. Paedag. iii. 4.
4 Gen. xviii. 12.
3 On Sarah's spiritual race see Rom. iv. 11 ; Gal. iii. 7. The word n-ro^o-ir, "scare," is
probably borrowed from Prov. iii. 25 (LXX.). St. Peter was evidently familiar with the
Proverbs. o 1 Pet. iii. 1—7. For eKKdnreo-ftu (Rom. xi. 22, etc), A, B, read eyKdin-eo-Sat, "be
hindered." Cf . 1 Cor. vii. 5.
7 Leg. TaTreu'dtppoi'es, N, A, B. 0.

DUTY OF SYMPATHY.- 93
blessing for abuse, as being heirs of blessing. This lesson is enforced
by a free citation of David's eulogy of government of the tongue, and
of a peaceful disposition as the secret of a blessed life, as well as by
the truth that, whether just or evildoers, we live under the eye of God.1
Who then could harm them if they proved themselves zealots of the
good1?2 Let them fear nothing, for there is a beatitude in persecution
for the sake of righteousness if the will of God should so decree.
Inward holiness,3 outward readiness to vindicate to every one their
grounds of hope with meekness and fear,4 together with a good con
science, would in the long run make the heathen blush at their insulting
and threatening calumnies against the holiness which they accused of
criminality. For, contrary to the common opinion of men, it is better
to suffer (if such be God's will) unjustly than to suffer when we deserve
to do so. If we suffer for sins which we have not committed, so did our
great Example. 5 " Because Christ also, once for all, suffered for sin,
just for unjust, that He may lead you to God ; slain in the flesh, but
quickened to life in the spirit, wherein also He went and preached6 to
the spirits in prison7 who once were disobedient when the long-suffering
of God awaited8 in the days of Noah while the Ark was a-preparing ;
by entering wherein, few, that is, eight souls,9 were saved through
water : 10 which (water, leg. S) also as an antitype now saveth you —
namely, baptism — (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but
the entreaty for a good conscience towards God)11- — by the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, who is on the right hand of God, having gone into
Heaven,12 angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto
Him."13 The general meaning of this passage — Christ's descent into Hades to
i Ps. xxxiii. 12—16, LXX.
2 1 Pet. iii. 13, leg. ^Awtou, a, A, B, C. On the thought, see a magnificent passage
in Chrysostom (Ep. ad Cyriacum) : " Should the Empress determine to banish me, let
her banish me. The earth is the Lord's. If she should cast me into the sea, let her cast
me into the sea. I will remember Jonah," etc.
3 l'Pet. iii. 15, leg. t6k XpiorbK, a, A, B, C. " But sanctify the Christ in your hearts
as Lord. "
4 1 Pet. iii. 15. The notion that legal trials are intended by iwoKoyU, and with it the
inference that the days of Trajan are alluded to, are excluded by the words " to every
one that asketh," etc.
6 1 Pet. iii. 8—17.
6 iicrjpvlev^eiirryyeMo-aTo, "preached the Gospel."
7 i.e., in Hades. Jude 6 ; 2 Pet. ii. 4.
8 1 Pet. iii. 20. aTrefeSe'xeTo, «, A, B, C, K, &c. The reading S.ira£ " once for all " of
Erasmus and the E. V. is quite untenable.
9 This indicates the motive of Christ's Descent into Hades. It was because few only
had been saved from perishing. And this is the view of such Fathers as Clem. Alex.
(Strom, vi. 6), Origen, Athanasius, Jerome, and even, in his milder moods, Augustine
(Ep. ad Evoct. clxiv. ).
10 Perhaps this means "by water as an instrument," i.e., because the water floated
the Ark.
n See supra, p. 75, note 3.
12 Cf . 1 Tim. iii. 16. Perhaps, as Dr. Plumptre says, the precious fragment of an
early baptismal profession.
13 1 Pet. iii. 8—22. Cf. Col. ii. 10—15.

94 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
proclaim the Gospel to the once disobedient dead— is to every unobscured
and unsophisticated mind as clear as words can make it. Theologians
have attempted to get rid of this obvious reference by explaining it of
Christ preaching in the person of Noah ; or by making " He preached"
mean " He announced condemnation ; " or by limiting " the spirits in
prison " to Adam and the Old Testament saints ; or by rendering
iv <pv\anri " on the watchtower of expectation " (!) ; or by supposing that
Christ only preached to those spirits who repented while they were being
drowned ! These attempts arise from that spirit of system which would
fain be more orthodox than Scripture itself, and would exclude every
ground of future hope from the revelation of a love too loving for hearts
trained in bitter theologies. What was the effect of Christ's preaching
we are not told. Some, perhaps, may like to assume that the preaching
of Christ in the Unseen World was unanimously rejected by the once
disobedient dead, though the mention of their former disobedience seems
to imply the inference that they did hearken now. Others can, if they
choose, assert that this proclamation of the Gospel to disembodied
spirits was confined to antediluvian sinners. With such inferences we are
unconcerned. " It is ours," says Alford, " to deal with the plain words
of Scripture, and to accept its revelations as far as vouchsafed to us.
And they are vouchsafed to us to the utmost limit of legitimate inference
from revealed facts. The inference every intelligent reader will draw
from the fact here announced : it is not purgatory ; it is not universal
restitution ; but it is one which throws blessed light on one of the darkest
enigmas of divine justice : the cases where the final doom seems infinitely
out of proportion to the lapse which has incurred it." On the other hand,
we do not press the inference of Hermas and St. Clement of Alexandria
by teaching that this passage implies also other missions of Apostles and
Saints to the world of spirits. We accept the words of Scripture, and
leave the matter there in thankful hope.
Thus — continues the Apostle — as a preliminary to His exaltation, did
Christ suffer for us, and we should therefore gird on the armour af the
same resolve. Suffering (of course Christian suffering is implied) is a
deathblow to concupiscence. In past times they had perpetrated the
will of the Gentiles in " wine-swillings and roysterings," x in lives of
wanton excess, and idolatries that violated the eternal law of heaven ;
and now the Gentiles reviled them in astonishment that they would no
longer run with them into "the same slough of dissoluteness."2 But
these Gentile opponents " shall give an account to Him that is ready to
judge the living and the dead. For to this end, even to the dead was the
Gospel preached, that, as regards men, they may be judged in the
flesh, but may live as regards God in the spirit."
In the last verse we again encounter the ruthlessness of commen
tators. " The dead " to whom the Gospel was preached are taken to
1 1 Pet. iv. 3, oiyoipAvylcus, KaJp.ocs.
2 1 Pet. iv. 4, ao-wTias avdxvinv.

EXHORTATIONS. 95
mean something quite different from " the dead " who are to give an
account. The dead to whom the Gospel is preached are explained away
into "sinners" or "the Gentiles," or "some who are now dead."
Augustine, as might have been expected, leads the way in one wrong
direction, and Calvin in another. Another view — which makes this
verse mean that " Christ will judge even the dead as well as the living,
"because the dead too will not have been without an opportunity to
receive His Gospel" — is indeed tenable. To me, however, judging of
the feelings of the Apostle, from his boundless gratitude for the oppor
tunities of obtaining forgiveness, and from the love which he inculcates
towards all mankind, the connexion seems to be, " The heathen, in all
their countless myriads, who seem ta be hopelessly perishing around you,
will be judged ; — but the very reason why the Gospel was preached by
Christ to the dead was in order that this judgment may be founded on
principles of justice, that they may be judged (xpieSxri) in their human
capacity as sinners, and yet may live (frim) to God as regards the
diviner part of their natures ; " — if, that is, they accept this offer of the
Gospel to them even beyond the grave.1
(6) " But the end of all things " — and therefore of calumny and
suffering and heathen persecution in this transitory life — " is at hand.
Be sound-minded, therefore, and be sober unto prayers, before all things
having intense love towards one another, because love covereth a multi
tude of sins." 2 Then come fresh exhortations to unmurmuring hospi
tality (so necessary for poor and wandering Christian teachers), and to a
right stewardship of God's various gifts for the common benefit to the
glory of God through Jesus Christ. They were not to regard the confla
gration3 which was burning among them to serve as their test, as though
it were something strange. They ought rather to rejoice because a
fellowship in Christ's sufferings would in the same proportion involve a
fellowship in His glory. Reproach in the name of Christ is a beatitude.
Let none of them suffer as a murderer, thief, malefactor, or intrusive
meddler ; but punishment for refusing to disown the name of Christian 4
is not a thing for which to blush, but rather to glorify God. It showed
them to be, as it were, under the ver}r shadow of the wings of the
Shechinah. The time for judgment had come. If it began from the
house of God, what would be the end of those who disobeyed the Gospel
of God1? And if the righteous be saved with difficulty, the impious and
i Analogous elements of thought as to the disciplinary intent of even the severest
punishments may be seen in 1 Cor. v. 5 ; xi. 31, 32.
2 Prov. x. 12 (cf.t xvii. 9), where it is "all sins." James v. 20 quotes the same
words, but perhaps in a different sense ; not, as here, of love throwing a covering over
the sins of others by forbearance (cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 5, 6), but of love hiding our own sins
from view.
3 irvpuxrei. Were it not that this word occurs in the LXX. of Proverbs (xxvii. 21), a
book with which St. Peter shows himself so familiar, we might suppose that he and St.
John (Rev. xviii. 9, 18) were reminded of it by the burning of Rome.
4 Perhaps we should read the ignorant heathen distortion, Chrestian (see Ufe and
Work of St. Paul, i. 301) with n.

96 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
sinner — where shall he appear?1 So then let even those that suffer
commit their lives unto God, as to a faithful Creator, in well-doing.2
The remainder of the Epistle is more specific. It is addressed to the
elders by St. Peter — as a fellow-elder and witness of the sufferings of the
Christ, and therefore also a partaker of the glory about to be revealed.
He exhorts them to tend the flock of God 3 among them with willing and
self-denying oversight, "not as lording it over, their allotted charge,4 but
proving themselves examples of the flock ; then, at the manifestation of
the chief Shepherd, they should carry off as their prize " the amaranthine
chaplet " of the conqueror's glory.5 The younger, too, were to be sub
missive to the elders, " yea, all of you, being submissive to one another,
tie on humility like a knotted dress,6 because God arrays Himself against
the overweening, but to the humble He giveth grace.7 Be humbled,
then, under the strong hand of God, that He may exalt you in season,
casting, once for all, all your anxiety upon Him, because he careth for
you. Be sober ! watch ! because your adversary,8 the Devil, like a
roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may swallow up. Against
whom take your stand, firm in the faith, knowing that the very same
sufferings are running their full course for your band of brethren in the
world. But the God of all grace, Who called you unto His eternal
glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little, Himself shall
perfect, establish, strengthen, place you on a sure foundation. To Him
be dominion for the ages of ages. Amen.9
" By Silvanus, your faithful brother, as I esteem him,10 1 write to you
i Prov. ix. 31. The words "upon earth" of the original Hebrew, show that temporal
judgments (as in Matt. xxiv. 22) were prominent in the writer's mind (cf. Jer. xxv. 29).
Christians were suffering under the Neronian persecution, but the destruction of Jerusalem
and the disintegration of the Roman Empire were not far off.
2 1 Pet. iv. 7—19. The latter verses (12—17) are not a repetition of iii. 13, iv. 6,
because there the afflictions were spoken of in relation to their persecutors, and here in
relation to their own feelings (cf. Matt. v. 11). The p-rj fei^'fecrSe is equivalent to "make
yourself at home in," "regard as perfectly natural." In ver. 15, St. Peter seems to have
coined the picturesque word aAAoTpioe7runcoiroi, "other people's bishops." (The nearest
approach to the word is Plato's aAAoTpion-payp-ocninj, "meddlesomeness.") The attempt
(Hilgenfeld, Einleit. 630) to render this " informers " (delator), because informers were
legally punishable in the days of Trajan (Plin. Pancg. 34, 35), has nothing in its favour.
The word is a needful warning against the temptation to a prying religiosity. The
ap£<ur6ai of ver. 17, proving as it does that Jerusalem was not yet destroyed, is another
death-blow to all hypotheses as to the late date of the Epistle.
3 noipaive Ta TrpoBard pov, John xxi. 16.
4 i.e., their "parishes," not "the clergy."
6 ap.apdvTivov, not ap-apoiros, as in i. 4 : —
" Their crowns inwove with amaranth and gold,
Immortal amaranth. . . . " — MILTON.
not like fading Nemean parsley, or Isthmian pine.
6 'EyKopBuio-ao-Oe, Col. iii. 12, 'EvSiio-aotfe. K6pBtap.a — " an apron " worn by slaves.
7 " Humility is a vessel of graces," Aug. Prov. iii. 34.
8 Matt. v. 25, ivTiSucos ]ap.
» 1 Pet. v. 1—11.
10 Fronmiiller (in Lange's Commentary) strangely supposes that this can mean, " I
cOnjeoture that you will receive this Epistle by the hands of Silvanus I "

THE SECOND EPISTLE. \)'t
in few words, exhorting, and confirming by my testimony, that this is
the true grace of God.1 In this take your stand !2
"She, who is co-elect in Babylon, saluteth you,3 and Marcus, my
son. Salute one another with a kiss of love. Peace to you all in Christ
Jesus. Amen."

CHAPTER IX.
PECULIARITIES OF THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER.
"Petrus magis magisque opus esse statuit admonitione propter ingruentem
corruptionem malorum hominum. — Bengel."
In reading the First Epistle of St. Peter, we are reading a book which
even a critic so advanced as M. Renan admits to be " one of the
writings of the New Testament which is the most anciently and the
most unanimously cited as authentic."4 In turning to the Second
Epistle we are met by problems of acknowledged difficulty, and have
to consider the claims of a document which the same writer pronounces
to be " certainly apocryphal," and of which he says that " among true
critics he does not think it has a single defender." Such a remark
is easy to make ; but critics like Schmid, Guericke, Windischmann,
Thiersch, Alford, and Bruckner, are in learning, if not in genius,
as much entitled to decide such a point ex cathedrd as M. Renan, and
-they, after deliberate examination, do accept the Epistle as genuine, and
offer in its defence not a contemptuous dictum, but a serious argument.
On the other hand, although it is discourteous and unwarrantable to
pronounce the Epistle to be so certainly spurious that nothing but
prejudice or ignorance could maintain its genuineness, neither ought its
defenders to argue as though any hesitation as to its genuineness
was an impious arrangement of the Spirit of God. To say that " there
is scarcely a single writing of all antiquity, sacred or profane, which
must not be given up as spurious if the Second Epistle of St. Peter
be not received as a genuine writing of the Apostle, and as a part
1 This which I have written to you. It is very doubtful whether there is any inten
tion Aere to ratify the orthodoxy of St. Paul's teachings, though all the Epistle shows,
how deeply the true St. Peter (so unlike the fictitious Peter of the Clementines)
reverenced them.
2 1 Pet. v. 12, o-TJJTe, x, A, B.
3 'H (jweKAeKT>j. Some take this to mean "the co-elect lady" — i.e., Peter's wife (cf.
1 Cor. xiv. 5). But surely a Jew would hardly have sent a greeting from his wife — a
poor Galilean woman — to all these Churches, or have described her as simply i iv BajSuAwi.
It is much more natural to understand eKKArjcrta, meaning the Church of Rome. It is
true that St. Peter has not used that word, even in his salutation, but it might none the
less be in his thoughts, just as St. Luke (in Acts'xxvii. 14) says av-rti of the ship, though
he has been using the word irAoiov. On Marcus and Babylon, see ante, p. 62.
4 L'Antechrist, p. vi.
H

98 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of Holy Writ;" — to assert that we receive it on "the testimony of
the Universal Church," which is "the Spouse and Body of Christ
enlightened by the Holy Ghost ; " — and that if it be " not the Word of
God, but the work of an impostor, then, with reverence be it said,
Christ's promise to His Church has failed, and the Holy Spirit has not
been given to guide her into all truth," — is to use a style, I cannot say
of "argument," but of dogmatising traditionalism, which perilously
confuses a thousand separate issues. Such assertions, if listened to,
would end in making all criticism impossible, and in reducing all
inquiry to mediaeval torpor. They can serve no purpose but to damage
in many minds the cause of religion. They confound the eternal
truths of Christianity with uncertain details. They imperil the
impregnable fortress of Revelation by identifying its defence with
that of its weakest and most uncertain outposts. To talk of the
Second Epistle of St. Peter — if, indeed, it was not the work of that
Apostle — as "a shameless forgery," and of its writer as "an impostor,"
and of his motives as showing " intentional fraud " and " cunning
fabrication,"1 is to use language which only tends to obscure the critical
faculty. Such a style of statement is an anachronism. It cannot
be said too strongly that it is " inexpedient to encumber the discussion
by an attempted reductio ad horribile of one ofthe alternatives."2
The question of the genuineness of this Epistle must be regarded as
unsettled until the arguments adduced against it by a serious criticism
can be met by counter-arguments of a criticism equally serious. Its
acceptance cannot be founded upon assertions to which criticism, as
such, can pay no heed. That the writing known as the Second Epistle
of St. Peter is canonical — that for fourteen centuries it has been
accepted, and rightly accepted, by the Church as a part of the Canon of
Holy Scripture — is not denied. I say rightly accepted, because the
Church would not have so received it if she had not felt that it was
" profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction
in righteousness." But to say that in its present form it is absolutely
the work of St. Peter — and that, if not genuine, the Church has "been
imposed upon by what must, in that case, be regarded as a Satanic
device " (!), is to claim a monopoly of the critical faculty which is
refuted by every page of the history of exegesis. On all such questions
Churches have erred, and may err. The Second Epistle is accepted
as St. Peter's mainly on the authority of the Church of the fourth
century ;3 but the Church of the fourth century had not the least
pretence to greater authority, and had a far smaller amount of critical
knowledge, than the Church of the nineteenth. The guidance of the
Holy Spirit of God was promised not to one age only, but to the
Church of all ages, even to the end of the world ; but the lessons of
1 Wordsworth, Introd. ; Fronmiiller, § 3.
2 Bp. Ellicott's Commentary, iii. 437.
8 It was admitted into the Canon by the Council of Laodicea A.n. 363.

WEAKNESS OF EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 99
century after century ought to have taught us that guidance into
all necessary spiritual truth is a very different thing from critical
infallibility. Theologians who usurp the right to speak with inspired
positiveness on questions which are still unsettled, not only render
their own pretensions liable to defeat, but seriously endamage a sacred
cause. Nothing has gone farther to shake my conviction of the
genuineness of the Epistle than the dangerous plausibility of many
of the arguments adduced by its defenders. They have so obviously
approached the question with their minds made up beforehand ; they
have shown themselves so eager to establish a case at all costs ; they
have treated as so unimportant the absence of that evidence to which
in other cases they attach such extreme importance ; they have been
tempted to use arguments so painfully inconclusive, and to make light
of counter-considerations so undeniably strong, that any one who takes
the same, side with them may well fear lest he too should sink into the
advocate, and forget the love of simple truth. The supporters of the
Epistle have done far more than its assailants to deepen my own
uncertainty whether it can be regarded as the direct work of the
Apostle. For what are the facts with which we must start in considering
the Second Epistle of St. Peter? Surely common honesty compels
us to acknowledge that of all the books of the New Testament it is the
one for which we can produce the smallest amount of external evidence,
and which at the same time offers the greatest number of internal
difficulties. As regards the external evidence, the Epistle is not quoted, and is
not certainly referred to, by ¦ a single writer in the first or second
century. Neither Polycarp, nor Ignatius, nor Barnabas, nor Clement
of Rome, nor Justin Martyr, nor Theophilus of Antioch, nor Irenreus,
nor Tertullian, nor Cyprian, can be proved even to allude to it. It
is not found in the Peshito Syriac, nor in the Vetus Itala. It is
unknown to the Muratorian Canon. During the first two centuries the
only traces of it, if traces they can be ealled, are to be found in the
Pastor of Hermas,1 and in a recently discovered passage of Melito of
Sardis ; but even these are of so distant and general a nature that
it is impossible to determine whether we should regard them as
reminiscences of the language of the Epistle, or accidental approxi
mations to it. But even if we grant all the parallels adduced by
Dietlein, the concession would be unfavourable rather than otherwise to
the genuineness of the Epistle ; he ruins his own case by proving too
much. For if the writers of the first and second centuries did indeed
know the Epistle, it is inconceivable that not one of them should have
hinted at the authority which it derived from the name of its author.
When we come down to later writers, we find that, in all his learned
1 Hermas, iii. 2 ; 2 Pet. ii. 20.

100 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
works, it is not once alluded to by St. Clement of Alexandria, who
even seems to exclude it by the expression, "Peter in the Epistle."1
Origen knew of it, but, since he uses the same expression as
St. Clement, seems — when writing accurately — to question its genuine
ness ;2 although, if we may trust the loose Latin translation of Rufinus,
he refers to it as St. Peter's when he alludes to it popularly in a casual
quotation. Firmilian (f 270), a friend of Origen, is the first person
who, in a letter to Cyprian, extant only in a Latin version, refers
to it ; but neither is this letter beyond suspicion, nor is the reference
decisive.3 Didymus, in a Latin translation of his commentary, calls
the Epistle "falsata," and says that "it is not in the Canon."4
Eusebius knew of it, but only recognised one genuine Epistle.5 It was
rejected by Theodore of Mopsuestia, and was still regarded as uncertain
in the times of St. Gregory of Nazianzus." It must, therefore, be
admitted that the evidence in its favour is exceptionally weak. The
First Epistle was almost universally recognised by the ancient Church ;
the Second was partly controverted, partly ignored — and among those
who ignored or rejected it were some Fathers of the greatest learning,
and of the keenest critical acumen.
These doubts were so far silenced, that it was on the whole passively
accepted by men like Athanasius, Basil, Jerome, and Augustine, and
towards the close of the fourth century was declared to be canonical by
the Councils of Laodicea (a.d. 363), Hippo (a.d. 393), and Carthage
(a.d. 396). But surely this tardy recognition is a suspicious circum
stance. If the repeated references to most of the other books of the
New Testament Canon by Fathers of the first three centuries be rightly
regarded as proofs of their genuineness, then the absence or uncertainty
of any reference during the same period must so far be unfavourable.
Importance is sometimes attached to fourth century decisions by saying
that evidence was then extant which has not come down to us. The
proposition might be disputed ; but whatever such evidence may have
been, it did not remove the doubts which prevailed in the great schools
of Alexandria and Antioch, as represented by such eminent scholars as
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. The
intrinsic value of the Epistle, and the growing habit of loosely referring
to it as " St. Peter's," would lead to its gradual admission without any
further debate, at a period when competent critics were few and far be
tween. St. Jerome did more than any man to hasten the acceptance of
1 Clem. Alex. Strom, iii. p. 562, ed. Potter. Eusebius (H. E. vi. 14) says that
Clement, in his Hypotyposes, commented both on the acknowledged and the uncertain
books of the N. T. , not even passing by ' ' The Apocalypse of Peter : " but that can hardly
mean this Epistle.
2 "Peter has left only one generally acknowledged Epistle— perhaps also a second,
for this is considered doubtful (eara>6e KoXScvTepdv, d/i<pg3dAAeTai yap)." Orig. ap. Euseb.
II. E. vi. 25.)
3 Epp. Cypr. 75.
4 Tho word which he used was probably raoSe'rem-cu, "has been accounted spurious "
s Euseb. H. E. iii 25. 6 Greg. Naz. Carm. 33, vs. 35.

DOUBTS AS TO GENUINENESS. 101
the Epistle by admitting it into the Vulgate. Yet he was too able not
to observe, and too candid not to admit, that it differs from the First
Epistle in style, character, and structure of words.1 Further than this,
he tells us that " most men " in his day denied that St. Peter wrote it,
" on account of the dissonance of its style with the former." He is the
only person in the first four centuries who offers any intelligible theory
of that striking divergence. This he does by saying that " from the
necessity of things he made use- of different interpreters." This is
indeed to accept the Epistle as genuine, but with the important modifi
cation that it is either a translation from an Aramaic original, or that
the thoughts only are St. Peter's, while the words belong to some
one else. If this be admitted, what becomes of recent attempts to
show that the style and phraseology are exactly what we 'should
expect 1
It is idle to lay much stress on the fact that no further doubt as to
the authorship of the Epistle was expressed during long centuries of
critical torpor. During those centuries there was no criticism worth
speaking of, because criticism could only register the dictated con
clusions of a Church which punished original inquiry as presumptuous
and hereticaL If any one expressed an independent opinion, however
true, the Church and the world combined against him. But the moment
that " the deep slumber of decided opinions " was broken by the Refor
mation — the moment that criticism ceased to be confronted by " the
syllogism of violence " — thence the doubts as to the genuineness of the
Epistle began to revive. Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin freely express
them, and they were shared by Cajetan, Grotius, Scaliger, and Salmasius.
In modern times, since the days of Semler, an increasing number of
critics have decided against the genuineness of the Epistle, including
not only Baur, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld, Mayerhoff, Bleek, Davidson,
Messner, Reuss, but even such conservative theologians as Neander,
Weiss, and Huther, while Bertholdt, Ullman, Bunsen,2 and even
Lange3 hold that, though genuine in part, it has been largely inter
polated. The last supposition, which might remove many difficulties, can
hardly be accepted. The body of the Epistle must stand or fall as
a whole, for it is singularly compact and homogeneous.4 The writer
has stated his twofold object in the last two verses. One of these
objects was warning : it was that, by being put upon their guard,
the readers might not fall away from their firm position through
being misled by the error of the lawless. The other object was ex
hortation : " But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ." These objects are kept steadily in view, and
1 Jer. Ep. ad Hedib. ii. Compare De Virr. Hlustr. 1.
2 Ignatius, p. 175. 3 Apostol. Zeit. i. 152.
4 Mayerhoff's remark, that the Epistle is clumsy and illogical, is quite false. See
Bruckner, Einl. § 1 ; Hofmann, p. 121 ; Huther, p. 306.

102 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the structure of the letter is more distinctly articulated than that of the
First. The outline of the letter is as follows : — After the greeting (i. 1, 2)
the writer enforces his hortatory object by urging the attainment of full
knowledge, which is the consummation of Christian growth, and the
essential of final salvation (3 — 11). Hence it is his wish to utilise the
brief time which remains to him for reminding them of this truth
(12 — 15), a truth of which they might be convinced, because Peter,
with others, had been, as it were, an initiated eye-witness of the
Transfiguration, and had heard the voice which was then borne from
heaven (16 — 18) ; and because they all possessed the word' of prophecy
as a surer witness, to which they would do well to listen as to the voice
of inspiration (19 — 21).
He thus passes quite naturally to the topic of warning. False
teachers would bring in " sects of perdition," and he describes these
false teachers in their successful blasphemies and their certain punish
ment, like that which fell on the world at the time of the Flood and on
the inhabitants of the Cities of the Plain (ii. 1 — 9) ; though, as in all
such instances, the pious should be delivered (5, 7, 9). None, however,
were more deserving of God's vengeance than these impure, disdainful,
self-corrupting railers — fools who rushed in where angels feared to tread
(10 — 12), whose vileness and perniciousness are described (13, 14), and
whose apostasy resembles that of Balaam (15, 16). After using various
indignant images (17), to illustrate their insolence, wantonness, and
cunning — which, while it promised liberty, only involved a deadly ser
vitude (18, 19) — he says that their previous knowledge of Christ is the
worst aggravation of their horrible apostasy (20, 22).
He is therefore writing once more to remind his readers of pre
vious lessons (iii. 1, 2), .and especially to warn them against those
scoffers who sneered at the promised coming of Christ (3, 4}, and
ignored the fact, that as the world had perished by water, so should
it hereafter perish by fire (5 — 7). Let the brethren remember that
one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and that His delays
are due to His mercy. But the dreadful day of dissolution should
come (8, 9). On this thought he bases the exhortation to them to be
blameless, as those who look for new heavens and a new earth, and to
make a right use of God's longs uffer ing, in accordance with the teaching
of St. Paul — whose writings they must be careful not to wrest into a
wrong sense (10 — 16). Then into two final verses he compresses his •
recapitulation of the two chief topics of the letter, together with the
final doxology (17, 18).
Such, then — so marked by unity and coherence — is this remarkable
letter, which the Church could ill afford to lose, and which is full of im
passioned warning and eloquent exhortation. We have seen how weak is
the external evidence in its favour ; are there any decisive phenomena
to which we can appeal by way of internal evidence of its authenticity %

PECULIARITIES OF THE EPISTLE. 103
That it resembles the First Epistle in the use of some peculiar
expressions is certain. The word for " conversation," i.e., general mode
of life -,1 the remarkable word for an eye-witness, which is also the word
for one initiated into the mysteries;2 the expressions "to carry ofl' as a
prize,"3 " spotless and blameless,"4 and "to walk in lusts,"5 are common
to both Epistles, and are almost unknown to the rest of the New
Testament.6 If the general style were the same, these would have
weight. Their weight is small when we remember (i.) that the writer
of the Second Epistle must, on any supposition, have been well
acquainted with the First,7 and when we find (ii.) that the Second
Epistle abounds in expressions peculiar to itself, and (iii) that it is
confessedly written in a style of marked difference.
The peculiarity of many expressions, of which the majority are
unique,8 must strike the most careless reader of the original. "To
acquire faith by lot ; "9 " to give things which tend to life and piety ; "10
" to bring in all haste ; "n " to furnish an abundant supply of virtue ; "u
"to receive oblivion;"13 "to furnish an abundant entrance;"14 "the
present truth ; "15 " to bring in factions of perdition ; "16 " the judgment
is not idle, the destruction is not drowsily nodding ; "ir " to walk in
desire of pollution;"18 "to walk behind the flesh;"19 "to esteem
luxurious wantonness in the daytime as a pleasure ;"m " eyes full of an
adulteress;"21 "insatiable of sin;"22 "a heart trained in covetous-
ness;"23 " the mirk of the darkness ; "M "treasured with fire;"23 "to
fall from their own steadfastness ;"*" " chains of darkness ; " " to calcine
to ashes ; " "to hurl to Tartarus ; " " to blaspheme glories ; " " the
heavens shall pass away hurtlingly;"27 " the elements being consumed
1 aeoo-TpCMpjJ, avaarpetpeaQai (1 Pet. i. 15, 18, etc. ; 2 Pet. ii. 7, iii. 11).
2 eVoimjs, eVoirTevW (1 Pet. ii. 3, iii. 2 ; 2 Pet. i 16).
3 Kop.ifeo-001 (1 Pet. i. 9, v. 4 ; 2 Pet. ii. 13).
4 curmAoi (cat ajxiip-yrroi (1 Pet. i. 19 ; 2 Pet. iii. 14).
5 nopevecrdai kv ejriQvp.Cais (2 Pet. ii. 10).
G To these may be added cWofoo-is (1 Pet. iii. 21 ; 2 Pet. i. 14) ; TreVavrai apaprtaf
(1 Pet. iv. 1 ; 2 Pet. ii 12) ; ifleo-po? (1 Pet. iv. 3, iei^ro;, 2 Pet. ii. 7, iii. 17).
7 2 Pet. hi 1. 8 There are twenty hapax legomena in this brief epistle.
9 Aaxovcri irltTTLV, i 1. 10 Tan-pbs £<ujjv Kat evGeBtiav oeowpTjueVTj (act.), i 3.
11 crirovSrjv -nda-av Trapeio-eWyceures, i 5.
j2 eirixopTrpicare kv Tfj 7rierrei iipjav ttji* dperfiv, 2 Pet. i 5. 13 A^&ji/ Aa/Sur, i 9.
14 eirixop'r/'J&iceTai vp.lv tj etcroSos, i 11. 15 ^ 7rapovcra dA7j0eta, i. 15.
7rapei0-dfoU(Tii' aipe'crets a7rwAetas, li. 7.
*' To Kpr/j-a ovk apyei, Tfl a7rtoAeta ov wo-Ta£et, ri. 3.
1 kv kTTlOvpia piaafxov Tropevofievovs, h. 10.
is ottiVco, the only passage of the N. T., except Jude 7, where hwiaa is not used
of a -person. It has a special meaning, and ia unlike n-epiwaTeiv koto, tropica in Rom.
viii. 4.
20 -qSovriv fiyovpievot. Tr\v kv fipepa Tpvcpqv, ii 13.
21 6<^6aAp.oi>5 p.ecrrovs uoixaAifios, ii. 14.
22 dKaTairavoTovs ap.aprLas, ii. 14. Some MSS. (A. B.) have the yet stranger reading
OKaTTaTrdcrTOv ff .
S3 yeyvpvatrp.ivriv ffAeope^iais, ii 14. ^ o e)oipo? tou ctkotou?, ii. 17.
25 Te9r)<ravptcrp.€vOL mipi, iii 7. 26 eK7re'oT]Te tou loiov cmjptyp.ou, iii. 17i
27 poi.£rj86v, iii. 10. The strange English expression exactly corresponds to the Greek.
The only form like it occurs in the LXX. in Cant. iv. 5.

104 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
melt away."1 Such are a few of the striking and even startling phrases
which in the course of three short chapters stamp the style with an
intense peculiarity. Nothing analogous to these phrases is found in
the First Epistle. It may be pleaded that, as in the case of the Epistle
to the Colossians, some of these words are due to the new subjects
with which the Apostle has here to deal. That answer might be suffi
cient for three or four of them, but most are of a kind which do not
rise from speciality of subject. They show a peculiarity of structure
rather than of topic. Some of them are eccentricities of language
adopted to clothe conceptions which would have been capable of a
perfectly simple and commonplace expression.
Independently of this distinctiveness of verbiage, there is a wnie
difference between the two Epistles in the general form of thought.2
This is a fact too obvious to be denied. Obvious as it is to us — for
besides minor differences, there is a ruggedness and tautology in the
Greek of the Second Epistle very different from the smoothness of the
First — this difference of style must have been far more obvious to
those to whom Greek was a spoken language, and who were therefore
more sensitive than we can be to its delicate refinements. It was
pointed out by St. Jerome, and he assigns it as one of the causes which
had led to the general rejection of the Epistle.
But it is answered, and again with perfect truth, that the style of
a writer differs under differing circumstances. The style of the Epistle
to the Ephesians is not the same as that to the Galatians, and both
differ from the Pastoral Epistles. The style of St. John's Gospel is
very unlike that of the Apocalypse. I grant this to the utmost. I
have even insisted upon it, and illustrated it in other instances.3 But
differences of style must not be so wide as to show a difference of
idiosyncrasy. They must be accompanied with resemblances of struc
ture ; and they must be partially accounted for by a long interspace of
years. The difference between the styles of the First and the Second
Epistle of St. Peter does not admit of these modifying circumstances ;
it is deeper than can be accounted for by a difference of mood and -
object. The Apocalypse and the Gospel of St. John were separated by
an interval of perhaps thirty years spent in the most polished cities of
Asia. The earlier and later Epistles of St. Paul were divided from
each other by many years subjected to the intense influence of ever-
varying conditions. But the two Epistles of St. Peter, if both are
genuine, must have been written, so far as we can learn, under iden
tical external conditions, and written within a very short time of each
other. For this reason I set aside as irrelevant the instances adduced by
the industry of critics to prove that the same writer may adopt different
styles. It is true that the style of Plato's Epinomis is inferior to that
i /cauo-ovVera TTjitcTai. 2 This is admitted even by Schott.
3 See my Life and Work of St. Paul, ii. 610.

DIFFERENCES OF EXPRESSION. 105
of the Phajdrus ; that Virgil's Ciris is unworthy of the author of the
^neid ; that the De Oratoribus of Tacitus is marvellously unlike his
Annals ; that the Paradise Lost is in a loftier key than the Paradise
Regained ; that the style of Twelfth Night is widely separated from
that of Hamlet ; that the Racine of the Alexandre is much below the
Racine of the Phedre and Athalie; that Burke on the Sublime and
Beautiful is incomparably tamer than Burke's Orations ; and that there
are marked distinctions between the first and the second part of
Goethe's Faust. But these analogies, which might easily be multiplied,
do not touch the problem before us. There is not one among them
which offers a parallel to the phenomenon of total difference, not only
in language, but in thought, presented by two works of the same writer
dealing in great measure with the same subjects, and written from the
same place, within a very short time of one another. And the differ
ences between the two Epistles go further than this. Many are
adduced which I pass over as unimportant. But it is not easy to
explain why there should be such and so many variations as those
which follow. Thus — (1) In the first the writer calls himself Peter,
and in the second Symeon Peter. (2) In the first he writes "to the
elect sojourners of the Dispersion ; " in the second to those who
"obtained like precious faith with us." (3) In the first Christ's
descent into Hades is a point of capital importance ; in the second,
where, there would seem to be every reason for such an allusion, no
reference is made to it. (4) In the first the writer's mind is full of the
Epistles to the Romans and Ephesians, and the Epistle of St. James ;
in the second, though he makes a special reference to St. Paul, there is
scarcely a single thought, and barely two expressions, J which can with
any plausibility be referred to those two Epistles, and there is only
one word2 which can be derived from St. James. (5) Again, in the
first he constantly enweaves without quotation the words of Isaiah, the
Psalms, and especially the Book of Proverbs ;3 in the second there is
not a single certain quotation, and if ii. 22, iii. 8 be meant for quota
tions, they are introduced in a wholly different way.4 (6) Of the first
the keynote is Hope; of the second, though also written in days of
persecution, the leading conception is the totally different one of "full
knowledge."6 (7) In the first our Lord is usually called Christ, or "the
Christ," or " Jesus Christ ; " in the second the simple title is never
used, but He is always called " our Lord," or " our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ." (8) In the first (a) the Coming of Christ is called "a
Revelation;" in the second the "Presence" or " Day of the Lord;"
1 2 Pet. i. 2, etc., "Eitiyvuais (Rom. i. 28, etc.) ; iii. 15, paKpoivnia (Rom. ii. 4).
2 2 Pet. ii. 14 ; oeAed^on-es, James i. 14. 3 1 Pet. i. 7, ii. 17, iv. 8, 18.
4 It has been supposed that i. 19, "as a lamp shining in a squalid place," is borrowed
from 2 Esdr. xii. 42, "Of all the prophets thou, only art left us ... as a candle in a
dark place." But so obvious a comparison need not have been borrowed.
5 This i-rriyvuo-is is made to consist in the knowledge of the Power and Parousia of
Christ. See Huther, p. 306.

106 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
(0) in the first this Advent is expected as near at hand, while in the
second we are warned that it may be indefinitely distant; (7) in the
first Christ's coming is regarded as the glorification of the saints ; in the
second as the destruction of the world. (9) In the first the sufferings,
death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord are prominent ; in the
second no allusion is made to them. (10) In the first there is a pre
vailing tone of sweetness, mildness, and fatherly dignity ; the second is,
as a whole, denunciatory and severe. Further difficulties have been
caused to some minds (11) by the manner in which the writer of the
Second Epistle, unlike the author of the First, seems anxious to thrust
into prominence his own personality; (12) by the expression "the com
mand of your Apostles," in iii. 2 ; (13) by the manner in which the
false teachers seem to be treated of sometimes as future (io-ovrtu, ii. 1 — 3),
sometimes as present (ii. 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, &c.) ;' (14) by the growth
of a feeling which they consider to be later than the Apostolic age in
the allusion to Mount Hermon as "the Holy Mount;" (15) by the
unparalleled reference to St. Paul and the apparent placing of his letters
on a level with the Scriptures of the Old Testament;2 and (16) by the
curious allusion to " the world standing out of water and amidst
water." (17) But we have not even yet exhausted the list of serious diffi
culties. An entirely new and very formidable one has just been brought
to light by Dr. Abbott. It is nothing more or less than the certainty
that either the author of the Second Epistle had read Josephus — in
which case, of course, he could not have been St. Peter, since the
earliest of Josephus's writings were not published till A.D. 75, and the
Antiquities not earlier than A.D. 93 ; or (an alternative which Dr.
Abbott does not discuss) that Josephus had read the Second Epistle,
which, it must be confessed, is a difficult supposition. One thing is
indisputable — namely, that the resemblances between the writer and the
Jewish historian cannot be accidental.
a. The proof rests partly on single words and phrases, such as
" tardiness " applied to the Divine retribution (iii. 9) ; " to which ye do
well if ye take heed" (i. 19); "assuming oblivion " (i. 9) ; "bringing
in besides all diligence " (i 5) ; " condemned with an overthrow " (ii. 6);
"equally precious"; " epangelma" for "promise" (i. 4); " sesophis-
menos" for "cunningly elaborated" (i. 16) ; and "from of old" (ii. 3).
These are not found elsewhere, either in the New Testament or in the
Septuagint, or not in the same senses ; but they occur in Josephus,
often in very similar allusions.
But the proof becomes far more striking when we consider groups
of words, cases in which several unusual words occur together in similar

1 The same strange phenomenon meets us in the third chapter (iii. 3, eAevVojrat ; iii.
5, \av9dvei). 2 These differences might be greatly multiplied. See Davidson, Introd. i. 492 — 494.

RESEMBLANCES TO JOSEPHUS. 107
Of these there are two most marked instances : —
In the Preface to the Antiquities (§§ 3, 4) Josephus tells us that
Moses thought it necessary to consider " the Divine nature " (&e0v <piois),
without which he would be unable 'to promote the "virtue" of his
readers.; that other legislators "followed after myths," but Moses,
having shown that " God was possessed of perfect virtue," thought that
men should strive after virtue ; and that his laws contain nothing
derogatory to the " greatness " of God.
In this single section, then, there are several very striking expres
sions, but they occur quite naturally, and betray no deviation from the
historian's usual style. It is, however, surprising that we find them
occurring as absolutely isolated expressions — hapax legomena as far as
the New Testament is concerned — in this Epistle. Thus we have
" that ye may become partakers of the Divine nature " (i. 4), where
both the phrase and its context strongly recall Josephus ; we have the
"greatness" (megaleiotes) of Christ (i. 16), and in the very same verse
"following after cunningly elaborated myths." This would alone be
sufficient to attract notice ; but how much more amazing is the word
"virtue" applied to God ! The word "virtue" in this sense is itself
very rare in the New Testament, which uplifts the higher standard of
holiness. But no one can read that God called us "by His own glory
and virtue " (for such is the true reading) without something like a
start of surprise. We should be struck with the singularity of the
expression in any writer ; but in Josephus it is at once explained and
justified by the context in which it occurs. For Josephus is not making
an abstract allusion, but expressly contrasting the Ideal of Virtue in
God's revelation of Himself to Moses with the shameful vices which
degraded the heathen ideal of their false deities.1
But this is not the only group of words.
p. In the last words of Moses (as recorded by Josephus in Antt.
i\ 8, § 2) there occur no less than eight or nine phrases, some of which
either do not occur, or scarcely ever occur, in the New Testament, and
some of which are not found even in the Septuagint, but every one of
which occurs in this brief Epistle, and some of them in similar colloca
tions.2 To me I confess that the evidential force of this fact — and Dr.
Abbott informs me that further evidence is forthcoming — seems to be
very strong.3 If, then, the Epistle be genuine, it cannot be questioned
1 'Aperi] only occurs in 2 Pet. i. 3, 5 ; Phil. iv. 8. In 1 Pet. ii 9 the plural uperal is
indeed applied to God, but in a very different sense. It there means " excellencies."
2 They are, Toil<r8e (i. 17) ; flei'as koiiwoI <puVe<oS (i. 4) ; " but I think it just " (i, 13) ;
" so long as " (id. ) ; " in the present truth " (i. 12) ; " mention " or " memorial " (i. 15) ;
" departure " for " death " (id.) ; " recognising that " (i. 20 ; iii. 3), and others. Besides
these groups of words, we have phrases in 2 Pet. i 19 and ii. 10, which occur in Jos.
Antt. xi. 6, § 12, and B. J. iii. 9, § 3, but not elsewhere in the N. T. or LXX.
3 Since these pages have been in the press, Dr. Abbott has published his very inter
esting discovery in the Expositor for January, 1882. Some parts of his second paper are
so similar to my own remarks, that I think it right to say that these pages were in print

108 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
that it was known to Josephus. Here, however, we are met by the
difficulty that the same argument does not apply to the First Epistle, so
that once more we have a marked distinction between the two.
(18) Once again, if the Second Epistle of St. Peter be genuine, it
was written within a short time of the Apocalypse ; yet how different
is the tone of the two writings with respect to the Coming of Christ !
In the Apocalypse the belief in its immediate imminence "blazes out
in its brightest flame, and takes its most concrete form in the idea of
the Millennium : " on the other hand, in the Second Epistle of St. Peter,
we hear of scoffers, who are already beginning to point out that in their
opinion the nearness of the Parousia is a mere delusion, and to ask,
" Where is the promise of this coming]" Now, how does the writer
meet their objections 1 Not by thundering forth with yet deeper con
viction Maranatha, but by showing that, as far as human calculations
of time were concerned, the coming might be still indefinitely delayed,
because with the Lord a thousand years are as one day. There is not
another passage in the whole New Testament which implies that the
Parousia — for which the early Christians looked with such intense
earnestness — so far from being manifested in that very generation,
might not take place for even a millennium hence. However we explain
the phrase, " Since the fathers fell asleep," the point of view seems to
mark an age later than that of the true St. Peter.1 It seems to point
to an epoch in which those who, like the Montanists, still expected the
instant close of the age (in another sense than that in which it had
already been accomplished by the fall of Jerusalem) were few in
number.*1 The last chapter of the Epistle is devoted to the correction of two
errors — namely, (i.) the acceptance of the scoff about the delay in
Christ's Second Coming, and (ii.) the misuse of the Epistles of St. Paul.
The first error is dealt with at some length (iii. 1 — 13) ; the second is
dismissed in a few words (15 — 16). It cannot be said that either ©f
these topics necessarily indicates an age later than that of St. Peter.
They would, however, have been very suitable to the second century,
when even the Fall of Jerusalem — in which men failed to recognise a
true Coming of Christ — had not been followed by the expected Advent
in flaming fire ; and when, as we know, some Gnostic sects, like that of
Marcion, were beginning to make a dangerous use of the arguments of
St. Paul.
No doubt as regards every one of these difficulties something more or
before I had read it. Besides the coincidences of phrase, he points out that the allusions
to Noah and Balaam in 2 Pet. ii. 5, 8, point to Hagadoth found in Jos. Antt. i. 3, § 1 ;
iv. 6, § 3.
1 Even in Justin Martyr's time there was still the expectation of an immediate
Parousia (Dial. c. Tryph. 80).
2 See Baur, First Three Centuries, i. 247, ii. 45 (E. Tr.). The Montanist view was no
doubt that of the primitive Church. See Mr. De Soyre's excellent Essay on Montanism,
and Bonwelsch, Die N&he des Weltendes, p. 76.

CAN THE DIFFICULTIES BE MET 1 109
less possible, probable, or plausible, may be urged. It may be said, for
instance, that after St. Peter had written the First Epistle the letter of
St. Jude was brought to him, and threw him into such a state of indig
nant alarm as to alter his whole frame of mind, and to account for many
of the differences above mentioned. The non-allusion to Christ's preach
ing in Hades may be referred to this indignation of mind, and it may be
pointed out that St. Peter, if the Second Epistle be genuine, shows the
same interest as before in events to which other Apostles have made
little or no allusion. The absence or presence of certain marked influ
ences, and modes of quoting Scripture, may be regarded as having in it
nothing decisive. The expression " your Apostles " may merely mean
" St. Paul and those who preached to you." " The Holy Mount," though
not a phrase which we should have expected, may be defended on Old
, Testament analogies,1 and may hardly involve its modern connotations.
The allusion to St. Paul's Epistles may not be to all of them which we
possess, but only to those, whether lost or extant, which may have been
made known to St. Peter by Silvanus or Mark ; and doubtless the power
of the Holy Spirit was recognised in them from the earliest age.
Whether these answers be regarded as sufficient to support the cause in
which they are urged, must depend on the feelings of the reader. They
mitigate some of the difficulties ; few, I think, would pretend to say that
they are adequate to remove them all. It must be remembered that ob
jections which might be overruled if they stood alone, may acquire from
their number and variety a cumulative force. Nor are all these objec
tions easy to meet. The mixture, for instance, of presents and futures
in the description of the False Teachers, is a difficulty which has been
met by untenable remarks about the " Prophetic style." That St. Jude's
Epistle was prior to that of St. Peter seems to me an irrefragable con
clusion ; and if so, it is an unsolved — though I will not say insoluble —
difficulty that St. Peter should have described in prophetic futures the
teachers whom St. Jude had already denounced as active workers. There
is no known reason why he should have mingled predictions of their ap
pearance with traits of their existing physiognomy. If it be urged that
St. Peter merely prophesies the worst development of contemporary
germs of evil, the answer is that it would be impossible to imagine any
thing more pernicious than the apostates whom St. Jude had scathed
with his terrible invective.2 Before we can acquiesce in these methods
of defence let us ask ourselves whether they would have had the least
weight with us if no predisposition to side with the popular opinion were
i Is. xxvii. 13.
2 Dean Afford and others point out resemblances in this Epistle to the style and
phraseology of St. Peter's speeches in the Acts of the Apostles, such as the word "piety "
(eva-ifiela) (Acts iii. 12), "the Day of the Lord " (iii 10 ; Acts ii. 20), and a few others.
But they seem to me too few and too shadowy for their purpose ; nor can we observe in
the Second Epistle (with one marked exception, vide infra, p. 114) that influence of events
narrated in the Gospels on the character and views of St. Peter, which may be so strikingly
traced in the First Epistle (supra, p. 69, fy.).

110 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
involved. Would they have been held sufficient to prove the genuineness
of a classic treatise, or even of a tract of any of the Fathers?
(19.) But we have not even now exhausted the peculiarities of this
weakly-authenticated letter. We have still to consider the extraordinary
phenomenon which it presents in its relationship to the short Epistle of
Jude. On the facts of this relationship each successive writer comes to
a different conclusion ; but, after careful consideration and comparison
of the two documents, it seems to my own mind impossible to doubt that
Jude was the earlier of the two writers.1 If so, the fact that such an
Apostle as St. Peter should, without even referring to him by name, have
incorporated successively so many of the thoughts and expressions of one
who, like St. Jude, was not an Apostle, is yet another extraordinary cir
cumstance. To talk of " plagiarism " would be to import modern notions
into the inquiry ; and if St. Peter were the borrower, we shall see that
he deals with his materials in a wise and independent manner. But as
to any further questions which may arise from the relationship of the
two writers, we must be content to say that we have no data on which
to furnish an answer.
The closeness of the relationship will be seen at a glance by com
paring the parallel passages side by side. The characteristics of the
" impious persons " of Jude and that of the " false teachers " of St. Peter
are identical. Both are marked by those insidious and subterranean
methods which seem to be inseparable from the character of religious
partisans (Jud. 4 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1 — 3) ; by impious wantonness (id., and
Jud. 8 ; 2 Pet. ii, 10) ; by denial of Christ (id.) ; by slander of dignities
(Jud. 8; 2 Pet. ii. 10); by corruption of natural instincts (Jud. 10;
2 Pet. ii. 12); by greed (Jud. 11; 2 Pet. ii. 14, 15); by pompous
assertions and scoffing mockery (Jud. 16 — 18; 2 Pet. ii. 18, iii. 3).
Both are doomed to swift judgment; are described by very similar
metaphors ; are threatened with the same punishments ; are compared
to Balaam ; and are warned by the example of the Cities of the Plain.
But if the two passages are read side by side, it can hardly be denied '
that the language of St. Jude is the more eloquent and impetuous, while
that of St. Peter is the more elaborate and restrained. The burning
lava of St. Jude's indignation has evidently poured itself through the
secondary channels of a temperament which would probably have been
more congenial to its reception at an earlier period. St. Peter, if it be
he, catches something of the Judaic fire and heat of his contemporary,
but he modifies, softens, and corrects his vehement phrases. His
language is but an echo of the thunder. He throws the description,
1 The notion of Luther, Wolf, etc., that 2 Peter was the earlier, though still supported
by Thiersch, Dictlein, Fronmuller, Hofmann, Wordsworth, &c, is being more and more
abandoned. The priority of St. Jude is accepted by Herder, Hug, Eiehhorn, Credner,
Neander, De Wette, Mayerhoff, Guerike, Reuss, Bleek, Weiss, Wiesinger, Bruckner,
Huther, Ewald, Alford, Plumptre, Dr. S. Davidson, &c.
2 Bertholdt and Lange suppose that this chapter was subsequently interpolated into
the Second Epistle of St. Peter.

RESEMBLANCE TO ST. JUDE. Ill
in part at least, into the future, as though to indicate that those against
whom he warns his readers have not yet burst into the full blossom of
their iniquity.
Travelling through Christian communities as one of " the brethren of
the Lord," x St. Jude seems to have come into personal contact with
bodies of corrupt, greedy, and subtle Antinomians closely resembling
those " Gnostics before Gnosticism " whose appearance had been noted
by the prescient eye of St. Paul. Having actually witnessed their
baleful influence, he can depict them with startling power and clearness,
and he rolls over them peal after peal of Apocalyptic denunciation. St.
Peter, now perhaps awaiting his death at Rome, has not personally seen
them — not, at any rate, in their worst and most undisguised develop
ments. Startled by the language of St. Jude — such is a perhaps
admissible hypothesis — finding that the very words and thoughts and
sentences of that brief but strange and powerful letter keep ringing with
ominous sound in his memory — in his heart too the fire burns and he
speaks with his tongue. The mystery of iniquity, he implies, is already
working, but he cannot bring himself to believe that it has invaded all
the Churches to which he writes, and therefore he predicts even while
he is describing, and describes while he predicts. The language. of his
second chapter seems to show that the author was writing from vivid
and even verbal memory of St. Jude's letter, but not with its words,
lying actually before him. In some cases he presents the curious but
familiar phenomenon of the memory being magnetized rather by the
sounds of the words than by the words themselves.2 Thus from external
similarity St. Jude's " sunken reefs " (spilades) become " spots " (spiloi),"
and St. Jude's " love-feasts " (agapai) become " deceits " (apatai). But,
besides this, it is evident that both in greater and smaller matters a
spirit of conscious modification is at work, both in the way of addition
and omission. Where St. Jude speaks of " clouds without water," St.
Peter, to avoid any scientific cavil — since a cloud without water is a
thing not conceivable — speaks of " wells without water." Where St.
Jude refers to the profanation of the Agapa? St. Peter's allusion is more
distant and general. St. Jude in three successive clauses speaks of the
fall of the angels through fleshly lusts ; of Sodom and Gomorrha as
"undergoing a judgment of seonian fire;" of a peculiar form of
ceremonial pollution familiar to all who were trained in the Levitic law ;
of the dispute between Michael the Archangel and the Devil about the
body of Moses ; and of the corruption of natural and instinctive know
ledge. He then proceeds to compare these evildoers to Cain, to Balaam,
and to Korah, and after an impassioned outburst of metaphors applies
i 1 Cor. ix. 5.
2 Weiss says that "St. Peter" has here been influenced by the " wortklang."
3 I am aware that some take o-n-iAaSes to mean the same as o-irTAot, and it is so under
stood in the ancient versions. See Bishop Lightfoot on Revision, p. 137. Dr. Abbott
points out (Expositor, Feb. 1882, p. 145) that a group of words in this paragraph is also
found in Is. lvi 7— lvii 5.

112 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
to them a prophecy from the apocryphal Book of Enoch. It is instruc
tive to see how the writer of this later Epistle deals with the burning
material thus before him. To the fall of the angels he only alludes in
the most general manner, excluding all reference to the Rabbinic
tradition, which sprung out of inferences from Gen. vi. 2. Omitting St.
Jude's allusion to the Israelites in the wilderness, he substitutes a
reference to the Deluge. Omitting, perhaps as liable to be misunder
stood, the seonian fire of Sodom and Gomorrha, he only says that these
cities were reduced to ashes, while he is careful to add, by way of
encouragement to the faithful, that Lot was saved. He omits as painful,
and to Hellenic readers hardly intelligible, both of St. Jude's allusions to
certain forms of Levitic pollutions.1 He omits, as being derived from
the apocryphal Ascension of Moses, all allusion to the legend about the
dispute of Michael and Satan, and even the name of the Archangel, and,
in a passage which, apart from the parallel in St. Jude, would be
extremely obscure, he gives to the reference a general turn, which, if it
conveyed to the readers any distinct conception, would remind them
rather of the accuser of the Brethren in the Book of Zechariah. St.
Jude, speaking throughout rather of vicious livers than of false teachers,
describes them with great clearness as blaspheming in subjects about
which they know nothing, and corrupting the knowledge which comes
to them instinctively, as it does to animals without reason. The later
writer remembers the words " as the animals without reason," but by
an ingenious figure of speech, in which the same word serves a double
purpose,2 applies it to compare the hopeless end of the false teachers to
that of animals. Omitting the instances of Cain and of Korah, but
amplifying that of Balaam, which was more germane to his purpose, he
tones down the exuberance of St. Jude's rhetoric. Perhaps because he
is only writing from impressions without the original manuscript before
him, while substituting " wells without water" for "clouds without
water," he adds the clause " clouds chased by the hurricane." He
omits St. Jude's " wandering stars," and yet applies directly to the
teachers the powerful metaphor " for whom the gloom of darkness has
been reserved for ever." Again, he omits the prophecy of Enoch,
probably because it is taken from an apocryphal book ; and lastly, he
mentions — as a specific instance of the scoffs to which St Jude only
alludes — the mocking questions which were suggested by the delay of
Christ's return. I must confess my inability to see how any one who
1 Lev. xv. 16, 17 ; Jude 8, 23.
2 This figure of speech is called antanaclisis, and consists in the use of the same word
twice in different senses in the same passage (see supi-a, p. 92, the note on 1 Pet. iii.. 1).
Here ipeopA is first " destruction," and then " corruption." Compare 2 Pet. ii. 12, "But
these, as reasonless animals, creatures of nature (^vo-ikA), born for rapture and destruction
(c/,eopc\v), blaspheming in things of whioh they are ignorant (iyvooicnv), shall be destroyed
in their own corruption (iv 177 ainw $6opS /caTacf>9ap>jcroi/Tai), " with Jude 10, "These, in all
things which they know not (ou* olSaim.), blaspheme ; but all the things which, like the
reasonless animals, they know naturally (<puo-ucws), in these they corrupt themselves
(cjideipovrai).*'

POSSIBLE AUTHENTICITY. 113
approaches the enquiry with no ready-made theories can fail to come 'to
the conclusion that the priority in this instance belongs to St. Jude. It
would have been impossible for such a burning and withering blast of
defiance and invective as his brief letter to have been composed on
principles of modification and addition.1 All the marks which indicate
the reflective treatment of an existing document are to be seen in the
Second Epistle of St. Peter. In every instance of variation we see the
reasons which influenced the later writer. The instances of Cain and
Korah did not suit his purpose, which dealt rather with secret corruption
than flagrant violence, and with errors of theory than with undisguised
revolt. But, had St. Peter written first, there is no reason why St.
Jude should have omitted so striking and apposite an example as was
furnished by the Deluge. It is inconceivable that St. Jude should
simply have taken a paragraph of a longer Epistle, have added apocry
phal illustrations to it, and flashed lightning into it by a process of
reflective treatment. All literary probability decisively shows that the
more guarded, more dignified, more exclusively authoritative composi
tion — the one less liable to excite offence and cavil — would be the later
of the two. There is nothing absurd in the supposition that a later
¦writer, powerfully moved by the state of things revealed in the letter of
St. Jude, should, in a longer and in some respects weightier epistle, have
utilised, while yet he modified, that powerful utterance, abandoning its
triplicity of . structure,2 and omitting those Hebraic references which
would have been a stumbling-block to a wider circle of readers. The
notion that St. Jude endeavoured to " improve upon " St. Peter is, I
say, a literary impossibility ; and if in some instances the phrases of St.
Jude seem more antithetical and striking, and his description clearer, I
have sufficiently accounted for the inferiority — if it be inferiority — of
St. Peter by the supposition that he was a man of more restrained
temperament ; that he wrote under the influence of reminiscences and
impressions ; and that he was warning against forms of evil with which
he had not come into so personal a contact.
Having now examined — fairly, I trust, and as fully as my limits
will allow — the peculiarities of the Epistle before us, and the serious
difficulties which lie in the way of our regarding it as the work of
St. Peter, I will state one or two of the reasons why, in spite of
these difficulties, I cannot regard it as certainly spurious. They are
mainly three : — •
1. First, we must not wholly ignore the similarity in expression and
tone of thought between this Epistle and the First,3 nor the slight re-
1 The genius and fine literary instinct of Herder saw this at once :— :' ' Siehe welch ein
gauzer kraftiger, wie ein Feuerrad in sich selbst zuriicklaufender Brief : man nehme
das Schreiben Petrus dazu, wie es einleitet, mildert, auslasst, &c." So, too, Weiss,
Huther, &c.
2 See infra, p. 131.
3 Words common to both Epistles are "precious" (ripioe), "abundantly furnish"
(iiriXopiyyt<»), "brotherly love " (<piAaSeA$i'a), "eye-witnesses" (eVcwTai), "wantonness"
I

114 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
semblances which it offers to St. Peter's speeches recorded in the Acts.1
The resemblance of the writer to St. Peter in tone of mind2 — as, for
instance, in his largeheartedness to the Gentiles,3 in his fondness for the
less trodden paths of Biblical illustration and enquiry, and in his ten
dency to soften instances of doom by the parallel of instances of
deliverance — must also be allowed their due weight. Under this head
I may refer to the subtle reminiscences of the Transfiguration. Of the
appeal to the Transfiguration as a source of the writer's conviction, it
may of course be said that it would naturally occur to any one
assuming the name of St. Peter ; but the casual subsequent introduc
tion of the word " tabernacle," 4 and of the most unusual word for
" decease," 5 not in any formal connexion with the appeal, but by an
inimitably natural association of ideas, has always seemed to me an
important item of evidence. To this must be added the little-noticed
indication that the Transfiguration probably took place at night, though
it is not so stated in the Gospels. This would at once account for the
following comparison of the word of prophecy to " a light shining in a
squalid place."
2. Another important consideration is the ancientness of this
Epistle. It we cannot infer this from tbe vague resemblances to it
adduced from passages in the Apostolic Fathers, we may infer it from
three circumstances — namely, the want of all specific features of later
Gnosticism in the heretics here described ; the absence of allusions to
¦ ecclesiastical organisations ; and the absence of any traces of the fall of
Jerusalem. As to the first point, is it not certain that a later writer
would have aimed his remonstrances at something more distinctly and
definitely resembling the heresies of Cerinthus or Ebion, or, later still,
of Carpocrates and Valentinus 1 As to the second point, it is probably
better known to us than it was even to many writers in the second
century, that there had been a rapid tendency to desynonymize the
words " bishop " and " presbyter," and that the consequent develop
ment of " episcopal " power was due to the growth of heresy, against
which it was designed to be a bulwark.6 If, then, the writer of this
Epistle was a falsarius, writing late in the second century, it is difficult
(io-e'A-yeia), "spotless" (aWiAo!). In both there is a prominence of the Deluge and of
Prophecy. See Plumptre, Introd., p. 75. I have pointed out that in both occurs a
specimen of the figure called antanaclisis ("word" in 1 Pet. iii. 1, "corruption" in 2
Pet. ii. 12). This has. I believe, escaped the notice of previour inquirers. See supra,
pp. 92, 112.
i This is fully worked out by Prof. Lumby in the Expositor, iv. 372—399 and 446 —
469. But in any case the writer of the Second Epistle would be very familiar with the
language of the First. Differences, in a question of this kind, furnish a far more serious
consideration than identities and resemblances.
2 Compare 2 Pet. i. 17, 21 ; ii. 1, 13 ; with Acts iii. 12 ; ii. 2 ; iv. 24 ; ii. 15.
3 2 Pet. i. 1. 4 tricfivuipa. Matt. xvii. 4.
6 efo5o5, "departure," i.e., death, as in Jos. Antt. iv. 812. Wisd. iii. 2.
6 In the First Epistle the word episkopos only occurs once, and that in its general
sense of "guardian" (1 Pet. ii. 25), and each Church has only its "presbyters," with
whom the Apostle ranks himself (1 Pet. v. 1).

SUPERIORITY TO UNCANONICAL WRITINGS. 115
to imagine that he would not have adopted the same tone in reference
to this subject as the other writers of his age. As regards the fall of
Jerusalem, it may, of course, be said that any reference to it would
have betrayed the pseudonymous character of the writer ; but I am
now only arguing that there are no traces of the state of mind pro
duced by the Jewish catastrophe. Is it not probable that a falsarius
of the ability pre-supposed by this Epistle would have seized the grand
opportunity of introducing as a prediction, an illustration which would
have been in all respects so overwhelmingly apposite 1 But in any
case the end of the Jewish polity was an event so stupendous that
no writer dealing with such subjects as those before us could have
succeeded in excluding every trace of an occurrence which so radically
modified the tone of Christian thought. "
3. One more consideration remains, which seems to me of capital
importance. It is the superiority of this Epistle to every one of
the uncanonical writings of the first and second centuries. If we
are to accept the theories of modern critics, that the Epistles of the
Captivity, and the Pastoral Epistles, and the Gospel of St. John, and
the Second Epistle of St. Peter, are the works of " forgers," then —
seeing the indescribable superiority of these writings to all others
which saw the light during the epoch at which they are supposed to
have been written — we are driven to the extraordinary conclusion that
the best strength and brilliancy and spiritual insight of the second cen
tury is to be found in its pseudonymous writings ! Who will venture
to assert that any Apostolic Father — that Clement of Rome, or
Ignatius, or Polycarp, or Hernias, or Justin Martyr, could have
written so much as twenty consecutive verses so eloquent and so
powerful as those of the Second Epistle of St. Peter 1 No known
member of the Church in that age could have been the writer; not
even the author of the Epistle to Diognetus. Would a writer so much
more powerful than any of these have remained uninfluential and un
known 1 Would one who could wield his pen with so inspired a power
have failed to write a line in his own name, and for the immediate
benefit of his own contemporaries ?
In the face, then, of these counter-difficulties, I see no solution of
the problem but the one which St. Jerome indicated fourteen centuries
ago.1 I believe that we may perhaps recognise in this Epistle the
opinions, the influence, the impress, direct or indirect, of the great
Apostle of the Circumcision. If we cannot find his individual style^ if
we are faced by many peculiarities, if we miss characteristic expressions,
if we recognise a different mode of workmanship, some of these difficul
ties would be removed by the supposition of a literary amanuensis.
The supposition of an Aramaic original, as supported by Mr. King,
1 " Stilo inter se et charactere discrepant structuraque verborum. Ex quo intel-
ligimus pro necessitate reruin diversis eum usum interpretibus. " — Ep. ad Hedib.
120, 11.

116 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
seems to me untenable.1 This Epistle is addressed quite as much to
Gentiles as to Jews ; and even if the Jews of the Dispersion understood
Aramaic, the Gentiles did not. This suggestion, moreover, does not
remove the most serious difficulties. The Epistle, though it does not
show the mastery of Hellenistic Greek possessed by some of the New
Testament writers, has yet an energy of its own which excludes the
possibility of its being a translation.2 I believe there is much to sup
port the conclusion — at which I had arrived before I became aware of
the resemblances to Josephus — that we have not here the words and
style of the great Apostle, but that he lent to this Epistle the sanction
of his name and the assistance of his advice. If this be so, it is still in
its main essence genuine as well as canonical, and there is a reason both
for its peculiarities and for its tardy reception. On this hypothesis we
may rejoice that we have preserved to us both the encouragements
addressed to the Church by St. Peter, and his warnings against anti-
Christian heresies. These heresies, as we see from the Second Epistle
to Timothy, had also occupied a large space in the last thoughts of
St. Paul, St. Peter speaks of them mainly in the future, as St. Paul
had done, in his farewell to the Ephesian elders at Miletus. It is said
that when Charlemagne first saw the ships of the pirate Norsemen he
burst into tears, not because he feared that they would give him any
trouble, but because he foresaw the miseries which they would inflict
upon his subjects in the future. So it was with the Apostles. The
errors of which others only saw the germ, loomed large on the
horizon of their prophetic insight, although it was not until after
their death that they assumed their full proportions as the perilous
heresies of Gnostic speculation.

CHAPTER X.
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER.
"E.v oh eVri 8v<rv6r)Ta. Tira. — 2 Pet. iii. 16.
Instead of following the plan which I have hitherto adopted, of
endeavouring to take the reader through each Epistle by explaining
and epitomising its general purpose in language which may counteract
the deadening effect of over-familiarity, I have thought it best to
' A translation would not have such a figure as that involved in the use of <p0op£
(first "destruction," then "corruption") in ii. 12, or such an alliteration as TrpoipijTov
TTapa$povlav in ii. 16.
- ' Diese ist fast ohne alle Ausnahme sehr fein Griechisch, voll der freiesten acht
Griechischen Wortstellungen und Satzbildungen, " &c— Ewald, Sendschr. ii. 110. It
may, however, be best described as the poetic Greek of one who had partly learned the
language from the tragedians. The repetitions of words are due to the same sparse but
sonorous vocabulary of the amanuensis.

SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. 117
re-translate the whole of this Epistle. I have done so for several
reasons. In previous instances I have given a literal version of every
passage which was obscure, or specially remarkable, or in which the
English Version seemed incorrect, or difficult of apprehension, or
dependent on inferior readings. This Epistle has given rise to so
many controversies, it is so remarkably compact in its structure, its
expressions are so unusual, and sometimes even so astonishing, that I
have thought it best to re-translate the whole of it as closely as I
could, appending in the briefest form such notes as seemed most
. necessary. I know that the reader may feel inclined to leave the
translation unread, under the notion that he is already familiar with
a version not only infinitely more dear to him, but also more
euphonious, more smooth, more literary, and (as it will' perhaps seem to
him) more easy to understand. I would, however, ask him to follow
me in this version, because our English Bible, with all its splendid
merits, constantly misses the peculiarities of the writer's diction
through its besetting fondness for needless variations. My translation,
made, I ought to say, before the Revised Version appeared, and with a
different object, is meant throughout to be not only a literal version,
but also a running commentary.1
Symeon2 Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained3
a like precious faith with us, in the righteousness of our God and of our
Saviour Jesus Christ,4 grace to you and peace be multiplied in the full knowledge6
of God and of Jesus our Lord. Seeing that His Divine power hath given us
all things that pertain to life and piety,6 by means of the full knowledge of
Him Who called us by His own glory and virtue ; 7 by means of which He hath
given us His greatest and precious promises,8 that by their means ye may become
partakers of Divine nature, having escaped from the corruption which is in
the world in lust. And on this very account, adding all earnestness,9 abundantly
furnish10 in your faith virtue, and in your virtue knowledge, and in your
knowledge self-control, and in your self-control endurance, and in your endurance
piety, and in your piety brotherly affection, and in your brotherly affection love.11
1 I may perhaps be allowed to remark that, though this book, no less than my Life of Christ
and Life of St. Paul, has benn written without the aid which I should have derived from the Re
vised Version, I find that there is scarcely a single instance iu which the corrections I had ven
tured to make, and the readings which I had selected, were not in accordance with those of the
Revisers. The fact that the renderings which I have given are often those which the Revisers
place in the margin, may serve to illustrate the exact reproduction of the peculiarities of the
original, at which I have always aimed.
2 The adoption of this form at once marks a Hebraist.
s AovoOo-t, Acts i. 17 (St. Peter).
* " O t our God and Saviour Jesus Christ " would also be grammatical, but see on Tit. ii. 13,
Life and Work of St. Paul, ii. 533 ; and the' next verse seems to show that the Father and the
Son are here meant.
5 'ETTt-yi/wo-ts, " full knowledge," is the leading word of this Epistle (as " hope " is of 1 Pet.),
6 Evo-e'^eta. The word only occurs elsewhere in Acts iii. 12 and the pastoral Epistles. 0etos,
" divine " is peculiar to this Epistle. (Cf. Acts xvii. 29.)
7 'Ape-rij, here alone of God. In 1 Pet. ii. 9 the word is dperas, which is quite different. Leg.,
tota 8. Kat ap. , n, A, C. The writer is fond of using the emphatic tfitos (2 Pet. ii. 22 ; iii. 3, 16, 17 ;
1 Pet. ui. 15). ,
8 As in 2 Pet. iii. 13.
9 €t<T(pepeiV tTTTOVOlJf . Jos. Antt. XX. 9, § 2.
10 €7rixopijyTj<raTe. The E. V., "Add to your faith virtue, &c.," is quite untenable.
11 For these virtues see the first Epistle, where every one of them is mentioned, even the
less common words aperi/ (1 Pet. ii. 9, ptur.), iptAaSeA^ta (1 Pet. i. 22), and yywo-is (1 Pet. iii. 7).

118 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
For these things, when they exist and abound, render you neither idle nor unfruit
ful unto the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.1 For he in whom they are
not is blind, wilfully closing his eyes,2 assuming oblivion3 of his purification
from his olden sins.4 Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make
sure your calling and election, for by so doing ye shall never stumble.6 For there
shall be richly furnished to you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ (i. 1 — 11). 6
Wherefore I will not neglect to remind you always about these things, though
ye know them, and have been firmly fixed in the present truth.7 But I consider
it right, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to arouse you by way of reminder,
knowing that swiftly shall come the laying aside of this my tabernacle,8 as
even our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.9 But I will be diligent, that you may
be able10 even on every occasion after my departure, to make mention of these •
things.11 For it was not by following in the track of elaborated myths12 that
we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but
by having been initiated,13 as eye-witnesses, into His Majesty. For having
received honour and glory from God the Father when a voice such as this was
borne to Him14 from the magnificent glory,15 "My Son, my Beloved is this,16 in whom
I am well pleased — '' 17 And this voice we heard borne from Heaven, when we were
with Him in the Holy Mount.18 And still stronger is the surety we have in the
prophetic word,19 whereunto ye dp well if ye take heed-'0 as to a lamp shining
in a squalid place,21 until the day dawn, and the morning star arise in your
hearts;22 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture proves to be of
1 Comp. Col. i. 10.
2 p.vbind£oiv, one of the numerous hapax legomena of this Epistle. There is a gloss faXacptav,
"furob ing his wav." If the meaning " short-sighted " (Arist. ProbZ. xxxi. § 16) be adopted (as
in E. V.), it may mean " blind to the far-off heavenly things, able only to see the near earthly
things." 3 Comp. Jos Antt. ii. 6, § 9.
4 I.e., by Baptism. — Chrysost., &c.
6 Ja. ii. 10, iii. 2.
6 " Furnish knowledge, self-control, &c. (ver. 5), and you shall be rewarded in kind; for so
the entrance into Christ's eternal kingdom shall be fnmisbe 1 richly to you."
7 Ver. 12, iv -rjj 7rapovo-jj dKndeia. Cf. Jude 5; Rom. xv. 14; 1 Per. v. 12.
8 A mixture of the metaphors' of a robe and a building, as in 2 Cor. v. 1 (De Wette).
9 John xxi. 17, 18 (but of course that was written long afterwards, if the Epistle be genuine).
10 e\etc — Bvvaa-Bai, as in Luke vii. 42.
11 This is the ordinary meaning of uctJutjj/ iroteurSat. I have already noticed the interesting
use of o-ioji-toua and efoSos (vide supra, p. 144).
12 p.,',9ots. See on 1 Tim i. 4, iv, 7, Lije of St. Paul, ii. 517 ; bat each commentator guesses
differently as to the kind of myths alluded to. The best comment is Jos. Antt. Proem. § 4 :
" All othi r lawgivers following on the track of their myth*, transferred to the gods the shame of
their human sins."
la cn-dm-at, a technical word ofthe Eleusinian mysteries (used in 2 Mace. iii. 39).
14 kvsxOetirqs, a most unusual expression, found also in 1 Pet. i. 13. Perhaps it maybe ex
plained of the rushing wind accompanying the Bath Kol. Cf . Acts ii. 2. It is analogous to
}E; (Is. ix. 8). The Evangelists use yiyverai, epxerai (Luke ix. 35 ; John xii, 30).
"'is The glory is " the Shechinah" which uttered the voice (utto).
16 O utds fiov, 6 dvaTnfjTos pov, n, A, C, K, L. The variations from the Oospel narrative are in
favour of the genuineness of the Epistle. " In whom," Jit. " unto whom."
17 The sentence is unfinished in the original (Anakoluthon) .
is The inference from this expression, a- showiug a post-Apostolic date, is not unreasonable,
but the epithet may be fairly explained by Jewish conceptions (Ex. iii. 5 ; Josh. v. 15).
19 Ver. 19, BeBaiorepov. Why " more sure ? " Becuusa wider in its range, and more varied,
and coming from many, and bringing a more intense personal conviction than the testimony to
a single tact. The reference to prophecy is prominent in both Epistles (1 Pet. i. 11, seg.).
Perhaps, too, we may trace the early tendency to underrate the force of individual visions,
which we find existing in St. Paul's day (see Life of St. Paul, i. 193), and which is so strongly
nuirked in the Clementines (Horn. xvii. 13). The " prophetic word " may surely include New
Testament as well as Old Testament propheoies (Aots xxi. 10, 1 Cor. xii. 10,1 Thess. v. 20;
1 Tim. i. 18).
20 Jos. Antt. xi. 6, § 12, ols TrooJcreTe tta\ii>s uij Trpoo-e'xovTes.
21 avXPVPV.
22 The meaning seems to be that the lamp of prophecy will become needless-in the full noon
day blaze of perfect conviction.

SECOND EPISTLE OP ST. PETER. 119
private interpretation.1 For prophecy was never borne along by will of man,
but being borne along by the Holy Spirit, men spoke from God (i. 12—21).
But there rose false prophets also among the people, as also among you
shall be false teachers, of a kind2 who shall secretly introduce factions of
perdition,3 denying even the master that bought them,4 bringing upon themselves
swift perdition. And many shall follow in the track5 of their wantonness,6 on
whose account the way of the truth shall be railed at.7 And in covetousness,
with fictitious speeches, shall they make trade of you, for whom, since long
ago, their doom idleth not, and their destruction drowseth not.b For if God
spared not angels who sinned,9 but, hurling them to Tartarus,10 committed them
to dens11 of darkness, as reserved for judgment— and spared not the ancient world,
but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness,12 with seven others, bringing a
sudden flood on the world of the impious ; and calcining the cities of Sodom
and Gomorrha, condemned them with overthrow, having made them <x warning
for those who should hereafter be impious ; and righteous Lot, utterly distressed
by the wanton life of these offenders,13 He rescued — for by sight and hearing
the righteous man, dwelling among them day after day, was torturing his
righteous soul with their lawless deeds — the Lord knoweth hoyv to rescue the
pious from trial, but to reserve the unrighteous, under punishment, for the
day of judgment ; and especially those who walk after the flesh in the lust of
pollution, and despise dominion. Daring, self-willed, they tremble not when
they rail at glories,14 in cases wherein angels, greater though they are in strength
and might,15 do not bring against them16 before the Lord a, railing judgment.
1 Of the many possible explanati' ns of these wor 's, I accept that which makes them mean
" that the prophets did not speak by spontaneous knowledge, and spoke more than they could
themselves ii.ter(.rer," as where Philo sa.js, "the prophet utters nothing of Lis own." If his
utterance is not his own, his mterpret'ition mav also well be inadequate. The remark then re
sembles l Pet. i. 10 — 12. The yiverat would then mean that history proves the truth of this
remark. 'EirtAu'tny onl occurs in Aqnila's vesion of Gen. si. 8, and eh-iXvu means " I explain"
in Mark iv. 34-. The v> rb en-iAiiw occurs in Gen. xl. 8, xli. 12, and the explanation of the thought
must be looked for in Wen. xli. 15, 16 (comp. JVr. xxiii. 26). [Since writing this note I see that
Dr. Al'bott points out that several words are here borrowed from the passage in Philo, Quis JRer.
IHv. Haer., p. 52, viz. : 0eot/>opr)Tos, <f>(a<r<f>6pos, tSios, avareAXei,. This seems to be decisive as to the
meaning.] 3 oi-rti/es The transition from the true to the false prophets, and so to .existing false
teachers, is very natural.
3 cupeo-€i9. The meaning " heresies " is lat*-r (cE 1 Cor. xi. 19, Gal. v. 20, Tit. iii. 10).
* Peter^s mere momentary " denial" at a moment of strong temptation differs wholly from
this persistent negation and apostasy. *A.yop6.cra.vTo. — notice the clear expression of Christ's
death for ali. In the participial constructions of this chapter (which I have faithfully repro
duced) the sentences sometimes have an unfinished look.
5 i£a.Ko\ov9ri<TOV<riv. 6 Leg. atreAyeuus, N> A, B, C, K, L. " Lecheries," Wiclyf.
7 This furnishes us with an imporiant listori^al hint. The stranee and odious calumnies
which were rife from the earliest days against the Christians, originated in the antinomian
heresies of Gnostic and other sects in which perverted doctrine led to impure life. S-^e Jer.
Adv. Lucif., p. 53 ; Epiphan, Haer, 23.
8 t6 xpiju-a, the sentence of judgment; KpiVcs, the act. Nuaratjei, lit. "nods," " dtorrriitat"
(Matt, xxv 5). 9 Gen. vi. 2.
10 Ver. 4, Taprapwo-as ; a strange classic ha-pax legomenon. Tartarus is the Hebrew Gehinnom.
St. Peter dots not follow St. Jude in specifying the traditional sin of the angels ; still his
allusion is to Jewish tradition. Cf. Book of Enoch v. 16; x. 6 ; xiv. 4, etc. On such allusions
see Life of St. Paul, i. 58, ii. 48 — 51, etc.
11 Leg'., <reipois, a, A, B, C. Here again St. Peter substitutes a word of similar sound for
cretpats, "chains," which may have been a variation of memory for Jude's Setr^ots. There is,
however, an epic darmg in the expression " chains of darkness ; " "fetter of darkness " is found in
"Wisd. xvii 17.
12 That Noah was a preacher was a natural Jewish inference ( Joe. Antt. i. 3, § 1).
13 a9e<T{±(ov, implying that they violated the most sacred and natural laws.
14 Glories, that is, at " glorious beings."
is •* Fools rush in, where angels fear to trea^l."
16 This can only mean " against glories " — i.e., against angelic dignities even after their fall —
and the verse would be perfectly inexplicable without the a'lusion of Jude to Michael refraining
to rail at Satan. He aud the fallen angels were S6£ai once, just as they may still be called
" angels." Compare Milton's —
" Less than Archangel ruined, or excess
Of glory obscured."

120 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
But these as mere irrational animals, horn for capture and destruction,1 railing
in things which they know not, in their own corruption shall he utterly destroyed,2
suffering wrong as the hire of doing wrong.3 Thinking that luxuriousness in
the day4 is pleasure, spots6 and blemishes, luxuriating in their own deceits6
while they banquet with you, having eyes full of an adulteress,7 and insatiable
of sin, luring with a bait unstable souls, having a heart trained in covetousness,
children of malediction ! Abandoning the straight path they wandered, following
in the path of .Balaam the son of Bosor,8 who loved the hire of wrongdoing,
but received a rebuke for his own transgression: a dumb beast of burden9
uttering a human voice checked the prophet's infatuation. These are waterless
spring's, and mists driven by a hurricane, for whom the mirk of darkness
has been reserved. For uttering inflations of foolishness they lure with a bait10
in the lusts of the flesh, in wantonness, those who were scarcely11 escaping them
who spend their lives in error, — promising them liberty, though being themselves
slaves of, corruption.12 For by whatever any one has been worsted, by that
has he also been enslaved. For if, after having escaped the pollutions of the
world by full knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are
worsted by being again entangled in them, the last things have become worse
to them than the first.13 For it had been better for them not to have fully known
the way of righteousness, than, after fully knowing it, to swerve aside from
tho holy commandment delivered to them. But there has happened to them
the fact of the true proverb, " The dog turning to his own vomit," and " A
sow that had bathed to its wallowing-place of mire " 14 (ii. 1 — 22).
This is now, beloved, the Second Epistle I am writing to you, in both of
which I am trying to arouse your sincere understanding, by reminding you, —
that you may remember the words spoken before by the holy prophets, and
the command of the Lord and Saviour, through your Apostles;15 recognising
this first, that there shall come at the end of the days scoffers in their scoffing,
walking according to their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of
His coming p for from the day when the fathers fell asleep 16 all things are
/
Unwilling to adduce Jude's reference to the dispute between Michael and Satan about the body
of Moses, which was only recorded by apocrvphal writings from Jewish tradition, the writer
makes the reference general, so that the reader who was familiar with the Old Testament
would rather he reminded of Zech. iii. 1, 2.
1 A sacrificial calf ran to Rabbi Judah and wept in his bosom. But "go," lie said, "yon
were created for this purpose " [Babha Metsia, /. 85 a).
3 The acceptance of Jude's words, and their application in a totally different sense, is very
remarkable. St. Jude's language reads like a keen epigram ; on the other hand, we lave in St.
Peter a remarkable play on the two senses of the word tpOopd., viz., "corruption" and
" destruction " (v. supra, p. 112).
3 Leg. aSiKovuevot, n, B. The common teat has jco/AtoCjaei/ot, "about to carry off," A, C.
* I. e., for life's brief day. " Voluptateni aestimantes uiei delicias" (Vulg.).
5 o-tuAoi, where Jude has o-jri\a&es, " sunken reefs."
6 aTraTats, n, A, C, etc. , for Jude's ayairats, " love feasts" (cf. 2 Thess. ii. 10).
7 fxoixaAi'Sos (cf. Rev. ii. 20). But if the reading be right (for p.ot\aKias, N, A) the allusion is
uncertain. 8 St. Paul (1 Cor. x. 8), St. Peter, and St. John (Rev. ii 14, &c.) alike allude to this false
prophet as a t.\pe of false teachers in their own day. Bosor, perhaps a Galileau corruption of
Beor (lisa), with an intentional assonance (in the Jewish fashion, as in Jerubbesheth, Kir Eeres, '
i';i:i I Zebub, &c, see Life of Christ, i 456) to Bashav, " flesh."
» Tbe New Test.iment writers, like tlie LXX., seem to avoid oi<os (ass), which led to Gentile
jeers, and use the more euphemistic iiTrofiJyioi'.
10 SeKad^oviXiv, as in ver. 14 ; only found in Ja. i. 14.
u Leg. bMyois, A, B, &c.
" John viii. 34 ; Rom. viii. 21 ; 1 Pet. ii. 16 j Gal. v. 13 (Iren. Haer. xxi. S). An old way with
false teachers (Gen. iii 5). Their argument was, that the Spirit was so supremo and ethereal
that indulgence of the flesh could not harm it.
" Matt. xii. 45.
" Ver 22, to t% impoifuas, cf. to ttjs ctvktjs, Matt. xxi. 21, The language differs so much from
Prov. xxvi, 11 that probably this is merely a current proverb (Im Kv\i.(Tp.a, n. A, K, L).
it " Your Apostles "—i. e. , those who first preached to you. Cf 1 Cor. ix. 2.
" Cf. Mal. ii. 17 ; Ps. xiii. 4. The exact reference to " the fathers " is difficult to determine.
It may mean those well known Christian teaohers and others (1 Thess. iv. 15) who, like St,

SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. , 121
continuing as they now are, from the beginning of creation. For this they
wilfully choose to forget — that there were heavens from of old, and earth
composed out of water, and by means of water.1 by the word of God, by
means of which (water) 2 the then world being overwhelmed with water perished ;
but the present heavens and earth by this same word have been stored with
treasuries of fire,3 being reserved for the day of judgment and destruction of
impious men. But do not ye forget this one thing, beloved, that one day with
the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.4 The Lord
is not tardy concerning His promise as some reckon tardiness, but is long-
suffering towards you, not wishing that any should perish, hut that all should
come to repentance.6 But the day of the Lord shall be upon u's as a, thief, in
which the heavens shall pass hurtlingly away,8 and orbs of Heaven, being
scorched,7 shall he dissolved, and the earth and the works in it shall be burnt
up.8 Since, then, all these things are in course of being dissolved,9 what kind
of men ought ye to be in holy ways of life and piety, awaiting and hastening10
the coming of the day of the Lord, because of which the heavens being set
on fire shall be dissolved, and the scorching orbs of Heaven shall be melted ? n
But, according to His promise, we expect new heavens and a new earth, in
which righteousness dwelleth.12 Wherefore, beloved, since ye expect these
things, give diligence, to be found spotless and blameless for Him in peace,
and account as salvation the long-suffering of our Lord, even as also our beloved
brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him,13 wrote to you,14 as also
in all his epistles, speaking in them about these things ; — in which are some
difficulties which the unlearned and unstable distort, as also the rest of the
Scriptures,15 to their own perdition. Ye, then, beloved, knowing these things
James the elder, had died between a.d. 33 and a.d. 68. But it may naturally include the
patriarchs and prophets to whom the promise came (Rom. ix. 5). St. Peter refutes this taunt
about " the status quo of the world " (a) by the deluge of water,' which shall be followed by the
delude of fire (5 — 7): and (fi) by the difference between God's conception of time and man's
(8-10). 1 The allusion seems to be to water, as the i»Atj, the matter out of which the world was made
(as in Clem. Horn. xi. 24) — the material cause of the world, as Thales also thought; — and to
water as also the instrumental cause (SiaTeJuKos) of the world, Gen. i. 6. Cf. Pss. xxiv. 2 ;
cxxxvi. 6.
2 Gen. vii. 11.
3 t it., "treasured with fir<V' alluding to the subterranean fires. But it may be (t treasured
up (i.e., reserved) for fire." "We find the same conception in the Book of Enoch i. 6. See Clem
Alex. Strom, v. 9 ; Hippol. Ref. Haer. is:. 28.
4 " The dial oi the ages — the aeoniologiam — differs from the horologe of time." — Bengel, Ps.
xc. 4.
5 His seeming delay is not delay, but mercy and forbearance (Aufgeschoben nicht aufgelwberi) t
*' Pa'iens quia aeternus" (Aug.). See Hahbat. ii. 3; Ezek. xviii. 23, xxxiii. 11 j Ecclus. xxxv.
22; Heb. x. 37; 1 Tim. ii. 4.
6 pot^Vjfidv, one of the iEschylean expressions (re^paiaas, TapTapujcras, uirepoyKa, AaiAa^, <Jo<£gs,
o-eipos, &c. ) of this Epistle.
7 crroixeia. may m* an the heavenly "bodies, as in Justin Martyr, A-pol. ii. 5 (Matt. xxiv. 29).
Kavo-oOp-cu is first found in Dioscorides, in the sense of feverish.
8 «, B, Kread evpeflyjo-eTcu, " shall "be found." This makes very dubious sense, unless the
clause be interrogative. It had occurred to me, before I saw it remarked elsewhere, that it
mi^ht be some accidental conf tision with the Latin urentur.
9 This is the ¦praesena futurascens, the grand prophetic present which assumes the progressive
realisation of the fixed decree.
10 Just as the Jews believed that by faithful obedience to the Law they would speed the
Advent of the Messiah (see Life of St. Paul, i. 65, 66),
11 Is: xxxiv. 4; Mic. i. 4. i2 Is. xxxd 16 ; lxv. 25. 13 1 Cor. iii. 10.
14 Even if it is assumed that this can only refer to letters addressed to Asia, we can still
refer it to Eom. ii. 4, ix. 2 ("not knowing that the goodness of God is leading thee to repent
ance "), for it is nearly certain that the Epistle to the Eomans was address d, am^ng other
Churches, to Ephesus (see Life of St. Paul, ii. 170). The allusion to this Epistle would at once
account for the lemark that some things in St. Paul's writings were " hard to be understood."
The doctrines of Freedom and Justification by Faith were peculiarly liable to ignorant and
dangerous perversion, as St. Paul himself was well aware (Eom. iii. 8, v. 20; 1 Cor. vi. 12 — 20;
Gal. v. 13—26). Others explaia thereference by 1 Thess. iv. 13 — v. 11, &c.
15 The writings of Christian Prophets, Apostles, and Evangelists would soon acquire a posi
tion un the same level as the Old Testament Scriptures. See Eev. xxii. 18, 19.

122 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
beforehand, be on your guard, lest, being carried away by the error of the
lawless, ye fall away from your own steadfastness. But increase in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to Whom be the glory
both now and unto the day of eternity.1
So— abruptly— the Epistle ends. There are no salutations, there
is no benediction. The absence of the former is easily understood,
because the letter was obviously intended to be (Ecumenical in character ;
and perhaps this, or the indignant agitation which was shaking the
heart of the writer, or even that share in the composition which I have
supposed to belong to another, may also account for the absence of
the blessing. No conclusion, it seems to me, can be drawn from this
circumstance, either for or against the genuineness of the letter. But
whether it be genuine or not, or genuine only in a partial and secondary
sense, no one can read it without a recognition of its power, or without
a conviction that the "grace of superinteudency " was at work when,
in the fourth century, it was finally admitted into the Canon of the
Church.2 We do not possess in it a letter of the intense and touching
personal interest which attaches to the Second Epistle of St. Paul
to Timothy, because it gives us far less insight into the writer's personal
feelings, and because its absolute genuineness is not above suspicion;
but if we do not hear in this Epistle, but rather in its predecessor,
the last words of the great Apostle of the Circumcision, there is at least
a reasonable probability that we hear the echo of some of his latest
thoughts.

CHAPTER XI.
THE EPISTLE OP ST. JUDE.

'Iouoas eypatyev £ttio-to\4iv d\iy6<rrixov p-tv -neirK'npoip.ivnv 5^ tt}s obpavtov xaptros
tyfmp.il/av X6yav. — Origen (in Matt. xiii. 55).
The authenticity of the brief but interesting Epistle of St. Jude is
more strongly supported by external evidence than that of St. Peter.
This circumstance alone tends to establish its priority of origin. It was
indeed ranked by Eusebius, as were five of the Catholic Epistles, among
the "disputed" books; but it was accepted by Tertullian,3 Clemens
of Alexandria, Origen, Jerome, and Ephraem Syrus, and though
absent from the Peshito, is recognised in the Muratorian Canon. This
acceptance is the more remarkable, because in the brief space of twenty-
five verses it presents so many peculiarities. It startled many Christian
i "All Eternity in one Day." (Estiua.)
2 I entirely disagree with Dr. Abbott in his very slighting estimate of the value of
the Epistle. " ln omnibus Epistolse partibus," says Calvin, spiritus Christi majestas
se exserit. "
3 He is the earliest who mentions it. De habit, mul. 3.

STORY OF THE DESPOSYNI. 123
readers even in the first three centuries alike by its allusions to strange
Jewish legends unauthorised by Scripture, and by its quotation from
a book which was acknowledged to be apocryphal. On these grounds,
as St. Jerome tells us, most men in his day rejected it, and the triumph
of its canonicity over such prejudices can only have been due to the
strong reasons for its acceptance. One of those reasons is the absence
of any motive for a pseudonym so little known as that of Jude, and
one which even in the early Church furnished no certainty as to the
identity of the writer. Apocryphal literature was busy from the first
with the name of St. Peter j1 and any one who wished to secure
recognition for his own opinions by introducing them tinder the shadow
of a mighty name, would also have had every temptation to give them
the weight of authority which they would derive from the name of
James, the Bishop of Jerusalem. But there existed no such reason
for adopting the name of Jude. The Jude who was believed to have
written this Epistle was not one of the Twelve Apostles. He is never
expressly spoken of as an Apostle, even in the wider sense. His name
is barely mentioned in the New Testament, and only mentioned at
all in connexion with the unbelief which he shared with his three
brothers during the years of our Lord's ministry, previous to that
conversion which, as we may conclude from various indications, was
effected by the overwhelming evidence for the resurrection of Jesus
from the dead. So little, indeed, is known of St. Jude, that even
tradition, which delights to furnish particulars respecting the Apostles
and leaders of the early Church, is silent about him. Apart from a few
uncertain inferences, no Christian legend, no pious martyrologist, no
learned enquirer, can tell us one single particular about the life, the
labours, or the death of Jude. The only story in which his name
occurs is the one told us by Hegesippus, and preserved in Eusebius.
He says that Domitian's jealousy was excited by rumours that some
of the earthly family of Him Whom Christians adored as the King
of the Universe were still living in Palestine. Prophecies about the
advent of the great kingdom which was to take its rise in the East had
been prevalent in the days of Nero, and were not entirely set at rest by
the elevation of Vespasian to the Empire from the command of the
army in Syria. Timid from the sense of his own manifold crimes,
Domitian determined to enquire into the matter, and ordered some
of these "relations of the Lord," or Desposyni, as they were called,
to be brought into his presence. They were grandsons of the " Jude
the brother of James " who wrote this Epistle, and when Domitian
ascertained that they only possessed a few acres of land, and saw
that they filled no higher rank than that of peasants of Palestine,
whose hands were horny with daily labour, he dismissed them to their
1 Serapion— Ta 8e bvopLaTl aVT&v *pev8eTrCypa$a . . . TrapaiTiapeda (Routh, Mel. SaCT. i.
470). Euseb. H. E. iii. 3. We know that there was a " Gospel " and an "Apocalypse"
of Peter.

124 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
homes unharmed and with disdain1 — content with their assurance that
the kingdom of Christ was neither earthly nor of this world, but
heavenly and angelical.3
I have here assumed that the author of this short Epistle was
the person whom he describes himself as being — "Jude the brother
of James." That Jude was not one of the Twelve may be regarded
as certain. He does not profess to be an Apostle, and speaks of
the Apostles as of a class to which he did not belong.3 The only
Apostle besides Judas Iscariot who bore that very common name was
Judas (the son) of James,'1 surnamed Lebbteus or Thaddseus. But early
tradition says that this Apostle laboured in Syria, and died at Edessa ;
and if he had been the author, it would be impossible to account for
that non-acceptance of his Epistle in the early Syrian Church which
is proved by its absence from the Peshito Version.5 But, besides this,
when the writer calls himself " the brother of James,'' it is unanimously
admitted that he can only mean one James — the James who, after
the martyrdom of the son of Zebedee, was universally known through
out the Church — that " pillar " of the Church of Jerusalem who was
the undisputed head of Judaic Christianity, and was distinguished
as "the brother of the Lord."
I shall not here enter into the disputed question as to who were
" the brethren of the Lord," at which I must again glance in speaking
of the Epistle of St. James.
All that need here be said is, that Jude, though not an Apostle, was
a brother of James, and therefore a brother — or, at least, a brother in
common parlance — of the Lord. If it be asked why he does not give
himself this title, the simplest answer is that neither does James.
Those who had a right to it would be the least likely to employ it.
None were so well aware as they that from the moment when Christ
began His ministry His whole relations to them and to His Mother had
been essentially altered. On more than one occasion, when they aspired
to control His actions and direct His movements, He had tried to make
clear to them that they must henceforth recognise the Divine mystery
of His Being. He had even classed them as children of the world,
whom it was therefore impossible for the world to hate as it hated
Him.6 And if this was the case during His earthly ministry, how
infinitely more was it the case after His Resurrection, and when He had
1 Hegesipp. ap. Euseb. iii. 20. They told Domitian that they only had between them
about seven acres of land, which they farmed themselves.
2 See Kouth, Mel. Sacr. 196, and Notes ; Fleury, Hist. Eccl. ii. § 52.
a Ver. 17, 18. -i Luke vi. 10.
5 The "Jude of James," who was one of the Twelve (Luke vi. 16; Actsi. 13), is
called a son. of James in Tyndale's, (Jranmer's, and Luther's versions, and in the text
of the Revised Version.
» John ii. 4 (I have shown, however, in the Life of Christ, i. 165, that neither these
words, nor the address " Woman ! " involved any of the harshness or want of the most
delicate reveronce which the English translation seems to imply), vii. 7 ; Luke xi. 28 ;
Matt. xii. 50.

RELATIONSHIP OF ST. JUDE. 125
ascended_ to the right hand of the Majesty on High ! It was natural
that the' early Church should speak of those holy men — who, if they
were not the sons of the Mother of Jesus, had at any rate been trained
under the same roof with Him — as " the brethren of the Lord." It
was still more natural that, knowing Him at last, and believing on Him
after He had risen from the dead, they should themselves shrink from
the adoption of a title which pointed to a partial and earthly relation
ship, of which they could not but feel themselves transcendently
unworthy. As for the later term adelphotheos, or "brother of God,"
which arose to describe this relationship,1 I believe that St. James and
St. Jude would have repudiated it with indignant energy, as arising
from a reckless confusion of earthly relationships and Divine mysteries.
They could not prevent their fellow-Christians from speaking of them as
the " brethren of the Lord," but scarcely even for purposes of identifi
cation would they have been willing to use such a title of themselves.
Like St. Paul, they must have felt that, though they had known " Christ
after the flesh," yet henceforth they knew Him " after the flesh " no
more. To have been, in any sense, brothers of Jesus of Nazareth in
the humiliation of His earthly life gave them no right to speak of them
selves authoritatively as brothers of the Eternal Son of God now sitting
on the right hand of the Majesty on High.
On the other hand, nothing was more natural than that Jude should
describe himself as " the brother of James." His object was to tell
his readers who he was, and how they might distinguish him from
thousands of other Jews who bore his name. He was personally
unknown to all but a few. If he called himself "the brother of
James," his identity would be recognised by all. He would have some
influence, as a brother of the great " Bishop " of Jerusalem, whose fame
had spread through every community of the Christian Church, and
whose authority, as a sort of Christian High-Priest, was recognised by
the myriads of Jewish Christians2 who still went up to the Holy City at
the great yearly feasts.
Further than this, we only know the single fact that St. Jude was
married. This we learn from the curious anecdote of Hegesippus which
I have quoted on a previous page. It gives us an interesting glimpse of
the simplicity and poverty which continued to the last to be the earthly
lot of those who were connected with the Holy Family of Nazareth ;
and it is the more interesting because it is the last glimpse of them
afforded to us by either secular or sacred history. Hegesippus says they
lived till the days of Trajan, and perhaps implies that the race of
the Desposyni ended with them.3 This anecdote also accords with
1 It is found in the superscription of the cursive Manuscript /, "AXAos a$ek$66eos rdS
'Iov'Sas eva-eBkeo-iv, which also has ypap.p.a jrpbs 'EBpaiovs IaKwjSov aSsKtboOeov as a superscription
to the Epistle of St. James.
2 Acts xxi. 20 : iro(Tai p.vpia8cs . . , 'lovoattov rdv TreirioTeVKOTtov,
3 Euseb. H. E. iii. 20.

123 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the incidental allusion of St. Paul, which, in contradiction to Ebionite
traditions, speaks of the brethren of the Lord as being not only married
men, but even as travelling about with their wives or Christian sisters
on various missions.1
In the latter allusion we can see the possibility of circumstances
which may have called forth the Epistle of St. Jude. If he travelled
as one of the early preachers of Christianity, many years could not
have elapsed before he learnt by painful experience that it was possible
to accept the profession of Christianity without any participation in the
holiness which it required. The imaginative sentiment which dwells
with rapture on the supposed perfection of the early Christian Church is
one which is cherished in defiance of history and Scripture. Hegesippus2
says that till the days when Symeon, son of Clopas,3 was Bishop of
Jerusalem, the Church was a virgin, and that then " Thebuthis " began
to introduce heresies because he had not been elected bishop. He is,
however, probably taking a Hebrew word for a person. True Christians
did indeed preach a standard of ideal holiness, and approached that
standard in lives more noble and more innocent than any which the
world had ever seen. But from the first the drag-net of the Church
contained fish both bad and good, and from the first the tares sown
by the enemy began to spring up thickly among the growing wheat.
Many of the converts had barely extricated themselves from the vices
of the heathendom by which they were surrounded.4 Some openly
relaxed into pagan practices.5 Others, as time went on, betrayed a
Satanic ingenuity in making their spiritual freedom a cloak for their
carnal lusts.8 The Epistle to the Corinthians exhibits to us a Church
of which the discipline was inchoate and the morality deplorable. The
Epistle to the Colossians proves that there had been an influx of
gnosticising heresies, which illustrated the fatal affinity of religious
error to moral degradation. The Pastoral Epistles show that these
germs of sinful practice and erroneous theory had blossomed with fatal
rapidity. In the Epistle of St. Jude and the Second Epistle of St.
Peter we see perhaps still later developments of these tendencies. The
former denounces the atrocities of conduct, the latter the audacities of
opinion, which displayed themselves in men who, in the still tentative
organisation of Christian discipline, and before the Church had perfected
the bulwark of her episcopate, were by the outer world identified with
Christians, and had crept in unawares among the faithful. If Jude in
1 1 Cor. ix. 5. "A sister, a wife," appears to mean, as it is rendered in the Revised
Version, " a wife who is a believer."
2 A p. Eust-b. H. E. iv. 22. For "Thebuthis," Ruflnus has " Theobutes quidam;"
see Routh, i. 237. It may be connected with n»pi and may mean " filth."
3 Rufinus has Oleopas.
4 This is even more apparent in the original of such passages as 1 Thess. iv. 6 and
Eph. v. 3, than it is in the English version, where it is happily obscured by the rendering
of TrXeovef in by " covetousness."
« See 1 Cor. v. 1-11 ; 2 Cor. xii. 21.
6 1 Pet. il 16 ; Gal v. 13.

ST. JUDE AND ST. PAUL. 127
one of his mission journeys came into personal contact with any of these
deadly hypocrites, and was brought face to face with their extending
influence, we can well imagine that one who had lived from childhood
in a home of spotless purity, would have sat down in a flame of zeal to
wrap such infamous offenders in the whirlwind of his wrath. The
anger of a pure-hearted Jew might sometimes burn against the heathen
who knew not God ; but here were Christians — Christians who claimed
yet loftier privileges than Israel of old, Christians who had received a
grander law and a diviner spirit, Christians who had been admitted into
a holier sanctuary only to become guilty of a more heinous sacrilege !
They were doing the deeds of darkness while they stood in the noon
day. They claimed higher prerogatives than the Jew, yet they lived in
viler practices than the Gentile. The fulness of their knowledge aggra
vated the perversity of their ignorance; the depth of the abyss into
which they had sunk was only measurable by the glory of the height
from which they had fallen. " Oh, deeper dole,
That so august a spirit, shrined so fair,
Should, from the starry session of its peers,
Decline to quench so bright a brilliancy
In Hell's sick spume ! Ah me, the deeper dole ! "
Filled with the burning indignation which was inspired alike by the Law
and by the Gospel, Jude determined to warn the infant Church against
their perilous influence. It was his object to expose and to denounce
them ; — and he did not spare.
But though the intention of the Epistle, as he himself tells us, is thus
distinct, we know nothing of the date at which it was written, or of the
place from which it was sent, or of the Churches to which it was ad
dressed. That it was written in Palestine, and addressed to Corinth or
to Alexandria, are conjectures, which may be correct, but which rest on no
adequate foundation. St. Jude merely addresses his warnings to faithful
Christians. The notion that his letter was dictated by animosity towards
St. Paul or his followers, may be mentioned as a curiosity of criticism. It
is obvious that bad men, whether Paulinists or Judaists, might fall into
grievous aberrations. Truths can always be distorted by headstrong
partisans. There may have been nominal Paulinists — indeed, we know
that there were2 — who wrested St. Paul's language into the wicked in
ferences that we may sin in order that grace may abound ; and that,
since we are justified by faith, wdrks are superfluous ; or even, as we are
told in modern revivalist hymns, that " works are deadly." But that
i Renan, who accepts many of the theories of the Tubingen School in the fullest
development which they have received at the hands of Schwegler and Volkmar, sees
in the Epistle of St. Jude one of those venomous compositions, full of deadly hatred,
which he supposes to have been circulated through the Judseo-Christian communities by
emissaries of St. James, to counteract the growing influence of St. Paul ! See these views
ably criticised by Ritschl, Studien u. Krit. 1861, p. 103 ff.
2 Rom. iii. 8; 2 Pet. iii. 15.

128 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Judaists were capable of heresies no less disastrous is proved by the way
in which they and their adherents are addressed in St. Paul's Epistles.1
There is no reason for asserting that the one class are here denounced
more than the other ; and how little St. Jude was likely to think of St.
Paul with bitter feelings is happily, though most incidentally, revealed,
not only by the analogous tone of St. Paul's own warnings, but also by
the impress of the Epistle to the Romans on the form which St. Jude
adopts for his final benediction. We reject the theories of M. Renan
and the more extravagant followers of the school of Tubingen, not from
any a priori views — for we know that in that epoch., as in all others,
theological differences were wide and deep, and theological controversies,
even between men of the Apostolic age, could be bitter and impassioned2
— but we reject them because they rest on no foundation, and because
they are contradicted by facts of which all can judge.
For purposes of exact comparison with the cognate paragraphs of the
Second Epistle of St. Peter, it may be well to translate this letter also in
a style more literal than that of our English Version, and then to consider
the main problems which it presents. It is only by the aid of a literal
translation that the English reader can really estimate the wide diver
gence of St. Jude's style from the ordinary style of the New Testament
writers. In order that all may take in at a glance the affinity between
this Epistle and the Second of St. Peter, I have here printed in italics those
identical or closely analogous words and phrases which occur in both.
Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ, and a brother of James, to them that are beloved in
God the Father and have been kept for Jesus Christ,3 being elect, mercy to you, and
peace, and love be multiplied*
Beloved,5 in giving all diligence to write to you respecting our common salvation,6
I felt a necessity to write at once7 exhorting you to fight in protection"1 of tho faith
once for all delivered to the saints. For there slank in9 certain persons10 who have
long ago been fore-described (in prophecy) as doomed for this sentence, impious men,
changing the grace of our God into wantonness,11 and denying the only Master, and
our Lord Jesus Christ.12 But I desire to remind you, though ye know all things, once
for all,13 that Jesus,14 after saving a people from the land of Egypt, secondly destroyed
such as believed not.16
1 Gal. i. 9, v. 12, vi 12 ; 2 Cor. xi. 20, ftc. ~~
3 Acts xv. 2, ttoW}} crv6jT7/(ny . 3 See Jolin xvii. 11. * Compare Eph. vi. 23.
5 Only as an opening address in 3 John 2.
6 Cf. ttrdnpov ttIvtlv, 2 Pet. i. 1. Even where tbe words of the two writers are not identical
there is often a close analogy between the meanings which the words express.
' ypa^iai. The word previously used is ypifyeiv. Tbe sudden change of tense certainly seems
to imply that St. Jude ha.d intended to write a move general letter, "but felt compelled by the
present necessity to write this immediate warning. ' 8 knayiavi^etrdat., super-ccrtare.
B TTapeiakSvo-av ; cf . 2 Pet. ii. 1, wapeio-d^ovmv. Gal. ii. 4 ; Trapeio-OLKTOVS , TrapeicrfiXdov.
10 ri^es and dvQpuwoi are both depreciative (Gal. ii. 12).
" H ow prevalent was tills dangerous possibility we see from 1 Cor. vi. 9 — 18 : 1 John iii.
7—10 j 2 Pet. ii.
12 Or, " our onlv Lord and Master." «, A, B, C omit 6c&v; but probably (as in Luke ii. 29;
Aots iv. 24 ; Rev. vi 10, &c.) Seo-ttott)! refers to God, though it is used of Christ in 2 Pet. ii. 1.
» I.e., though ye baveonce for all received all necessary instruction in matters pertaining to
salvation. 14 "Jesus" is the more difficult, and therefore more pro'rable, reading of A, B. It is
explained by 1 Cor. x. 4, and the identification of the Messiah with the "Angel of the lord"
(Ex. xiv. 19, xxiii. 20, &c), and with the Pillar of Fire in Philo.
is .< whose carcases fell in the wilderness " (Heb. iii. 17).

EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE. 129
And angels, those who kept not their own dignity,1 hut abandoned their proper
habitation, he hath kepi2 for the judgment of the great day in. everlasting chains under
mirky gloom.3 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities around them, giving
themselves to fornication in like manner with these,4 and going after strange flesh,
are set forth as an example, undergoing a penalty of eternal fire.5 Yet, notwith
standing, in like manner, these persons also in their dreamings defile the flesh,6 and
set lordship at naught, and rail at glories.' But Michael the archangel,8 when con
tending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses,9 dared not 10 bring against
him a railing judgment,11 but said, * ' The Lord rebuke thee ! " 12 But these rail about
such matters as they know not}z and such things as they understand14 naturally, like
the irrational animals, in these they corrupt themselves.15 Woe to them, because they
1 Vulg., Tprincipatum.
2 TerqpnKev I cannot see any intentional play of words here, though, it is in contrast with
the tous /ni) TTjpTjarowTa?.
3 <£o^os is the word used by Hesiod of the imprisoned Titans (Theogon. 729). "AiStos is
stronger than aidivlos in the conception of permanence, yet, as we see here, it is used for a
limited period, viz., els KpCcrtv fx. tj/j.., and in Enoch, to which Jude is referring, we find " Bind
them for seventy generations under the earth until the day of judgment.'* (See Enoch xii 4>t
xiv. 5, xv. 3, xxi. 10, &c). I do not think it needful to enter into curious enquiries how these
fallen angels, if kept in chains, dwell in the air and go about tempting men (Eph. ii. 2, vi. 12),
or whether the tempting spirits ore a different class from the fallen angels. See Excursus on
the Book of Enoch and Rabbinic allusions of St Jude.
* Clearly " with these angels " To refer it to Sodom and Gomorrha as though it were " Even
as Admah and Zeboim like Sodom and Gomorrha," or "Even as Sodom aud Gomorrha, in like
manner with these ungodly Christians," is to introduce impossible explanations in order to get
rid of St. Jude's plain intimation that he, like the Jews of his day, attributed the fall of the
angels to sensuality.
5 See 3 Mace. ii. 5, where the words are closely parallel ; so, too, virsxetv, unknown to the
N. T., is found in 2 Mace. iv. 48. The fire of retributiun which destroyed the Cities of the Plain
burnt but for a day ; but it is called ceonian, or eternal, because the smoking ruin of it remains
(comp. Wisd. x. 7), and because it is the lire of God's retributive wrath which burns eternally
against unrepented sin. " JEonian*' expresses quality, not duration. Libanius uses the same
expression, in the same meaning, of the fire which burnt Troy.
6 See Is. lvi, 10 (LXX.). They are dreamers because they take the substance for the shadow
and the shadow for the substance, and their dreamy speculations are mixed up with immoral
practices. 7 What "glories" are meant is very uncertain. Wiesinyer and Huther explain it of evil
angels, as the context seems to imply. There is no trace of any early sect of heretics (whether
in conduct, as those spoken of by Sc. Jude, or in teaching, as those spoken of by St. Peter) railing
at angels, but rather the reverse (Col. ii. 18). In Enoch vi. 4 we read, " Ye calumniate [God's]
greatness j " and in xli. 1, " The sinners who denied the Lord of glory ; " and in xiv. 2, " Who deny
the Name of the Lord of Spirits ; " and in. i. 8, " Tne splendour of the Godhead shall illuminate
them." But we can hardly imagine that any who blasphemed God would be suffered to remain
even nominal members of the Christian community. Immorality, however flagrant, would not
necessarily exciude them from Churches of which the discipline was lax or weak, as we see not
only from 1 Cor. v. 2, but also from the warnings which St. Paul finds it necessary to utter to
even faithful communities. We see, however, from 1 Cor. xii. 3 that in the wild abuses of the
" Tongues " some even dared to say " Anathema be Jesus ! " See my Life of St, Paul, ii. 56.
8 "Archangel" only in 1 Thess. iv. 16 (Dan. xii. 1, LXX.). Michael— "the merciful, the
patient, the holy Micbael " (Enoch xl. 8) — only in Dan. x. 13 ; Rev. xii. 7. Origen says that the
allusion is taken from an apocryphal book called The Ascension of Moses (De Princ. iii. 2). See
Eampf , Ber Brief Juda. In Targ. Jonath. on Deut. xxxiv. 6he is the guardian of the grave of Moses.
9 Tbe Scriptural account of the death of Moses is very simple, but the Jews had many legends
about it ; especially how he — '* Died of the kisses of the lip^ of God."
The Angel of Death dared not take his life, and so God drew away his soul with a Mss. One
legend was that Satan claimed bis body as " lord of matter " (to? ttjs uAtj? 8<-o-ir6govTi) . (Ecumenius
says he claimed the body because Muses had murdered the Egyptian.
io Why " dared not ? " 'lhe entire reasoning shows tbat the answer is " Because of Satan's
former greatness." It can hardly be because tbe language of stern denunciation should never
be .used, seeing that Jude himself is here using it in the most impassioned form. In the Catena
is a strange story that Satan, seeing Moses at tbe Transfiguration, taunted Michael with the
violation of God's oath that Moses should not enter Canaan.
11 Literally, " dared not brinsr against him a judgment of railing."
12 The very words used by the Angel to the Accuser in Zech. iii. 1 — 3.
13 This phows that the "railing" of these impious men was employed against spiritual or
celestial beings of some kind. We have no materials for entering into further details.
14 The E.V. does not keep up the distinction between otStwrt and eirCaTavrat,
is See on 2 Pet. ii. 12 supra, pp. Ill, 120.
J

130 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
went in the way o/Cain,1 &ndpoured themselves forth in the error of Salaam for hire,
and perished in the gainsaying of Korah.2 These are the sunken reefs* in your
love feasts,4 banqueting with you fearlessly,5 pasturing themselves;6 waterless clouds?
swept hither and thither by winds,8 autumn- withering trees,9 fruitless, twice dead,10
deracinated j11 wild waves of the sea,foaming out their own shames ;12 wandering stars,
for which the mirk of darkness has been reserved for ever. Yea, and with reference
to them13 did Enoch, the seventh from Adam,14 prophesy, saying, " Lo, the Lord
came, among his saintly myriads, to execute judgment against all, and to convict all
the impious about ail the deeds of their impiety which they impiously did, and about
all the hard things which they spake against Him, impious sinners as they are.
These are murmurers, blamers of their destiny,15 walking according to their lusts ; and
their mouth utters inflated things, admiring persons for the sake of advantage.™
But ye, beloved, remember the things spoken before by the Apostles of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that they used to tell you, that, in the last time there shall be scoffers,
walking according to their own lusts of impieties.17 These are the separatists/8 ego
tistical,19 not having the spirit. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most
1 The allusion to Cain is obviously to the Cain of Jewish hagadoth, for St. Jude can hardly be
charging these teachers with murder (see Excursus).
2 " Gainsaying," Heb., Meribah ; Numb. xx. 13, " the water of strife" (LXX, avrtXoytas).
8 (TTrtAaSes, at vifiaKoi ire'rpat, Etym. Magn. In 2 Pet. ii. 13, trirlKot, "spots."
* Agapae are mentioned under that name in this place alone.
5 Perhaps avveva}xovu.evot. refers to some such insolent selfish greed as that of the rich Corin
thians (1 Cor. xi. 21) ; a<p6£o)s, not fearing either the rebuke of Presbyters {who are themselves
afraid in poor communities to do their duty) or the consequences which they may bring upon
themselves (1 Cor. xi. 30).
* Ez. xxxiv. 1, " Woe to the shepherds that feed themselves."
7 Prov. xxv. 14 j " carried about by every wind of doctrine," Eph. iv. 14.
8 Here St. Peter's "being driven by a huiricane" is the more energetic phrase. The
metaphors and expressions are here as^schylean as St. Peter's, e.g., kna^pi^ovra. ; cf. iEsch.
Ag, 1067.
9 " Spatherbstliche." Grot, /rugiperdae.
io << Twice deid," merely a proverbial expression for "utterly dead," as in " Bis qui cito," and
" Pro quo bis patiar mori."
11 e.Kpi£t»6ivra. I take the unique equivalent from Shakespeare —
" Rend and deracinate
The unity and wedded cairn of states."
" Is. lvii. 20.
13 Or, ** to these also " (as well as to others).
14 We should say the st#tfi,but the Jews counted inclusively. The only object in mentioning
this is the mystic significance of the number seven. Thus the Jews ^poke of Moses as the
seventh from Abraham ; of Phinehas as the seventh from Jacob, &c. In Enoch xii. — xvi. the
prophet is sent on a mission t'> the Fallen Angels. They fe'l from Heaven to earth, he was
exalted from earth to Heaven (Iren. Haer. iv. 2, 16). See Excursus, "The Bo>k of Enoch."
15 ix€ix^f/Cjj.OLpoi, " blamers of their own lot." Philo, Mb. Mos. i. 33, Kat iraKtv fjpt-avro
fiEfi^jLiJ.0Lp6lv, " and they began again to blame their lot. " Th«ophrastus, Eth. Char, xvii., irepC
nep.\\n}i.aLpLas„ " discontent following in the wake of self-indulgence."
16 Bavfid^etv TrpotrwTra, a Hebrew phrase : comp. Trpoo-wTroA^Trnjs, Acts x. 34. In Gen. xix. 21f
" Lo ! I have accepted thee," the LXX. render iSov, tflau/xacra crov to irp6<rioirov. The best com
ment is in the words of Shakespeare—
" And not a man for being simply man
Hath any honour, .but honour for those honours
Which are trif/iuut him, as place, riches, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit."
And as to the cause which St. Jude assigns for this partiality —
" Plate sin with gold
And tbe strong lance of justice hurtless breaks."
17 'E/uratKTai, Is. iii. 4 (LXX.). Warnings against such apostates, blasphemers, and ungodly
men must have occurred often in the teachings of the Apostles (see Acts xx. 29 ; 1, 2 Thess. ;
C>1. i. ii. ; Tim. ; Tit. ; Rev., passim). It seems a most iille argument to refer this prophecy to
2 Pet. iii. 1, 2, and thence to assume the pri jrity of that Epistle !
18 The word is only found in Arist. Poht. iv. 4, § 13. Separatists =Phurisees. But here the
Pharisnism is Autiuomian and apostate (Hooker, tierm. v. 11).
19 if/vxtKoiy ' ' egotistical. " If this rendering be not accept* d, there is nothing for it but to
naturalise the word *' psychical'* as a translation of this word. It expresses those who live in
accordance with the mere natural views of a limited and selfish life. They are mt necessarily
"carnal" — i.e., devoted to the basest fleshly impulses (o-apxticot) — nor have they become
•'spiritual" (Tn/ei»juaTiKot). They live the common fife of men in simple worldliness, and the
slightly expanded egotism of domestic selfishness.

PECULIARITIES OF STRUCTURE. 131
holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, awaiting
the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto life eternal. And some, indeed, try to con
vict of error when they dispute with you ;x and try to save some, snatching them
from the fire ;2 and pity some in fear,3 hating even the tunic that has heen spotted*
by Vos flesh.
Now to Him that is able to guard you6 unstumbling, and to set you before His
glory blameless in exultation, to the only God6 our Saviour through Jesus Christ our
Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and power before all the aeon,7 and now, and to all
the .eons. Amen.
I. The style of the Greek — which was no doubt the language in
which this letter was originally written — is exactly such as we should
expect from one to whom Greek was not so familiar as his native
Aramaic, but who still writes with a passion which gives force and
eloquence to his words. It is the language of an Oriental who knows
Greek, partly by reading and partly by having moved among Hellenistic
communities, but whose vocabulary is far richer and more powerful
than his grammar.8 The words ar;e Greek words, and sometimes rare,
forcible, and poetic; but the whole colouring and tone of thought
recall the manner of the Hebrew prophets, in whose writings St.
Jude must have been trained during his youth in the humble and
faithful house of Joseph at Nazareth.
The most remarkable trace of this Hebraic structure is shown in
the extraordinary fondness of the writer for triple arrangements. In
pausing to tell us that Enoch was the seventh from Adam, he at once
shows his interest in sacred numbers, and throughout his Epistle he has
scarcely omitted a single opportunity of throwing his statements into
groups of three. Thus those whom he addresses are sanctified, kept,
elect,9 and he wishes theni mercy, love, peace ;10 the instances of Divine
retribution are the Israelites in the wilderness, the fallen angels, and
the cities of the Plain j11 the dreamers whom he denounces are corrupt,
rebellious, and railing ;12 they have walked in the way of Cain, Balaam;
1 Bead for kKeare or eAeetTe (which spoil the continuity of the structure), kKkyxere, A, C, which
can ooly be fully rendered by " try to convict of error ;" SiaKpivopevous, n, A, B, C, see Vtr. 9 for
the meaning of the word. Elsewhere it means " doubting " (Acts x. 20, Ja. i. 6, &c. ).
2 Zech. iii. 2, " Is not this a brand plucked from the burning? " (Am. iv. 1).
3 Leij. oils Se k\eare kv <p6j8a), n, A, B. The omission of this clause by the E.V. (following
K, L) spoils the triple structure. The first, class of these impious men is to be refuted in
argument ; the second to be saved by vigorous personal influence and exertion ; the third, which
is the most obstinate and degraded class, shun, for fear they should defile and corrupt you ; yet
pity them in Christian love.
4 ko-Tri\aipevov (comp. Rev. iii. 4, ovk kpoXvvav ra iparia avrwv).
5 avroi/s for vpas is the difficilior lectio, but as it is only found in A, it may be a mere slip.
The doxology evidently recalls Rom. xvi. 25.
6 The word " wise," omitted in n, A, B, C, &c, is probably interpolated from Rom. xvi. 27.
7 I.e., "as it was in the beginning."'
8 The number of the fcapnar le iomena is remarkable, and some of them are full of picturesque-
ness and force — e.g., krrayuivC^frBat, -jvapeio-k^vtrav, kKTropveva-avai, OTTtcru (Tap/cos, UTrevoutrat, (pv<riKws,
k£exvthj<rav, ayairais, (TTTikaSes, <\>8ivo-iTbipiva, kiraxppi^ovTa, TrKavrfrai, yoyyvtrrai, p.ep.i|/ijU(KpCH, 7rpoO"ama,
SiopL&vres, a7rTai'oTous, 7rpo TravTos roy aiotvos, besides others' which are only found here and in
2 Peter, or are exceedingly rare in the New Testament. The semi-poetic colouring of these
words is a phenomenon often observable in writers who are using a foreign language. " The
diction," says Davidson, " is round and full, not neat or easy, but rather harsh. It shows one
acquainted with Greet, yet unable to express his ideas in it with ease." — Introduction to New
Testament, i. 450,
" Ver. 1. «> Ver. 2. « Vers. 5—7. u Ver. 8.

132 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and Korah ;' they are murmurers, discontented, self-willed ; they are
boastful, partial, greedy of gain f they are separatists, egotistic, un-
spiritual.8 Lastly, they are to be dealt with in three classes, of which
one class is to be refuted in disputation, another saved by effort, and
the third pitied with detestation of their sins.4 But saints are to pray
in the spirit, keep themselves in. the love of God, and await the mercy
of Christ f and glory is ascribed to God before the past, in the present,
and unto the farthest future.6
Some of these triplets — those, for instance, in the twenty-third and
last verses — are missed, in consequence of the adoption by the English
Version of inferior readings ; but, as regards the rest, even if we might
otherwise suppose that some of them were accidental, the recurrence of
this arrangement no less than eleven times in twenty-five verses is
obviously intentional, or, at any rate, characteristic of the writer's mode
of thought. It could not be paralleled from any other passage . of
Scripture of equal length.7 It is unlike anything which we should find
in classic Greek, and accords with the professed authorship by indi
cating the Hebraic tinge of the writer's mind. We shall notice here
after that a similar antithetic balance and rhythmic flow is characteristic
of the style of St. John. In both of these sacred writers it is the
result of their Semitic origin and Jewish education.
II. But a far more remarkable characteristic of the writer is his
fondness for alluding to remote and unrecorded incidents of Jewish
tradition. In the brief space of nine verses he introduces current
Rabbinic views in a manner to which, in the New Testament, there
is scarcely a parallel. He accepts, for instance, the strange notion
respecting the fate and fall of the angels through fleshly lusts. Alone
of the New Testament writers, except St. John in the Apocalypse, he
mentions and names an archangel.8 He introduces, probably from the
apocryphal Ascension of Moses9, a personal contention between this
Archangel and the Devil about the body of Moses, to which there is
not in Scripture the remotest allusion.10 He tells us that Michael "did
not dare" to bring a "judgment of railing" against the Evil Spirit.
He refers to Cain in a manner which seems to imply something more
than the murder of Abel. He makes a quotation, which has since been
» Ver. 11. 2 Ver. 16. •" Ver. 19. * Vers. 22, 23.
6 Ver. 20. 6 Ver. 25.
7 There is something which partially resembles it in the half-rhythmio triplets of
Eph. v. 14.
8 In the Apocryphal books and the Talmud we read of seven Archangels — Michael,
Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Sealthiel, Jeremeel, and Sammael.
9 'AraA>;i/fis Muiio-e'ios. See Hilgenfeld, Mess. Jud. lxxii. He may, however, be
merely introducing the Jewish legend in his own way. (See Lieffert in Herzog.
B. Eric., a. v.)
10 Sehottgen, Meuschen, and others adduce in exact parallel to this, that in the Jalkut
Keubeni (f. 43,^ 3) there is a contest between Michael and Satan about Isaac and the ram.
In Hilgenfeld's Mcssias Jndacoritm, p. 461, various fragments are quoted of the
Ascension of Moses, from which the reference was taken. (Orig. De Princip. iii. 2, § 1 ;
see, too, (Ecumenius ad loc. ; Cramer's Catena, p. 160.)

APOCRYPHAL ALLUSIONS. 133
discovered in a book confessedly apocryphal.1 How are we to explain
these peculiarities 1 Do they need any apologetic treatment ?
There are two ways of treating them, which I shall content myself
with stating, leaving every reader of unbiassed mind and fearless sin
cerity to choose between them.
i. There are many writers who endeavour by various explanations to
miniuiise whatever contradicts their theories of " verbal dictation," and
who insist that every allusion which cannot be explained out of the
Old Testament must be accepted as a literal fact divinely revealed to
St. Jude himself. It would, indeed, be a matter of no small difficulty
to accept the Jewish legend that angels fell from their heavenly dignity
by sensual impurities with mortal women. Hence these writers interpret
the " sons of God " in Gen. vi. 2 to mean men of the righteous race,
and they suppose that the " giants " in that passage were the offspring
of inter-marriages between the race of Seth and the race of Cain.2
They therefore explain St. Jude's allusion as & reference to the expulsion
of Satan's angels from Heaven because of their revolt, — a notion very
familiar to us from Milton's Epic, but of which there are in Scripture
only the dimmest and most disputable traces. They take it as a divinely
revealed fact that the body of Moses was really an object of personal
contention between the Archangel Michael and the Devil, and they
boldly conjecture that Satan desired to seize the body that he might
induce the Jews to treat it as a relic to be worshipped.3 Lastly,
although the prophecy attributed to Enoch really does occur in almost
the same words in the apocryphal book of that name — and although it
is certain that the book in whole or in part existed in St. Jude's time —
they refuse to admit that St. Jude could have used a quotation from a
book confessedly apocryphal, but assume either that he received this
particular passage " by independent revelation " f or that it was a
genuine prophecy of the antediluvian prophet correctly handed down
by tradition for two thousand five hundred years ;5 or, lastly, that the
writer or interpreter of the Book of Enoch borrowed it from St. Jude,
and not St. Jude from him.
ii. To others the rare phenomena of the Epistle present no difficulty
which requires such a congeries of harsh suppositions — suppositions
which, in their opinion, need no refutation, because they rest on no
basis. They do not think it necessary to support the authority of this
certainly canonical, but as certainly non-apostolic, writer by hypotheses
so extraordinary. They know that at. this epoch apocryphal literature
1 Jude 14.
= As was done even by St. Augustine. See, too, Milton, Paradise Lost, xii. 580, seq.
3 Philippi supposes that the fact was revealed to the disciples, to account for the
appearance of Moses on the Mourit of Transfiguration. Of what use are such con
jectures ?
4 " Apostolum Henochi verba ex singulari divina revelatione habuisse." — Pfeiffer,
Becas, iv. § 8.
5 See " Enoch Restitutus : An attempt to separate from the Books of Enoch the book
quoted by St. Jude," by Rev. E. Murray, 1838.

134 THR EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
was widely current among the Jews, and that a dense multitude of
Piabbinic legends had sprung up around their early literature and
history. Many of these are of an absurd and objectionable character,
and they see a superintending guidance in the wisdom which excludes
all trace of these from the sacred page. Every Jewish Christian,
trained in the lore of Palestine, would be familiar with many such
Hagadoth ; and it was perfectly natural that in writing to his country
men St. Jude should refer to such beliefs by way of passing illustration,
just as St. Paul refers to the traditional names of the Egyptian
magicians,1 and to the legend of the wandering rock.2
St. Jude's quotation from the apocryphal Book of Enoch b no more
stamps the book of Enoch, or the passage quoted from it, as a Divine
revelation than do St. James's references to the Wisdom of Solomon, or
St. Paul's quotations from Epimenides, Aratus, or Menander. Erom
those pagan writers, and even from the last — deeply dyed as he was
with the vicious morality of a decadent age — St. Paul quotes without
hesitation a religious truth, or moral aphorism, or historical allusion
which happens to illustrate his general purpose. It is in no wise strange
that St. Jude should make analogous use of the Book of Enoch and the
Ascension of Moses, which were current among the Hebraists whom he
was addressing, and whose views he shared. Some have supposed that
he used them because they were accepted by those against whom he is
writing, and because any consideration derived from these would have
the force of an argumentum ad hominem. It seems to be a more natural
supposition that he alluded to current conceptions for a particular object,
just as all writers do in all ages, without entering into any discussion as
to their literal truth.
Such are the conflicting opinions of different commentators. They
affect questions which lie in that neutral region of uncertainty where all
true Christians should respect their common freedom. They touch on
questions of literature and criticism. They hinge upon definitions of
inspiration which the Scriptures themselves do not furnish, and which
the Church has in consequence withheld. They may be safely left to
the influence of time, and the widening thoughts of mankind. All that
we need say respecting them is, " Let there be in things necessary
unity ; in things doubtful liberty ; in all things charity."
iii. If we ask, lastly, who were the evil-doers against whom the
parallel denunciations of St. Jude and the Second Epistle of St. Peter
i 2 Tim. iii. 8.
2 1 Cor. x. 4. See Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 48, 638.
3 The direct quotation is in Jude 14, 15, but there are several other traces of St. Jude's
acquaintance with the book ; for instance, the pseudo-Enoch, no less than Jude, refers
to "wandering stars" (xviii. 14, 16; xxi. 3), and comes near the very remarkable
expression " chains of darkness " (Jude 6 ; 2 Pet. ii. 4, 5 ; " Bind Azazel . . . cast him
into darkness " (xii. 5—7); "Fetters of iron without weight" (liii. 3). Hofmann and
Philippi try to prove that the Book of Enoch was written by a Jewish Christian. Locke,
Ewald, Weiszaoker, Dillmann, Kbstlin, &c, only admit later interpolations of a Jewish
book.

WHO WERE THE HERETICS 1 1 35
were hurled — St. Jude' exposing their unnatural wickedness and blas
pheming presumption, the Second Epistle dwelling mainly on their
corrupting influence and specific faithlessness — the answer is that neither
of the sacred writers is dealing with a definite sect, but that the errors
and malpractices which they denounce afterwards came to a head in the
mysteries of iniquity which characterised many sects. These errors
contained the germ of the systems which were subsequently known as
Antinomian Gnosticism. Very shortly after the period with which we
are dealing, the Nicolaitans drew on themselves the indignant anathemas
of St. John. The second century saw the rise of other defilers of the
Christian name and profession. Such were the Ophites, who lauded the
Serpent of Paradise as their benefactor ; 1 the blasphemous Cainites, who
made their heroes out of all the vilest characters mentioned in the Old
Testament ; 2 the Carpocratians, who taught licentious communism ; 3 the
Antitactae, who regarded it as a duty to the Supreme God to , violate all
the commandments, on the ground that they had been promulgated by
His enemy the Demiurgus ; 4 the Adamites, who taught men to live like
brutes.6 None of these sects as yet existed as sects, but in the wild
opinions attributed to Nicolas and Cerinthus we see the seething
elements of reckless speculation which sprang from a common fountain,
but under the subsequent name of Gnosticism split into the two opposite
streams of a reckless immorality and an extravagant asceticism.6
1 Iren. Haer. i. 30, § 5. * Epiphan. Haer. xxxviii. 2.
3 Clem. Alex. Strom, iii. 2 ; Theodoret, Haer. i. 6.
4 Clem. Alex. Strom, iii. 4. 5 Epiphan. Haer. Iii.
6 r) yap tol aSiwpoptas £r\v di8diTKOV<n,v t) to vireprovov dyovo~cu eyKpareiav (Clem. Alex. Strom
iii. 5, § 40).

APOLLOS AND ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

CHAPTER XII.
JUDAISM, THE SEPTUAGINT, AND ALEXANDRIAN INFLUENCES.
"Alexandria . . . vertex omnium civitatum." Amm. Marcell. xxii. 16.
The Christian Faith does not centre in a Dogma, or in a Book, but in a
Person, and this is tftie cause and pledge of its essential unity. Its one
answer to all who, with the Philippian jailer, ask, " Sirs, what must I
do to be saved 1 " is the answer of Paul and Silas, " Believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." That truth was
clearly seen by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he began
his magnificent sketch of Christian theology with the pregnant words,
" God, Who fragmentarily and multifariously of old spake to our fathers
by the Prophets, at the end of these days spake unto us by His Son."
But unity does not exclude diversity — nay, more, without diversity
there can be no true and perfect unity. Where there is no unity there
is distraction, but where there is no diversity there is death. Where
the spirits of the prophets are not subject to the prophets — where every
man is conscious only of his own invisible consecration — where, as in the
Church of Corinth, every one in his fanatical egotism is anxious to shout
down the truths revealed to others, that he may absorb the attention of
all by his own " tongue," however barbarous, however dissonant, how
ever unintelligible — where it is ignored that amid the diversities of gifts
and ministrations there is yet the translucent energy of one and the
same Spirit — there is confusion, and railing, and irreligious strife. And
where, on the other hand, all lips mechanically repeat the same shib
boleth for centuries after its significance has been worn away — where
the dulness of a self-styled " orthodoxy " has obliterated the many hues
of the wisdom of God — where enquiry is crushed under the heel of
authority — where, in fact, there can be no independent enquiry because
all conclusions are dictated beforehand by the tyranny of an usurped
infallibility — there is uniformity indeed, but therewith corruption and
decay. When it is persecution to alter the perspective of a doctrine,
and death to leave the cart-rut of a system — when they who question
the misinterpretations of Scripture which have been pressed into the

UNITY, NOT UNIFORMITY. 137
service of popular errors, must face the anger of startled ignorance —
when there is no life left save the spark which glows in the ashes of the
Martyr, or the lamp which flickers in the Reformer's cell — then the
caste which has seized the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven may boast
indeed of unity, but it is the unity produced by selfishness in the few,
and serfdom in the many. The unity so secured is but the stagnancy of
the unrippled water, the monotony of the barren sands. It is the unity
of the dead plain, "where every molehill is a mountain, and every
thistle a forest tree." In this latter condition there is a deadlier peril
than in the former. Even discords can be inwrought into the vast
sequences of some mighty harmony, but what great music can be
achieved with but a single note 1 Unbroken unanimity may be the
boast of a deadening Buddhism, a withered Confucianism, a mechanical
Islam ; it cannot exist in a free and living Christianity. If it exist at
all, it can only be as a uniformity of indifference and ignorance — a
uniformity of winter and of night. The uniformity of the noonday is
only for the Infinite. For finite beings, if there be any light at all,
there must be the colours of the sunset, and the sevenfold lustre of the
rainbow, which is only seen when there is rain as well as sun.
" Only the prism's obstruction shows aright
The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light
Into the jewelled bow from blankest white ;
So may a glory from defect arise."!
Hence, as we have seen again and again in the books of the Old
Testament, the truth which they reveal comes to us tinged with the
individuality of the writers. It comes to us unchanged, indeed, in
its essence, because that essence is unchangeable, but still reflected and
refracted by the medium through which it has inevitably passed. The
Light, of Heaven, like the light of day, can only reach us through
earthly media. The sunlight — lest it should blind us with its bright
ness — must pass through the atmosphere with its layers of vapour
visible and invisible ; it must glance from a myriad surfaces ; it must
fire the mountain tops and blaze upon the sea, and be coloured by
the evening clouds. And yet wherever it falls, however it is modified,
it is always beneficent — and even more beneficent from the changes
to which it is subjected — because it is the sunlight still. And in
the sanie way, to suit our finite capacities, the Light of Heaven also
must pass through human subjectivities. It must display blessed
varieties of hue, and graduated intensities of radiance, according as
it comes to us through the mind of a Moses or of an Isaiah, of a St. James
or a St. Paul. But of itself it can never lead astray, because it is light
from Heaven. The mystic light which, as Jewish legend tells us,
gleamed over the oracular gems of Aaron's breastplate, was ardent now
with the azure of the sapphire, now with the deep green of the emerald,
l Browning.

138 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
now with the softer lustre of the amethyst. Even so does the light
of inspiration alternately blaze or glow in the fiery heart of the Apostle
of the Gentiles, in the loving tenderness of St. John the Divine, in the
stern and lofty morality of St. James, the brother of the Lord.
Nor is it otherwise with the truths proclaimed by different com
munities. Churches, too, have their modifying subjectivity. The
Spirit of God that spake of old in the prophets is the Spirit of Christ
which speaks in his prophets now. " Vox quidem dissona, sed una
relligio." The voices are many, the utterance is one. Churches differ
as individuals differ. There were differences of view, differences of
perspective, differences of characteristic expression in the Churches
of Africa and of Palestine, in the schools of Alexandria and Antioch,
in the Churches of the East and of the West. Christianity, in all
Churches- was, and ever must be, in its essence Catholic — one and
indivisible ; yet Christians shared in all minor matters the varying
views of the bodies to which they belonged. There is but one flock
of Christ, but there are many folds. The Christians of Egypt were not
absolutely identical in the colour of their theology with those of
Ephesus, nor the Christians of Ephesus with those of Rome.
Uniquely great and memorable was the work of the Church of
Alexandria. The Christian School of Alexandria was deeply influenced
by the views and traditions of the Jewish schools from which it sprang.
To those schools it was affiliated by an unbroken course of historical
events. I will endeavour, therefore, to furnish here a swift and sum
mary view of the origin and character of Alexandrian Christianity,
which may at least serve to render more distinct the special character of
the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The Jews, tenaciously as they have always clung to their national
peculiarities, have yet shown a remarkable power of adapting themselves,
within certain limits, to the civilisation and tone of thought of the age
and country in which their lot has been cast. But there has never
been any modification of Judaism so remarkable as that which arose
in Alexandria when Jewish religion first came into contact with Greek
philosophy. Thus did the House of Bondage of their fathers become
for the later Jews a School of Wisdom.1
If the bringing of East and West into closer contact with each other
was one of the main works of Alexander the Great, the deepest
mark which he left on the history of the world was his founding
of Alexandria. Jewish Hellenism — the utterance of Oriental thought
in Greek language, and the interchange of Asiatic and Greek con
ceptions — was the result of Alexander's conquests, and of the policy
which directed them ; and this fusion went on more rapidly in Alex
andria than in any other part of the Macedonian Empire.
1 Gratz, Qesch. d. Juden, iii. 26.

THE JEWS IN ALEXANDRIA. 139
Alexandria was a city which had the most splendid advantages.
The fleets of Asia and Europe met in a commodious harbour, whose
entrance was lighted by the Pharos, which has given its name to every
lighthouse in the world.1 Unlike the majority of ancient cities,
it was built upon a regular plan, and was magnificently adorned with
public buildings and works of art. Its climate was healthy ; it was
well supplied with pure water by noble aqueducts ; its market was
a meeting-place for traifickers from every region of the civilised globe.
The mixture of various nationalities in an .important city always tends
to quicken the thoughts of men. Oriental theosophy, Greek culture,.
philosophic speculations, found their way among the citizens as surely
as the sailors of the ships which came to anchor behind the Pharos.
Even Theodorus the Atheist was welcomed at the Court of the
Ptolemies.2 Alexandria seethed with intellectual excitement.3 There
was an incessant conflict and rivalry between the -Egyptian, Greek, and
Jewish elements of the populace, which in later times could barely
be kept in order by the rough authority of Roman Proconsuls. But
besides the natural sharpening of the intellect which resulted from
the contact of opposite religions, the Ptolemies had made it their object
to be patrons of literature, and the royal library of Alexandria
furnished an unique opportunity for earnest students.
A circumstance which exercised no small influence over the deve
lopment of Alexandria was the equality of civil rights which the Jews
had from the first enjoyed. Alexander the Great had been most
favourably impressed by his interview with the high-priest Jaddua.4
Whatever may be thought of the legendary details of that interview, it
is certain that he had spared the Jews from any exactions, and had
accorded to them exceptional privileges. His policy was followed by
the astute dynasty of the Lagidse, the famous Ptolemies who ruled at
Alexandria for nearly three centuries. Under the fostering care of
some of these kings, who understood them better and treated them
more wisely than the rival dynasty of Syrian Seleucids, the Jews grew
and multiplied in prosperity, as they had multiplied in adversity in the
old days of their Egyptian bondage. Before the dawn of the Christian
era they had increased to a million, and not only occupied two of the
five quarters of Alexandria as their exclusive Ghetto, but were also in
possession of the best localities for business in the rest of the city.
Their synagogue — the famous Diapleuston, with its seventy gilded
chairs, and its size so vast that the signal for the " Amens " of the con-

1 Me'ywnw kpLTropelov Tijs oi/covueVij? (Strabo).
2 Diog. Laert. ii. 102.
3 Eis y\v Kal ii wavTa)(6Qev ovveppei petmjs tiov irepi <pt\oo-o<pCav ko-irovoaKOTbjv (Greg. Nyss.
VU. Greg. Thaumat.).
4 It is an interesting fact — a link between the farther and nearer epochs of antiquity
— that Jaddua, B.C. 333, is the latest person (chronologically) who is mentioned in the
Old Testament. Nehem. xi 22 ; Jos. Antt. xi. 8, § 5.

140 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
gregation had to be given by a flag — was the grandest in the world.1
The management of the harbour-shipping, and of the all-important
export of corn, on which Rome depended for its daily bread, was mainly
in their hands.2 Their Sanhedrin was almost as venerable as that of ,
Jerusalem. Their Alabarch was one of the principal persons in the city,
and occupied a position of splendid dignity. The Temple of Onias at
Leontopolis, while it did not alienate their affections from the Temple at
Jerusalem, was a continual source of pride and gratification.3 So great
was the skill of the Alexandrian handicraftsmen that, if any of the
finest work was required for the adornment of the Temple at Jeru
salem, the Rabbis sent for workmen to Alexandria, as Solomon had
done to the Phoanicians in the days of old.4 The privileges of the Jews
had been secured to them under the Roman Empire by the generous
edicts of Julius Caesar and other emperors.6
The Jews had been able on more than one occasion to render _
valuable assistance to the Ptolemies, and especially to Ptolemy
Philometor in his struggles against his brother Physkon. It was
natural that the Egypto-Grecian kings should desire to know something
of the vaunted lore of these remarkable subjects. The Greek Version
of the Bible, so famous under the name of the Septuagint, was under
taken for the gratification of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who wished to
have a specimen of the Bible in the great library ;6 or, perhaps, as a
result of the amicable relations between Ptolemy Philometor and the
Jewish philosopher Aristobulus. The House of Lagos must have some
of the credit for its production. Whatever may have been the history
of this version — which is much obscured by the fictions of Aristeas as
to its miraculous origin — the effects which it produced were deep and
lasting. The Septuagint was, as the modern Jewish historian quaintly
observes, " the first Apostle of the Gentiles." For the first time the
heathen of every land were enabled to read and judge for themselves of
all that "Moses delivered in his mystic volume."7 The translators of
the Greek Bible, whose names are for the most part unknown, rendered
two immense, but unconscious, services to the Christianity which was
soon to shine upon the world. They disseminated the monotheistic con
viction, with the historic revelation on which it was based ; and they
created the peculiar dialect in which the New Testament was written.
' See a description of the Diapleuston or Great Synagogue of Alexandria (of which it
was said that " whoever had not seen it, had not seen the glory of Israel ") in Succah. f.
51, 6. There is the usual monstrous hyperbole — e.g., that each of the 71 gilded chairs
for the Sanhedrin was worth 21 myriad talents of gold ! See Gratz, Oesch. d. Juden,
iv. 128. 2 Philo. c. Flac. ii. 525 (ed. Mangey). '
3 It seems to have been built about A.D. 150.
4 Yoma, 38, 1 ; Gratz, iii. 28. « Jos. Antt. xiv. 10, § § 1—10.
6 It is said that his attention was called to the subject by the eminent librarian,
Demetrius Phalercus.
7 Juv. Sat. xiv. 102. The epithet "arcano " seems to be due to the talk of allegorists,
who denied that the literal sense was the real sense.

THE SEPTUAGINT. 141
The task of the Apostles and Evangelists would have been far more
difficult than it was, if they had not found ready to their hands a
dialect which was even more flexible than the pure Greek of the
Classics, and a religious phraseology for technical conceptions which had.
already begun to be widely understood.
The appearance of the Septuagint Version affected the Jews in very
different ways. To the Alexandrian Jews, and generally to the Jews
of the Dispersion, it furnished an occasion for unmitigated joy. They
could now 'point with pride to the writings of Moses and the Prophets
in proof that they too were in possession of a priceless literature. They
could show the Greeks that there were Hebrew writers even greater
than Pythagoras and Plato, who were the boast of Heathendom. The
tenets of their religion became better known, and therefore more
respected, wherever Greek was understood. Though Hebrew was now
a dead language, and the Jews of Europe and Asia had for the most
part forgotten their native Aramaic, they were kept faithful to the laws
and institutions of their fathers. Thanks to the labours of " the
Seventy," Moses was read in the Synagogues every Sabbath day, and
interpreted into a tongue understanded of the people.1 We cannot,
therefore, wonder that the Alexandrian Jews kept the day of the publi
cation of the Septuagint as an annual feast-day, on which they visited,
with every sign of rejoicing, the cells on the island of the Pharos in
which tradition said that the version had been finished < by supernatural
aid. Far different were the views of the stern old Hebraisers — the
Hebrews of Hebrews — who taught in the schools of Palestine and
Jerusalem. Rejecting the fiction of Aristeas, that the interpreters had
been sent to Ptolemy Philadelphus from Jerusalem by the express
sanction of the high-priest Eleazar, and scornfully denying that God had
shown His approval by granting inspiration to the Translators, they
regarded the rendering of their sacred tenets into a profane language as
an irreparable misfortune. It had long been forbidden to write the
words of the Torah on the skins of unclean animals ; surely, they
argued, it was -a far greater profanation to express them in the
accents of a pagan dialect. Was it even possible so to express them ?
Was it possible to place them in the crucible of an unhallowed language
and not to evaporate some of their subtlest elements of truth % How
could the God of Shem speak in the unblessed accents of Japhet ? Was
it not certain that, apart from the impossibility of making one tongue
express the exact sentiments of another, there would be large room for
unfaithful concessions to Greek and heathen prejudices on the part of
1 In the Life of St. Paul, i. 369, I have mentioned the interesting fact that from the
Midrash, or expository sermon delivered by the Apostle, we are enabled to tell with
certainty what Parashah and Hapktarah, or First and Second Lessons, had been read
from the LXX. in the Synagogue of Antioch, in Pisidia, on a certain Sabbath more than
eighteen centuries ago.

142 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the Translators t As a counter-manifesto to the exultation of the
Alexandrian Jews,1 they kept the day of the publication of the Greek
Bible as a Fast, and a day of evil omen as deadly as that on which
Israel had danced around the golden calf.2
And from their point of view the B,abbis of Jerusalem were more
than half right. They had good grounds for being suspicious of what
they called the "wisdom of the Ionians."3 The publication of the Bible
in Greek did tend to alter the conceptions of the Jews ; to widen their
tribalism ; to prepare the way for Christianity ; to throw down the
middle wall of partition between them and other nations ; to show the
absurdity of many of the legends, precedents, and inferential systems
which they had based on the isolation of their favourite " texts." But,
further than this, there can be little doubt that Judaism, when denuded
of the ism wherein resided its intense exclusiveness, lost also much of. its
distinctive character. ¦ When the Jews began to recognise that they were
not the monopolists of truth, they developed the tendency to underrate
the preciousness of the truth which was their special heritage. It was
by no means easy to fulfil the aspiration of the learned Rabbi Jochanan
Ben Napuchah, who had desired to unite the pallium of Japhet with the
tallith of Shem.4 When in the troubles which burst upon the Alexan
drian Jews in the Proconsulship of Flaccus many of them purchased
exemption from torture and massacre by apostasy, the religious conser
vatives of Palestine were strengthened in their conviction that the Jews
could never study without peril the literature of the Gentiles. When
an old Rabbi was asked at what hour Grecian literature might be studied,
he replied that it could only be studied at an hour which belonged neither
to the day nor to the night; for God's Law, and that only, ought to be
man's meditation both day and night.5
Even the Seventy had shown that they either did not sufficiently
understand the duty of absolute t faithfulness in translators, or that in
some instances their sense of the literal meaning of the Sacred Text had
been biassed by the spirit of the age in which they moved. Certain it
is that they had left traceable indications of their private opinions, and
of the tone of thought by which they were surrounded.
In some particulars their variations from the original had been com
paratively harmless. If in reading the lists of clean and unclean animals
the reader came upon the Greek word dasupous, or " rough-footed," when
1 Philo, VU. Mos. ii. 140.
2 See Frankel, Vorstudien, i. 61. In later times Justin Martyr complained that the
Jews had falsified the Septuagint by cutting out passages which told in favour of the
Christians, such as "Tell it out among the heathen, the Lord reigned from the tree"
(i™ fvXou), Ps. xcvi. 10. See Just. Mart. Dial. pp. 109, 170. Tert. Adv. Marc. iii. 19.
Aug. Enarratt. in Ps. p. 714. But the words were probably a Christian gloss.
3 " Chokmath Jaranith." See Derenbourg, Palest, p. 361.
4 See Life of Christ, ii. 461; Life of St. Paul, i. 37. (Midrash Kabbah on Gen.
xxxvi., &c. )
6 Rabbi Ishmael, arguing from Jos. i. 8. Menachoth, f. 99, 2 (Derenbourg, Palest.
361).

ECCENTRIC RENDERINGS. 143
he knew that the animal mentioned in the Hebrew was the hare (arne-
beth), he soon remembered with a smile that, if the courtly translator had
rendered the word literally, by Lagos, the Ptolemies might have seen
with disgust that the founder of their dynasty bore the name of an
animal which the Jews regarded as unclean ! Again, if he found the
homely ass (onos), on which Moses and the sons of Jair rode, dignified
int* a prancing steed (polos), this might seem to him a simple way of
avoiding the scorn which a Greek unfamiliar with the value attached to
the ass in Eastern countries would have felt when he read of any emi
nent person bestriding an animal so humble and so despised.1 He would
have been further amused by finding Keren Happuk, the daughter of
Job (Job xiii. 14), whose name means " horn of stibium," turned into
" Amalthea's horn ; " and by the substitution of Greek for Hebrew
proverbs in 1 Kings xx. 11 and Prov. xxiii. 27. 2 Again, the Seventy,
in not a few instances, had introduced or implied the legends (Hagadoth)
and precedents for inferential rules (Halachoth) which were not only
sanctioned in the Rabbinic schools of Jerusalem, but which it was their
main occupation to discover and to record. Thus in Deut. xxxii. 8 they
had, "He set bounds to the people according to the number ofthe Angels
of God ; " in Josh. xxiv. 30 they insert that the flint knives used for
circumcision in the wilderness had been buried in Joshua's grave ; in
Ex. xiii. 18 they rendered "harnessed" by "five abreast;" in Gen. iv. 4
they added that God " kindled by fire " the sacrifice of Abel ; in Josh.
xiii. 22 they follow the legend which made Balaam, like Simon Magus,
fly in the air, until he was dashed down (4v fioirfi) by Phinehas ; in 1 Sam.
xx. 30 they imply that Jonathan's mother was one of the maidens seized
at Shiloh ; in Num. xxxii. 12 they introduce the belief that Caleb was of
Gentile origin. .
These were pardonable eccentricities. But there was one important
matter of dogma in which the Seventy had shown that they were the
children of their own epoch and had deeply imbibed the opinions of the
Greek philosophers. The Supreme Being of the Greek philosophers had
been a Being infinitely exalted above human imperfections, and there
fore a Being absolutely unlimited by human peculiarities. This view of
"the Divine" had impressed itself on the philosophising Hellenists of
Alexandria. They disliked the simple "anthropomorphism" of the
earlier Sacred books, and did not wish to represent the God of Israel to
the Gentiles as one who was pictured with a body, or who appeared in
human form to the eyes of men. Still less was it consonant with Alex
andrian prejudice to give literal renderings to those expressions which
spoke of God by what is called " anthropopathy " — that is, as subject to
wrath, repentance, or other human emotions. Yet the " anthropomor-
1 The LXX. were fond of euphemisms, as in their rendering of Gen. xlix. 10; Deut.
xxiii. 14 ; Nah. iii. 5 ; Is. iii. 17 ; Job xxxi. 10. They show a little national vanity in
small matters in Ex. ii. 1 ; iv. 6 ; vi. 12, 15 ; 1 Sam. xv. 12.
2 Frankel, Vorstud. i. 203.

144 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
phism " and " anthropopathy " of the early Siriptural books could only
be modified by imperfect or unfaithful renderings ; — and of these the
translators did not hesitate to be guilty.1 In Gen. vi. 6 the expression
" it repented the Lord," and similar phrases elsewhere, quietly disappear
from the Greek Version. In Ex. xxiv. 10 the Elders of Israel are not
allowed to see "God," but only "the place where God stood."2 The
falsification of the following words is still more startling. Instead of
" Upon the nobles .... He laid not His hand ; also they saw God,"
we have the daring change " Ofthe elders of Israel not even one perished
(diephonesen), nnd they were seen in the place of God." Well might the
Talmudist3 charge the Seventy with intentional perversion of the text in
this place. In Ex. iv. 16, "Thou shalt be to him for God (n<rr»A) " be
comes " Thou shalt be to him the things that relate to God (ri. irpbs rbv @ebv)."
In Num. xii. 8 the Epiphany to Moses is softened into a vision of the
Shechinah, or glory. In Num. xiv. 14 it is not Jehovah, but the She-
chinah, which is seen face to face. In Job xxix. 25, in Ps. xiii. 3, and
in many other places, the direct expression "Jehovah" is softened into
phrases of which the intention always is to place as many intermediates
as possible between the Supreme and man. In Job xix. 26, 27, for
" Yet in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself and my
eyes shall behold, and not another," we have, " For these things happened
to me from the Lord, which I understand for myself, which my eye lias
seen, and not another." In Job xxxv. 14 "Although thou sayest thou
shalt not, see Him, yet judgment is before Him, trust thou in Him," be
comes "For the Almighty sees those who do wickedness, and slwM save
me; be judged before Him." In Ps. xvii. 15 the Seventy give us, "I
shall be seen before Him in Righteousness, I shall be satisfied in His
glory being seen." In Hezekiah's prayer (Is, xxxviii. 11) "I shall mot
see the Lord, the Lord in the land of the living " is turned into " I shall
not see the salvation of God in the land of the living, I shall not see the
salvation of Israel on the earth."* In Is. ix. 6, "the mighty God" be
comes " an Angel of great counsel."
2. This and other tendencies find their illustration in the writings
of the Jewish philosopher Aristobulus and in the Wisdom of Solomon.5
Aristobulus, a man of priestly descent, is said to have been the first Jew
who studied Greek philosophy, and he was an avowed Peripatetic.
Living in the court of Ptolemy Philometor (b.c. 160), he stood in close
terms of intimacy with the royal house, and presented the Pentateuch
1 See their versions of Ex. iii. 1 ; iv. 24 ; xvii. 16 ; xxv. 8. They are specially
audacious in Ex. xix. 3.
2 Ex. xxiv. 9 — 11. Kat etSop t6v toitov o5 eia-njKei 6 ©eos.
3 Megillah, f. 9, a.
4 If there is no change in such passages as Amos ix. 1, etc., it is because these are
understood as visions only. For a full treatment of the subject see Frankel, Vorstudien
zu der Septuaginta.
6 The avoidance of "anthropomorphism'' and "anthropopathy " in the Targums is no
less marked. Dr. Deutsch has supplied many instances in his Literary Remains,
pp. 348-356.

THE BOOK OF WISDOM. 145
to the King, with a commentary and prolegomena. A fragment of this
work, which is sometimes called a Syngramma and sometimes Prope-
phonemena, is preserved for us by the indefatigable labours of Eusebius,1
and in this fragment Aristobulus expressly warns the King against a
literal understanding of anthropomorphic expressions. If God is spoken
of as having hands, arms, feet, and so on, those, he says, must be simply
looked upon as pictorial phrases. Where it is said that " God stands,"
the reference is to the fixed order of the universe. The speech of God
is only to be understood of ultimate causation, for " God spake and it
was done." This philosopher appears to have translated the Book of
Exodus in the Septuagint Version.
3. The author of the Wisdom of Solomon availed himself of the
personification of. "Wisdom" in the Book of Proverbs as the inter
mediate agency between God and man which the Alexandrian theosophy
required. In this book " Wisdom " plays the part which is assigned to
the Logos in the writings of Philo. The dualism — the existence of
matter as the source of evil apart from God — of which there is a trace
in the avoidance of the term " Creator " by Aristobulus, finds a distinct
expression in the Wisdom of Solomon when the writer says that God's
Almighty hand made the world out of matter without form.2 In the
opinion of the Alexandrians the world was not created out of nothing,
but out of the formless chaos, the ThoJvQ, va-bohil of the second verse of
the Book of Genesis. We see, too, in the Book of Wisdom the dislike
of the body — that view of it as the fetter and prison rather than the
home and temple of the soul — which was afterwards so strongly felt by
the Neoplatonists that the "philosopher Plotinus is said " to have blushed
that he had a body." " The corruptible body," said this eloquent writer,
" presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the
mind that museth upon many things."3
4. The epoch of the Septuagint was characterised by an outburst of
Jewish literature of a semi-ethnic character. A poet named Ezekiel
dramatised the Exodus ; another named Philo wrote an epic on Jeru
salem ; a third — Theodotus — chose his theme from the story of Dinah
and Shechem. Demetrius and Eupolemos wrote history ; and the Story
of Susanna is one of several specimens of Jewish romance. But the-
name of all the other Alexandrian writers is eclipsed by that of the-
great Philo, who reproduced Jewish theology for the benefit of Greek:
and Hellenist philosophers, just as Josephus reproduced Jewish history-
for the benefit of cultivated Romans. But there is this difference
between Philo and Josephus. The astute historian well knew what he
was about. He falsifies and colours, and' omits and modifies with con
summate skill and coolness whenever it suits him, and feels as little
scruple in assimilating the Pharisees to the Stoics as he feels in describ
ing the Angel who appeared to the mother of Samson as a handsome •
' Euseb. Fraep. Ecang. viii. 10, xiii. 12. 2 Wisd. xi. 17. 3 Wisd ix 15.
K

146 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
youth who kindled the jealousy of Manoah. Philo, on the other hand,
wrote with far greater unconsciousness. Unable to read Hebrew1 —
knowing the Sacred books chiefly, if not exclusively, in the Greek
Version — having breathed from childhood the atmosphere of Alexandrian
speculation — he no doubt considered that he had really grasped the key
to the inner meaning of the Scriptures, and that his method of exegesis
was the only way to rescue them from philosophic contempt. But it is
a great mistake to suppose that he invented the philosophic system which
is generally known by his name. The main beliefs of that system were
—that matter is impure ; that God cannot appear under material form,
and is therefore invisible ; that He chose the Jewish people to receive
His revelations ; that those revelations can only be interpreted by
allegoric methods ; that He deals with men solely through the Logos or
Word, and the logoi or Divine forces ; that the body is the source of
evil ; that the soul is pre-existent ; that to gain God's mercy the flesh
must be slain, and we must attain to the virtues of resignation, un-
worldliness, simplicity, faith, hope, and love. But none of these views
was absolutely original. He does not announce them as such. He
writes as though he were addressing readers who would at once recognise
the truth of what he says. His thoughts, apart from many new illus
trations, are not peculiar to him, but are found throughout the whole
circle of Alexandrian literature.2 The grounds for this statement will
be found in the sketch of the life and writings of Philo, which occupies
the following chapter.

CHAPTER XIII.
PHILO, AND THE DOCTRINE OP THE LOGOS.
SxeSoy yap to. ttAvto. ij ra trKetcra rrjs vofiodeo'tas aWnyopeTrai. Philo, De Josepho.
Among the Jews of Alexandria the family of the Alabarch Alexander
had risen to a pre-eminent position. They were of priestly origin, and
of wealth so immense that on one occasion Alexander, out of regard to
Queen Cypros, found no difficulty in lending to Agrippa I. the great
sum of 200,000 drachmse.3 At Jerusalem the family was favourably
known from the splendid generosity with which the Alabarch had
enriched nine gates of the Temple with silver and gold.4 At Rome
they were so much honoured for their integrity that Antonia, the
1 This is clear from his mistakes in explaining simple Hebrew names. See Frankel,
Vorstudien, ii. 28—41.
2 To prove this is the object of the second volume of Gfrorer's learned book on Philo,
to which I have heen much indebted. The author has pointed out that there are in
Josephus many traces of similar views.
3 Jos. Antt. xviii, 6, § 3. 4 Id., B. J. v. 5, § 3.

LIFE OF PHILO. 147
mother of Claudius, made Alexander her steward, and Claudius showed
him marked favour. His son, Tiberius Alexander, at the terrible price
of apostasy from his religion, rose so high in the Roman service as to be
appointed Procurator of Palestine, and, afterwards, Praefect of Alex
andria. Of the other two sons, one married Berenice, and died early,
the other succeeded his father in the office of Alabarch.1
Philo was the brother of this Jewish Croesus,2 and therefore the
uncle of the three Alexandrian Jews who played so considerable a part
in the history of their day. He seems to have passed his life in unbroken
prosperity, troubled only by that " inexorable weariness " which is
experienced by most men at some period of their lives. He complains
somewhat querulously of burdens which might have been lightly borne
by those who had been called upon tp face severer troubles.8 He was
married, and his wife had so profound an admiration for him that, when
asked why she wore no jewels, she answered, in the spirit of the mother
of the Gracchi, that "her husband's virtue was her sufficient jewellery."4
In Philo's single visit to Jerusalem, which fell during the lifetime of
Jesus, his priestly birth secured him the privilege of offering sacrifices
in the Temple.5 In the troubles which arose in Alexandria from the
brutality of the Greek and Egyptian mob, and the ill-humour of the
Prasfect Flaccus, he was chosen one of the ambassadors to the Emperor
Gaius,. and was an eye-witness of the strange scenes of which he has
left so vivid a picture in his description of the insane and odious tyrant.6
He employed his peaceful days in acquiring the knowledge, superficial
in character, but encyclopaedic in range, which was the fashion of his
time ; and he threw himself with enthusiasm into the pious task of
allegorising Scripture in such a way as to make it speak the language of
Greek philosophy, and especially* of "the holy Plato" and "the holy
community of the Pythagoreans."7 He was one of those who, under
God's Providence, helped to pave the way for Christianity, but that he
was not himself a Christian, as early legends assert, is shown by the
absence from his writings of every distinctively Christian truth.
Judaism sufficed him. In one eloquent passage he argues for the
Divine Mission of Moses from the immutability of his legislation amid
the numberless vicissitudes of Jewish life, while the works of all other
lawgivers had been incessantly modified, abrogated, and swept away.8
All the numerous works of Philo may be grouped round four
1 Jos. Antt. xix. 5, § 1 ; xx. 5, § 2.
2 DM. xviii. 8, § 1 ; Gf rarer, Philo, i. 1—7.
3 De Legg. Spec, ii., ad init. mivmv 8" o/xms avrix^. (Mangey, ii. 299.) My references
to Philo will be made to the folio edition of Mangey (1742), but I generally add the
section also.
4 Fragm. (Mang. ii. 673.)
5 See Euseb. Praep. Evan. viii. 12 ; Jer. Cat. Script. Some think that Alexander in
Acts iv. 6 was his brother.
6 In his Legatio ad Gaium, the most popular of his writings.
7 De Provid. ii. 42 : "Quod omnia prob. liber," ad init. Tov IlvBayopeiav Upiirarov eiaxrov.
8 De Vita Mosis, ii. § 3 (Mangey, ii 136).

148 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
treatises ; namely, those on the Creation of the world ; on Abraham ;
on Joseph ; and on the life of Moses.1
I. The first of these — the book on the Creation — and the tracts
which touch upon cognate subjects — are an endeavour to bring
the Mosaic cosmogony into harmony with the views of Plato in his
Timceus.2 Philo keeps in sight two elements of creation : on the
one hand a formless chaos ; on the other a Being better than all
goodness, holier than all holiness, more beautiful than all beauty,
of Whom man may know indeed that He is, but hardly what He
is.3 But how was it possible to bridge over the vast abyss between the
two1! How, in the words of Plato, could the mortal be woven into
the immortal 1 Philo meets the difficulty partly by the conception
of the Logos, " the Word " by Whom God created all things ; and
partly by the yet lower agencies of "intermediate words" — spiritual
entities — angels of all kinds, "thrones, dominations, virtues, princedoms,
powers "- — who had their share in the work of creation, and by whose
existence Philo accounts for the plural " Let us make man." The
visible world was not created at once, but there existed in the Divine
understanding an eternal determination not to leave Chaos in its
formlessness. This determination constituted a spiritual world, which
was the archetype and exemplar of the visible. It was the Perfect
Idea, of which material existences are the transient and imperfect
copy. II. In the treatises on Abraham and on Joseph, Philo gives the
reins to his imagination. The simple narratives of Scripture become,
as narratives, almost valueless. They lose their historical beauty
and human interest. They become elaborate allegories, through which
move a crowd of vapid abstractions. Abraham leaving his country
and his kindred and his father's house, is lowered into a sort of
typical Stoic departing from the Chaldasa of the sensual understanding
to seek the land of pure reason, and turning his back upon desire,
and fear, and ambition. He is, in fact, not an Oriental Emir called
to inaugurate the era of the chosen people, but a symbol of the soul
seeking God. The Chaldees worshipped stars, and therefore the call
to Haran was an indication that he was to look, not at the universe,
but at himself. Haran means " Holes," and is a symbol of the
five senses. Abraham's further wanderings mean that he attains"
to the knowledge of God. Abram means, according to Philo, "aspiring
1 See Zeller, iii. 2,603; Hausrath, Neutcgt. Zeitgesch. Die Zcit d. Apost. 152. Gfrorer
divides his writings into four general classes :— (1) Philosophic (De mundi incorrupti-
bilitate ; Quod omn is probus liber ; De vita contemplative)); (2) Historical (De mundi
opijicio ; De vita Mosis ; Dc Decalvgo ; De Monarch ii ; De C ' ircumcisione ; De legibus
special ibus ; Dc pracm.iix et pocnis, &c. ); (3) Allegorising (Liber Lcgis allcgoriarum ; De
mmniis, &c.) ; (4) Political (Legatio ad Gainm ; Contra Flaccum) ; Philo i. 7 — 37.
2 Hence the oft-quoted proverb, "Either Philo platonises, or Plato philonises."
(Suidas, &o.)
8 St. John, on the other hand, says (i. 3), " Without Him was not even one thing
made that hath been made."

WRITINGS OF PHILO. 149
father," with an allusion to his star-worship, but Abraham means
"father of sound." Sound is like speech, but "father of sound"
is like spirit which utters sound.1 Similarly he says that Sarai means
"my rule," and Sarra (= Sarah) "princess;" and that the first name
allegorically signifies particular virtue, which is transient ; and the
second, generic virtue, which is eternal and incorruptible.2 Thus
the grand old patriarch becomes a cold cypher, indicative of mental
earnestness ; Sarah, the beautiful and passionate Eastern woman, fades
into an unsatisfactory symbol for an abstraction. The laughter from
which the name of Isaac was derived becomes the joy of the
philosopher who has conquered every evil impulse, and entered into
the rest of the Eternally Real. And whereas Sarah is Virtue and
abstract Wisdom, Hagar represents only the general sciences of
grammar, music, geometry, dialectics, and rhetoric ! If Jacob comes
to a certain place when the sun sets, the statement in the Philonian
system is explained by the remarks that the sun is the perceptive
faculty, the place is the Divine Word, and Jacob is wisdom attained
by training. Hence the only value which that pathetic and deeply
instructive story possesses for Philo is the somewhat dreary platitude
that man can only grasp the Divine when his natural understanding
has set like the sun.3
III. In the Life of Moses, Philo is anxious to prove the absurd
hypothesis that the Gentiles have learnt their wisdom and philosophy
from the Jews, and that Moses was practically the master of Hesiod
and Heraclitus, of Plato and Zeno.4 Here, as everywhere, Philo cares
almost nothing for the letter of the Law. He is indeed a faithful
Jew, and thinks that the Law should be rigidly observed. Just as
we cherish the body as the dwelling-place of the soul, so (he says)
ought we to keep the letter of the Law, although its real meaning
lies exclusively in the esoteric senses which can be tortured out of
it.5 Circumcision, and the Sabbath, and all the other Mosaic institu
tions, are but allegories.6 Even as to the plainest details of juris
prudence, which, in their homely realism, seemed too coarse to form
any part of a Divine revelation — such, for instance, as that which
punished the immodest interference of women in quarrels — an
explanation was forthcoming. The passage is made to mean that
every soul has male and female elements, of which the male elements
reach forth to the heavenly and the female to the earthly, and that
our natural tendency towards the transitory must be flung ofl'.7 So
sincere was Philo in his belief that truth could only be found in
1 Tlarrip litXeitTos rixov- De Cherubim, i. § 2 (Mang. i. 139).
2 De nom. mutat. § 8, etc. (Mang. i. 591, etc.).
3 " Quod a Deo mittantur somnia." § xxii. sq. (Mang. i. 638, sq. ; Gratz, iii. 295).
4 Quis rer. div. haeres (i. 503, and other passages). See Gratz, iii. '295.
5 De Cherubim, ad init. and passim.
6 Leg. allegg., ad init. (Mang. i. 43) ; De Josepho, § 6 (Mang. ii. 46).
1 De spec; legg. (ii. 329) ; De circumc. (ii. 211) ; Gratz, iii. 297.

150 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
these strange paths of exegesis, that he thanked God for having
allowed him to be the interpreter who rendered clear the meaning
of that which to the mass of men had hitherto been unintelligible.1
He even tells us that he occasionally fell into ecstasies, in which he
was prophetically made aware of profound meanings, which otherwise
would have escaped him.2 Yet, though he thus allegorises everything,
his views wholly differ from those of the Epistle of Barnabas.
Anything like disrespect for the letter of the Law struck him as
impious. He delights to point out instances of retribution which
fell on the enemies of Israel. He tells of an Alexandrian who, having
made himself merry on "the splendid present which the Lord of
the world had made to the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah,
by presenting the one (in Greek) with the letter alpha and the- other
with the letter rho," became afterwards mad, as a punishment inflicted
on him by Heaven.8
The Philonian method is of all styles of exegesis the most arbitrary.
But Philo unquestionably did not invent it. Both among Rabbis
and Alexandrians it was already in the air. It sprang from the spirit
of the times. It was the inevitable result of two beliefs, which would
otherwise have come into dangerous collision — the belief in Biblical
inspiration, and the belief in Greek philosophy. Alexandrian Jews
had to reconcile the letter of the Bible with convictions which could
only be deduced from it by allegorising processes. When they had
come to believe in Platonic idealism and Pythagorean mysteries —
to look on matter as impure, to regard the Divine Being as incog-
nisable, to contemn the body as the source of all evil — they saw no
way out of their difficulties except by inventing a Logos as High-priest
of the world, and subordinating to him all kinds of powers and
spirits, until they had taken the golden reins of external nature out
of the hands of God, and transferred them to the charge of intermediate
beings.'1 It may help the reader to understand the method in virtue of which
this Judaic philosophy claimed its sole right to exist, if I furnish one or
two more specimens of the allegorising inferences which enabled the
Alexandrians to make Moses express the thoughts of Plato, and to turn
" a religious philosophy" into something which they took for " a philo
sophic religion." But for these I must refer to the Excursus on
" Specimens of Philonian Allegory " at the end of the book.
The doctrine most closely identified with the name of Philo is that
of the Logos ; and it is sometimes asserted that St. John, and, to a
certain extent, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews — who, however,
'- De spec. legg. (ii. 300).
2 De Cherubim, § 10 (i. 143) : "I once also heard something of still deeper significance
from my soul, whioh is frequently accustomed to be filled with inspiration (6eokiiineio-6ai),
and to exercise divination (^avreiiecrflai) concerning things which it does not know."
3 De nomin. mutat. jj 8 (Mang. i. B87).
4 Gfrorer, Philo, i 73.

DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 151
seems to avoid the use of the actual word — borrowed it from him. It
is easy to show that this is far from being an accurate statement of the
case. The word Logos has two meanings, Reason and Speech. Philo uses
it sometimes in one and sometimes in the other of these senses, but pre
dominantly in the former. When he wishes to distinguish between
them, he calls Speech " uttered Reason " (logos prophorikos), and
Reason " immanent Speech " (logos endiathetos). The Reason, he
says, is like a fountain, and the utterance flows from it. The seat
of the reason is the ruling and spiritual sphere of human nature ;
the seat of speech is in the vocal organs.1 Hence " the Divine
Logos " is the manifestation of God ; and " the Sacred logos " is
used for the Scriptures; and the "true logos" is the rule of life,
namely, to live in accordance with the highest nature. He uses
the plural, "the divine logoi," for "the powers of nature." It re
quires but one step in advance to personify these logoi, and identify
them with angels. On the other hand, angels are sometimes volatilised
into ideas. Hence, in the weakest of its aspects, the philosophy of
Philo might be represented by those who dislike it as one of the
systems in which "naught is everything, and everything is naught." 2
But, besides all this, the Logos Himself is again and again directly
personified. (a) He is above all the High Priest. Those who fled to a city of
refuge could only return when the High-priest died : which means that
as long as the Logos abides in the soul no accidental fault ever can enter
into it ; but if the Logos dies, i.e., is separated from the soul, a return
of the soul to Him is possible even after willing sins. Let us then
pray that the stainless High-priest may live in the soul as our judge and
conv neer.3
(0) In another passage he compares this high-priestly Logos to a
cup-bearer. Commenting on Gen. xl., he says grapes and vineyards
sometimes symbolise the joyous absorption of the soul in God, some
times drunkenness and wickedness. The cup-bearer of Pharaoh is
he who feeds his godless master with sensuality ; for Pharaoh, who
says, "I know not God,"4 is a type of the godless mind. But the
cup-bearer of God is the Sacrificer, the true High Priest, Who re
ceives and distributes the eternal gifts of grace, and pours out the
holy vials full of pure wine — that is, Himself.5 And as the High-
priest Aaron was father of Eleazar and Ithamar, so the Logos High
Priest is Father of the heavenly logoi and powers.
i De VU. Mosis, iii. § 13 (Mang. ii. 154).
2 Additional illustration of Philo's views about the Logos will be found in Excursus
VII. 3 De Profugis (Mang. i. 563). The allegory is more than usually clumsy.
4 Philo here seems to confuse the Pharaoh of Joseph with the Pharaoh of Moses
(Ex. v. 2).
6 De somniis, ii. (Mang. i. 685 sq.)

152 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
(7) In other passages the Logos is the image of God, the shadow of
God, the instrument of all creation, the likeness of God, Who is the
archetype of all other things.. He is also spoken of as the eldest and
the firstborn Son of God ; x and as an Archangel, and the eldest Arch
angel, who stands as an intermediate between the Creator and the
created. Again, he is the angel that appeared to Hagar ; the angel
that punished Sodom ; the God Who appeared to Jacob at Bethel, and
wrestled with him at Peniel ; the angel that appeared to Moses in the
bush ; the pillar of fire which led the Israelites out of Egypt ; the angel
which appeared to Balaam ; the leader of Israel through the wilderness.
Melchizedek is a symbol of Him,2 and so are Noah, and Bezaleel, and
Aaron, and Moses.
(8) By this time the reader will have seen how vague is Philo's con
ception ; how it floats in the air ; how the outlines of it are perpetually
confused together or melt away. He will see that whether any of the
New Testament writers were familiar with Philo, or only with the
circle of conceptions in which he moved, the amount to which they are
indebted to those conceptions is as nothing compared to the new and
immortal life which they breathe into them. In Philo they are, and they
would ever have remained, dead philosophic generalisations, founded on
loose allegoric methods, and abounding in irreconcilable contradictions.
In the New Testament they breathe and stand on their feet as clear,
living, and redemptive truths. Philo's misty and ever-changing Logos
is an intellectual possession for Judaising philosophers, but is almost in
conceivably removed from the Divine Redeemer, the Saviour of all the
world. Between the doctrine and method of Philo &nl that of the
Apostles the difference is as wide as that between the living and the
dead. The four words of St. John, " The Word became flesh," created
an epoch. They tell us more, and are of infinitely more value to
us than all the pages and volumes on the subject which Philo and
his contemporaries ever wrote. They summarise and concentrate the
inmost meaning of the Old Testament revelation and of post^canonical
thoughts.3 They are as a flash of the sword of that Word which cleaves
even to the dividing asunder of sword and spirit ; a flash which dispels
a thousand distorting mists, a sword to cleave the knot of a thousand
difficulties, which the Alexandrian philosophy vainly endeavoured to
cleave or to unloose. •
1 De Unq. confus. §§ xi. , xxviii. (Mang. i. 413, 419).
2 Leg. allcgg. iii. § 25 (Mang. i. 102).
3 Dr. Westcott — who thinks that St. John borrowed the expression (not, of course,
the doctrine) from the Palestinian Mt-mra (which always means "word" only), not the
Alexandrian Logos (which predominantly means Intelligence) — says that St. John's
evangelio message is the complete fulfilment of three distinct lines of preparatory revela
tion — namely, (i.) "the Angel of the Presence" (Gen. xxxii. 24, &c), (ii!) the "Word,"
(Gen. i. 1, &c ), and (iii.) " Wisdom " (Prov. viii. 22, &c).

THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. 153

CHAPTER XIV.
PH1L0NISM, ALLEGORICAL EXEGESIS, AND THE CATECHETICAL SCHOOL OF
ALEXANDRIA.
" All things are double one against another." — Ecclus. xiii. 24.
" Two worlds are ours ; 'tis only sin
Forbids us to descry
The mystic heaven and earth within,
Plain as the sea and sky." — Keble.
We have already seen that St. Paul was acquainted with some of
the writings of Philo, or, at any rate, with the ideas which filled
the Alexandrian literature of that epoch, and of which Philo was an
exponent.1 We shall learn, farther on, that the author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews was deeply imbued not only with the phraseology of
the great Alexandrian, but also with the general principles of his
theology.2 But we shall see also how entirely free he is from the
defects and weakness, the unreality and the affectations of the Philonian
philosophy. There is perhaps no more striking proof of the spiritual
gifts of the Sacred writers than the fact that even when they show
to the most marked degree the influence of the various forms of
lifelong training to which they had been subjected, they rise superior
to the errors and limitations of the very systems to which they are
indebted. And yet this " Sapiential literature of Alexandria " — the literature
which is represented by the books of Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom and in
the writings of Philo — had a great part to play in the development
of Revelation. It worthily filled up the interspace between Malachi
and the earliest Epistles of St. Paul. The Septuagint created the
dialect and phraseology in which the Gospel was to be proclaimed, and
the Alexandrian writers, not without heavenly guidance, helped to
smooth the path which the early Christian thinkers were to tread.
Alexandrianism was too vague, too receptive, too little conscious of the
width and depth of the chasm which separates Sacred from Jewish
literature ; but in its successful endeavour to break down the exclusive-
ness of Judaism it prepared the way for Christianity as the universal
revelation, in which there should be neither Jew nor Greek, neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.
But, with all its merits, Philonism had obvious defects. The
orthodox Rabbis showed their shrewdness when they looked on it with
jealousy and suspicion. It was a system of syncretism, and it swarmed
See Life of St. Paul, i. 642, 643.
It was the observation of this influence that led to the Church legends that Philo
for a time embraced Christianity (Photius, Cod. cv.), in consequence of having met
St. Peter at Pome (Euseb. H. E. ii. 17).

154 . THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
with contradictions. It attempted to weld together two dissimilar,
if not antagonistic, elements — the letter of Scripture and the Platonic
philosophy. The attempt was as unsatisfactory as that of the School
men to form systems which combined Aristotle with the New Testa
ment. Sometimes the philosophic conception was sacrified to the letter;
more frequently the letter was set aside to make room for the philo
sophy. The allegorical distortion of literal narratives — if it be taken
for exegesis — is almost ludicrous. But the Judaisers saw clearly that
the method might be so extended as to explain away .the whole
ceremonial law ; and, in point of fact, it was so extended. The pride of
fancied initiation made some of the Alexandrians despise Levitism just
as some of the Gnostics advanced so far in their falsely-called know
ledge as at last to despise even the moral law. It . is a startling
comment on the tendency of Philo's speculations when we find that
his nephew was an avowed renegade.

But the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was not the only
Christian writer who had been influenced by the Philonian philosophy.
Alexandria became from the earliest days of Christianity the home
of a Christian school of thought.1 The Alexandrian converts were
confronted from the first by the same problems, and surrounded
by the same influences as their Jewish predecessors. The fact that
their teaching was carried on in the midst of Pagans and philosophers —
men of wide training and cultivated intellect — rendered it indispensable
for them to present Christianity in such a manner as should neither
repel their opponents, nor give them an easy victory over ignorant
assertions and futile anathemas. From this necessity arose the great
catechetical School of Alexandria, which claimed as its founder the
Evangelist St. Mark. Its earliest teacher of any fame was the
venerable Panta^nus, who is always spoken of by his successors with
affection and respect. He was followed by St. Clement of Alexandria,
many of whose invaluable writings are still preserved to us. Clement
was followed by the greatest of all the Fathers, the most Apostolic
man since the days of the Apostles, the Father who in every branch of
study rendered to the Church the deepest and widest services — the
immortal Origen. Origen was succeeded by his pupils Heraclas and
Dionysius, to whom succeeded Pierius, Theognostus, Peter Martyr,
Arius, and Didymus. This brings us to the fourth century, after
which the glory of the school completely died away.
It was the Successful effort of these thinkers to prove to the
Gentiles that Christianity in no wise shunned the light of reason,
but was always ready to come forth into the noon-day, and to meet
opponents with a culture equal to their own. They also aimed at
checking the Gnostic vanity, which looked down with contempt on
*,«£ apxaiov edous, Euseb. H. E. V. 10.

ALEXANDRIAN ALLEGORY. 155
the faith of the ignorant, and prided itself on the possession of esoteric
mysteries. These were high and worthy ends. But it was no less
necessary to show to the zealots of a presumptuous religionism that
if God has no need of human knowledge, He has still less need of
human ignorance ; that a chastened speculation and a Divine philosophy
were not only permissible, but necessary in the field of Christian
learning ; that there was such a thing as an Ethnic as well as a
Christian inspiration ; and that so far from looking askance on the
light which shone outside the Sacred Tabernacle, all Christians should
learn to love and welcome it as being a ray from the same inexhaustible
orb of glory.1 The Christian scholars of Alexandria chose as the motto
of their school the Greek version of Is. vii. 9, " If ye believe not, ye
shall never understand." The words, indeed, are not accurately trans
lated, and are torn from their context. This, however, has been the
fate of nine-tenths of the " texts " which have been distorted into
the watchwords of party dogmatism ; and a misapplication of Scripture
is at least pardonable when it is applied to noble purposes, and not
(as is so often the case) to burn incense to pride or add fuel to hatred.
The saintly Catechists of Alexandria used their motto to imply a twofold
truth — namely, that no one could understand the inmost meaning
of Judaism who did not accept the Christian revelation ; and that
no one could advance to the mysteries of the Gospel who did not possess
an unsophisticated faith in its initial principles.2
In the then stage of Scriptural knowledge .the Alexandrian teachers
would have found it difficult to defend many parts of the Old Testament
without the use of allegory. It was only by allegory that Philo
had been able to educe from the Pentateuch the secrets of Greek
philosophy. His genius had deepened the conviction that the Scripture
was a profound enigma, in which the simple narrative and the obvious
moral were all but valueless. But this conviction was not the growth
of a day. If the Alexandrian Fathers derived it in part from the
influence of Philo,3 Philo had himself derived it from predecessors
who had invented that mystic exegesis which, in its turn, was developed
into the system of the Kabbala.
Taking the word Pardes, or "Paradise," as their watchword of
interpretation, the Kabbalists had declared that every passage of
Scripture was capable of a fourfold interpretation, indicated by the
letters P R D S. These letters represented the words —
Peshat, or " explanation."
Rentes, or "hint."
Dardsh, or "homily.''
Sod, or " mystery."
1 See Neander, Ch. Hist. ii. 264, etc.
2 See Bacon, Nov. Organ, i. 68, ,"ut non alius fere sit ad i tus ad regnum hominis quod
fundatur in scientiis, quam ad regnum coelorum, in quod nisi sub persona infantis intrare
non datur." 3 Philo is frequently quoted by Clement and Origen, as also by Eusebius.

156 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY. v
In these ways the Rabbis said that the Law could be explained in
forty-nine different manners.1
Pant^enus was the earliest Catechist who gave his adhesion to the
allegoric method,2 and we are told that he applied to the Church what is
written cf Paradise. Clement vehemently condemns carnal interpreta
tion (o-apKM&s), and says that nothing should be deduced from Scripture
but what is perfectly accordant with the Divine nature.3 He held that
all Scriptures, alike of the Old and New Testaments, demanded an alle-
goric, as well as a literal, interpretation, and he applied to them the
passage in the Psalms, " I will open my mouth in parables."4 He said
that the literal sense sufficed for an elementary faith, but that allegory
was required for more illustrious knowledge.5 Thus he explains the
furniture of the Tabernacle, and the story of Agar and Sarah, and many
other passages, in a way which might have delighted Philo. It was,
however, Origen who laid down the express rule that Scripture con
sisted of the visible and invisible, as man consists of the body and the
soul, and that all Scripture, in order to discover the inner soul and
spirit, should be interpreted in a threefold sense — historic, moral, and
mystic.0 But he did not quite fling away .the literal sense. In proof of
its usefulness he appealed to the faith of simple Christians. Nor did
he ever proceed to allegory till he had first ascertained, by all the
critical aids in his power, the grammatical meaning of the passage on
which he was commenting. Dionysius, while still continuing the alle
gorical method, leaned with greater favour to moral interpretation.
Pierius followed more closely the guidance of Origen. It was not till
the close of the third century that allegory was gradually abandoned by
Peter Martyr, and still later by Didymus, in consequence of the
growing influence of the great School of Antioch.7
The system continued, however, to be used not only in the Eastern
but even in the Western Church. St. Jerome said that to be content
with the literal sense of Scripture was "to eat dust like the serpent."
The writings of St. Hilary are full of allegorical fancies. He declared
it irreligious to take literally the natural objects so exquisitely described
in Psalm cxlvi. By the "fowls of the air" in Matt. vi. he understands
the devils, and by the " cities " the angels. The " two sparrows " which
" are sold for one farthing " are sinners whose souls being made to fly
upwards sell themselves for trifles. More than one of the Fathers has
explained the Mosaic distinction between clean and unclean animals by
saying that those which divide the hoof represent those who believe in
1 See my paper on " Rabbinic Exegesis " in the Expositor, v. 362.
2 Athenagoras, who, perhaps, succeeded Pantasnus, was not remarkable in any way as
an exegete, and he accepted Scripture literally. He paid chief attention to the Prophets,
and strangely neglected the New Testament.
3 Strom, ii. 16. 4 Ps. lxxviii. 2. Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6 ; Strom, v. 4; vi, 15.
6 Strom, vi. 15. 6 Horn. V., in Levit. § 1 ; De princip. iv. 11.
7 See Guerike, De ScholA Alex,, and Vaeherot, Hist. Crit. de I'Ecole d'Alexandrie,
i. 100—303.

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 157
the Father and the Son, and those which chew the cud represent those
who meditate on God's Law ; whereas the unclean animals, which
neither divide the hoof, nor chew the cud, imply those who neither have
faith in God nor study His law. No modem writer can attach the
smallest value to such inferences as these. But though the day has
come when the allegorical method must be limited to rigid conditions —
though it is now regarded as useless for- purposes of proof, and only
valuable by way of illustration — we must not forget that it once played
an important part in the development of doctrine, and that even the
Sacred writers have furnished splendid instances of the method in which
it may be applied.1

CHAPTER XV.
AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
" De Deo homo dixit et quidem inspiratus a Deo, sed tamen homo .... non
totum quod est dixit ; eed quod potuit homo dixit." — Aug. Tract, in Joh. i. 1.
Such being, in outline, a history of the great School of Christian
philosophy and Christian criticism in Alexandria, we may well be thank
ful that one of the Sacred Books— while it is the only book of the
Canon which emanated from the School of St. Paul — bears the stamp of
Alexandrian thought. It thus furnishes one more link of solid gold in
the continuity which binds us to the Church of the Jewish Fathers.
That is a truly Catholic philosophy which seeks to combine all that is
precious and permanent in the wisdom of patriarchs and philosophers, of
Hellenists and Hebraists. There ought to be a common sympathy
among those who in all nations have loved the Lord, even when they
knew Him not : among all who have — by His holy inspiration — thought
worthy thoughts respecting the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man. For all -true wisdom is, in its essence, Divine wisdom. There, is a
light which lighteth every man who is born into the world. Even amid
the moral aberrations of heathenism it was granted to some — granted,
let us trust, to many — to keep that light unquenched. I know not
whether any are still so narrow as to refuse all recognition of inspira
tion outside the limits of Scripture — any who would still be shocked by
the discovery that a Philo, with all his tedious allegorisings and cold
abstractions, was yet an appointed minister in influencing the thoughts
of an Apollos2 and a St. John. But if there be any such, let them
1 On modern allegorical systems, as exemplified in Swedenborg, see Mohler, Symbolik,
p. 589 (ed. 1864).
2 It will be seen farther on that there are very strong reasons for believing that
Apollos wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. I venture therefore to ask permission to use
his name by anticipation, at least hypothetically, in order to avoid cumbrous periphrases.

158 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
remember that " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
and cometh down from the Father of lights, with Whom is no variable
ness nor shadow of turning. A Socrates, a Plato, a Sakya Mouni —
these, too, had reared their altars to " the unknown God ; " these, too,
were enabled to shed some light on the darkness of sin and sorrow,
because they had kindled their torches at the Sun of Righteousness, and
drawn some sparks of light from the unemptiable fountain of Divine
wisdom.1 If it be a fatal error to cut ourselves adrift from any age in
the past history of Christianity — if we shall one day suffer for having
disowned our brotherhood with the Church of the Middle Ages, or the
Church of the Reformers — so is it also an error to dissever ourselves
from any in the redeemed brotherhood of man who have taught truth,
even if it has been mingled with error, or who have served God, even if
it has not been with the service of the Sanctuary. Truth is truth, and
it comes from God, whether the speaker be a Balaam or an Elijah, a
Caiaphas or a St. John. In the multiplicity of parts and diversity of
methods which have characterised the deliverance of the one great
Revelation, even the heathen have borne their share. Verses quoted
from the Greek poets are to be read on the Sacred page. Philo was
deeply influenced by Plato, and Philo in his turn has left on Christian
Apostles his own vivid impress. St. Paul did not think it necessary
to apologise when he alluded to a homely Latin fable ; the risen Lord
of Glory did not disdain to address a Greek proverb to His erring
saint. In speaking thus of Ethnic inspiration, I am but reviving — as I
have tried to do in other instances — a truth which was firmly held
by the greatest thinkers of the Primitive Church, but which, since
the days of St. Augustine, has been forgotten or concealed. The
primitive doctrine of Inspiration — as held by Justin Martyr, and by
the School of Alexandria, who freely appeal to the inspired testimony
of " minds naturally Christian " — only resembles the popular doctrine
in the use of similar terms, but not in the significance which the
terms really bear. The Apologists' of the second century, and the
philosophic Greek Christians of the third, never hesitated to recognise
the truth that the influences of the Spirit are as the wind which
bloweth where it listeth, and that the poets and philosophers of the
heathen are often the conscious and unconscious exponents of His
inward voice. They held with the much injured and much calumniated
Montanus, whom Wesley regarded as the best man of his age, that
the soul of man is like a lyre, and that it breaks forth into music
when its strings are swept by " the plectrum of the Paraclete."
1 Wisd. vii. 25, 26 : "For she (Wisdom) is the breath of the power of God, and a
pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty ; therefore can no defiled thing
fall into her. For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of
the power of God and the image of His goodness. And being but one, she can do aU
things, and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new ; and, in all ages, entering
into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and prophets.

NOT BY ST. PAUL. 159
In these remarks it may be thought that I have begged the
question by assuming that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written
by St. Paul. This, however, is not the case. Even in the recognised
writings of the great Apostle there are traces of thoughts which
emanated from Alexandria.1 St. Paul, after his conversion, certainly
belonged to that Hagadistic school of Jewish exegesis2 without which
there would hardly have been any room for Phio or for any Hellenist
within the narrow limits of Jewish orthodoxy. Philo did something
towards breaking down that bristling hedge of technicalities, in the
construction of which so many of the Rabbis intensified their
Pharisaism, and wasted their unprofitable toil. Paul had been in
his early years a student, and perhaps remained a student to the
last. There is, therefore, no improbability in the conjecture that
he was acquainted with Philo's writings.3 But even if St. Paul had
found room in his large heart for such truths as God had revealed
to his philosophic contemporary, not one of his Epistles is coloured
with Alexandrian conceptions to anything like the same extent as
the Epistle to the Hebrews. Comparative criticism has made it
little short of certain that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not
written by St. Paul. That science has made gigantic strides since
the days of the Fathers. Even if the conclusion had been arrived
at in spite of patristic authority, it is established on grounds too sure
to be shaken. But in point of fact it is in strict accordance with
the tenor of ancient evidence. The continued assertion of the Pauline
authorship shows but too plainly to what an extent the manliness
of criticism can be benumbed by the paralysis of custom. Adhesion
to prejudice is too often mistaken for love of truth.
I shall not stop to show how often, or by what partisans, the
external evidence has been mis-stated. One of the most recent
commentators, for instance, has prefixed to the Epistle the clause
of Origen, that " It is not by haphazard that ancient authorities have
handed it down as St. Paul's." He omits to inform us that Origen
in the very next word says that "God only knows the truth as to
who wrote it," and that though some of his predecessors had held
1 Even Philo appeals to older writings (trvyypap.p.aTa ira\atuiv avSpwv), as did also the
Therapeutae. (Tholuck, 79.)
2 See Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 639 — 642; and Delitzsch, Commentar. Zum
Brief e an die Hebv'aer, xxvi., xxvii.
3 The following passages of St. Paul show familiarity with the Alexandrian author
of the Wisdom of Solomon : —
2. Cor. v. 1, "The earthly house of our Wisd. ix. 15, "The earthly tabernacle."
tabernacle."
Eom. i. 20, "The invisible things of Him Wisd. xiii. 1, "Who are ignorant of God,
. . . are clearly seen, being perceived and could not out of the good things
by the things that are made." that are seen know Him that is."
Eom. xiii. 1 — 7, "There is no power but Wisd. vi. 1—4, "For power is given unto
of God; the powers that be are ordained you (Kings, &c.) from the Lord, and
of God." sovereignty from the highest."
See Hilgenfeld, Einleit. 223.

160 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
it to be St. Paul's, yet the historical tradition (ia-ropia) which had come
to him asserted it to be the work of St. Clement or St. _ Luke. It
may be worth while, then, once more to summarise, and to put in its
true perspective the evidence of the Fathers.1
This evidence may be placed in the Excursus. But we may here
most briefly summarise it by saying that in spite of the antiquity
and authority of the Epistle no writer of the Western Church in
the first, second, or third century, quotes it as St. Paul's ; that the first
Latin writer who attributes it to St. Paul is Hilary, late in the fourth
century ; and that in the fifth century both St. Jerome and St.
Augustine, though loosely quoting it as St. Paul's, had serious mis
givings about its direct genuineness. In the Eastern Church,
Pantaenus and Clement of Alexandria seem to have set the fashion
of accepting the Pauline authorship ;2 but on this subject even Origen
felt grave doubts. Eusebius wavered about it, and admitted that
the Epistle was accounted spurious by many, but thought that it might
perhaps be a translation from an Aramaic original. Even in the
Eastern Church it did not meet with unhesitating acceptance as a
work of St. Paul.
A Jewish rule, which has found unconscious acceptance in all ages,
says that " Custom is Law."3 But if the Epistle to the Hebrews
owes its recognition among the Epistles of St. Paul far more to an
unthinking custom than to careful argument, how is it that such a
custom arose? The answer is simple. It arose mainly in the Eastern
Church from the initiative of Pantsenus, and it was only accepted in the
Western Church, after considerable hesitation, by the force of example.
In both Churches it originated not from trustworthy tradition, but from
the superficial acceptance of prima facie phenomena. The general
theology of the Epistle was Pauline, and the finer differences escaped
notice. Many characteristic phrases coincided with those in St. Paul's
Epistles, and were current in his school of thought. The allusions
at the close of the Epistle led to the careless assumption that they were
penned by St. Paul. The observation of similarities is easy to any
one ; the detection of differences, which, however deep, are yet to
some extent latent, is only possible to students who do not rely
upon authority and tradition except so far as they are elements
in the sacred search for truth. Nothing can more decisively prove
the incompetence of a mechanical consensus than the fact that
millions of readers have failed to perceive, even in the original, the
dissimilarity of style, of method, and of theologic thought, which proves
that the same pen could not have written, nor the same mind have
originated, the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistles of St. Paul.
1 See ExcursusVIII. on the " Patristio Evidence as to the Authorship of the Epistle to
the Hebrews. "
2 See Eouth, Bel. Sacr. i. 472, 4S0.
3 paanjn

NOT BY ST. PAUL. 161
Luther showed his usual insight and robust sense when he saw that
Heb. ii. 3 could not have been written by the author of Gal. i. 1, 12.
Again, though the author does not fall into any demonstrable error
in his allusion to the details of Temple worship in vii. 27, ix. 3, 4,
x. 11 — yet he goes to the verge of apparent inaccuracies, against which
St. Paul, who was familiar with the Temple service, would surely
have guarded himself. In reading the Epistle to the Hebrews we
are in contact with the mind of a great and original writer of the
Apostolic age, whose name escaped discovery till modern times.
It is hardly worth while to quote later authorities. They can have
' no effect but to impose upon the ignorant. They simply float with the
stream. They are uncritical, and therefore valueless. When such
writers as Clement of Alexandria and Origen in the Eastern Church,
and Jerome and Augustine in the Western Church, had made timid
concessions to the custom of popularly quoting the Epistle as St. Paul's,
it was natural that later writers should follow their example. Gradually,
by the aid of conciliar decrees,1 prevalent assumption hardened into
ecclesiastical conviction. The result of the evidence may be summed
up by saying that, as far as the evidence of antiquity is concerned, loose
conjecture tended in one direction and genuine criticism in the other.
It is astonishing that any one should attach importance to the conven
tional allusions of writers who neither discussed nor considered the
question. That this or that Father of the fourth or fifth century intro
duces a quotation from the Epistle with the words "St. Paul says" is
of no more consequence than when this or that clergyman announces a
lesson or a sermon from "the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews."
Such " patristic authorities " are, for any critical purpose, not worth the
paper on which they are written. The acceptance of a current view by
a writer who has not examined the question has no evidential weight,
even if that author be an Athanasius or a Theodoret.
But among thoughtful writers who really turned their attention to
the matter the old doubts on the subject were by no means extinguished.
In the Western Church the Epistle was not publicly read to the same
extent or on the same footing as the others, even at the close of the
fourth century. The assertion that it was written by St. Paul was
sometimes accompanied with modifications, in the fifth century. It had
never been commented on by any Latin writer as late as the sixth.
In the seventh, Isidore of Seville records that many still attributed it,
at least in part, to Barnabas or Clement " because of the discrepancy of
style." Even in the ninth it is entirely omitted by the Codex Boer-
nerianus (G), and only appears in a Latin translation in the celebrated
1 The first Synod which used the Epistle to the Hebrews as Pauline was that of
Antioch, A.n. 264, which was summoned to correct the errors of Paul of Samosata. It
is placed tenth among St. Paul's Epistles by the Council of Laodicea, A.D. 364 (Can.
60). This canon appears to be genuine (Wieseler, i. 23), though not above suspicion.
(Credner, Gesch. d. Kanon, 21 fg.)
L

162 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
F, the Codex Augiensis. But long before the ninth century, and for
centuries afterwards, the science of criticism was forgotten. St. Thomas
of Aquinum, in the thirteenth century, repeats the old objections in
order to refute them by the old arguments ; but all doubt on the subject
was lulled to sleep by the spell of ecclesiastical infallibility. Then
came the reviving dawn of the sixteenth century, when " Greece rose
from the dead with the New Testament in her hand." At that epoch
even Roman Catholic writers like Ludovicus Vives and Cardinal Cajetan
ventured to point out the uncertainty which had been felt by Origen,
Jerome, and even Augustine. Erasmus, while confessing his willingness
to accept any certain definition of the Church on the subject, yet quotes
some of the Fathers to show the absurdity of the pseudo-orthodoxy
which condemned a man as " plusquam heretical " if he doubted about
the authorship of this Epistle. His own opinion was that St. Paul did
not write it.1 Luther calls attention to its style, and quotes various
passages2 to show that it could not have been written by St. Paul or by
any Apostle. While speaking of it with admiration as "a strong,
mighty, and lofty Epistle," he considers that its Scriptural method in
dicates the authorship of Apollos, and says that at any rate it is the
work of "an excellent apostolic man."3 Calvin, again — while, like
some of the Fathers, he popularly quotes it as " the Apostle's " — says
that he cannot be induced to recognise it as St. Paul's because it differs
from him in its style and method of teaching, and because the writer
speaks of himself as a pupil of the Apostles,4 a thing very alien from
St. Paul's custom.5 Melancthon never quotes it as St. Paul's. The
Magdeburg Centuriators denied that it was his. Grotius and Limborch
and Le Clerc supposed it to have been written by St. Luke, Apollos, or
some companion of St. Paul.
Then for a time the tyranny of indolent custom began once more to
reassert itself. During the seventeenth century, and long afterwards,
especially in England, no one, without incurring dislike or suspicion,
could hint, even apologetically, at any doubt as to whether the translators
of the English Bible were in the right when they headed the Epistle
with the superscription, " The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the
Hebrews."6 But since the time of Semler (1763) many eminent writers
1 " Quod ad sensum meum attinet, non videtur illius esse, ob causas quas hie reticuisse
praestiterit. " — Erasm. Opp. vi. 1024.
- ii. 3 ; vi. 4, seq. ; x. 26, seq. ; xii. 17.
3 He only gives it precedence over the Epistles of James and Jude. "Lutherus eam
simpliciter rejicit atque ita fere sentiunt Lutherani." — Gerhard (t 1637), Comment, p. 10.
4 Heb: ii. 3.
6 Gal. i. 11—15 ; ii. 6 ; 1 Cor. ix. 1 ; xi. 23 ; Eph. iii. 2, &c. See Calvin, ad. Heb.
ii. 3 ; xii. 13.
6 " St. Paul saith in the twelfth chapter of the Hebrews" (Office for the Visitation of
the Sick). " Marriage is commended of St. Paul to be honourable of all men" (Heb.
xiii. 4), (Office Form for the Solemnisation of Matrimony). Such accidental allusions are
in no sense authoritative. This is exactly a question on which Councils and Churches are
very fallible, and have no authority beyond that which they derive from the study and
research of their individual members. These obiter dicta have no more weight in proving

RESEMBLANCE TO ST. PAUL. 163
have practically set the question at rest by furnishing the results
of that close examination, which prove, not only that St. Paul
was not the actual writer of the Epistle — a fact which had beien
patent even in the days of Origen — but that it is not even indirectly
due to his authorship. The phraseology has been passed through -a
fresh mint, and the thoughts have been subjected to the crucible of
another individuality.
It will, therefore, serve no purpose to heap up words and phrases
which are common to the author and to St. Paul.1 Many, indeed, of
those which have been adduced belong to the current coin of Christian
theology. Those that are distinctively Pauline only prove a point which
every one is ready to concede, that the writer had adopted much of the
Apostle's teaching, and had been deeply influenced by his companionship.
It is this very fact which throws into relief the positive dissimilarities.
The more we read such books as Mr. Forster's Apostolical Authority of
the Epistle to the Hebrews, " the closer," says Alford, " becomes the
connexion in faith and feeling of the writer of the Epistle and St. Paul,
. but the more absolutely incompatible the personal identity ; the more
we perceive all that region of thought and feeling to have been in
common between them which mere living together, talking together,
praying together would naturally range in ; but all that region wherein
individual peculiarity is wont to put itself forth, to have been entirely
distinct. Again, it is vain to talk about difference of subject or difference of
aim as furnishing any explanation of these dissimilarities. We have
writings of St. Paul on all kinds of topics, and at all ages of his mature
life ; and though the style of a writer may vary in different moods, as
the style of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians differs from that-in
the Pastoral Epistles, yet every style retains a certain stamp of indi
viduality. Now, the differences between the Epistle to the Hebrews
and the Epistles of St. Paul are differences which go down to the roots
of the being. That the same pen should have been engaged on both is
a psychological impossibility. The Greek is far better than the Greek
the Pauline authorship than the insertion of 1 John v. 7 in the English Version has
weight in deciding on the authenticity of that passage. On such matters the Church of the
seventeenth century was less qualified to decide than the Church of the nineteenth ;
and if the learned divines of the Church were now called upon for an opinion, the pre
ponderance against the Pauline authorship would be overwhelming. To use such casual
allusions as though they were decisive, in this and similar discussions, is one of the most
unworthy — and therefore, alas ! one of the commonest — forms of the reductio ad Iwrribile
and the mentum ad invidiam.
1 Some of these may be seen collected by Tholuck and Bishop Wordsworth in their
introductions to the Epistle, as also in the editions of Stuart and Forster. Any one will
see at a glance the large sifting they require, I subjoin some of the most striking — 1
Thess. i. 3, " unceasingly making mention of your work of faith and labour of love ; "
Heb. vi. 10, ' ' God is not unjust to forget your work and love ; " Eom. xii. 18, ' ' if possible,
being at peace with all men ; " Heb. xii. 14, " Follow peace with all." Compare also Heb.
xiii. 18 with 2 Cor. iv. 2 ; Heb. x. 30 with Eom. xii. 19 ; Heb. ii. 10 with Eom. xi. 36 ;
and Heb. xiii. 20 with Bom. xv. 33.

164 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of St. Paul.1 St. Paul is often stately and often rhetorical, and some
times wi'ites more in the style of a treatise than of a letter ; but the
stateliness and rhetoric and systematic treatment of the Epistle to
the Hebrews in no way resemble his. The form and rhythm of its
sentences are wholly different. Paul is often impassioned and often
argumentative, and so is the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews;
but the passion and the dialectics of the latter furnish the most striking
contrast to those of the former. The writer cites differently from
St. Paul f he writes differently ; he argues differently ; he thinks
differently ; he declaims differently ; he constructs and connects his
sentences differently ;3 he builds up his paragraphs on a wholly dif
ferent model. St. Paul is constantly mingling two constructions, leaving
sentences unfinished, breaking into personal allusions, substituting the
syllogism of passion for the syllogism of logic. This writer is never un-
grammatical ; he is never irregular ; he is never personal ; he never
struggles for expression ; he never loses himself in a parenthesis ; he is
never hurried into an anacoluthon.4 His style is the style of a man of
genius who thinks as well as writes in Greek : whereas St. Paul wrote
in Greek, but thought in Syriac. The writings of both have the inde
finable stamp of distinction ; but the distinction of Apollos is marked
by a less burning passion, and a more absolute self-control. The notion
that the Epistle is a translation may be set aside. It only arose from a
desire to save the Pauline authorship while accounting for the glaring
differences of style. The fact of its acceptance by writer after writer5
shows that criticism had little to do with deciding on the peculiarities of
the letter. The quotations from the Septuagint even where it differs from
the Hebrew, the structure of the sentences, and even the use of th<j two
1 This does not exclude Hebraisms, because lexical Hebraisms (such as kXtjpo*6>os,
oxKovpkvr) piWovaa, ayia&iv, <rap£ «al alpa, k-t.x.) were inwoven into the theological language
of Christianity ; but the majority of the grammatical " Hebraisms " in Prof. Stuart's
list are not Hebraisms at all, or are reminiscences of Old Testament expressions (see
Tholuck, Komment. 26—30). Bleek and Tholuck select six special peculiarities of
style — 1. The constant use of iras, "all;" 2. The intransitive use of Ka8i£eiv, "sit"
(i. 3, viii. 1, etc.); 3. The use of kavwep, "even though," where St. Paul always uses
etye, " if at least ; " 4. odev, in the sense of "wherefore ;" 5. eis to otqpeKes, " to perpetuity;'1
and eis to Trar-nrAes (Heb. vii. 3, 10, 25, etc.) for St. Paul's ™woTe, " always," which is not
a good Greek word ; 6. The use of irapa and vnkp after comparatives.
2 He follows the LXX., and usually the Alexandrian form of it, even where it differs
from the Hebrew (i. 8, 9, ii. 7, x. 5—7, 30, 37—38, xi. 21, xiii. 5) ; whereas St. Paul
often reverts to the Hebrew, and his citations agree with the Vatican MS. of the LXX.
See this demonstrated by Bleek, Der Brief an d. Hcbr. 338, seq.; Tholuck, Komment. 55.
And he introduces his quotations all but invariably, not by "as it is written," "the
Scripture saith," or " David so saith," but by " He saith," or " the Holy Spirit or God
saith or beareth witness," etc. (i. 5, 6, iii. 7, 15, iv. 3, 4, v. 5, vi. 14, vii. 14, 21, viii.
6, 8, etc.).
3 Tap, roiyopovv, Kat yap, roiwv, 811S, aAAa ou (ii. 16 and iii. 16) ; etra (xii. 9) ; 8-qirov (ii. 16).
See Bleek, i. 330.
4 How totally unlike St. Paul's rugged impetuosity is the calm and masterly grasp
over the grammar in the splendid paragraph of xii. 18—24, in spite of its double
parentheses ! St. Paul would have made shipwreck of the grammar in such a sentence.
6 Eusebius, Jerome, Theodoret, Euthalius, (Ecumenius, Theophylact, etc., and down
to Thomas Aquinas.

DIFFERENCES OF STYLE. 165
senses of the word diatheke, are sufficient to prove that the letter was
written in Greek. A translation may be very able, but it can never
bear upon its surface such marks of originality as we find in this Epistle.
Its eloquence belongs to the language in which it is composed.1 It is as
unlike the eloquence of the LXX. translators when they are rendering
into Greek the promises and denunciations of the Hebrew prophets as it
is possible to conceive. It is full of paronomasife and plays of words
which could have had no meaning or parallel in Hebrew.2 It abounds
in words which, while they have not the startling life of St. Paul's —
while they are neither half-battles nor " creatures with hands and feet "
— are yet terse, beautiful, and essentially Greek.3 It could not have
been a version from an Aramaic original. If then the Greek be the
Greek of the original author, it is wholly unlike St. Paul's Greek. It
was not in St. Paul's nature to be, as this writer is, " elaborately and
faultlessly rhetorical." St. Paul, as I have shown elsewhere, has his own
style of rhetoric, breathless, impetuous, bursting out like a lava stream
of spontaneous passion. But never under any circumstances does St.
Paul use rhetoric for its own sake. Never does he look out for expres
sions which shall merely please by their own sonorous majesty. Never
does he indulge in the balanced equilibrium of euphonious clauses. His
expressions are never leisurely. The movement of this author is that
of an Oriental sheikh with his robes of honour wrapped around him ;
the movement of St. Paul is that of an athlete girded for the race.
The rhetoric of this writer, even when it is at its most majestic
volume, is like the smooth flow of a river amid green fields ; the
rhetoric of St. Paul is like the rush of a mountain torrent amid opposing
rocks. The idiosyncrasy of the writer is seen in his fondness for amplitude
and rotundity of expression. Where St. Paul uses " reward " (misthos)
his ear requires " recompense of reward " (misthapodosia) ; where St.
Paul would have been content with the word "blood" (haima) he re
quires " shedding of blood " (haimatecchusia) ; where St. Paul has " oath "
(horkos) he uses the fuller and rounder horkomosia. St. Paul thrice em
ploys the expression " sitting at the right hand of God ; " this writer,
perhaps also with a touch of the Alexandrian dislike of anthropomor-
1 Thus Philastrius (Haer. 89) says of some, " In ea (epistola) quia rhetorice scripsit,
sermone plausibili, inde non putant esse ejusdem apostoli." The emphatic and sounding
uses of the hyperbaton in vii. 4 (the position of 6 irarptapxijs) could not be paralleled in St.
Paul ; nor the strikingly effective collocation of words in the very first sentence, in xii.
1, \ ix. 11, 12, etc.
2 i. 1, iroAu/iepws Kat iroAliTpairios ; ii. 5 — 8, vireVa£ee . . . awnoraKTOV • . • inrOTeTayneVa ;
V. 8, ep.a9ev a<p' Sjv en-aflef ; V. 14, KOtAou.Te Kat kokoG ; ix. 8, ejrl fiptouatriv Kal Tr6p.atnv ; xiii. 14,
Pikvovaav . . . /ie'AAovo-af ; ix. 15, ota07JKTf (in two senses, "a covenant" and "a will");
vii. 39, p-STerr)(T)KGV . . • Trpoo'e'crx^Kei' ; X. 29, ^yno'a^ei'os ¦ • . ^ytatrthj ; xi. 9, iraptiiKijo-ei' . . .
KaTotKTJo-as ; xiii. 2, kTrLKav6dvea-9e . . . k\aBov ; and many instances of plays on compound
words (ii. 8, vii. 23, 24, viii. 7, 8, ix. 28), besides numerous rhetorical assonances (vii. 19,
22, x. 29, 34, 38, 39, etc.).
3 i. 3, a.TTavyao-p.a. j xii. 1, ev7rept<rraTOS ; V. 2, p-eTpioirafletc.

136 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
phism, thrice amplifies it into sat1 " on the right hand of the Majesty vn
the highest" or " on the right hand of the throne of God," or " on the
right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." St Paul speaks
of Christ as " the image of God," this writer as " the effulgence of the
glory and impress of the hypostasis of God."2 All this arises from his
love for " musical euphony." On the other hand, St. Paul rarely speaks,
as this writer usually does, of our Lord as " Jesus," or " the Lord," or
" Christ," but rather of " our Lord Jesus Christ," and " Christ Jesus our
Lord."3 The variation is remarkable, but is due to the fact that as time
went on the names "Christ" and "Jesus" became to all Christians so
connotative of the supremest exaltation as no longer to need that
addition or description which had become familiar to the earlier
converts.

CHAPTER XVI.
THEOLOGY OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
" Oh, that I knew how all Thy lights combine,
And the configurations of their glorie,
Seeing not only ho%v each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the storie. "
G-. Herbert.
But the importance of all these differences, great as it is, sinks into
insignificance when we consider the deep distinctions which exist
between the theological conceptions of St. Paul and those of the writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews.' There is, it need scarcely be said,
no contradiction, any more than there is a contradiction between
the theology of St. Paul and St. John ; but there is a dissimilarity
so marked that, as St. Paul could not have written the Epistle to
the Hebrews without a radical change of style and individuality, so
neither could he have written it without completely shifting the
perspective and the inter-relations of the truths which he habitually
taught. These facts are so interesting, so convincing, so intrinsically
important, and so frequently overlooked, that they deserve the reader's
most careful consideration.
(1.) That the writer was of the School of St. Paul we have said
already, and accordingly we find him dwelling on three cardinal topics
of the Pauline theology, namely (1) the contrast between Judaism
and Christianity, (2) the saving efficacy of faith, and (3) the re-
' KaMfoii', " to sit," is intransitive in Heb. i. 3, viii. 1, x. 12, xii. 2. In St. Paul it is
always transitive, "to seat."
2 See Alford, IV. i. p. 79.
8 These oompound forms occur sixty-eight times in St. Paul, and even " our Lord
Jesus " only once in the Hebrews.

CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM. 167
demptive work of Christ. But the fourth great topic of St. Paul's
teaching — namely, the Universality of the Gospel as offered to all men,
and to the Gentile in no less degree than to the Jew — is conspicuously
absent in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
" The people " is to our author repeatedly, and, so far as this
Epistle is concerned, exclusively, the Chosen People.1 The Gentiles
are ignored. The word " Gentiles " does not occur in the Epistle ;
and the writer speaks as though there were no such thing as a
pagan in the world.2 No one, surely, can refuse to recognise this
phenomenon, or will think that it is sufficiently explained by saying
that the Epistle is " addressed to the Hebrews." That might account
for the absence of any discussion of the relations between the two un-
fused, and even half-discordant, elements of the Christian Church ; but
St. Paul, with whom the offer of salvation to the Gentiles was the most
essential element of "his Gospel,"3 could not have excluded every
allusion to them, however remote. Had he done so by way of defer
ence to Jewish prejudices, it would have been a concession altogether
unworthy. That this writer accepted the call of the Gentiles we do
not dispute ; had he not done so he could not have been, as he so
evidently was, a friend and adherent of the great Apostle. But it was
not a topic of which his thoughts were full to overflowing, as were the
thoughts of St. Paul. It was not a truth for the sake of which he had
spent, amid combat, calumny, and persecution, the best years of his life.
His thoughts were so exclusively occupied with the Hebrews, that he
even speaks of the Incarnation as a taking hold not of humanity, but of
Abraham's seed.4 It is, perhaps, this circumstance which has robbed us
of that enquiry into the position of Heathenism in the Divine economy,
which would not only have had an intense interest, but would have
completed for us the now imperfect scheme of what may be called the
philosophy of historic religion.
But while the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews had evidently
embraced the views of St. Paul, how differently does he handle the
three great themes which he has in common with his predecessor !
His whole Epistle deals with the relations betiveen Christianity and
Judaism, but it is doubtful whether, at earlier stages of the controversy,
St. Paul would have thought it expedient to adopt his line of argument.
It is one which was in itself admirably suited to pacify the furious
indignation of his Jewish opponents ; but rougher and sterner work
had to be done before it could be profitably employed. Jewish ex-
i 'O Aans, v. 3 ; vii. 5, 11, 27 ; viii. 10 ; ix. 7, 19 ; x. 30 ; xi. 25. See especially ii. 17 ;
iv. 9 ; xiii. 12. In this sense the writer (as we should have supposed, & priori) is a
Jewish Christian ; but he is a Jewish Christian of a large and liberal type, and he does
not utter one word which is antagonistic to the great spiritual conceptions of St. Paul.
He dwells emphatically on the imperfection of Judaism (aadevks . . ai/w^eAes) ; places
Abraham below Melchizedek; does not dwell on Chi ist, either as the Jewish Messiah, or
us the Son of David ; and places the attainment of salvation in faithful endurance, not
in obedience to the Law. 2 See Reuss, Thiol. Chrit. ii. 289.
'¦> Eph. iii. 4 -8. " See u. 16.

168 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
clusiveness had taken refuge in what they regarded as the impregnable
fortress of Levitism ; and it was necessary to batter down that
fortress with many a rude shock of argument before the Apostle
could pause to show the beauty and past usefulness of its walls and
towers. Similarly there can be no question that the Papacy had in
its day rendered magnificent services to the cause of civilisation;
but it is scarcely from the Reformers that we should have expected
a demonstration that it did so. It was their appointed task to show
the dangerous elements which, in the sixteenth century, had rendered
it necessary to emancipate mankind from its oppressive sway. There
is force and truth in the arguments of De Maistre, but it was not a
Luther who could be expected to originate them.
The specific character of the argument cannot be more briefly de
scribed than by saying, as we have said already, that it is Alexan
drian. It is not only Alexandrian in its learning and culture,1 but
has its bases in the Alexandrian theosophy, and appeals for support
to the allegoric method of Alexandrian exegesis.2 St. Paul was no
stranger to that method ; but his approaches to it are distant and
external. They are of the nature of literary reminiscences. They
tinge the phraseology rather than sway the entire conception. They
are such as had flowed from Alexandria into the field of Palestinian
thought. On the other hand, the Alexandrianism of the author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews is that of one who had been trained in
the system, and whose whole theology is influenced by the conceptions
which he has thence acquired.
I will try to make this clear.
«.. We have already touched upon the exclusive regard paid to the
Chosen People. The writer's thoughts are absorbed in the Hebrews.
It is the same with Philo. His cosmopolitan interests and encyclo
paedic training had made him familiar with Roman institutions and
Greek culture ; yet everything appears to him in the light of Hebraism.
Moses is to him the ultimate source of all wisdom. Philo was as
ardently convinced as the fiercest of the Zealots that Israel is the
leader of the Gentiles, and that to Israel belongs the future of the
world. Israel is to the nations as the Pillar of Fire, wherein the Logos,
or some other Divine minister, led their fathers in the wilderness.
Israel, with his Temple and his laws, is the priest to pray and inter
cede for the seventy nations of mankind. The souls of the Israelites
are of a higher order than those of the heathen. To Philo the
Messianic kingdom means mainly the assembling of the Dispersion
by some new and personal manifestation of the Logos.8 To him
1 Instances will "be frequently found in the notes to the following pages. See also
Excursus IX.," The Epistle to the Hebrews and the writings of Philo.
2 iv. 1-10 ; vii. 1—17 ; ix. 1—10 ; x. 1—10.'
3 For these allusions see Philo, Vita Mosis, Opp. ii. 104, 107, 124, 126, 155
(ed. Mangey) ; and Hausrath, Die Zeit d. Apost. 181.

ALEXANDRIANISM. 160
Judaism means Philosophy, but he still regards it as the absolute
religion. Similarly, to the writer of this Epistle Christianity is but the
fulfilment of Judaism. He sees in all mankind the undeveloped germs
of the ideal Hebrew.
$. Another marked trace of the writer's Alexandrianism is his
method of treating Scripture. To him, as to Philo, it is pregnant with
latent meanings. Its silence is divinely significant, and is indeed as
important for instruction as are its utterances. On two passing
and isolated allusions to Melchizedek, allusions separated from each
other by an interval of nine centuries, he builds a theological system of
unequalled grandeur. That system receives strong support from the
' import and omen of names. It is partly built on the fact that certain
circumstances are not mentioned in the Sacred narrative. Similarly,
from the absence of any reference to the death of Cain, Philo infers the
deathlessness of evil in mortal life. He calls Sarah " without mother "
because the name of her mother is not recorded. So, to the writer
of this Epistle, the mystic splendour of Melchizedek is enhanced by the
circumstance that he is " without father, without mother, without re
corded genealogy."
y. But again and again, in peculiar phrases and pregnant hints,
we see how much the writer has benefited from the study of Philo. If
his main argument turns on the Priesthood of Christ, and His sinless
Priesthood, we cannot forget that Philo too has called the Logos a High
Priest, an " image of God," and " first-born of God," and has spoken
of his having "no participation in sin."1 Philo as well as St. Paul has
contrasted the milk and the solid food of religious instruction. If
Apollos speaks of Christ's sitting on the right hand of God to make
intercession for us, Philo too has spoken of the Logos as " a Priest
of the Father of the Universe ; " as " an Advocate to obtain both
forgiveness of sins and a supply of all good;" as "the boundary
between created things and the Creator ; " as " an intercessor for
mortality in its longings after the incorruptible, and an ambassador from
the Lord of all to that which is His subject." These are but some
of the memorable ways in which, by God's gradual education of
mankind, Alexandrian Judaism was enlightened to create forms of
thought of which Christianity could make use in proclaiming the
Gospel of the Incarnation, and in basing it upon the utterances of the
Old Testament Scriptures.2 But we must again be reminded how
vast is. the superiority of the Christian faith to the Philonian philo-
1 De profugis, 20 : Gtpxtepevs • • • apaprrjpiaTWv afxe'roxos. f
2 Among phrases common to the writer and to Philo, but unknown to St. Paul, we
may mention — Sijn-ou, too-oDto . . oa-ov, the interchange of meanings between "covenant"
and "testament" in diatlieke, farigeiv, yevo-ao-dai, ueTpton-afietc, ai±rJTiop. There is a remark
able parallel between Heb. x. 29 and Philo, Deprofug., " For if those who abuse mortal
parents are led to death, of what punishment must we think them worthy who venture to
blaspheme the Father and Maker of all things?" Such striking terms as "to sin
willingly" and "prayers and supplications " are also common to both.

170 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY. i
sophy. The Logos of Philo has to be removed from any direct contact
with matter by an endless number of intervening Powers; the forms
in which He is represented are so self-contradictory, that we never
know whether he is to be regarded as a Person or an Idea. And
Philo is still so far entangled in Jewish particularism that he is
unable to understand the universal prophecies of the Old Testament,
His Logos is at the best a Jewish deliverer, and is infinitely far
from being the Saviour of the World.
5. But the still closer comparison of a few of the most memorable
passages of the Epistle with the words and thoughts of Philo will
show that the author is indebted to him to an extent to which
St. Paul's writings furnish no parallel.
(i.) Take, for instance, the memorable opening passage. He speaks
of Christ as " the effulgence of God's glory." Philo had spoken
of God as the "archetypal brightness," and of the Logos as a "sunlike
.brightness," and the Book of Wisdom had spoken of Wisdom as " the
effulgence of everlasting light." — He calls the son " the stamp and
impress of God's substance." Philo speaks of the word of man as
"the stamp of divine power," and of the Logos as "the stamp
of the seal of God." — He says that the Son "upholds all things by the
utterance of His power." Philo speaks of the Logos as "bearing
all things that are." — He says, " By whom also He made the worlds."
Philo says that "the instrument (organon) of creation was the Word,
by Whom it was set in order," and that "the Word is the image (eikon)
of God, by Whom the whole universe was fashioned."1
(ii.) Again, take Heb. iv. 12, 13 : "For living is tlie Word of God,
and active, and more cutting than any two-edged sword, and piercing
even to the division both of soul and spirit, both of joints and marrow,
and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of ilte heart." In this
passage the writer evidently has in his mind the thoughts of Philo
and of the Book of Wisdom. Philo compares the Word to the flaming
sword of Paradise ; he speaks of the " fire and knife " of Abraham as
being used " to cut off and consume his still adherent mortality." He
calls the Word "the cutter of all things," and says that "when
whetted to the utmost sharpness it is incessantly, dividing all sensuous
things." ' He compares it to the midmost branch of the golden candle
stick, as being the cutter or dividar of the six faculties of the human
soul. Similarly the author of Wisdom compares God's Almighty word
to a sharp sword leaping down from earth to Heaven.2
(iii.) Again, this Epistle is remarkable for several passages which
express with uncompromising sternness the hopeless condition of willing
and determined apostates. Those passages (vi. 4 — 8 ; x. 26 — 29 ;
xii. 16, 17) are in some respects unique in Scripture, and they furnished
a stronghold to the heretics of the religiosity which delights in hatred
1 De monarchia, ii. f 5 (Mang. i. 47, 106—162, etc.).
3 See Excursus IX. Quis rer. div. haer. (Mang. i. 491, 503, 506).

APOLLOS AND PHILO. 171
That they do not sanction such perversions we shall see further on ; but
we find something very analogous to them in a passage of Philo1 which
is almost apostolic in its solemnity, where he describes the irreparable
loss sustained by that soul which refuses to submit itself to the
discipline of the Logos and which overpasses the limits of fitting
humility. " Such a soul," he says, " will not only be widowed in
respect to all true knowledge, but will also be cast out. Once unyoked
and separated from the Logos, she will be cast away for ever, without
possibility of returning to her ancient home."2
After instances so striking, it will be needless to do more than
to point to two of the most fundamental conceptions in the entire
Epistle. 1. One of them is the Melchizedek Priesthood of Christ. In
his whole treatment of the subject, the writer adopts the method
and the thoughts of Philo. Philo speaks of the " Just King," as
holding " a self-acquired, self-taught priesthood," which — building
solely on the silence of Scripture — he describes as having been bestowed
on -him without merit or work. He directly compares him to the Logos
in the words, " The Logos,, who is shadowed forth by Melchizedek,"
is "priest of God the Most high." Philo also speaks of the Logos
as "the great High Priest."3
But here again, as throughout the Epistle, the writer shows himself
superior to Philo. With Philo allegory is everything, and the literal
narrative almost nothing. With Apollos the literal narrative is
accepted, and the typology is confined within rational limits, not pushed
into absurd details. He does not say, as Philo does, that Melchizedek
brought forth the nourishment for the soul which the Ammonites and
Moabites would not do, because the Ammonites are the children only of
perception, and the Moabites of mind.4
2. But there- is a yet more fundamental Alexandrianism in his
mode of thought, and one which requires a fuller examination.
It had been a main object of St. Paul to dissuade the Jews from
clinging to Judaic observances as a means of salvation ; to prevent their
enforcement" upon the Gentiles; and to convince the Gentiles that they
were abrogated and null. He does this by a dialectic method, in which
he proves to the Jews that Mosaism was but a transient, imperfect,
relative dispensation, having no absolute value, but only intended to
lead men by an unsatisfied yearning, or rather to drive them with the
scourge of an awakened conscience, to a diviner and an eternal faith.
1 Legg. alleg. iii. (Mang. i. 119; o"i/o"eA7rtTTun' p.eTa 7roAAiJs arias KTarat k.t.A-)-
2 Delitzsch, on Heb. vi. 4. On the resemblance between this Epistle and Philo,
see Excursus X., and consult Carpzov, Sacr. Exerc. in Ep. ad Hebr. ex Philone,
1750; Lbsner, Observ. in N. T. ex Philone; Bleek, i. 399, f. 9; Tholuck, 78, f. 9;
Gfrorer, I.e. ; Dahne, Alex. Beliqionsphilos. i.
a De Smart. § 38 (Mang. i. 653).
4 Tholuck points out that in the Hagadoth about the infancy of Moses the writer is
nearer to Josephus ( Antt. xv. 563) than to Philo.

172 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
To him the Law is neither Promise nor Fulfilment, but a stern though
necessary discipline which had been interposed between the two.
Moses, in the Apostle's view, was by no means the supreme chief of the
Hebrew race, but a personage of secondary importance in comparison
with Abraham. The fiery Law of Sinai, so far from being, as the
Rabbis said, the one thing for the sake of which the universe had been
created,1 was deposed into complete subordination. St. Paul placed it
immeasurably lower than the promise to Abraham, and showed that it
sank into insignificance before the Gospel of Christ. Hence the con
trast between the Law and the Gospel is, for St. Paul, a contrast
between Command and Promise, between Sin and Mercy, between
Works and Faith, between Curse and Blessing, between the threat of
inevitable Death and the gift of Eternal Life. Apollos, on the other
hand, treats of the contrast only as a contrast between Type and
Reality. The polemical aspect of the question has disappeared. The
Circumcision controversy, the question about meats,2 the proofs that the
Gentiles were not to be under Levitic bondage, are matters that have no
existence in his pages. He does not say one word about that opposition
of Faith and works which occupy so many chapters of St. Paul.
Election, Regeneration, the Rejection of Israel, the difference between
the physical and the spiritual seed of Israel, are absent from his treatise.
He only alludes even to Repentance and to the Resurrection to class
them among the "elements" which he may safely pass by.3 To St.
Paul Judaism was represented by a Law which enforced, by one
universal menace, its impossible exactions ; it was a dispensation of
wrath which revealed to man that he was naturally under the curse of
God. Christianity, on the other hand, was represented by a Deliverance,
a Reconciliation, a Free Grace, which men were forced to seek as a refuge
from a doom which their troubled consciences declared to be deserved.
This Epistle views the two religions under an aspect entirely different.
It sees in Judaism not so much a Laio as a System of Worship, of which
Christianity was the antitype and fulfilment Both writers arrive at
the same conclusion, but they do so by different routes, and from different
premisses. St. Paul represents Mosaism as a cancelled servitude ;
this writer as an incomplete satisfaction. To St. Paul the Levitic
system was a discipline which had been rendered superfluous ; to this
writer — to whom by anticipation I will again ask permission to give the
name of Apollos — it was a symbol which had become nugatory. To St.
Paul the Law was a bond, of which Christ had nailed the torn frag
ments to His Cross ; to Apollos Judaisni was a scaffolding within which
1 See the Introd. to Delitzsch's Commentary on the Epistle, and Kitzur Sh'lh, /. 7, 2
(Hershon's Talm. Miscell. p. 331). Avoda Zara, /. 3, 1. Shabbath, /. 89, 1. Pesachim,
/ 54, 1, etc. _
- There is a passing allusion to the distinction of meats in xiii. 9, but only as it
affected the Jews, and with no reference to its present obligatoriness or non-obligatori-
ness either for them or for the Gentiles.
3 vi. 1.

ST. PAUL AND APOLLOS. , 173
the true Temple had been built, a chrysalis from which the winged life
had departed. St. Paul looked on Mosaism, as a broken fetter, his
follower regarded it as a vanished shadow. To St. Paul the Law was .
abrogated because it consisted of " beggarly elements ; " to Apollos it
was annulled because the Priesthood on which it depended had become
weak and profitless. Both regarded Christianity as far more ancient
than Judaism — but it was so to St. Paul because he saw in it the fulfil
ment of a Promise, and to Apollos because he saw in it the realisation
or an archetype. St. Paul's proof hinges on the threat which lay by
implication in the words : He that doeth them sltall live by them ; the
argument of Apollos rests on the command to Moses : " See that thou
make all things after the pattern showed thee in the Mount." St. Paul
proves the independence of Christianity by referring to Abraham ;
Apollos by referring to Melchizedek. The Jewish ritual was to Apollos
a, material something between the Divine Idea and its partial realisation
by Christians on earth until they passed to its absolute realisation in
Heaven. Hence, "the Epistle to the Hebrews is a thoroughly original
attempt to establish the main results of Paulinism upon new pre
suppositions and in an entirely independent way."1 We may add that
this way, being more comprehensible, was of the extremest importance.
It was clearer to the Gentiles because it did not involve the transcen
dental heights of St. Paul's fervid mysticism. It was more easily
accepted by Jews because it gave a less violent shock to their prejudices.
It soothed the wounded pride of Levitism, by, recognising it as part of
an unbroken continuitj''.2 The Jew was less likely to cling with frantic
patriotism to the traditions of his fathers if he could be persuaded that
Christianity was not in opposition to them, but might be regarded as a
progress beyond them, an evolution out of them, a nearer approximation
to the Eternal Substance of which they were the acknowledged but
evanescent shadow.3
And yet how effective the argument was ! The Temple seems
to rise before us in all the splendour of its most imposing ceremonial.
We see the Ark and the Cherubim and Aaron's budding rod, and the
1 Pfleiderer, Paulinism. ii. 53.
2 This may be illustrated from the writer's treatment of Revelation. Here again we
find the argumcntum a minori ad majtis. The Revelation to the Jews (n-tiAat) was in all
respects a genuine revelation (i. 1 ; ii. 2 ; iii. 9 ; iv. 12 ; xii. 19, etc.), but the Instrument
of the Christian Revelation was higher and greater (i. 1 ; ii. 3)— One far above angels,
far above Moses, far above Aaron ; and he spoke not in terror, as on Sinai, but in mercy,
as by the Galilean Lake (xii. 18 — 21 ; iii. 7 ; iv. 1, etc. )
s The whole subject has been well treated by Baur (Church History, I., pp. 114 — 122,
E.T.) and by Pfleiderer, Fanlinvsmus, Kap. ix.), to whom I am much indebted. Baur
says (p. IIS) — "The distinction between the two views may be said to be that the
tendency of St. Paul's is ethical, that of this Epistle metaphysical." There is nothing in
this Epistle so startling to the Jew as St. Paul's remark that the Law was given " for the
sake of transgressions " (Gal. iii. 19) ; but what Apollos sees in the Law is mainly its
negative relation to Christianity. The Priesthood, not the Law, is with him the essential
thing, and as to the Law, he merely says that when there is a change in the one there
must be a change in the other (vii. 12).

174 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
golden pot of manna, and the curling wreaths of incense. We hear
the trumpets blow, and see the Levites in their white tunics on the
marble steps, and the High Priest in his golden and jewelled robes.
And while the Jew is exulting in all this gorgeous and significant
ritual, it is by one wave of a wand reduced to a shadow, a picture,
a transient symbol of that by which it is all to be done away !
For the main section of the Epistle is occupied with the proof
that Christ is the true Priest, who continues indeed the Aaronic
priesthood, but supersedes it by reverting to a higher type ; that
Judaism is but an inchoate and imperfect Christianity. The difference
between the two systems is quantitative rather than qualitative, though
quantitative in an almost infinite degree. The ancient novice, when
initiated into the mysteries, used to exclaim, ifyvyov kokoV, iopov a/mvov,
" I fled the bad, I found the better." But to revert from Christianity
to Judaism was the worst kind of apostasy — it was to fling away
the better from a deliberate preference for the worse.1
The author (as we have seen) found his fruitful thought of a
pre-existent Ideal in the Alexandrian philosophy. That philosophy
had sprung up from seed which Plato had sown in the rich soil of
Semitic monotheism. To the school of Philo, as to that of Plato,
earth was— " But the shadow of Heaven, and things therein,
Each to the other like more than on earth is thought."2
To them — and they found sanction for their views in Holy Writ — the
world of phenomena was but the shadow of a world of noumena. The
things seen and temporal were dim copies of things unseen and eternal.
The visible universe is a faint adumbration of the archetypal, and it
is only Divine in so far as it answers to the Great Idea of its Creator.
The Jews had begun to study Greek philosophy, and to see that
" All knowledge is not couched in Moses' Law,
The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote:
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by Nature's light."
The spirit of Judaism had been kindled afresh by a breath of secular
inspiration. They had begun to recognise in the nobler tones of
heathen literature the voice of that eternal Sibyl who " in all ages
entering into holy souls makes them sons of God and prophets, and
speaking, things simple and unperf umed and unadorned, reaches through
ten thousand years by the aid of God."3 Familiar with the Timaeus,
Philo made his entire system depend on the existence of a k6o-/j.os i/onrbs,
1 Hence the oonstant recurrence of KpetTTwv cAttis, Kpeirraiv StaOyKy (vii. 19, 22) ;
Sia<popbtrkpa AeiTovpyt'a (viii. 6) ; pei&v Kat TfAetoTe'pa trKjjpij (ix. 11) ; KpetTTOfes 0uo-t'at, CTrayyeAtai
(ix. 23). It might almost bo said that iriio-u ,uaAAoi», "how much more," is the key-note
of the argument (ix. 14 ; x. 29)- the argumentum a minori ad mqfus.
" "Der Sinnenwelt ein Sohatte ist der Geistwelt" (Mahomed, a Persian poet, quoted
by Tholuck, 135).
a Heraclitus.

HOPE. 175
or World of Ideas, of which the Mosaic system was a copy. He learnt
from Scripture that the worlds were made by the Word of God,
and he regarded the ideal world as being the sum total of the concrete
developments of this Infinite Logos. As St. John identifies the Logos
with Christ, so the author of this Epistle identifies the Ideal
World with the kingdom of Heaven, and the kingdom of Heaven
with perfected salvation. And thus the conception — transplanted from
the atmosphere of philosophy into that of religion — acquires new life.
It is no lonsrer a transcendental abstraction : it gives form and
expression to a living hope.
We might, perhaps, suppose that there is a trace of the same
conception in the language of St. Paul about " the heavenlies " in
the Epistle to the Ephesians -1 but St. Paul merely ulses the expression
as a moral appeal, and not as the basis of a theological system. In
the Epistle before us the whole argument is made to turn upon it.
Levitism is but a sketch in outline, a rough copy, a quivering shadow
of the things in Heaven, which are supersensuous, invisible, immaterial,
immovable, eternal.2 This seon is but an imperfect realisation of
the future seon.3 The Tabernacle was made after the pattern of a
Divine Temple/ and Christianity is that Temple. The superiority of
Christianity to Judaism is shown to consist in this, that Judaism
is earthy and sensuous, Christianity supersensuous and ideal. But
the Christianity of this world is itself but a closer copy, a truer
realisation of the perfect kingdom beyond the grave. Hence the
kingdom of Heaven is both present and future. It is a salvation
subjectively enjoyed, not yet objectively realised.6
(1.) From this different way of handling the relation of Christianity
to Judaism there arises incidentally a remarkable difference between
the aspect presented by the Christian Hope in this writer and in
St. Paul. St. Paul says, "We were saved by our Hope."6 The
salvation is secured, yet Hope is necessary, because here we groan
in the mortal body. There is in us a " psychological dualism " — a
disintegrated individuality — flesh struggling against spirit, and spirit
against flesh, although the spirit is winning a progressive victory, and
gradually asserting its sole pre-eminence. The Christian receives
the Sonship, but he still awaits its perfect fruition.5' He looks forward
1 Eph. i. passim ; and Heb. viii. 5 ; ix. 23.
2 vn-oSetyjua, viii. 5 ; o-KLav, ix. 1; ix. 23; xi. 1, 3 ; xii. 18, 27 ; TrapaBokjj, ix. 9 ; avri-nma,
ix. 24 ; as opposed to 6 tvitos, or to Te'Aetor , or Ta aK-qQiva, or aiiTrj ij €iKiiiv, The world of
phenomena (au-rij 17 ktio-is) is described as visible (to 8KeTr6p.evov, xi. 3), capable of being
Bhaken (t<i o-aAeuop.et/a, xii. 27), tangible (xii. 18), but the archetypal world is the
"House of God" (x. 21) ; "the genuine Tabernacle" (viii. 2) ; "the city which has the
foundations " (xi. 10); our true " father land " (xi. 14); the unshakeable kingdom " (xii.
28) ; " tbe heavenly Jerusalem " (xii. 22). 3 Heb. ii. 5 ; vi. 5.
4 Thus tbe Jews said that " An Ark of fire, and a Table and Lampstand of fire, came
down from Heaven to Moses as patterns, and that Gabriel, clothed as a workman,
showed Moses how to make them." — (Menachoth, /. 29, 1.)
6 Heb. xii. 28 ; vi. 4, 5.
6 Rom. viii. 24 : rfi yap eAjrtSi ko-b>8i\p.tv. 7 2b. vioBeo-lav aireKSe^ofievoi.

176 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
to the resurrection as his final deliverance from the assaults of the
fleshly principle, after which he will be in possession of a spiritual
body. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we read nothing of this fierce
struggle. Constantly as the author speaks of the future life, he
says nothing about the Resurrection, except to mention it among
the elementary subjects which he does not mean to discuss. But
Hope is necessary, because the state in which we live is but a
shadow of the state wherein we shall be. In this view we can only
realise the future by exultant anticipation and inward evidence.1 Hope
is not fruition. Here the ship still tosses on the turbid waves, but
yet it is held by a sure and steadfast anchor, of which the golden
chain passes out of our sight in that aerial ocean beyond the veil ; — and
the unseen links of that chain are held by the hand of Christ, Who
has gone before us there.2 It remained for St. John o say and to
show still more clearly and comfortingly that he that i.atli the Son
hath life — that this is eternal life. In him Hope melts into actual
fruition. ' The future becomes one with the present. The chasm
between the two is bridged over by the highest utterance of revelation,
that " the Word became flesh."
(2.) So far, then, we have seen that the Epistle to the Hebrews
differs theologically from the writings of St. Paul by its marked Alex
andrianism. But this is not the only difference. Faith is prominent
alike in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in St. Paul, but it is presented
under a changed aspect. The terminology is in part identical, the
accentuation of meaning is not the same. The writer uses St. Paul's
phrases, but he applies them to truths seen under a different light. To
St. Paul Faith meant the essence of the Christian life. Ultimately it
meant the unity of the spirit of man with the Spirit of God — the life in
Christ — the identity of the life of Christ with the life of the Christian.
The life of faith in St. Paul is the realised immanence of Christianity,
" Christ in me." This is the form of faith in his writings, and its object
is the life, the death, the resurrection of his Lord. Now, often as faith
is spoken of in this Epistle, the form and the object of it are different.
Its form is " the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things
invisible."3 The object of it is neither the Person of Christ,4 nor the
death of Christ,5 nor the resurrection of Christ,6 but it is trust in the
word of God, and the entrance into that unseen world whereinto Christ
has preceded us.r Not that the faith of this writer sinks into a Chili-
astic expectation. It is the present approximation to future perfectness.
i Heb. vi. 4, 5 ; xii. 28. 2 Heb. vi. 19.
8 xi. 1. On the meaning of timJo-Tao-is and eAeyxos, see infra, on Heb. xi. 1. ¦ "Der
Begriff der m'o-rts ein anderer ist, namlich nicht so wohl die fides specialis in Christum als
die fides generalis in das unsichtbare (Ideale) Heil." Immer, Neu-Test. Theol. p. 403.
* Rom. iii. 22 ; Gal. ii. 20 ; Eph. i. 15 ; Col. i. 4, etc.
6 Rom. iii. 25 ; Gal. ii. 20.
6 Eph. passim; 1 Oor. xv. etc Christ's resurrection is only once alluded to by
Apollos, Heb. xiii. 20, and that but passingly.
7 vi. 1 ; xi. 1, 2, 4, etc He does not speak of iri'aris Vno-ov Xptcrrou or kv Xpto-rw rqo-ov.

righteousness. 177
It is confidence in the promised rest, founded on approach to God,1 —
analogous to the belief of the old heroes and Patriarchs, but more perfect
and less distant,2 and evinced by endurance.3 Faith in St. Paul is one
ness with Christ ; in this writer it has Christ for its example. It is not
the instrument of justification, but the condition of access. It is used
in a sense more easily intelligible, and therefore more likely to be widely
accepted. It is "Christ for us" rather than "Christ in us." Hence
faith, as treated in this Epistle, becomes very closely allied with " endu
rance to the end."4
(2) 0. There is a similar difference observable in the use of the word
Righteousness. St. Paul's use of the word is peculiar. The main dog
matic thesis of the Epistle to the Romans — "justification by faith " — is
an illustration of the method whereby the subjective righteousness of
God can become the objective righteousness (or justification) of man.
To this dogma the letter before us does not allude, and Dikaiosune is
confined to its original meaning of simple "righteousness." For that
state which St. Paul calls "justification" this writer has a different
word. The words " imputed righteousness " nowhere occur in him.
Righteousness with him is not a conditio.! bestowed on man by God as
a result of the work of Christ, but, as in James, it is faith manifested by
obedience, and so earning the witness of God.6 Thus the word Dikaio
sune is stripped of judicial accessories,6 and the results of a life of
obedience based on faith are expressed by the terms "purification,"
" sanctifi cation," "perfectionment."' In other words, "righteousness"
is not to this writer " the Divine gift which faith receives " — the white
robe put into the outstretched hands ; but it is " the human condition
which faith produces,"8 the inheritance which man acquires.9
Here, again, there is no contradiction of St. Paul, who carefully
guards himself against Antinomian misconceptions, and who shows that
where faith is there works must be, just as where sunlight is there warmth
and light must be. But though there is no contradiction, there is
marked divergence. The identity of phraseology does but serve to bring
into prominence the underlying differences. Even when the author
quotes the famous verse of Habakkuk, "The just shall live by faith,"
or, as he more probably wrote, " My just man shall live by faith," he
applies it in a manner which is not the same as that of St. Paul. Each
of the three words of the text has a different shade of meaning. By
i xi. 10. 2 x. 34; xi. 40; xii. 22, 28.
3 x. 35—39.
4 xi. 1; xii. 1, rotyapow . . . Si iiroaoiTJs Tpixapsv. So Philo defines Faith as "a
bettering in all things of the soul which has cast itself for support on the Author of all
things " (De Abrahamo, ii. 39).
5 kp-apropriOri e'pai StKatos, xi. 4, 5.
6 AtKatrfu occurs twenty-eight times in St. Paul ; not once in this Epistle.
1 ouafeti/, iyia&o-flai, ii. 11 ; x. 10, 14, 29 ; xiii. 12. Compare p*m£tu>, patrto-aos, z. 22,
29; xii. 24 (IPet. i. 2).
8 xi. 33, Sta irtorews eipyatrarro 8lKaloovin)v.
9 xi. 7, SiKaioo-vi^s eyeVeTo K\ypoi'6pos . See Pfleiderer, ii. 86.
M

178 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
" the just ". St. Paul means " he who has been justified ; " by " faith " he
means " union with Christ ; " by " shall live " he means " enter into the
spiritual life." The use of the text by Apollos comes nearer to its
original significance in the old Jewish prophet, which was that " the up
right man should be preserved from ruin by his fidelity."1 How any
careful reader with such facts before him can persist in maintaining that
St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, must remain one of the
strangest problems of theological criticism.
(3.) Once more, without the smallest contradiction between the
Christology of St. Paul and that of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we can
trace in the latter the speciality of Alexandrian influences. The con
ception of the Eternal Christ, as One Who was far above all angels, is
the same as in the Epistle to the Colossians, but the expressions used of
Him are even stronger. In the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is not
only the Image of God, as He is in St. Paul,2 but also, as in the Book
of Wisdom,3 " the effulgence of His glory, and the impress of His sub
stance ; " and is not only, as in St. Paul, the Instrument of creation, but
also the upholder of all things by the word of His power. In this
respect Apollos stands midway between St. Paul and St. John. The
word Logos, as directly applied to Christ, seems constantly to be in his
mind, but he does not actually use it. And yet in his first chapter,4 and
elsewhere,5 he transfers directly to Christ the attributes of the Logos of
Philo." And by so doing he produced a deep effect. In the Apocalypse,
also, Christ appears as the Logos and the High Priest. In its exalted
conception of our Lord's Divinity, and in the development of His high-
priestly functions,7 the Epistle to the Hebrews exercised an influence
upon the Church which perpetuated its value long after any proof of the
superiority of Christianity to Judaism had been rendered needless by
the inexorable demonstrations of History.
(4.) And the redemptive work of Christ is also looked at from a
slightly different standpoint, both in its nature and its results. In St.
Paul the decree of God and the passivity of Christ are mainly dwelt
1 Hab. ii. 4 ; Rom. i. 17 ; Heb. x. 38. See my Life and Work of St. Paul, ii. 181 ;
Pfleideref, Paulinism. ii. 89 ; "Weiss, Petrin. Lehrbegr. 527.
2 etKiif tou ©eov tov dopaTov, Col. i. 15 ; iii. 12 ; 2 Cor. iv. 4.
3 Wisd. vii. 25, 26. Noack suggested an ingenious theory, that the Book of "Wisdom,
was written by Apollos before his conversion. This theory has been worked out by Dean
Plumptre in the Expositor, i. 327, 348, 409 — 435. He adduces the words common to
Wisdom and the Epistle, such as jroAvpepws, an-av'yao-p-a, iin-oo-Tacris, depdjrttiv, tottos p.eTafOtas,
jSepVtuo-is, eKpWis, and many more ; shows the connection of both books with Philo ; points
to parallel passages like Hob. iv. 12 and Wisd. xviii. 22 ; shows that Clement of Rome
used both books ; illustrates the sonorous style of both, the fondness for compounds, for
unusual words, and for an accumulation of epithets ; and calls attention to the fact that'
the two books are mentioned in juxtaposition by Irenceus (Euseb. H. E. v. 26), and
-nearly so in the Muratorian Canon.
•> Heb. i. 1—4.
6 iv. 12, 13.
6 De Soma. (Mailg. i. 633, to pev yap TrapaSetyua o TrAljpeVraTOS %v aVTOU Adyos (ptis.)
1 It is reproduced in Clem. Rom. ad Rom. 36, 58, and referred to in the Martyrdom
of Polycarp, and the Testament, of the Twelve Patriarchs.

work op redemption. 179
upon, and His death is regarded from its most mysterious aspect as
being an expiatory sacrifice to redeem mankind from the curse of the
Law ; but in the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is not only the passive
victim, but the sacrificing priest.1 The result of His willing sacrifice of
Himself is the purification of man's conscience from the sense of guilt,2
and the sanctification of man's life by a new relation towards God.
Guilt had rendered us impure before God. The Jews of old were
replaced in a condition of Levitical purity, partly by sacrifices, partly
by a sprinkling of blood. We are rendered spiritually pure from the
defilement of a tormenting conscience by the death of Christ for us
once for all, and by the sprinkling of our consciences with His Blood.
The point of view from which Christ's death is here regarded is not the
identity of the Christian with Christ, but the passing through the veil
into the Holiest — the approach to Christ, and through Christ to God.
Even when he is dwelling directly on the death of Christ, the author
scarcely ever uses any phrase which can be interpreted as intimating
that it was an expiation which was necessary to manifest that God was
righteous although He forgave sin.3 The reason which he assigns for
the abstract necessity of Christ's death is that a testament can only
come into force after the death of the testator.4 This reason, taken
alone, explains so small a part of the matter, and so completely leaves
out of sight the sacrificial death of Christ, and bears so slightly on the
analogy of the ancient sacrifices on which he has so long been dwelling,
that we are almost driven to infer that the writer supposed his readers
to be aware of the explanation of this mystery furnished by St. Paul,
and therefore deemed it needless to develop it further. This is the
more remarkable, because whereas the author speaks even more strongly
than St. Paul of the majesty of the Eternal and Pre-existent Christ, he
yet dwells more distinctly than St. Paul on the moral and human side of
the life of Christ — His prayers and tears, His anguish, His holy fear, His
perfectionment through suffering.5 He contents himself with the general
expression that there was a moral fitness in its being thus ordained.6
But while we can have no doubt that he accepted the truth which St.
Paul had taught,' we can see how natural it was for one who had been
1 Geiger has argued that this conception came from the Sadducees, and therefore
that the writer must have once been a Sadducee. There is nothing to be said in favour
of this view, and much against it. See Matt. xxii. 23, and Acts xxiii. 8, compared with
Heb. vi. 2 ; xi. 35 ; i. ii. passim.
2 The two words most frequently used are naQapio-pos, KaBapigev, as in ix. 13, 14 ; x. 2,
22, &c. ; and ayta^etx, ii. 11 ; x. 10, 14.
3 As in Rom. iii. 25 ; Gal. iii. 13 ; 2 Cor. v. 21. 4 Heb. ix. 15-22.
5 ii. 10 ; iv. 15 ; v. 8 ; vi. 20 ; vii. 2, 10 ; xii. 2.
6 eVpeTrey i]plv, vii. 26.
1 That he does so is clear from such expressions as airoAvTpioo-ts, ix. 15 ; aipareicxvo-ia,
ix. 22 ; tAao-ieeo-#at, ii, 17 ; on-ws inrep 7TavTos yevanrat Oav&TOV, ii, 9. But these expressions
make it only the more remarkable that he nowhere touches on the reason for these
necessities — the rationale of this reconciliation. He says that Christ was offered and '
man was cleansed, but he nowhere develops any theory of vicarious satisfaction to
explain the fact. (Kostlin, Johann Lehrbegr. 435.)

180 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
trained in Alexandrian notions to accept it without being led to dwell
upon it ; to leave it as an insoluble mystery ; to feel a difficulty in
speaking of " reconciliation," or of any apparent contrast between God's
retributive wrath and His reconciling love. That which only could be
expressed in anthropomorphic, and therefore in imperfect metaphors,
was least calculated to attract the genius of Alexandrian elucidation.
We are not surprised that an Alexandrian should reverently leave this
on one side, as being the mysterious element in Christ's sacrifice which
is to us incomprehensible. He does not therefore touch on the satis
faction of God's justice, but on another aspect of Christ's death — namely,
the annihilation of the power of the Devil.1 He is content to declare,
without further discussion, that Christ's death is man's purification. He
" leaves a gap between the means and the end."2 He dwells more on
Christ the Sanctifier than on God the Justifier.8 He speaks of Christ's
sufferings as the appointed pathway of His perfection, and of the
following of His example as the appointed means of our being perfected.4
Scarcely touching on St. Paul's words " ransom," " reconciliation,"
"justification," he teaches that Christ, by His suffering and death,
performed once for all the work of an Eternal High Priest — offered that
sacrifice of Himself which purges the consciousness of man from its
sense of guilt, and, as our forerunner and standard-bearer^ flung open
the heavenly sanctuary, the archetypal world, wherein man, purified
from guilt, can enter into the Presence of God — in hope and humble
access now, in beatific vision hereafter behind the veil.5
(5.) In seizing upon Priesthood and Sacrifice, rather than on the
1 Compare Col. ii. 14, 15. Both writers use the word "ransom," because as regards
man Christ's death has the effect of a ransom paid. But neither of them touch on the
question, " To whom is the ransom paid ? " And with good reason : because that question
is an invasion of the secrets of the Deity. When men insist on trying to answer it, they
(1) either draw out a doctrine of the Atonement which represents God in a light which
utterly shocks the moral sense, or (2) infer, as was taught by theologians for a thousand
years, that the person to whom the ransom was paid was — the Devil ! Such a notion
would have been abhorrent to the Alexandrian monotheism ; and that the notion of a
"warfare or lawsuit" between Christ and Satan should for so many hundred years
have formed a constant element of Church teaching respecting the mystery of the
Atonement, from Augustine to Anselin, is one of the many historic facts which should
abate the towering pretensions of an inferential theology.
2 x. 14.
3 See Davidson, Introd. ii. 245.
4 ii. 9, 10; xii. 6 — 11; v. 9; reAeiWis, "perfectionment," is a characteristic word
of this Epistle, and it seems to include both "justification," " sanctification," and
"glorification." 5 vi. 20 ; x. 20. It will be seen, then, that points in which the writer is not dis
tinctively Pauline are, (1) the prominenoe of reAetWts rather than of StKatWts ; (2) the
conception of Christ less as the Crucified and Risen than as the sympathetic High
Priest ; (3) the conception of approach to Him (Trpoo-e'pxeo-Oat 7rp6s) rather than of mystic
union with Him (Immer, Neu-Test. Theol. p. 403). (4) St. Paul's quotations are in
troduced by ye'ypaTTTat yap Or Ka0ws ye'ypaTTTat, etc. (2 Cor. vi. 16, 17 ; Rom. ix. 15 ; 2 Cor.
vi. 2 ; Gal. iii. 16), those of this Epistle are introduced by " God " or " the Holy Ghost "
(iii. 7 ; x. 15) " saith " or " witnesseth " (Heb. ii. 6 ; vii. 17 ; x. 15). (5) He holds more
closely to the LXX. and the readings now found in Cod. Alexcmdrinus, whereas St. Paul
follows those now found in Cod. Vaticanus (Bleek).

"him that made HIM." 181
Law, as the central point of his treatment, the writer showed his deep
knowledge of Jewish feeling. Not only do the regulations respecting
worship occupy the greater part of the Book of Leviticus, but, as we
shall see further, the imagination of the people had almost concentrated
itself upon priestly functions, and especially upon the Great Day of
Atonement. A glance at the Talmud will show how large a part
Priesthood occupied in the thoughts of every Jew. Thus we are told of
the priests that their descent from Aaron was the badge of exclusive
privilege j1 that in the faithful days of the first Temple each High Priest
enjoyed an average of 23 years of office f that when he was admitted
to service he was inspected by the Sanhedrin, and if there was so much
as a mole on his body he was dressed in black and dismissed ;3 that even
if priests were unworthy, no one was to think evil of them f that if a
priest was found to be Levitically unclean while performing the Temple
service, his juniors might at once drag him out of the Temple and brain
him with clubs.5 The very garments of the priests were not only used
to make wicks for the great candlestick,6 but were regarded as so holy
that they had the faculty of atoning for sin — the tunic for murder, the
ephod for idolatry, the girdle for evil thoughts.7 One passage will still
further show their estimation : " So long," says the tract Gittin,8 com
menting on Ezek. xxi. 26, " as there is a diadem on the head of a priest,
there is a crown on the head of every man. Remove the diadem from
the head of the high-priest, and you take away the crown from the head
of all the people."
(6.) There is yet another point on which we may seize as marking
the difference between the writer and St. Paul. It is perhaps an accident
that he uses a phrase — " to Him that made Him " (iii. 2)9 — which,
though capable of perfectly simple explanation, yet lent itself with so
much facility to the misinterpretations of heresy that it acted as one of
the causes which delayed the general acceptance of the Epistle by the
Church. But it is no accident that the writer in three passages (vi. 4
• — 8; x. 26 — 31; xii. 16, 17) uses language of such unconditional
sternness that it was seized upon with avidity by those who held the
uncompromising tenets of the Montanists and Novatians. No such
passages are to be found in St. Paul's Epistles. The fulness of almost
universal hope which marks the outbursts of emotional eloquence in his
epistles, shows that such language could hardly have been used by him
without large qualification. It is true, as I have shown in dealing with
those passages, that they lend no real sanction to the conclusions which
have been built upon them ; and that, if they did, they would stand in
1 Berachoth, f. 29, a,. 2 Yoma, f. 9, a.
3 Yoma, f. 19, a. * Kiddushin, f. 70, 6.
5 Sanhedrin, f. 81, I. « Shabbath, f. 21, a.
7 Zevachim, f. 88, 6.
8 Fol. 7, a. These and other passages are quoted in Mr. Hershon's Taimudie
Miscellany, p. 107.
9 See the note on this passage.

182 the early days of Christianity.
flagrant contradiction to other passages of Scripture. I believe that the
real thoughts of the writer would have coincided with those of St. Paul ;
but the use of language which lends itself to perversion with so much
facility is yet another mark that his idiosyncrasy differs from that of
the great Apostle.
If, then, there be these marked differences between the aspect of the
same great Christian verities as viewed from the standpoint of St. Paul's
individuality and that of the writer of this Epistle, it is idle to pretend
any longer that St. Paul was the author. The differences are there. No
one can any longer overlook them. And if the differences are there, it
is clear that the ancient guesses about an amanuensis who used the
thoughts of St. Paul, but expressed them in his own language, fall to
the ground.1 We are, therefore, studying the work of another writer
of the Apostolic age, who thought for himself, and who wrote in his
own manner. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit was not a mechanical
dictation, which makes a man the pen rather than the penman of sacred
utterance, and obliterates the plainest landmarks of human idiosyncrasy.
It is a positive gain to us that we have here the treatise of a great
follower of the Pauline school of thought; — a school which was so com
pletely overshadowed by the mighty genius of the Apostle of the
Gentiles that it scarcely produced a single other writer of remarkable
eminence.2

CHAPTER XVII.
WHO WROTE THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS ?
" Auotor Epistolae ad Hebraeos quisquis est, sive Paulus sive ut ego arlitror
Apollo." — Luther, ad Gen. xlviii. 20.
" Q,uis porro eam composuerit non magnopere curandum est. . . Sed ipsa
dieendi ratio et stilus alium quam Paulum esse satis testantur." — Calvin.
If the author — and by author I do not mean merely the amanuensis, but
the actual originator of this Epistle — were not St. Paul, who was it 1
I have already indicated my belief that it was Apollos, and it is now
necessary to furnish the grounds, both positive and negative, for that all
but certain conclusion.
The author does not adopt the invariable practice of St. Paul by
i Schwegler supposes that the writer tried to pass for Paul (Nacliap. Zeil. ii. 304),
and was amply refuted by Kostlin, Theol. Jahrb. 1853, p. 420 ; 1854, p. 437.
2 The notion of Hase, that the Epistle is by a Nazarene heretic and addressed to
Nazarenes, though partially favoured by Ritschl (Altkathol. Kirche (second edition),
p. 159), needs no further notice (see Hilgenfeld, Einleit. 359). Every sober enquirer now
acquiesces in the opinion that the Epistle represents Pauline views, but coloured by
Alexandrian influences, and leaning to the Jewish-Christian standpoint, so far as this
was possible to any follower of St. Paul. (See Baur, Three Christian Cent. i. 115,
seqq.)

THE AUTHOR. 183
beginning his Epistle with a greeting in his own name, although it is
clear that he meant his readers to know, both from the Epistle itself and
through the bearer of it, who he was ; nor is his treatise full of that rich
element of personality which lends to St. Paul's Epistles so indefinable
a charm. But yet, from the Epistle itself we see certain broad facts.
(1.) The writer was a Jew, for he writes as though Heathendom
were practically non-existent.
(2.) He was a Hellenist, for he exclusively quotes the Septuagint
version, even where it diverges from the original Hebrew.1
(3.) He had been subjected to Alexandrian training, for he shows a
deep impress of Alexandrian thought, and quotes from Alexandrian
manuscripts of the Septuagint, without pausing to question the accuracy
of the renderings.2
(4.) He was a man of great eloquence, of marked originality, of wide
knowledge of the Scriptures, and of remarkable gifts in the application
of Scripture arguments.
(5.) He was a friend of Timotheus, for he proposes to visit the Jewish
Churches in his company.
(6. ) He was . known to his readers, and writes to them in a tone of
authority. (7.) He was not an Apostle, for he classes himself with those who
had been' taught by the Apostles.3
(8.) The Apostle by whom he had been taught was St. Paul, for he
largely, though independently, adopts his phraseology, and makes special
use of the Epistle to the Romans.4
(9.) He wrote before the destruction of Jerusalem, and while the
Temple" services were still continuing.-
(10.) It is doubtful whether he had ever been at Jerusalem, for his
references to the Temple and its ritual seem to apply, not, indeed, to the
Temple of Onias, at Leontopolis,5 but mainly to the Tabernacle as
described in the Septuagint version of the Pentateuch.
Further than this we have no data 6 on which to decide the question
1 In one remarkable passage (x. 30) he follows St. Paul (Rom. xii. 19) in a variant
quotation of Deut. xxxii. 35.
2 See Bleek, i. 357, and Heb. ii. 3 ; Kostlin, Theol. Jahrb. 1853.
3 Heb. ii. .- . Any one who chooses to explain away the obvious meaning of this verse
in the interests of the Pauline authorship, by talking of " anakoinosis " or " sunkatabasis,"
must do so. But those technical words are here inapplicable, and the supposed parallels
too illusory to need refutation. Serious readers will see how impossible it is that such
a phrase should have been used (and that to Jewish readers !) by one who had written
such passages as Gal. i. 1, 12 ; 2 Cor. xi. 24, xii. 12 ; Eph. iii. 2, 3, etc.
4 V. infra, p. 190.
5 See Wieseler, Untersuchung iiber d. Hebr. A great deal too much has been made
of the suggestion. Philo only recognised one TraTptioi/ iepoV, and the Jews of Egypt never
dreamt of looking on the Temple of Onias in the same light as the Samaritans looked on
Mount Gerizim, namely, as a rival shrine to the one Temple, to which they sent then-
yearly offerings. The conjecture of Wieseler ought, therefore, to be finally dismissed.
See the decisive remarks of Gratz, Gesch. d. Juden, iii. 31 — 34, 412.
6 The allusion in x. 34 has no bearing on the authorship.

184 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of his identity : but we may fairly assume that we should find in the
New Testament the name of any friend and companion of St. Paul of
sufficient authority, learning, and genius, to have been the author of so
remarkable an Epistle. Now, the only known companions of St. Paul
who would in any way fall under this description were Aquila, Silas,
Titus, Barnabas, Clement, Mark, Luke, and Apollos,1 and accordingly
several of these were conjecturally designated as the authors, or part
authors, in ancient days. Assuming, as we are entitled to do, that it
was one of these, the only way to decide between them will be by a
process of elimination.
The claims of some of them may be dismissed at once.
1. Aquila, for instance, could not have been the author ; for the
fact that he is constantly mentioned with his wife, and even after her,
shows that his personality must have been somewhat insignificant,2 and
that his wife was superior to him in energy.
2. Titus could not have been the author, for he was a Gentile.
3. There is nothing to be said in favour of the authorship of Silas,3
especially as he seems to have been not a Hellenist, but a Jew of
Jerusalem. 4. Tertullian, in his usual oracular way, attributes the Epistle to
Barnabas, but he seems to have done so by an unsupported conjecture.4
The Epistle is incomparably superior to the Epistle of Barnabas, with
its exaggerated Paulinism ; but that Epistle is not by the Barnabas of
the New Testament, and is not earlier in date than A.D. 110.5 The
" Apostle " Barnabas, as a Levite, would more probably have described
the Temple at Jerusalem as it then was, and if he had possessed the
natural ability to compose such a treatise as this, he would not have
been so immediately thrown into the shade by St. Paul from the very
beginning of his first missionary journey.6 His claims have received but
little support, and he would have been indeed unfortunate if a false
1 Timotheus is, of course, excluded by xiii. 23.
2 Acts xviii. 18 ; Eom. xvi. 3 ; 2 Tim. iv. 19.
3 Only held by Bohme and Mynster. The former supposed that the Greek of 1 Peter
was also by Silvanus, and that it resembled the Greek of this Epistle.
4 Tert. Depudicit. 20: "Exstat enim et Barnabae titulus ad Hebraeos." Perhaps
he had heard of an " Epistle of Barnabas," and confused this letter with it. The claims
of Barnabas are maintained by Camerarius, Twesten, TJllmann (Stud. u. Krit. 828),
Thiersch (Comment. Hist, de Ep. ad Hebr. 1847) — who, however, thinks that the Epilogue
was by St. Paul — and Wieseler (Chronol. p. 504, and UntersvxhungiiberdenHebraerbrief,
1861). Wieseler speaks of Tertullian's assertion as tbe only authentic tradition on the
subject. His arguments about the position of the Epistle in the Peshito, etc., seem
to me to be very inconclusive. Thiersch supposes that the Epilogue may have been
written by St. Paul, and so too Delitzsch (arguing from xiii. 8). Benan also inclines
in favour of Barnabas (L'Antechrist, p. xvii.). In the Clementine Homilies (i. 9),
Barnabas (and not St. Mark) appears as the founder of the Church of Alexandria.
fi See Hamack, in Herzog, s. v. Barnabas, and the article by Heberle in the old
edition. Hefele also (Patr. Apost. ) has shown how impossible it would have been for the
Apostle Barnabas to see in the Jewish ceremonies mere foolish carnal mistakes about
things which God had intended to be understood spiritually.
6 Bp. Wordsworth (Introd. p. 362) adds that Epiphanius, as a Cyprian Bishop, might
have been supposed to know the work of a fellow-Cypriot.

various claimants. 185
Epistle was attributed to him, and his real Epistle, which was so far
superior, assigned to another.
5. St. Clement's claims, though mentioned by several of the
Fathers,1 may be set aside, because we have one genuine Epistle from
his hands, and — independently of differences of view — that letter is
sufficient to show that he had not the capacity to write the Epistle to
the Hebrews. Besides this he quotes from the Epistle to the Hebrews
as though it were of co-ordinate authority to the rest of Holy Scripture,
which he certainly could not have done in the case of any writing of
his own.2 6. St. Mark has never been seriously suggested as the possible
author, because his Gospel presents no points of analogy to N this Epistle
either in style or sentiment. Further than this, it is probable that he
also was a Jew of Jerusalem, and his connexion with St. Peter was
closer and more permanent than his connexion with St. Paul.
7. St. Luke, though often suggested as the scribe of the letter s — on
the hypothesis that the thoughts came directly from St. Paul — could not
possibly have been the author. It is true that in the Gospel and the
Acts we frequently find words and idioms which occur in this Epistle.4
That is a phenomenon which is not difficult to explain in the case of two
writers who had passed through the same kind of training, and had lived,
perhaps, in each other's company, and certainly in close contact with the
mind and teaching of St. Paul. But in spite of these resemblances the
style and the tone of the Epistle to the Hebrews differ essentially from
those of St. Luke. Balanced rhetoric and majestic periods are nowhere
found in the writings of the Evangelist, and it is psychologically difficult
to believe that .a writer whose prevailing tone of mind was tender and
conciliatory should have written passages of such uncompromising stern
ness as those which occur in Hebrews vi. 4 — 8 ; x. 26 ; xii. 27. In
these passages the sternest Mdntanists exulted, and they were used as
bulwarks of the Novatians in their refusal to re-admit the lapsed to
Baptism or the Lord's Supper ; but they have always raised a difficulty
1 E.g., Origen (v. m/ra,Excurs.ViII.),Euthalius, Eusebius (H. E. iii. 18), and Jerome.
The view is accepted as probable by Erasmus and Calvin. Almost the only modern
writer who maintains this view is Riethmayer (Einleit. p. 681).
2 It is strange that Euthalius (a.d. 460) should say rovyap koI a-m£ei t6v xapaK-rfjpa,
though it is true enough that many of the sentiments resemble each other iprj Troppu
Ta kv exaTepots Tots aTjyypap.p.ao-1 vorjuaTa Kadetrrdvai, Euseb. H. E. iii. 38). But the resemblance
is merely due to direct plagiarism, while the difference in strength and originality is
immeasurable. 3 Clemens Alex., Origen, Grotius, Hug, Stier, Guerike, F. Delitzsch, Ebrard,
Bisping, Wieseler, Renan.
4 Clemens Alex, observes on the general resemblance of style (tcw aiTov xp"™) between
the Epistle and the Acts. The parallels are tabulated by Lunemann in his edition of the
Epistle, and are constantly referred to by Delitzsch and Ebrard. Among them are
evAo/Seto-Gai, cts to rrai/TeAe's, ijyovaei'OS, apXT/yos (used of Christ, Acts iii. 15, v. 31 ; Heb. ii. 10,
xii. 2), p.apTvpouaei/os, Trapo|v(rp.6s, aeVoxos- They are, however, of no decisive importance.
See Riehm, Lehrbegriff, p. 886, note. Moreover, St. Luke more closely followed St.
Paul's theological views and expre.-sions (r) «s Xpto-Tbi' ttio-tis, 5t<catoyo-0ai e£ 'lrjo-ou, etc.,
Acts xiii. 39 ; Luke xviii. 14) than this writer does; See supra, cap. xvi.

186 the early days of Christianity.
in the minds of those who reject the ruthless dogma that there is no
forgiveness for post-baptismal sin.1 Apart from these considerations, it
appears to be almost certain that St. Luke was a Gentile Christian,2 and
there is much ground for the tradition which describes him as a Proselyte
of Antioch. He could not, therefore, have written this Epistle, It may
be regarded as an axiom that it could not have been written by any one
of Gentile birth.
8; If, then, the writer was neither St. Paul nor any of these, we are
led by the exhaustive process to consider the claims of Apollos, and we
at once find not only that none of those objections can be urged against
him which are fatal to the claims of the others, but also that he meets
in every one of the ten particulars the requirements of the problem.
He was a Jew ; he was a Hellenist ; he was an Alexandrian ; he was a
friend of St. Paul and had been deeply influenced by his teaching;
he could not have been specially "familiar with the Temple ritual ; he
was remarkable for originality ; he was an attractive orator ; he was
a powerful reasoner ; he was a man of great personal authority ; he
taught with so much independence, that St. Paul formally recognised
his gift of maturing and preserving the germs of truth which he
himself had sown.3 Had St. Paul and St. Luke deliberately designed to
point out a man capable of writing the Epistle to the -Hebrews,
they could not have chosen any words more suitable to such an object
than those by which they actually describe him as a Jew, an
Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures,
fervent in spirit, who, after having been carefully taught the way
Of the Lord, "began to teach accurately the things concerning the
Lord," and powerfully confuted the Jews out of the Scriptures.4 Even
in minor matters we trace the same congruence between Apollos and
the writer of this Epistle. We are told that he was originally
acquainted only with the baptism of John, and this writer places the
" doctrine of baptisms " among the rudiments of Christian teaching.5
We are told that " he began to speak with confident boldness in the
Synagogue," and this writer has a high estimate of confident boldness
as a virtue which the Christian should always retain.6 Lastly, we
see in Apollos the rare combination of a dislike of prominence
with a remarkable power of oratory. This is exemplified in his refusal
of the invitation of the Corinthians, some of whom so greatly admired
his culture and oratory that they preferred his teaching even to that.
1 Even the Novatians did not exolude the hope that God would forgive post-baptismal
sins. Acesius, a Novatian bishop, said that " those who bad sinned a sin unto death"
could not be indeed admitted to the Christian mysteries, {tan' ja Se ttjs iifje'o-e&is . . . trapa tou
©eoO cKSe'xeo-fai (at the Counoil of Nico ; Socr. H. E. i. 10).
2 Col. iv. 11—15. See my Life of St. Paul, i. 480.
3 Some of these peculiarities in the mind and manner of Apollos are illustrated by
the allusions to the partisans who used his name in Corinth (1 Cor iii.).
4 Aots xviii. 24—28, xix. 1 ; 1 Cor. iii. 4—6.
6 Acts xviii. 26 ; Heb. vi. 2.
6 7rapprj<rid£eo-0ai, Acts Xviii, 26 J tt> irappija-iav, x. 35 ; iii. 6.

apollos. 1 87
of St. Paul. In that generous refusal he displayed the very feeling
which would have induced him to suppress all personal references, even
when his readers were perfectly well acquainted with the name and
antecedents of him who was addressing them.
It is stated as an insuperable objection to this theory that the
Church of Alexandria retained no tradition that this Epistle was
written by their brilliant fellow-countryman. But although Apollos
was an Alexandrian by birth and by training, it does not follow
that he had lived in his native city,1 and as he had left the city before
he became a Christian, he may have been a stranger to the Alexandrian
Christians. We do not hear a word about the Epistle in that Church
until a century after it was written. At any rate, this difficulty is
not so great as that which arises from the supposition that the 'Epistle
was the work of St. Paul, and yet was not recognised as such for some
centuries by the Western Church, and only partially and hesitatingly by
the Eastern Church.2 For there would be every temptation to attribute
the work to the Apostle, and none to associate it with the name of
Apollos, which, except in one or two Churches, seems to have been
but little known.3
It is not a decisive objection to the Apollonian authorship that
no one is known to have suggested it before Luther. We have seen
that in the early centuries the Epistle was only assigned to this or that
author by a process of tentative guesswork. Those who saw that
St. Paul could not have been the actual author often adopted one of the
arbitrary hypotheses, that it is a translation, or that the sentiments and
the language were supplied by different persons. The self-suppression
of Apollos resulted in the comparative obscurity of his work, and
the Fathers, having nothing but conjecture to deal with, fixed upon
names every one of which was more generally familiar than that of the
eloquent Alexandrian. And if it be strange that the name of Apollos
should not have been preserved by the Church to which the letter
was despatched, we may account for this by the absence of super
scription, and by the fact that it was only addressed to the Jewish
section of that Church. This much may be said with certainty, that if
it were not written by Apollos, at any rate the evidence which points to
him as its author is more various and more conclusive than that which
can be adduced to support the claims of any one else. It is a greater
1 The reading of D (the Codex Bezae) in Acts xviii. 24 (kv rjj Trarpi'Si) may be a mere
conjecture. 2 The last paragraphs are more in the style of St. Paul than any of the rest ; and even
in modern times this has led Thiersch and others into the opinion that, though the body
of the Epistle was not written by him, yet he adopted it as his own, and wrote the last
chapter 'with his own hand. The suggestion is untenable, #but the superficial grounds on
which it rests were sufficient to lead many, in uncritical days, to assume that the whole
Epistle was written by the great Apostle of the Gentiles.
3 The passages on which we can alone depend for our knowledge of Apollos are
Acts xviii. 24 — 28 ; 1 Cor. iii. 4 — 6 ; xvi. 12 (comp. Rom. xvi 3 ; 2 Tim. iv. 19) ;
Tit. iii. 13.

188 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
testimony in his favour that his name, when once suggested by a flash
of happy intuition, should have been accepted, with more or less
confidence, by an ever-increasing number of trained and careful critics
of all schools,1 than that it should not have occurred to the less laborious
and penetrating examination of writers in the early centuries. To
suppose that even an Origen or a Jerome — much less an Augustine —
subjected the Epistle to that minute comparative study, word by word
and line by line, which it has since received from writers like Bleek and
Tholuck, and in its theological aspect from Delitzsch, Biehm, Ebrard,
Reuss, and Pfleiderer, is to ignore facts. The decision of the future will
be that it was either written by Apollos or by some writer who is
to us entirely unknown.
As to the date of the Epistle, our only clue is furnished by the
certainty that it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem
in a.d. 70, and by the allusion to the liberation of Timotheus.2 Had
it been written after the fall of Jerusalem, the arguments of the writer
might have been stated with tenfold force. The author of the Epistle
of Barnabas, for instance (4, 16), is able to treat very differently a
similar line of reasoning. The destruction of Jerusalem came like
a Divine comment on all the truths which are here set forth. It is
no answer to this difficulty that Josephus,3 the Mishna, the Gemara, the
Epistles of Barnabas,4 and Clement,5 and Justin Martyr,6 continue
to speak of the Temple worship in the present tense after the City and
Temple had been destroyed.7 In the Epistle to the Hebrews we are
dealing not with a figure of speech,8 but with the structure of an
argument. A writer who could argue as in Heb. x. 2, without adding
the tremendous corroboration which his views had received from the
Divine sanction of History, could not have written the Epistle at all.
The allusion to Timothy is too vague to admit of any certain
conclusion being founded upon it. It is probable that Timothy
obeyed the summons to come immediately to Rome which he had
received from St. Paul,9 and that in the then exacerbation of the
imperial government against the Christians he so far shared in the peril
of the great .Apostle as to have been thrown into a prison. He may
have been subsequently set free because of the harmlessness of his
character and the lack of evidence against him. If so, this Epistle
must have been written soon after the year of St. Paul's death, at
the end of A.D. 67, or the beginning of a.d. 68. This date suits well
1 Luther, Osiander, Le Clerc, Heumann, L. Miiller, Semler, Ziegler, Dindorf, Bleek,
Tholuck, Credner, Reuss, Rothe, Feilmoser, Lutterbeck, Guerike, De Wette, Lunemann,
Alford, Kurz, Davidson, Plumptre, Moulton. A few writers— e.g., R. Kostlin, Moll,
Ewald, Riehm — think that the name of the author is undiscoverable.
2 Heb. xiii. 23. 3 Jos. Antt. vii. 6, §§ 7—12 ; c. Apion, i. 7; ii. 8, 23.
4 Ep. Barnab. 7. 5 Clemens Rom. i. 40. 6 Dial. c. Tryph. 107.
1 This argument is used by Keim (Jesu von Nazara, i. 148, 636), who, with Volkmar
{Ret. Jesu,, 388) and Holtzmann (in Schenkel's Bibellexicon), tries to bring down the date
of the Epistle to the persecution of Domitian.
s See Hilgenfeld, Einleit. 381. » 2 Tim. iv. 9, 21.

TO WHOM ADDRESSED ? 189
with the allusions which indicate that the first generation of Christians
had already passed, or was rapidly passing, away.
It was addressed to Jewish Christians exclusively — to Jews by birth,
who, though they had been converted,1 were in imminent danger of
apostasy, and who had been subjected to persecution, which was not,
however, so severe as to have led to many martyrdoms.2 If we could
assume that the last four verses were a special postscript to some par
ticular Church, it might be supposed that the letter was rather intended
as a treatise in which Jews were addressed in the abstract ;3 but even
then it must have been sent in the first instance to at least one
Church. L That this was not the Church of Jerusalem4 is all but certain. It'
is true that the Mother Church might have been specially interested by
all that the writer says ; but the saints of Jerusalem would have been
hardly likely to welcome a letter from a Hellenist, which only quoted
from the Septuagint, and which was written in Greek. Moreover, it
cannot be said of them, in any ordinary sense, that . " they had not
yet resisted unto blood ;" nor were they in a position to minister to the
saints,5 being themselves overwhelmed in the deepest poverty ; nor
would it be likely that no allusion should have been made to the fact
that some of them must have actually heard the words and witnessed
the sufferings of Christ ; nor would any of St. Paul's companions have
been entitled to address them in the tone of authority which the writer
adopts ; nor were the Christians of Palestine specially interested in
Timothy. A Paulinist in the position of Apollos could not have ven-'
tured to reproach the Church of the earliest saints in such words of
severe and authoritative rebuke for their ignorance and childishness as
occur in Heb. v. 1 1 — 1 4. This passage is alone sufficient to show the un
likelihood that the " Hebrews " addressed are the Palestinian Christians.6
ii. Corinth, which would otherwise be naturally conjectured, is
1 Heb. ii. 3, 4 ; iv. 14 ; v. 11 ; vi. 1 ; viii. 1 ; x. 19, etc. Comp. Acts vi. 1. Hase
supposes that it was addressed to a group of Palestinian Nazarites ; Stuart, that it was
written by St. Paul to Csesarea ; Boehme, that it was sent to Antioch.
- Wieseler (Untersuchung, ii. 3, seq.) has conclusively proved that the term
" Hebrews " need not be confined to Palestinian Jews. (See 2 Cor. xi. 22 ; Phil. iii. 5.)
Josephus originally wrote his "Jewish War" in Aramaic, yet he tells us it was
meant for Jews' all over Asia (see Tholuck, Hebr. p. 97). Moreover, it is far from
certain that the superscription Trpbs 'EBpaiovs is genuine. From the Muratorian Canon we
might suppose that in another inscription it was called "to the Alexandrians."
3 So Euthalius thought : Trao-t Tots kic TrepiTop.Tjs Trto-Teijo-atni/ 'E0patoic. Delitzsch is there
fore mistaken when he says that it was the unanimous ancient opinion that it was
addressed to Judaea.
4 ttov 51 oSo-tv eTre'r/TeAAep ; epol SoKti kv 'lepoo-oAv'uots Kat naAairrnVrj, Chrysost. Prooem in
Hebr. ; and so, too, Theodoret. This is the view of Bleek, De Wette, Tholuck,
Thiersch, Delitzsch, Liinemann, Riehm, Ebrard, Lange ; but the notion is being readily
abandoned. It sprang from the Greek Fathers, and it is a mistake to suppose that it is
necessitated by the title " the saints " (1 Cor. vi. 1 ; 2 Cor. i. 1 ; viii. 4, &c).
5 Heb. vi. 10.
6 Ebrard supposes that it was meant for Christian neophytes at Jerusalem, who were
rendered anxious by being excluded from the Temple worship.

190 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
excluded by the allusion (ii. 3) which points to a Church founded by
one of the original Twelve Apostles.
iii. Alexandria1 would have seemed probable, and has in its favour
the dubious allusion of the Muratorian Canon ; but Timothy had no
relations with Alexandria, and (which is a far more serious objection) it
is unlikely that a Church like that of Alexandria would have forgotten
the authorship of a letter by one of their own countrymen, if it had
been in the first instance addressed to them.2
iv. If our. conjecture about Timothy's imprisonment be correct, it
could not have been addressed to Rome, which otherwise has many con
siderations in its favour.3 It was well known to St. Clemens of Bome,
and some of the allusions of the Epistle might suit the Neronian perse
cution. On the other hand, the tortures spoken of are somewhat distant
in time (ras vpSrepov r/nepas, x. 32), and the Roman Church more than
any other had resisted unto blood.4 We have no hint in the New
Testament that Apollos ever visited Rome ; and a writer addressing the
Jews of that city, and familiar with the Epistle to the Romans,5 would
hardly have ignored the existence of the Gentiles. Again, although this
hypothesis would indeed account for the conviction of the Roman
Church that the Epistle was not written by St. Paul, it would be difficult
to explain why Clement, who knew the Epistle — and who, if it had been
sent to the Roman Church, must from the nature of the case have known
the name of the writer — handed down no tradition on the subject. If
we must single out one Church as the probable recipient of the letter, it
would be the Jewish portion of the Church of Ephesus, where both
Apollos and Timotheus were well known, and in which they had both
laboured. 1 Heb. ii. 3. See Dean Plumptre's argument in the Expositor, i. 428 — 432, that it is
addressed to Christian ascetics connected with Alexandria. The notion that it was
addressed to Alexandria is adopted by Schmidt, Bleek, Credner, Votkmar, Kostlin,
Bunsen (Hippolytus, i. 365), Hilgenfeld, DUmann, Schleiermacher, and Wieseler (Chron.
496). 2 Schleiermacher, Einleit. 445 ; Ad. Maier, Hebr. 4. If iv tjj irarpiSi, the reading of
D in Acts xviii. 25, is correct, Apollos had been converted in Alexandria. Hilgenfeld
(Einleit. 357) gets over the difficulty by supposing that it may have been addressed as a
private letter to one section of the Church.
3 It was suggested by Wetstein (N. T. ii. 386), and supported at length by Holzmann
(Bunsen's Bibclwerk, viii. 432 ; Stud. u. Krit. 1S59), Kurtz, Renan, and Alford (Introd.
to Hebrews). It is the view of Eichhorn, Schulz, Baur, Holtzmann, &c. Ewald thinks
it may have been written to— Ravenna ! Wilibald Grimm fixes on Jamnia ; Hofmann
on the Jewish section of the Church at Antioch.
4 This expression must surely refer to martyrdom (since atua is used so often of the
Blood of Christ, Eph. ii. 13 ; Kev. vi. 10, &c), as h^xp" SavdTov does. 2 Mace. xiii. 14 ;
Phil. ii. 8. The context also points to this meaning, and not to a pugilistic metaphor.
It cannot be regarded as certain that tuBao-iv in xiii. 7 means martyrdom.
5 The following are some of tho parallels between the Epistle to the Hebrews and
that to the Romans : —
Rom. xii. 1—21. Heb. xiii. 1—6 ; x. 30.
xiv. 7. xiii. 9.
xv. 33. xiii. 20.
In Heb. x. 30 there is a quotation which agrees neither with the Hebrew nor the LXX.
of Deut. xxxii. 35, but is also found in Rom. xii. 19, ep-oi ckSiktio-ls, eyw avTawodtiio-to.

WHENCE written? 191
The place from which the Epistle was written can only be a matter
of guess, since there is nothing to indicate it, and least of all the expres
sion " they of Italy " in xiii. 24. That clause, as we shall see, is quite
vague. It may equally well imply that the Epistle was written in
Italy, or in any Church in which there happened to be a few Italian
Christians. We hear of Apollos for the last time in the Epistle to Titus (iii. 13),
where we find that' he was expected in Crete during the course of some
missionary journey. At that point he disappears from Christian his
tory ; but he will, as we believe, speak to the Church to the end of time
in the eloquent teachings of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE EPISTDE TO THE HEBREWS,
"... Nihil interesse cujus sit, cum ecolesiastici viri sit, et quotidie, ecole-
siarum leotione celebretur." — Jer. Ep. 129, ad Dardanum.
"Das ist erne starke, machtige, und hohe Epistel." — IjUtheb.
" Of this ye see that the Epistle ought no more to be refused for a holy, godly,
and catholic than the other authentic Scriptures." — Tyndale.
SECTION" I.
THE SUPERIORITY OP CHRIST.
" Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat." — Inscription on Obelisk at
Rome.Having now examined all that can be ascertained respecting the author
of the Epistle, and the circumstances in which it originated, we are
more in a position to follow the outline of its teachings. The writer's
main object was to prevent the Jewish Christians from apostatising
under the stress of persecution, by convincing them that they would
find in the finality and transcendence of the Christian Eaith a means of
perfection and a path of blessedness which the shadow of their old cere
monial Judaism could never afford. This end he achieves by a com
parison between Christianity and Judaism under the double aspect of
(1) the Mediators between God and man, by whom they were respec
tively represented, and (2) the nature of the blessings which they were
calculated to impart.
Of those five familiar divisions — greeting, thanksgiving, didactic
nucleus, resultant moral application, final salutations and benedictions
— which constitute the normal structure of the Epistles of St. Paul, the
first two are entirely wanting. The writer begins with the statement
of his thesis, that God has given to the world by His Son the complete

192 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and final revelation of His will. Christians were taunted by Jews as
apostates from Jehovah and renegades from Moses, who had abandoned
the Law which had been delivered by the mediation of Angels, and had
proved faithless to the Aaronic priesthood; they were told that by
accepting as their Messiah a crucified malefactor they had forfeited all
the blessings and promises of the Old Covenant. It is the object of the
writer, first, to convince them, with many an interwoven warning,
that, on the contrary, Christ, as the Son of God, is above all mediators
and all priests, and the sole means of perfect and confident access for
all men to the Holy Sanctuary of God's Presence. He therefore
proves that Christ is above Angels,1 and that this supremacy was in no
sense weakened by His earthly humiliation, which was the voluntary
and predestined necessity whereby alone He could have effected His
redeeming work ; that He is above Moses by His very nature ; above
Joshua, because He leads His people into their true and final rest ;
like Aaron in being called of God and in being able to sympathise with
men, but above Aaron, first because His Priesthood is eternal and not
hereditary, and next because He is personally sinless, and thirdly
because His Priesthood was established by an oath, and most of all
because of the incomparable benefits resulting from it. He is only to
be paralleled by the mysterious Melchizedek, the kingly Prince of
Peace, anterior and superior to Aaron, springing from another tribe
than that of Levi, and belonging to an earlier and loftier dispensation
than that of Sinai. He is at once the unchangeable Priest and the sin
less sacrifice. And this change of Priesthood involves a change of the
Law, and the introduction of a New Covenant, and an entrance into
the true archetypal sanctuary which God made and not man.
Having thus in the first eight chapters shown the superiority of
Christ to all those to whom was entrusted the dispensation of the
Mosaic Covenant, he proceeds, secondly, in the ninth and tenth chap
ters, to show the vast superiority of this New Covenant as the fulfilling
of the shadowy types and symbols of the Mosaic Tabernacle, and as
having rendered possible — not by the impotence of repeated animal
sacrifices, but by the blood of Christ once offered — a perfect purification
from sin. Under the New Covenant as under the Old there is sin and
the need of expiation, and therefore in the New Covenant as in the Old
there is a Temple, a Sacrifice, and a High Priest — only that these are
not temporary, but eternal ; not human, but Divine.2
On the basis of this double comparison of the two covenants as regards
their agents and their results he passes, (1) into exhortations to confidence
and steadfastness in that faith of which he records the many memorable
triumphs ; (2) into warnings against the awful peril of apostasy and
1 " Messiah is (greater than the Patriarchs, Moses and the Ministering Angels." — Yaikut
Ciiadash, f. 144, b (Sohottgen). I am also referred to Yalkut Shimoni, pt. 2, f. 53, 3: " He skftll
be exalTed above Abraham and shall he extolled above Moses, and shall he more sublime fcaan
the Ministering Angels."
• See Reuss, Thiol. Chrit. ii 274.

THE INTRODUCTION. 193
willing sin ; and (3) into practical inculcations of duties both general
and special, ending with a few brief personal messages, and a single
word of benediction.
The keynotes of the Epistle are the phrases, " By how much
more " (io-oi p.a\\ov), and " A better Covenant " (Kpefrrav Siae-fiKv).
In one grand sentence, eminently original in its expressions, and
pregnant with thoughts which would be capable of almost indefinite
expansion, the writer states the thesis on which he intends to base his
warnings against the peril and folly of retrogression into an imperfect
and abrogated dispensation.
" God, who in many portions i and in many manners 2 of old 3 spake to the
fathers in the prophets4 at the end of these days5 spake unto us in His Son, whom
He appointed Heir of all things, by whom also He made the world ; 6 who being the
effulgence7 of His glory, and the stamp of His substanoe,8 and sustaining ail
things by the utterance of His power,0 after making purification of sins,1" sat
on the right hand of the Majesty in high places,11 having proved Himself by so much
better than the angels as He hath inherited a more excellent name than they."12
In this powerful Introduction, of which the opening words alone are
a marvellously instructive summary of the religious history of the world
before Christ,13 he declares the dawn of the last seon of God's earthly
dispensations, by setting forth the supremacy of the Son of God over all
created things, and the finality of His redemptive work. Apart from
the stateliness and ' artistic balance of the language, we find in these
three verses no less than six expressions which occur only in this
Epistle,14 and at least nine constructions 15 which, even when not rare in
1 Not giving at once a final and perfect revelation, but revealing Himself part by part —
lifting the veil fold by fold (1 Cor. xiii. 9, e« uepovs TrporpTrrevouei/).
2 By promises, types, sacrifices, Urim, dreams, voices, similitudes, prophets specially com
missioned. 3 Molachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets, lived b.c. 320.
4 kv, like the Hebrew i 131. Cf. 1 Sam. xxviii. 6 ; Matt. ix. 34.
5 Compare ix. 26. A recognised Messianic expression, Dan. viii. 17 ; xii. 13. The " last days '*
date from Christ's Advent. They are the Acharith hayamim, the Katpbs Stopetuo-etus and the
o-vpTe'Aeta tZ>v amvav. With them ends the former dispensation (the Olam hazzeh, tbe allav oStos),
and begins the (Ham habba, or the txkKXoiv alutv. The " last days" (Jas. v. 3) are to be ended by
" the last crisis " (jcaipbs !o-Yaro?, 1 Bet. i. 5 ; 1 Tim. iv. IJ, after which come " the rest " and
"the sabbatism; " but the "last hour" has begun (1 John ii. 18J.
6 Lit., "The ages," Hebr. Olamitn ; but in this Epistle it means "the Universe," being used
in its Rabbinic and post-Biblical sense, as in xi. 3, "by faith we believe KaT>jpTi'o-&H tous ataipa? ; "
v. infra ad Zoc. Cf. Tobit xiii. 6 ; 1 Tim. i. 17 ; Col. i. 5 ; John i. 3—10.
¦ Cf. Wisd. vii. 26. Philo, De Mund. Opif. i. 35. "Light of{kic) Light."
8 In Philo, De Monarch, ii. p. 219, the Logos is compared to a seal-ring.
9 Col. i. 17 ; Eph. vi. 10. Similarly Philo calls the Logos §eo-abs toiv a-navrwv.
10 E, K, L, M, Syr., Copt., .rEthiop., &c, add fii eavrou, "by His own act." This is in any case
involved in the middle rrotrjo-tijueros. Iu " purification " there may be a glance at Torn Hakkip-
purim, the Day of Atonement, rjpkpa tov Ka9api<Tpov. (Ex. xxix. 36, LXX.)
u The old " Ubiquitarian'' controversy, as to whether " the right hand of God is everywhere,"
is now as dead as hundreds of other theological controversies- once waged with much dogmatic
bitterness. la Namely, the title of " Only-begotten Son."
13 The paronomasia of the first words, nud the general style of the sentence, ought to have
been sufficient to prove, on the very threshold, that the Epistle is uot a translation.
14 Jfapa.1; leaomena, as far^ as the New Testament is concerned. 7roA.up.epw5, ttoAutpottws,
aTrau'vao-aa, xap&K-Trjp, peyaXvivvvn, fiia<popwTepoc.
15 TraAat, AaArJrras, err' k<r\&TOV Tbiv Tj/xeptor', tovtwv, tpkpinv (iu tlhis sense), Kadapitrpbv Tbtv a/AapTtujr,
lv im/r/Aot?, TO<TOVTtf « . . oo-ai, ifpetTTWiy (iu this sense), StatpopcoTepov rrapd.
N

194 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
themselves, occur nowhere in St. Paul, together with others which occur
but once in all his thirteen Epistles.
The manner in which the writer here introduces his subject is not
only full of majesty, but it also goes straight to the point. In a tone
which reminds us of the Christology of the Epistles to the Colossians
and Ephesians he sets forth the supreme exaltation of Christ as Light of
(i.e.„from <?«) Light and very God of very God1 — as the enthroned
exalted Purifier from sin. He specifies particularly his superiority to
Angels. The necessity for doing this points not so much to those
seductive influences of Essene speculation against which St. Paul argues
in his Epistle to the Colossians — for here there seems to be no danger of
¦ the worship of Angels — but rather to the Judaic boastings that their
fiery Law was uttered by the mediation of Angels on Mount Sinai, and
must therefore be superior to any teaching of man. The exaltation of
Angels was, both at this period and long afterwards, a tendency of
Jewish thought. In the fourth book of Esdras we find many specula
tions about the greatness of Gabriel, Uriel, Michael, Raguel, Eaphael,
the starry and the sleepless ones.2 In the almost contemporary Epistle
of Clemens of Rome3 the argument is again expanded and enforced. It
was necessary, therefore, to show that Christ was not a mere man whom
it was idolatry to adore, but that he was above all the heayenly Princi
palities and Powers ; and even more than this — that men themselves,
by virtue of Christ's work, were more concerned than Angels in the
seon of future glory. That Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God,
he does not need to prove, because he is writing to those who had
accepted Him as their Messiah ; but it was necessary to show that this
Messiah was Divine, and that even the angelic heralds of Sinai4
shrank into insignificance in comparison with His eternal and final,
work. This he proceeds to prove in the remainder of the chapter by that
Scriptural method which was to the Jews more conclusive than any
other, and with which the writings of St. Paul have already made us
familiar. He does so in a mosaic of magnificent quotations from the
second, the ninety -seventh, the forty-fifth, and the hundred-and-second
Psalms, and from Deuteronomy and the Second Book of Samuel.
" For to which of the angels said He ever, My Son art thou ; to-day have I
begotten thee ? 5 And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son ? 8
1 It is strange that the great majority of olergrymen, in reading the Nicene Creed, should
still say, " nod of God, Light Of Light " — which is surely quite meaningless — instead of " God
o/God, Light o/ Light."
' See Siijicriwt Rdig. i. 93.
3 Clem, ad Cor. 36.
* Apollos gives no sanction to Philo's distinctiou that the Teu Commandments were uttered
by the immediate voice of God, and the rest of the Law by augels.
5 Ps. ii. 7; on its Messianic interpretation compare Rom. i. 4; Acts xiii. 3. Kimchi and
Rashi testify to this being the ancient view. The whole clause must be taken together, for
angels are called sons iii Job i. 6; Dau. iii. 25; and in LXX. (A) Ps. xxix. 1 ; Deut. xiv. 1, etc.
" To-day "—a part of " God's Eternal now. "
* 2 Sam. vii. 14 ; Philo, Lege. A Uctjg. iii. 8. The allusion is perhaps to the Incarnation.

CHRIST ABOVE ANGELS. 195
And when He, again,1 bringeth the firstborn into the habitable world, Ho saith,
And let all the Angels of God worship Him.2 And of the Angels He saith,
Who maketh His Angels winds, and His ministers a flame of fire ; 3 but to the Son,
thy throne, 0 God,4 is for ever and ever. And the sceptre of rectitude is the
sceptre of thy6 kingdom. Thou lovedst righteousness, and hatedst lawlessness;
therefore did God, thy God, anoint thee with the oil of exultation above thy fellows.6
And thou, 0 Lord, in the beginning didst found the earth; and the heavens are the
work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest. And they all shall
wax old as doth a garment, and as, a mantle shalt thou roll them up,7 and they shall
be changed ; but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.8 But. to which of
the angels has He said at any time, Sit at My right hand until I make thine enemies
a footstool of thy feet?9 Are they not all ministrant spirits,10 sent forth for service
for the sake of those who are about to inherit salvation ? "ll
This mode of argument, by Scriptural quotation, has been made a
needless stumbling-block, on the ground that some of the passages here
adduced in proof of Christ's exaltation were originally addressed to
David and Solomon, and had a directly historical reference. That such
passages did really have such a primary reference no fair reasoner is
' likely to deny ; but to assert that they had such a reference only is to
repudiate an interpretation which they may obviously bear, and which
had been attached to them by the' nation among whom they originated
for centuries before, as well as for centuries after, the coming of our
Lord. Let us take these quotations in order. No one will question
that the second Psalm was originally a song of trust and anticipated
triumph in times of gathering war ; that the words of 2 Sam. vii. 14
were, in the first instance, addressed to Solomon ; that in Psalm xcvii. 7
(if that be source of the quotation), or in Deuteronomy xxxii. 43 — the
song of Moses — the " Elohim " are bidden to worship God ; that the
forty-fifth Psalm was an epithalamium for Solomon, or one of his
successors; that in Ps. cii. 25 the "0 Lord" does not exist in the
1 If the "again " merely introduces a new quotation, as in i. 5, ii. 13, iv. 5. etc., there is no
difficulty except the very strange misplacement (hyperbaton). But it seems better to apply it
prophetically to the Final Advent, though I have left the translation ambiguous, as the
original is.
* Ps. xcvii. 7 (cf. Deut. xxxii. 43). The LXX., the Syriac, and the Vulgate, render EloMm by
" angels," as in Ps. via. 6, etc. ; the Chaldee, by " all who worship idols."
3 Ps. civ. 4. Both ayyeAous and TrrevaaTa are dubious ; ayye'Aovs means either "messengers"
or "angels"; -nvevpara either " winds " or "spirits." The context shows that the latter meanings
are intended here. In the original the context seems to demand an inversion, i.e., " He maketh
the winds His messengers, the flaming fire His ministers" — hut grammatical considerations
make this difficult to accept. See Perowne, The Psalms, ii. 229, 237. Further, the Rabbinic
notion was that the angels could "clothe themselves with the changing garment of natural
phenomena," and be changed into wind and flame (Wetst. and Schottgen, ad loc ).
4 Ps. xiv. 6, 7. 5 Or " His kingdom," n.
6 Here all tbe ancient versions render Elohim as a vocative ; moderns render it " Thy Divine
throne," as 1 Chron. xxix. 23. The Jews have never doubted its Messianic interpretation, and
the Chald. Paraphrast on ver. 3 was, " Thy beauty, 0 King Messiah, is greater than that of the
Son of men " (Schottgen). See Percwne, i. 357.
7 eAt'fets, N, D, read <iAAd£ets, as in Hebrew and in the Alexandrian MS. of the LXX , which
this Epistle generally follows.
8 Ps. oU- 25. Although "0 Lord" (Kiipte) is not in the original, a Christian, writing to
Christians who accepted Christ as the Messiah, might quote these verses in a Messianic appli
cation, especially as he has already said, " By whom also He made the world."
9 Ps. ex. 1. The fact that this Psalm was prominently used by our Lord without dispute
in a Messianic sense shows incontestably that in the Priest-King after the order of Melchizedefe
all readers, Jewish as well as Christian, would at once accept a type of the Messiah.
i° They render service (Aetrovpyta) to God, and aid (Btajcovia) to men.
« Heb. i. 5-14

196 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Hebrew, and that the words are addressed to Jehovah ; that even the
hundred-and-tenth Psalm must have had a contemporary and historic
meaning. And this being so, if any one were to adduce these citations
as a proof of the supremacy of Jesus Christ over the angels to one who
began by denying altogether the Messianic import ©f the Old Testament,
the arguments could not have any weight until this method of applying
the Old Testament had been justified. But to pass through these preli
minary reasonings was in this case needless. Apollos is arguing with
the Hebrews, and arguing with them on admitted principles. Those
Hebrews were Christians. He had no need to begin by proving to
them that Jesus was the Messiah. That part of his work had been
mightily accomplished many years before. It would have been neces
sary only for unconverted Jews, whom he is not addressing. But even
Jews, if they were once convinced on this point, would have been com
pelled to accept his further arguments. Their whole religion was ulti
mately resolvable into a Messianic hope, and their whole method of
Scriptural study was Messianic application. It was an accepted rule of
their interpretation that everything which the Prophets had spoken they
had spoken of the Messiah. Calvin, in his great commentary, thinks it
sufficient to say that the New Testament writers make a pious use of
such passages by infusing into them a new meaning.1 But no Jewish
scribe or Christian Apostle would have regarded himself as making a
strained use pf these quotations. To such readers the passages derived
their chief importance from the prophetic meaning which had always
been assigned to them. The Christological application cannot, and is
not meant to, disturb the historical foundation of such passages ; but
mystical extensions of the language, and inferential deductions from it,
were in the inmost nature of things perfectly tenable, and constituted,
indeed, the very essence of Jewish exegesis.
But it may be said that, however conclusive this method of argu
ment and citation may have been to the Jews, it cannot be so to us.
It would be useless and dishonest to ignore that such a remark is
natural. The objection was. felt so strongly even by Cardinal Cajetan
that he says, '' It is not quite becoming that so great an Apostle should
use an argument in a matter of so much importance." 2 My reply is
that the argument can and ought to be, if not logically conclusive, yet
full of weight and instruction to us. It may be that the whole result
of our training, and our entire method of criticism lead us to attach
more exclusive import to the primary application of the Old Testament,
and not to allow its full force to the Messianic presentiment which
largely moulded the language of Scripture. Yet how is it possible for
us to deny that the Jews had read these texts in a Messianic sense for
ages before Christ was born, and in many instances continue so to
i " Pift deileotione ad Christi personam accommodat" (Calvin, in Eph. iv. 8). He calls this
method of application erref epyarria.
8 " Minus decet in tauta re tantum Apostolum uti tali argumeuto." Comment, (op. Tho
luck, 66).

SCRIPTURAL QUOTATIONS. 197
accept them ? Is it not further true that these utterances have received
a fulfilment such as was attributed to them, and a fulfilment more
universal and magnificent than was ever anticipated by those who
received or those who uttered them t Is it not true that Jewish litera
ture is the embodiment of Jewish religion ; that the very heart and soul
of Jewish religion was the Messianic faith ; and that in Christ that
Messianic faith has found its most glorious accomplishment t A pious
Jewish interpreter might carry a modern critic with him when he said
that much of the language of the Old Testament respecting the ideal
Man — the ideal Jashar — the ideal Israel — the ideal seed of David and
of Abraham, could only find its true and full meaning in the promised
Messiah. The very name Adam, said the Babbis, involves the names
.4 dam, Z>avid, Jfessiah ; so that the mystery of Adam is the mystery of
the Messiah.1 The Babbinic Midrash on Ps. civ. 1 is that God lent
"glory " to Moses, and " honour" to Joshua ; but, according to Ps. xxi.
6, he meant to lend both to King Messiah. The New Testament quota
tions are all based on the principle, nowhere more powerfully expounded
than in this Epistle, that the New Testament is latent in the Old, and
the Old is laid open in the New — that both are but parts of one system
of Divine ideas, moments in the course of one progressive revelation.
With the extent to which the Old Testament writers themselves
realised the force of their own utterances we are not immediately con
cerned. " Their words meant more than they." The Spirit who,
entering into their holy souls, made them Sons of God and Prophets,
gave them the large utterance which has reached over three thousand
years, and of which the final consummation is yet afar. The grandeur
of prophecy did not consist in mechanical predictions, but in the Faith
which enabled the Chosen People to support with unflinching allegiance
the cause of right, and in the Hope which burned with unquenchable
brightness even in the depths of universal gloom.
But when we have given their fullest weight to these considerations,
we must still admit that the tendency of our exegesis is different from
that of the Jews. We find in this and other Epis+les a style of Scrip
tural application which comes home with less force to us than it did to
its earlier readers. We must, however, remember that this mode of
argument was once both necessary and convincing, although to us, with
the widening knowledge of centuries, it is no longer indispensable. The
argument from some of the Messianic Psalms is undoubtedly to be taken
into account among the other evidences of Christianity. If there are
other Psalms which can be regarded as having no such evidential value,
except to those who accept the ancient methods of interpretation — if
the prophetic evidence appeals to us with less force than of old — the
Historic evidences of Christianity have, on the other hand, been incom
parably strengthened. Different methods of argument appeal with
1 Nishmath Chajim, f . 152 b.

198 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
varying force to different ages. This is nothing more than we should
have expected from the fact that God never willed to reveal at once the
whole mystery of His dispensations. His revelations (as we have just
been told) come to us gradually like the dawn — fragmentarily and
multifariously — in many portions, in many ways.
SECTION II.
A SOLEMN EXHORTATION.
Having thus proved the superiority of Christ to Angels, the writer
pauses for a word of warning.
" On this account we ought more abundantly to pay heed to the things heard,
lest perchance we should drift away from them.1 For if the word uttered by means
of angels 2 proved stedfast, and every transgression and neglect 3 received a just
recompense of reward, how shall we4 make good our escape6 if we neglect so
great a salvation ? which, having begun to be uttered through the Lord, was ratified to
us by them that heard,6 God attesting it with them by signs and portents, and various
powers, and distributions of the Holy Spirit, according to His will " (ii. 1 — 4).
After this exhortation the thread of argument is resumed, and he
proceeds to show that this destined supremacy of man over Angels was
foretold in the Scriptures, and has been fulfilled in Jesus. He won
supreme glory by willing suffering, in order to share the trials of those
whom He is to sanctify and lead to glory as sons of God. This brother
hood of man with Christ is illustrated by passages from Ps. xxii. and
Is. viii., and the chapter concludes with a pregnant summary of the
reasons why it was — from the human point of view — necessary that
Christ should condescend to incarnation and death. It was that he
might bring to nought the lord of Death, and liberate men from the
lifelong terror of death — it being His aim to aid men and not angels,
and to be made like men that He might show the sympathy of the
Infinite with the finite by actually sharing in their trials and their life.
" For not to angels did He subject the age to be,7 respecting which we speak.
1 Trapappuwp.ef, 2nd aor. subj. pass, of napappeiv. Cf. Prov. iii. 21, LXX., vie prj TTapappvjjs . . ,
eiir/i/ jSouArJp. It is the opposite of rvpelv. " Lest pet adventure we fleten away " (Wiclif). " Let
them slip " first appears in tbe Genevan Bible of 1560.
3 Acts vii. 53 ; Gal. iii. 19 ; Deut. xxxiii. 2 ; Ps. lxviii. 17 ; Jos. Antt. xv. 5, 3. See on these
Angels at Sinai my Life and Work of St. Pawl, ii. 149. The prominence given to the angelio
mediators of the Law is still more observable in the Talmud, the Torgums, the Midrushim, etc. :
and in the tract " Maccoth " we are informed that the only words actually spoken by God were
the ¦First Commandment. 3 irapapWts, sins of commission; irapaKor], of omission.
* " The child owes a deeper debt than the servant." 5 €Kipev£6ue0a.
G St. Paul would never have written thus. He always insists most strongly on the indepen
dence of his call, his revelation, and his gospel (lial. i. 1, &c).
7 Heb. vi. 5. In the Old Testament the " Age to be " is the Messianic Age. But when the
Messianic Age had dawned — when this " futiu'e age" (olam habba) had become "present" (olam
hazzeh) — then Christians were still led to look forward to yet another " future age." The olam
habba is the Christian dispensation, in its present existence here, which involves its future per-
f eetioument. Tbe olam hazzeh, or " this Age " (alu>v ovtos ) , might be applied to tbe period before
the destruction of Jerusalem, regarded in its Jewish, Heathen, and imperfect Christian aspeot ;
and the " prest-nt world," in this sense, was subjected to angels (Deut. xxxii. 8, LXX., " accord
ing to tho number of the angels of God j " Dan. x. 13, 20, 21 ; Tobit xii. 15). In point of fact, the
horizon of the " Age to be " is one which must ever fade before us until we reach the end of
this Age, and of all things.

THE WORK OF CHRIST. 199
But one somewhere1 testified, saying-, What is man-2 that thou rememherest him?
or the son of man, that thou lookest upon him ? Thou loweredst him a little in
comparison to the angels ; 3 with glory and honour thou crownedst him ; all things
didst thou subject beneath his feet. For in subjecting the universe to him, He left
nothing unsubjected to him; but now we see4 not yet the universe subjected to
him, but we look upon 5 Him who has been for a little time made low, in comparison
of angels — even Jesus — on account of the suffering of death, crowned with glory
and honour,6 in order that by the grace of God 7 He may taste death 8 on behalf of
every man. For it became Him, for whose sake are all things, and by whose means
are all things — in bringing many sons to glory— to perfect by means of sufferings
the Captain9 of their salvation. For the Sanctifier and they who are being
sanctified are all from one. for which cause He is not ashamed to call them
brethren, saying, I will declare thy name to my brethren, in the midst of the
Church will I sing praise to thee.10 And again, I will put my trust in Him ;
and again, Lo, I and the children which God gave me.11 Since then the children
have shared in blood and flesh,12 He Himself also similarly partook in the same
things, in order that by means of death He may render impotent him that hath
the power of death, that is the devil,13 and may set free those who by fear of
death through their whole life were subjects of slavery. For assuredly14 it is not
angels whom He takes by the Hand, but it is the seed of Abraham whom He takes
by the hand.15 Wherefore it behoved Him16 in all respects to be made like to His
brethren, in order that He may prove Himself merciful, and a faithful high priest
1 This vague method of quotation is found also in Philo and the Rabbis. Generally, each
quotation is referred to "God" or "the Holy Spirit," but that method could not be here
adopted, because God is addressed.
2 tD13« — man in bis humiliation and weakness.
3 Heb. Elohim. * bpu>fj.ev. s fiKeirofiev.
6 On the connexion of the Grown with the Cross, compare Phil. ii. 5—11 (" via crucis, via
lucis"). 7 The reading xtupi's ©eou (" without God," or " except God," now only found in MSS. 53 and
67) was found by Origen in some MSS. few tktlv avny patois), and by Jerome (" absque Deo, in
quibusdam exemplaribus "). Theodore of Mopsuestia spoke with contempt of the reading x&P}TL>
as meaningless ; but x<*>pfc seems to be either an accidental misreading of x<*PlTt» or a marginal
gloss on to. iravra ("might taste death for everything except God"). (Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 27.) The
Nestorians, however (and even St. Ambrose and Fulgentius), interpreted it. *' might, apart from
His Divinity (i.e., in His human nature only), taste death." If accepted, it can only mean " that
He may taste death for every being, God excepted " (1 Cor. xv. 27). Drs. Westcott and Hort
(Greek Test. ii. 129) regard it as a Western and Syrian reading which sprang from an accidental
confusion of letters.
8 A common Semitic metaphor, from the notion that death gives a cup to drink. In the
Arabian poem " Antar " we find, " Death gave him a cup of absintb by my hand."
9 a-pxnyov (Acts v. 31). In Acts iii. 15 it means "tlie Leader " in the sense of " the Author"
or "Originator." Comp. xii. 2, Herzog itirer Seligkeit (Luther).
io pg, xxii., a typico-prophetic Psalm (Matt, xxvii. 46). It is headed in our Hebrew Bibles,
" On the hind of tbe dawn," which the Midrash Tehillin explains to mean, " On him who leaps
— as a stag— and brightens the world in the time of darkness" (Mic. vii. 8). R. Cbija explained
it of the gradual redemption of Israel.
11 The verse continues, " Behold I and tbe children which God gave me (viz., Mahershalal-
hashbaz and Shearjashub), are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of Hosts (Is. viii.
18). The names of those two sons (" Speed-pluuder-haste-spoil" aud "A remnant shall re
main") were symbolical, as also was their whole position. It indicated the relation of the
chosen part of the people towards God. These texts are not (in our sense of the word) proofs,
but only symbols and illustrations.
12 This (as in Eph. vi. 12) is the order in A, B, C, D, B, M.
13 Compare Phil. ii. 9 : "He humbled Himself, becoming subject to death, &c." Tbe Devil
has the power of death, not as Lord, but as executioner. (Cf. John viii. 44, avOpwiroKTovos in-'
ipx^s ; Rev. xii. 10.) Wisd. ii. 24, " By the envy of the Devil death entered into the world."
The Jews called Sammiel the " Angel of Death ," and he was the Devil (Eisenmenger. p. 821).
14 Arjwov (opinor) in Classic Greek has a semi-ironical tinge. It occurs nowhere else in the
Kew Testament or LXX., but is common in Philo.
15 Sc, "to help and rescue" (Matt. xiv. 31, etc. ; cf. viii. 9). Wisd. iv. 11, "Wisdom ....
takes by the hand those that seek her." By the " seed of Abraham " there can be no doubt
that the writer means Jews, because throughout the whole Epistle he has them exclusively in
view ; but of course he did not for a moment dream of excluding the spiritual Israel.
16 The obligation is involved in the purpose of Christ's assimilation to man.

200 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
in things that relate to God, to expiate the sins x of the people. For in that sphere
wherein s He suffered by being Himself tempted, He is able to succour them that
are being tempted " (ii. 5 — 18).
Having thus introduced the word " High Priest," he might have
proceeded at once to the proof of the nature and superiority of Christ's
High Priesthood, which is the central idea of the Epistle. But he was
arguing with Jews who raised Moses to a pedestal of almost Divine
eminence, in their enthusiasm for his work as a mediator between God
and their nation.3 It was desirable, therefore, to pause and show that
Christ was superior not only to the angels by whose instrumentality, but
also to Moses by whose immediate agency, the Law was delivered to
Israel. In doing this he follows the lines of his previous demonstration.
He has shown that the angels were but " ministering spirits," and that
the Son is, in His very nature, more exalted than they (i. 5 — 14) ; and
then, after a few words of exhortation (ii. 1 — 5), he has proved that in
Christ our human nature is also to be elevated above the angels in the
"future age" or true Messianic kingdom (ii. 6 — 16), since Christ as our
High Priest took part in that nature (ii. 17, 18). He now proceeds to
show that Christ is higher than Moses, inasmuch as the Son is higher
than the minister (iii. 1 — 6) ; and then, after another exhortation (iii.
7 — 19), that the future belongs to Christ, and not to Moses, because
Christ achieved the work of bringing Israel into the promised rest, a
work which Moses had left imperfect (iv. 1 — 13). The angels had come
in the name of God before Israel, and Moses had come in the name of
Israel before God; the High Priest came in the name of God before
Israel, wearing the name Jehovah on the golden petalon upon his fore
head, and in the name of Israel before God, bearing the names of their
tribes on the oracular gems upon his breast. Christ is above the Angels,
1 i\ao-Keo-9ai, " to expiate " or "propitiate." It is never connected with "God." or "the
wrath of Gnd," either in the LXX. or N.T., because, as Delitzsch says, man must not regard
sacrifice as an act by which he induces God to show him grace ; just as it is nowhere said that
Christ s sacrifice propitiated God's wrath, as though that sacrifice hiid in any way anticipated
God's own gracious purpose (see Rom. iii. 25 ; Eph. ii, 10). It tepreseuts the Hebrew Kippeer,
" to cover." Comp. Ecclus. iii. 3, " whoso honoureth his father maketh a« atonement for his
sins;? 30, " Alms maketh an ato i, etnent, for sins; " xx. 28 and xxxiv. 19, " Neither is he pacified
for sin by the multitude of sacrifices."
2 The E.V. renders kv S> "in that" — i.e., "forasmuch as," — like the Hebrew ba-asher; but it
is more simple to make it mean, " in that particular wherein." Comp. vi. 17 ; Rom. viii. 3.
3 This will be seen at once by a few extracts from the Talmud about Mo»es. They may be
found in Hamburger's Wbrterb. and Mr. Hershon's Genesis; —
" Three things did Moses ask of God : (1) He asked that the Shechinah might rest upon
Israel j (2) That the Shechinah might rest upon none but Israel ; aud (3) That God's ways
might be made known unto him. And all these requests were granted." — (Berachoth, f. 7, u.)
" The soul of Moses, our Rabbi, embraced all the souls of Israel, as it is said, Moses was
equivalent to all Israel " (" Moses our Rabbi " is in Hebrew, by Gematria, = 613, which is the
numerical value also of tbe Hebrew words for " Lord God of Israel"). — (Kitzur sh'lu, p. 2.)
Hershon, Miscellany, p. 322.
" The Angels asked the Holy One, Blessed be He .... Why did Moses and Aaron die, who
fulfilled the whole Law ? Ho answered, " There is one event to the righteous and the wicked."
— (Shabbath, I 55, b.)
"Moses' face was like the sun, Joshua's like the face of the moon" (Num. xxvii. 27).— (Bava
Bathra, f. 75, a.)
"All the Prophets saw through a dim glass, but Moses saw through a clear glass.'" —
(Yevamoth, f. 49, b.)
" Fifty gates of understanding were created in the world ; all but one were opened to
Moses." — (Rosh Hashanah, f. 21, b.)

SOLEMN APPEAL. 201
as Son of God and Lord of the future "world, and is not only the mes
senger of God to men, but as High Priest is the propitiatory representa
tive of men before God. The distinctive exaltation of Christ above
Angels and above Moses as regards His mediatorial work, rests in His
High-Priestly office — a truth which is stated in that hortatory form
, which coritinually asserts itself throughout these two chapters.1
" Wherefore,2 holy brethren,3 partakers of a heavenly calling,4 contemplate' the
Apostle5 and High Priest of our profession, Jesus, as faithful to Him that made Him
(such),6 as also Moses was faithful in all His house.7 For He hath been deemed
¦worthy of more glory than Moses, in proportion as He who established the house
hath more honour than the house. For every house is established by some one, but
He who established all things is God. And Moses indeed was faithful in all his
house, as a servant, for a testimony to the things which were to be afterwards
spoken;8 but Christ as, a Son over His (God's) house, whose house are we9 if we
hold fast the confidence and ground of boasting of our hope firm unto the end"10
(iii. 1—6).
Then follows a powerful appeal to faith and faithfulness,11 founded
on the exhortation in the ninety-fifth Psalm, to hear God's voice " to
day,"12 and not to harden the heart against Him,13 as the Israelites had
1 This parallelism of structure "between chapters iii., iv. and i., ii., is well drawn out by
Ebrard : —
I. Christ higher than ministering spirits (i. II. Christ higher than Moses, because the
5 — 14.) Son is higher tban the servant (iii. 1 — 6).
Exhortation {ii 1 — 5). Exhortation (iii. 7 — 19).
He raises humanity above angelhood (ii. In Him Israel has entered into rest (iv.
6—16). 1—13).
For He was our High Priest (ii. 17, IS). Thus He is also our High Priest (iv. 14—16).
2 vO06i/ — i.e., Since we have such a helper. "OBev (ii. 17; viii. 3) is never once used iu the
Epistles of St. Paul (though once in a speech, Acts xxvi. 19), and only elsewhere in 1
John ii. 18.
3 A mode of address never once used by St. Paul.
4 "Heavenly," because from heaven and calling to heaven.
5 'AttootoAw, because "sent from the Father" (aTreoTaAfieVoi/ Trapa Tiarpos), as the High
Priest was sometimes regarded as a messenger ( Sheliach) from God (John x. 36) ; sent by G-od as
an Apostle to us ; going from us as a High Priesc to God ; and, therefore, most strictly a
Mediator. The title is referred to by Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 12 and 63, where he says that the
Word of God is called an angel, because He announces (aTrayyeAAei), and an Apostle because He
is sent (aTroare'\AeTai).
6 The expression "To Hira that made Him" (tw ttoltjo-olvti avrbv), which might be taken
superficially to indicate that Christ was a created being, caused the genuineness of the Epistle
to be suspected (Philastr. Haer. 89). But even if this sense were necessary, it would merely
refer to Christ's human birth (corporalts generntio, Primasius), as Athanasius understood it.
It cannot possibly refer (as Bleek and Liinemann suppose) to His Eternal generation, though
they rightly urge that iroiw, with an accusative, usually means to create or make. It is simpler
to understand it, " Who made Him an Apostle and High Priest." Compare 1 Sam. xii. 6
(6 7ronjo-as tou Mwvo-fjv) ; Mark iii. 14 ; Acts ii. 36, *' God made Him Lord and Christ." So the
Greek Fathers understood it : ri iroi-na-avri ; airouroXov ko.1 dpxiepe'a (Chrys.) ; irol-no-Lv • • « ttjv
\eipQTOviav KeKkyficeu (Theodoret) .
7 An allusion to Num. xii. 7. His (i.e., God's) House.
s "By Christ" (Deut. xviii. 15).
9 " How we ought to walk in the House of God, seeing that it is the Church of the Living
God '* (1 Tim. iii. 15). " Ye are the temple of Gud " (1 Cor. iii. 16).
10 The " firm unto the end " is omitted in B.
11 The Sib of iii. 7 refers ou to the jSAeVere of ver. 12, the intervening words being a long
parenthesis. 13 The Hebrew of Ps. xcv. 6 rather is," O that ye would hear His voice ; *' but this ejaculatory
wish is often rendered iu the LXX. by edv (cf. Ps. exxxviii. 19).
13 Remarkable, as Bleek observes, because it is the only place where man is said to harden
his own heart, which is usually ascribed immediately to God (Ex. vii. 3, and passim; Is. lxiii.
17; Eom. ix. 16). Man is usually said to stiffen his neck (Deut. x. 16, etc.) or back (2 Kings
xvii. 14). But we have "but since some hardened themselves " (coy Se' rives eo-KkrjpvvovTo), Acts
xix. 9.

202 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
done at Massah and at Meribah,1 which had resulted in God's oath that
they should not enter into His rest.2 The "/fco-day" of the Psalm,
repeated by David five hundred years afterwards, showed that the " to
day " of God's offered mercy had not been exhausted in the wilderness,3
God had offered " a rest " to His people, but through unbelief they had
failed to enter into it (iii. 7 — 19).4 "Let us then fear," he says, "lest
haply, though a promise is still left us of entering into His rest, any one
of you should seem to have failed in attaining it.5 For indeed we too,
just as they, have had a Gospel preached to us, but the word of hearing
benefited not them, since they had not been tempered in faith with them
that heard it."6
" For we who believed are entering into that rest." This he proceeds
to prove by the argument that God has long ago entered into His rest
after the worlds were made; and it had been evidently intended that
some men should enter that rest of God. Since, then, those who had
first heard the glad tilings of promise had not entered into God's rest, as
a punishment f Or their disobedience, the promise was repeated ages after
wards. For again, after so long a time, God had in the Psalm of David
used the limiting term " to-day."7 Clearly, therefore, Joshua8 had not
led Israel into any real or final rest. If he had done so the promise of
rest would not have needed to be, renewed.9 There still remains, then,
a Sabbath-rest for the people of God. For any Christian who entered
into his rest (by death) ceased from his labours, as God ceased from His
own labours.
1 The writer follows the LXX. in rendering it " In the embittennent," as though the Seventy
had here read "Marah" for "Meribah." In Ex. xvii. 1 — 7 they render it Loidoresis, or
" Reproach." Massah and Meribah were two different places (Num. xx. 1—13).
a Num. xiv. 28—30.
3 " Few things in the Epistle," says Dr. Moulton, "are more remarkable than the constant
presentation of the thought that Scripture language is permanent, and at all times present." As
regards the forty years in the wilderness, it is remarkable that forty years was also the ppriod
between the Crucifixion and the Fall of Jerusalem, and that according to Rabbi Akhiva the
years of tbe Messiah were to be forty years (Tanchuma, f. 79, 4). So, too, R. Eliezer, referring
expressly to Ps. xcv. 10(Sanbedr. f. 99, a). The word "always " in ver. 10 is not iu the original,
but is either due to loose citation (for, as Calvin says, " Scimus apostolos in citandis testimoniis
magis attendere ad summum rei quam de verbis esse solicitos "), or to some si girt difference of
reading. The " if they shall enter " is a Hebraism for "they shall not enter " (cf. ver. 18). It
is really due to a suppressed apodosis (Mk. viii. 12).
* In ver. 10 he says "with this generation" (n, A, B, D, M) for the "that" ofthe LXX.— no
doubt intentionally (compare Matt, xxiii. 36 ; xxiv. 31). In ver. 15 viroo-raxrts is "confidence,"
as in Ps. xxxviii. 7, " My sure hope (LXX. vTrdo-racri?) is in Thee."
3 The 5o/cfl is used by a sort of litotes to suggest to the conscience of each a stronger term.
Ebrard renders it " lest any of you think that he has come too late for it," which is a perfectly
tenable rendering, but unsuitable here, because the object is warning against presumption, not
encouragement against despair.
6 This is a strange expression, and the reading o-uvKeKpajxeVos in the E.V. is certainly much
simpler ; but it is for that very reason suspicious when we find <ruy«eKpao>i€Vovs in A, B, C, and
avvKSKepao-p. evovs in M. The meaiiing will then be, as in the text, that the "Word did not profit
the rebellious Israelites because they were not blended with Joshua and Caleb in their faith*
"Westcott andHort suspect the possibility of the reading tol? aicovoi)eio-iv, or even of Noesselfs
conjecture tois aKovo-ixao-iv.
' iv. 4, etpijKe, " He (God) hath said"— a method .of citation not once used in St. Paul's
Epistles. s iv. 8. The unfortunate rendering " Jesus " in this verse might seem as if it were expressly
designed to perplex ignorant readers.
9 iv. 8, ouk ay Trepi aAAi^s ekd\ett <€ He would not have been speaking of another day." The
imperfect is in accordance with the writer's habit of seeing things in their ideal continuity*

Christ's high priesthood. 203
" Let us, then, be earnest to enter into that rest, that no one fall into the same
example of disobedience. For living1 is the word of God,2 and effectual, and keener
than any two-edged sword, and cleaving through even to the severance of soul and
spirit, of joints and marrow,3 and a discerner of the thoughts and conceptions of the
heart. And there is not a created thing unseen in His presence, but all things are
naked and laid prostrate4 to His eyes. To whom our account must he given."s
SECTION IH.
THE HIGH PRIESTHOOD OP CHRIST.
Then follows tbe transitional exhortation to tbe long proof and illus
tration of tbe following chapters.
"Having, then, a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens —
Jesus, the Son of God — let us hold fast our confession. For 6 we have not a High
Priest who cannot sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted
in all respects just as we are, apart from sin. Let us approach, then,7 with con
fidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace for a
seasonable succour " (iv. Ii — 16).
The predominance of the thought of Christ's High Priesthood in tbe
mind of the writer has already been shown, not only by the two last
verses, but by bis two previous allusions to it. In ii. 17 he had said by
anticipation that it was necessary for Christ to take a human, not an
angelic, nature from the moral necessity for His being made like unto
His brethren, " that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest
in things pertaining to God." In iii. 1 he had solemnly invited his
1 " Living oracles " (Acts. vii. 38).
2 Clearly not here the personal Logos in St John's sense, though many Fathers and divines,
who wrote far more from the theological than from the critical point of view, have so understood
it. No doubt that meaning may lie in the background, but if so, the writer has purposely left it
in the background ; for again and agam such a usage seems to be hovering on his lips, and yet he
does not actually adopt it. It was left for the inspired genius of St. John to adopt the term
" the Wokd " into the theology of Christianity, and in adopting it to glorify every previous and
analogous usage of it (vide mfra, p. 512). The word of God is here the written and spoken
word of God, <ol which again and again the writer Bhows that he has a most vivid perception as
a living reality ; there may also be a sort of semi-personification. The comparisou was also
familiar to Philo, as in Quis rer. div, heeres, § 27 : " Thus God having whetted that Word of His
which cuttethall things, divides the shapeless and unformed essence of all things." It is dear
from, the context that the passage was known to the writer, for Philo also speaks of the Word
as penetrating even to things called invisible^, and separating the different parts of the soul. We
find the same figure in Ps. lvii. 5, etc. ; Rev. i. 16 j Wisd. xviii. 15, 16. " Thine Almighty Word
leaped down from heaven .... and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword,
and standing up rilled all things with death."
3 That is, the Word of God pierces not only the natural soul, but also £he Divine Spirit, and
even to the very depths of these. "AnimA (ipvxy) vivimus, spiritu {jrvev fiaxi) intelligimus,"
Primas. MepujyAou may mean the " joint " or " articulation." It should be observed that while
the expressions recall those of Philo, the application of them is wholly different.
4 TeTpax17A.1p.eVa. The word has been rendered, (1) " seized by the throat and overthrown ; "
(2) "bent back by the neck, like malefactors" (Bleek, etc.); (3) "flayed" (Chrys.), or
"anatomised" (by the Priest in his fL(op.oo-Koir£a, or inspection of victims), or "manifested"
(Hesych., Phavorin), or " sacrificed " (Theodoret). But " laid prostrate " is almost undoubted y
the right meaning, since the word is constantly used in that sense by Philo.
5 Heb. iv. 11 — 13. This may also be, as in the E.V. (more generally) — "with whom we have
to do." It would be very tame to make it mean " with reference to whom we are speaking " (as
in v. 11).
6 [And we may do this with perfect confidence], "for" — the "for" anticipates an objection
(occupat objectionem," Schlichting).
7 ¦trpoaipx^o-Qai is a favourite word with this writer (vii. 25, x. 1, 22, xi. 6, xii. 18 — 22), though
only found once in St. Paul (1 Tim. vi. 8), and then in an entirely different sense, " take heed.**
We have, however, "access" (irpoo-ayiayr]) in Eph. ii. 18, iii. 12.

204 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
hearers to the contemplation of Christ as our High Priest. It had been
necessary for him to pause for a moment to show that Christ was greater
even than Moses, and to invite his readers by a solemn appeal to strive
to enter into that rest which some of those whom Moses led out of
Egypt had failed to attain. The true rest which Moses had promised
was a rest typified by the Sabbath-rest of God. It pointed far beyond
the possession of Canaan to the final rest which remaineth for the people
of God. Christ's High Priesthood is a pledge to us of a grace by
which that rest may be obtained.
We thus reach the very heart of the Epistle, for the development of
this topic occupies nearly six chapters.
First he lays down two qualifications which must be found in every
High Priest, namely, —
i. That he must be able to sympathise with men by participation
with them in their infirmities (v. 1 — 3, comp. ii. 17) ; and,
ii. That he must not be self-called, but appointed by God (4 — 10).
That Christ possessed the first of these qualifications was self-evident,
and had indeed been expressly stated (comp. ii. 17).
That He possessed the second he proves by a reference to His eternal
Sonship (Ps. ii. 7) and His Melchizedek Priesthood (Ps. ex. 4).
He then pauses once more during a somewhat long digression to
express his sorrow that their spiritual dulness and backwardness made
it needlessly difficult for him to illustrate these deep truths (v. 11 — 14).
He therefore urges them to more earnest endeavours after Christian
progress (vi. 1 — 3), partly by an awful warning of the danger of relapse
from truth (4 — 8), and partly by encouragements derived from the
activity of their Christian benevolence (9, 10) and the immutable cer
tainty of the promises of God (11 — 18). These inspire a hope founded
on this Priesthood of our Lord (19, 20), which was a Priesthood not
merely Aaronic, but transcendent and eternal after the order of Melchi
zedek. Having thus cleared away every preliminary consideration, and
raised them by his warnings and exhortations to a state of mind suffi
ciently solemn for the consideration of the subject, he proceeds to show
that in many most important particulars the Priesthood of Melchizedek
was superior to that of Aaron ; namely —
i. Because it is eternal, not transient (vii 1 — 3).
ii. Because even Abraham acknowledged the superior dignity of
Melchizedek, by paying tithes to him and receiving his blessing (4 — 10).
iii. Because the Priesthood of Melchizedek is recognised in the
Psalms as loftier than that of Aaron, — which implied a change in the
Priesthood, and therefore in the Law (11, 12). This is confirmed by
the fact that the Lord sprang from the tribe of Judah, not from that of
Levi (13, 14) ; and from the fact that the Melchizedek Priesthood, being
eternal, could not be connected with a Law which perfected nothing
(15—19),

priesthood op melchizedek. 205
iv. Because the Melchizedek Priesthood was founded, as the Aaronic
never was, by an oath (20 — 22).
v. Because the Levitic priests died, but Christ abideth for ever
(23—25). He then pauses to dwell for a .moment on the eternal fitness of
Christ's Priesthood to fulfil the conditions which the needs of humanity
require ; and proceeds to show that as Christ's Priesthood is superior to
that of Aaron, so is His Ministry more excellent as belonging to a better
Covenant (viii. 1—6). This is mainly proved by the fact that a new
Covenant — and therefore a better Covenant — had been distinctly pro
phesied and promised (7 — 13).
The superiority of this second Covenant is shown by a comparison
of the ministry of the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies on the
Day of Atonement with that of Christ passing into the Heavens. The
Levitical High Priest entered the Holiest Place but once a year. He
had to do this year after year ; he offered for his own sins as well as for
those of the people ; his sacrifices could ' not cleanse his conscience ; his
whole service stood merely in connexion with rites and ceremonies of a
subordinate character. But, on the other hand, Christ (i.) entered, not
a symbolic tabernacle, but the Heaven of Heavens ; (ii.) He entered it
once for all, and for ever ; (iii.) He had no need to make any offering
for His own sins, being spotless ; (iv.) He entered through His own
blood, which (v.) was eternally efficacious for the purging of the con
science from dead works ; and (vi.) His whole ministration had to do
with abiding realities, hot with passing shadows (ix. 1 — 14). Then, led
by the double meaning of the word diatMke, which means both " testa
ment " and " covenant," he shows that the blood of Christ was necessary
to sanctify the new Covenant, and was efficacious even for the redemp
tion of transgressions under the old (15 — 22), and that His one Death
has wrought an all-sufficient expiation (23 — 28). He concludes the
argument by contrasting the impotence of the Levitic sacrifices to perfect
those who offered them — an impotence attested by their incessant repe
tition — with the one sacrifice offered by the willing obedience of Christ
(x. 1—10). Christ's sacrifice issued in His eternal exaltation, after He
had perfected the new Covenant in which constant sacrifices are no
longer needful, because by the one sacrifice is granted the Forgiveness
of Sin (11—18).
Such, in barest outline, is a sketch of the great argument of the
Epistle, and we can see at once how powerfully it must have appealed
to the intellect and conscience of an enquiring Jew. The sweeping
proofs which St. Paul had furnished of the nullity of the Law under the new
Christian dispensation, and of the secondary, parenthetic position which
it had always occupied in the designs of God, might sway the reason of
a Hebrew reader, but they tended to shock his most cherished prejudices.
He would hail an argument which did not involve so apparently absolute
a disparagement of the system under which he had been brought up.

206 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
For, in this new method of Christian argument, even while he enjoyed
the glory of the substance he was permitted to admire the beauty of the
shadow ; he could joyfully see that even in the passing type there had
always been a prophecy of the eternal antitype.
Let us nowlook at this great section in closer detail, a,nd with an effort
to understand not only the general bearing of the Epistle, but its separate
paragraphs ; and let us try in passing to remove any difficulties which
may arise from the expressions or the arguments which the writer adopts.
Having spoken of the boldness with which we may approach the
Throne of Grace, because of the High Priesthood of Christ, he gives the
two conditions of Priesthood, namely, (i.) a power to sympathise, and
(ii.) a special , call.
(i.) "For every High Priest, being taken1 from among men, is appointed on
behalf of men in things relating to God that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices2
on behalf of sins,3 being able to deal compassionately 4 with the ignorant and erring,
since he himself also is encompassed with moral weakness ; and because of this very
weakness5 he is bound, as for the people so also for himself, to offer sin-offerings6
(v. 1-3).
(ii.) " And no one takes this honourable office for himself, but on being called by
God as even Aaron was.7 So even the Christ 8 glorified not Himself to be made a
high priest, but he [glorified Him] who said to Him, Thou art my Son ; to-day have
I begotten thee.9 As also in another place He saith, Thou art a priest for ever after
the order of Melchizedek ; 10 — Who, in the days of his flesh,11 having ofEered up
1 Xa/j.pav6fxevo<;, " being (as he is) chosen.''
2 This may be one of the writer's sonorous amplifications, for no distinction can here be
made between Swpu and 8vo-Ca<;. In accurate Greek they differ, and the latter means " slain
beasts ; " but in the LXX. they are used indiscriminately <7mpa Se -rrj ypa<pjj a.8ia0dpws Keivrat,
Theophylact) . The writer may, however, have been thinking of the incense and meat-offerings
of the Day of Atonement when he says Swpa, or of free-will offerings.
3 virep, i.e., to make atonement for (ii. 17).
* Properly, " to show moderate emotion." MeTpto7ra0yj? was the word used by the Peri
patetics, and was invented by Aristotle (Diog. Laert. v. 31) to express the right state of mind,
as against the Stoics, who demanded of their *' sage " a complete suppression of emotion
(<Mrn0)js). The word is used both by Philo and Josephus of moderating passion. Here the
context shows that it means "reasonable compassion" (fieTpioTraOijs . . . o-vyytyv<oo-K(ap cTrieiKtis,
Hesych.). s Siavrrjis («, A, B, C, D).
6 See Lev. iv. 3 ; ix. 7, etc. The first confession of the High Priest on the Bay of Atone
ment was—* O do Thou expiate the misdeeds, the crimes, and the sins wherewith I have done
evil and have sinned before Thee, I and my house."
7 Ex. xxviii. 1; Num. xvi. — xviii. : "God Himself judged Aaron worthy of this honour"
(Jos. Antt. iii. 8, § 1 ; and contrast Num. xvi. ; Z Chron. xxvi. 16—21). See 1 ammidbar Kabba,
§ 18 (in Schottgen), where Moses brings this fact as a reproach against Korah. The High-
priests of tbe clay, when this Epistle was written, were alien Sadducees not vi high-priestly
lineage, who bought and sold, and transferred from one to the other, and generally degraded
the office, being originally mere nominees of Herod. They belonged " to certain obscure
persons who were only of priestly origin," not descendants of Aaron (Jos. Antt. xx. 10, §5).
For their characteristics see the Talmudic quotations in my Life of Christ, ii. 330, 342, and
i'fra, p. 313. But it is doubtful whether tho writer means to hint at this state of things. As
an Alexandrian, living in Hellenistic communities, it would not be brought prominently under
the notice of Apollos, especially as these Boethusim, etc., had now held the office for more
than half a century.
8 The true "anointed Priest."
9 The Sonship, in the writer's argument, involves the proof of His Divine call to the
Priesthood. w " A priest upon his throne " (Zech. vi. 12) ; Kara rd^iv. al-dibhratM, after the office, or place
(Ps. ex. 4). The Jews said that the " two anointed ones" (" sons of oil") in Zech. iv. 14 are
Aaron ond Messiah, and argued from Ps. ex. 4 that Messiah was the dearer to God. They
always account* d the Psalm to be Messianic, and the Targum of Jonathan began, " The Lord
said to his Word."
11 capias here meany His *' Humanity."

Christ's humiliation. 207
supplications and entreaties to Him who was able to save him out of death, with
strong cryir ig and tears,1 and having been, heard because of his reverential awe,2
Son though he was, learnt his obedience from the things which He suffered,3 and,
after being perfected,4 became to all those that obey Him the cause of eternal
salvation, saluted by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek3 (v. 4—10).
" Now, respecting 'Melchizedek, what we have to say is long, and is difficult to
explain to you, since ye have become dull in your hearing.6 For, indeed, though ye
ought to be teachers as far as time is concerned/ ye again have need that some one
teach you the rudiments8 of the beginning of the oracles of God, and ye have sunk
to the position of those who need milk and not solid food-.ft For every one who feeds
on milk is inexperienced in the word of righteousness,10 for he is an infant. But
solid food pertains to the fullgrown — to those who by virtue of their habit have their
organs of sense trained to discrimination of good and evil n (v. 11—14).
" Leaving, then, the earliest principles of Christian teaching,12 let us be borne
along towards full growth, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead
works,13 and of faith towards God, of the doctrine of ablutions 14 and laying on of
hands,15 and of resurrection of the dead, and of asonian judgment.16 And this let us
1 Not mentioned in the Gospels in the Agony at Gethsemane, but absolutely implied.
2 eitroKovaOels onrb ttjs euAa0euis. 'Atto may certainly mean "for," "because of," as in
Luke xix. 3 : ovk rfSvvaro airo tou o^A-Ouy xxiv. 41, a-maTOVVTiav dirb Tijs ^apas. Comp. John xxi. 6 ;
Acts xii. 14; xxii. 11 (ovk evifiXeirov airb tyjs 56£rjs), etc ; EvAajSeia (which, in the N. T. occurs only
at xii. 28) is "reverent fear," as opposed to terror and cowardice. Zeno defined it as "reason
able shrinking " (evAoyos liqcXtcn;) and as being the opposite of fear, and says that the wise man
might evXafSeto-BaL but never <j>ofieio-6a.L. Demosthenes contrasts the evAapijs with the SeiAfls.
The E. V. is therefore correct, and the meaning of this interesting passage is quite clear.
It is a bulwark against the heresies which never will see or allow the perfect Humanity of
Christ, as well as His true Divinity. The attempts to avoid this meaning by rendering it " was
heard- by Him whonx He feared" (comp. Gen. xxxi. 42), or "was heard (and so deliveredjjrom ,
that which he feared," are merely due to theological bias. Both renderings are absolutely
untenable. The rendering of the E. V. is that of all the Greek Fathers, and the meaning of
evAa£eia excluded every other (see Trench, New Test. Synom-ms, § x.). The eto-a/coucrfleU may refer
to the Angel who strengthened Him in consequence of His prayer (Luke xxii. 43), or to His
absolute triumph over death and Hades.
3 "Son," i.e., not "a Son" (for then there would have been no stress on His "learning
obedience")* DUt' "the fon of God." ep-afav . . . eiraOev, one of the commonest of ancient
paronomasias (Herod, i. 207; iEsch. Ag. 170; and often in Philo). Theodoret called this
expression hyperbolical, and Chrvsostom seems surprised by it ; and Theophylact goes so far as
to call it unreasonable. But " the things that He suffered " have a reference far wider than to
the Agony. Still there is no doubt that passages hke these increased the hesitancy in receiving
the Epistle.
* " Perfected" in His mediatorial relation, ii. 10.
5 Comp. Philo, Opp. i. 653 ; iv w (k6(Tju.&)) kali Apxiepevs 6 irpiaToyovos avrov Aoyos.
6 This passage also was perhaps known to Justin Martyr (Dial c. Trypti. 33 1.
' The expression shows that the Epistle was written somewhat late— to those who had long
been conveits.
s Gal. iv. 3. 9 1 Cor iii. 1. 2.
10 Apparently a general phrase for the Gospel. The word Tseddkah in Hebrew has a wider
range of meaning than "Righteousness."
11 Clearly not "right and wrong;" but here referring to doctrines— the power to "dis
criminate the transcendent" (Eom. ii. 18), to distinguish between excellence and. inferiority in
matwr of truth. The phrase is a Hebrew one, Yada tobh va-rd (Gen. ii. 17, etc.).
12 Leaving such principles — not, of course, in the sense of neglecting or forgetting them, but
in the sense of making an advance beyond them.
13 Repentance was the-first and earliest lesson of the Gospel (Mark i. 15). Dead works — works
of the Law (ix. 14 ; Rom. ix. 32), which have no inherent life in them (Article XIII.).
14 Jewish ablutions (ix. 10) tbe Jewish converts to Christianity might still retain and explain
in a more spiritual sense, BapHsmos is never used for Christian Baptism (oaptisma).
15 Por healing (Mark xvi. 18, etc.), for ordination (Acts \i. 6, etc.), for confirmation (Acta
vi/i. 17, etc.).
16 The attieios expresses the quality of the Kplfxa. as referring to the future world. Un
doubtedly this sentence is surprising. The TeAetonjs towards which we are to be carried along
is evidently connected in the writer's mind with the doctrine of Christ's High Priesthood,
as typified by that of Melchizedek. It seems strange that he should rank this Gnosis aa
so -great an advance beyond the doctrines of faith, repentance, and the resurrection, which
both. St. Paul and we regard as being of such primary importance. See, however, Riehn,
Lehrbegriff der Heb<a rbriefs, 783, f. 9. The writer means, "These truths you know, or ought
to know, thoroughly by this time; but your special danger is apostasy to Judaic formalism,

208 THE EARLY DAYS -OF CHRISTIANITY.
do if God permit. For as to those who have been once for a]l enlightened,1 and
have tasted of the heavenly gift,2 and lecome partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have
tasted the excellence of the word of God,3 and the Powers of the Future Age,4 and
who have fallen away B — it is impossible again to renew them to repentance, while
they are crucifying to themselves the Son of God afresh, and putting Him to open
shame. For land which has drunk the rain which often cometh upon it, and which
is producing herbage suitable for those for whose sake it is also being tilled, partakes
of blessing from God; hut that which produces thorns and thistles is rejected, and
near a cur.se, the end of which is for burning.6
" But, beloved, we are convinced of the better alternative about you,7 and things
akin to salvation,8 even though we do thus speak. For God is not unjust to forget
in a moment 9 your work and love which ye showed towards His name in having
ministered to the saints, and yet ministering.10 But we long for each of you to show
the same earnestness with the view to the full assurance of your hope until the end,11
that ye may prove yourselves not sluggish,13 but imitators of thoss who by faith and
patient waiting inherit the promises. [And I say who inherit' the promises] for
God, when He promised to Abraham, since He could not swear by any greater,
swore by Himself,13, saying Verily,14 blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will
multiply thee. And so, by waiting patiently, he obtained the promises. For men
indeed swear by the greater, and to them the oath is an end of all contradiction for
confirmation.15 On which principle,16 God wishing to show more abundantly17 to
and you would be beyond the reach of this peril if you were capable of grasping the truths
which I shall now set forth," He does not disparage these elementary truths, though they
were all common to Christianity with the older Covenant.
1 aVaf is a favourite word of the writer, occurring more frequently in this Epistle than in
all the rest of the New Testament. Pkotismos became (probably in consequence of this
passage) the regular phrase for baptism (Just. Mart. Ap. i. 62 ; Chxysostom, etc.). Here it has
the more general sense.
2 It is impossible to be certain as to the definite meaning of this expression. It probably
means "remission" or "regeneration." It is not easy in this passage to see a clear distinction
between yevo-aa-Oai with the genitive (8o>pia<;) and the accusative (pij/xa).
3 This phrase is also indefinite, but from a parallel passage of Philo (De profug. vi. 25) it pro
bably mean's the Divine teaching of the Gospel. The writer may here have used the accusative
with yevo-ao-0ai because the genitive would have caused a confusion with 0eoO. On the gifts in
general comp. ii. 3, 4.
* Compare with this expression Philo, De proem, et poen. (Opp. i. 428, ed. Mangey). " This is
he who has quaffed much pure wine of God's benevolent power, and banqueted upon sacred words
and doctrines." The ' ' powers of the future SBon " (i.e., of the Olam habba) may be foretastes of
its glory, or, as Chrysostom says, "the earnest of the spirit."
5 Comp. ii. 1 ; iii. 12 ; x. 26, 29.
6 vi. 1—8. See infra. These strong warnings against apostasy (comp. x. 26 — 31 ; xii. 15 — 17)
are a special characteristic of this Epistle. Their general meaning is, that for deliberate and
defiant apostasy there is no remedy provided. They are involved in the strong expression of
St. Paul, " God is not mocked " (®eds ou (nvKTTjptfeTai, Gal. vi. 7), and may be compared with
Matt. xii. 31, 32, 43 — 45 ; 1 John v. 16. It must be borne in mind, what a rare insolence and
wretchedness of sin must be involved in such expressions as "trampling down the Son of
God" and "insulting the spirit of grace."
7 tA Kpeio-a-ava. 8 The opposite to eyyus Kardpas in ver. 8.
9 im\a$eo-0at— forget in a single act. "Labour" (kottov) is omitted in the best MSS., and is
probably added from 1 Thess. i. 3.
10 Por the phrase see Eom. xv. 25. The " saints *' at Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 10 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 1)
were too poor to minister to others, and this is one indication that the letter was not sent
_ to them. 11 To show the same earnestness in advancing to perfection as they had shown in ministering
to the saints.
12 That ye may not become as " sluggish " (vtaBpoi) in Christian progress as ye have become in
spiritual knowledge (ver. 11).
13 In this passage we again find an almost unmistakable reference to Philo, De Legg. Alleg.
iii. 72: "Having well confirmed His promise even by an oath . . . for thou seest that God
sweareth not by another — for nothing is superior to Himself— but by Himself, Who is the best
of all." 14 The MSS. vary between el /htj, et nHy, % pvqv y but the three readings mean much the same.
el fiy}, a literal rendering of the Hebrew im lo, may have led to the variations.
15 Comp. Philo, Quod a Beo mittantur somnia (Opp. i. 622), and there are very similar passages
in De Abrahamo (Opp. ii. 39).
16 ev $. w " More abundantly " than if He had not sworn.

Christ's priesthood. 209
the heirs of the promise the immutability of His purpose, intervened with an
oath1 that by means of two immutable things,2 in which it is impossible for
God to lie,3 we may have a strong encouragement who fled for refuge to grasp
the hope set before us.4 Which we have as an anchor of the soul,5 secure and
firm, and passing to the region behind the veil,6 where a forerunner on our
behalf entered — Jesus— having become a High Priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedek" (vi. 9— 2Q).
The earlier sections of this passage are easy to understand. We see
at once that a High Priest who was not of like feeling with ourselves —
one who had no capacity for suffering, and therefore no power of
sympathy — would be a most imperfect representative of his fellow-men,
on whose behalf he has to stand in the presence of God. ISTor is it
difficult to understand the importance which the writer attaches to a
Divine calling to the Priesthood. Of the Divine calling of Christ he
furnishes a twofold proof, — the one, that it was involved in the eternal
Sonship, which he illustrates by Psalm ii. 7 ; and the other, that He is
addressed as a Priest after the order of Melchizedek in Psalm ex. 4.
As both Psalms were fully acknowledged to be Messianic, the cogency of
these references would not be disputed. He adds a few words of pro
found interest to show that Christ's eternal Priesthood was perfected
first by the sufferings which He endured for our sakes, and then by His
glorification. He regards the whole life of Christ as a part of the work
wherein God glorified Him to be an Eternal Priest. The main work of
that Priesthood was infinite self-sacrifice ; for the sake of which, in the
days of His flesh, He not only emptied Himself of His glory, but laid
aside for a time every claim as the co-eternal and co-equal Son/ in order
to become a man with men ; to dwell in man's house of clay ; to have a
human soul ; to entreat and supplicate and cry to His heavenly Father
with tears both in Gethsemane and on the Cross. And He was heard,
because of the glory of the infinite self-abnegation involved in this
humble awe. In this passage, as elsewhere, the writer furnishes the
most inestimable proof that Christ's High Priesthood has the qualifica
tion derived from perfect human sympathy. He also gives us a strong
hold of assurance to resist the Apollinarian heresy which, with irreverent
reverence, denies the true humanity of Christ, and has often been as
dangerous to the Church as Arianism itself. Neither that heresy, nor
1 Made his oath intermediate between Himself and Abraham. In Berachoth, f . 32, a, Moses
says to God, " Hadst Thou sworn by Heaven and Earth I should have said They will perish, and
therefore so may Thy oath ; but as Thou hast sworn by Thy great name, that oath shall endure
for ever."
» Namely,. His word and His oath (Gen. xxii. 17). The Targums have not " By Myself," but
" By My word have I sworn."
8 "Nothing is impossible with God, except tolle'1 (Clem. Rom. 27).
* A metonymy for " the object of our Hope set before us as a prize.''
5 In very early times the Anchor was the emblem of Hope. ttoKKHv payeio-uv eWSoH/, jaiSs
rvX<iv tMsch. Ag. 488).
6 " Nostram ancoram mittimus ad interiora coeli, sirut ancora ferrpa mittitur ad inf eriora
maris." " Christ hath extended to us a Hope from Heaven, as a rope let down from the throne
of God, and again reaching from us to the inmost Heaven and the seat of God" (Faber Stapu-
lensis). " The veil," Ex. xxvi. 31 — 35.
' Phil. ii. 6 : " He counted not equality with God a thing at which to grasp."
O

210 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the Monothelite heresy, which denies to our Lord a human will, can find
a moment's admission so long as this passage and the early chapters of
St. Luke retain their places in Holy Writ. The fact that some of the
Fathers were startled by this passage is an additional indication of its
importance to the Christian Church. Theodoret ventures to say that
since Christ manifested His obedience not after, but before, His suffering,
the expression that " He learned obedience by the things which He
suffered " is a hyperbolical expression.1 Theophylact goes even farther,
and says that Paul (for he traditionally accepts the Pauline authorship),
" for the benefit of his hearers, used such accommodation as obviously to
say some unreasonable things." 2 Had these Fathers sufficiently borne
in mind that Chi-ist was " perfectly man " as well as "truly God " they
would not have used so free a style of criticism. And it might have been
better for the Church if they had been less ready to claim a right to use
this " accommodation " themselves, and less ready to attribute it to the
Apostles.3 The digression that follows does not in the least resemble what has
been called St. Paul's habit of "going off at a word." This writer does
not go off at a word at all. Nothing less resembles being " hurried
aside by the violence of his thoughts." His method is precisely the
opposite of this. Instead of yielding to the impulse of a strong emotion,
as St. Paul does, he prepares himself in the most leisurely and deliberate
manner for an argument of consummate skilfulness and power. That
argument was wholly original in its development, and he therefore
endeavours to stimulate the spiritual dulness of his readers. By a
powerful mixture of reproach, warning, and encouragement, he arouses
them to the moral and intellectual effort without which it is impossible
for us to grasp new truth.
He is about to give them not the milk which was necessary for
infants — for beginners in Christ's teachings4 — but solid food, such as was
only fitted for mature understandings.5 In their present condition —
long as was the time since their conversion — they were incapable of
receiving it ; but he encourages them to hope that they would become
capable, if they were sincere and earnest, in their desire for Christian
progress. He bids them, therefore, dismiss for the present the subjects
which had engaged their attention when they 'were catechumens. In
those days they had been occupied with the initial steps of religious
knowledge. It was not his present purpose — it ought to be quite un
necessary now — to remind them once more of such rudimentary truths
as the difference between faith and works; the distinction between
1 The special objection only arose from Theodoret's failure to recognise that the word
"suffered" upplies not only to the Agony in Gethsemone and on the Cross, but to the whole
life of the Saviour.
2 See supra, p. 207, note.
8 See note on " Accommodation " in my Mercy and JuoZgment, p. 296.
* The young Rabbinic neophytes used to be called thtnolttfth (nipvn) " sucklings.*" Comp.
Philo, De Agric., 'Eire! SU vriwCois p.kv eur! yaAaTporfm, K.T.A,
« Comp. 1 Cor. iii. 1, 2.

POST-BAPTISMAL SIN. 211
Jewish ablutions and Christian Baptism ; the meaning of imposition of
hands ; the truths of the resurrection of the bod)"- and the sentence of
the world to come. They could not need such teachings as this — unless,
indeed, they were in danger of apostasy. Of the peril of such apostasy
he gives them a most solemn warning.
And here at once we find ourselves launched on a sea of controversy
which has been age after age renewed. The originality of the writer's
mind constantly shows itself in expressions and modes of thought which
occur in him alone.
1. First of all the word " enlightened " acquired at a very early age
the technical sense of " baptised," so that " enlightenment " (photismos)1
was a recognised synonym of baptism, though it referred directly not
to the outward sign, but to the thing signified. Hence the sterner
schismatics of the early Church deduced from this passage the duty of
finally excluding the weak from Church communion by refusing absolu
tion to those who once had lapsed into apostasy or flagrant sin.2 This
was equivalent to the assertion that " all sin willingly committed after
baptism is unpardonable." The fact that the use of " enlightenment "
for " baptism " did not exist before this passage was written, but is
derived from it, is at once sufficient to set aside the cogency of their
inference, which was, it is needless to add, diametrically opposed to the
practice and teaching of Christ and His Apostles, and is justly con
demned by our Church in her 16th Article.
2. This hard dogma was also rightly rejected by the Fathers,
who, following the example of Christ and the Apostles,3 never
closed the door of repentance even to the most flagrant sinners.
From this passage, however, they deduced the unlawfulness of
administering a second time the rite of Baptism — a right conclusion
indeed, but one which rests on other grounds than those which this
passage affords.
3. But while these ancient controversies are practically set at rest,
we have not yet heard the last of that which raged between Calvinists
and Arminians on the " indefectibility of grace."
a. Both sides tampered with the plain meaning of the words. The
expression " when they have once fallen away " was fatal to the theories
of the Calvinists, who held that those who were regenerate were also
elect, and could never fall away.* It has been often supposed that the
1 The 4>aiTi£eo-9at. is equivalent to the " receiving full knowledge of the truth " in x. 26. The
word also occurs in 2 Cor. iv. 4, " the illumination of the Gospel of the g'ory of the Christ."
In the LXX. #wti£=«' is "to teach" (Judg. xiii. 8; 2 Kings xii. 2). Similarly in the Fathers
a.vaK.aivi£eiv\a " to rebaptise."
8 See Tert. Depudicit. 20; Epiphan. Haer. lix., pera to Xavrpbv prjKGTi eXeeuT0ai &vvao-9ai t'ov
7rapa7reirTWKdTtt ; Euseb. H. E. vi. 43; Ambrose, J)e Poenit. ii, 2, etc. ; Pearson, On the Creed,
Art. x. ; and the Bp. of Winchester on Art. xvi. This attempt to insist upon a transcendental
perfection arose from the conviction, held by Montanists, though not by them exclusively, that
the end was imminent. The rule of the Novatians was p!t\ d"e'xecr0ou tovs kmredoKoTas eU to.
pvarripia (Socrates, H. E. iv. 28).
3 2 Cor. ii. 7, 10 ; vii. 12.
4 The reader win be reminded of what was said by the dying Cromwell. He asked his
chaplain a question as to'" the indefectibility of grace." " Was it possible for any one who had

212 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
rendering of the English Version, " if they shall fall away," is an
attempt to get rid of this inference. That it is a mistranslation of the
most obvious kind is undeniable, since the Greek participle is in the
past tense ; but, if the history of it be traced through various versions
of the Bible, it seems not to have been due to a Calvinistic bias, but
to be a perfectly honest mistake, derived from other sources. Calvin
himself was far too great a scholar to defend his view by such a
rendering. He adopted the different method of attempting to weaken
the force of the previous expressions, and to argue that when the writer
spoke of those " who tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made par
takers of the Holy Ghost, and tasted the good word of God and the
powers of the future world," he did not mean " true and sincere
believers," but only "the reprobates who had but tasted, as it were,
with their outer lips the grace of God, and been irradiated by some
sparks of His Light." He tried, in fact, to exaggerate the literal
meaning of the word "taste," so as to imply that it meant nothing
more than an inkling of Christian truth. It will be seen at once that
such an argument is not to explain Scripture, but to explain it away.
Extravagant literalism has been even more fatal to exegesis than extra
vagant allegorising.
/3. But the Calvinists had no monopoly in the distortion of the plain
meaning of the sacred words. That error belongs, alas ! to all sects
and all religious partisans alike. Arminians, who were unwilling to
admit that in this life the door of repentance and of hope could ever be
closed to any sinner, stumbled at the word " impossible," and actually
rendered it (as in some ancient Latin manuscripts) by the word difficile,
" difficult." The doctrine on behalf of which they thus twisted words
to suit their own meaning may, indeed, be amply supported, but it must
not be supported by such an untenable procedure. " Impossible " has
a very different meaning from "difficult," and it is clear that the
writer lays down quite distinctly that, when those who have received
spiritual illumination and shared in Divine gifts deliberately apostatise,
it is impossible to renew them to repentance, seeing that they are — or,
as the words may perhaps be rendered, so long as they are — crucifying
afresh, to their own ruin, the Son of God. He does not say that this
has occurred in the case of the Hebrew Christians ; nay, he expresses
his conviction that it has not. He does not even say that it can occur.
He only says that, when it occurs, and so long as it lasts, renewal is
impossible. There can be no second " Second Birth."
4. On the other hand, his words must not be forced and tortured
into conclusions which do not fall within the scope either of his language
or of his hypothesis. All that he has here in view is the agency of men
— the teaching and ministry of the Church ; he is neither speaking nor
once been in a state of grace to fall away from it ? " When his chaplain answered in the nega
tive, Cromwell replied that in that cose he was happy, for he felt sure that once he had been in
a state of graoe.

THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 213
thinking of the omnipotence of God. It is impossible in the highest
degree for a camel to go through the eye of a needle ;x but what is
impossible with men is possible with God.2 And, indeed, the marked
change of tenses in this passage is not without its significance. He
says that it is impossible to renew to repentance those who have fallen
away, crucifying as they are the Son of God. The change from the
past to the present implies a continuous, as well as an insolent apostasy.
It implies the case of those who cling deliberately to their sins.3 While
this continues, how can there be any hope of renewal 1 The condition
of such men, so long so it continues unchanged, precludes all possi
bility of the action of grace. It is impossible -at once " to be pardoned "
and to retain the offence. If, said the Jewish Rabbis, a man has merely
touched a creeping thing, the smallest drop of water suffices for his
Levitic purification ; but if he keeps the unclean thing purposely in his
hand, an ocean of ablutions will not make him clean. It is impossible
to save willing offenders in the sense in which man may " save " his
brother (1 Tim. iv. 16) ; but nothing is impossible to God.
5. It will be seen, then, how little this passage lends itself to
the violent oppositions of these old controversies. Nor, again, has
it much bearing on the too curious speculations in which some have
indulged about the sin against the Holy Ghost, and the unpardonable
sin.4 That there is a sin which shall not be forgiven, either in this
or the future age — that there is " a sin unto death," for the forgiveness
of which we are not bidden to pray — that the last state of a backslider
or an apostate may be worse than the first5 — we learn from other
passages of Scripture. That a daring and willing apostasy — a
deliberate return from light to darkness, and from the power of
God to Satan — must be the most perilous of all conditions, and
therefore must very nearly approach to those awful sins, is clear
from the nature of the case, since like " the doing despite to the
spirit of grace " (x. 29) it seems to close against itself the very
door of salvation.6 We must neither turn the text into "a rack
of despair" nor into " a pillar of carnal security." If by the expression
" on their falling away " he meant to describe every fall into mortal
sin, then, as Luther says, his words would contradict " all the Gospels,
1 Matt. xix. 26; Mark x. 27; Luke xviii. 27.- That the words must be understood in their
literal sense, and that neither can kcitjAos mean "rope," nor "the eye of a needle" mean "the
side-gate of a city," I have shown iu a paper in the Expositor (Vol. iii. 169).
3 So St. Ambrose (De poenit. ii. 3) : " Quae impossibilia sunt apud homines, possibilia sunt
apud Deum, et potens est Dens quando vult donare nobis peccata, etiam quae putamus non
posse concedi."
3 eKOvtrttus apapravovriav, X. 26.
* See infra on 1 John v. 16.
5 2 Pet'ii. 20; Luke xi. 26.
6 A writer who was not thinking of the Epistle to the Hebrews has said, in touching on only
one little aspect of the consequences of apostasy, that " When the Christian falls back out of
the bright hope of the Resurrection, even the Orpheus song is forbidden him ; hot to have
known the hope is blameless : one may sing, unknowing, as the swan or Philomela. But to
have known and fall away from it, and to declare that the human wishes which are summed in
that one — ' Thy kingdom come ' — are vain ! The Fates ordain that there shall be no singing
after that."— Ruskin, " Fiction, Fair and Foul " (Nineteenth Century, Aug. 1880).

214 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and all the Epistles of St. Paul." But he is speaking only of pre
determined and wilful apostasy, and irrevocable Divine dereliction ; 1
such as is described in that passage of Isaiah2 where the Prophet
speaks of renegades passing through the land hardly bestead, and
hungry, and fretting themselves, and looking upwards only to curse
their King and their God, and seeing nothing but dimness and anguish
when they look downwards. Beyond this we cannot go. The various
modern discussions which have risen out of these mysterious passages
do not seem to have been consciously present to the writer's mind.
He is speaking to a very different class from those whom Jesus
warned about the sin against the Holy Ghost. He is speaking
to Hebrew Christians, and pointing out to1 them with awful
faithfulness the fact that they were becoming spiritually stagnant,
and that stagnancy ends in corruption. To return to their dead
works after the heavenly enlightenment — to abandon the eternal
substance for the transient shadow — to go back from the finished
sacrifice of Christ to the beggarly elements of the Law, was a peril
which they were beginning to incur, but from which he felt convinced
that they would be saved in time. Nor could he have chosen any
words better fitted than these to arrest the degeneracy which he already
saw and deplored.
A less voluminous controversy has arisen out of the writer's
comparison of the backsliding, or rather the apostate, Christians to
waste and worthless land.
a. The test of sincerity is fruitfulness. The field that has drunk the
rain from heaven, and bears thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold, is a field
which God has blessed. But the field on which the rain falls and
the sun shines in vain, and which only brings forth weeds wherewith
the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that gathereth the sheaves
his bosom, has been tested and found profitless, like the clay ground
between Succoth and Zeredatha." Of such land he says that it is
"nigh to a curse." Doubtless he has in mind the older curse — which
yet the mercy of God mitigated into something not far from a
blessing — " Cursed is the ground for thy sake. Thorns also and
thistles shall it bring forth to thee."4 But yet the form of his
expression surely shows how far are his thoughts from the awful
dogma of final reprobation. " See," says St. Chrysostom, " how much
consolation his words involve ! He says 'near a curse,' not '¦a curse.'
But he who has not yet fallen into a curse, but has got near it, will
also be able to get afar from it. If then we cut out and burn up
the thorns, we shall be able to enjoy the unnumbered benefits, and
to become approved, and to share in the blessing."
0. Yet the end of such waste soil is " for burning." Some have
thought that even in this burning there is implied, not hopeless
1 Von Oettingen and Delitzsch refer to the case of Spira (see Herzo?, Real. Encykl., s.v.). ,
» Is. viii. 21. ' 2 Chrou. iv. 17. « Gen. iii. is.

WORDS OF HOPE. 215
destruction, but a method of improvement. Such a method was
well known to Roman agriculture. " Often, too," says Virgil, "hath it
been of' use to fire barren fields, and to burn the light stubble with
crackling flames ; whether it be that so the lands acquire hidden
strength and fattening nurture, or that so every distemper is baked
out of them by fire, and the useless moisture sweats out, or that
the heat opens out more paths and secret apertures through which
sap may come to the tender plants."1 It may be doubted whether
the writer was familiar with this agricultural practice, or its supposed
utility. It is more likely that he was thinking of scorched and
waste wildernesses like that " Burnt Phrygia " with which he must
have been familiar, or of regions like the Solfatara, or of the smoke
rising from the fields of Sodom, where " the whole land is brimstone
and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any green
groweth therein."2 He is not describing the actual fate in store for
any of his readers ;. he is illustrating by a passing metaphor the
ultimate destiny of those who deliberately reject God — of those who,
having sinned willingly against light and knowledge, continue hardened
in defiant impenitence. Such, for instance, would be the position
of those Jews who, having once known Christ, so far apostatised
from Him as to adopt the current names of scorn by which He was
described in the Jewish cryptographs — to speak of Him as " Absalom"
or " the Hung," or to turn the form of His name into an anagram
of malediction.3 If the ground which God gives us to till produces
only thorns and thistles, we must, as St. Chrysostom says, cut up
and burn them. We must "break up our fallow ground, and not
sow among thorns."4 We shall then be able "to enjoy unnumbered
blessings and to become approved." The evil produce of the soil must
be consumed that the soil may be saved for better purposes, just
as the bad work of a workman must be burned while the workman
shall be saved so as by fire. But if the work of the workman be
always and continuously bad, he is rejected ; and if a soil brings forth
nothing but things rank and gross in nature, it must itself be scathed
with fire. The metaphor acquires a fuller significance if we think
of the Jews to whom it was addressed, and remember that, but a
few years afterwards, their beloved city was trodden under fpot by its
enemies, and their Holy Temple was given to the devouring name.
But he proceeds to tell them that he has a conviction that they,
his Christian readers, have adopted the better course, and will inherit
the better lot. He did not doubt that they were heirs of salvation,
though he used this language. " Their work, their alms, and all their
good endeavours " furnished a proof of this ; for God is just, and God
1 Virg. Qe/ira. i. 84, seq. See, too, Plin. H. N. xviii. 39, 72.
' Deut xxix. 23.
3 See Life of t:hrist, ii. 452. [By notarikon, Jemaoh Sftemo Fezichro, "May his name and
memory be blotted out. ''"]
1 Jer. iv. 3.

216 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
does not forget. They had ministered to the saints ; they were still
doing so, though, perhaps — as he seems to hint with delicate kindness —
with less zeal than before. He exhorts them not to show themselves
remiss, but with all zeal to work out their salvation to the end,
and so by faith and endurance to enter into that heritage which
was pledged to them not only by the word but by the oath of God.
However severe, therefore, their afflictions had been, they might rest
upon a sure hope. The little boat of their lives was being tossed
by many a storm, yet it was safe, for it was moored by an anchor
which could never slip its hold. That anchor was not fixed even
on the rock of any earthly sea, but the hawser which held it passed
out of sight behind the veil of Heaven ; and in that heavenly sanctuary
One had entered as a forerunner on their behalf. He would see that
the anchor held ; He would keep guard over the promised hope, — the
High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
SECTION IV.
THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.
In those words, the writer, with great literary skill, resumes the
allusion which he had introduced in v. 10, and had left unexplained in
order to prepare them for his argument by the exhortation of these inter
mediate verses. But now that he has stimulated them to a loftier range
of spiritual attainments by warning them of the peril of apostasy, and by
encouraging them to perseverance in good works, he can proceed with a
surer step to develop the truths which were best fitted to emancipate
them from their temptation to relapse.
" For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God most high,1 who met2
Abraham returning from the slaughter3 of the kings and blessed him,4 to whom also
Abraham apportioned a tithe of all,5 being first by interpretation King of righteous
ness,6 and then also King of Salem, which is King of peace ; without father, with
out mother, without lineage,7 having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but
having been likened to the Son of God8 remaineth a Priest for perpetuity" (vii.
1-3). This comparison of the Priesthood of Christ to that of Melchizedek
occupies so cardinal a position, that we must pause over this passage if
we are to form any true conception of the meaning of the Epistle.
1 King and Priest, Zech. vi. 13 (Serv. ad Mn. iii 80). See the subsequent remarks for further
notes on this passage.
2 The true reading is os, not 6 («, A, B, D, E, K). The construction is an anakoluthon.
3 Ko-rrrj, from KOTrno, "I cut." Comp. Josh. x. 20 (LXX.).
4 Philo (De Abraham. § 40) says that Melchizedek " sacrificed for Abraham the offerings of
victory. 5 I.e., of all his spoils. 6 T. infra.
i 'AyeveaXoyrjTos, wnich occurs here only, cannot mean "without descent" (see ver. 6), though,
misled by this error, Ignatius (Ep. ad Philad.) reckons Melchizedek among those who have led
a celibate life.
8 This expression not only refers to Ps. ex. 4, but speaks of Melchizedek as a Divinely ap
pointed type of Priesthood, which he is not recorded to have either received from any ancestors,
or transmitted to any successors.

MELCHIZEDEK. 217
Let us first endeavour to clear up the separate expressions.
All that we know historically respecting Melchizedek is contained in
two verses in the Book of Genesis (Gen. xiv. 18, 19).
We are there told that when Amraphel, king of Shinar, with three
allies, made war on Bera, king of Sodom, and his four allies, and de
feated them, they carried away the plunder and captives of the Cities of
the Plain. Among these captives was Lot, whose goods they had also
seized. Abraham, arming his three hundred and eighteen servants, and
assisted by the Amorite chiefs Mamre, Aner, and Eshcol, pursued the
victors to the neighbourhood of Damascus, defeated them, rescued their
prisoners, and recovered the spoil. On his return the king of Sodom
went out to thank and greet him, and met him " at the valley of Shaveh,
which is the king's dale." " And Melchizedek king of Salem brought
forth bread and wine : and he was the priest of the most high God.1
And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God,
possessor of heaven and earth : and blessed be the most high God, which
hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes
of all." If we first take the narrative as it stands, we observe that it is not
stated that Melchizedek went out to meet Abraham, as it is stated of the
king of Sodom. It is, however, a natural inference that he did so, and
we see from the reference of the writer of the Epistle that such was part
of the Jewish tradition on the subject. The place of meeting is uncer
tain. Shaveh has never been identified, nor is anything known of the
King's dale.2 The name Melchizedek may mean "king of righteous
ness " — a rendering found in the Targums,3 and here introduced perhaps
with reference to Is. xxxii. 1, where it is said of the Messiah, " Behold
a king shall reign in righteousness."4 It may also mean "righteous
king," as it is rendered in Josephus5 and Philo.6 It is a name closely
analogous to Adonizedek, which means " Lord of righteousness " or
"justice," and is a natural name for an Eastern king whose chief function
in time of peace was that of a judge. Adonizedek is called king of Jeru
salem/ but Melchizedek is called king of Salem. It has been a disputed
point for centuries whether by Salem is meant Jerusalem or not.8
That this king of a Canaanite city should be "a priest of the most
high God " is an interesting circumstance. Attempts have been made to
1 The union of Royalty and Priesthood was regarded as peculiarly sacred. " Rex Anius, rex
idem hominum Phosbique sacerdos'' (Virg. JEn. iii. 80).
2 Josephas calls it HeSiov Bao-thi/tov (Antt. i. 10, § 2). There is nothing to identify it with
" the King's dale" in which Absalom built himself a pillar. Even if it be tbe same "King's
dale " it may have been in the tribe of Epbraim, if the reading of 2 Sam. xiii. 23 be right ; but
there, instead of "beside Ephraim," there is a various reading, " the Valley of Rephaim."
3 In Bereshith Rabba, f . 42, a, it is said that Tsedek was a name of Jerusalem, as is implied
in Is. i. 21. " Righteousness lodged in it." Aben Ezra makts Melchizedek mean "King ui a
righteous place."
* Compare Is. ix. 6 ; Zech. ix. 9 ; Mal. iv. 2 ; 1 Cor. i. 30.
5 Antt. i. 10, § 2 ; B. J. vi. 10 ; 6 rtj TraTpia y^sita-o-n tc\n9eU j8a£Ti\evs SucalOS.
6 Leg. Allegg. iii. 25.
7 Josh. x. 3.
8 See Excursus X., " * Salem * and Jerusalem."

218 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
explain it away. The Hebrew phrase for the most high God is El ERdn,
and it appears that the Phoenicians also had a god to whom they gave the
title of EliOn, or The Highest.1 Nothing, however, can be clearer than
that Moses intended the word to be understood in its fullest sense of the
True God.2 Nor is there any excuse for being incredulous about the
fact, for, when we remember the longevity of the patriarchs, it is probable
that the worship of God would have been preserved in some families.
And the primary intention of the sacred historian in mentioning this
incident may have been a desire to do honour to this kingly priest,
whose dignity was recognised with such deep reverence by Abraham
himself, that he accepted his solemn blessing, and gave him a tithe of
his spoils.It was natural that a circumstance so remarkable should attract the
attention of the Jews, and that they should see something memorable in
the priesthood of a king who enjoyed his sacerdotal dignity so many
centuries before the days of Aaron, and who had been treated with so
much honour by their great ancestor himself. Hence it was also natural
that the Hebrew poet in the 110th Psalm,3 in prophesying of a Prince
and Deliverer who was the type of the Messiah, should say, " The Lord
sware, and will' not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedek." The Messianic interpretation of this Psalm was never
disputed."4 If it had been, nothing would have been easier for the Jews
than to set aside the question about David's son and David's Lord which
our Lord propounded to them, and which they expressed their inability
to solve.5 But even the Targum of Jonathan renders the first verse of
this Psalm by "The Lord said to His Word."
But when Melchizedek was thus elevated into a type of the Messiah,
the brief notice respecting him was studied with tlie minutest scrutiny,
and mysteries were supposed to lurk in every word. Thus so simple
a circumstance as his bringing forth to Abraham bread and wine is
in Bereshith Babba explained by Rabbi Samuel Bar Nachman to mean
that he taught to Abraham the ordinances of the High Priesthood, the
bread being a type of the shewbread, and the wine of libations. Other
Babbis, referring to Prov. ix. 5 — " Come eat of my bread, and drink of
the wine which I have mingled " — say that Melchizedek explained the
Law to Abraham. These, it is obvious, are mere fancies of a fantastic
exegesis bent on seizing every opportunity to proclaim the eternity
of the Levitic dispensation. Yet multitudes of Christian writers,
imbued with the spirit which will see in Scripture more than Scripture
1 Philo Bybl. ap. Eusob. Fraep. Eu. i. 10. A tra^e of this title (alonim aoa!oTiHih=Elionim
velionoth) is1 x^erhaps discoverable in the Poenulus of Plautus.
2 Though this is the earliest occurrence of tbe name, it is found frequently in the Pentateuch
and Psalms. Abram repeats it with "Jehovah" in ver. 22.
3 In the title, Ps. ex. is called " A Psalm of David ; " the LXX. call it "An ode to the Assy
rian." * Comp. Zech. vi. 13, where, of the High Priest Joshua f Jeshua in Ezra aud Neb.) as a type
of the Messiah, it is said, "He shall be," or perhaps, "There shall be," a priest upon his
throne." 5 Matt. xxii. 44.

BREAD AND WINE. 219
sanctions, make this simple act of hospitality a sacerdotal oblation, and
argue (with Bellarmine) that it was the one characteristic of his
Priesthood.1 But that the bread and wine were not typically intended
is clear from the silence of the Epistle. Had the application been
legitimate, a point so germane to the writer's purpose could not have
been passed over without notice, especially as Philo, who has very
similar views respecting Melchizedek, ventures to say that on this
occasion he did offer a sacrifice for victory — emvlic'ia eflue.2 What an
opportunity for powerful argument would have been furnished if
Apollos could have said that Melchizedek's sacrifice was not an offering
of victims in the Jewish fashion, but was an offering which prefigured
the Christian oblations of bread and wine ! Of such a sacrifice he
does not say a word. Whatever may have been the acts in which
the priesthood of Melchizedek consisted, Apollos does not mention
sacrifice among them. He does not so much as allude to the bread
and wine — much less- does he imply that it was an Eucharistic
offering. But he touches on other points which seem to enhance the dignity
or mysteriousness of Melchizedek by saying that he was "fatherless,
motherless, without pedigree, having neither beginning of days nor end
of Ufe." His method of illustration, like that of which St. Paul occasionally
made use, is Babbinic in its general character, but not fantastic or
inadmissible. He takes a Scriptural fact as it stands, and merely shows
its typical value. It is, however, this passage which has originated
so many untenable conjectures about Melchizedek, and which has
been made an excuse for most strange hypotheses. Such discussions
would never have arisen if we had been more familiar with the way of
handling Scripture which had become prevalent at Alexandria, and
was perpetuated for centimes in the later schools of Tiberius and
Babylon. Of course, if the words be taken literally, they can have but one
meaning. One who had neither father, nor mother, nor ancestors,
neither beginning of days nor end of life, could not be a human being
at all. Accordingly Melchizedek has been regarded by some com
mentators, even of this century, as "the Angel of the Presence," the
"Captain of the Lord's Host," "the Divine Angel of the Lord," the
Second Person of the Ever Blessed Trinity, the Jewish " Shechinah "
and Metatron,3 who continually appeared to the Fathers under the
Old Testament dispensation. Cunseus even refers to this incident

1 On this perversion see Waterland, Works, v. 165 ; Jewel, Reply to Harding, art. xvii. ; and
on the other side, Jai.-kson, On the Greed, ix., § ii. 10.
8 De Abraham.
3 Metatron is a Talmudic word of foreign origin, perhaps a rude hybrid of pera Opovtos, or
" sharer of the ThroDe. " He was the chief of the four Angels who were, ' ' Masters of Wisdom."
He stands in a subordinate relation to Grod, but to him are attributed many of the works of the
" Angel of the Presence,"— a sort of Pre-inearnate Messiah (see Hamburger, s.v.).

220 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
in explanation of our Lord's words to the Jews, " Your father Abraham
rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad." Marcus Eremita
mentions a sect which believed Melchizedek to be " God the Word,
previous to incarnation."1
Others, again, thought that Melchizedek was the Holy Spirit.2 This
was the opinion maintained in an anonymous work — probably written
by the deacon Hilarius — which St. Jerome received from Evagrius,
and which led him to an elaborate study of what had been written
on this question, which even in his day was eagerly debated. He found
that Origen and Didymus believed Melchizedek to be an angel, and
that the Jews supposed him to be Shem, the son of Noah,3 who — as
they showed by calculation — might have survived till the days of
Abraham.4 It is hard to see why, in that case, he should not have been
introduced by his own name. Yet this hypothesis satisfied Lyra,
Cajetan, Melancthon, and even Luther and Selden. Others again,
with about as much justification, suppose that he was Ham. Calmet
regards him as a re-appearance of Enoch. Nork, with hardly less
absurdity, discovers in him the Phoenician god Sydik, or Saturn !5
I unhesitatingly follow those who reject these idle hypotheses,
and who hold with Hippolytus, Eusebius of Cresarea, and other Fathers,
as well as the ablest recent commentators, that Melchizedek was neither
more nor less than what Moses tells us that he was — namely, Melchi
zedek, a Priest and King of the little Canaanite town of Salem, to
whom, because he was a worshipper of the True God, Abraham paid
tithes, and from whom he received a blessing.6 His importance was
purely .typical ; his personal importance was very small. It is amazing
that any one familiar with Rabbinic exegesis should hesitate for a
moment in coming to this conclusion. In the Alexandrian School
especially, the habit of allegorising had been carried so far as to imperil,
and even obliterate, the plain sense of the sacred narrative. The
allegorists saw or imagined mysteries in the silence of Scripture no less
than in its simplest circumstances, and even in the numerical values and
methods of writing its letters. The writer of this Epistle, familiar
with the works of Philo, adopts the Alexandrian method in arguing
with those by whom it would be regarded as specially cogent. But
1 Epipban. Haer. lv. 7 ; Ambrose, De Abraham, i. 3. AU these opinions and quotations are
diligently collected by Bleek.
a Epiphan. Haer. lxvii. 3. This wild theory was maintained by the sect of Melchizedekites
(see Bonier, i. 515).
3 Rabbi Jochonan Ben Nuri says: "The Holy One— blessed be He !— took Shem, and
separated him to be a priest to Himself, that he might serve before Him. He also caused His
Shechinah to rest with him, and calkd his name Melchizedek, Priest of the Most High and
King of Salem."— Avodalh Hakkodesh, Pt. iii. c. 20 ; Nedarim, f. 3i, b.
* Thus in two of the Tarjrums— though not in that of Onkelos— we find the gloss "Malka
Zedika, who was Shem bar Noah." But as far as the Epistle to the Hebrews is concerned it
is enough to say that (1) Shem is not ayei/eaAoyijTOt : his linense is recor.led: (2) that Canaan
was in the territory of Ham (see Deyling, Obs. Sacr. ii. 73 ; Boohart, Phaleg. ii. 1 ; Jackson On
ihe Creed, Bk. ix.). This opinion of the Jews, though embraced by Luther, Lightfoot etc
seems to have been post-Christian.
» Nork. Bibl. Mythol. i. 154.
« See Cave, Lives ofthe Apostles, xxii. This is the view of Josephus (B. J. vi. 10).

WITHOUT FATHER, MOTHER, PEDIGREE. 221
he neither abuses the method nor carries it to untenable extremes. He
sees that the suddenness with which Melchizedek is introduced into the
sacred story, and the subsequent silence respecting him, are reasons for
regarding him as a Divinely-appointed type of the Messiah. The Book
of Genesis, as Bishop Wordsworth says, casts on him a shadow of
eternity ; gives him a typical eternity. But he expressly treats of
him as a type, and a type only, of One whose " office was incomparably
beyond that of the legal Economy " — his person greater, his undertaking
weightier, his design more sublime and excellent, his oblation more
meritorious, his prayers more prevalent, his office more durable than
even any whose business it was to intercede and mediate between God
and man.1 Had Melchizedek been the Metatron, or the Pre-incarnate
Messiah, he would not have been a type, but the Divine Son Himself;
he would not have been likened to Christ, but would have been Christ.
All the conjectures respecting him were excusable in times when
the peculiarities of Semitic thought were little known ; but now that
the history of exegesis is better understood, such suggestions can only
be ranked among obsolete mistakes.
For there are abundant instances to prove that such phrases as
" fatherless, motherless, without pedigree," were used, not only in
Rabbinic Hebrew, but even in Classical Greek and in Latin, of those
whose parents and ancestry were simply unrecorded. Thus Ion, in the
tragedy of Euripides, calls himself " motherless " when he supposes him
self to be the son of a slave-woman ;2 and Scipio addressed the mongrel
crowd in the Forum as people " who had neither father nor mother ; "s
and Horace speaks of himself as "sprung from no ancestors."4 Simi
larly we find in Bereshith Rabba that "a Gentile has no father,"5 i.e.,
the father of a proselyte is of no account in Jewish pedigrees. The
Jewish priests were obliged to keep the most careful genealogies, and
some families were for ever excluded from the priesthood in Ezra's days
because they could not produce adequate proof of their priestly descent.6
And not only must they be able to produce the names of their fathers
and their ancestry up to Aaron, but, further, their marriages were regu
lated by the most rigid restrictions.7 It was remarkable to the Jews of
Ezra's day that Melchizedek should be introduced as a priest — and as a
priest of such striking dignity — while not a word is said of his father
or mother, or ancestors, or birth or death.8 In the' mystic treatment of
Scripture by the Talmudists, arguments are drawn from this silence.
Thus, from the non-mention of Cain's death in Scripture, Philo draws
the lesson that evil never dies among the human race. The very vague-
1 Cave, I.c. ' Ion, 850. » Cie. tie Orot. ii. 64.
* Hor. Sat. i. 6, 10. 5 f. 18, b.
« Ezr. ii. 61, 62 ; Nehem. vii. 63, 64. 1 Lev. xxi. 7, 13, 14.
» " The Melchizedek of human history has, indeed, died ; but the Melchizedek of sacred
history lives without dying, fixed for ever as one who Hues by the pen of the sacred historian,
and thus stamped as a type of the Son, the ever- living Priest" (Delitzsch). "He is simply an
otherwise unsown king, whose meeting with Abraham is, however, in the history of redemption,
of the greatest historical and typical importance " (Moll).

222 THE EARLY DATS OF CHRISTIANITY.
ness in which this grand figure of Melchizedek is left, although he is
the first who in Scripture is called a priest, makes him better suited to
stand as the type of one who was endowed with an eternal priesthood.
The words of the writer taken literally are applicable to Jesus alone,1
and are only applicable to Melchizedek in the secondary and meta
phorical sense which I have explained. He stands on the page of
Scripture as an eternal priest, because Scripture witnesses alike to his
priesthood and his life without an allusion to the abrogation of the one
or the close of the other. 2 If any harshness still remains, it is removed
by the consideration that in the mind of the writer the type and the
antitype are so simultaneously prominent that the language which
refers to the one is mingled with that which is more strictly applicable -
to the other. To ignore these facts, and to regard Melchizedek as a
Divine being, still alive as a priest, though' he only occurs in a single
clause of a simple, historic narrative,3 is to apply to Scripture the
methods of explanation which reduce it to an insoluble enigma, and
which subject the souls of unbiassed readers to a strain which it was
never intended that they should bear. Any one who helps to rescue
the Holy Book from these extravagances of superstitious letter-worship
renders to faith, a service for which he maybe rebuked by contemporary
ignorance, but which will bear good fruit in future times.
" But observe," 4 he continues, " how great was this man to whom even Abraham
gave a tithe out of his best spoils5 — he, the patriarch.6 " And those of the sons of
Levi who receive the priestly function,7 have commandment to tithe the people
according to the law3 — that is, their brethren, sprung though they are from the loins
1 The word " without mother '* might seem inapplicable, and would he inapplicable if the
Church had ever sanctioned the title Thcotolcos applied to the Virgin Mary ; but, as Theodoret ,
rightly observes, " as God, He has heen begotten of the Father alone."
2 Alford thinks it " almost childish "to suppose that the writer meint no more than that the
life, death, etc., of Melchizedek are not recorded; and therefore he regards him as a Divine
being about whom we are not to be wise above what is written, and about whom, we are not
called upon to enquire further! It is not "almost," hut "quite" childish to pretend to
interpret Scripture by ignoring the plain peculiarities of the language and method of thought
among those by whom it was written. And the misapplied text about "not being wise above
what is written" is usually, degraded into an excuse for oeing wise above what is written —
to the extent, sometimes, of utter superstition.
3 Josephus simply calls him " a chief of the Canaanites."
4 The proper difference between opw, "I see," and 6eiapu>, "I observe" (though it is not
always kept in common usage), is given by Phavorinus, who says that bpw is applied to bodily,
and 06b}pui to spiritual, insight.
5 aicpoOlvta, derived from a«po? and BU, properly means "what is taken from the top of the
heap," but it is used for "the first fruits of i-p' iis " and sometimes, apparently (according
to He^ychius and Phavorinus), for "spoils" generally.
c The position of 6 irarptapx>js is very forcible, and the oratorical style of the writer evidently
makes him fond of these sounding collocations. The use of the Ionicus a minore (u u " ") to end
the sentence makes the word still more prominent. A whole argument abput the grandeur of
Abraham is thus condensed into one emphatic word. Comp. Acts vii. 16, 43; xxviii, 31;
Gal. iii. 1.)
? Aristotle defines this word iepareta as meaning "the care concerning the gods" (Pol. vii. 8).
It seems to be a little more specific than tepwtruir).
8 A needless difficulty has been made of this expression because the Priests did not directly
receive tithes from the people, but only from the Levites, who paid them a tithe of what they
received as tithes (Numb, xviii. 22, 23, 26; Neh. x. 88). Hence Biesenthal proposes to read
A.ev'iv for \a6v. But (a) the Priests might take these tithes directly, as Jewish tradition
paid that they did in the days of Ezra (Yevamoth, f. 86, b; Beohoroth, f. 4, a); and (j3)
the expression is a general one — " qui facrf, per alium, facit per se." The question, as Dr. Moulton
says, is not one of emolument, but of position, and the Priests stood alone in receiving tithes
and paying none.

GREATNESS OF MELCHIZEDEK. 223
of Abraham ; but he whose descent is not derived from them hath tithed Abraham,
and hath blessed1 the holder of the promises. Now, beyond all dispute, that which
is inferior is ever blessed by the superior. And in this case dying men 2 receive
tithes ; but in that case he of whom it is testified that he lives,3 And, so to speak,
by means of Abraham, even Levi, who receiveth tithes, hath been tithed ; for he was
still in the loins of his father when Abraham met him '' (vii. 4 — 10).
The argument of this passage is the superiority of Melchizedek's
priesthood to that of Aaron in seven particulars : —
(i.) Because even Abraham gave him tithes.
(ii.) Because even the yet-unborn Levi may be said to have paid
tithes in the person of Abraham.
(iii.) Because it is the superior who gives the blessing, and Melchi
zedek blessed Abraham.
(iv.) Because the Aaronic priests die, but Melchizedek stands as a
type of undying priesthood.
(v.) Because the permanence of his Priesthood implied the abro
gation of the whole Law on which the Levitic Priesthood was
grounded. If there was a transference of the Priesthood there was necessarily
also a transference of the Law. Had there been in the Levitic Law
any power of perfectionment, what need would there have been for a
different priest4 to rise of whom it was expressly said, not that he was
"after the order of Aaron," but that he was "after the order of
Melchizedek " 1 And " our Lord,"6 in whom was fulfilled the Type pf
Eternal Priesthood, was a different Priest, seeing that He has sprung6
from a different tribe than that of the Aaronic priests — namely, the royal
but non-priestly tribe of Judah.7 Christ is a Priest, not in accordance
1 Tlie perfects express the absolute and permanent fact.
2 I.e., men under the liability to die, as in the well-known lines —
" He preached as one who ne'er should preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men."
* We know nothing of the death of Melchizedek ; so far, therefore, as the page of Scripture
is concerned, he always lives. The argument is analogous to that which I have already
mentioned, derived by Philo from the absence of any mention of the death of Cain in Scripture.
To a writer addressing those who in the Rabbinic Midrashim heard daily specimens of similar
applications, nothing would be more natural than to argue that the absence of all mention
of the de ith of Melchizedek made him, in yet another respect, an eternal type of Christ. The
difference between his method and ours is not in the point of inexy, but only in the method of
statement. Writing in these days we might argue thus : The Psalmist says that God had sworn
that the Priest-king, the Messiah of whom he is prophesying, should be " a priest for ever after
the order of Melchizedek." We learn from the Book of Genesis that the Priesthood of Melchize
dek was one of such high dignity as to be recognised even by the Patriarch Abraham ; and in this
respect, as well as in its magnificent and untransraitted independence, it is evidently spoken
of as superior to the Aaronic Priesthood. And it is also a type of the Messianic Priesthood,
because just as Christ was eternal and Buperior to all earthly relationships, so on the
page of Scripture Melchizedek stands without father, mother, or descent, and with no record of
human birth or human death. This is all condensed by the writer of the Epistle into such
expressions as those in the text.
* erepov, " a different," not merely aWov, " another."
s This passage is memorable as being the ./Erst in which this expression — now so familiar and
universal — is applied to Christ. It marks an advance in the growth of Christianity.
« avariTakKev, a word almost invariably used of the sunrise (Mal. iv. 2; Is. Ix. 1; Luke xii. 54;
2 Pet. i. 19), though also of the springing of plants (Zech. Ui. 1 ; vi. 12 ; Jer. xxiii. 5, where the
LXX. render " the Branch " by 'Avaro^rj ; and Is. xliv. 4 ; Ezek. xvii. 6).
7 The writer does not touch on the doubt which hung over the High Priesthood of his time.
If his readers were Palestinian Jews, they at least, and probably all Jews, would be quick to
catch the fresh force which was added to his arguments by this circumstance. Those Sadducean

224 THE EARLY DATS OF CHRISTIANITY.
¦with "the law of a fleshen commandment" — i.e., with the transitory
system "which was hedged round with the limitations of earthly relation
ships1 but in accordance with the power of that indissoluble life2 which
is indicated by the swearing of the oaths that He should be " a priest for
ever after the order of Melchizedek." From the change, then, of the
Priesthood we infer nothing less than the disannulment of the preceding
commandment3 because of its weakness and unprofitableness — (for the
Law perfected nothing) — and the introduction of a better hope, by
means of which we draw nigh to God.4
(vi.) It was superior because it was founded on the swearing of an
oath,5 — namely, that of Psalm cix. 4 — which was not the case with the
Levitic priests. " Of so much better a covenant " 6 hath Jesus become
a surety.7
hierorchs had been introduced by Herod. Tbey were of priestly, but it was far from certain
that they were of high-priestly, descent (Jos. Antt. xx. 10 ; xv. 3, § 1). Philo, who was himself
of Aaronic descent, uses the expression apxiepeus ipevStavvp.o<; {Opp. ii. 2i6, Mangey).
1 Neither this writer nor St. Paul would have called the Law "carnal " (o-apKucos), a term
which he expressly disclaims (Rom. vii. 14). The true reading is trapjcurf? (n, A, B, C, D, etc. ;
1 Cor. iii. 1 ; 2 Cor. iii. 3), as here explained.
2 The balance and rhythm of the original (paris^sis, paromoiosis) are characteristic of this
writer, but not of St. Paul. Instances of this style may no doubt be found in St. Paul's Epistles,
because, as I have shown in my Life of St. Paul (i. 627), he had probably had some initial training
in the rhetorical schools of Tarsus, and there is scarcely a single figure of speech or technical
method of construction which he does not sometimes use. But they are not characteristic of
him; they do not enter into tbe very heart of the periodic structure which he naturally adopts.
It" I may use a current distinction, St. Paul is often rhetorical — i.e., he writes with a passion
which finds natural expression in the most forcible figures of speech j but he is scarcely ever
oratorical — i.e., he never studies the form of his sentences with a view to pleasing or satisfying
the ear. He does not habitually adopt a stately, sounding, and impressive style. Now, the
writer of this Epistle is scarcely ever impassioned ; he is never quite swept away by the force
of his own feelings, as St. Paul repeatedly is ; and he is always oratorical — it was evidently
natural to him to adopt such expressions and such a periodic structure as fill and gratify the
ear, while at the same time they give impressiveness to the arguments which he is endeavouring
to enforce. I have always insisted (see Life of St. Paul, ii. 601, 6 10) on the necessity of making
the fullest allowance for the change of style which may be caused by the different moods, or
circumstances, or objects of an author at different ages of his life ; but no author can
continuously adopt a style which is alien to the characteristics of his own temperament ; and
to me it is only necessary to read the Epistle to the Hebrews side by side with any Epistle of
St. Paul to feel more and more strongly that it is impossible that the two should have emanated
from the same mind.
3 He does not venture on the strong word athetosis, " disannulment," till he has, so to speak,
prepared his way for it by the much milder word" metathesis" — " transference/' or "alteration,"
in ver. 12.
4 vii. 11—19. The E V. in the latter verse follows a bad punctuation of the Greek. The
word eTreicraywyJj is not the nominative of eTeAeuuuev, but of yCveTai — " there takes place a cancel
ling of the previous commandment and a superinduction of a better hope."
5 The writer uses the sounding word opKWfiocria as being statelier and more impressive than
6pKOS. 8 The E. V. here renders SiaBrjien by " testament." Now StaBmcr} is the Greek equivalent of
"herlth," as in Baal Berith ("the Lord of the Covenant") in Judg. ix. 4; and berith is rendered
by the LXX. BiaB^KV), and by our version " covenant," at least 200 times. In fact, in the Old
Testament the word can, have no other meaning, for the Romans invented the " will," and the
Jews knew nothing of testamentary bequests. It is certain, tberi, that any Jew reading this
passage, and familhr with the LXX, would take the word to mean "covenant," and not
"testament." The "Vulgate uses " tostamentum," because in Classio Greek StaBiJKrf often has
this meaning ; but, ag Dr. Moulton remarks, it seems clear from such passages as Ps. lxxxiii. 5
that St. Jerome used it in a wider sense than that of " will." It is from the influence of the
Vulgate that we get our phrase "the Old aud New Testaments." There is happily nothing
misleading or erroneous m the term, but there can be little doubt that St. Paul, from the
translation of whose expression the term is derived (2 Cor. iii. 6), meant ** Old Covenant/' and
not " Old Testament." What the meaning of the word is in ix. 15—17 we shall see in the notes
to that paSBn i*e.
7 vii. 20, 21. As Eternal Priest, he is a pledge (Ecclus. xxix. 15) of the validity of the New
Covenant (ver. 25 ; see viii, 1).

melchizedek's PRIESTHOOD. 225
(vii.) It was superior because the Levitic priests were necessarily
many, requiring to be constantly replenished to fill up the ravages
made in their ranks by death ; but His Priesthood, because of His
Eternal permanence, is intransmissible ; whence, also, He is able to
save to the uttermost those who through Him approach to God, seeing
that He ever liveth to intercede for them.1
Having thus in seven particulars proved how far superior was the
Melchizedek Priesthood of Christ to the Levitic Priesthood, and having
incidentally introduced the important truth that this transference of
Priesthood involved the abrogation not only of Leviticism, but of the
whole Mosaic system, he adds a weighty summary of all that he
has said about Melchizedek as a Type of Christ, into which, in his
usual skilful manner, he introduces the vein of thought which he
proceeds to develop in the three following chapters : — ¦
"For" he says — and this "for" clinches the whole argument by showing the
moral fitness which there was for the disannulment of the old imperfect Priest
hood, and the introduction of a tetter hope — " for such a high priest even became
us — holy,2 harmless,3 undefiled,4 separated from sinners,5 and made loftier than
the heavens ; who hath not daily necessity,6 even as those high priests have, first
on behalf of his own sins to offer sacrifices, then on behalf of the sins of the
people : for this He did once for all in offering up himself. For the law
appoints human beings who have infirmity as high priests ; but the utterance of
the oath, which was after the law, appoints a Son, perfected 7 for ever more "
(vii. 26—28).
1 vii. 22 — 25. Comp. Is. lix. 16, and a passage in Philo on the mediation of the " Eldest
Word" (Quisrer. div. haer. Opp. i. 501, ed. Mangey).
* Ps. xvi. 10 ; Acts ii. 27 ; TDPT— " holy " as regards God.
3 Blameless as regards man.
* Comp. ix. 4; 1 Pet. i. 19 ; Lev. xxi. 17.
5 The High Priest was in a general sense " separated " (Lev. x. 10 ; xxii. 2 ; 1 Chr. xxiii. 13 ;
Jos. Antt. iii. 12, § 2), but he was more specially separated for the week before the Day of
Atonement (Yoma, f . 2, a).
6 If this is interpreted to mean that the High Priest offered sacrifices daily, the expression
taken literally is inaccurate ; for, normally, the High Priest only offered sacrifices once a year,
as the writer seems to have been well aware (ix. 25 ; x. 1, 3). Various ways have been suggested
for meeting the difficulty; e.g., (a) that "daily" means "one fixed day every year"; or (/3)
" often," since it appears that the High Priest might, if he chose, offer sacrifices on other occa
sions (Lev. vi. 19—22 ; Jos. B. J. v. 5, § 7), or might be represented by one of his sons ; or that
the expression is, as Bengel says, " ihdignabunda hyperbole." — But if the expression refers
either to the daily meat-offerings— the " Mincha" — (Ex. xxix. 38 — 42; Lev. vi. 13—16, 20;
Ecclus. xiv. 11), or to the morning and evening sacrifices in which he might, if he chose, take'
part, there can be no question that these, so far as we can lind any trace in the Law, had
nothing to do with the expiation of sins. On the other hand, the High Priest might, if he
chose, offer the daily incense, which was regarded as partly expiatory (Lev. xvii. 1], 12). " We
are taugbt," says the Talmud, *' that incense atones " (Num. xvii. 12), the silent smoke atoning
for slanders spoken in a whisper (Yoma, f. 44, a). Some, again, have supposed that it was a
custom for the High Priest to take part in daily expiatory sacrifices, in the Temple of Onias at
Leontopolis, in Lower Egypt, and that the writer is thinking of this Temple — a conjecture of
the most baseless kind. It is certain that Philo uses the same expression exactly, for he speaks
of the High Priests " offering on each day prayers and sacrifices " (De Spec. Legg. § 23 ; see, too,
in the Talmud, Chagigah, ii. 4 ; Pesachim, f. 57, a). It may, however, be doubted whether
there is any inaccuracy in the mind of the writer, for he possibly means that " Christ had no
need to offer sacrifices for daily sins, as the High Priests had year by year to offer a sacrifice for
the sins which they daily committed.
7 Ver. 5, 6, 9; ii. 10; Pss. ii., ex. The rendering "consecrated" (in our version) is taken
from Lev. xxi. 10 j Ex. xxix. 9, "but is much less appropriate.

226 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
SECTION V.
• THE DAY OF ATONEMENT.
It is evident that in this passage the thoughts of the writer are
passing from Melchizedek to the Levitic High Priest in his grandest
function on the Day of Atonement. The ideal of his whole position on
that day was that he should be free from every ceremonial pollution as
a type of his freedom from every stain of sin and wrong. In order to
represent as fully as possible this ideal cleanness, he had to be accom
panied, and kept awake all the previous night, and had on the day
itself to submit to five washings and ten purifications. The Day of
Atonement was so memorable in its symbolism — it stirred so intensely
the hopes or fears of the people — it was supposed to be attended by so
many supernatural omens, on the presence or absence of which the
whole welfare of the people depended during the ensuing year — the
anxiety caused by any accident which impaired the due ceremonies was
so extreme — that the Jews regarded no precaution as extravagant which
could ensure the due performance of the requisite ceremonial. It was a
shock to the feelings of the whole nation when, on one occasion, the
High Priest Ishmael Ben Phabi had been incapacitated from his func
tions because, in spite of all the long and elaborate endeavours to make
his legal cleanliness complete, he had after all become ceremonially un
clean, and had been compelled to depute his Sagan to perform the most .
memorable of his yearly duties. In this instance the pollution had
arisen because he had been conversing with the Arab ethnarch Hareth
(Aretas), and a speck of the Emir's saliva had touched the High Priest's
beard. It was impossible, therefore, by any amount of lustrations or
isolation to secure so small a matter as the ceremonial cleanness of the
High Priest for even one day in all the year ; but Jesus was morally, in
inmost reality, and for all eternity, that which the human Priest could
not be even ceremonially, even in semblance, even for a single day — the
sinless offerer of one all-sufficient offering for the sins of all the world.
Having exhausted the comparison of the Priesthood of Christ with
that of the Levites, the writer proceeds to a comparison of their respec
tive ministrations, which continues to chap. x. 18.
"But the chief point in all we are Baying is this:1 Such is the High Priest
whom we have, who sat on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens,2 a
minister of the sanctuary8 and of the genuine tahernacle4 whiqh the Lord
1 Tlie context shows that Kefpabaiov here cannot mean " summary," for it is "by no means a
summary, and it also adds fresh particulars. The word is here used in its proper classical
sense of " chief point" (Thuc. iv. 50 ; vi. 10). Dr. Field would render it, " Now to crown (or
sum up) our present discourse " (Ottum Norvicense. iii. 141).
2 On this sonorous amplification see ante, p. 224, n. The kicdOio-ev seems to he a mark of em
phatic pre-eminence (comp. x. 11, 12).
3 This is probably the meaning of rwv kymv here as elsewhere in this Epistle (ix. 8, 12, etc.,
x. 19, xiii. 11), and not " of the saints " (GScumenius) or " of holy things."
* The ideal Archetypal (AKiflwis) Tabernacle is not only real (i.Kifi'ni), but the perfected

A NEW COVENANT. 227
pitched, not man. For every High Priest is appointed to offer "both gifts and
sacrifices ; whence it is necessary that this High Priest also have something which
he may offer.1 Now, K he were upon earth, he would not be a, priest at all,2 since
there are priests already who offer the gifts according to the law3 — the priests who
serve an outline and shadow of the heavenly things ; even as Moses when about to
complete the tabernacle has been Divinely admonished 4 — for See, he says, that thou
make all things 5 according to the pattern 6 shown thee in the mount. But now he has
obtained a better ministration in proportion7 as he is also a mediator8 of a better
covenant — one which has been constituted upon better promises.9 For had that first
covenant been faultless,10 no place would have been sought for a second " (viii. 1 — 7).
But — as he goes on to argue — place has been sought for a second,
and this is sufficiently demonstrated by the passage of the Prophet
Jeremiah u in which, by way of blame 12 to his countrymen, he says, that
the days should come when Jehovah would accomplish K for Israel and
Judah a New Covenant, unlike the one which He made for their fathers
in the day when He took them by the hand to lead them forth from
Egypt — and that because they did not abide in His Covenant, therefore
He rejected them.14 But in the coming days the covenant which He
would make would be marked by three great blessings,* which were but
partially understood by a few of the most enlightened under the Old
Covenant- — namely, the writing of the Law not on granite slabs, but on
their hearts ; 15 the immediate knowledge of God by all withqut human
reality of its material counterpart (comp. ix. 24, x. 22 ; John i. 9) . To see in this Tahernacle
*' the glorified, body of Christ " is to give it here too special a meaning.
1 Namely the Blood of His own finished sacrifice (ix. 14).
2 Not even aPriest, much less a High Priest.
3 The present tenses, here as elsewhere, seem to show decisively that the Epistle was written
before the fall of Jerusalem.
* Kexpri^drla-TaL. The use of the perfect is due to the writer's mode of rpgarding everything
which has been said iu tbe Bible as a present actuality (iv. 9, etc.). For the meaning of the
word itself see Luke1 ii. 26 ; Acts x. 22 ; Matt. ii. 12, 22.
5 Ex. xxv. 40. In the Hebrew and LXX. it is simply "make it," not " all things ; " but this
remarkable variation is due to Philo (De Leg. Allegg. iii. 33).
6 It seems to be a very idle enquiry whether this pattern was something real, or only an
idea, so that the Tabernacle was " a shadow of a shadow," or only a vision. These are questions
which would not so much as occur either to Moses or to the writer, and are in any case otiose
because incapable of being decided. The notion that there is in Heaven a real Tabernacle of
which, that erected by Moses was an exact counterpart—" a fiery ark, and a fiery candlestick, and a
fiery table," which descended from Heaven for Moses to see — is mere Rabbinic letter worship
and. superstition, founded on au abuse of the most ordinary principles of human language.
? This method of stating results by proportions is found in other passages of this Epistle
(i. 4, iii. 3, vii. 22) .
8 A mediator between God and man, as the Introducer of the New Covenant. Philo applies
the same term to Moses (comp. Gal. iii. 19, 20 ; 1 Tim. ii. 5).
3 Better promises, because, as Theodoret says, the promises of the Mosaic dispensation—
a land flowing with milk and honey, multitudes of children, etc. — were mostly temporal, but
the new dispensation promised the kingdom of Heaven and Eternal Life.
io Whereas it was '* weak and unprofitable " (vii. 18).
11 Jer. xxxi. 31 — 34 (comp. Ezek. xxxvi. 25—27). It forms, says Delitzsch, " tho third part
of the third trilogy of the three great trilogies • into which the prophecies of Jeremiah may be
divided." The reference evidently is. to the days of the Messiah.
13 The object of n.e/x^dju.ei'os is not expressed, but probably it is avrols. Comp. 2 Mace. ii. 7.
13 avvreKetrio is used for the less emphatic Siaflrjcrojuai of the LXX., as a rendering of the
Hebrew phrase, "to at a covenant" (rvUiTOl.
14 In our E. V. it stands (Jer. xxxi. 22), although I was a husband to them" (lit. "a lord,"
asinHos. ii. 16; comp. Jer iii. 14; Is. lxii. 4). ButthequotationisfromtheLXX., which either
foUows a different reading (^rbsi), or takes another meaning of the verb Th^i, which is perhaps
tenable, as Kimchi asserts.
is viii. 8—13. Even the Rabbis, in their moments of saner exegesis, anticipated a day when the
Law should cease to be. This they .inferred from Deut. xxxi. 21. R. Bechai, on this verse, argues
that the Law " shall be forgotten " when " the evil impulse M (the yetzer fca-rd) ceases to exist.

228 THE EARLY DATS OF CHRISTIANITY.
intervention ; and the final pardon of sins. Such was to be the New
Covenant which God promised. The fact that He called it " new " was
a making the existing dispensation old,1 and the fact of its being thus
regarded as "old" showed that it was hastening to final decay — that
the decree of dissolution had been passed upon it.
After this digression the writer resumes the subject on which he had
touched in viii. 6 — the superiority of the ordinances of ministration in
the New Covenant over those which had been appointed in the Old.
He wishes to prove, above all, the transcendent efficacy of Christ's
high-priestly atonement as compared even with the most solemn sacri
fices and the most sublime ceremonial of Jewish worship. To this he
hastens as to the very heart of his subject, not pausing to explain any
minor details of the Jewish sanctuary and its service, though these had
a deep interest for him, and he would have been as admirably fitted as
Philo himself to bring out the allegoric meaning of every shadowy type
of the Mosaic dispensation. This, however, would have been impossible
in a letter, and would have dissipated the attention of his readers, which
he wished to concentrate on one central consideration. If he could but
convince them that " Christ was the end of the Law " — that by His
sacrifice all other sacrifices had been rendered needless — that His resur
rection and ascension robbed of all its meaning the splendid ceremonial
of the Day of Atonement, which was the crowning event of the Jewish
year — then it would be impossible for them to relapse into Judaism out
of any admiration for the ordinary routine of its liturgical appliances.
"To resume, then, even the first (covenant)2 had its ordinances of pnhlic
worship,3 and its sanctuary — a worldly one.4 For a tahernacle was established; the
outer one, in which is 6 the lampstand,6 and the table, and the setting forth of the
Bhewbread7 — which is called the holy place.8 Bat behind the second veil 9 was the
1 This is the same argument as in vii. 11, etc.
2 There can be no reasonable doubt that " Covenant " (Siafl^ioj) and. not " Tabernacle "
(o-K-nvrf), as in our text, is the proper word to supply with i) irpviTn. It is true that o-ia]vrj is read
by the Coptic Version and one or two cursive MSS., probably from the mistaken supposition
that irpurn means " first," and not "outer," in ver. 8. But the author has been thinking all
along of two Covenants, not of two Tabernacles, and the Heavenly Tabernacle as in no sense a
second Tabernacle, but the first in order as in pre-eminence.
3 ix. 1 ; Leitourgia ; hence our " liturgy." The classic meaning of the word was a. public
service rendered to the State.
4 KotrpLtKov — i.e., " visible," "material," " temporary," in contrast to the one which was not
of this world. The notion of Schottgen and Bp. Middleton that K osmikon is a Rabbinic expres
sion for " furniture " is mistaken.
5 I supply " is " and not "<iuas," because the writer uses the present (AeysTeu, elo-iaa-iv, etc.),
in accordance with the vivid presentment to his imagination of everything mentioned in
Scripture, as though it were eternally existent. (See on vii. 6—8, etc.)
6 Ex. xxv. 81 — 37. The writer is thinking throughout of the Mostdc Tabernacle, not of the
Temples of Solomon or Herod, In Solomon's Temple there were ten lampstands (1 Kings vii.
49). In tbe second Temple there was only one (1 Mace. i. 21 ; iv. 49 ; Jos. Antt xii. 7, § 6).
7 The table has no importance except for the shewbread, or " Bread of the Face " (of God),
rendered by the LXX. " Loaves of the Setting forth " (see Uen. xxv. 23— 30; Lev. xxiv. 5—9).
There were ten of these acacia-wood tables overlaid with gold in Solomon's Temple (2 Chr. iv.
8, 19). 8 Probably otyia, " Holy (places)," neut. pi. ; not a.y,a, fern. sing. He uses the generic name.
9 The ourtaiu culled Paroketh hung 1 <etween the Holy Place aud the Holiest (iix. xxvi. 31 —
35) : the other curtain, called M,hak (Ex. xxvi. 36, 37), huug before the Tabernacle door. The
LXX. in somo places call buth these curtains leaTan-eVacr/ia, and in other passages use KaKvppa or
k-Triciraarpov for the outer one. Philo also in one place ( Fit. Jfos. iii. 9) calls the outer one
KaKvp.pa. The Rabbis often speak of two curtains between the Holy and the Holiest Placet

SYMBOLISM OP THE TABERNACLE. 229
tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies.l having a golden incenser,2 and the
ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which are a golden pot
holding the manna, and the rod of Aaron which budded, and tho tables of the
covenant; and above it the cherubim of glory overshadowing the propitiatory,
respecting which. things I cannot now speak generally " (ix. 1 — 5).
"We must follow the example of the writer in not being tempted to
linger over the facts upon which he here slightly touches. Doubtless,
had he been able to expand the symbolism of the Tabernacle he would
have elucidated points which are still dark to us. "We are, however,
able to see something of the meaning of the Holiest Place, with the few
things which it contained. It was always shrouded in darkness, except
for the moment Tvhen the High Priest lifted the curtain to enter its
awful precincts. No window or opening of any kind admitted into it a
single ray of light, and the interior was only visible to the High Priest
in the crimson gleam of the thurible from which rose , the clouds of
fragrant incense. But in the Ark, containing the granite slabs on which
were carved the Ten Words of Sinai — with the Propitiatory above it3
and the " Cherubim of glory " 4 bending over it, we cannot fail to recog
nise an emblem of all that is highest and best in Creation upholding the
throne of the Eternal, and rapt in adoring contemplation of that Moral
Law which is the revelation of His will.
It is, however, to be borne in mind that what the writer says of the
furniture of the Temple is applicable primarily to the Tabernacle, and,
only in a lower degree, to the Temple of Solomon. As an Alexandrian,
he had no personal knowledge of the ritual, but derived his views from
the Pentateuch. To the Herodian Temple of his own clay, and even to
the Temple of Zerubbabel, his description is not applicable. In the
Holiest Place of the later Temple there was nothing.5 The Ark had
disappeared at the time of the Babylonian captivity. When Pompey,
nearly a hundred years before, had, to the horror of the Jews, profanely
forced his way into the inmost shrine, he had been amazed to find that
with a sort of lobby — a space of a cubit's breadth — between them, called the Tarkesin. The
derivation of the won] is much disputed. Some connect it with the Greek Tapanis, " confusion."
because the builders were "confused" as to whether it belonged to the Holy Place or the
Holiest; and there are oiher conjectures equally improbable. The fact itself is more than
doubtful As t<> the VarSkeih, or Inner Veil, the Rabbis said that it was a hand-breadth thick,
woven of 72 cords each 24 strands thick ; that it was 40 cubits long, and 20 wide ; that it took
300 priests to draw it, etc. (Chullin, f. 90, b).
1 'Ayia ayituv, like the Latin Soncta Sanctorum, is a literal rendering of the Hebrew Kodesh
hak-Kedashim, for which one version uses "Most Holy," or "the Holy Place." la Solomon's
Temple it was called "the Oracle."
» See infra. I use this word in order not to prejudice the question as to whether it means
Thurible or Altar of Incense.
3 The word iKa<nripiov, "propitiatory," is a rendering of the Hebrew cappdreth, which means
a " covering." It is translated " mercy seat " in our version from the notion that it implied
the covering of sins, and the LXX. selected the wood ihao-Tiwov, or kirtdepui, to represent it,
because upon it was sprinkled the blood of the propitiatory offering.
* The expression means much more than " glorious Cherubim." It no doubt means the
Cherubim which bear on their winss the Glory of God, the shechinah or Cloud of Light which
was the symbol of His Presence (Hasr. ii. 7—9 ; Meuschen, p. 701). Even the Jews spoke of the
passage in Ezekiel which describes the Cherubim as " the chariot," and it was a favourite
passage with the Kanbalists.
5 Jos. B. J. V. 5, § 5 ; exeiTO Se oiifiep oAus kv aury.

230 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
there was nothing whatever — vacua omnia 1 The mass of native rock
on which the Ark had once stood — called by the Rabbis " the stone of
the foundation" — alone was visible. The absence of everything else
perhaps originated the notion that the Jews worshipped " nothing except
clouds and the Deity of Sky," just as the living creatures which formed
part of the Cherubim may have helped to give currency to the old
ignorant Pagan slander that they worshipped an ass.
Two questions are raised by this brief glance at the furniture of the
Tabernacle, which we are bound to examine because they affect the
accuracy of the Epistle, and have been supposed to bear on the question
of its authorship.
I. Of these the minor question is, Has not the writer fallen into a
mistake in saying that the Ark contained not only the Tables of the
Law, but also the golden pot of manna,1 and Aaron's rod that budded 1
Speaking of Solomon's Temple, the First Book of Kings (viii. 9) 2 says
that " there was nothing in the Ark save the two tables of stone, which
Moses put there at Horeb ; " and in Ex. xxv. 16, 21 ; xl. 20, we are
told that he put " the testimony '' into the Ark. Neither in those
passages, nor in Deut. x. 2, 5, are we told that he put anything besides.3
But in Ex. xvi 33, 34, Moses is bidden to lay up a pot of manna, and
in Num. xvii. 10, to lay up Aaron's rod which budded, " before the
testimony," and " before the Lord." Since these expressions are not
defined, it is obvious that they may have been interpreted to mean either
in the Ark or in front of it. It is idle to contend that there would have
been no roomvfor them inside the Ark when we have no indication as
to the size of the tables of stone. In these small matters much was left
to the discretion of the High Priests. The statement of the Book of
Kings only applies to Solomon's Temple, and since the writer of this
Epistle is not thinking of Solomon's Temple, but only of the Tabernacle,
he may be following a trustworthy tradition in stating that these
memorials had in former days been placed inside the Ark. They might
have been removed when the Ark was hurried from place to place in the
troublous times of the Judges — lest the frailer objects should have been
i The word rendered " pot " is o-rapvos. It sepms to mean a jar with a tapering base. The
Palestine Targum calls it "earthen," but Jewish tradition always spoke of it as made of
gold, and the epithet " golden " is added by tbe LXX. in Ex. xvi. 3-t, as also by Philo. Perhaps
a golden pot, was substituted for the earthen one in Solomon's Temple. It contained one
" omer " of manna, which was tlie daily portion for each person (Ex. xvi. 16, 32).
2 Comp. 2 Chr. v. 10.
3 The Talmud says the tables of stone were "sU handbreadths long, s»'.e broad, and tZiree
thick " (Nedarim, f. 38, a), and they weighed, according to the Targuui of Palestine, 40 seahs.
But the Talmudic estimate is probably very excessive. The Talmud says further that the
broken Tab'on, as well as the new ones, were stored up in the Ark — which Kashi inferred from
Dent. x. 2 (Heraclioth, f. 8, b; Kethuboth, f. 101, a) — and also the Roll of tbe Law, written by
Moses (Bava Bathra, f. 14, a). As to the disappearance of the Ark, they say that Josiah hid it
because of Deut. xxviii. 36, and this tbey inferred lrom2 Chr. xxxv. 3 (Yoma, f. ¦t>2, b). but "the
foundation-stone " was supposed still to remain three inches above the soil. A prif*t who. by the
condition of the plaster, conjectured th« spot iu the wo d-store where tbe Ark was hidden,
died immediately ; aud once when a priest was in the wood-store, he happened to drop his
chopper on tho spot above where it was hidden, whereon fire sprang forth and consumed bim.
The stone on which it had rested was believed to be (like the omphalos at Delphi) the centre of
the world (see Hershon, Tahnudio Miscellany, etc.)

THE TABLES IN THE ARK. 231
broken to pieces by the slabs of stone. Nothing was farther from the
intention of the Rabbis than the desire to vindicate the accuracy of the
Christian writer who directed against them so powerful a polemic ; yet
Rabbi Levi Ben Gershom, Abarbanel, and others, testify to the existence
of the tradition which is here followed.1 There is, therefore, no neces
sity for the theory of Michaelis that the " in which " is the mistake of
some one who was translating the Epistle into Greek from the Aramaic
original. There is still less room for the suggestion of Danzius and
others, supported by expressions which are not at all parallel, that " in
which " can mean " together with which." It would be better to acknow
ledge a difficulty than to remove it by such desperate expedients. In
this case there is no difficulty. In the Temple of our Lord's day there
was no Ark at all ; 2 in the Temple of Solomon the manna-pot and the
rod were probably placed in front of the Ark ; but in the Tabernacle of
the Wilderness there can be little doubt that these objects were actually
inside the Ark, as the writer says.
II. But it is asserted that he made a mistake in saying that the
" thumiaterion " was in the Holy of Holies. The word which he uses is
rendered " censer " in our version.3 It does not occur4 in the Greek
version of the Pentateuch, where the " altar of incense " is called to
8vo-ia.a-Tr)ptov dufuipaTos (Ex. xxxi. 8 ; Luke i. 11). But the LXX. use it
in 2 Chron. xxvi. 19; Ezek. viii. 11, and in both of these places it
means "censer." The Rabbis assert that the High Priest used on all
other days a silver censer, but a golden one on the Day of Atonement.5
On the other hand, in Philo and Josephus the word thumiaterion means
the "altar of incense," and this might be called "golden," though in
reality it was only of acacia-wood overlaid with gold.6 Considering how
deeply the author is influenced by Philo, and also that in the Hellenistic
Greek of his day — from Josephus to Clemens of Alexandria — the word
is used for the " altar of .incense," it is most probable that this is here
the meaning. But since both "censer" and "altar of incense" are
closely connected with the ceremonies of the great Day of Atonement,
of which the writer is here thinking, we cannot come to any positive
decision as to which of the two he meant.
But now occurs the further difficulty — Were either of these objects
in the Holiest Place 1
a. As regards the censer, if that be the meaning here intended, it
may have been kept in the Holiest, and, though we cannot corroborate
the assertion from other sources, the writer may be following a correct
Jewish tradition in saying that it was. Or, again, the name may have
1 See Wetstein, ad loc. The reader will find a full discussion of these particulars in Pri-
deaux's Connection, i. 138.
2 Yoma, v. 2; Snrenhusius, Mishna, ii. 233.
3 And in tbe Vulgate, Syriac, Arabic, and .33thiopic ; and the word is so understood by Theo-
phylact, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Grotius, "Wetstem, Bengel, Relaud, Stier, &c.
* Except as a various reading.
s Yoma, iv. 4.
• In Solomon's Temple it was of cedar-wood.

232 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
been given to some permanent golden censer-stand in the Holiest Place
on which the High Priest placed the small brazier or shovel-shaped basin
(machettah, LXX. pureion) which he carried with him when he stood
before the Ark on the Day of Atonement.
p. As regards the altar of incense, if we assume that to be the
meaning of the word, there is no question that it was not in the Holiest.
No tradition ever asserted, nor could have asserted, that it was. If the
writer meant that it was, he then made a mistake which even in an
Alexandrian Jew would be almost inconceivable, and as to which Philo,
with whose writings he was so familiar, would have set him right.1 But
it may be fairly argued that he. did not mean to say that the incense-
altar was inside the Holiest Place. If ho did, why does he go out of
his way to vary the expression 1 He tells us that the manna-pot and
the rod were " in the Ark," but he only says that the Holiest Place
" had " the thumiaterion and the Ark, and we cannot assert that the
change of phrase is due to the rhetorical desire for variation. The phrase
" having " may therefore be adopted to apply not only to the Ark which
was inside the Holiest, but also to the altar which, though not actually
inside, was close outside the veil, and was intimately associated with the
Holiest, not only in the use to which it was put, but also by the express
language of Scripture. On the Day of Atonement, when the Veil was
drawn, the altar of incense might be said, in the strictest sense, to belong
to the Holiest Place.2
" Since then these things have been thus arranged, into the outer tabernacle the
priests enter continually in the performance of their ministrations ;3 but into the
inner, once in a year,4 the High Priest alone, not without blood, which he offers on
his own behalf and for the ignorances5 of the people :6 the Holy Spirit signifying
this, that the entrance into the Holiest had not yet been manifested, while yet the
1 Philo, De Diet. off. § 4.
8 See Excursus XI. " The Altar of Incense and the Holiest Place." If this view be correct,
and certainly it cannot be disproved — the exovo-a will be equivalent to the Hebrew 7, in the
sense of "belonging to," in 1 Kings vi. 22 ("the altar which was "V2^7 to the Oracle ").
3 Num. xviii. 7. The ordinary priestly duties were to offer sacrifice, burn incense, and light
the lamps. No priest might enter the Holiest, except the Sagan, and then only iu most excep
tional circumstances ; but the High Priest might perform any of the ordinary functions if he
chose. The graduated sanctity of the rest of the Tabernacle — which gave its special awfulness
to the Holiest— was remarkable. In the Temple all might enter the outmost court; all Jews
the second court ; all males tbe third ; priests alone, in their robes, might enter the first cham
ber ; the High Priest alone, in bis robes, might enter the shrine (Jos. c Apion, ii. 8).
* Undoubtedly the High Priest must actually have entered into the Holiest three times
(Lev. xvi. 12—16), if not four times (Yoma, v. 2 ; vii, 2), on the Day of Atonement (the 10th of
Tishri)— viz. (1) with the incense; (2) with tbe blood of the bnllock offered for his own sins ;
(3) w th the blood of the goat offered for the sins of the people ; and (4) to remove the censer.
But these entrances were practically only one, as they were but parts of one grand ceremony.
There was no need of pragmatic accuracy when this would be at once understood by every
reader. On such matters the ancients, and especially Semitic writers, cared much less than the
moderns for pedantic exactness.
5 No doubt ayvo-fipa-ra is used generally to include sins and errors of all kinds (v. 2, 3 ; vii. 27 ;
Ex. xxxiv. 7).
6 I have rendered the Grpek literally, but no doubt i/irkp kavrov means "for his own sins,"
aud, as we learn from Lev. xvi. 6, 11, for Those of bis house. Th>j confession of the High Priest
was ma'le in the following terms : " And now, 0 Lord, I have sinned, and done iniqnit.i , and
trespassed before Theo. I pray, therefore, 0 Lord, cover my sins and iniquities and trespasses,
whorein I have sinned, offended, and trespassed against Thee 1 "

CHRIST AS HIGH PRIEST. 233
outer Tabernacle stands L— which, outer Tabernacle is a parable for the present time,
in accordance with which (parable) 2 both gifts and sacrifices are offered, such as are
not able as far as conscience is concerned to perfect the worshipper ; 3 seeing that
they consist only in meats and drinks, and divers washings 4 — 'being ordinaaces of
the flesh, imposed (only) till the season of reformation"5 (ix. 6 — 10).
" But Christ having appeared, a High Priest of the good things to come,6 through
the greater and more perfect Tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this
(visible) creation' nor even by means of the blood of bulls and. goats, but by means
of His own blood, entered once for all into the Holiest Place, obtaining for us eternal
redemption.8 For if the blood of goats and bulls,9 and the ashes of a heifer sprink
ling the defiled , 10 sanctifies to the purity of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of
the Christ,11 who through an eternal Spirit12 offered Himself without blemish 13to G-od,
purify your conscience from dead works1* to serve the living G-od ?" 15 (ix. 11 — 14.)
"And on this account" — i.e., because of the greatness of His work — "He is a
mediator of a new covenant, that — when death had occurred for the redemption of
the transgressions under the first covenant — they who have been called may receive
the promise of the eternal inheritance. For where there is a testament it is necessary
that there should be legally involved the death of the testator. For a testament is
of force in the case of the dead — since is there any validity in. it when the testator
lives ?"16(ix. 15—17.)
1 The outer Tabernacle was tlie place of the priests in general, who might not penetrate
further. " Stands "—the present is used in accordance with the general idiom of the Epistle.
See supra, p. 2Uii, n. The writer throws himself vividly into the past, and so he conceives of all
the contemplated arrangements as still existing.
2 Leg. Ka$' r\v ; A, B, D, etc.
3 The "parable," or typical meaning, of the Tabernacle and its service is this : The object
of the tifts and sacrifices is to obtain entrance into God's presence ; but since the Holiest is not
opened by them, the result is not obtained ; which shows that the worshippers, so far as their
inmost hearts are concerned, are not perfected.
4 Meats (Ex. xii ; Lev. xi. ; Num. vi. ) ; drinks (Lev. x. 9 ; Num. vi. 3) j divers washings (vi.
2 ; Ex. xix. 10, 11 ; xxix. 4 ; Lev. xv. 8 ; xvii. 5 ; xxii. 5). See on both classes of observance the
teachin g of Christ (Mark vii. 1 — 15).
5 ix. 6' — 10. It is not meant that tbe system of sacrifices was useless, but only that in them
selves — and apart from the grace of G-od which might be imparted by their faithful use — they
could n<>t give perfect ease and peace, or gain admission for the worshipper into the presence of
God. There is probably a slight sense of painful burden in the word iiriKeCfxeva (comp. Acts xv.
10). The "reformation" (SLopBioo-ts) is that prophesied by Jeremiah (see viii. 7 — 12). Various
other ways of translating this clause have been suggested, but the one which I have adopted
seems to me so much the more correct that I do not mention others.
fi In B and D we have the reading " good things that have come " (yevop-evtov).
7 Comp. viii. 2. But here it seems best, with Chrysostom and many of the Fathers, to under
stand this Tabernacle, through which Christ passed, of His Human Nature (eo-Kvjvtocrev, John i,
14 ; comp. ii. 19 ; xiv. 10 ; Col. ii. 9). Of the other explanations the best is perhaps that of Bleek,
De Wette, Lfcnemann, etc., who understand it of "the lower heavens" (comp. iv. 14). Moll
renders Sid. " by means of ; " ktutis may mean " building," on the analogy of ktC£io, but in that
case TavTTjs must mean "vulgar," " ordinary "— quae vulgo dicitur (Field, Oti»m No> vicense, iii. 142).
8 Avrptao-iv, "ransom," with its cognate words, occurs in ver. 15 andxi. 35; Matt. xx. 28; Lute
xxi. 28 ; xxiv. 21 ; 1 Tim. ii. 5 ; Tit. ii. 14 ; 1 Pet. i. 18. The metaphor applies "onlv t.i the effects
of the Redemption a-s regards man, whom it sets tree from the bondage of sin. So little is the
notion of its Divine side dwelt upon, that it is never said to whom the ransom is paid, and for
many centuries the Church in general held the strange and grievous notion that it was paid to
Satan. s Lev. xvi.
10 See Num. xix. 9 (comp. xii. 24). Thus, in this verse he refers, by way of example, to the
two most significant ceremonies of the Jewish Law.
n The bio' >d of Chri-t was the true fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness (Zech. xiii. 1).
12 Probably His own Spirit is intended — " per ardentissimam caritatem a Spiritu Ejus aeterno
profectam " (GEeulamp.). If we explain it of the Holy Spirit, we must refer, by way of parallel,
to such passages as Matt. xii. 23 ; Luke xi. 20.
13 The word used by the LXX. for sacrificial victims (comp. 1 Pet. i. 19).
14 Comp. vi. 1. Here the expression has possibly a slight reference to the dead things which
caused pollution under the Levitical Law. Tbe writer does not here attempt to ex f. lain the
mystery of the efficacy of Christ's blood, which is indeed, on the Divine side, inexplicable; he
only dwells on it as a reveal d fact— in its effects for us.
i5 ix. 11—14. For the expression "living God" see Deut. xxv. 26.
16 ix. 15—17. The juvjjroTe is most bimply explained by regarding the clause as a question.

234 THE EAKLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
"We must pause for a moment to examine the meaning of the last
two verses. A voluminous controversy has arisen about them, because
we seem to be almost compelled to alter the translation " covenant,"
which throughout the Epistle has been the only tenable rendering of
diatMke, and — in these two verses only — to substitute for it the render
ing testament or will. This has seemed to many commentators a great
difficulty. In the quotation from Jeremiah (xxxi. 31 — 34), which plays
so important a part in the argument of the Epistle, BiaBriKri must mean
" covenant," and this meaning must be retained in the following verses
even as far as verse 15. It may well seem extraordinary that in the
very next verses (16 and 17), and these alone, the different sense — which
is the classical sense of the word — should be introduced. After these
two verses the word evidently reverts to its normal sense. For the Old
Dispensation alluded to in .verse 20 was indeed "a covenant," but could
only be called a "testament" by a remote analogy. Yet, if on these
grounds we resist the concession of a new meaning in the two verses
before us, we have to reconcile with plain facts the statement, that
"when there is a covenant there must also be of necessity the death of
him who made it." This is attempted by arguing that in verse 15 the
death spoken of is the death of Jesus ; that the new covenant was " a
covenant in Christ's blood (1 Cor. xi. 25) ; and that no covenant could
be established without the death of sacrificial victims (Gen xv. 9, 10 ;
Ps. 1. 5), in which the death of the covenanter is implied (rpfpt-o-dai),1
either as a punishment if he should break the compact, or as involving
a total change — a sort of death — as regards the past or the future.' We
should then be obliged to render verse 17 by "a covenant is of force
over dead victims" and to regard Jesus as both the mediator and maker
of the covenant. Thus the death of the covenanter becomes a sort of
ideal conception— an imaginative realisation of the supposed signi6cance
of the sacrifices over which the compact is made.
However ingeniously these arguments may be stated, they attach to
the writer's words a very vague and unnatural sense. I see no alterna
tive but to suppose that the writer does in these two verses introduce a
sort of side light from the classical meaning of the word diatheke, which
he has elsewhere been using in the ordinary Hellenistic sense.2 These
two verses clo not belong to the essence of his argument. He is com
paring the Old with the New dispensation, and the old with the new
Priesthood. In the Old the High Priest entered the Holiest with the
blood of bulls and goats ; in the New, Christ, as our Redeemer, passed
with His own blood into the immediate presence of Cod. In both
dispensations there was a purifying and propitiatory shedding of blood.
1 Perhaps the word may be rendered " be proved or established "— constare.
2 How completely the illustration is an obiter dictum appears from this— (1) that he does not
even touch upon the fact that Christ did not merely die, but died a violent and shameful and
agonisiilR death; and (2) does not pause to co-ordinate the two senses of diathSU, or (3)
explain the very distant analogy between the nocosfttiy ofa death when there is a "will," and
the (very different) sacri£oe of victims when there is a covenant."

CHANGE OP MEANING. 235
In developing this argument the writer passingly recalls another illustra
tion. The word which he is using has two recognised senses.1 i A
diatheke in the sense of a " covenant " involved the necessity for the
death of sacrificial victims ; a diatheke in the sense of a " will " involved
the necessity for the death of the testator j and he avails himself with
perfect simplicity of this second meaning. To call this a Hellenistic
play on words, or a specimen of sophistry, or a proof of feeble logic, is a
mistaken method of criticism. The writer is not furnishing any proof
of the necessity for Christ's death. If he were, he would have had to
prove why the Christian Dispensation must be regarded' as a diatheke,
which it is unnecessary for him to do. He is writing to those who have
already accepted the truth of Christianity, and to whom, therefore, the
necessity for Christ's death transcends the need of proof. He is com
paring two dispensations, of which his readers are convinced that both
have come from God, and his sole object is to prove the superiority of the
latter. By the double sense of the word he is reminded, in passing,
that death is the condition of inheritance by testament, just as death is
the efficient cause of purification by covenant. " The same death which
purifies us from guilt makes us partakers of the kingdom of glory ; the
same blood which cleanses us from sin seals the testament of our
inheritance." It requires but a slight development of the literary sense
to see that if, in carrying out his comparison, he could illustrate it by a
momentary reference to another meaning of the word with which he is
dealing, he is ' only adopting a method which might be used by any
writer, whether ancient or modern.2
We may now resume the thread of the argument, which we will here
translate, because of the extreme importance of this section of the Epistle.
"Whence" — i.e., "because a " covenant " and a " testament " alike involve the
idea of death ; a covenant being ratified by the death of victims, and a testament
involving the death of the testator — " not even the first covenant has been inau
gurated 3 apart from blood. For when every commandment according to the Law had
been spoken by Hoses to all the people, taking the blood of the calves and the goats,
with water and scarlet wool and hj'ssop, he sprinkled both the book itself and all the
people,4 saying, ' This is the blood of the Covenant which God (Heb. Jehovah) com
manded in regard to you.' 8 And the Tabernacle, and all the vessels of the
1 VH,rl (diithiki) in the Talmud certainly means " a will," and is said also to be used in the
sense of Berith (" covenant "). It is of coarse only the Greek word dvitMkS. though B. Obad.
de Bjitenora offers an astonishing Hebrew derivation for it (see McCaul, ad loc. ). Originally
(Deut. ttj 16) the Jews knew nothing about " wills," but they learnt the use of them from the
Romans. 2 Philo similarly alludes to the two senses of the word (De Nom. Muiat. § 6) . Alford com
pares the term " New Testament " itself as hearing two meanings — a "book," and a "wilL"
No one would accuse an English writer of sophistry or feeble logic if, iu speaking of the Hook, he
introduced a passing illustration from the other meaning of the name by which theBouk is called.
3 iyKeKaCvLO-Toj. — another of the perfects which, with the p'esents, are so characteristic of the
writer. He regards every ordinance of Scripture either as representing a permanent fact, or
as still continuing its past existence. The Alexandrian word iyKOLvi£ut is use'i by the LXX.
(Deut. xx. 5 ; 1 Kings viii. 03), and means to " handsel." Hence the name "Encaenia," for the
feast kf the "Dedication" (John x. 22).
* Ex. xxiv. 3—7. The book of the Covenant was Ex. xx. 22 ; xxiii. 33. See infra, p. 23".
5 n-pbs iipas— i.e., for me to deliver to you. In the LXX for " this is the blood," we ha/e the
more literal rendering, " behold (rrjrt) the blood." Bbhme and others suppose that the varia.

236 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
ministration, did he likewise so sprinVle with the blood,1 and, speaking generally,11
all things are puiified with blood according to the Law, and without bloodshed3
remission does not take place. It is necessary, then, that the outlines* of the things
in the heavens be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves 5 with
sacrifices better than these.6 For not into a material sanctuary did Christ enter — a
(mere) imitation of the ideal7 — but into the Heaven itself, now to be visibly
presented befora the face of God for us. Nor yet did He enter Heaven that He may
often present Himself there as the High Priest enters into the Holiest year by year
with blood not his own — since it would then have been needful 8 for Him often to
suffer since the foundation of the world ; but now, once for all, at the consummation
of the ages9 has He been manifested 1U for the annulment of sin by the sacrifice of
Himself. And, inasmuch as it is appointed for men once only to die, and, after
this judgment, — so also the Christ, having been once for all offered to bear11 the
sins of many,12 shall, a second time, apart from sin,13 appear, to those who wait for
Him, for salvation" 14 (ix. 18—28).
It is -worth, while to notice, in passing, the familiarity of the writer
tion is due to a reminiscence of the words of Christ in inaugurating' the Last Supper, as
recorded in Luke xxii. 20. The writer substitutes 'commanded' (cwTetAaro) for the BUBrro of
the LXX. Tbe Hebrew as usual has " cut " (ma).
1 This was on auother and later occasion, nor recorded in Scripture, but implied in Ex. xl.
2 There were a few exceptions (see Ex. xix. 10 ; Lev. v. 11 — 13 ; xv. 5 ; x-i. 26, 28; xxii. 6;
Num. xxxi. 22 — 24). Sxe'Soi/ is only used elsewhere in Acts xiii. 44 ; xix. 26.
3 De Wette and. others render aVaTeK^uo-ta, " pouring out of bluod," at the foot of the altar
(Ex xxix. 16 ; 2 Kings xvi. 15 ; 2 Chron. xxix. 22, LXX.). But the pouring out of the blood is
secondary ; it is the shedding of the blood which is ot chief importance, and the meaning1 seems
to be decided by Luke xxii. 20, "This cup is the new covenant iu my blood which in being shed
for you ; " and (Lev. xvii. 11), it is tbe blood that maketh an atonement for the soul, ' whence
the Babbinic rule: "No expiation except by bl od"— CD N1?** mED p4 (Yoma, f. 5, h). The
famous passages of the Prophets (Hos. vi. 6 ; Isa. i. I'1 — 17, etc.) are directed not against the use
of sacrifices, but against their abuse.
4 v-rroSeCyp.aTa (iv. 11 ; viii. 5). They were "copies" (Abbilden), not "patterns" (Urbilden).
5 What is meant bv " the heavenly things ? " The no ion that the phrase means " the new
covenant" (Chrys , GScumen.j, or "the ermrch" tThcophyl.), <>r ourselves as heirs of heaven
(Tholuck), are on'y suggested to avoid the difficulty of supiosing that heaven can need any
purification. But the best proof that this natural meaning is the true one may be seen in Job
iv. 18, " His angels He charged with folly."
6 The plural is merely generic.
7 The Ideal ie that which is actual and eternal ; the uncreated archetype as contrasted with
the hand-made antitype. The word aeri-ruTi-os is found only in 1 Pet. iii. 21. The better
sanctuTry is some proof that there was a better sacrifice. It is an argument from the effect to the
cause. 8 eSet. On this idiom, see Winer, § 41. 9 Comp. Matt. xiii. 39, 40, 49 ; xxiv. 3 ; xxviii. 20.
10 ip.tl>avio-Bi}vat. This emphanismos is the actnfil vision face to face (Ex xxxiii. 13). The E. V*.
makes no difference between ifitpavLO-Qrivat (ver. 2J)> Tre^a^'pcoTai (ver. 26), and o^flqaerai (ver. 28).
11 Isa. Ii i. 12. The sense may be " to ta^e auatj" m the Hebrew.
12 OE course this does itot mean that He did not near the sin< of all, as is again andagain stated
in Scripture; but "many" is used»s the antithesis of " few." On e for all. One died for all,
who were (qunutiiively) many. ( ee Life of St. Paul, ii. 216.) Christ may be said both to offer
Himself (v. 14), and to be offered (ver 28i, just as He is said to deliver up Himself for us (Eph.
v. 2), or to be delivered for us (Rom. iv. 25).
13 Not merely " withi >ut sin " (w*.ich would be drep ), but "apart from all connexion with
sin" (comp. vii. H6), either in the form of temptation (iv. 15) or burden (2 Cor. v. 21). At His
first appearance also Christ was " without sin," but H« was not " apart from sin," fjr He was
tempte I like as we are ; and He was made sin for us ; but at His second coming He shall have
triumphed over sin, and taken it awav { Dan ix. 24, 25 ; Is*, xxv. 7 — !>).
11 ix. 1^ — 28. Iu this, as in so maay other cases, it is remnrkable how evidently the sanred
writers, as a rule, avoid dwelling on ihe more terrible features of the Second Advent. "How
shall He le seen ? " says St Chrysostoin. * Does He say, as a Punisher ? He did not say this,
but the bright aspect." Their normal conception ¦ f the ¦ et"rning Christ wus not the wrathful
avenging figure of Michael Aug- lo, with H>s rhjht band uplifted as He turns away from His
interceding in ther. to drive the lost myriads nf humtinity in deus^ herds before Him, but the
Deliverer bringing glory and salvanou to nil His children. It is not that they exclude the other
notion, alt gether (x. 27; 1 Thess iv. 16; 2 Thess. i. *-}, hut they do not love to dwellonit. The
parallelism <>f these two vers s is as follows: — Mun d;es once, and then is judged; the Christ
died once for man, ami shall return to be (he might have said " the Judge," but he does say,
"the Saviour of those who look for Him."

THE DAT OF ATONEMENT. 237
with the Jewish Hagada and Halacha — that is, with the unrecorded
circumstances which Jewish tradition added to the History or to the
Ceremonial Law of the Sacred Books. In this chapter there are five or
six references to one or the other. He has already said (1) that the pot
of manna was of gold, and (2) that it and the rod of Aaron were in the
Ark ; and (3) that there was a close connexion between the altar of
incense and the Holiest Place. . In these latter verses he mentions (4)
that Moses purified the people with the blood of the goats (which may
be presumed to have been among the burnt-offerings mentioned in Ex.
xxiv. 5) ; (5) that the sprinkling was done with water, scarlet wool, and
hyssop (perhaps on the analogy of Ex. xii. 22, Num. xix. 6, Lev. xiv.
4^ — 6, etc.) ; (6) that the Book of the Covenant was sprinkled as well as
the people — perhaps from the Hagada that the book was lying on the
altar when Moses sprinkled it (Ex. xxiv. 7) ; and (7) that on a subse
quent occasion he sprinkled the Tabernacle and all its furniture. The
latter circumstance is mentioned by Josephus.1 It was probably done
when Moses (Ex. xl. 9, 10) anointed the Tabernacle and its implements
with holy oil. By a similar sprinkling Aaron and his sons were conse
crated to their sacred functions (Lev. viii. 30), and the altar was touched
with blood to hallow it for use. These seven references to the traditional
lore of the Rabbis incidentally mark the writer as an accomplished
"pupil of the wise."
But far more important is the general scope of this chapter as
proving the unapproachable superiority of Christ's priesthood over that
of the sons of Aaron.
If any one desired to contemplate the Levitical high priesthood in its
grandest phase — to realise its antiquity, its sacredness, the splendour of
its ministrations, and the awful sense of responsibility with which its
representative was bound to fulfil its functions — he would naturally have
turned his thoughts to the great Day of Atonement — that " Sabbath of
Sabbatism " — which was the most memorable day of the Jewish year.
It was the day of expiation for the sins of the whole people, and
was observed as a perfect Sabbath.2 It was the one fast-day of the
Jewish calendar.3 It was emphatically " the day." The seventy
bullocks prescribed for sacrifice during this week were supposed to
be an atonement not for Jews only, but for the seventy nations of the
world.4 It was supposed that on New Year Day (Tishri 1) the Divine decrees
are written down, and that on the Day of Atonement (Tishri 10) they
are sealed,5 so that the decade is known by the name of " Terrible
1 Antt. iii. 8, § 6. On the whole passage see especially Bleek's Commentary. Philo, Be Vit.
Mos. iii. 18 {Opp. ii. IW, ed. Mangeyj is referred to, but he does not make this statement.
* Lev. xvi. 31: pnllD ni«.
s The bi-weekly fasts of the Pharisees in the days of Christ were a later invention. (See
Life of Christ, i 349.)
* Sucoah, f . 55, i>.
' Bosh Hashanah, f . 16, a.

238 THE EAELT DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
Days," and " the Ten Penitential Days." So awful was the Day of
Atonement that we are told in a Jewish book of ritual that the
very angels run to and fro in fear and trembling, saying, " Lo, the Day
of Judgment has come ! " It was not until that day that the full
pardon was granted which repentance had insured.1 On that day
the year of Jubilee was proclaimed. On that day alone the people
came early to the synagogues and left .them late.2 On that day alone,
they said, Satan has no power to accuse, for Ha-Satan by numeration
(Gematria) is 364, which means that on the one remaining day of
the year he is forced to be silent.3 To die on the eve of that day
was a good omen.4 It was supposed to be the day on which Adam
had sinned and repented ; on which Abraham was circumcised ; on
which the latter tables had been given to Moses.6 It was supposed by
some to secure pardon for most sins even uritlwut repentance, and
indeed, according to Rabbi Judah Hakkodesh, for all sins except
apostasy.6 The Gentiles are said to have committed a fatal and
suicidal error in destroying the Altar, because it made atonement even
for them, which was now impossible.7 Three books, it was said, are
opened on New Year's Day — one for the perfectly wicked, one for
the perfectly righteous, and one for the intermediate class. The first
are sealed to death, and the second to life ; the fate of the third is
suspended till the Day of Atonement.8
Nothing could exceed the solicitude with which the High Priest was
prepared for the sacred functions of the day. Seven days before it
came he was removed from his own residence to the chamber of the
President of the Sanhedrin, and he appointed a Sagan, or deputy,
to act for him in case of his being incapacitated by any Levitic
impurity. When the Elders of the Sanhedrin had read over to
him the duties of the day, they said, " My Lord High Priest, read
for thyself, read for thyself; perhaps thou hast forgotten, or never
learnt it." On the day before, he was taken to the east gate, and with
bullocks, rams, and lambs, actually before him, was instructed what
to do. Towards the dusk of the last evening he was only allowed
to eat little, lest he should be sleepy. Then he was handed over
to the senior priests, who swore him in, and said, " My Lord High
Priest, we are the ambassadors of the Sanhedrin, and thou art our
1 Yoma, f. 85, b; i. 86, a (Lev. xvi. 30). The reader will find a deeply interesting account of
the Day of Atonement compiled from the Talmud (especially Yoma) in Hamburger, s.v.
Versbhnung, and Mr. Hershon's Treasures of the Talmud, 89—114.
> M exilian, f. 23, a.
3 For this they.quoted Ps. lxviii. 28 j Kosh HashaDah, f. 16, b.
? Kethuboth, f. 103, b. s Bava Bathra, f. 121, o.
• Kerithoth, f. 7, a; Shevuoth, f. 13, a; Yoma, f. 86, a.
7 Succab, f. 55, It. These and tbe preceding passages haTe been collected by Mr. Hershon in
his interesting Talmudic Miscellanies.
8 This information was furnished by Elijah the Tishbite to Eav Judah, and he proved
it by Gematria as above (Yoma, f. 20, a). This treatise of tho Talmud is devoted to the
Day of Atonement. It is one of the earliest, and was written by Simeon of Mizpeb,
a contemporary of Gamaliel the First (Derenbourg, p. 375, wbo refers to Peah, ii. 6;
Toma, 14, b).

OMENS OP THE DAY. 239
ambassador, and we adjure thee by Him who dwells in this house
that thou wilt alter nothing that we have told thee." Then they
parted, he and they both weeping ; they because they suspected he
was a Sadducee, and the penalty for wrongful suspicion was scourging ;
and he because they suspected him.1 During the night, if he was
a learned man, he preached or read to others ; if not, they preached or
read to him. The books read to him were Job, Ezra, Chronicles,
and Daniel. If he became drowsy, the younger priests filliped their
fingers before him, and said, " My Lord High Priest, stand up and
cool thy feet upon the pavement." Thus they kept him engaged till the
time of sacrifice, lest by chance any accidental defilement should spoil
his propitiation. And so important was his ceremonial purity that
if he was found performing the sacred duties in a state of defilement,
the junior priests might drag him into the Hall of Paved Squares and
brain him with clubs.2 It may be safely said that, to the imagination
of a Jew, the most solemn moment of the year was that in which
the High Priest in his white robes stood alone before the Presence
of God in the Holy of Holies ; and that the proudest and gladdest
moment of the year was that in which, awe-struck but safe, he came
forth from the Holy Place in his golden garments to bless and to
dismiss the forgiven worshippers.3
To the Mosaic ritual the Jews added many legendary particulars.
They said, perhaps with reference to Isa. i. 18, that round the horns of
the scapegoat which was to be " for Azazel," and round the neck of the
goat " for Jehovah," was tied a tongue of scarlet cloth, and that if
the ceremonies of the day were accepted by God, then this tongue
of scarlet was turned to white. They also asserted that, in order
to secure that the scapegoat should not, with fatally evil omen, wander
back to the congregation, it was sent by the hands of a trusty person
to Zuk, some cliff in the wilderness, down which it was hurled
backwards and killed.4 The later Rabbis, echoing perhaps the
mournful traditions of the last days of Jerusalem, told how, in the
time of Simeon the Just, the lot for the Lord always fell on the right-
hand5 goat, and the tongue of scarlet always turned white ; but forty
years before the destruction of the Temple — a date which closely
corresponds with the death of Christ — the lot did not fall on the right,
nor the crimson cloth turn white^ nor a light burn in the west. And
the doors of the Temple opened of themselves, so that R. Jochanan
Ben Zaccai rebuked them, and said, " O Temple, Temple, why art
thou dismayed t I know thy end will be to be destroyed, for
1 Yoma, f. 2, a; 18, a, b; 19, b. In tbe Herodian Temple tbe ark and mercy-seat were only
supposed to be present. Tbe sprinklings were made towards the stone of the foundation.
s Sanhedrin, f. 81, b.
3 Further details of the ceremony of the Day of Atonement will be found in Excursus XII.,
'* Ceremonies of the Day of Atonement."
* Yoma, f. 66, a. There is no such provision in tbe Law. "Zuk" was to be 12J miles from
Jerusalem. See Hershon's Treasures ofthe Talmud, ch. vii.
s Lev. xvi. 8—10.

240 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Zechariah, the son of Iddo, hath foretold concerning thee, ' Open thy
doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.' "x
They also regarded the function of the High Priest on this day
as one of extreme peril. In his various confessions he had to
pronounce ten times the Sacred Tetragrammaton — the ineffable name
of Jehovah. The injunction never to enter the Holiest except on that
one day of all the year had been laid on Aaron after the sudden death
which had avenged the presumptuous irreverence of his two eldest sons,
Nadab and Abihu ; and the Jews said that if the High Priest entered
the Holiest five times instead of the four which were actually necessary,
he was slain by the wrath of God.2 They even believed that many
High Priests had perished on that day for neglect of the details which
they swore to observe. During the whole ceremony the High Priest
was alone in the Tabernacle. No Priest, until it was completed, was
allowed to enter even into the Holy Place.3 Hence the people, standing
in the Court of Israel, waited with intense solicitude the reappearance
of the High Priest through the outer veil. After his last entrance into
the Holiest, he prayed in the Holy Place ; and it was a special custom
to make the prayer a short one, both from the awfulness of the solitude
and in order that the apprehensions of the people might not be too
painfully kindled by any long delay.4
Now the writer of the Epistle shows his fairness of spirit by taking
this great ceremonial as his point of comparison, in order to give every
advantage to the priesthood of which he wishes to prove the inferiority.
He might have touched— a smaller man certainly would have touched — ¦
on the sacerdotal functions in their meaner, more trivial, more repellent
aspect ; but instead of this he takes the Aaronic Priesthood in the crown
and flower of its loftiest ritual, and strives to warn the Christian converts
from the peril of retrograding, by showing how the work and person of
Christ transcends these seductive, but transitory and unsatisfying splen
dours. If the ritual of this day was, after all, a nullity, how great a
1 Zech. xi. 1 ; Yoma, f. 29, b. Since the due fulfilment of the ceremonies of this great day
has for 1,800 ye*rs been impossible to tbe Jews, the reader may be interested to see the
melancholy folly into which its splendid ordinances have degenerated in tbe hands of the Polish
Jews. It is now observed by what is called "the Atonement of tbe Cuck." Since, in one
passage of the Talmud, Gever (-q:i) is used, not for "man," but for "cock" (Yoma, f. 20, b),
modern Rabbis have invented the substitution of a cock for a man (Temurath Gever begever),
and this custom has become a law according to the rule " custom is as law.'* Fowls, and
especially white cocks, ore in great request on that day, as indicating that though the sins of the
man wbo kills it be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. The legs of tbe cock are tied, and
holding thein in his hand, the Jew repeats tbe customary prayer. Then be swings the cock
round and round bis head with the words, " This is my substitute (Chalaphathi), my com
mutation (Tetnarathi), my atonement (JCapparatlti)." Then the cock's neck is wrung, it is dashed
on the ground, and its throat is cut, so that it undergoes (in a sense) tbe four Mosaic capital
punishments of strangling, stoning, beheading, and burning. I borrow these, among otlier
interesting particulars, from the Jewish Herald for July, 1830.
3 Maimonides in Surenhusius, Mithna, ii. 232. See Lev. xvi. 2, 13. In the evening tbe
High Priest gave a banquet to his friends to commemorate his safety. Perhaps it was the
awe inspired by the ceromony which made the Sadducean High Priests of our Lord's day so
willing to hand tbe office from one to another. See Life of Christ, ii. 342 ; D. renbourg, 234 sq.
3 Lev. xvi. 17.
4 Yoma, iv. 7 (Surenhusius, Mishna, ii. 231). See Excursus XIII., " Impressions left on the
Mind of tbe Jews by tbe Ceremonies of the Day of Atonement."

CHRIST OUR HIGH PRIEST. 241
nullity must be the other Levitical details ! These High Priests were
but provisional. From Aaron downwards their dignity had been dwarfed
and overshadowed by the mysterious grandeur of Melchizedek. They
were but priests ; He who came to cancel their prerogatives was, like
His antitype, a King as well as a Priest. They are for a time ; He is
for ever. They are but links in a long succession, each with many pre
decessors, each transmitting his office to his posterity ; He stands alone,
preceded by none, with no successor. They were established by an
ordinance of Moses ; He by the oath of God. They were sinful ; He is
innocent. They weak ; He all powerful. They had to offer " daily "
sacrifices ; He offered Himself once for all. They serve a Tabernacle
which is but a copy and shadow of the True ; He is a Minister of the
Immaterial, the Ideal Tabernacle, Eternal in the Heavens. Their dis
pensation is declared to be Old ; His is prophesied of as New and founded
on better promises. They died and passed away ; He sits for ever at
the right hand of God still to make intercession for His people.
Further, the fact that even the Priests might not enter into the
Holiest stamped with imperfection their whole ministration. The re
striction proved that the priesthood could not perfect the worshipper as
to his inmost life, since it was unable to lead him into the Presence-
chamber of God. The whole Dispensation of which their ritual formed
a part was necessarily provisional, consisting as it mainly did in matters
relating to meats and drinks and washings — human ordinances, only im
posed as preparatory to the season of their final rectification. The High
Priest did indeed enter the Holiest with the blood of bulls and goats ;
but it was an exceptional privilege, not a right of continual and fearless
access. The fact that it was necessary for him to make an atonement
year after year, showed how little permanent was the effect of even that
most solemn purification. And though he entered with awful pre
cautions, so conscious were the people for whom he sacrificed that he
was but a weak and sinful man, that they awaited his return in tremb
ling suspense, lest by some sin or error he should provoke the wrath of
God. Yet this was the system, this the central act of the system, to
which Christians, heirs of privileges so infinitely greater, were looking
back with longing glances — to which some of them were even tempted
to apostatise or retrogress ! And what a retrogression ! They were
looking back to their petty Levitism, while Christ, the Mediator of a
new, of a better, of a final dispensation — Christ, Whose death had made
valid His Testament, Whose blood had a real and not a symbolic
efficacy1 — had died for all, and having died — not many times, but once
for all, not as one of a long line, but Alone for all — not for Himself, be-
1 The following passages illustrate the Jewish belief that there was "no remission without
blood " : —
"Abraham was circumcised on the Day of Afonement; and on that day Gnd looks annually
on the blood of the covenant of the circumcision as atoning for all our iniquities " (YaUut
Kadash, f. 121, b).
" R. Eli-zer asked, ' For whose benefit were the seventy bullocks intended ? ' (Num. xxix.
9.

242 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
cause He did not need it — not as a sinful man, but as the sinless Son of
God — not with the blood of calves and goats, but with His own blood — .
had entered not into a secondary and imitative tabernacle of perishable
gold, but into one greater and more precious, and hot made with hands !
And so, passing for ever into the Immediate Presence of God, He had
opened a way thither for all, obtaining an eternal fedemption. And
having thus with His own blood purified, not the earthly shadows of
things, but even the heavenly things themselves, He would, at the con
summation of the Ages, appear for salvation to those who were awaiting
Him with feelings not of terror but of hope ; He would appear, not as
a sinful man, not even as bearing the sins of men, but apart from all sin,
as the Everlasting Victor over all sin, with death and every other enemy
laid prostrate beneath His feet.1 SECTION VI.
A RECAPITULATION.
It only remained for the writer to sum up his argument, which he
does in the first eighteen verses of the following chapter. In these he
dwells mainly on Christ's voluntary offering of Himself in obedience to
the will of God, which he illustrates from Ps. xl. 6, 7 ;° on the one act
of Christ's Redemption as contrasted with the many Levitic sacrifices ;s
and on Christ's finished work in accordance with the great prophecy of
Jeremiah,4 which he_ has already quoted.5 And thus the leading thoughts
of the argument are brought together in one grand finale, jnst as in the
finale of a piece of music all the hitherto scattered elements are united
in an effective whole.6
" For the Law having a shadow7 of the good things to come,8 not the very form9
of the things— they can never,10 with the same sacrifices, year by year, which they
offer continuously, perfect (vii. 11, xi. 9) them that draw nigh (vii. 26). Since, in
13—36). The answer is, 'For the seventy nations of the Gentile world, to atone for them. . . .
Woe to the Gentile nations for their loss and . . . they know not what they have lost ; for as
long as the Temple existed the Altar made Atonement for them ; but no^v wbo is to atone for
them ? ' " (Succah, f . 55, b) .
1 See Jeremy Taylor's Life of Christ, iii. § 15. " He was arriyed with ornaments more glorious
than the robeB of Aaron. The crown of thorns was his mitre, the cross his pastoral staff . . .
and his flesh rased and chequered with blue and blood instead of tbe parti-coloured robe."
2 x. 1—10. 3 x. 11-14. « See vifi. 8-12 ; Jer. xxxi. 33, 34.
* x. 15— 18. « Delitzsch.
7 viii. 5 (comp. Col.,ii. 17) : a eo-ri ctkiol tS)v peKkovrviv, to fie a-tapa tov Xptorov. 8 ix. 11.
0 For other uses of the word, see 2 Cor. iv. 4, where Christ is called the eluSiv of God.
"•tTmbra in Lege ; Imago in Evangelio ; Veritas in Coelo," S. Ambrose in Ps. xxxviii. (see 1 Cor.
xiii. 12).
10 The best supported reading seems to be Su'van-cu, and all tbe more because it is the more
difficult reading, n, A, C. But with this reading, the passage becomes an anakoluthon, and the
Kar' kviavrov (if we accept tbe rendering of tbe E. V.) is very strangely placed (hyperbaton). To
avoid this difficulty some expluin it thus : — " They (the priests) can never, year by year, with
the Bame sacrifices which they offer continuously, make them that draw nigh perfect." The
meaning will then be that the priests cannot by the sacrifices of the Great Day of Atonement—
which are after all but tbe same sin-offerings as they offer daily — perfect the worshippers. Yet
another way of taking the words is to separate the kar iviavrov +cus avrats by commas, and
render " can never perfect the comers by the sacrifices which they offer, which are tbe same
year by year." So Bleek and De Wette. But after all it is not impossible that ovvavrat may be
a mere clerical error.

THE BLOOD OP CHRIST. 243
that case, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers, purified
once for all, would have had no more consciousness of sins ? But in these sacrifices
there is a calling to mind of sins year by year j1 for it is impossible for the blood of
bulls and of goats to take away sins.2 Therefore, on entering into the world He
saith,3 ( Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not,4 but a body didst thou prepare for
me,5 whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings thou approvedst not. Then I said, Lo,
I have come (in the roll of the book it has been written concerning me6) to do, 0
1 See v. 3, and note on vii. 27. Here again, we find a striking resemblance to Philo, who
speaks of the sacrifices providing " not, an oblivion of sins, but a reminding of them " (De Vict.
Off., and De Fit. Mos. iii.) And again (De plant. Noe), he calls attention to Num. v. 15, where
Moses speaks of the meat-offering of jealousy as being "a memorial meat-offering ormging
iniquity to remembrance." The fact that the oft-repeated sacrifices thus reminded the worshipper
of sins, and pointed daily to the means of their removal, and exercised bis obedience in offering
them, was the justification of their existence, although they were intrinsically without efficacy.
3 Impossible that sacrifices should have this efficacy in themselves ; they can only possess it
per acciaens, by faith, and because of the special grace of God attached to them. Even the
' Talmudists saw and said that the Day of Atonement itself was no remedy for, no expiation of,
the willing sin which constantly defers repentance (Yoma, viii 9).
8 This remarkable quotation comes from Ps. xl. 6, 7. It is probably a Psalm of David, and
although this passage is typically Messianic, other parts of the Psalm (e.g. ver. 12) are almost
exclusively personal. But ypt the "He saith" means "Christ saith," "because the words of
David n.pply in a deeper and truer sense to Him.
* "Thou carest not for slain beast and bloodless oblation." This is one of the many
memorable utterances of the Prophets, which show that*bhey had been led to feel the nullity of
sacrifices regarded as mere outward acts, and the vast superiority of a spiritual worship. It
specially resembles 1 Sam. xv. 22, and anticipates the grind thoughts of Isaiah (i. 11 — 17);
Jeremiah (vi. 20 ; vii. 21— 23) ; Hpsea(vi.6); Amos (v. 21— 24) ; and, above all, Micah (vi. 6— 8).
Philo in a "beautiful passage (De plant. Noe) shows how well he had caught the spirit of these
prophetic passages, when he warns against the ignorant superstition which confounded the
offering of sacrifices with the practice of piety, and ugainst the fancy that sacrifices alone will
cleanse from moral guilt. He adds that God accepts the innocent even when they offer no
sacrifice, and delights in fireless altars round which the virtues dance.
6 A remarkable variation of the LXX. from the Hebrew text, which literally is "Ears hast
thou digged for me." How did this variation arise ? (i.) One suppos tion is that the LXX. fol
lowed a different reading, but this is now generally abandoned, as the attempts to alter the
Hebrew text have been unsuccessful ; and a 11 other versions render the clause literally, showing
that they had the preseut Hebrew text. (ii. ) Nor is it very probable that the text of the LXX.
is corrupt, though Usher and others have very ingeniously supposed that KATHPTISA2I2TIA
has got changed partly by homceoteleuton, and partly by mistaking TI for M, into KATHPT12A5
SfiMA ; and the reading wtio. is actually traceable in some manuscripts, (iii.). It is, however,
more probable that the LX X. use their phrase as a sort of Targum, a way of explaining a Hebrew
allusion which thev perhaps thought would Ve unintelligible to Gentile readers. The next
question is, Huw did they arrive at this sense ? (a) A favourite explanation is, that the Hebrew
expression alludes to the custom of boring the ear of a slave if he chose to remain in servitude
(Ex. xxvi. 6 ; Deut. xv. 17), so that the bored ear would be a sign of willing obedience. But the
verb means rather " digged " than " bored " (as in Ex. xxi. 6), and if this explanation were true
we should expect " ear," not " ears.", 0) It seems much more likely that the phrase " digging
the ears," refers to opening the ears so that the soul may hear and obey— a metaphor found
both in 1 Sam. xv. 22, and in Is. 1. 5 : " The Lord hath opened the ear for me, and I was not
rebellious " (comp. Is. xlviii. 8) . The meaning of the Psalmist will then be " thou hast revealed
tome," or " caused me to hear so as to obey." The antithesis of the four clauses in the two
verses of the Psalm is then perfect : —
" Slain beast and bloodless oblation thou desiredst not.
But mine ears thou diggedst.
Burnt-offering and sin-offering thou req.uiredst not,
Then said I, ' Lo ! I have come to do thy will.* "
In the first clauses of each distich we have the sacrifices for which (comparatively, or in them
selves) God does not care; in the second clauses the obedience for which He does care (see
McCaul's Messiahship of Jesus, p. 162). In this sense then, the rendering of the LXX., though
not a translation, is on intelligible, though somewhat bold, parBphrase, the " body " apparently
meaning **the form of a slave" (comp. Phil. ii. 7; Rev. xviii. 13). Finding the rendering in the
LXX., believing it to represent the true sense of the original (as it does), and also seeing it to
be eminently illustrative of his subject, the writer naturally adopts it. The. suggestion of an
ancient writer that it was he who altered the read ng of the LXX, must be unhesitatingly
rejected. Tbe word " holocausts," or whole burnt-offerings, occurs here alone in this Epistle.
They were the emblem of entire self- consecration (while the meat-offerings were eucharistic,
and the sin-offerings expiatory). But the holocaust was valueless without the self-sacrifice of
which it was the symbol
6 K€(f>aXis is properly the knob (umbilicus) of the roller on which the vellum was rolled. The
LXX. chose it to represent the Hebrew Megillah. The writer probably did not stop to ask what

244 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
God, ' Thy will.'1 Saying as above, ' Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offer
ings, and sin offering's, thou wouldest not, nor even approvedst (the which are offered
according to the Law),2 then He has said, 'Lo, I have come to do Thy will.' He
takes away the first (namely, sacrifices) 'that He may establish the second'
(namely, the Will of God) . ' By which will we have been sanctified by the offering
of the body (vs. 8, Eom. xii. 1) of Jesus Christ once for all.'
" And every High Priest,3 indeed, standeth daily ministering, and offering often
the same sacrifices, of a kind which are never able to strip away sins.4 But He,
after offering one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down at the right hand of God
(vii. 27, viii. 1), henceforth awaiting until His enemies be placed as a footstool for
His feet.6 For by one offering He hath perfected (vii. 11, 25) for ever those who
are in the way6 of sanctincation/
" But the Holy Spirit also testifies to us. For after having said, ' This is the
covenant which I will make with them after those days,' saith the Lord,8 giving
My Laws on their hearts, and upon their understandings will I inscribe them — and
their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of
these is, there is no longer offering for Sin."9
Those last words are the triumphant close of the argument. If
the forgiveness, the removal, the obliteration of sin, has been obtained,
the object of all expiatory offerings has been accomplished, and they are
rendered not only needless, but harmful — harmful as involving a
faithlessness to Christ's finished work. If offerings are no longer
admissible, there is an end of the Aaronic Priesthood ; and if of the
Priesthood, then also of the Law, which was based upon its existence ;
and if of the Law, then of the entire Old Dispensation. But if the
Dispensation, which had long been depreciated by the voice of prophecy
as "old," was now utterly vanishing away, this could only be because,
in accordance with that same sure'word of prophecy, the New had been
inaugurated. And the New was an abrogation of the Old, because
it was as the substance to the shadow, as the picture to the sketch.
Dook David was thinking of, because his mind is solely occupied with the Messianic application
in which "the hook" would he the whole Old Testament (Luke xxiv. 27). The words of the
Psalm may mean "in the roll ofthe hook it is prescribed to me," or as Gesenius and Ewald
take it, " I am come with the volume of the book which is written for me." kv Ke</>aAi'$i cannot
mean "in the chief part " (Luther), or "in the beginning." David alludes to the writings of
Moses, or possibly to the unwritten book of God's purposes (Ps. cxxxix. 16). The writer has
omitted the words " I delight," before "to do Thy will." The sacred writers never aim at
verbal accuracy in their quotations, since they did not hold any slavish and letter-worshipping
theory of verbal inspiration. They hold it sufficient to give the general sense.
1 x. 1—10 (comp. 1 Thess iv. 3). 2 The rbv is omitted in n, A, C.
3 apxizpebs (A. C.) ; iepei>9, n, D, E, K, L (B. ends at Ka0aipLei, in ix. 14). As to the daily
offerings of the High Priest, see vii. 27, but the supposed difficulty may have led to the various
reading. The " standetli" is emphatic. In the inner court none were allowed to sit, and the
Levites are described as " standing before the face of the Lord."
4 " To strip away "—sin being like a close-fitting robe (see on xii. 1).
s See i. 13 ; Ps. ex. 1.
6 tous ayta£op.kvovs ; literally, "those who are being sanctified" (ii. 11). Sanctifieation is
continuous, never instant and complete ; but in the perfect sacrifice of Christ lies the germ of
certain ultimate perfectiomnent for the believer (comp. tous a-otCopivovs, Acts ii. 47).
' x. 11-14.
< The quotation is from Jer. xxxviii. 33, 34 (comp. viii. 10—12). To avoid the somewhat
harsh forin of the clause, the words iicrepov Aeyei, " Then He saith," are added before vi. 7 as
the apodosis to pera to etprjKeVtu. They are found in the Philoxenian Syriac, and were placed by
Dr. Paris in the margin of the Cambridge Bible of 1762. There is no MS. or MS. authority for
them, except the cursive :37. Others make these words " Saith the Lord," in ver. 16, prospective,
and so the true apodosis. The question is not very important, being merely one of continuity
of style. » x. 15-18.

THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 245
It was founded on better promises ; it had an Eternal High Priest ; it
needed no renewal ; it looked with confidence to the fulfilment of
illimitable hopes ; it rejoiced in the admission into God's Presence,
by virtue of the finished sacrifice and endless intercession of its King
and Priest, its Divine Saviour and everlasting Lord.
To this conclusion the whole Epistle has been leading up. In the
first six chapters, with many hortative and illustrative digressions,
the writer has made good his opening words, that " God had in these
last days revealed Himself to us in His Son." This he has done by
showing Christ's superiority to angels, the mediators of the Old
Covenant (i. 5, ii. 18), and to Moses, the appointed Lawgiver (iii. 1,
iv. 16). Then, after showing the way in which Christ fulfilled the
qualifications of High Priesthood, as a High Priest after the order
of Melchizedek (v. 1 — 10), he enters on the solemn strain by which
he designs to prepare the thoughts of his readers for due attention
to his central argument (v. 11 — vi. 20). That argument falls into three
parts, namely —
(a) The superiority of Melchizedek's Priesthood, and therefore
of the Priesthood of Christ, to that of Aaron in many particulars
(vii. 1—28).
(b) The superiority of the ordinances of Christ's New Dispensation
to those of the Old (viii. 1 — ix. 28), with special reference to the
ceremonies of the Day of Atonement.
(c) The final recapitulation and summary of the conclusions which
he has set forth (x. 1 — 18). SECTION VII.
A THIRD SOLEMN WARNING.
The main work of the writer is finished. He has set before the
recent converts from Judaism incontrovertible reasons for holding
fast that which they have received, and for not abandoning the better
for the worse, the complete for the imperfect, the valid for the in
efficient, the archetype for the copy, the Eternal for the evanescent. It
only remains for him to supplement the weight of reasoning by solemn
warning and appeal. And this he does, first by an exhortation to faith,
partly in the form of encouragement (x. 19 — 25), partly of warning
(26 — 31) ; next, by a magnificent historic illustration of what faith
is (xi.) ; lastly, by fervent exhortations to moral steadfastness and
the holiness of the Christian walk (xii. 1 — xiii. 19), ending by a few
affectionate words of prayer and blessing.
The first burst of exhortation I proceed to translate, both because
of its special solemnity and because it offers some difficulties of
illustration and peculiarities of reading. The translation is offered
not by any means as preferable to other versions, but as written
with special objects. My aim is to follow (sometimes silently) what

246 THE EARLY DATS OP CHRISTIANITY.
seems to me to be tlie best text ; to avoid pages of discussion by only
giving results ; and to keep as nearly as possible to the form of the
original Greek. In the notes I merely offer what seems to me to be
most necessary for the elucidation of the text in the briefest form
into which I can compress it.
" Having, then, confidence, brethren, in the blood of Jesus1 for our entrance
into the holies — (an entrance) which He inaugurates for us as a fresh and a living
road,2 through the veil, that is His flesh3 — and (having) a Great Priest4 (set) over
the House of G-od, let us approach with sincere heart, in full assurance of faith,
having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our body washed with pure
water.5 Let us hold fast the confession of our Hope6 unwavering, for faithful
is He who promised.7 And let us consider one another for provocation8 to love and
good works, not deserting the assembling of ourselves together,9 as is the custom
with some,10 but encouraging one another, and so much the more as ye see the day
approaching.11 For if we sin willingly12 after the receiving of the full knowledge of the truth,13
there is no longer left a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectance of
1 These words go best with vapprio-ia fcomp. Eph.. iii. 12). It cannot he accurately said that
ive enter God's presence with the blood of Jesus, but He with His own blood (vi. 20 ; ix. 12). '
2 "NeW," ix. 8. 12; "Living," not in the sense of "life-giving" (Grotius, etc.), or
"enduring" (Chrysostom), or "real," but because "He who liveth'1 is Himself the Way
(John xiv. 6).
3 As the veil hnng between the Holy and the Holiest, so for a time the veil of Flesh, i. e., of
suffering humanity, was the way through which Christ entered into the Holiest (see vi. 20) ; and
His laving aside that veil of Flesh, and so, as it were, passing through it into Heaven, was
symbolised by the rendering of the Par6keth (see on ehap. ix. 3), Matt, xxvii 5L
* See iv. 14. By " a great Priest " (c»hen gaddl, Lev. xxi.) is meant nut only a High Priest,
but " a Priest upon His throne," as in Zech. vi. 11 — IS.
5 Comp. Ezek. xxxvi. 25. The meaning is, " with our hearts sprinkled, as it were, with the
blood of Christ (xii. 24 ; ix. 14; 1 Pet. i. 2), and so cleansed from a conscience which bas become
depraved, and our whole beings cleansed in the waters of baptism " (Eph. v. 26 ; Tit. iii. 5 ;
1 Pet. iii. 21), just as the Jewish priests were sprinkled with blood (Ex. xxix. 21 ; Lev. viii. 30),
and bathed (Ex. xxx. 20; Lev. viii. 6; xvi 4) lefore they could enter the Holy Places;
ippo.vrto-p.ivoi . . . Xekovp.4voi, " sprinkled * . . washed, once and for ever." For all Christians
are priests (Rev. i. 5, 6).
6 See vi. 11, 18, 19. Here, by a very singular oversight, our version has " the profession of
our faith." We have "Faith" in ver. 22; "Hope" here; and "Love" in ver. 24. In this, as
throughout the Epistle, we recognise the friend and pupil of St. Paul (1-Cor. xiii. 13 ; 1 Thess.
i. 3: Col. i. 4, etc.).
7" See vi. 13; xi. 11; xii. 26; 1 Thes3. v. 24 ; 1 Cor. i. 9.
8 napofvovxbs is generally used in a bad sense, like "provocation ; " and perhaps he uses the
word because there had been among them a paroxusmos of hatred and not of love.
9 Namely, in Christian gatherings for worship and Holy Coramuniun. ^Eirio-vavyioyr} is only
found iu 1 Thess.'ii. 1, and Delitzsch thinks that the word is here selected to avoid the Jewish.
0-vva.ytayrf ; for the Jews also were stringent in requiring this duty (Berachoth, f, 8, a).
10 In this neglectfulness he saw the dangerous sjcrm of apostasy.
11 x. 19 — 25. The day is the Last Day when Time, as counted by days, shall end '1 Cor. iii.
13). Thab Day, as regards the Old Covenant, cams within a few years of this time at the fall of
Jerusalem, which was God's judgment on the Judaism which refused to recognise its own
Divine annulment. And that Day of the Lr-rd was " the bloody and fiery dawn " of the Last
Great Day (Matt. xvi. 28 ; xxiv. ; Luke xvii.).
13 The whole of this striking clause of warning closely resembles the passage on vi. 4—8,
where see the notes. It contemplates not the ordinary sins and shortcomings of humnn frailty
{ao-9evcia . . . ayvoovvres . . . ir\avu3p.€voi, v. 2), wLich may be forgiven upon repentance, but the
last extreme of deliberate and self-chosen wickedness in those who say, "Evil, bd thnu mv
good," and who thus close the dttor of repentance against themselves, by passing from the
spiritual life into impenitent and determined apostasy ; and it contemplates this state as con
tinued till "the Day" comes. The warning is against tendencies so perilous that they might
end in a state of sin which deliberately despised and rejected its Saviour.
13 •En-i'yt'wa-iff— not a mere historical knowledge of the truth, but some advance in that know
ledge — a recognition of the truth at once theoretical and practical. He is speak:ng, not of lip-
Christians, but of converts who lapse into " wretchlessness of unclean living." The passage has
nothing directly to do with the Novation dispute about the possibility of a second baptism.
Nor does it say that the sinner h»s exhausted the infinitude of God's forgiveness, but only that
there is no other sacrifice for sin left for hiui except that which he has willingly rejected.

PERIL OF APOSTASY. 247
judgment,1 and a jealousy of fire which is about to devour the adversaries.2. Any
one who set at nought Moses' Law is without compassion put to death on the
testimony of two or three witnesses ; of how much worse vengeance,3 think ye,
shall he be deemed worthy who has trampled under foot the Son of G-od, and
considered the blood of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified a common thing,
and insulted the Spirit of Grace?4 For we know Him who said Retribution is
Mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord ;5 and again, The Lord shall judge His people.8
Fearful is it to* fall into the hands of the Living God" (x. 19—31).
" But recall the former days8 in which, after being enlightened,9 ye endured
much struggle of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle 10 in reproaches
and afflictions, and partly by becoming partakers with those who were thus treated.
For indeed ye sympathised with the prisoners,11 and ye accepted with joy the
plundering of your possessions,12 recognising that ye have yourselves™ as a better
1 The tis is intensive.
2 See Is, xxvi 11. He personifies the fire, because the same thought is in his mind which he
expresses in xii. 29. Perhaps, too, he is referring to such passages as Ps. lxxix. 5, " Shall thy
jealousy burr^like fire ? " (Ezek. xxxvi. 5, etc.). The fire of God's wrath is that which was soon
to devour the whole existence of Judaism. The New Testament writers are often alluding
primarily to these consequences with none of those further allusions which have been intro
duced into the interpretation of their language.
3 Deut. xvii. 2—7, where the sin to be punished is idolatry. This is the only passage in the
New Testament where rip.<apia — which properly means retributive or vindictive punishment — is
used of God. The word "punishment" is elsewhere KoAacris, which properly means "remedial
punishment." It must be borne in mind that (1) it is here applied to the worst, deadliest, and
most impenitent apostates ; and (2) that its immediate reference is to the Day of Christ's coming,
which was so close at hand in the temporal overthrow of the Jewish polity (Ewald, Sendschr.
an. d. Hebr. p. 122).
4 It is clear that no more violent extremity of sin — no nearer approach to the unpardonable
sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost — con be described than that which is contemplated in these
verses. By " a common thing " may be meant either " unclean " (Vulg., Luther, etc.) or " of no
specific value (Theopbyl., etc.).
5 He quotes this text to show that his warnings are founded on Scripture warrant. The
reference is to Dexit. xxxii. 35, but it exactly follows neither the Hebrew (To me [is] Vengeance
and recompense ") nor the LXX. ("in the day of retribution I will requite"). It is exactly
identical with St. Paul's citation of the same verse in Eom. xii. 19, especially if " saith the
Lord " is here genuine (which is, however, omitted by ^, D, and several versions and Fathers ) .
An argument has been drawn from this fact that St. Paul must be the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, but ti is argumentis untenable, because (1) it is universally admitted that the writer
was a friend and follower of St. Paul, and familiar with his phraseology and method of thought ;
(2) he may very possibly have had the Epistle to the Romans in' his hands, especially as in
xiii. 1 — 6 be shows traces of Eom. xii 1 — 21 (see Alford, Introd. p. 71) ; and (3) the quotation in
this very form, or one which nearly resembles it, seems to have been current in the Jewish
schools, for it is found in the Targum of Onkelos. The reference to Deuteronomy shows that
he is thinking mainly of national punishments.
6 The primary sense of these words in Deut. xxxiii. 36, " The Lord will deliver His people as
a righteous Judge ; " but judgment involves both acquittal and condemnation, and the deliver
ance of the Jews meant ihe overthrow of their enemies.
7 Here again the stern aspect of " falling into the hands of God " is given — the aspect which
it bears "for the apostate and covenant-breaker" who h^s, deliberately rejected and defiled
God. For the penitent sinner there is another aspect. David, expecting and bowing to just
punishment, yet says (I Chr. xxi. 13), "Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord; for very great
are His mercies : but let me not I -ill into the hand of n an." And the son of Sirach, referring
to the same passage, says (Ecclus. ii. 18), " We will fall into the hands of the Lord, and not
into the bands of men ; for as His majesty is, so is His mercy." Some would render it of " a ,
living God" (comp. iii. 12); and this may be right, because there is a silent reference to
Deut. xxxii. 40.
8 Here, as in vi. 9 — 12, he posses from warning to encouragement, and bids them imitate
their former and better selves.
9 This word is not a mere synonym for " when ye were baptised " (see on vi. 4).
10 The same metaphor as in 1 Cor. iv. 9 ; xv. 32
11 The common reading is roU Seo-fiaU p.ov, " with my chains ; " and this has been One of the
circumstances which have led to the identification of the author with St. Paul. But this
reading may easily have crept in from Col. iv. 18; Phil. i. 7, etc., and Setr/xuns, "with the
prisoners," is the reading of A, D, the "Vulgate, Syriac, aud Coptic versions, St. Chrysostom,
etc., and is strongly supported by xiii. 3. It also suggests fewer historical difficulties.
12 Th^reis a very striking parallel in Epiitetus— " I became poor at Thy will, yea and gladly."
18 I here follow the very striking and beautiful reading of n, A, which suggests the same
great spiritual truth as ver. 39 and Luke is. 25, xxi, 19. If h eaurots, the very ill-supported

248 THE EAKLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY
possession and an enduring. Fling not away, then, your confidence, since it has1
a great recompense of reward. For ye have need of endurance, in order that, by
doing the will of God, ye may win the promise. For yet but a very, very little
while,2 He who cometh will have come, and will not tarry.3 ' But my righteous one
shall live by faith,' and 'if he4 draw hack my soul approveth him not.' But we
are not of defection unto perdition, but of faith unto the gaining of the soul "6
(x. 32—39). We are not of defection unto perdition — we do not belong to the
party of those who have passed over the verge of apostasy, to the
ruin of their souls ; " but we are of faith to the salvation of the
soul." What, then, is Faith 1

SECTION VIII.
THE GLORIES OF FAITH.
By his mention of the word Faith in this climax of exhortation,
the writer, with the skill of a great orator, prepares the way for the
enumeration of the heroes of faith in the next chapter. And this
muster roll of the elders of the Jewish Church is by no means
intended only as a series of good examples. It serves a more powerful
end. It shows the Jewish converts, who were in danger of relapsing
into their old bondage, that there was no painful discontinuity in
their religious life ; no harsh break between their present hopes and
the past history of their race. The past was not discarded and dis
graced ; it was fulfilled and glorified. So far from being dissevered
from the gracious lives of the Patriarchs, and the splendid zeal of the
Prophets, they were infinitely nearer to them as Christians than they
could have been as Jews. They were in possession of the mystery on
which the elders had gazed with longing eyes, and were better able
reading of our text, be followed, the true translation will even then be, not (as in our version )
"knowing in yourselves that," but "knowing that you have in yurselve?," ».e., in your own
hearts, or omitting the kv with A, D, E, K, L, "for yourselves." The " m Heaven " must in
any case be omitted as a gloss (n, A, D, etc.).
1 tjtis, quippc quae.
2 pmpov oo-ov uo-ov. This forciMe phrase is borrowed from LXX. Is. xxvi. 20.
3 Th"1 quotation is an adaptation of the words of Hab. ii. 3, 4. Por a fu'ler consideration of
it, as it occurs m Gal. iii. 11, Roui. i. 17, see my Life of St. Paul, i. 369. Tlie poi (" my just
man ") is weakly supported by MS .authority, being only found in n A ; but the fact that it is
not found in the two citations by St. Paul makes it more probable that it is genuine here. In
the original it is " the vision" which will soon come. The Rabbis said that into this one
precept as to the saving nature of faith, Habakkuk has compressed the 365 negative and the
248 positive precepts of tbe Law, which Daviil had reduced to 11 (Ps. xv. 1 — 5), Isaiah to 6 (Is.
xxxiii. 15), Micah to 3 iMic. vi. 8), Isaiah agiin to 2 (Is. lvi. 1), and Amos, as well as Habakkuk,
to 1 (Amos v. 1) (Maccoth, f. 23, b ; I. 24, a).
4 " If lie," i.e., " if my just mau." The E. V. inserts " if am; mau," but this is not warrant
able, and us it is only found in the Genevan Version, there is some reason to fear that tl.is is
one of the very rare instances in which our translators have yielded to the temptation of
dogmatic bias. But the belief that "tbe just" may fall back runs throughout tbe Epistle.
There is not in it a single trace of the notion of " iudefeotible grace," or of "final per
severance." 5 Por this word vTroo-T€C\ijTat see Acts xx. 20, 27 ; Gal. ii. 12. In these words the LXX.
diverge widely from the Hebrew, which means " Behold his soul is lifted up, it is not upright
in him" — words which seem to refer to the hauyhty Chaldean invader. The word rendered
" faith " means, in the language of the Prophet, primarily " faithfulness."

WHAT FAITH IS. 249
than their unconverted brethren to understand the inmost heart of
their fathers. Physical descent and identity of worship could not
enable them to know the meaning of the faith displayed in the ante-
Diluvian, the Patriarchal, and the Mosaic days. But Faith iu Christ
was the sunlike centre of all the types, and symbols, and sacrifices,
and promises which constituted the religion of the Chosen People
until Christ came.
"What, then, is faith?
It is nowhere defined in Scripture, and the famous words with
which this chapter opens are not so much a definition as a description.
They are not a definition, for they do not, as St. Thomas Aquinas
says, indicate the essence of Faith. They tell us what Faith does,
rather than what it is — its issues, rather than its nature. " Faith," the
writer says, " is the basis of things hoped for,1 the demonstration of
objects not seen."2 This is what faith is in its results. It furnishes
us with a foundation on which our hopes can securely rest, and with a
conviction that those things exist which are not earthly or temporal,
and which, therefore, we cannot see. Faith itself — not in the highest
Pauline sense, but in its more usual sense3 — is the spiritual power by
which we are enabled to occupy this sure foundation, and arrive at this
firm persuasion. It is the hand stretched forth into that Holiest Place
which is as yet hidden from us by the veil of sense — the hand which
can hold the spiritual gifts of God with so sure a grasp that it can
never be deprived of them. To the eye of Faith the unseen and the
eternal are more real than the things seen and temporal. To the heart
of Faith hopes are as actual as realities, and heavenly promises are
more precious than earthly possessions. To the eyes of the unillumi-
nated heart the region in which Faith lives and moves is a dark cavern
1 imotrrao-is . This word " hypostasis " occurs only in 2 Cor. ix. 4 ; si. 17 (" confident boast
ing") ; Heb. i. 3 ("substance") : iii. 14 (" confidence"). Here it has been variously under
stood to mean (1) the " substance," in the metaphysical sense ; that unseen substance in which
all properties of a thing cohere ; that which " stands under " all the visible or sensible qualities
of a thing — its essence; that, thereto- e, which alone gives it reality. Thus among others
Theophylact, who Calls it the oiMrtajtrt? riav arj-n-ta ovToiv koI inrd<n"a<7is Tiiiv fiYj vfyemutTviv, and
Ewald (" Bestand in denx u-as man hofft"). It would thus mean the cause of the subjective
reality of things hoped for ; or, as Dr Moulton says, "the giving substance to them;" or (2)
"confidence"; or (3) as understood by Luther, Grotius, Bleek, Delitzsch, He Wette, Ebrard,
Lunemann, etc., "foundation." This latter rendering seems to me tbe best. It is true that it
is not the meaning of the word in iii. 14, nor i. 3, and the LXX. use it for " standing " in Ps.
lxix. 2 (see Dante, Paradiso, xxiv. 52 — 81). St. Jerome says that this clause "breathes some
what of Philo," who similarly speaks of " faith1 as dependent on a gracious hope, and regarding
things not present as being indubitably present," ana as " the fulness of excellent hopes . . .
the lot of happiness . . . the sole genuine and secure blessing."
2 If we could render the word " inward convict'on," it would give a more forcible sense, nnd
perhaps this is implied, though the word usually bears the more objective meaning of " demon
stration." The use of the word TrpavjaaTwi- in this clause seems to imply that Paith not only
makes Hope seem to rest on a basis of actual fruition, but also demon&ti ates the existence of
the immaterial as clearly as though it were material. Ewald renders it, " Es ist aber Glaube
. . . Beweis fiir Dinge welche man nicht scbauet."
3 For the distinctions in the meaning of Paith, see supra, p. 172, and my Life of St. Paul, ii.
188, sq. Here the writer uses the word, not in its specifically Christian sense (Gal. ii. 16 : iii.
26" ; Rom. iii. 24), but in its general Old Testament sense of faithfulness resuming from trust in
God (Gen. xv. 6, etc.), as also sometimes in St. Paul (2 Cor. v. 7; Rom. viii. 21 — 25). In thia
sense it is the hope which, without seeing, holds the ideal to be the real (Immer, Neu. Test.
Tlieol. p. 413).

250 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
where nothing is even visible, much less can anything be beautiful;
but Faith carries in her hand a lamp, kindled with light from Heaven,
and wherever she moves an atmosphere of light is shed around her,
and under every ray of it the streets and walls of the New Jerusalem
seem to flash as with innumerable gems.
It was then a great encouragement and safeguard for these recent
converts to know that it was by Faith that the elders1 obtained a good
report — that they, too, had to walk by Faith, and not by sight, and
that the object of Faith was the same then as now, with this only
difference, that then it was dim and unrevealed| but now was made
fully manifest. For the object of the faith of the righteous — even
from the days in which it had been promised in Paradise that the
seed of the woman should break the serpent's head — -was none other
than the Christ. To the ancients He had been known solely under the
guise of type and shadow, but now He was set forth to all as the
brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of His person.
But, before beginning his list of worthies, he says,
" By faith we perceive that the ages 2 have heen established by the utterance of
God,3 so that not from things which appear hath that which is seen come into
being4" (xi. 4).
It is a mistake to regard this verse as incongruous with those which
follow, or as introducing a different line of illustration from them. On
the contrary, it strikes the keynote of all faith. Faith can only take its
origin from the belief in God as the Creator of the Universe, and of
the very substance from which the material Universe is made, so as to
exclude all semi-Manichsean conceptions of the Eternity of Matter. We
cannot believe in Christ, the end of our Faith, nor can we in any way
understand His work, until we have learnt to believe in God as the
Infinite Creator of all things visible and invisible. And this belief was,
from the dawn of Humanity, the foundation of all holiness. Like the
1 By the elders is nob meant merely " the ancients," but the ZekSnim, the greatest and best
men of past ages (Is. xxiv. 22, etc.). " One who is in truth an elder is regarded," says Philo,
" not in distance of time, but in worthiness of life" (De Abraham. § 46).
2 See Philo, De Monarch, ii. p. 823 ; Leg. allegg. iii. p. 79 ; De Cherub, i. p. 162 (ed. Mangey),
where the Logos is the Instrument of Creation, ot aliaves, C'ErW ("the ages"), is the world
regarded in its history, regarded as existing in time. It differs from " the Universe" (koo>ios),
which is the world r garded in its material aspect (see the quotation from the Talmud in
Gesenius, Tlie0. If. 1056). This expression, therefore, includes the moral government of the
world, as well as its creation (see i. 2); "the invisible, spiritual, and permanent potencies of.
the phenomenal world which owe their origin to the Son of God" (Moll).
3 It is hardly to be doubted that the writer means no more here than that " God spake, and
it was done " (Ae'ywp ap.a eTroiet — P-hilo, De Sacr. Abel et Cain, § 18). Had he meant to imply that
God' created the world by the Divine Logos, he would have used the word Aoyw, not prtpart,
especially as the LXX. use it in Ps. xxxii. 6. Even in iv. 12, it is more than doub'tful whether
Logos bears its technical sense.
* I read to /SAemVei/oe with w, A, D, E. The wording of the phrase and its meaning may
seem harsher than the rendering of the E. V., but it is the only rendering of which the order of
the Greek admits, and the meaning is that "tlie visible world did not derive its orig'n from
anything phenomenal " — in other words, that there was no pre-existent matter from which God
made tho world — not even the wild waste, "thohu va-bohu," of the cbaos mentioned in
Gen. i. 2. The meaning then, is practically identical with 2 Mace. vii. 28 (reading e£ ouk oi/tuk),
" I beseech thee, my son, look upon the heaven and earth, and all that is therein, and oonsider
that God made them of things that were not."

HEROES OP FAITH. 251
first chapter of Genesis, the verse is meant to exclude from the region of
faith all Atheism, Pantheism, Dualism, or Polytheism, and to fix. the
soul on the thought of the One True God.
Then he begins to adduce his handful of illustrations — "plucking, so
to speak, only the flowers which stand by his way, and leaving the whole
meadow full to his readers."1 And he first culls examples from the
antediluvian days to show that the Paith which Christ required was
analogous to the Faith which had worked in every holy soul since the
world began.
It was by faith, then, that Abel offered to God a sacrifice which was
" more than that of Gain," 2 and was borne witness to as being Bighteous3
— since God bore witness respecting his gifts, and so, by his faith, he
though dead yet speaketh.4 It was by faith that Enoch was removed
hence,5 because he had that faith both in God's Being and in His
Divine government of the world, without which it is impossible to
please Him. By faith Noah built .the Ark, and became an heir of the
Righteousness which is according to faith.6 By faith Abraham, when
called by God,7 left his home in Ur of the Chaldees to wander as a
nomad Sheikh in a land not yet his own, awaiting the city that hath the
foundations8 whose architect and framer was God.9 By faith even
Sarah10 became a mother of him from whom sprang people numberless
as the sand along the lip of the sea.u The death of all these resembled

1 Delitzsch. The chapter falls into five groups of instances :— (i.) Antediluvians (4 — 6) ; (ii.)
from Noah to Abraham (7 — 13). Then follows a general reflexion (13—16); (iii.) Abraham and
the Patriarchs ; (iv.) from Moses to Rahab ; (v.) summary reference to later heroes and martyrs
down to the time of the Maccabees (32—40).
2 Ver. 4. irKeiova napa Kd'iv (comp. iii. 3 ; .Matt, vi. 25). The exact point in which the sacrifice
of Abel was superior to Cain's is left uncertain, though not difficult to conjecture.
3 By God's approval of his sacrifice (Gen. iv. 4). He is called "righteous" in Matt, xxiii. 35;
1 John iii. 12.
* Primarily, an allusion to " the voice of his blood " (Gen. iv. 10), as seems probable from
xii. 24, but hardly excluding the wider sense, in which it is ao often quoted, of " speaking by
hiB example." Another reading is AaAeirat (D), "is spoken of" j but here, ag^in, the writer
seems to be thinking of a passage of Philo, where he says that "Abel — which is most
strange— has both been slain, and lives," which he deduces from Gen. iv. 8 — 10 (Opp. i. 200,
ed. Mangey)
5 xi. 5, p.erere9y} ; lit., "he was transferred" (Gen. v. 24).
6 Noah is called Righteous (tsaddik, Sueaios) in Gen. vi. 9 ; and, as Philo observes, he ia
the first to whom the title is given in Scripture. He is mistaken in making the name Noah
mean righteous (Leg. aUegg. iii. 24). The " righteousness accordmg to faith," is a very Pauline-
sounding phrase, though, St. Paul never actually uses it. He uses, however, " the righteousness
of faith" (Rom. iv. 13). The phrase could hardly have been used by one unfamiliar with
St. Paul's terminology ; but the writer shows bis own marked individuality by applying both
words, "Righteousness" and "Faith," in a sense by no means identical with that of St. Paul,
"but strongly marked with his own views (see supra, pp. 172, 173).
7 Ver. 8. I read KaAov/xeeos with most uncials. If, however, ok. he, the right reading
(>4, A, B), the meaning can only be "he who was called Abraham," with a reference to
the change of his name from Abram. This is by no means impossible (so Theodoret). The
faith of Abraham was one of the commonest topics of eulogy and dissension in the Rabbinio
schools. 8 Ver. 10. Not Jerusalem {Ps. xlvi. 5 ; lxxxvii. 1 ; Rev. xxi. 10), hut " the Jerusalem above n
(xii. 22 ; xiii. 14). The same thought and expression occurs often in Philo.
9 Philo in several places speaks of God as the Architect (rexvCrr^) of the world ; and this is
one of the resemblances of this Epistle to the Book of "Wisdom (Wisd. xiii. 1).
10 Even Sarah, though once she laughed.
11 Dr. Field seems to think that koX Auttj 'Zappa, may be a gloss : for (i.) SreKev is not found
in «, A, D ; (ii.) from the reference to Abraham in Rom, iv. 8 ; (iii.) because KaraSo^j properly
applies to the male.

252 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
their lives, for they all died in accordance with faith, not having received
the (fruition of the) promises made to them,1 but having seen that
fruition from, afar, and greeted it,2 and acknowledged that human life is
but a sojourn in an alien country.8 Such language showed clearly that
they were looking for a fatherland ; and this was not the land which
they had left, for, had this been all, they could easily have returned to
it. But they were yearning for a better — a heavenly country j and
because they were thus homesick their Father was not ashamed of them,
not ashamed to be entitled their God (Gen. xvii. 7 ; xxvi. 24; xxviii. 13,
etc.), for He prepared for them a city.
Then, returning to Abraham, he dwells on the faith he showed in
the willingness to offer up his son, his only son, whom in will he so
absolutely sacrificed that, typically speaking,4 he received him back only
from the dead. B}r faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even respecting
things future.5 By faith Jacob on his death-bed blessed each of the sons
of Joseph,6 and bowed his head to God as he leaned over the top of his
staff.7 By faith Joseph felt so sure that God would fulfil His promises
that he bade the children of Israel carry back his bones with them from
Egypt to the Promised Land.8 By faith Amram and Jochebed, the parents
of Moses, struck with his beauty,9 fearlessly hid him for three months.
By faith Moses when he grew up, undazzled by the rank and splendour
of the Egyptian throne, 10 turned away his eyes to the great reward, deli-
1 They had received the promises in one sense (iKop-io-avro), but not in another (ou kafiovTes,)
See ix. 15.
2 See G-*n. xlix 19 ; John viii. 56.
s Gen. xxiii. 4 ; xlvii. 9 ; 1 Chron. xxix. 15 ; Ps. xxxix. 12, etc.
4 Ver. 19. Elsewhere in the Epistle 60€v means "for which reason." The meaning of
the words ee irapa^okjj has been much disputed. (1) Some take it to mean "unexpectedly"
(as in Polybius, i. 23, Trapa£6Aw?), or "in bold venture," on the analogy of irapaPaWca-Bat —
"to undertake a daring risk." (2) Luther erroneously follows the Vulsr. in rendering them
"for a type" (in parabolam, zum Vorbilde). Ther-3 is, however, no doubt that it must mean (3)
"in a figure," as in our E. V. But the question then arises how he can b1* said to have
received Isaac back " in a figure," and not in reality ? Omitting untenable conjectures, it may
mean either "as a type of the resurrection," or be taken as a qualification of the "received
him from the dead." Isaac was, "figuratively speaking, dead" when Abraham received him
back. The form of expression is unusual, but the Jewish analogies seem to show tjhat this
is the meaning here. (See tbe passage3 quoted by Wetstein— in one of them — Pirke Eliezer, § 31
—it is said that Isaac did actually die ; and see Rom. iv. 17 — 19).
fi Esau too was blessed. He got the lower life th>it he desired, though the true rendering
of Gen. xxvii. 39 is not as in our Version, but "Behold, thy dwelling shall be aioay from
the fatness of the earth, and away from the dew of blessing."
6 See Gen. xlviii. 14, 17—20.
7 This seems to refer, not to the blessinsr of Ephraim and Manasseh, but to Gen. xlvii. 31.
In our version it runs, "And Israel bowed himself upon his bed's head," The LXX. and
Peshito render it as here, "upon the top of his staff;" and the strange rendering of the
Vulgate, " He (Jacob) adored the head of his (Joseph's) staff," has led to the wildest vagaries of
conjectue, and to the defence of imane-wnrship from this passage! the main variation of
rendering arises only from the fact that the LXX., Vulgate, and Peshito, understood the word
to be matteh, " staff," not mittah, " bed," as they understood it two verses later (Gen. xlviii. 2).
Jacob was lying in bed, but, getting up to take the oath from Joseph, supported his trembling
limbs upon "the staff," which was a memorable type of his pilgrimage (Gen. xxxii. 10), and,
at the end of the oath, bowed bis head over his staff m sign of thanks and reverence to God.
8 Gen. 1. 26 ; Ex. xiii. 19 ; Josh. xxiv. 32.
9 Acts vii. 20, "fair to God." His Divine beauty seemed to them a sign of something
remarkable. See Philo, Vit. Mos. (0,>p. ii. 82).
10 "The son of a daughter of Pharaoh," i.e.t the son of a princess. The reference is to
the Jewish legend( whioh was peculiarly rich in details about Moses. It is not recorded in
Scripture, though it is implied. Comp. Luke iv. 5, 6.

HEROES OP FAITH. 253
berately preferring to share in the reproach of the Christ1 with GocJ's
suffering people. By faith, with his eyes still steadfastly fixed on the
unseen King, he braved the wrath of Pharaoh, and led his people out of
Egypt.2 By faith he celebrated8 the Passover and the sprinkling of
blood that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them. By
faith the Israelites crossed the Red Sea as through dry land. It was by
their faith that the walls of Jericho fell. It was faith4 which led
Rahab, the heathen harlot,5 to receive their spies. And after these
many examples of heroic faith exhibited in many particulars — Abel,
Enoch, Noah — Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the parents of
Moses — Moses, the Israelites, Rahab — what need was there to con
tinue6 the glorious enumeration, and go through the deeds of Gideon,
Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the Prophets —
" Who, through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,7 obtained
promises,3 stopped the mouths of lions,9 quenched the power of fire,10 escaped the
edges of the sword,11 were strengthened out of weakness,12 became mighty in war,
drove back the armies of the aliens.13 "Women received their dead by resurrec
tion,14 and others were broken on the wheel,16 not accepting the offered deliverance,
that they may obtain a better resurrection.16 Others again bore trial of mockinss
and scourgings,1' aye, and further of chains and imprisonment ; 18 they were stoned,19
were sawn asunder,20 were tempted,21 died by slaughter of the sword.22 They went
about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented — of whom
1 See xiii. 13 ; 2 Cor. i. 5 ; Col. i. 24. " The reproach which Christ had to bear hi His own
person, and has to bear in that of His members" (Bleek). There is probably a reference to
Ps. lxxxix. 50, 51. Comp. Phil. iii. 7—11. .
2 This clearly alludes to the Exodus. If it alluded to his flight into Midian, it would
require some violence to harmonise it with Ex. ii. 14. It is true that for the moment Pbaraoh
consented to the .Exodus, but it was only in wrath and fear, and it was certain that he would
pursue tbem.
3 For the perfect see ver. 17, and the notes on iv. 7, ix. 8, x. 9, x. 28, etc.
4 It is equally true, in another sense, that it was by works. Jas. ii. 25.
5 The word is to be understood literally (Matt. i. 5), and its retention is a proof of the faith
fulness of the sacred narrative, even in njatters most likely to wound the national sensibilities
of the Jews The Targum softens it down into Pundakitha=iravboKevTpia, cauponari;, "inn
keeper," and Braune most arbitrarily renders it ''idolatress."
6 The phrase, " time will fail me," is found also in Philo (De somn.).
7 A pro if that the writer never dreamt, any more than St. Paul did, of an inoperative faith.
8 The allusion is to the promises of victory, etc., of Josh. xxi. 45, etc. (Comp. ver. 13, 39J.
9 Dan. vi. 23 ; Judg. xiv. 6 ; 2 Sam. xvii. 34 ; xxiii. 20.
i° Dan. iii. " the burning fiery furnace."
11 1 Sam. xviii. 11 ; xix. 10, 12 ; 2 Kings iv. 14 ; etc., etc.
12 Sams1 n, David, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, etc.
13 These two clauses seem to refer to the Maccabees.
14 1 Kings xvii. 22, 23 ; 2 Kings iv. 35- 37.
15 This is the technical meaning of the word, and is probably intended here, if the reference
is to 2 Mace. vi. 18—30, and vii.
16 Not a resurrection like that of the Shunamite and the woman of Sarepta. See 2 Mace. vii.
9—36. 17 2 Mace. vii. 7—10 ; 1 Mace. ix. 26 ; Jos. Antt. xii. 5, § 4.
18 1 Mace. xii. l2 ; and in the Old Testament, Micah ; 1 Kings xxiii. 26 ; Jer. xxxii. 23 ; etc.
19 See 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 — 22 ; Matt, xxiii. 35 — 37. Tradition said that Jeremiah was stoned.
20 Isaiah was perhaps sawn asunder. (See Yevamoth, f . 49 b ; Sanhedrin, f. 103 b ; Hamburger,
Talm. Wort. s.v. Jesaia.)
21 Comp. Matt. xxiv. 51. As the prophet from Judah was by Jeroboam, 1 Kings xiii. 7. If
the reading be correct, it can only imply that the temptation to apostatise was the most cruel
of afflictions (comp. Acts xxvi. 11 ; Life and Work of St Po-n), i. 172). But kirpyo-Brio-av, " they
were burned, would be a probable conjecture if there were tbe slightest variation in the MSS.
Comp. Philo, in Flacc. 20, where he tells us that some Jews of Alexandria were burned alive.
(See 2 Mace. vi. 11.)
» 1 Kings xix. 10 j Jer. xxvi. 23; 1 Mace. ii. 38; 2 Mace. v. 26.

254 THE EARLY DATS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the world was not worthy— wandering in deserts and mountains, and caves and the
clefts of the earth 1 Arid these all, being borne witness to by their faith, received
not the promise,2 since God provided something better concerning us,3 in order
that they may not, apart from us, be perfected " 4 (xi. 33 — 40).
SECTION IX.
PINAL EXHORTATIONS.
He can now resume with added force his final exhortation to faithful
endurance. They are running a race, they are fighting a battle, but they
are not alone. They are successors of the. old saints, united with them
in sympathy, but endowed with even richer blessings, and inspired with
more glorious hopes.
"Wherefore let us also, since we have on aril sides around us so great a cloud
of witnesses (to the faith),5 laying aside every weight6 and the closely- clinging sin,7
let us run with patience the race set before us, gazing earnestly on the leader 8 and
perfecter of our faith, Jesus, who for the joy set before him endured a cross,
despising shame, and has sat down on the right hand of the throne of God. For
compare yourself with him who hath endured such contradiction at the hands of.
sinners against himself,9 that ye be not weary by fainting in your souls. Not yet
unto blood did ye resist in your struggles against sin,10 and yet ye have utterly for
gotten the encouragement which discourseth with you as with sons, My Son,
despise not the training of the Lord, nor faint in being corrected by Him : for whom
the Lord loveth He traineth, yea, He scourgeth every son whom He accepteth.11
1 Judg. vi 2 j 1 Kings xviii. 4, 13 ; xix. 8, 13 ; 1 Mace. ii. 23, 29 ; 2 Maec. v. 27 ; vi. 11 ; x. 6 j
Matt xiv. 10.
2 See ix« 15. If this be the right reading, we must suppose a contrast between geoeral
promises (xi. 33) and the one great final promise. But A reads " promises, ' ' and this is followed
by some of the Fathers. (Comp. vi. 15.)
s Matt. xiii. 17 ; 1 Pet. i. 10, 11. * 1 Thess. i. 10 ; Rev. xxi. 3, 4.
5 " A cloud," i.e., a dense multitude? like " a cloud of foot-soldiers," in Horn. 17. iv. 274,;
Herod, viii. 109 ; and comp. Is. Ix. 8. Since patience was the characteristic of the faith of all
these elders, he exhorts to patience (vTrofiavrj), which Christ also showed (viropittvas rbv oravpov).
6 As an athletic technicality the word meant " superfluous flesh," such as was reduced by
training (Galen, Hippocrates).
7 evTrepta-rarov occurs here alone in Greek literature. The meanings which have been sug
gested are (1) "circumventing," "hemming in on all sides;" (2) "easily avoidable" (comp.
irepdarao-o, 2 Tim. ii. 16; Tit. iii. 9) ; (3) " much-applauded," in the sense of "surrounded by
spectators ; " (4) " easily-besetting." This last is one of the senses approved by St. Chrysostom
and many others (e.g., Erasmus, " tenaciter inhaerens;" Bp. Sanderson, "quae nos arete com-
plectitur;" Wiclif, "that standeth about us "J, and involves the metaphor of a closely-fitting <
robe ((Tra-ros xit<W, " a close tunic "), which also seems to be suggested by airo0e'ju,ei>op. (Comp.
Eph. iv. 22; Col. iii. 9.)
8 'Apxyyov. Hee Acts iii. 15, "the Prince of life;" v. 31, " a Prince and a Saviour j" vnfra,
p. 312 > ls. xxx. 4 (LXX. ). "Whether, as Riehm and others think, the idea is involved of Jesus
also " setting forth and manifesting faith in its perfection " is a very doubtful " afterthought of
theology.'* «
9 Ni T>. E have eavroix;, "sinners against themselves."
10 " Unto blood " may either be the technical pugilistic expression (" an athlete can bring no
great courage to a contest who has never had blood drawn" — "qui nunquam suggillatus est,'J
Sen.) ; or, more probably, means, " there have as yet been no actual martyrdoms among you."
The use of the aorist seems to imply a slight reproach— "ye resisted not unto blood, but gave
way to the attack." Until we have any grounds for reasonable certainty as to the Church to
which this Epistle was addressed, the phrase can hardly be used as an argument in settling the
date at which it was written. Certainly in Rome aud in Jerusalem there had been martyrdoms
before any date which is at all probable for its composition.
11 Philo comments on the same passage (Prov. iii. 11, 12) in much the same strain (Opp. f-
544), The quotation is from the LXX., with slight variations. It agrees with the Hebrew, ex
cept that "faint in being corrected" is in the Hebrew "loathe not his correction." Tbe Vat.
MS. of the LXX. has eKeyxei, " rebukes " or " chastens," for irai&evei, "trains" (see Rev. iii. 19).
Iu the last clause, for " scourgeth every son," etc., the Hebrew has " even as a father the^son in
whom he delighteth." Probably the LXX. read 3*0} for 3N^l.

THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 255
Endure with a view to your training;1 since God is dealing with you as with
sons" (xii. 1 — 7).
He continues the illustration of God's Fatherhood by human father
hood. The father who nobly and wisely loves his child will not spoil
him by suffering him to grow up in headstrong wilfulness, but will
punish him when punishment is needful, and the father does not
thereby lose, but rather increases, his son's reverence for him. How
much rather shall we subject ourselves to the Father of our spirits?2
The punishment of earthly parents is only for the brief days of their
authority, and there mingles with it an element, if not of* caprice, yet of
the possible errors of human opinion. God corrects us only for our
good, that we may partake of His holiness. Now the sterner side
of training is never immediately pleasurable ; but men enjoy its
fruits afterwards in the peace of moral hardihood and serene
self-mastery. He urges them to straighten into vigour the relaxed
hands and palsied knees, and to make straight tracks for their
feet,8 that lameness may not be quite put out of joint,4 but may rather
be cured." Pursue peace with all,6 and the sanctification without which no man shall see
the Lord ; looking carefully lest there he any one who is falling short of the grace
of God — lest any root of bitterness6 springing up trouble you, and by its means the
many be denied — lest there be any fornicator,7 or scorner, like Esau, who for one
meal sold his own birthright.8 For ye know that afterwards, when he was even
1 The best reading seems to be ei?, not et (^, A, D, K, L, etc.).
2 This is the most natural meaning of to! rTarpi w irv€vp.6.rti>v, especially when we compareit
with Num. xvi. 22, " the God. of the spirits of all flesh." And this seems to have originated the
expression among Rabbinic writers (v. Wetstein and Schottgen, ad loc). Others take it to mean
"the Father of spiritual life" (the Author of xaP"rft0LTa- or Divine graces), or " of the spirit-
world," i.e., "of angels,*' etc. But it would not then be a direct antithesis to "fathers of our
flesh." To draw any inference here about the verbal controversy (as it seems to me) between
Creationists — those who consider that the human soul is in each birth distinctly created — and
TraducuMiists— those who think^that it is derived in the way of natural birth— is perfectly
futile. 3 xii. 13. Kal rpox<-as bpBas TrotijtraTe rots irocrlv vfi&v is an unintentional hexameter. These
are metrical accidents. The metaphor is borrowed from Prov. iv. 26. The fact that, beside
this hexameter, there are two distinct iambicsjver. 14, 15)—
o$ x^pfc ovSels oxfjerai rbv Kvptov,
"Eirio-KOirovvres p.rj tis voreplav ano,
and one balf-iambic, tra p.?) rb xm^ov inrpaTrfj (ver. 13), and a bad pentameter (ver. 26)— though
the rhythms are evidently unintentional— shows the elaboration and oratorical finish and state-
liness of the Btyle.
4 ixTpa-niJ. I have given the technical sense of the word (Zuxari) ; and the familiarity of the
writer with St. Luke's language, and, in all probability, with St. Luke himself, makes it not
unlikely that he may have learnt a technical term or two from intercourse with " the beloved
physician." Possibly, however, the word may have its ordinary sense of " be turned out of the
way. " 1 Tim. i. 6 ; v. 15 ; 2 Tim. iv. 4.
s Ps. xxxiv. 10; 1 Pet. iii. 11.
6 xii. 15 ; Deut. xxix. 18, u a root that beareth gall and wormwood," or, as in margin, "a
poisonful herb." The mention of " gall " has led to the untenable conjecture that we should
read iv xoAjj here as in the LXX ; but the Alexandrine MS. of the LXX has hox^j}- See
Exc. IX.
7 xii. 16. Since the word here can hardly mean "idolator" (Chrys., Calvin, Grotius, De
Wette, Bleek, etc.), and would be too strong to apply to Esau on account of his heathen
marriages (Gen. xxvii, 35 ; xxviii. H), we must suppose that the writer follows the Jewish tradi
tion, as Philo also does, in which Esau was represented as a man of impure life. They applied
to him the expression in Prov, xxviii. 21. If it mean apostasy from Jewish privileges (Tholuck,
Ebrard, Riebm), then his nopvHa in abandoning Judaism is compared with the iropveia of now
returning to it (Riehm, p. 155, f. 9).
8 eavToO, Nj A, C.

256 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
anxious to inherit the blessing, he was rejected : for he found no opportunity
for repentance — though he sought it [i.e., the blessing] earnestly with tears"1
(xii. 14—17).
Then comes the great outburst of triumphant comparison in which he
closes this, his main exhortation against the imminent peril of apostasy —
" For ye have not come to palpable and enkindled fire,2 and to darkness and
gloom, and storm, and sound of trumpet, and voice of utterances (^Tj/JidTOJv), which
they who heard deprecated, entreating that no further discourse (\6yov) should be
addressed to them, for they could not bear what was being enjoined, 'and if a beast
touch the mountain it shall be stoned ; ' and (so fearful was the pomp of the vision)
— Moses said, ' I am terrified and trembling ' 3 : — but ye hav,e approached Sion,
mountain and city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of
angels, to a festal assembly and church of the Firstborn enrolled in Heaven,4 to a
Judge, the God of all, and to the spirits of just men who have been perfected, and
to Jesus, Mediator of a new covenant,5 and to a blood of sprinkling, which speaketh
1 xii. 14—17. The general tenor of the warning i% Do not despise your birthright, lest here
after you should be unable to recover it when you feel the bitter consequences of the loss. If
thiB clause means that Esau desired to repent, and no cbance of repenting was allowed him, it
runs counter to the entire tenor of Bible teaching. Hence the totto? fj.eravoious (comp. Wi*d. xii.
10) must mean, like its Latin equivalent, " locus poenitentiaB," not merely an opportunity for
repentance, but a chance of so changing his mind as to avert the fatal consequences. " It does
not mean," says Theodore of Mopsuestia, " that he did not obtain pardon of sins on repentance,
for that he was nut in any way asking ; but that it was never possible for theblessing to be given
him again." " His tears were tears of remorse for the earthly consequences, not tears of
spiritual sorrow (2 Cor. vii. 10). They sprang from the dolor amisei, not the dol -r admisjsi; from
the dolor ob poenam, not the dolor ob peccatum" ("Wordsworth). Hence, though we cannot
accept the favourite view of many modern commentators (Beza, Ebrard, Tholuck:, etc.) that the
woidsmean "an opportunity of a chang« of mind in his father," we must either (1) give to
[Af-ravoLo. some ltss special sense than that of "repentance," which it usually bears; or (2) put
the clause in a parenthesis, and take it to mean that, as a fact, Esau never repented, which is
rendered more probable by the Targum on Job, which s>iys : "All the days of Esau the ungodly
they expected that he would have repented, but he repented not ; " or (3) we must suppose th^t
it means " he found no opportunity of repentance of such a land as would reverse the consequences
of hi* prolate levity , and win him back the blessing." H we take tbis last view, the "though ho
sought it " may mean " this kmd of repentance ; '' if not, we have no alternative but to under
stand " it " of " the blessing." It is perfectly true that there is thus a difficulty either in tho
construction of the sentence, or in the meaning given to p.^r6.vota ; and some may prefer to say
that tbe passage merely expresses the hopeless condition, humanly speaking, of the hardened
and defiant apostite, like vi. 4 — 8 ; ii. 3 ; x. 26 — 31 ; xii. 25. But if any one rejects all tuese ways
of removing the difficulty, he is left with a statement which will ev*r furni-h its best stronghold
to that guilty desrair which is antagonistic to all that is best and most precious in tbe Gospel
of Love. It was the abuse of this passage by the Montanists and Novatians to justify their
refusal of absolution to those who fell into sin after baptism which tended to the discrediting
of this Epistle in the Western Church.
a xii. 18. This rendering may surprise the reader ; but opet is omitted by n, A, C, and some
of the best versions, and this view is adopted by Bengel, Delitzsch, Tischendorf, Davidson,
Muulton, etc. See Ex. xix. 18; xx. 12; Deut. iv. 12. The words may, however, mean "that
| mountain^ which is materinl (or ' that is being groped for ' (Wordsworth); comp. Ex. x. 21 ;
LXX.) and burned with lire.1'
3 In speaking of this terror of Moses at Sinai, the writer follows the Hagada, unless he can
be supposed to refer to Deur. ix. 19. Iu Shabbath, f. 88, o, Moses exclaims, "Lord of tho
Universe, I am afraid lest they (the angels) should consume me with the breath of their
mouths." The same tradition of Mose^' terror is found in Midrash Koheleth, f. 69. 4, and in
Zohar. In Kx. xix. 16 it is said that "all toe people trembled." Similarly, in Acts vii. 22 wu
are told the unrecorded fact that Moses trembled on seeing the burning bush (Ex. iii. 6) .
* I will not here enter into the voluminous controversy which has arisen as to the punctua
tion of thece words, or the emct significance which the writer attached to the expression
" church of tbe first-born enrolled in heaven,'' because I do not think tbat any certain conclu
sions can be arrived at. I take the juupiacri with ayyeA.ioi', because of Deut. xxxiii. 1. 3; Ps. lxviii.
17; Dau. vii. 10; and I suppose the " Chmvh of the first-born enrolled in heaven" to be tin:
Church of Christ, the heir of the spiritual Jacob, while the Jews had forfeited their spiritual
birthright." (Luke x. 30 j Rev, iii. 5; xiii. 8 ; xx. 15; Phil. iv. 3. Comp. Ex.iv.22, xix. 1—0,
with 1 Pet. ii. 9 ; and see xiii. 8.)
5 Aia0»')KTj yea, as distinguished from tbe commoner epithet Katioj, implies not only that tr, is
" recent," but that it is "young" and"strong."

NEW SINAI. 257
mii nova.*/.--. ¦_, , tjXt uuuii Inat of Abel.' Take heed that ye do not decline to listen to
Him that speaketh. For if th-y escaped not hy refusing him who spake on earth,
far more shall not we, who are turning away from Him who is from Heaven.2
Whose voice shook the earth then,3 hut now He hath promised, saying, 'Again, once
*or all will I shake not only the earth, hut also the Heaven.'4 Now this ' again
once for all ' indicates the removal of the things that are heing shaken, as of things
which have been made in order that things which cannot be shaken may remain. 5
Wherefore since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us cherish
thankfulness, and thereby let us serve God acceptably with holy awe and fear. For,
indeed, our God is a consuming fire " 6 (xii. 18 — 29).
In this, then, was to be their great encouragement to Faith and
Patience. The Dispensation which they were now enjoying was infi
nitely richer in blessing, infinitely less surrounded with elements of
terror, than that under which had lived those elders of whose steadfast
endurance he had just been telling them. In the culminating point of
that Dispensation God had spoken to the Israelites of old, not from
heaven, but from the flaming and earthquake-riven peak of the desert
mountain. His voice had come with a sound so awful from the dark
storm and careering fire as to force from them the entreaty that God
would speak to them no more, except through the voice of their law
giver. Even that great lawgiver had almost recoiled in terror from the
awful splendour of the scene. To the mountain itself the Israelites had
not dared to approach, for they had been told to set a fence around it,
so as not even to touch its border, and if even an animal touched it they
were to stone it, or pierce it with a dart. They stood, therefore, afar
off, and Jewish legend told how at the utterance of each commandment
they recoiled twelve miles, till the ministering angels brought them
back.7 But now the True Israel — they who had accepted the Messiah
and King of Israel — had come near, and that with perfect boldness, to
another and a heavenly hill, where there were angels indeed in myriads,
but not surrounded with attributes of terror ; where they would be
admitted into the peaceful and blessed communion which united the
1 See ix. 13 ; x. 22 ; xi. 4 ; xiii. 12. " The blood of Abel demanded vengeance, that of Christ
remission" (Erasmus). It is curious that, according to Jewish legend, the dispute between
Cain and Abel had reference to the question whether God was a judge or not, which, Selden
says, was even found in some editions of the Hebrew Pentateuch (De jur. natal.). One interpre
tation of the plural " bloods " in Gen. iv. 10 was that his " blood was sprinkled on the trees and
stones " (Surenhua. Mishna iv. 229).
2 Chrysostom, etc., understood Moses to be meant by him that uttereth sacred words on
earth. Hewho speaks from heaven is Jesus. But the contrast evidently is between the voice
that spoke on Sinai and that which appeals to us from the heavenly Sion. It is not a contrast
between tbe speakers, but between the places from which they spoke, involving as it did the vast
difference between the inferior and the superior revelation. The speaker may be regarded as
the same, for even the Jews always said that the speaker at Sinai was Michael = the Shechinah=
the Angel of the Presence (Isa. lxiii. 9), or of the Covenant (Mal. iii. 1).
3 See Ex. xix. 18 ; Judg. v. 4 ; Ps. cxiv. 7.
4 Hagg. ii. 6, 7. The words literally mean, " Tet once it is, a little while." Comp. Luke -
xxi. 26.
5 The words may also be rendered, " The removing of the things that are being shaken, as of
things which have been made in order that the things not shaken may remain."
6 xii. 18—28. The quotation is from Deut. iv. 24 (comp. ix. 3), and gives a reason why our
love of God should be mingled with holy awe and fear. The best reading is p.erd. euAa/3ei'as koX
Se'ovs, although Se'os occurs nowhere else in the New Testament.
' See McCaul's OU Paths, pp. 202—205.
E

258 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
saints on earth to those in heaven ; and where it was the Voice of the
Son of God Himself which invited them to enter the immediate Presence
of God their Loving Judge. If, then, the neglect of that voice from
Sinai had brought down its own terrible consequences, how much more
inexcusable would it be, how much more terrible, to neglect and despise
the voice which now called to them in tones of infinite tenderness ! The
earth had trembled at Sinai ; the sure word of prophecy had declared
that it should be shaken once again. But there was one thing which
could never be shaken, and that was the Kingdom of God into which
they had entered. Let that thought be to them one of thankfulness
and godly reverence, lest forfeiting the blessings into which they had been
freely admitted, they should find that the Fire of Love was no less
terrible to purge and punish than had been that of Sinai to their
fathers ! 1
The last chapter of the Epistle consists of notices and exhortations,
such as the writer considered to be necessary for the Church whose
members he is addressing. He urges them to a continuance of their
brotherly love.2 He tells them not to forget hospitality, a virtue which
was so indispensable for the happiness of the poor brethren who found
themselves in strange towns.3 It was a virtue for which the ancient
Christians were celebrated even among the heathen,4 and the writer
reminds them how by the exercise of hospitality some of the elders (like
Abraham and Lot and Manoah and Gideon) had even entertained
angels unawares.6 He bids them be mindful of prisoners, as being
themselves Christ's prisoners,6 and of all in distress, liable as they were,
while still in the body, to similar sufferings.7 He bids them in all
respects to honour marriage, and to keep undefiled the marriage bed,
since God will judge the unclean.8 He warns them against covetous
ness,9 and encourages them to contentment by the blessed promise that
1 Comp. x. 27, 28, 30.
s vi. 10 ; x. 32, 33. Comp. Rom. xii. 10 ; 1 Thess. iv. 9 ; ] .'et. i. 22. Perhaps the neglect, by
Bome, of Christian gatherings, had tended to disunion (x. 25).
3 1 Pet. iv. 8, 9 ; Rom. xii. 13 ; Tit. i. 8; 1 Tim. iii. 2. Comp. Berachoth, f. 63, b, and many
passages in Hershon's Treasures ofthe Talmud, chap. x.
4 Lucian, De mort. Peregr. 16 : " Their principal lawgiver has inspired in them the sentiment
that they are all mutually brethren." Julian (Ep. 49) says that if nepl roiis £eVovs tpt^vOptairla has
been the chief element of success in the spread of their afleoTvjs.
5 Comp. Mattl xxv. 35. The writer had doubtless read Philo's DoAbrahamo {Opp. ii. 17) : ,( I
know not what excess of happiness and blessedness I should ascribe to the household wherein
angels deigned to bH introduced to men, and to share their gifts of hospitality."
6 1 Cor; vii. 22 ; 2 Cor. ii. 14 (" who leadeth us in triumph "). Lucian, in his curious tract on
the Detithof Peregrinus, dwells ou tbe extraordinary tende* ness of Christians for the Confessors
in prison. This incidental notice shows the courage and endurance which a Christian was
called on to display in these times of persecution.
7 Calvin takes kv a-wpart to mean " the body of tbe Church" ; but the words standing alone
could not bear such a meaning. Here, again, we might be prepared to see a reminiscence of
Philo, who says, ws kv rot? krepaiv o-wpao-iv ain-ol teaKovpevot, " as being yourselves afflicted in the
persons of others " (De spec. legg. § 30). But the meaning olearly is, "as being yourselves liable
to suffer." 8 The warnings may have been equally needed by Essenes, who disparaged marriage (1 Tim.
iv. 3), and by Antinomians, who made light of unchastity (Acts xv. 20 ; 1 Thess. iv. 6 ; xii. 16).
9 For a similar juxtaposition of covetousness pnd uncleanness see 1 Cor. v. 10 ; vi. 9 ; Eph.
v. 3, 5; Col. iii. 5; and here the very idiom (afbtKapyvpos 6 Tpon-or apKoii/xei/ot) is identioal with
that of St. Paul (Rom. xii 9 : i] dyaTrr) acuTrdfcpiTos* aivoo-njyovvTes). It need hardly be added that
this is no proof whatever of the Pauline authorship. It is quite clear throughout the Epistle

EXHORTATIONS. 259
Gocl "would never leave nor forsake them,1 a promise "which gave them
an impregnable security against all assaults of man. / He bids them
bear in memory their leaders who had passed away 2 — leaders who once
spoke to them the word of God, "whose faith imitate, contemplating
the issue of their Christian walk." s
And since those leaders had ever preached Christ, Who is the Word
of God — (though here again the term is not directly applied to Him) —
he warns them once more of their tendency to be seduced by the
haughty boasts and privileges of Judaism, or by any which would lead
them to relapse into the religion from which they had been converted.
" Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.4 Be not swept
away6 "by various and strange teachings. For it is a beautiful thing6 to be esta
blished in heart by grace,7 not by meats, in which they who walked were not bene
fited.8 We have an altar,9 wherefrom they have no license to eat who serve the
tabernacle.10 For the bodies of those animals, the blood of which is carried by the
High Priest into the holy place, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus
also, that he may sanctify the people by his own blood, suffered without the gate.11
Let us then go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.12 For we
that the writer lias lived in close communion with. St. Paul, and a writer of such intense
originality as Sb. Paul stamps his thought^ and id'oms on the minds of his associates. These
similarities only force into more prominent relief the marked individuality of the style of the
present writer.
1 " He hath said." " He," as in the Talmud, means God (no^ Nin . The exact word1', " I
will never leave thee nor forsake thee," do not occur in the Old Testament, though they are so
quoted by Philo (De co"/us. ling. § 32). The expression may he taken from 1 Chr. xxviii. 20 j
Deut. xxxi. 6, 8; or (more .probably ¦ ) Josh. i. 5.
3 If the letter^was addressed to Palestine, these leaders would include such men as St.
Stephen and St. James the brother of St. John.
3 The word eK/Sao-w (" outcome ") occurs only in 1 Cor. x. 13, where it is rendered "escape."
The word here may imply their death (on tbe analogy of e£oSoy, 2 Pet. i. 15 ; Luke ix. 31, and
a<£i.£is, " departure," Acts xx. 29). It means that they were faithful to the end (see Wisd. ii. 17).
* Mal. iii. 6; Jas. i. 17.
5 "Being swept away (irept<p€p6p.evoi) ,by every wind of teaching" (Eph. iv. 14).
6 "Ver. 9, ko\ov.
7 Its meaning is that our security should rest on God's grace, not on Levitieal rules and
distinctions about meats and drinks, which had been profitless to the Jews, who attached so
much importance to them. On the extent to which these' questions agitated the ancient
Church, and their bearing on dailv life, see Life of St. Paul, i. 264 ; and comp. ix. 10 ; Eom. xiv. ;
Col. ii. 16 — 23; 1 Tim. iv. 3; and Gal. vi. 12, 13. No doubt the Jews appealed to the eternal
Pharisaism of the human hearr., and said to the Christian converts, " We live Jewish-wise ; you
have degraded yourself into living Gentile fashion (iBviK&s, Gal. ii. 14) ; you neglect the Kashar ;
you feed with those who are denied by eating of the unclean beast."
s x. 29 ; xii. 15, 28. . 9 Namely, "the Cross." See infra.
10 The connexion is not quite obvious at first sight, hut seems to be as follows : — He has said
that " matters of meat " had been found unprofitable (vii. 18, 19), and. is perhaps reminded of
the boasted Jewish privilege of partaking of the sacrifices (1 Cor. ix. 13), which was of course no
longer possible tor Christians whom the Jews had excommunicated. So far, thtn. the Chris
tians may have felt, and may have heen taunted with, their loss. But the writer reminds them
that their sacrifice was analogous to the highest aud most solemn of all the Jewish sacrifices —
those offVred on the Day of Atonement. Now of these neither the priests nor any of the Jews
might eat (Lev. iv. 12 ; vi. 30* xvi. 27) The bodies of these victims were burnt without the
camp, just as our Divine Victim suftered outside the city gate. Now of our altar, of our sacri
fices, we may eat {John vi. 51 — 56). We are bidden spiritually to eat His flesh, and drink His
blood. But of this altar, of this sacrifice, they who serve the Tabernacle (see viii. 5) may not
eat. We, therefore, are better off than they. Let us then go forth to Him out of tbe old city
which rejected Him and the old dispensation — which refused to recognise its own annulment;
let us'bear His reproach, th it we may also enjoy the blessings which He offt-rs.
11 His suffering without the gate (Matt, xxvii. 32) corresponded to the sacrifice of the victim,
and the burning df its body ; the sanctification of His people hy the blood of this sacrifice, with
which He has passed into the heavens, corresponds to the sprinkling of the blood by the high
priest in the holiest place.
12 Matt. v. 10 — 14 ; Luke vi. 22. The Jews treated them as outcasts and apostates, but they
were to remembei that they were citizens not of the doomed city (Matt. xxiv. 2), but of the city

260 THE EAELT DATS OF CHRISTIANITY.
have not here an abiding city, hut we are seeking further for that which is to come.
Through him, then, let us offer up a sacrifice of praise1 continually to God, that is
the fruit of lips which confess to His name.2 But forget not beneficence, and
free-sharing of your goods, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased"3 (xiii.
8—16). This passage, like multitudes of others in the Holy Scriptures, has
been pressed into modern controversies with which it has no connexion.
The whole context shows that the word " altar " is here secondary, inci
dental, and metaphorical. The passage is highly compressed, and is so
allusive, that we should hardly be able to understand it apart from the
tenor of the argument which has occupied the main part of the Epistle.
I have endeavoured in the note to explain its meaning. Here I may,
perhaps, add a general paraphrase. Do not forget the rulers of your
Church who have ended consistent lives by holy deaths. Imitate their
faith. They are gone, but the object of their faith is deathless and
unchangeable. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
Be then steadfast in the immutable truth of His doctrine. Do not be
swept away by gusts of everchanging opinion — particularly those of the
Jewish Halachists, who spend their whole lives in torturing strange
inferences out of Levitic regulations. The meats and drinks with
vfhich this science of the Halachah is mainly occupied have been proved
by the experience of ages to be in themselves profitless (vii. 18, 19).
It is not scrupulosity about ceremonial minutiae, but it is the grace of
God which is the real stay and security of the spiritual and moral life.
When they speak about these distinctions of clean and unclean meats — ¦
doubtless your priestly antagonists taunt you with their privilege of
partaking of many sacrifices, such as the sin-offerings and trespass-
offerings, and wave-offerings, and doves — a privilege which you, priests
though you are to God (1 Pet. ii. 5 ; Rev. i. 6 ; xx. 6), may share no
longer. Be it so. Still our case is far superior to theirs. For of their
greatest and most significant sacrifices, those offered on the Day of
Atonement, even their High Priests could not partake. The blood of
those victims was sprinkled on the mercy seat, their bodies were burnt
without the camp. Since, then, the Jewish priests were forbidden to
eat of the type, how could they have license to eat of the antitype 1
But we, too, have our great sacrifice, and we may eat of it, and it is
"food indeed." It is the sacrifice of Him Who was offered without the
that hath the foundations which were not material but built by God. Possibly in this " re
proach " there may be a passing allusion to the fact that those who burnt the bodies of the
Atonement-victims outside the camp, were ceremonially unclean ; but far more to the fixed
Jewish conception that he who was crucified was " accursed of God " (Deut. xxi 22 23) (See
Life of St. Paul, ii. 77, 148.)
1 See Lev. vii. 12 j Pss. xliv. 23 ; cxvi. 17. Tbe Jews had a very remarkable saying that in
the days of the Messiah all other sacrifices should cease, but that the sacrifices of praise
(Jer. xvii. 28) should never cease.
2 Is. lvii. 10, " I create the fruit of the lips." Hos. xiv. 3 ; (lit., our lips, as calves) ; but as
the next verso says, we must (unlike the Jews of old, Is. xxix. 13—21 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 21) offer to
God the sacrifices of well-doing, as well as of praise, and thank Him with our lives as well as
with our lips (Matt. xv. 1—9).
s xiii. 8—16. On this beneflcenoe and participation of earthly goods see Eom. xii. 13 • 2 Cor
ix. 13 1 1 Tim. vi. 18,

WE HAVE AN ALTAR. 261
gate, whose blood is sprinkled to sanctify His people, and to sanctify
even the heavenly places (ix. 12 — 28) ; and on that sacrifice we may live
by perpetual sustenance. He was rejected ; He was thrust outside the
city to be offered up. Let us go forth to Him, bearing His reproach.
If we leave the city of our affection, we are at the best but strangers
and sojourners there, and we are going forth to the Heavenly and the
Eternal City. That earthly city will be shaken ; the Heavenly City is
one of those things which can never be shaken, and will remain. Let us
then offer our thankofferings to Him. Those thankofferings are not the
bullocks enjoined by the Levitic Law (Lev. vii. 12) ; they are " the
bullocks of our lips," and those thankofferings will be acceptable if we
offer therewith the thankofferings of holy lives.
It will be seen, then, that what is prominent is the sacrifice, and our
sustenance thereby. No prominence is given to the altar on which the
sacrifice is offered. It is, so to speak, extra figuram. If in the mind
of the writer any significance was attached to the " altar," it could only
be explained as the Ceoss, as it is understood by St. Thomas Aquinas
and the Boman Catholic Este, no less than by De Wette and Bleek. It
was on the altar of burnt-offering that the Jewish victims were slain ; it
was on the Cross that our great High Priest perfected once and for ever
the offering of Himself. The Cross, then, is the altar, not the material
Table of the Lord. What the writer had in mind was the feeding on
Christ in the heart by faith ; living not on His flesh, which, materially
considered, profiteth nothing, but on His words, which are spirit and
life, and of which they who rejected Him neither might nor could eat.
The " eating of the flesh of Christ and drinking His blood " was the
symbol — far commoner, far less strange, far more directly intelligible to
any one familiar with Jewish habits of thought and expression than it
is to ourselves — of that close union with Him whereby " He that sancti-
fieth and they that are being sanctified are all of one," and whereby it
is not we who live, but Christ in us. The Victim Lamb has been once
offered (ix. 25 — 28), but after a heavenly and spiritual manner we may
feed upon Him, and so be partakers of the Altar until we see Him face
to face.1 Then follows an exhortation to obey and be subject to their leaders,2
who watched sleeplessly for their souls as men who would have to give
an account, so that they might give their account with joy, and not
with groaning, which would be " unprofitable" for them — a euphemistic
1 Whether it is desirable or not to speak of the Lord's Table as an altar is a question of very
secondary interest. Certainly there would not be the smallest objection to doing so if the
lueaning of the term was never perverted in support of false and superstitious conclusions.
But even Baxter said that it is no more improper to call the Lord's Supper a sacrifice (as was
constantly done in the ancient Church), than it is " to call our bodies, and our alms, and our
prayers, sacrifices " " A'id the naming of the Table an altar, as related to this representative
sacrifice, is no more improper than the other." {Christian Institutes, i. 304, quoted by Words
worth. Baxter applies this passage directly to sacramental communion.)
2 The emphasis laid on tbis injunction perhaps hints at tendencies to self-assertion and insub
ordination. In the importance given to the position of these leaders we see the gradual growth
of episcopal powers.

262 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
way of saying that it would be for their deep disadvantage. Then he
asks them for their prayers, adding a profession of conscientious sin
cerity, such as St. Paul also had to make on more than one occasion.1
And he begs for these prayers in the hope that they might bring about
a speedier restoration of the writer to their society.2
" But the God of Peace3 who brought up from the dead4 that Great Shepherd
of the sheep, our Lord Jesus,6 by virtue of the blood of an eternal covenant,6
stablish you in every good work so that ye may do His will, doing that in you,7
through Jesus Christ, which is well-pleasing before Him, to whom be the glory
which is His for ever.8 Amen.
" But I beseech you, brethren, bear with the word of my exhortation.9 For
indeed I have written to you briefly.10 Te know n that our brother Timothy has
been set free, with whom, if he come soon, I will see you. Salute all your
leaders and all the saints. The Italians salute you. Grace be with you all.
Amen " (xiii. 13—25).
The last clauses have been pressed into the discussion of the author
ship of the Epistle, but they are too vague to give any real clue. All
that we learn from the allusion to Timothy is that he had been
detained, probably in prison, but that now he had been liberated, and
that it was the intention of the writer to visit in his company the
Church to which he was writing, if Timothy came sufficiently soon.
There is not the slightest clue as to where Timothy or the writer were
at the time when the letter was written. Even the inferred imprison
ment of Timothy is uncertain, for the word used of him (cwroAeAujueW),
though used of liberation from prison (Acts iii. 13, iv. 21), is also used
of official, and even of ordinary, dismissal on any errand or mission
(Acts xix. 41, xxiii. 22). 12 It is, however, as I have already said, a
reasonable conjecture that Timothy obeyed with all speed the urgent
summons of St. Paul in his second letter, and either arrived in time to
1 Acts xxiii. 1 ; xxiv. 16 ; 1 Cor. i v. 4 ; Gal. i. 13, irsMpsia, n ? A. C, D ; Acts xxvi. 26,
wnoiOapev ; Gal. v. 10 ; Phil. i. 25 ; ii 24. It is probable that some would look with suspicion,
and even with angry denunciation, at the spiritual freedom in all matters of form which was
claimed and exercised by the school of St. Paul. These concluding sentences of the Epistle
greatly resemble those of St. Paul, and were probably a common feature in letters of his
friends. See Co), iv. 3 ; 1 Thess. v. 25.
8 Phil. 22. The circumstances that hindered him may have heen of a special eharacttr
(" but Satan hindered us," 1 Thess. ii. 18) ; we cannot at all conjecture what they were.
8 xiii. 14 i Eom. xv. 33 ; xvi. 20 ; Phil. iv. 9 ; 1 Thess. v. 23, etc.
4 The only allusion to Christ's Eesurreotion in this Epistle (comp. vi. 2 ; xi. 35 ; Eom. i. 7).
5 Zech. ix. 11; Is. Ixiii. 11.
6 ix. 15—18 j Ex. xxiv .8.
1 eU to Trotijo-al . ¦ TTOiiav . . kv vp.iv (comp. Phil. ii. 13, 6 kvepyStv kv iipiv jcal TO (Je'Aeii* Kat TO
ivipyeiv). « Gal i. 5.
9 Acts xiii. 15. A courteous apology, lest he should seem to have adopted a tone of
authority which he did not possess.
10 Acts xv. 20 ; xxi. 25 ; Sui /3paxeW = 8t' oAiywv ; 1 Pet. v. 12 : " pancis pro copia rerum et
arguraenti dignitate " (Bengel) . 'ETreo-retKa is the epistolary aorist, which may be idiomatically
represented in English either by " I write " or " I have written." He adds "briefly" to show
that he had had no space for lengthened apologies, or for an\ thing but a direct and compressed
argumeut and appeal. Possibly, however, this allusion to the brevity of his letter is given as a
reason why they should bear with it. " Since you see that I have not troubled you at any
great length."
11 Or " know." It cannot mean "Pay friendly regard to "
>2 Even Chrysostom, Theophylact, and fficumenius, felt no certainty that airoKe\vuevov meant
" freed from prison. "

GREATNESS OF THE EPISTLE. 263
be present at the martyrdom of the Apostle or soon afterwards. The
Church in Bome was then suffering from the Neronian persecution, and
any one who came to Bome as a prominent Christian, and as a devoted
friend of the greatest Christian teacher, would have been little likely to
escape suspicion and arrest. If, so, we are unable even to conjecture the
circumstances to which he owed his acquittal. Perhaps his comparative
youth and the unobtrusive timidity of his character may have worked
in his favour. But if these conjectures are true, he must have been set
free at Bome, and this would be a proof that the Epistle to the Hebrew's
was written to some other place. The data are, however, too slight to
furnish any ground on which to build ; and when Ewald ventures, from
these hints, to conjecture that the letter may have been addressed
to a Christian community at Bavenna, he might have conjectured a
hundred other places with just as much, and just as little, proba
bility. Nor can anything be deduced from the salutation which the writer
sends. His words literally translated are, " Those from Italy salute
you." a If we give to these words the sense which they ordinarily bear,
they must mean " the Italians," just as " The scribes from Jerusalem "
mean " Jerusalemite scribes" (Matt. xv. 1), and "those from Cilicia"
mean " Cilicians " (Acts vi 9), and "the Jews from Thessalonica "
mean " Thessalonian Jews" (Acts xvii. 13), and "the Jews from Asia"
mean " Asiatic Jews " (Acts xxi. 27). But there is nothing to show
where these Italians were residing, or what interest would be felt in
their salutation by the purely conjectural Church to which the letter is
addressed. The subscription to the Epistle in the Alexandrine manuscript is,
" It was written to the Hebrews from Bome." That in the Moscow
Manuscript (k) and in the Syriac and Coptic Yersions is, " It was
written to the Hebrews from Italy by Timotheus," and this is adopted
in our received text. Both subscriptions are destitute of authority, and
the latter is in plain contradiction with what we should infer from the
allusion to Timothy in the letter itself. It would be interesting to us
to know more of the history of the letter, but this is no longer discover
able. Like Melchizedek, it has been said, the letter is o.-wa.To>p,
a.yevea\6ynTos, without known father or lineage. None the less it will
always remain as a priceless possession to the Church. Its eloquence,
its enthusiasm, its loftiness of conception, would alone suffice to stamp
it as a remarkable work; but its highest value lies in the force and
originality of its whole train of reasoning. No Epistle even of St. Paul
was so well calculated to win the unconverted Hebrews, or when they
had embraced Christianity, to save them from their temptation to suc
cumb under the force of grievous persecution, and to find refuge once
more from the reproach of Christ in the Synagogue of their fathers.
1 See supra, p. 191.

264 THE EARLY DAYS OE CHRISTIANITY.
For no writer had ever yet developed with such grace and power the
thought that the New Dispensation was not the ruinous overthrow, but
the glorious fulfilment of the Old ; that the Christian, so far from being
robbed of that viaticum of good examples which had been the glory of
Judaism, could feed upon them with a deeper sympathy ; that the
Temple and the whole Levitic ritual, so far from being scornfully flung
aside by the follower of Jesus, did but shine with a new splendour
in the light of that revelation which, for the first time, shed on them a
blaze of more glorious significance. To retrograde into Judaism after
the study of this Epistle would indeed be to go back into the darkness
from the noonday. But yet this conclusion was brought home both to
the Jew and to the Jewish Christian so gently, so considerately, so skil
fully, so gradually, that the reader was drawn along as by a golden
chain of irresistible reasoning, without one violent wrench of his preju
dices, or one rude shock to his lifelong convictions. The golden candle
stick of the Church to which these words were addressed must, indeed,
have been burning dim if the tendency of any of its members to flag or
to apostatise — to prefer Moses to Christ, and the Temple to the true
Church of the firstborn — was not checked for ever by arguments which
enabled them to see their true position in the light of such inspired and
inspiring wisdom.

JUDAIC CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XIX.
"THE LORD'S BEOTHEE."
" No man having drunk old wine desireth new, for he saith, ' The old is excel
lent.' "—Luke v. 39.
We now pass to yet another phase of Christianity — neither Pauline nor
Alexandrian, but distinctively Jewish. Of this phase — the type of
Christianity which prevailed with unbroken continuity in the Holy City
until its destruction, anil was afterwards maintained among the Naza
renes — we have a magnificent specimen in the Epistle of St. James.
But before we can understand this Epistle, or enter with intelligent
sympathy into the truths which it was its mission to proclaim, it will^ be
essential for us to discover by whom it was written.
Now, all the clue which the author gives us as to his identity is by
calling himself " James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ."
But, unfortunately, the same name and the same description is
equally applicable to others. The name thus Anglicised is, in reality,
that of the old Hebrew patriarch Jacob,1 the father of the Twelve Patri
archs who gave their names to the Tribes of Israel. That " Syrian ready
to perish "2 — the wretched supplanter who ultimately reached the moral
grandeur of a Prince with God — was what the Greeks would have called
the Hero Eponumos of the Jewish nation. Hence the name Yakoob
was as common in Palestine in our Lord's day as it is to this day in
many parts of the East. There was among the Jews a remarkable
paucity of personal names, and the fact that persons, and even groups of
persons, had the same names, is but of little importance in defining their
identity, particularly when they belong to kindred families. The name
of James gives us as little clue to a man's identity as would the name
"William in England, or Mohammed in Egypt.
Now, in the little Galilean group of early disciples we find no less
than six persons so called. These are —
1. James, the son of Zebedee, brother of John (Matt. iv. 21 ; Mark
i. 19 ; Luke v. 10).
2. James, the son of Alphams (Matt. x. 3; Mark iii 18).
1 In Hebrew, Yakoob ; in Greek, 'la'mopos ; Spanish, lago ; Portuguese, Xayme ;
French, Jacques and Jame ; Scotch, Hamish. See the Introduction to my friend Dr.
Plumptre's excellent edition of the Epistle in the Cambridge Bible for Schools.
2 "A Syrian ready to perish was my father " (Deut. xxvi. 5).

266 THE EAELY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
3. James, mentioned with Joses (i.e., Joseph), Simon, and Judas
as one of the "brothers" of Jesus (Matt. xiii. 55, xxvii. 56; Mark
vi. 3).
i 4. James " the little," brother of a Joseph, and son of a Mary (Mark
xv. 40) who, as we find from John xix. 25, was the wife of Clopas.
5. James, the " Bishop " of Jerusalem, " the Lord's brother " (Gal. i.
19), who plays a leading part in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts xv. 13,
xxi. 8), and held a position of high authority in the early Church (1 Cor.
xv. 7; Gal. i. 19, ii. 9).
6. James, the brother of Jude (Jude 1).
There cannot be the least reasonable doubt that these six, who are
referred to under this name, are in reality three.
For James, the son of Alphseus (No. 2), is rightly identified with the
son of Mary (No. 4), who from his diminutive stature is called "the
little."1 This is intrinsically probable, and is confirmed by the fact that
Clopas is only the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Chalpai, which,
in the universal Jewish fashion, was further Grecised, for use among the
Gentiles, into the classical name Alphieus.
And James, " the Lord's brother " (No. 3), is, beyond doubt, the
first " Bishop " of Jerusalem (No. 5) and the brother of Jude (No. 6).
And both of these were probably first cousins to each other, and to
the third James, the son of Zebedee. The question then arises (1)
Which of these three is the author of the Epistle 1 And this question
is inextricably mixed up with the further question (2) Is the son of
Alphseus the same as the first " Bishop " of Jerusalem ? And this ques
tion really depends for its solution on the question, Who were our Lord's
brethren 1 or, in other words, are we, by the term " brethren," to under
stand His cousins 1 But we have then further to ask, If the Apostle,
the son of Alphseus, is not the same as the " Bishop " of Jerusalem, the
Lord's brother, which of the two wrote this Epistle — the Apostle or the
Bishop 1
It might have been thought that the question of authorship was set
at rest so far as the son of Zebedee is concerned. For —
a. Not a single ancient author ever thought of attributing the
Epistle to him.
B. He was the first martyr of the Twelve Apostles, and since his
martyrdom took place in the reign of Herod Agrippa I., a.d. 44, fourteen
years after the Ascension,2 the Epistle, if written by him, would be the
earliest work of the entire canon. The allusions of the Epistle, and the
state of circumstances which it describes as existing in the Church, are
incompatible with this supposition. Setting aside for the present the
question whether it was meant to be a polemical answer to those who
misinterpreted or exaggerated the views of St. Paul, it is clear on other
1 This is the meaning of the word fu/cpbi m Luke xix. 3 (Zacchseus, " little of stature").
2 Acts xii. 2.

JAMES THE APOSTLE. 267
grounds that it could not have been written so early as a.d 44. For it
is addressed to the twelve tribes of the Dispersion, and until the mis
sionary labours df St. Paul, Christianity had not spread to the Jews
throughout the world. , Even those of Asia Minor, as well as those of
Greece, heard the name of the Lord Jesus for the first time from his lips.
The doctrine of "justification by faith," in that distinctive form which
alone rendered it liable to perversion,1 had never been previously preached
by any Christian teacher. It found its great exponent in the Apostle of
the Gentiles, and its elaborate development in the Epistles to the Gala
tians and Romans. And, not to dwell on other points, the whole- tone
of the letter shows that it is addressed to Churches which were liable to
fall into a slumbering Christianity, and not to Churches which were
feeling the glow of their first love. Bespect of persons, for instance, had
already grown up in these Jewish-Christian communities. These reasons
have been so strongly and universally felt that not one of the Fathers
has imagined that this letter was written by the son of Zebedee, the first
Apostolic martyr. The only authority, if the name " authority " can be
given to such a careless mistake, is to be found in a single Latin manu
script of the ninth century. The MSS. of the Peshito version, do, in
deed, attribute it to " James the Apostle ; " but it is idle to interpret
this to mean James, the son of Zebedee, when it is far more probable
that the term was meant to describe James, the son of Alphseus ; or (if
not) that the term Apostle — in accordance with the less specific use of it
in the Apostolic age2 — is meant to describe the general dignity of James,
the Lord's brother.
It is therefore to be regretted that so baseless a theory should have
been supported by an English commentator in one of the latest editions
of this Epistle.3 The arguments which he adduces are entirely incon
clusive. The supposed improbability that one of the inner circle of
Apostles should have passed away without any written memorial of his
teaching, would be worth nothing as an argument even if the death of
the son of Zebedee had not occurred at so early an epoch. The
supposed resemblances to the teaching of John the Baptist are of
the most general character ; they might occur equally well in any
Christian writer,4 and might be illustrated by many other parallels.
Moreover, it is more than doubtful whether James, the son of Zebedee,
had ever been a disciple of the Baptist. It is implied that he was not
with the little group of disciples who were with the Baptist at Jordan
when they first heard the call of Christ. The resemblances of the
Epistle to the Sermon on the Mount would be accounted for equally
well if the writer were the son of Alphaeus. They do not require the
theory that the writer heard the sermon, since they might have been
derived from intercourse with St. Matthew, or from a perusal of the
1 2 Pet. iii. 15. 2 Andronicus, Junias (Eom. xvi. 7).
3 By the Rev. F. T. Bassett (Bagsters, 1876).
* Jas. i. 22, 27 ; ii. 15, 16, 19, 20 ; v. 1—6 (comp. Matt. iii. 8—12 ; Luke iii. 11).

268 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
outlines which perhaps formed the original nucleus of the Gospels.1
But even if they did involve the certainty that the author of the Epistle
had personally heard Christ's gracious words, there is not the least
unlikelihood that James the Lord's brother may have been seated, as
well as the son of Zebedee, amid that listening throng. The notion
that the phrase " The Lord of Glory " renders it probable that the
writer had seen the Transfiguration is an argument so fragile and so far
fetched2 that it could only be dictated by despair of more valid indica
tions. Vain-glory, rivalry, and self-seeking, may have existed in the
Apostolic band, and the son of Zebedee may himself have shared in
these frailties, as he did in a vehement intolerance which savoured
rather of the Elijah-spirit than the spirit of Christ j3 but it is surely
strange to adduce the warnings against these faults, and the reference
to Elias, as conferring any probability on a theory which otherwise has
nothing in its favour. The inferences drawn from the parallelism of
some passages to the First Epistle of St. Peter,4 and to the great
eschatological discourse of our Lord, are as much overstrained as the
others. They do not confer on this hypothesis any claim to serious
attention, and it may be regarded as finally dismissed.
2. There is more to be said for the claim of the son of Alphseus.5
That is supported by the ancient theory that the son of Alphseus was,
in fact, the same person as the Bishop of Jerusalem.6 Beyond this
theory, however, it has nothing in its favour. For this " James the
little," or " James, the son of Alphseus, " is to us a name and nothing
more. Not one incident is narrated of him ; not one utterance is
attributed to him in the Gospels ; not one fact is preserved respecting
him by any tradition older than those recorded, or accepted, or invented,
by Nicephorus in the fourteenth century.7 It is inexcusable to argue
d, priori, as Lange does, that the son of Alphseus must be James, " the
Lord's brother," and Bishop of Jerusalem, because the assumption is
highly improbable that James, the son of Alphseus, should, in so short
a time, have vanished from the stage past all tracing, without being
1 It seems to be doubtful whether the word logia in the well-known passage of Papias
means "discourses ;" but in any case discourses of our Lord must have been early com
mitted to writing by some of the disciples.
2 It was a common and well-known Jewish designation with reference to the
Shechinah. Compare "cherubim of glory," Heb. i. 3; ix. 5 ; Acts vii. 2; Eph. i. 17,
supra, p. 229.
3 Luke ix. 54. 4 See supra, p. 72.
5 To argue that "James, the Lord's brother,'' must have been one of the Apostles,
from Gal. i. 19 ; 1 Cor. xv. 7, is to ignore the commonest facts of the Greek language
Even if in these passages he were identified with, not excluded from, the number of the
Apostles, they would prove nothing ; for James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, was an Apostle
just as much as Barnabas or Paul.
c In the Apostolical Constitutions (ii. 55) James, the son of Alphseus, is especially dis
tinguished from the Lord's brother.
' Nicephorus (H. E. ii. 40) says that he preached in South-west Palestine, and was
ultimately crucified at Ostracine, iu Lower Egypt. See Cave, Lives of the Apostles, and
supra, p. 48.

ALPH.EUS AND MAEY. 269
thought worthy of having even his death noticed by Luke, the historian,
and that there should suddenly have sprung up some non-apostolical
James, who actually occupied a prominent position among the Apostles."
The instance of Philip might be alone sufficient to show the futility of
the argument ; for Philip the deacon springs into extreme prominence
in the Acts of the Apostles without any further mention of Philip the
Apostle. When Lange says, further, that it is "purely inconceivable"
that James, " a recently-converted non-Apostle," should have been
acknowledged so" early as a man of Apostolical authority, it is strange
that he should regard as " purely inconceivable " what was an actual
fact in the cases of Barnabas and Paul. When he adds, "If anything,
it is still more inconceivable that the names of three real Apostles
(James, Simon, Jude) should have been extinguished without all trace
by the names of three non- Apostles," he is making capital out of an
identity of names which is not of the smallest significance. For that
tbe prominence of every one of the twelve, except Peter and John, was
from the first obliterated, so far as our Scriptural record is concerned,
by the names of others who were not among the original twelve, is proved
by the New Testament itself, and by every trace of early Church history.
And as for the names James, Simon, Jude, it is as certain that no one
could have taken a walk through the streets of Jerusalem without
meeting dozens, perhaps scores, of people who bore one or other of
those names, as it is that you would meet scores of people who bore the
names of John, George, and Thomas, in a walk through London streets.
The fact is, that of the twelve Apostles the majority are only known to
us as names, sometimes undistinguished by a single incident. We
know less of the son of Alphseus than of any one among their number.
We are told the name of his father and of his mother, and nothing
more. His father was Alphseus, who, as we have seen, was the same as
Clopas (John xix. 25 ; Matt. x. 3).1 It is usually asserted that he
cannot be the Cleopas to whom our Lord appeared on the road to
Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 18), because that name is an abbreviated form of
Cleopater, whereas Cleopas, or Chalpai, is a Hebrew name, of which
Alphseus is the current assonance adopted for intercourse with the
Gentile world. But it is as little improbable that this disciple may
have had both names, as that Judas should have been called both
Lebbseus and Thaddseus. However this may be, we know nothing more
of Alphseus except that the name of his wife was Mary, and that his
other sons were Matthew and Thomas. " Jude of James " would be
yet another son, if we could be sure that it meant " brother of James."
In the absence, however, of any evidence to the contrary, it is more
natural to take it to mean " son of James."
But was the Mary who was the wife of Alphseus a sister of the
1 The E. V, has Cleophas, which only comes from late Latin MSS.

270 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Virgin Mary1!1 This has been inferred from John xix. 25, where tho
punctuation which some would adopt is, "there stood by the ci-oss of
Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister Mary, the wife of Clopas, and
Mary Magdalene." But, apart from the authority of the Peshito, which
inserts " and " before Mary, it is now generally accepted that by this
verse four women are intended, namely — (1) The Virgin Mary; (2) her
sister Salome, who being St. John's mother is left unnamed by his
delicate reserve ; and the two other Marys, namely — -(3) the wife of
Clopas, and (4) Mary of Magdala.
Is it, then, the case that Alphseus, or Clopas, was the brother of
St. Joseph, and therefore (legally) the uncle of our Lord1? The
suggestion is supported by the testimony of Hegesippus.2 It may
be true or not ; but that the sons of Alphseus were our Lord's
"brothers" is only a conjecture of Jerome, made in the interests of
an ecclesiastical hypothesis. His authority gave it currency, and
consequently a rash conjecture, treated even by its author as un
important, became the favourite theory of the "Western Church.3
A still later afterthought — planted upon this groundless conjecture,
like a rootless stalk on a thin soil — is the guess that Alphseus died
early, and left all his sons to be supported by his brother Joseph ; that
they thus became legally Joseph's sons, and can thus be called " the
brethren of the Lord."
These are hypotheses invented to support a conception of which
no trace is discoverable in Scripture, and which is mixed up with many
aberrations of Essenian and Gnostic asceticism. All that we know
about James the Apostle is that he was a son of Alphaeus, and that he
was called "the little." All that we can reasonably conjecture is that
he was " a cousin of the Lord."
3. It may be regarded as certain, in accordance with ancient
tradition,4 and with the best of modern opinions, that the author of the
Epistle is the " Bishop of Jerusalem," and the "brother of the Lord."
But is he identical with the son of Alphseus? There seems to have
been a confused notion among some ancient writers that he was,
and this view is accepted by many modern commentators, among whom
I may mention Lange and Bishop Wordsworth.
The identification is, however, only possible to those who hold,
in despite of the plain evidence of the Synoptists, and still more of
1 In the paucity of Jewish names, and the commonness of the name Mary, there is
no decisive objection to this view from the fact that, in this case, two sisters would have
borne the same name. No doubt suoh instances are rare, but I have found several in
ancient and modern history.
2 Ap. Euseb. If. E. iv. 22.
•'' Thus in the' Ohuroh of England July 25th is dedicated to the Son of Zebedee, and
May 1st to St. Philip and St. James ; and since part of the Epistle of St. James is read
on that day, it is clear that "the son of Alphseus" is identified with "the brother
of the Lord." In the Greek Church they are distinguished — October 9th is dedicated to
the son of Alphseus, and October 23rd to the brother of the Lord.
* Euseb. H. E. ii. 23 ; Jer. De Virr. Illustr. 2.

THE LOED'S BRETHREN. 271
St. John, that our Lord's " brethren " were among the number of His
Apostles. For if James, the Lord's brother, was indeed the same
person as the son of Alphseus, then Jude also, and, according to some,
Simon too, and Matthew, and perhaps Thomas, were "brethren of
the Lord," since they, too, Were sons of Alphseus. So that we shall
have this singular phenomenon — that whereas four only of our Lord's
" brethren" are mentioned by name, viz., James and Joseph and Judas
and Simon, three out of these four were Apostles, and certainly one, if
not two other sons of Alphseus were also Apostles ; and yet we are
expressly told that "neither did His brethren believe in Him."1 An
attempt is made to get rid of this plain contradiction by saying that
His brethren had not " the resigned obedience of faith," so that in
the same sense it might have been said that neither Peter, nor Thomas,
nor even the Blessed Virgin, believed on Him !2 And this theory
is (ostensibly) to be built on the notion that it is " inconceivable " that
a James, a Simon, and a Jude, should have been Apostles, and yet
that there should have been another James, another Simon,3 and
another Jude who became distinguished in the -Church. There is,
however, nothing inconceivable, nothing about it even improbable.
There were hundreds, and even thousands, who, at this epoch, bore
those names. Even among the twelve Apostles there were two
Simons, two Jameses, and two Judes ; among the handful of those
first connected with Christianity there were nine Simons, three
Jameses, six Josephs, and four Judes ; and in the very narrow circle
of early disciples there were five Marys.4 Any one, therefore, who
considers this identity of names to be " purely inconceivable," must
be extremely limited alike in his power of imagination5 and in his
knowledge of facts.
I hold it, then, as certain that James, the Bishop of Jerusalem,
and "the Lord's brother," was not the same person as the Apostle,
the son of Alphseus.6 The latter was one of the Twelve ; the former
was one of those who up to a late period in the life of Christ " did not
believe on Him."
But having advanced thus far, it is almost impossible to avoid
saying one word more on the question of the Lord's brethren —
(1) Were they, as Helviclius thought, the sons of Joseph and Mary ?
or (2) were they, as Jerome fancied, the adopted nephews of Joseph?
1 John vii. 5.
2 Lange, Introd. § ii. 1, and in Herzog's Cyclopsedia, s. v. Jacobus.
3 Tradition, as preserved by Hegesippus (ap. Euseb. iv. 23), says that Simon, son of
Clopas, succeeded James as Bishop of Jerusalem because he was our Lord's cousin
(avtyios). 4 (1) The Virgin ; (2) the wife of Clopas ; (3) Mary Magdalene; (4) Mary of Bethany;
(5) Mary, mother of John Mark.
5 Hegesippus says, k-n-el 7roAAol 'IaKW|3oL knakovvTO.
6 This denial of their identity has the powerful support of Gregory of Nyssa,
Be Resurr. Orat. ii. ; Chrysost. in Matt. Horn. 5 ; and Jerome (who, however, wavers)
inlsai. xvii., and in Gal. i. 19.

272 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
or (3) were they, as Epiphanius argued, sons of Joseph by a previous
or (4) as Theophylact suggests, by a Levirate marriage 1
Now, on this question I have no desire either to dogmatise or
to press my own opinion ; but I will endeavour once more, in the
fewest and simplest words, to indicate the inference to which the
Gospels seem to point. And in doing so I shall dwell on two con
siderations, which, in spite of the enormous mass of literature upon
the subject, have been all but universally neglected.
The inference, whether correct or not, to which the language of the
Evangelists would naturally lead us, certainly is that " the Lord's
brothers " were the children of Joseph and Mary, born in holy wedlock
after the birth of Christ. Can any one honestly say that such is
not, at least, the prima facie conclusion which every reader would draw
from the Gospel allusions and the Gospel narrative 1
In the very first chapter of the Gospel we are told that " Joseph
took unto him his wife, and knew her not until she brought forth
her son, her firstborn, and called his name Jesus." Now would not
the aorist " took unto him " (irapeA-ajBe) in connexion with the imperfect
tense " knew her not " (iyivuo-Kcv), to say nothing of the words " her son,
her firstborn,"1 naturally lead us, in any ordinary case, to conclude that
Joseph _ and Mary lived together in wedded union after the birth
of Jesus, and that children were born to them 1
Of course the verse is not in itself decisive. Instances may be
adduced in which an action is said not to have happened until a certain
time, and yet is not thereby asserted to have happened after the lapse
of the fixed period. Other instances may be quoted in which the word
"firstborn" does not necessitate a belief in the birth of subsequent
children. Proofs to this effect were adduced by Bishop Pearson, and
have been repeated by hundreds since. But this much may be affirmed
— that if it had been a heresy to deny the Perpetual Virginity of the
Blessed Virgin — (as St. Augustine and others have tried to hint, in
accordance with the fatal tendency of theologians to brand as heretical
everything that does not coincide with their own inferences) — then
the Evangelists would not have gone out of their way to use an
exceptional idiom, which seemed to countenance such a heresy. They
would, on the contrary, have been anxious to avoid language which
could not but lead ordinary readers to understand them in the very
sense which (in that case) they would have most wished to exclude.
And yet so little anxiety do they show under' this head, that,
without so much as a single exception, every phrase they use, and
every incident they record, tends directly to confirm an error which, if
it be an error, they could again and again have rendered impossible by
a single line of explanation, or even by a single word ; — nay, even
1 The words "her firstborn'' are omitted in s, B, Z, etc., and must be regarded
as uncertain.

" BROTHERS." 273
using coiTect and accurate expressions instead of others which, if it
be necessary to believe in the Perpetual Virginity, were, strictly
speaking, inaccurate and incorrect. If it were indeed " heretical,"
as was asserted by third and fourth century dogmatists, to doubt
whether Scripture taught the Perpetual Virginity of the Virgin, could
any expressions have been more unfoi-tunately conducive to heresy than
such a verse as Matt. xiii. 55, "Is not His mother called Mary 1 and
His brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas 1 "
a. "For, to take first, the theory of St. Jerome, if these brethren of
Jesus were in reality His cousins, what answer can be given to the
question, Why did not the Evangelists call them so ? Certainly not that
they had no word expressive of that meaning. Such words were ready
to their hands in the Greek anepsioi, or sungeneis — " cousins " or " kins
men" — or in very common periphrases.1 "With such terms they were
perfectly familiar. If James, and Joses, ?tnd Simon, were habitually
called " brothers " when they were only " cousins," it can only be said
that they were needlessly and systematically misnamed.
But, it is said, the Hebrews used terms of relationship very vaguely,
and,, in accordance with their usage, our Lord's cbusins would quite
normally have been called His brethren.
Now, although this assertion has been repeated by writer after
writer down to our own day, it is quite untenable.2 There are four
senses ofthe word "brethren." (1.) There is the general sense in which
it is applicable to all mankind. (2.) There is the narrower sense in
which it is applied to men of the same race, nation, or creed, or to
dwellers in tlie same town. (3.) There is the still narrower sense in
which it is applied to all members of the same kin or family. And all
these being metaphorical senses; there is (4.) the only proper and literal
sense in which it means the sons of the same, or of one of the same,
parents.3 Now certainly the term " brethren " might have been applied
1 avtyibs, Col. iv. 10 (incorrectly rendered "sister's son"); auyyevfis, Luke i. 36 ;
ii. 44 ; xiv. 12 ; John xviii. 26, etc.
2 I insisted strongly on this point in an article on the word "Brethren," in Smith's
Dictionary of the Bible, nearly twenty years ago ; biit, so far as I am aware, the point
has never been noticed, and the objection never answered. One of the latest popular
editors of the Epistle of St. James can still repeat, "that in Holy Scripture there are
four seuses of brotherhood, namely, of blood, of tribe, of nation, and of friendship, and
the three last of these will all apply to the case in point. " To talk thus is to ignore the
dictates of common sense. We might just as well argue that any two persons who,
through four different historical records, were invariably called " brothers," were perhaps
only Freemasons, who are often called " brethren." The source of this mistake (as of so
many others) seems to be St. Augustine, Evang. Tract, in. S. Jo. xxviii. 3 : "Consan-
guinei Virginia Mariae fratres Domini dicebantur. Erat enim consuetudinis Scripturarum
appellare fratres quoslibet consamjuineos et cognationis propinquos. "¦
3 When Bishop Wordsworth and others speak of the words " brother " and " sister "
in the New Testament being used for " cousm " "in the Hebrew sense," on what basis
does this strange generalisation rest ? In the New Testament there is not a single instance
of such a usage. In the Old Testament (i.e. in a literature which spreads over a thousand
years) the Hebrew word ny is used twice only in a loose general sense. In every other
instance (not metaphorical) it has its proper meaning. The sacred writers usually mean
what they say.
3

274 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
emotionally, or metaphorically, or loosely, or on any special occasion, to
the Lord's cousins, or He may so have addressed them by way of affec
tion.1 But to assert that "cousins" could be called " brothers "' in
ordinary prose, time after time, throughout a perfectly plain and simple
history, with no hint whatever that they were not " brothers " in the
everyday sense, and always in connexion with the actual mother of Him
whose " brothers " they are called — and not seldom when His mother
with these " brothers " appear together on the scene with a desire to
check, or control, or dictate to their Divine kinsman — is to assert some
thing for which no analogy is to be found either in Semitic or any other
literature in the whole world. No language could be contented with
the use of terms habitually misleading. In this case such a form of
speech would not only be misleading, but could only be termed a direct
encouragement to views which theologians have attempted to represent
as all but heretical. That John and James, the sons of Zebedee, were
first-cousins of our Lord may now be regarded as a nearly certain con
clusion. If, on the common theory, His other cousins who " did not
believe on Him," are always called His " brethren," how comes it that
this term is never once, or by any chance applied to these first-cousins
who did believe on Him, and of whom one was His specially-beloved
disciple ? But to refute the Hieronymian theory again — though there
will probably be found commentators to repeat it till the end of time —
can only be regarded as a slaying of the slain ; like the soldier in
Ariosto,2 it goes on fighting without being aware that it is dead.3
The whole theory sprang from a notion that it would be derogatory
to the dignity of the Virgin, or of our Lord, that she should subsequently
have become a mother of children born in ordinary wedlock. Such a
theory, I freely admit, might better accord with our d, priori conceptions.
But can we venture to hold it if the natural interpretation of so many
Scripture passages seems to point the other way? The only text which has
ever been quoted from the whole range of Scripture in favour of the
Aeiparthenia, or Perpetual Virginity, is Ezek. xliv. 2. It is — " This gate
shall be shut and shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it, be
cause the Lord the God of Israel hath entered by it ; it shall be shut."
But to quote such a verse in these days as possessing any controversial
value on this question is an insult to common sense. If such allusions
can be so applied, then we can prove anything whatever. Can it be
called anything short of a deplorable Kabbalism to make such a use of
1 This is unlikely, beoause He never so addressed even John, the disciple whom He
loved. 2 " II pover' uom che non sen era accorto
Andava combattendo, ed era morto." Orland. Innam.
3 St. Jerome quotes no tradition in its favour ; speaks of it very waveringly ; and
finally (Ep. ad Hedibiam) seems to abandpn it, or at least to regard it with complete
indifference. It had served the purpose of exalting Virginity when he wrote against
Helvidius in A.n. 383 ; but twenty-three or more years later (a.d. 406) he had ceased to
regard it as important. See Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 248.

THE VIRGIN MARY. 275
a description of the Eastern Gate of the Prophet's mystic Temple, into
which "the Prince " was to enter by " the porch," and in which he was
to sit " to eat bread before the Lord " 1 If such perversions of Scripture
were permissible, it would then be quite fair to say of the Bible —
" Hie liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque
Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua."
The belief in the Aeiparthenia — :of which there is no trace in the
Church for centuries — had its origin in two tendencies, both perilous,
both unscriptural. The one — the tendency to exalt the Virgin to super
human dignity — is markedly ignored, and even discountenanced, in
Scripture. The other — the tendency to disparage the wedded state, and
to exalt celibacy into a counsel of perfection — is not only discouraged
in Scripture, but had its root in dangerous heresies, and runs counter to
the express and repeated teachings of Holy "Writ.
Every Christian will feel that the Mother of the Lord ought to re
ceive the deepest honour and reverence. She was highly favoured, and
could not have been thus selected out of the myriads of the human race
to be the mother of the Saviour without the possession of conspicuous
gifts and graces. Yet, as though with definite purpose, she is left in the
depths of her almost unbroken seclusion and reserve. In some of the
few instances in which this silence respecting her is broken, she is by
no means singled out for special commendation. After the return of
Joseph and Mary with the child Jesus to Nazareth, she is only men
tioned or alluded to on six or seven occasions. One of these was when
she and Joseph lost Jesus, and finding Him in the Temple, she addressed
Him in words of sorrowing and almost reproachful wonder, and under
stood not His reply.1 Another was when, at Cana, in answer to her
faint suggestion that He should work a miracle, He said to her,
" "Woman, what have I to do with thee ? " 2 A third — and perhaps a
fourth — was when she came with His brethren — who " did not believe
on Him " — to seek Him,3 and even, as St. Mark tells us, " to lay hold
on Him," 4 thinking that His enthusiasm, which they could neither
measure nor understand, was getting the better of Him. On that occa
sion, as though with the express view of discouraging every attempt to
exalt His relatives after the flesh, He exclaimed, as He looked round on
those who were sitting about Him, " Behold my mother and my
brethren ! " And, again, when a woman of, the multitude exclaimed, in
a burst of emotion, how blessed His mother must be, His public reply
had been, " Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and
keep it."5 "We catch but one more glimpse of the Virgin. Seeing her
as she stood beside the cross, our Lord said to St. John, "Behold thy
mother," and to her, " Woman, behold thy son."6 After this her name
1 Luke i. 50. 2 John ii. 4.
3 Matt. xii. 46 ; Mark iii. 31 : Luke viii. 19. 4 Mark xi. 21.
s Luke xi. 28 6 John xix. 26.

276 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
occurs for the last time in Scripture in the passing mention of the fact
that she, with His brethren — unbelievers in Him no longer — was present
in the gatherings of the faithful disciples for purposes of prayer and sup
plication, which filled up the period between the Ascension and the Day
of Pentecost.1 On which of these notices can we found the dogma of
the Aeiparthenia or of the Immaculate Conception ?
But, it will be said, our Blessed Lord consigned her to the care of
His beloved disciple, and not to the care of His " brothers." That cir
cumstance needs no explanation St. John was the Virgin's nephew.
He was nearer and dearer to Jesus, in accordance with his own express
declaration, than any of His brethren were. They were absent from
the cross ; 2 St. John was present. They had been absent from Him all
the darker and more troubled phases of His ministry ; St. John had
accompanied Him through them all. They had not been at the Last
Supper ; St. John had then leaned his head upon His breast. They had
not been with Him at Gethsemane ; St. John had been one of the
chosen three. They had addressed Him dubiously, almost reproach
fully, on the occasion of His going to the Feast of Tabernacles ; 3 St.
John had been His chief companion. The Lord, as He Himself bore
testimony, had been no prophet " in His own house," any more than in
His own country. His brothers, therefore were less suited than St.
John to care of that precious charge. And further than this, we have
reason to infer three facts about St John's position which were no't
applicable to theirs, and which, besides the sweetness and nobleness of
his nature and his dearness to Jesus, made him exceptionally suited to
give a home to the suffering Mother. One was that he had a home in
Jerusalem, which they had not ; another, that his circumstances were
more prosperous than theirs, which would have enabled him to feel no
burden in undertaking the support of Mary ; a third, that he alone had
powerful friends at Jerusalem, which might enable him to render her
position more secure than it could have been in the lodgings of
struggling Nazarenes. On any hypothesis, the Virgin was removed to
another home ; she lived no longer with those brothers of the Lord with
whom up to this time she had always been associated.
To what lengths the tendency to exalt, beyond all warrant of Scrip
ture or reason, the dignity of the Blessed Virgin has led, we have seen even
in our own age, in the adoption of the dogma that she was born sinless.
There is no further need to dwell upon this tendency. But the notion
of the Aeiparthenia was aided by the growth of erroneous views respect
ing the supposed degradation, or comparative unworthiness, of marriage.
i Acts i. 14.
2 It cannot be said that this is an argumentum ex silentio ; for (1) as this is the only
place in the Gospels after the visit to the Temple in which the Virgin alone is mentioned
without the brethren, this is a clear indication that they were not. with her; and (2) the
whole tenor of the narrative leads us to believe that but few of our Lord's relatives or
followers stood beside His cross, and that those few are all mentioned. .
3 John vii. 1—10.

CELIBACY AND MARRIAGE. 277
It is assumed that the Virgin would have been dishonoured by subse
quent motherhood. "Where is there any Scriptural or other warrant for
such a notion ? It may be certainly affirmed that such a notion was
unknown alike to the Jews and to the early Christians.1
And in the view of all those who regard holy wedlock as no stain
and no disparagement, but as a sacred and blessed institution, the
Virgin-mother is in no way lowered from that high blessing which she
received from the annunciation of the angel by receiving the after-blessing
of sons and daughters, a blessing which cometh from God alone.2 And
so far is the Divine dignity of the Son of God from being lowered by
such a circumstance — in that human humiliation which was to Him the
appointed path of his perfectionment 3 — so far was it from being deroga
tory to Him to live in the same house with " brothers " and " sisters,"
the children of His mother, that, on the contrary, there is something
inexpressibly beautiful and consoling in the thought that He, too — as
part of that sympathy with us, which was one of the great qualifications
for a High "Priesthood which could be touched with a feeling of our
infirmities — knew to the full the dignity, the happiness, the innocence,
the holiness of family life. Such a life — the deep and helpful love of
brothers and sisters bound together in a common bond of resistance
against the perils, of consolation amid the trials, of joy in the happiness,
of the world — is one of the most beautiful and sacred spectacles which
earth can offer. It forms yet one more link of union between us and
our Saviour, if He shared with us this, as well as every other relation
ship of life in which it was possible for Him to share at all. If I held
the common sentiment that the Virgin would have been dishonoured by
the ordinary family relationship — if I shared the Apollinarian tendency
to obliterate as much as possible all traces of those things which our Lord
had in common with an ordinary human life — then I, too, might be tempted
to succumb to the force of those sentiments which in this matter have led
so many to interpret the Gospels in a non-natural sense. But I hold it to
be a paramount duty to interpret Scripture by what it says, and not by our
own fancies as to what it ought to say. I also hold that our Lord came
to ennoble and glorify our human nature in all its normal conditions,
and that all His teaching is opposed to notions of ceremonial as apart
from moral sanctity, and to all Gnostic, or Manichean, or Essene, or
monastic fancies. He never breathed one word to exalt the celibate
over the wedded life, and to attribute to that age the glorification
of the celibate in the wedded life is an immense anachronism. I
am unable to accept the arguments which still lead so many to
turn the word "brothers" into "cousins," or to borrow apocryphal
1 1 Tim. iv. 3 ; Col. ii. 18—23 ; 1 Cor. vii. 5 (on which see Life of St. Paul, ii. 70).
And for Jewish opinion see Bava Bathra, f. 116 a ; Pesachim, f. 113 6 ; Nedarim, f .
64 b ; Kiddushin, f. 29, b ; Yevamoth, ff. 62, 63, as quoted by Hamburger, etc.
2 Even Tertullian, in spite of his glorification of celibacy, seems to have held the
same view as Helvidius.
3 Heb. ii. 10.

278 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
fictions to help out a theory of married relationship known to the tradi
tions of medievalism, unknown to the Scriptural simplicity of Jewish
family life.
These, then, are the considerations which, to my mind, give the main
force to what is called the Helvidian theory — the theory that the Lord's
" brothers and sisters " really were the children of His mother.1 It is
really no theory at all, but an acceptance of what the Gospels seem to
say. I regafd it as possible — nay, even as probable — that the sons of
Alphseus, of whom two or more were Apostles, were, like the sons ,of
Zebedee, the first cousins of Jesus ; but I do not believe they were ever
called His " brothers." 2
2. There is, however, yet another theory, which is more plausible
than that of St. Jerome, and which may be accepted by any who can be
satisfied with such evidence as is adduced for it. It is the theory which
Bishop Lightfoot has called the Epiphanian, because it seems to be first
definitely maintained by Epiphanius,3 a.d. 367. This is the theory that
" the Lord's brethren " were the children of Joseph by an earlier
marriage. It is adopted by Theophylact under the form that they were
his children by a Levirate marriage with the widow of his brother
Clopas. Modern writers, again, have regarded them as adopted nephews,
whose father was dead. These variations show that we are in the
region of conjectural tradition rather than of traditional evidence. But
the general notion that "the brethren " were children of Joseph and not
of Mary derives such support as it may from the Apocryphal Gospels.
They show what was a popular belief in the second and third centuries.
That they show nothing more will, I suppose, be conceded by every one ;
and the measure of value which we are to attach to such popular belief
is shown by the monstrous and even abhorrent fictions in which these
Apocryphal Gospels abound. A support which comes from a source so
radically tainted is not one on which we can rely. In fact, St. Jerome
contemptuously dismisses this theory under the name of deliramenta
apocryphorum — " apocryphal ravings." These fictions originated the
notion that Joseph was an old man, and that he had sons who were
grown up when Jesus was born. One of the oldest of these Apocryphal
Gospels is the Protevangelium of James,4 which, however, either
blunders in saying that Joseph had no daughter,5 or does not hold to
the Perpetual Virginity. The Gospel of pseudo-Matthew calls James

1 It is accepted by Neander, Blom, Meyer, Stier, Alford, Schaff, etc.
2 The well-known story of the Desposyni (supra, p. 123) obviously accords far better
with the view that our Lord's brethren were, in the Helvidian sense, His brothers, than
with any other.
3 Bishop Lightfoot has rendered a great service in correcting the error that the
Papias who is quoted (Mill, Mythical Interpretation, p. 291) in support of the Hieronj-
mian theory, is Papias of Hierapolis. He is a Papias not of the second, but of the
eleventh century.
4 See, too, the Gospel of Joseph, and the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy.
6 Mark vi. 3.

CONCLUSION. 279
"the first-bom son of Joseph,"1 which does not in any way decide the
question ; and the story which, in common with the Gospel of Thomas,
it tells about James being bitten by a viper, and healed by Jesus, seems
to be a confused echo of a story which, in distorted forms, was current
in the Babbinic schools.2
Such is the evidence for this Epiphanian theory. Its first respect
able support comes at the close of the fourth century, and its earlier
traces are only found embedded in worthless and pernicious forgeries.
If there are any who consider such evidence sufficiently strong to
overthrow the apparently straightforward indications of the Gospel, and
the other difficulties on which I have here touched, I have no desire to
combat their opinion. What I must myself regard as proven is, that
James, the author of the Epistle, was not the son of Alphaeus, and there
fore was not one of the Twelve Apostles. Whether we embrace the view
of Epiphanius, or that of Helvidius, is not a religious question. It is a
question of literature and of criticism. It is the question whether we
are to interpret the Gospels by their apparent meaning, or to correct
them by imagined fitnesses, and by the confused combinations of
apocryphal forgers. It is the question above all of the view which
we take of the married life — whether, with some of the Essenes and
many of the Gnostics, we regard it as involving something essentially
impure, and therefore derogatory to the honour of the Virgin as the
Mother of our Lord ; — or whether we regard it as a holy mystery,
which is so far from having in it any touch of earthly defilement, that
it is deliberately, and again and again adopted as a type of the union
between God and holy souls, between Christ and His spotless Church.
Whichever view we adopt, we shall indeed be justified in stating the
arguments which have led us to our conclusion ; but to advance them
with courtesy, and to hold them in perfect charity, will be a Christian
duty, from which no amount of zeal and no intensity of conviction can
for a moment hold us excused.
1 How purely arbitrary were the inventions about the relationships of the Holy
Family appears from the genealogical details furnished in this apocryphal writing, which
may be thus tabulated : — Joachim = Anna = Cleophas (by a second marriage).
I I
= Joseph = The Virgin Mary. Mary = Alphseus.

James, Joseph, Judas, Simon. Philip and James the Little.
3 Avodah-Zarah, f. 27 b.

280 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XX.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ST. JAMES, THE LORD'S BROTHER.
" Thy Nazarites were purer than snow." — Lam. iv. 7.
It is one of the signs of the inimitable truthfulness and power of
Scripture, that again and again, by a few simple touches, it enables
us to realise the character of those of whom it speaks. There are
many whose lives, as recorded in Holy "Writ, would only occupy two
or three verses, whom, nevertheless, from the inspired power with
which they are delineated, we are enabled to represent to ourselves in
their distinctest personality. Still more is this the case when we also
possess some of their utterances and writings. And such a picture we
can paint of St. James, first Bishop of Jerusalem, one of the " brothers
of the Lord."
Even of his childhood and training we can form some conception.
Whether he were a half-brother or only a step-brother of Jesus, tradition
and' Scripture alike tend to show that he was brought up with brothers
and sisters in the lowly home at Nazareth. Joseph was but a village
carpenter, and, as tradition says, by no means a skilful one. A car
penter at an outlying Galilean village must of necessity have been poor.
But there is an immense chasm between poverty and pauperism. The
circumstances of Eastern life take away all the sting from the condition
of the industrious poor. The wants of life are there reduced to their
simplest elements. There is no wasteful luxury, no extravagant display.
A little bread, a few dates, a spring of water, a humble cottage, a single
change of raiment, are enough to support the honest labourer in dignity
and contentment ; and these he can earn with ease and certainty.
Where there is no envy in the heart, where restlessness and ambition
are under due control, such a state of life is not only tolerable — it is
endowed with special elements of happiness. There must, we may be
sure, have been many who sat around our Lord as they listened to the
Sermon on the Mount who could understand from happy personal experi
ence the beatitudes pronounced upon the poor who were also poor in spirit.
It will be needless to touch once more on that course of a Jewish
boy's education which I have already described in the Lives of Christ
and of St. Paul. "We know how the Scriptures of the Old Testament
formed the very staple of a boy's training in every genuine Israelitish
family, how the children began to learn them at five and continued the
study until manhood, only adding to them the teachings of the Scribes.1
1 Judah Ben Temah in Pirke Arot.h, v. 21 : "At five the Bible, at ten the Mishnah,
at thirteen the commandments, at fifteen the Talmud, at eighteen marriage, at twenty
trade, at thirty full vigour, at forty maturity, at fifty counsel," etc.

TRAINING OF ST. JAMES. 281
Those teachings, under the two forms of Halachoth and Hagadoth — the
one mainly consisting of ceremonial rules, the other of imaginative
legends — were first collected in the second century by Babbi Judah the
Holy (Hakkodesh), into the Mishnah.1 In the course of centuries they
grew, by the constant accretions of the Gemara, until they now fill the
twelve folio volumes of the Jewish Talmud. "We cannot, of course, tell
with any certainty how much of the teaching existed at the beginning of
the Christian era ; but the essence of Jewish teaching at that day con
sisted in the repetition of precedents and opinions, and a large body of
these precedents and opinions are attributed to Hillel and Shammai, and
other great Rabbis partly contemporary with, partly anterior to, the
days of Christ. Again, how much of this teaching was likely to pene
trate into the families and schools, if schools there were, of the despised
Galilean village, is a matter of still greater uncertainty. But the dis
courses of Christ show that He was familiar with the conceptions which
lay at the heart of the Rabbinic system ; 2 and when He came to an open
rupture with the Pharisees of Jerusalem, He showed His intensest dis
approval of the spirit which identified their ritualistic observances and
stereotyped formulse with true religion.' The language of St. James
shows that, in later days, at any rate, he had accepted the truths which
the Lord had taught. Until the time of his conversion he may have
held the Pharisaic traditions in higher estimation. The essence of
Pharisaism consisted in the extravagant exaltation of the Law, in its
ceremonial no less than in its moral elements, and in the endless
developments of pedantic scrupulosity into which its regulations had
been expanded. The object of these developments was to enclose the
Law in a hedge of separatism,3 out of which no Jew could break without
threats of excommunication, and into which no Gentile could force his
way with any promise of advantage, unless he accepted the seal of the
covenant, abandoned his Gentile antecedents, and became a Proselyte
of Righteousness. "Whatever may have been the earlier opinions of
St. James, he ultimately learned to regard even the Levitic Law as a
yoke too heavy for Gentiles to bear ; 4 and he lived to teach the Jews of
the Dispersion that the only ritual which was pure and undefiled before
God was the ritual of Christian tenderness, the activity of Christian love.5
But whether he had been trained or not in the traditional ex
pansions of Judaic scholasticism, we know that he was a rigid adherent
of the Mosaic Law, and a faithful maintainer of the Levitical worship.
His father Joseph 6 is characterised by St. Matthew as " a just man."
1 Eabbi Judah the Holy was born about A.D. 130 and died A.D. 190.
2 Matt, xxiii. 16—22, 25 ; Mark vii. 5—13 ; &c.
3 From this word — perishuth — the name Pharisee is derived.
4 Acts xv. 10, seqq. He listened without protest to the startling language of St.
Peter, who also said that it was too heavy for "our fathers."
* Jas. i. 26, 27.
6 Joseph was his father on the " Epiphanian " hypothesis as much as on the
Helvidian.

282 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
This word conveys to Jewish ears a more definite meaning than it does
to ours. It means not only that he was fair and honourable and
upright, as we see that his conduct was in every incident of Christ's
nativity and infancy in which he bore a part, but also that he made it
his special study to meet all the requirements of the Mosaic Law. A
"just man" was one who gave tithes; who went to the yearly feasts ;
who kept the one yearly fast ; who was scrupulous in the observance of
the Sabbath ; who attended the Synagogue ; who used the prescribed
prayers ; who observed the rules of Levitic purification ; who reve
renced the great Babbis ; who wore fringes and phylacteries ; who
made a constant study of the commandments, the precepts, the judg
ments, the testimonies, the Law, the word, the will of the God of
the Covenant of his fathers.1 To be a just man, according1 to the
Jewish ideal, was to be " a Hebrew of the Hebrews," to walk in all
the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.2 And this
was the aim of the Holy Family. Not only did Joseph go up to
Jerusalem to the Feast of the Passover, but Mary accompanied him,
though, in consequence of the fatigue and the perils of the journey,
it was deemed unnecessary, and what the Schoolmen would have
called " a work of supererogation," for women to accompany their
husbands.3 It is certain, then, that St. James was educated in an
atmosphere of rigid Judaism, perhaps not untinged with that fervid
patriotism and unbounded appreciation of the privileges of the Jewish
people which was characteristic of the Galileans,4 and which, unless
duly controlled, might easily degenerate into fierce fanaticism and
haughty exclusiveness.
But in St. James these tendencies assumed the nobler form of a
morality which was not only energetic, but even stern in its holy
severity. He had grown up amid men and women of beautiful and
simple natures — among those whose souls wore, "when they looked
without, the glow of sympathy ; when they looked within, the bloom of
modesty." Of his other brothers we know nothing, but we trace the
same characteristic features in the mind of his brother St. Jude'. May
we not suppose that " steady love of good and the steady scorn of evil "
may have been intensified in their minds to a rare degree by their inter
course with One Who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from
sinners? Perhaps we may trace one result of that intercourse in the
intense belief showed by St. James in the efficacy of prayer. The duty
and blessedness of prayer occupies no small part in the teaching of his
Epistle ;5 and he speaks of it as one who had learnt the lesson from the
Lord Jesus.6 In this, and in all respects, must not the presence of the
1 Ps. oxix ; Matt. i. 19 ; Luke xviii. 12. 2 Luke L 6.
8 Such had been the decision of Hillel.
* Jos. Antt. xviii. 1, § 6 ; Vit. 19, and passim, B. J. iii. 3, § 2.
» See i. 5 ; iv. 2, 3, 8 ; v. 13-18.
• Compare the above passages with Matt. v. 44 ; xvii. 21, etc

TRAINING OF ST. JAMES. 283
Son of God in that humble household of Nazareth have exercised a spell
which could not but create in the hearts of good men a horror of vice even
deeper .than that which such natures would spontaneously derive from
the training of righteous parents, and from their exclusive study of
Holy Books ? ,
In the writings both of St. James and St. Jude we find an intimate
familiarity with the books of Scripture. The Bible had been their main
library. In St. James we can even trace the portions of Scripture
which had the deepest charm for him, and the impression which they
had left upon his mind. He alludes to Abraham, to Rahab, to Elijah ;
he refers to the Pentateuch, to the Psalms, to Isaiah, and to the
Prophet Amos. On a passage of the latter Prophet he founded the
main argument of the speech which had so vast an influence on the
spread of Christianity, and he echoes his views in two passages of the
Epistle.1 But the Old Testament writers whose spirit he had most fully
imbibed are those whose teachings bear on that practical wisdom which
the Jews called Ghokmah. They held, and held truly, that they were
in possession of a moral " wisdom " which was the peculiar heritage of
their race. It was not a " philosophy ; " it was too little systematic, too
much founded on practical experience and intuitions which transcended
proof, to correspond to the ordinary meaning of that term. But the
Hebraising Jews valued it so exclusively that they looked with unwise
suspicion, and even with ignorant contempt, upon Greek and Boman
lore. Now the Jewish " wisdom " bore far more on conduct than on specu
lation. With this kind of wisdom the Epistle of St. James is largely
occupied.2 There is no book of the Hagiographa to which he more
frequently refers than the Book of Proverbs.3 He has evidently caught
his tone from the Prophets of his nation; but the lessons which he
deemed to be of the highest importance are those lessons of " wisdom
for a man's self" which recorded the long results of experience in
the terse apophthegms of Solomon and of the school which he had
founded. But St. James had not studied the Scriptures only. It is not
certain that our Lord ever alludes to the Apocrypha, though there are
one or two passages in which it is possible that he does so. But both
St. James and his brother St. Jude show a marked familiarity with
apocryphal writings. St. Jude, as we have seen, makes a direct quota
tion from the apocryphal Book of Enoch, and alludes to other circum
stances which he could only have derived from apocryphal tradition.
In other words, St. Jude was in great measure what the Babbis would
have called a Hagadist, or one who dwelt on allegory, legend, and
historical story more than on the legal precedents of the Halachah.
i Amos ix. 12 (Acts xv. 17), ii. 7, v. 12 (Jas. v. 4). ,H 5-8 ; iii. 13—17.
3 See infra, p. 318.

284 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
There are no such legendary allusions in St. James ; but, on the other
hand, he shows a surprising fondness for the two best books of the Old
Testament Apocrypha — the books of Eoclesiasticus and Wisdom. To
these books he makes no less than thirteen references in the short
compass of five chapters. These allusions, strange to say, are more
numerous and definite than those which he makes to any of the books
of the Old Testament. The reader will have an opportunity of estima
ting this fact by a reference to the parallels which I have mentioned
farther on. It has been reckoned that he alludes more or less directly
to the Book of Job six times, to the Book of Proverbs at least ten
times, to the Book of the " Wisdom of Solomon " at least five times,1
but to the Book of Eoclesiasticus — " the Wisdom of Jesus the son of
Sirach " — more than fifteen times.2 It requires but a glance , at his
Epistle to see that what has influenced him most of all is the Sermon on
the Mount, to which he has some fourteen allusions ; but he has used its
teaching to breathe new life into the beautiful though apocryphal treatise
of the Son of Sh'ach, on which it is evident that he had deeply medi
tated. The fact is the more striking because in other respects St.
James shows no sympathy with Alexandrian speculations. There is
not in him the faintest tinge of Bhilonian philosophy ; on the contrary,
he belongs in a marked degree to the School of Jerusalem. He is a
thorough Hebraiser, a typical Judaist. All his thoughts and phrases
move normally in the Palestinian sphere. This is a curious and almost
unnoticed phenomenon.* The "Sapiental literature" of the Old Testa
ment was the least specifically Israelite. It was the direct precursor of
Alexandrian morals. It deals with mankind, and not with the Jew.
Yet St. James, who shows so much partiality for this literature, is of
all the writers of the New Testament the least Alexandrian and the
most Judaic.
But there is another fact about St. James which goes far to account
for his position, his character, and the tone which he adopts, and which
also throws an interesting light on the views of Joseph and of the
Holy Family. It is that he was — if we may accept the testimony of
Hegesippus, which is in this instance intrinsically probable — a Nazarite
Erom the womb.3 Joseph was called a "just man " in the sense which I
1 If any further evidence should ever throw probability on the ingenious theory of
Dean Plumptre that the Book of Wisdom was written by Apollos before his conversion
to Christianity, it would be an interesting circumstance that there should have been
these intellectual affinities between the head of Jewish Christianity and the great disciple
of the Apostle of the Gentiles.
2 The Talmud places among those "who have no portion in the world to come " (the
olam habba) "those who road the books of outsiders" (D'JiSTTn HDD) ; andEav Yoseph
said " that it was unlawful to read the Book of the sort of Sirach " (Sanhedrin, f. 100 6).
On the other hand, it is referred to with respect in Yevamoth, f. 63 b.
3 The sketch of St. James by Hegesippus is preserved in Euseb. 3. E. ii. 23. Gratz
has no ground for his assertion (Gesch. d. Juden. iii. 250) that St. James was in these
particulars a representative of the Church ; but I cannot agree with Mr. Sorley (Jewish
Christians, p. 18) that the sketch is unworthy of credit, for it is confirmed by many inci
dental allusions in the Acts and Epistles.

ST. JAMES A NAZARITE. 285
have already explained ; it was probably to the vow of the Nazarite
that St. James owed his title of "the Just." The close of the Jewish
age was an age of vows. The gathering of the eagles which were
beginning to flap their fierce wings over the Holy Land awakened
anguish and terror in the hearts of the Jews.1 In the spirits of many
of them, and not least in those of brave and hardy Galilssans, the
sense of peril kindled a flame of patriotism which showed itself in wild
revolt.2 In those who were unprepared for these movements — who did
not hear the call from Heaven, which in the form of prophetic sanction
or manifest opportunity would alone have justified an appeal to the
sword — the sorrow of political extinction found its sure consolation in
the Law of God. The beauty and purity of that Law had kindled the
rapturous delight of the exile who wrote the 119th Psalm. In that
golden alphabet of Hebrew faithfulness he found a compensation for
every earthly ' trial. It was the desire to preserve that Law intact
which, amid manifold aberrations, formed the nobler side of Pharisaism.
In faithfulness to that Law — which he at last learnt to regard from the
Christian standpoint as " a Law of Liberty " — St. James found the
highest meaning of his life. To obey it in the most open manner
became the vow of his life. A people suffering under oppression learns
to value the force which is derivable from sacred vows. In vows the
age of the Judges had found a spring of enthusiasm which helped them
to win deliverance. The instances of St. John the Baptist and St.
James — not to mention the Essenes or Banus1 the Pharisee3 — show us
that in the days of Roman oppression the Jews were once more learning
the same lesson.4
As a Nazarite St. James would be regarded as holy even from
infancy. The vow was one which devoted him to the cause of God.
He never tasted wine or strong drink. He never ate any animal food.
No razor had ever come upon the long locks which streamed over his
shoulders. He never anointed himself with oil.5 Although he must
have constantly practised the ablutions which were an essential part of
Levitic rule, he never allowed himself the effeminate luxury of the
bath, which had been borrowed from the soft customs of Ionia.6 The
1 -See 2 Esdras xi. 45.
2 The name " Galilean," though not, as has been erroneously said, almost identical
with " Zealot," yet in common use denoted a certain amount of disaffection to the
Koman Government (Matt. xxvi. 69 ; Mark xiv. 70 ; and Jos. B. J. iii. 3, § 2, etc. ).
3 Jos. Vit. 2. 4 See Ewald, Gesch. Yolks Israel, ii. 517.
5 See Hegesippus, ap. Euseb. BT. E. ii. 23. This may be regarded as irreconcilable
with the directions given in James v. 14 ; but the use of oil medicinally is very different
from its use as a luxury.
6 BaAavetw ouk kxprjo-aro. Some have been rather horrified by the expression of Hege
sippus that St. James "never used the bath." But it must not for a moment be
supposed that St. James approved of that revolting notion of " the holiness of dirt "
which seems to have found a place in the minds of some of the hermits. The expression
"the bath " seems to me to have a technical meaning, so that it might be said even of
an Essene, in spite of his daily ablutions in cold water (Jos. B. J. ii. 8, § 5), that "he
did not use the bath." See Schwegler, Nachapost. Zeitalt. i. 141.

286 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
scrupulous cleanliness of Levitism, which arose from its abhorrence of
defilement from any creeping thing, led him always to wear robes of
pure white linen, because woollen substances could not be kept so ab
solutely clean. This would indicate a scrupulosity even greater than
that of the Priests, for they ordinarily wore woollen garments,1 although
they might only be clad in linen while performing their sacred func
tions. The Nazaritism of St. James is a circumstance of great moment
in the explanation of his life and character. It added strength to his
personal influence. There are traces in Scripture that the Nazarites
were regarded with peculiar pride. They were looked upon as en
dowed with health and beauty, as well as holiness. " Thy Nazarites,"
says Jeremiah,2 " were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk,
they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of
sapphire." They may even have been admitted into some of the func
tions which were otherwise confined to the tribe of Levi. It cannot
indeed be true that " because he was a Nazarite " St. James was allowed,
like the High Priest, to enter the Holiest once a year. In making that
statement Epiphanius3 probably mistakes the remark of Hegesippus4
that he was admitted into the Sanctuary (el's- to 01710). And this may be
true. For if we read of Bechabites who were " scribes " and " singers,"
and were allowed " to stand before the Lord " in the service of the
Sanctuary, though they were of Kenite blood,6 the same was more likely
to be true of Nazarites, especially if, like St. James, they were of priestly
kin and of Davidic descent. At any rate, the Nazarites were pledged
champions of Mosaic, institutions,6 and signs are not wanting that the
vow of the Nazarite had been adopted by other members of the circle
who were connected with the earthly home of Jesus.7
In the case of St. James, as in that of his kinsman John the Baptist,
this life-long vow helps to account for the tone of prophetic aivthority
and fiery vehemence in which he speaks, May it not also account for
" the little rift within the lute " — the gradual severance, if not aliena
tion, from Christ of His earthly " brethren " which is traceable in the
Gospels ? It is probable that there was no disturbance of harmony so
long as Jesus continued to live in the home of His childhood, and to
work with the other members of His family as " the Carpenter of
Nazareth." On the Divine instructiveness of that long epoch of seclu
sion — on the eloquence with which that silence teaches us some of the
best and most necessary lessons of life — I have dwelt elsewhere.8 We
1 Lev. xvi. 4 ; Ezek. xliv. 17. 2 Lam. iv. 7.
3 Epiphan. Haer. xxix. 4 ; lxxviii. 13. 4 Hegesippus, ap. Euseb. B. E. ii. 23.
6 On the Bechabites see 2 Kings x. 15, 23 ; Jer. xxxv. ; 1 Chron. ii. 55 ; Ps. lxxi.,
inscr. ; and the allusion of Hegesippus to the Rechabite priest, ap. Euseb. H. E. ii. 23.
6 Hence, perhaps, in part, the title borne by St. James of Obliam, or "bulwark of the
people" (Ophel am), which Hegesippus confusedly says is "defence of the people, and
righteousness." 1 Thus we are told of St. Matthew — who, being a son of Alphseus, was perhaps a
oousin of St. James — that he only ate vegetables. (Clem. Alex. Paed. ii. 1.)
8 See my Life of Christ, i. 80-104.

JESUS AND HIS " BRETHREN." 287
may . well believe that those early years at Nazareth were exceptionally
peaceful and blessed. But when the Lord's hour was come there fell a
shadow between Him and those with whom He had been brought up.
He went to be baptised of John in Jordan. He returned with a body
of youthful disciples, of whom one was His first cousin, and who were
subsequently joined by other relatives. But His brethren did not
join that cluster of young men in all their glowing enthusiasm whom
Jesus gathered round Him as the fresh garland of His ministry. He
left His home : they stayed in it. They must have heard many a
rumour of Him before He re-appeared in His native village. Of the
secret of His birth, shrouded in awful reticence by the awe-struck
humility of their mother, it may be that they had not heard. They
had seen Him grow up as one of themselves, living in obscure poverty,
toiling at a humble trade. Could they approve of the astonishing
boldness with which — usurping, as it might seem to them, the functions
- of the greatest Priests, or the most learned Rabbis, and even en
dangering the position of His countrymen with Herod, and with the
Romans — He had swept the courts of the Temple clear from the
crowd of chaffering traffickers ? If such conduct showed a noble zeal,
how could they approve of such a violation of all custom — such a dis
regard of all patriotic prejudices — as was indicated by His stay among
the detested Samaritans 1 And how intense must have been their
astonished disapproval when, in the Synagogue of Nazareth, they
heard Him — Him with Whom they had all grown up side by side —
proclaim Himself to be the promised Messiah of the Great Prophecy
of Isaiah ! His expulsion from Nazareth — the narrow escape from the
death for " blasphemy " which His infuriated townsmen wished to
inflict upon Him — the consequent disturbance of all their hitherto
peaceful relations with their neighbours1 — the necessity, arising from
this disturbance, which compelled the whole family to migrate from a
town endeared to them by so long a residence, and by so many associa
tions — these and other circumstances must all have come upon them
as heavy trials — trials which had arisen from the claims and the con
duct of Him Whom men called their brother. All these circumstances
would tend to produce the want of perfect cordiality to which our Lord
alluded when He said that " a Prophet is not without honour except
in his own country, and among his kinsmen and in his own house."*
At first, however, they did not venture to interfere. With their
strong Levitic prejudices, they must have heard with disapproval of His
disparagement of the " traditions of the fathers ; " of His indifference
to the Oral Law ; of His neglect of Levitic rules when He touched a
1 "Is not this the son of Mary, and the brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and
Simon ? and are not his sisters here with us ? " — Mark vi. 3.
2 Mark vi. 4 ; Matt. xiii. 57 ; Luke iv. 24 ; John iv. 44. The last words are omitted,
perhaps out of respect for the feelings of the Lord's brethren, by the two later
Evangelists.

288 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
corpse or a leper ; of His graciousness to the poor woman, whose
slightest contact involved ceremonial pollution ; of His eating with
unwashen hands ; of His annulment of the distinction between clean
and unclean meats ; of His not observing the two weekly fasts ; of the
way in which He set at nought the common rules about the observance
of the Sabbath. But the awe which He inspired hushed the voices
which would otherwise have risen in remonstrance. It was only when
the path of the " Prophet of Nazareth " seemed to darken — only when
they found that He was arraying against Himself, first the disapproba
tion, then the indignant hatred, of ajl those on whom they looked with
the deepest veneration — that they thought it a duty, if possible, to
control His actions. It is difficult for us to realise how profound was
the respect with which the humbler Jews looked up to the Priests, the
Sanhedrists, the Pharisees, the Teachers of the Law. The titles which
the Rabbis so eagerly accepted, the tone of contempt which they adopted
towards those who were not initiated into their system, the insolence
with which they depreciated all who did not belong to their little clique,
had gradually led the mass of the Jews to accept these teachers at their
own. estimate, and to obey their decisions with almost abject humility.
It was inconceivable to them how one of the people should dare to scorn
the wisdom, to set aside the authority, to defy the injunctions of their
idolised theologians. It startled them that He should denounce as
blind guides and pernicious hypocrites the men whom they had been
accustomed to regard as little Ezras or Simeons — as " uprooters of
mountains " — as " glories of the Law " — as men of whom the least was
"worthy. that the Shechinah should rest upon him."1 They, too, were
inclined to repeat, " Is not this the carpenter ? " In the sixteenth
century men marvelled at the audacity of the German monk who dared
to breathe defiance against the immemorial majesty of the Papacy, and
to brave the opposition of a compact ecclesiasticism. But the courage
of Luther was as nothing to what Jews who did not accept the Divine
mission of Jesus must have considered to be the daring of the Nazarene,
who cared nothing for the threats of the Scribes and Pharisees who had
been despatched from Jerusalem to watch his movements. How could one
who " had never learnt letters," and knew nothing of what passed for
" theology " — gaze without quailing on those broad phylacteries, and
listen without reverence to that micrology of erudition ? Was it not
amazing that He should dare to teach with personal authority, and
without any reference to the precedents and technicalities of men who
had actually listened to Shammai and to Hillel ! The brethren of Jesus
could only attribute such conduct to an enthusiasm which seemed to be
getting beyond His own control. They imagined that the Spirit of the
Prophet was no more subject to the Prophet. They said, " He is beside
Himself." Fortifying their interference with the presence of His mother,
1 The Rabbis, like the mediaeval schoolmen, were distinguished by such flattering
titles as "the glory of the Law," "the Holy," &c.

REPROOF OF THE "BRETHREN.'' 289
they went in a body to the skirts of the vast crowd which he was
addressing at Capernaum, and sent a message that they wished to speak
with Him. It was an act of which they themselves were as yet in
capable of understanding the immense irreverence. It was time that
James and Judas should be taught, as Mary had been gently taught
even at the wedding-feast of Cana, that for Him the bond of earthly
relationships was transcended for ever. Stretching out His hand to
His disciples, He said, " Behold My mother and My brethren 1 For
whosoever shall do the will of My Father in Heaven, he is My brother,
and sister, and mother."1
Yet even this repudiation of their interference— this rebuke, so
distinct yet so gentle, of the presumption which relied on fleshly kins-
manship — was not effectual to silence finally the remonstrances of His
"brethren." Once more — and this time they were unable to bring
Mary with them — they ventured to proffer their advice to Jesus ;
ventured, not obscurely, to intimate their disapproval of His conduct,
and their rejection of His highest claims.2 The burst of unpopularity
which had followed His discourse at Capernaum about the Bread of
Life — the discourse in which He had. checked the false Messianic
enthusiasm excited by the feeding of the five thousand — rendered His
position more and more isolated. So great was His peril that, though
the Feast of Tabernacles was at hand, He could not go publicly to
Jerusalem. It was at this sad crisis that His brethren came to Him,
and said, with impatient perplexity, " Depart hence, and go into Judaea,
that Thy disciples also " — not merely these few Galilseans, but those
who have believed on Thee in Jerusalem and Judsea — "may behold the
works that Thou doest ; for no man doeth anything in secret " — as Thou
art now practically doing — " and seeks to be publicly acknowledged.3
If Thou doest these things '' — and though the words are not a denial of
His work they are at least a cold and hesitating acknowledgment — " if
Thou doest these things, manifest Thyself to the world." This forward
and ungracious speech, in which they ostentatiously separate themselves
from His disciples, is accounted for by the remark of the Apostle, " For
even His brethren were not believers on Him."4 Their belief, such as
it was, was neither permanent nor deep. They may have given to His
claims a general acceptance, but their faith was lacking in energy and
depth. Had it not been so, they would never have aspired to control
His actions. Once more His calm words involved a deep reproof :
" My opportunity has not yet come : your opportunity is always ready.
The world cannot hate you ; but Me it hateth, because I bear witness
concerning it that its deeds are evil. Go ye up unto the feast. I do
not mean yet to go up unto this feast, because my opportunity is not
yet fulfilled." Accordingly He did not go up to the feast publicly, or
i Matt. xji. 49, 50. 2 John vii. 1—10.
8 John vii. 4 : kv Trappno-ia elvai. 4 Ver. 5 : ouSe yap ot aSeA^oi in-io-Tevov eis aitrov.
6 Such as is expressed by mo-reveii* nyi, but not by mo-reveiv eis.
T

290 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
with them, or as one who went to observe it ; He only appeared
in the Temple suddenly in the midst of it. But what a severance
between Himself and them the words reveal ! How marked is the
emphasis of the contrasted pronouns? How unmistakably do His
words imply that tliey belonged as yet to the world of Judaism and
Pharisaism ; to the world which hated Him ; to the world in which they
were in no sort of peril, but which was seeking to take His life. They
were members of the religious world ; they sided with the dominant
parties ; they walked in the odour of sanctity ; they were breathing the
beatitude of orthodox benediction. His was the isolation and the
persecution of the Prophet — of the Prophet who awoke the deadliest of
all forms of hatred — the hatred of professional partisans ; the hatred
which must ever be the meed of those who are not afraid to pluck off
the mask of the hypocrite, to startle the slumbers of a false orthodoxy,
and to expose the insincerity of a false pretence.
In the four Gospels we do not again hear of the brothers of the
Lord. They were not with Him during the last scenes; they were not '
at the Last Supper ; they were not in the Garden ; they drew no sword
for Him ; they did not follow Him to the Hall of Caiaphas ; they did
not defile themselves for the feast by entering the Praatorium ; they did
not stand beside the Cross ; they did' not, so far as we know, visit with
sorrowing gifts His tomb.
Yet, strange to say, when next we meet with them they have thrown
themselves heart and soul into the struggling fortunes of the Church !
It is after the Ascension. The Eleven have returned from the Mount
of Olives, and go to the Upper Boom, which is their regular place of
meeting in Jerusalem ; and in that Upper Boom are not only the
Eleven, but also Mary the mother of Jesus and His brethren.1 From
that moment as a body they disappear, and we hear no more of either
Joses or Simon. But Jude lived to travel as a Christian missionary,
and to write the Epistle which bears his name ; and James lived to furnish
the nearest approach to a bishop which is to be found in the Apostolic
age, and to be for twenty years a main pillar of the persecuted Church.
Whence came this marvellous change ?
We have no account of it ; we have no means of even conjectiirally
explaining it, unless the explanation lies in three words of the Apostle
Paul. In his relation of the appearances of Christ after His Resurrec
tion he says that he was seen of Kephas, then of the Twelve, then
of more than five hundred brethren at once ; " then He was seen of
James."2 That this James means the Lord's brother, the head of
the Church in Jerusalem, is clear, because when the Epistle was"
written the son of Zebedee was dead, and the son of Alphseus was
unknown to Gentile Christians. They knew but of one James, the one
whose authority was so highly venerated, and the only one whom
J Acts i. 14. a 1 Cor. xv. 7 : eVewa u$en 'IaK(u/3¥.

CONVERSION OF ST. JAMES. 291
St. Paul mentions by name. Three, and three alone, were singled
out to be separate eye-witnesses of the appearances of the risen Christ on
earth. One was the leader of the Apostolic band, the repentant Kephas ;
another was she who loved much, whose love made her last at the cross
and earliest at the tomb ; the third was the brother of the Lord.
Not a single further detail is added in Scripture respecting the
appearances to Kephas and to James. But in the Gospel of the
Hebrews — the most ancient and trustworthy of the apocryphal Gospels
— we find the striking story that James had bound himself by an oath
that from the hour when he had drunk of the Lord's cup he would
neither eat nor drink until he should see him risen from the dead.
" Now the Lord, when He had given the cloth' (sindon) to the
servant of the priest, went to James and appeared to Him, and
said after a while, 'Bring hither a table and bread;' and He took
bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to James the Just, and
said to him, ' My brother, eat thy bread now, for the Son of Man
hath risen from among those that sleep.'"1 There are several circum
stances here which show us indeed that we are in the region of the
Apocryphal, for James was not present at the Lord's Supper, and
there did not exist among the Apostles — in spite of all that Jesus
had told them — any expectation of the Resurrection. Indeed, so far
from the belief creating the conviction, we are expressly told of the
incredulous astonishment with which they received the first Easter
tidings. But though there may be some confusion in these details,
there is nothing improbable, nothing which is unlike- St. James's
character, in the main facts of the tradition. That he loved the
Brother with whom he had lived at Nazareth for thirty years we
cannot doubt. Although he may have been unconvinced at first
of His Divine claims, though he may even have yielded to doubts
respecting His Messiahship, yet one into whose heart had sunk so
deeply the lessons of sentence after sentence from the Sermon on
the Mount could not have regarded Him as other than a great prophet
from the earliest days of his public ministry. All his personal affection
may have been stirred to its lowest depths by the knowledge of'
what He had suffered. His nascent and imperfect belief may have
been greatly strengthened by the events which accompanied the
Crucifixion, and which made so deep an impression not only on the
awestruck Jews, but even on the heathen centurion. It is therefore
far from impossible that when he heard the first reports of His
resurrection, the subsequent intelligence that He had been actually
seen — and not only by Mary -of Magdala, but by Kephas, and by
the Twelve, and by five hundred brethren at once — he may have bound
himself by the not uncommon cherem, or ban, which the tradition
records. He was a Nazarite, and bound by a general vow ; he would
1 Jer. De Vwr. Illustr. 2.

292 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
now make a special vow neither to eat nor drink until he too had seen
the Lord — until he had been thus thoroughly convinced that all which
yet remained of his past doubts was wrong and vain. However this
may be, we know on the testimony of St. Paul that a special vision
was vouchsafed to him. We know further from sacred history that he
became thenceforth, until his martyrdom, a faithful shepherd- of souls,
a tower of defence to the Church of Christ in the Holy City.
Seven or eight years elapse before we again hear of him,1 and then
it is merely a passing allusion to the fact that St. Paul saw him in
Jerusalem, three years after his conversion, when he had been forced to
fly for his life from Damascus. All the brethren at first — and
therefore James among them — received the new convert, who had lately
been so terrible an inquisitor, with fear and suspicion. When the
generosity of Barnabas had rescued his friend from this painful
isolation, Peter was the earliest to hold out to him the right hand
of fellowship, and from that time James seems also to have received
him with kindness.2 Even then St. James appears to have held some
authoritative position in the Church, though he is distinguished from
the Apostles. Since no other Apostle except Peter is mentioned, we
may infer that they were not at Jerusalem at that moment. Indeed,
the whole Church had been scattered by the storm of persecution which
had been directed by Paul himself.
Six more years elapse before, in a.d. 44, we again meet with the
name of James. In that year Herod Agrippa I., in trying to sustain
the politic rtle of a national king, had taken the readiest method
of pleasing the Jews by harassing the Christians. He had accordingly
seized James the son of Zebedee, and put him to death. The selection
of the felder son of Zebedee for a victim shows either that the burning
zeal was still unquenched which in old days had earned for him
and his brother John the surname of Sons of Thunder, or that he was
at that time regarded as the leader in the Church at Jerusalem. Why
that position was assigned to him rather than to Peter we can only
conjecture. It may have been owing to his position, or to his
connexion with Jerusalem, or to the fact that as the son of Salome he
was the near relative of his Lord. No sooner had he been executed
than, seeing the delight which the Jews had taken in his execution,
Herod proceeded further to seize Peter. The angelic deliverance of
Peter from prison thwarted the king's murderous designs ; and when
Peter went at once to the house of Mary the mother of John Mark, to
remove the anxious fears of the assembled brethren before his flight
from Jerusalem, he ended his hasty narrative with the words, "Tell
James and the brethren these things."3
The expression shows that James the Lord's brother had succeeded
the son of Zebedee as the chief person in the mother Church. The
i About A.D. 88. a Gal. i. 18, 19. » Acts xii. 17.

BISHOP OF JERUSALEM. 293
twelve years had now elapsed during which, according to a probable
tradition, the Apostles had been bidden to stay at Jerusalem before
they scattered far and wide to preach the Gospel to all nations.1 The
stationary superintendence of the little body of Christians in the
head-quarters of Jewish fanaticism was felt to be a position which
belonged less fitly to any of the Twelve than to one who, though
he might in the less technical sense be called an Apostle, was not
one of the chosen witnesses to whom had been entrusted the evangeli
sation of all the world.
To James, therefore, the Lord's brother. — not only because he was
the Lord's brother, but because of the force of his character and
influence — fell naturally and at once the office of Bishop of Jerusalem.2
The appointment was eminently wise, and as Jerusalem was yearly
visited at the great feasts by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, of
whom multitudes were Christians,3 this position at once gave to the
Lord's brother an immense authority. He became a pillar of the
Church ;4 and if it had been in the power of an3r one even at the
eleventh hour to win over the people of the Ancient Covenant, he
would have achieved the task. The shadow of an awful mystery clung
about him as the earthly brother of Him Whose true Divinity as the
Eternal Son of God was brought home more deeply by the Holy
Spirit to the hearts of the disciples as year after year passed by.
And this awe of his personality, enhanced among the Jews by his
Davidic descent, was increased by the stern sanctity of his character.
This was he — so men whispered, and we catch the echo of their
whispers centuries afterwards — " who is wont to go alone into the
sanctuary, and is found prostrate in prayer, so that his knees have
grown hard and worn like a camel's because he is ever kneeling and
worshipping God, and asking forgiveness for the people."5 "This is
the righteous one." "This is Obliam, the bulwark of the people."
" He is even allowed," they said, " like the high priest, to wear on
his forehead the petalon, the plate of gold on which is inscribed
Holiness to the Lord." The latter notion is probably a symbolic
expression translated into a fact/ for there is no trace that such a
privilege was accorded to any one, even if he were, as James may have
1 Clem. Alex. Strom, vi 5, § 43, quoting the Kerugma Petrou ; and Apollonius, ap.
Euseb. H. E. v. 18.
2 Clemens (ap. Euseb. H. E. ii. 1) says that he was appointed bishop by Peter and
the two sons of Zebedee. Hegesippus says : BiaSkxerat fie ttjv 'EKKkrjviav pera. tuv aTroo-Tohw
6 afieA^bs tou Kvpiov 'IaKw/3os, k.t.a. It is amazing that Jerome should have ventured to
render this "Suscepit Ecclesiam HierosolymEe post apostolos frater domini Jacobus." It
means " with the Apostles," and shows that James was not one of the Twelve.
3 In Acts xxi. -20 we find the startling expression, "Thou beholdest, brother, how
many myriads (n-do-at pvpiaSe^) there are of Jews who have believed."
4 Gal. ii. 9. 5 Euseb. H. E. ii. 23.
6 Epiphan. Boer. xxix. 4 ; Ixxviii. 13.
1 As is the case with the similar story told by Polyorates about St. John (Euseb.
S. E. v. 24).

294 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
been, of Aaronic as well as of Davidic origin.1 But it is not incredible
that James may, as a Nazarite, have been allowed to share in some
of the priestly privileges.2 In any case, these stories must indicate
that he was held in exceptional reverence, for legends only gather
round the names of the greatest, just as it is only the loftiest mountain-
tops to which the mists most densely cling. And every indication with
which we are furnished shows that he was providentially fitted to
give one last chance to all who would accept salvation, whether in
the Jewish capital or amid the Twelve Tribes of the Dispersion. From
the whole character of his views he would speak to them in a voice
more acceptable than that of any other man.
In the narrative of the anger which arose at Jerusalem when the
news arrived that Peter, not content with baptising Gentile proselytes,
had actually lived in their houses and eaten with them, the name of
James is not mentioned. Nor, again, are we told that St. Paul saw
him in his hurried and unimportant visit, in the year of Peter's im
prisonment, to carry alms from the Gentile Christians at Antioch to
their suffering brethren, the " saints " of Jerusalem.3 But five years
later, about A.D. 50, when Paul and Barnabas went up a second time to
Jerusalem for the settlement of the great question which was then agi
tating the Church, we again see St. James as the most prominent figure
in that memorable Synod. The question whether the Gentiles were or
were not to be circumcised — was one on the decision of which hung the
entire future of Gentile Christianity. It involved the whole relation of
the Gentiles to the Mosaic Law. I have elsewhere so fully entered into
its bearing, and into the circumstances of the scene at which it was
decided, that I must be content to refer to what I have there said.4 But
I may here repeat that the whole weight and responsibility of the
decision rested with St. James, and that he rose on this occasion to a
height worthy of his parentage and of his character. In the face of all
the prejudices of his life — rising superior to the views of all the Babbis,
his predecessors and contemporaries — ignoring the wrathful murmurs
and fanatical arguments of the Pharisaic Zealots, he decided in an oppo
site sense to what seems to have been expected of him. He, . the
Bighteous — he, the Bulwark of Judaism — he, the priestly Nazarite, to
whom, Christian though he was, even Jews looked up with reverence —
he, who was so rigidly accurate an observer of all the precepts of legal
righteousness — he, the very man whose name and authority had been
claimed by the Judaic emissaries who had troubled the Church of
Antioch by their insistance on legal scrupulosity and Jewish particu
larism — he, whose name they afterwards abused in counter-missions to
undo the teaching of St. Paul — he gave his voice in favour of the liberal
view ! Never, perhaps, did a result so awful in its responsibility depend
1 Mary was related to Elizabeth.
2 See supra, p. 2S6. Dean Plumptre refers to Maimonides, Moreh Nevochim, iii. 43.
3 Acts xi. 30 ; xii. 25. 4 See Life, and Work of St. Paul, i. 405—408.

THE GENTILES AND THE LAW. 295
on the wisdom of any single man. The assembly of Jewish Christians
in the Holy City, seething with intense excitement,1 hung on the lips of
their Bishop, as, in the hush of awe inspired by his person and character,
he rose, with the long locks of the Nazarite streaming over his white
robes, to close the discussion in which so many fierce passions had been
aroused. The Pharisees had been insisting on the Law — the Law of
Moses — the sacred, irrevocable, fiery Law of Sinai, for the sake of
which they thought the very world had been created — the Law which
the Saviour had Himself said that He came not to destroy, but to
fulfil — nay, which He had personally fulfilled — nay, respecting which
He had openly declared that no jot nor tittle of it should ever pass
away. Who had the power to say that this Law which God had
uttered from the rolling fire, with the sound of a trumpet amid
myriads of angels — who should dare to say that any portion of it
was special 1 that any utterance of it was evanescent ? Who would dare
to argue that it was meant for Jews only, and that it need not be
adopted by proselytes, and that it had not been intended for all the
world? Could even the Bath Kol itself, the voice from Heaven,2 super
sede its universal sacredness, or absolve, were it but one Gentile, from
so much as the position of a phylactery or the.colour of a fringe ? Did
not tradition say that all the souls even of nations yet unborn had been
summoned to the awful mountain to hear that Law delivered ? And be
it remembered that these arguments were being uttered at Jerusalem, in
the midst of, and to the knowledge of, a madly fanatical population — ¦
uttered, as it were, in the audience of those long centuries of Sacred
history to which every tower and pinnacle of the Holy City was bearing
witness — uttered by men who were not only Pharisees, but Christians.
And let it be further remembered that every argument which they were
urging was one addressed as it were in shorthand to the impassioned
prejudices of the majority of the hearers ; anticipated almost before its
utterance by their quick and excited sensibility; weighted with the
emphasis of those lifelong convictions, which come to be identified with
the very essence of religion. Against this mighty current of obstinate
Judaism, Paul, the once fierce Inquisitor and Persecutor — Paul, the
hated renegade of the Sanhedrin — Paul, who had his share in the death
of the proto-martyr — Paul, the suspected teacher of heathen customs
which were the subversion of legal righteousness — Paul, and even
Barnabas, tainted, as many of these Pharisees would have thought, by
intercourse with " the enemy," — would have struggled in vain. One
tower of strength the wiser and larger-hearted party possessed in the
advocacy of Peter; but Peter himself, though he adduced irresistible
1 Acts xv. 2.
2 See the memorable story in the Talmud, where the Rabbis repudiate even the testi
mony of the Bath Kol against one of their Halachoth. " It is not mysterious voices,"
said Rabbi Joshua, " but the majority of the Sages which ought alone to decide questions
of doctrine " (Bava Metzia, f. 59 6). See my paper on " Christ and the Oral Law " in
the Expositor, (v. 233).

296 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
proofs of a Divine sanction for what he had done, had barely been able
to justify, at Jerusalem, the isolated baptism and admission into fellow
ship of a single pious proselyte. The question now at stake was not
the treatment of an individual case, but the obligations of the whole
Gentile world. Was the coming of the Jewish Messiah to be the annul
ment of the Jewish Law, the obliteration of all that was most distinctive
in the Jewish Church 1 Was the triumph of Israel to involve its
national effacement ? Such were the questions which led to a storm of
passionate dispute. But meanwhile, before the convening of this
deeply-moved assembly, the result of which was to be fraught with con
sequences so momentous, Paul and Barnabas had, with consummate
wisdom, secured the adhesion of the three great pillar-Apostles. Peter
was already with them in heart ; but Peter's impulsive and yielding
temperament might have been little able to stand alone against the
rushing tide of fanaticism if he had not been supported by the authority
of John and James. But John was won by the clear signs that God
had been with the heroic missionaries, and that the Holy Spirit had set
His seal on all their work. And when James also was convinced —
when even his practical wisdom had grasped the truth, which was the
last which the Holy Spirit made perfectly clear to the minds of the Early
Apostles — the greatest victory ever achieved by Gentile Christianity
was won. The fiery speech of St. Peter might only have fanned the
prejudices of the Jewish Christians into a fiercer flame. Even to the
striking narratives of Paul and Barnabas they listened in unconvinced
silence. They attached chief importance to the original Apostles and
witnesses.1 Their hopes were in James. And James arose to dash
those hopes to the ground. He referred to the narrative of " Symeon;"
he passed over in silence the speeches of Barnabas and Paul ; but then
— appealing to the words of a prophet who was a Nazarite like himself
— with his " Therefore I decide," he settled the question.2 And his
decision was that the Gentiles were to be admitted into the Christian
Church on the footing of proselytes of the Gate, and were not to be
burdened with any requirements beyond the simple and easy rules of the
Noachian Dispensation. I have pointed out elsewhere how many points
of discussion were still left undecided by this decree ; how local and
how transitory was its authority ; how completely, in Churches outside
the limited circle to which the letter was addressed, St. Paul set aside
its authority. I have also shown how openly the implied contract was
also broken by those who were most hostile to the Apostle of the
heathen, and who, appealing too often to credentials furnished by St.
James, sophisticated St. Paul's feeble converts and undid his toilsome
work. But, meanwhile, James himself, with worthy firmness and true
1 See Clem. Horn. xix. 17.
2 Acts xv. 19. Two resemblances have been observed between the speech and the
Epistle— (1) The epistolary greeting, x<u>e«. (infra p. 326); and (2) ifieA^oi, oKovWe
(Acts xv. 13; Jas. n. 5).

ST. JAMES AND THE JUDAISTS. 297
wisdom from on high, had conceded the whole question at issue. When
the principle had been thus once conceded, it was, from the nature of
the case, conceded for ever. The details could be safely left to future
adjustment as they were seen by the light of circumstances. No one
who called himself 'a Christian, whether Jew or Gentile, could really
dispute a rule which had been laid down by the concurrent authority
not only of Paul and Barnabas and Peter, but even of the Beloved
Disciple and of the Brother of the Lord. But myriads of Jewish
Christians remained secretly unpersuaded, until the' destruction of
Jerusalem, like a lightning-flash from heaven, dispelled their perplexities
by the Divine logic of events.
Years again pass by, and we have but incidental references to the
name of James. It is clear that if James was satisfied as to the right
of St. Paul to act as he had done, many of his adherents were not. In
violation of the whole spirit of the sy nodical compact, they insisted on
maintaining a rigid line of distinction between Jews and uncircumcised
Gentiles ; and their presence at Antioch was so successful in reawaken
ing the terrors of a fancied unorthodoxy that Peter himself once more
wavered, and even Barnabas was led away with the dissimulation
which followed the arrival of these " certain from James." It is not
necessary once more to write the history of that bitter quarrel which
nearly rent asunder the unity of the early Church, and which it took
a full century to heal. It is enough to say that the habits and con
victions of a lifetime can never be lightly, and rarely with completeness,
laid aside. Although St. James had shown on the one great occasion a
noble liberality, yet his sympathies were to the last with the Jewish
Christians. As the head of their party and the exponent of their
views, he could never have felt in entire accord with the Apostle of the
Gentiles. Hence his memory was fondly cherished by all Judaisers,
and the Ebionites claimed his special patronage.1 Peter was too wide in
his sympathies, too free from narrowness and prejudice, to be the chosen
leader of so intensely Judaic a sect. The Nazarenes also, who were
Judaists but not heretical, looked up to James with the highest
reverence. In the Church of Jerusalem he was succeeded by Symeon
son of Clopas, who is said to have suffered martyrdom, at the age of 120,
in the reign of Hadrian. Every one of the next thirteen Bishops was of
the Circumcision.2 The first Gentile Bishop was Marcus (a.d. 137), who
presided over the Church when some of the Christians had returned from
Pella to Jerusalem, then called by its new name of jElia Capitolina.
That St. James continued to the last to be swayed by the thoughts
and traditions of his earlier life may be asserted without any blame to
1 In the pseudo- Clementine Homilies and Epistles he, and not Peter, is elected to the
rank of supreme and universal Bishop. One Ebionite romance, the Anabathmoi
Iakobou, went so far as to describe his ascension into Heaven. Epiphan. Maer,
xxx. 16.
3 Euseb. iv. 5.

298 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
him. It is only what we see every day. The saints of God, who will
be very near and very dear to each other in Heaven, are on earth
separated by bitter prejudices, by party shibboleths, by mutual mis^
understandings, by the almost grotesque misrepresentations in which
they mutually indulge. The Holy Spirit of God was with St. Paul, and
with St. James, and with each of the Apostles, dividing to each man
severally as He would. But there was a diversity of gifts and graces
in accordance with the individuality of each ; nor did the Holy Spirit
bestow on any one of them an infallible wisdom or a perfect sinless-
ness. "Even a Paul," as St. Chrysostom says, "was still but a man."
It is surely one of the heresies of modern times, one of the faithless
misconceptions which alter the central meaning of Christianity, to
suppose that the Holy Spirit, who was promised for all time, was with
the Apostles and is not with us. He is with us. He is with all who
seek Him. But as it is alien from the possibilities of earthly life ' that
His indwelling Presence shoiild make us perfect or all-wise, so neither
did it make them perfect or all- wise. They were mortal men, not angels.
They were liable to inconsistencies, and they fell into errors. It is, I
think, an unmistakable inference, both from the hints which we find in
the Acts of the Apostles and from the silence of that book in other
places, that St. James and St. Paul felt but little congeniality towards
each other. They differed in sympathies and in temperament. No
lives could be more diverse than those of these two great servants of
God. St. Paul was constantly traversing Europe and Asia in long
journeys, living in heathen cities, crossing and recrossing the Mediterra
nean, brought into daily contact with the rich though unsanctified culture
of the grandest nations of antiquity, seeing the works and learning the
thoughts of many men. It was impossible for him to retain the Jewish
standpoint when, by the wisdom of Providence, his mind had been
enlarged by such influences and such knowledge. It forced upon him,
in a way far different from that of theoretical assent, the conviction of
God's fatherhood over the family of man. In the light of Christ's com
mand to gather all mankind into the fold of His Church, the promises and
prophecies which ran throughout the whole Old Testament flashed into
new significance. The training which St. Paul had received from God's
Holy Spirit, that he might become a true " vessel of election " to win
the Gentiles unto Christ, shifted, as it were, the centre of gravity of his
whole theological system. Theologically, as well as geographically, he
was now aware that it was but a fiction of Babbinism to regard Jeru
salem as the centre of all the earth. The one thing which imperilled
the conversion of the world was the attempt to force on the neck of the
Gentiles a yoke of observances which they were unable to bear. It was
impossible for St. Paul to dwell on the symbolism which gave to the
Law its true splendour. What he had to enforce was its deathful, its
menacing, its elementary aspect as a curse and a bondage. He was
driven in the earnestness of controversy to use such expressions as

JAMES A JUDAIST. 299
" weak and beggarly elements," which we cannot imagine that St. James
could under any circumstances have brought himself to use. We can
hardly wonder if a polemic so unsparing produced feelings of intense
exasperation. The Rabbis applied to their hedge of Levitic Halach6th
the expression of the Book of Ecclesiastes (x. 8), "Whoso breaketh
down a hedge a serpent shall bite him." St. Paul broke down that
hedge in every direction — it was the duty and object of his life to do
so — and he was bitten in consequence by the " offsprings of vipers."
They whose work it is to win multitudes to Christ, to show religion in
all its width and attractiveness, to make it wear a winning aspect in the
eyes of all who love mercy and culture, have always aroused the alarmed
antagonism of more timid natures.1
But the life and training of St. James, and consequently to a great
extent the colour of his opinions, were the reverse of cosmopolitan. So
far as we know, he never left Jerusalem after the Ascension. All that
he learnt of the outer world .was the glimpse of it which he received
from intercourse with the Paschal pilgrims who came from " the Dis
persion " with all their thoughts full of Jerusalem, and of Jerusalem
alone. There was nothing in such intercourse to decrease, rather there
was everything to intensify, the feelings of the Jew as to the grandeur
and importance of his own privileges. Now the cause and substance of
those privileges lay in the institutions which God had given him, and
even more in the ceremonial Law, with its service and Priesthood, than
in the inoral law, which — in its great outlines — was common to the Jew
with all mankind. A Christian Jew might concede that these institu
tions were not obligatory on the Gentile, at any rate to their full
extent ; but it was almost impossible for him to realise that they had
become needless and insignificant shadows for himself also. They had
been delivered from Sinai by the voice of God speaking out of the fire.
How, then, could they become obsolete? Who had repealed them?
When had they been annulled ? Had any prophet greater than all the
prophets reduced to a dead letter so much of the Levitic Books ? Had
Christ done so ? There were those who argued that implicitly He had
done so ; but was the implicit and the inferential a sufficient warrant
for the abrogation of that which was positive and Divine ? Could it,
moreover, be said with certainty that Christ had even implicitly set
aside the Mosaic Law which He said He had come not to destroy, but
to fulfil ? If St. Paul appealed to the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
others too, who thought that they had the Spirit of God, did not feel so
sure as to their warrant for neglecting or undervaluing what was to
them the certain revelation of 1,500- years ago.
Least of all could it be expected that one like St. James — a Hebrew
of Hebrews, the son of a " just " man, and one whose own title of " the
Just " was a testimony to the faithfulness of his observances, a Nazarite
1 "Above all, let us not make the doors of the Church bristle with razors, and pitch
forks, and bundles of thorns " (H. Peyrreyve to Pere Lacordaire).

300 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" holy from his mother's womb," — would readily embrace such views.
If he did, would not the Temple in which he worshipped, the vows in
which he took part, the Holy Place in which he was permitted to
kneel, the sacrifices which he offered, the streets of the city which he
trod, the very robe he wore, bear daily' witness against him ? No doubt
the Gentiles, if they chose, might be contented with the Noachian pre
cepts ; and the question as to the relative position of Jews and Gentiles,
and of proselytes of the Gate in comparison with proselytes of
Bighteousness, might be left in abeyance. But to St. James Jerusalem
was the joy of the .whole earth, the City of the Great King. To him
" the people " meant the Chosen People, and the rest of the world was,
in comparison, as nothing.1 It had not been elected for exceptional
blessings. It stood in a wholly inferior relation towards God. If such
were not the views of St. James, they were the views of many of those
Priests and Pharisees by whom he was surrounded, and with whom he
lived in friendship. Many of these were only so far Christians that
they recognised in Christ a Divine Messiah." They were Jews as well
as Christians, and by the whole bent of their lives they were Jews first
and Christians afterwards. To many of them, as we see from the New
Testament, it was the strongest temptation of their lives to waver half
way between Judaism and Christianity, on the verge of apostatising
into the former. It was not so with St. James. His heart was sure,
his affections fixed, his soul anchored on the rock of Christ. He was a
Christian first, a Jew afterwards, although his Epistle shows that it was
the moral rather than the dogmatic side of Christianity which mOst
absorbed his thoughts. But a man is insensibly affected by intercourse
with those around him ; and every circumstance around St. James was
of a kind to deepen in his eyes the sanctity of Judaism. Those about
him, often without his sanction, and sometimes in defiance of his
wishes, did not scruple to make use of his name to discountenance the
views of St. Paul. It was the position of St. James as the head of the
Judaising Christians which made his name so dear to the Ebionites.2
They were glad to attribute to him that bitter antagonism to the
teachings of St. Paul which was true only of those who usurped his
name. This is why, in the spurious Epistle of Peter prefixed to the
Clementine Homilies, Peter is made to exalt the Law against the
attacks of " the enemy," and none are regarded as full Christians but
those who are devout and circumcised. This is why " James, the slave
of the Lord Jesus Christ," becomes in the dedication of the Epistle of
the pseudo-Clemens, and in the Liturgy of James, not " the Lord's
brother," but Adelphotheos, " the brother of God." He is spoken of,
1 Rabbis used to talk of all the world except Judea as chootsah-la-arets, "outside the
land." 2 The " Ascent of James," the " AVitness," and the " Protevangelion of James " were
Ebionite writings. There are imitations of the Epistle of St. James in the Clementine
Homilies, iii. 1, 17, 54, 55 ; viii. 7 ; xix. 2 (Ep. Clem, ad Jac. 15).

EBIONITE FICTIONS. 301
with the pompous inflation of a later sacerdotalism, as " the Lord
James," "the prince of bishops, Apostles, and martyrs," "the bishop of
bishops, who rules Jerusalem, the Holy Church of the Hebrews."1 He
is the Archbishop of Jerusalem, who, sending about even the greatest
of the Apostles, at his own behest2 despatches St. Peter to withstand
Paul, " the enemy," thinly disguised in the person of Simon Magus.
He stands seven days on the steps of the Temple witnessing (as though
against the teaching of this " enemy " !) that Jesus is the Christ. In the
Clementine Recognitions,8 Peter — with pointed reference to the remark
of St. Paul that he needed no letter of recommendation (2 Cor. iii. 1) —
is made to give solemn warning to the Church to test false Apostles,
and " to trust no teacher who has not brought a testimonial " (as we may
call it) " from James or from his successor ; because, unless any one
has gone up to Jerusalem and there been approved as being a teacher
fit and faithful to preach the word of Christ, he is not by any means to be
received." Such were the dreams and extravagances and ambitions and
calumnies of party theology in the days of the Ebionites. Most of this
Ebionising exaltation of Judaic episcopacy is the nonsense of. an hereti
cal and malignant ecclesiasticism, savouring of the elements which have
ever been the corruption of all that is pure and sound and simple in the
Churoh. But it bases its fictions upon circumstances which at one
time did really exist, although to a much less extent than this. It had
its root in the real differences between Judaic and Pauline Christianity.
A passionate contest did really occur between those who wished to
maintain intact and those who wished to annul the Levitic Law ; and
there may have been a want of heart-felt union between the leaders of
the Church of Jerusalem and the great founder of the Church of the
Gentiles. The state of circumstances which I have here sketched finds
a striking illustration in the advice given by St. James and his elders,
in AD, 58, on the occasion of St. Paul's fifth and last visit to Jeru
salem, when they recommended him to take a part in helping some
poorer brethren to bring to due conclusion a temporary vow. That
vow, with all its Levitic ceremonials, involved circumstances which
could not but have been painful to St. Paul ; and the recommendation,
though given in all sincerity as a supposed means of averting a collision
between Jews and Christians, produced the most disastrous conse
quences for many years.4
1 The forged letter of St. Peter in the Clementines is addressed "To James, the Lord
and Bishop of the Holy Church," who is described as being at the head of a college of
seventy Presbyters. The letter of pseudo-Clemens describing the martyrdom of St.
Peter is addressed " To James the Lord, and Bishop of Bishops, who rules the Holy
Church of the Hebrews in Jerusalem, and all the Churches everywhere established by
the Providence of God," etc. See too Becogn. i. 43.
a Becogn. i 44, 68, 73. 3 Becogn. Clem. iv. 35 ; Horn. xi. 35.
4 See this fully explained in my Life of St. Paul, ii. 295—308. The Nazarite voW
might be taken for a longer or shorter period, and one who undertook it for a period only
was called " a Nazarite of days " (see Amos ii. 11, 12 ; 1 Mace. iii. 49). St. Paul's vow
at Cenchreae may, or may not, have been of this character (Acts xviii. 18).

302 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
From that time forward we lose sight of St. James in Scripture ;
but we gain one more glimpse of him in Jewish history and Christian
tradition five years afterwards, in the year of his martyrdom, a.d. 63.
Respecting this martyrdom, Josephus tells us that it was due to
Ananus, or Annas — or, to give him his true name, Hanan — the
younger, who in that year was High Priest, the last of the high-
priestly sons of the "Annas" of the Gospels. Hatred against Christ
and Christians had already led the house of Hanan to imbrue their
guilty hands in the blood of Christ and of St. Stephen, to approve of
the murder of James the son of Zebedee, and to endeavour to procure
the assassination of St. Paul. The same unrelenting animosity now
hurried the younger Hanan, a man of violent and imperious temper,
into a fresh crime. He seized a sudden opportunity to put to death the
Lord's brother, and so to strike one more blow at the Christian Church.
Festus, whose justice had saved the life of St. Paul, and who was one
of the most honourable of the Roman procurators of Judsea, had died
after a brief government of two years. Albinus was appointed as his
successor, and before he arrived there was a little interval during which
Judsea was only under the distant supervision of the Legate of Syria
Agrippa II. was absent from Jerusalem. At such a time a bold and
cruel Sadducee like this High Priest might easily induce the Sanhedrin
to stretch their authority, and exercise a power of inflicting capital
punishment which had ceased strictly to belong to them. He hoped
that this irregularity would be either unnoticed or condoned by the
Romans, who were very tolerant of what was done in the interests of
any legally-permitted religion, and who would not be likely to interfere
with an execution which had no political significance. Inspiring the
Sanhedrin with his own audacity, Hanan induced them to arrest James
and other leading Christians, and to have them stoned. The charge
brought against them was doubtless blasphemy, for it was impossible to
charge James at any rate with " transgressing the Law." Perhaps, if
James had been as much hated as St. Paul was, no more would have
been said. But James, at Jerusalem, like Ananias at Damascus, was
profoundly honoured by Jews no less than by Christians. He, too, was
" a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the
Jews which dwelt there. " 1 It was not merely the converts to Chris
tianity, but " some of the most equitable in the city, and those who
were most accurate in their knowledge of the Law," who were
grieved at this wanton murder of the saintly Nazarite. They were
determined to protect such citizens from the insolence of a blood
stained house, and they laid their complaints before Agrippa II.
This king had heard the defence of St. Paul before Festus, and was
capable of taking a fairer view of Christianity than that which was
deemed politic by his astute and unprincipled father. They also
1 Acts xxii. 12.

THE YOUNGER HANAN. 303
complained to the new Procurator, who was now on his way from
Alexandria to Jerusalem. The consequence was that Albinus
(a.d. 63) wrote to Hanan a stern rebuke for his illegal violence, and
Agrippa II. felt that he might, without danger to his own popularity,
expel him from the High Priesthood, though he had only held it for
, three months.1 We can see from this brief narrative that the cruelty of
the younger Hanan was only part of a bold plan to restore the waning
influence of the Sadducean priesthood. Those who, by informing
against him, defeated his purpose and drove him from his office, were
evidently Pharisees.2 The Pharisees were never actuated by the same
animosity against the Judseo-Christians as the Sadducees. Judaic
Christianity leaned to the views of Pharisaism. Sadducees like the
Beni-Hanan naturally hated it on this ground, and all the more because
the many Pharisees who had by this time embraced the faith were
believers in the Besurrection of Christ, and were therefore extreme
opponents of the very negation which was most characteristic of
the Sadducean sect. Hanan is perhaps the proud young priest, who,
on reproaching his father for conformity to Pharisaic practices while he
had lived all his life in the profession of Sadduceism, received the
answer that only at the price of such hypocrisy could their priestly
position be maintained at all.3 If so, we see that he was exactly
the sort of person who would have taken the initiative in a Sadducean
conspiracy. Hegesippus supplements the narrative of Josephus by giving a more
detailed account of the martyr's death.4 He says that James won over
many of the Jews to Christianity by his testimony to Jesus as being the
Door of the Sheepfold, the Way of Life, until the multitude of conver
sions aroused, as it had done twenty-five years earlier, the angry atten
tion of the Scribes and Sanhedrists. They accordingly sent him a
deputation from their " Seven Sects" to ask him, "Who is the Door of
Jesus ? " 5 He answered, " that Jesus was the Saviour ; " and by this
testimony he again won so many converts that a tumult arose, from the
fear that all the people would be won over to look for the coming of
Christ. Accordingly they once more sent him a deputation, acknow
ledging his " righteousness," and the reverence with which they regarded
him, and the strong influence which he held over the people, but en
treating him to stand upon the pinnacle of the Temple on the day of the
Passover, and persuade " all the tribes " and the Gentiles " not to be led
1 Joshua, son of Damnaeus, was appointed in his place, but was soon superseded by
Joshua Ben Gamala, who bought the office by an enormous bribe, offered by his wife,
Martha, a daughter of Boethus.
2 Jos. Antt. xx. 9, § 1.
3 Tosefta Joma, c. 1; Geiger, Urschrift, 112; Derenbourg, Palest. 104.
4 Hegesippus wrote, he tells us, when Eleutherus was Bishop of Rome, A.D. 174 — 189
(Euseb. iv. 22).
5 The phrase may mean " Which is the door of which Jesus spoke? " (John x. 7, 9), or
" "What is the Door which leads to Jesus ? "

304 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
away concerning Jesus." The rest of the story may be told in the
quaint style of the old writer itself : —
" The Scribes and Pharisees, then, who have been previously men
tioned, set James on the pinnacle of the Temple, and cried to him and
said, ' Just one ! whom we ought all to obey, since the people is wan
dering after Jesus the Crucified, tell us, Who is the Door of Jesus 1 '
And he answered in a loud voice, ' Why do ye ask me again about
Jesus the Son of Man ? He both sits in the heavens on the right hand
of the Mighty Power, and He will come on the clouds of heaven.' And
when many had been fully assured, and were glorifying God at the
witness of James, and saying, ' Hosanna to the Son of David ! ' then
again the same Scribes and Pharisees began to say to one another, ' We
did wrong in affording such a testimony to Jesus. Come, let us go up
and cast, him down, that they may be afraid, and not believe him.' And
they cried out, saying, ' Oh ! oh ! even the Just has gone astray ! ' and they
fulfilled the Scripture written in Isaiah, ' Let us away with the Just, for
he is inconvenient to us.' (Is. iii. 10?) Therefore they shall eat of the
fruit of their own deeds. They went up, therefore, and flung down the
Just, and said to one another, ' Let us stone James the Just.' And they
began to stone him, since he did not die from being flung down, but
turned and knelt on his knees, saying, ' I entreat Thee, O Lord God !
O Father ! forgive them, for they know not what they do.' But while
they were thus stoning him, one of the Priests, of the sons of Rechab, a
son of the Rechabites to whom Jeremiah the Prophet bears witness,
cried out, saying, ' Cease ! what are ye doing 1 The Righteous One is
praying for you ? ' But one of them, one of the fullers, lifting up his
club with which he used to beat out clothes, brought it down on
the head of the Righteous One. So he bore witness ; and they buried
him on the spot, beside the Sanctuary.1 He was a true witness to
Jews and Greeks that Jesus is the Christ. Immediately afterwards
Vespasian besieged them." Eusebius quotes Josephus for the statement
that the destruction of Jerusalem fell on the Jews in punishment for his
murder ; but he exaggerates the remark in the Antiquities, unless he is
quoting from passages of Josephus no longer extant.2 The episcopal
chair of St. James was, we are told, long preserved at Jerusalem as
a relic. Such is the story of Hegesippus, mixed up, no doubt, with legendary
particulars, and consisting in part of a cento of Scripture phrases,3 but
i Ap. Euseb. H. E. ii. 23 (quoting from the fifth book of the Hypomnemata). See,
too, Epiphan. Haer. ii. 1 (where he quotes from Clemens Alexaridrinus) ; lxxvii. 13, 14 ;
Abdias, Apost. Hist. vi. 15. Kern's objection (Tubingen Mag., 1835) to the genuineness
of the Epistle of St. James, because Hegesippus does not happen to mention it, is sorely
insufficient. 2 He says that Josephus, in his 18th book, "openly confesses that Jerusalem had been
destroyed because of the murder of James the Apostle." Josephus, in Antt. xx. 9, § 1,
only says that his murder offended the most equitable citizens.
3 Matt. xxvi. 64 ; Luke xx. 21 ; Gal. ii. 6 ; Luke xxiii, 34.

TALMUDIC LEGENDS. ' 305
bearing some marks of genuineness in the picture it presents of the
estimation in which James was held, of his eminently prayerful cha
racter, of his courage, holiness, and devotion to the Law, and of the
sympathy which he excited among those who like himself were partial
Nazarites. And looking at his whole career in the light which was
thrown upon it by later history, we cannot but see how merciful was
the Providence which placed him in that sphere of labour, and made
him what he was. If there was any voice to which even a remnant of
Israel would listen, it was the voice of James. He venerated their
Law, he observed their customs, he loved their nation, he attended their
worship with scrupulous devotion. There are traces even in the Talmud
of the deep influence which he exercised. There, among the chief
Minim, or " heretics " — which is the ordinary Talmudic name for
Christians — we constantly hear of a certain Jacob (i.e. James) of
Kephar Zekania, who works supernatural cures in the name of Jesus
son of Pandera. One of the stories about him is that Ben Dama,
nephew of Babbi Ishmael, was bitten by a serpent, and James coming
to him, offered to cure him after the fashion of the Nazarenes. Babbi
Ishmael forbade any recourse to such methods. " Suffer me," said Ben
Dama, " to prove from the Scripture that this is lawful ; " but before
his proof was ready he died. " Happy Ben Dama," said his uncle,
" in that thy soul hath departed hence, and that thou hast not broken
through the hedge ofthe wise," quoting Eccles. x. 8, "He who breaketh
through a hedge a serpent shall bite him."1 Another story of him is
that he was met by Rabbi Eliezer in the street of Sepphoris, and gave
to the Rabbi a Halacha, or legal decision, which pleased him, on Deut.
xxiii 19. But when Eliezer repeated this, he got into trouble by being
accused of sympathy with the Christian heretics.2 Whether these and
other anecdotes have in them any truth or not, they at least show the
importance of St. James's position in the traditional recollections of
the Jews.
It was one of the wild legends of the Jews, which yet hid beneath
it a meaning even deeper than they imagined, that before the city fell
the Shechinah had gone to the Mount of Olives, and for three years had
pleaded with the people of Jerusalem in vain. The Shechinah, the
Metatron, the Divine Son, the effulgence of God's glory, had indeed
pleaded and had vanished ; but in the teaching of St. James there was
still left the echo of that tender patriotism in which He had bewailed
the obduracy of guilty Jerusalem. Yet even to this human voice of
the fellow citizen whom they reverenced, and who had not kindled their
burning hatred by any denunciation of the things wherein they trusted,
,they would not listen. When they murdered the just observer of the
Law, they filled to the brim the cup of their iniquity. It was at about
1 Midrash Koheleth, i. 8 (in Wunsche's Biblioth. Babbinica, p. 15).
2 See Wunsche, p. 14 ; Gratz, iv. 47 ; Derenbourg, Palest. 359. The chronological
difficulties go for nothing in the looseness of the Talmud as to such matters.
U

306 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
this very time that a strange fanatic, who bore the common name of
Jesus, appeared in Jerusalem, at the Feast of Tabernacles, and began
to make the streets resound with the melancholy cry —
" Woe to the city ! woe to the Temple ! A voice from the east ! A
voice from the west ! A voice from the four winds ! A voice against
Jerusalem and the Temple ! A voice against bridegroom and bride !
A voice against the whole people ! "
Annoyed and alarmed by his cries, the people complained of him.
The unresisting offender was secured and brought before the Procurator
Albinus, but he would answer no question ; even the horrible scourging
to which he was subjected, until his bones were laid bare, wrung from
his lips no other cry than " Woe, woe to Jerusalem ! " Unable to
extort any answer from him, they released him as a monomaniac ; and
every year for seven years, at the great yearly feasts, he traversed the
city with his wailing cry, answering to no man either bad or good, but
whether beaten or kindly treated uttering no word but " Woe ! " At
last, during the siege, he suddenly exclaimed, " Woe, woe to me also ! "
and a stone from a Roman catapult laid him dead.
The blood of St. James, shed by priests and Zealots, stained the
Temple court at Jerusalem, in the year a.d. 63. Three years had not
elapsed before the marble floor of the Temple swam with the blood of
more than eight thousand Zealots, who stabbed each other in internecine
massacre. Hanan, the prime mover in the martyrdom, perished miser
ably. He was seized by the Idumeans; murdered, and his corpse was
flung out naked to dogs and beasts.1 Six years had not elapsed before
priests, swollen with hunger, were seen madly leaping into the altar
flames.2 Seven years had barely elapsed before city and Temple sank
into charred and blood-stained heaps, and the place, the nation, the
ritual of Judaism were for ever swept away.
" Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small ;
Though in patience long He waited, yet He surely grindeth all."
1 The eulogy which Josephus pronounces on the younger Hanan in his Jewish War
(iv. 5, § 2), where he attributes to his death the precipitation of the ruin of Jerusalem,
is quite inconsistent with the severe remarks which he applies to him in the Antiquities
(xx. 9, § 1). But when he had any purpose to serve, Josephus was not in the least to be
trusted. 2 Hegesippus says that he was martyred the year before the siege of Jerusalem ; but
this does not agree with the date of the Procuratorship of Albinus, and the deposition
from the Priesthood of the younger Hanan (Jos. Antt. xx. 9, § 1).

GENUINENESS OF THE EPISTLE. 307

CHAPTER XXI.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES.
Tiveo-Be Be ttoivtoI \6yov. — Jas. i. 22.
Of the canonicity of the Epistle of St. James there can hardly be a
reasonable doubt, and there is strong ground for believing it to be
authentic. It is true that Origen is the first who ascribes it to St.
James, and he only speaks of it as an Epistle "currently attributed to
him."1 Clemens of Alexandria, though he wrote on the Catholic
Epistles, does not appear to have known ife2 Tertullian, from his silence,
seems either not to have known it, or not to have accepted it as
genuine. It is not mentioned in the Muratorian Fragment. It is a
curious fact that even in the pseudo-Clementines it is not directly
appealed to. It is classed by Eusebius among the Antilegomena,3 but
he seems himself to have accepted it. Theodore of Mopsuestia rejected
it. On the other hand, there can be little doubt, from the occurrence
of parallels to its phraseology, that it. was favourably known to Clemens
of Rome, Hermas, Irenaaus, and Hippolytus. Jerome vindicated its
genuineness against the opinion that' it was forged in the name of
James.4 It is quoted by Dionysius of Alexandria; and it has the
important evidence of the Peshito in its favour. Thus, the Syrian
Church received it early, though it was not till the fourth century that
it was generally accepted by the Greek and Latin Churches. Nor
was it till A.D. 397 that the Council of Carthage placed it in the
Canon. On the other hand, the Jewish-Christian tendencies of the
Epistle, and what have been called its Ebionising opinions,* agree so
thoroughly with all that we know of James and the Church of
Jerusalem, that they form a very powerful argument from internal
evidence in favour of its being a genuine work of the " Bishop " of
Jerusalem. Suspicion has been thrown on it because of the good
Greek in. which it is written, and because of the absence of the
essentia] doctrines ,of Christianity.5 On the first difficulty I shall touch
later. The second is rather a proof that the letter is authentic,
1 Orig. in Joann. xix. If we could trust the translation of Rufinus (e.g., Horn, in
Gen. xxvi. 18), in other parts of his commentaries he spoke of it as St. James's, and
even called it " the Divine Epistle."
2 Cassiodorus says that he wrote upon it, but " Jude " ought to be read for James
(see Westcott, On the Canon, p. 353). Eusebius only says that Clemens in his Outlines
commented even on disputed books : " I mean the Epistle of Jude, and the rest of the
Catholic Epistles, and that of Barnabas," &e.
3 vo&ruerat (Euseb. ii. 23).
4 De Virr. Illustr. 2. It must, however, be admitted that Jerome's remark is some
what vacillating.
6 See Davidson's Introd. i. 303.

308 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
because otherwise, on this ground, and on the ground of its apparent
contradiction of St. Paul, it would never have conquered the dog
matic prejudices which were an obstacle to its acceptance. The single
fact that it was known to St. Peter, and had exercised a deep
influence upon him, is enough to outweigh any deficiency of external
evidence.1 In this Epistle, then, St. James has left us a precious heritage of
his thoughts, a precious manual of all that was purest and loftiest in
Jewish Christianity. Having passed into the Church through the
portals of the Synagogue, and having exulted in joyous obedience to a
glorious law,2 the Hebraists could not believe with St. Paul that the
Institutions of Sinai had fulfilled no loftier function than that of
bringing home to the human heart the latent consciousness of sin.
They thought that the abrogation of Mosaism would give a perilous
licence to sinful passions. St. James also writes as one of those who
clung fast to the prerogatives of Israel, and could not persuade them
selves that the coming of the Jewish Messiah, so long expected, would
have no other national effect than to deprive them of every exclusive
privilege, and place them on the same level as the heathens from whom
they had so grievously suffered. Further than this, his letter shows
some alarm lest a subjective dogmatism should usurp the place of a
practical activity, and lest phrases about faith should be accepted as an
excuse, if not for Antinomian licence, at least for dreamy indifference
to the duties of daily life. St. James keenly dreaded a falling asunder
of knowledge and action.3 His letter might seem at first sight to be the
most direct antithesis to the Epistles of St. Paul to the Galatians and
the Bomans, and to reach no higher standpoint than that of an idealised
Judaism which is deficient in the specific elements of Christianity. It
does not even mention the word Gospel. The name of Jesus occurs in
it but twice. Nothing is said in it of the work of Bedemption. Even
the rules of morality are enforced without any appeal to those specific
Christian motives which give to Christian morality its glow and
enthusiasm, and which occur so repeatedly in the Epistles of St. Paul,
St. Peter, and St. John. "Be ye doers of the word," he says, "not
hearers only."* " (Vho is wise among you ? Let him show forth his
works with meekness of wisdom." b "Adulterers and adulteresses, know
ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God ? "6 " Take
the prophets, my brethren, as an example of suffering and of patience."1
" Go to now, ye rich, weep and howl."s Is it possible to deny that there
is a difference between the tone of these appeals and such as " / have
been crucified with Christ."0 " But I say walk in the Spirit."10 "TJie love
of Christ constraineth us."11 " We were buried with Him by baptism unto
death . . . so let us also walk in newness of life."12 "As he who called
i See supra, p. 71- 2 Ps. cxix. passim. 3 Wiesinger, Einl. p. 42.
4 i. 22. 5 iii. 13. » iv. 4. 7 v. 5. 3 v. 1.
« Gal. ii. 20. >° GaL v. 16. " 2 Cor. v. 14. >2 Rom. vi. 4.

LUTHER ON ST. JAMES. 309
you is holy, so become ye holy."1 " This is the message which ye heard
from the beginning, that we love one another."2 It was the presence of
such peculiarities which made Luther take up his hasty, scornful, and
superficial view of the Epistle. "On that account," he said, "the
Epistle of St. James, compared with them (the Epistles of St. Paul), is
a veritable straw-Epistle (recht strohern), for it lacks all evangelical
character."3 " This Epistle of James, although rejected by the
ancients,4 I praise and esteem good withal, because it setteth not forth
any doctrine of man  But to give my opinion, yet without the
prejudice of any one, I count it to be no Apostle's writing, and this is
my reason : first, because, contrary to St. Paul's writings and all other
Scriptures, it puts righteousness in works," on which account he thinks
that its author was merely " some good, pious man," though in other
places he seems to think that it was written by James the son of
Zebedee.5 It was, perhaps, hardly strange that Luther, who did not
possess the clue by which alone the apparent contradictions to St. Paul
could be explained, should have arrived at this opinion. To him the
letter seemed to be in direct antagonism to the truth which had wrought
his own conversion, and which became powerful in his hands for the
overthrow of sacerdotal usurpation and the revival of religious faith.
But this unfavourable opinion of the Epistle lingered on. It is found
in the Magdeburg centuriators and in Strobel, who said that, "no
matter in what sense we take the Epistle, it is always in conflict with
the remaining parts of Holy Writ." On similar grounds Erasmus,
Cajetan, Grotius, and Wetstein, hesitated to accept it.6 Such views are
untenable, because they are onesided. We shall consider afterwards
the alleged polemic against St. Paul ; and in judging of the Epistle
generally we must bear in mind its avowedly practical character, and
the entire training of the writer and of those to whom it was addressed.
The purpose for which it was written was to encourage the Jewish
1 1 Pet. i, 15. 2 1 John iii. 11.
3 Preface to New Testament of 1524, p. 105.
4 This is hardly a fair account of the history of the Epistle and its reception into the
Canon. 5 In 1519, he calls it " wholly inferior to the Apostolic majesty " (in the seventh
Thesis against Eck) ; in 1520, "unworthy of an Apostolic spirit " (De Captiv. Babylon.).
In the Postills he says it was written by no Apostle, and is " nowhere fully conformable
to the true Apostolie character and manner, and to pure doctrine." In his preface to the
Fpistle in 1522 ( Werke, xiv. 148), he speaks almost contemptuously. " He (St. James),
he says, " has aimed to refute those who relied on faith without works, and is too weak
for his task in mind, understanding, and words, mutilates the Scriptures, and thus
directly (stracks) contradicts Paul and all Scripture, seeking to accomplish by enforcing
the law what the Apostles successfully effect by love. Therefore, I will not place his
Epistle in my Bible among the proper leading books. " Nor did he ever, as is sometimes
asserted, retract these opinions. His Table Talk shows that he held them to the last,
and considered St. James irreconcilable with St. Paul (Colloq. lxix. 4). See the quota
tion, infra, p. 355). Archdeacon Hare (Mission of the Comforter, ii. 815) rightly says that
" Luther's words cannot always be weighed in jewellers' scales."
6 The objections of Schleiermacher, De "Wette, Reuss, Baur, Schwegler, Ritschl,
Davidson, etc., are based on critical and other grounds.

310 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Christians to the endurance of trial by stirring them up to a brighter
energy of holy living. And in doing this he neither urges a slavish
obedience nor a terrified anxiety. If he does not dwell, as assuredly he
does not, on the specific Christian motives, he does not at any rate put
in their place a ceremonial righteousness. His ideals are the ideals of
truth and wisdom, not of accurate legality. The Law which he has in
view is not the threatful law of Moses, which gendereth to bondage,
but the royal Law, the perfect Law of liberty, the Law as it was set
forth in the Sermon on the Mount. He is the representative, not of
Judaism, but of Christian Judaism— that is, of Judaism in its trans
formation and transfiguration. A book may be in the highest sense
Christian and religious without using the formulas of religion and
Christianity. The Book of Esther is a Sacred book, a book of the
inspired Canon, and a book justly valued, though it does not so much as
mention the name of God. The bottom of the ocean is always pre
supposed as existent though it be neither visible nor alluded to. And,
as we shall see later on, there are passages in the Epistle of St. James
which involve the deepest truths of that Christian faith of which he
avows himself a humble follower, although it was not his immediate
object to develop the dogmatic side of Christianity at all If some of
the weightiest Christian doctrines are not touched upon, there are, on
the other hand, more references to the discourses of Christ in this
Epistle than in all the others put together.1
If we could be certain of the date of the Epistle, and of the
characters whom St. James had chiefly in view, some light would
doubtless be thrown on these peculiarities. But on these subjects we
are unfortunately in doubt. Amid the differing opinions respecting the
date, I side with those who look upon the Epistle as one of the later,
not as perhaps the earliest, in the Canon. One or two facts seem
to point in this dii-ection. On the one hand, the Epistle could not have
been written after the year a.d. 63, because in that year St. James was
martyred. On the other hand, the condition and wide dissemination
of the Churches to which it is addressed ; the prevalence of the name
Christ instead of the' title "the Christ";2 the growth of respect for
persons as shown in distinction of seats ; the sense of delay in the
Second Coming,3 and other circumstances, make it necessary to assume
that many years had elapsed since the Day of Pentecost. Further,
it seems probable that some of St. James's allusions may find their
explanation in a state of political excitement, caused by hopes and fears
which, perhaps, within a year or two of the time when it was written,
broke out in the wild scenes of the Jewish revolt. Lastly, it seems
impossible to deny that although St. James may have written his
arguments about faith and works4 without having read what had
• See Dollinger, First Age of the Church, p. 107 (tr. Oxenham).
2 ii. 7. 3 v. 7, 8. 4 ii. 21—26.

WRITTEN AT JERUSALEM. 311
been written on the same subject by St. Paul,1 and in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, still his language finds its most reasonable explanation
in the supposition that he is striving to remove the dangerous
inferences to which St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith was
liable when it was wrested by the unlearned and the ignorant.2 If so,
the Epistle cannot have been written more than a year or two before
St. James's death, since the date of the Epistle to the Galatians is
a.d. 57, and that of the Epistle to the Romans a.d. 58. It has been
urged against this conclusion that if it had been written later than the
so-called " Council of Jerusalem " in A.D. 50, it must have contained
references to the great dispute about the obligations of circumcision.
But the circumcision question, fiercely as it was debated at the time,
was speedily forgotten ; and it must be borne in mind that St. James is
writing exclusively to Jews. Again, it has been urged that the trials
to which he alludes must have been the persecutions at Jerusalem,
in which Saul and Herod Agrippa I. were respectively the chief
movers. But persecution in one form or other was the chronic trial
of Jewish as well as of other Christians. To refer to the existence
of deep poverty as a sign that the Epistle was written about the time
of the general famine of A.D. 44 is to rely on a very shadowy argument,
since famines at this period were by no means unfrequent, and poverty
was the permanent condition of the saints at Jerusalem. I therefore
disagree with the views of Neander, Alford, and Dr. Plumptre, who
argue for the early date; and I agree with those of De Wette, Bishop
Wordsworth, and many others, who fix the date of the Epistle about
the year a.d. 61. 3
If, however, the date of the Epistle be uncertain, we have no
uncertainty about the place where it was written. That is undeniably
Jerusalem. When once settled in that city, St. James, with the
natural stationariness of the Oriental, seems never to have left it.
Its Temple and ritual would have had for him a strong attraction.
The notion of writing the Epistle may have partly originated from the
' It is not necessary to assume in consequence that "Apostolical Epistles were
transcribed by the hundred and circulated broadcast"; or that "copies of what was
written for Rome or Galatia would be at once despatched by a special courier to the
Bishop of Jerusalem " (Plumptre, p. 42). The Church of Jerusalem was kept well
acquainted with the movements and tenets of St. Paul, and any of the Passover pilgrims
from Asia Minor might have informed James of the drift of the Apostle's arguments,
and of some of his more striking expressions, even if he could not procure a copy
of a complete Epistle.
2 Baur says (Ch. Hist. p. 128), "It is impossible to deny that the Epistle of James
presupposes the Pauline doctrine of justification." He admits that "it may not be
aimed directly against the Apostle himself," but says that, if so, "its tendency is
distinctly anti-Pauline." Nevertheless, both St. Paul and St. James might, in the sense
in which they were alone intended, have interchanged each other's apparently antago
nistic formulse. See infra, pp. 356 — 359.
3 Eusebius (H. E. ii. 23 ; iii. 11) gives a.d. 69 as the date of St. James's death,
apparently because Hegesippus said that the siege happened " immediately afterwards."
But if the narrative of Josephus is correct, St. James could not have been killed later
than a.d. 63. This is the date given by Eusebius in his Chronicon.

312 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
circumstance that the Jewish high priest sent missives from the Holy
City, which were received with profound respect throughout the length
and breadth of the Dispersion. Similarly, the first bishop of the
metropolis of Christianity was one to whom every Jewish Church
might naturally look for advice and consolation. The physical allusions
in the Epistle to oil, and wine, and figs, to salt and bitter springs,
to the KausSn, or burning wind of Palestine, and, above all, to the
former and the latter rain, show that the letter was despatched from
Jerusalem. Some have supposed that it was written at Joppa ; but
this is only a precarious inference from the allusion to the life of the
shore and the traffic in the harbour, the fish and the wonders of the sea.1
There can, at any rate, be no doubt that it emanated from Palestine.
In this Palestinian origin I see an explanation of some of the
phenomena of the Epistle. We see, for instance, why it is that
St. James seems to be speaking sometimes to Jews and sometimes
to Christians, sometimes to all the Churches of the Dispersion and
sometimes almost exclusively to the Churches of Judsea. The difficulty
vanishes when we remember the position of the writer. He is
addressing " the Twelve Tribes of the Dispersion." It was a
sufficiently wide range — wider than that of any one of the Epistles.
It included Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, dwellers in
Cappadocia, Galatia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, the
parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers at Bome, Cretes and Arabians,
Jews and proselytes.2 But of the varying conditions of these widely-
scattered communities he could know almost nothing. He could have
no information about them except such as he might now and then
derive from the general talk of some Passover pilgrim. He addresses
them, indeed, as a " Christian high priest wearing the golden mitre "
might have done, or as a sort of ideal Resh GalAtha, or " Prince of the
Captivity," might have addressed his fellow-countrymen in later days.3
But he could only speak on topics which he might infer to be necessary
because he saw that they were necessary for the Syrian Churches, with
whose trials and temptations he had an exclusive familiarity. His
remarks, for instance, about the conduct of the rich, and the bearing of
the poor towards them, have created the greatest perplexity. These
rich men, whose arrogance is described as so outrageous, were they
Jews, Christians, or Gentiles? I think that I find an explanation
of his allusions in conduct which he saw daily taking place under his
own eyes. The Jewish Church at Jerusalem was at that time governed
by a clique of aristocratic Sadducees. They were men of immense
i James i. 6 ; iii. 4 ; iv. 13 (Hausrath, .ZV. Test. Zeitg. 1, § 5).
2 Acts ii. 9 — 12. The reader will find a sketch of the character of the Jewish
Dispersion, and of tlie events which led to it, in my Life of St. Paul, i. pp. 115 — 125.
3 The Jews of the Dispersion in Babylonia were called "the Gola," or "Deportation,"
and they enjoyed a sort of independence under a ruler of their own choice known as the
Besh Galutha. See on his office, Etheridge, Hebr. Lit. 151, seq.

TYRANNY OF THE RICH. 313
wealth, which they increased by violent and dishonest exactions.
Profoundly hated by the people, they were yet kept secure in their
positions by the close understandmg which they usually preserved with
the Herods and the Bomans. Outwardly, therefore, they were treated
with abject reverence, and in spite of the curses, not loud but deep,
which were secretly uttered against them, and which were soon to
burst in vengeance upon their heads, they were able to exercise an
almost uncontrolled authority. When we read side by side the
denunciations hurled by St. James against the tyrannous greed and
cruel insolence of the rich, and the eight-fold and thrice-repeated curse
of the Talmud1 against the blood-stained and worldly hierarchs who
disgraced the mitre of Aaron, it will be seen, I think, that these
passages of the Epistle sprang, at least in part, from the indignation
with which the Christian bishop had witnessed the conduct of the
detested Boethusim and Beni-Hanan, To their vengeance he at last
succumbed, and under their avarice and worldliness the Jews of that
day vainly struggled. St. James says : —
" Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats ? Do
they not blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called f " 2
And again —
" Go to now, ye rich men ; weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon
you. . . . Behold the hire of the labourers which have reaped down your fields,
which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth. . . . Ye have lived in pleasure in
the earth, and been wanton ; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter ;
ye have condemned and killed the just, and he doth not resist you." 3
It is obvious that these remarks could not apply to the treatment of
the poor by the rich throughout all the Ghettos and Christian commu
nities of the world. In the infant Churches, during the whole of the
first century, there were " not many rich." 4 The few wealthy and noble
Gentiles who were converted were so far from being able to wield such
a tyranny as St. James describes, that, in the gatherings of the converts
they might be under the spiritual supervision of presbyters and
"bishops " who occupied no higher earthly rank than that of slaves;
Moreover, no Christian could have dared to "blaspheme" — that is, to
speak injuriously of the name of " Christian" or of " Christ." But St.
James is not thinking exclusively of Christian communities. He is
writing of things which were on the horizon of his daily life. Bead
what the Talmudists say of the priestly families by which he was sur
rounded, and his allusions at once become explicable. For thus in the
tract Yoma (f . 9, a) we find : —
" What is meant by Ps. x. 27, ' The fear of the Lord prolongeth
days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened ' ? The first clause
' Pesachim, 57, a; Tosefta Menachoth; Derenbourg, Palest. 233; Geiger, TJr-
schrift, 118.
2 Jas. ii. 6. 8 v. 1—6. 4 1 Cor. i. 26.

314 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
alludes to the 410 years of the first Temple, during which period there
were but eighteen high priests. But ' the years of tlie wicked shall be
shortened' is illustrated by the fact that during the 426 years of the
second Temple there were more than 300 high priests in succession. So
that deducting the forty years of Simon the Bighteous, and the eighty
of Babbi Jochanan, and the ten of Ishmael Ben Phabi, it is evident
that not one of the remaining high priests lived to hold office for a
whole year." 1 The supposed fact is unhistorical, but the remark shows
in what low estimation these later hierarchs were held.
Again, in the tract Pesachim (57, a) we find one of several repeti
tions of the famous malediction on those priestly families : —
" Woe unto the family of Boethus,
Woe to their bludgeons !
Woe to the house of Hanan,
Woe to their viper hitsmgs !
Woe to the family of Canthera,
Woe to their libels !
Woe to the family of Ishmael Ben-Phabi,
Woe to their blows with the fist !
' ' They are themselves chief priests, their sons are treasurers, their sons-in-law
captains of the Temple, and their servants strike the people with their staves."
Again, we are told that the Yestibule of the Temple uttered four
cries — " Depart hence, sons of Eli, who defile the Temple of the Eternal !
Depart, Issachar of Kephar Barkai, who only carest for self, and pro-
fanest the victims consecrated to Heaven ! " And again : " Open, ye
gates, let Ishmael Ben Phabi enter, the disciple of Phinehas (son of Eli),
to do the duties of high priest ; open, let John, son of Nebedseus, enter,
the disciple of gluttons, to gorge himself with victims." 2
Tales of these priests — their luxury, their gluttony, their simony,
their avarice, their atheism — long lingered in the hearts of the people.
They told how this Issachar, in his fastidious insolence, had had silk
gloves made to prevent the soiling of his hands while he sacrificed ; of
the calves which John, son of Nebedaeus had devoured, and the tuns of
wine which he had drunk ; how Martha, daughter of Boethus, had
bought the priesthood for her husband Joshua, son of Gamala, for two
bushels of gold denarii, and had carpets spread from her house to the
Temple when she went to see him sacrifice ; how the house of Hanan
deliberately raised the price of doves, in order to make gain out of the
poor, till they were liberated from this tyranny by Gamaliel, the grand
son of Hillel ; how Eliezer Ben Charsom went to the Temple in a robe
which had cost 20,000 minaj, and which was so transparent that the
other priests forbade him to wear it.3 Even Josephus bears witness to
1 Hershon, Talm. Misr-ell. p. 107. All insolent priests were supposed to be descended
from Pashur, the son of Immer. Kiddushin, f. 70 6. (id. p. 244).
2 Pesachim, I.e., and Kerithoth, 28, a.
3 Yoma 35', 6. See Raphall, Hist, of Jews, ii. 370 ; Gratz, Gesch. de Juden, iii. 321;
Derenbourg, Palest, p. 233, seqq., and my Life of Christ, ii. 330—342, where the original
references are given.

TONE OF ST. JAMES. 315
the ruthless extortion and cruelty with which they defrauded the infe
rior priests of their dues until they were almost reduced to the verge of
starvation.1 In the section which follows his account of the murder of
James, he says that the greedy procurator Albinus cultivated the friend
ship of Joshua, the high priest, and the other chief priests, and joined
with them in robbing the threshing-floors by violence, and that for this
reason some of the priests died from inability to recover the tithes which
were their sole means of sustenance.
But, while he thus alluded to the state of things in Jerusalem, there
can be no doubt that St. James mainly intended to address Christians.
Otherwise he would have added some explanation of his simple title,
" James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ."2 Nor could
he otherwise have said, " My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, with respect of persons ; " 3 nor again,
" Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming ofthe Lord."4 How
is it, then, that the Epistle contains none of the rich and advanced
Christology of many other Epistles? that the allusions to specific
Christian doctrine and motive are so rare ? How is it that the word
" gospel " does not once occur in it ? that ' Christianity is still viewed
under the aspect of Law, though truly of an idealised and royal Law ?
that the general tone of appeal is much more like that of John the Baptist
than that of St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John ? How is it that next to
the moral parts of the Sermon on the Mount, St. James is most frequent
in his references to books of apocryphal wisdom, written by unconverted
Jews ? How is it that there are whole sections which might have been
written by an Epictetus or a Marcus Aurelius ? I think that the reason,
and the only reason, which can be given, is that while he is writing in
the first instance to Christians, he is thinking to a great extent of Jews.
The Christians were few, the Jews many. He has begun by saying that
he is writing to the Twelve Tribes of the Dispersion, and he meant his
letter to be delivered primarily to the Christians among them. But the
Christians whom he has in view were also Jews. He does not even
allude to the Gentiles. The converts whom he addresses had never
thought of deserting the ceremonies, or abandoning what they imagined
to be the exclusive privileges of the chosen seed.5 And he was himself
a Jew, living among Jews, and living in all respects as a Jew of the
strictest? orthodoxy, reverenced even by many who regarded his belief in
Christ as a mere aberration — a mere excrescence on his Judaic devotion.
It was from Jews, not from Christians — it was because of accuracy in
l Jos. Antt. xx. 8, § 8 ; 9, § 2. 2 i. 1. 3 ii.l.
4 v. 7. See other distinctively Christian allusions in i. 18 : " Of His own will begat
He us by the word of truth ; " ii. 7 : " Do they not blaspheme that worthy name by
which ye are called ? " v. 6 : " Ye condemned and killed the Just ; " v. 14 : "Anointing
him with oil in the name of the Lord."
5 "VVe have observed the same phenomena of a sort of dual consciousness as to the
readers whom he is addressing in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. See Life and Work
of St. Paul, ii. 168, 169.

316 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Jewish observances, not for strictness of Christian morality— that he
had received the surname of " the Just." Let it be borne in mind that,
alike amid Jews and Gentiles, the distinction between the Jew and
the Christian was infinitely less wide in the first generation after Christ's
death than it afterwards became. St. Paul, even after he had written
the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, did not hesitate to exclaim
before the assembled Sanhedrin, " Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of
Pharisees," and to reduce the whole question between him and them to
a question of believing in the Resurrection. As a Nazarite, as an heir
of David, as having priestly blood in his veins, as one whpse faithful
ness was known to all the dwellers in Jerusalem, and to all who visited
it, as a Jew who walked in all the commandments and ordinances of
the Law blameless, James might well consider it his duty to address
words of warning and exhortation, primarily indeed to the Christian
Churches of Judsea, but through them to all his countrymen. To him
the Church is still not only Ecclesia (v. 14), but the Synagogue (ii. 2) —
a word which even the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews seems pur
posely to avoid, but which was used exclusively by the Ebionites.1
When alluding to the object of faith, he speaks not of Christ, but of
" One God " (ii. 19). He warns against swearing by the heaven and by
the earth (v. 12), which we know from the Gospels (Matt. v. 33) to have
been common formulse of Jewish adjuration. He saw in Jews the
catechumens of Christianity, and in Christians the ideal Jews. The fact
is, that alike in the real and in the traditional St. James we see the
traces of views which distinguished three parties of Jewish Christians
in the first century, and which continued to exist in three classes of
Jewish Christians in the second. Like St. Paul and like the Nazarenes,
he did not insist on the observance of Mosaism by the Gentiles, yet,
like the milder Ebionites, he appears to have leaned — or, at any rate,
his followers leaned — to the belief that even for Gentiles they might be
of great importance ; and, like the Essene or ascetic Judaists, he per
sonally adopted the rigid practices which may have been to him a valu
able training in self-discipline, but which the Colossian and other ¦
heretics regarded as constituting a legal righteousness. To us the name
" Jewish Christian " may seem almost an oxymoron — a juxtaposition of
contrary terms. We see with St. Paul — whose opinions had been the
result of special Divine training— that between the bondage of cere
monialism and the freedom of Christianity — between the righteousness
of legal ordinances and justification by faith — there is a profound anti
thesis. But it was impossible that it could wear this aspect to the early
Christians. We view the matter after nineteen centuries of Christian
experience ; they were the immediate heirs of nineteen centuries of
Jewish history.
But while in the first line of his letter St. James testifies to his own
1 Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 18.

ESSENES AND EBIONITES. 317
faith, he must have known that his words would be received with re
spect by genuine Hebrews, and that it would be useless to enforce the
lessons which he wished to impress upon all his countrymen by appeals
distinctively Christian. His whole nation was in a state of wild tumult;
swayed by passion and worldliness ; indulging in the fierce language of
hatred, fanaticism, and conceit ; becoming godless in their tone of
thought ; relying on the orthodoxy of Monotheism ; careless and selfish
in tlie duties of life ; forgetful of the omnipotence of prayer. And the
Christians whom he is addressing, being Jews, participated in these
dangers. He wished to make the Christians better Christians, to teach
them a truer wisdom, a purer morality. He wished to make them
better Christians by making them better Israelites ; and he wished to
convert the Israelites into being worthier members of the common
wealth of Israel before he could win them to become heirs of the
covenant of the better promise. If we bear these circumstances in
mind, if we also remember that his letter is not intended for a
dogmatic treatise, but for the moral exhortation of -one to whom
the Law means the rule of life as Jesus had taught it, we shall be
better able to judge of the rashness which has only condemned or
slighted this Epistle because it has failed to understand the true purpose
of the writer.
Again, to grasp the full meaning of St. James, we must appreciate
the passionate earnestness of one whose ideal is too stern to admit of
any , compromise with the aims and pleasures of the world.
i. Critics have spoken of the Essenism and ihe Ebionism of the
Epistle. But although " help and mercy " were special duties of the
Essene, and though St. James " writes mercy upon his flag," there is
no trace that he was an Essene. Doubtless he sympathised with many of
the views of that singular body. Any Essene might have spoken just
as St. James does about oaths, and riches, and merchandise, and the
virtue of silence, and the duty of checking wrath j1 but so might any
Christian who had studied, as St. James had studied, the precepts of the
Sermon on the Mount. The later Ebionites represented Judaism when
it had passed into heresy. The views and tendencies of the early
Christians in Jerusalem, before they had been modified by the teach
ings of experience, were only Ebionite in a sense perfectly innocent.
In these views and tendencies St. James shared, but he did not fall
into the extravagant exaggeration by which they were subsequently
caricatured. ii. Some, again, have seen in the expressions of St. James an Orphic
colouring ; but of this we require much stronger proof than the phrases
" the engrafted word," or " the wheel of being " (iii. 6), even though
those phrases may be illustrated by parallels in the writings of Pytha-
1 Comp. Jas. i. 19 ; ii. 5, 13 ; iv. 13 ; v. 12 ; with Josephus, Bell. Jud. II. 8, 6, and
Philo, Quod ommsprob. lib., § 12 (Hilgenfeld, Einleit. p. 539).

318 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
goreans.1 Undoubtedly, however, we find a peculiarity of the Epistle in
the extreme frequency of the parallels between its language and that
of other writers. These are so numerous that I have no space to write
them out at length, but no careful reader can entirely miss them.2
They show how strong was the originality which could absorb influences
from many different sources, and yet maintain its own perfect independ
ence. In this respect the Epistle of St. James differs remarkably from
the Epistle of St. Clemens of Bome. St. James, even while he borrows
alike from Jewish prophets and from Alexandrian theosophists, fuses
their language into a manifesto of Judaic Christianity by the heat and
vehemence of his own individuality. He strikes lightning into all he
borrows. St. Clemens is far more passively receptive. He has the
amiable and conciliatory catholicity' which leads him to adopt the moral
teaching of all schools ; but he has none of the individual force which
might have enabled him to infuse into what he has borrowed an in
dividual force.
iii. The style of St. James, as compared with his tone of thought,
presents the singular combination of pure, eloquent, and even rhythmical
Greek, with the prophetic vehemence and fiery sternness of the Hebrew
prophet. The purity of the Greek idiom has been made a ground for
doubting the genuineness of the Epistle.3 But the objection is without
weight. Palestine — even Galilee — was in those days bilingual. James
had probably spoken Greek from his birth. He would therefore find
no difficulty in writing in that language, and his natural aptitude may
have given him a better style than that of many of his countrymen.4
But even if not, what difficulty is there in the supposition that St.
James, like St. Peter, employed an "interpreter,"5 or adopted the
common plan of submitting his manuscript to the revision of some
accomplished Hellenist ? The thoughts, the order of them, and the tone
1 The hexameter in i. 17 (where the word Upi\pa is unknown to the N. T. in this
sense), and the expression "Father of lights" have been suspected of being borrowed
from Alexandrian sources. For the latter see Dan. viii. 10.
2 Every chapter will furnish parallels to passages in the Sermon on the Mount (see
Matt. v. 3, 4, 10—12, 22, 24, 33—37, 48 ; vi. 14, 15, 19, 24 ; vii. 1—5, 7—12, 21—23) and
the eschatological discourse (Mark xiii. 7, 9, 29, 32). For the very remarkable and close
parallels to the Book of Eoclesiasticus, comp. i. 5, 8—12, 13, 19, 23, 25 ; iii. 5, G, respec
tively with Ecclus. xx. 15 ; xli. 22 ; i. 28 ; xv. 11 ; v. 11 ; xx. 7 ; xii. 11 ; xiv. 23 ; xxviii.
10, 19 (especially in the Greek). For parallels to the Book of Wisdom, comp. Jas. i.
10, 11, 17, 20 ; ii. 21 ; iv. 14 ; v. 1—6, with Wisdom ii. 8 ; v. 8 ; vii. 17—20 ; xii. 16 ; x.
5 ; v. 9—14 ; ii. 1—24. For parallels to the Book of Proverbs, comp. i 5, 6, Vi, 19, 21 ;
iii. 5 ; iv. 6 ; v. 20, respectively with Prov. iii. 5, 6 ; xxiii. 34 ; iii. 11 ; Eccl v. 2 ; Prov.
xxx. 12 ; xvi. 27 ; iii. 34 ; x. 12. Many more might be added, but the student who will
verify these references for himself will see how fully the points mentioned in the text
are proved.
3 Eg., De Wette asks, How could James write such good Greek?
4 Incomparably better, for instance, than that of St. John in the Apocalypse.
6 St. Mark and a certain Glaucias are both mentioned as "interpreters" of St. Peter.
Of the latter— claimed as an authority by the Basilidians— nothing is known ; but St.
Mark may have acted as " interpreter " to St. Peter rather when he needed Latin at
Rome than when he wrote in Greek.

STYLE OF ST. JAJIES. 319
in which they are expressed, are exactly such as we should have ex
pected, from all that we know of the writer. The form of expression
may easily have been corrected by any literary member of the Church
of Jerusalem. But the accent of authority, the noble sternness, the
demand for unwavering allegiance to the laws of God — even the poetic
parallelisms1 — are all his own. When Schleiermacher speaks of " much
bombast " in the Epistle, and describes the style as being " in part
ornate, in part clumsy," it is because he criticises it from a wrong stand
point. It is like Voltaire criticising ^Eschylus or Shakspeare. It is
due to the application of Hellenic canons to Semitic genius. The style
of St. James is formed on the Hebrew prophets, as his thoughts are in
fluenced by the Hebrew gnomologists. He has nothing of the Pauline
method of dialectic ; he is never swept away, like St. Paul, by the tide
of his own impassioned feeling. His moral earnestness glows with the
steady light of a furnace, never rushes with the uncontrolled force of a
conflagration. The groups of thoughts follow each other in distinct sec
tions, which never interlace each other, and have little or no logical
connexion or systematic advance. He plunges in medias res with each
new topic ; says first in the plainest and most straightforward manner
exactly what he means to say, and enforces it afterwards with strong
diction, passionate ejaculations, rapid interrogatives, and graphic simili
tudes. He generally begins mildly, and with a use of the word
" brethren," but as he dwells on the point his words seem to grow in
candescent with the writer's vehemence.2 In many respects his style
resembles that of a fiery prophetic oration rather than of a letter. The
sententious form is the expression of a practical energy which will
tolerate no opposition. The changes — often apparently abrupt — from
one topic to another ; short sentences, which seem to quiver in the
mind of the hearer from the swiftness with which they had been
launched forth ; the sweeping reproofs, sometimes unconnected by con
junctions,3 sometimes emphasised by many conjunctions;4 the manner
in which the phrases 'seem to catch fire as the writer proceeds;
the vivid freshness and picturesque energy of the expressions ; 5 —
all make us fancy that we are listening to some great harangue which
has for its theme the rebuke of sin and the exhortation to righteous
ness, in order to avert the awfulness of some imminent crisis. The
power of his style consists in the impression which it leaves of the
burning sincerity and lofty character of the author.
iv. For these reasons it is almost impossible to write an analysis of
the Epistle. The analysis is only a catalogue of the subjects with which
1 Bishop Jebb, Sacred Literal, p. 273.
2 As specimens of his method in these respects see ii. 1 — 13 ; iv. 11, 12.
8 Asyndeton, or absence of conjunctions, Jas. v. 3 — 6.
4 Polysyndeton, or multiplicity of conjunctions, Jas. iv. 13.
5 What the ancient critics call Seivorns. St. James is a perfect autocrat in the use of
words. He abounds in hapax legomena, or expressions either not found elsewhere or
not in the Kew Testament. These are mentioned in the notes.

320 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
it deals.1 Writing to those who are suffering trials, he exhorts them to
endurance, that they may lack nothing (i. 1 — 4). But if they lack
wisdom, they must ask God for it, and desire it with whole-heartedness
(5 — 8). The enemy of whole-heartedness is often worldly wealth, and
he therefore tells them how blessed poverty may be, and how transitory
are riches (9 — 11). Since poverty is in itself av trial, he shows the
blessedness of enduring the trials which come from God. But there are
trials which, while they come in the semblance of trials from God, have
their origin in lust and their end death (12 — 15). It is only the good
and perfect gifts which come from God ; above all, the gift of our birth
by the Word of Truth (16 — 18). Let them in meekness and in purity
live worthily of that Word of Truth (19 — 21) ; let them be doers, and
not mere hearers of it (22 — 25) ; let them learn to distinguish
between external service and the true ritual of loving unselfishness
(26, 27).
Then passing to some of their special national faults, he first sternly
rebukes the respect of persons, which was contrary to Christ's ideal, and
a sin against the perfect law of liberty (ii. 1 — 13). It is, perhaps,
because he saw the origin of this selfish arrogance and abject servility
in the reliance which they placed on a nominal orthodoxy, that he enters
into the question -about faith and works, to show that the former, in his
sense of the word, is dead, and therefore valueless without the latter
(14—26). Then he powerfully warns them against the sins of the tongue in
passion and controversy (iii. 1 — 12) ; and, to show that the loudest and
angriest talker is not therefore in the right, he draws a contrast between
true and false wisdom (13 — 18).
The source of the evils on which he has been dwelling is the
unbridled lust which springs from worldliness. They need humility,
and the determination to fight against sin, and sincere repentance (iv.
1 — 10), which will show itself in an avoidance of evil speaking (11, 12),
and in a deeper sense that their life is wholly in God's disposing hands
1 Ewald arranges it in seven divisions, followed by three shorter paragraphs : —
i. 2— 18. On trials.
i. 19 — 27. How we ought to hear and do God's Word.
ii. 1 — 13. Right behaviour in general.
ii. 14 — 26. The relation between Faith and Works.
iii. 1 — 18. Control of the tongue is true wisdom.
iv. 1 — 12. The evils of strife.
iv. 13— v. 11. Perils of the rich, and duty of endurance with reference to the
coming of Christ.
(i.) v. 12. The sinfulness of needless oaths.
(ii.) v. 13—18. The power of prayer, especially in sickness.
(iii.) v. 19, 20. The blessing of converting others.
The reader will perhaps think some of the divisions somewhat artificial, especially as
Ewald himself describes them. But there is nothing surprising in the general fact that a
Jewish Christian should arrange his work with some reference to numerical symmetry ;
and Ewald points out that the number three prevails in ii. 19, iii. 15, and the number
seven in iii. 17.

TOPICS OF THE EPISTLE. 321
After this he bursts into a strong denunciation of the rich who live
in pride, oppression, and self-indulgence (v. 1 — 6), while he comforts the
poor, and counsels them to patience (7 — 11). Then he warns against
careless oaths (12), gives counsels for the time of sickness (13 — 15),
advises mutual confession of sins (16), dwells once more on the efficacy
of prayer, as shown in the example of Elijah (16 — 20), and ends some
what abruptly with a weighty declaration of the blessedness of convert
ing others.
v. If it be asked what is the one predominant thought in the
Epistle, its one idea and motive, the answer seems to be neither (as
some have supposed) the blessedness of enduring temptation — though
this is very prominent in it;1 nor a polemic against mistaken impres
sions respecting justification by faith, though that occupies an important
section ;2 nor an Ebionising exaltation of the poor over the rich, though
the rich are sternly warned ;3 nor a contrast between the friendship of
the world and the enmity of God.4 Each of these topics has its own
weight and importance, but to bring any of them into exclusive promi
nence is to confuse the general with the special. The general object, as
is shown again and again, is to impress the conviction that Christian
faithfulness must express itself in the energy and action of loving
service.5 " Temptations," indeed, occupy a large share in his thoughts,
but he wished his readers to try against them the " expulsive power of
good affections." The ritualism of active love and earnestness in prayer
are with him the means of perfection.6
vi. It is this object which gives to the Epistle its controversial
aspect. St. Paul says that a man is justified by faith ; St. James, that
he is justified by works ; but St. James is using the word "faith " from
the standpoint of Jewish realism, not of Pauline ideality. With both
of these Apostles the Law is an inward, not an outward thing ; a
principle of liberty, not a yoke of bondage ; a word of truth ; a living
impulse of fruitful activity implanted in man.7 Seeing the danger of
doctrinal formalism, St. James writes to counteract its unpractical
tendencies, and to furnish us — from the standpoint, indeed, of Jewish
Christianity, but still of an enlightened, liberal, and spiritualised form.
of it — the delineation of the Christian as he ought to be, " as a perfect
man in the perfection of the Christian life, which can only be properly con
ceived as a perfect work." And from this point of view his letter was
* Jas. i. 3 and 4, inropovri ; 12, juafeapio; avijp, OS viropevei ; V. 7, paKpodvprio-aTe ovv, a8e\$ot
. . . pajcpoBvpuiv ; 8, paicpodvpyo-aTe Kal vpeis ; 10, vn-oSei-y/ia Aa/3ere . . . ttjs pjLKpo$vplas ;
11, inropevovTas.
2 ii. 10—26.
- 3 ii. 1-7 ; iv. 1—10 ; v. 1—6.
4 iv. 4, 5 (1 J. ii. 15 — 17), and he opposes special forms of worldliness in i. 2 — 15 ; ii.
1—4 ; iii. 1—18 ; iv. 13, 14.
5 i. 4, 22 ; ii. 14—26 ; iii. 13—17 ; iv. 17 ; etc.
6 St. James dwells on this word, i. 3, 25; iii. 2; v. 4 ; "Tout dans l'&riture est
1'ideal " (Ad. Monod). He speaks of prayer in i. 5 ; iv. 2, 3, 8 ; v. 13—18.
7 Aoyos eu^vros. Jas. i. 21.
V

322 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
a valuable contribution to the formation of a Catholic Christianity.
There is nothing harshly intended in its statement of the counter-
aspect of the truth which St. Paul had proclaimed. St. Paul would
himself have rebutted the one-sided distortion of his views ; and he who
opposes one-sided tendencies always does a useful work. It is a duty of
Catholic Christianity to adjust one truth with another, and to place
apparent contraries in their position of proper equilibrium.1 It is
inevitable — it is even desirable — that men should approach truth from
many points of view. We can only hope to gain completeness of vision
by combining their separate results. It is certain that we ourselves
shall be more inclined, by temperament and training, to dwell on one
aspect of truth than we shall on others. Yet it is not therefore neces
sary that we should become party men. It is possible to insist upon
party truths without being tainted by party spirit. There existed at
least three marked parties in the early Christian Church — the parties of
Jewish, of Alexandrian, and of Pauline Christianity. There were many
Christians who would not identify themselves with any of these parties,
but who aimed at being many-sided, conciliatory, catholic. Now St.
James stood at the head of the party of Jewish Christians, though his
followers thrust him more prominently into this position than he would
have himself desired.2 But if we would see the depth of difference
which separates him from the Jewish Christians to whom the party-
view was everything, and the common Christianity was, by comparison,
as nothing, we shall be able to judge of it by reading his Epistle side by
side with the poisonous innuendoes and rancorous calumnies of the
pseudo-Clementines. Their polemic consisted in secretly maligning the
views and character of the Apostle of the Gentiles. The polemic of St.
James issued in the delineation of the moral character of a Christian
man. The party controversialists only fostered mutual hatred and
opposition ; St. James drew so noble a picture of Christian faithfulness
that, as has well been said, " a Church which lived in sincere accord
ance with his lessons would in no respect dishonour the Christian
name." In proceeding to examine the Epistle of St. James, we shall do so
with deeper interest if we bear in mind that it is yet another appeal of
a great Christian writer to Jews and Jewish Christians shortly before
the final destruction of their separate nationality. St. Paul had shown
them the eternal superiority of the new to the old covenant. St. Peter
had shown them how Christianity was the true kingdom, the royal
priesthood, the theocratic inheritance. Apollos, in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, had furnished them with a masterly proof that Christians had
the true priesthood, which could alone admit any man into the heavenly
sanctuary. St. James calls them to obey the royal Law, the law of
1 See the few but weighty remarks of Baur, Ch. Hist. pp. 128 — 130, though he unfor
tunately denies the genuineness of the Epistle.
2 Acts xv. 24, " to whom we gave no such commandment."

CHARACTER OF THE EPISTLE. 323
liberty. Thus they had been shown by St. Paul and Apollos that the
rejection of Christianity, or apostasy from it, was the rejection of, or
apostasy from, grace to sin — from the substance to the shadow. St.
Peter had warned them against murmuring and faithless impatience ;
St. James sternly sets before them the perils of insincerity and double-
mindedness. And the common message of all is that Jews who had
embraced tlie faith of Christ should hope and endure, and be faithful
unto the end.
vii. In one respect the Epistle is unique. Alone of the twenty
Epistles of the New Testament, it begins with no benediction, and ends
with no message of peace.1 We might, perhaps, see in this fact a
reflexion of the unbending character of the writer. He was a man
who in many respects stood alone, and whose manner it was to say
what he had to say without formula or preamble, in the fewest and
simplest words. The times demanded sternness and brevity. They
resembled the days which had called forth the sixfold woe of Isaiah2 on
greed, and luxury, and unbelief, and pride, and injustice, and the
reversal of moral truths ; and which had forced him to end those woes
with the denunciation of terrible retribution. Hollow professions of
religion, empty shows and shadows of faith, partiality and respect of
persons, slavish idolatry of riches, observance of some of God's com
mandments, together with open and impious defiance of others ; arrogant
assumption of the office of religious teaching without due call and
authority ; encouragement and patronage of those who set themselves
up to be spiritual -guides ; sins of the tongue ; evil speaking against
man and God ; envying and strife ; factions and party feuds ; wars and
fightings ; adulteries ; pride and revelry ; sordid worldliness and pre
sumptuous self-confidence ; a Babel-like building-up of secular plans
and projects, independently of God's will, and against it ; vainglorious
display of wealth ; hard-heartedness towards those by whose industry
that wealth is acquired ; self-indulgence and sensuality ; an obstinate
continuance in that temper of unbelief which rejected and crucified
Christ; "these," as we see from this Epistle, "were the sins of the
last days of Jerusalem ; for these she was to be destroyed by God ; for
these she was destroyed ; and her children have been scattered abroad,
and have now been outcasts for near two thousand years.
Amid such circumstances, St. James, the Apostle and Bishop of Jeru
salem, wrote this Epistle — an Epistle of warning to Jerusalem — the last
warning it received from the Holy Spirit of God. He thus discharged
the work of a Hebrew Brophet and of a Christian Apostle. He came
forth as a Christian Jeremiah and a Christian Malachi. A Jeremiah
in denouncing woe ; a Malachi sealing up the roll of Divine prophecy
1 This might be said also of the First Epistle of St. John ; but that Epistle — even if
we do not accept the view that it was sent to accompany the Gospel — has no epistolary
address, and is more of the nature of a treatise than an Epistle.
2 Is. v. 1—30.

324 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
to Jerusalem ; and not to Jerusalem only, but to the Jews throughout
the world, who were connected with Jerusalem by religious worship and
by personal resort to its great festal anniversaries. The Epistle of St.
James is the farewell voice of Hebrew prophecy."1

CHAPTER XXII.
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES.

" Christianorum omnis religio sine scelere et macula vivere." — LACTANTrcs.
" "What a noble man speaks in this Epistle ! Deep unbroken patience in
suffering ! Greatness in poverty ! Joy in sorrow ! Simplicity, sincerity, firm
direct confidence in prayer ! . . . How he wants action ! Action ! not words, not
dead faith ! " — Herder.
As we have now learnt all that we can about the author of the Epistle,
and the circumstances under which he wrote, we shall be in a better
position to understand rightly his solemn teaching.
" James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,"2 — such is
the title which he assumes, and the only personal word in his entire
Epistle.3 It was a simple title, and yet in his eyes, as in those of
the other Apostles, nobler than any other badge which he could adopt,
for they all felt that they were "bought with a price." He will not
call himself an Apostle, because in the highest technical sense he is not
an Apostle, since he is not one of the Twelve.4 He had no need of any
such title to command the attention of Christians, among whom he
exercised unquestioned authority, and it was not a title which would
be recognised among the unconverted Jews, whom he also desired
to address. Nor, again, will he call himself "a brother of the Lord."
That was a claim which was thrust into prominence on his behalf
by others, but it is not one which he would himself have approved.
It reminded him, perhaps painfully, of the wasted opportunities of those
1 Bishop Wordsworth, whom I quote .the more gladly because I dissent widely from his
exegetical views.
a This and ii, 1 are the only passages in which the names " Jesus " or " Christ" occur, but
by no means the only references to Him. See supra, p. 315. Bengel says that it might have looked
like pride if he had seemed to speak too muoh of Jesus after the flesh. The real solution of the
matter lies in the object and character of the Epistle. He does not, indeed, mention Christ in
his speech (Acts xv. 14—21) ; but that was brief and purely special. The wording of ii. 1, and
the association of Jesus with G-od the Father in this verse, clearly shows that to St. James the
Lord was not the *biAby avdpiowos of the Ebionites; nor would James have called himself "a
slave" of any mortal man. See Christologie, i. 95.
3 inrlp irav Si KOtrpiKOV at-Ciapa, . . . -rb SoOAot etvai XptoTot) KaAAiun-i^oiuei'OL toGto yvtapio-pa kavrwv
(3ouAovTat iromo-tlai (OScumen.) ; Rom. i. 1 ; 2 Pet. i, 1, etc. ; 1 Cor. vi. 20; via. 23.
* " The thirteen Apostles were appointed by the Lord ; St. James, St. Clemens, and others by
the Apostles" (Apost. Constt. ii. 55).

ADELPHOTHEOS. 325
years in which he had not believed on Him ; nor could he forget
with what marked emphasis the Lord Jesus, from the beginning of
His public ministry, had set aside as of no spiritual significance the
claims of fleshly relationship. Of the risen, of the glorified, of the
Eternal Christ, he was in no sense "the brother," but "the slave."1
I cannot imagine that he would have listened without indignation to
the name conferred on him by the heated partisanship of those who
in after days called him "the brother of God." The name would have
shocked to its inmost depths the feeling which every Jew imbibed from
the earliest training of his childhood respecting the nothingness of man
and the awfulness and unapproachable majesty of God. He was,
in a secondary and carnal sense, a half-brother of Jesus in His earthly
humiliation ; but he must have learnt from the words of the Lord
Himself that this kinsmanship in the flesh could hardly redeem from
unconscious blasphemy a name so confusing, so unwarrantable, and
so unscriptural, as " brother of God." In the only sense in which
the word could have any meaning, every faithful Christian was in
all respects as much "a brother of God" as he. That he was, in
common parlance, " a brother of Him who was called the Christ," there
was no need for him to mention. It was a fact known to every Jew of
the Dispersion who visited Jerusalem at the yearly feasts, and it even
stands as a description of St. James on the indifferent page of the
Jewish historian.
" To the twelve tribes that are in the Dispersion,2 giving them joy."3
The ten tribes had, as a body, been indistinguishably lost among the
nations into whose countries they had been transplanted ;4 but there
were probably some communities, and certainly many families, which
had preserved their genealogy, and still took pride in the thought that
they belonged to this or that tribe of ancient Israel.5 And the nation
never lost the sense of its ideal unity. The number " twelve " was
to the Jews a symbolic number. " Three " was to them the sacred
number, the number of spirit, the number of the life that is in God ;
"four " was the number which symbolised Divine Providence ;
" twelve " (4 x 3) was the number of Heavenly completeness, the
number of the consummation of the Kingdom of God.6 Hence St.
Paul also speaks of "the dodekaphulon,"7 our " twelve-tribed nation,"
1 Rom. i. 1 ; 2 Pet. i. 1 ; Jude 1.
2 See Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 115, seq. The word Diaspora occurs in John vii 35;
1 Pet. i. 1 ; and in the LXX. of Ps. cxlvi. 2 ; Deut. xxviii. 25.
3 See infra p. 326.
4 Dean Plumptre points out that the first appearance of the fiction that tbe Ten Tribes were
somewhere preserved as one body is in 2 Esdr. xiii. 39 — 47, where the author says that, in the
determinaticn to keep their own statutes, " thpy took this counsel among themselves, that they
would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a farther country, where never
mankind dwelt." The Talmud recognises their entire dispersion. Thus Rabbi Ashe said, " If
a Gentile should betroth a Jewess, the betrothal may not now be invalid, for he may be a descen
dant of one of the Ten Tribes, and so of the seed of Israel " (Yevamoth, f . 16, b). Ayain, " the Ten
Tribes will never be restored (Deut. xxviii. 25) . . . so says R. Akhiva " (Sanhedrin, f. 110, b).
5 E.g., the widow Anna, who was of the tribe of Asher.
6 See Herzog, Real. Encycl., 8. v. Zahlen; Lange, Apocalypse, In trod., § 6. a.
7 Acts xxvi. 7.

326 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and St. John, in the Apocalypse, echoes in various forms1 the
conception of the Elect of the Twelve Tribes in Heaven which had
been involved in the promise of Christ, "Ye also shall sit upon twelve
thrones judging the Twelve Tribes of Israel."2
It is a curious and undesigned coincidence that this letter, and
the encyclical letter from the Church of Jerusalem, of which St. James
was the main author, are the only two Christian lettei'S in the New
Testament which begin with the greeting " giving them joy."3 It was
distinctively the Greek salutation. The Jewish was Shaldm —
" Peace."4 St. Paul, wishing to combine in his salutations all that was
most blessed alike in ethnic and in spiritual life, combines the two
national methods of salutation in his xapis Ka! «p^»i, " grace and peace,"
which in his pastoral Epistles is tenderly amplified into " grace, mercy,
and peace."
I have here rendered the word by "giving them joy"6 because it
forms the transition to the opening passage, "My brethren, count
it all joy." This mode of transition by the repetition of a word — which
is technically known as duadiplosis — is very characteristic of this
Epistle, and forms, in fact, the writer's ordinary method of passing from
one paragraph to another." The remainder of the chapter — the
phraseology of which I will endeavour to elucidate in the notes, and the
general bearing in the text — runs as follows : — •
" Count it all joy,' my brethren,3 when ye suddenly fall into varied
temptations,9 recognising that the testing of your faith10 works endurance;
but let endurance have a perfect work,11 that ye may be perfect and complete,
lacking nothing12 (i. 2 — 4).
1 12 tribes ; 24 elders ; 12,000 of each tribe ; 114,000 of the followers of the Lamb, etc. The
latter number is so lor from being narrowly restrictive, that it stands for a number ideally
complete.
' 2 Matt. xix. 28 ; Rev. vii. 5—8.
3 Acts xv. 23, xatpeif. The word also occurs in tho Greek letter of Claudius Lysias to Felix
(Acts xxiii. 26), and in that of Autiochus in 2 Mace. ix. 19. Its recurrence here is one of
the undesigned, coincidences between this letter and the account given of St. James in the
Acts. * Is. xlviii. 22 ; Ivii. 21, where Shalom is rendered ^ai'peu> by the LXX,
5 Comp. 2 John 10, 11. The absence of any opening benediction may be duo to the general
character of the letter.
6 Thus we have ver. 1, \aipeiv ; ver. 2, \6.pav ¦ v-rropov^v ; ver. 3, ^ 8e VTrop.ovij ; ver. 4, keivopevoi ;
ver. 5, et Se Tis AeiVeTat j ver. 6, p.TjSee SiaKptfo/xepos 6 yap SiOKpivofitvos, etc. ; and SO through
out. 1 nao-av xaPav, nxerum, gaudium, eitel Freude. Comp. Luke vi. 22, 23 ; Acts v. 41 ; Col. i. 24.
8 The perpetual recurrence of this word shows that the wounds which St. James inflicts are
meant to be the faithful wounds of a friend.
9 TTeptTreo-tjTe of Sudden accidents, as YtJtTTats TrepieVeirep, Luke x. 30 ; 7repi7reo-oires 8c eis tottov
St^aAatra-oi/, The word 7roi'/ciAos literally means " many-coloured." Comp. eiri0yp.ia.ts TroiK'iAais,
1 Tim. iii. 6. The wor l " temptations " iuc udes all forms of trial : Luke xxii. 28 ; Acts xx. 19.
Persecution was rife at this time : 1 Thess. ii. 14 ; Heb. xi. 32, 33.
i° Verse 3, to SoKipiov vpiov i-tjs mo-Tews. St. Peter (1 Pet. i. 7) uses the same phrase, and the
coincidence can hardly he^ accidental.
11 Matt. xxiv. 13 — o 8e VTrop-eiVas eis Te'Aos crwfoJo-eTiu.
is " The work of God," says Alford, " in a man is the man." The word rAeios is a favourite
one with St. James (i. 3, 4, 17, 25 j iii. 2), borrowed doubtless, from the words of our Lord
(Matt. v. 48; xix. 21). 'OAoKAnpos is also used by St. Paul (1 Thess. v. 28). and means "well
regulated in every part " (Acts iii. 16). Philo and Josephus use it for unblemished, sacrificial
viotims.

EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 327
11 But if any one of you lacks -wisdom,1 let him ask from God, who giveth
to all simply 2 and upbraideth not,3 and it shall he given him 4 (5).
" But let him ask in faith,5 nothing doubting,6 for he that doubteth is like
a wave of the sea wind-driven7 and tossed about. For let not that person think
that he shall receive anything 8 from the Lord — a double-minded man,9 unsettled in
all his ways 10 (6—8).
" But let the humble brother glory in his exaltation, but the rich in hia
humiliation,11 because as the flower of the . grass he shall pass away.12 For the
sun ariseth with the burning wind, and drieth the grasB, and its flower fadeth away,
and the beauty of its aspect perisheth ;13 bo also shall the rich man fade away in his
goings14 (9—11).
'* Blessed is the man15 who endureth temptation, for when he has been approved
he shall receive the garland of the life16 which He promised17 to those who love
Himls (12).
"Let no one who ia being tempted say, 'I am being tempted from God.' For
1 "Wisdom" with St. James is evidently that practical wisdom which surpasses knowledge
(yvtaa-is), because it not only knows truth, but acts upon that knowledge (Etym. Magn.). Comp.
ui. 15—17 ; 1 Cor. xi-. 8 ; Col. ii. 3.
3 (xtt^ws. So in Eom. xii. 8 we are bidden to grow in " simplicity."
3 The meaning of this expression is best seen from Ecclus. xx. 15, where it is said of the
fool, " He giveth little, and upbraideth much; he openeth his mouth like a crier; to-day he
lendeth, and to-morr> >w he will ask. Such an q ¦ ,e is to be hated of God and man ; " Id. xli. 22,
"After thou hast given, up l raid, not" (py bvetSt^e). The " exproo ratio benefici" (Ter. And/r.
i. 1) — ie., the casting in the teeth of others what we hav^ done for them— is a vice of all ages.
* See 1 Kings iii. 11, 12, " Because thou hast asked this thing (wisdom), beheld, I have done
according to thy word," Luke xi. 13 ; Ecclus. vii. 10, " Be not fainthearted when thou makest
thy pr.iyer." "We see here tbit by "faith " St. James means undivided confidence in God.
5 See v. 15 ; Matt. xxi. 22, " All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall
receive." 6 Ata.Kptv6fj,evo<;, Matt. xxi. 21, " If ye have faith and doubt not (ay Sia«:p<.07,Te), ye shall do not
only tbe miracle of the tig-tre J, but," &c. ; Rom. iv. 20, Abraham ov Ste/cpt'Sij ttj an-io-Tia. " "When
faith says ' yes ' and unbelief says ' no,'" says Huther, " to doubr (Situcpiveo-dai) is the union of
'yes' aud 'no,' but so that 'no' is the weightier. The deep-lying ground of it is pride."
Dean Plumptre quotes from Tennyson —
'* Faith and un faith can ne'er be equal powers,
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all."
7 avefi.i£ofievb> ical piTrt£ofxfiv<i>. The words occur here only^and kAvSwv ("billow") only in
Luke viii. 24 ; but we have the metaphor m Is. lvii. 20 ; Eph. iv 14. The words well express
the state of tumultuous excitement wbich preceded the Jewish War.
8 That is, " any special answer to prayer."
9 'Aiojp Styvxos "The man who has two souls in conflict with each other." This striking
expression occurs only at iv. 8. Eabbi Tanchum (/. 84) on. Deut. xxvi. 17 gives a close parallel,
"Let n t those who pray have two hearts, one directed to God, one to something else."
Comp. 1 Kings xviii. 21 ; Ps. xii. 2, " a double he irt " (lit. " a heart and a heart,' ) ; Ecclus. i.
28, " Come not unto the Lord with a double heart ; " Is. ii. 12, " Woe be to . . . the sinner that
goeth tw» ways; " Matt. vi. 24, " No man can serve two masters." The passage is imitated in
" The Shepherd of Her urns " (Mandai. ix ).
10 'AKaTdoraTos. A c assical expression (again) found only in Sfc. James (iii. 8). Comp Is.
liv. 11, ** tossed with tempest ; " 'Aiccna<rrao-iaf iii. 16 ; Luke xxi. 9 ; 1 Cor. xiv. 33, &c. It is
one who " never continueth in one stay " (Job xiv. 2).
11 Por the different views taken of this verse see infra, p. 330. KavxanrOat is literally " to
boast." Eom. ii. 17, etc.
12 For the metaphor, specially suitable to the brief life of flowers in the scorching beat of
Palestine, see Is. xl. 6, 7 ; Ps. cii. 15 ; Job xiv. 2 ; 1 Pet. i. 24 ; Wisd. ii. 12, " Let ns crown our
selves with rosebuds before they be withered;" riches are no " unwithering inheritance"
(1 Pet. i. 4) as tbe kingdom of God is.
13 The aorist tenses show us the whole story, so to speak. The Jeans (in is usually taken to
mean the ka&lm, or simoom, as in Jonah iv. 8 ; the " east wind " of Ezek. xvii. 10 ; xix. 12 ;
"the wind of the Lord from the wilderness " of Hos. xiii. 15 ; but may mean merely " scorching
heat ; " Matt. xx. 12 ; Luke xii. 55.
14 Mapavd-qo-eTat only in Wisd. ii. 8 and Job xv. 30 (LXX.). Tropet'ats is the best-supported
reading, and alludes, perhaps, to travels for purposes of gain, etc. (iv. 13). (A, reopiaxs,
"gettings.") 15 a.v7)p — " non mollis nee effeminatus sed vir " (Thos. Aquin.).
16 There is no special reference to athletes (Ps. xxi. 3 ; Bev. ii. 10; Wisd. v. 16).
!7 The "He" (as in «, A, Bi is more emphatic than if he had inserted "the Lord," and
seems to show how early the Talmudic method of reference had begun.
" Amor parit patientiam (Bengel).

328 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
God is out of the sphere of evils,1 and Himself tempteth no one, but each is ever
tempted when he is being drawn forth2 and enticed by his own desire.3 Then the
desire, having conceived, bears sin ; but sin, when full grown, brings forth death
(13— lo).4
"Be not deceived, my brethren beloved. Every good giving and every perfect
gift0 is from above, descending from the Father of the Lights,6 with whom there is
no varying nor shadow of turning.7 Because He willed it, He brought us forth
by the word of truth that we might be in some sense8 a first fruit of His creatures9
(16—18). " Ye know,10 my brethren beloved. But let everyone be swift to listening, slow
to speaking,11 slow to wrath. For the wrath of a man (ivb'pbs) worketh not the
righteousness of God. Therefore laying aside all filthiness and superfluity of
malice, receive in meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.12
1 aTreipao-To? occurs here onlr. It means (1) " untempted," and (2) "one who does not
tempt." Luther follows the Yulgate in understanding it to mean "does not try evil men"
{inten'atoY malorum e*t), or " is not a tempt-r of yvell things " (Winlif) ; bat this tit. James has
said already. It seems to mean " has nothing to do with evil things," and ther. fore cannot
tempt men to evil. (Ecumenius quotes a ht aihen saying, " The Divine neither suffers troubles
nor causes them to others." " Why, then, is it said that God did tempt Abr ihain in Gen. six.
3 ? That means that He tried Abraham, not from evil motiv.s to an evil end, hut from good
motives to a good end" (Aug.).
2 Prov. xxx. 13 (LXX.). The word may be used of " dragging a prey to land," ns in Hdfc ii.
76, and so we might take the metaphor to be one from fishing. The word oe\ea£6aevos may also
mean '* enticing with a bait," as in 2 Pet. ii 14, 18; Xen. Mem. ii. 1, § 6. But tbe further
expansion of the metajdior shows that he is thinking of the enticement of the harlot Sense
{Prov. vii. 16 — 23), to which in classical and Hfllenisiic usage the words are equally ni'plicable
(Horn. 0.1. it, 294 ; Arist. Polit. v. 10 : Totam. XII. Patriarch, p. 702) ; and especially Plutarch's
Be Ser. Nun. Vindict. ; "the sweetness of desire, like a bait (Se'Aeap), entices (efe'AKet) men."
3 " No uiai taketh harm but by himself ; " " passion becomes to eacli his own God ; " " sibi
cuique Benefit d,ir,i cuiddo " (Virg. JEn. ix. 185)
* Milton expands the metaphor into an allegory in Par. Lost, ii. 745—814 Lange points ont
the varying expressions of the New Testament : " Sin brings forth death " (James) ; " death is
the waives of sin " (Paul) ; " sin is death " (John)
5 This forms in the original a perfect hexameter, except that the last syllable of Sdo-is is
lengthened — TTao-a Sdo'l? aya9r\ Kal ftav 5ujpTj.ua TeAeioi'.
On these metrical phrases see note on Heb. xii. 14. Siipvpa only occurs in Rom. v. 16. " From
above" (John iii. 3, 7, 31 ; xix. 11). Bishop Andrewes, in two sermons on this text, says the
Sda-i9 ayaOrj refers to the gifts of eternal life ; the Soipnpa re\eu>v the treasures laid up for us in
eternity. 6 By " the lights " is meant probably " the heavenly bodies," as in Ps. exxxvi. 7 ; Jer. iv. 23,
called in (Jen. i. 14 ^wo-rijpe?, which is metaphorically applied to Chtistians John v. 35 ; Phil.
ii. 15). The "Father" then means tne Creator (comp Job xxxvhi. 28, "Hath the rain a
father ? ") Some explain it of angels and spirits, and of Him who is the " Light of the world "
(John ix. 5). But. the question is not what meaning the words may'be made to include, but
what, meaning they ori.inally had.
7 The words are curious— TrapaAAtL-yii tj tpotttjs a-ivoa-Kiao-pa. The first word is a hapax lego-
menon in the Neiv Testament (but see 2 Kings ix. 20, LXX.), and has heen understood to b« a
technical term of astronomy, like parallai-. But iu Epictot. i. 14 it merely means "change,"
even in an astronomical sentence : and Plotinus speaks of " a change (TrapoAAayrj) of days to
nights." It seems, however, to have a semi-technical connexion with astronomy. 'ATroo-Kiao-pa
is also a hapax legomenon, and rpoirai jjAi'ov mems "the solstices" (see Job xxxviii 33). Here,
however, there seems to be a general allusion to the changes and revolutions of the sun, moon,
and stars ( Wisd. vii. 17—19), as compared with thf sun which never sets. Comp. 1 John i. 5
" God is lidit, and in Him is no darkness at all ; " Ps. cxxxix. 11.
8 aTrapyfiv. The nva shows that he is using a new metaphor.
» On the great theological importance of this verse— all the more noticeable because the
Epistle is predominantly practical— see infra, p. 333.
w The true reading seems to bo tore. A, B, C (Heb. xii. 17; Eph. v. 5). Its very abruptness
probably caused the variations of the MSS.
" Ecclus. v. 11 : "Be swift to hear .... and with patience give answer ; " " Thou hast two
ears and one mouth' (Ruckert). (Ecumenius here quotes the proverb that "no one ever
repented of having been silent," and every one will be reminded of the proverb " Speech is
silvern, Silence is golden" (Prov. xiii. 3, etc. ; Eccl. v. 2i— Pnilo has the phrase, "slow to
benefit, swift to injure. The Jews were ever " slow to hear ' (Heb v lis ^5)
12 It is ahle, for it is a power of God ( Rom. i. 16). Without it they are' unable whether bv
outward works (as Pharisees said) or by determination of will (as Sadducees said) 'to be saved
Ou < I"!.,,,...., see p. 333.

EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. 329
But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not hearers only, misleading yourselves
(Col. ii. 4 ; Luke xi. 28). For if any ODe is a hearer of the word, and not a doer,
this person is like a man1 contemplating: the face of his birth in a mirror. For
he contemplated himself, and has gone away,2 and immediately forgot what kind of
person he "was. But he who has stooped down to gnze3 into a perfect law, the law
of liberty,4 and has stayed to gaze,5 proving himself not a hearer who forgets, but
a doer who works, he shall be blessed in his doing6 (19 — 25).
" If any one fancies that he is ' religious '7 while he is not bridling his tongue
(iii. 2, 3), but is deceiving his own heart, this man's religious service is profitless.
A religious service pure and undefiled8 before our God and Father is this — to
take care of orphans and widows in 'their affliction (Ex. xxii. 22 — 24; Acts vi. 1),
to keep himself unspotted from the world"9 (26, 27).
I have broken the chapter into brief sections to indicate as far
as possible the transitions of thoiight. Special difficulties of expression
are, I hope, sufficiently elucidated in the appended notes, and the very
literal translation will show what I believe to be the best reading
and construction. But- there are one or two general points in the
chapter which require notice.
i. It will be observed that St. James begins at once with the
subject of temptation, using the word in its broadest sense of all forms
of trial. It includes both outward persecution — from which the
Churches of scattered Jews, whether converted or unconverted, were
always liable5 from the common hatred which Pagans felt for them —
1 avSpl. Some have referred the term to the comparative carelessness of men in looking at
mirrors (1 Cor. xiii. 12 ; Wisd. vii. 26 ; Ecclus. xii. 12), but it is doubtful whether St. James in
tends any special distinctiveness in the word (see vers. 8—12).
* a7reA.TjA.u0ev, perf. The tenses make the image more graphic.
3 The true meaning of the word will be seen by a reference to Luke xxiv. 12 — "Stooping
down and looking in " ; Ecclus. xiv. 23 ; John xx. 5, 11 ; 1 Pet. i. 12 (see the note on that verse).
Doubtless Sfc. James thought, in passing, of the Cherubim bending down over the Ark as
though to gaze continually on the revelation of God"s will in the moral law. See on this word
Coleridge (Aids to Reflection), p. 15, "A more happy and forcible word could not have been
chosen to express the nature and ultimate object of reflection."
4 " Legum servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus " (Cie ). We have seen already that St.
James's ideal of the Law is not that of Moses (Acts xv. 10 ; Gal. v. 1. but comp. Ps. xix. 8 — 11),
hut that of the Sermon on the Mount (ii. 8 ; v. 12 ; John viii. 32), the law of the Spirit (Eom.
viii. 2), the law of faith (Rom. iii. 27).
5 N"o,tice the antithesis, vapaKv^as, irapap.e tVas, ovk a«poaT7js eniArjrrp.oaiJVYis, as against
KarevoTfO'ev, o.TreA.iJAuOei', ejreAafleTO.
6 " TJt ipsa actio sit beatitudo " (Schneckenburger).
7 ©pTjcTKet'a means ritual service, external observauce ; " gay religions, full of pomp and gold "
(Acts xxvi 5), which (as we see from Col. ii. 18, the only other place where the word, occurs in
the New Testament) have a perpetual tendency to degenerate into superfluous and self-satisfying
human ordinances (e6e\o8pr)cnceia), and even, to use the bold coinage of a later writer, sdekoirepur-
<ro9p-t](TK€ia. It is the peril and disease of the externally virtuous — vice corrupting virtue itself
into pride and intolerance. Hence tbe flpijo-Kos is one who plumes himself on his outward
service. This paragraph illustrates the " slowness to speak," as the last did the " swiftness to
hear." Obtrusiveness in talk is a natural consequence of a spurious religion.
8 The Jewish notion of defilement was very different (John, xviii. 2S ; Lev. v. 3, and passim, ;
comp. Ecclus. xxxv. 14). For "the fatherless and widows" (where " respect of persons" is also
alluded to), and for the general thought, compare Mark vii. 20—23 ; Lake xi. 40
9 St. James would feel this duty all the m6re keenly, and would feel that this, aud not the
performance of outward religious duties, was what God really desired, because the day had been
when he too was of the world, for which reason the world which hated Christ had not hated
him (John vii. 7). By " the world" is here meant everything in the world, and in the worldly
life which tempts to sin (1 Tim. vi. 14). With this thought compare Jolm xvii. 15 ; 1 lim. v. 22.
With the geueral thought of the paragraph comp. Eci-lus. xxxv. 2 : " He that requiteth a good
turn, offereth fine flour; and he that giveth alms, satrificeth praise." The same thought is
found both in Scripture (Deut. x. 12 ; Ps. xl. 7 j xxi. 17 j 1 Sam. xv. 22; Mic. vi. 6—9 ; Hos.
vi. 6; xii. 6, etc.) and. in heathen writers.

330 THE EARLY DATS OP CHRISTIANITY.
and those inward temptations which are often closely connected with
outward circumstances. St. James shows his readers how to turn these
temptations into blessings, by making them a source of patient en
durance, and so using them as the fire which purges and tests the fine
gold. For the Christian should aim at such perfection1 (i. 2 — 4).
ii. Now for perfection he needs wisdom2 most of all; and if he
lacks this wisdom he has only to ask for it from One whose gifts are
absolute and gracious (i. 5).
iii. Yet it is useless to ask without faith in Him to whom the
petition is addressed, and without faith that it will be granted. Such
faithless prayers can only arise from a wavering disposition, a want
of stability, a want of whole-heartedness, a dualism of life and aim
(i. 6-8). iv. Then comes an apparently sudden transition of exhortation to
rich and poor.3 That the transition was not so sudden in the mind
of the writer is shown by his connecting particle. "The man of
two souls," he says, "is restless in all his ways; but let the humble
brother rejoice." The unexpressed connexion seems to be, "Now, what
is the cause of this spiritual distraction and instability] Does it
not arise from worldliness ? Well, ye cannot serve God and Mammon.
If, then, any brother be poor and humble, let him rejoice in his ex
altation. For if he take it rightly his earthly humiliation is his true
dignity. He is enjoying the beatitude of poverty. It is something
like the thought expressed so tersely by our great philosopher,4 " Pros
perity is the blessing of the Old Testament, Adversity is the blessing of
the New" (i. 9).
v. "But the rich," he adds, "in his humiliation." The meaning of
these words is not clear. It has even been supposed by some that
the words " rich " and " poor " are used in this Epistle in a meta
phorical sense.5 Another discussion turns on the question whether
by " the rich " we are here to understand rich Christians, or rich
Jews and Gentiles. I feel convinced that the words are to be under
stood in their primary meaning. As I have already explained, St.
James is not thinking of Gentiles at all, and is drawing no marked
1 The Christian aims at " endurance," not at " apathy," as the Stoic did. His endurance
has "a sublimer origin, a milder character, a greater duration, a more glorious fruit" (Van
Oosterzee). 2 The history of the next few years shows how deeply the Jews needed this wisdom.
,( Wisdom is justified of her children " (Matt. xi. 19J ; — and she abode not at Jerusalem, hut
with the Christians who fled in time to Pella,.
s So in Shemoth Rabba (§ 31, /. 129) we find, " Blessed is the man who stauds in his tempta
tion ; for there is no man whom God does not try. He tries the rich, to see if they will open their
hands to the poor; He tries the poor, to see if they will not murmur," etc.
* Lord Bacon.
5 Lautre thinks that by "the brethren of low degree " are meant Jews and Jewish Christians,
and by the rich tlie Gentiles ; for, he says, the rich Jews have always been kind to the poor. I
think I have already met this difficulty. It is surely extravagant to say that " the rich man
with a gold ring and splendid garment denotes the proud Ebionitish Jewish Christian parad ng
his ring of the Jewsh Covenant (!), while the poor mau, with a vile garment, describes the Gentile
Christian " (Introd. p. 27). This is to introduce into New Testament exegesis fancies borrowed
from Leasing and Swift.

RICH AND POOR. 331
distinction between Jews and Christians. A further question is, are we
to understand this phrase hortatively in the sense of " but let the
rich man boast in his humiliation," or as a contrast, " but the rich man
rejoices or glories in that which is in reality his humiliation "V ln the
one case it is an exhortation to the rich man as to what he ought to do ;
in the other a censure upon him for what he does. Neither inter
pretation is without difficulty, but on the whole the meaning seems
to be that worldliness, with the temptations which it brings, is full
of dangers. Poverty and riches stand in God's estimation in reverse
positions. Humble poverty is true wealth. Pampered wealth is real
poverty.2 Let the poor brother glory in the beatitude of poverty ; it
is a gift of God. The rich brother, then, is worse off, is in a worse
position, than he — his riches are his humiliation in the heavenly order,
for they are a temptation to which he is only too liable to succumb ;
they tend to make him more of a worldling, less of a Christian. Such
views belong to the so-called Ebionitism of St. James. But the
opinions of the Ebionites were due to the falsehood of extremes.
Neither is wealth in itself a sin, nor poverty in itself a virtue. They
are conditions of Life in which God has placed us, each liable to its own,
and each to different temptations. But as regards those days — perhaps
as regards all periods — riches were liable to severer temptations than
poverty. In the teaching of St. James we recognise, not the exag
gerations of Ebionitism, but the impression left by the sermons and
parables of Christ3 (i. 10).
vi. And the reason why the rich brother should glory in the
humiliation which the world regards as his enviable superiority is that
reason which Isaiah had so exquisitely expressed, and to which St. Peter
also refers.4 It is the transitoriness of riches.5 Often, even in this
brief life, they make themselves wings and fly away. But they must
always pass away with the fading flower of life ; not even the poorest
fragment of them can be held by the relaxing hand of death. Is that a
condition to glory in, which Christ showed to be surrounded with peril,
and which must soon become like a withered blossom in a dead man's
hand? (i. 11).
vii. But whether our trial comes in the form of wealth or of poverty
it becomes a beatitude if it works in us the spirit of patient endurance.
And here it is necessary for St. James to introduce a strong caution.
1 This would resemble Phil. iii. 19, " whose glory is in their shame." Compare the saying
of Pascal about man—" Gloire et rebut de l'Univers, s'il se vante, je l'abaisse ; s'il s'abaisse, je
le vante." 2 Matt. v. 3.
3 Matt, xxiii. 12 ; Luke xiv. 11 ; xviii. 14. The commoner view of the e'ause is "Let the rich
man rejoice when he is humiliated by the ' spoiling of his goods ' " (Heb. x. 34,). But (1) this lo-s
of wealth happens only to a few. (2) He is throughout addressing " rich men," who are in the
full flower of their prosperity.
* Is. xl. 6 ; 1 Pet. i. 24 (comp Matt. vi. 30 ; x;ii. 26).
s Some refer the passage chiefly to reverses iu life. " The rich man, overtaken bv judgment,
perishes m the midst of his doings and pursuits, as the flower, in the midst of its blessings, falls
a victim to the scorching heat oi the sun " (Huther).

332 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The word which he has used for temptation is capable of two meanings
—trial in the sense of a difficult and painful test — adversa pati ; and
trial in the sense of strong impulse to sin (malis ad defectionem solli-
citari). In the first sense it comes from God ; it is a part of His
providential ordering of our lives. In the second sense it by no means
comes from God.1 When a man pleads, as men have so often done,
that " God has made them so;"2 or that "the flesh is weak," or that
" God for a moment deserted them ; "8 when they say that they have
done wrong because they could not do otherwise f when they contend
that each man is practically no better than an automaton, and that his
actions are the inevitable — and therefore irresponsible — result of the
conditions by which he is surrounded — they are transferring to God the
blame of their misdoings. " The foolishness of man perverteth his way,
and his heart fretteth against the Lord."5 The doctrine of fatalism is
but a poor and false excuse for crime.6 When passively accepted it
paralyses every nerve of moral effort; when it takes the form of
materialism, and poses as the final result of science, it lays the axe at
the root of every motive by which men rise to the dignity of free and
moral beings. Men become the children of God by obedience to His
laws, resulting not from necessity, but choice. And so St. James gives
the true genesis of sin. It springs from lust — desire — the yetser-ha-ra,
or evil impulse, which plays so large a part in later Jewish literature.
This is to each soul the harlot-temptress which draws him forth from
the safe shelter of innocence, entices him, and bears the evil offspring
of committed sin. But the bad genealogy ends not there. Sin, too,
grows to maturity, and the offspring of her incestuous union is death
(i. 12—15). viii. No, God is not the author of evil ; it is only every good gift
which comes from Him. " God is always in the meridian."7 He dwells
in the (piis hvio-inpov, in the light whereof there is no eventide, the sun
whereof knows no tropic. .No darkness can flow from the fountain of
that unchanging Sun, which is not liable to the parallax and eclipses of
1 The history of temptation, says Bede, is (1) Suggestion ; (2) Delight ; (3) Consent. Sug
gestion is of the enemy, delight and consent from our own frailty. If the hiith of a wrong
action follows the delight of the h'-ait, tlie enemy leaves us as a victor, and we are liable to
death. "Lust is the mother of sin, sin the mother of death, the sinner the parent of both"
(Macknight). 3 St. Paul deals with this question — " Why doth He yet find fault ? For who hath resisted
His will ? " (Rom. ix. 19).
3 "Setms thtre any recess? It is we forsake Him; not He us (Jer. ii. 17.)" (Bishop
Andrewes. )
4 The imhnppy Henry II., shortlv before his death, passionately exclaimed to God, " Since
Thou hast taken from me the town I loved best ... I will have myrevenge onThee too. I will
rob Thee of thut thins: Thoti lovest most in me" (peeGvea'> Hi-t. of Engl. I. p. 181). There can
belittle doubt tlmt St. James hud in his mind a magntticent passage o' Eccius. xv. 11- 17, " Say
not thou, ' It is through the Lord that I fell away : ' for thou ought est not to do the things that He
hatetla. S >y u t thou, ' He hath caused me to err,' for He hath no need of the sinful man. . . .
He hath set fire and water before thee : str. tch forth thy hand unto whether thou wilt. Before
man is Ufe and death, aud whether him liketh, shall be given him."
6 Prov xix. 3.
6 It wa=t familiar to St. James, for, as Josephus says, it was a doctrine of the Pharisees (Antt.
xviii. 1, § 3 ; U. J. ii. 8, § 14).
' Wetste.n.

PURE SERVICE. 333
the heavenly bodies which He has made.1 And then, in one singularly-
pregnant clause which — although in this respect it stands somewhat
isolated — shows how little the practical tendency of the author was
dissevered from deep dogmatic insight, he tells us of God's most perfect
gift to us. He tells us that we need a new life ; that God by one great
act has bestowed it upon us ; that this act sprang from his own free will
and choice f that the instrument of this new birth was the word of
truth,8 the Divine revelation of God to man, which, of course, requires
faith in them that hear it ; that the result of this new birth is our
dedication as "the first-fruits of a sacrificial gift"4 which shall only be
completed with the offering up of all God's creatures. Thus in one
brief sentence he concentrates many solemn truths, and even by the one
word, "of His own will" (pov\r}0e\s), he repudiates alike the dangerous
fatalism of the Pharisees, and the arrogant assertion of the Sadducees
that salvation lies within the power of our own unaided will (i. 16 — 18).
ix. They know this ; but let them apply it — let them listen to this
word of truth, hearing more, speaking less, wrangling not at all.
Passionate fanaticism does not help forward God's righteousness. It
deceives itself when it brings into God's service that impure mixture of
human evil.5 The Gospel is meant to be used for our own sanctifica-
tion, not to be abused to quarrelsomeness with others. God's word,
implanted in the heart,6 is powerful to save, but the condition of its
power is its meek reception. It requires steady, earnest contemplation,
not a mere hasty passing gaze. There were many, both Jews and
Christians, who were absorbed in outward service7 — who were content
1 " Though the lights of heaven have their parallaxes, yea * the angels of heaven He found
not steadfastness in them \ (Job. iv. 18) ; yet for God, He is subject to none of them. He is
' Ego sum qui sum ' (Ex. iii. 14), that is saith Malachi, ' Ego Bens et non wmtor ' (Mal. iii. 6). "We
are not what we were a while since, what we shall be a while after, scarce what we are ; tor every
moment makes us vary. V\ ith God it is nothing so. He is that He is ; He is and changeth not "
(Bishop Andrewes, Semi. iii. 374; John viii. 58).
2 God is -the cause of His own mercy. ,l Unde sequitur naturale esse Deo benefacere " ( Cal
vin). See John i. 13; 1 Pet. i. 23. j3ouA.i)0€ts, "Voluntate amantissimS, Uberrima, purissima,
foecundissima" (1 John i. 13 ; 1 Pet. i. 3). ,A.iretci'rri<rev, the antithesis to the airoavei of sin, in ver.
17, " Ipse Deus Pain's et trutris loco est " (Bengel) (Roin. viii. 15 ; Gal. iii 26 ; 1 Pet. i. 23),
3 John xvii. 17, " Sanctify them by Thy truth. Thy word is Truth." 1 Pet. i. 23, " Having
been born again by the word of the Living God." It is the equivalent to the Go-pel (2 Tim. ii.
15 ; Eph. i. 13). " The lying word of the serpent has corrupted us, but the true word of God
makes us good again" (Luther). Here and elsewhere, some (e.g., Athanasius) give to "the
Word " its specific Johannine sense, and interpret it of Christ, the Divine Logos. No doubt it
may be made to bear this meaning in this and many other passages ; but as this letter was ad
dressed to the Jews of the Dispersion, of whom many had no Alexandrian training or Alexan
drian sympathies, the question is (1), Would they so have understood it ? and, therefore, (2)
Did St. J'tmes intend it so to be understood ?
4 "First-fruit" (see Lev. xxiii. 10; Deut. xxvi. 2; 1 Cor. xv. 22; xvi, 15; Rev. xiv. 4).
Christ is the true first-fruit, and 'then we in Him (Rom. viii. 19—22). Seaa valuable note of
Wiesinger, who was the first to call due attention to the depth" and importanre of this verse.
5 " Purius sine ira fit " (Bengel). There is always a germ of the atheistical in the heat of
fanaticism (Nitseh), as in Jonah's, "I do well to be angry." Lange observes that Simeon and
Levi, the ancestors of the Jews in fanaticism, were disapproved by Jacob (Gen. xxxiv. 49), but
afterwards upheld as patterns (Judith ix. 20).
6 Perhaps an allusion to the Parable of tbe Sower, and so parallel with Matt. xiii. 23. The
word eyx0vro? only occurs in Wisd. xii. 10. In classic Greek it means also " innate," but thia
does not furnish so simple a meaning, though it may be compared with such passages as Col. ii.
16, " as ye have received Christ, so walk ye in Him."
7 See Dr. Mozley's admirable sermon on the Pharisees. " Qui crassiora vitia exuerunt, huic
inorbo sunt ut plurimum obnoxii" (Calvin),

334: THE EARLY DAVS OF CHRISTIANITY.
with endless ablutions and purifications, and not with what is true, pure,
unspotted, and undefiled ; who made long prayers, and yet devoured
widows' houses. But all service is fruitless if it does not lead a man
to refrain from bitter words. The only pure and perfect ritual is
active love,1 and a freedom from "the contagions of the world's slow
stain."2 He proceeds, in the second chapter, to rebuke the respect of persons,3
the worldly partialities, which are so alien to " the faith of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Lord of the glory."4 That faith teaches before all
things the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of mau. Since in
God's sight all are equal — since in the eye of His Church the greatest
princess is but "this woman," and the proudest emperor but " this man"
— was it not most unworthy to thrust oppressive disparities into
prominence in a wrong place by ushering the gold-ringed man5 in the
bright dress into the best seat in the synagogue,6 while they made the
squalidly dressed pauper7 stand anywhere, or thrust him down into a
seat on the floor. When ye acted thus, "did ye not doubt in your
selves,8 and did ye not show wicked reasonings as judges 1 " It shows
doubt to act as though Christ had never promised His kingdom to the
poor, rich in faith f and wicked reasonings to argue mentally that the
poor must be less worthy of honour than the rich. It is the evil schism
in the heart which leads to this evil judgment in the life. And was
not this a strange method of judging, when it was the rich who played
the lord over them, dragged them into law-courts,10 and blasphemed the
1 Comp. Tobit i. 16, 17.
* " The outward service (Opno-Keia) of ancient religion, the rites, ceremonies, and ceremonial
vestments of the old law, had morality for their substance. They were the letter of which
morality was the spirit ; the enigma of which morality was the meaning. But morality itself is
the serv ice and ceremonial (cultus exterior, dp^o-tceta) of the Christian religion " (Coleridge, Aids
to reflection, Aph. xxiii.).
3 Curiously enough the Talmud says, " God is a respecter of persons," Num. vi. 26 (Bera-
Choth f. 20, 2).
* Lit. " of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the glory." Bengel takes the two words in apposition
— '"ut ipse Christus dicatur, i) fiofa, Gloria." The Shechinah was a Jewish name for the Messiah,
but it is better, as in tbe E. V., to understand it as ''the Lord of the frlory" (comp. John
xvii. 5). The title here implies the utter obliteration, by comparison, of petty earthly di,-
tinctions. 5 The ostentation of gold rings was afashion of this epoch, and Roman fops wore them even
inconvenient y large (Juv. Sat. l. 28, 30 ; Mart. xi. 60), six on each finser. Lucian (Sunn. 12)
speaks of wearing sixteen heavy rings. " All fingers are loaded with rings " (PJin. H. N.
xx xiii. 6).
6 "A synagogue " is, on the whole, the best supported reading f^, B, C). The passage is not
a mere rebuke to " sexton rudeness." It illustrates faithless partiality by a common instance,
and this desire for prominence was largely developed among the Jews (Matt, xxiii. 6).
Christians probably used Jewish synagogues (as St. Paul did) as long as they were per
mitted to do so.
' No doubt "gold rings" and squalid apparel (Zeeh. iii. 3,4; Rev. xxii. 11) maybe used
symbolically, but to understand this passage as an allegory of Jewish exclusiveness towards the
Gentiles (as Lange does), is very far-fetched. Notice the picturesque antitheses—
You — sit — here— honourably (near the coifer which held the Law).
You— stand— there— under my footstool (out of sight and hearing, near the door).
Even in courts of law the Jewish rule was that (to show the perfect impartiality of the law)
both suitors, whether rich or poor, should sit, or both stand.
8 6ieicpi0>jTe. "Doubt" is the ordinary meaning of oiaicplvopai, as in i. 6; and there is no
reason to change it here into " make differences, or judge," etc. (Matt. xxi. 21 ; Acts x. 20 ;
Rom. iv. 20, etc.).
» Matt. v. 3 ; Luke vi. 20. w Acts vii 12; xvii. 12; xviii. 5; xix. 38.

RESPECT OP PERSONS. 335
fair name by which they were named I1 It were nobler to fulfil the
royal law,2 " Love thy neighbour as thyself," and so to treat all, whether
rich or poor, with equal courtesy. Not to act thus is sin. They must
not regard such sin as unimportant. There' is in God's law a uniform
solidarity, and one God made all the law. To break one commandment
is to break all,3 for it is to violate the principle of obedience, just as " it
matters not at what particular point a man breaks his way out of an
enclosure, if he is forbidden to go out of it at all."4 Every separate
commandment has the same Divine source. The sum total of all com
mandments is that law of liberty5 by which we shall be judged. That
judgment shall be merciless to the merciless.6 And then he adds, with
an emphasis all the more forcible from its brevity and abruptness :
" Mercy " — whether in the heart of God or of man — •" glories over judg
ment"7^ 1—13).
The passage that follows is the famous passage about justification by
works : —
" What is the advantage, my brethren, if any say that he has faith, hut hath not
works ?8 Is the faith able to save him P9 But if a brother or sister be naked, and
lacking the day's food, and one of you should say, ' Go in peace ;10 warm yourselves
and feed yourselves,' but ye give them not the necessaries of the body, what is the
advantage P11 So also faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself.13 Yea, some one
1 Literally "which was invoked over you" (Deut. xxviii. 10, etc. : J°r. xiv. 9 ; Am. ix. 12 ;
Heb. xi. 16), i.e., the name of Christ. Christians were called ot Xptarov il Cor. iii. 23).
Nominal Christians, however rich, could hardly have ventured to "blaspheme," or "speak
injnr.ously of," the name of Christ. St. James must be passing in thought to rich Jews,
Sadducean oppressors, etc. (Acts iv. 1, 6, v. 17), though he may include the conduct of rich
Christians which caused Christ'sname to be blasphemed among the Gentiles, as the Jews caused
Gfd's name to be (Rom. ii. 24 ; comp. 2 Sam. xd. 14).
' A royal law, because the best of all laws— a king of laws. '* Love is the fulfilment (irAwKuua)
of the Law" (Rom. xiii. 10). '
3 " Me who observes but one precept, secures for himself an advocate (Parklit, or Paraclete),
and he who commits one sin procures for himself an accuser" (Pirke Avoth, iv, 15).
4 "A garment is torn though you only take away one piece of it ; a harmony in music is
spoiled if only one voice he out of tuoe " (Starke).
5 St. James is thinking of the free service of the will to Christ's pure moral law, not of the
law " which gendereth to bondage," and enforces incessant restrictions on unwilling souls (Gal.
iv. 10, 24), which was a yoke which neither they nor their fathers had been able to bear
(Acts xv. 10). 6 Mutt „;;. j_
7 This is a great law of the moral kingdom. It applies alike to God and to men. 'Tis
mightiest in the mightiest. It is the reason why Christian universality is better than Jud'aising
exclusiveness ; why the geniality, love, and brightness of the Gospel is better than the gloomy
hatred of the Talmud; whv tolerance is better than the Inquisition; why philanthropy is
nobler than sensual egotism (see Lange, p. 78).
8 Comp. ou yap b^et\rjast Tiva To \kyetv dAAa TO Troteir* £K jrairbs ovv Tponov KaXStv epytav
Xpeia. (Clem. Horn. viii. 7).
9 Not if it be the faith that St. James has in view, which is here merely a theoretically orthodox
belief, not a vital faith. Such a faith cannot save such a man Vital faith carries in itself the
animating principle from which works must emanate. The whole araument is aimed at those
Antinomians who said, "If you have faith, it ma' ters little how .iou live" (Jer. in Mich. iii. 5).
10 Such a parting benediction would, without some accompanying help, he as incongruous a
mockery as Ulaudius's reply of " Avete vos" to the gladiators' " Iforituri te salutamus " (Judg
xvni. S; 2 Kings xv. 9; Luke vii. 50; viii. 48). Similarly, Plautus has "Of what use is v our
ber^olent language if your help is dead ? " (Epidic. i. 2, 13).
'- St. James uses an illustration of what faith leads to, which he borrows from the teaching
of Christ (Matt. xxv. 35 — 16).
J» Just as the compa-sion is dead and use'eis ii it be that of—
" The sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe,
Who sigh for wretchedness yet shun the wretched,
Nursing in some delicious solitude
Their dainty loves and slothful sympathies "—(Coleridge.)

336 THE EARLY BAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
may eay1 [quite fairly], ' Thou hast faith and I have works. Show me thy faith
without the works ' — which you cannot do—' and I,' who do not pretend to believe
in the possibility of such a faith, ' will,' very easily, < show thee my faith by my
works'" (ii. 14—18).
Assuming that the Solifidian — the believer in the possibility of an
abstract faith which can show no works as an evidence of its existence
— is thus refuted, St. James proceeds to refute him still farther : — " Thou
believest that God is one."2 It was the proud boast of the Jew, who
among all the nations of antiquity, gloried in being a monotheist.
"Excellent so far; the demons also believe and shudder.3 But wilt thou recog
nise, 0 vain man,4 that faith apart from works is idle fB Abraham, our father — was
he not justified by works, when he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar F6 Dost
thou see that faith wrought with his works,7 and by works the faith was perfected r8
And the Scripture was fulfilled which says,9 ' But Abraham believed God, and it
was reckoned unto him for, righteousness, and he was called the Friend of God.iff
Ye see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.11 But likewise also
Rahab, the harlot,12 was she not justified by works, when she received the messengers,
so faith, is dead and useless if it do not work by love. " No spirit, if no work (Spectrum est, non
Bpiritus) ; a flying shadow it is ; a spirit it is not, if work it do not. Having wherewith to do
good, if you do it not, talk not of faith, for you. have no faith in you if you have wherewith to
show it aud show it not " (Bp. Andrewes).
1 'AAA' epel ny, is something in St. Paul's manner (1 Cor. xv. 35; Rom. ix. 19). The inter
locutor is not here, however, an objector, but a Geutile Christian, who makes a perfectly true
criticism of the worthlessnesB of an idle orthodoxy (see Tert. De Poenit. 5). "Faith,'* says
Luther, "is the mother who wives birth to the virtues as her children." And St. Paul presses
the same truth quite as clearly as St. James (Rom. ii. 13).
2 2u, emphatic ; thou, as distinguished from the heathen. The Jews had learnt Credere Deum,
and Credere Deo, but not (according to St. Augustine's distinction) Credere in Deum. This shows
that St. James is thinking of some sort of verbal orthodoxy, not of specific Christian faith. The
Unity of God was the very first and most important belief of Judaism. The first line of the
Talmud begins with discussing it ; it was daily repeated in the Shemd (Deut. vi. 4), to which, as
to all their observances, the Jews attached most extravagant virtue. Thus they sail that tbe
fires of Gehenna would be cooled for him who r peated it with attention to its very letters. To
this they attached Hab. ii. 4. All the fine things which they called liapardes (dtieh), the
" Garden," or " Paradise," turned on the Unity of God. Akhiva was supremely blessed because
he died uttering the word " One " (see infra, p. 352).
3 This unique and unexpected word (ippivo-ovtri, hnrrescunt) comes in with great rhetorical
and ironic force. It explains the horror of physical antipathy. For the fact, see Matt. viii.
29; Mark ix. 20, 26. " 'lhe sarcasm lies iu the fact itself. Formally, it only flashes out in the
splendid Kat" (Lange).
* The Hebrew NP^!?, Raca (Matt. v. 20). Some think that this objurgation is aimed at St,
Paul ! Apostles did not speak of each other in the language of modern religious controversy
(See Pirke Avoth, i. 17).
s oipyn, B, C.
6 St. Paul does not refer to this act, which is indeed only alluded to in Heb. xi. 17 (and
Wisd. x. 5), but to the faith which Abraham had shown forty years before. ,
7 " Overosafuii non otiosa" (Calvin).
8 " Faith aided in the completion of the work, and the work aided in the completion of the
faith" (Lange). " His faith was completed, not that it had been imperfect, but that it was
consummated in the exercise " (Luther).
P Sayw elsewhere, Gen. xv. 6 (before the sacrifice of Isaac).
10 Is. xli. 8. In Gen. xxv. 9, this clause seems to have occurred in some readings (Ewald,
Die Sendschreiben, ii. 225). Abraham is still known through the East as El Khalil Alfoh <" the
Friend of God "), and hence Hebron is called El Khalil. Dean Pl< mptre points out the curious
fact that the title occurs neither in the Hebrew nor in t'le LXX., and is first applied to Abraham
by Philo (De resip. Noe, c. 11).
11 St. Paul t ad adduced Abraham as a proof of justification by faith, not by legalism. St.
James adduces him as an example of justification by the works which spring from faith, not by
orthodoxy. la This second example is chosen because he wishes to prove the unity of faith in Jews and
Gentiles, by two examples of faith manifested by works. Abraham was a man, a Hebrew, a
Prophet; Ralmb a woman, a Canaanite, a harlot; yet both were justified (i.e., shown to he
righteous in the moral sense) by works which sprang from their faith (Heb. xi. 31).

ORACULAR EGOTISM. 337
and hastily sent them forth hy another way ? For even as the hody apart from the
spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead."1
Leaving the theology of this remarkable passage for subsequent dis
cussion,2 in order not to break the thread of tlie Epistle, we proceed to
the next chapter.
It was natural that those who had seized a Shibboleth, of which
they neither fathomed the full depth nor even rightly understood the
superficial meaning, should endeavour to force it upon others with irate,
obtrusive, and vehement dogmatism. This "itch of teaching," this
oracular egotism, is the natural result of vanity and selfishness disguising
themselves under the cloak of Gospel proselytism. With all such men
words take the place of works, and dogmatising contentiousness of peace
and love. Therefore he warns them against being many teachers3 — self-
constituted ministers — " other peoples' bishops "4 — persons of that large
class who assume that no incompetence is too absolute to rob them of
the privilege of infallibility in laying down the law of truth for others.
" My brethren, do not become many teachers,6 being well aware that we
(teachers) shall receive a severer judgment than others," since our
responsibility is greater than theirs. " For in many respects we stumble,
all of us."6 Speech is the instrument of all teachers. If any man
stumbles not in word, he is a perfect man/ able to bridle also the whole
body. Sins of speech are so common, the temptations to them are so
universal, that there can be no question of the perfect wisdom and self-
control of him who has acquired an absolute immunity from these. For
how great is the power of the tongue ! how evil its depravity, untame-
ableness, and duplicity ! It is like the little bridles which rule, the
horse, like the little helms that steer the great ships. It is like the
spark which kindles a conflagration in the forest.8 Yes, the tongue —
i ii. 19—26.
a See ™/ra, pp. 349—361.
3 Any authorised person might speak, either in the synagogue or the early Christian
assembly (1 Cor. xiv. 26--34). The ordinary readers and preachers were not clergy at alii The
eager seizure of a party watchword would be likely to lead to mere pi ating.
4 aAAoTptoe7ri'cTKOTroi (1 Pet. iv. 15).
5 Matt, xxiii. 8 — 10. "But be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your guide — even Christ; but
all ye are brethren." " Love the work, but strive not after the honour of a teacher" {Pirke
Avoth, i. 10 1.
6 St. James would no more have thought of claiming immunity from sin than St. Paul
(Pbil. iii. VI) or St. John (1 John i. 8) did. When Schleiermaclier condemned this passage as
"bombast," he condemned the equally strong language of many great moralists of all ages.
And it mus;t be remembered that St. James was living in the Jerusalem of a.d. 60. There was
not more backbiting then than there now is, but good men felt its evil more strongly. They
did not take an interest in it, let it lie on their tables, subscribe to its dissemination. Compare
the language of the Son of Sirach (xxviii. 15 — 26) : "Many have fallen by tbe edge of the sword,
but not so many as have fallen by the tongue. . . . Strong cities hath it pulled down ; well is ¦¦
he that hath not passed through the venom thereof. . . . The deaTh thereof is an evil death ;
the grave were better than it. . . . Such as forsake the Lord shall fall into it; and it shall
burn in them and not be quenched ; it shall be sent unto them as a lion, and devour them as a
leopard." For Jewish views, even of tbe Talmudists, see Schoettgen.
7 "By thy words thou shalt be justified" (Matt. xii. 37). See the great sermon on this
text by Barrow.
8 both these metaphors are common in classical writers (Soph. Antig. 332, 475), and both
occur in the hymn of Clemens of Alexandria (Pozdog. ad finem). " Quam lenibus initiis quanta
incendia oriuntur" (Sen. Controv. v. 5). *Y\ij is here probably "a wood," not "material."
The setting on fire of forests by sparks furnished similes even in Homer's days (Horn. II. ii. .
W

338 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
that world of injustice — is a fire. It inflames the wheel of being,1 and
is ever inflamed by Gehenna.2 It is the sole untameable creature — a
restless mischief brimmed with deathful venom.3 Therewith we bless
the Lord and Father, and therewith we curse the human beings who
have been made after His likeness.4 Is this inconsistency anything
short of monstrous I5 Is it not like a fountain bubbling out of the same
fissure the bitter as well as the sweet 1 Can a tree produce fruits not
its own Is Can the salt water of a cursing tongue produce the sweet
water of praise? (iii. 1 — 12).
These sins of the tongue among Jews and Christians sprang in a great
measure from the obtrusive rivalries, the contentious ambitions to which
he had alluded in the first verse. Never have they been extinct. Party
spirit has always been. a curse and disease of every religion, even of the
Christian. The formulas of Christian Councils have been tagged with
anathemas ; Te Deums have been chanted at Autos da Fe\ And because
this factiousness shows an absence of true wisdom amid the pride of its
imagined presence, he proceeds to contrast the false and the true
wisdom. True wisdom, true understanding/ is shown by a ' course of
life spent in meekness, which is the attribute of wisdom.8 For a man
to boast of wisdom when his heart is full of bitter emulation and party
spirit is a lying vaunt. The wisdom of which he thus boasts is not, at
any rate, the heavenly wisdom of the Christian, but earthly, animal,9
demon-like. The wisdom which evinces itself in party spirit leads to
unhallowed chaos and every contemptible practice. " But the wisdom
from above is first pure,10 then peaceful, reasonable, open to persuasion,
455 ; xi. 115 ; Virg. Georg, ii. 303 : " et totum involvit flammis nemns " ) ; but St. James is more
likely to have adopted it from Philo (Be migr. Abr. p. 407). peya\avx<* (Ter. 5) occurs only in
Philo. 1 iii. 6, rbv rpoxbv tt)9 yeve'craos (comp. Eccl. xii. 6). It is a phrase of uncertain meaning,
perhaps " the orb of creation " — hardly " the rolling wheel of life " (avamjitKno-Ls, see Windet,
De Vita fund.), though Anacreon uses that expression, and tbe Syriac here has, " it turneth the
course of our generations, which run as a wheel" (comp. Sil. Ital. iii. 6, " rota volvitur aevi)." ,
2 Comp. Pss. Iii. 2 — 5 ; cxx. 3, 4 ; Prov. xxvi. 27 : " there is as a burning fire; " (Ecclus. v.
14 ; xxii. 24, " As the vapour and smoke of a furnace goeth before the fire, so reviling before
blood ").
3 Hermas, who has several references to this Epistle, says (Pastor, ii. 2) : " Backbiting is a
wicked spirit, and a restless demon " (comn. Ps. cxl. 13).
4 Even in fallen man, " remanet nobilitas indeleb'lis" (Beng.}. He still retains sparks
(scvntillulae, Confess. Belg. 14) of the heavenly fire, though " very far gone from original
righteousness" (Art. ix.).
5 The word xpi) occurs here alone in the New Testament or the LXX. The word which they
use for " ought " is 5ei, which expresses moral fitness. " Praise is not seemly in the mouth of
a sinner" (Ecclus. xv. 9).
6 Matt. vii. 16, 17. The metaphor both of this and the next verse show a marked local
colouring. 7 " Who is wise (chalram) and intelligent (rcablioii) amongst you ? " (Deut. i. 13 ; iv. 6 ; Eph.
i. 8 ; Col. i. 9). The kiritrTnpl^v is one who understands and knows ; the <ro06? is one who carries
out his knowledge into his life. " Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers" (Tennyson). (Job
xxviii. 12.) s ps. ). 16—20.
9 i/ruxiKos (see Jude 19); \pvxt.Kol, trveiipa py exovres. "Soulisb" — i.e., sensuous — living onlv
the natural animal life, and therefore imspiritual. This wisdom is earthly, because it avuri-
ciously cares for the goods of earth (Phil. iii. 19); animal, because it is under the sway of
animal lusts (1 Cor. ii. 14) ; demon-like, because full of pride, egotism, malignity, and ambition,
which are works of the devil (1 Tim. iv. 1).
10 » Pure," i.e., chaste, consecrated, free from admixture of carnal motives. Even out of this
strong condemnation of contenti <us dogmatism, the universal misinterpretation of Scripture
has extorted an exouse— nay, au argument— f or intolerance. But the wisdom is only said to be

HEAVENLY WISDOM. 339
full of mercy and good fruits, without vacillation,1 without hypocrisy. . . .
But the fruit of righteousness is ever sown in peace by those who work
peace" (ii. 13 — 18). Thus we see that with St. James, no less than
with St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John, love, peace, mutual respect,
mutual toleration, is the highest form of wisdom, and is a far truer sign
than a contentious and bitter orthodoxy that he who has it has reached
to the highest ideal of the Christian character.
But how strong are the feelings of St. James on this subject ! It
was a period of turmoil and contention within and without the fold.2
" Whence," he asks. " come wars, and whence fightings among you P Is it not
from hence, from your pleasures that militate in your members ?3 Ye desire and
have not. Ye murder4 and envy and are not able to obtain. Ye battle and ye
war, and ye receive not because ye ask not for yourselves. Ye ask and receive not
because ye ask ill for yourselves that ye may squander it in your pleasures. Adul
teresses ! 5 know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity against God ?
"Whosoever, then, prefers to be a friend of the world, establishes himself as an
enemy of God. Or deem ye that it is vainly that the Scripture saith, ' The spirit
which He made to dwell in us jealously yearneth over us ? ' Q But " (because of this
jealous love for us) " He giveth greater grace. Wherefore He saith God arrayeth
Himself against the haughty, but giveth grace to the humble " 7 (iv. 1 — 6).
i. This passage is in several respects remarkable. First, we cannot
but feel surprise at such a picture as this. Wars, fightings, pleasures
"first pure," because "purity" describes it inward essence, and the other epithets its outward
manifest ationo. "Peaceable" (Matt. v. 9), "reasonable," i.e., "forbearing" (1 Tim. iii. 3),
" open to persuasion " (Vulg. suadibilts), or perhaps " winning its way by gentleness." Seveu
qualities of wisdom — se^en colours of the Divine rainbow — all blended into the one " Light of
the world." The phrase "the wi-dom from above " is common in the Talmudic writings,
where it is attributed to Adam, Enoch, Solomon, etc.
1 a5idKprros, one of St. James's frequent hapax legomena. It is better to interpret it by the
ordinary sense of SiaxpCvop.a.i, " to doubt." Tbe E. V. follows Luther in rendering it " without
partiality." Bengel says, "Non facit discrimen ubi non opus est." Lange, "unsectarian,"
"not Separatist," i.e., not Pharisaic. There is force in his remark that the epithet would
naturally refer to social conduct, and have some relation to dvuTrtwcpn-os. If so, we may render
it " not partial," or "censorious." "Being aSiaKpiros it does not spy out mote-i in a brother's
eye; and beins' awiroKpiros, it does not hide the beam in its own" (Wordsworth, who adds that
"this beautiful picture of true wisdom may be placed side by side with that of charity
portrayed by St. Paul, 1 Cor. xiii.). ' Comp. Ecclus. i. 1 — 11, "All wisdom cometh from the
Lord, and is with Him for ever . . . Wisdom hath been created before all things, and the
understanding of prudence from everlasting. The Word of God Most High is the fountain of
wisdom . . . She is with all flesh, according to His gift, and He hath given her to them
that love Him."
2 See infra, Chapter xxxi., on the Last Days of Jerusalem.
3 "For in truth nothing else except the body and its desires causes wars, and seditions, and
battles" (Plato, Phrndo, p. 66, c).
4 Some conjecture ipQovelre, " ye grudge; " but the reading is probably right, and means "ye
murder," not " ye wish to kill," etc. See below.
5 ~M.oixa-b.C8es ! (the jmoixot is omitted by K, A, B). The f&rmnine word is explained by the
common Old Testament metaphor for idolatry (Isa. liv. 5 ; Jer. ii. 12 ; Ezek. xvi. 32). Hence
in the New Testament yevt-a. juoixoAt's (Matt. xii. 39; xvi. 4; 2 Cor. xi. 2); and tbe strange
expression of 2 Pet. ii. 14, " having eyes full of an adulteress " (see note there).
6 See infra, p. 341. irpbg tfiBavov, not "against envy" (Luther), but the phrase seems to
be adverbial, like irpos /Siav, n-pbs tjSoitji', ttc. eirnroSet never means "lusteth," as in E. V.,
but expresses warm tenderness (2 Cor. ii. 9 ; Phil. i. 8). This seems to be the only tenable
translation. I may mention one other version, which is to make irvevp-a an accusative — "God
yearns jealously for the spirit which He placed in us, and gives us greater grace." Yet another
way (but inconsistent with tbe usage of the phrase ^ ypo.$r\ Ae'yet) is to break the clause into two
questions — "Do ye fancy that the Scripture speaketh vainly? Doth the Spirit, which He
planted in us, lust to envy ? " (I see that this is accepted by the .Revised Version, with the
other renderings in the margin.)
7 Prov. iii. 34 j 1 Pet. v. 5j Clem. Eom. c. 30."

340 THE EARLY DATS OF CHRISTIANITY.
that are ever setting out as it were on hostile expeditions,1 disappointed
desires, frustrate envy and even fruitless murder to supply wants which
would have been granted to prayer — then, again, prayers utterly
neglected or themselves tainted with sin because misdirected to reckless
gratification of pleasure, and because ruined by contentiousness 2 and
selfishness — all this spiritual adultery, the divorce of the soul from God
to the love of the world — is this indeed a picture of the condition of
Christian Churches within thirty years of the death of Christ ? Again,
I see no possible solution of the difficulty except in the twofold answer — ¦
partly that St. James is influenced by the state of things which he saw
going on around him in Judsea, and partly that he is drawing no marked
line of distinction between Jews and Christians in the communities
which he is addressing.3 And this being so, there was certainly in the
Palestine of that day an ample justification for every line of the dark
delineation. Alike among priests and patriots there was a fierce and
luxurious greed. Strifes about the Law were loud and violent.4 Even
in the days of our Lord, while the tree of Jewish nationality was still
green, and not dry, as it had now become, the very Temple had been
polluted into a brigands' cave.5 The dagger of the assassin was often
secretly employed to get rid of a political opponent. A bloodthirsty
spirit had possessed itself of the once peaceful nation. Righteousness
had once dwelt in their city, but now murderers. Men like Barabbas
had become heroes of the people. Men like Theudas, and Judas, and
the Egyptian impostor, were crowding the horizon of the people's life,
and found no difficulty in leading after them 4,000 men or even
murderers. Zealots had increased in numbers and in recklessness.
Bands of robbers were the terror of every district which offered them
hopes of plunder. Assassins lurked in the streets, and mingled un
noticed in the dense throngs which crowded the Temple courts at the
great annual festivals.8 Sects were arrayed in bitter envy against sects,
and all were united in burning hatred against their Roman conquerors.
It became in popular estimation a pious act — an act which even High
Priests could hail and bless — for sicarii to bind themselves under a curse
to waylay and massacre an enemy.7 The fury of fanatical savagery
assumed the guise of patriotism. Ealse Christs and false prophets
abounded and flourished, but " Stone him," and " Crucify him," and
" Away with him," and " He is not fit to live," were cries into which
1 iv. 1, OTpaTevopevuiv.
> St. Peter saw no leas clearly (1 Pet. iii. 7) that quarrelsomeness is fatal to prayer.
» It is a weighty remark ot Lange (ad loc.) that "Junes put this Epistle into the hands
of the Jewish Christians that it might influence all Jews, as it was a missionary instruction
to the converted for the unconverted, and the truly converted for the half-converted."
* St. Paul (Tit. iii. 9) applies to these the very word of St. James, " legal hattles " (p-axai
vopiKaC). There were the struggling sects of Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Herodians,
Samaritans, etc. Laurentius says — " Won loquitur Apostolus de hellis et caedibus, sed de
mutuis dissidiis, litibus, jurgiis, et contentionibus." Doubtless of these — but of actual
Btrug«les alBO.
5 o-nvKaiov Xno-rSiv, Matt. xxi. 13. Comp. Mark xv. 7 ; Acts xxi. 88.
» See Jos. B. J. ii. 1, 23; iv. 10; vii. 81; Antt. xviii. L.
' Acts xxiii. 12.

ANOMALIES 0* PRAYER. 341
men were ready to burst at a moment's notice against those whose
thoughts had been enlightened to believe in the Son of God.
Besides all this, the world and the interests of the world assumed a
complete preponderance in the thoughts of all men ; the fear of God
seemed to have been banished into the far background of life. Could
such men pray at all 1 Yes, and long prayers and loud prayers in the
Temple courts and at the corners of the streets at the very time when
they were devouring widows' houses, and making their proselytes ten-
times-worse children of Gehenna than themselves. There is literally no
end to the anomalies of prayers. Rochester went home to pen a pious
prayer in his private diary on tb,e very day that he had been persuading
his sovereign to commit an open sin. Cornish wreckers went straight
from church to light their beacon fires, and Italian brigands promise to
their saints a share in the profits of their murders.1 This " Italian piety "
is the terrible state of moral apostasy against which St. James speaks
with all the impassioned sternness of one of the old prophets. Like
Amos, who had, no less than himself, been both a peasant and a
Nazarite, he raised his indignant voice against the luxury and idolatry
of the Chosen People. It is in the love of the world that he sees the
source of all these enormities, and it is against this love of the world,
arrayed in the golden robe of the hierarchy, and wearing " Holiness to
the Lord " upon its forehead — it is against this tainted scrupulosity and
mitred atheism that he speaks trumpet-tongued.
ii. But besides these remarks on the general purport of the chapter,
we must notice his unidentified quotation. The English version renders
it " the spirit that dwelieth in us lusteth to envy." The correct version,
according to the best reading, is probably as I have given it, " The
spirit, which He made to dwell in us, yearneth over us jealously." The
meaning, then, is that the guilt of worldly unfaithfulness is enhanced
because the Spirit of God, which he hath given us, longs with a jealous
fondness that we should pay to God an undivided allegiance, a whole
hearted friendship ; and for that reason He gives us greater grace —
greater because of His yearning pity and love.2 But where does this
passage occur in Scripture 1 Doubtless from the library of the writers
of the Old Covenant, which forms our Old Testament, we can produce
analogies, more or less distinct, to the general meaning of this utterance,3
but nowhere do we find the exact words. Only two solutions are there
fore possible — (1) St. James may be quoting from some lost book, or
1 Plumptre, p. 89.
2 Here, as elsewhere, I have not thought it worth while to trouble the reader with masses
of "explanations," which torture out of the words the most impossible senses by the most
untenable methods. Beza, Grotius, etc., make it mean "the spirit of man has a natural bias to
envy," but en-tn-oflet cannot bear this sense, nor that given by Bede, Calvin, &c, " Is the Spirit
(of God) prone to env,j ?" nor that of Bensel, " the Spirit lusteth against envy." There is much
less objection to the Jview of Huther, Wiesinger, etc., "He (God) yearns jealously over the
Spirit which He has placed in us, and gives greater grace" (supra, p. 339).
3 It has been variously deferred to Gen vi. 3, 5 ; Num. xi. 29 ; Ezek. xxiii. 25 ; xxxvi. 27 ;
Deut. v. 9; xxxii. 10, 11; Ps. cxix. 20; Prov. xxi 10; Cant. viii. 6; Ecclus. iv. 4; Wisd.
vi. 12, 23.

342 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
some apocryphal book — like the Testament of tlie Twelve Patriarchs.
The suggestion is rendered less unlikely by the references which he
makes in this Epistle to other apocryphal books,1 and by the fact that
his brother, St. Jude, quotes from the book of Enoch.2 We must in that
case understand the words y ypa<b)) in a lower sense than that which we
attribute to the Scripture. Or (2) he may be adopting the method, not
unknown to the Scripture writers and to early Fathers, of concentrating
the meaning of several separate passages into one terse summary.3 In
that case the word "saith" will have to be understood generically to
mean, " Is not this the sense of Scripture 1 " If we adopt this solution,
we must suppose that the passages alluded to are such as Gen. vi. 3,
"My spirit shall not always strive with men;" or Deut. xxxii. 11,
where God describes His love for Israel under the image of an eagle
covering her young in the nest, and bearing them on her wings, and
where in the Septuagint this very verb epipothei, or "yearns over,"
occurs ; or, again, Ezek. xxxvi. 27, " I will put My spirit within you."
The difficulty cannot yet be considered to have been removed, but other
methods of solving it are far less probable than the two to which I have
here referred.
iii. Having thus shown their dangerous condition, he urges them,
with strong exhortation, which reminds us of the tone of Joel, to sub
mission, moral effort, resistance of the devil,4 the earnest seeking of Cod,
and deep humiliation of soul,5 which might lead God to interfere on
their behalf.
iv. Then, with a repetition of the word" brethren," which shows that
his rebukes are being uttered in the spirit of love, he warns them once
more against evil-speaking as a sin which is averse to the humility
which he has been urging on them, since it rises from an imaginary
superiority. It arrogantly usurps the functions of God, who is the one
true Judge, because He alone stands above the Law on the behests of
which we are not capable of passing any final judgment.6
v. Passing to another sin, he strongly condemns the braggart self-
confidence7 and sensual security with which, like the Rich Fool in the
Parable, men make gainful plans for the future without any reference to
God, or to His provident ordering of our lives, or to the fact that life itself
1 Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom. Similarly the writer of the Epistle to the' Hebrews makes
distinct references to the Books of Maccabees (xi. 37, ^8).
2 Jude 14.
3 We find similar condensed quotations in John vii. 33, 42 ; Matt. ii. 23 ; and perhaps Eph.
v. 14. Dean Plumptre quotes from Clemens Romanus (c. 46) the curious passage, " It has been
written, ' Cleave to the saints, for they who cleaVe to them shall be sanctified.' "
* This is one of the few places in the New Testament where StdjSoAos occurs. " The devil,"
says Hermas (Past. ii. 12), " con wrestle with us, but cannot throw us ; if, then, thou resist him,
he will be conquered, and flee from thie utterly ashamed." (Matt. iv. 1 — 11.")
6 He uses the striking word KaT7jc/>eia — " downcastness of face " — which occurs nowhere else
in the Now Testament. He is thinking of- the outward manifestations as the signs of the in
ward humiliation.
6 " Nostrum non est judicare, praesertim cum exsequi non possumus " (Bengel). " To offer
to domineer over the conscience," says the Emperor Maximilian, " is to assault the citadel of
heaven." 7 iv. 16. oXa^Sma only in 1 John il 16 : " Ye boast in your vain-glorious presumptions."

REBUKE OF THE RICH. 343
is — or rather that they themselves are — but as a fleeting mist.1 They
knew in their hearts that they ought not to speak thus. If they thought
for a moment their conscienceswould condemn them for thus ignoring all
reference to God, and this was a plain proof that it was sin2(iv. 13 — 17).
vi. Then in language full of prophetic imagery and prophetic fire,
meant to terrify men into thoughts of repentance, but not by any means
as Cakdn too characteristically said, absque spe veniae — " apart' from
hope of pardon " — he bursts into terrible denunciation of the rich, which
shows how much his thoughts had dwelt upon their arrogant rapacity.
" Go to now, ye rich, weep, howling 3 over your miseries that are coming upon
you. Your riches are rotted, and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your
gold and your silver is rusted through and through,4 and the rust of them shall he
for a witness to you,5 and shall eat your flesh G as fire. Ye treasured up in the last
days.7 So the pay of your labourers, who reaped your fields, the pay kept back by
fraud, cries aloud from you,8 and the cries of the reapers have entered into the ears
of the Lord of Sabaoth.9 Ye luxuriated on the earth and waxed wanton, ye
fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.10 Ye condemned, ye killed the just man.
He doth not resist you11 (v. 1 — 6).
1 Job vii. 7; Ps. cii. 3 ; Wisd. v. 9 — 14. The best reading is aruXs yap eo-re, " for ye are a
vapour," B, and tbe Syriae and ^Itbiopic versions (and practically A, K, for ecrrat must be due
to itacism). " Pulvis et umbra sumus " (Hor.), But St. James turns the transitoriness of life
to an opposite lesson from tbat of the Epicureans (Hor. Od. 1, 9 ; 1 Cor. xv. 32).
2 " There shall no harm happen unto me " (Ps. x. 6) ; "I shall die in my nest " (Job xxix. 18).
For a Jew to talk thus, as if there were no God, or as though He took uo part in the concerns
of life, was to run counter to the central thought of their whole dispensation. A sense of God's
nearness was the one thing which more than all others separated the Jews from other races as
a chosen people. To abnegate this conviction iu common talk was to show a practical apostasy.
The Babbrnists also felt this. In Debharim Rabba, § 9, a father at his son's circumcision produces
wine seven years old, and says, " With this wine will I continue for a long time to celebrate the
birth of my new-born son." That night Rabbi Simeon meets the Angel of Death, and asks him
" why he is wandering about." " Because," said Asrael, "I slay those who say, We will do this or
that, and think not how soon death may overtake them. The man who said he would drink that
wine often shall die in thirty days." Prom this verse and from 1 Cor. iv. 19, " I will come
quickly to you, if God will," has come the common phrase, " Deo volente,"
3 Only in I-a. xiii. 6 ; xiv. 31 ; xv. 3 ; xxxiii. ; Ezek. xxxvii. The language must be judged
from the standpoint of prophetical analogies in Isaiah, Amos, etc., and also in Matt, xxiii., Rev.
xviii. And the warnings, like all God's warnings, are hypothetical (Jonah iii. 10 : Jer. xviii.
7—10). * v. 2. The perfects are prophetic perfects ; they express absolute certainty as to tbe ultimate
result. Kartwrat is another hayax legomenon (except Ecclus. xii. 11), as are o-eoyjirev (Ecclus. xiv.
19) and ayrofiptara. in this verse. Gold and silver do not rust, but the expression is perfectly in
telligible (Isa. i. 22, " Thy silver has become dross").
5 "In their tarnish and consumption you may see a picture of what will come on you."
" Magna vanitas ! thesaurisat moriturus morituris " (Aug.).
6 to.5 o-6.pK.as (plnr.) has been taken to mean "your bloated bodies," etc., but occurs in Lev.
xxvi. 29, etc.
7 There was much worldly prosperity aud ostentatious legalism at this epoch. Some take
ws TrCip after kOyo-avplaars — " your treasury of gold is in reality a treasuryof fire."
s "From you," i.e., from your hands or treasures. Ecclus. xxxiv. 22, " He tbat taketh away
his neighbour's living slayeth him, and he that detraudeth the labourer of his hire is a blood- *
shedder" (c >mp. Gen. iv. 10; Deut. xxiv. 14, 15; Jer. xxii. 13; Mal. iii. 5). The rendering of
the E. V., " kept back by you," is also tenable. The tract Succah (f . 29, b) gives four reasons
why the avaricious lose their goods, which are (I) because they keep back the pa>i of their labourers ;
(2) because they neglect their welfare ; (3) because they shift burdens upon them ; (4) because
of pride. 9 The form of expression (used by no other New Testament writer, except in a quotation,
Rom. ix. 29) is characteristically Judaic. The LXX. rendering is mostly iravroKpaTtop. See Bp.
Pearson On the Creed, Art. I.
10 Like cattle grazing in rich pastures on the day tha^ they are doomed to bleed (Theile) ;
Ezek. xxxiv, 1 — 10.
11 Hos. iv. 17 ; 2 Tim. ii. 24 ; Isa. liii. 7. This makes the conclusion of the clause far more
striking than the proposed renderings, *'Does he not set himself in array against you?" or
" bring the armies against you ? "

344 THE EARLY DATS OF CHRISTIANITY.
?
" Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.1 So the husband
man awaiteth the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it until he receive
the early and latter rain.2 Be patient then, ye also, stablish your hearts because
the coming of the Lord is near " (v. 7, 8).
- vii. Here again we ask, Of whom is the Prophet thinking ? Were
there indeed, in those early days of Christianity, any — still more, could
there have heen many — who correspond to this picture of voluptuous
and fraudful wantonness, which had forgotten God and was so cruel and
false to men t Surely St. Paul gives us the answer when he says,
" Consider your calling, brethren. Not many of you are wise after the
flesh ; not many mighty, not many noble " s— and therefore certainly
not many rich — " are called." In those early congregations of slaves
and sufferers there was little to attract, there was everything to repel,
the ordinary multitude of the wealthy. In those days the truth of the
Lord's words was seen, " How hardly shall they that have riches — how
hardly shall they who trust in riches — enter into the Kingdom of
Heaven." The " deceitfulness of riches " became very manifest, and the
" woe unto you that are rich " was seen in its full meaning. Rich men,
indeed, there were in the Church, as there had been since Nicodemus
and Joseph of Arimathsa brought their costly spices to the tomb ; for
St. Paul in one of his latest Epistles could give a charge to the rich not
to be arrogant, and not to trust in the uncertainty of riches.4 But con
sidering what a Christian had in those days to suffer, is it conceivable
that any of the few rich men who had ventured to bear the reproach of
the cross would have lived the haughty, greedy, oppressive life of the
men on whom St. James here hurls his unsparing denunciation ? So
strongly has this difficulty been felt that some, once more, see in " the
rich " only a symbol of the proud, haughty, exclusive, self-satisfied reli
gionist ; 6 but though the words " rich " and " poor " may not be confined
to their literal senses — yet certainly the literal sense is not excluded.
Once more, I see the explanation of his passion, the moving cause of his
righteous menaces, in the conduct of the leading classes at Jerusalem —
the gorgeously clad Herodians, the aristocratic Sadducees. The extracts
from the Talmudists which I have given on a previous page describe
their conduct, and will show what bitter need there was for the language
which St. James employs.
Nor is Josephus less emphatic.
"About this time," he says, " King Agrippa gave the high priesthood
to Ishmael Ben Phabi. And now arose a sedition on the part of the
chief priests against the priests and the leaders of the multitude at
Jerusalem. Each of them gathered around himself a company of the
boldest innovators and became their leader. And when they came into
1 This must be a reference to Christ's coming.
• The former in winter, the latter in spring (Deut. xi 14 ; Jer. iii. 3 • v. 24 j Joel ii 23)
» 1 Cor. i. 26. 4 1 Tim. v. 17.
5 Comp. Rev. ii. 9 ; iii. 17 ; and see 1 Sam. ii. 8 ; Ps. bmi. 13 ; Amos ii. 6 ; Luke i. 52, 53 ; vi
20) etc

MURDER OP "THE JUST." 342
collision they both abused each other and flung stones. There was no
one to keep them in awe, but all these things went on with a high hand
as though in a city where there was anarchy. And such impudence and
audacity seized the chief priests that they even dared to send slaves to
the threshing-floors to seize the tithes due to the priests. And it hap
pened that some of the priests died of want from being deprived of their
sustenance, so completely did the violence of the seditious prevail over
all justice."1 viii. And if these words of St. James were addressed to Jews and
Jewish Christians about the year a.d. 61, how speedily were his warn
ings fulfilled, how terribly and how soon did the retributive doom fall
on these wealthy, luxurious tyrants ! A few years later Vespasian
invaded Judsea. Truly there was need to howl and weep when, amid
the horrors caused by the rapid approach of the Roman armies, the gold
and silver of the wealthy oppressors was useless to buy bread, and they
had to lay up, for the moth to eat, those gorgeous robes which it would
have been a peril and a mockery to wear. The worshippers at the last
fatal Passover became the victims. The rich only were marked out for
the worst fury of the Zealots, and their wealth sank into the flames of
the burning city. Useless were their treasures in those " last days,"
when there was heard at the very doors the thundering summons of the
Judge ! In all their rich banquets and full-fed revelling they had but
fattened themselves as human offerings for that day of slaughter ! The
Jewish historian here becomes the best commentator on the prophecies
of the Christian Apostle.
ix. " Ye condemned, ye murdered the just." The aorist tenses of the
original may rjoint equally well to some single act, or to a series of
single acts ; and " the just man " was a title of every devout and
faithful Israelite. The present tense, " he doth not resist you " — so
abruptly and pathetically introduced — seems to show that St. James is
alluding to a general state of things. In the delivery of Christ to the
Gentiles the Jewish Church had slain " that Just One ; "2 and since His
death they had consented to the murder of His saints in the stoning
of Stephen, and the beheading of James, the son of Zebedee. But in
the scantiness of the records of the early Church of Jerusalem there is
too much reason to fear that there was a crowd of obscurer martyrs.3
And Christ suffered, as it were, again in the person of His saints.
When they were murdered, He was, as it were, led once more to un
resisted sacrifice. And now St. James himself bore pre-eminently the
title of "the Just." His words might seem to have been prophetic of
his own rapidly-approaching fate, while yet they tacitly repudiate the
title by which he was called, to confer it on Him who alone is worthy
1 Jos. Antt. xx, 8, § 8. He repeats the same complaints against Joshua, son of Gamala. in
xx. 9, § 2.
2 Acts vii. 52.
3 Acts xxvi. 10. " When they were condemned to death," says St. Paul, " I gave my voice
against them."

346 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of it. But the state of things which he is describing was by no means
isolated. It had been already described at length in the language of a
book which also belonged to this epoch, and with which St. James has
more than once shown himself to be familiar.
" For the ungodly said . . . Come on therefore, let us enjoy the good
things that are present ; and let us speedily use the creatures as in youth. Let us
fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, and let uo flower of the spring pass by
us ; let none of us go without his portion of our voluptuousness — let us oppress the
poor righteous man . . . for that which is feeble is found to be nothing worth.
Let us lie in wait for the righteous. He professeth to have the knowledge of God,
and he calleth himself the child of the Lord. He was made to reprove our thoughts.
We are esteemed of him as counterfeits. He pronounceth the end of the just to be
blessed, and maketh his boast that God is his father. Let us examine him with
despitefulness and torture, that we may hnoio his meekness and prove his patience. Let
us condemn him with a shameful death, for hy his own saying he shall be respected"
(Wisd. ii. 6—20).
x. But all such warnings proved vain. Nay, it is probable that
they only precipitated the fate of the speaker, and that he, like other
prophets, felt the vengeance of those whose unrepented sins he so
unsparingly denounced.1 When the priests had murdered James the
Just, not resisting them, but praying for them, the day for warning
had passed away for ever, and over a guilty city and a guilty nation
History pronounced once more her awful verdict of "Too late."
" Ye condemned, ye murdered the just. He resisteth you not."2
"And thus," says Wiesinger, "we have, as it were, standing before
us the slain and unresisting righteous man, when, lo ! the curtain
falls. Be patient, brethren, wait ! " The coming of the Lord for which
they had to wait was not far distant. The husbandman had to wait in
patience, and often in disappointment, for the early and latter rain.
Let them learn by his example. But since the Judge was standing
already before the doors,3 let them, that they might escape His con
demnation, not only bear with patience the afflictions of persecutors,
but also abstain from murmuring at each other's conduct.4 It was
patience that they needed most ; patience with one another, patience
under external trials. As an example of that patience, let them take
the prophets, and let the Book of Job5 remind them that in the end
God ever vindicates his attributes of compassionate tenderness.6
1 Hegesippus, ap. Euseb. ii. 23 ; Origen, o. Cels. i. 48 ; Jer. De Virr. Illustr. ii.
» Comp. Amos v. 12 : " They afflict the just .... therefore the prudent shall keep silence
in that time.'*
3 Some have fancied that the question tauntingly asked of St. James in the story of his
martyrdom in Hegesippus— "Which is the door of Jesus ? "—had reference to this saying of
his; as though they would ask, "By which door will Christ come to judge?"; hut it more
probably refers to John x. 7—9 (soo (iieseler, Oh. Hist. § 31).
4 A clear reference to Matt. vii. 1 {py o-Tev6}tTe xar oKkriXinv) ; lit., " groan not against one
another." The E. V. "grudge," once meant "murmur" (see Ps. lix. 15); "he eats his meat
without grudgin<" (Shakesp. Much Ado, iii. 4, 90).
" Here alone referred to in the New Testament, though quoted in 1 Cor. iii. 19, and by
Philo, De Mutat. Nom. xxiv.
0 v. 9—11. Others interpret " Ye have seen the end of the Lord," to mean, " Ye saw the
death of Christ," as in 1 Pet. ii. 22 — 25; jroAuo-n-Xay^vos is yet another unique expression for
euo-n-Aayxvos (Eph. iv. 32; 1 Pet. iii. 8). oittTippoiv occurs in Ecclus. ii. 13; Luke vi, 36.

ANOINTING WITH OIL. 3 <t7
xL His task is now done, but he adds a few needful admonitions.
Let them avoid all rash and needless oaths, and be simple in their
affirmations.1 Let them( be more fervent in prayer.
" Is any one among you in affliction ? Let him pray. Is any cheerful ? Let
him sing praise. Is any sick among you? , Let him summon the elders of the
Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him "with oil2 in the name of the
Lord,3 aud the prayer of faith shall save the sick man, and the Lord shall raise him
(from his bed of sickness, Acts ix. 34). 4 Even if he shall have committed sin, it
shall he remitted him. Confess then to one another5 your transgressions, and. pray
for one another, that ye may be healed.6 Much availeth the supplication of a just
man, when it wbrketh with energy. Elias "was a man of like passions with us,7 and
he praj'ed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not upon the earth three
years and six months.8 And again he prayed, and the heaven gave rain, and the
earth brought forth her' fruit.1'9
The leading idea of thia passage, which Lange most needlessly
allegorises, is the efficacy of Christian prayer. The course which
St. James recommends in cases of sickness is natural and beautiful,
and in the small numbers of the Christian communities could be easily
followed. It is the advice of which the entire spirit is carried out in
our service for the Visitation of the Sick. We no longer, indeed,
anoint with oil, because we do not live in Palestine or in the first
century.10 The therapeutic means of one climate and age are not
necessarily the best to be adopted in another, but prayer belongs to all
4
1 Comp. Matt. v. 35, 36. Jews (unlike Christians, alas ! ) were not likely to take God's name
in vain. ** That ye fall not inta judgment " ; tne reading eis viroKpto-iv, gives a worse sense, and
is not well supported.
3 A common Eastern therapeutic, as we see from Isa. i. 6 ; Mark vi. 13 : Luke x. 34 ; Jos.
B. J. i. 33, § 5 ; Antt. xvii. 6, § 5. It was also used by Bomans (Pliny, H. N. xxxi. 47). The use
of oil for bodily healing is retained by the Eastern Church.
s That is, of Christ tMatt. xxviii. 19 ; Acts ii. 38 ; iii. 16 ; iv. 10 ; 1 Cor. i. 13—15).
* '* Nisi mempe aliter ei suppeditat ad aeternam salutem " (Grotius) . In the first Prayer.
book of Edward VI. the anointing was accompanied by the prayer : " Our Heavenly Father
vouchsafe for His great mercy (if it be His blessed will) to restore to thee thy bodily health."
The prayer will not be thrown away ; it will be answered as is best for us and. the sufferer.
How much connexion this has with Extreme Unction (of which with an anathema the Council
of Trent commanded it to be understood) may be seen from the fact that extreme unction is
forbidden, except in cases in which recovery seems quite hopeless.
5 In the manipulation of this text by Cornelius a Lapide, " to one another " becomes "to a
p priest " ("frater fratri confitemini, puta sacerdoti "). Confession in sickness is also enjoined, in.
the Talmud (Shabbath, f. 32, a).
6 "When E.ibba fell sick he bade his family publish it abroad, that they who hated him
might rejoice, and that they who loved liim might intercede vdth God for him " (Nedarim, f. 40, a).
( " The wise men have said, No healing is equal to that which comes from the Word of God and
prayer" (Sephpr Ha Chayim).
7 Acts xiv. 15.
8 Luke iv. 25. This period (42 months, 1,260 days — comp. Rev. xi. 3) was mentioned by the
Jewish tradition (Yalkut Simeoni), and is perfectly consistent with fair inferences from 1 Kings
xviii. s v. 13—18. Thus the prayer of Elijah was one of mercy as well as one of judgment. Dean
Plumptre thinks that St. James may have had in mind the sudden burst of rai-i after drought
which fell in answer to prayer after the troubles caused by the attempt of Caligula to set up
his statue in the Temple (Jos. Antt. xviii. 8, § 6). Analogous to this is the story of ,the
Thundering Legion (Euseb. H. E. v. 5; Tert. Apol. 5), and the well-known story of Mr. Grim-
sbaw. Hegesippus says of James himself, that it was supposed by the people that he caused
rain to fall by his prayers.
io « Things which were practised and prescribed by Christ Himself and His Apostles are not
of perpetual obligation unless they are conducive to an end which is of perpetual necessity." — Bp.
Wordsworth, who instances feet-washing (John xiii. 14) and the Kiss of Peace (1 Thess. v. 26;
1 Pet. v. 14).

348 THE EARLY DATS OP CHRISTIANITY.
countries and all times, and the mutual confession of sins is often
helpful. We must always distinguish between the letter and the spirit,
the accidental adjunct and the eternal principle. If this passage has
been perverted into the doctrine and practice of extreme unction
regarded as a sacrament,1 and of sacramental confession to a priest, it
has only shared the fate of hundreds of other passages. There are
few prominent texts on which the tottering structures of purely
inferential dogmas have not been reared. Thus do men build upon
Divine foundations the hay and stubble of human fancies. And if the
passage has thus been perverted in one direction by the growth of
sacerdotalism, it has been perverted in another by the fanaticism of
ignorance. Because the promises of healing given by St. James are
unconditional, it has been assumed by some poor fanatics that no
one need ever die, as though death, in God's good time, were not man's
richest birthright, and as though every good man's prayer for any
earthly blessing was not in itself made absolutely conditional on the
will of God.2 But neither for extreme unction, nor for sacramental
confession, nor for sacerdotal absolution,3 nor for fanatical extravagance,
does this passage afford the slightest sanction. Such inferences are only
possible to the exegesis which takes the sound of the words, and not
their true meanings. The lessons which we must here learn are lessons
of the blessedness of sympathy, and of holy intercourse, and of the
humble confession of sin, and, above all, of prayer, at all times, hut
most of all in times of sickness. Our faith, too, may find encourage
ment in the efficacy of prayer for the achievement of results which even
transcend the ordinary course of nature. In enforcing this faith by the
example of Elijah,4 St. James does so on the express ground that, saint
though he was, and prophet though he was, he was no supernatural
being, but one " of like passions " with ourselves.
xii. Then, in one last weighty word, comes the solemn close of
the Epistle.
" My brethren, if any one among you wander from the truth, and one convert
him, know that he who has converted a sinner from the error of his way shall save ^
a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins '' (v. 19, 20).
He has spoken many words of warning and condemnation against
the worldliness, the violence, the forgetfulness of God, which were
but too prevalent among Jewish amd Christian communities, and he has
1 Anointing with oil was provided for in the first Prayer-hook of Edward VI., " if the sick
man desire it " ; but as no miraculous results can follow, and as oil is not specially -valuable in
our climate as a means of healing in all diseases, it was wisely dropped in the Prayer -hook of
1552 (see Jer. Taylor's Preface to Holy Dying).
2 (Ecumenius, on the other hand, has no warrant for confining the reference of the verse to
miraculous healings in the days of the Apostles (the xapio-pa. iapdrwv, 1 Cor. xii. 9).
8 Even Cardinal Cajitan admits, with perfect frankness: ''Haec verba non loqnuntur de
Sacrnnientali Unctione extremae unctionis — nee hie est sermo de confessione sacrameutali."
* It is implied in 1 Kings xviii. 42, seq., that Elijah prayed for rain. It was the Jewish
tradition that he also prayed for the drought, but (Scripture does not say so. He announced
it (1 Kings xvii. 1).

CONVERTING WANDERERS. 349
given many an exhortation to patience, and dehortation from iniquity.
But this last word is a word to those who were most faithful, and
is meant to stimulate them to the best and most blessed of all duties —
the endeavour to help and save the souls of others. No reward could
equal that of success in such a task.1 To hide as with the gracious
veil of penitence and forgiveness the many sins of a sinner was a
Christlike service, and he who was enabled to render it would share in
the joy of Christ. And may not the thought be at least involved
that in covering the sins of another he would also be helping to cover
his own — that he who waters others shall be watered also himself?2
And there, as with a seal affixed to a testament,3 he ends. He
would leave that thought last in their minds, and would suffer neither
greetings nor messages to weaken the force of the injunction, or the
supremacy of the blessing by which he would encourage them to its
fulfilment. " Insigni doctrinA, velut colophone epistolam absolvit."*

CHAPTER XXIII.
ST. JAMES AND ST. PAUL ON FAITH AND WORKS.
" Thy works and alms and all thy good endeavour
Staid not behind, nor in the grave were trod ;
But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod,
Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever." — Milton.
Our sketch of the Epistle of St. James cannot conclude without a few
words on the famous passage in which, it has been supposed, the Bishop
of Jerusalem deliberately contravenes and argues against the most
characteristic formula of the Apostle of the Gentiles.5
1 Ps. xxxii. 1, 2; lxxxv. 2; Neh. iv. 5; Prov. x. 12; IPet. iv. 8. "He commends
the correspondence of brothers from its result, that we may more eagerly devote our
selves to it " (Calvin). A faint analogy occurs in Yoma, f. 87, a, "Whoever leads many
to righteousness, sin is not committed by his hand."
2 " "Whosoever destroyeth one soul of Israel, Scripture counts it to him as though he
had destroyed the whole world ; and whoso preserveth one soul of Israel, Scripture
counts it as though he had preserved the whole world " (Sanhedrin, f. 37, a). E. Meyer
said — " Great is repentance, because for the sake of one that truly repenteth, the whole
world is pardoned (Hos. xiv. 4) " (Yoma, f. 86, 6). How much wiser and more controlled
is the language of St. James !
3 Herder. 4 Zuinglius.
5 I have consulted the treatment of this subject by Luther, Bengel, Jer. Taylor (Ser
mon iii. "Fides formata"), Barrow (Sermon on Justifying Faith), De Wette (whose note
is quoted in Alford, ad, toe), Hare (Vindication of Luther), Bishop Lightfoot, Plumptre,
Dean Bagot, Wordsworth, Ewald, Lange, Pfleiderer, Baur, AViesinger, Huther, Schaff,
Keuss, Immer (N. Test. Theol.), Meander, and other writers.

350 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
Let us first place side by side the passages which are in most direct
apparent contradiction :

" ... if Abraham were justified by
works, he hath whereof to glory, but not
before God" (Rom. iv. 2).
" Therefore being justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ " (Rom. v. 1).
" By grace are ye saved thro' faith
. . . not of works, lest any man should
boast " (Eph. ii. 8, 9).
" Therefore we conclude that a man is
justified by faith -without the deeds of the
law " (Rom. iii. 28).

" Was not Abraham our father justified
by works when he had offered Isaac his
son upon the altar ?" (Jas. ii. 21).
" What doth it profit, my brethren,
though a man say he hath faith, and
have not works ? Can the faith save him ?'
(Jas. ii. 14).
"... Faith, if it hath not works, is
dead, being alone " (Jas. ii. 17).
" Ye see, then, how that by works a
man is justified, and not by faith only "
(Jas. ii. 24).

It is hardly strange that the opposite character of these statements
should have, attracted deep attention, and of late years there have been
two distinct views respecting them.
(1.) One is that the passages involve a real and even intentional
contradiction.1 Baur, while holding that St. James meant to oppose the
formulae of St. Paul, or of his School, yet speaks with moderation. He
believes that St. James's arguments were not so much meant to be
polemical as corrective of misapprehensions, and therefore that they
were dictated by the true spirit of catholic unity. Others, however,
and notably the advanced members of the Tubingen School, regard the
Epistle as a bitter manifesto of Judaising Christians against the
Paulinists.2 The research and insight of Baur led him to a real dis
covery when he pointed out the importance of the contest between the
Judaisers and the Paulinists. Those who pushed his views to an ex
treme were prepared to sacrifice the entire historical credibility of the
Acts of the Apostles in order f o make out that St. James and St. Paul,
or at least their immediate followers, hated each other with irreconcil
able opposition. They thought, in fact, that in the Clementine
Homilies, with their strong animus against St. Paul, they had discovered
the true key to the early history of the Church. They attributed to the
Apostles themselves heretical slanders which they would have rejected
with astonished indignation. They think that three of the Apostles —
St. James, St. John, and St. Jude — were Judaists, who not only took
ah impassioned part in the controversies which were excited by the
actions of St. Paul, but have even recorded their abhorrence of his
views upon the Sacred page. In their opinion, it is St. Paul at whom
St. James is aiming one of the bitterest terms of Hebrew condemnation
when he exclaims, " But art thou willing to recognise, 0 empty person?
that faith without works is dead 1 " The Epistle of St. Jude becomes,
1 Luther, Cyril Lucar, Strobel, Kern, Baur, Schwegler, Eenan.
2 The notion that Jas. iii. 13 — 18, and the praise of the wisdom whioh is " earthly,
unspiritual, demonish," is a reflection on 1 Cor. ii. 14, 15 (Hilgenfeld, Einleit. 536) is very
baseless. 8 Npn, Raca.

JUDAISTS AND PAULINISTS. 351
in their view, a specimen of the " hatred-breathing Erjistles " which
were despatched to the Jewish Churches by the heads of the Mother
Church in Jerusalem, to teach Christians not only to repudiate, but to
denounce the special " Gospel " of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Accord
ing to their interpretation, St. John, the Apostle of Love, hurled forth
against his great fellow-Apostle yet fiercer execration, and, in " cries of
passionate hatred," described him as a False Apostle, a Balaam, a
Jezebel, the founder of the Nicolaitans, and a teacher of crime and
heresy. They, therefore, regard the addresses of the Apocalypse to the
Seven Churches as manifestoes directed by a Judaist against the very
Apostle by whose heroic labours those Churches had been founded.1
The falsehood of this hypothesis has long been demonstrated. It only
furnishes an illustration of the ease with which a theory, resting on a
narrow basis of fact, may be pushed into complete extravagance. That
St. Paul and St. James approached the great truths of Christianity
from different points of view ; that they did not adopt the same
phrases in describing tltem ; that they differed about various questions
of theory and practice ; even that they stood at the head of parties
whose mutual bitterness they would have been the first to deplore — is
clear from the Acts of the Apostles, and still more clear from scattered
notices in the Epistles of St. Paul. But it is quite common for the
adherents of great thinkers to exaggerate their differences, and fail to
catch their spirit. Whatever may have been the tone of the Jerusalem
Pharisees towards Gentile Christians who paid no regard to the cere
monial Law, we have the evidence of St. Paul himself,2 as well as of
public records of the Church, that between him and the other Apostles
there reigned a spirit of mutual respect and mutual concession. The
view, therefore, that St. James was trying, in the approved modern
fashion, to "write down" St. Paul, may be finally dismissed.
(2.) The other view, which has recently been maintained by Bishop
Lightfoot,8 is that St. James is not thinking of St. Paul in any way ;
that his expressions have no reference to him whatever ; and that he is
only occupied with controversies which moved in an entirely different
world of ideas. Now it is, I think, sufficiently proved that this view
is possible. Evidence has been adduced to show that the question of
faith and works was one which had been long and eagerly debated in
the Jewish Schools, and that the names of Abraham, and even of
Rahab,4 as forming two marked contrasts, had constantly been intro
duced into these discussions. It is not, therefore, true to say that St.
James must be thinking of St. Paul. The " Solifidianism " of the Jews
consisted in an exclusive trust in their Monotheism, their descent from
i Renan, St. Paul, p. 367.
2 Gal ii. 9 ; Acts xv. 13-21 ; xxi. 17—25.
3 Galatians, pp. 152 — 162. This is the view of Schneckenburger, Theile, Neander,
Schaff, Theirsch, Hofmann, Huther, Lange, Plumptre.
4 That Rahab was prominent in Jewish thought we see from Matt. i. 5.

352 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
Abraham, their circumcision, and their possession of the Law.1 Justin
Martyr alludes to Jews who, " although they were sinners, yet deceived
themselves by saying that, if they knew God, He would not impute
sin to them."2 If, then, the early date of the Epistle could be otherwise
demonstrated, the question as to any designed opposition between the
two Apostles would fall to the ground, and we should only have to show.
whether it is possible to reconcile independent statements which at first
appear to be mutually exclusive. It is so important to establish this
fact; — so important to prove that whatever be the date of the Epistle,
St. James may be refuting the nation of a justification by faith which
is not that described by St. Paul, but a blind Judaic trust in privi
leges and observances — that it will be worth while to show from the
Talmud how prevalent these views were in the Jewish world.
a. Thus, as regards Monotheism, we find that in repeating the
Shema, or daily prayer, " Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God is one
God " (Deut. vi. 4) ; " whosoever prolongs the utterance of the word
One (echad) shall have his days and years prolonged to him " (Bera-
choth, f. 13, b).
When Akhiva was martyred by having his flesh torn from him, he
died uttering this word " One ; " and then came a Bath Kol, which
said, " Blessed art thou, Rabbi Akhiva, for thy soul and the word
One left thy body together" (id. f. 61, b).
/8. Again, as regards circumcision :
" Though Abraham kept all the commandments, including the whole
ceremonial law " (Kiddushin, f. 82, a), " still he was not perfect till he
was circumcised " (Nedarim, f. 31, b).
" So' great is circumcision, that thirteen covenants were made con
cerning it" (Nedarim, f. 31, b).
Many Jews relied less on their observances than on their possession
of Special privileges.
y. As regards their national position, they said that God had given
to Israel three precious gifts — the Law, the land of Israel, and the
world to come ;s that all Israelites were princes,1 all holy,5 all philoso
phers, " full of meritorious works as a pomegranate of pips," 6 and that
it was as impossible for the world to be without them as to be without
air.7 They even ventured to say that " All Israelites have a portion in
the world to come, as it is written, And thy people are all righteous,
they shall inherit the land" (Is. Ix. 21). (Sanhedrin, f. 90, a).
" The world was created only for Israel : none are called the children
of God but Israel : none are beloved before God but Israel " (Gerim, 1).
8. In fact, on the testimony of the Talmud itself, externalism had
triumphed in the heart of the Jewish Church. The High Priests, though
they were, according to the best Jewish testimony, shameful examples
1 Matt. iii. 9 ; John viii. 33 ; Rom. ii. 17 — 20 ; and compare Jer. vii. 4.
2 Just. Mart. Dial. $ 141. a Berachoth, f. 5, a. ¦» Shabbath , f. 57, a,
5 Shabbath, f. 86, a. 6 The Machsor for Pentecost. 7 Taanith, f . 3, b.

MECHANICAL HOLINESS. 353
of greed, simony, luxury, gluttony, pride, and violence, were yet quite
content with themselves if they were rigorists in the minutise of Levitism
instead of examples of ideal righteousness. In the tract Sota (47, b)
there is a bitter complaint that moral worth was disregarded, and no
regard paid to anything but external service. In another tract (Yoma
23, a) we are told that outward observance was more highly esteemed
than inward purity, and that murder itself was considered venial in
comparison with a ceremonial defilement of the Temple.1 St. James was
daily familiar with this spectacle of men who, living in defiance of every
moral law, yet thought to win salvation by the easy mechanism of cere
monial scrupulosity. Against such mechanical conceptions of holiness
his Epistle would have told with great power.
(3.) But believing as I do, on other grounds, that the Epistle was
written shortly before St. James's death, it becomes difficult to suppose
that St. James's argument in favour of "justification by works" bears
no relation whatever to the great argumentative Epistles in which St.
Paul had established the truth of Justification by Faith. And while I
freely concede that the question of faith and works was frequently dis
cussed in the Jewish Schools, and with special reference to the life of
Abraham, there is not, I think, sufficient evidence that the doctrine had
ever been so distinctly formulated, and certainly it had never been so
fully and powerfully discussed, as it was in the Epistles to the Romans
and Galatians.2 If we are right in supposing that St. James wrote his
Epistle about the year 61 or 62, then some years had elapsed since St.
Paul had sent forth these great Epistles. Considering that emissaries,
who came from Jerusalem — who came ostensibly from James — who
boasted, though not always truly, of his sanction and authority — who
carried with them letters which, if not written by him, were written by
leading personages in the Church of which he was the Bishop — had
penetrated into many of the communities founded by St. Paul, and had
half-undone his work by reducing his converts to the legal bondage from
which he had set them free — it becomes almost inconceivable that St.
James, even if he had not seen copies of one or other of those Epistles,
should not at least have been familiar with the general drift of views
which had become notorious wherever the name of Christ was preached.
Now, the teaching of St. Paul was intensely original. It was not easy
for any one to grasp its full meaning ; and it was quite impossible for
any hostile and prejudiced person to understand it at all. To many,
educated in the absorbing prejudices of Judaism, his opinions about the
Law would have appeared dubious. Their indignation would have been
1 For the various Talmudic quotations see Gratz, iii. 321, 322, and the works of Schott
gen, Meuschen, Eisenmenger, Hershon, Hamburger, etc. No less than fourteen of the
Treatises of the Talmud, both Mishna and Gemara, have now been translated into French
by Moise Schwab.
2 ' ' Und sicher kann man nicht leugnen dass die vom Apostel Paulus aufgestellbe Lehre
fiber dem Glauben zu dieser Abhandlung die nachste Veranlassung gab " (Ewald, Die
Sendachreiben, ii. p. 198).
X

354 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
kindled by the fiery and almost contemptuous boldness of some of the
expressions which he wrote and published, and which he must therefore
have frequently let fall in the heat of controversy. In the Church of
Jerusalem it is hardly likely that the dialectics of St. Paul were lovingly
or patiently studied. St. James himself is our witness to the fact that
there, and throughout the Ghettos of the world, the views of the great
missionary were systematically misrepresented. To the ordinary Jewish
Christian he was known as one who constantly taught " apostasy from,
Moses," as one who "forbad " not only Gentiles, but " all Jews," to cir
cumcise their children, and " to walk according to the customs." 1 As
regards Jews, the charge was false. St. Paul never interfered with
them ; and since he himself kept the general provisions of the Law as a
national duty — greatly as, to him, they must have lost their significance
— we have every reason to suppose that he would have advised any Jew
who consulted him to do the same. But any lie, however often refuted,
is good enough for party-spirit ; and no amount of explanation, however
simple and sincere, will prevent the grossest misrepresentations of
opinion from being used for their own purposes by religious partisans.
Further than this, it is not only possible, but probable, that some of St.
Paul's followers did misinterpret his characteristic expressions, did make
a bad and even dangerous use of them. We might easily imagine that
this would be the case, because every day shows us how easy it is, first
to turn any expression into a watehcry, then to empty it of all signifi
cance, and finally to use it in a sense entirely alien from that in which
it was originally used. Here again, we are not left to conjecture. We
have the express testimony of the second Epistle of St. Peter that there
were those who wrested the difficult parts of St. Paul's Epistles, as they
did also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own perdition. Now, if it be
merely snatched up as a formula — without an earnest desire to under
stand it, without the thought which was necessary to see it in its proper
perspective — there is no expression more liable to be perverted than St.
Paul's characteristic formula of " Justification by Faith." In his sense
of the words it is one of the deepest and most essential truths of
Christianity ; but in his sense only. And he had used both words,
"Justification" and "Faith" in meanings which made them parts of
one great system of thoughts. It is owing to this that his words have
been constantly misunderstood, and are to this day deplorably misinter
preted. To this day there are some who use expressions so objectionable
as "works are deadly." There were even in the days of the Apostles,
as there have been since, Nicolaitans and other Antinomians, who, on
the claim of possessing faith, have set themselves in superiority to the
moral law, and asserted a licence to commit all ungodliness. Now, if St.
James had come across such men, or had been told of their existence, or
had even met with Jewish Christians who, without understanding St.
1 Aots xxi. 21.

ST. JAMES AND ST. PAUL. 355
Paul's teaching, were perplexed by the ignorant repetition of the formula
which was selected to represent it, would there, have been anything
derogatory to the character of St. James, or unworthy of his position,
in the endeavour to refute the perversions to which this formula was
liable 1 Is it not a high service to expose the empty use of any expres
sion which has been degraded to the purposes of cant and faction 1
Would not St. Paul have rejoiced that such a task should have been
performed 1 Would he not have performed it himself, if circumstances
had led him to see that it was needful 1 It is, indeed, improbable that
he would in that case have used all the expressions which St. James has
used ; but his pastoral Epistles are sufficient to prove that he would
have cordially concurred with him in his general opinion. I believe,
then, with many of the Fathers, that St. James wrote this passage with
the express intention of correcting false inferences from the true teaching
of St. Paul;1 and that, though' there is no contradiction between them,
there is a certain antithesis — a traceable difference in the types of dogma
which they respectively adopted.2
If the arguments of St. James had been intended for a refutation of
St. Paul himself, they would have been singularly ineffectual. They do
not fathom the depths of his meaning ; they deal with uses of his
words which are more superficial and less specifically Christian. A
polemical argument must, as such, be a failure if every word which the
writer says could be adopted by the person against whom he is writing.
It is only as the correction of onesided and erroneous inferences from St.
Paul's . teaching, drawn by honest ignorance or circulated by hostile
malice, that the argument of St. James has a value, which the Church of
all ages has rejoiced to recognise.
But setting aside the question of conscious opposition between the
views of the two Apostles, as one which lies outside the range of proof,
we have to ask the far more important question, How is their language
reconcilable with the truth of God? How can it be said with equal
confidence " Ye are saved through faith .... not of works " (Eph. ii. 8, 9),
and " Ye see . . . that by works a man is justified, and not by faith
only " (James ii. 24) 1
And here I must entirely differ from Luther in the view that the
two statements, in the senses intended by their authors, are irrecon
cilable.3 The reconciliation is easy when we see that St. James is
1 This is the view adopted by Bp. Bull in his Harmonia Apostolica.
2 So Schmid, Wiesinger, etc.
3 Luther says : " Plures sudarunt in Epistola Jacobi ut cum Paulo concordarent . . .
sed minus feliciter, sunt enim contraria, ' fides justificat ' •' fides non justiflcat ' — qui haec
rite conjungere potest, huic vitam meam imponam, et fatuum me nomanare permittam "
(Cottoq. ii. 202). Strobel, in a review of Wiesinger, says, " No matter in what sense we
take the Epistle of St. James, it is always in conflict with the remaining parts of Holy
Writ."

356 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
using all three words — Faith, Works, Justification — in a different sense
to different persons, with different illustrations, under different circum
stances ; and when we find, further, that St. James, in other passages,
insists no less than St. Paul on the importance of faith ; and St. Paul,
no less than St. James, on the necessity of works.
L For by Faith St. Paul never means dead faith (fides informis) at
all. He means (1), in the lowest sense of the word, general trust in
God (assensus, fiducia) j1 then (2) self-surrender to God's will;2 in its
highest and most Pauline sense — the sense in which he uses it when he
speaks of "Justification by Faith" — it is self-surrender which has
deepened into sanctification ; it is a living power of good in every phase
of life ; it is unio mystica, a mystical incorporation with Christ in unity
of love and life.3 But this application of the word was peculiar to St.
Paul, and St. James does not adopt it. He meant by faith in this
passage a mere theoretical belief — belief which may exist without any
germinant life — belief which may stop short at a verbal profession of
Jewish orthodoxy — belief which does not even go so far as that of
demons — belief which, taken alone, is so inappreciable in value that he
compares it to a charity which speaks words of idle comfort and does
not give.4
ii Again, by Works the two writers meant very different things.
St. Paul was thinking mainly of those works which stood high in the
estimation of his Jewish opponents; he meant the works and obser
vances of the Levitical and ceremonial Law — new moons, sabbaths,
sacrifices, ablutions, meats, drinks, phylacteries, and so forth ; — or, at the
very highest, works of ordinary duty, " deeds of the Law," untouched
by emotion, not springing from love to God. He did not mean, as St.
James did, works of love and goodness done in obedience to the royal
law,5 those works which spring from a true and lively faith, which must
spring from it, which it is as impossible to sever from it as to sever from
fire its light and heat.6
iii. And, finally, the , sense of the word Justification in St. Paul
moves in a higher plane than that in which it is used by St. James. St.
Paul uses the word in a special, a technical, a theological sense, to
express the righteousness of God, which, by a judgment of acquittal,
pronounced once for all in the expiatory death of Christ, he imputes to
guilty man. St. James uses the word in the much simpler sense of our
being declared and shown to be righteous — not indeed, as many have
i Rom. iv. 18 ; as in Heb. xii. 1. 2 Rom. x. 9 ; Phil. iii. 7.
8 Rom. xii. 5 ; Phil. i. 21 ; 1 Cor. vi. 17. See Life and Work of St. Paul, ii. 188—193 ;
Pfleiderer, Paul innmus, $ 5 ; Baur, Paul. ii. 149 ; Neue Test. Theol. i. 176.
4 In other passages " faith " connotes somewhat more than this, namely, trust in God
(i. 6 ; v. 15).
s Jas. i. 25 ; ii. 12.
6 If St. Paul at'taches to ' ' works " a lower meaning than St. James, St. James attaches
to "faith " a lower meaning than St. Paul ; but there can be no confusion about the re-
Bults, because eaoh writer uses the words in senses which he makes perfectly clear.

THE PAITH OF ABRAHAM. 357
said, before men only1 — but righteous before God, as those whose life is
in accordance with their belief.2 St. Paul speaks of the justification
which begins for the sinner by the trustful acceptance of his reconcilia
tion to God ia Christ, and which attains its perfect stage when the
believer is indeed " in Christ " — when Christ has become to him a new
nature and a quickening spirit. St. James speaks of the justification of
the believer by his producing such works as are the sole possible demon
stration of the vitality of his indwelling faith.3
Briefly, then, it may be said that the works which St. Paul thinks of
are the works of the Law, those of St. James the works of godliness ;
that St. Paul speaks of deep and mystic faith, St. James of theoretic
belief ; that St. Paul has in view the initial justification of a sinner, St.
James the complete justification of a believer.4
iv. In accordance with this view, although both Apostles refer, for
illustration of their views, to the life of the Patriarch who lived so
many centuries before the delivery of the Law, they do not refer to the
same events in his life. St. Paul illustrates his position by Abraham's
belief in God's promise that he should have a son, when against hope he
believed in hope.5 St. James, taking the life and the faith of Abraham,
so to speak, " much lower down the stream," shows how Abraham, many
years afterwards, was justified as a believer, justified by works, when
he gave the crowning proof of his obedience by the willingness to slay
even his only son and the heir of the promise.6 It is obviously as true
to say that Abraham in that act was (in the ordinary meaning of the
1 This common explanation (Calvin, Grotius, Baumgarten, etc.) is quite untenable.
There is not a word in St. James to indicate that he is only thinking of justification be
fore men ; and the notion that he is, is refuted by ver. 14.
2 As our Lord also said, " By thy words thou shalt be justified" (Matt. xii. 37) ; and
St. Paul himself, in Rom. ii. 13, " the doers of the law shall he justified.1' Had this sen
tence occurred in St. James, how eagerly would it have been seized upon as a flat contra
diction of Rom. iii. 20, " Therefore, from the works of the law shall no flesh be justified
before Him." But if the same author can thus in the same Epistle use the same word in
different senses, what difficulty can there be in supposing that this may be done by dif
ferent writers, without any hostile intention ?
3 "To justify" (SuceuoSy p-ya) has in the Bible two meanings : (1) "To pronounce the
innocent righteous in accordance with his innocence " (Ex. xxiii. 7 ; Prov. xvii. 15 ; Is. v.
23; Matt. xii. 37, etc.) ; (2) to make righteous, or lead to righteousness (Dan. xii. 31 ;
Is. liii. 11 ; and Rom. passim) . In St. James true faith is imputed as righteousness, but
justification follows works as the proof of true faith (Lange).
4 "Works," says Luther, "do not make us righteous, but cause us to be declared
righteous " (Luke xvii. 9, 10).
5 Rom. iv. 3, 9, 22 ; Gen. xv. 6.
6 Jas. ii. 23 ; Gen. xxii. 12. See Huther ad loo. A remarkable Talmudic story tells us
that Satan slandered Abraham before God, saying that God had given him a son when he
was a hundred years old, and he had not even spared a dove for sacrifice. God answers
that Abraham would not spare even his son if required. So God said, " Take now thy
son " (as if a king should say to his bravest warrior, Fight now this hardest battle of all),
" for fear it should be said that thy former trials were easy. " " I have two sons,-" an
swered Abraham. "Take thine only son." "Each," he answered, "is the only son of
his mother." "Take him whom thou lovest." "I love them both." Then God said,
" Take Isaac.'' Abraham obeyed, and on the way Satan met him, and tried to make him
murmur. Abraham answered, "I will walk in mine integrity " (Sanhedrin, f. 89, 6).

358 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
words) justified by faith, as that he was justified by works. He was
justified by faith, because nothing but his faith could have led him to
such perfect endurance in the hour of trial; he was justified by works;
because, without his works, there could have been no% proof that his
faith existed. Faith and works, in this sense, are, in fact, inseparably in
tertwined. There cannot be such works without faith ; there cannot be
such faith without works. It is really the same thing to say that a man
is (in one or other of the senses of the word) justified by such a faith as
must from its very nature issue in good works, or by such works as can
only issue from a true and lively faith. Nor is it surprising (as we
have seen) that the question should be illustrated by the example of
Abraham, whose life and faith were constantly discussed in their
minutest particulars by the Jewish Rabbis, and who was asserted to
have not only been saved by faith, but to have observed even the oral
commandments centuries before they were delivered.1 If St. James
also takes the instance of Rahab, this does not involve a necessary
reference tp the remark in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that she, too,
was saved by faith. For the example of Rahab was also greatly dis
cussed in the Jewish schools, and for her faith and works it was said
that no less than eight prophets, who were also priests, had sprung
from her, and that Huldah, the prophetess, was one of her descen
dants.2 v. And the superficial contradiction between the Apostles vanishes
to nothing when we bear in mind that St. Paul is dealing with the vain
confidence of legalism, St. James with the vain confidence of orthodoxy.
St. Paul was writing to Gentile Churches to prevent them from being
seduced into trusting for salvation to the adoption of external badges
and ceremonials, or to good deeds done in a spirit of servile fear. St.
James is arguing either with Jewish bigots who thought that a profession
of Monotheism and a participation in Jewish privileges 3 would save
them ; or with mistaken Paulinists who had snatched up a formula
which they did not understand, and who thought that justification could
be severed from sanctification — that a saving faith was possible without
the holiness of an accordant life. St. Paul is contrasting faith in Christ
with works of the Law ; St. James is contrasting a dead unreal faith
with a faith which evidences its reality by holy works. St. Paul's
arguments were meant to overthrow the vain confidence of the Pharisee4 ;
St. James's tell equally against the Jew who pillowed his hopes on fruit
less orthodoxy, and the Antinomian who identified saving faith with
barren profession.
For, lastly, there is no cliiTiculty in showing that both as regards
faith and works the Apostles, however much their expressions may
differ, were substantially at one.
i Yoma, f. 28, b ; Kiddushin, f. 82, a. * Meggillah, f. 14, o.
8 Matt. iii. 9. * Comp. Acts xiii. 39.

ST. JAMES ON FAITH. 359
(i ) Thus as regards Faith, St. James says in this very chapter : —
" And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed
God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness " ! (ii. 23).
And St. PquI quotes the same verse in the same words (Rom. iv. 3),
with the introduction "What saith the Scripture?"
So little does St. James exclude faith, that he speaks of "the testing
of faith " as working out that " endurance " which is the appointed path
of perfectionment (i. 3) ; he urges the duty of prayer offered in un
wavering faith as the means of obtaining Divine wisdom (i. 6) ; he
describes Christianity as being the " holding the faith of our Lord Jesus
Christ the Lord of the Glory " (ii. 1) ; he speaks of the poor as being
heirs of the Kingdom because they are rich in faith (ii. 5) ; he implies
the absolute necessity of faith co-existing with works — working with
them, receiving its perfection from them (ii. 22, 26), and does not
imagine the possibility of such works as he contemplates except as the
visible proofs of an invisible faith.
(ii.) And exactly as St. James neither ignores nor underestimates
faith, so neither does St. Paul ignore nor underestimate the value and
necessity of good Works. He speaks of God as "being able to make
all joy abound in us, that having in all things always all sufficiency
(aiirapKaav) we may abound unto every good work " (2 Cor. ix. 8). He
speaks of good works as the appointed path in which we are predestined
to walk (Eph. ii. 10). He describes the walking '¦' in every good work,
bearing fruit," as being the worthy walk, and the walk which pleases
God (Col. i. }0). He prays that the Lord Jesus may stablish the hearts
of His converts in every good word and work (2 Thess. ii. 17). He
devotes a practical section in every Epistle to the inculcation of Chris
tian duties and virtues (Rom. xii. — xvi. ; 1 Cor. xvi. ; 2 Cor. ix. ; Gal.
v. 6 ; Eph. v., vi. ; Phil. iv. ; Col. iii., iv., dzc). He devotes the almost
exclusive exhortations of his very latest Epistles to impress on all
classes of his converts the blessedness of faithful working (1 Tim.'ii. 10,
v. 10, vi. 18 ; 2 Tim. iii. 17; Tit. ii. 7—14, iii. 8). Nay, more, in the
very Epistle of which the central idea is Justification by Faith, he does
not scruple to use the word justification in the less specific sense of St.
James, and to write that " tlie doers of the Law shall be justified"2 — a
sentence which St. James might have, adopted as his text. Both
Apostles would have freely conceded that (in a certain sense) faith
without works is mere orthodoxy, and works without faith mere legal
righteousness. Surely after these proofs that for all practical purposes the Apostle
ofthe Gentiles and' the Bishop of the Circumcised are fundamentally at
1 "Magnum opus sed ex Fide" (Aug. on Ps. xxxi.). Ewald briefly says, "Faith is
the first and most necessary thing ; this is here also taken for granted throughout ; but
it must prove its existence by corresponding works, otherwise man cannot obtain Divine
justification and final redemption " (Die Sendschreiben, ii. 199).
2 Rom. ii. 13.

360 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
one — that they agree in thought, though they differ in expression, or at
least that their minor differences are merged in a higher unity — it is
unjustifiable to speak as though, on this subject at any rate, there was
any bitter controversy between them. They approached the truths of
Christianity from different sides ; they looked at them under different
aspects ; they lived amid different surroundings ; they were arguing against
different errors ; they used different phraseology. The antithesis between
them only lies in regions of literary expression ; it in no way affects the
duty or the theory of the Christian life. There is not a word which St.
' Paul wrote on those topics which would not have been accepted after a
little explanation by St. James, though he might have preferred to alter
some of the expressions which St. Paul employed. There is not a word
which St. James wrote on them which — when explained in St. James's
sensS — St. Paul would not have endorsed. It is true, as St. Paul wrote,
that we are "justified by faith ; " it is true, as St. James wrote, that "we
cannot be justified without works." Amid the seeming verbal contra
dictions there is a real agreement. Both Apostles held identical views
respecting the will of God, the regeneration of man, and the destiny of
the redeemed.1 The ideal which each accepted was so nearly the same,
that St. James's brief sketch of the Wisdom from above might be hung
as a beautiful companion picture to St. Paul's glorious description of
Heavenly charity. Both would have agreed, heart and soul, in the
simple and awful moral truth of such passages as these : —
" So speak and so do as they who shall be judged by the law of
liberty." (Jas. ii. 12.)
" Faith apart from works is dead, by itself." (Jas. ii 17, 26.)
" The work of each shall become manifest, for the day shall reveal
it." (1 Cor. iii. 13.)
" God shall give to each according to his works." (Rom. ii. 6 — 10.)
"We must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ
that each may obtain the things done by the instrumentality of the body,
with reference to the things he did, whether good, or evil." (2 Cor. v. 10.)
Both, again, would have accepted heart and soul such language as
that of St. John, in which these superficial discrepancies are finally
reconciled — " If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in
darkness, we lie, and do not the truth" (1 John i. 6) ; — or as that of St.
Paul himself in the very Epistle in which he first worked out the sketch
of his great scheme, and in the three different conclusions to his own
favourite and thrice-repeated formula : —
" For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor
uncircumcision," —
But, " Faith working effectually by means of love." (Gal. v. 6.)
But, "A new creature." (Gal. vi. 15.)
But, " An observance of the commandments of God." (1 Cor. vii. 19.)
1 See supra, pp. 328, 333, the note on Jas. i. 18.

FAITH AND WORKS. 361
Had St. Paul written, as Luther wrote for him, that man is justified
" by Faith only" — had he been in this sense a Solifidian — then there
would have been a more apparent contradiction between him and St.
James. But what St. Paul said was, " Therefore we reckon that a man
is justified by faith, apart from the works of the Law " (Rom. iii. 28),
and it was Luther who ventured to interpolate the word " alone "• — the
" word alone," as Erasmus calls it — " stoned with so many shoutings " —
(" Vox sola tot clamoribus lapidata "). In St. James's sense of faith this
would have indeed been open to the contradiction (ii. 24) " Not by faith
alone " (oI>k ix irlo-Teas fj.6vov). But even had St. Paul used the word
" alone " he would have said what is true in his sense of the words, and
in the sense in which they are adopted in the Articles of our Church.
His words only become untrue when they are transferred into the
different senses in which they are used by his brother Apostle.1
In this, as in so many other cases, we may thank God that the truth
has been revealed to us under many lights ; and that, by a diversity of
gifts, the Spirit ministered to each Apostle severally as He would,
inspiring the one to deepen our spiritual life by the solemn truth that
Works cannot justify apart from Faith ; and the other to stimulate our
efforts after a holy life by the no less solemn truth that Faith cannot
justify us unless it be the living faith which is shown by Works. There
is, in the diversity, a deeper unity. The Church, thank God, is
" Circumamicta varietatibus " — clothed in raiment of many hues. St.
Paul had dwelt prominently on Faith ; St. Peter dwells much on Hope ;
St. John insists most of all on Love. But the Christian life is the
synthesis of these Divine graces, and the Works of which St. James so
vehemently impresses the necessity, are works which are the combined
result of operative faith, of constraining love, and of purifying hope.2
J See Article IX., and on it Bishop Forbes, Bishop Harold Browne, etc.
s See an excellent tract on St. Paul and St. James by Dean Bagot.

THE EAKLIEE LIFE AND WOEES OF ST. JOHN.

CHAPTER XXIV.
ST. JOHN.
" For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear — believe the aged friend —
Is just our chance of the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is." —
Bkowning, A Death in the Desert.
"And recognising the grace given to me, James, and Kephas, and
John, who are thought to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right
hand of fellowship, that we to the Gentiles, but they to the circum
cision "1 —
So wrote St. Paul to the Galatians, in one of the passages of the
New Testament, which — apart from the Gospels — has a deeper personal
interest, and which throws more light on the condition of the Church
in the clays of the Apostles than any other.2 It is an inestimable
privilege to the Church that we possess writings of each of these three
Pillar-Apostles — as well as of that untimely-born Apostle on whose
daring originality they were inclined to look with alarm, until he had
fully set forth to them that view of the Gospel which was emphatically
"his Gospel,"3 and which he had learnt "neither from men nor by the
instrumentality of man."4 We are thus enabled to see the Gospel
in the fourfold aspect in which it appeared to four men, — each specially
enlightened by the Spirit of God, but each limited by individual
conditions, because each received the treasure in earthen vessels. The
minds, of men inevitably differ. The individuality of each man — his
subjectivity — his capacity to receive truth — his power of expressing it
— all differ. Hence the truths which he utters, since they are uttered
in human language, must be more or less differentiated by human
peculiarities, and hence arises a gracious and fruitful variety, not
a perplexing contradiction. Had the Apostles been bad men, had there
been in their hearts the least tinge of spiritual or moral falsity, the
pure stream of truth would have been corrupted by evil admixtures ;
but since they were sincere and noble men, the individuality with
1 Gal. ii. 9. 2 Gal. i. 11— ii. 21.
* "My Gospel," 1 Cor. xi. 23. to ebayy{\iov 8 Kijpvo-o-w (Gal. ii. 2).
* Gal. i. 1, ouk an-' avOptimttiv oiiSe SV av9pii)Trov, 1 Oor. xi. 23 ; xv. 3.

THE PILLAR-APOSTLES. 363
which the style and method of each is stamped, so far from being a loss
to us, is a peculiar gain. No one man, unless his powers had been
dilated almost to infinitude, would have been able to set forth to
myriads of different souls the perfection of many-sided truths. It was
a blessed ordinance of God which enables us to hear the words of
revelation spoken by so many noble voices in so many differing tones.
We see from St. Paul's allusion, that twenty years after the
Resurrection1 the three Pillar-Apostles, at the date of his conference
with them, were at Jerusalem, and were still regarded as the chief
representatives of Jewish Christianity. But their Judaic sympathies
were felt in very different degrees. St. James represents Christianity
on its most Judaic side — spiritualising its morals, but assuming rather
than expounding its most specific truths. He wrote exactly as we
should have expected a man to write who was a Nazarite, a late
convert, a Bishop of the Church at Jerusalem, a daily frequenter of the
Temple, a man in the highest repute among the Jews themselves, a
man who, for more than a quarter of a century, lived in the focus
of the most powerful Judaic influences. He was the acknowledged
leader of those converts who *were least willing to break loose from the
Levitic law and the tradition of the fathers. St. Peter, on the other
hand, became less and less a representative of the narrower phase
of Judaic Christianity — more and more, as life advanced, the Apostle
of Catholicity. The vein of timidity which, in his natural tempera
ment, was so strangely mixed with courage — the plasticity which gave
to his conduct a Judaic colouring so long as he was surrounded by
the elders at Jerusalem, or by emissaries who came from James to
Antioch — caused him to be long regarded by the converted Jews
(undoubtedly against his will) as a party leader. Yet he was among
the earliest to see the universality of the Gospel message, and he flung
himself with ardour into the support of St. Paul's effort to emancipate
the Gentiles from Levitic observances. And when he began his
missionary journeys, his thoughts widened more and. more until, as we
find from his Epistle, he was enabled to accept unreservedly the
teachings of St. Paul, while he divests them of their antithetical
character, and avoids their more controversial formulae. When we
combine the teaching of St. James and St. Paul, we find those
contrasted yet complementary truths which were necessary to the full
apprehension of the Catholic Faith in its manifold applicability to
human needs. St. Peter occupies an intermediate and conciliatory
position between these two extremes — more progressive than St. James,
less daringly original and independent than St. Paul. But to utter
the final word of Christian revelation — to drop, as it were, the great
keystone, which was still needed to complete and compact the wide
arch of Truth — was reserved as the special glory of the Beloved
i About a.d. 52.

364 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Disciple. And this was the crowning work of that old age which, as a
peculiar blessing to the Church of Christ, was probably prolonged to
witness the dawn of the second century of the Christian Church.1
But in St. John too we see that growth of spiritual enlightenment
which made his life an unbroken education. In his latest writings
we find a deeper insight into the truth than it would have been
possible for him to attain before God had " shown him all things in the
slow history of their ripening." The " Son of Thunder " of the
Synoptic Gospels had the lessons of many years to learn before he
could become the St. John who in Patmos saw the Apocalypse. The
St. John who saw the Apocalypse had still the lessons of many years to
learn, and the fall of Jerusalem to witness, before he could gaze on the
world from the snowy summit of ninety winters, and become the
Evangelist of the fourth Gospel, the Apostle of Christian Love.
And yet the days of St. John were not divided from each other by
any overpowering crisis, but were, from first to last,
' ' Bound each to each by natural piety."
In the life of St. Paul the vision on the road to Damascus had cleft
a deep chasm between his earlier and later years. The character of the
Apostle retained the same elements, but his opinions were suddenly
revolutionised. Paul the Apostle could only look back with an agony
of remorse on the thoughts and deeds of Saul the Inquisitor. Like
Augustine and Luther, he is a type of the ardent natures which are
brought to God and to the service of the truth by a spasm of sudden
change. But St. John was one of those pure saints of whom the grace
of God takes early hold, and in whose life, as in those of Thomas k
Kempis and Melancthon, " reason and religion run together like warp
and woof to weave the web of a holy life." To him, from earliest days,
the words of the poet are beautifully applicable —
" There are those who ask not if thine eye
Be on them ; who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of }routh :
Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot,
Who do thy work, and know it not ;
Oh, if through confidence misplaced
They fail, thy saving arm, dread Power ! around
them cast."
Never, perhaps, was a more glorious destiny reserved for any man,
or a destiny more unlike what he could have conceived possible, than'
that which was awaiting the Apostle, when he played as a boy beside
his father's boat on the bright strip of sand which still marks the site of
Bethsaida. His father was Zabdia or Zebedee, of whom we know
1 Qui in secreta divinae se nativitatis immergens ausus est dicere quod cuncta saecula
nesciebant, " In principio erat verbum " (Jer. in Isa. lvi. 4)

GREATNESS OF ST. JOHN. 365
nothing more than that he was a fisherman sufficiently well-to-do to have
hired servants of his own.1 He was thus in more prosperous circum
stances than his partner Jonas, the father of Peter and Andrew. His
wife was Salome, sister of the Yirgin Mary. The fact that she was one
of those who ministered to the Lord of her substance, and also bought
large stores of spices for His grave, are additional signs that Zabdia and
his wife were not poor. Their sons were James and John, who were
thus first cousins of our Lord according to the flesh.2
We catch no glimpse of John till we see him among the disciples of
the Baptist on the banks of .the Jordan. We aue told, however, that in
his manhood he appeared to the learned Sanhedrists of Jerusalem to be
a " simple and unlettered " man.3 Doubtless the term which they
actually used was the contemptuous am-haarets, a technical expression
far more scornful than its literal translation, " people of the land." 4 It
is clear, therefore, that he had never been what they called " a pupil of
the wise," and had not been trained in that cumbrous system of the
Oral Law which they regarded as the only learning. It was well for
him that he had not. The Rabbinism of that day was nothing better
than a system of scholastic pedantry, impotent for every spiritual end,
like many another vaunted system of purely verbal orthodoxy, yet tend
ing to inflate the minds of its votaries with the conceit of knowledge
without the reality. Of such learning it might well be said, in the
words of Heraclitus, that " it teaches nothing." 5
On the other hand, we see from St. John's own writings that he was
a man of consummate natural gifts, and that he had been so far well
educated as to be acquainted with both Greek and Hebrew,6 of which
the latter was not an ordinary acquirement even of well-educated Jews.
Apart from his unequalled capacity for the reception of spiritual grace,
his natural gifts appear in his deep insight into the human heart ; in the
dramatic power with which by a few touches, he sets before us the most
1 Mark i. 20.
2 Nicephorus and others rightly call Zebedee ifiiopaijKjujpov, " an independent fisher
man with a ship of his own. " What St. Chrysostom (Horn. i. in Joann. ) says of the
extreme poverty and humility of his lot (oii&kv ireviaTtpov ovSe areXio-Tepov, k.t.K.) is rhetorical
exaggeration (see Lampe, Prolegomena, p. 5). The Lake of Galilee was extraordinarily
rich in fish, some of which were regarded as great delicacies, and — like the coracinus —
were extremely rare. The trade in fish at Tiberias, Sepphoris, Taricheae, and especially at
Jerusalem, was so active that a leading fisherman like Zabdia must have been almost rich.
3 Acts iv. 13. A man was called a mere ignoramus (am-haarets) even if he knew the
Scriptures and the Mishna, but had never been one of the " pupils of the wise " (Thahnidi
hachalcamim). If he knew only the Scriptures, he was called " an empty cistern " (bor)
(Wagenseil, Sota, p. 517). The idiotes is one who is no authority on a subject (see
Orig. c. Cels. i. 30). Augustine calls the Apostles " ineruditos . . . non peritos gram-
maticae, non arinatos dialectica, non rhetorica inflates " (De Civ. Dei, xxii. 5).
4 For the meaning and associations of this word see Dr. McCaul, Old Paths, pp.
458—464. 5 7roAv^.a8n) ov SiSaavtet (Heracl. ).
6 The quotations of St. John in the Gospel are not always taken direct from the
LXX., but are sometimes altered into more direct accordance with the Hebrew (xix. 37 ;
vi. 45 ; xiii. 18).

366 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
vivid conception of the most varied characters ; in his style, apparently
so simple yet really so profound — a style supremely beautiful, yet unlike
that of any other writer, whether sacred or profane ; and above all, in
the fact that he was a fit and chosen vessel for that consummate truth
— the Incarnation of the word of God. That truth, while with one
swift stroke it summarised the speculations of Alexandrian theosophy,
became in its turn the starting-point for the most sacred utterances of
all Christian thinkers till the end of time.
His native Galilee was inhabited by the bravest and truest race in
Palestine.1 They were remarkable for faithfulness to their theocratic
nationality. They detested and were ashamed of alike the Roman
dominion and tlie Herodian satrapy which was its outward sign. Their
temperaments were full of an enthusiasm which easily caught fire. The
revolt of Judas of Galilee against the registrations of Quirinus showed
the indignation with which Galileans contemplated the reduction of
the Holy Land to the degraded position of a Roman Province. The
watchword of that uprising was that the Chosen People should have
" no Lord or master but God." Wild and hopeless as the insurrection
was, and terribly as it was avenged, its failure was so far from quench
ing the spirit of patriotism by which it had been instigated, that it was
not difficult for the sons of Judas long years afterwards3 to fan the hot
embers into flame.8 The revolt of Judas took place when St. John was
about twelve years old — the age at which a Jewish boy began to enter
on the responsibilities of manhood. It was impossible that an event
which produced so widespread an agitation should have failed to leave an
impression on his memory. His sympathies must have been with the
aims, if not with the acts, of the daring patriot. In both the sons of
Zebedee we trace a certain fiery vehemence, and this it was which
earned for them from the Lord the title of "Boanerges."4 It is pro
bable that they shared in some of the views which had once actuated
their brother Apostle, the Zealot Simon.6
If the home of Zebedee was in or near Bethsaida, his two sons must
have grown up in constant intercourse with Philip and Andrew and
Peter, and with his cousins, the sons of Alphfeus, and with Nathanael
of the not-far-distant Cana. Whether he ever visited the home of the
Virgin at Nazareth, and saw the sinless youth of Jesus, and the sternly
legal faithfulness of " His brethren," we do not know, but in any case
we can see that he enjoyed that best of training which consists in being
1 Jos. Antt. xviii. 1, § 1, 6 ; B. J. ii. 8, § 1. 2 A.D. 8 of our era.
3 In A.D. 47 and a.d. 66.
4 Boanerges, " Beni-regesh" (Mark iii. 17). No doubt, the title was earned by the
tire and impetuosity of their nature ; not because they were, as Theophylact says.
" mighty heralds and divines " (Theophyl. in Mark i. ; Epiphan. Haer. 73 ; Cyrill. Alex.
ad Nestor. 1). For a multitude of the guesses about a matter perfectly simple, see
Lampe, Prolegom. 24 — 30.
6 Luke vi. 15, Kananite=Zealot. The Zealots formed the "extreme left" division
of the Pharisees politically, as the Essenes did religiously.

MESSIANIC HOPES. 367
brought up in the midst of sweet and noble natures, and in the free
fresh life of a hardy calling and a beautiful land. And what most of
all ennobled the aspirations of these young Galileans was that, with
perfect trust in God, they were waiting for the consolation of Israel — ¦
they were cherishing the thought which lay at the very heart of all that
was best and deepest in the old Covenant— the hope that the promised
Messiah at length would come.
We are not told a single particular about his early years. We first
see him- — evidently in the prime of early manhood — as a disciple of the
Baptist.1 He does not mention himself by name, because in his Gospel
he shows a characteristic reserve. But there never has been a doubt
that he is the disciple who was with St. Andrew when they heard from
their Master the words which were to influence their whole future life.
The Baptist had received the deputation which the Sanhedrin had sent
to inquire into his claims, and had told them that he was not the Christ,
nor Elijah, nor " the Prophet." On the next day he saw Jesus coming
towards him on His return from the temptation in the wilderness.
Then first he said, " Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the
sins of the world ! " and testified that he had seen the Spirit descending
from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him. Again, the next day,
fixing his eyes on Jesus as He walked by, he exclaimed, " Behold the
Lamb of God ! " At once the two disciples followed Jesus. Turning
and gazing on them as they followed, He said, " What are ye seeking "! "
Giving Him the highest title of reverence they knew, the simple Gali
leans answered, " Rabbi, where stayest thou ? " He saith to them,
" Come and see." They came and saw. It was now four in the evening,
and they stayed with Him that night.
That brief intercourse sufficed to convince them that Jesus was the
Christ. The next morning Andrew sought his brother Simon, and with
the simple startling announcement, " We have found the Messiah," led
him to the Lord.
It is not mentioned that St. John sought his brother, and it is clear
that the elder son of Zebedee was not called to full discipleship till
afterwards on the Sea of Galilee. It was from no difference in character
that James did not, so far as we know, become a hearer of the Baptist.
He was earning his daily bread as a fisherman, and may have found
no opportunity to leave the Plain of Gennesareth. I have ventured
elsewhere to conjecture the reason why St. John was able to seek
the ministry of the Baptist though his brother was not.2 He had some
connexion with Jerusalem, and even had a home there.3 We find
1 Ecclesiastical tradition says that he was called " adolescentior," and even " puer. "
Paulin. Nol. Ep. 51. Ambros. Offic. ii. 20, § 101. Aug. c. Faust, xxx. 4. Jer. c.
Jovin. i. 26.
2 See Ufe of Christ, i. 144.
3 John xix. 27. " From that hour the Disciple took her to his own home " (eis rh
ISia). *

368 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
an explanation of this in the fact that the fish of the Lake of Galilee
were largely supplied to Jerusalem, and nothing is more probable than
that Zebedee, as a master fisherman, should have sent his younger son,
at least occasionally, to the Holy City to superintend what must have
been one of the most lucrative branches of his trade. If so, it would
have been easy for St. John to reach in less than a day the banks
of Jordan, and to listen to the nighty voice which was then rousing
Priests and Pharisees as well as people from their sensual sleep.
The teaching of the Baptist appealed to the sternest instincts of his
youthful follower. Its lofty morality, its uncompromising denunciations,
its dauntless independence must have exercised a strong fascination over
the young Galilean. It made him more than ever a Son of Thunder.
It has been said of John the Baptist that he was like a burning torch —
that the whole man was an Apocalypse. In the Apocalypse of him
who was for a time his disciple, we still seem to hear echoes of that
ringing voice, to catch hues of earthquake and eclipse from that
tremendous imagery.
The question here arises whether St. John was or was not un
married. The ancient Fathers are fond of speaking of him as a
"virgin." As early as the pseudo-Ignatius we find an address to
"Virgins," i.e., celibates, with the prayer, "May I enjoy your holiness
as that of Elijah, Joshua the son of Nun, Melchizedek, Elisha,
Jeremiah, John the Baptist, the Beloved Disciple, Timothy, Evodius,
and Clemens." Nothing corresponding to this praise of "virginity" is
found either in the Scripture or in the earliest Fathers, for " the
virgins" of Rev. xiv. 14, and "those who have made themselves
eunuchs for Christ's sake" of Matt. xix. 12, are expressions which,
when taken in the sense which was familiar to the Jews themselves,
convey no such exaltation of the unwedded life.1 Tertullian, however,
in his book " On Single Marriage," calls St. John " Christi spado," and
St. Jerome, filled with his monastic gnosis on this subject, says that
" when St. John wished to marry his Lord restrained him."2 Similar
testimony is repeated by St. Augustine, Epiphanius, and others, but
it only seems to have been derived from the " Acts " of Leucius.
Apart from direct evidence, all the customs of the Jews make it
extremely improbable, and St. Paul tells us that "the rest of the
Apostles " as well as Kephas were married.3 The notion of his celibacy
was strengthened by the erroneous misreading of a superscription to lus
1 See the passages of Zohar quoted by Schottgen, p. 159.
2 Tert. De Moimgamia, 17 ; Epiphan. Haer. Mil. ; Jer. c. Jovinian. 1, 14, and in
proleg. Joann., Praef. in Matt., ad Is. lvi. 4 ; Aug. c. Faust, xxx. 4. The virginity of
St. John became a commonplace with the Ecclesiastical writers. See Chrysostom, De
Virg. 82 (Opp. i. 332), Ps. -Chrysostom (Opp. viii. 2, 246, ed. Montfaucon) where Peter is
a type of a-epvoyapta, and John of napBevia. Ambrose. De Inst. Virg. viii. 50. The belief
originated in the Acts of Leucius. See Zahn, Acta Joannis, c. ciii.
3 2 Cor. xi. 2, on which Ambrosiaster remarks " omnes Apostoli, excepto Johanne et
Paulo uxores habuerunt."

THE EARLY CALL. 369
first epistle which is itself erroneous. Augustine in one place quotes
1 John iii. 2, as occurring in St. John's letter " to the Parthians,"1 and
he is followed by Idacius Clarus, and (according to Bede) by Athanasius.
But as there are also traces of its having been called "a letter to
Virgins," it has been supposed that Parthos is a mistaken contraction for
parthenous, or vice versd. But even if St. John had thus written a
letter to "virgins," it would not be a, necessary inference that he
was himself unmarried, or even that " virgins " and celibates were
equivalent terms.2
The first call of St. John on the banks of Jordan was not the final
call. St. John accompanied Jesus to the marriage feast of Cana in
Galilee, and saw Him manifest forth His glory. Then, during the early
ministry of Jesus in Southern Judfea, the little band of brethren seem
to have resumed for a time their ordinary avocations.
It was on the Lake of Galilee, after the miraculous draught of
fishes, that there came to him the decisive call — "Follow Me." He
obeyed the call. With his brother he left his father Zebedee and
the boat, and the hired servants — left all, and followed Jesus. Of
Zebedee we hear no more. It is probable that he died soon afterwards ;
for in the bright year of the Galilean ministry, before Jesus was driven
to fly northward, and to wander through semi-heathen districts, we find
Salome, the mother of James and John, among "the women who
ministered unto Him of their substance."
The Apostles whom the Lord gathered finally around Him before
the Sermon on the Mount fall into three groups of four, of which
the first and most privileged consisted of Andrew, Peter, James, and
John ; of these again the last three were the most chosen of the chosen.3
Alone of the Apostles they were permitted to witness the Raising
of Jairus's Daughter, the Transfiguration, and the Agony in the Garden.
And of these three again the nearest and dearest was John. Of
both Peter and John it might have been said that they, more than
all the rest, were disciples whom Jesus loved as personal companions4 ;
but St. John alone — not with a claim of vainglory, but with the simple
testimony of truth — has indicated to us unmistakably, yet with dignified
reserve, that he was the disciple whom Jesus loved and honoured
with the affection of high esteem.5 St. Peter was the more prominent
as the champion of the Christ ; St. John was the closer friend of Jesus.6
1 Est. Praef. im 1 John.
2 Another cause of this belief was the fancy that our Lord specially approved of St.
John's celibacy, and that this also was the reason why the Virgin was entrusted to his
care. Zahn, Acta Joannis, p. 201, seqq.
3 "E.KXf.KTbiV €K\€KTOT€'pOU9 (Clem. AleX.).
4 In John xx. 2 we have the expression ipX'Tal n-pbs Xipoiva UsTpov Kal Trpbs riv aXXov
paBrjTrjv ov e^i'Xet 6 'lijtroCs. From the change of term (tyiXei, not as in other places, -tiyaTra),
and from the structure of the sentence, Canon Westcott (ad toe.) infers, with much
probability, that Peter is here included in the description.
6 iyaira, xiii. 23 ; xix. 26 ; xxi. 7, 20.
6 St. Peter has been called 4iMxpioros, St. John *i\oi^<rovt.
Y

370 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
And' we see in his Gospel the proof that he was so. The Synoptists
witness faithfully to external events. St. John gives a far more inward
picture. He writes as one to whom it had been granted to know some
thing of his Master's inmost thoughts.1
And yet this high honour, this distinguishing personal affection,
arose from no faultless ideality in his character. The youth with whom
Italian art has made us familiar — the youth of unearthly beauty,
with features of almost feminine softness, with the long bright locks
streaming down his neck, and the eagle by his side, is not the St. John of
the New Testament : he is neither the St. John of the Synoptists and
the Apocalypse, nor of the Fourth Gospel and Epistles — but is the
one-sided idealisation of Christian painters.2 Jesus loved him because
of his warm affections, his devoted faithfulness, his glowing zeal, his
passionate enthusiasm ; not because his character as yet approached
perfection. The young St. John had very much both to learn and
to unlearn. He participated in the faults of fretfulness, impatience,
emulous selfishness, ambitious literalism, want of consideration, want of
tenderness, dulness of understanding, and hardness of heart, which,
as the Gospels so faithfully tell us, were common to all the disciples.3
Nay more, it is remarkable that, in nearly every instance in which
he is brought into prominence, either singly or with his brother, it
is in connexion with some error of perception or fault of conduct. He
had to unlearn the exaggeration of the very tendencies which gave
to his character so much of its human charm. He had to learn lessons
of tplerance, lessons of mercy, lessons of humility, which perhaps
it took him his whole life to understand in all their fulness as falling
under the one law of Christian love.
1. Thus on one occasion a selfish dispute had arisen among the
Apostles as to which of them should be the greatest.4 Our Lord
rebuked it by taking a little child and saying, by way of consolation as
well as by way of reproof, "Whosoever shall receive this little child
in My name receiveth Me."5 The conscience of St. John seems to have
smitten him as he listened to the tender and moving lesson, and with an
ingenuous impulse he confessed to having taken part in conduct which
now struck him as a fault. " Master," he said, " we saw one in Thy
name trying to cast out the demons, and we prevented him, because he
does not follow with us." To prevent him had been a natural impulse
of sectarian pride and ecclesiastical jealousy. The man was not an
* See John vi. 6, 61, 64 : fjfiet yap e£ apyf\<; K.T.K. zvtfipipria-aro tu irvevpart Kat erdpa$ev
iavrov, Xi. 33 J Xiii. 1, 3, ll, 21. ETapaxQri Taj irvdvpaTL, xviii. 4 ; xix. 28, etc.
2 Pictures of St. John existed in early days among the Carpocratians. See the
fragments of Leucius in Zahn, p. 223.
3 Matt. xv. 16 ; xvi. 6 — 12 ; John xii. 16 ; Mark ix. 33 ; Luke ix. 49 ; xxii. 24 ; xxiv.
25, etc. 4 Luke ix. 49 ; Mark ix. 38.
5 An old tradition, mentioned by Hilary, seems strangely to have said that St. John
was the boy to whom Jesus pointed in order to rebuke the ambition of the disciples.
See Zahn, Acta Joannis, p. oxxxiv.

VIOLENCE HATEFXTL TO GOD. 371
Apostle, nor even a professed disciple ; what right had he thus, as it
were, to steal the credit of miracles which belonged to the Lord only,
and which He had delegated to none but His genuine followers ? "
" Who," St. John may have thought, " is this unknown exorcist, who
thus encroaches on our privileges 1 " and so, with other Apostles, he had
disowned the man, and peremptorily forbidden him.1 It was an impulse
somewhat similar to that which made Joshua exclaim, " O my lord
Moses forbid them," when he heard that Eldad and Medad were pro
phesying in the camp. Instantly and nobly the great law-giver had
answered, " Enviest thou for my sake 1 Would God that all the Lord's
people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His spirit upon
them."2 So now came at once the answer, the spirit of which in two
thousand years Christians have hardly begun to learn, " Prevent him
not ! for he who is not against us, is on our side."
2. But, once again, John and his brother James had needed a stern
and public lesson. They had been taught that sectarian jealousy is alien
from the heart of Christ ; they had now to learn that religious in
tolerance and cruel severity are violations of His spirit. They had to
learn, or begin to learn, the lesson — of which (once more) nineteen cen
turies have failed to convince the self-styled representatives of Churches
— that violence is hateful to God.3
The incident occurred at the beginning of the Lord's great public
journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, when He now openly assumed the
dignity of the Messiah, and was accompanied not only by His disciples,
but by a multitude of followers, all — like Himself — pilgrims on their
way to the Holy City. The first village which lies between the borders
of Galilee and Samaria, at the foot of the Hills of Ephraim, is the
pleasant village of En Gannim, or the "Fountain of Gardens," then,
as now, inhabited by a rude and fanatical community. The numbers of
his retinue, and the fact that He was now about to enter on the territory
of Samaria, made it necessary to send messengers before Him to provide
for His reception. It was not always that the Galileans ventured to
take the road through Samaria, for the intense exacerbation between
Jews and Samaritans constantly showed itself by collisions between
Samaritans and Passover pilgrims. Still this road was taken sometimes
by the festival caravans, and it may be that our Lord was willing to
test whether the memory of His previous stay among the Samaritans
would secure for Himself and His followers a friendly welcome. But
one of the numberless quarrels which were constantly arising had made
the Samaritans more than usually hostile. Violating the rule of hos
pitality, though it is the very first rule of Eastern life, the villagers of
En Gannim refused to receive the Messianic band.
It was a flagrant wrong thus to dismiss a weary and hungry mul
titude at the foot of the frontier hills, at a distance from other villages,
1 Luke ix. 49, iiaakvlTapev. 2 Num. xi. 38. 3 Bu» exOphv ©e<j>.

372 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and at the beginning of their sacred pilgrimage. But besides this it
was an undisguised insult, a refusal, open as that of the Gadarenes, to
admit the now public claims of Him who asked their courtesy. Instantly
the hot spirit of the sons of Zebedee took fire. It was in this very
country that Elijah, to avenge a much smaller wrong, had called down
fire from Heaven.1 Had not the time arrived for One greater than
Elijah to vindicate His majesty, and to revive by some signal miracle
the drooping spirits of His followers 1 " And on seeing it, His disciples
James and John said, Lord, wiliest Thou we should bid fire to descend
from heaven, and consume them, as even Elijah did ? " What wonder,
it has been said, " that the Sons of Thunder should wish to flash light
ning? " But how significant are the touches of character even in these
few words, " Wiliest Thou that we — " ! They want to take part in the
miracle themselves. They, too, have been insulted in the person of their
Lord. They have an uneasy sense that calling down fire from heaven
does not quite accord with the character of Him who " went about
doing good," but they are ready to undertake the task for Him. Yet,
even in expressing the wish, they felt a little touch of shame. Is not
such conduct vindictive and impatient t Well, at least, their excuse is
ready — " as Elijah did." They can shelter themselves behind a great
name. For their earthly wrath they can adduce a Scripture precedent.
They have " a text " ready to consecrate their personal resentment.
Alas ! had it been in their power to make the heavens blaze they would
but have furnished another instance of the crimes which have been
committed or excused in the name of Scripture. What is it that we
learn from remorseless persecutions, bitter hatreds between those who
bear the common name of Christian — from the atrocities of the Inqui
sition, from savage crusades, from brutal witch-murders, from the fires
of Smithfield and of Toledo, from the condonation and even the approval
of mere assassins, from medals struck in honour of massacres of St.
Bartholomew, from sermons preached amid the agonies of martyrs,
from the slanders and calumnies weekly used to write down imaginary
opponents by those who think that in the hideous forms of their
fanaticism they are doing God service 1 — what do we learn from these
most miserable and blood-stained pages of ecclesiastical controversy, but
that " In religion
What damned error but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament " P
But the lesson of all Scripture is that, though the Elijah-times may
require the Elijah-spirit, yet the Elijah-times have passed for ever, and
that the Elijah-spirit is not the Christ-spirit. For Christians, at any
rate, it is written, bright and large, over every page of the New Testa-
1 2 Kings i. 9—14.

Bia'iX0pbv @eo3. 373
ment, that " the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God."1
And how full of instruction is Christ's reproof ! He does not stop or
stoop to argue. He does not unfold the hidden springs of selfishness
and passion which had caused their fierce request. He does not dispute
their Scripture precedent. He does not point out that texts must be
misused if they be applied to exacerbate human hatreds born in the
inflation of religious vanity. He does not reproach them for the indif
ference to the agony of others which lay in the words, " Wiliest Thou
we should bid fire to descend from Heaven and consume them ! " No ;
but, turning round, He rebuked them, and said, " Ye know not — ye —
of what spirit ye are.2 For the Son of Man came not to destroy men's
souls, but to save." His words were brief and compassionate, because,
in their error, flagrant as it was, there was still a root of nobleness. '
Their zeal for the Lord, their love of His person, their impassioned
estimate of the heinousness of any insult directed against Him — these
were the salt of good motives which saved their conduct from being
entirely evil. Where they erred was in the fancy that love to Him
can be rightly shown by fury and vengeance against those whom they
deemed to be His enemies ; and that it was His wil] that any should
perish rather than come to repentance. It was a lesson, for all ages, of
infinite tenderness and infinite tolerance ; a lesson which during these
long centuries theologians and religious parties and partisans have for
the most part failed to learn. Of old, when it was permitted them,
they resorted to chains and stakes ; now thai the secular weapons have
been struck out of their grasp, they shoot out their arrows, even bitter
words. And they take this to be religion, — this to be the sort of service
which Christ approves !
3. Once again in the Gospels the sons of Zebedee come into separate
prominence, and once again they appear as disciples who have mis
understood Christ's promises, and but imperfectly learnt His lessons.
The incident occurred at one of the most solemn moments of His life.
From the plots and excommunications of His enemies, with a heavy
price on His head, He had taken refuge in deep obscurity in the little
town of Ephraim. There he remained for some weeks between the
death of Lazarus and the Passover,3 until from the summit of the
conical hill on which the little town was built, He could see the long
trains of Galilean pilgrims streaming down the Jordan valley on their
1 The needfulness of the lesson becomes even more clear when wo find St. Ambrose
(in Luke ix. 54, 55) deliberately defending the Apostles : . " Nee discipuli peccant, qui
legem seqmmtur," etc. How greatly do we all need to offer the prayer —
" Let not this weak unknowing hand
Presume Thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land
On each I judge my foe."
2 Luke x. 55. mm m/evVaros etrre \>p.hs. Both the expression of the word v/xSis and its
position make it extremely emphatic.
3 John xi. 54.

374 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
way to Jerusalem. Then He knew that He could join them and pro
ceed at their head to the Holy City. He set forth to what He foresaw
would be His death of agony and shame. As seems to have been
common with Him, He walked alone, and in front, while the Apostles
followed in a group at some little distance behind Him. But on this
occasion the majesty of His purpose seems so to have clothed His
person with awe and grandeur — He seemed to be so transfigured by the
halo of Divine sorrow, that — as we learn from St. Mark — in one of
those unexplained references which he doubtless borrowed from the
reminiscences of St. Peter — the disciples as they walked behind Him
were amazed and full of fear.1 From His look and manner they felt
instinctively that something more than usually awful was at hand. Nor
did He leave them long in doubt as to what it was. He beckoned them
to Him, and in language more definite and unmistakable than ever
before, He revealed to them not only that He should be betrayed, and
mocked, and scourged, and spit upon, but even the crowning horror that
He should be crucified — and then that, on the third day, He should rise
again. It was at that most inopportune moment that Salome came to Him
with her two sons, James and John, worshipping Him, begging Him to
grant them something. The facile mother was but the mouthpiece for
the ill-instructed ambition of her sons. Relying on her near relation
ship to Him, on her services in His cause, on His known regard for
them both, on His special affection for one of them, they wanted thus to
forestall the rest, and to secure a special and personal blessing for them
selves. They wanted thus, and finally, to settle the dispute, which had
so often risen among the half-trained Apostles, as to which of them
should have the precedence, which should be the greatest among them.
Yet we must not think that their motive was altogether earthly in its
character. It was not all selfishness ; it was not mere ambition — at
any rate, not vulgar selfishness, not ignoble ambition. In the strange
complexity of human motives there was doubtless a large admixture of
these impurer elements, and there was also a complete ignorance as to
the nature of the approaching end. But there was also a loving desire
to be nearest to Jesus, one at His right hand, one at His left. They
had thought of material power and splendour in their interpretation of
His promises. His thoughts had been of the cross, theirs were of the
throne. In their ignorance they had asked for the places which, seven
days afterwards, were occupied in infamy and anguish by two crucified
robbers. Oh, fond, foolish mother ! oh, too presumptuous sons ! the
kingdom of Heaven is not as ye think. It is not a place for ambitious
precedence and selfish rivalries. Not there do Michael and Gabriel con
trast the respective value of their services, or compete as to which shall
do "the maximum of service on the minimum of grace." There the
1 Mark x. 32.

ANGER OF THE DISCIPLES. 375
success of each is the joy of all, and the glory of each the pride of all.
Nor is there, as ye vainly imagine, any favouritism, any private parti
ality, any acceptance of men's persons with God and with His Christ.
All are alike the children of His impartial mercy — " all equally guilty,
all equally redeemed." With Him many of the first shall be last, and
many of the last first, and many whom their brethren would altogether
exclude shall be heirs of His common heaven, and many who, on earth,
figured as saints, and great divines, shall be far below the peasants and
little ones of His kingdom — and, alas ! here on earth, how many,
glorying in themselves, have delighted in anathemas and misrepresenta
tions — " Who there below shall grovel in the mire,
Leaving behind them horrible dispraise ! "
But once more, because the request was not all selfish or all ignoble,
and because, in true hearts deeper lessons spring from loving forbearance
than from loud rebuke, Jesus gently said to them, " Ye know not " —
again, " Ye know not," for it was ignorance, not badness, from which
their errors sprang — " Ye know not what ye are asking for yourselves.
Can ye drink the cup which I am about to drink, and be baptised with
the' baptism wherewith I am being baptised?"1 They say to Him,
" We can." And He saith to them, " My cup indeed ye shall drink,
and with the baptism wherewith I am being baptised shall ye be
baptised ; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is Mine to give
to those only for whom it has been prepared by My Father."2 In that
bold answer, " We can ! " had flashed out all the true nobleness of the
sons of Zebedee. For the answer of Jesus had by that time partially
undeceived them. It had shown them the mistaken nature of their
chiliastic hopes. They saw that the blessing for which they had asked
had been, so far as things earthly were concerned, a primacy of sorrow.;
that the only passage to Christ's throne of glory lay through the
endurance of suffering ; that to be near Him was — as the oldest
Christian tradition quoted some of His unrecorded words — to be " near
the sword and near the fire :"3 — and yet they had not shrunk. What
ever the price was, they were ready to pay it. To be near Him was
worth it all.
And the punishment of their fault came in part and at once in the
indignant disapproval of their fellow Apostles. The other disciples, too,
had their chiliastic hopes ; they wanted thiir thrones and their preroga
tives ; and all that had been selfish and unworthy in this attempt of the
Sons of Thunder to wring, as it were, from private influence or private
kinsmanship an exclusive privilege, aroused a strong counter selfishness.
Doubtless the voice of Judas was loudest in the complaint that this was
1 The Fathers speak of the triple baptism in water, by the Spirit, and in blood.
a Matt. xx. 23.
* o eyyvs pov eyyvs tou jrupos (Didymus in Ps. lxxxviii. 8).

376 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
a mean attempt to steal from others their fair share of a private advan
tage; that it was "just what might have been expected of Salome and
her sons."1 But instantly the Lord healed the rising feud. He called
them all round Him. He taught them that arrogant lordship and
domineering despotism2 were the characteristics of Gentile self-assertion.
" Not so shall it be among you. But whosoever wills to become great
among you shall be your servant ; and whosoever wills to become first
of you shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to
be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for
many." Yet the fault and the rebuke of which St. John had had his share
in no ways alienated from him the affection of his Lord. We see him
again at the last supper, and he is leaning on Christ's breast. It is
from this that he gains his title in the early Church of " the bosom
disciple."3 Although he does not mention his own name, he is himself
the describer of the incident. Jesus and the Twelve are reclining at
the quasi-paschal meal. Our Lord is in „the centre of the couch leaning
on His left arm. At His right, in the place of honour, was perhaps
Peter, or perhaps — as an office-bearer of the little band — the traitor
Judas. At his left, and therefore with his head near the breast of
Jesus, is reclining " the disciple whom Jesus loved." The anguish of
the soul of Jesus wrung from Him the groan, " Verily, verily, I say to
you that one of you shall betray Me." The words fell very terribly on
the ears of the Apostles. They began to gaze on one another with
astonishment, with perplexity, almost with mutual suspicion.4 They
thought that if any one knew, John knew the secret ; and supposing
that Jesus had whispered into his ear the fatal name which He would
not speak aloud, St. Peter, catching his eye by a sign, whispered to
him, "Tell us who it is of whom He speaks?"5 John did not indeed
know the traitor's name, but leaning back his head with a sudden
motion, so as to look up in the face of Jesus,6 he said, " Lord, who is
it ? " Then Jesus whispered, " It is that one for whom I shall dip the
sop, and give it him." He dipped the piece of bread in the common
dish, and gave it to Judas. Then Satan entered into him, and he went
forth into the night. Relieved of the oppression of that painful
presence, Jesus began those Divine discourses which it was granted to
John alone to preserve — so " rarely mixed of sorrows and joys, and
studded with mysteries as with emeralds."
We see John once again, with Peter and James, in the Garden
of Gethsemane sleeping the sleep of sorrow and weariness, when it had
1 Matt. XX. 24, 0l &Ka rjyavaKTrja-av Trept Twc 5uo aSeA^toe.
'' Mark X. 42, KaraKVpievovtriv . . . Kare^ova-^a^oviTiv. 3 6 eirioTTjflios.
4 John xiii. 22, anopovpcvoi 7repi ti'vos Xe'yei. fi B, C, L.
6 John xiii. 25, eimrecraK, not "leaning" (ivaiccipevos), as in the E. V., but suddenly
changing his posture. The oimus, which is read in B, C, E, F, etc., is a vivid touch of
reminiscence, describing the actual posture as in iv. 6.

KNOWN TO THE HIGH PRIEST. 377
been better had he kept awake ; and then we see him showing no
greater courage than the rest when " all the disciples forsook Him and
fled.-" " ' What should wring this from thee P ' — ye laugh and ask ;
What wrung it ? Even a torchlight and a noise,
The sudden Eoman faces, violent hands,
And fears of what the Jews might do ! Just that,
And it is written ' I forsook ami fled.'
There was my trial, and it ended thus." l
But if he was one of those who fled, he was the earliest of all
to rejoin his Lord. Braving the multitude, and the peril, and the
shame, he at once returned from his flight, and followed the group who,
under the traitor's guidance, were leading Jesus bound to the joint
palace of Hanan and Caiaphas. He even ventured to enter the palace
with those who were guarding the Prisoner.2 He gained admission
.because he was known to the High Priest. It is unlikely that this has
anything to do with the fact that he had some distant affinity with
priestly families,3 or with the strange and probably symbolical tradition
that, in his old age at Ephesus, he wore the petalon or golden plate
which marked the mitre of High Priesthood.4 Nor is it easy to
imagine how a Galilean fisherman should have known anything
personally of these wealthy Sadducean aristocrats, with whom he had
not a single thought or a single sympathy in common. To me it
seems probable that he knew Hanan and his household only in the way
of his business, and I see in this incidental notice a fresh confirmation
of my conjecture that the duties of this business obliged him sometimes
to reside at Jerusalem.
And thus the beloved disciple stayed with Christ during the long
hours of that night of shame and agony. He was doubtless an
eye-witness of all that he narrates respecting Peter's denial, and the
scenes which took place before Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate. He saw
Jesus — with the murderer by his side — standing on the pavement,
wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe, dyed a deeper purple
with His blood. He heard the Jews prefer to Him Barabbas as their
favourite, and Tiberius as their king. He heard the bursts of
involuntary pity and involuntary admiration which wrung from the
half-Christianised conscience of the cruel governor the exclamations,
" Behold the man ! " " Behold your king ! " He saw Him bear His
cross to Golgotha ; and saw Him crucified ; and saw the two brigands
occupying the places for which he and James had asked so ignorantly,
at His right hand and at His left.
1 Browning, A Death in the Desert.
2 John xviii. 15, " went in with Jesus."
3 The Virgin Mary was a kinswoman of Elisabeth, who was the wife of a leading
priest ; and, therefore, the sons of Zebedee, through their mother, must have had some
priestly connexions.
4 Euseb. H. E. v. 24, quoting Polycrates.

378 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Four women stood beside those crosses. They were the mother of
Jesus ; Salome, His mother's sister ; Mary, the wife of Clopas, perhaps
another sister ; and Mary of Magdala. With them, alone apparently of
all the Apostles, stood St. John. No other disciple, except standing in
a group afar off, was present during those awfully agonising, those
supremely crushing moments which seemed to dash into indistinguish
able ruin all their hopes, and to give an almost fiendish significance to
the taunts of priests and mob. Let us recognise the. heroism, the faith,
the endurance which enable the three Maries, and Salome, and her son,
to stand gazing at a scene which must have made the sword pierce their
souls with unutterable agony. Let us see in it the proof that if Salome
and John had indeed looked to share with him a pre-eminence of,
blessedness, they were not ashamed to stand beside Him in the hour of
His humiliation, and in the Valley of the Shadow of His Death.
And even in His hour of agony, His kingly eye was on them. To
them were addressed the second, perhaps the first words which He
uttered after the actual elevation of His cross.1 "Seeing then His
mother and the disciple standing by, whom He loved, He said to
His mother ' Woman, behold thy son ! ' Then He saith- to the disciple,
' Behold thy mother ! ' " Very few words, but there was compressed
into them a whole world of meaning and of tenderness ! And what can
appear less strange than that to St. John was entrusted that precious
charge? True that Christ had " brethren ; " but apparently they were
not there ; or, if they were there, it was only among " the many " who
stood " beholding from afar " — the many whose love was not at that
moment strong enough to overcome the horror and the fear. But John
was there — almost His earliest disciple ; whom He loved most ; who
believed on Him unreservedly ; who was akin to Him ; whose mother
was the Virgin's sister ; who was rich enough to undertake the charge ;
whose natural character, at once so brave and so loving, fitted him for
it ; who had powerful friends ; who was probably the only Apostle and
the only relative of Jesus who had a home at Jerusalem, where, in the
bosom of the infant Church which Christ had founded, it was fitting
that the Virgin should henceforth dwelL "And from that hour that
disciple took her into his own home."2 ,
" From that hour ; " — he felt probably that the Virgin had
witnessed as much as human nature could sustain of that awful scene.
1 The prayer for His murderers seems to have been breathed when the hands were
pierced, and before the cross was uplifted (Luke xxiii. 34). The omission by B, D, etc.,
may be due to some lectionary arrangement, but is surely insufficient to throw doubt on
its genuineness, since it is found in n, A, C, F, G, etc. We cannot tell whether the
promise to the converted robber was spoken before or after those words to His mother
and St. John.
3 The tradition to which the Fathers refer as " ecclesiastioa Mstoria " (probably derived
from the Acts of Leuoius) assign another reason. " Cujus privilegii sit Joannes, immo
Joannis Virginitas ; a domino virgino mater virgo virgini discipulo commendatur " (Jer.
c. Jovin. i. 26). SriXov on 'lwayi-Tj Sta rrjv TrapQevtav (Epiph. Haer. lxxviii. 10 ; Paulinus of
Nola, Ep. 51, etc.). See Zahn,' p. 206.

THE CLOSING SCENES. 379
There would be no rescue ; no miracle. Jesus would die — would die,
as He had said, upon the cross. The Virgin had suffered enough of
agony ; she had received her last farewell ; it needed not that she
should witness the deepening anguish, the glazing eye, the horrible
crurifragium which probably awaited Him. The Beloved Disciple
took her to his own home.
But he must himself have returned to the cross, for he tells us ex
pressly and emphatically that he was a personal eye-witness of the last
scenes. He was standing by when the soldiers broke the legs of the
two robbers to hasten their deaths, which otherwise might not have
happened till after two more days of lingering agony. He was close by
the cross when, seeing that Jesus was already dead, a soldier gashed His
side " with the broad head of his lance," and " immediately there came
out blood and water '"¦ — to be for all the world the mystic signs of im
parted life and cleansing power. " And he that hath seen hath borne
witness, and his witness is true, and he knoweth that he saith things
that are true that ye also may believe." That witness was to be hence
forth the work of his life ; — the winning over of men to that belief was
to be henceforth the main end of all he did and all he wrote.2 And to
that incident, narrated by him alone of the Evangelists, he refers with
special emphasis in the Epistle which enshrines his final legacy to the
Church of God.
How long the Apostle stood to the Virgin in the place of a son we
do not know. She is mentioned in the New Testament but once again,
when we see her united in prayer and supplication with the other holy
women and the Apostles, and with the " brethren of the Lord," now at
last fully converted by the miracle of the Resurrection. After that
slight notice she disappears not only from Scripture history, but from
early tradition. It was unknown, even as far back as the second cen
tury, whether^ she died in Jerusalem, where the tomb of the Virgin is
now shown, close to Gethsemane :3 or whether, after more than eleven
years had elapsed, she accompanied St. John to Ephesus, and died and
was buried there.4
The subsequent glimpses which we obtain of St. John in Scripture
are not numerous. He does not once appear alone, but always in con
junction with St. Peter, and for twenty years and more he does not
seem to have manifested any independent or original action. On the
morning of the Resurrection he was with St. Peter, when they two
were the first who received from Mary of Magdala the startling tidings
1 John xix. 34, Jioyxn . . . Sw^ev. 2 xix. 35 ; xx. 30.
3 This supposed tomb was unknown for at least six centuries. Nicephorus, in the
fourteenth century — from whom has been derived such a mass of entirely untrustworthy
tradition — says that she died at Jerusalem, aged fifty-nine (H. E. ii. 3).
4 Epiphan. Haer. lxxviii. 11. This was asserted in a synodical letter of the Council
of Ephesus, A.D. 431. It seems,1 however, to be very unlikely, for had she died at
Ephesus her grave would have been even more likely to be pointed out than the grave of
John.

380 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
that the tomb was open and empty. Instantly they ran to visit it.
The swift step of St. John, who was the younger of the two, outran
Peter ; and as he stood stooping and peering into the darkness he saw
that Jesus was not there, and caught only the white gleam of the linen
clothes. But when Peter came to the place, no awe, no danger of
Levitical pollution, could restrain his impetuous eagerness. He would
see all, know all. Instantly he plunged into the dim interior, and
stood gazing on the scene which presented itself.1 The shroud which
had swathed the body lay there ; the napkin lay rolled up in a place
by itself. As they went home together, the Divine necessity that Jesus
should rise from the dead dawned first with full conviction upon their
minds. Once more we see St. John separately and as a distinct figure in
his own Gospel. He was with the Eleven on that first Easter evening
when Jesus appeared to them in the closed upper room, and said,
" Peace be with you," and showed them His hands and His feet, and
breathed on them, and said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost." He was
with the Twelve when Jesus again appeared to them on the next Sun
day, and Thomas was convinced. Then for a little time the Appear
ances of the Risen Lord seem to have been intermitted. Driven to
earn his daily bread, Peter proposed to resume the fishing, which had
for so long a time been abandoned. Thomas and Nathaniel, James
and John, and two other disciples accompanied them. They toiled all
night ; but they caught nothing. But when day began to dawn,2 Jesus
stood suddenly upon the beach. They, however, did not recognise Him
in His glorified body,3 and in that unexpected place, as He stood with
His figure looming dimly through the morning mist. He said to them,
"Children, have ye anything to eat?" They answered, "No." Then
He bade them cast the net on the right side of the ship, and immedi
ately they were not able to drag the net into the boat for the multi
tude of fishes. The meaning of the sign flashed at once upon the
soul of the disciple whom Jesus loved. He said to Peter, " It is the
Lord ! " Instantly Peter had snatched up his fisher's coat, and plunged
into the sea to swim to land. More slowly the rest followed in the
little boat,4 dragging to land the net full of one hundred and fifty-
three fishes, which they were unable to haul into their ship. When
they got to land they saw there a charcoal fire with a fish broiling on
it, and a loaf beside it, as one may often see now when the poor Fel-
lahin are fishing in the Sea of, Galilee. Jesus bade them bring some
of their fish, and share in the morning meal. They dared not ask
Him, " Who art Thou ? " knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus
brought them the bread and the loaf, and they broke their fast.
Then, after the meal, there took place that deeply touching interview
1 John XX. 6, ei<ri}A0ee . . . Bempei. - John xxi. 4, yivoptvrjS.
3 John xx, 14 ; Luke xxiv. 31. 4 xxi. 8, irAoiapuu.

LATER LIFE OF ST. JOHN. 381
in which Jesus bade the now-forgiven and deeply-repentant Peter to
feed His little lambs, and to feed and tend His sheep,1 and prophesied
to him the martyr-death that he should die. Peter, as he turned
away, caught sight of John, who was following them, and with sudden
curiosity asked, "Lord, but this man — what?"2 "If I will him to
abide while I am coming,3 what is it to thee? Follow thou Me."
The expression was misunderstood, as those of the Lord so often were.
It led to the mistaken notion among the brethren that that disciple
was not to die. It is to remove that erroneous impression that he
relates the incident. It is clear from his language that he did not
even then, in extreme old age, understand its complete significance,
because Christ had never revealed the secrets about the time and
manner of His coming. But his correct version of the misquoted
words did not prevent the continuance of the error. Even when he
was dead, legend continued to assert that he was living in the grave,
and that his breath gently heaved the dust.4

CHAPTER XXV.
LIFE OF ST. JOHN AFTER THE ASCENSION.
"iEteraa sapientia sese in omnibus rebus maxime in humanil mente, omnium
maxime in Christo Jesu manifestabit." — Spinoza, Ep. xxi.
After this St. John is mentioned but thrice, and alluded to but once in
the New Testament.
i. He is enumerated among the eleven Apostles who were gathered
in the Upper Room with the rest of the little company of believers
after the Ascension, and who were constantly engaged in prayer and
supplication.5 ii. He was going up with Peter to worship in the Temple at three
o'clock in the afternoon — one of the stated hours of prayer — when Peter
healed the lame man, and afterwards addressed the assembled worshippers,
whose amazement had been kindled by that act of power. This great
address — in which, as we infer from Acts iv. 1, St. John took some part
— was interrupted by the sudden arrest of the Apostles. They were
seized in the sacred precincts by the dominant Sadducees — the priests
and the captain of the Temple. As it was now evening the two Apostles
1 XXI. 15, 3ocnce Ta. apvia pov ', 16, iroiaatve ; 17, j3d<T(C€ Ta ffpojSara fiou.
'* xxi. 21, Ku'pie, oStos Se tL ; Vulg. Domini, hie autem quid i
3 See Canon 'Westcott's note on this expression (Speaker's Comm. ad loc.).
4 St. Augustine (in Joh. exxiv. 2) seems to have been half inclined to accept this
strange and unmeaning legend on the testimony of grave people who imagined them
selves to have witnessed it !
5 Acts i. 13.

382 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
were thrown into prison. Next morning they were haled before the
Sanhedrin which gathered for their trial in the imposing numbers of all
its three constituent committees. The accused, according to the usual
custom, were set in the midst of the semicircle and sternly interrogated.
The two Apostles — Peter again being the chief spokesman — gave a bold
and noble testimony, from which the Sanhedrists recognised the two
facts that " they had been with Jesus," and that they were simple and
unlettered persons. The Pharisees from the whole height of their
ignorance' looked down on them as "no theologians." Their Galilean
dialect, and their obvious unacquaintance with Rabbinic learning,
inclined the Sanhedrin to despise them. On the other hand, they were
perplexed by the presence and witness of the lame man who had
undeniably been healed. They therefore remanded the Apostles while
they held a discussion among themselves. In spite of the severity for
which the Sadducees were notorious, they did not feel justified on this
occasion in doing anything more than threatening them with worse
consequences if they ventured to preach again in the name of Jesus.
The Apostles gave them frank warning that such threats must be in
vain, since it was a plain duty to obey God rather than man. Afraid,
however, of exciting a tumult among the people, who, up to this time,
sided heartily with the Christians, and were glorifying God for the
recent miracle, the Sanhedrin were forced to content themselves with
renewing their threats, and they set the Apostles free.
The return of Peter and John to the assembled brethren was followed
by a song of triumphant gladness, and by another outpouring of spiritual
influences. During these earlier scenes of Christian history there is no
doubt that St. John lived mainly at Jerusalem — though he may have
made short excursions to places in Palestine. He must have lived
through the short period during which the Church adopted the experi
ment of community of goods ; must have heard of, or witnessed, the
terrible fate of Ananias an'd Sapphira ; and must have shared in the
outburst of supernatural power, followed by multitudes of conversions.
which marked the early energy of St. Peter. He was arrested with the
other Apostles in a fresh alarm of the priestly party, and thrust into
the public prison. Having been delivered in the night by an angel, at
the dawn of the next day they were once more led before the startled
Sanhedrin. This time they were arrested without violence, for the
priests feared a violent intervention of the people on their behalf.
Stung, however, to madness by the firm attitude of the Apostles, who, to
the remonstrances of the High Priest, answered by their spokesman St
Peter that they were bound to refuse obedience to the murderers of their
Lord, the Sanhedrin seriously debated whether they should put them
all to death, and were only saved by the wise counsel of Gamaliel from
the commission of that fatal crime. They determined, however, to
scourge the Apostles ; and then first St. John knew what it was to suffer
disgrace and bodily anguish for his Lord. But that anguish failed of

MARTYRDOM OF ST. JAMES. 383
its intended purpose. The Apostles rejoiced that they were deemed
worthy to sufl'er shame for His name, and daily in the Temple preached
the good news of Jesus Christ.
iii. Then followed the appointment of the Seven ; the preaching
and martyrdom of St. Stephen ; the scattering of all the Church except
the Apostles, in consequence of the fierce persecution of Saul the
Pharisee; the work of Philip in Samaria; the journey of St. Peter
and St. John to confirm the new converts, and the stern encounter
with Simon Magus.1 After this the two friends travelled through
Samaria, preaching in many of the villages. Perhaps En Gannim was
one of those villages, and by that time St. John had learnt the meaning
of the rebuke " Ye know not — ye — of what spirit ye are." He saw
then why Jesus had rebuked the evil wish to call down fire from heaven
and consume them all. Then, too, he learnt what Jesus, meant when
He had said to them by the well of Jacob, " Lift up your eyes and gaze
on the fields, because they are white unto harvest already. . . I sent
you to reap that wherein ye have not toiled. Others have toiled, and
ye have entered into their toil." 2
iv. After this the name of St. John disappears entirely from the
Acts of the Apostles. We cannot tell what view he took at first of the
bold conduct of Peter in admitting to baptism a Gentile soldier and his
household — in "going in to men uncircumcised and eating with them."
We can only feel sure that Peter's conviction would — in the close union
which had ever subsisted between them — have gone far to help his own.
By the time when he wrote the Apocalypse he had learned to look upon *
the Gentiles as true and equal members of the Church of God.3
It was four or five years after the conversion of Cornelius4 that
Herod Agrippa I. seized James, the elder brother of John, and put him
to death with the sword. We are told so little of St. James, the son
of Zebedee, that we do not know by what bold deed or burning word
he had provoked his doom. We may judge with what mingled feelings
of anguish and exultation St. John would witness or hear of the
murder of the elder brother with whom he had spent his life. St.
James was the first martyr of the Apostles. How vast were to be
the changes in the Church and in the world during the long half
century before John passed away to join his brother — the last sur
vivor of that high and glorious band ! But, doubtless, he was in some
measure prepared for this lengthening of his life. In that memorable
scene on the misty lake at early morning Jesus had spoken to Peter
of martyrdom ; to John He had spoken only of tarrying while He was
coming. It is as though He had said, "Let finished action follow
me, shaped by the example of My passion ; but let contemplation, now
1 Acts viii. 14. 2 John iv. 35—38.
3 On the much disputed question whether in the Apocalypse the Gentiles are placed
on a footing of absolute equality with the Jews, see Gebhardt, Doctrine of the Avocalvme.
pp. 180—194. * A.D. 44.

384 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
commenced, abide until I come, to be perfected when I have come."1
"The one Apostle," says Canon Westcott, "is the minister of action,
whose service is consummated by the martyrdom of death ; the other
is the minister of thought and teaching, whose service is perfected in
the martyrdom of life."
v. The name of St. John occurs but once in the thirteen Epistles of
St. Paul. Perhaps in the early years of St. Paul's stormy ministry the
two would not have been naturally drawn together. They would be
separated in part by the memories of "the great persecution," 2 of which
Saul had been the most furious agent, and in which John may have lost
many friends. They would be still more separated by deeply-seated
differences of character. St. John, as we have said, was wholly unlike
the effeminate pietist of Titian's or of Raphael's pictures. We havfi
seen that there was within him a spring of most fiery vehemence. Yet,
so far as we can judge, this passion was not often or easily aroused.
None could have written as St. John wrote who had not thought long and
deeply ; and the slight part which he is recorded to have taken in the
history of the Church during the first twenty-five years of its existence
shows that he was either absorbed in the care of the Virgin, or that he
was living a life of meditation and devotion. This was almost neces
sitated by the atmosphere of persecution which was continuously
breathed by the Church of Jerusalem. But St. John must have been
naturally inclined to a quiet and contemplative life. Men of very
opposite temperaments are not readily drawn together, and there must
have been much in the almost feverish energy of the Apostle of the
Gentiles which would not at once win the sympathies of the beloved
disciple. Besides this, the glimpse which we are allowed to see of John
shows him still devoted to the outward life of the Jewish system. He
was a daily worshipper in the Temple at the stated hours of prayer, and
remembered, even to his last days — though with ever-widening vision
and ever-deepening insight into the meaning of the words — that " salva
tion was from the Jews." One, therefore, who loved peace as he loved
it — one who could only be prepared by the training of experience for
the immense development which the Church was to undergo from its
earlier conditions in the days of Galilee — one who as a mystic lived in
the absorbing realisation of a Divine idea — would hold aloof from the
loud questions which began to agitate the Church, and almost uncon
sciously would feel inclined to shrink from him who stirred them up. It
is easy to conceive that to one trained as John had been in the intensest
feelings of nationality, and in the most absolute devotion to the Law,
the characteristics of St. Paul were not attractive. Paul's breadth and
cosmopolitanism, his emancipation from Judaic prejudices, his vehement
dialectics, his irresistible personality, his daring expressions, the inde
pendence of his course of action, the bitter feelings which he kindled in
1 Aug. im. Joh. oxxiv. 3. * Aots. viii. 1, ne'y<« Suoynis.

ST. JOHN AND ST. PAUL. 385
the hearts of men among whom John lived, and whom he could not but
respect — all tended to prevent any close union between the two. When
Saul first returned from Damascus an ardent and controversial convert,
St. John seems to have been absent from Jerusalem.1 At any rate, St.
Paul did not see him, either on that occasion or on his subsequent visit
to convey to the elders the alms of the Gentiles at Antioch. But on
the occasion of the third visit of St. Paul to Jerusalem with Barnabas,
in order to settle the question — so momentous to the future of the
Church — whether or not the yoke of circumcision, and therewith of all
Levitism, was to be laid on the necks of the Gentiles — St. Paul tells us
that St. John was at Jerusalem as one of the Three Pillar- Apostles, and
that he met him in conference. I have elsewhere described that most
important scene in the history of the world. St. John was at that time
by conviction a fervid Jewish Christian He was living with and acting
with the Jewish Christians, side by side with St. Peter, who at Jerusa
lem conformed to all their usages. Both of them — though all three
" were held to be pillars " — were overshadowed by the commanding per
sonality of the Lord's brother, St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem.
Between , the first reception of the delegates from Antioch and the
stormy meeting in which the question was debated, St. Paul, with the
consummate statesmanship which was one of his intellectual gifts, had
privately secured the assent of the three leaders of the Church to his
views and proposals. All three were convinced ; all three gave to him
and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship ; all three recognised their
mission to the Gentiles. Nay, they not only recognised this mission,
but formally handed it over to the care of those who had hitherto been
its all but exclusive ministers. They made to Paul and Barnabas but two
requests — both most readily granted : the one that they should themselves
be left undisturbed in the ministry of the circumcision ; the other that
the needs of the poor saints at Jerusalem should not be overlooked in
the wealthier Churches of the Gentiles. The fact of this mutual recog
nition — this interchange of Christian pledges in a spirit of friendship —
is the best answer to the dreams of those who would persuade us that
St. John, in the Apocalypse, condescended to attack St. Paul himself, as
well as his followers, in language of unmitigated hate.
This seems to have been the only occasion — at any rate, it is the only
one known to us — on which there was any meeting between the Beloved
Disciple and the Apostle of the Gentiles. St. John took no part in the
great debate. He seems to have shrunk from everything which bore any
resemblance to noisy publicity. On this occasion he left the speaking to
St. Peter and St. James, only supporting their concession by his vote
and silent acquiescence. His was not the temperament which delights,
as did that of St. Paul, in ruling the stormy elements of popular assem
blies. In the earlier days, when he and Peter worked together in close
» GaL i. 19.

386 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
communion, it is Peter who on every occasion comes forward as the
chief speaker. Yet we must not infer from this that the relation of
John to the elder Apostle was at all like that which subsequently arose
between Paul and Barnabas. In the -first missionary journey Paul took
the lead by virtue of his superior intellect and more vigorous energy.
He was, in human estimate, the abler and greater of the two. It was
not so with St. Peter. His, doubtless, was the readier, the more
practical, the more oratorical ability ; but, judging by their writings, we
should again say that in human estimate St. John's was the profounder
and more gifted soul. But his sphere was by no means the sphere of
daily struggles and controversies —
" Greatest souls
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least."
We can think of St. John in the cave at Patmos ; we cannot fancy him
addressing a yelling mob on the steps of Castle Antonia. His was to be
a very different, yet a no less necessary work. It was his to be guided
by the Spirit through the education of outward circumstances to truths
deeper, richer, more comprehensive, more final than it had been granted
even to St. Paul to set forth.
From this time we lose sight of St. John in Holy Scripture, so far
as any external record or notice of him is concerned. All our further
knowledge respecting the outward incidents of his life is reducible to the
fact that when he wrote the Apocalypse he was " in the isle that is
called Patmos, because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus
Christ." But, meagre as is this one personal fact, we learn much
respecting him from early tradition, and from the precious legacy of his
own writings. From these sources we are able to trace the Apostle in
his advance towards Christian perfection — in the expansion of his en
lightened intellect, in the deepening of his universal love.
It will be better to separate the story of his remaining years as it is
handed down to us by early tradition, from the proofs furnished by his
own writings of his gradual growth in the wisdom and knowledge of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet tradition helps us to realise, the conditions
under which the beautiful but partial dawn which we witness on the
banks of Jordan and the shores of Galilee broadened at last into the
perfect day.
Many details of his history are left in the deepest obscurity. During
a period of at least eighteen years we neither know where he lived nor
what he did. In the New Testament we lose sight of him in ad. 50,
at the date of the Synod of Jerusalem ; we do not meet with him again
till we find him in the isle called Patmos, in a.d. 68.
Perhaps some readers may feel surprise that the latter date should
be given with any confidence. It was the general belief of antiquity
that his residence in Patmos was owing to his banishment. Even this

ST. JOHN AT PATMOS. 387
has been disputed, on the ground that it is only an inference from his
expression that he was there " because of the word of God and because
of the testimony of Jesus Christ." These words have been interpreted
by some to mean that he retired from Ephesus to the seclusion of the
rocky islet in order to concentrate his mind on the thoughts and visions
which were being revealed to him. There are, however, no certain
grounds for setting aside the old tradition. It furnishes the most
natural interpretation of his language, and well accords with his saying
that he was "the companion" of those to whom he was writing, "in
their tribulation, and in the kingdom and endurance of Jesus Christ."
But the date of this banishment, if banishment it were, is most
variously conjectured. Epiphanius1 says that it took place in the reign
of Claudius ; Theophylact and the superscription of a Syrian MS. say
that it was in the reign of Nero. Irenseus,2 Jerome,3 and Sulpicius
Severus4 asjree that it was in the reiffn of Domitian, and Eusebius in
his Chronicon places St. John's banishment in the fourteenth year of
that reign ;5 Dorotheus places it in the reign of Trajan. On the other
hand, Clemens of Alexandria6 and Tertullian7 do not venture to name
the particular Emperor, and Origen8 observes that St. John himself is
silent on the subject. But — as I hope to show hereafter — there can be
no reasonable doubt respecting the date of the Apocalypse, and therefore
none as to St. John's stay in Patmos, if, as I myself believe, he was the
author of that book. That he was the author is the all but unanimous
testimony of antiquity from the days of Justin Martyr to those of the
great Fathers of the third century, and it is, I believe, the inference to
which the book itself most decisively points. The notion that it was
written either by John the Presbyter, or by the Evangelist John Mark,9
.requires for its support far weightier and more decisive evidence than
any which modern ingenuity has even attempted to provide.
Of this hiatus of eighteen years in the life of the great Apostle
tradition has very little to tell us, and what it does tell us is of no value.
That he left Jerusalem is certain, and he probably left it for ever. This
may have been at the end of the twelve years during which, as tradition
says, Jesus had bidden His Apostles to stay in the Holy City;10 but, more
probably, it was at a much later period. What were the circumstances
which induced him to leave his own home,11 we cannot tell, but it may
have been the result of that terrible combat between Romish oppression
and Jewish exasperation which arose during the Procuratorships of
1 Haer. Ii. 33. 2 Iren. c. Haer. v. 30, 3.
3 De Virr. Illustr. 9. * Sacr. Hist. ii. 31.
5 H. E. iii. 18 ; xx. 23 ; and Chron. He says he returned from exile in the reign of
Trajan. s Quis Div. Salv. 42. 7 De Praescr. Haer. 36.
8 Comm. in Matt. iii. p. 719.
9 Beza, Proleg. in Apoe. ; Hitzig, Veber Joh. Markus, 1843.
10 Apollonius, ap. Euseb. H. E. v. 18 ; Clem. Alex. Strom, vi. 6, quoting from the
Praedicatio Petri. n to. Kio, John xix. 27.

388 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Albinus and Gessius Florus. We have seen that the agitation which
affected the minds even of Christian Jews had given occasion to the
warnings of the Bishop of Jerusalem that " a man's wrath worketh not
the righteousness of God." The death of the Virgin,1 the murder of
" the Lord's brother " — perhaps precipitated by his own stern rebukes — ¦
the meditated flight of the Christians to Pella — the actual outbreak of
the Jewish war, — any of these may have been St. John's motive for
thus changing the settled habits of his life. Perhaps by this time, when
a race of young, men was growing up around him to whom the Cruci
fixion was but a tale which they heard from the lips of their fathers, he
may have been led to the conviction that the day of Jerusalem had
passed away for ever, that Jewish obduracy had finally hardened itself
against the message of the Gospel. Any peace which the Church of
Jerusalem had enjoyed had been owing to the famines, and political
troubles, which had diverted the attention of the Jews from the
Christians to the desperate struggle against the encroachments of the
Romans and their Herodian nominees. Perhaps it had been due, to an
even greater degree, to the legal " righteousness " of St. James, his
faithfulness to all Jewish traditions, his conciliatory and respectful
attitude towards the Mosaic Law. But the death of James seemed to
open a new chapter in the history of the Mother Church. Simon, son
of Alphfeus, another kinsman of Christ according to the flesh, was
chosen to succeed him. St. John may have felt that his work at
Jerusalem was now finished ; that his thoughts had ripened ; that his
labours were needed in wider regions ofthe mission- field. Of this we
are sure — that he would leave himself to be guided in all the main
decisions of his life by the influence of the Holy Spirit of God.2
Two common legends account for his presence in Patmos by a super
natural deliverance from martyrdom. It is said that he was plunged
into a caldron full of boiling oil at the Latin gate of Rome, and so far
from suffering, only came out of the caldron more vigorous and youthful
than before.3 Another story, frequently represented in Christian art,
says that an attempt was made to kill him by a poisoned chalice, but
1 Nicephorus, H. E. ii. 42. There is nothing to be said for the conjecture of Baronius
and Tillemont that the Virgin accompanied St. John to Asia. oOSaiioi) Xeyerai '6tl cTnjyayei-o
ptff £o.vtoi) tt/i' ayiav irapBivov (Epiphan. Haer. lxxviii. § 11). This statement was made
at the Council of Ephesus (Labbe, Concil. iii. 547).
2 He may even have stayed in Jerusalem till Nero sent Vespasian to suppress the
Jewish revolt (Luke xxi. 20; Jos. B. J. ii. 25; Euseb. iii. 5). One tradition says that
on leaving Jerusalem he went and preached to the Parthians. It rests on such very
shadowy foundation that it may safely be set asido (see Lampe, p. 48, and supra, p. 36S).
Even if there were not some strange error in St. Augustine's reference to this Epistle as
being written "to the Parthians " (Quaest. Eecmg. ii. 19), his writing to them would not
prove that he had preached among them, and there is no trace that he did.
3 Tert. de Praescr. Haer. 36, "in oleum igneum demersus, nihil passus est." Jer.
adv. Jovin. i. 26, and in Matt. xx. 23 ; Origen, in Matt., Horn. 12. Baronius says truly
enough of Tertullian that he was so credulous that he would snatch up any old woman's
story with avidity (Annal. A.n. 201). On these two legends see the various references
in Zahn, Acta Joannis, cxvii. — cxxii.

WAS HE EVER AT ROME? 389
that " it was rendered harmless when he signed over it the sign of the
cross, and the poison fled from it in the form of a little asp."1 The
silence of Irenseus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Sulpicius Severus,
and many others is alone sufficient to prove that these are unauthorised
fables. But these legends bring us face to face with the question, Was St.
John ever at Rome ? It is true that the legends furnish no conclusive
evidence, and that there is no authentic trace of St. John's visit to Rome
in the history of the Roman Church.2 On the other hand, there ist
throughout the Apocalypse so intensely vivid a realisation of the horrors
of the Neronian persecution, and the wickedness of the agents by which
it was brought about, that we feel strongly inclined to believe that the
visions of that book reflect the terrible experiences of an eye-witness.
St. John may have reached Rome as St. Peter and St. Paul did, either
as an Evangelist or as a prisoner, during the final spasms of that
dreadful movement which first caused the blood of martyrdom to flow
in rivers. In any case the Apocalypse is the echo of a harp whose
perturbed strings have been smitten by fierce and bloodstained hands,
and then have been swept by the mighty wind of inspiration. St. John
did not indeed perish as did his brother Apostles during those years
of horror, but the legends of the poisoned cup and the boiling oil may
be dim reflections of the narrowness of the escape which ended in
what was (perhaps erroneously) believed to be his deportation to a rocky
island, and his condemnation to toil as a labourer in its quarries.3
We must, however, be content to remain in ignorance as to the
causes of his presence in Patmos. The tone of his letter to the Seven
Churches speaks of an intimate knowledge of their circumstances, and
the possession of an unquestioned authority over them. He must have
resided in Asia Minor before we find him at Patmos, and the attempt to
prove that his connexion with Ephesus is apocryphal must be pro
nounced to have egregiously failed. That attempt, first made by
Liitzelberger, in 1840, has been seriously followed up by Keim, in 1867,4
and by the Dutch theologian Scholten, in 1871,5 but it surely shows
"the very intemperance of negation." Not only Baur, and Strauss,
1 Augustine, Soliloq. ; Isidor. Hispalensis, De Vit. et Mort. Sanct. 73 ; Ps. Abdias,
Hist. Apost. v. 20 (Fabric. Cod. Apoa: ii. 575) ; Cave, Lives ofthe Apostles. Papias tells
the same story of Joses Barsabbas, and it may be allegorically deduced from Mark
xvi. 18.
2 It is curious that in the Latin translation of the Journeys of the Divine (TreptSSot) by
the Pseudo-Prochorus (Bibl. Pair. 1677), an attempt is made to fix bis martyrdom at
Kome. The MS. was found in the library of the monastery of St. Christodulus in
Patmos. See Zahn, Acta Joannis, p. 191. Tischendorf, ^.ct. Apoa: 266 — 271. . Hip
polytus exclaims " Tell me, blessed John, what didst thou see and hear about Babylon ? "
De Christ, et Antichrist. 36.
3 Victorinus and Primasius say that he was "in metallum damnatus." There are no
mines in Patmos, but metallum may mean "a stone-quarry." It was not one of the
islands usually selected for deportations.
4 Keim, Jesu von Nazara, i. 161 — 167 ; iii. 44 — 45.
5 Scholten, Der Apost. Joann. in Elein-Azie (Leyden).

390 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and Renan, but even the most advanced followers of the Tubingen
school, such as Schwegler, Zeller, and Volkmar, admitted the cogency
of the evidence for a fact which till the last ten years has been
universally accepted. The notion that the Apostle John was mistaken
for the Presbyter John — if ever there was such a person — is wholly
baseless. Even if we accept the wild conjecture that the Apocalypse is
by John Mark the Evangelist or by the supposed Presbyter John —
conjectures which crumble to nothing before the first serious examina-
.tion— -it results from the whole manner and phraseology of the book
that the writer meant himself to be regarded as the Apostle. And
such being the case, it is equally clear that his residence in Asia
Minor is assumed as a thing well known to all readers of the book. It
would have been absurd for a forger to start with an assumption which,
if false, would at once have proved that he was not the person he
pretended to be. Even if we set aside the authority of such men as
St. Clemens of Alexandria,1 and Origen,2 the fact that St. Polycarp, in
A.D. 160,3 who had actually seen and heard the Apostle, appeals to his
authority for the Eastern custom of keeping Easter on Nisan 14, ought
alone to be decisive. Poly crates, in a.d. 190, who as Bishop of Ephesus
was a man likely to be well informed, made the same appeal,4 as also
did St. Irenseus in his letter to Florinus.5 When we remember the
statement of St. Irenseus that as a boy (about A.D. 150) he had heard
from the mouth of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, and many other elders,
many memorable things about John, the Lord's disciple, who, as a
successor to St. Paul, lived in Ephesus, wrote the Revelation and the
Gospel, and died at a great age in the reign of Trajan,6 — does it not
require an extraordinary stretch of credulity to suppose that he made a
confusion between John the Bosom-friend of the Lord, the beloved
Apostle and Evangelist, the immortal survivor of the Apostolic choir,
and a " nebulous presbyter," whose very existence is problematical ?
And who can believe that when Polycrates ranks John with the Apostle
Philip as " the two great stars of Asia,"7 he is thinking only of this
dubious presbyter? Eusebius does indeed in one place (iii. 39) infer
from a well-known passage that Papias had been a personal hearer of
Aristion and John the Presbyter, and not of John the Apostle. In the
style of Papias, so inartificial and inexact, it cannot be regarded as
certain that this is his meaning ; but even if it is, the inference drawn
from this, that St. John had not lived in Asia, has no weight against
1 Clem. Alex. Quis Div. Salv. § 42, and ap. Euseb. iii. 23.
2 Orig. in Oen. (Euseb. iii. 1, 1).
3 Tert. De Praesa: Han: 32; Jer. De Virr. Illustr 17; Chron. Pasch. p. 252.
Waddington places tho martyrdom of Polycarp in 154 or 155.
4 Ap. Euseb.' v. 18, 24. (Comp. Haer. III. iii. 4.) 5 Euseb. v. 20, 24.
0 Surely this testimony more than outweighs the mere silence of Ignatius (ad Eph.
12 ; ad Trail. 5).
7 Ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 31. I believe, with Benan, that the Philip intended was the
Apostle not the Deacon.

WORK OF ST JOHN. 391
the clear statements of Polycarp and Irenseus. It has never been
doubted that Cerinthus taught in Asia, and from the first the Church
has, in many ways, connected the names of Cerinthus and St. John.
By a strange fatality the writings of St. John were actually attributed
to Cerinthus (against whom they were perhaps written) by the Alogi,
who denied the doctrine of the Logos.1 A scholar so accomplished as
Dionysius of Alexandria, in expressing his doubts about the Apocalypse,
thinks it worth while to record the legend that Cerinthus had written it,
and fraudulently- prefixed to it the name of John.2 But even if it
should be proved that the Apocalypse was not written by John, it still
bears decisive testimony to the belief that he was the acknowledged
head of the Christians of Asia.
Relegating to the Excursus3 the intricate inquiry as to the identity
of the Apostle with John the Presbyter, we may here be allowed to
assume that the belief of the Church — unquestioned for nineteen cen
turies — is still to be accepted. It is not difficult to discover why St.
John should have fixed his new home in the famous capital of Procon
sular Asia. The Church in that city was large and flourishing. It
stood at the head of many Churches of great importance. The position
of the city as an emporium of the Mediterranean made it an eminently
favourable centre for missionary labours. The Christians of Asia were
liable to severe temptations, and had long been tried by the influx of
various errors. Everything called for the presence of St. John. St.
Paul was imprisoned, if not dead, and had, at any rate, bidden farewell
to Ephesus for ever.4 The other Apostles were scattered or dead. The
Church, largely composed of Judaising Christians, naturally looked for
the support of an Apostle from Jerusalem. St. John was alone avail
able for the work : nor is it impossible that he may have felt all the
more need to obey the call because, like St. James, he may have been
aware of the danger which arose from the perversion of St. Paul's
teaching by Gnostic and Antinomian heresiarchs, who were ever
mixing it up with alien elements borrowed from Greek or Eastern
speculation. That St. John's individual leanings long continued to be in favour
of the Judaists is proved by the impression which he left upon the
minds of those with whom he had lived ;5 as well as by the countenance
he gave to the Quartodecimaus, who kept the Passover on the 14th of
1 Epiphan. Haer. Ii. 3. The other Fathers are unanimous — Chrys. Praef. in Ephes. ;
Theod. Mops. Prooem. in Cat. Patr. ; Tert. c. Marc. iv. 5.
2 Ap. Euseb. iii. 28.
3 See Excursus, "St. John in Ephesus."
4 Acts xx. 25, 38.
5 E.g., by the story that he was a priest (iepeiis) wearing the high-priestly mitre, Ex.
xxviii. 36 (Polycr. ap. Euseb. v. 24). But it must be borne in mind that St. John re
garded all Christians not only as priests, but as high priests (i. 6 ; xx. 6 ; and ii. 17,
where the mystic stone seems to be analogous to the Urim and Thummim which were
put inside the ephod). The word "mitre of the faith " is used metaphorically in Test.
XII. Patr. iii. 8.

392 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Nisan. It is proved most of all by the general tone of the Apocalypse,
which, amid many resemblances, differs so widely from that of the
Gospel and Epistles. That the Apocalypse was written many years
before the Gospel and Epistles ought to be regarded as a certain conclu
sion. The difi'erence of style alone — apart from the deeper differences
on which I shall dwell hereafter — is sufficient to prove it. The Greek
of the Gospels and Epistles, though Hebraic in the structure of its
sentences, is yet perfectly smooth and correct. It is the Greek of one
who had long been familiar with the language. But the Greek of the
Apocalvpse is so ungrammatical and so full of solecisms as to be the
worst in the entire Greek Testament. Now it is natural that ^t. John,
after so many years in which he had spoken little but Aramaic, should
write Greek imperfectly ; and that he should subsequently gain power
in writing Greek by residence in heathen cities and among a Greek-
speaking population. But it is inconceivable that he should have
written the Gospel and Epistles in pure Greek, and then, after years of
familiar practice, should have come to write the language incomparably
worse. The attempts to explain the difference of style by the peculi
arities of Apocalyptic writings are impossible after-thoughts, wholly
inadequate to account for the phenomena But besides this, without
the invention of a moral miracle, we cannot regard it as possible that, by
writing the Apocalypse after the Gospel, St. John could have gone back
from clear thought to figures, and have reduced the full expression of
truth to its rudimentary indications.1
Perhaps it needed nothing less than the fall of Jerusalem to teach
to St. John, as it taught to most Jewish Christians, that though Judaism
had been the cradle of Christianity it was not to be its grave. Their
intense belief in the symbolism of the Mosaic worship, their identifica
tion of faithfulness and orthodoxy with obedience to the Levitic law,
were opinions so inveterate that nothing could shake them save that
visible interposition which, when Christianity was fairly planted in the
world, rendered impossible the fulfilment of Mosaic ordinances. The
extreme Judaisers had so long encouraged themselves in the belief that
St. Paul was a dangerous, if not a wicked, teacher, that they could not
be convinced that after all they had been immeasurably inferior to him
in insight, until their eyes were opened by the catastrophe which closed
the order of the old ajres, and which was the First Coming of Christ.
St. John, of course, would not have agreed with these Judaisers in their
extreme views, but no one can read his Gospel and Epistles, written
some time after the destruction of Jerusalem, without seeing how much
his knowledge of the truth had been widened since he wrote the
Apocalypse in the days when the Holy City had not as yet been made
a heap of stones.
It has been said, and with scarcely any exaggeration, that the
1 On this subject see Canon -Westcott, Introd. to Gospel, p. IxxxvL

THE APOCALYPSE.

393

Apocalypse is of all .the books in the New Testament the most intensely
Jewish, and the Fourth Gospel the least so. In the Apocalypse " Jew "
is a term of the highest honour ; in the Gospel it usually describes the
enemies of Jesus, the Pharisees and Priests. Yet these differences
are capable of explanation, and we must remember that they are found
in connexion with close resemblances. Even in the Gospel there is no
higher eulogy than " an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile."
" We must be content to remain in uncertainty as to the chronology
of this part of St. John's life, and as to the circumstances which took
him to Ephesus.1 We mny, however, be sure that his residence alike
in the rocky islet and in the thronged Ionian capital were very fruitful
in his divine education. In Ephesus he saw — perhaps for the first
time — the wicked glittering life of a great Gentile city, with its mer
chandise not only of fine linen, and purple and scarlet, and vessels of
ivory and precious wood, and amomum, and incense, and wine, and
horses, and chariots, — but also of "slaves, and souls of men." There,
on the centre of the western coast of Asia Minor, he could, as from a
beacon-tower, look back over the plains and valleys watered by the
Heimus and Mseander, and while he kept watch over all the Churches
of Asia, his voice could sound like a trumpet of God over the Isles of
Greece, and westward to the great cities of Greece and Italy, and
Gaul and Spain.2 Amid that busy scene, with its harbour thronged
with the sails of the civilised world, and its Temple frequented by
nations of worshippers, there could have been little time for contempla
tion in the midst of the work which life in such a city entailed upon a
Christian Apostle. But in his retirement at Patmos, whether voluntary
or compulsory, he would have leisure for peaceful thought. Patmos,
with its strangely shattered configuration, is little more than a huge
rock, and it can never have had many inhabitants. In its grotto of La
Scala, on its bare hills, by its projecting promontories, as he sat alone — ¦
with man distant from him, but God near — he could meditate in undis
turbed devotion. He might naturally pass into mystic ecstacy, as he
sat under some grey olive and looked up in prayer to tlie glow of
heaven, or gazed on the silent expanse of the sea, which under the
burning sun gleams so often like a sea of glass mingled with fire. No
outward circumstances could have been more providentially ordered to
bring out his noblest faculties than the interchange of a life spent
" amid the madding crowd's ignoble strife," with one spent in seclusion
and solitude, wherein he could commune with his own thoughts and hear
the voice of God speaking to him, and be still.3
1 A legend preserved by the author of the Life of Timotheus, of which some extracts
are furnished by Photius, says that he was shipwrecked on the coast of Ephesus during
the Neronian persecution. It is also mentioned by Simeon Metaphrastes, Vit. Joh. 2
(Lampe, Prolog, p. 46).
2 Magdeb. EcrJ. Hist. Cent. ii. 2 ; see too Chrysost. Horn. i. in Johan.
8 " Patmos ressemble a toutes les lies de rArchipel; mer d'azur, air limpide, ciel
serein, rochers aux sommets denteles, a peine revGtus par moments d'uu leger duvet de

394 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The history of Patmos itself throws no light on this interesting sub
ject. It is scarcely alluded to by any ancient author, which is the more
surprising because it furnished a convenient point at which vessels could
touch on their way from Ephesus to Italy. It is only mentioned inci
dentally by Pliny and Strabo,1 and there seem to be no adequate grounds
for Renan's assertion that in the first century it was very populous. A
sterile rock, about eighteen miles in circumference,2 can never 'have been
important. We have no mention of its being used for the deportation
of criminals, and when St. John says that he was there " for the word
of God and the testimony of Jesus," the phrase is indecisive. Patmos
was, indeed, so completely in the highway of the Icarian sea, and its
port was so convenient, that it would not, under ordinary circumstances,
have suited the object for which islands were selected as places of exile.
It is curious that the pseudo-Prochorus, in his Periodoi, says nothing
about any banishment to Patmos, and does not even mention the
Apocalypse, but says that St. John went there to write his GospeL
We can trace no special influences of the scenery on his mind, unless it
be in the mention of " a burning mountain in the midst of the sea,"
which may be a reminiscence of the then active volcano of Santorin,
the ancient Thera.8

CHAPTER XXVI.
LEGENDS OF ST. JOHN.

Ae7 Se Kal vapah'&o'ti xPVO'Bat. ov yap iravra a-jrb rrjs Betas yputprjs SiWrat
\ap.$o.vea8ai. — Epiphan. Haer. lxi. 1.
No account of St. John would be complete without some estimate of
the many legends which cluster round his later years. We may say at
once that some of them, if true at all, belong — in spirit at any rate — ¦
far more to the epoch in which he wrote the Apocalypse than to that in
which he wrote the Gospel.
verdure. L'aspect est nn et sterile ; mais les formes et la couleur du roc, le bleu vif de
la mer, sillonnee de beaux oiseaux blancs, oppose aux teints rougeatres des rochers sont
quelque chose d'admirable " (Kenan, V Antichrist, p. 376). " Silent lay the little island
before me in the morning twilight. Here and there an olive breaks the monotony ui the
rocky waste. The sea was still as the grave. Patmos reposed in it like a dead saint
. . . John— that is the thought of the island. The island belongs to him ; it is his
sanctuary. The stones speak of him, and in every heart he lives " (Teschendorf, Beise
in's Morgenlunil; ii. 257 ; see too Ross, Eeisen auf griech. Inscln, ii. 123, and Guerin,
Dcscr. de Vile de Patmos, 1856). It consists of three masses of rock united by narrow
isthmuses. 1 Strabo, x. p. 488 ; Pliny, H. N. iv. 12 ; Thuo. iii. 23.
2 Tournefort, Voy. du he cant, i. 168. In his time there were only 300 inhabitants. .
See on Patmos, Stanley's Sermons in the East, p. 230.
a Pliny, H. N. iv. 12, § 23; Sen. Qu. Nat. ii. 20 ; vi. 21. But it is just as easy to
suppose that St. John may have sailed past Stromboli in going to Rome.

LEGENDS OF ST. JOHN. 395
1. One of the best-known of these tells us that once at Ephesus he was
entering into one of the great public baths (thermae), when he was in
formed that Cerinthus was in the building. Thereupon he instantly
turned away, exclaiming, " Let us fly, that the thermsa fall not on our
heads, since Cerinthus, the enemy ofthe truth, is therein."1 In another
version of the anecdote, given by Epiphanius, the name of the mythical
Ebion2 is substituted for that of Cerinthus, and this variation happily
serves to throw great doubt on a story which is still quoted with
applause by religious partisans, because it is supposed to furnish a
sanction for violent religious animosities. We catch, indeed, in this
story the old tone of the passion and intolerance of the Son of Thunder,
at a period of his life when we might have hoped, from other indica
tions, that he had climbed to that region " where above these voices
there is peace." Cerinthus was a Jewish Christian, and the earliest of
the Christian Gnostics. He was one of those who believed in two prin
ciples, making a distinction between God and the Demiurgus or
Creator.3 Further than this, he was one of the founders of Docetism,
in that form of it which spoke of " Jesus " as being a mere man, on
whom " Christ," the Son of the Most High God, had descended at His
baptism in the form of a dove, leaving Him again at the moment of
His crucifixion. We can understand how abhorrent such views would
be to St. John ; how they would run counter to his inmost and most
precious convictions. But in the idly superstitious notion that the
thermse must therefore necessarily fall and crush the heretic, we could
only trace (were the story true) the spirit which had once wished to per
form Elijah-miracles of fire — the spirit of one who forgot for the
moment that Christ came to save, not to destroy — that God maketh
His sun to shine upon the evil and upon the good, and sendeth His
rain upon the just and upon the unjust.4
There is another reason for hoping that this favourite story of re
ligious hatred is a fabrication. It was not the usual custom of Jews
to frequent the public baths. They could hardly do so without ren-
1 Iren. c. Haei: iii. 3 ; Euseb. H. E. hi. 28 ; iv. 14 ; Theodoret, ii. 3 ; Nicephorus,
iii. 30. Besides the original authorities here quoted, I may refer to Lampe (Proleg. 68),
Krenkel {Der Apostel Johannes, pp. 21 — 32), and Stanley (Sermons on the Apostolic Age).
2 Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 24.
3 Iren. c. Haer. i. 25 ; Hippol. Philosoph. vii. 33.
4 "A man," said the Rabbis, "should not wade through water, or traverse any
dangerous place, hi company with an apostate, or even a wicked Jew, lest he be over
taken in the same ruin with him " (Kitzur Sh'lah, f. 10, b). This is not the spirit of
Eph. v. 7, or Rev. xviii. 4, which forbids, not the ordinary intercourse of life, which St.
Paul expressly told his converts that he did not mean to forbid (1 Cor. v. 10), but
participation in the sins of others. It is more like the heathen notion —
" Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum
Vulgarit arcanum sub isdem
Sit trabibus, fragilemve mecum
Solvat phaselon," etc.
By entering the same baths, St. John would certainly not have been supposed by any
human being to make himself a "partaker of the evil deeds" of Cerinthus (2 John
10, 11)

396 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
dering themselves liable to the grossest insults. Further, the baths
were almost invariably adorned with statues, and it would have been
strange indeed if those statues were not sometimes those of heathen
deities. The iconoclasm of the Jew made such places detestable to him,
and it was thought an instance of reprehensible laxity when the younger
Gamaliel entered a bath which contained one of the common statues
of Aphrodite.1 Then, too, the Ionian baths were thought to be very
luxurious. We are told that for this reason they were never used by
St. James.2 Epipbanius also asserts that St. John " used neither bath
nor oil."3 Cerinthus was surely not worse than thousands of bad
Christians and worse Pagans — Pagans dyed in every extreme of vice —
whom St. John would be quite sure to encounter if he went to public
baths at all. Strange to say — heretical as were the speculations of
Cerinthus — he is actually asserted by one ancient writer to have been
the author of the Apocalypse. That conjecture is absurd, but it surely
shows that Cerinthus — who, in virtue of his restless and impressionable
nature, has thus become "the spectre of St. John" — could not have
been so flagrantly wicked as to render it dangerous to be under the
same roof with him ! The story is surrounded by difficulties, and I
for one am glad to dismiss it from my memories of the holy Apostle,
as an anachronism in the history of his life, and wholly unworthy of
the later period of his career. If there be any truth in it, it can only
be regarded as an expiring flash of that old intolerance which Christ
had reproved ; or, again, any slight basis of truth in it may be reducible
to the utterance of a strong metaphor by way of expressing marked
disapproval.4 In that case the Apostle would not have meant it to be
taken literally and d'un trop grand serieux. That it was so taken is
due to Polycarp — through whom we get the story third-hand in
Irenseus — and of Epiphanius, who repeats it fourth or fifth-hand, and
tells it wrongly. Polycarp, who would not notice Marcion in the
streets, and when challenged as an acquaintance replied — not surely in
the true Christian spirit, which is peaceable and meek and gentle —
" Yes, I know thee, the first-born of Satan ; " Irenseus, who tells these
stories with approval; Epiphanius, who spent his credulous age in hunt
ing for heresy in the dioceses of wiser men and better saints than him-
1 Avoda Zara, f. 44, b. Tlie excuse which the Rabbi made, " that the statue was a
mere appendage of the bath," showed more good sense than the impetuous conduct
ascribed to the Apostle.
2 Iren. c Haer. v. 33. 3 Epiphan. Haer. lxxviii. 14.
4 Epiphanius, though glad to retain the story, is puzzled by the visit to the baths,
and thinks that it must have been a quite unusual, providential visit ; that he must
have gone "compelled by the Holy Spirit" (ijvayKdcrOr) vn-o tou ayiov HvevpaTos), to give
him an opportunity for the valuable anathema ! Baronius (Anna!., ad A.D. 74) thinks
to reconcile Epiphanius with Iremeus by the suggestion that perhaps both Cerintnus and
Ebion (!) might have been in the bath, a conjecture which Ittigius (De Haeresiarchis, p.
58) approves. See on tho story generally, Lampe, Prolcg. p. 69. I am sorry that
Holtzmann should say (Schenkel, Bib. Lex. s. v. Joh. d. Apost.) " Diese Tradition ist
von alien . . . die glaubwiirdigste," assigning as his reason its accordance with the
character of St. John.

STORY ABOUT THE VINE. 397
self — would not have been likely to soften the features of an anecdote
which had an evil effect even on the saintly mind of John Keble, and is
but too dear to the odium ecclesiasticum.1
2. Another curious story was current in the Churches of Asia long
after the Apostle's death. It rests upon the authority of Papias,2 who
professes to have heard it from Polycarp and others, who had heard it
from St. John. It is as follows : — " The Elders who had seen John, the
disciple of the Lord, related that they heard from him how the Lord
used to teach about those times, and to say, ' The days will come in
which vines shall spring up, each having ten thousand stems, and on
each stem ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand
shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand clusters, and on each cluster
ten thousand grapes, and each grape when pressed shall give five-and-
twenty measures of wine. And when any saint shall have seized one
cluster, another shall cry, " I am a better cluster, take me ; through
me bless the Lord.'" And he used to add, ' These things are believable
to believers.' And when Judas the traitor did not believe, and asked,
' How will such products be created by the Lord 1 ' the Lord said, ' They
shall see who shall come to those times.' "3
What are we to make of this strange story 1 It comes to us only
fifth-hand, in a free Latin translation of a passage of Papias ; and
Papias, on whose authority it rests, was generally looked on as a weak
and credulous person. To make it still more suspicious, it is found also
in the Apocalypse of Baruch. As to its right to belong to the agrapha
dogmata, or unrecorded sayings of Christ, two suppositions alone are
possible — either that it rests on no foundation, or that it is due to
an unintelligent literalism which has mistaken some bright symbol used
by our Lord in the genial human intercourse of His happier hours. He
may have been speaking with His Apostles of the festal anticipations
which, in the common notions of the people, were mingled with their
Messianic hopes ; and in touching on their true aspect — the aspect
which, for instance, makes the wedding festival a picture of the Lord's
kingdom — He may have used some such words in the half-playful irony
which marks . some of the finer shades of His familiar language.
Perhaps He may only have meant to expose the carnal notions of
Jewish chiliasm, which appear again and again in the teaching of
the Rabbis. If so, St. John — fond at that time, as the Apocalypse
1 Dean Stanley (Sermons on the Apostolic Age, p. 273), to show how stories do not
lose by repetition, quotes the purely imaginary sequel of the story in Jeremy Taylor
(Life of Christ, xii. 2), that the bath did fall down, and Cerinthus was crushed in the
ruins ! Jeremy Taylor, however, was not the inventor of this story. It is first found
in the Elenchus Haeresium, by Prateolus ("De suo addit Prateolus, etc., at apud
primitivae .ecclesiae auctores altum est de hac re silentum " (Ittigius, Haeresiarch.
p. 58). 2 On Papias see the Excursus on " John the Presbyter."
3 Iren. Haer. v. 33, 3 ; Euseb. H. E. iii. ad fin. ; Routh, Bel. Sacr. p. 9. Grabe
rightly observes that the narrative must be reckoned among the pvBiKiarepa rtva and &vai
iropa/3oAdi, which Eusebius charges Papias with recording.

398 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
shows, of material symbolism — may, with due oral explanation, have
repeated some of His words. A literal-minded hearer like Polycarp
may have repeated the tale on the authority of St. John, while he
robbed it of all the nuances which alone gave it any beauty or signi
ficance.1 It would become still more prosaic and material in the
writings of a commonplace reporter, and the last traces of its real
bearing might easily evaporate in the loose translation and paraphrase
of Irenseus. In this point of view the story has a real value. It shows us that
we can only attach a modified credence to any report intrinsically
improbable, even when it comes to us attested by one who professes to
have known at least two of the Disciples of the Lord.2 If the anecdote
be based upon fact at all, it has come to us so reflected and refracted
through the medium of a weak mind as to have lost its real significance.
Experience shows that a story told second-hand, even by an honest
narrator, may be so tinged in the narrator's subjectivity as to convey
an impression positively false. We are thus obliged to discount the
tales and remarks for which Irenseus refers us to the authority of " the
Elders,"3 by whom he seems chiefly to mean Papias and Polycarp. Now
Eusebius does not hesitate to say that Papias was a source of error
to Irenseus and others who relied on his " antiquity." When Irenseus
¦says that the "Pastor of Hermas " is canonical; that the head of the
Nicolaitans was the Deacon Nicolas ; and that the version of the
LXX. was written by inspiration ; — we know what estimate to put
on his appeals to apostolic tradition. But there is one instance of
mistake or credulity even more flagrant. -The whole Christian world
unites in rejecting the assertion that our Lord was fifty years old when
he died, although Irenseus asserts it on the authority of " elders who
received it from the Apostles."4 If in these particulars Irenseus followed
too hastily the credulous Papias, he may have derived the harsher
elements of the story about Cerinthus from the aged Polycarp. The
accentuation of that dubious anecdote is what we should expect from
the old man whose way of expressing disapproval of heresy was not to
refute it, but indignantly to stop his ears. The description of the passion
and vehemence of Polycarp given by Irenseus in his fine letter to
Florinus exactly resembles the conduct attributed to St. John. Irenseus
says that if Polycarp had heard the views of Florinus, " I can testify
before God that the blessed and apostolic elder, crying out loud, and
stopping his ears, and exclaiming in his usual fashion, ' Oh, good God,
1 So Eusebius says of Papias that he failed to understand the apostolic traditions
whioh he received, ri kv viroBeiyaao-t irpbs avriiiv p.v8iicSjs eipjjpcva py (rvveiupaKoTa (H. E. iii. 39).
2 Namely, Aristion and "the Presbyter John." Renan needlessly conjectures that
the true reading of Papias in this passage is a re 'ApioriW km 6 jrpeo-0uT£pos 'luivmri oi to5
Kvplov paB-qral \ paBr}Tti)v'} Aeyovo-i (Euseb. iii. 39).
3 " Audivi a quodam Prcsbytero ; quidam ante nos dixit ; iirb tou KpeiVroyos i\pMv etpirrai,
etc See his forms of quotation, collected in Westcott, On the Canon, p. 80.
* See for these opinions Iren. i. 26 ; ii. 22 ; iii. 21 ; v. 20, § 2.

ST. JOHN AND THE ROBBER. 399
to what times hast thou kept me alive, that I endure such things- !'
would have fled away from the place in which he had been sitting
or standing when he had heard such words." Here we have indeed the
story of St. John and Cerinthus in all its distinctive features ! But how
ineffectual and how little Christ-like is such a method of meeting error !
How widely does it differ from the calm reasoning, and " Ye therefore
do greatly err," of the Divine Master ! Neither Papias nor Irenseus are
safe authorities for stories like these. Papias has evidently fallen
into some confusion, and Irenseus has probably mixed up his remini
scences of Polycarp with Polycarp's reminiscences of St. John.1
3. Far different is another story related for us at full length by
Clemens of Alexandria, and worthy in every respect of the great
Apostle. We may assume that it rests on some foundation, because it is •
full of touches which could not easily have been invented. It shows
St. John to us in the full tide of his apostolic activity, appointing
and reproving bishops, visiting and directing Chuisches, and yet finding
time to care for individual souls, loving the young, and willing to brave
any danger in order to rescue them from temptation. I will tell it
mainly in the words of St. Clemens himself.2
" But that you may be still more confident, when you have thus
truly repented, that there remaineth for thee a trustworthy hope of
salvation, hear a legend — nay, not a legend but a true narrative — about
John the Apostle, handed down and preserved in memory. When,
on the death of the tyrant, he passed over to Ephesus from the island
of Patmos, he used to make missionary journeys also to neighbouring
Gentile cities, in some places to appoint bishops, and in some to set
in order whole Churches, and in some to appoint one of those indicated
by the Spirit. On his arrival then at one of the cities at no great
distance, of which some even mention the name, .... he saw a
youth of stalwart frame and winning countenance and impetuous
spirit, and said to the bishop, ' I entrust to thee this youth with all
earnestness, calling Christ and the Church to witness.' The bishop
accepted the trust, and made all the requisite promises, and the
Apostle renewed his injunctions and adjurations. He then returned
to Ephesus, and the Elder taking home with- him the youth who had
been entrusted to his care, maintained, cherished, and finally baptised
him. After this he abandoned further care and protection of him,
considering that he had affixed to him the seal of the Lord as a
1 Euseb. H. E. v. 20. See some excellent remarks in Lampe's Prolegomena, pp.
67-71. 2 Quis Div. Salv. o. 42. Perhaps the life of Apostolic joumeyings, of which this
story furnishes a trace, may show that even if Timothy was " bishop " of Ephesus there
would have been no conflict between his functions and the Apostolic duties of St. John.
But we do not know whether Timothy returned to Ephesus or not after the visit to
Rome, which we may assume that he made at the urgent summons of St. Paul (2 Tim.
iv. 9). The notion of a double succession of bishops — of the circumcision and of the un-
circumcision — which is mentioned in the Apostolic Constitutions (vii. 16), does not agree
with the indications of the Apocalypse.

400 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
perfect amulet against evil. Thus prematurely neglected, the youth
was corrupted by certain idle companions of his own age, who were
familiar with evil, and who first led him astray -by many costly
banquets, and then took him out by night with them to share in their
felonious proceedings, finally demanding his co-operation in some worse
crime. First familiarised with guilt, and then, from the force of his
character, starting aside from the straight path like some mighty steed
that seizes the bit between its teeth, he rushed towards headlong
ruin, and utterly abandoning the Divine salvation, gathered his worst
comrades around him, and became a most violent, blood-stained and
reckless bandit-chief. Not long afterwards John was recalled to the
city, and after putting other things in order said, ' Come now, O Bishop,
restore to me the deposit which I and the Saviour entrusted to thee,
with the witness of the Church over which thou dost preside.' - At
first the bishop in liis alarm mistook the meaning of the metaphor, but
tho Apostle said, ' I demand back the young man and the soul of
the brother.' Then groaning from the depth of his heart and shedding
tears, ' He is dead,' said the bishop. 'How and by what death?' 'He
is dead to God ! For he has turned out wicked and desperate, and,
to sum up all, a brigand ; and now, instead of the Church he has
seized the mountain, with followers like himself.' Then the Apostle,
rending his robe and beating his head, with loud wailing, said, 'A
fine guardian of our brother's soul did I leave ! Give me a horse
and a guide.' Instantly, as he was, he rode away from the Church,
and arriving at the brigands' outposts, was captured without flight
or resistance, but crying, ' For this I have come. Lead me to your
chief.' The chief awaited him in his armour, but when he recognised
John as he approached, he was struck with shame and turned to fly.
But John pursued him as fast as he could, forgetful of his age, crying
out, 'Why, my son, dost thou fly from thine own father, unarmed,
aged as he is 1 Pity me, my son, fear not ; thou hast still a hope
of life. I will give account to Christ for thee, should need be. I
will willingly abide thy death ; the Lord endured the death on our
behalf. For thy sake I will give in ransom my own soul. Stay !
believe ! Christ sent me.' But he on hearing these words first stood
with downcast gaze, then flung away his arms, then trembling,
began to weep bitterly, and embraced the old man when he came up
to him, pleading with his groans, and baptising himself afresh with
his tears, only concealing his right hand. But the Apostle pledging
himself to win remission for him from the Saviour by his supplications,
kneeling before him, covering with kisses even his right hand as having
been cleansed by repentance, led him back to the Church, and praying -
for him with abundant prayers, and wrestling with him in earnest
fastings, anil disenchanting him with various winning strains, he did not
depart, as they say, till he restored him to the bosom of the Church,
affording a great example of true repentence, and a great badge ol

ST. JOHN AND TnE PARTRIDGE. 401
renewed birth, a trophy of visible repentance, when in the close of the
age the angels receive those who are truly penitent into heavenly
habitations, radiantly rejoicing, hymning their hymns, and opening the
heavens."1 4. Other traditions may be briefly mentioned. One beautiful story
rests solely on the authority of the monk Cassian (a.d. 420), and is far
too late and unsupported to have any authentic value.2 It is yet in
many respects characteristic. It tells us that St. John, in his hours of
rest and recreation, used to amuse himself by playing with a little tame
partridge. On one occasion a young hunter, who had greatly desired to
see him, could hardly conceal his surprise, and even his disapproval, at
finding him thus employed. He doubted for a moment whether this
could indeed be the last survivor of the Apostles. " What is that thing
which thou carriest in thy hand ? " asked St. John. " A bow," replied
the hunter. "Why then is it unstrung?" "Because," said the youth,
" were I to keep it always strung it would lose its spring, and become
useless." " Even so," replied the aged saint, " be not offended at this
my brief relaxation, which prevents my spirit from waxing faint."
The beauty of the anecdote lies far less in the common illustration
of the bow which is never unbent, than in the old man's tenderness for
the creatures which God had made. The Jews were remarkable among
the nations of antiquity for their kindness to dumb animals. Even
Moses had taught careless boys not to take the mother bird when they
took the young from their nest, and had meant to inculcate the lesson
of mercy in the thrice-repeated command : " Thou shalt not seethe the
kid in its mother's milk." It is a beautiful Rabbinic legend of the great
legislator that once he had followed a lamb far into the wilderness, and
when he found it, took it into his arms, saying, "Little lamb, thou
knewest not what was good for thee. Come unto me, thy shepherd, and
I will bear thee to thy fold." And God said, " Because he has been
tender to the straying lamb, he shall be the shepherd of my people
Israel." Another Talmudic story will sho,w how much the Jews thought
of this duty. Babbi — the title given by way of pre-eminence to Rabbi
Judah Hakkodesh, the compiler of the Mishna — was a great sufferer.
One day a calf came bellowing to him, as though to escape slaughter,
and laid its head on his lap. But when Rabbi pushed it away with the
remark, " Go, for to this wast thou created," they said in heaven, " Lo !
he is pitiless ; let affliction come upon him." But another day his
servant, in sweeping the room, disturbed some kittens, and Rabbi said,
" Let them alone ; for it is written, ' His tender mercies are over all His
1 The Chronicon Alexandr. mentions Smyrna as the city. Rufinus, in adding that
John made the youth a bishop, seems to be mistaking the meaning of mTemijm rjj
"EKKXtitrla. If, however, the story be well attested, it is strange that no use should have
been made of it in the controversies against Tertullian and the Montanists.
2 Cassian, Gollat. xxiv. 21. The twenty-four Collationes of Cassian are prefixed to
the works of John Damascene. See Zahn, p. 190.
A A

402 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
works.' " Then they said in heaven, "Let us have pity on him, for he
is pitiful."1 " He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man, and bird, and beast.
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all. '
5. The tradition that St. John lived in Ephesus the life of a rigid
ascetic, eating no animal food, having the unshorn locks of a Nazarite,
and wearing no garments but linen, has little to recommend ic. It rests
solely on the authority of Epiphanius, who wrote three centuries after
St. John was dead. No hint of it is found in the writings of those who
had conversed with friends and pupils of the great Apostle. But when
the possibility of Apostolic labours and joumeyings was over, he doubt
less led a life of peaceful dignity, not indeed, except in metaphor, as " a
Priest, wearing the golden frontlet,"2 but as a beloved and venerated
old man whose lightest words were treasured up because he was the last
of living men who could say, " I have seen the Lord."
6. The unsupported assertion of Apollonius, that he had raised a
dead man to life at Ephesus,3 may be passed over without further
notice ; as also may be the assertion that he was, in the Apocalyptic
sense, "a virgin."4 The expression of St. Paul in I Cor. ix. 5,6 at least
gives some probability to the belief that all the Apostles were, like St.
Peter, married men.
7. One more tradition has met with almost universal acceptance.6 It
is that when St. John "tarried at Ephesus to extreme old age, and
could only with difficulty be carried to church in the arms of his
disciples, and was unable to give utterance to many words, he used to
say no more at their several meetings than this : — ' Little children, love
one another.' The disciples and fathers who were there, wearied with
hearing always the same wor^ls, said, ' Master, why dost thou always
say this V ' It is the Lord's command,' was his worthy reply ; ' and if
only this be done, it is enough.' " r
1 Bava Metsia, f. 85, a.
2 Polyer. ap. Euseb . iii. 31, 8s ZytvyBri iepn>s to tt^toKov n-eifiopeKws. Hegesippus affirms
the same thing of James (ap. Euseb. ii. 23). Epiphanius (Han: xxix. 4) appeals to
the authority of Clemens in favour of this legend (aAAa Kai to TreVoAo^ eirl ttjs Ke^aAijs e^ijv
aiiTa> <pcpeiv) (comp. id. Ixxviii. § 13).
3 Apollon. ap. Euseb. v. 18 ; Sozomen, vii. 26.
4 Rev. xiv. 4 (see Life of St. Paul, i. 80 ; Tert. De Monogam. " Joannes . . Christi
spado;" Ambrosiaster on 2 Cor. xi. 2; and in the Pistis Sophia, and Apocalypse of
Bsdras (Fabricius, Cod. Apoa: II. 585).
6 " As the rest of the Apostles. "
6 Lessing has touched on this story in his Testament des Johannes, as Herder has told
the story of the Ephesian robber in his Der gerettetc Juriflling.
1 "Beatus Joannes Evangelista cum Ephesi moraretur usque ad extremam senec-
tutem, et vix inter disoipulorum manus ad ecclesiam deferretur, nee posset in plura
vocem verba contexere, nihil aliud per singulas solebat proferri collectas, nisi hoc

LEGENDS ABOUT ST. JOHN. 403
8. We cannot with certainty name those with whom he was familiar
during the closing epoch of his life. We only know that, according to
the unanimous testimony of antiquity, Polycarp was his friend and
hearer.1 There is less certainty about Ignatius, Papias, and Quad-
ratus.2 9. Respecting the death of St. John we are left in the completest
darkness. Two words — ai>ei\e pLaxo-ipa, "slew with the sword" — suffice
to record the martyrdom of his elder brother;3 not one word tells us
how the last, and in some respects the greatest, of the Apostles passed
to his reward. It is only a very late and worthless rumour which says
that he was killed by the Jews. From the silence of all the early
Fathers as to this supposed martyrdom, we may assume it for certain
that, so far as they knew, he died quietly at Ephesus in extreme old
age. His grave was shown at Ephesus for several centuries, and the
legend, before mentioned, that the dust was seen to move with the
breathing of the great Apostle, as he lay in immortal sleep, arose from
the awe with which it was regarded.4 But the age which he attained —
far surpassing, if some of our accounts are true, the ordinary three score
years and ten5 — only deepened the impression that he would not die till
'Fiholi, dilioite altebdtkum . ' Tandem discipuli et fratres qui aderant, taedio
aff ecti quod eadem semper audirent, dixerunt : ' Magister, quare semper hoc loqueris ? '
Qui respondit dignam Joanne sententiam : ' Quia praeceptum Domini est, et si solum
fiat, sufficit" (Jer. in Gal. vi. 10).
1 Iren. ii 3, and op. Euseb. v. 20; Euseb. iii. 36; Jer. Chron. A.D. 101; de Virr.
Hlustr. 17 ; Suidas, s. v. ; and Tert. de Praescr. Haer. 32.
2 Ignatius is said to have been a hearer of St. John, in Jer. Chron. A.D. 101. The
question about Papias is touched upon in the Excursus on "John the Presbyter."
Quadratus is mentioned by Eusebius and Jerome. Prochorus and Bucolus are mentioned
by later writers of no authority.
3 Acts xii. 2.
4 See supra, p. 381 ; Polycrates, ap. Euseb. H. E. hi. 31, 39 ; v. 24 ; Jer. de Virr.
Hlustr. ix. ; Aug. Tract. 124, in Joann. "Assumat in argumentum quod illic terra
sensim scatere et quasi ebullire perhibetur atque hoc ejus anhelitu fieri " (Niceph. H. E.
ii. 42 ; Zahn, p. 205).
5 According to Isidore Hispalensis (De ortu et obitu, 71), he lived to the age of
eighty-nine. But if he lived till the reign of Trajan (Iren. c. Haer. ii. 225 ; Jer. de Virr.
JUustr. ix., adv. Jovin. i. 14) he must have been nearly ninety-eight. The Chronicon
Paschale says he lived one hundred years and seven mouths, and pseudo-Chrysostom (de
S. Johan. ) that he lived to one hundred and twenty ; as also Suidas s. v. 'Iwaecijs, and
Dorotheus (Lampe, p. 92). In the ninth century a writer named G-eorgius Hamartolos
quotes the authority of Papias, "who had seen him," for the statement in the second
book of his Words of tlie Lord, that John was "put to death by the Jews." On the
other hand, (i) Polycrates (ap. Euseb. iii. 31, v. 20), Ireneeus (Haer. ii. 22, § 5), and
Tertullian (de Anim. 50) speak of his having died a natural death, which they certainly
would not have done if there had been any tradition of his martyrdom ; and (ii) the
epithet " martyr " was only applied to him in consequence of the legends about the
caldron of oil (Tert. Praescr. Haer. 36) and the poison cup ("Acts of John," Fabricius,
Cod. Apocr. i. 576), as well as with reference to his banishment to Patmos (Origen, in
Matt. xvi. 6 and Bev. i. 9). Keim most erroneously says (Jesu von Nazara, III. 44) that
Herakleon, the Valentinian, quoted by Clemens of Alexandria (Strom, iv. 9, § 73),
asserted that the only Apostles who had not suffered martyrdom were Matthew, Thomas,
and Philip. But, in the first place, Herakleon added "Levi, and many others," of
whom, therefore, John may have been one ; and, secondly, he is speaking not of martyr
dom at all, but of various kinds of "confession," one of which is "confession by the

404 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Christ returned. He did not die till Christ had returned, in that sense
of the " close of the aeon " to which His own words and that of His
Apostles often point ; but legend said that he had been taken alive to
Heaven like Enoch and Elijah,1 and that sometimes he still wandered
and appeared on earth.2 So prevalent were such notions as to his
immortality, even during his lifetime, that in the appendix to his Gospel
he thought it necessary to point out the erroneous report of the words
of Jesus from which they had been inferred.
He died, as his brother had died, unnoticed and unrecorded, but he
will live in his writings till the end of time, to teach and bless the
world. " His body is buried in peace, but his name liveth for evermore.
The people will tell of his wisdom, and the congregation will show forth
his praise."8

CHAPTER XXVII.
GENERAL FEATURES OF THE APOCALYPSE.
" Volat avis sine meta,
Quo nee vates, nee propheta
Evolavit altius.
Tarn implenda quam impleta
Nunquam vidit tot secreta
Purus homo purius." — De S. Joanne.
Milton has spoken of the Apocalypse as " the majestic image of a high
and stately tragedy, shutting up and intermingling her solemn scenes
and acts with a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping sym
phonies."4 In this aspect of the book — though the notion of its dramatic
form must be rejected — we may perhaps be content with the arrange
ment which places it as the last book of Holy Writ. But the whole
voice in the presence of authorities," and certainly John had made such a " confession "
(Aots iv. 13, 19). Even Scholten gives up the value of this testimony and that of
Georg. Hamartolos (see "VVilibald Grimm in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschr. (1874), p. 1231.- How
loosely Hamartolos quotes may be seen in the same passage (which was first discovered
by Nolte, Tiib. Quartalschr. 1862, aud is quoted in Hilgenfeld's Einleit. p. 399), from his
reference to Origen, who does not say that St. John was martyred in our sense of the
word, but only that he was banished to Patmos. Nor can any counter-inference be
drawn from a rhetorical passage of Chrysostom, Horn, in Matt. lxv.
1 Tert. de Anima, 50. Obiit et Johannes, quem in adventum domini remansurum
frustra fuerat spes. Ps.-Hippolyt. de Consummat. Mundi. Photius Myriobybl. Cod.
229. The notion that he revised the Canon is quite baseless, nor is it worth while to do
more than mention the story of his having degraded the Presbyter who forged the Acts
of Paul and Thecla (Jer. de Virr. Hlustr. ; Tert. de Baptismo). See, for all legendary
particulars about his death, Zahn, Acta Joannis, cvii. sqq., 200 sqq.
2 As in the famous legends of his appearance to Theodosius (Theodoret, H. E. v. 24),
to Gregory Thaumaturgus ( VU. d. Greg. JVyss. ), and to Edward the Confessor and the
English pilgrims, which is represented on the screen of the Confessor's Chapel in "West
minster Abbey ; and of his appearance to James IV. before the battle of Flodden.
3 Ecclus. xliv. 14, 15. 4 Reasons of Church Government.

ORDER OF BOOKS. 405
weight of evidence now tends to prove that it is not the last book in
chronological order ; that it was written nearer the beginning than the
end of St. John's period of apostolic activity amid the Churches of
Asia ; 1 that the last accents of revelation which fall upon our ears are
not those of a treatise which, though it ends in such perfect music,
contains so many terrible visions of blood and fire, but are rather those
of the Gospel which tells us that the " Word was made flesh," and of
the Epistle which first formulated the most blessed truth which was ever
uttered to human hearts — the truth that "God is Love." 2
And if this conclusion be correct, it is impossible to say how much
we lose — what confusion we introduce into th^divine order — by neglect
ing the indications of chronology. Chronological sequence is always of
the utmost importance for the right understanding of what a writer says.
We are always liable to judge of him erroneously if we intermingle his
writings, and put those messages last which he delivered first. It is
impossible to say how much the difficulty in understanding the mind of
St. Paul has been increased for ordinary readers by the unfortunate
arrangement — an arrangement made on the most haphazard and unin
telligent principles — which obliterates the lessons which would naturally
spring from the right arrangement of his Epistles. It is a subject of
' Modern criticism tends more and more to the conclusion that the Apocalypse is a
. genuine work of the Apostle St. John. Even Baur and Zeller regard it as one of tho
most certainly authenticated of the Apostolic writings. The Alogi at the close of the
second century rejected it only on internal grounds, and their judgment is of no im
portance. Gaius (circ. 200) appears to attribute it to Cerinthus. Dionysius of Alex
andria (a p. 247) was inclined, on grounds of style, to assign it to some other John, but
speaks of it with reverence. Eusebius wavers about it, placing it among the spurious
books in one passage, and among the acknowledged books in another. Cyril of Jerusalem
(t 386), deliberately excludes it from the Canon. The Council of Laodicea (A.D. 381)
omits it. Amphilochius, in his Jamb, ad Seleucus, says that "most" regard it as
spurious. Junilius, even in the sixth century, says that among the members of the
Eastern Church it was viewed with great suspicion. Theodore of Mopsuestia (+ 429)
never cites it. Theodoret (t457) alludes to it very slightly. It is not found in the
Peshito. The Nestorian Church rejected it. It is not mentioned in the sixth century
by Cosmas Indicopleustes. Nicephorus (ninth century) in his Chronographia omits it.
Even in the fourteenth century Nicephorus Callistus, while accepting it, thinks it
necessary to mention that some held it to be the work of " John the Presbyter," regarded
as a different person from " John the Apostle." But, on the other hand, these adverse
views are to some extent accounted for by dislike to the difficulty and obscurity of the
book (Slot to ao-a$h aurrj? «al ovo-dfpiKTOv Kal bXiyots SiaAa/ijSai'd/xei'Oi' (cat pooup-tvoy), and by the
dangerous uses to which it was often turned (t^rjSe avptpepov elvat tols 7roAAots to. lv av-rri fiaBr}
Ipewiv, Prol. to MS. 224). Dislike to chiliastic fanaticism, as well as obvious critical
difficulties, also led to its disparagement in many quarters. The positive evidence in its
favour is very strong. It was accepted by Papias, Justin Martyr, Dionysius of Corinth,
Hermas, Melito of Sardis, Theophilus of Antioch, Apollonius, and Irenseus, the Canon
of Muratori, and the Vetus Itala, in the second century ; by Clemens of Alexandria and
Origen in the third ; by Viciorinus of Pettau, Ephraem Syrus, Epiphanius, Basil,
Hilary, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Didymus, and Ambrose, in the fourth. Besides
this, the internal evidence, in spite of differences and difficulties, is too clear to be over
looked, and too subtle to have been forged.
2 It is hardly worth while to mention the Apocryphal writings attributed to St.
John, such as the one on the Descent from the Cross, on the Death of the Virgin
Mary, etc. See Lampe, Prolegomena, p. 131 ; Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. Hi. T. pt. iii.
p. 200.

406 THE EARLY DATS OF CHRISTIANITY.
regret that the Revisers of the Authorised Version did not render a
permanent service by placing them in that sequence which is now ascer
tained with certainty as regards the four several groups into which they
fall, and which is known with approximate certainty respecting almost
every one of the separate Epistles. How is it possible for any one to
enter into the real working of St. Paul's mind — the effects produced
upon his thoughts by years of Divine education — who is led to infer that
he wrote the two Epistles to the Thessalonians after he had written not
only those to the Romans and Galatians, but even after those to the
Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians 1 It is to be hoped that the day
will come when the obstinacy of custom will no longer prevent the cor
rection of these conventional misplacements. But even graver mis
apprehensions result from the misplacement of the writings of St. John.
Their present arrangement is due to suppositions, which lead to endless
difficulties. It confuses the value of precious lessons, and paves the way
for grievous errors. Some may think it an exaggeration to say that
this closing of the Holy Book with the Apocalypse has not been without
grave consequences for the history of Christendom ; but certainly it
would have been better both for the Church and for the world if we had
followed the divine order, and if those books had been placed last in the
Canon which were last in order of time. Had this been done, our Bible
would have closed, as the Book of God to all intents and purposes did
close, with the gentle and solemn warning of the last Apostle — " Little
children, keep yourselves from idols."
This, then, is the order which we here shall follow. In the Apoca
lypse the New Testament seems to be still speaking in the voice and in
the tones of the Old Testament. In trying to see something of the
meaning of the Apocalypse, we shall see the mind of St. John when he
first emerged from the overshadowing influence of St. James and the
Elders of Jerusalem ; when, from the narrowing walls of the metropolis
of Judaism, he passed forth into the Christian communities which had
grown up in the heathen world. We shall see how he wrote and what
he thought while under the guidance indeed of God's Holy Spirit, but
before he had profited by his thirty last years of continuous education,
and while yet he was but imperfectly acquainted with the language in
which his greatest message was to be delivered. The Apocalypse was
written before he had witnessed the Coming of Christ and the close of
the Old Dispensation, in the mighty catastrophe which, by the voice of
God in history, abrogated all but the moral precepts which had been
uttered by the voice of God on Sinai The moral conceptions of the
Gospel transcend the symbolism of visions, and the; kabbalism of
numbers. We do not pass from the purest and most etherial region of
thought to dim images of plague and war, foreshadowed by fire-breath
ing horses and hell-born frogs. When we have grasped the\ abstract and
absolute forms in which the Gospel and the Epistles set forth to us the
eternal conflict of life with death, and light with darkness, we have

APOCALYPSE AND GOSPEL. 407
learnt higher and deeper lessons than when we gaze on the material
symbols of scarlet dragons and locust-horsemen, and the warring of
Michael with the devil and the beast
A few words from one of our latest and best students of the
writings of St. John, though not written with this purpose, may serve
to show what we lose by our customary reversal of the proper order.
" In the Apocalypse," says Canon Westcott, " the thought is of an
outward coming for the open judgment of nien ; in the Gospel, of a
judgment which is spiritual and self-executing. In the Apocalypse, the
scene of the consummation is a renovated world ; in the Gospel, the
Father's House. In the former, the victory and the transformation are
from without, by might, and the 'future ' is painted in historic imagery;
in the latter, the victory and the transformation are from within, by a
spiritual influence, and the ' future ' is present and eternal 
The Apocalypse gives a view of the action of God in regard to men in a
life full of sorrow, and partial defeats and cries for vengeance ; the
Gospel gives a view of the action of God with regard to Christ, who
establishes in the heart of the believers a presence of completed joy.
. . . . In a word, the study of the Synoptists, of the Apocalypse,
and of the Gospel of St. John in succession, enables us to see under what
human conditions the full majesty of Christ was perceived and declared,
not all at once, but step by step, and by the help of the old prophetic
teaching." 1 SECTION I.
DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE.
But before we enter on the difficult task of attempting to see the
significance of the Apocalypse, we must once more pause to cast a
glance over the condition of the world at the time when it was written.
The chief obstacle to the acceptance of the true date of the Apoca
lypse, arises from the authority of Ireneeus. Speaking of the number
of the Beast, and repeating those early conjectures which, as I shall show
elsewhere, practically agree with what is now known to be the true
solution, he remarks that he cannot give any positive decision, since he
believes that, if such a solution had been regarded as necessary, it would
have been furnished by " him who saw the Apocalypse. For it is not so
long ago that it (the Apocalypse) was seen, but almost in our generation,
towards the close of the reign of Domitian." Three attempts have been
made to get rid of this evidence. Guericke proposes to take " Dome-
tianou " as an adjective, and to render the clause " near the close of the
Domitian rule," i.e., the rule of Domitius Nero.1 But the absence of
the article on which he relies gives no support to his view, and no
scholar will accept this hypothesis, though he may admit the possibility
of some confusion between the names Domitius and Domitian.3 Others
1 Introd., pp. lxxxv. — lxxxvii. 2 Guericke, Einleit. ins N. Test. p. 285.
3 This is the view of Niermeyer.

408 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
again make the word ewPdev mean " he, i.e., St. John, was seen,". since no
nominative is expressed. Now Irenseus, in the same passage and else
where, dwells so much on the fact of testimony given by those who had
seen John face to face, that we cannot set aside this suggestion as impos
sible.1 It has the high authority of Wetstein. Again, the Latin trans
lator of Irenseus renders the verb not " visa est," " the Apocalypse was
seen," but "visum est," "the Beast (to emptor) was seen." The language
is, unfortunately, ambiguous, and as, in uncritical times, it would
naturally be understood in what appears to be the most obvious sense, it
is not surprising that St. Jerome follows the supposed authority of
Irenseus in dating the Apocalypse from the later epoch. Eusebius says
that St. John was banished to Patmos in the reign of Domitian, but,
even if he be not misunderstanding the meaning of Irenseus, his evidence
goes for little, since he leant to the view that the Apocalypse was
written by John the Presbyter, and not by the Apostle. But the autho
rity of Irenseus was not regarded as decisive, even if his meaning be
undisputed. Tertullian places the banishment to Patmos immediately
after the deliverance from the caldron of boiling oil, and Jerome
says that this took place in the reign of Nero.2 Epiphanius says
that St. John was banished in the reign of Claudius, and the earliest
Apocalyptic commentators, as well as the Syriac and Theophylact, all
place the writing of the Apocalypse in the reign of Nero. To these
must be added the author of the " Life of Timotheus," of which extracts
are preserved by Photius. Clemens of Alexandria and Origen only say
that " John was banished by the tyrant," and this on Christian lips may
mean Nero much more naturally than Domitian.3 Moreover, if we
accept erroneous tradition or inference from the ambiguous expressions
of Irenseus, we are landed in insuperable difficulties. By the time that
Domitian died, St. John was, according to all testimony, so old and so •
infirm that even if there were no other obstacles in the way it is impos
sible to conceive of him as writing the fiery pages of the Apocalypse.
Irenseus may have been misinterpreted ; but even if not he might have
made a " slip of memory," and confused Domitian with Nero. I myself,
in talking to an eminent statesman, have heard him make a chronological
mistake of some years, even in describing events in which he took one of
the most prominent parts. We cannot accept a dubious expression of
the Bishop of Lyons as adequate to set aside an overwhelming weight of
evidence, alike external and internal, in proof of the fact that the Apoca
lypse was written, at the latest, soon after the death of Nero.4
1 pap-TV povvriav €Keivtiiv Tutv KaT* o^Jtv 'liaavvrfv etopajco'TWl' (Iren. ad Haer. V. 30).
2 Tert. De Praescr. 36, Jer. c. Jovin. i. 26.
3 See Epiphan. Haer. Ii. 12 and 33 ; Andreas on Bev. vi. 12 ; Arethas on Bev. vii.
1 — 8 ; Syriac MS. No. 18 ; Theophylact. Comment, in Joann.
* This result is now accepted, not only by Liicke, Schwegler, Baur, Zullig, De "Wette,
Renan, Krenkel, Bleek, Reuss, Keville, Volkmar, Bunsen, Diisterdieck, etc., but also by
such writers as Stier, Neander, Guericke, Auberleu, F. D. Maurice, Moses Stuart,
Niermeyer, Desprez, S. Davidson, the author of Tlie Parousia, Aube\ etc.

THE APOCALYPSE. 409
For the sole key to the Apocalypse, as to every book which has any
truth or greatness in it, lies in the heart of the writer ; and the heart of
every writer must be intensely influenced by the spirit or the circum
stances of the times in which he writes. His words are addressed in the
first instance to his living contemporaries, and it is only through them
that he can hope to reach posterity. Now, if there was ever any book
which bears upon every page the impress of reality — the proof that it is
written in words which came fresh and burning from the heart, and
passed fresh and burning into the hearts of others— that book is the
Apocalypse. " Without tears,'' says Bengel, "it was not written ; with
out tears it cannot be understood." It comes to us with tenfold force
when we remember the tumult of emotions with which the small and
persecuted communities of early Christians found themselves in direct
antagonism to the Roman Empire, as well as to the Jewish religion.
Could any powers more venerated and more portentous than these be
ever banded together to crush a nascent faith 1 The Apocalypse is not
in the least a book of dim abstractions, of fantastic enigmas, of mon
strous symbols. It had a very definite object, and a, very intelligible
meaning for all who had been trained in familiarity with the strange
form of literature to which it belongs. The single phrase of Tertullian
— " Sub Nerone damnatio invaluit " — goes far towards giving us a clue
to the meaning of the Apostle. John writes as a Christian prophet
would be likely to write who may have seen a Peter crucified and a Paul
beheaded.1 The book is a rallying cry to the Christian warriors who
might seem liable to be trampled to the earth in irremediable defeat.
The book has been persistently misunderstood. Herder migtit well
ask, " Was there a key sent with the book, and has this been lost1? Was
it thrown into the Sea of Patmos, or into the Maeander 1 " Intolerance,
ignorance, sectarian fierceness, the sanguinary factiousness of an irreli
gious religionism, the eternal Pharisaism of the human heart, have made
of it their favourite camping-ground. Others have been driven into a
natural but irreverent scorn of it, because they turn with disgust from
the degradation to which it has been subjected by fanatical bigotry.
But when rightly used, it is full of blessed instruction, and it would
never have been discredited as it has been if its own repeated assertions
and indications had not been ignored. Instead of seeking out the mean
ings which must have made it precious to its original readers, as, in great
part at least, to all loving and humble Christian hearts, men have
wandered into the quagmire of private interpretations after the ignis
fatuus of religious hatred. God has revealed Himself in the history of
the Church and "the World, but this manifestation of God in history
has been hopelessly confused by an attempt to make it correspond with
1 The remarkable expression, " And I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded
(ireireXtKHTp-ivuv) for the testimony of Jesus " (Kev. xx. 4), may (as Ewald thinks, Gesch.
vi. 618) point especially to the death of St. Paul. " Beheading " was the fbrm of death
adopted for Boman citizens.

410 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
symbols with which it has no connexion. The surest and deadliest
injury to which the Apocalypse can be subjected is to treat it as a
sort of anticipated Gibbon, or a controversial compendium of ecclesias
tical disputes. Its symbols have become plastic in the hot hands of
party factiousness, but under such manipulations they have been ren
dered unintelligible to the eyes of truth and love.
Happily these " theological romances " ! of Apocalyptic commentary
have had their day. Like a thousand other phantoms of exegesis, they
are vanishing into the limbo of the obsolete. They may linger on for
a time, like spectres not yet exorcised, but they are doomed to dis
appear for ever in the broadening light of a sounder knowledge.
The Apocalypse had its immediate origin in two events which
happened at this period of the life of St. John. One was the Neronian
persecution. The other was the outbreak of the Jewish war. It was
not until these events were over, it was not until their Divine teaching
had done its work, that a third and more gradual event — the develop
ment of Gnostic teaching in the form of new Christologies — called forth
in its turn the Gospel and the Epistles of St. John as the final utterance
of Christian revelation.
Unless we study these events there is no chance of our under
standing the writings of St. John. Those writings, like all the Books
of Scripture, are indeed full of sacred lessons for every humble heart.
The comprehension of such lessons — which, after all, are the best and
deepest — require nothing but the spiritual enlightenment of a pure and
truthful soul. But the historical and critical knowledge of a book
demands other qualifications; and it has been a fatal mistake of
Christians to claim infallibility for their subjective convictions, not
only in matters of religious experience, but in questions of history and
criticism, respecting which they may be quite incompetent to pronounce
an opinion of any value.
We have already seen what manner of man Nero was. The spec
tacle of such a mau seated on the Imperial throne of the heathen world
accounts for the abhorrence which he inspired as a living impersonation
of the "world-rulers of this darkness."2 We have also seen the origin
and history of the Neronian persecution, and the circumstances which
connected it with the burning of Bome. For the history of these
events we must refer back to the earlier portion of the volume. But
we must remind the reader that the Apocalypse of St. John can only
be rightly read by the lurid light which falls upon it from the Burning
City — under the horrible illumination flung by the bsde-fires of martyr
dom upon the palace and gardens of the Beast from the abyss.
A great French artist has painted a picture of Nero walking with
his lictors through the blackened streets of Rome after the conflagration.
' Moses Stuart. 2 Eph. vi 12.

THE NERONIAN PERSECUTION. 411
He represents him as he was in mature age, in the uncinctured robe
with which, to the indignation of the noble Romans, he used to appear
in public. He is obese with self-indulgence. Upon his coarsened
features rests that dark cloud, which they must have often worn when
his conscience was most tormented by the furies of his murdered mother
and his murdered wives. Shrinking back among the ruins are two poor
Christian slaves, who watch him with looks in which disgust and de
testation struggle with fear. The picture puts into visible form the
feelings of horror with which the brethren must have regarded one whom
they came to consider as the incarnate instrument of Satanic antagonism
against God and against His Christ — as the deadliest and most irresis
tible enemy of all that is called holy or that is worshipped.
Did St. John ever see that frightful spectacle of a monster in human
flesh ? Was he a witness of the scenes which made the circus and the
gardens of Nero reek with the fumes of martyrdom? We have already
observed that tradition points in that direction. In the silence which
falls over many years of his biography, it is possible that he may have
been compelled by the Christians to retire from the menace of the storm
before it actually burst over their devoted heads. St. Paul, as we
believe, was providentially set free from his Roman imprisonment just
in time to be preserved from the first outburst of the Neronian perse
cution.1 Had it not been for this, who can tell whether St. Paul
and St. John and St. Peter might not have been clothed in the skins of
wild beasts to be torn to pieces by the bloodhounds of the amphitheatre'!
or have stood, each in his pitchy tunic, to form one of those ghastly
human torches which flared upon the dark masses of the abominable
crowd? But even if St. John never saw Rome at this period, many
a terrified fugitive of the " vast multitude " which Tacitus mentions
must have brought him tidings about those bloodstained orgies in which
the Devil, the Beast, and the False Prophet — " that great Anti-Trinity
of Hell" — were wallowing through the mystic Babylon in the blood
of the martyrs of the Lord.
Supposing that St. John had written an apocalyptic book at this
time, is it not d priori certain that these events, and the appalling figure
of the Antichrist who then filled the world's eye, would have been
prominent in such a book 1 Do not contemporary events and contem
porary persecutions figure in every one of the numerous Apocalypses in
which Jews and Christians at this epoch expressed their hopes and
fears 1 Is it not a matter of certainty to every reasonable man, that the
Apocalypse must be interpreted by laws similar to those which regulate
every other specimen of that Semitic form of literature to which it
avowedly belongs 1 Does not the fact that the anticipated Antichrist of
Daniel is the persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes, make it in the highest
degree probable that the incarnate Antichrist of St. John is the per
secutor Nero ? i See my Life of St. Paul, ii. 604—607.

412 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The Neronian persecution, then, was one of the two events which
awoke in Christian hearts those thundering echoes of which the
Apocalypse of St. John is the prolonged and perpetuated reverberation.
The other event was the outbreak of the Jewish war and the siege
of Jerusalem. If we succeed in fixing the date of the Apocalypse,
we shall be able to know what was the exact condition of the Empire
and of the Holy Land, of Judaism, Heathendom, and Christianity —
of the world and of the Church of Christ — when St. John saw and
wrote. But while the date may be fixed with much probability, it cannot
be fixed with certainty. All that can be asserted is that the book was
written before the destruction of Jerusalem, and the burning of the
Temple. This is clear from the beginning of the eleventh chapter.
The Temple is there spoken of as still standing, in language which
closely resembles, and indeed directly refers to, the language of our
Lord in his great Eschatological discourse. Such language, and the
whole sequel of it, would have been unreal and misleading if, at the
time when it was penned, nothing remained of the Temple and city of
Jerusalem but heaps of bloodstained stones. But though Jerusalem
was not yet taken, there are signs that the armies had already gathered
for her anticipated destruction, and that the whole length of the land
had been deluged and drenched with the blood of its sons. We cannot
tell the exact year in which the Christians — warned, as Eusebius says,
"by a certain oracle given to their leaders by revelation;"1 or, as
Epiphanius tells us, "by an angel"2 — left the doomed and murderous
city and took refuge across the Jordan, in the Persean town of Pella.3
There can be little doubt that their flight took place before the actual
blockade of Jerusalem by Titus, and probably in a.d. 68. It seems to
be alluded to in Rev. xii. 14. Now the first threatening commotions in
Judsea began in a.d. 64, shortly after the fire of Rome. The actual
revolt burst forth at Csesarea in ad. 65. Vespasian was despatched to
Judsea by Nero during his visit to Greece in a.d. 66. He arrived
in Palestine early in a.d. 67. The years 67 and 68 were spent in
suppressing the brave resistance of Galilee and Persea. Nero died
in June, 68. Political uncertainties caused a suspension of the Roman
1 Euseb. H. E. iii. 5 (Kara nva xpwi&v k.t.x.). Probably the leading Presbyters of the
Church pointed out that the signs of the times indicated by our Lord, as He sat two
days before His death on the Mount of Olives (Matt. xxiv. 15, seq.), now clearly required
obedience to His warning.
- Epiphan. De Meiuurin, 15. In Haer. xxix. 7, he refers directly to the command of
Christ. Jerusdem might be said to be "circled with armies" (Luke xxi. 20), long
before its actual circumvallation by Titus.
3 Which might well be described as in " the mountains." Pella is in a lofty position,
and is on one side surrounded by precipices. It was the nearest city to Jerusalem which
was at once safe and neutral. Though a free city, it had placed itself more or less
under the protection of Agrippa II., and by so doing had severed its fortunes from those
of the Jews. By their flight to this town, the Jewish Christians cast in their lot with
the opponents of Jewish fanaticism. It was one of the steps in that Divine education
which showed them that the days of Mosaism and of the synagogue were past.

THE FIVE KINGS. 413
measures during the year 69, but when Vespasian felt himself secure of
the throne, in a.d. 70, he sent Titus to besiege Jerusalem. The siege
began early in March, 70, and was brought to its terrible conclusion in
August of the same year. •
But there are two passages, Rev. xiii. 3, and xvii. 10, 11, which
might seem to give us the very year in which the book was written.
The former tells us about the Wild Beast, and how " one of his heads
was smitten to death and his deathstroke was healed ; " the other,
explaining the previous symbols, tells us that the seven heads of the
Beast "are seven kings ; the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not
yet come." Now we shall see hereafter, with perfect certainty, that the
Wild Beast, and the wounded head of the Wild Beast, are interchange
able symbols for Nero. The five " kings " then can be no other than
Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Nero. The reckoning of the
" kings " J from Augustus is the natural reckoning, and is the one
adopted by Tacitus. If Suetonius begins his Twelve Csesars with the
life of Julius, the greatest of them all, the reason is that he wishes to
give an account of the Csesarean family, and of the hero eponymus who
raised them to the summit of earthly power.2 So far then it might be
regarded as certain that Galba is the sixth emperor, and therefore that
the Apocalypse was written between June, 68, when Nero committed
suicide, and January, 69, when Galba was murdered. And since the
news of Galba's successful rebellion could not have been known without
a little delay, we might fix the date of the Vision in the summer or
autumn of a.d. 68.
This is, indeed, the all but certain date of the book. We have
already seen reason to set aside the notion of its having been written in
the reign of Domitian, as due partly to the mistake of Irenseus,3 and
partly to idle repetition and idle inference. It is not, however, impos
sible that Vespasian and not Galba may have been regarded by the
Apostle, no less than by others, as having been in reality the sixth
emperor. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius passed like phantoms across the
imperial stage. The Sibyllist dismisses them in the single line — "After
him three kings shall be destroyed by one another."'1 They neither
belonged to the old imperial family, nor did they found a new one.
Between them they barely covered the space of a year and a half. It is
true that they are spoken of as "Csesars" both by Tacitus and Suetonius,
though Vitellius refused the name. But when Vespasian succeeded the
murdered Vitellius, at the end of ad. 69, it was believed that the
1 " Kings " was a common title for the Roman Emperors in the Eastern provinces
(see Ewald, Gesch. vi. 604. seqq.).
8 " Imperator " was a title which Julius Cassar bore, in common with Cicero and
other private persons. He never was " Princeps." The last private Imperator was
Junius Blaesus, in the reign of Tiberius.
3 The Commentary of Andreas, Bp. of the Cappadocian Caesarea, in the fifth cen
tury, rightly says, in contradiction of Irenseus, that it was supposed to have been
written before A.D. 70. * Orac. Sib. v. 35.

414 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Flavian dynasty would be secure and lasting, and the fashion arose of
regarding the reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius as a mere " rebellion
of three military chiefs." l If this were the view of the seer, the date
of the Apocalypse would be brought down to A.D. 70. The earlier date
accords better with his own indications.
The tension of feeling caused by the tremendous conflict of the
Antichrist against the Saints must have been still further strained by
the imminent destruction which seemed to threaten the existence of the
Jewish race. To minds already glowing with expectations of the Coming
of Christ, and the close of the ages, the signs of the times must have
worn a portentous aspect. The sunset sky of the ancient dispensation
was red and lowering with the prophecy of storm. The "woes of the
Messiah " — the travail throes of the Future Age — the pangs which were
to accompany the new birth of the Messianic kingdom — were already
shaking the world. There were wars and rumours of wars. There
were famines and earthquakes. The Church had barely passed through
the anguish of the great tribulation. Christians had realized what a tre
mendous thing it was to be "hated of all men," and to be treated as the
offscourings of the world. Hundreds of martyrs had been baptized in
blood. The name of " Christian " was regarded as the synonym of
malefactor ; and all the world hated Christians on the false charge that
Christians hated all the world. Many were faltering in the faith ; many had
proved false to it. Even within its sacred fold many regarded each other
with suspicion and hatred. There were false Christs and false Prophets.
The powers of heaven were being shaken. Suns and moons and stars —
from Roman Emperors down to Jewish Priests — were one after another
waxing dim, and shooting from their spheres. Clearly the day must be
at hand of which the Lord had said that it would come ere that genera
tion passed away, and that all the things of which He had spoken would
be fulfilled. Men were not expecting it. They were eating and drink
ing, as in the days of Noah, marrying and giving in marriage, drinking
with the drunken, and beating their servants in all the security of greed,
in all the insolence -of oppression. But none the less were the powers of
vengeance nursing the impatient earthquake, and a belief in the eternal
laws of morality was alone sufficient to make every Christian feel that
the fiat had gone forth —
" Rome shall perish ! write that word
In the blood that she hath spilt :
Perish hopeless and abhorred,
Deep in ruin as in guilt."
1 The language of Suetonius is very remarkable, and certainly lends some sanction to
the views of those who regard Vespasian as the sixth Emperor. He says, " Bcbellione
trium principitm et csede inccrtum diu et quasi ragum Imperium suscepit firmavitque
tandem gens Flavia " ( Vesp. 1).
2 This is tho term used not only by the Babbis, but also by the Evangelists, ipxy
iiSlvwv (Matt. xxiv. 8 ; Mark xiii. 8). It is a rendering of the Hebrew Chebell hamme-
shlach. (See Hos. xiii. 14 ; Isa. xxxvii. 3 ; Mic. iv. 9 ; v. 2, &c.)

MUTUAL HATRED. 415
The fields were white for the harvest, the grapes were purple for the
vintage of the world. The carcases of a corrupt Judaism and a yet
corrupter heathendom seemed already to be falling in the wilderness ;
and on the distant horizon were visible the dark specks which the seer
knew to be the gathering vultures of retribution, which should soon fill
the air with " the rushing of their congregated wings."

SECTION n.
THE REVOLT OF JUDJEA.
" Conquest, thy fiery wing their race pursued,
Thy thirsty poniard blushed with infant blood." Heber.
On the whole the Jews had borne with reasonable patience, for
nearly a hundred years, the odious yoke of the Herods and the Romans.
The volcano of their fanaticism was, indeed, only slumbering ; and every
now and then such events as the rebellion of Judas of Galilee, or the
bold teaching of the Pharisee Matthias Ben Margaloth, or some tur
bulent movement of the Zealots, or some secret assassination by the
Sicarii, proved to the Procurators that it was not extinct. The
affair of the Standards, and of the Gilt Votive Shields, and of the
Corban Money, under the rule of Pilate — the fierce persistency with
which the Jews braved death by the sword or by famine, rather than
admit the desecration of their Temple by the Colossus of Caligula —
showed the Romans that they were walking over hot lava and recent
ashes. The rise of false Messiahs under Fadus, the seditious movements
in Samaria under Cumanus, the spread of brigandage under Felix, the
establishment of a sort of vehmgericht, which carried out by murder its
secret decrees, the quarrels between Agrippa and the Jews under Festus
about the wall of his palace, the avarice of Albinus (a.d. 63), and the
manner in which he allowed the disgraceful factions of rivals in the
High Priesthood to assail each other unchecked, all tended to precipitate
the end. But though the Jews and the Romans felt for each other
a profound hatred, there was no overt rebellion till the days of Gessius
Floras, who was appointed Procurator in a.d. 65. Under the best
of circumstances the administrative customs of the Romans were odious
to the Jews, and although the Romans were anxious to extend to them
the utmost limits of a contemptuous tolerance, yet they looked upon
the conduct of the Jews as so unreasonable, so fanatical, so unworthy
of ordinary human beings, that they were in a state of perpetual
exasperation. The Jews, in return, regarded the Romans as the imper
sonation of brutal violence, infamous atheism, and impure greed. In
the Talmud, and in the Books of Esdras and Enoch, we see how they
loathed their political rulers. The arrogance of Jewish exclusiveness
constantly betrayed itself in language which showed that they regarded

416 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Gentiles as worthless,1 and even Proselyte's as little better than a blotch
on the health of Israel.2 On the other hand, Tacitus shows us how
a grave Gentile historian could describe the Jews as no people at all,
but the mere scum and offscouring of peoples, the descendants of a
horde of leprous slaves, devoted to execrable superstitions, degraded by
ass-worship, and animated by phrenetic hatred of all nations except
themselves. The mutual aversion of Semites and Aryans thus finds
ample illustration in the litei'ature of both.
Between such elements there could be no deep or lasting peace, least
of all when the Jews were so seething with Messianic expectations that
even the Gentiles had come to believe that some one from the East was
to be Master of the World. The Romans afterwards explained this
prophecy as applicable to Vespasian ; but Suetonius tells us that the
Jewish revolt was due to their understanding it in a Messianic sense.3
The air, too, was full of prodigies. A great writer has said that the
most terrible convulsions of nature have often synchronised with the
political catastrophes.4 However this may be, it is certain that events
are often influenced by the effect produced on the imagination by
strange portents or uncommon appearances. The tension of men's
minds among the heathen made them notice or imagine all sorts of
prodigious births, storms, inundations, comets, showers of blood, earth
quakes, strange effects of lightning, abnormal growths of trees, streams
of meteorites.5 In Jerusalem men told how, at the Passover of ad. 65,
a mysterious light had gleamed for three hours at midnight in the
Holiest Place ; how the enormous gates of brass, which it required the
exertions of twenty men to move, had opened of themselves, and could
not be closed ; how, at Pentecost, the priests had heard sounds as of
departing deities, who said to each other, " Let us depart hence ;"6 how
" Fierce fiery warriors -fought upon the clouds,
In rank and squadron, and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood."
"Every one," says Renan, "dreamed of presages; the apocalyptic
colour of the Jewish imagination tinged everything with an aureole
of blood." It seems to have been the wicked object of Gessius Florus — the last
of the Procurators of Judsea — to bring these elements of rebellion to a
1 Bava Kama, f. 113, 6; Sanhedrin, f. 59, a; Sopherim, 15 ; Bosh Hashanah, f. 2% a.
These, and other similar passages, may be seen translated in Dr. McCaul's Old Paths,
Hershon's Treasures of the Talmud, etc.
2 " The following three are attached to each other — proselytes, slaves, and ravens"
(Pesachim, f. 113, b). Rabbi Chelbo said, " Proselytes are as injurious to Israel as the
scab " (see my Life of St. Paul, i. 666).
3 Suet. Vesp. 4. " Percrebuerat Oriente toto vetus et constans opinio esse in fatis ut
eo tempore Judea profecti rerum potirentur. Judaei ad se trahentes rebellarunt " (Jos.
B. J. vi. 5, § 4 ; Tao. Hist. v. 13).
¦* Niebuhr. 6 Suet. Vesp. 5.
6 Jos. B. J. ii. 22, § 1 ; vi. 5, § 21 ; Tao. H. v. 13, and in the Talmud.

THE TROUBLES AT 'OESAREA. 417
head.1 Though he owed his appointment to the friendship of his wife,
Cleopatra, with Poppsea, who, if not a proselyte, was very favourable to
the Jews, it seems as if he took every step with the intention of escaping
from legal enquiries into his own administration, by maddening the
Jews into acts which the Romans would regard as irreparably criminal.
The legions of Palestine were not purely Roman. They were recruited
from the dregs of the provincials, especially from the Syrians of Ctesarea
and the Samaritans of Sebaste, two places in which the Jews were
regarded with special antipathy.2 At Csesarea the population was half
Jewish, half Greek and Syrian. Nothing but the Roman authority
prevented these hostile nationalities from flying at each other's throats.
In A.D. 66 Nero settled their rivalries by giving the precedence to the
Greeks and Syrians. A Greek immediately built a wall so close to the
Jewish synagogue that the Jews had hardly room to pass. The young
Jews assaulted the workmen, and John, a Jewish publican, gave Floras
the immense bribe of eight talents to prohibit the continuance of the
building. Florus accepted the money, and, without taking any step,
went to Sebaste. The next day, being the Sabbath, some worthless
Greek, in order to insult the Jews, turned up an earthen pot near the
door of the synagogue, and began to sacrifice birds upon the bottom of
it. This was intended to be a parody on Lev. xiv. 4, 5, and therefore
an allusion to the old calumny that the Jews were a nation of lepers.3
The Jews flew to arms, and since the Roman Master of the Horse
could not quell the tumult, they carried off their sacred books to
Narbata. When John and twelve of the leading Jews went to Sebaste
to complain to Florus, he threw them into prison. As though this was
not enough, he sent to Jerusalem, and demanded seventeen talents from
the Corban treasury for the use of the Emperor. This was more than
the Jews could tolerate. They not only refused the demand, but
heaped reproaches upon the Procurator. He set out for Jerusalem, with
a body of horse and foot, to enforce his requisition ; and when the
people came forth to pay him the customary compliment of receiving
him with a shout of joy, he ordered his cavalry to drive them back
into the city. Next day, with outrageous insolence, he refused every
apology which was offered him, demanded the surrender of those who
had reproached him, and scourged and crucified some of the Jewish
publicans, though they held the rank of Roman knights. In these'
disturbances 3,600 Jews were slain. Even then the chief citizens tried
to calm the people, and to hush the voice of their natural lamentations.
But Florus now bade them all go out and welcome with a shout of joy
two cohorts which were advancing from Csesarea. To these cohorts he-
1 " Duravit tamen patientia Judaeis usque ad Gess. Florum .... sub eo bellum
ortum"(Tac. H. v. 10).
2 "Ekron shall bo rooted up" (Zeph. ii. 4). "This is Cfflsarea, the daughter of
Edom (Rome) " (Megillah, f. 6, a).
3 See Jos. c. Apion. i. 25 ; Tac. H. v. 4.
B B

418 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
had given the brutal order not to return the shout, and to fall on the
Jews, sword in hand, if they showed any signs of dissatisfaction. A
tumult naturally arose, and many of the defenceless Jews were mas
sacred or crushed to death. Next day the people were in open revolt.
They drove back Florus from the Temple into Antonia, and demolished
the covered way, down which it had been the custom of the Roman
soldiers to rush when any disturbance arose in the Temple. After these
acts pardon was impossible, and Floras, having effected his infamous
purpose, retired to Csesarea, leaving only a single cohort in the Castle of
Antonia. The principal Jews, with the Queen Berenice, then went to complain
of Florus to Cestius Gallus, the Legate of Syria. He sent Neapolitanus
and Agrippa to Jerusalem to make enquiries, and Agrippa sincerely
tried to save the people from rebellion. They were willing to make
every concession except that of continuing to obey Florus. When
Agrippa urged them to do this, they pelted him with stones, and drove
him from tbe city.
The revolt continued. Though occasioned by the tyranny of Florus,
it was inspired by Messianic hopes.1 The strong fortress of Masada was
seized by the Zealots,2 and the Roman garrison was put to the sword.
Eleazar, captain of the Temple, refused to permit any sacrifices for the
Emperor. The loyal party, aided by 3,000 Batanean horsemen, sent
them by Agrippa, could only command the upper city, and this was
stormed after a few days by the Zealots and Sicarii, who burnt the
palaces of Agrippa, Berenice, and the High Priest Ananias. Two days
after — on July 5, A.D. 66 — they took the tower of Antonia, and though
they had sworn to let the Roman garrison depart, they massacred the
whole cohort with the exception of their head centurion, Metilius, who
basely purchased his life by accepting circumcision. The High Priest
Ananias was dragged out of his place of concealment, a sewer of the
Asmonsean Palace, and was murdered. By the end of September, 66,
Jerusalem was in the hands of the rebels. The Romans in the strong
fortress of Machserus capitulated. Cypros was taken. In five months
the whole of Palestine — Judsea, Persea, Galilee, and even Idumsea— was
in open rebellion against the Roman Empire.
Then began that internecine war of races— that horrible " epidemic
of massacre " — which is unparalleled in the whole of history. The
rebellion failed chiefly because of the hatred with which the Jews had
inspired the Syrians. In Csesarea the Greeks and Syrians attacked the
Jews, and massacred them to the number of 20,000 ; while Florus
seized the few that had escaped, and sent them to the galleys. The
1 Jos. B. J. vi. 5, § 4. Josephus and Tacitus are almost our sole authorities for the
history of the revolt. Gratz (Gcscli. d. Jnden. iii. 331 — 414) and Derenbourg (Hist, de
Tal. 255-302) add a few particulars gleaned from the Talmud.
2 The Zealots (Knnnaim) were the fiercest and most unscrupulously reckless of
the national party. They were chiefly Galilseans. Simon the Apostle was a Kananite —
i.e., a Zealot.

EPIDEMIC OF MASSACRE. 419
Jews avenged themselves by massacring the Syrians in Philadelphia,
Heshbon, Gerasa, Pella, Scythopolis, and other towns ; and by laying
waste with sword and fire every city and village which they could seize
in Decapolis, Gaulonitis, Samaria, and the maritime plain. The Syrians
took fearful reprisals at Ascalon, Ptolemais, Tyre, Hippo, and Gadara.
The madness spread even to Alexandria. The Prsefect at that time was
the apostate Jew, Tiberius Alexander, a nephew of Philo. The quarrel
broke out when the population were assembled in the huge wooden
amphitheatre. Insulted by the Greeks, the Jews hurled stones at their
adversaries, and seized torches to set fire to the amphitheatre, and
involve the whole population in destruction. Unable to stop them in
any other way, Tiberius let loose 17,000 soldiers upon them, and 50,000
Jews were slain. Before the year was ended, there was another horrible
plot of massacre at Damascus, and 10,000 Jews, unarmed and defence
less, were shamefully butchered by their fellow-citizens. Early in the
next year, the streets of Antioch also were deluged with Jewish blood.
Cestius Gallus now marched southward with Agrippa, at the head
of a considerable force, to quell the rebellion. Conflagration and
massacre marked his path. Zabulon, Joppa, Narbatene, Mount
Asamon, Lydda, were the scenes of various tragedies. In October he
arrived at Gibeon. Though it was the Sabbath, the Jews, with whom
intense zeal supplied the place of skill and discipline, rushed to en
counter him, and killed 515 men, with the loss of only twenty-two on
their own side, while the rear of the Romans was harassed by Simon
Bar Giora. Of the ambassadors sent by Agrippa to appeal to the Jews,
one was killed, the other wounded. All hope of peace being now at an
end, on October 30, Cestius advanced to Scopus, at the north of Jeru
salem, seized Bezetha, fired the timber market, and drove the rebels
within the second wall. If he had shown the least courage and reso
lution, he might now without difficulty have taken the city by assault,
and ended the war, for large numbers of the peaceful citizens were ready
to open the gates to him. His irresolution and cowardice frustrated
their plans. Even when he was on the verge of success, he so
unaccountably sounded a retreat, that the Zealots, in a fury of reviving
hope, chased him first to Scopus, thence to Gibeon, and finally inflicted
upon him a desperate defeat at the famous path of Bethhoron, over which,
in old days, Joshua had uplifted his spear to bid the sun " stand still
upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon." Cestius left
5,300 footmen and 380 horsemen dead upon the field, lost an eagle,
and, flying to Antipatris, left behind him the military engines which the
Jews afterwards turned to such good account against the besiegers of
Jerusalem. The sheep, as in the Book of Enoch, were now armed to
do battle against the wolves. The Legate died soon after, weary of a
life which had suffered so severe a shame.
The defeat of Cestius took place in November, 66. When the news
of it reached Nero in Greece, even the supreme folly and disgrace of his

420 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
daily proceedings did not prevent him from realising the gravity of the
crisis. He saw that an able general was necessary to recover the
country, which he had been taught by soothsayers to regard as his future
Empire.1 He had such a general in Vespasian, whose humble origin
and plebeian surroundings secured him from jealousy. Vespasian was
then in disgrace, for having gone to sleep or yawned while Nero was
singing. When the messenger came to announce his elevation to the
post of commander-in-chief of the Judsean legions, Vespasian thought
that he was the bearer of a death-warrant from the imperial buffoon.
But accepting the proffered command, he at once took vigorous
measures, and was ably seconded by Titus, his son.
Meanwhile — though it was clear from the first that the revolt was
foredoomed to defeat, and that the rebels would drag nation and city
and Temple to destruction — even serious citizens were swept away by
the tide of frenzied enthusiasm. They may have thought that the only
way to control the revolt was to range themselves at the head of it.
The city was placed under the younger Hanan and Joseph Ben Gorion.
The country was divided into military districts. Gamala and Galilee
were assigned to the protection of the historian Josephus.
It was on him, and the forces under his command, that the first
shock of battle fell. Vespasian had formed the plan of conquering the
country in detail, and of driving the defeated population southwards in
disorderly masses towards Jerusalem, where he hoped that famine would
expedite the work of war. He started from Antioch in March, ad. 67.
Then once more began the bath of blood for the hapless race. Josephus,
though he displayed both genius and courage, and was the nominal
general of " more than 100,000 young men," was hindered by want of
cavalry, and hampered by the rashness, treachery, and opposition of
followers, from whom his very life was often in danger. Gadara was
the first city to fall. There, as well as in the surrounding villages, men,
women, and children were indiscriminately slain. For forty -six days
Josephus defended Jotapata. On the forty-seventh it was betrayed.
Forty thousand Jews had fallen in the siege ; 1,200 were made prisoners;
the city was committed to the flames. At Ascalon 10,000 Jews were
slaughtered. At Japha 27,000 were killed, and the women and children
were sold into slavery. On Mount Gerizim many Samaritans perished
of thirst, and 11,600 fell before the soldiers of Celearis. At Joppa,
8,400 had been slain by Cestius and the city burnt. But a number of
fugitives had ensconced themselves in the ruins, and were living by
piracy and brigandage. These Jews fled to their ships before the
advance of the Roman soldiers. Next morning a storm burst on them,
and, after a frightful scene of despair, 4,200 were drowned, and their
1 Suet. (Nei: 40) : " Spopondorant tamen quidam destituto ei ordinationem Orientis,
nonnulli nominatim regnum Hierosolymorum. "
2 So he says (B. J. ii. 20, § 6) ; but perhaps bis numbers would bear dividing by ten
at least, and his items (id. § 8) seem only to amount to 65,350.

GAMALA AND GISCALA. 421
corpses were washed upon the shore. Tarichese was a strongly-fortified
city on the shores of Lake Tiberias. It was taken by Titus, and 6,000
Jews dyed with their blood the waters of that crystal sea. Titus had
promised safety to the inhabitants, but in spite of this 2,200 of the
aged and the young were massacred in the Gymnasium ; 6,000 of the
strongest were sent to Nero to dig through the Isthmus of Corinth ;
and 30,400 citizens of this and neighbouring cities, including some
whom Vespasian had given to Agrippa, were sold as slaves.
After this dreadful experience, nearly the whole, district submitted
to the conqueror. Gamala, however, still resisted. It was deemed im
pregnable by its citizens, since it was built at the top of a mountain,
accessible only by one path, which was intersected by a deep ditch.
Agrippa besieged it for seven months in vain. Then Vespasian invested
it. Pressed by hunger, of which many died, some of the citizens climbed
down the precipice, or escaped through the sewers. At last, aided by a
storm, the Romans took it on October 23, a.d. 67. Once more there
was a fearful slaughter. Two women alone escaped ; 4,000 were slain
in the defence ; 5,000 flung themselves down the precipices ; all the rest
— even the women and children — were cut to pieces or thrown down the
rocks. Mount Tabor, which Josephus had fortified, still held out. Placidus
drew away some of its defenders by a feigned flight, and the rest were
driven to surrender from want of water. We are not informed of the
number of the slain.
Giscala, the native city of the. Zealot John, was the last to succumo.
John fled from it with his adherents, and in the pursuit of them by the
troops of Titus, 6,000 women and children were slain.
After this the Roman generals led their troops into winter quarters,
postponing the siege of Jerusalem till the following year. But this
respite brought no peace to the miserable and polluted city. John of
Giscala, escaping to Jerusalem, excused his flight by saying that it was
not worth while to defend other cities so long as the Jews possessed such
a stronghold as Jerusalem, which the Bomans, unless they made them
selves wings, could never reach. By such boastings he fired the audacity
of the young and the fanatical. Brigandage increased on all sides, and
the Zealots were guilty of such atrocities that many preferred to throw
themselves on the mercy of the Romans. By night and by day, openly
and in secret, murder, pillage, and every form of crime raged in the Holy
City. The rich and noble were seized in multitudes on the false charge
of treachery, and were put to death, partly to get rid of their authority,
partly to plunder their goods. For the purpose of humiliating the
priests, it was pretended that the High Priest ought to be chosen by lot,
and they thrust into the venerable office a poor peasant who was totally
ignorant of the necessary duties. Hanan the Younger, a man of great
courage and of high authority, because he and his family had long been
the wealthiest and most eminent of the High Priests, made one more

422 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
attempt to rouse the wretched citizens against this brutal tyranny,
which, in the name of religion and patriotism, was guilty of the most
awful crimes. To the last, and to the utmost of his power, he was true
to the traditional policy of his house, which was so to act that "the
Romans might not come and take away their place and nation." 1 It
was for this reason only that he had so far yielded as to give an appa
rent sanction to the revolt. But he was as little able to stay the shocks
of the subsequent earthquake as Mirabeau or Lafayette to stem the
course of the French Revolution. When these tremendous outbreaks
have fairly begun, their issues always belong to the most violent.
The Zealots were the Montagnafds of the Jewish revolt. John of
Giscala, while he swore a most solemn oath that he was faithful to
the party of moderation, betrayed all their plans to the Zealots. A
combat ensued, in which the party of Hanan succeeded in driving the
Zealots into the inner courts of the Temple. Then, at the instigation
of John, the Zealots introduced 3,000 Idumeans into the city, by sawing
through the bars of the city gates, on a night of such violent storm that
they were not heard or suspected. The Idumeans, once admitted, began
to massacre the people. When their presence was discovered, a wild
wail of terror rang through the night, and many of Hanan's party flung
themselves in despair from the walls and porticos of the Temple. The
massacre was continued in the city. Zealots and Idumeans scourged
and tortured the most eminent citizens, and murdered the wealthy
Zachariah, the son of Baruch, under circumstances of peculiar brutality.2
They not only killed Hanan the Younger, and Jesus son of Gamala, but,
with unheard-of ruthlessness, stripped naked the bodies of these vener
able priests, and flung them forth unburied to be devoured by dogs and
jackals. The scenes enacted at Jerusalem during this year, a.d. 68, and the
year following, may perhaps be faintly paralleled by the worst orgies, of
the Reign of Terror, but far exceeded them in stark and irredeemable
wickedness. The Idumeans, says Josephus, " fell upon the people as a
flock of profane animals, and cut their throats." It was not long before
they were so gorged with plunder, so sated with blood, so sick of their
own brutalities, that with a qualm of self-disgust they expressed repent
ance, opened the prisons which they had themselves filled, 'and leaving
the city, joined Simon, the son of Giora. But the Zealots did not pause
for a moment in their work of horror. They murdered Gorion, and
Niger of Perea, and every noble citizen that was left. They sold to the
rich permission to fly, and murdered all who attempted to escape without
bribing them. Vespasian and his soldiers were glad to look on and see
1 John xi. 48 — 50 ; xviii. 14. Josephus, with his usual untrustworthiness where he
had any purpose to serve, directly contradicts himself as to the character of Hanan
(B.J. iv. 3, §7;.F«. 391.
2 In Matt, xxiii. 35, "Son of Barachias," is probably an ancient but mistaken gloss
(see my Life of Christ, ii. p. 246, n.).

VESPASIAN. 423
these infatuated wretches do the work of their Roman enemies. Mercy
seemed to be dead. All the streets of the city, all the roads about the
city, were heaped with unburied corpses, which putrefied in the sun.
Brigands and sicarii raged uncontrolled, and the Zealots, who had seized
Masada, attacked the town of Engedi, murdered more than 700 women
and children, pillaged the town, and terrorised the whole coast of the
Dead Sea,
Such was the state of things when the campaign reopened in the
spring of 68. The first task of Vespasian was to seize Gadara. At
Bethennabris there , was another slaughter. Placidus pursued the
fugitive Jews to Jericho. It happened that at this time the Jordan was
in flood. Such multitudes were drowned that the river and the Dead
Sea were filled with corpses, as the Sea of Galilee had been after the
siege of Tarichea. Thirteen thousand were left dead upon the field ;
2,200 were taken prisoners. Every other Perean town which offered
resistance was taken. Those who took refuge in boats on the Dead Sea
were chased and slain. On the eastern bank of the Jordan, Machserus
alone remained in the hands of the rebels.
The reader may now understand something of the force of the expres
sion in the Apocalypse, that when the vintage of the land was trodden,
the blood without the city rolled in a torrent, bridle-deep, for a distance
of 1,600 furlongs.1 The length of the Holy Land, from Dan to Beer-
sheba, is 139 miles ; but over a still larger area, from Tyre — nay, even
from Damascus — in the north, to Engedi in the south, the whole country
had been scathed with fire and drowned in blood. The expression of the
Seer would hardly seem an hyperbole to one who had seen the foul red
stains which had polluted the silver Lake of Gennesareth ; the Jordan
choked with putrefying corpses ; even the waves of the Dead Sea
rendered loathlier than their wont with the carcases of the countless
slain. No one could witness, no one could think of those urtsparing
massacres without having his eyes dimmed, as it were, with a mist of
blood. " For seven years," says the Talmud, " did the nations of the
world cultivate their vineyards with no other manure than the blood of
Israel."2 But in truth when we read the Jewish annals of these years, we
never seem to have reached the cumulus of horrors. It was in vain
that — even after he seemed to have drawn round Jerusalem his " circle
of extermination " — Vespasian was called away from the scene. He
arrived at Jericho on June 3, a.d. 68, but his attention was at once
diverted into an entirely different direction. Vindex revolted from
Nero on March 15 ; Galba on April 3 ; the Prsetorians revolted on
June 8 ; on June 9 Nero committed suicide. Vespasian had been
flattered by dreams and prognostications of future Empire, to which his
ears were always open. Up to this time, however, he had not coin-
i Bev. xiv. 19, 20. 2 Gittin, f. 57 a.

424 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
mitted himself, and he now sent Titus with Agrippa to salute Galba as
his legitimate Emperor. Before they arrived, the news came that on
January 2, a.d. 69, Vitellius had been proclaimed Emperor by the
legions of Germany, and that on January 15 Galba had been murdered,
and Otho proclaimed by the Prsetorians. Vespasian was not prepared
to acknowledge either Otho or Vitellius. He paused in his warlike
operations to watch the course of events. But the doomed and
miserable land, and the yet more doomed and miserable city, were
far from profiting by this respite. It seemed as if the Zealots were now
drunken with blood and fury. Simon, son of Giora, had got together
an army of slaves and cut-throats, and was spreading terror far and
wide. He conquered the Idumeans, and desolated their country with
fire and sword. He repelled an attack of the Zealots, and drove them
back into Jerusalem. When, by a stratagem, they had captured his
wife, he seized all who came out of the city, cut off their hands, sent
them back, and threatened to treat every one of the citizens in the
same way, if his wife were not restored to him. Power was given
to the mystic rider of the Red Horse, says St. John, " to take peace
from the earth, and that men should slay one another."1 Civil war
raged within and without the city with such fury, that the Romans
almost appeared in the guise of friends. All who attempted to fly
from Simon were murdered by John ; all the fugitives of John were
murdered by Simon. At last, in despair at the tyranny of John, the
people admitted Simon within the walls. The only difference was that
they had now two tyrants instead of one. John and his Zealots were
confined to the Temple, and were the fewer in number; but from its
height and impregnable position they were enabled to make sallies,
and to hurl down upon their enemies, from the captured engines of the
Romans, a perfect hail of missiles. In the incessant collision between
the hostile factions, all the houses in the neighbourhood of the Temple
were burnt down. It was surrounded by a chaos of blackened ruins, in
which unburied corpses bred pestilence in the summer noon. Not only
the streets, but even the courts and altar of the Temple constantly
swam in blood. Priest and pilgrim mingled their blood with their
sacrifices, smitten down by balistse or catapults as they stood beside the
altar. Their feet were soiled, so that they polluted every corner of
the holy precincts with steps encrimsoned by the uncleansed pools
of gore, which told the tale of daily slaughter. Every semblance of
performing the rites of religion was reduced to the most monstrous
mockery. It was impossible that men could breathe this reeking
atmosphere of blood and crime, in which every brain seemed to reel
with the hideous intoxication, without a total collapse of the moral
sense. At the very time that the Zealots were representing them
selves as the God-protected champions of a cause the most sacred in the
1 Rev. vi. 4.

STATE OF THE WORLD. 425
world, they had become so dead to every precept of religion, that,
putting on the robes and ornaments of women, decking their hair,
painting underneath their eyes, but carrying swords under their gay
female apparel, they plunged headlong into such nameless obscenities,
that it seemed as if the city had become not only a slaughter-house, and
a robbers' cave, but a very cage of unclean beasts, fit only to be taken
and destroyed. " How is the faithful city become an harlot ! It was
full of justice ! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers."1
Very early, amid these scenes of horror, it must have been evident
to the little Christian community that "the abominable wing that
maketh desolate"2 was standing in the Holy Place, which was now
more shamelessly defiled than any shrine of Moloch or Baal Peor.
Well might they recognise that the city which was known as "the
Holy, tbe Noble," was " spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where
also their Lord was crucified."3

Thus horrible was the aspect of the world — politically, morally,
socially, even physically — during the months in which the Apocalypse
was written. Physically men seemed to be tormented and terrified
with catastrophes and portents. " Besides the manifold changes and
chances of human affairs," says Tacitus, "there were prodigies in
heaven and on earth, the warnings of lightnings, and the presages of
the future, now joyous, now gloomy, now obscure, now unmistakable.
For never was it rendered certain by clearer indications, or by more
deadly massacres of the Roman people, that the gods care nothing for
our happiness, but do care for our retribution."4 In Rome a pestilence
had carried off tens of thousands of the citizens. A disastrous
inundation of the Tiber had impeded the march of Otho's troops, and
encumbered the roads with ruins.5 In Lydia an encroachment of
the sea had wrought fearful havoc. In Asia city after city had
been shattered to the dust by earthquakes.6 "The world itself
is being shaken to pieces," says Seneca, "and there is universal
consternation."7 Comets, eclipses, meteors, parhelions, terrified the
ignorant, and were themselves the pretexts for imperial cruelties.8
Auroras tinged the sky with blood. Volcanos seemed, like Vesuvius,
to be waking to new fury.9 Morally, the state of the Pagan world was
such as we have seen. It was sunk so low that, in the opinion of
the Pagan moralists of the Empire, posterity could but imitate and
could not surpass such a virulence of degradation. The state of the
i Isa. i. 21. 2 Dan. ix. 27 ; xl 31 ; xii. 11 ; Matt. xxiv. 15 ; Mark xiii. 14.
3 Rev. xi. 8. 4 Tac. H. i. 3. * Tac. H. i. 86.
6 Eusebius (Chron. A.D. 17) mentions Ephesus, Magnesia, Sardis, iEgae, Philadelphia,
Tmolus, Apollonia, Dia, &c. In the third book of the Sibyllines (iii. 337 — 366) many
others are mentioned.
7 Sen. Nat. Qu. vi. 1. 8 Suet. Ner. 36. 9 Tac. Ann. xv. 22.

426 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Jewish world is revealed alike in the Gospels, in the Talmud, and
in the writings of Josephus. It may suffice to quote the opinion of the
latter that his own generation in Judsea was the wickedest that the
world had seen, and that if the avenging sword of the Romans had not
smitten Jerusalem with God's vengeance, the very earth must have
opened to swallow up her iniquities. Socially, we see how desperate
was the condition alike of Jews and Pagans, in St. Paul, St. James,
and Josephus on the one hand, and in Tacitus, Suetonius, and the
Satirists on the other. Politically, the whole Empire was in a state of
agitation. That the sacred sun of the Julii should set .in a sea of blood
seemed an event frightfully ominous, while, owing to the obscurity
which hung about the death of Nero, and the very small number of
those who had seen his corpse, and the prophecies which had always
been current about his complete restoration, not only was there a
universal belief that he would return, but as early as the end of a.d. 68
a false Nero gained many adherents, and caused wide-spread alarm.1
The election of Galba by the legions of Spain seemed to divulge a secret
full of disaster — the fact that an Emperor could be created elsewhere
than at Rome. Emperor after emperor died by suicide or by the hands
of assassins. " In outlines dim and vast
Their fearful shadows cast
The giant forms of Empires on .their way
To ruin ; — one by one
They tower, and they are gone — "
The Romish world and the Jewish world were alike rent by civil
war. There were banquets in the reign of Nero at which seven
emperors and the father of an eighth — for the most part entirely
unrelated to one another — might have met under the same roof, namely,
Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, and
the elder Trajan ;" and five of these, if not six, died violent deaths.
Every general of the smallest eminence became ambitious to raise
himself to " the dread summits of Csesarian power."3 Vindex, Nym-
phidius, Galba, Vitellius, Vespasian, Claudius Macer in Africa, Fonteius
Capito in Germany, Betuus Chilo in Gaul, Obultronius and Cornelius
Sabinus in Spain, were all seized with the vertigo of this ambition ;
while the generals who helped their various attempts — such as Csecina,
Valens, Mucianus, Antonius Primus — became themselves the objects of
jealousy and suspicion. More than once the soldiers had serious
thoughts of murdering all the senators, in order to keep the whole
government of the world in their own hands." Almost alone among the
crowd of military chieftains, Virginius stood superior to these dreams
of usurpation, and when he died peacefully, full of years and honours,
1 Suet. Nei: 40, 57. 2 Eenan, L' Antichrist, p. 481.
3 See Merivale, Hist. vi. 374. * Tac. H. i. 80 ; Dion Cass. lxiv. 9.

MASSACRE AT BEDRIACUM. 427
he deserved the proud epitaph which he engraved upon his tomb, that
he, when Vindex was defeated,1 " claimed the Empire not for himself
but for his country."'1 The fatal lesults of consular ambition might be
seen on the field of Bedriacum. Therj the very roads were obstructed
with the mounds of the dead, and the massacre was all the more deadly
because Romans could not be sold as slaves, so that no one on either
side was tempted to pause from slaughter in the hope of booty. After
a desperate hand-to-hand conflict between Romans and Romans, which
heaped the field with an almost incredible number of the slain,3 " the
soldiers fell sobbing into one another's arms, and all denounced in
common the wickedness of civil war." Amid portents so threatening
and scenes so terrible, it is not strange that the hearts of men should
have been failing them for fear. There had been for many years an all
but universal impression that the days of Rome were numbered. It
had probably originated from the expectations of Jews and Christians,
and is found again and again in the Sibylline books.4 In Dion. Cassius
we read that a proverb was prevalent that when thrice three hundred
years had passed, or in the beginning of the tenth century since Rome
was founded, she should perish.6 It was even sung as a song in the
streets, that after thrice three hundred years internal sedition should
destroy the Bomans ; and at a later period, the line " Last of the
descendants of ^Eneas, a matricide shall. reign," was on everybody's lips.
" Rome shall be ruins," says one of the Sibyllists, writing long before the
Apocalypse. The calculations of that Jewish form of Kabbalism which
was known as Gematria — or the substitution of numerical values for
words — led the writers of the Sibyllines to notice that the numerical
value of the letters of Rome was 948, and they therefore prophesied
that in that year Rome should be destroyed.6 They thought that Nero
would awake from the dead to accomplish this vengeance, and that
" dark blood should mark the track of the Beast."7 The Sibyls, says
Lactantius, " say openly that Rome shall perish, and that by the
judgment of God."8 The topic of them all is, in prophetic language,
" The burden of Rome."
And amid all these evils — these multiplied signs of the approaching
end — the "woes of the Messiah " afflicted the Church also. Two of the
¦ greatest cities of the world — Rome, the spiritual Babylon ; Jerusalem,
the spiritual Sodom — had drunk deep of the blood of the prophets
and saints of Christ. Nor had the guilt of such murders been confined
1 " Hie situs est Bufua, pulso qui Vindice quondam,
Imperium asseruitnon sibi sed patriae. — (Plin. Ep. vi. 10. )
2 Tac. H. ii. 44.
3 Dion Cassius (lxiv. 10) mentions the fearful but most improbable total of 400,000
(reVo-apss pvpia&es). Tacitus (H. ii. 44) calls it a strages.
* Orac. Sibyll. ii. 15, 19 ; iii. 46—59 ; vii. 111^112, etc.
5 Dion Cass. Ivii. 18; lxii. 18.
« 'Povo, =100+800+40+8=948. (Orac. Sib. viii. 147.)
J Id. 157. s Lactant. Div. Inst. vii. 15.

428 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
to them. " Through all the provinces " it seemed as if Satan had come
down having great wrath, as knowing that his time was short. Many a
nameless martyr in the various cities of the Empire had been added to
that " vast multitude " who, in the Neronian persecution, had suffered
their baptism of blood. Yet even persecution from without had not
secured the Church from the growth of deadly he;esies within. Every
one of the Apostles had been driven to utter words of sternest warning
against teachers who, while they called themselves Christians, were
guilty of worse than heathen wickedness — who turned the grace of God
into lasciviousness, and made their liberty a cloak for evil lives. Thus
alike the Jewish and the heathen world, each at the nadir of their
degradation and impiety, were bent upon the destruction of Christ's
little flock ; and even into that little flock had intruded many who came
in sheep's clothing, though inwardly they were ravening wolves.

Such were " the signs of the times " during the course of these
awful years in which St. John found himself on the rocky isle " that is
called Patmos," 1 and uttered his prophecies respecting the past, the
present, and the immediate future. In those prophecies we see the
aspect of the age as it presented itself to the inspired mind of a Christian
and an Apostle ; and we can compare and contrast it with the aspects
which it presented to heathens like Tacitus and Suetonius, or to Jews
like Josephus and the authors or interpolators of the Books of Enoch
and Esdras. It is true that our want of familiarity with Apocalyptic
symbols which were familiar to the Jewish Christians of that epoch,
seems at first to give to many of the Apostle's thoughts an unwonted
obscurity. But, on the one hand, the obscurity does not affect those
elements of the book which we at once feel to be of the most eternal
import ; and on the other, we are only left in the dark about minor
details which have found no distinct record in history. Let any student
compare the symbols of the Apocalypse with those of Joel, Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Daniel ; let him then see how those symbols
are applied by the almost contemporary writers of such Jewish
Apocalypses as the Book of Enoch, the Fourth Book of Esdras, and the
Vision of Baruch ; let him meditate on the conditions of the age in the
particulars which we have just been passing in review ; lastly, let him
bear in mind the luminous principle that the Apocalypse is a stormy
comment upon the great discourse of our Lord on Olivet, as it was
being interpreted by the signs of the times, and he will read the Vision
of the Apostle with a freshness of interest and a clearness of appre
hension such as he may never previously have enjoyed. He will then
see in it, from first to last, the words '' Maran atha ! the Lord cometh!"
1 The expression militates against the notion of Benan, that Patmos was at this time
populous and well known.

DISLIKE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 429
He will recognise that the contemplated Coming was first fulfilled in
the catastrophe which closed the Jewish dispensation, and the inaugura
tion of the last age of the world. He will .find that the Apocalypse is
what it professes to be — an inspired outline of contemporary history,
and of the events to which the sixth decade of the first century gave
immediate rise. He will read in it the tremendous counter-manifesto
of a Christian Seer against the bloodstained triumph of imperial
heathendom ; a paean and a prophecy over the ashes of the martyrs ;
" the thundering reverberation of a mighty spirit," struck by the fierce
plectrum of the Neronian persecution, and answering in impassioned
music which, like many of David's Psalms, dies away into the language
of rapturous hope.
And thus we shall strive to overcome that spirit of dislike to the
Revelation of St. John which has existed in so many ages. We have
already seen that this dislike existed among the Alogi,1 and that it finds
expression in the remains of the Presbyter Gaius, Dionysius of Alex
andria, and Eusebius of Csesarea. In later ages the disinclination to
accept its authenticity found more or less open expression in the
writings of Erasmus, Calvin, Zwingli, Luther, CEcolampadius, Bucer,
Carlstadt, as well as in those of Scaliger, Lowth, Schleiermacher,
Goethe, and many others. This alienation from the book arose in the
ancient Church from the abuse of it by the fanaticism and narrowness
of the Chiliasts ; in the modern Church from the Hellenic taste which
took offence at its Judaic imagery, and from the discredit which it has
suffered at the hands of rash, uncharitable, and half-educated inter
preters. Even the most reverent inquirers have pronounced it to be
unintelligible.2 Such views of it can only be removed by a reasonable,
a charitable, and — at least within broad limits — a certain exegesis.
1 The Alogi were those who rejected the doctrine of the Logos, and therefore the
writings of St. John. The name of this obscure sect, which had its headquarters at
Thyatira, seems to have been invented by Epiphanius : — en-el oov rot- Aoyov oi &4xovtm . . .
aAoyot KkTjBriaovTM (Haer. Ii. 3). They attributed the Apocalypse to Cerinthus, declaring
that a book about seals, trumpets, etc., was unworthy of an Apostle, and saying that he
addressed a Church in Thyatira, when there was no Church in Thyatira.
2 Dionysius of Alexandria says that the Alogi spoke with positive scorn (xXevd^ovr^)
of the Apocalypse, and tbat some, before his day, not only rejected it, but criticised it
chapter by chapter to demonstrate its illogical character, and denied that it could be a
Bevelation, seeing that it had been covered with so dense a veil of non-intelhgibility.
They, like Gaius, attributed it to Cerinthus. Junilius tells us that the Eastern Church
had great doubts about it. " Fateor multa me in ejus dictis saepissime legendo scrutatum
esse ner. intellerisse," says Primasius. even in the sixth century. St. Gregory of Nyssa
(Opp. ii. 44, ed. Paris) quotes from the Apocalypse as a writing of St. John, ev in-oitpv^ois
. . . 5i' alviyparos Xeyovros, but this expression does not necessarily mean that he regarded
it as deutero-canonical. Jerome, in the fourth century, said that the book had as many
mysteries as words (Ep. liii. ad Paulinum), and Augustine admitted that it was full of
obscurities, due in part to its repetition of the same events with different symbols, and in
part to the absence of definitive clues. " Et in hoc quidem Wrro obscure multa dicuntur
. . . et pauca in eo sunt ex quorum manifestatione indagentur caetera cwm labore, maxime
quia sic eadem multis modis repetit" (Aug. De Civ. Dei, xx. 17). Nicolaus Collado
(Meth"dus, 1584) dwells on the same peculiarity (see Diisterdieck, p. 17). " Apocalypsim
fateor rne nescire exponere juxta sensum literalem; exponat cui Deus concessit," wrote

1:30 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
For if indeed the Apocalypse were the kind of treatise which it has
become in the hands of controversialists from the Abbot Joachim down
wards — if it were a synopsis of anticipated Church history, ringing
with the most vehement anathemas of sectarian hatred, and yet
shrouded in such ambiguity that every successive interpreter has a new
scheme for its elucidation — if it were a book in which only Protestants
could take delight because it is supposed to express the intensest spirit
of denunciation against the errors of a Church which, whatever may be
its errors, is still a sister Church — then it might be excusable if the
spirits of those who seek peace and ensue it, and who look on brotherly
love between Christians as the crown of virtue and the test of true
religion, should turn away from the book with a sense of perplexity and
weariness. They could never gain much comfort and edification from
any pulpit in which " A loud-tongued pulpiteer,
Not preaching simple Christ to simple men,
Announced the coming doom, and fulminated
Against the scarlet woman and her creed.
For sidewise up he flung his arms, and shrieked
' Thus, thus with violence,' a9 though he held
The Apocalyptic millstone, and himself
Were that great Angel — ' thus with violence
Shall Babylon be thrown into the sea.
Then comes the end.' "1
There are few of us who would find much music in such "loud-
tongued anti-Babylonianisms " as these. The blind fumes of party
hatred can only distract and lead astray. The spirit of the Inquisition,
even when it is found in Protestants, is essentially anti-Christian.
It is a scorpion-locust out of the abyss. But when we put our
selves in ttie position of the Seer, and grasp the clues to his
meaning which he has himself furnished — when we accept his own
assurance that he is mainly dealing with events which were on the
immediate horizon — when, lastly, we discount the Oriental hyper
boles which, in fact, cease to be hyperbolical if they be understood
in their normal usage, then for the first time we begin to understand
Cardinal Cajetan (Opp. v. 401). Zwingli said ho took no account of it : " Dann es nit
ein biblish Buch ist " ( Werke, ii. 169). Tyndale wrote no preface to the Apocalypse.
Luther calls it "a dumb prophecy." He says, " Mcin Geist kann sieh, in das Buch
nicht stricken, und ist mir Ursach genua dass ich sein nicht hoch achte dass Christus
darinnen weder gelchrt nach erkannt wird." Gravina says, " Mihi tota Apocalypsis valde
obscura videtur, et talis cttjuA explicatio eitra pcriculmn vix queat tentari." Quite recent
commentators have held similar language. " Ein Bnch von dem man ganze Capitel nach
Ansdrilekung von einigcn Tropfen saft als Icere Srlialcn beiseitc-legcn muss " (De "Wette).
" No book of the New Testament has so defied all attempts to settle its interpretation "
(Bloomfield). "I cannot pretend to explain the book ; I do not understand it " (Adam
Clarke). " No solution has ever been given of this part of the prophecy" (Alford).
" Deutero-kanonische Dignitdt kommt ihr zu, aber nicht weniger" (Dusterdieck).
1 Tennyson (.S'm Dreams). " Totum hiinr librum . . . spectare praecipue ad des-
a'ibendam tyrannidcm spiritualem Bomani papatus et totius cl-eri ejus " (Nic. Collado, ap.
Dusterdiook, p. 48).

SCHOOLS OF INTERPRETATION. 431
the Apocalypse in all its passion and grandeur, as it was understood by
those for whom it was written. We no longer expect to find in it the
Saracen conquests, or the Waldenses, or the French Revolution, or "the
rise of Tractarianism." We are soothed by its heavenly consolations
and inspired by its inextinguishable hopes. When read in the light of
events then contemporary, it rolls with all its thunder and burns with
all its fires. Over the guilt of Jerusalem, over the guilt of Rome,
it hurls the prophecy of inevitable doom. Around the diadem of Nero
and the hydra-heads of Pagauism in its hour of tyranny and triumph it
flashes the sure wrath of heaven.1 But, like all prophecy, it has
" springing and germinal developments." It is the defiance uttered by
true Christianity for all time against the tortures, the legions, the
amphitheatres, the fagots, the prisons, the thumbscrews, the falsehoods,
the inquisitions of that demoniac spirit of persecuting intolerance,
which, whether it uses the asp-poison of slander or the sword of murder,
is never so irreligious as when it vaunts its zeal for God. Though he
wrote in the hour of seeming ruin, such is the passionate intensity
with which the Seer pours forth the language of victory, that it seems
as though the hand which he has clipped in the blood of the martyrs
flames like a torch as he uplifts it in appeal to the avenging heavens.
And since the truths which he utters become needful at the recurrence
of every similar crisis — and most of all when the execrable weapons of
tyranny are grasped by the reckless hands of sectarian bitterness — the
Apocalypse has ever been dearest to God's true saints at the hour of
their deepest trials. It ceases then to be a great silent sphinx, reading
its eternal riddle at the gate of Scripture, and devouring those who fail
to answer it ; it becomes a series of glorious pictures, wherein " are set
forth the rise, the visible existence, and the general future of Christ's
kingdom, in figures and similitudes of His First Coming, to terrify and
to console."2 There have been three great schools of Apocalyptic interpretation : —
1. The Prseterists, who regard the book as having been mainly fulfilled.
2. The Futurists, who refer it to events which are still wholly future.
3. The Continuous-Historical Interpreters, who see in it an outline
of Christian history from the days of St. John down to the End of
all things. The second of these schools — the Futurists — has always
1 The use of the word " diadem " of the Boman Emperor in this book is made much
of by the commentators, who try to overthrow the sure results of recent exegesis. They
urge that Caligula alone of the Caesars ever attempted to wear a diadem, as distinguished
from a crown or wreath ; that Julius Csesar refused a diadem ; that Sulpicius Severus is
mistaken when he describes Vespasian as wearing one ; and that the first Emperor who
boldly assumed this badge of Oriental autocracy — a purple silken fillet, embroidered
with pearls — was Diocletian. Meanwhile this imposing array of arguments crumbles at
a touch. When Antony offered the diadem to Julius, he betrayed the secret as to the
real character of Imperial power. Orientals in the provinces both thought and spoke of
the Emperors as- " Kings, " though such a name would have horrified the Bomans; but
Oriental kings wore diadems, and therefore the Oriental symbol of the Boman Emperor
was the diadem. 2 Herder.

432 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
been numerically small, and at present may be said to be non-existent.
The school of Historical Interpreters was founded by the Abbot
Joachim early in the 13th century, and was specially flourishing in the
first fifty years of the present century.1 The views of the Praeterists
have been adopted, with various shades of modification, by Grotius,
Hammond, Le Clerc, Bossuet, Eichhorn, Hug, Wetstein, Ewald,
Herder, Zullig, Bleek, De Wette, Liicke, Moses Stuart, Davidson,
Volkmar, Krenkel, Diisterdieck, Renan, and almost the whole school of
modern German critics and interpreters. It has been usual to say that
the Spanish Jesuit Alcasar, in his Vestigatio arcani sensus in Apocalypsi
(1614), was the founder of the Prseterist School, and it certainly seems
as if to him must be assigned the credit of having first clearly enunciated
the natural view that the Apocalypse, like all other Apocalypses of the
time, describes events nearly contemporaneous, and is meant to shadow
forth the triumph of the Church in the struggle first with Judaism and
then with Heathendom. But to me it seems that the founder of the
Prseterist School is none other than St. John himself. For he records
the Christ as saying to him when he was in the Spirit, "Write the
things which thou sawest, and the things which are, and the things
which are about to happen (a ^e'\\ei yfreo-8ai) after these things." No
language surely could more clearly define the bearing ofthe Apocalypse.
It is meant to describe the contemporary state of things in the Church
and the world, and the events which were to follow in immediate
sequence. If the Historical School can strain the latter words into an
indication that we are (contrary to all analogy) to have a symbolic and
unintelligible sketch of many centuries, the Prseterist School may at any
rate apply these words, 8. eialv, "the things which are," to vindicate
the application of a large part of the Apocalypse to events nearly
contemporary, while they also give the natural meaning to the sub
sequent clause by understanding it of events which were then on the
horizon. The Seer emphatically says that the future events which
he has to foreshadow will occur speedily (CV rdxtt,)2 and the recurrent
burden of his whole book is the nearness of the Advent (d Kaipbs eyyis).
Language is simply meaningless if it is to be so manipulated by every
successive commentator as to make the words "speedily" and "near"
1 There are two schools of the interpreters who make the Apocalypse a prophecy of
all Christian history. The school of Bengel, Vitringa, Elliott, etc., make it mainly a
history of the Church. Another school regards it more generally, and less specifically, as
an outline of Epochs of the History of the world and the great forces which shape it into
a Kingdom of God. To this latter school belong Hengstenberg, Ebrard, Auberlen, etc.
2 Comp. TaXi (Bev. ii. 5, 16 ; iii. 11 ; xi. 14 ; xxii. 20). It is curious to see with what
extraordinary ease oommontators explain the perfectly simple and ambiguous expression
"speedily " (ivrin'i), to mean any length of time which they may choose to demand.
The word "immediately," in Matt. xxiv. 29, has been subject to similar handling, in
which indeed all Scripture exegesis abounds. Tile failure to see that the Fall of Jeru
salem and the end of the Mosaic Dispensation was a " Second Advent " — and the Second
Advent contemplated in many of the New Testament prophecies— has led to a multitude
of errors.

PR^TERISTS. 433
imply any number of centuries of delay. The Prseterist method of
interpretation does not, however, interfere with that view of prophecy
which was so well defined by Dr. Arnold. This is the view of those
who have been called the "spiritual" interpreters. It admits of the
analogical application of prophecy to conditions which, in the cycles of
history, bear a close resemblance to each other. It applies to all times the
principles originally laid down with reference to events which were being
then enacted, and starts with the axiom of Bacon, that divine prophecies
have steps and grades of fulfilment through divers ages.1 All that
is really valuable in the works of the Historical Interpreters may thus
be retained. No importance can be attached to their limitation of
particular symbols, but the better part of their labours may be accepted
as an illustration of the manner in which the Apocalyptic symbols
convey moral lessons which are applicable to the conditions of later
times. But, apart from St. John's own words, it cannot be conceded that
the central conception of the Prseterist exegesis is a mere novelty of the
17th century. On the contrary, we can trace from very early days the
application of various visions to the early Emperors of Pagan Rome.
Thus Justin Martyr believed that the Antichrist would be a person who
was close at hand, and who would reign three and a half years.2
Irenseus also thought that Antichrist, as foreshadowed by the Wild
Beast, would be a man; and that "the number of the Beast" repre
sented Lateinos, " a Latin."3 Hippolytus compares the action of the
False Prophet giving life to the Beast's image, to Augustus inspiring
fresh force into the Roman Empire.4 Later on, I shall furnish abundant
evidence that a tradition of the ancient Church identified Nero with the
Antichrist, and expected his literal return, just as the Jews expected the
literal return of the Prophet Elijah. St. Victorinus (about ,a.d. 303)
counts the five dead Emperors from Galba, and supposes that, after
Nerva, the Beast (whom he identifies with Nero) will be recalled to
life.5 St. Augustine mentions a similar opinion.6 The Pseudo-Prochorus,
writing on Bev. xvii. 10, says that the " one head which is " is meant for
Domitian. Bishop Andreas, in the fifth century, applies Bev. vi. 12 to
the siege of Jerusalem, and considers that Antichrist will be " as a king
of the Romans." Bishop Arethas, on Rev. vii., implies that the
Apocalypse was written before the Jewish War. The fragments of
ancient comment which we possess cannot be said to have much intrinsic
value ; but, such as they are, they suffice to prove that the tendency
of modern exegesis approaches quite as nearly to the earliest traditions
as that of the Historic School. It is a specially important fact that
St. Augustine, as well as many others, recognised the partially retrogres-
1 De Augment. Scient. ii. 11. 2 Dial. c. Tryph. p. 250.
3 Iren. Haer. v. 25. 4 De Antichristo, p. 6.
5 " Bestia de septem est quoniam ante ipsos reges Nero regnavit. "
6 De Civ. Dei, xx. 19.
C C

434 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
sive and iterative character of the later visions, and thereby sanctioned
one of the most important principles of modern interpretation.1 The
internal evidence that the book was written before the fall of Jerusalem
has satisfied not only many Christian commentators, who are invidiously
stigmatised as "rationalistic," but even such writers as Wetstein,
Liicke, Neander, Stier, Auberlen, Ewald, Bleek, Gebhardt, Immer,
Davidson, Dusterdieck, Moses Stuart, F. D. Maurice, the author of
" The Parousia," Dean Plumptre, the authors of the Protestanten-Bibel,
and multitudes of others no less entitled to the respect of all Christians.
If, however, the reader still looks with prejudice and suspicion on
the only school of Apocalyptic exegesis which unites the suffrages of the
most learned recent commentators in Germany, France, and England,
I hardly know where he is to turn. The reason why the early date and
mainly contemporary explanation of the book is daily winning fresh
adherents among unbiassed thinkers of every Church and school, is
partly because it rests on so simple and secure a basis, and partly
because no other can compete with it. It is indeed the only system
which is built on the plain and repeated statements and indications
of' the Seer himself, and the corresponding events are so closely ac
cordant with the symbols as to make it certain that this scheme of
interpretation is the only one that can survive. A few specimens may
suffice to show how completely other systems float in the air.
Let us suppose that the student has found out that in viii. 13 the
true reading is "a single eagle," not an angel ; but, whether eagle
or angel, he wants to know what the symbol means. He turns to the
commentators, and finds that it is explained to be the Holy Spirit
(Victorinus) ; or Pope Gregory the Great (Elliott) ; or St. John himself
(De Lyra) ; or St. Paul (Zeger) ; or Christ Himself (Wordsworth).
The Prseterists mostly take it to be simply an eagle, as the Scriptural
type of carnage — the figure being suggested not by the resemblance of
the word "woe!" ("ouai") to the eagle's screams, but by the use of
the same symbol for the same purpose by our Lord in His discourse
about the things to come.2
But this is nothing ! The student wishes to learn what is meant by
the star fallen from heaven, in ix. 1. The Historical School will leave
him to choose between an evil spirit (Alford) ; a Christian heretic
(Wordsworth) ; the Emperor Valens (De Lyra) ; Mohammed (Elliott) ;
and, among others, Napoleon (Hengstenberg) !
The confusion deepens as we advance. The locusts are "heretics"
(Bede) ; or Goths (Vitringa) ; or Vandals (Aureolus) ; or Saracens
(Mede) ; or the mendicant orders (Brightman) ; or the Jesuits
(Scherzer) ; or Protestants (Bellarmine).
The same endless and aimless diversity reigns throughout the entire
works of the Historical interpreters ; none of them seems to satisfy any
' De Civ. Dei, xx, 17. s Matt. xxiv. 28.

HISTORICAL INTERPRETERS. 435
one but himself. The elaborate anti-papal interpretation of Elliott — of
which (to show that I am far from prejudiced) I may mention, in
passing, that I made a careful study and a full abstract when I was
seventeen years old — is all but forgotten. Mr. Faber admits that there
is not the least agreement as to the first four trumpets among writers
of his school, and he rightly says that " so curious a circumstance may
well be deemed the opprobrium of Apocalyptic interpretation, and may
naturally lead us to suspect that the true key to the distinct application
of the first four trumpets has never yet been- found."
Not that this school leaves us any better off when we come to the
seven thunders. They are seven unknown oracles (Mede) ; or events
(Ebrard) ; or the seven crusades (Vitringa) ; or the seven Protestant
kingdoms (Dunbar) ; or the Papal Bull against Luther (Elliott).
The two wings of the great eagle in xii. 14 are the two Testaments
(Wordsworth) ; or the eastern and western divisions of the Empire
(Mede, Auberlen) ; or the Emperor Theodosius (Elliott).
The number of the Beast — which may be now regarded as certainly
intended to stand for Nero — has been made to serve for Genseric,
Benedict, Trajan, Paul V., Calvin, Luther, Mohammed, Napoleon — not
to mention a host of other interpretations which no one has ever
accepted except their authors.1
It is needless to multiply further instances. They might be
multiplied almost indefinitely, but their multiplicity is not so decisive
of the futility of the principles on which they are selected, as is the
diversity of results which are wider than the poles asunder. What are
we to say of methods which leave us to choose between the applicability
of a symbol to the Holy Spirit or to Pope Gregory, to the Two
Testaments or to the Emperor Theodosius 1 Any one, on the other
hand, who accepts the Prseterist system finds a wide and increasing
consensus among competent inquirers of all nations, and can see an
explanation of the book which is simple, natural, and' noble — one which
closely follows its own indications, and accords with those to be found
throughout the New Testament. He sees that events, mainly contem
porary, provide an interpretation clear in its outlines, though neces
sarily uncertain in minor details. If he takes the view of the
Spiritualists, he may at his pleasure make the symbols mean anything
in general and nothing in particular. If he is of the Historical School
he must let the currents of Gieseler or Gibbon sweep him hither and
thither at the will of the particular commentator in whom he for the
time may chance to confide. But if he follows the guidance of a more
reasonable exegesis, he may advance with a sure step along a path
which becomes clearer with every fresh discovery.
But I cannot leave this subject of Apocalyptic interpretation
1 The majority of guesses which have the least seriousness in them point to Bome,
the Boman Empire, or the Boman Emperor.

436 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
without repeating my conviction, that the essential sacredness and
preciousness of the book lies deeper than the primary or secondary
interpretations of its separate visions. Whatever system of exegesis we
adopt — whether we suppose that St. John was indicating to the
Churches of Asia the influence of Mohammed, Hildebrand, and Luther
centuries later — whether he was foreshadowing events of which they
could not have the remotest comprehension, or events with which they
were immediately and terribly concerned — he is, at any rate, dealing on
the one hand with awful warnings, and on the other with exceeding
great and precious promises. His teaching is needful for our education
in the ways of God. It will be well for every Christian to take it
deeply to heart. Amid endless diversities, here at any rate is a point
respecting which all true Christians may be cordially agreed.
It is admitted by every unbiassed critic that Apocalyptic literature
is inferior in form to the Prophetic. The Jews themselves have
marked their sense of this by excluding the Book of Daniel from the
prophetic canons, and placing it among the Hagiographa. Apocalypses
belong, as a rule, to later ages and less vivid inspiration. Why then,
it may be asked, did St. John choose this form of utterance1? The
answer is simple. It was, first, because it was in this form that his
inspiration came to him ; it was in this form that his thoughts
naturally clothed themselves. It was, next, because the Apocalypse
was the favourite form of the prophetico-poetic literature of this epoch,
with which many instances had made his readers familiar. But lastly,
and perhaps chiefly, it was from the dangers of the time. An
Apocalypse, by the very meaning of the term, implies a book which
is more or less cryptographic in its contents. Hence in every
Apocalypse — in the Books of Esdras, Enoch, and Baruch, no less than
in St. John — there are for us some necessary difficulties in the details
of interpretation which perhaps did not exist for contemporary readers.
But if anything were obscure to them, this was more than compensated
by the resultant safety. No danger incurred by the early Christians
was greater than that caused by the universal prevalence of political
spies. If one of these wretches got possession of any Christian writing
which could be construed into an attack or a reflexion upon their
terrible persecutors, hundreds might be involved in indiscriminate
punishment on a charge of high treason (laesa majestas), which was then
the most formidable engine of despotic power. St. Paul, writing to the
Thessalonians even so early as A.D. 52, had found it necessary to speak
of the Roman Empire and of the Emperors Claudius or Nero in terms
of studied enigma.1 St. Peter, making a casual allusion to Rome, had
been obliged to veil it under the mystic name of Babylon.2 Even
Josephus has to break off his explanation of the Book of Daniel with
mysterious suddenness rather than indicate that the fate of the Roman
i 2 Thess. ii. 3—12. » 1 Pet. v. 13.

APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE. 437
Empire was there foreshadowed. Concealed methods of allusion are,
for similar reasons, again and again adopted in the Talmud. St. John
saw in Nero a realisation of Antichrist ; but it would have been fatal
to whole communities, perhaps to the entire Church, if he had openly
committed to writing either the indication of Nero's character or the
prophecy of his doom. He could only do this in the guise of Scriptural
and prophetic symbols, which would look like meaningless rhapsodies
to any Gentile reader, but of which, as he was well aware, the secret
significance was in the hands of those for whom alone his revelation
was intended. It may be laid down as a rule, to which there is no
exception, that the commentator who approaches the Apocalypse
without the fullest recognition of the fact that in its tone and in
its symbols it bears a very close analogy to a multitude of other
Apocalyptic books, both Jewish and Christian, is sure to go utterly
astray. But if he knows the symbols and their significance, not only
from the Old Testament but also from seeing how the imagery of the
Old Testament was applied in the first century to contemporary events,
he will be prepared to see that to the original readers of the Apocalypse,
at any rate, the book had and could have but one meaning, and that
the intended meaning is still partially discoverable by those who do not
read its visions through the ecclesiastical veil of unnatural and fantastic
hypotheses.

CHAPTER XXVILL
THE APOCALYPSE.

"Apocalypsis Johannis tot habet aacramenta quot verba. Parum dixi pro
merito voluminis. Laus omnia inferior eat." — Jee. ad Paulin.
In the superscription of the Apocalypse found in some of the cursive
manuscripts, St. John is called by the title of " the Theologian," or, as
it is rendered in our version, "the Divine." It was a title borne by
the highest order of priests in the Temple of the Ephesian Artemis, as
appears from inscriptions discovered by Mr. Wood at Ephesus. It is,
however, unlikely that St. John bore the title in his own day, or that it
was intended to contrast him with the local and pagan hierarchy. It
was more probobly due to the grandeur of his witness to Christ as the
Divine Logos. It is remarkable that only one great Christian writer
has shared it with him — the large-hearted St. Gregory of Nazianzus.
The true Theology is the glorious mother of all the sciences, and differs
infinitely from the narrow and technical pedantry which has in modern
times too often usurped the exclusive name. It would have been well
for the world if it could have rescued the term from the degradation to

438 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
which it has been subjected by Pharisaism and self-assertion. Theology
would have received the honour of all mankind if it had not so often
mistaken verbal minutise for divine essentials, if its self-styled votaries
had caught something of the love and something of the loftiness of the
Beloved Disciple of Galilee and the eloquent Patriarch of Constan
tinople. SECTION L
THE LETTERS TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES.
To write a full commentary upon the Apocalypse, or to enter into
the numerous questions to which it gives rise, would be impossible in
the space at my disposal. All that I can hope to do is to give a rapid
outline of its contents, and, so far as ascertainable, of its probable
meaning in those parts of its symbolism which are capable of explansi-
tion, or which do not at once explain themselves.
After the Prologue,1 the main sections of the book are arranged in
accordance with the number Seven, which is the most prominent
among the symbolic numbers with which the book is filled. Thus we
have : —
Prologue, i 1 — 8.
1. Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, L 9 — iii 22.
2. The Seven Seals, iv. — vii.
3. The Seven Trumpets, viii — xi.
4. The Seven Mystic Figures, xii. — xiv.s
5. The Seven Vials, xv. — xvi.
6. The Doom of the Foes of Christ, xvii — xx.
7. The Blessed Consummation, xxi. — xxii. 7.
The Epilogue, xxii 8— 21.3
1 The Vision takes place on "the Lord's Day," which probably means neither
"Easter Day," nor the "Day of Judgment," but "Sunday." It is the earliest use of
the expression, but furnishes no proof at all of the later date assigned to the Apocalypse.
2 I borrow this ingenious suggestion from the author of the "Parousia," a book full
of suggestiveness, although I disagree with the author in its limitation of the Apocalyptic
horizon mainly to Jerusalem. The Seven Mystic Figures are :— (1) The Sun-clothed
Woman ; (2) Tho Bed Dragon ; (3) The Man-child ; (4) The First Wild Beast from the
Sea ; (5) The Second Wild Beast from the Land ; (6) The Lamb on Mount Sion ; (7)
The Son of Man on the Cloud.
3 Ewald divides the book into three main sections of seven members each : — The
Seven Seals (iv.— vii.); the Seven Trumpets (viii.— xi. 14); the Seven Vials, with the
group of associated Visions (xi. 15— xxii. 3), which are divided into three members ;
(xi. 15— xiv. 20 ; xv.— xviii. ; xix.— xxii. 5). He thinks that the book has an In
troduction in four parts; Preface and Dedication in seven parts (ii., iii.); and a
Conclusion in three parts. Volkmar's division is into two main parts: — (I.) The
Announcement of the Judgment (i.— ix);- (II.) The Achievement of the Judg
ment (x.— xiv.). The subordinate parts are: — Prologue (i. 1—7); (1) First Vision (i.
8 — iii.) ; (2) Second Vision, the Seals (iv.— vii.) ; (3) Third Vision, the loud Declaration
of God's Judgment (viii., ix.) ; (4) Fourth Vision, the Introductory Judgment (x.— xiv.) •
(5) Fifth Vision, Avenging Justice (xv., xvi.) ; (6) Sixth Vision, the overthrow of the
World-Power, or Bome (xvii., xviii.) ; (7) Seventh Vision, the Completion of the Judg
ment (xix.— xxi.) ; Epilogue.— Whatever division of the book be adopted, it will be seen
at once that it is constructed in a very artificial manner, and dominated by the numbers

THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 439
The Seven Churches addressed in the person of their Angels1
are : —
Ephesus, the Church faithful as yet, but waxing cold.
Smyrna, the Church faithful amid Jewish persecutions.
Pergamum, the Church faithful amid heathen persecutions, but liable
to swerve into Antinomianism.
Thyatira, the Church faithful as yet, but acquiescent under Anti-
nomian seductions.
Sardis, the Church slumbering, but not past awakenment
Philadelphia, the Church faithful and militant.
Laodicea, the Church unfaithful, proud, lukewarm, and luxu
rious.2 The letters to these Seven Churches are normally sevenfold, consist
ing of: 1. The address; 2. The title of the Divine Speaker; 3. The
encomium ; 4. The reproof ; 5. The warning ; 6. The promise to him
that overcometh ; 7. The solemn appeal to attention. These elements
are, however, freely modified. Two Churches — Smyrna and Phila
delphia — receive unmitigated praise. Two — Sardis and Laodicea — are
addressed in terms of unmitigated reproof. To the three others —
Ephesus, Pergamum, and Thyatira — is awarded a mixture of praise and
blame. The Angel of the Church of Ephesus is praised for " having tried
them which called themselves Apostles, and they are not,3 and having
found them false," and also for hating the works of the Nicolaitans.
The Angel of the Church of Smyrna is praised for faithfulness amid
" the reviling of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are a
synagogue of Satan." The Angel of the Church of Pergamum is
blamed because he has there " some who hold the teaching of the
Nicolaitans, and the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a
seven, three, and four. Seven is the mystic number of peace, expiation, and the
covenant between God and man. Three is the signature of the Deity. Four is the
number of the world and created things. Ten = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4, indicates completeness.
On the symbolism of numbers, see Bahr, Symbolik. i. 187, etc. Herzog. Beal. Encycl.
s. v. Zahlen ; Lange, Bevelations, Introd. § 6, etc.
1 The Angels cannot be the Bishops, for even if the Domitianic date of the
Apocalypse be accepted, episcopacy had not even then attained to such proportions, and
if the Ancients had supposed the Bishops to be meant, they would have adopted this
title in speaking of them. Probably the title implies the Genius of the Church, ideally
represented as a Besponsible Head, or Guardian of it ; just as Daniel idealises the Angels
of the nations (Dan. x. 20, 21 ; xii. 1).
2 The number seven is ideal. It is idle to suppose that there were no Churches at
Tralles, Hierapolis, Laodicea, etc. The book is pervaded by the number seven (i. 4 ; iv.
5 ; vii. 1 ; viii. 2 ; x. 3 ; xii. 3 ; xv. 1 ; xvii. 9, 10, etc.). It should be observed that the
sacred numbers are throughout parodied by the anti-sacred numbers.
3 Men ( Dean Plumptre says) of the Hymenseus, Alexander, and Philetus type (1 Tim.
i. 20 ; 2 Tim. ii. 17). In the days of Nero there were still false teachers, who called them
selves " Apostles " (2 Cor. xi. 13, 14). It is tolerably certain that there were none in the
days of Domitian. Hippolytus (recently discovered in an Arabic translation) says that
they were " Judaisers from Jerusalem, " and certainly no such agents were at work so
late as a.d. 95.

440 the early days of Christianity.
.stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things offered to
idols, and to commit fornication." The Angel of the Church of
Thyatira is blamed for "suffering the woman Jezebel1 to seduce my
servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed to idols."
The Angel of the Church of Philadelphia is promisedthe victory " over
the synagogue of Satan, of them which say they are J ews and they are
not, but do lie."
Little is known about the special characteristics of the heresies
here alluded to. It would hardly be necessary to notice the wild
guesses respecting them but for the increasing confidence of the
assertion that these expressions are aimed at St. Paul or his followers.
St. Paul is supposed to be the chief of the heresiarchs, and the leader
of those who falsely claimed to be Apostles.2 In other words, we are
to believe that the virtue of the Ephesian Church consisted in casting
forth the doctrines and adherents of its glorious founder — of the
Apostle who had there faced martyrdom, who had there " fought with
beasts," who had won the passionate affection of the first presbyters,
who had toiled there with infinite devotion for more than two years,
admonishing them night and day with tears, and with his own hands
ministering to their necessities. The whole theory is monstrous. The
tone of deep respect in which the Asiatics Polycarp and Irenseus speak
of St. Paul is alone sufficient to overthrow it. St Paul himself had
warned his Churches against "false Apostles." They did not, of course,
pretend to be of the number of the Twelve ; neither did St. Paul. The
notion that St. John jealously excludes St. Paul by saying that on the
Twelve foundation stones of the New Jerusalem were the names of the
" Twelve Apostles of the Lamb," is the idlest extravagance. St. Paul's
Apostolate was neither from men, nor by means of men. Unless the
calm and definite testimony of St. Luke is to be set aside for the
fictions of nameless heretics, the Twelve, and St. John among them, had
expressly sanctioned St. Paul's Apostolic claim, had given him their
right hands of fellowship, had recognised his equality, had found no
fault with his teaching, had sanctioned his independence in his own
wide sphere of toil, had even appealed to him for sympathy and assis
tance in the support of their poor. Polycarp was the hearer and
devoted admirer of St. John. If St. John had been actuated by a
fanatical horror of St. Paul's teaching, would Polycarp have spoken of
the Apostle as "the blessed and glorious Paul?"3
As for the Nicolaitans, we know of no excuse for regarding them
1 Or, " thy wife Jezebel," A, B, g, Andreas, etc. Dean Blakesley precariously iden
tifies Jezebel with the Hebrew sibyl Sambetha, who was worshipped at Thyatira (Smith's
Diet. Bibl. s. v. Thyatira). If ' ' thy wif e " be the true reading, it presents a curious
parallel to the state of the Philippian Church in the days of Polycarp. In his letter to
the Philippians (ch. xi.), he speaks of the wife of one of the Presbyters, named Valens,
who was guilty of much the same wickedness as this "Jezebel."
2 See Volkmar, Commcntar zur Offenb. pp. 79, seqq.
> Polyc. Ep. ad Philip. 3.

SUPPOSED ATTACKS ON ST. PAUL. 441
¦ as Paulinists, even if we admit the absurd notion that Nikolaos, which
means " conquering the pebple," is a Greek translation of Bileam,
which is precariously rendered " corrupting the people."1 The conduct
of Balaam, and the traditional teaching of the Deacon Nicolas,2 would
have been at least as abhorrent to St. Paul as to St. John. He has
himself again and again denounced such impure and Antinomian tenets,
in language as powerful as and more profoundly reasoned than that of
\ the Apocalypse. He has even drawn the same warning illustration
from the example of Balaam.3 To say that in any sense, literal or
allegorical, he or any one of his genuine followers ever seduced
Christians to fornication, whether in the form of tampering with
idolatry, or thinking lightly of uncleanness, is to affix a wanton calumny
on one of the purest of the saints of God. If it be true that any
Christians distorted to their own perdition, or to that of others, his
doctrine of Christian liberty, he was himself the first to utter his
warning against such perversions. Nor did he, directly or indirectly,
induce men to eat " meat offered to idols." In cases where the con
science was in no way wounded by doing so — in the instance of those
who were firmly convinced that an idol is nothing in the world — Where
the meat was innocently bought in the open market, or eaten in the
ordinary intercourse of social life — in those carefully limited circum
stances he had taught, and rightly taught, that the matter was one of
pure indifference. If in saying, " I will lay on you none other burden,"
St. John meant (as Benan says) that those had nothing to fear who kept
the concordat arranged at the Synod of Jerusalem (Acts xv.), it is
strange to overlook that this very concordat had only been won by the
genius, the energy, and the initiative of St. Paul. But so far from
" casting a stumbling-block " in the path of others, he had, on the
contrary, always maintained, as his Lord had done before him,4 that the
casting of stumbling-blocks — which he expressed by the very same word
as St. John — is the deadliest of crimes against Christian charity,5 and
that it would be better to eat no meat of any kind while the world
lasted than to cause a weak brother to offend.
1 Gesenius and Furst explain the name to mean " Not of the People,"'i.e. , a foreigner.
Vitringa makes it mean "lord of," and Simonis "destruction of the people." In no
sense is it an equivalent of Nikolaus.
2 On Nicolas, see my Life of St. Paul, i. 133. There is no absolute proof that the
heretic was the Deacon, but Irenseus (Haer. i. 26 ; iii. 11) and Hippolytus (Haer. vii.
36) supposed him to be so. Clemens of Alexandria (Strom, ii. 20 ; iii. 4) tells a dubious
story that when he was accused of jealousy of his beautiful wife, he disproved the
charge in a very strange and unseemly way. He is the reputed author of the rule that
"we must abuse the flesh " (on Set irapaxpy\o-8ai i-ft o-apKl), which might convey the innocent
meaning that stern self-denial was requisite to repress evil passions. The verb was,
however, capable of the meanmg " use to the full, " and possibly some may have founded
on this phrase the wicked inference that criminal passion should be cured by unlimited
indulgence. See Ewald, Gesch. vii. 172.
3 1 Cor. x. 7, 8.
* Matt, xviii. 6, 8, 9 ; Mark ix. 43—47.
6 1 Cor. viii. 13 ; x. 32 ; 2 Cor. xi. 29 ; Eom. xiv. 21.

442 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Again, to suppose that because St. John (Rev. ii. 24) reflects severely
on those who talked of "knowing the depths of Satan," he must neces
sarily be uttering a malignant sneer against St. Paul, who had spoken
of " the Spirit searching all things, yea, even the depths of God,"1 is to
use a style of criticism which builds massive systems upon pillars of
smoke. The utmost which we could infer would be that false teachers
had distorted and parodied the expression of St. Paul. The single grain
of truth in the whole hypothesis is that St. John speaks in a more
sweeping and less limited way than St. Paul about eating " meats
offered to idols." It was natural that it should be so, both because St.
John's Judaic training had given him a deeper instinctive horror of
even the semblance of participation in idolatry, and also because he was
writing at a later date and in days of persecution, in which the act itself
had acquired a more marked significance. Had St. Paul been writing
under the same circumstances as St. John, he would have spoken no
less strongly on the sin of a cowardly conformity. To eat of idol
offerings in cases where no mistaken inferences could be drawn from
doing so, was perfectly innocent ; but it became a very different thing
to eat of them in days, like those of the Neronian. persecution or those
of Justin Martyr, when to do so meant to be indifferent to the sin of
idolatry. This attempt to represent the Apostles as actuated by a
burning animosity against each other, and a determination to "write
each other down," as though they were contributors to modern religious
newspapers, is a total failure. It is time it were dismissed. When the
Apostles differed from each other — as we know, from the Acts of the
Apostles and the Epistle to the Galatians, that they sometimes did — -
it was only in the spirit of mutual respect and affection in which Luther
differed from Melancthon, and Bossuet from Fenelon.2
The false Jews, the false Apostles, the Nicolaitans, the Balaamites,
were immoral sectarians, whether Judaic or anti-Judaic, against whom
St. Paul had beforehand warned his Churches, very much as St. John
has done, and against whom every one of the sacred writers has lifted
up his voice. To admit that St. John could have written such railing
accusations against his glorious brother Apostle, is to imply that he was
unworthy to be an Apostle, or a sacred writer at all. It is to degrade
him at once to the level of modern partisans. The early Christisins had
not yet been taught that religion consisted in breathing the atmosphere
of faction, slanderousness, and hate. There were some, even then,
" who preached Christ of contention, supposing to add affliction to St.
Paul's bonds," and they would have been well qualified to write
anonymous articles of unfair and unchristian depreciation. But they
incurred a stern censure from the lips of Christ's Apostle. Such
i 1 Cor. ii. 10 ; comp. Eom. xi. 33.
• Luther, as a friend reminds me, is sometimes a little severe upon " Philippismus,"
and Bossuet admitted that he had sometimes argued in opposition to Fenelon without
naming him.

THE TUBINGEN SCHOOL. 443
orthodoxy is heterodoxy ; such religion is irreligion ; such Christianity
is worse than heathendom, and is no Christianity at all.
We reach the culmination of these exegetic absurdities when we find
Volkmar also identifying the Second Wild Beast from the Land, and
the False Prophet of Rev. xiii. and xvii., with St. Paul !
Writers of the Tubingen School were so enchanted with their
discovery that the struggle between Jewish and Pauline Christianity
was longer and more permanent than had been supposed, that they
exaggerated the significance of the second century calumnies against St.
Paul. They forgot that the Clementines were heretical, and that these
Ebionite attacks were, after all, subterranean and pseudonymous. As
for the grounds on which St. Paul is identified with the False Prophet
— namely > because in writing to the Romans1 he taught loyal obedience
to the powers that be as being "ordained of God"2 — Volkmar surely
forgets that the teaching of St. Paul on this subject was the normal
teaching of all the Apostles, of all the early Christian Fathers and
Apologists, nay, more, of the Lord Jesus Himself. St. Peter — writing
in the days of Nero — writing, in all probability, during the Neronian
persecution, had not only said " Honour the king," but even " Submit
yourselves unto every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it
be to the king as supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are
appointed by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise
of them that do well." And as to the Divine authority of heathen
government, St. John himself records in his Gospel how our Lord said
to Pilate, " Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it
were given thee from above."5 Indeed, such teaching was so obviously
based on common sense and common duty, that even after the destruction
of Jerusalem — even in the days when detestation of the Gentiles had
been reduced to something like a system — Rabbi Chanina used to say,
" Pray for the established government, for, but for it, men would devour
each other."4
SECTION IL
THE SEALS.
After the letters to the Seven Churches begins the more definitely
Apocalyptic portion of the book. The Apostle hears a voice bidding
him ascend to heaven, and see things which must come to pass after.
these things. Instantly, in an ecstasy, he sees a throne in heaven, en
circled by an emerald rainbow, whereon was seated One whose lustre was
as a jasper and a sardine. Round the throne were twenty-four enthroned
elders, representing the Patriarchs of the redeemed Church of both dis
pensations, arrayed in white and crowned with gold. Out of the throne
came an incessant rolling of thunders and voices, and a stream of light-
l Bom. xiii. 1—7. * 1 Pet. ii. 13, 14—17.
8 John xix. IL 4 Mechilta on Exod. xix. L,

444 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
nings ; and before it there burned, as with the flame of seven lamps, the
sevenfold Spirit of God. Before the Throne flowed a glassy sea of
crystal brightness, and about it were the fourfold cherubim, six-winged
and full of eyes, symbols of all that is most perfect in creation, hymning
the perpetual Trisagion, and joining in the endless Kturgy of prayer and
praise. On the right hand of Him who sat on the throne was a book,
seven-sealed, and written within and without. In answer to the appeal
of an angel, none is found worthy to open the book but the Lion of the
Tribe of Judah, who is also the Lamb that was slain. When He has
taken the book there is a fresh outburst of universal triumph and blessing,
in which even those join who are " under the earth."1
i The Lamb opens one of the seven seals, and one of the Immor
talities cries with a voice of thunder, " Come ! "
Instantly there springs forth a white horse, bearing a rider with a bow
in his hand, to whom a crown is given, and who goes forth conquering
and to conquer. It is a symbol of the Messiah riding forth to victory,
but armed only with a bow to smite his enemies, not as yet in close
conflict, but from afar.2
But the coming of the Messiah was to be ushered in by the woes
which are the travail-pangs of a new dispensation.
ii The Lamb opens the Second Seal, and the second Immortality
cries " Come ! "
Instantly a, fiery horse — a horse red as blood3 — leaps forth, — whose
rider is armed with a great sword. It is the symbol of War. To him
it is given to take peace from the earth, and that — as in the fierce con
flicts between Otho and Vitellius, between Vitellius and Vespasian,
between the Jews and the Romans, between John of Giscala and Simon
— men should slay one another in internecine and civil discord. It was
an epoch of wars and massacres. There had been massacres in Alexan
dria ; massacres at Seleucia ; massacres at Jamnia ; massacres at Da
mascus ; massacres at Csesarea : massacres at Bedriacum. There had
been wars in Britain, wars in Armenia, wars in Gaul, wars in Italy,
wars in Arabia, wars in Parthia, wars in Judsea. Disbanded soldiers
and marauding troops filled the world with rapine, terror, and massacre.
The world was like an Aceldama, or field of blood. The red horse and
its rider are but a visible image of the words of our Lord — " For nation
shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom ; " and " Ye shall
hear of wars and rumours of wars, which things are the beginning of
the birth-throes."4
1 Verse 13, comp. Phil. ii. 10. With the vague numbers of the numberless multitude
oomp. Dan. vii. 10.
2 Comp. xix. 11. Both Victorinus, in his commentary, and Tertullian (de Cm: Mil.
15) understand the Bider of the White Horse to be Christ. The white horse is a sign of
victory (Virg. yEn. iii. 537). The symbol of the bow is, perhaps, derived from Pss. vii.
13, xiv. 6.
3 2 Kings iii. 22, m/ppa. uis alpa.
1 Matt. xxiv. 4, 7. For corroborative authorities see Jos. Antt. xviii. 9, § 9 ; xix. 1,

THE THIRD SEAL. 445
iii. The Lamb opens the Third Seal, and the third Immortality utters
the word " Come ! "
Instantly a black horse leaps forth. Its rider is unarmed, but holds
in his hand a balance ; and by way of explanation a voice is heard from
among the four Immortalities saying, " A choenix of wheat for a denarius,
and three of barley for a denarius." The rider is Famine. A choenix
was less than a quart, and was the minimum allowance for a day's food,1
yet it was to cost a whole day's wages ;2 and a third of the same price
was to be given for even so coarse, a grain as barley — a food to which
Roman soldiers were only degraded by way of punishment. Thus wheat
and barley were to rise to twenty times their usual price, to the infinite
distress of men. " He calls for Famine, and the eager fiend
Blows poisonous mildew from his shrivelled lips,
And taints the golden ear."3
It was an epoch of constant famines. The dependence of Rome and
Italy upon Alexandria for corn caused bitter and constant distress. In
the reign of Claudius the famine and its accompanying prodigies had been
deemed an omen, and only fifteen days' food had been left in Rome.4
About this very time, ad. 68 — in the midst of Nero's impotent buffoon
eries — the people, already burdened by famine prices, were nearly mad
dened by the discovery that a ship from Alexandria, which had been
mistaken for one of the famous wheat-ships, had a lading of sand with
which to strew the amphitheatre.6 The overflow of the Tiber, early in
the reign of Otho, caused, as Tacitus says, famine among the common
people, and a scarcity of the commonest elements of life'. 6 It was the
deliberate object of Vespasian to cause famine and dissensions at Rome
by stopping the supplies of provisions, nor did he let the corn-ships sail
till only ten days' supply was left in. the city.7 In Jerusalem, during
the final state of siege which was now rapidly approaching, the anguish
and horror of the famine were unspeakable. Josephus tells us that
many sold their all for a single choenix of wheat if they were rich, of
barley if they were poor, and shut themselves up in the inmost recesses
of their houses to eat it raw ; and that many had to undergo unspeakable
tortures to make them confess that they had but one loaf of bread, or so
§ 2 j , B. J. ii. 17 ; x. 18 (where he says that " a terrible disturbance prevailed throughout
Syria, and every city had been divided into two camps ") ; Tacitus and Suetonius
passim. 1 Herod, vii. 187 ; Diog. Laert. viii. 18.
2 Matt. xx. 2 ; xxiv. 7 ; Mark xiii. 7 ; Tac. Ann. i. 1. In Sicily, in the days of
Cicero, twelve Chcenixes of wheat could be bought for a denarius (Cie. Verr. iii. 81), and
therefore thirty-six of barley. 3 Cowper.
4 Tac. Ann. xii. 43: "frugum egestas et orta ex eo fames." Suet. Claud. 18,
"assiduae sterilitates." (Comp. Jos. Antt. iii. 15,- § 3.)
* Suet. Ner. 46.
6 Tac. H. i. 86 : " fames in volgus, inopia quaestus, et penuria alimentorum " (Suet.
Otho, 8). 7 Tao. H. iii. 48 ; iv. 52.

446 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
much as a handful of barley meal.1 Terribly — both in Italy and in
Judsea — did the fearful rider of the black horse do his appointed work !
He is a visible symbol of the Lord's words — " There shall be famines
. . . . in divers places."2
But the third Immortality added the strange words, "And the oil and
the wine hurt thou not." Oil and wine are not necessaries but luxuries.
It is as though he had said, " In the wild anguish of famine let their
pangs be aggravated by having the needless accessories of abundance."
So it was — strange to say — in both the places on which the Seer's eye is
mainly fixed, Jerusalem and Bome. In Jerusalem, while myriads were
starving, John of Giscala and his Zealots had access to the sacred stores of
wine and oil in the Temple, and wasted it with reckless extravagance,3 and
Simon's followers were even hindered from fighting by their perpetual
drunkenness. In Rome immense abundance of wine was a frequent con
comitant of extreme scarcity of corn. So marked was the evil, that
Domitian endeavoured to secure by edict the diminution of the vinelands,
and the devotion of wider areas to the cultivation of cereals for human
food.4 iv. The Lamb opens the Fourth Seal. The fourth Immortality
utters his solemn " Come ! "
Instantly a livid horse leaps forth. His rider is Death ; and
Hades follows to receive the prey. They usher in a crowd of calamities
over a quarter of the earth — sword, and famine, and pestilence, and
wild beasts. Sword and famine had done part of their work ; pestilence
and the increase of wild beasts naturally follow them. God's four sore
judgments usually go hand in hand.5 Christ had already said of these
days that there should be famines and pestilences, as well as wars and
rumours of wars. Apart from the inevitable prevalence of wild beasts
in places where the inhabitants are thinned and weakened by calamity,
an incredible number of human beings were yearly sacrificed to wild
beasts in the bloody shows of the amphitheatres, not only at Rome but
throughout all the provinces. Lions and tigers were literally fed with
men.6 A pestilence at Rome carried off 30,000 in a single year.7 At
Jerusalem there was from these combined causes " a glut of mortality "
almost incredible. It was calculated that upwards of a million
perished in the siege, and Mannssus, son of Lazarus, told Titus that even
before, the Romans encamped under the walls, he had seen 115,880
corpses carried through one single gate.8
v. The Lamb opens the Fifth Seal.
Immediately under the golden altar of incense before the throne are
l Jos. B. J. v. 10, § 2. 2 Matt. xxiv. 7.
3 Jos. B. J. v. 13, § 6 ; 1, § 4. < Suet. Dom. 7.
5 Ezek. xiv. 21 ; Matt. xxiv. 6, 8 ; Mark xiii. 7, 8.
6 Hence one of the wild plans of revenge which chased each other across the brain of
Nero on his last day of life, was to let loose upon the people the wild beasts of the
amphitheatre. Suet. Na: 43 : " urbem incendere feris in populum immissis."
? Suet. Ner. 39 ; Tac. Ann. xvi. 13. 8 See Jos. B. J. v. 12, § 3; 13, § 7.

THE FIFTH AND SIXTH SEALS. 447
seen the souls of the " great multitude " who had perished " for the
word of God and for the testimony which they held,"1 some at Jeru
salem, some in the provinces, but most of all in the Neronian persecu
tion at Rome. They are impatiently appealing for vengeance and
judgment.2 Hero after hero had fallen in the Christian warfare.
Apostle after Apostle had been sent to his dreadful martyrdom. St.
Peter had been crucified ; St. Paul beheaded ; St. James the Elder
beheaded ; St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, hurled down and beaten
to death ; hundreds of others burnt, or tortured, or torn to pieces in the
gardens of Nero and in the Roman circus; yet no deliverer flashed
from the morning clouds. How long, oh Lord, how long ! When all
the world is arrayed against Thy saints, must not deliverance assume
the inevitable guise of temporal vengeance t — White robes are given
them, and they are bidden to wait till the number of the martyrs is
complete, till their brethren who are still on earth shall have fulfilled
their course.3 They are those of whom Christ had prophesied when He
said "Then" — after the "beginning of sorrows" — "shall they deliver
you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you." The time had come for
judgment to begin at the throne of God. Meanwhile the fire of olden
prophecy was re-kindled for their inspiration, and they found that the
more they were trodden down the more did they feel the conviction of
glorious triumph and the exultation of inward peace. They who have
an invisible King to sustain them, and a John to utter His messages,
may brave the banded forces of secular despotism and religious hatred —
and may stand undismayed between a Zealot-maddened Jerusalem and
a Neronian Rome. If the judgment began with Christians, what
should be the end of those who obeyed not the Gospel of God ?4
vi The Lamb opens the Sixth Seal.
Instantly there are all the signs which usher in a Day of the Lord.
The darkened sun, the lurid moon, the showers of meteors, the shrivel
ling heavens, the terror with which men call on the rocks and mountains
to fall on them and hide them, are the metaphors of vast earthly
changes and catastrophes. At first sight it might well seem as if they
could describe nothing short of the final conflagration and ruin of the
globe. But there is not one of these metaphors which is not found in
the Old Testament prophets,5 and in them they refer in every instance
to the destruction of cities and the establishment of new covenants, or
Bey. vi. 9 ; vii. 13 ; xvii. 6 ; xx. 4.
_ 2 This has been variously excused by different commentators. " Non haec odio
inimicorum," says Bede, "pro quibus in hoc saeculo rogaverunt, orant, sed amore aequi-
tatis." Bengel explains their impatience as zeal for the truth and holiness of the Lord
(comp. Ps. lxxiv. 19 ; Luke xviii. 7, 8).
3 Comp. Enoch civ. 1 — 3. " Ye righteous, . . . your cries have cried for vengeance
. . . wait with patient hope." See too Gen. iv. 10 ; Job xvi., xix. ; Is. xxvi. 21 ; 2 Esdras
xv. 8, etc. 4 i pet. iv. 17.
5 See Is. ii. 12, 19 ; xiii. 10 ; xxxiv. 3, 4 ; 1. 3 ; lxiii. 4 ; Jer. iv. 23—26 ; Ezek. xxxii.
7, 8 ; Joel ii. 10, 31 ; iii. 4, 15 ; Hos. x. 8 ; Nah. i. 6 ; Mal. iii. 2, etc. The extent to
which the Apostle borrows the phrases of the Old Testament may be seen by taking

448 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
to other earthly revolutions. Not only had our Lord adopted these
vivid Oriental symbols to describe the signs of His coming in the fall of
Jerusalem, and the close of the old aeon, but he had expressly said that
" this generation shall not pass away until all these things be fulfilled."1
It is clear, therefore — as nearly every school of interpreters has seen —
that they are but a description, in the language of Eastern poetry and
metaphor, of an age terrified alike by political crises and physical
calamities. Such a description accords exactly with the reality. In the
sudden collapse of the deified line of the Julii, who had governed them
for four generations, the Romans saw an omen which seemed to
threaten the world with destruction.2 There reigned everywhere an
universal terror.3 Throughout the length and breadth of the Roman
Empire, but most of all in Judaea, in the midst of the violent revolu
tionary movements which marked the day, men's hearts were failing
them for fear. 4
vii. Then, before the opening of the Seventh Seal, there is a pause.
The Angels of the winds had been bidden to prevent their ravages5
until the servants of God are sealed upon their foreheads by the Angel
from the sunrising. The seal is doubtless the cross of baptism, just as
in Ezekiel (ix. 4, 6) those alone are to be spared from slaughter who
have "the sign Thau," — that is the cross — upon their foreheads.6 A
purely ideal number are sealed — namely, twelve times twelve thousand
— twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes. The tribe of Dan is
alone omitted, probably because it had almost disappeared from the
annals of Israel.7 Besides these, the seer beheld an innumerable multi
tude of every nation, and all tribes and peoples and tongues, arrayed in
white and with palms in their hands. One of the elders tells him8 that
these are they who came " out of the great tribulation " — that is, the
Neronian persecution — and have washed their robes and made them
Bev. i. 12 — 17, and comparing it phrase by phrase with Zech. iv. 2 ; Dan. vii. 13 : x. 5 ;
vii. 9 ; x. 6, 11, 12 ; Is. xlix. 2 ; Ezek. xliii. 2.
> Matt. xxiv. 29—34. 2 gee Ta0. H_ j, u .
8 Luke xxiii. 36.
4 Here, if any one believes that the Apocalyptic symbols are infinitely plastic, he
may hold with Godet that the seals foreshadow " all the wars, all the famines, all the
persecutions, all the earthquakes, etc. , which the earth has seen or will see until the last
scene for which the trumpets give the signal. "
5 Among other things they are forbidden "to hurt any tree," vii. 1 (comp. ix. 4).
The Jews felt deeply the destruction of all the trees in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem
during the Jewish War. Babbi Yochanan said, " The Holy One — blessed be He — will in
future replace every acacia which the heathen have taken away from Jerusalem. " He
supported this by Is. xli. 19, saying that " the wilderness " (Is. lxiv. 10) was meant to
indicate Jerusalem (Bosh Hashanah, f. 23, a).
6 The anoient form of the letter Thau was +
7 It is not worth while to repeat all the idle conjectures about this point. The
Targum of Jonathan on Ex. xvii. 8 represents Dan as "a sinner from the beginning " — a
tribe thoroughly idolatrous (see Ewald, Gcseh, i. 490). Simeon is omitted in Deut.
xxxiii., and Dan in 1 Chron. iv. After 1 Chron. xxviii. 22 it is not mentioned. Levi
is here counted as one of the tribes, because all the Lord's true people are now priests.
8 Cf. Zeoh. iv. 4, 5.

THE TRUMPETS. 449
white in the blood of the Lamb. The whole company are " the elect
gathered together from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the
other."1 Tlie 144,000 seem to represent the ideal Israel. The " num
berless multitude," which is almost the identical expression used of the
Neronian martyrs alike by Tacitus and by Clemens Romanus,2 are those
who have died for the truths of Christ, whose souls St. John has
already seen in shadowy throngs beneath the altar.
viii. We still await in dread expectation the opening of the Seventh
Seal. But when it is opened there is a pause of terrified astonishment,
a silence for half an hour in Heaven, as though the dwellers in Heaven
drew their breath in anguish of expectation. It is like the awful
pause before the hurricane, when we hear " the destroying Angels
murmuring together as they draw their swords in the distance," and
" the questioning in terrified stillness of the forest leaves which way the
wind shall come." For hitherto the judgments of the earth have only
been seen in Heaven by the shadowy images of those who went forth
for their accomplishment ; but now are to be seen the very judgments
themselves. There are seven Angels s —
" The Seven
Who in God's presence, nearest to His throne
Stand ready at command, and are His eyes
That run through all the Heavens, and down to the earth
Bear His swift errands."
To these angels are given seven Trumpets to blow the signals of doom.4
The results that follow the blast of these seven trumpets practically
form the issue of the breaking of the Seventh Seal. But the troubles
which follow are neither definite, nor continuous, nor rigidly historical.
They closely resemble those which have followed at the opening of the
Sixth Seal, only that these trumpet calamities affect a third, and not
a fourth, part of the earth.5 They indicate the widening spread and
deepening intensity of judgment ; and although it is not possible to
point out in chronological sequence the exact events which they des
cribe in hyperbolic symbolism, they resemble those signs in the sun, the
moon, the stars, and the sea by which the Lord on the Mount of Olives
had shadowed forth the troubles of the approaching end. The language
is also coloured by reminiscences of the Plagues of Egypt.6 Further, it
must be borne in mind that to the eye of the seer the outlines of time
are indistinct, and there is a commingling of the events of the present
1 Matt. xxiv. 31. 2 oxAos ttoAvs, "ingens multitudo."
3 See Tobit xii. 15 ; Dan. x. 13 ; Zech. iv. 10. The names are given differently in the
Book of Enoch, the Targum of Jonathan, and other sources (see Gfrorer, Jahrb. d.
Heils, i. 361).
4 Comp. 1 Cor. xv. 52 ; 4 Esdr. v. 3 ; Matt. xxiv. 31.
5 The "third part " is evidently a general expression, as in Zech. xiii. 9. It probably
indicates the Boman Empire (ix. 18 ; xii. 6).
6 See Luke xxi. 25.
D D

450 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and the immediate past with those of the instantly anticipated future.
The repetition of the vision of judgment in various forms is one of the
recognised Hebrew methods of expressing their certainty. The same
general calamities are indicated by diverse symbols. Let it not be
supposed that there is anything novel in this view. On the contrary,
it is found as far back as the close of the third century, in the most
ancient of all the extant Scholia on the Apocalypse — those by St.
Victorinus of Pettau, who was martyred in the days of Diocletian.1 He
regards the visions as mainly retrogressive and iterative. "The phials,"
he says, " are a supplement of what he said of the trumpets. We must
not regard the mere order of the statements, for the Holy Spirit, after
he has advanced to the end of the latest time, often returns to the same
time again, and supplies all which was before partially stated." And
just before this passage, he says, " that though the seer repeats by the
vials (what had been implied by the trumpets) this does not imply a
repetition of the fact, but is a twofold statement of a single decreed
event." There is fair reason to suppose that Victorinus derived this
valuable, and by no means obvious, principle of interpretation from
early, and perhaps from Apostolic tradition.
SECTION III.
THE TRUMPETS.
Before the seven Angels sound, another Angel, standing at the
altar, mixes abundant incense in a golden censer with the prayers of the
saints. Some at least of these prayers are represented as having been
a unanimous cry for speedy vengeance. In answer to these, the Angel
takes the censer, fills it with fire from the altar, and hurls it upon the
earth, which echoes back its crashing fall in thunderings, lightnings,
voices, and earthquakes. Such thunderings and lightnings and earth
quakes were, according to Tacitus and Suetonius, characteristic of the
epoch. I have already quoted the solemn language in which Tacitus
summarises the manifold calamities of this very period.2 Speaking
of the day on which Galba adopted Piso — Jan. 10, a.d. 69 — he says
that the day was foul with rain-storms, and disturbed beyond natural
wont with thunders, lightnings, and the threats of heaven "3 — omens
which he blames Galba for neglecting. Speaking a few years earlier, he
observes that " never had the storms of lightning flashed with more
frequent violence;"' and this he mentions among the prodigies which
were the indication of imminent calamities. In Asia, where St. John
1 See Aug. De Civ. Dei, xx. 14. So too Andreas, Corn, a, Lapide, Vitringa, Bengel,
and many commentators of all schools, including writers so unlike each other as Bossuet,
Ewald, De Wette, and Eeuss, on the one hand, and Elliott, Wordsworth, and Hengsten-
berg, on the other.
2 Tac. H. i. 3. It had long been customary to connect such phenomena with political
events (Cie. De Div. i. 18 ; Suet. Aug. 94).
a Tac. H. i. 18. * Tac. Arm. xv. 47.

THE FIRST TRUMPET. 451
was writing, the era might well be called the era of earthquakes.
"Nowhere in the whole world," says Solinus, "are earthquakes so
constant and cities so frequently overthrown." They are referred to
again and again by all the writers and historians of the age.1
i. Then the first Angel sounded. Hail followed, and fire mingled
with blood, and a third part of the surface of the earth, with its grass
and trees, was scorched up.2 They are but the beginning of the worse hail
(xvi. 21) and fire (xx. 9) and blood (xiv. 20) which are to follow. They
point to years of burning drought and rains of blood,3 and to disastrous
, conflagrations, such as those at Lyons, Rome, and Jerusalem, and to
fierce storms of hail — such as so often destroy in a few hours the
vineyards of Lombardy — and to scenes of human bloodshed. And we
must once more remind the reader that these storms and prodigies, so
far from being peculiar to the Apocalypse, or understood in a peculiar
significance, are referred to in very similar terms and explained in a
very similar way by other Christian, Heathen, and Jewish writers.
Speaking of the earthquake of a.d. 63, Dion Cassius, reflecting the
impression of contemporaries, calls it the "greatest that had ever
happened." Can we be surprised if, in a book which reads like a
hundredfold reverberation of older prophecies, the contemporary pheno
mena are depicted in the same imagery as that which had been used in
their day by the Prophets of Judah and Israel to describe the calamities
which were then happening before their eyes? Is the language of
St. John about contemporary calamities anything like so hyperbolical as
that in which the Prophet Joel had described the ravages produced by a
plague of locusts 1 It is only to the tamer and colder imagination of
Teutonic races that such terms sound hyperbolical if applied to any
thing short of the final consummation.
ii. The second Angel sounds, and something which resembles a
burning mountain is flung down into the sea, and the third part of the
sea is turned into blood, and the third part of the fish die, and the third
part of the ships is destroyed. The image is original. St. John may
have derived this terrific picture of "a burning mountain cast into the
sea " either from seeing the lurid flashes that leap up night and day from
the cone of Stromboli, which he may have passed in a voyage to Rome,
1 Dion Cass. Ixvi. 23-24 ; Jos. Antt. xv. 5, § 2 ; B.J. 1. 19, § 3 ; iv. 4, § 5 ; Tac.
Ann. ii. 47 ; iv. 13 ; xii. 43—58 ; xiv. 27 ; Sen. Q-u. Nat. vi. 1 ; Suet. Tib. 74, Ner. 20 ;
Juv. Sat. vi. 411 ; Carm. Sib. iii 471 ; Strabo, xii. 8, § 16, etc. Seneca exclaims, " How
often have the cities of Asia, how often those of Achaia, fallen by one shock ! How
many towns in Syria, how many in Macedonia, have been devoured ! . . . . Often have
the ruins of whole cities been announced to us " (Ep. 91).
2 See Ex. ix. 22 ; Joel ii. 3. The reference to the destruction of trees in the Apoca
lypse may be due to the terrible destruction of the trees and the vegetation of Palestine
in the Jewish War, especially round Jerusalem ; a destruction from which it has never
recovered. The " third part " may, as we have seen, vaguely correspond to the Boman
Empire. * Liv. xxxix. 46 ; and often mentioned among Boman portents. Dion. Cassius
(lxiii. 26) mentions such a rain in A.D. 68, and says that "the blood" — really a natural
phenomena, which happened at Naples so late as 1869— discoloured even the streams.

452 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
or more probably from seeing on the horizon, as he gazed from Patmos,
the dense smoke vomited from the burning island-mountain of Thera,
the modern Santorin. The notion of seas and rivers turned into blood
by way of punishing the guilty is well known to the imagery of the
Prophets and Apocryphal writers.1 The language is obviously that of
daring symbolism. Taken literally, the fall of the burning mountain
resembles no event ever seen or known in the history of the world.
Taken metaphorically, it may be meant to depict great calamities con
nected .with the sea and ships, deaths by drowning and massacre which
" incarnadined the multitudinous seas." The times of Nero furnished
abundant instances. Such were the inundation which devastated the
coasts of Lydia, and the destruction of fleets, and the waves reddening
with the blood of men, as at Joppa, and on the coastSxof the Dead Sea,
and on the Lake of Galilee. At Joppa, " the sea was bloody a long
way, and the maritime parts were full of dead bodies ; and the number
of bodies that were thus thrown out of the sea was four thousand
two hundred:"2 At Tarichese " one might see the Lake of Galilee
all bloody, and full of dead bodies . . . and the shores were full
of shipwrecks and of dead bodies all swelled, and as the dead bodies were
inflamed by the sun they putrefied and corrupted the air, insomuch that
the misery was not only an object of commiseration to the Jews, but to
those that hated them and had been the authors of that misery . . .
and the number of the slain was six thousand five hundred."3 Con
sidering, however, that in no age of the Church has there been any
accepted identification of the scenes thus pictured, it must always
remain uncertain whether the seer meant to point to any very definite
events. His object may have been to express in imaginative emblems
broad general circumstances and conditions of warning and judgment.
iii. The third Angel sounded, and a great star called Absinth " fell
upon the third part of the world's waters, and made them so bitter that
men died of them." Here again we are in the abstract region, of
apocalyptical imagination tinged by reminiscences of the Plagues of
Egypt. Alike the result and the agency by which it is accomplished
are indefinite. As stars are the images of rulers, and fallen stars of
rulers flung down from heaven,4 the symbol may dimly express the
bitterness and terror caused by the overthrow of Nero and the ominous
failure of the Julian line. The details of the image may have been
suggested by the wicked habit of poisoning the waters of which an
enemy was to drink. The Romans excused their cruelty at Jerusalem by
asserting that the springs and fountains had been poisoned by the Jews.5
> Wisdom xi. 6, 7. ~ Jos. B. J. iii. 9, § 3. 3 Jos. B. J. iii. 10, § 9.
4 " How art thou fallen from heaven, oh Luoifer, Son of the Morning ! " (Is. xiv. 12).
6 As a specimen of the strange diversities of interpreters, I may mention that Bede
• understands the fallen star of heretics generaUy ; N. de Lyra applies it to Arius and
Macedonius ; Luther thinks that it represents  Origen ! Mede understands it of
Bomulus Augustulus ; Grotius of " that Egyptian " ; Herder of the Zealot Eleazar ;
others of Gregory the Great !

THE FIFTH TRUMPET. 453
iv. The fourth Angel sounded, and the third part of the sun and
moon and stars, and day and night are smitten j1 in other words — in
accordance with the recognised imagery of Apocalypse and Prophecy —
ruler after ruler, chieftain after chieftain of the Roman Empire and the
Jewish nation was assassinated and ruined. Gaius, Claudius, Nero,
Galba, Otho, Vitellius, all died by murder or suicide ; Herod the Great,
Herod Antipas, Herod Agrippa, and most of the Herodian Princes,
together with not a few of the leading High Priests of Jerusalem,
perished in disgrace, or in exile, or by violent hands. All these were
quenched suns and darkened stars. It must be again borne in mind
that all the events thus symbolised are not meant to be consecutive.
Although progressive, they are analogous to, or even identical with,
those already described. The plagues of the trumpets are but the
deadlier form of the plagues indicated by the seals ; and in the vials the
same woes reach their consummation. So far, therefore, as the effects
of the fourth Trumpet are meant to be historical, and not a general
echo of our Lord's great discourse about the Last Things, they allude,
like those of the sixth Seal, to political perils and revolutions in
the Roman Empire, which were the special characteristic of that epoch,
and of which every comet and every eclipse and every unusual tempest
was believed to be a threatening sign.2
v. The trumpets are broken into divisions of four and three. To
prepare for the remaining three, a single eagle3 flies in the mid region
of Heaven, screaming with loud cry a triple " Woe ! " by reason of the
Angel trumpets which were yet to sound. The eagle denotes carnage ;
— "where the slain are there is she."4 The massacres of these years
stained, as we have seen, both the land and sea. The furrows of earth
were red with slaughter ; the waves were dyed with blood.
The fifth Angel sounds, and a star falls to earth, to whom is given
the key of the abyss. He opens the abyss, and in the issuing smoke
which' dims the air comes forth a host of scorpion-locusts, which are
forbidden to hurt the grass or green things or trees, but are bidden, for
a space of five months, to torment without killing all who have not the
seal of God on their forehead. These scorpion-locusts resemble war-
horses, with crowns like gold, with the face of men, the hair of women,
the teeth of lions ; they have breastplates as of iron, and the sound of
their wings is like the sound of chariots, or of horses charging to battle.
The anguish they inflict makes men desire to die ;5 and their king
is called Abaddon, Apollyon, or the Destroyer.
i Matt. xxiv. 29.
2 Stars are the well-understood Scripture symbol for persons in authority (Gen.
xxxvii. 9 ; Jer. iv. 23 ; Ezek. xxxii. 7, 8 ; Isa. xiii. 9, 10, 17). The symbol is a natural
one. Similarly, Shakspere tells us how —
" Certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music. "
3 Bev. viii. 13. evos aerov, a, A, B, &c. 4 Hos. viii. 1.
5 Jer. iii. 8 :. "Death shall be chosen rather than life, by all them that remain of
this evil family. "

454 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The fallen star may again be meant for Nero ; but on the whole I
agree with those who see in this vision a purely demoniac host. The
fallen star will then be Satan, of whom the Lord said, " I saw Satan as
lightning fallen from heaven."1 The abyss is pre-eminently the abode
of "demons."2 It is their speciality to cause torment.3 They are as
appropriately symbolised by scorpion-locusts as by frogs.1 Christ had
specially prophesied that " this wicked generation " should be more
grievously afflicted by demons. As time went on, Rome and Jerusalem
— the two places typically prominent in the mind of the writer — were
becoming more and more " a habitation of demons, a hold of every
unclean spirit, a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."5 In Rome
the loose, disbanded soldiery and the scum of the forum had degraded
society to the lowest levels of infamy. The city had become a foul
pool, into which every polluted river had poured its dregs. In
Jerusalem, according to the emphatic testimony of Josephus, never
since the beginning of the world had there been any generation more
prolific of wickedness. Stier says, " that in the period between the
Resurrection and the Fall of Jerusalem the Jewish nation acted as if
possessed by seven thousand demons. The whole age had upon it a
stamp of the infernal."6
Whether in this general picture of the host of hell swarming out, of
the abyss, there is any direct allusion to the Idumeans, Zealots, and
Sicarii stinging themselves to death with untold anguish, like scorpions
encircled by a ring of fire ; or, again, to the tumults, bloodshed, and
agonies of Rome, the frequency of suicide, and the many tales of those
who seemed to long for death in vain — cannot be affirmed. The
description of the scorpion-locusts evidently recalls the Egyptian
Plague, and the language of Joel, and the fanciful allusions to locusts
which abound in the songs and proverbs of the East.7 The five months
may point to the summer period, which is the time of locust plagues.8
1 Luke x. 18. The Book of Enoch is full of good and evil angels, who are spoken of
as stars (Enoch xviii. 13 ; xxi. 3, etc.).
2 Luke viii. 31. a Matt. xv. 22.
4 Bev. xvi. 13. Benan may be right in saying that the notion of frogs and locusts
coming from the abyss, may have beea partly suggested by the actual phenomena of the
Solfatara, or some similar district.
5 Bev. xviii. 2. o Reden Jesu, ii. 187.
7 Locusts are called " caralctti " in Naples. Hermas (Vis. iv. 1) sees "a great beast
.... and fiery locusts coming out of his mouth," which appears to be (Vis. iv. 3) "the
type of the great tribulation which is to come." Compare Ulaudian's description —
" Horret apex capitis ; medio fera lumina surgunt
Vertice ; cognatus dorso durescit a-mictus.
Armavit natura cutem dumique rubentes
Cuspidibus parvis multos acuere rubores. "— (Epigr. xxxiii.)
" Bochart, Hierozoic ii. 495 ; Plin. H. N. ix. 50 ; " latent quinis mensibus." If any
one desires to see once more the endless guesses of interpreters, I may mention that
Bede explains the "five months" of human life, because we have five senses; the
scorpions are heretics. Vitringa makes the five months mean 150 years— the time of
Gothic domination. Calovius explains them of the prevalence of Arianism. Bengel
makes them mean 79J years— the time of the Jewish afflictions in Persia in the sixth

HOSTS OF HORSEMEN. 455
But two circumstances seem to show that we are here dealing not
with human avengers but with invisible demons of the air. One
is that their leader is the Demon Destroyer ; the other is that Chris
tians, and Christians only, are expressly exempted from their power
to hurt. vi. Two woes yet remain. A voice is heard from the horns of the
golden altar, bidding the sixth Angel loose the four Angels which are
bound at the great river Euphrates,1 who were prepared for the due
time, to slay the third part of men. Immediately there ride forth tivo
hundred million horsemen, breathing fire and smoke, on lion-headed
steeds, armed with breastplates as of fire, jacinth, and brimstone.
With their flames and their atnphisbsena-stings they slay the third part
of men ; — and yet the rest do not repent.2
It is probable that the facts which loom large and lurid through this
blood-red mist of Apocalyptic symbols are the swarms of Orientals who
gathered to the destruction of Jerusalem in the train of Titus,3 and the
overwhelming Parthian host which was expected to avenge the ruin of
Nero. It was a popular belief that he was still living ; that he had
taken refuge in the East ; or that in any Case Tiridates, who greatly
admired him, or Vologeses, whose relations with him were very
amicable, would bring him back with a whirlwind of triumphant
horsemen.4 These great Eastern Empires took deep and dangerous
interest in the affairs of Rome. " Vologeses, King of the Parthians,"
says-Suetonius, "had sent ambassadors to the Senate about the renewal
of amity, and earnestly made this further request, that the memory of
Nero should be held in honour. In my youth, twenty years after,
when a false Nero had arisen, his name was so popular among the
Parthians that he was strenuously assisted and with difficulty given
up."5 Both Suetonius and Tacitus relate that Vologeses offered to
assist Vespasian with forty thousand mounted archers.6 One of the
circumstances which most deeply aroused the indignation of Titus
against the Jews was that they had sent embassies for assistance to
their kinsmen beyond the Euphrates.7 In the Sibylline Oracles and in
the Ascension of Isaiah we find distinct and repeated allusion to some
century. Hofmann refers to the five sins ; and Ziillig to the time of the Deluge (Gen.
vii. 24). Some consider that Apollyon meant Napoleon. Bullinger explains the locusts
of the monks ; Beljarmine of the Protestants ; and so on. And this is "Exegesis ! "
1 These four bound angels have never been explained. Some refer them to the Angel
princes of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, and Persians. Some to the four Eoman
stations on the Euphrates. Bound angels would recall to St. John's readers the notion
of evil spirits. Comp. Tobit viii. 3 ; Matt. xii. 43 — 45.
2 Et gravis in geminum surgens caput amphisbama " (Luc. Phars. ix. 719).
3 Jos. B. J. hi. 1, § 3 ; 4, § 2. Four kings — Antiochus, Sohemus, Agrippa, and
Malchus— contributed archers and horsemen. The latter, who was an Arabian Prince,
sent 5,000 archers and 1,000 cavalry.
4 See Suet. Nero, 13, 30, 47, 57; Carm. Sib. iv. 119—147 : v. 93, and passim; viii.
70, etc.
5 Comp. Tac. H. i. 2.
6 Tac. H. iv. 51 ; Suet. Vesp. 6. 7 J08. B. J. vi. 6, § 2.

456 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
expected catastrophe from the realm of Parthia.1 The metaphor will
then closely resemble that of Jer. Ii. 27, " Cause the horses to come up
as rough caterpillars; prepare against her the nations with the Kings
of the Medes." These vaticinations do not belong in the least to
the essence or heart of the Apocalypse. They are but passing illus
trations of the great principles — the hopes and warnings — which it was
meant to inculcate. Warriors from the Euphrates had their share
in the siege of Jerusalem ; and though Parthian horsemen did not
sweep down from the East at that time against pagan Rome, yet in due
time vengeance did fall on her, and in due time the countless hosts
which swarmed from beyond the Euphrates may well be said to have
destroyed a third of men, and yet to have left the rest impenitent for
their crimes.
SECTION IV.
AN EPISODE.
Then follows another pause.
A mighty Angel arrayed with cloud, and with a rainbow encircling
a sunlike face, descends from Heaven. His feet are like pillars of fire,
and he sets one on the land and one on the sea.2 A little open book is
in his hand, and when he speaks in his lion-voice seven thunders utter
their voices. But the seer is forbidden to write, and it is, therefore,
absurd to conjecture what they uttered. Then the Angel, lifting his
right hand to Heaven, swears by the Almighty Creator that no further
time shall intervene, but that at the trumpet-blast of the seventh Angel
the mystery of Qod shall be finished.3 The seer is bidden to take the
book and eat it. In his mouth it is sweet as honey ; in his' belly it is
bitter. He is then bidden to prophesy again concerning many peoples,
nations, tongues, and kings.
This magnificent episode tends to deepen and heighten the expecta
tion of what the seventh Trumpet is to bring. The incident of eating
the roll is also found in Ezek. ii. 9 ; iii. 3,4 and the command to seal up
1 "Towards evening war will arise, and the great fugitive of Bome (Nero) will raise
the sword, and with many myriads of men ride through the Euphrates " (Carm. Sib. iv.
116, seq.). In the fifth book of Sibylline verses Nero is caUed " the dread serpent," who
though vanquished would return, and give himself out as God (Id. v. 93, and passim).
Nero is the godless king," and murderer of his mother, of the Vision of Isaiah, who
shall be destroyed after 1,335 days. Jerome on Dan. i. 28, says that many Christians
expected the return of Nero as Antichrist.
2 Since, in xi. 3, he says, "I will give power to my witnesses," we may perhaps see in
this mighty Angel a representation of the Son of God. The descriptions correspond
with those of the first (i. 15) and fourth Angel (iv. 3) ; see too Dan. xii. 1. Nic. de Lyra
supposes that the Angel is meant for the Emperor Justinian ; Luther, for the Pope ; and
Bede, for St. John himself ! But it is worse than useless to record the vagaries of
Apocalyptic interpretation.
3 This is a reference to vi. 11, where the souls of the martyrs are bidden to rest,
"still a little time."
4 Comp. Jer. xv. 16, "Thy words were found, and I did eat them." The contents of
the roll were sweet in anticipation, because he had hoped to read in them the perfect
conversion of Jerusalem ; but were bitter when their real import was known.

THE SEVEN THUNDERS. 457
the " utterance " of the seven thunders resembles those given to Daniel,
in Dan. viii. 26 ; xii. 4 — 9. The general meaning seems to be that
much of the future is to be left in deep mystery, and that the messages
yet to be delivered are of mingled import, sweet with consolations, yet
bitter with awful judgments. The little book is intended to contain the
issues of the seventh Trumpet. They are as yet undeveloped. Much of
the vision hitherto has referred to the past. It has explained the mean
ing of the signs in the physical and political world which pointed to the
Coming Judgment. It has made clear to believers that the woes which
had shaken and were still shaking the earth were the beginning of the
Palingenesia. What the seer has now to foreshadow is the Coming
Dawn itself.
His first warning prophecies are addressed to the Jews. The judg
ments of the first six Seals affect the fourth part of all men alike —
Christians, Jews, heathens. Before the opening of the seventh Seal,
the servants of God — that is, all the members of the Christian Church
— are sealed upon their foreheads. The judgments of the first six
Trumpets affect, therefore, only the Jews and the heathens. But now,
before the actual sounding of the seventh Trumpet, the Jews are won to
God (xi. 13). St. John, like St. Paul, sees that it is only "in part"
that " blindness hath befallen Israel," and only "until the fulness of the
Gentiles be come in." Consequently the judgments of the first six
Vials, though they extend over the whole earth, fall only upon the
heathen. The seventh Vial brings upon all the unconverted the final
judgment. So that before the seventh Trumpet sounds the seer is bidden to
measure the Temple, and altar, and worshippers with a measuring reed,1
exclusively of the court which has been given over to the Gentiles, who
are to trample down the Holy City for forty-two months — i.e., three and
a half years.2 During these twelve hundred and sixty days, the Two
Witnesses are to prophesy in sackcloth. They resemble the two olive
trees and the two lamp-stands of the Temple.3 With fire from their
mouth they can destroy their enemies.4 They can shut up the Heavens
and smite the earth with plague. When their testimony is over, the
Wild Beast out of the abyss shall kill them. Their dead bodies shall
lie for three and a half days in the streets of Jerusalem, the spiritual
Sodom 5 and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. Men of all nations
1 Ezek. xl. ; Zech. iv.
2 Dan. viii. 13 ; 1 Mace. iii. 45, 51 ; iv. 60 ; Luke xxi. 24. " Jerusalem shall be trodden
down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." The period 3 J years,
42 months, or 1,260 days (the half of seven years), is often found in Scripture in con
nexion with judgments. Dan. vii. 25 (Antiochus Epiphanes rages for "a time, times,
and half a time"); ix. 27 (the oblation ceases for half a week) ; xii. 7, 11 ; comp. Luke
xxi. 24 ; James v. 17 (time of drought at Elijah's prayer).
3 Zech'iv. 3, 11.
4 2 Kings i. 10 ; Jer. v. 14 ; Ecclus. xlviii. 1. " Then stood up Elias the Prophet as
fire, and his word burned like a lamp. "
5 Jerusalem (Sodom) ; Isa. i. 10 ; iii. 9 : Jer. xxiii. 14 ; Ezek. xvi. 48, 49. There may

458 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
shall rejoice over their corpses,1 and will not suffer them to be buried.2
Then the breath of life from God shall enter into them. To the terror
of all they shall stand upon their leet,3 and at the bidding of a voice
from Heaven shall ascend in cloud. Then a great earthquake, in
which seven thousand shall perish, shall shake down a tenth of the city.
The rest of its inhabitants repent in their terror, and give glory to the
God of Heaven.
Every item of the symbolism, as will have been seen from the refe- '
rences, is borrowed from ancient prophecy : and yet neither in its details
nor in its general import is the vision clear. There neither is nor ever
has been in Christendom, in any age or among any school of interpreters,
the smallest agreement, or even approach to an agreement, as to the
events which the seer had in view.
What is the object of the measuring] Judging from Ezekiel and
Zechariah, we should say that it is for construction and preservation ;
but in other passages the " stretching out of a line," or " setting a plumb-
line," or " measuring with a line," are emblems of punishment or
destruction.4 As both destruction and preservation follow, the question
is not easy to answer.
Again, is the seer now dealing with more or less definite history,
whether contemporary or impending, or are the limits of past, present,
and future obliterated in illustrating the Divine principles of the Eternal
Now? Again, does the vision refer to the actual Jerusalem, or to Jerusalem
as an emblem of the whole Jewish race 1
Once more, who are the Two Witnesses 1 Were there during the
siege of Jerusalem, or during the general epoch of its imminent doom,
two witnesses for God and for Christ, who in their characteristics recalled
Moses and Elijah 1 Or are Moses and Elijah themselves symbolically
described i Was the seer thinking of St. John the Baptist and our
Lord 1 5 or of the two Christian martyrs, James the son of Zebedee and
James the Bishop of Jerusalem 1 or of two Christian witnesses of whom
no history is recorded t 6 or of the murder of men like Zechariah, son of
Berachiah 1 or is he indeed only thinking of Enoch and Elijah,7 according
to the almost unanimous tradition of the Early Church f 8 Or, again,
be a passing allusion to the detestable crimes of the Zealots, as recorded by Josephus,
B. J. iv. 6, § 3.
1 Congratulations of the enemies of God. Heb. viii. 10, 12 ; Esth. ix. 19, 22.
2 1 Kings xiii. 22 ; Isa. xiv. 18 ; Tobit i. 17.
3 Ezek. xxxvii. 10.
4 Lam. ii. 7, 8 ; Isa. xxxiv. 11 ; Amos vii. 6, 9 ; 2 Sam. viii. 2 ; 2 Kings xxi. 12, 13.
6 Matt. xvii. 9 — 13. 6 Compare Bev. xi. 3 with Acts i. 8.
7 In the Gospel of Nicodemus, Enoch says of himself and Elijah, " We are to live
until the end of the world ; and then we are to be sent by God to resist Antichrist, and to
be slain by him, and afta- three days to rise again, and to be caught up in clouds to meet the
Lord" (Gosp. Nicod. ii. 9).
8 As preserved in the Commentary of Andreas, Bp. of Csesarea in Cappadocia (comp.
Gospel of Nicodemus xxv. ). The view derives some sanction from Luke xvi. 31 ; and the
Transfiguration, Matt. xvii. 3.

THE TWO WITNESSES. 459
widening the symbol of Jerusalem to apply to the whole Jewish and
Christian Church, is he thinking of' St. James and St. Peter? or even
of St. Peter and St. Paul as the two most illustrious victims of the
Neronian persecution ? None of these guesses are certain ; and perhaps
the same may be said of a solution which has sometimes occurred to me,
that the Two Witnesses represent Jewish and Gentile converts to the
Church. Is the description of their unburied corpses and subsequent
ascension a symbol of the true fulfilment of their prophecies, the vindi
cation of the truths they taught, the posthumous honours paid to their
memories ? Are we to understand the vision literally, or ideally, or
allegorically ? None can tell us ; and who shall say 1
Lastly, in the earthquake and the overthrow of a tenth part of the
city, and the resultant terror and repentance, are we to see a picture of
the anticipated results from the rapidly approaching siege of Jerusalem,
or do they shadow forth the fate of the besieged, and the effect of their
awful judgment upon the minds of their co-religionists throughout the
world?1 These questions have never been satisfactorily answered, and perhaps
never will be. We must be content to leave them in the half-light in
which the uncertainty of nineteen Christian centuries has left them
hitherto. There are no two writers of any importance who even
approximately agree in the interpretation of the symbols. Those
symbols were probably coloured not only by the language of the Old
Testament, but by actual events in the siege. Such, for instance, was
the terrific storm, the bursts of rain, the earthquake, " the amazing
concussions and bellowings of the earth," during which the Idumeans
were admitted, and in which Josephus says that " the whole system of
the universe seemed to be in disorder."2 In the subsequent massacres,
the outer Temple — that is, the Court of the Gentiles — " was all over
flowed with blood," and eight thousand five hundred corpses lay about
its precincts. The insults to the unburied witnesses recall for a moment
the fate of the younger Hanan and the priest Jesus, whose bodies were
" cast out naked and unburied to be the food of dogs and wild beasts,"
but whose reputation was so thoroughly vindicated in the eyes of their
countrymen, that Josephus pronounces a high eulogy upon them, and
attributes the final doom of the city to the guilt incurred by their
murderers.3 The three and a half years, again, correspond with the
actual length of the siege, together with the special horrors by which it
was preluded. On the other hand, we know of nothing which corre
sponds to the fall of only the tenth part of the city, or to any repentance
on the part of its inhabitants. Every interpretation seems to be beset
with insuperable difficulties. No one school of commentators has been
more successful than iis rivals in furnishing an historical solution. May
1 Doubtless the imagery is coloured by reminiscences of the events mentioned in
Matt, xxvii. 51 ; xxviii. 2.
a Jos. B. J. iv. 5, § 5. 8 Ibid. iv. 5, § 2.

460 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
not this be a sign that no exact historical counterpart to these symbols
was contemplated by the seer, and that he is only moving in the region
of ideal anticipation in order to use material symbols as the vehicle for
eternal principles? He who has learnt the lesson, " not by power nor
by might, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts ; " he who feels
that the downfall of Evil and the ultimate triumph of Good has all the
certainty of an inevitable law ; — he who is waiting for the consolation
of the spiritual Israel and the gathering of all nations into one flock
under one shepherd at the Coming of the Lord, — he, it may be, has
learnt more of the inner spirit and essential meaning of the Apocalypse
than if he followed all the flickering lights of Exegesis which have led
men into the marshes of rival fictions from the days of St. Victorinus
down to the present time.
It has been often asserted that St. John meant to indicate the
preservation of the Temple, in accordance with the general expectation
and what was believed to be the express wish of Titus. But he does
not say so. The measuring-rod may have been, as we have seen, a
mark of coming overthrow. There is indeed an absolutely fatal argu
ment against the notion that St. John anticipated that the Temple
would be preserved. It is that our Lord on Olivet, in the very
discourse on which the Apocalypse is an expanded and symbolic com
mentary, had declared without the least ambiguity, and in exact
accordance with the result, that of that Temple not one stone should
be left upon another. St. John indicates the conversion of the Jews,
not the deliverance of Jerusalem.
But all that we cannot understand of St. John's symbolism belongs
- — the very failure of the Christian world in any age to understand it is
a sufficient proof that it belongs — to the secondary, the subordinate, the
less essential elements of the book. It must always be more than
doubtful whether, in the very small fraction of the book which touches
on the yet earthly and historic future, St. John intended to deal with
specific vaticinations. At any rate, the meaning and literal accomplish
ment of such vaticinations is irrevocably lost for us, and, in point of
fact, has never been known to any age of the Church — not even to the
earliest, not even — so far as our records go — to Irenaaus, the hearer of
Polycarp, or to Polycarp, the hearer of St. John. What we can see in
the whole vision of the Holy City and the Two Witnesses, is a prophecy
of the ultimate conversion of the vast mass of Israel, and the final
triumph of Christian testimony over every opposing force ; further
than this, there is nothing to be found in any commentary but fancy
and guess-work, and arbitrary combinations, which may seem irrefragable
to those who indulge in them, but which have not succeeded in con
vincing a handful of readers.
Then, at last, the seventh Angel sounds. There is a shout of
jubilee in Heaven, because the kingdoms of the world have become the
kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. The Jews are now converted.

THE WOMAN AND THE DRAGON. 461
There remains nothing but the judgment of the Gentiles and the
Coming of Christ in the close of the seon. The earthly Temple has at
last disappeared. In the Heaven is seen the Temple of God, open even
to the Holiest Place, to which there may now be universal access at all
times, through the Blood of Christ. SECTION V.
THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA.
But, as though to compensate for the uncertain idealism of the last
Vision, the meaning of the next Vision is retrospective, and, in its
main outlines, perfectly clear.
A woman, arrayed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet,
and a crown of twelve stars around her head, brings forth a man-child.
A huge scarlet dragon, with ten horns and seven diademed heads, whose
tail sweeps after it the third part of the stars to the earth,1 stands before
her to devour the child the moment it is born, since the child is to rule
the nations with a rod of iron. But the child is snatched up to the
throne of God, and the woman flies into the wilderness, where she is
to be nourished for 1,260 days.
All agree as to the interpretation. The star-Crowned woman is the
ideal Church of Israel.2 The child she brings forth is a symbol, partly
of the Messiah, partly of the Christian Church.3 The scarlet dragon is
an emblem of Satan, with the attributes of the world-power, as specially
represented by the Roman Empire — of which a dragon was one of the
later insignia. A dragon or serpent (for between the two words there
is no real distinction) was also the apt inspirer for an Emperor who
was believed to wear as an amulet a serpent's skin, and whose life,
according to popular legend, had been saved by a serpent when he was
an infant in the cradle.4 Its seven heads and ten horns are seven
Emperors5 and ten Provincial Governors. But no power of legions, no
violence of martyrdoms, can slay the infant Church of Christ. The
Mother Church, the Church of Jerusalem, which, as it were, rocks the
cradle of Gentile Christianity, is saved alike from Idumeans and Zealots,
and the Roman armies which advance to besiege the Holy City. She
flies to the mountains ; to the wilderness ; .to the secure and desolate
region of Pella, in which town, on the edge Of the deserts of Arabia, 6
1 Dan. viii. 10 (of Antiochus Epiphanes). 2 Isa. lxvi. 7, 8.
3 The narrative is doubtless coloured by the perils and escapes of the Infant Christ
(Matt. ii. 11—15). 4 Suet. Ner. 6.
5 The " seven " may include Julius Csesar ; or, excluding him, may include Otho. In
the days of Julius, however, the name Imperatoi' had not acquired its exclusive signifi
cance, and he never had the title of Princeps. Apocalyptic symbolism, dealing in mystic
numbers, dpes not greatly trouble itself with these minor details. Thus the seven heads
of the Beast serve alike to symbolise seven hills and seven emperors. The Dragon is at
once Satan and the representative of Satan — the Empire of Pagan Bome.
6 Josephus says of Perea, " its eastern limits reach to Arabia " (B. J. iii. 3, § 3).
Pella is now Tabakat Fahil.

462 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
at an early period of the impending siege, the Christians took refuge,
in accordance with their Lord's command. : They thus escaped the
horror's of the three and a half years which elapsed between A.D. 67,
when Vespasian began his dreadful work in Judea, and September, AD.
70, when the city and Temple perished in blood and flame.
The attempts of the dragon are practically foredoomed. Michael
and his Angels have warred against him, and flung him down to earth.
There is no place for him in heaven as an accuser of the brethren,
because the blood of the Lamb and the blood of the martyrs prevails
against him. His great wrath must be confined to earth, and that only
for a little time.2
He rages against the sun-clad woman, but she escapes from him into
the wilderness, with the two great eagle- wings of divine protection.3
There may have been, and doubtless was, an attempt to pursue and
murder the flying Christians. We know that desertion from the city
was checked by the most violent measures. Had any details of the
flight to Pella been preserved to us, we should understand what is
exactly meant by the dragon vomiting out of his mouth water as a
river that she might be swept 'away, and by the earth helping her and
swallowing the river. When Vespasian sent Placidus to chase the
Jewish fugitives from Gadara, they were stopped by the swollen waters
of the Jordan, and being compelled to hazard a battle, were driven in
multitudes into the river, and 15,000 of them perished.4 It is very
probable that some such obstacle may have impeded the flight of the
Christians, and that while they were enabled to escape safely by some
manifestation of special Providence, many of their pursuers perished in
the swollen stream.
The next Vision is not only plain, but must henceforth be regarded
as so certain in its significance as to furnish us with a. point de repire for
all Apocalyptic interpretations. It is the Vision of the Wild Beast
from the Sea ; and beyond all shadow of doubt or uncertainty, the
Wild Beast from the Sea is meant as a symbol of the Emperor Nero.
Here, at any rate, St. John has neglected no single means by which he
could make his meaning clear without deadly peril to himself and the
Christian Church.
He describes this Wild Beast by no less than sixteen distinctive
marks, and then all but tells us in so many words the name of the
person whom it is intended to symbolise.
These distinctive marks are as follows : —
1. It rises from the sea ; — by which is perhaps indicated not only a
1 Matt. xxiv. 16 ; Luke xxi. 21.
2 Comp. Luke x. 18. " I beheld Satan as lightning fallen from heaven," John xii.
31. "Now is the judgment of this world, now shall tho prince of this world be cast
out " (comp. 1 John iii. 8).
3 For eagles' wings as the symbol of the Divine protection, see Ex. xix. 4; Deut.
xxxii. 11. 4 Jos. B. J. iv. 7, § 5.

THE WILD BEAST. 463
Western power, and therefore, to a Jew, a power . beyond the sea,1 but
perhaps especially one connected with the sea-washed peninsula of
Italy.2 2. It is a Beast like one of Daniel's four Beasts, but more por
tentous and formidable. Daniel's four Beasts were the Chaldean lion,
the Median bear,' the Persian panther, and the Beast of Greek
dominion, of which the ten horns represent the ten successors of
Alexander,3 and the little horn represents A.ntiochus Epiphanes. St.
John's Beast being the all-comprehensive Roman power, is a combina
tion of Daniel's Beasts. It is a panther, with bear's feet and a lion's
mouth. It has seven heads,4 which indicate (in the apparently arbitrary
but perfectly normal vagueness of Jewish apocalyptic symbolism) both
the seven hills pf Bome and seven kings.5 The Beast is a symbol
interchangeably of the Roman Empire and of the Emperor. In fact, to
a greater degree than at any period of history, the two were one.
Roman history had dwindled down into a personal drama. The Roman
Emperor could say with literal truth, " L' Mat c'est moi." And a Wild
Beast was a Jew's natural symbol either for a Pagan kingdom or for its
autocrat. When St. Paul was delivered from Nero, or his representa
tive, he says quite naturally that " he was delivered out of the mouth of
the. lion " (2 Tim. iv. 17 ; comp. Heb. xi. 33). When he is alluding to
his struggles with the mob and their leaders at Ephesus, he describes it
as "fighting with wild beasts" (1 Cor. xv. 32). When Marsyas
announced to Agrippa I. the death of Tiberius, he did so in the words,
"the lion is dead."6 Princes, as well as kingdoms, had been described
under the same symbol by the Old Testament prophets.7 Esther, in the
Jewish legends, was said to have spoken of Xerxes as " the lion."
Lactantius speaks of Nero as a tarn mala bestia.8 But, besides all these
reasons, which made the symbol so easily intelligible, Renan may be
right in conjecturing that there was yet another. It was that, on an
occasion which was exceptionally infamous even for Nero, he had been
disguised as a wild beast, and in that disguise had been let loose from a
cage and personated the furies of a tiger or panther.9
1 In the Sibylline Oracles (hi. 176) the beast rises "from the Western sea." In 2
Esdras xi. 1 the Eagle (Bome) comes from the sea.
2 Such is the not improbable conjecture of Ewald. From xvii. 15 we might explain
it of "the peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues," over which Bome ruled.
In Shabbath, f. 56 5, we are told that when Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter,
Gabriel thrust a reed into the sea, and of the mud formed an island,. on which Bome was
built. 3 The Diadochi, as they were called. See Grote, xii. 362.
4 Comp. Orac. Sibyll. iii. 176, where also the many -headed beast is Bome.
5 Bev. xvii. 9, 10.
6 Jos. Ant. xviii. 6, § 10.
7 Ezek. xix. 1—9.
s The Sibyllists call Nero "the Beast." De Mort. Persec. 2.
9 V Antichrist, p. 175. Suet. Ner. 29. I am told that to this day, in the Had
Gadyo, which the Jews of Germany use at the Passover, their old persecutors are com
pared to various animals.

464 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
3. This wild beast of Heathen Power has ten horns, which represent
the ten main provinces of Imperial Rome.1 It has the power of the
dragon — that is, it possesses the Satanic dominion of the " prince of the
power of the air."
4. On each of its heads is the name of blasphemy. Every one of the
seven "kings," however counted, had borne the (to Jewish ears)
blasphemous surname of Augustus (Sebastos, " one to be adored ") ; had
received apotheosis, and been spoken of as Divus after his death ; had
been honoured with statues, adorned with divine attributes ; had been
saluted with divine titles ; and in some instances had been absolutely
worshipped, and that in his lifetime, with temples and flamens — espe
cially in the Asiatic provinces.
5. The diadems are on the horns, because the Roman Proconsuls, as
delegates of the Emperor, enjoy no little share of the Csesarean auto
cracy and splendour ; but —
6. Tlie name of blasphemy (for such is the true reading) is only on
the heads, because the Emperor alone receives divine honour, and alone
bears the daring title of " Augustus."
7. One of the heads is wounded to death,'' but the deadly wound is
healed. If there could be any doubt that this indicates the violent end,
and universally expected return of Nero — or, which is the same thing
for prophetic purposes, of one like him — that doubt seems to be
removed by the parallel description of the 1 7th chapter, where we are
told that of the seven kings of the mystic Babylon —
8. The five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come ; and "the
Beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come out of the
abyss ; " " the Beast that was and is not, even he is an eighth, and is of
the seven."3 Can language be more apparently perplexing 1 Yet its
solution is obvious. No explanation worth the name has ever been
offered of this enigma except that which makes it turn on the wide
spread expectation that Nero was either not really dead, or that, even if
dead, he would in some strange way return. Only two or three slaves
and people of humble rank had seen his corpse. AU of these, except
one or two soldiers and a single freedman of Galba, had been his
humble adherents. It seemed inconceivable that after a hundred years
of absolutism the last of the deified race of Csesars should thus dis
appear like foam upon the water. The five kings are Augustus,
Tiberius, Gaius (Caligula), Claudius, and Nero. Since the seer is
' Ten horns, as in Dan . vii. 24. There they are the Diadochi ; here the provinces of
Italy, Achaia, Asia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Germany (Benan,
L'Antechrist, p. 13). The history of this troubled epoch amply justifies the additional
touch of description in which, later on, they, in conjunction with the Beast (i.e., the
Provincial Governors and Generals, together with the Emperor), hate the harlot (i.e.,
the City of Bome, and the Senatus Populusque Bomanus), and devour her flesh, etc.
Again and again in the civil disorders Bome was brought by Emperors and Proconsuls to
the verge of ruin and despair.
2 Just as the eagle's head (Nero) in 2 Esdras xi. 1, 36.
8 Bev. xvii. 8, 10, 11. In ver. 8 the true reading is «<u napiariu..

THE WILD BEAST. 465
writing in the reign of Galba, the fifth king (Nero) was, and is not ;
Otho, the seventh king, was not yet come. When he came, which
could not be long delayed, for Galba was an old man — he was to reign
for a short time, and then was to come the eighth, who, it was expected,
would be Nero again, one of the previous seven, and so both the fifth
and the eighth. Eor, strange to say, Nero still lived in the regrets
alike of Romans and of Parthians.' Since Rome is the great city
(xvii. 18), and the ten horns its provincial governors — "kings who had
received no kingdom as yet" (xvii. 12)'-' — it seems difficult even to
imagine any other explanation of symbols which it is quite clear that
the Apostle meant to be understood, and which he assumed would be
understood, since otherwise they would have been useless to his readers.
But, after he has thus all but told us in so many words whom he means,
the seer continues the hints by which he describes the characteristics of
the Beast. He says that —
9. " All the earth wondered after the Beast." In that day men
rejoiced in the omnipotence of evil, and did homage to it in its concrete
form. The Roman plebs had become " sottish, licentious, gamblers ; "
and one who was more gigantically sottish than themselves had become
their ideal.3 The best comment on this particular may be found in the
description of Tacitus of the manner in which all Rome, from its
proudest senators down to its humblest artisans, poured forth along the
public ways to receive with acclamations the guilty wretch who was
returning from Campania with his hands red with his murdered mother's
blood." 10. That the world "worshipped the dragon, who gave his power to
the Beast," would be a natural Jewish way of indicating the belief that
the Pagan world, when it offered holocausts for its Emperor, was adoring
devils for deities.5
11. The cries of the world, " Who is like unto the Beast ? who is able
to malce war with him ? " sound like an echo of the shouts " Victories
Olympic ! victories Pythian ! Nero the Hercules ! Nero Apollo !
Sacred one ! The One of the jEon," i.e., unparalleled in all the world !
with which Dion Cassius tells us that he was greeted by the myriads of
the populace, when, with the crowns of his 1,800 artistic triumphs, he
returned from his insane and degraded perambulation of Greece.
12. " The mouth speaking great things and blasphemies " is the mouth
which was incessantly uttering the most monstrous boasts and preten-
1 Suet. Ner. 49, 50, 57 ; Tao. H. i. 2, 78 ; ii. 8 ; Dion Cassius, lxiv. ; and Dio. Chry-
sost. Orat. xxi. 10.
2 As yet — but several of them were to do so in the course of the next few years.
This completely disposes of the supposed refutation of the views here maintained on the
plea that the Boman Emperors did not wear diadems. The ten horns are kingdomlesa .
kings (i.e., Provincial Governors), and yet even these horns are diademed (xiii 1).
3 Maurice, Revel, p. 238.
* Tac. Ann. xiv. 13 ; Dion Cass. bri. 16 ; Suet. Ner. 39.
« 1 Cor. x. 20.
E E

466 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
sions,1 declaring that no one before himself had the least conception of
what things an Emperor might do, and of the lengths to which he could
go ; the mouth which ordered the erection of his own colossus, 120 feet
high, adorned with the insignia and attributes of the sun.2 As for his
blasphemies, Suetonius tells us that he was an avowed and even con
temptuous atheist — " religionum usquequaque contemptor."3
13. "Power was given him to act* forty-two months." The exact
significance of this mystic number, which is also described as 1,260 days
(xi. 2; xii. 6), and as " a time, times, and half a time" (xii 14), is
variously explained. The simplest explanation is that it refers to the
time which elapsed between the beginning of Nero's, persecution in Nov.,
64, and his death in June, 68, which is almost exactly three and a half
years. 1 4. " It was given him to make war with tlie saints, and to overcome
tliem," for it was he who began the terrible era of martyrdom, and put
" a vast multitude " to death with hideous tortures on a false accusa
tion.5 15. "Power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and
nations." Of the representatives of the world-pow.ers in that day,
Greece received him with frantic adulation, Parthia was in friendly rela
tions with him, and Armenia, in the person of Tiridates, laid its diadem
before his feet.8 Even Herod the Great, though himself a powerful king,
had been accustomed to talk of the " Almighty Romans."
16. All " the inhabitants of the earth, except the followers of the
Lamb, worshipped him. " This, as we have seen, was literally true of the
Emperors, both in their lifetime and after their death. At this dreadful
period the cult of the Emperor was almost the only sincere worship
which still existed.7
Then follow two verses (xiii. 9, 10) which do not bear directly upon
the symbol. They are either a prophecy of retribution given for the
consolation of the suffering saints,6 or, if we take what seems on the
whole to be the more probable reading, they are a declaration that the
1 The "mouth speaking great things" of Antiochus Epiphanes, in Dan. vii. 8, 20,
never uttered half such monstrous boasts as that of Nero.
2 Pliny, H. .V. xxxix. 7 ; Suet. Ner. 30 — .'^ ; Dion Cass. Ixvi. 15 ; Mart. Spectac. ii.
1, Ep. i. 71. It required twenty-four elephants to drag it away in the reign of Hadrian.
Spart. Hadr. 19.
3 Nero, 56. The first object of his veneration was the Syrian goddess " hanc mox ita
sprevit ut urina contaminaret. "
4 xiii. 5. TrotTjo-at, can hardly mean "to continue " as in the English version. It must
mean " to act," " to do what he will ; " and, if so, the addition of 5 Se'Aei in n is at least a
correct gloss.
5 Tac. Ann. xv. 44.
6 Tac. Ann. xiv. 26 ; Suet. Ner. 13.
7 See Boissier, La Religion Bomaine, i. 122—208. Augustus disliked all personal
worship, and insisted that his cult should be joined to that of Bome. But Caligula
claimed to be worshipped in person (Suet. Gal. 21), and Nero received apotheosis in his
lifetime. Tac. Ann. xv. 74.
8 Perhaps an allusion to Nero's supposed death and flight.

NERO. 467
saints must indeed suffer, but that their sufferings should be endured in
faith and patience.1
In these paragraphs, then, we have sixteen hints as to who and what
is intended by the Apocalyptic Wild Beast, and it is undeniable that
every one of these directly points to Rome and Nero. They point so
directly to Rome and to Nero that it is difficult to conceive how the
writer could have expressed his meaning less enigmatically, if he adopted
at all that well-understood literary method of Jewish Apocalypses which
was enigmatical in its very nature.2 The most remarkable mdication
that Nero is mainly intended is that it is exactly in the most enigmatical
particulars that the resemblance is most close. He was mortally
wounded, and yet (according to the then belief, which is here adopted
for purposes of description, and which was symbolically though not liter
ally true) the wound was healed ; and he was a fifth king who was, and
is not, and yet (so St. John indicates him by the popular belief) should
be once more the eighth king, and one of the seven.3 If we had not the
perfectly simple clue to what what was indicated by this strangely
riddling description, we might give up the interpretation as insoluble ;
but the clue is preserved for us, not only by Jewish Talmudists,4
and Pagan historians and authors, such as Tacitus,5 Suetonius,6 Dion
Cassius,7 and Dion Chrysostom ;8 but also by Christian fathers like St.
Irenseus,9 Lactantius,10 St. Victorinus, Sulpicius Severus,11 and the Sibyl
line books ;12 and even by St. Jerome,13 and by St. Augustine.14 Nothing
can prove more decisively than these references that for four centuries
many Christians identified Nero with the Beast. An Eastern kingdom
had long been promised to him by soothsayers.15 The author of the
Ascension of Isaiah says that Beliar shall descend from the sky in the
form of man, an impious king, the murderer of his mother (i.e., in the
form of Nero).16 So, too, Commodianus, in the third century, talks of
i Bev. xiii. 10.
2 How strange were the symbolic devices of Apocalyptists we see in the 8th Book of
the Sibyllines, where Hadrian is described as "having a name like that of a sea" (the
Hadriatic), and is called "the wretched one," because of the resemblance of his name
(iElianus) to the Greek eleeinos (Orac. Sib. viii. 52, 59).
3 It was believed that he would return from the East, by the aid of Parthians, among
whom he was thought to have taken refuge.
4 The tract Gittin, quoted by Gratz, Gesch. d. Judenth. vol. iv. p. 203.
5 Tac. Hist. ii. 8. . 6 Suet. Ner. 57, et ibi Casaubon.
7 Dion Cass. ; Xiphilinus, lxiv. 9 ; see Zonaras, Ann. xi. 15 — 18. The expectation
was most current in Asia Minor, and Nero's thoughts were incessantly turned to the
East by astrologers, etc. Tac. Hist. ii. 95 ; Ann. xv. 36 ; Suet. Ner. 40 — 47.
8 Dion Chrysost. Orat. xxi. (i. p. 504, ed. Beiske ; "Even now all desire him to
live, and most persons think that he is still alive.")
9 Iren. I.e. w Lactant. De Mort. Persec. 2.
11 Sulp. Sever. Hist. Sac. ii. 28. " It is the current opinion of many that he is yet to
come as Antichrist." This was written A.D. 403.
'2 Sibyll. v. 33 ; viii. 71. I3 Jer. In Dan. xi. 28.
14 Aug. De Civ. Dei, xx. 19, 3. " Unde nonnulli ipsum (Neronem) resurrecturum
et futurum Antichristum suspicantur, alii vero nee occisun putant sed subtractum
potius. "
15 Suet. Ner. 40. 16 Ascens. Is. iv. 2 — 14.

468 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Nero being raised from the under-world.1 Nay, more, we can appeal to
the earliest extant Greek commentary on the Apocalypse — that of
Andreas, Bishop of the Cappadocian Csesarea, -who says that " the king
of the Romans shall come as Antichrist to destroy " the four kingdoms
of Daniel. It would have been strange that the Christian world should
have felt any doubt that Nero is intended, if all history did not show the
extent to which dogmatic bias — which only resorts to Scripture in order
to find there its own ready-made convictions — has dominated for cen
turies over simple and straightforward exegesis. But as though to
exclude any possibility of doubt about the matter, St. John, after all
these clear indications, has all but told us in express words the name of
the man whom he means by his Antichrist and Wild Beast — by this
deified yet slain and to-be-resuscitated murderer of the saints. He does
so in the last verses of the chapter. They furnish a seventeenth detail,
in which the indications of the seer point immediately and distinctly to
the worst of the Roman Emperors.
17. "Here is wisdom," he says (chap. xiii. 18); or, as he expresses
it in chap, xvii 9, " wisdom is needed to grasp the meaning of my
symbol;" or, perhaps, as Ewald understands it, "this is the sense — •
whoever has wisdom will understand it thus." "Let him that hath
understanding count the number of the Beast ; for it is the number of a
man." In other words, he tells us that he now intends to indicate
numerically the name which he dared not actually express. A Jew
or Jewish Christian would at once be aware that he now intends to give
an instance of one of the forms of that Kabbalistic method, of which
traces are found even in the ancient prophets, and which was known to
the Rabbis as Gematria — i.e., Geometry, or the numerical indication
of names.2 Gentile Christians were not so familiar with this method;3
but we see from Irenseus that they could easily have got the general clue
from their Judaic brethren, to whom the Apocalypse is mainly ad-
1 Commodian. Instr. 41.
2 For an account of Gematria, and numerous illustrations of it, I may refer to my
paper on Babbinic Exegesis in the Expositor for 1877, vol. v. Similarly among Egyptian
mystics the God Thouth was spoken of by the cypher 1218. On the Gnostic gems the
word Abraxas is used as isopsephic to Meithras (the sun) because the letters of both
names = 325.
3 It was, however, by no means unknown to educated Greeks under the name of
isopsephia. For instance, they called verses isopsephics when their letters made up
numerically the same sum. In the Anthology we find an epigram which begins —
"One, hearing the words Demagoras and Plague (Loimos), which are of equal
numerical value " —
which he could test in a moment, since, in Greek letters, Demagoras is—
4 + 1+ 40 +1 + 3 + 70 + 100 + 1 + 200 = 420
AAMATO P A 2
and Loimos (Plague) is— 30 + 70 + 10 + 40 + 70 + 200 = 420
A o I M O 2
There are isopsephio inscriptions in the Corpus Inscr. Grcec. 3544—3546. [See Aul. Gell.
xiv. 14.)

NUMBER OF THE BEAST. 469
dressed.1 There was not much danger of a secret being betrayed which
might cost the life of any one who mentioned it, and at the same time
imperil the whole community. What St. John says in effect is : "I
shall now give you the name of the Wild Beast in its numerical value.
You have heard many specimens of this method, so that you can apply
it in this instance, though I warn you that it may give you some
difficulty." He evidently intended some of them to find out the number
of the Beast, which was also the number of a man, while he pointed
out that there was one unexpected element in the particular solution.
If it had been merely a name in the numerical value of its Greek letters
there would have been so little difficulty about it that any ordinarily
educated reader might have discovered it after a few trials. He would
only have to find out what living men there were who had the dozen or
more attributes which the seer had given to the Beast, and whose
names, counted by the value of the letters, made up the number of 666.
As there was scarcely any other living person to whom the Apocalyptic
description could apply, Nero's was probably the first name which
a Jewish Christian reader would have tried. And here he would have
been at once baffled. In Greek letters he would have found that Neron
made 50 + 5 + 100 + 800 + 50 = 1005. If he tried Neron Kaisar,
it would only make 1005 + 332 = 1337. Almost every combination
which he tried would fail, and very possibly he would give up the task
in despair, with the thought that he did not possess the requisite
" wisdom," though he may have solved many such problems in Sibylline
or similar books. Thus, in the Sibylline books, the poet indicates the
name Jesus, in Greek "Ina-ovs, by saying that it is a word which has
4 vowels and 2 consonants, and that the whole number is equivalent to
8 units, 8 tens, 8 hundreds — i.e., 888 ('ivo-ovs = 10 + 8 + 200 + 70 +
400 + 200 — 888), and no Greek-speaking Christian would have had
any trouble in solying the riddle. Since, however, all the other
indications pointed so clearly to Rome and Nero, the Greek Christian
reader might very naturally have hit upon " Latinus " (Aareivbs = 30 +
1 + 300 + 5 + 10 + 50 + 70 + 200 = 666) as a sort of general
indication of Rome and " a Latin man." This accounts for the
prevalence of this explanation among the Fathers, beginning with
St. Irenseus, who may have heard it from St. Polycarp, who had seen
St. John in his old age.2 These early Christian writers were, so to
speak, on the right track ; yet with " Latinus " they could hardly have
been quite satisfied It is a vague adjective, and the names Latium and
Latinus had long been practically obsolete. If this were indeed the
1 The Sibyllist describes Nero as the Emperor whose sign is 50, "a fearful serpent who
shall cause a grievous war." N, the initial letter of Nero, = 50. I have already referred
to the fancy of Barnabas about Abraham's 318 servants as represented by iht, and so a
sort of symbol of Jesus on the Cross. Similarly in Tertullian (Carm. adv. Marc. iii. 4),
the victory of Gideon's 300 is connected with the fact that 300 = T, -the sign of the
Cross : " Hoc etiam signo praedonum stravit acervos."
2 Iren. Adv. Haer. v. 30 ; Hippolyt. De Christo, p. 26.

470 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
solution, they might have put down its vagueness to intentional
obscurity. We can hardly conceive what care a Jewish writer had
to take if he touched in any respect unfavourably upon the imperial
power in those days of delators and laesa majestas.1 Josephus was in
high favour, first with Popptea and then with the Flavian dynasty ; at
Rome he was so great and influential that he probably had the honour
of a statue in the imperial city :2 — yet he stops abruptly in his explana
tion of the prophecies of Daniel, with a mysterious hint that he does
not deem it prudent to say more.3 This evidently was because he feared
that, if he touched on any explanation of the work of destruction
wrought by the "stone cut without hands," he might seem to be
threatening future ruin and extinction to the Roman Empire ; and to do
this went beyond his very limited daring. It was perhaps the complete
unsatisfactoriness of the solution " Lateinos" which made some Chris
tians, as Irenseus further tells us, try the name Teitan, which also gives
the mystic number 666 (Teitan = 300 + 5 + 10 + 300 + 1 + 50 =
666), and which has the additional advantage of being a word of six
letters. In this instance also ingenuity was not very far astray ; for
Titan was one of the old poetic names of the Sun, and the Sun was the
deity whose attributes Nero most affected, as all the world was able
to judge from seeing his colossus with radiated head, of which the sub
structure of the base still remains close by the ruins of the Colosseum.4
The mob which greeted him with shouts of "Nero- Apollo !" were well
aware that he had a predilection for this title.
On the whole, however, the Greek Christians must have remained a
little perplexed, a little dissatisfied, and must have been inclined to say,
with some of the Fathers,5 that only time could reveal the secret ; or
else to believe that perhaps there was more than one solution. They
must, however, have known what was meant, even if the exact equi-
numeration of any words which they could hit upon did not entirely
satisfy them. And this was the general condition in which the secret
remained in the early Christian Church. At any rate there stood
the strange number before them.
The very look of it was awful. The first letter was the initial letter
of the name of Christ. The last letter was the first double-letter (st) of
the Cross (sfeiuros). Between the two the Serpent stood confessed with
its writhing sign and hissing sound.6 The whole formed a triple re-
1 See Tac. Ann. iii. 38, iv. 50; Hist. i. 77; Suet. Ner. 32:— "turn ut lege majes-
tatis, facta dictaquo omnia, quibus modo delator non deesset tenerentur."
2 Juv. Sat. i. 130.
3 Jos. Antt. x. 10, §4: "Daniel did also deolare the meaning of the stone to the
king ; but I do not think proper to relate it."
4 What was meant by the guess Euanthas is uncertain. Could it be an allusion to
the " aurea caesaries " which grew down over Nero's neck ?
s Irenaeus, v. 30. 6 Bev. xii. 9, xx. 2.

NUMBER OF THE BEAST. 471
petition of 6, the essential number of toil and imperfection ; and this
numerical symbol of the Antichrist, 666, stood in terrible opposition to
888 — the three perfect 8's of the name of Jesus.
But Jewish readers — and, as we have said, it was to Jewish readers
that the Apocalypse was primarily addressed — would find none of the
difficulties which perplexed their Gentile fellow-Christians. The Apostle
had warned them that the solution did not lie so much on the surface as
was usual in similar enigmas. Every Jewish reader, of course, saw that
the Beast was a symbol for Nero.1 And both Jews and Christians
regarded Nero as also having close'affinities with the serpent or dragon.
That Nero was intended would be as clear to a Jew as that Babylon
meant Rome, though Rome is never mentioned. He would not try the
name Nero Cassar in Latin, because isopsephia (which the Jew called
Gematria) was almost unknown among the Romans, and their alphabetic
numeration was wholly defective. He might try Nepaic Kataap in Greek,
but it would not give him the right number. Then, as with a flash
of intuition, it would occur to him to try the name in Hebrew.2 The
Apostle was writing as a Hebrew, was evidently thinking as a Hebrew.3
His solcecistic Greek was sufficient to prove that the language was
unfamiliar to him, and that all persons of whom he thought would
primarily present themselves to his mind by their Hebrew designations.
This, too, would render the cryptograph additionally secure against the
prying inquisition of treacherous Pagan informers. It would have been
to the last degree perilous to make the secret too clear. Accordingly,
the Jewish Christian would have tried the name as he thought of the
name — that is in Hebrew letters. And the moment that he did this the
secret stood revealed. No Jew ever thought of Nero except as "Neron
Kesar," and this gives at once — -op pi: = 50' + 200 + 6 + 50 + 100 +
60 + 200 = 666.4
Jewish Christians were familiar with enigmas of this kind. They
occur even in the ancient Prophets after the days of Jeremiah, and are
1 The Sibyllists had already spoken of Caligula as Beliar (Garm. iii. 63), and as a
serpent. The stories of the serpent which had crawled from Nero's cradle, and of his
serpent-amulet (v. supra, p. 461) would add significance to the symbolism.
2 I am not sure that a Jew would not have tried Hebrew letters at once. A Talmudic
scholar wrote to tell me that my number for Bome (supra, p. 427) was wrong, because he
had tried it in Hebrew letters. It had not occurred to him to try it in Greek letters !
3 See the startling Hebraism in the Greek of Bev. i. 4, and comp. Bev. ix. 11 :
xvi. 16.
4 The name was so written in Jewish inscriptions. See Ewald, Die Johann. Schriften,
ii. 203 ; Buxtorf. Lex Rabbin, s.v. The name Csesarea appears in the Talmud as pDp. •
Benan mentions the remarkable fact that the name for Antichrist in Armenian is Neren
(ii. 23). Ewald found that Josippon writes the name "Dp. The secret has been almost
simultaneously re-discovered of late years by Fritzsche in Halle, by Benary in Berlin, by
Beuss in Strasbourg, and by Hitzig in Heidelberg. See Bleek, Vorlesungen, 292 ff. ;
Krenkel, Der Apostel Johannes, 88 ; Volkmar, OJfenbarung, 18 and 214. Ewald was
only prevented from making the discovery in 1828 by the assumption, which he after
wards found to be erroneous, that Caesar must be spelt in Hebrew with a yod. He there
fore conjectured " Ceesar of Bome " (DYi ID'p) (Johann. Schrift. ii. 263).

472 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
found in the Old Testament Scriptures.1 The Jewish Christians could
not have hesitated for a moment in the conclusion that in the Hebrew
name of Nero the solution of the riddle stood revealed. The Jews were
remarkable for reticence, and men are specially liable to keep their
secrets to themselves when they involve matters of life and death.
Many methods and secrets of Rabbinic exegesis, though of great
value, have remained unrevealed by Jews to Christians, simply because »
the jealous exclusiveness and haughty prejudice of that singular race
— feelings which, it must be confessed, have been due in no small
degree to the brutality of their enemies — make them indifferent to the
religious views of others. It is, therefore, by no means remarkable
that the Asiatic Judaists, who first read St. John's Apocalypse, did not
betray what they must have recognised to be the name which exactly
corresponded with the number of the Beast. They might be pardoned
if they were reluctant to place their lives and the very existence of their
churches at the mercy of Gentile brethren, of whose prudence and fidelity
they could not in every instance be perfectly secure. Enough, how
ever, may have escaped them to put others in the right direction ; and,
as far as the general understanding of the Apostle's meaning was con
cerned, it mattered very little whether the guessed solution was Lateinos,
or Teitan, or Neron Kesar, since all three words were but varying forms
of the same essential thing. All the earliest Christian writers on the
Apocalypse, from Irenseus down to Victorinus of Pettau2 and Convmo-
dian in the fourth, and Andreas3 in the fifth, and St. Beatus in the
eighth century, connect Nero, or some Roman Emperor, with the
Apocalyptic Beast.
If any confirmation could possibly be wanting to this conclusion,
we find it in the curious fact recorded by Irenseus that, in some
copies, he found the reading 616. Now this change can hardly have
been due to carelessness. The letters xb' were so singular, even in their
external form, that no one could have been likely to alter them into
X"' 01 616.4 But if the above solution be correct, this remarkable and
ancient variation is at once explained and accounted for. A Jewish
Christian, trying his Hebrew solution, which would (as he knew) defend
the interpretation from dangerous Gentiles, may have been puzzled by
the n in Neron Kesar. Although the name was so written in Hebrew,
1 Thus in Jerem. Ii. 41, "Sheshach" stands for "Babel," by the transmutation of
letters known as Atbash (a subspecies of what the Eabbis call Themourah or " change") ;
and in li. 1, l'they that dwell in the midst of them," means tbe Chahheans (lebh kamai =
Kasdim) ; and in Isa. vii. 6, Tabeal, by another sort of Themourah, gives us the name of
Bemaliah. See my Paper in the Expositor, v. 375.
2 "Hunc ergo — se. Neronem — suscitatum Deus mittet regem dignum dignis et
Christum qualem meruerunt Judaei" (Vict. Pett. in Apoc. xiii.).
3 SiV KpatrjacL 6 'AvtixP'OTOs tl)s Paj^aiwi' /Samuel's eAeu<ro^ei<09 (Andr. ).
4 ^r/Kovra W«a ef, is the reading of the Codex Ephraemi. Benasus appeals for the cor
rectness of the reading 666 not only to all the good and ancient MSS., but to the direct
testimony of those who had seen St. John [papTvpovvroiv avTHtv eKeivuv t&v ko.t tyw t'ov
%aa.vvT)v eupoKaritiv).

NERO REDIVIYUS. 473
he kri-rw that to Romans, and Gentiles generally, the name was always
Nero ( 'sesar, not Neron. But Nero Kesar in Hebrew, omitting the final
n, gaA ; 616, not 666 ; and he may have altered the reading because he
imagii ed that, in an unimportant particular, it made the solution more
suitable and easy.
One objection will be made at once to this solution. Nero, it will
be said, never did return. The belief in his return, though it showed an
obstinate vitality, was a mere chimaera. St. John could not have enshrined
in his Apocalypse what turned out to be but a popular mistake.
Such an objection is entitled to respect, but it imports a priori con
siderations into a plain matter of exegesis. This belief about Nero's
return did prevail in the Christian, no less than in the Pagan, world.
It is found again and again in the Sibylline books, and in later
Christian writers. In the Pagan world it led to the success of more
than one false Nero. It is probable that one of these was making him
self extremely formidable in the very region in which St. John was
writing, and at that very time.1 In the Christian world the belief was
still existent, three centuries later, that Nero would return in person
as the future Antichrist. The vividness of the contemporary belief must ,
be measured by its extraordinaiy permanence.
We have no right, then, to frame our interpretation of Scripture by
our theories respecting the character and limits of how it ought to be
written. Our duty is, on the contrary, to discover its interpretation,
and to be guided by this to the true theory of its claims. When we
study the meaning of a passage, our sole and our solemn aim should be
to get at the real meaning, and not to repudiate or to gloss over that
meaning in obedience to subjective convictions. We should not con
ceal from ourselves that to get rid of a plain explanation because it
does not at once fall in with our ready-made dogmas is a dishonesty
which, in the language of the Book of Job, is a form of " lying for
God." God's own rebuke to Job's three friends was meant to teach
mankind for ever that truth and charity are infinitely more sacred than
either conventional orthodoxy or traditional exegesis.
In reality, however, this question is not one which in any way
affects the dignity of revelation. St. John uses the common belief, as
he might have used any other contemporary fact, or any other contem
porary notion, merely to help him in the elaboration of his symbol, and
to enable him to point out the person whom he is describing. The
arrangement of the symbolism affects in nowise the truth of the great
principles which he reveals. The Divine hopes and consolations of
which the Apocalypse is full, the priceless lessons in which it abounds,
are not in the slightest degree affected by the circumstance that he
depicts the Neronian Wild Beast in the colours which every other
historian, whether secular or sacred, would have used for his delineation.
1 Tac. H. i. 2 ; ii. 8 ; Suet. Ner. 5T ; Zonaras, xi. 15, 18, etc

474 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
But farther, be it observed that, even if this detail of Nero's
personal return had been meant to be in any way essential to the
general prediction, it was, with singular exactness, symbolically ful
filled. Although Nero had not (as was popularly supposed) taken
refuge among the Parthians, and never was restored by their aid, as was
the common expectation of that day, yet such an anticipation is not
directly involved in the Apocalypse, and in any case does not belong to
its essential meaning. Every successive Antichrist has shown the
Neronian characteristics. If the prophecy of the return of Elijah the
Prophet was adequately fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptist,
the prophecy of the returning Nero was adequately fulfilled in Domi
tian, in Decius, in Diocletian, in many a subsequent persecutor of the
saints of God. Allegory is only susceptible of allegoric interpretation ;
and in the person of Domitian, as we shall see further on,1 the prophecy
of ' Antichrist in the person of Nero redivivus may be regarded as
having been almost literally, and in every sense symbolically, fulfilled.
I am well aware that even recent English commentators have done
their best to treat this view of the Apocalypse with suspicion and con
tempt, to treat it as unworthy of their modern theory of " verbal dicta
tion." Let them beware lest in so doing they be haply found to fight
against God, and lest, in their attempts to force upon Christendom their
private interpretations of prophecy, they only succeed in bringing all
prophecy into suspicion and contempt.2 SECTION VI.
THE SECOND BEAST AND THE FALSE PROPHET.
But if Nero be the Wild Beast from the sea, who is the Wild
Beast from the land *! If Nero be, in the parallel passages, the death-
wounded yet unslain head of the Beastj who is the False Prophet which
wrought the signs before him 1
Our great difficulty in answering this question arises from the fact
that not the lightest breath of tradition upon the subject has been pre
served in the first two centuries. The earliest suggestion is furnished
by Victorinus at the close of the third. All commentators alike,
Prseterist, Futurist, Continuous-Historical, and Allegorical, with all
their subdivisions, have here been reduced to manifest perplexity, and
have been forced to content themselves with explanations which do
violence to one or more of the indications by which we must be
guided. What are those indications 1
They are mainly given in Rev. xiii. 11 — 17, and are as follows: —
1. I saw another wild beast coming up out of the earth.
1 See infra, pp. 482, 483.
3 See some wise remarks of Ewald, Johann. Schrift. ii. 15.

THE SECOND WILD BEAST 475
2. And he had two horns like unto a lamb.
3. And he spake as a dragon.
4. And he exercised all the authority of the first Beast in his sight.
5. And he maketh the earth to worship the first Beast whose death-
stroke was healed.
6. And he doeth great signs which it was given him to do in
the sight of the Beast, that he should even make fire to come down
from heaven upon the earth by reason of the signs which it was
given him to do in the sight of the Beast, saying to them that dwell on
the earth that they should make an image to the Beast who hath the
stroke of the sword and lived.
7. He gives breath to the image of the Beast, and makes it speak.
8. He causes the execution of those who will not worship the image
of the Beast.
9. He makes men of all ranks and classes receive a stamp on their
right hand or their forehead.
10. He prevents all who have not the mark of the Beast (his name
and the number of his name) from buying and selling.
The only additional clue is that in the parallel description of
Rev. xix. 20 he is described under another aspect as " the False
Prophet that wrought the signs in the sight of the Beast wherewith he
deceived those that had received his mark and worshipped his image."
Now in trying to discover the meaning of the symbol, we
may again pass over the countless idle guesses of those who have
endeavoured to torture the Apocalypse into a prediction of the details
of all subsequent Christian history. With these guesses we are not
concerned. They have, as a rule, only been adopted by the individual
commentators who suggested them. Nothing, we may be sure, was
further from the mind of the writer than a desire to gratify the
fantastic curiosity of eighteen centuries of Christians as to events yet
future which they have been always unable tp foresee, or even sub
sequently to recognise. The resemblance of Nero to Antiochus
Epiphanes as the personification of savage enmity to the people of God
in the book of Daniel, is enough to suggest the certainty that in the
case of the second Beast, as in the case of the first, the seer has
primarily in view some contemporary person or phenomenon.
Setting aside many conjectures, which I have fully examined else
where,1 that the Second Beast is meant for Balbillus of Ephesus, or
Tiberius Alexander, or Josephus, or Gessius Florus, three conjectures
alone seem to me to be worthy of special consideration : —
I. One is suggested by Victorinus of Pettau (a.d. 303). He thinks
that by this Wild Beast and False Prophet is meant the Roman
Augurial system.
There is in this suggestion much probability, and we may point out
l In the Expositor for Sept. 1881.

476 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
in passing that Victorinus in the third century, no less than Irenseus in
the second, saw that the Apocalypse moved in the plane of contem
porary events. The early mention of this solution may have been due
to some echo of still more ancient tradition. Certain it is that, in
appearing to identify the Second Beast with the "False Prophet"
(xvi. 13 ; xix. 20 ; xx. 10), St. John lends some sanction to this view.
The influence exercised by Chaldcvans, Mathematici, Astrologers, Magi,
Augurs, Medici, Prophets, Casters of Horoscopes, Sorcerers, Dream-
interpreters, Sibyllists1 — Oriental charlatans of every description, from
Apollonius of Tyana and Alexander of Abonoteichos down to Pere-
grinus — is a phenomenon which constantly meets us in the Age of
the Caesars. They appeared in Rome more than two centuries before
Christ. Ennius mentions them with contempt.2 As early as B.C. 139,
they had been ordered to quit Italy in ten days. In B.C. 33 they had
again been banished by the ^Edile M. Agrippa. Augustus and Tiberius
had also directed severe edicts against them.3 But they held their
ground.4 Tacitus calls the edict of Claudius " severe and ineffectual."
We see, both from Tacitus and from the anecdotage of Suetonius, that
almost every Emperor felt and indulged in some curiosity about these
divinations. Tiberius reckoned the "Chaldsean" Thrasyllus among his
intimate friends.5 Poppsea, the wife of Nero, had " many " of them in
her household.6 Nero had his Balbillus ;7 Otho his Ptolomseus ;8
Vespasian his Seleucus ;9 Domitian his Ascletarion.10 Agrippina
depended on Chaldseans for the favourable hour of Nero's usurpation.11
There is scarcely one of all the Emperors whose history had not some
connexion or other with auguries, prophecies, and dreams.12 In the
reign of Nero these prognosticators were brought into special promi
nence,13 because the restless and tortured conscience of the Antichrist
was constantly seeking to pry into futurity. It is remarkable that they
especially encouraged his Oriental dreams, and that some of them even
went as far as to promise him the empire of Jerusalem.
It has, however, been generally felt that the institution of Prophets
was not so prominent even in Nero's reign as to admit of our applying
to it the ten definite" indications of the Apocalyptic seer. False
prophets were hardly in any sense a delegate and alter ego of the
Emperor. There is at least a probability that as one person is specially
i 2i/3vWicrTai. Plutarch, Marius, 42. See Tao. Ann. xii. 52 ; Hist. i. 22, ii. 62 ;
Suet. Tib. 36, Vitell. 14 ; Juv. Sat. vi. 542.
» Cie. De Div. i. 58.
3 See Val. Max. i. 3; Dion Cass. xlix. 1; Tao. Ann. ii. 27, 32; iii. 22; iv. 58;
vi. 20. 4 Tac. Ann. xii. 52. 6 Tac. Ann. vi. 21.
6 Tac. Hist. i. 22. 7 suet. Nero, 36.
8 Suet. Otho, 4; Tao. Hist. i. 22, 23. 9 Tac. Hist. ii. 8.
10 Suet. Domit. 15. " Tao. Ann. xii. 68.
'2 Suet. Jul. Caesar, vii. 61 ; Octav. 94 ; Tiber. 16; Calig. 57 ; Otho, 4; Titus, ii 9;
Domit. xiv. 16. For Nero, see Tac. Ann. xiv. 9.
n Suet. Ner. 34, 36, 40. Plin. H. N. xxx. 2.

SIMON MAGUS. 477
pointed to by the symbol of the Beast, so one person is intended by his
False Prophet.
II. More, on the whole, is to be said in favour of the view that the
Second Beast, or False Prophet, is Simon Magus. In one direction he
corresponds with remarkable closeness to the symbols. His baptism
gave him a certain lamb-like semblance to Christianity, while his gross
deceptions were the voice of the serpent. Christian tradition, which
may well be founded on facts, has much to say about his pretended
miracles, and two classes of those miracles are of the very character
here indicated. It is said, for instance, that the Second Beast makes
fire come down upon the earth. Now among the miracles of Simon
we are told that one was to appear clothed in flame.1 It is said that
the Second Beast animates an image of the Beast, and Simon is
expressly said to have made statues move, so that he may well have
also pretended to make them speak.2 If he attempted this imposture
at all he is more likely to have applied it to the statue of the Emperor
— " the image of the Beast " — than to any other. All that would have
been needed was a little machinery and a little ventriloquism. If the
Middle Ages were deceived by winking Madonnas and glaring cruci
fixes it must have been equally easy to delude the Roman mob by
moving statues. Further, it was at Rome that Simon displayed his
magic powers, and they are said to have been exercised with the
immediate object of winning influence over Nero. In this the legend
declares that he entirely succeeded, and that his influence was wielded
to induce the Emperor to persecute and massacre the Christians.
These features appear not in one, but in many authors,3 and though the
sources from which we now derive this information are exceedingly
dubious, there is nothing improbable in the supposition that Simon
Magus did find his way to Rome — the reservoir, as Tacitus says, into
which all things infamous and shameful flowed4 — and did there
endeavour to win dupes by the same magical arts which had gained
him so many votaries among the simple Samaritans.6 If we suppose
that he dazzled the mind of Nero, and that he was one of those men of
Jewish race, who, with Aliturus and Josephus, taught Nero and
his servants to discriminate between Jews and Christians, and to
martyr the latter while they honoured the former, then in Simon
Magus the Second Beast of the Apocalypse — especially in the attributes
1 Arnobius (Adv. Gent. ii. 12) speaks of Simon being precipitated from a fiery chariot.
Augustine (Haer. i.) says that he professed to have come to the Apostles in fiery tongues.
Nicephorus says that he pretended to pass through fire unhurt.
2 Clem. Recogn. iii. 47. "I have made statues move about."
3 Justin Mart. Apol. ii. p. 69 ; Tertull. De Anim. 34 ; De Praescr. Haer. 37 ; Sulp.
Sev. Hist. Sao: ii. 42; Clem. Horn. ii. 34; iv.4; Becogn. ii. 9; iii. 47, 57; Constt.
Apost. vi. 9 ; Epiphan. Haer. xxi. 5 ; Arnob. Adv. Gentes, ii. 12 ; Ambros. Hexaem. iv.
8, § 33 ; Cyrill. Catech. 6 ; Ps. Egesipp. De excidio Hieros. ; August. Sena. iii. de SS.
Petro et Paulo ; Nicephorus Callistus, H. E. ii. 27.
4 Tac. Ann. xv. 46 ; v. supra, p. 64.
5 Acts viii. 11.

478 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of a False Prophet— would stand revealed. It is true that, the Pagan
historians are silent about him and his doings ; but the events them
selves had no political significance, and lay outside their sphere. They
belong to the history of the Church not of the State.1 And Victorinus
seems to be referring to Simon Magus when, with reference to the
signs wrought by the False Prophet, he says that " the Magi do these
things even to this day by the help of the banished Angels."
III. We now pass from what may be called the ecclesiastical and
the religious fields of conjecture to the political. It must be remem
bered that it is as it were only by an afterthought that the Second Beast
is called the False Prophet. May we not look for him in another region
of Roman life 1
There is, I think, much to be said in favour of Hildebrandt's sug
gestion2 that by the False Prophet, or the " Second Beast from the land,"
is meant Vespasian. Let us apply to him the ten indications which the
seer has furnished.
1. Being a " wild beast " it is a priori probable that he will belong
to the heathen world. He rises " from the earth " or " from the land."
If we take the former rendering it may point to his taking his origin, as
an important power, not from the sea, or any sea-washed peninsula like
Italy, whence Nero had sprung, but from the vast continent of Asia ;
i.e., the growth of his power is connected with the East. If the words
be rendered "from the land," they then apply to Judsea. Now both
Jews3 and Pagans4 were struck with the fact that Vespasian, as Empe
ror, " went forth from Judsea," and they connected his rise in that
country with many prophecies then current, not only in the East, but
among the Bomans themselves — prophecies which were familiar to more
than one of the Csesars, and had exercised no small influence on their
aims and actions.
2. He had two horns like unto a lamb. There is hardly one of those
who have been suggested as answering to the False Prophet to whom
this description in any way applies. To Vespasian it does apply in a re
markable manner. His nature and his language, sts compared with
those of a Caligula and a Nero, were absolutely mild. He was indeed
as indifferent to the blood and misery of a hostile people as all the Romans,
were ; but there was nothing naturally ferocious and sanguinary in
the character of this worthy bourgeois.5 Now since the ten horns of the
1 I have already mentioned that Justin's mistake about a statue to him as a god was
dispelled in 1574, when the inscription to the Sabine god, Semo Sancus, was found in the
place which he mentions ; v. supra, p. 64.
2 Hilgenfeld's Zeitschr. 1874. s jos, B_ j. yi, 5j § 4.
4 Suet. Vesp. 6.
5 Josephus boasts of the generosity of Vespasian as something extraordinary (Antt.
xii. 3, § 2). His natural kindness, and freedom from hatred and revenge, are freely ad
mitted, and may account for his external semblance to "a lamb" in the Apocalyptic
symbol. Suetonius says that from the beginning to the end of his reign he was "civilis
et clemens" (Vesp. 11); that he bore all kinds of opposition in the gentlest manner
(lenissime, c. 13) ; and that he neither remembered nor revenged injuries (0. 14). But

Vespasian's "miracles." 479
first beast are ten provincial governors — ten powers which are, prima
rily, a source of his strength — we should expect that the two horns also
indicated persons, and especially persons more or less imperial in their
functions, in whose existence lay the strength of the Lamb-like Beast.
And this was the exact position of Vespasian. His force lay in the fact
that he had two sons, both of them men of mark : Titus, the conqueror of
Judsea, who kept the allegiance of the army firm for him while he was
awaiting his actual accession to power ; Domitian, who headed his party
in Rome. But for their assistance his cause could not have prospered
¦ so decisively, and both of them succeeded to the empire after his death.1
He spake as a dragon or serpent, that is, he used the language generi-
cally of Paganism, and specifically of subtle and deceptive invention.
The allusion may be to circumstances which were better known to St.
John than to us ; but, meanwhile, whether it be generic or specific, there
is sufficient evidence that it is appropriate in a sketch of the rise of
Vespasian, and corresponds with the serpentine wisdom and caution
with which his designs were carried out.
4. He is a visible delegate of, and responsible to, the first Beast. This
applies better to Vespasian than to any one. The first outbreak of the
Jewish war took place while Nero was indulging in his frantic follies of
sestheticism in Greece, a.d. 66. He instantly despatched Vespasian to
suppress the rebellion. To a general so placed it would have been an
easy matter to revolt against the blood-stained actor who then afflicted
the world. But as long as the Emperor lived, Vespasian, though not a
favourite of Nero, remained conspicuously faithful.
5. And he made the earth worship the first Beast, whose death-stroke
was healed. To enforce subjection to Nero, who even in his lifetime was
" worshipped " as a god, was the express object of Vespasian's mission
to the East. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that by the Wild
Beast is meant the Roman Empire in general as well as Nero; and Rome
was worshipped as a goddess in many of the provinces.2
6. It might seem an impossibility that any Roman general should
St. John, a Jew by birth and a true patriot, saw with Jewish eyes the inner wild-beast
nature of the man. He would be little likely to share in the renegade admiration of
Josephus for the general who, like his son, caused such myriads of Jews —
"To swell, slow by the car's tall side,
The stoic tyrant's philosophic pride ;
To flesh the lion's ravenous jaws, and feel
The sportive fury of the fencer's steel ;
Or sigh, deep-plunged beneath the sultry mine,
For the light airs of balmy Palestine. " ,
St. John's estimate of him is that of the Rabbis, who narrated that he died in frightful
torments ; and that of the 2nd book of Esdras, that he ruled "with much oppression "
(2 Esdr. xi. 32).
1 Titus and Domitian are probably the two heads on each side of the central head of the
eagle in 2 Esdr. xi. 30, and ver. 35 may allude to the belief that Domitian poisoned Titus.
2 On the apotheosis of Emperors, often even in their lifetime, see Suet Octav. 59 ;
Tiber. 40 ; Claud. 2 ; Calig. 22, 24 ; Vesp. 9 ; Tac. Arm. i. 10, 74 ; iv. 15,- 37 ; xiv. 31,
etc., and supra, p. 4.

480 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
have pretended to work signs, still more that there could be anything in
his history which could be specifically described as a bringing down fire
from heaven. It happens, however, that Vespasian is the one Roman —
the only Roman in high places, the only Imperial delegate — to whom
such language will apply. His visit to Alexandria was accompanied by
signs and wonders, which obtained wide credence. Not only had the
Nile risen in a single day higher than it had ever done before, but Ves
pasian was believed to have worked personal miracles.1 He had
anointed with spittle the eyes of a blind man, and restored his sight ;
before a full assembly he had healed a cripple ; and he had shown a re
markable example of second sight.2 We do not indeed read that he had
called down fire from heaven ; but that expression may be metaphorical
of the fire and sword with which he scathed and devastated Palestine,
and we can see the circumstance which may have given shape to the
image. It represents the False Prophet as a pseudo-Elias, and there was
a circumstance which might well have suggested a sort of antithesis be
tween the two. Vespasian had visited Carmel, and had received a re
markable communication from "the god Carmelus " (evidently intended
for Elijah),3 who, though not worshipped under the form of any
image, had there an altar which was regarded as peculiarly sacred. This
god Carmelus had given him an oracle, which, even in the version of
Suetonius, reminds us strongly of Dan. xi. 36, namely, that "everything
which he had in his mind should prosper, however great it was."4 As a
"fulmen belli," and as the supposed recipient of a favourable oracle from
Elijah, Vespasian, in his brilliant successes at the beginning of the
Jewish war, might well be said, in the style of writing which constantly
mingles the symbolic and the literal, to have flashed fire from heaven
upon the enemies of the Beast.
7. He gives breath to the image of the Beast and makes it speak.
Whether in this instance again we have some allusion to the story of a
magic wonder current in that day we cannot tell. All that we know is
that Vespasian would certainly enforce homage and reverence from the
conquered Jews to the statues of the Emperor,5 which Nero was specially
fond of multiplying, and which the Jews regarded with peculiar abhor
rence.6 In the Ascension of Isaiah it is made a characteristic of Nero
that "he shall erect his statue in all cities before his face."7 Since
Simon Magus pretended to animate statues with life, there may have
been a rumour that something of the kind had taken place in Judsea. If
not, the metaphorical meanmg — the reanimation of the Roman power in
Palestine, which the successful revolt of the Jews had for a time ex
tinguished — is quite sufficient to meet the language of the seer.
i Dion Cass. lxvi. 8 ; Suet. Vesp. 7. 2 Tac. Hist. iv. 82.
8 Ritter, Erdkunde, viii. 705. Carmel is now called Mar Elyas.
4 Suet. Vesp. 5 ; Tac. Hist. ii. 78. s Jos. Antt. xviii. 8, § 1.
6 " The image of the beast is clearly the statue of the Emperor." — Milman.
7 Ascem. Isa. iv. 11 ; Lactant. ii. 7.

DOINGS OF VESPASIAN. 481
8. The putting to death of those who will not worship the image of
the Beast — the slaughter, banishment, and sale into slavery of all who
refused to accept the imperial authority, reverence the imperial images,
and accept the imperial coinage, is a circumstance which will explain
itself. It is a symbolic condensation of all that had already occurred
in the Jewish war at Ascalon, at Sepphoris, at Gadara, at Jotapata, at
Gerasa, at Japha, Joppa, Tarichese, Giscala, Gamala, and throughout
the whole north and west of Palestine.
9. He stamps men of all ranks and classes, high and low, rich and
poor, with the image of his Beast, and the number of his name. This
detail, which only applies in the loosest possible manner to any of the
others who have been regarded as the antitypes of the False Prophet,
suits Vespasian very closely. It exactly describes his natural conduct
in giving his soldiers the brand of their service,1 and exacting from all
classes the oath of allegiance, making them swear " by the genius of
Csesar " — first of Nero, then of Galba.
Lastly, 10. The forbidding all to buy and sell who have not got the
mark of' the Beast, seems to be a very natural reminiscence of one of
Vespasian's most remarkable acts. When Nero was dead, and Galba
murdered, and Otho also had committed suicide after the terrible battle
of Bedriacum, neither Vespasian nor his soldiers felt inclined to obey
the imbecile rule of the glutton Vitellius. Vespasian accepted his own
nomination to the Empire by the legions of Mucianus as well as by his
own soldiers, and he hastened to make himself master of the occasion by
establishing his headquarters at Alexandria. Any ruler who had hold
of Alexandria could command the allegiance of Egypt, and the lord of
Egypt could always put his hand upon the very throat of Rome. For
if the corn ships did not sail from Alexandria the populace of Rome
was starved. Accordingly, the first thing which Vespasian did was to
forbid all exports from Alexandria. That stern edict was felt through
out the Empire. The object of it was to starve Rome into an absolute
acceptance of his " mark of the Beast," i.e., his imperial claim. It was
entirely successful. Galba, Otho, and even Vitellius, were regarded as
isolated military usurpers ; Vespasian, the Wild. Beast's delegate, the
Wild Beast's miraculous upholder, mounted the Wild Beast's throne,
and like him became one of the seven heads, and wielded the power
of the ten provincial horns— once rebellious — now subdued ; often
inimical to the harlot-city, but always faithful to the Roman Empire.2
To me these circumstances, which I have drawn out in my own
way, but of which the original discovery is due to Hildebrandt, seem to
be nearly decisive. My only doubt is whether, in that subtle inter
change of ideas which marks all symbolic literature, St. John may not
Jiave mingled two conceptions in his description of the Second Beast..
1 See Ronsch, Das N. T. Tertulliant, p. 702.
8 Rev. xvii 12, 13, 16, 17.
P P

482 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
If so, I should feel no doubt that . the subordinate monster was meant
to combine the features observable in the position and conduct of Simon
Magus, as the False Prophet and Impostor who supported Nero at
Rome, and of Josephus the False Prophet who embraced the cause of
Vespasian in Palestine, with that of Vespasian himself as a two-homed
Wild Beast maintaining the power of Rome in the Holy Land. The
composite character of such a symbol presents no difficulty. It closely
corresponds with known apocalyptic methods — and certainly in this
instance if the Second Wild Beast and False Prophet be regarded as a
composite symbol (as is suggested by the alternative description), I
think that I have here offered a closer approximation to every one of
the requirements of the imagery than I have found in the pages of any
other interpreter.
Lastly, to revert for one moment to the return of the Antichrist in
the person of Nero, it is — as I have said — in apocalyptic and Oriental
style amply fulfilled in the reign of Domitian. If Galba, Otho, and
Vitellius, be omitted from the list as mere transitory usurpers who
would hardly be regarded as Emperors at all, then Nero the fifth
Emperor did reappear, not indeed in person but in symbol, in the eighth
Emperor, Domitian.1 Even Titus was regarded as likely to be a coming
Nero.2 The Jews were very far from looking upon him as the amor et
. deliciae humani generis. It is probable that Sulpicius Severus may be
preserving for us the testimony of Tacitus when (ii 97) he attributes
to Titus the thoroughly Neronian and Antichristian purpose of up
rooting both Christianity and Judaism in one and the same stroke.
This purpose, if he ever had it, he did not live to carry out. But
Domitian, at any rate, was, like Nero, an open persecutor of Christianity.
Tertullian not only sets him side by side with Nero, but even calls him
"a fragment of Nero, so far as his cruelty was concerned," and a sub-
Nero.3 In Domitian the Christians saw the legend of Nero redivivus
symbolically and effectively if not literally fulfilled.
So great was the resemblance between him and his blood-stained
prototype that the common nickname of Domitian in Rome was " the
bald Nero." "Titus," says Ausonius, " was fortunate in the shortness
of his rule : his brother followed him, whom his Rome called ' a bald
Nero ;'"* and Juvenal talks of the time when "the last Flavius was
rending the half-dead world, and Rome was enslaved to the bald Nero."5
The identification of the spirit of Domitian with that of Nero was also
familiar to Christian historians. Eusebius says that towards the close
of his reign Domitian established himself as a successor of Nero's
1 The Eight would then be Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian,
Titus, Nero again in the form of Domitian ; so that Nero was, and is not, and yet was to
recur : he was at once the fifth and the eighth.
2 "Denicrae propalam alium Neronem et opinabantur et praedicabant " (Suet. Tit. 7).
» Tert. Apol. 5 ; De Pall. 4.
* Auson. Monost. de Ord. XII. Imp. 11, 12. s Juv. Sat. iv. 34, 35.

THE VIALS. 483
hatred to God and hostility against Him.1 It was natural to St. John
to symbolise Nero as " the Wild Beast," and the very same term
(immanissima bellua) is applied by Pliny to Domitian.2 Tacitus even
draws a parallel between the two to the advantage of Nero.3 Both
showed the wild beast nature, but the ferocity of Domitian was more
cruel and more innate. In him the death-wounded Antichrist was
once more restored to life.
SECTION VII.
THE VIALS.
We have now passed in review all the more difficult Apocalyptic
visions. A great part of the remainder of the Book is occupied with
scenes which require but little comment, and convey directly their own
great lessons. First, we have the glorious vision of the Lamb upon
Mount Zion with the redeemed and virgin multitude. Then three
Angels fly in rapid succession through the mid region of heaven. The
first bears in his hand an eternal gospel which must be preached to
every nation, tribe, tongue, and people before the end.4 The second
cries out in prophetic anticipation, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the
Great." A third utters an awful warning to the Gentiles who worship
the Beast and receive his mark. Then a Voice proclaims the blessed
ness of the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth, and immediately
afterwards there appears on a white cloud one like unto the Son of Man,
wearing a golden crown and. grasping a sharp sickle. Then follows the
harvest of the elect, and the vintage of the wrath of God, which seems
to take place in the valley of Jehoshaphat,5 and of which the imagery is
tinged by reminiscences of the terrible Jewish War, with its deluge of
rolling blood6 — rolling 200 miles, or, roughly, the whole length from
Tyre to Rhinocolura, from north to south of the Holy Land.7
Then, after an episode of resplendent triumph and thanksgiving in
heaven, seven Angels, arrayed in precious stone,8 pour out their vials of
wrath upon the heathen world.9 Like the plagues of the first four
1 TeXevTav -rfjs Nepiufos QeoexBpias Te Kal tfeojuaxias SiaSoxop kavrav KaTea-rqo-aTo (Euseb. H. E.
iii. 17). 2 Paneg. 48.
3 Tac. Agric. 45 : "Nero tamen subtraxit oculos, jussitque scelera non spectavit."
4 Matt. xxiv. 14.
6 Rev. xiv. 20 ; Isa. xvii. 5 ; lxiii. 1—6 ; Joel iv. 2, 11—14 ; Mic. iv. 13 ; Hab.
iii. 12.
6 Isa. lxiii. 3 ; comp. Enoch xcviii. 3 : " The horse shall wade up to his breast, and
the chariot shall sink to his axle in the blood of sinners. " So too Silius Italicus (iii. 704)
speaks of "flammam exspirare furentes cornipedes, multoque fluentia sanguine lora."
7 Jerome, Ep. ad Dard. states this at 160 miles ; but the deluge of blood began to
roll from a point far north of Tyre.
8 Leg. xiBov, A, C, Vulg., and some MSS. known to Andreas. Comp. Ezek. xxviii.
13 (iravTa, KIBov xprprrov hhiota-ai), " Every precious stone was thy covering " (see "Westcott
and Hort, Greek Test. ii. ad loc, and compare Milton's —
" His vaunting foe
Though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed").
• Ezek. xxii. 31 ; Zeph. iii. 8.

484 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
trumpets, they affect the earth, and the sea, and the rivers,1 and the
heavenly bodies, the seat of the Beast, and the river Euphrates, and
they are ended by the terrible phenomena of storm and earthquake.
They are again but a vivid picture of the repeated signs in the sun, and
the moon, and the stars, the distress of nations with perplexity, the
sea and waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for fear, and the
shaking of the powers of heaven, of which Christ had prophesied.2 At
the outpouring of the sixth Vial, the Euphrates is metaphorically dried
up to prepare for the invasion of the kings of the East ; and out of the
mouths of the Devil, the Beast, and the False Prophet come three frog-
like spirits of demons working miracles which gather the heathen
kings to the great battle of Har-Magedon — a symbol of satanic
opposition gathering to a final head, and meeting with its final over
throw.3 The seventh Angel pours out his vial on the air. There are thun
ders and a mighty earthquake. The great city (Jerusalem) is divided
into three ; the cities of the Gentiles fall ; Rome — the mystic Babylon
— comes into remembrance before God for vengeance; islands and
mountains flee away, and there is a mighty plague of hail. We seem
here to be in a region beyond the limits of history ; but we can see that
the images were in part suggested by that remarkable epoch of earth
quakes which affected especially the cities of Asia, and by the three
camps occupied by the army of Titus, and the three factions which
occupied the three regions of Jerusalem — Simon in Bezetha, John in
the Upper City, Eleazar in the Temple, and tore it to pieces with their
internecine fury.
Then the great harlot city (Rome) drunken with the blood of the
Neronian martyrs, is judged. Her judgment comes in part from the ten
horns, which should have been the source of her strength, but which
hate her, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. Part at least of the
symbol corresponds with the horrors inflicted upon Rome and the
Romans in the civil wars by provincial governors — already symbolised as
the horns of the Wild Beast, and here characterised as kings yet king-
domless. Such were Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian. Vespasian
and Mucianus deliberately planned to starve the Roman populace ;4 and
in the fierce struggle of the Vitellians against Sabinus and Domitian,
and the massacre which followed, there occurred the event which
i 1 Oomp. Wisd. xi. 15 — 16 ; xvi. 1, 9 ; xvii. 2, seqq.
2 Luke xxi. 25, 26. "We have already seen that the practical identity of the seals,
trumpets, and vials was known by tradition even to the earliest commentators ; v. supra,
pp. 430, 434, 453.
3 Tho hill and plain of Megiddo were the scenes of great battles. They are in the
Plain of Jezreel, the battlefield of Palestine (Judg. v. 19; 2 Kings xxiii. 29 ; Zech. xii.
11). Hence Ewald's conjecture that Har-Magedon is a cypher for Rome the Great (Ha
Romah Haggedolah) is needless. Otherwise we might see here another instance of
Gematria, for Har-Magedon and Romah Hagedolah are both = 304.
4 Jos. B. J. iv. 10, § 5.

CLOSING VISIONS. 485
sounded so portentously in the ears of every Roman — the burning to
the ground of the Temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, on December 19th,
a.d. 69.1 It was not the least of the signs of the times that the space
of one year saw wrapped in flames the two most hallowed shrines of
the ancient world — the Temple of Jerusalem and the Temple of the
great Latin god. The Jews were not alone in interpreting these events
of the final dissolution of the Empire. Josephus saw, in the establish
ment of the Flavian dynasty, "the unexpected deliverance of the
fortunes of Rome from ruin;"2 Tacitus looked on the year a.d. 68 as
one which threatened to be the final year of the Roman commonwealth.3
The Apocalyptist of //. Esdras says of the Eagle, in which he symbolises
Rome, " Thou hast afflicted the weak, thou hast hurt the peaceable,
thou hast loved liars, and hast cast down walls of such as did thee
no harm ; therefore appear no more, O Eagle ! nor thy horrible wings,
nor thy wicked feathers, nor thy malicious heads, nor thy hurtful claws,
nor all thy vain body." (2 Esdr. xi. 42 — 46.) The author of the
Book of Baruch says of Rome, the city which afflicted Jerusalem,
" Fire shall come upon her from the Everlasting, long to endure ;
and she shall be inhabited of devils for a great time " (Bar. iv, 35).
The next chapters are occupied by the mingled wail and psean over
the doom of fallen Babylon, which is echoed in heaven.4 The armies of
heaven ride forth after the Word of God, and the fowls of the air are
summoned to feed on the flesh of kings and captains slain in impious
battle. The Beast and the False Prophet are cast into the Lake of
Fire, and their followers are slain by the sword of the heavenly Rider.
Satan is bound for a thousand years, and the Millennium of the Saints
begins.5 When the thousand years are ended, Satan is to be loosed to
gather all the heathen, Gog and Magog,6 to the final battle against God,
after which he shall be flung to join the Beast and the False Prophet in
the Lake of Fire. The great White Throne is set. The dead are
judged. There is a new heaven and a new earth. Glowing with gold
and gems,7 the New Jerusalem descends out of Heaven from God,8
i Tac. H. iii. 83 ; Jos. B. J. iv. 11, § 4. * Jos. B. J. iv. 11, § 5.
3 Tac. H. i. 11.
4 The expressions throughout chapters xvii. — xviii. are almost entirely borrowed
from the ancient prophets (Isa. xiii., xxiii., xxiv., &o. ; Jer. xvi., xxv. ; Ezek. xxvi.,
xxvii. ; Amos vi. 5 — 7.
5 A literal millenarianism has been generally condemned by the Catholic Church.
Victorinus and the earliest commentators understood the 1,000 years to have begun at
the Incarnation. Origen and most of the Fathers understood it spiritually and meta
phorically. 6 Barbarian nations from the North (Ezek. xxxviii., xxxix.). Abarbanel on Jer. xxx,
calls them nations from the East.
7 Derived from Is. liv. 12 ; and comp. Yalkut Shimeoni, f. 54, a.
s The Rabbis inferred from Ps. cxxii. 3, that there was " a Jerusalem above (Taanith,
f. 5, a) ; and Rabbi Johanan says, " The Holy One will bring precious stones and pearls,
each measuring 30 cubits by 30, and after polishing them down to 20 cubits by 20, will
place them in the gates of Jerusalem " (Bava Bathra, f. 25, a). Again, " The Jerusalem
of this world is not as the Jerusalem of the world to come. The former is open to all ;

486 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
through whose streets flow, bright as crystal, the River of the water of
life, and there is no Temple there, nor light of moon nor sun, for the
Lord God gives them light ; and there shall be no more curse.1 The
book ends with that which is the burden of the whole— Yea ! I come
quickly. And the seer answers, as all Christians have ever answered,
Amen ! Come Lord Jesus !*
And thus the whole book, from beginning to end, teaches the great
truths — Christ shall triumph ! Christ's enemies shall be overcome ! They
who hate Him shall be destroyed ; they who love Him shall be blessed
unspeakably. The doom alike of Jew and of Gentile is already immi
nent. On Judsea and Jerusalem, on Rome and her Empire, on Nero and
his adorers, the judgment shall fall. Sword and fire, and famine and
pestilence, and storm and earthquake, and social agony and political
terror, are nothing but the woes which are ushering in the Messianic
reign. Old things are rapidly passing away. The light upon the visage
of the old dispensation is vanishing and fading into dimness, but the
face of Him who is as the sun is already dawning through the East. The
new and final covenant is instantly to be established amid terrible judg
ments ; and it is to be so established as to render impossible the con
tinuance of the old. Maranatha ! The Lord is at hand ! Even so
come, Lord Jesus ! Mane nobiscum Domine, nam advesperascit I

CHAPTER XXIX.
THE FALL OF JERUSALEM.

" The Lord, whose fire is in Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem " (Tsa. xxxi. 9).
" What was the cause of the destruction of the Second Temple, seeing that the
age was distinguished for the study of the laws ? . . . It was groundless hatred"
(Yoma, f. 9, *).
There is no need to dwell upon the last days of Jerusalem. Very little
can be added to the horrible story beyond what is to be read by every one
in the pages of Josephus.3 It is true that Josephus has effectually
to the latter (Rev. xxi. 5) none shall go up but those who are ordained to enter " (id.
75, 6). , As to its height (Rev. xxi. 16) the Rabbis say that God will place it on the sum
mits of Mounts Sinai, Tabor, and Carmel (Isa. ii. 2). 1 Zech. xiv. 11.
2 The solemn curse against any one who adds to, or takes from, the book, was not
uncommon in days when literary forgery and interpolation was remarkably common.
Thus Irenseus ended one of his books with the words : — "I adjure you, copyists of this
book, by the Lord Jesus Christ, and by His glorious coming to judge the quick and the
dead, that you compare and carefully correct your copy by this exemplar, and likewise
place this adjuration in your copy " (Opp. i. p. 821, ed. Stieren). A similar passage is
found at the end of Rufinus's prologue to his version of Origen's De Principiis (see
Huidekoper, Judaism at Bome, p. 289).
3 For modern narratives derived from him, Bee P. de Saulcy, Les Derniers Jours de
Jerusalem, 1866 ; Milnian, Hist, of Christianity, vol. iii. ; Merivale, Hist, of the Romans,
oh. lix. ; Ewald, Gesch. vi. 696—813.

THE FALL OF JERUSALEM. 487
blackened his own memory. It would have been well for him if he had
only written the Antiquities and the Dialogue against Apion. In his
Jewish War, and, above all, in his autobiography, he stands confessed as
a false, heartless, and designing renegade. The man who, standing in
sight of the ruins of Zion and the blackened area on which had shone the
Holy of Holies, complacently tells us how Titus gave him other lands in
Judsea, because those which he had possessed near Jerusalem had become
useless ; the man who gloatingly recounts the honours heaped upon him
by the conquerors who flung thousands of his brave countrymen to the
wild beasts, and sold tens of thousands more into brutal misery ; the
man who, in the sumptuous palace which he owed to his conqueror, could
detail without a sob the extermination of his people ; the man who could
gaze with complacent infamy on the triumph which told of the destruction
of his nation's liberty, and could look on while the hallowed vessels of the
Sanctuary were held aloft before a Pagan populace by bloodstained
hands ; the man who in youth haunted the boudoir of Poppsea, and in
old age hung about the antechambers of Domitian ; the man who pur
sued with posthumous hatred of successful treachery the brave though
misguided patriots who had held it a glory to die for Jerusalem — must
stand forth till the end of time in the immortal infamy which his own
writings have heaped upon himself.1 We cannot be surprised that all
the patriots of his nation hated him, and tried to disturb his base pros
perity and " gilded servitude." No one trusts the words of Josephus
where he has the least interest in palming off upon us a deception. But
he had no partieular reason to misrepresent the general facts of the
awful and heroic struggle in which for a few months he bore a part.
And since the writings of Justus of Tiberias and Antonius Primus have
perished, as well as the latter part of the History of Tacitus, Josephus
becomes our sole guide. The Talmud has. almost nothing to tell us. In
it we look in vain for the names of John, or Simon, or Eleazar. We
only see a dim glimpse of flames and assassination, and ruin, mixed up
with curious legends and tales of individual agony.2
In April, a.d. 70, Titus, with a force of 80,000 legionaries and
auxiliaries, pitched his camp on Scopus, to the north of the city.
Besides the 2,400 trained Jewish warriors who defended the walls, the
city was thronged with an incredible number of Passover pilgrims, and
of fugitives from other parts of Judsea. Feats of heroic valour were
performed on both sides, and the skill of the besiegers was often checked
by the almost insane fury of the besieged. Fanatically relying on the
visible manifestation of Jehovah, while they were infamously violating
all His laws, the Zealots rejected with insult every offer of terms. At
last Titus drew a line of circumvallation round the doomed city, and
1 See Derenbourg, p. 264, and n. xi. ; Gratz, iii. 365, seq., 386, 411 ; Salvador, Hist.
ii. 467 ; De Quincey, Works.
2 Derenbourg, pp. 266, 282—288. Some of the stories which Josephus recounts of
himself are transferred in the Talmud to the celebrated Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai

488 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
began to crucify all the deserters who fled to him. The incidents of the
famine which then fell on the besieged are among the most horrible in
human literature. The corpses bred a pestilence. Whole houses were
filled with unburied families of the dead. Mothers slew and devoured
their own children. Hunger, rage, despair, and madness, seized the city.
It became a cage of furious madmen, a city of howling wild beasts, and of
cannibals — a hell ! x For the first time for five centuries, on July 1 7, A D. 70,
the daily sacrifices of the Temple ceased for want of priests to offer them.
Disease and slaughter ruthlessly accomplished their work. At last, amid
shrieks and flames, and suicide and massacre, the Temple was taken and
reduced to ashes. The great altar of sacrifice was heaped with the slain.
The courts of the Temple swam deep in blood. Six thousand miserable
women and children sank with a wild cry of terror amid the blazing
ruins of the cloisters. Romans adored the insignia of their legions on
the place were the Holiest had stood. As soon as they became masters
of the Upper City they only ceased to slay when they were too weary
to slay any longer. According to Josephus, it had been the earnest
desire of Titus to preserve the Temple, but his commands were dis
obeyed by his soldiers in the fury of the struggle. According to Sul-
picius Severus, on the other hand, who is probably quoting the very
words of Tacitus, Titus formed the deliberate purpose to destroy Christi
anity and Judaism in one blow, believing that if the Jewish root were
torn up the Christian branch would soon perish.2 The tallest and most
beautiful youths were reserved for the conqueror's triumph. Of those
above seventeen years of age multitudes were doomed.to work in chains
in the Egyptian mines. Others were sent as presents to various towns
to be slain by wild beasts or gladiators, or by each other's swords in the
provincial amphitheatres. The young of both sexes were sold as slaves.
Even during the days on which these arrangements were being made,
11,000 perished for want of food; some because their guards would not
give it to them, others because they would not accept it. Josephus
reckons the number of captives taken during the war at 97,000, and the
number of those who perished during the siege at 1,100,000. The
1 Renan, L'Antechrist, 507.
2 "Alii et Titus ipse evertendum templum imprimis censebant, quo plenius Judae-
orum et Christianorum religio tolleretur. Quippe has religiones licet contrarias sibi,
iisdem tamen auctoribus profectas ; radice sublata, stirpem facile perituram " (Sulp. Sev.
Sacr. Hist. ii. 30, § 6, 7). He had access both to the lost part of the Histories of
Tacitus, and also to the work of Antonius Julianus, De Judaeis. The latter, who was
one of Titus's council of war, wrote with far less biassed motives than Josephus, who is
not to be trusted when he had anything to gain by disguising the truth. Dr. Bernays,
of Breslau, believes that Sulpicius Severus is quoting Tacitus in the sentence quoted
above. Gratz (iii. 403) contemptuously rejects this suggestion, on the ground that Titus
could scarcely have heard of the Christians. But Titus saw a great deal of Josephus and
of Agrippa II. , and there are signs that Josephus knew a good deal more about
Christianity than he ventures to say, and that Agrippa had not been uninfluenced by the
arguments of St. Paul (see Derenbourg, p. 252). On the other hand, Ewald thinks that
this assertion as to the purpose of Titus is weakened by the repetition of it in the case of
Hadrian : — " existimans so Cluistianam fidem loci injuria " (i.e. by profaning the site of
the Temple) peremturum " (Sulp. Sev., Sacr. Hist. ii. 31, § 3 ; Ewald, Gesch. vi. 797).

THE FALL OF JERUSALEM. 489
numbers who perished in the whole war are reckoned at the awful total
of 1,337,490, and the number of prisoners at 101,700; but even these
estimates do not include all the items of many skirmishes and battles,
nor do they take into account the multitudes who, throughout the whole
country, perished of misery, famine, and disease. It may well be said that
the nation seemed to have given itself "a rendezvous of extermination."
Two thousand putrefying bodies werefound even in the subterranean vaults
of the city. During the siege all the trees of the environs had been cut
down, and hence the whole appearance of the place, with its charred and
bloodstained ruins, was so completely altered, that one who was suddenly
brought to it would not (we are told) have recognised where he was.
And yet the site had been so apparently impregnable, with its massive
and unequalled fortifications, that Titus freely declared that he saw in
his victory the hand of God.1 From that time all Jews on seeing Jeru
salem rend their garments and exclaim, " Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem
a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised
Thee, is burned with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste." 2
It was to this event, the most awful in history — "one of the most
awful eras in God's economy of grace, and the most awful revolution in
all God's religious dispensations"3 — that we must apply those prophecies
of Christ's coming in which every one of the Apostles and Evangelists
describe it as near at hand.* To those prophecies our Lord Himself
fixed these three most definite limitations — the one, that before that
generation passed away all these things would be fulfilled;5 another,
that some standing there should not taste death till they saw the Son of
Man coming in His kingdom ;6 the third, that the Apostles should not
have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come.7 It is
strange that these distinct limitations should not be regarded as a
decisive proof that the Fall of Jerusalem was, in the fullest sense, the
Second Advent of the Son of Man which was primarily contemplated
by the earliest voices of prophecy.
And, indeed, the Fall of Jerusalem and all the events which accom
panied and followed it in the Roman world and in the Christian Church,
1 It is curious to contrast the pious, gentle, and amiable Titus of Josephus, and the
" Love and darling of the human race" of Roman historians, with "Titus the Bad"
(Ha-rasha), or "the Tyrant," of the Talmudists. Their well-known legend tells that,
being caught in a terrible storm, and getting safe to land, he defied God, Who, to punish
him, sent a little gnat (®1JT), which crept up his nostrils into his brain, and caused him
incessaut and sleepless anguish. At his death it was found to be " as big as a bird, and
to have a beak and claws of steel" (Bereshith Rabba x. ; Tanchuma, 62, a, etc.). It
may be imagined how patriotic Jews felt towards Titus Flavins Josephus. The name
on which he prided himself would be to them a veritable " brand of the Beast."
2 Isa. lxiv. 10, 11 ; Moed Katon, f. 26, a.
3 Bp. Warburton's Julian,.\. p. 21.
4 Acts ii. 16—20, 40 ; iii. 19—21 ; 1 Thess. iv. 13—17 ; v. 1—16 ; 2 Thess. i. 7—10 ;
1 Cor. i. 7 ; x. 11 ; xv. 21 ; xvi. 22 ; Rom. xiii. 11, 12 ; Phil. iii. 20 ; iv. 5 ; 1 Tim. iv.
1 ; 2 Tim. iii. 1 ; Heb. i. 2 ; x. 25, 37 ; James v. 3, 8, 9 ; 1 Pet. ii. 7 ; 2 Pet. iii. 12 ;
1 J. ii. 18
• Matt. xxiv. 34. 6 Matt. xvi. 28. 7 Matt. x. 23.

490 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
had a significance which it is hardly possible to over-estimate. They
were the final end of the old Dispensation. They were the full in
auguration of the New Covenant. They were God's own overwhelming
judgment on that form of Judaic Christianity which threatened to
crush the work of St. Paul, to lay on the Gentiles the yoke of an
abrogated Mosaism, to establish itself by threats and anathemas as the
only orthodoxy. Many of the early Christians — and those especially
who lived at Jerusalem — were at the same time rigid Jews. So long as
they continued to walk in the ordinances of their fathers as a national
and customary duty, such observances were harmless ; but it is the
inevitable tendency of this external rigorism to usurp in many minds
the place of true religion. In every Church, as we see from most
of the Catholic epistles, as well as in those of St. Paul, the Judaists
asserted themselves, and won over the devoted adherence of the multi
tude, which is ever ripe for the slavery of rigid dogmas and narrow
forms. It required the whole force of St. Paul's inspired and splendid
genius to save Christianity from sinking into an exclusive sect of
repellent Ebionites. No event less awful than the desolation of Judsea,
the destruction of Judaism, the annihilation of all possibility of ob
serving the precepts of Moses, could have opened the. eyes of the
Judaisers from their dream of imagined infallibility. Nothing but
God's own unmistakable interposition — nothing but the manifest coming
of Christ — could have persuaded Jewish Christians that the Law of the
Wilderness was annulled ; that the idolised minutise of Levitism could
no longer claim to be divinely obligatory ; that the Temple, to which so
many myriads had resorted from every region of the world, as to a
common refuge, where they found peace and forgiveness and holy
thoughts and joyous hopes,1 had been smitten to the ground as though
by flashes of God's own avenging fire ; that the sacrifices, of which
Philo had so recently said, " they are being offered even until now, and
they shall be offered for ever,"2 had been finally, decisively, and, by the
direct action of Divine Providence, annulled. It was absurd to imagine
that salvation could in any way depend on obedience to a law to which
obedience had been rendered impossible by God's own decree. The
facts, so terrible to Jewish imagination, that the steps of the profane
had carried their bloody footprints into the Holiest, where only the
High Priest could enter once a year ; that the unclean hands of Gentiles
had been laid on the golden altars ; that the sacred rolls of the Torah,
for which any Jew would have been ready to die, had been carried
captive, for every profane eye to gaze upon, along the streets of Edom
and Babylon — were but symbols of the yet deadlier fact that henceforth
that Law could not be kept, nor the Paschal lamb slain, nor the cere
monies of even the Great Day of Atonement any longer observed.
Judaism, a religion of which the Temple was the most essential centre,
1 Philo, De Monarchia (Mangey, ii. 223).
8 Id., Leg. ad Gaium (Mangey, ii. 569).

ABROGATION OF JUDAISM. 491
of which sacrifices were the most essential element, became a religion
without a temple and without a sacrifice. It became no longer possible
for even the most Pharisaic of sacerdotalists to talk as though the very
universe depended on ceremonies and vestments, or on the right burning
of the two kidneys with the fat.
Christian historians rightly appreciate the significance of the event.
The Temple, says Orosius, was overthrown and done away with, because
it could no longer serve any good or useful object, since now the Church
of God was vigorously germinating throughout the world.1 When, in
A.D. 120, .<Elia Capitolina was built by Hadrian on the ruins of
Jerusalem, and Christians were allowed free access to it, while no Jew
was suffered to approach it, the Church of the Circumcision was
practically at an end. " Up to that time," says Sulpicius Severus,
" almost all Christians in Judsea observed the Law while they worshipped
Christ as God ; but it was the result of God's ordinance that henceforth
the slavery of the Law should be taken away from the freedom of the
Church."2 The Church of ^Elia Capitolina was no longer prevalently
Judaic ; nay more, in a mission to Hadrian it formally severed itself
from the Jews. For the first time, in a.d. 137, it selected as its bishop
Marcus, an uncircumcised Gentile."3 The event significantly proved
that even in Judsea the future destinies of the Christian Church were in
no further danger of falling into the hands of either Ebionites or
Nazarenes.4 The Church then emancipated itself finally and for ever
from the trammels of the Synagogue.
No one was more deeply influenced by this event than St. John.
A full quarter of a century elapsed between the ripe manhood when he
wrote the Apocalypse and the old age in which he wrote the Gospel and
Epistles. The colouring and spirit of the Apocalypse are clearly
Judaic ; but we see alike in the advanced Christology,5 and in the
recognition of the equality of the redeemed Gentiles,6 and in the
absence of any Temple in the New Jerusalem, how far St. John was
removed from the heresies of those Jewish Christians to whom Christ
was no more than the Jewish Messiah, and Christianity no more than
an engrafting of their belief upon an otherwise unchanged Pharisaism.
And yet, though the Gospel and Epistles are identical with the
Apocalypse in essential doctrines — though the thought of Christ as
the Victim Lamb is prominent in both — we see how wide is the
difference which separates them; how much calmer is the style, how
1 " Ecclesia Dei jam per totum orbem germinante, hoe (templum) tanquam effoetum
et vacuum nullique usui bono commodum arbitrio Dei auferendum fuit " (Oros. vii. 9).
2 Sulp. Sev. H. S. ii. 31.
3 Euseb. H E. iv. 6 ; Gratz, Gesch. d. Juden. iv. 183.
4 The furious persecutions and massacres of Christians by the False Messiah Bar
Cochba (a.d. 132 — 134), which first thoroughly opened the eyes of the Pagan world to
the difference between Jews and Christians, were due alike to the rejection of his claims
by the Christians, and their refusal to join in his revolt " (Gratz, Gesch. iv. 154, 457).
6 Rev. hi. 14 ; v. 13 ; xix. 13 5 xvii. 14 ; xix. 16 ; etc. ' 6 Rev. vii. 9.

492 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
much deeper the revelation, contained in the later writings ; how the
light which had dawned so brightly upon the Apostles in the Church of
Jerusalem had shone more and more unto the perfect day. The Gospel
and Epistles contain the same truths as the Apocalypse,1 but the
symbols are spiritualised. Jerusalem, even as a symbol, no longer
occupies the foreground of his thoughts, and positive Judaic ordi
nances sink into insignificance in comparison with the knowledge of God
which is eternal life. The Apocalypse is mainly occupied with the
awfulness of retribution : The Gospel and Epistles are dominated by the
ideal of love.
Unless these considerations be admitted in their fullest extent,
it becomes impossible to maintain that writings so different, even amid
their partial similarities, could have come from the same hand. It
is true that in the Apocalypse we have a material eschatology, and
in the later writings a spiritual consummation. It is true that the
Apocalypse is an expression of Judaic Christianity, and that the Gospel
and Epistles are not. It is true that the points of contrast which they
offer are more salient than their resemblances. It is even true that
both could never have existed simultaneously in the same mind. In the
Apocalypse the symbols of Heaven itself are- mainly Jewish and
Levitical, and in the Gospel the evanescence and annulment of such
forms is clearly proclaimed. In the Apocalypse the elements of Divine
wrath are mainly depicted in phraseology borrowed from the old pro
phetic images ; in the later writings God is depicted almost exclusively
in the attributes of compassion and love. In the Apocalypse Christ
is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the ruler who, with a rod of iron,
shall dash the nations in pieces like a potter's vessel ; in the Gospel He
is the Good Shepherd who layeth down His life for the sheep. In the
later writings there are no wars and collisions — no acts of awful
vengeance at which the saints look on with exultation ; but the world
is something wholly apart from the kingdom of the saints, and that
kingdom is spiritual and in the heart. In the Apocalypse the Anti
christ is a bloodstained Roman Emperor ; in the Epistles there are
many antichrists, and they are forms of speculative error. In the
Apocalypse there are two resurrections, both physical, one before, one
after, the Millennium ; in the Gospel the first and chief resurrection is
that from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. In the
Apocalypse Heaven is wholly a future splendour; in the Epistles it
is already a living and present realisation of God's presence in the heart.
The Apocalyptist consoles the Christian sufferer with the hope of what
he shall be ; the Evangelist with the knowledge of what he is.2
How, then, it may be asked, can the Evangelist and the Seer of
Patmos be one and the same person ?8
1 As even Baur admits (Three Christian Centuries, i. 154).
2 See Reuss, Hist, de la Thiol. Chrit. ii. 564—571.
3 Ewald says with his usual positiveness, " Sie ergibt sioh je genauer man sie nach

THE APOCALYPSE AND THE GOSPEL 493
They are one and the same, but divided from each other by nearly
a quarter of a century — by more than twenty years of divine educa
tion and broadening light. Many of these differences arise from the
dealing with truths which are indeed widely diverse, but which yet
are equally true, and which are necessary to complement each other.
Many of them may be summed up and accounted for in the single
remark that the Apocalypse is an Apocalypse, and that it was
written amid the throbbing agonies of the Jewish War and after the
bloodstained horrors of the Neronian persecution. At that time St.
John still belonged in training and sympathy to the Church of the
Circumcision. The Gospel and Epistles, on the other hand, were
written after long residence among Gentiles, when the whole perspective
of the Apostle's thoughts had been altered by the flood of divine
nlumination cast alike upon the Old and the New Covenant by the
fulfilment of Christ's own prophecies of His coming. After the fall
of Jerusalem He had established His kingdom upon earth by closing
for ever the Jewish dispensation.
Nor must it be forgotten that amid all the differences which
separate these writings there are many subtle similarities in the tem
perament of the writer, in his phraseology and in his theological stand
point. In both we have the prominent conception of Christ as the
Lamb of God;1 in both-^and in them alone — He is called — " The
Word." In both we read of the " Living Water." In both we find
the recognition of the priority in time of the Jew and of the admission
of the Gentiles. Both books give prominence to the prophecy of
Zechariah (xii. 1 0), " they shall look upon me whom they have
pierced," and both in their reference to this verse diverge in the
same way from the LXX. No careful student of St. John's writings
can fail to see that in many respects, and in relation to many doctrines,
an identity of essence underlies the dissimilarity of form.2 Not one
of the Johannine books could be spared from the sacred canon without
manifest and grievous loss ; all of them are rich in truths which are
necessary to make us wise unto salvation.
alien Seiten hin untersucht . . . desto gewisser als von einem ganz andern Schriftsteller
und als nicht vom Apostel verfasst " (Johann. Schriften, ii. 1).
1 In the Gospel apvos, in the Apocalypse apviov. It has been ingeniously suggested
that ipviav may have been chosen as physiologically equivalent in sound to Byipiov.
2 For a most satisfactory proof of this, see Gebhardt, Doctrine of the Apocalypse
(E. Tr., Clark, Edinb. , 1878). Isolated resemblances are Rev. ii. 2; John xvi. 12
("cannot bear"); Rev. ii. 3 ; John iv. 6 ("faint"); angels and saints "in white"
(cv XevMis, Rev. iii. 18 ; John xx. 12) ; effects of ' ' anointing " (Rev. iii. 18 ; 1 John ii.
20). Besides these there are other verbal resemblances, such as rripeiv X6yov, or \6yovs
(Rev. iii. 8, 16 ; xxii. 7, 9, etc. ; John viii. 51 ; 1 John ii. 5) ; >roieii< i/ztOSoj, or aX-fiBeiav
(Rev. xxii. 15 ; 1 John i. 6) ; a'ipara (? B, etc.) (Rev. xviii. 24 ; John ii. 13) ; " He that
is true " (Rev. iii. 7, xix. 11 ; John i. 14, xiv. 6 ; 1 John v. 20) ; and the common
peculiar usage of the words aXr)Biv6s, Ppovn}, Saipoviov, e/3patirrl, eKKevrelv, oi^is, irop^upeos,
o-K-qvoZv, aipiTTeiv, etc. On the other side see, among others, Dusterdieck, pp. 73—80 ;
Ewald, Johann. Schriften, ii 52, 53, 61, 62.

494 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XXX.
THE GROWTH OF HERESY.
. ... Sis &pa p.*XPl T®v rore xphvuiv irap&tvos Ka&apa Kal aStdrpdopos euetrer ^
"EfCKATjo-fo. — Hegesipp. ap. Euseb. H.E. iii. 32.
" La fumee qui obscurcit le Soleil o'est a dire l'heresie." — Bossuet.
There were, as I have said, three great events which deeply influenced
the last and most active period in the life of St. John — the Neronian
persecution, the fall of Jerusalem, and the growth of Heresy. The
two former events, which were sudden and overwhelming, woke
their tremendous echoes in the Apocalypse. The third event was very
gradual. We find traces of it in the letters to the Seven Churches, but
it had a still deeper influence on the Gospel and the Epistles, which
were the inestimable fruit of the Apostle's ripest years. According to
the tradition of the Church, they were especially written to combat
heresy, not by the method of direct and vehement controversy, but by
that noblest of all methods which consists in the irresistible presentation
of counter truths.
The word " heresy," though it is used in the Authorised Version to
translate the hairesis of the New Testament, has not the same meaning.
The word was not originally applied in a bad sense. In classic Greek,
for instance, it merely meant a choice of principles, a school of
philosophy or of thought.1 In the New Testament it comes to mean
" a faction," and the sin condemned by the word is not the adoption of
erroneous opinions, but the factiousness of party spirit? It was, how
ever, perfectly natural that it should come to mean3 a wrong choice, a
false system. For Christianity, being a divine revelation, involves a
fellowship and unity in all essential verities, and he who gives undue
preponderance to his own arbitrary conceptions, he who allows to
subjective influences or traditional errors an unlimited sway over his
interpretations of truth, becomes a heretic. And in this sense many
are heretics who most pride themselves on their vaunted catholicity ;
for the source of all heresies is the spirit of pride, and the worst of all
heresies is the spirit of hatred. The word " heretic " has indeed been
shamefully abused. It has again and again been applied in a thoroughly
heretical, and worse than heretical manner, to the insight and inspira
tion of the few who have discovered aspects of truth hitherto unnoticed,
or restored old truths by the overthrow of dominant perversions. A
1 Sext. Empir. i. 16 ; Cio. ad Fam. xv. 16, 3.
2 It only occurs in Acts v. 17 ; xv. 5 ; xxiv. 5, 14 ; xxvi 5 : xxviii. 22 : 1 Cor. xi. 19 :
Gal. v. 20 ; 2 Pet. ii. 1.
3 See Neander, Ch. Hist. ii. 4.

SOURCES OF HERESY. 495
Church can only prove its possession of life by healthy development.
Morbid uniformity, enforced by the tyranny of a dominant sect, is the
most certain indication of dissolution and decay. Since Christianity is
manysided, the worst form of heresy is the mechanical suppression of
divergence from popular shibboleths. Every great reformer in turn,
every discoverer of new forms or expressions of religious truth, every
slayer of old and monstrous errors, has been called a heretic. When a
new truth could not be refuted, it was easy for the members of a
dominant party to gratify their impotent hatred by burning him who
had uttered it ; and though religious partisans can no longer commit to
the flames those who differ from them it is as true in our days as in
those of Milton, that —
" Men whose faith, learning, life, and pure intent
Would have been held in high esteem by Paul,
Must now be called and printed ' heretic'
By shallow Edwards and Scotch what-d'ye-call."
But the real heretics were, in most cases, the supporters of ecclesiastical
tyranny and stereotyped ignorance, by whom these martyrs were tortured
and slain. He, and he only, is, in the strict and technical sense of the
word, a heretic, who denies the fundamental truths of Christianity, as
embodied in the,catholic creeds which sufficed to express the doctrines
of the Church in the first four centuries of her history. But we are
taught by daily experience that it is possible to hold catholic truth in
an heretical spirit, and heresy in a catholic spirit. By the fraud of the
devil many a Catholic has acted in the spirit of an infidel ; and, by the
grace of God, many a heretic has shown the virtue of a saint. As for
the existence of diversity in the midst of general unity, it is not only
inevitable, but, in our present condition of imperfection, it is the only
means to secure a right apprehension of truth. Christianity may be
regarded in two aspects — as a law of life and as a system of doctrines.
But neither was the law of life laid down in rigid precepts nor was the
plan of salvation set forth in dialectics. Men may be pure and true
Christians, though their holiness reveals itself in manifold varieties of
form ; they may be in faithful and conscientious communion with the
Catholic Church, though the inevitable differences of individuality lead
to different modes of apprehending the essential Gospel. All that is
indispensable is that their varieties of opinion should be subordinate
to one divine unity, and that their mode of life under all differences
should express some aspect of the one divine ideal.
The moral fibre of bitterness, from which all heresies spring, is one
and the same. Whether they result from the blind and tyrannous
unanimity of corrupt Churches, or the wide self-assertion of opinionated
individuals, they owe their ultimate origin to the pride and ambition of
the heart. But the intellectual sources of heresy were manifold. It
was produced by the contact of Christianity with Heathenism and with

496 the early days of Christianity.
Judaism, and was especially derived from the forms of philosophy which
had sprung up in the bosom of both religions.
The Gentiles, as a rule, hated the Mosaic Law, and looked on Christi
anity as the antagonist of Judaism, rather than as its dissolution and
fulfilment. The Jews, on the other hand, saw in Christianity only an
accretion to the Law of Moses, and clung to the most rigid letter of in
stitutions which Heathenism despised. Hence, amid the numberless
ramifications of heretical sects which disturbed the Church of the first
century, and which were massed together under the vague and often in
appropriate name of Gnosticism, some were Judaic and some were anti-
Judaic. 1. To the Jewish sects we have aleady alluded. They maybe classed
under the two heads of Nazarenes and Ebionites.
We have been obliged again and again to notice that the earliest
decades after the Ascension were marked by a severe struggle between
the views of Judaising and of Gentile Christians. St. James, the head
of the Judaisers, had nevertheless adopted the views of St. Peter as re
gards the freedom of the Gentiles, and while he continued to be a blame
less observer of the Mosaic Law, he gave full tolerance to all converts
from Paganism who did not violate the Noachian precepts. This wa& the
decision of the Synod at Jerusalem. But the party who wrote upon their
banners the name of the Bishop of Jerusalem went much further. It
was one of the main works of St. Paul's life to counteract their surrep
titious methods of strangling the growth of true Christianity by insisting
that all Gentiles must be circumcised, and must observe the entire
Levitic Law. It was in the ranks of these Judaists that there arose
that imminent danger of apostasy against which they had received such
solemn warnings in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Epistle of St
James himself ; it was from their ranks also that there arose the two
sects of Ebionites and Nazarenes.
It may well be thought strange that the most definite existence of
these Jewish Christian sects falls in the era after the Fall of Jerusalem,
when it might have been deemed impossible for any one to retain the
opinion that God had intended the Jewish Law to be eternally obliga
tory. But prejudice, fortified by custom, is almost ineradicable. Judaism,
when robbed of all power to observe its ritual, took refuge in its Law,
regarded as a separate and ideal entity. The disease, uncured even by
the amputation of its chief limb, fastened itself with unabated virulence
on the vital organs. The Mosaic Law assumed in the minds of Tal-
mudists the place of God Himself, and by the Law they meant not
morals but Rabbinism, not the Decalogue, but the Halacha. When
Pope says that in some of the discussions of the Paradise Lost —
" In quibbles angel and archangel join,
And God the Father turns a school divine,"
he was using the broadest satire ; but his words are applicable in their

ADORATION OF THE LAW. 497
most literal sense to the teachings of the Rabbis, who arrogantly
usurped the exclusive name of Hachakamim, or " the Wise." They re
present God as Himself a student of the Torah. They disputed whether
God Himself did not wear phylacteries.1 They represent Heaven as a
great Rabbinic school in which there are differences of opinion about
the Halacha. On one occasion, they assert there was a dispute in the
celestial academy about the minutise of a Levitic decision, and as the
Deity took one view while the angels took the opposite, it became neces
sary to summon the soul of Rabbi Bar Nachman. To him consequently
the Angel of Death is despatched. The Rabbi is asked his opinion, and
gives it on the side of the Almighty, who is represented — with a naivete
astonishing in its blasphemous arrogance — as highly pleased with the
result of the discussion !2
If then the Jews could still find space for the practice and idealisa
tion of their Levitism when scarcely one of its directions could be carried
out — if almost without an effort the schools of Jamnia and Tiberias and
Pumbeditha could transform their theocracy into a nomocracy, and their
theology into a Levitic scholasticism, we are hardly surprised to find that
the influence of old traditions was sufficiently strong, and especially
within the limits of the Holy Land, to keep alive the spirit of Jewish
Christianity. Far on into the fourth, and perhaps even down to the
fifth century, there continued to be not only " Genists," or Jews by race,
and "Masbotheans," who observed the Jewish Sabbath, and " Merists,"
who kept up a partial observance of* the Jewish Law,3 but also organised
Christian sects who although they were excluded from the bosom of the
orthodox Church, had a literature of their own — the ancient counterpart
of the modern " religious newspaper" — and not only maintained their
ground, but even displayed a wide-spread and proselytising activity.
a. The Nazarenes, as a distinctive sect, were the Jewish Christians
who did not remove from Pella when — if we may accept the ancient tra
dition — the fugitive Church of Jerusalem returned to .ZElia Capitolina,4
which no Jew was allowed to enter. But they existed much earlier, and
are to be regarded less as deliberate heretics than as imperfect, narrow-
minded, and unenlightened Christians. Epiphanius calls them " Jews,
and nothing else ; "5 but since they accepted the Epistles of St. Paul,
and acknowledged the true divinity of Christ,6 we may set aside his un
charitable description of them. If, as is probable, their views are repre
sented by the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, we can see that while
they clung with needless tenacity to the obsolete and the abrogated, this
was only the result of limited insight and national custom. Their re-
1 Bab. Berachoth, 6 a, 7 a (p. 240, Schwab). 2 Babha Metzia, 86, a.
3 Hegesippus, ap. Euseb. H. E. iv. 22, 4 Neander, Ch. Hist. i. 475.
3 Epiphan. Haer. xxx. 9.
c They are said, however, to have denied His Prse-existence (Euseb. H. E. iii. 27), but
we may class them with the -rbv 'IijcroCr d?ro8exop.eMK of Origen (c. Cels. v. 61). The reason.
why the early allusions to them are contradictory, is because the opinions of these "sub-
dichotomies of petty schisms " were doubtless ill-defined,
G G

498 THE EARLY DAYS' OF CHRISTIANITY.
version to the religion of the Patriarchs, as representing a purer and
more absolute religion than the Levitic system, is distinctly Pauline, and
they honestly accepted the faith of Christ.1 It has been inferred from
passages of this book that they held the view that Jesus only became a
Divine Being at His baptism, but the expressions used seem to be at
least capable pf a more innocent and orthodox interpretation.2
b. The Ebionites, on the other hand, were daringly heretical. They
rejected altogether the writings of St. Paul,3 and pursued his memory
for some generations with covert but virulent calumny. They insisted
on the necessity of circumcision and the universal validity of the Law.
They regarded Christ as a mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary,
justified only by his legal righteousness.4 To these views some of the
Ebionites — who died away as an obscure sect on the shores of the Dead
Sea — superadded ascetic notions and practices which they seem to have
borrowed from the Essenes.5 Hence, in all probability, was derived
their name of Ebionites, from the Hebrew word Ebion, "poor." The
error that there was such a person as Ebion was due to Epiphanius,
who calls him a "successor of Cerinthus."6 The assertion that they
were called " paupers " because they thought " meanly and poorly " of
Christ, was merely a way of turning their name into a reproach.7 The
Elcesaites, or followers of Elxai, who were Ebionites with Essene and
Gnostic admixtures, were never more than a small and uninfluential sect.
By the time when St. John wrote his Gospel and Epistles, the
question of circumcision, and all the most distinctively Judaic con
troversies, had ceased to be discussed. They had, at any rate, lost all
significance for the Church in general. The Nazarenes and Ebionites
had at best but a local influence. Even the Nicolaitans are charged,
not with heresy, but with immoral practices, and with teaching indiffer
ence to idolatry by the ostentatious and indiscriminate eating of meats
offered to idols.8 This tendency to Antinomianism was the natural
result and the appropriate Nemesis of that extravagant legal rigorism
to which the Judaists strove to subjugate the Church.
2. The two heresiarchs who came into most dangerous prominence
1 See Neander, Ch. Hist. ii. 19—21 ; Mansel, Gnostic Heresies, pp. 123—128; Light
foot, Galatians, pp. 298—301 ; Ritschl, Altkath. Kirche, pp. 152, seq.
2 Test. XII. Patr., Levi, 18; Simeon, 7.
3 Orig. c. Ccls. v. ad Jin.
4 Hence Marius Mercator calls them Homuncionitae (Refut. anath. Nestor. 12), and
Lactantius Anthropiani (Instt. iv. ad fin.).
5 Tert. De Cam. Christi, 14 ; De Praescr. 33, 48 ; Philastr. Haer. 37 ; Aug. de
Haer. 16.
6 Dial. c. Lucifer. 8 ; Ps. Tert. Append, de Praesa: 48.
7 Euseb. H. E. iii. 27.
8 On the Nicolaitans see notes on Rev. ii. 6, 14, 15. An account of them, taken from
Iren. Haer. i. 27, iii. 11 ; Euseb. H. E. iii. 29 ; Epiphan. Haer. xxv. 1 ; Clem. Alex.
Strom, ii. 20, iii. 4, will be found in Ittigius, De Haeresiarchis, 1. 9, § 4; Mosheim, De
rebus Christ, ii. 69. They, like other sects, are charged with cloaking licentious habits
under specious names (Clem. Alex. Strom, iii. 4 ; Constt. Apost. vi. 8 ; Ignat. Ep. ad
Trail, and ad Philad.).

SIMON MAGUS. 499
in the Apostolic age are Simon Magus and Cerinthus. If any credit
can be given to the vague and much-confused traditions as to their
tenets, it is clear that those tenets, at least initheir germ, were strongly
and directly condemned in several of the Epistles.
a. Of Simon Magus, " the hero of the rpmance of heresy," little is
known which is not legendary. In the Acts of the Apostles1 we find
him in the position of a successful impostor in Samaria, where the
whole population, amazed by his sorceries, accepted his assertion that
he was " the Power of God which is called Great." He was baptised
by Philip, but proved the hollowness of his religion by being guilty of
the first act of the sin which from him is called " simony " — he
endeavoured " to purchase the gift of God with money." According to
the high authority of Justin Martyr — who was himself a Samaritan —
Simon was a native of Gitton in Samaria.2 Josephus, in calling him a
Cypriote (if he be speaking of the same person), may have confused
Gitton with Citium in Cyprus.3 Felix made use of his iniquitous
agency in inveigling from her husband the.Herodian princess Drusilla.4
He is the subject of many wild and monstrous legends. He is said to
have been a pupil of a certain Dositheus, and to have fallen in love
with his concubine Luna (Selene or Helena). When Dositheus wished
to beat him he found that the stick passed through his body as through
smoke.5 The " sorceries " which he practised are said to have consisted
in passing through mountains and through fire, making bread of stones,
breathing flames, and turning himself into various shapes. With the
money that he offered to St. Peter he purchased as his slave and
partner a woman of Tyre named Helena.6 Hence his followers are
called by Celsus Heleniani Irenseus says7 "that he carried this
woman about with him, calling her his first Conception (Ennoia) and
the mother of all things. Descending to the lower world, she had
produced the angels and powers by which the lower world was made,
and had been by them imprisoned and degraded. She had been Helen
of Troy, and in her fallen condition was " the lost sheep," whom he had
recovered. He himself, though not a man, became a man to set her
free. His adherents, he declared, had no need to fear the lower angels
and powers which made the world, but they might live as they pleased,
and would be saved by resting their hopes on him and on her. Later
on he is said to have gone to Rome, and to have met with his end in an
attempt to fly, which was defeated by the prayers of St. Peter and
St. Paul.8
1 Acts viii. 2 Just. Mart. Apol. i. 26.
3 Jos. Antt. xviii. 5 ; xx. 7, § 2. Euseb. H. E. ii. 13.
4 See Life and Work of St. Paul, ii. 341.
5 Constt. Apost. vi. 8 ; Clem. Recogn. ii. 31.
6 Clem. Recogn. ii. 31 ; Niceph. H. E. ii. 27.
< Iren. Haer. i. 23 ; ii. 9, and comp. Hippol. Ref. Haer. vi. 19 ; Tert. De Anima, 34 ;
Epiphan. Haer. xxv. 4 ; Theodoret, Haer. Fab. i. 1.
8 Hippolytus says that he was buried — promising to rise again (Ref. Haer. vi. 26).

500 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
It is clear that Simon Magus was not only a heresiarch, but also
a false Christ or antichrist. His notions were partly Jewish and
Alexandrian. Philo had spoken of "Powers" of God, of which the
greatest was the Logos. According to Jerome, Simon used to say, " I
am the word of God, I am beautiful, I am the Paraclete, I am the
Almighty, I am the all things of God;"1 and Irenseus says that he
spoke of having appeared to the Jews as the Son, to the Samaritans as
the Father, and to the Gentiles as the Holy Spirit. Hippolytus gives
an account of his opinions from a book called The Great Announcement
(Apophasis Megale), which, though it can hardly be his, may be
supposed to express the views of his followers. The views there stated
resemble those of the later Gnostics and Kabbalists. The " Indefinite
Power " is described as Fire and Silence. This Fire has two natures,
the source respectively of the Intelligible and the Sensible Universe.
The world was generated by three pairs of roots or principles — namely,
Mind and Consciousness, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Thought ;
and the Power in these roots is manifested as " he who stands," or who
shall stand — by which he seems to mean himself as the perfect man.
It is clear that in these roots we see the germ of the Gnostic Aeons and
the Kabbalistic Sephiroth — the object of which, like that of every
Gnostic system of emanations, was to separate God as far as possible
from man and from matter. The inmost conception of Gnosticism is
contradicted — its very basis is overthrown — by the words of St. John's
Gospel, " The Word became flesh."
b. The name of Cerinthus is less mixed up with fantastic legends ;
but the accounts given of his views are full of uncertainty and contra
diction, and seem to show that he was one of those who " wavered like
a wave of the sea," and was tossed about by every wind of doctrine.
Thus it is that he mixed up Millenarianism and other Judaic elements
with fancies which were afterwards developed by the most anti-Judaic
Gnostics.2 Thus, too, he has been credited with the authorship of the
Apocalypse, though, in accordance with early Church tradition, he was
the very teacher against whom the later writings of St. John were
specially aimed.3
Of his personal life scarcely anything is known. It is conjectured
that he must have been a Jew by birth, but he had evidently been
As to this legend — which (as we have seen) may have sprung from the attempt of an
actor taking the part of Icarus (Suet. Ner. 12) — Irenseus, Tertullian, and Eusebius are
silent. It is found in Arnobius, adv. Gent. ii. 12, and with many varying details in the
Apostolic Constitutions (vi. 9) ; Ambrose (Hexaem. iv. 8) ; Sulp. Severus (ii. 41) ;
Egesippus (De Excid. Hierosol. iii. 2), etc., as well as in Cedrenus, Nicephorus, Glycas,
etc. I have already alluded to the mistake which led Justin Martyr to suppose that he
was worshipped at Rome (Apol. 11, 69, 91 ; Tert. Apol. 13).
1 Jer. in Matt. xxiv. 5.
2 The assertion of Philastrius (Haer. 36) and Epiphanius (Haer. xxviii. 2) that he
was the person who stirred up the dispute about circumcision at Jerusalem (Acts ix. ), is
an unchronological guess.
3 Jer. Cat. Script. 9, and so too Irenseus, etc

CERINTHUS. 501
trained in Egypt,1 and he certainly taught, in Asia. The name
i/erinthus, which is sometimes given him, is probably a nickname, since
the word means "a cord." But even his date is uncertain. He is
usually believed to have taught in the old age of St. John ; but
Tertullian places him after Karpokrates, who did not flourish till the
reign of Hadrian, a.d. 117.
His errors, as noticed by Irenseus,2 are as follows : —
(1). He declared that the world was made by a Virtue or Power far
inferior to the Essential Divinity.
(2). That the human Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was the
son of Joseph and Mary, and that he only differed from men in supreme
goodness. (3). That the Divine Christ only descended upon Jesus at His
baptism ;3 and —
(4). That, when Jesus suffered, the Divine Christ flew back into
His Pleroma, being Himself incapable of suffering.4
Besides these errors, he is said to have regarded Jesus as a teacher
only, not as a redeemer ; to have rejected the Epistles of St. Paul ; and
to have sanctioned the practice of being baptised for the dead.
Even from these glimpses we can see that he did not exactly deny
the Divinity of Christ. The first who is said to have done this was
Theodotus of Byzantium.5 But Cerinthus was evidently actuated by
the Gnostic desire to remove as far as possible the notion of any con
tact, much more any intercommunion, between God and Matter. Now,
the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation cut at the root of the
Alexandrian and Gnostic fancies that Matter was evil, and that God
was so infinitely removed from man that he could hold no immediate
communion with him. It was the fatal system of Dualism which led
to so many heresies. It was the cause of Ebionism, which denied
Christ's Divinity altogether ; of Docetism, which maintained that the
body of Jesus was purely phantasmal and unreal ;6 and it probably lay
at the base of Nestorianism, which lost sight of the indivisible union
of the human and the Divine in the one God-man. Cerinthus, like
1 Hippolyt. Ref. Haer. vii. 33 ; Theodoret, Haer. Fab. ii. 3.
2 Haer. i. 26.
3 This view was afterwards elaborated by Bardesanes. Valenthms, on the other
hand, taught that the body of Christ was celestial, but merely passed through the Virgin
without partaking of her nature.
4 Epiphanius and Theodoret repeat this testimony of Irenseus, and say that Cerinthus
attributed the miracles of Jesus to Christ, whom he represented as identical with the
Holy Spirit. Jesus was to Cerinthus only "the earthly Christ," or "the Christ below"
(6 koto) Xpioro;), while the Divine Christ was " the Christ above " (o avu> Xpiords).
5 Euseb. H. E. v. 28.
6 Clemens of Alexandria (Strom, iii. 13) ascribes the invention of Docetism to Julius
Cassianus, a.d. 173, but it is clear that the germs of it existed long before, and are even
found, as Hippolytus says (Ref. Haer. vi. 14), in Simon Magus. It was taught in the
Apocryphal Gospel of Peter (Euseb. H. E. vi. 23), which was perhaps forged by Leucius,
a disciple of Maroion, about A.D. 140. The Docetae were also called Phantasiasts and
Opinarians.

502 THE' EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
other Gnostics of Egyptian training, denied the hypostatic and eternal
union of the two natures in Christ. He taught that Christ alone was
the Son of God, and that until His baptism, and at His crucifixion,
Jesus was an ordinary man. In the one pregnant expression of St.
John, he " loosed " or " disintegrated Jesus."1
Views essentially similar to these are found in all the Gnostic
systems.2 They all sprang from speculations about the origin of evil,
and about the method of bridging over the chasm between absolute
and finite being. Since they identified evil with matter, they led at
once to a Manichean dualism ; and it was only by inventing elaborate
series of hermaphrodite pairs of aeons or emanations that they could
imagine any communication of God's will to man.3 They were all
influenced by the Platonised Judaism of Philo 4 and the Alexandrians,
as well as by Persian and other Oriental elements of thought.5 But
the deadliness of their system revealed itself in many and in opposite
forms. It exalted an imaginary knowledge above a pure and unso
phisticated faith. It mistook a terminology for a creed. It confused
a manipulation of words with a removal of difficulties. It puffed up
its followers with an inflated sense that they were an intellectual
aristocracy, possessed of an esoteric teaching which elevated them
far above their simple brethren. The doctrine of the inlierent evil of
matter, and the confusion of "the body" with "the flesh," drove the
Gnostics either into an extravagant ascetism, which destroyed the body
without controlling it, or into Antinomian license, which destroyed it
in the opposite way by shameful self-indulgence. This they excused
either on the plea that to the true Gnostic the spiritual was everything,
and that anything which his body did was of no moment, since it did
not affect his true self ; or by arguing that the moral law was only the
work of the evil or inferior Demiurge.6 In both extremes they con
fused the true nature of sin, turned religion and morality into curious
1 See infra, p. 557.
2 The name Gnostic — "one who knows" — was first adopted by the Naassenes or
Ophites, "alleging that they alone knew the depths" (Hippol. Haer. v. 6). Irenseus
(ap. Euseb. H. E. iv. 7), calls Karpokrates " the father of the heresy which is called that
of the Gnostics" (comp. id. Haer. i. 25, 6; see Lipsius, Gnosticismus, p. 48). The
original sources for the history of Gnosticism are to be found in Irenseus (adv. Haa-eses),
Tertullian (adv. Marcionem, De Praescr. Haereticorum, and Scorpiace), Epiphanius (adv.
Haereses), and passages of Clemens Alex, and Origen, and Hippolytus Philosophumena.
Por modern treatises, see Beausobre (Hist, du ManicMisme), Matter, Hist, du Gnosti-
cisme), Burton (Inquiry into Heresies of the Apostolic Age), Mansel (Gnostic Heresies) , and
Baur (Die Christ. Gnosis). See too Milman, History of Christianity, ii. 6S ; Robertson,
Ch. Hist. i. 31 ; Neander, Ch. Hist. ii. 82 ; Gieseler, Ch. Hist. i. 114 ; Burton, Bampt.
Lect. iv., etc Later treatises are Ad. Harnack, Quellen d. Gesch. d. Gnost. (1873) ; Lip
sius, Quellen d. alt. Ketzergesch. 1875.
3 So Plato, in the Timaeus, said that it was the function of the subordinate gods " to
weave the mortal to the immortal."
4 "Haereticorum patriarchae philosophi " (Tert. adv. Hermog. 8); "Plato omnium
haereticorum condimentarius " (De Anim. 23).
5 Some of the Gnostics referred to Zoroaster. Porphyr. Vit. Plotin. 10.
6 Clemens Alex. (Strom, iii. p. 529) points out that they taught extravagant asceticism
(vireprovov eyKpaTeiav), or moral indifferentism (dfita^opws £jjv).

THE FULNESS OF CHRIST. 503
questions, placed salvation in systems of metaphysics, and by vain
speculation and verbal analyses lost sight of the practical answer which
Christianity had giyen to all the deepest problems of human life.
These errors existed in their germs from a very early period. We
often hear the voice of St. Paul raised in warning respecting them,
especially in the Epistles to the- Colossians and Ephesians, and in the
later Epistles. Against their Antinomian developments we have the
strong denunciations of St. Jude. But St. John lived at a time when
they had acquired a more definite consistency. He saw and he declared
that all of them began or ended with a denial of Christ, or with errors
as to His nature. He discountenanced alike their exaggerated spiri
tuality and the carnality into which it passed. He erected a bulwark
against them all in those inspired words which contain the essence of
all the truths which are most precious to Christianity, and which form
the Prologues of his Gospel and First Epistle. He regards them all "as
forms of Antichrist. He who denies that Jesus is the Christ the Son
of God — in other words, who asserts, as Cerinthus did, that the historical
Man Jesus was not in the fullest sense Divine — is an Antichrist in a
far different sense than Nero was, and yet in a true sense. St. John
tells us this in his usual way, both positively and negatively.1 He tells
us that Jesus is the Christ, and the son of God, and that the Divine
Eternal Being tabernacled in human flesh.2 He says, in every possible
form of words, that Jesus is Christ ; that Christ is Jesus ; that Jesus
is Divine — that Jesus is not a separate being from the Son of God, but
indistinguishable from Him. The Gnostics made the Divine " come
and go to Jesus like a bird through the air," but St. John testifies
throughout Gospel and Epistles, as he had also done, though with less
absolute distinctness, in the Apocalypse, that the Divine became Human,
and dwelt in our Humanity indivisibly.3 The Eternal Son of God not
only filled the whole person of Jesus, which is Himself, but also filled
all believers — who are born of God, not of "the will of the flesh."
He fills all life and death and resurrection with Divine life and glory.
Yet while thus protesting alike against Psilanthropia — the Ebionite
doctrine that Christ was a mere man — and against Docetism, and
against the Dualistic theories of incipient Manichees, and against all
severing of the Person of Jesus into a Man who is not God, or a God
who refuses to be a man — he at the same time makes it clear that he
does not identify religion with orthodoxy, but places true religion in
love to God shown by love to man. The self-satisfaction of a super
cilious orthodoxy which might at any time soar into Pharisaic asceticism,
or sink into reckless immorality, is confronted with the assurance — Oh
that in all ages the Christian Church had better understood it, and
taken it more deeply to heart ! — that " he who saith I know God, and
i 1 John ii. 18, 22 ; iv. 3, 15 ; v. 1, 10.
2 1 John iv. 2, 3 ; 2 John 7.
3 See Eeim, Jesu von Nazara, Introd. II, f.

504 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
keepeth not His commandments," were he ten-times-over orthodox in
his asserted knowledge, is yet " a liar, and the truth is not in him ; '"¦
and that " he who loveth not, knoweth not God ; for God is love."2

CHAPTER XXXI.
LATER WRITINGS OF ST. JOHN.

"Sumtis pennia aquilaa et ad altiora festinans de Verbo Dei disputat." — Jeb.
ed Matt. , Proem.
' ' Transcendit nubes, transcendit virtutes coelorum, transcendit angeios, et
Verbum in principio repperit." — Ambros. Prol. in Luc.
Apart from its own beauty and importance, the Epistle of St. John
derives a special interest from the fact that it is the latest utterance of
Apostolic inspiration. It is addressed to Churches which by the close
of the first century had advanced to a point of development far beyond
that contemplated by St. Paul in his earlier Epistles. Many of the old
questions which had raged between Judaisers and Paulinists had
vanished into the back-ground. The Gospel had spread far and wide.
It had become self-evident that nothing could be more futile than to
confine those waters of the River of God in the narrow channels of
Jewish particularism. The fall of Jerusalem had illuminated as with
a lightning flash the darkness of obstinacy and prejudice. It had
proved the inadequacy of the Pharisaic ideal of "righteousness," and
the ignorance of the system which proclaimed itself to be the only
orthodoxy. The liberty for which St. Paul had battled all his life long
against storms of hatred and of persecution, had now been finally
achieved. St. John himself had advanced to a standpoint of know
ledge far beyond that of the days when he had lived among the Elders
of the Church which was dominated by the views and example of. St.
James. He had learnt the full meaning of those words of the Lord to
the woman of Samaria, that the day should come in which men should
worship the Father neither on Gerizim or in Jerusalem but everywhere,
and acceptably, if they worshipped in spirit and in truth. On the other
hand, new and dangerous errors had arisen. Christianity had come
into contact with Greek philosophy and Eastern speculation. Men
were no longer interested in such questions as whether they need be
circumcised ; or to what extent their consciences need be troubled by
distinctions between clean and unclean meats ; or whether they were to
place the authority of James or Kephas above that of Paul ; or what
was the real position to be assigned to the gift of tongues ; or whether
i 1 John ii. 4. 2 1 John iv. 8.

FRESH QUESTIONS. 505
the dead in Christ were to lose any of the advantages which would be
granted at His second return to the living. All such questions had
received their solution in the Epistles of St. Paul. Christians as a
body were by this time fully acquainted with his arguments, and
acquiesced in them all the more unhesitatingly because they had been
stamped with irrefragable sanction by the course of History. All men
could see the rejection of the once chosen people. Far different were
the questions which now agitated the minds of Christian thinkers.
They were questions of a more abstract character, relating above all
to the nature of Christ. Was He, as the Ebionites maintained, a mere
man? Was He, as Cerinthus argued, a twofold personality, the Eternal
Christ and the sinless Jesus, united only between the Baptism and the
Crucifixion ? 1 Or, was He, again, as the intellectual precursors of the
Docetse were beginning to suggest, a man in semblance only — who had
but lived in the phantasm of an earthly life ? Nay more, men were
beginning to speculate about the nature of God Himself. Could God
be regarded as the author of evil1? Must it not be supposed, as the
Manichees subsequently argued, that there were two Gods — one the
supreme and illimitable Deity belonging to regions infinitely above
"the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men call earth," the other
a limited and imperfect Demiurge ? Again, what was the relation
between these questions and the duties of daily life ? Christians were
free from the Law ; that was a truth which St. Paul had proved. But
was there any fundamental distinction between the authority on which
rested the ceremonial and the moral law? Might they not regard them
selves as free from the rules of morality, as well as from the routine of
Levitism? Was not faith enough ? If men believed rightly on God and
on His Son Jesus Christ, would He greatly care as to how they lived ?
So argued the Antinomians, and many of them were prepared to carry
their arguments from theory into practice. Such, then, were the
errors which it became the special mission of St. John to counteract.
But he does not counteract them controversially. The method of
Pauline dialectics was entirely unsuited to his habit of mind. That
method in its due time and place was absolutely necessary. It met
the doubts of men in the intellectual region in which they had origi
nated. It broke down their objections with the same weapons by
which they Tiad been maintained. But when that work was done there
was another way to bring home the truth to the conviction of the uni
versal Church. It was by witness, by spiritual appeal, by the state
ment of personal experience, by the lofty language of inspired authority.
Hence the method which St. John adopts is not polemical but irenical.
He overthrows error by the irresistible presentation of counter truths.
In the Gospel, as Keim says, he counteracted heresy thetically, in the
1 Iren. Haer. xi. 7. "Qui autem Jesum separant a Christo et impassibilem per-
severasse Christum, passum vero Jesum dicunt ..."

606 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Epistles antithetically ; in other words, in the Gospel he lays down
positive truths, in the Epistles he states those truths in sharp contrast
with the opposing errors. To those who moved in the atmosphere of
controversy " difficulties " loomed large and portentous all around the
doctrines of the Church. St. John dealt with those difficulties from a
region so elevated and serene that to all who reached his point of view
they shrank into insignificance. At the heights whence he gazed men
might learn to see the grandeur of the ocean, and to think little of the
billows, and nothing of the ripples upon its surface. Hence it has been
a true Christian instinct which has assigned to St. John the symbol of
" the eagle," in the four-fold cherub of the Gospel-chariot. The eagle
which sails, in the azure deep of air "does not worry itself how to cross
the streams." Dante, in the- Par adiso, showed no little insight when
he called him " Christ's own eagle," and when he describes the outlines
of his form as lost in the dazzling light by which he is encircled. "The
central characteristic of his nature is intensity — intensity of thought,
word; insight, life. He regards everything on its divine side. For him
the eternal is already  He sees the past and- the future
gathered up in the manifestation of the Son of God. This was the one
fact in which the hope of the world lay. Of this he had himself been
assured by the evidence of sense and thought. This he was constrained
to proclaim: 'We have seen and do testify.' He had no laboured
process to go through ; he saw. He had no constructive proof to
develop ; he bore witness. His source of knowledge was direct, and
his mode of bringing conviction was to affirm." 2 His whole style and
tone of thought is that of " the bosom disciple."2
Thus then the one consummate truth which St. John had to offer to
the gathering doubts and perplexities of all unfaithful hearts was the
Incarnation of the Divine. This is the central object of all faith. This
is the one counteraction of all unbelief.
And by the manner in which he set forth this truth — by this pre
sentation to the world of " the spiritual Gospel " 3 — he at once obeyed the
Divine impulse of inspiration which came to him, and met the natural
wishes which the Church had earnestly expressed. The tradition which
records that he was urged to write his Gospel by the Elders and Bishops
of the Church,4 is one which has every mark of probability. The gene
ration of the Apostles was rapidly passing away. St. John had now long
exceeded the ordmary limits of human age. The day would very soon
1 Westcott, St. John, p. xxxv.
2 This title (° fcrumjSios) was given to St. John as early as the second century. It is
found (6 eirl t!> (TrriSos toO KupuSv ivajreo-iiv) in Polycrates, Bp. of Ephesus (see Routh, Rei.
Sacr. i. 15, 37, 370) and Iren. c. Haer. iii. 1, 1.
3 Clem. Alex. ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 14.
4 " Impelled by his friends " (Clem. Alex. I.e.). The legend is, that on being re
quested to write the Gospel, he asked the Ephesian elders to join him in fasting, and'
then suddenly exclaimed, as if inspired, "In the beginning was the Word" (Jer.de
Virr. Hlustr. 29). Irenseus only says that he was asked to write the Gospel (Haer.
iii. 1).

NEED FOR THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 507
come when not a single human being could say of the Lord " I saw."
But he could still say this ; he had not only seen and heard and gazed
upon and handled the Word of Life, but had even been the beloved
disciple of the Son of Man. The facts of the life of Jesus had been
recorded by the three Synoptists. What the world now needed was
some guide into the full and unspeakable significance of those facts.
Who was so fit to give it as St. John, nay, who besides him was even
capable of giving it with authority ? He had hitherto written nothing
but the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse had indeed depicted the glory of
the Eternal Christ, but it was a book of peculiar character ; it was full
of symbols ; it was difficult of interpretation ; it was based on the
imagery and prophecies of the Old Testament ; it was full of storm and
stress. It was the Book of Battle, the Book of the Wars of the Lord ;
it portrayed the struggles of the Church with the hostile forces of the
Jewish and Gentile world; and its celestial visions were interposed
between scenes of judgment,
" As when some mighty painter dips
His pencil in the hues of earthquake and eclipse."
There Were, morever, many Christian doctrines on which the Apoca
lypse did not touch, and, above all, it had been written before that
Divine event which had evidently been the beginning of a new epoch in
the history of Christianity. In the final removal of the candlestick of
Judaism, the Christian Church had rightly seen the primary fulfilment of
those prophecies which had spoken of the Immediate Coming of the Lord.
To all the living members of the Church, that stupendous event had
set the seal of God to the revelation of the New Covenant. It was the
obvious close of the epoch which had begun at 'Sinai. It was the ex
tinction of the Aaronic in order to establish the Melchizedek Priesthood.
It had rendered the system of Jewish sacrifices impossible, in order to
show that the one true sacrifice had now once for all been offered. It
had been the burning desecration of the sin-stained Temple in order
that men might see in the Church of God the new and spiritual Jerusa
lem which had no need of any temple therein, because the body of every
true believer was the spiritual temple of the one God. But to St. John
especially that event' had come as with a burst of light. It had been,
perhaps, the greatest step since the death of Christ in that education for
the sake of which his life had been so long preserved. The oral teaching
of the Apostle must have been sufficient to show that the gradual revela
tion which had so long been going on within him had now reached its
fulness. The light which had begun to pulse in the Eastern sky over
the banks of Jordan had shone more and more towards the perfect
day. Was this teaching to be lost to the world for ever ? Was it only
to be entrusted to the shifting imperfections of oral tradition ? Was it
to be but half apprehended by the simplicity, or misrepresented by the
limitations, of ' such men as Papias and Irenseus J How little had the

508 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Synoptists detailed respecting the Judsean ministry of which St. John so
often spoke ! They had not recorded the earliest call of the disciples nor
the raising of Lazarus, nor the washing of the Apostles' feet. They had
reported some of the public sermons of Jesus, but they had not preserved
any memorial of such private discourses as that to Nicodemus and the
woman of Samaria, or as those Divine farewells delivered at the Last
Supper. Nor, again, had they spoken of Christ's prse-existence ; nor
had they used that title of " the Word," which was now so frequently on
the lips of St. John, and to which he gave such pregnant significance ;
nor did they furnish a final insight into the two natures in the one
Person of the Son of Man.
ilt was true, indeed, as the Elders and Bishops who urged their
request upon St. John would at once have admitted, that as regards the
divinity and atoning work of Christ, the knowledge of the Church had
been greatly widened and systematised by the teachings of St. Paul. He
had brought into clear light the truth that Jesus was not only the
Messiah of the Jews, the Prophet, Priest, and King, but that He was
the Incarnate Son of God, the eternal Saviour of the World ; that only
by faith in Him could we be justified ; that the true life of the believer
is merged in absolute union with Him ; and that because He has risen
we also shall rise.
Yet none could have listened to St. John in his latter years without
feeling that, while he accepted the doctrines of St. Paul, he had himself,
in the course of a longer life, enjoyed more of that teaching which comes
to us from the Spirit of God in the lessons of History. Whilst he gave
no new commandment, and had no new revelation to announce, he yet
stamped with the impress of finality the great truths which St. Paul had
taught. There is not a single doctrine in the writings of St. John which
may not be found implicitly and even explicitly in the writings of St.
Paul ; and yet — to give but two instances out of many — the Church
would have been indefinitely the loser had she not received the inheri
tance of sayings so supreme, so clear, and so final as these of St. John, —
" The Father sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world," and
" We are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This
is the true God and eternal life."1
No one, again, had yet uttered such clear words respecting the
Divinity and Humanity indissolubly yet distinctly united in the Person
of Christ as those which are contained in the Prologue to the Gospel
and the opening address of the Epistle and which are concentrated in
the four words, " The Word became flesh." No one had so briefly sum
marised the Atoning and x Mediatorial work of Christ, as, " He is the
Propitiation* for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the Whole
World!" Indeed, as they listened to the white-haired Apostle, men must have
1 1 John v. 20. 2 1 John ii. 2 ; itaojuSs, a unique expression of St. John.

TEACHING OF ST. JOHN. 509
felt that there was something in his manner of exposition which tended
to remove all difficulties, to solve all apparent antinomies. Take, for
instance, the apparent contradiction between the terms used by St. Paul
and St. James as to Righteousness b}' Faith and Righteousness by
Works. Would it not cease to be a difficulty — was not the controversy
lifted to a higher region — when they heard such words as, " He that
doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous," in connexion
with, " Whoso keepeth His word, in them verily is the love of God per
fected, and every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him ; " and,
" Behold what and hoio great love God hath given us that we should be
called the children of God " ? Or, again, if men felt the difficulties
which rise from the forensic and sacrificial aspects of the Atonement, how
would they feel that the forgiveness in the Court, and the cleansing in
the Temple, was simplified when it was mingled with the thoughts of the
perfection of our sonship in union with the Son of God, and indicated in
terms so sublimely final as,
" If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in its. But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness " ?
The expressions of the New Testament which describe the privileges
of the Christian estate fall into three classes, of which one revolves
around the word Righteousness ; another round the word Sonship ; a
third around metaphors expressive of Sacrifice. Now let the reader
study the First Epistle of St. John, from ii. 29 to iii. 5, and he will find
the order there — Righteousness (ii. 29), Sonship (iii. 1), Sanctification
(iii. 2 — 5) ; but the three are one. The terms of the Court, the House
hold and the Temple confirm and illustrate each other. Jesus Christ —
the Righteous, the Son of the Father, the Holy One — presides, in the
glory of His holiness, over all and over each.1

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE STAMP OF FINALITY ON THE WRITINGS OF ST. JOHN.
" Aquila ipse est Johannes, sublimium prsedicator, et lucis interna} atque
aeternas iixis oculis contemplator." — Aug. in Joh., Tract. 36.
It is in ways like these — by the use of expressions at once larger and
simpler, more comprehensive and more easily intelligible ; expressions
which transcend controversy because they are the synthesis of the com
plementary truths which controversy forces into antithesis — that St.
John, the last writer of the New Testament, in traversing the whole
1 I owe this thought to Dr. Pope's excellent Introduction to his translation of Haupt's
First Epistle of St. John, p. xxxi.

510 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
field of Christian theology, sets the seal of perfection on all former
doctrine. This is exactly what we should have desired to find in the
last treatises of inspired revelation. And one remarkable peculiarity of
his method is that he indicates the deepest truths even respecting those
points of doctrine on which he does not specifically dwell. Thus, he
does not dwell on the explanation (if the term may be allowed) of
Christ's atonement ; he does not offer any theory as to the reason for
the necessity or efficacy of Christ's death ; yet he involves all the
teaching of St. Paul and of Apollos in the words, that " Christ is the
propitiation for our sins and for the whole world," and that " the blood
of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." He does not use the words
" mediator between God and man," but he sets forth, with a clearness
never before attained, that our mediator is God and Man. He does not
contrast God's love with His justice, but he shows that love and
propitiation were united in the antecedent will of God. He does not
work out the details of Christology, but he so pervades his Gospel and
Epistle with the thought that " the Word was God," and that " without
Him was not anything made that was made,"1 as to produce a
Christological impression, sublimer even than that which we derive from
the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. He does not dwell on
' the sacraments, and yet in his few words on the witness of the Water,
and on the Bread of Life, he brings out their deepest significance. He
does not develop the reasons for the rejection of the Chosen People
after the grandeur of their past mission ; but he illustrates both no less
fully than the Epistles to the Romans and the Hebrews, when, in his
Gospel, he contrasts, step by step, the unbelief of the Jews with the
faith of the disciples, and yet records the expression of Christ's eulogy
"an Israelite indeed." He records Christ's saying to the Woman of
Samaria, that salvation— the salvation of which all the Prophets had
spoken — was from the Jews ;2 and, in his own words, he writes of
Christ's coming to the Jews as a coming to " His own people and His
own house."3 Once more, St. John nowhere enters into any formal
statements about the Triune God ; yet in whose writings do we see
more fully than in his the illustration of St. Augustine's saying, " Ubi
amor ibi Trini/as," when we hear him say that " God is Love," and that
" God is Light ; " and that in Christ was Light, and that Light was the
Life of Men ; and that all Christians have an unction from the Holy
One, and that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ ?
But there are three points in the last writings of St. John which
more especially stamp his teaching with the mark of finality.
1. 'The first of these is the new and marvellous light which he
throws on the Idea of Eternity.
The use of the word aionios, and of its Hebrew equivalent, olam,
1 "These words, taken in their widest significance, constitute the signature of the
Johannsean writings " (Haupt). 2 John iv. 22, rj a-onripia ix top 'loySaiiav iariv,
8 John i. 11, oi Wioi . . . tA Mia. Comp. John xix. 27.

ETERNAL LIFE. 511
throughout the whole of Scripture, ought to have been sufficient to prove
to every thoughtful and unbiassed student that it altogether transcends
the thoroughly vulgar and unmeaning conception of "endless."
Nothing, perhaps, tends to prove more clearly the difficulty of eradi
cating an error that has once taken deep and agelong root in the minds
of "theologians" than the fact that it should still be necessary to prove
that the word eternal, far from being a mere equivalent for " ever
lasting," never means " everlasting " at all, except by reflexion from the
substantives to which it is joined ; that it is only joined to those
substantives because it connotes ideas which transcend all time ; that to
make it mean nothing but time endlessly prolonged is to degrade it by
filling it with a merely relative conception which it is meant to super
sede, and by emptying it of all the highest conceptions which it
properly includes. I am well aware that this truth will, for some time,
be repeated in vain. But, once more, I repeat that if by aionios St.
John had meant " endless " when he speaks of " aeonian life," there was
the perfectly commonplace and unambiguous word akatalutos, used by
Apollos in Heb. v. 6, and there were at least five or six other adjectives
or expressions which were ready to his hand. But the Life which had
been manifested, which he had seen, to which he was bearing witness,
which stood in relation to the Father, and was manifested to us,1 was
something infinitely higher than a mere " endless " life. The life — if
mere living be life — of the most doomed and apostate of the human
race — the life even of the devil and his angels — is an "endless" living,
if we hold that man and evil spirits are immortal. But by qualifying
the divine life by the epithet " eternal " (aionios) St. John meant, not
ah endless life (though it is also endless), but a spiritual life, the life
which is in God, and which was manifested by Christ to us. By calling
it aionios he meant to imply, not — which was a very small and accidental-
part of it — its unbroken continuance, but its ethical quality. The life
is "endless," not because it is the infinite extension of time, but
because it is the absolute antithesis of time ; and aionios expresses its
internal quality, not as something which can be measured by infinite
tickings of the clocks, but as something incommensurable by all clocks,
were they to tick for ever. The horologe of earth, as Bengel profoundly
expresses it, is no measure for the aeonologe of heaven. The meaning
of " eternal " ought long ago to have been vindicated from its popular
degradation. St. John is the last of all Scripture writers who uses it ;
he alone of all Scripture writers defines it ; and he makes it consist not
in idle duration, but in progressive knowledge. In defining it, he says
that it is the gift of Christ, " and that the eternal life is this, that they
may know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou sendest, even
Jesus Christ."2
i John i. 2.
3 John xvii. 2, 3. Literally " that they may be learning to know " — not so much the
possession of a completed life as of a life whioh is advancing to completion.

512 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
For thus we see at once, that in the mind of St. John eternal life is
an antithesis not to the temporal, but to the Seen j1 that it is not a life
which shall be, but one that, for the believer, now IS : that " every one
who beholdeth the Son has — not shall have, but has — eternal life ; "2
that " he who hath the Son, hath the life " here and now ; and that one
of the objects why St. John wrote at all was that they might know that
they had it.3 He who will lay aside bigotry and factiousness and news
paper theology, and will sincerely meditate on these passages, will see
how unfortunate is the antique and vulgar error as to the meaning of
this word. If a man be incapable of seeing this, or unwilling to admit
it, for such a man reasoning is vain.4
2. Another mark of finality is St. John's teaching about the Logos,
or Word. In the Epistle he enters into no details or description
respecting the nature and Person of the Logos ; and yet — in accordance
with that peculiarity of his method which we have already noticed —
the doctrine of the Logos, as the source of all life, is the fundamental
matter and pith of the Epistle.5 This, we may remark in passing, is-
one of the indications that the Epistle was a didactic accompaniment of
the Gospel. But in the use of the Logos as a distinct name of Christ
St. John stands alone. Other Apostles — St. Paul, St. James, and,
above all, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews — seem to hover on
the verge of it ; but they do not actually use' much less do they insist
on it ; and when they approach it they are thinking always of the
Divinity more than of the Humanity— of the glorified, Eternal Christ,
and not immediately of the man Christ Jesus. Other writers, again,
both Hebrew and Hellenistic, had employed terms which bore some
resemblance to it, but not one had infused into it the significance which
makes it a concentration of the Johannine Gospel. Philo had repeatedly
dwelt on the term, and surrounded it with Divine attributes ; but Philo
knew not the Lord Jesus, and in Philo the Logos is surrounded with
associations derived from the Platonic and Stoic philosophies. The
Targums had used the words Meymra (nid'd) and Debura (ntoi), which
could indeed only mean " the Word ; " but in these the use had been
intended simply to avoid the rude anthropomorphism of early Hebrew
literature, and to make God seem more distant rather than more near.
Alike the Alexandrians and the Targumists would have read with a
shock of astonishment and disapproval that utterance which St. John
puts in the very forefront of his Gospel, as containing its inmost
essence, and as solving all the problems of the world, that " the Logos
» John iv. 14, 36 ; vi. 27 ; xii. 25. 2 iii. 36 ; v. 24 ; vi. 40, 47, 54.
a 1 John v. 13, 14.
4 I should not use language so positive if I had not furnished the most decisive and
overwhelming proof of my position in Mercy and Judgment, pp. 391 — 405. Of that proof
another generation will be able to judge. Erom the false and fleeting criticisms of to
day, I appeal once more to a diviner standard. I exclaim again with Pascal, "Ad tuum,
Domine Jesu, tribunal appello."
6 See Haupt, p. 4.

"god is righteous," 513
became flesh." It was a truth far beyond anything of which they had
dreamed, that the Word — who was in the, beginning, who was with
God, who was God, by whom all things were made, in whom was life,
which life was the light of man — that this Word was in the world,
came to His own people and His own home, and was by most of them
rejected — that this Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us,
and we beheld His glory, a glory as of the only begotten from the
Father, full of grace and truth. To make such a use pf the word
Logos was to slay those conceptions which lay at the heart of the
Alexandrian theosophy with an arrow winged by a feather from its own
breast. It was to adopt the most distinctive watchword of the
Philonists in order to overthrow their most cherished conceptions.
3. I see yet another mark of Finality in what St. John says of God,
and especially in the First Epistle. It is not indeed possible to make
the whole analysis of the Epistle turn on the three great utterances —
definitions we dare not call them, yet approximations to some descrip
tion of the Essence of Him who is Divine — that God is Righteous, that
God is Light, and, above all, that God is Love. But I regard it as
a most blessed fact, that words so full of depth and blessedness should
occur in what is practically, and perhaps literally, the latest utterance
of Holy Writ.
" God is Righteous," and therefore He hates all unrighteousness
in others, and there can be no unrighteousness in Him. Unrighteous
ness, masking itself as righteousness — unrighteousness putting on as its
disguise the flaming armour of religious zeal — unrighteousness in the
form now of persecution, now of violence, now of scholastic orthodoxy,
now of depreciation, unfairness, and slander — has been again and again
represented as doing Him service. But because He is righteous He
hates it. Whether it take the form of Inquisitorial cruelty or of
anonymous falsehood, all violence is hateful to Him. Lying for God is
to God an abomination, even when the lie claims to be a shibboleth of
His most elect. Want of candour, want of gentleness, want of for
bearance, are unhallowed incense which does but pollute His altar.
Notions that represent Him as a God of arbitrary caprice, treating men
as though they were nothing but dead clay, to be dashed about and
shattered at His will — notions which represent His justice as some
thing alien from ours, and those things as good in Him which would
be evil in us — notions which imagine that in His cause we may do evil
that good may come- — those idols of the School are shattered on the rock
of the truth that God is Righteous.
" God is Light."1 Notions that represent Him as taking pleasure
in man's blind and narrow dogmatism, self-satisfied security, and bitter
' Rabbi Simon Ben Jehosadek asked R. Samuel Ben Nachman " from what the light
was created? " He answered, in a whisper of awe, " God wrapped Himself in light as in
a garment, and caused its bright glory to shine from one end of the world to another "
(Bereshith Rabba, ch. iii.).
H H

514 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
exclush eness — as making His chosen and His favoured ones not of
earth's b. st and nob'est, but of the wrangling religionists who claim
each for 1 is own party the monopoly of His revelation — as though one
could love tbe dwarfed thistles and the jagged bents better than the
cedars of Lebanon — these idols of the fanatic, idols of the sectarian,
idols of the Pharisee, are shattered by the ringing hammerstroke of the
truth that God is Light.
God is Love. The words do not occur in the Gospel, and yet they
are the epitome of the Gospel, and the epitome of the whole Scriptures,
and the epitome of the history of mankind ; and as such they are a
standing protest against all that is worst and darkest in many of the
world's schemes of inferential theology. God is Love — not merely
loving, but Love itself. The notions, therefore, which would represent
Him as living a life turned towards self, or folded within self, caring
only for His own glory, caring nothing for the endless agonies of the
creatures He has made, predestining them by millions to unutterable
torments by horrible decrees, regarding even the sins of children as
infinite, " drawing the swords on Calvary to smite down His only Son "
— these idols of the Zealot, idols of the Calvinist, idols of those who
think that they by their wrath can work the righteousness of God, and
that they " can deal damnation round the land on each they deem their
foe " — these idols of the Inquisitor, idols of the persecutor, idols of the
intolerant ignorance of human infallibility, idols of the sectarian news
paper and the religious partisan, are dashed to pieces by the sweeping
and illimitable force of the truth that God is Love.
And, therefore, those three final utterances of Revelation will
become more and more, we trust, the protection, the emancipation, the
precious heritage of all mankind ; they will be the barrier against
wicked persecutions, against unjust calumnies, against savage attacks of
sectarian hatred. They are as a charter of Humanity against the mis
representations of religion by misguided Infidelity — against its no less
perilous perversion by the encroachments and usurpations of religious
hatred and religious pride.
4. We may see a last mark of finality in the simplification of the
ultimate essential elements of Christian truth which we find in
St. John. In reading St. Paul we are at once struck with the richness
and variety of the terms and phrases which he has introduced into the
statement of Christian dogma. St. John, on the other hand, moves in
the sphere of a few ultimate verities. St. Paul is like a painter who
works out his results by the use of many colours, and with an infinitude
of touches ; St. John produces the effect which he desires by a few pure
colours and a few sweeping but consummate strokes. St. Paul is
discursive, St. John intuitive. St. Paul begins with man, St. John
with God. In otlier words, St. Paul passes from anthropology to
theology, and St. John moves chiefly in the purely theologic sphere.
St. Paul reasons most respecting the righteousness of God and how it

ST. JOHN AND ST. PAUL. 515
becomes the justification of man ; St. John's aim is to show the nature
of Eternal Life, and how man participates therein. Hence the different
tone of their moral teaching. The aim of St. Paul is human and
practical, and he dwells incessantly on Faith, Hope, aud Charity.
St. John's Divine idealism is mainly occupied with the abstract
conceptions of Love, and Life, and Light. St. Paul is pleading with
men as they are, and building them up into what they should be.
St. John assumes that the Christians to whom he writes are resting
with him in the full knowledge of Christ.' The Churches of St. Paul
are full of disturbing elements ; the- Church which St. John mentally
addresses is the true and inner Church, which has no new doctrine to
learn, which has received the unction from the Holy One, and which is
separated by an unimaginable abyss from the world and from its own
false members.1 St. Paul is ever yearning for an ultimate fraternity of
all men, a universal and absolute triumph of the work of redemption ;
St. John fixes his eyes on the Perfect Church and the Perfect Christian,
with whom the virulence of evil and the ultimate destiny of evil seem
to have no immediate concern.2
5. Now we cannot suppose that these blessed and mighty thoughts
occurred for the first time on St. John's written page. They must have
been previously expressed in his oral teaching. And would it have
been strange if — after having heard so much about the Life of Christ,
so much about His nature and person, so many of His discourses, so
many applications of the truth of His Gospel to meet every phase of
moral temptation and philosophic difficulty — the Bishops and Elders
came to St. John to urge him, before he died, to set forth his testimony
to the world in writing 1 At first he shrank from so solemn a task out
of humility.3 But on their still pressing him, " Fast with me for three
days," he answered — so runs the deeply-interesting tradition preserved
for us in the Muratorian fragment — " and let us tell one another4 any
revelation which may be made to us severally (for or against the plan).
On the same night it was revealed to the Apostle Andrew that John
should relate all in his own name, and that all should review his
writing." "And then," says St. Jerome, in his allusion to this
tradition, " after the fast was ended, steeped with inspired truth (revela-
tione saturatus), he indited the heaven-sent preface, ' In tlie beginning
was the Word.'"5
1 1 John ii. 20 ; iii. 14 ; v. 15.
2 See the able essay, "Paul et Jean," in Reuss, Thiol. Chret. ii. 572 — 600.
3 Epiphan. Haer. Ii. 12, Sib voTepov dvayKa^i TO a-yiov irvevpa TrapaiTOvpevov SI
evkaBeiav Kal TaTreLvo^paoTjvyv. Comp. Euseb. iii. 24 (eirayaVKe's), and Jer. Prol. im Matt,
("Coactus ab omnibus paene tunc Asiae episcopis," etc.).
4 This seems to be the meaning of alterutrum, as in the Vulg. of James v. 16
(Westcott, Hist, of Canon, p. 527 ; St. John, p. xxxv. ).
5 Jer. Comm. in Matt. Prol. Comp. Clem. Alex. ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 14. But see
Basnage, viii. 2, § 6. This was afterwards improved into the story that he wrote the
whole Gospel impromptu (ain-oaxdiiao-Ti), and that his autograph, in letters of gold, was
preserved in the Church of Ephesus (see Lampe, Proleg. p. 171).

516 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Such, then, having been the origin of the Gospel, it supplies us with
a certain clue to the origin of the Epistle. A mere glance at the two
writings shows that, on the one hand, there is the closest possible con
nexion between them, and that, on the other hand, the Gospel was the
earlier of the two.1 For the Gospel contains the more explicit, the
Epistle the more allusive and concentrated expressions. The Gospel is
intelligible by itself ; the Epistle would hardly be intelligible without
some previous instruction to explain its phraseology. The Gospel shows
us how vai-ious expressions originated ; the Epistle adopts, generalises,
and applies them. The Gospel furnishes us with a history, inspired
throughout by certain immanent ideas ; the Epistle assumes those ideas
to be known, and points out their practical bearing. The Gospel deals
with the manifestation of the Word in the flesh as an event which the
Evangelist has actually witnessed in all its phases ; the Epistle shows
how that event bears on the errors which were beginning to creep into
the Church, and on the lives of its individual members.
We may therefore safely conclude that the Epistle has distinct
reference to the Gospel ; but we may also infer that they were published
together, or in very close succession. The Epistle implies that the
truths of the Gospel are known to the reader with all the freshness of
recent study. It is based upon them as though they would be already
prominent in the reader's mind. This is explicable if we suppose that
the one treatise accompanied the other, and it would also account for
the absence of salutation and benediction, which would only partially
be accounted for by the encyclical character of the Epistle. The Epistle
is most easily understood if we suppose it to be addressed not only to
the Churches of Asia, whom the Apostle may have had primarily in
view, but to all readers of the Gospel. The external proof of this is
indeed insignificant ; but it is sufficiently established by internal proba
bility. If we may accept with reasonable confidence the tradition that
the Gospel, as well as the Apocalypse, was written in Patmos and pub
lished in Ephesus, the same tradition will apply to the Epistle also.2
And this would be a further light on the absence of salutations.
1 The reader will find the proof of this placed visibly before him if he will study the
parallels between the Gospel and the First Epistle of St. John, as gathered (among
others) by Canon Westcott, in his edition of the Gospel. There are no less than thirty-
five such passages, and it may be seen at a glance that they are neither borrowed nor
imitated, but independently introduced in the way which would be most natural in
two works written by the same author. More than half of the parallels are drawn from
the last discourses (John xii— xvii.). To me it seems clear that the Epistle represents
the later, less developed, and more allusive form of expression. Reuss says that the
Gospel is needed as a commentary on the Epistle ; but it is at least equally true to say
thai?. the Epistle is needed as an application of the Gospel. It is clear that both gain
indefinitely when they are read together. St. Clemens implies that the Epistle was
written after the Gospel, for he says that " the Epistle begins with a spiritual proem,
following that of the Gospel, and in unison with it (Adumbratt. p. 1009).
2 Patmos was within a day's reach of Ephesus, and if St. John had already felt that
the loneliness of the island was suitable to meditation, he might have been led to retire
thither once more while he was meditating on his last and greatest work.

WHERE WRITTEN] 517
Patmos is a small and rocky island, with few inhabitants. It is doubtful
whether it had any Christian community within its narrow limits ; but
even if it had, such a community would be all but wholly unknown,
and could hardly be regarded as an organised Church.
6. The only supposed clue as to the readers to whom the Epistle
was addressed is the curious statement of St. Augustine, in one single
passage, that it was written "to the Parthians." It is clear that this
is either a misreading, or a blunder. If, however, it be a misreading,
all the conjectural emendations of it have been quite unsuccessful.
Hug's supposition, that it crept in by mistake from the superscription
of the Second Epistle, "pros parthenous" "to Virgins," will be con
sidered farther on.1
7. The supposition that the Apostle wrote in Patmos well accords
with the whole tone of the Epistle. It was written evidently at a time
when the Church was not under the stress of special persecutions.2
Dangers and sufferings are not alluded to ; there are no trumpet-calls to
courage or endurance. This period of peace may have been due to
the crushing destruction which had now fallen on the Jewish nation
ality ; for, as we are again and again informed, both in history and in
Scripture, the deadly animosities of the Gentiles were in the early days
stirred up for the most part by Jewish hatred.3 Now in the Epistle
there is no distinct reference either to Jews or Gentiles. All the old
questions between the Church and these two great masses of mankind
have sunk out of sight. The controversies as to the relations which
should subsist between Jewish and Gentile converts within the limits
of the Church itself are regarded as settled. In the eyes of St.. John
there are but two great existing communities, and those are not Jews
and Gentiles, but the Church and the world. The severance between
them is complete and absolute. In this respect, as in so many others,
the Epistle recalls the last discourses of our Lord. In them, too, the
hatred of the world means that of the Jew no less than that of the
Gentile. But this hatred is here calmly assumed without being dwelt
upon. There is no complaint respecting it. Not a word is said as to
its origin ; not a hint is breathed as to its issues. The world is not
even spoken of as a source of special temptation, or as a sphere" for
1 See infra, on the Second Epistle.
2 This would point to some date after the reign of Nero (a.d. 54—68). We see
further that it must have been written, as the Gospel was, after the destruction of
Jerusalem (a.d. 70), and either before the persecution of the Christians in A.D. 95,
during the reign of Domitian (a.d. 91 — 96), or between that date and the persecution of
the Christians in the reign of Trajan (a.d. 98). Ewald (Die Johann. Schriften, i. 471)
suggests A.D. 90 as a probable date. Canon Westcott says that the Gospel may be re
ferred to the last decennium of the first century, and even to the close of it (St. John, p.
xl. ). This view is supported both by early tradition and by the, fact that (1) the Gospel
assumes a knowledge of the substance of the Synoptic narratives ; (2) it deals with later
aspects of Christian life and opinion than these ; (3) it corresponds with the circum
stances of a new world (id., pp. xxxv. — xl.).
3 Acts xvii. ; 1 Thess. i. 14 — 16, ii. 15 ; Phil. iii. 2 ; etc. See, too, the remarks of
Justin in his Dial, c Tryph.

518 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
missionary activity. It is simply set on one side as a satanic kingdom,
a kingdom of darkness and of death, with which it is impossible to
conceive that the Christian should have anything to do. But such a
view is little possible to one who lives in the hearts of great cities, and
is in daily struggle with hostile forces from without. It would be far
more possible to the contemplative recluse in some secluded retirement
than to the toiling Apostle in the streets of Sardis or Ephesus.
8. Yet there are dangers which St. John evidently contemplates.
They are dangers from heresy and from antichrists ; dangers not arising
from attacks of the world outside the Church, but from developments of
the world within it. Tbe perils which the Christians have to encounter
are perils from those who themselves profess the faith ; from wolves —
clad in sheep's clothing ; from Satan — disguised as an angel of light.
What St. John dreads is not flagrant wickedness and open blasphemy,
but "false types of goodness," and "false types' of orthodoxy." Such
perils had existed from the very earliest days in which the Church was
a Church at all ; but now, in the pause from outward assault, they were
assuming subtler and more seductive forms. In one shape or other,
in their moral or their intellectual aspects, every Apostle has lifted up
against them his warning voice. St. Paul had been obliged, even
weeping, to warn his converts against false teachers ; St. Peter, St.
Jude, St. James, had " burst into plain thunderings and lightnings "
against them. Far different is the tone of St. John. That they are
greatly in his thoughts is evident. Nay, since he frequently refers to
their several tenets, since in two passages he expressly names them,1
since the very last words of his Epistle refer to them,2 it is clear that it
was one of his primary objects to protect the Church from their insidious
teachings., Yet how instructive is the tone in which he speaks about
them ! It is calm, not tumultuous or agitated. It leads to the estab
lishment of positive truth, not to anathemas against negative errors.
It does not betray the least touch of anxiety. What St. John has to
teach is the nature of eternal life ; its concentration in the Word ; its
communication to the world. The passages about the antichrists might
even be omitted without materially affecting the structure of the Epistle.
Here again we find not only the stamp of finality, on which we have
already dwelt, but an indication of the circumstances under which St.
John was writing. He is not in the thick of the battle. His soul is
not harrowed by daily watching the ravages of error. Removed from
the scene of conflict, living in daily meditation on the truth, in daily
communion with God, he can write in the tone of serene joy, of sovereign
conviction. It is the peculiarity which we have already noticed in St.
Paul's Epistle to the Philippians. The keynote of that letter is joy.
In the prison, amid general desertion, left face to face with God, St.
Paul seems as if the one thought which inspires his whole being is,
> 1 John ii. 20-26, iv. 1—6. 2 1 John v. 21.

LOFTY SPIRITUALITY. 519
"Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say Rejoice." It is the
same with St. John. He speaks with the composure which befits the
last of the Apostles, the composure of a man who knew the certainty,
who had witnessed the victories of the faith. " The unique conscious
ness which an Apostle, as he grew older, could carry within himself,
and which he, once the favourite disciple, had in a peculiar measure ;
the calm superiority, clearness, and decision in thinking on Christian
subjects ; the rich experience of a long life steeled in the victorious
struggle with every unchristian element ; and a glowing language lying
concealed under their calmness, which makes us feel intuitively that it
does not in vain commend us to love, as the highest attainment of
Christianity — all this coincides so remarkably in this Epistle, that " — ¦
in spite of its purely impersonal character and the lofty delicacy with
which, as in the Gospel, the writer retires into the background, un
willing to speak of himself — " every reader of that period, probably
without any further intimation, might readily determine who he was."1
In its " unruffled and heavenly repose, it appears to be the tone not, so
much of a father talking with his beloved children, as of a glorified
saint speaking to mankind from a higher world. Never in any writing
has the doctrine of heavenly love, of a love working in stillness, a love
ever unwearied, never exhausted, so thoroughly proved, and approved
itself, as in this Epistle."2

CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MIND AND STYLE OF ST. JOHN.
" Columba sancta Ecclesia est ; quae duas alas habet per dileetionem Dei et
proximi." — A. de St. Victose.
The effect which the Epistle thus produces upon us is due partly to the
habit of St. John's mind, partly to the peculiarities of his style.
1. One. great peculiarity of his mind — on which we have already
incidentally touched — is his contemplativeness—'wha.t has been some
times, but not very accurately, called his mysticism. It was the
invariable tendency of his mind in these his later years to live and
move in the region of abstract thought. The abstractions are, however,
by no means treated as abstractions, but rather as facts and experiences
of life. In St. John we see yet another illustration of the fundamental
distinction between the Nominalist and the Realist — the Nominalist
who regards abstract terms as representing nothing but the generalisa
tions of the mind out of concrete presentments, the Realist who regards
1 Ewald, Die Johan. Schriften, i. 431. 2 Id. ib.

520 the early days of Christianity.
them as representing those eternal ideas which are the only absolute
realities. St. John is entirely a Realist. It has been truly said of him
that " Universalia ante rem " is the principle of all his philosophy.
With him Ideas— Light, Darkness— Truth, Falsehood— are not mere
concepts, but are the actual reality, the principles of life out of which
all individual things emerge. In his point of view Mankind, the
individual man, the particular action, only exist as the Idea prescribes.
The Idea, indwelling in them, moulds them as a law, by virtue of which
all that belongs to them is fashioned. Thus, to St. John, history is the
invisible translated into the visible.1 In the Gospel it is shown how the
ideas have been introduced into this earthly life ; in the Epistle how the
life of the individual may be modified in accordance with them.2 Thus
once more we see how every thought which St. John utters depends
upon his doctrine of "the Word made flesh." The Divine ideas of
which he speaks — Truth, Life, Light — are realities, and the only reali
ties, because they are inlierent in the Logos. They are in men only
because He is in men, and they are the only Life, the only Light, the
only Truth. The Gospel shows how, by the manifestation of the Logos
on earth, the fulness which was in Him is imparted to us ; the Epistle
speaks throughout of our personal appropriation of this fulness and the
way in which it is expressed in Christian lives.
2. But all this at once accounts for another of his characteristics — -
namely, the sovereign calm of the Apostle's tone. In this region of the
Idea there is no room for jarring conflicts. He is building the super
structure, not laying the foundation. He is reminding, not instructing.
He is perfecting, not commancing. He is stating, not arguing. He is
delivering a, solemn homily, not conducting an embittered controversy.
He can appeal to his readers, as those who know ;s as those whose sins
have been forgiven ; who have an unction from the Holy One ;4 who
already believe ;6 to whom the new commandment can be represented
as the old. And this is the reason why his defensive polemics can take
the form of positive instruction. He can teach true Christians to
conquer heresy by the expulsive power of right affections. He can
invigorate their interior life as the best means of strengthening their
outward warfare. The multiplication of antichrists was a serious
danger, but the Churches would be less likely to succumb to it if he
could inspire them with the victorious tranquillity with which he
himself regarded all dangers, as he looked forth on the troubled sea
from the haven of his island rest.
3. A third secret of St. John's power lies in his style. It is a style
absolutely unique, supremely original, and full of charm and sweetness.
Under the semblance of extreme simplicity, it hides unfathomable
i Haupt, pp. 376, 377.
2 " The Gospel seeks to deepen faith in Christ, the Epistle sets forth the righteousness
which is necessary to faith, and only possible to faith" (.Hoffmann).
s 1 John ii. 12—14. 4 1 John ii. 20, 27. 6 1 John v. 13.

STYLE OF ST. JOHN. 521
depths. It is to a great extent intelligible to the youngest child, to the
humblest Christian ; yet to enter into its full meaning exceeds the
power of the deepest theologian. Thus, St. John remarkably exem
plifies the definition that genius is " the heart of childhood taken up
and glorified in the powers of manhood." In his Gospel and Epistles
the artless ingenuousness of a child is intimately blended with the deep
thoughtfulness of a man. But the style, by its very characteristics,
would be ill suited to controversy. It is not syllogistic, like that of
St. Paul ; nor rhetorical, like that of the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews. It is rather contemplative, " noting the substance of the
thoughts without marking the mutual relations of the thoughts them
selves."1 The logic moves, as has been said, in circles rather than
straight onwards.2 The sentences are ordinatecl by simple conjunctions,
not subordinated to each other by final particles. The periods are
paratactic, not syntactic. The particles, as in Aramaic, are few.3
Hence, though the Greek is pure, in so far that it is free from solecisms,
it is as unlike Greek as possible in its periodic structure. There is
scarcely a single oblique sentence throughout St. John's Gospel. Often
the sentences follow each other without any conjunction between them,
and only by taking up again the chief word in the previous clause.
But under the appearance of incessant repetitions the thought is still
constantly advanced. " The still waters," as Herder says, " run deep,
flowing along with the easiest words, but the profoundest meaning."
The thoughts are pressed home in the simplest fashion of Aramaic
idiom by being expressed first positively, then negatively.4 They gain
further from the numerical symmetry of the clauses into which they
are thrown.6 The same word occurs again and again as the leading
1 Braune calls it "the dialectics of contemplation."
2 Dusterdieck. Tholuck had already given to St. John's style the epithet "cycloidal."
Renan admits that the style has "fervour, and occasionally a kind of sublimity, but
withal something inflated, unreal, obscure — an utter want of naivete. "
3 Ebrard, Introd. He points out that the sentences are often joined by *», when
St. Paul would have used 5e or yap. St. John constantly makes use of anaphora, i.e., the
introduction of a new sentence by the repetition of a word which has just been used.
Erasmus excellently describes it : "Dicendi genus ita velut ansulis ex sese cohserentibus
contextus, nonnunquam ex contrariis, nonnunquam ex similibus, nonnunquam ex iisdem
subinde repetitis . . . ut orationis quodque membrum semper excipiat prius, sic ut
prioris finis initium sit sequentis."
4 St. John seems to "think in antitheses.'' It is his manner "to construct the
matter of a positive idea out of its combination or contrast with its opposite. " By a
curious variation of style, for which it is not easy to account, we have conditional
sentences (" if we walk," " if we say," " if we confess "i in the first section of the Epistle
(i. 6; ii. 8), and participial construction ("he that loveth," "he that saith") afterwards.
5 There is an interesting specimen of this numerical concinnity of expression in
ii. 9 — 11, where, in steady progression, the first verse has one predicate : " He who saith
that he is in the light, and hateth his brother " (a) " is in the darkness even still." The
second verse has two predicates: "He who loveth his brother" (a) "abideth in the
light," (0) " and there is no stumblingblock in him." The third verse has three predi
cates : " But he who hateth his brother " (a) "is in the darkness,'' (P) "and walketh in
the darkness," ( ) "and knoweth not whither he goeth, because the darkness blinded
his ey es. " The symmetry is so absolute in its musical flow and rhythmic balance that
even tho double clause of the last line corresponds to the double clause of the first.

522 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
word of an entire section until it becomes impressive by the very
monotony of its iteration. It is like a stone flung into a smooth lake,
round which the riprjles widen to the shore in concentric circles. No
style could be worse to imitate. In feeble hands it would deserve the
charges of weakness, tautology, senility, which have been so idly made
against it. On the other hand, no style could better suit the character
of a mind absorbed in heavenly contemplation ; — of a mind filled with
conceptions of a depth so inexhaustible that words, however often
repeated, failed to convey the fulness of meaning with which they were
charged. 4. But — to revert to the characteristics of St. John's later teachings
— it must not be supposed that St. John has no sternness in him. Had
such been the case he could not have been the Son of Thunder. Pro
bably the natural character of no man had ever been so softened and
ennobled as his had been by the long years of Christian suffering and
Christian education; yet the elements of the natural character remained.
The essence of St. John's temperament, the foundation of his teaching,
in these his later years, was love ; but where there is an intense and
perfect love there must also be hatred of all that most offends and
injures love ; not hatred of men — that becomes impossible — but hatred of
all that degrades men into beasts or devils. It is impossible not to feel
that there is an accent of intense severity — of a severity even more
intense than that of St. James — in such words as,
"He that doeth sin is from the Devil, because the Devil sinneth from
the beginning." "Every one who abideth in Him sinneth not; every
one who sinneth hath not seen Him, nor even known Him." " Every one
who doeth not righteousness is not from God, nor lie who loveth not his
brother." 1
How does such language accord with Christ's unbounded love to
sinners, to publicans, to harlots, even to Pharisees 1 How is it recon
cilable with the paternal tenderness, the overflowing love, the gentle
tolerance, which breathes through the rest of the Epistle 1 How is it
in unison with certain and universal Christian experience 1 How is it
consistent with St. John's own gentleness to most flagrant offenders 1
How can it be left side by side with , language so apparently contra
dictory to it as that which urges God's children to confess their sin, and
even lays it down that,
" If" vie say t/tat we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth
is not in us." 2
Does not the only solution lie in the fact that here, too, St. John is
moving in the regions of the ideal, and that every sin is, in its ultimate
issue, in its final nature, Satanic \ As children of God we cannot sin,
and children of God we are. We are so by His gift,3 we must become
so by our own act. In so far as we by our own choice are sinners, so
i 1 John iii. 4—10. » i. 8—10. 3 iii. 1.

SIN OF INTOLERANCE. 523
far we are not children of God ; and if, at the last day — if, in the
general and unerring sentence of judgment pronounced upon us — we
are declared to be in a state of permanent and willing sin,1 then, in
spite of the imparted gift of sonship, we are children of the Devil. The
ideal of our position as children of God is the impossibility to sin ; and
a nearer and nearer approximation to this ideal is required of us
in actual life. But if to the very end we fall very far short of that
ideal, and so might be driven to despair, St. John himself has saved us
from any such despair by his previous sayings that if we confess our
sins God will forgive them,2 and that if any man sin we have an
Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the
propitiation for our sins.3
5. The personal question indeed remains. " If we say, that we have
fellowship with Him, and walk in the darkness, we lie." " He who doeth
sin is ofthe Devil." "If any one come to you and bring not this teaching,
receive him not into your house, and give him no greeting."* Are those
the accents of the Apostle of Love 1 Does not St. John by such
expressions and such advice reopen the floodgates of party railing,
ignorant zeal, malignant persecution, bitter intolerance1? So, at any
rate? those have thought who forget that hatred of any kind is the
essential note of the world. Those very " texts " have been seized with
avidity by the fierce party-spirit which all the Apostles alike so
unhesitatingly denounce as godless and anti-Christian. Heated con
troversialists have revelled in the imaginary licence to set aside all
the precepts of Christian love which breathes from every page of the
New Testament in order that they may, with these texts, bless and
approve with sober brows the very sin which is never more deadly or
more inexcusable than when it shamelessly intrudes into the sphere
of religious life. All that can be said is that such partisans wrest
these, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own perdition.
These phrases, rightly understood, belong to that sphere of the Ideal
and the Abstract in which St. John moves, but in which those do not
move who pervert his meaning in order to undo the teaching which he
loved best. No texts in Scripture can authorise any man to hate and
persecute those who teach the truths which he in his ignorance regards
as heresy. St. John's words do not confer on persecuting zeal the
attribute of infallibility. They do not exempt religious differences
from the realm of Christian charity. If they did, they would have to
be themselves overruled as proofs of weakness, because in that case
1 The force of the present tenses, and the alleviation whioh they introduce into the
force of the sentences, must not be overlooked. 2 i. 9.
3 ii. 12. We may remark in passing that this word "propitiation" (l^ao-pm) (here
and in iv. 10) is one of the very few which introduce into the Epistle/ conceptions which
are not directly touched upon in the Gospels. Another is XP"W, the " unction " of the
Holy One, in ii. 20, 27. Another is the application of the name Paraclete (" Advocate ")
to Christ (ii. 1), though this is indeed involved in John xiv. 16.
4 See infra in the remarks on this passage.

524 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
they would run counter to the best and holiest teachings of him who
uttered them. Religious persecution, religious intolerance, religious
hatred, are not religious, but irreligious, even if St. John be distorted
into their defence. If he did indeed defend them — as he does not — his
plea could only be due to the still lingering traces of the Elijah spirit ;
it could only be ranked with the conduct of St. Carlo Borromeo, who,
after tending the plague-stricken with the gentleness of a saint,
persecuted those whom he regarded as heretics with the fury of an
Inquisitor. The Apostle and Evangelist of Love would have destroyed
the very essence of his own divinest work if he had meant — as I
believe he never meant — to gratify the meanest and fiercest champions
of party in the indulgence of exactly those forms of hatred which have
ever been the most virulent, the most ignorant, the most hateful, and
the most intense.
6. I will mention only one more characteristic of this rich and
profound Epistle, which is, that though it is ethical and didactic, it
does not resemble the treatment of ethics by any other of the Apostles.
Here, again, the manner of the writer finds a fresh illustration. Other
Apostles enter into many details, touch on many successive duties.
Not so St. John. In his view two words enclose the whole cycle of
moral conceptions. Those two words are Righteousness and Love.
Both words have their roots in the Divine. God is righteous. God
is love. Therefore man must be righteous towards God, and must
manifest that righteousness by love towards the brethren. Even these
broad conceptions are lost in others still broader — namely, those of
Light and Truth. God is Light, and therefore every sin partakes of
the nature, and belongs to the realm, of darkness. God is True — i.e.,
Real — and therefore all sin partakes of the nature of unreality and
falsehood. All details, all special applications are involved in this.
He who does the truth, he who walks in the light, he who does
righteousness, he who confesses the name of Jesus Christ, he who loves
his brother — he has eternal life. He will therefore need no instruction
as to outward and individual acts.1 For him even the Church and the
Sacraments, and all ecclesiastical questions of organisation and ritual,
may, in St. John's manner, be passed over as " silent presuppositions."
He is forgiven ; he is cleansed ; he is a son of God. His faith in the
Divinity of Christ is transposed into life, and his life in Christ deepens
his faith in Christ's Divinity. The two are inextricably interlaced. A
righteous life is the result of faith, and faith is deepened by a righteous
life.2 He who denies Christ, he who " severs Christ," is of the Devil,
and belongs to the lie, the world, the darkness. Thus St. John moves
1 See ii. 27. Hence the constant words oibare (ii. 20 ; iii. 5, 15), olSaptv (iii. 2, 14 ; v.
15, 18, 19, 20), yu/oi™^ (ii. 5, 18 ; iii. lo, 24 ; iv. 6, 13 ; v. 2), iyv6Kap,ev (iii. 16 ; iv. 16)j
iyvuKa™ (ii. 13, 14), yiv&a-Ktn (ii. 29 ; iv. 2), 6oKipifyTe (iv. 1). Thus the thought that they
already know the truth of what he is saying recurs some thirty times. OXSa represents
knowledge generally ; yiviimtui represents " recognition," experiential knowledge."
2 Braune (in Lange's Bibelwerk), Introd. § II. ; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, p. 337.

METHOD OF THE EPISTLE. 525
as through the empyrean in the region of absolute antitheses. All
controversy is over for him. Like an eagle after one vast beat of
his wings, so this " own eagle of Christ "
" Scindit iter liquidum celeres neque promovet alas."

CHAPTER XXXIV.
OBJECT AND OUTLINE OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.
" Sed Joannes ala, bina
Caritatis, aquilina
Eorma fertur in divina
Puriori lumine." — Adam de St. Victors.
After these considerations we shall, I trust, be better prepared to
understand St. John's object in the Epistle, and how it bears on the
circumstances in which the Epistle was written. We shall be better
able to understand that it is a coherent whole, and that its purpose
is worked out in continuous development.
As to the object, we can have no doubt, because St. John tells it
to us quite distinctly in the first four verses. It was to set forth to his
readers his witness respecting the Word of Life, in order that he and
they might have fellowship with one another in their common fellowship
with the Father and with His Son, and that in consequence of this their
joy may be full. He expresses the same object in other terms at the
end of the Epistle, when he says, "These things I have written to
you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know
that ye have eternal life."1 In pursuing this object he shows that there
can be no fellowship with God without righteousness, rooted in faith
and manifested by love ; and that the Christian not only ought to
live such a life, but does so, because he is born of God. Thus does
St. John refute the antichristian lie which was already prevalent. He
would empty these souls of falsehood by filling them with truth. He
writes in order that, by fellowship with one another and with God
and His Christ — by perfected joy, by assured confidence in their present
possession of eternal life — the seductions of the teaching of antichrists
may become impossible to souls filled with Christian love.
An analysis of the Epistle, such as may serve to show that it is not
merely aphoristic, is perfectly possible. When Calvin spoke of it
as containing "doctrine mixed with exhortation;" when Episcopius
1 v. 13. The reading of B is here most probably correct, and the source of the other
variations — Tavra eypai/ia (epistolary aorist) iipiv 'iva eiSrJTe im farjv exeTe altiiviov, tois mtrrevovtriv
€i?to bvopji too viov tov 0eoO. Compare the closely-analogous description of the object of
the Gospel in John xx. 31.

526 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
said that "the method of treatment was arbitrary, and not bound
to rules of art;" they had missed its meaning. The art is concealed,
but it is consummate. The method is unique, but it is most powerful.
It is an entire mistake to speak of the Epistle as " incoherent," as a
congeries of scattered remarks about the Divinity of Christ, about the
blessings of adoption^ about love, and as "briefly touching on other
things also, such as being on our guard against impostors, and such
matters."1 Schmid, Oporinus,2 Bengel, and the other scholars who first
endeavoured to prove its consecutive and systematic character, rendered
a real servive to biblical theology. The student who reads it in the
light of some well-considered scheme, will gain more advantage from it
than others, even if details of his scheme be untenable. It is, for
instance, very tempting to arrange the Epistle under the three heads
which are suggested by the three great thoughts that God is Light, God
is Righteous, God is Love. I myself tried hard to do so in first studying
the Epistle. But though these great utterances throw some light on the
order of thought, it is evident that they are not the pivots of arrange
ment in the mind of the writer.3 Nor, again, is it possible to analyse
the Epistle, as Bengel endeavoured to do with reference to the doctrine
of the Trinity, an attempt into which that great theologian was misled
by his acceptance as genuine of the verse about the Three Heavenly
Witnesses. There is, indeed, as we shall see, a remarkable triplicity in
the subordinate divisions, due to the Hebraic training of St. John, and
to the rhythm and symmetry of the sacred idioms with which he was
familiar. Bengel, of course, rightly saw that the- Epistle falls at once
into the three divisions of
Exordium, i. 1 — 4.
Treatment of the Subject, i. 5 — v. 12.
Conclusion, v. 13 — 21.
But the unreality of his other divisions arose from his attempting
to analyse the Epistle in the interests of an a priori conception instead
of following step by step its own indications. The 'reason why it is
so difficult to analyse, is the extreme richness and fulness of the
thoughts, and the manner in which they interfuse each other. I said
just now that the leading words of St. John — words expressive of some
inexhaustible and abstract idea — might be compared to stones thrown
into a lake, which raise around them a far-spreading concentric ripple ;
1 " Doctrinam exhortationibus mistam continet . . . sparsim docendo et exhortando
varius est " (Calvin).
2 Joachim Oporin, in a Gottingen programme. " De constanter tenenda communione
cum Patre et Filio — i.e., Joannis Ep. i. nodis interprelum liberata, etc.," 1741. Some
have oalled the Epistle aphoristic, which is a misleading term if meant to exclude the
notion of a definite plan. The idea seized upon by Oporin is certainly the leading one
of the Epistle. So too LUcke — ( ( As the ground and root of all Christian fellowship is
the fellowship which each has with the Father and the Son in faith and love, so this
latter necessarily unfolds and exhibits itself in that former."
3 Huther, who, in his first edition, in Meyer's Commentary, adopted an analysis on
this plan (at De Wette's suggestion), abandoned it in his second edition.

WAVES OF THOUGHT. 527
but of this Epistle it would be even truer to say that word after word
exercises its influence over the surface, and that the innumerable ripples
which they create overflow and are influenced by each other, so that the
concentric rings of thought are broken and interlaced.1 Hence it is
probable that no analysis will be accepted by any careful student as
final or unobjectionable in all its details. Let each perform the task as
he thinks , best ; but for myself I can find no analysis so helpful and
thorough as that which has been indicated by one of the latest, and by
far the profoundest, expositor of the epistle, Eric Haupt.2 In giving it,
however, I must remind the reader that we do not pretend to imply that
St. John, in writing the Epistle, had any such scheme definitely before
him, but only that, in the development of the great central thoughts
which he desired to impress upon his readers, one general object
dominated through all the separate passages, and coloured the particular
expressions. Introduction, i. 1 — 4.
A. The main theme — Eternal Life manifested by the Word.
B. Certain assurance of this, as an irrefragable truth ; — the object of
setting it forth being that it is the ground and root of Christian
fellowship with God and with one another.
A Eternal Life, i. 5 — v. 5.
I. The evidence that it has been communicated to us by the Word is
Walking in the Light, which must show itself —
1. Towards God — in the form of sinlessness (i. 6 — ii. 2).
a Sinlessness is effected positively by redemption through
Christ's blood (i. 5—7).
3 Negatively, by forgiveness of past sin (i. 8 — 10).
7 Hortative recapitulation (ii. 1, 2).
1 I find that Huther has expressed exactly the same thought under a completely
different image. He says that in St. John's style "the leading thought is like a
key-note, which he strikes and causes to sound through the derivative thoughts until a
new key-note is struck that leads to a new key."
2 Generally speaking, throughout this and my former books on the New Testament,
I have, I trust, shown that my line, of thought is always independent ; that I have tried
in each instance to think and to judge for myself, nullius addictus jurare in verba
magistri. It is right, however, to say that in the exegesis of the First Epistle of St.
John I have been guided to an unusual extent by the admirable treatise of Haupt. I
have not always agreed with him. At times he seems to me to be over-subtle. I do not
always accept his views of scholarship. But though I have also studied the views of
many other editors— Huther, Dusterdieck, Ebrard, Braune, Alford, Wordsworth, Reuss,
etc.— I have not found in any one of them the depth and insight of this little-known
writer. I have, therefore, been specially indebted to him, and desire thus generally to
express my obligation. From Beuss I have gained scarcely any help. His treatment of
the Johannine writings in his TMologie Johannique seems to be decidedly poor, and far
inferior to his treatment of the Epistles of St. Paul. Nor have I learnt much from the
wordy obscurity of Braune.

528 the early days of Christianity.
2. Towards the brethren — as brotherly love (ii. 3 — 13).
o Keeping God's commandments is union with God (ii 3 — 5).
j8 Love as the new commandment (ii. 6 — 11).
y Hortative encouragement (ii. 12 — 14).
3. By utter severance from the world.
* No fellowship with the world or with Antichrist (ii 15 — ¦
19).
£ Security by means of the unction from the Holy One (ii
20—26).
y Recapitulation (27).
II. If we possess Eternal Life we have confidence, because we
have been born of God (ii. 28 — v. 5).
1. The evidence of this sonship is seen in action (iii.).
o Towards God it is evidenced by doing righteousness (iii
1—10).
/3 Towards the brethren, by love (iii 11 — 18).
7 Recapitulation (iii. 19 — 23).
2. The source of this sonship is the reception of the Spirit of God.
a The confession of Christ through the Spirit saves us from
false Spirits (iv. 1 — 6).
p Human love is a reflection of the Divine, and is derived
from the Spirit (iv. 7—12).
7 Recapitulation (iv. 14 — 16).
Retrospective conclusions : — when the Divine birth is thus mani
fested in action (iii), which may be traced back to the Spirit (iv. 1 — 6),
then we have the perfect confidence of sonship, and may stand un
abashed in the Day of Judgment (iv. 17, 18).
III. Final Illustrations.
A. Love and Faith,
a The Idea of Love embraces love both to God and to the brethren
(iv. 19—21).
/3 The Idea of Faith involves love both to God and to the brethren
(v. 1-3).
7 And also involves Victory over the world (v. 4, 5).
B. Assurance that the Word is the Giver of Eternal Life.
i. Because it is founded on the certain witness of God (v. 6 — 9).
ii. And this witness is echoed from within (v. 10—12).
C. Conclusion. a The substance of Eternal Life, as consisting of Faith in Christ,
and confidence, and intercessory love (v. 13 — 17).

TRIPLICITY OF STRUCTURE. 529
0 The signatures of the child of God (v. 18 — 20) in the threefold
knowledge that he is sinless, that he is from God, that he is in
Christ.
7 Emphatic conclusion, showing the practical aim of the Epistle.1
I have inserted this formal, analysis of the Epistle into, the text,
and not placed it in a note, because of its great importance, and because
it illustrates to no small extent the characteristics of St. John's method,
and the colouring of his thoughts. Some may be inclined to look on
it with suspicion, from the very fact of its prevailing triplicity ; and no
doubt this might be justly regarded as unfavourable to its reception if
we pretended to imply that St. John drew up beforehand any outline of
this definite division. Had he done so, it would at once have stamped
his Epistle with formalism of statement and want of spontaneity. But
this is not the case. The triplicity is entirely unintentional. It is so
little insisted on, that some of the sections, and especially the minor
divisions which I have not here pointed out, fall into pairs. The
detection of this involuntary triplicity and duality of statement does
not arise from any a priori determination to And it, but results.
naturally from careful study of the Epistle step by step. The very
same peculiarity is observable in the Gospel. Any one who analyses it
sees at once that there is scarcely one, either of its main or its minor
divisions, which does not fall into double or triple parts! This. was.
pointed out by Luthardt, and may be seen by a glance at Canon
Westcott's analysis of the Gospel, though he does not expressly allude-
to it. As to the Epistle, "the order and symmetry which pervade all,.
down to the minutest details, only show how clearly and sharply the-
Apostle was accustomed to think, and that, in consequence of an inherent
sense of order, his thoughts grouped themselves with facility in a definite
way." 
The genuineness of the Epistle may be regarded as beyond all
suspicion. It was known to and quoted by Papias (a.d. 140).2 There-
are unmistakable allusions to it in the Epistle to Diognetus (a.d. 117),
in the Epistle of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne (a.d. 177), and
in Polycarp's letter to the Philippians." It, was often quoted by
Irenams.4 There can be little doubt that the testimony of the Mura-
torian fragment (circ. a.d. 170) is in its favour.6 It is translated in
the Peshito ; is constantly quoted by the Fathers of the third century;
1 It would only confuse the reader to give the analysis of Hofmann, Ebrard, Huther,
etc. Ewald adopts three divisions, i. 1 — ii. 17 ; ii. 18 — iv. 6 ; iv. 7 — v. 21. Duster
dieck, closely followed by Alford, who gives his analysis at length, divides as follows —
Exordium, i. 1 — 4 ; two main sections, i. 5 — ii. 28 ; ii. 29 — v. 5 ; a double conclusion*
v. 6—13, 14-21.
2 Euseb. H. E. iii. 39, Kexprirat . . • pap-rvptais drrb TTJS 'Itodvvov 7rpOTe'pas en-icTTO^s,
3 Polyc. ad Philipp. 7. This quotation constitutes a strong proof of genuineness.
4 Euseb. H. E. v. 8 ; Iren. c. Haer. iii. 16, 5, 7. 6 See infra.
I I

530 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
is ranked among the Homologoumena by Eusebius,1 and is said by St,
Jerome to have been accepted by all true Churchmen.2 This external
evidence combines so overwhelmingly with the internal, that we are
not surprised to find that from the days of Marcion3 (about 140) and
the Alogi4 down to the days of Joseph Scaliger, the Epistle has been
received with unquestioning reverence.5 The notion that it shows signs
of senility is the superficial conclusion of careless and prejudiced
readers. The endeavour of Baur to find Montanism in the Epistle, and
that of Hilgenfeld to prove that it is a forgery of the middle of the
second century, need be no further debated, because they have found
scarcely any followers. And even Hilgenfeld spoke of the writer as
" a great independent thinker," and called his Epistle, not as Baur had
done, a " weak imitation " of the Gospel, but a " splendid type " of it.6
The notion that such Epistles as this, and the Epistles to the Ephesians
and Colossians, and the Pastoral Epistles, could have been second-century
forgeries, is refuted by the entire literature of that century, whether
authentic, or anonymous, or pseudonymous. That literature is of a
character incomparably more feeble, and is animated by a spirit incom
parably less divine.
Some have preferred to regard this Epistle as a theological treatise,
or a religious homily ; but the form which it assumes, and the direct
addresses with which it abounds, show that it really was intended as an
encyclical letter, addressed neither "to Parthians" nor "to Virgins,"7
but to the Churches of Asia, with which the Apostle was most familiar.
The conclusions which have here been indicated may be considered
certain : — namely, that it was written towards the close of the first
century ; and — which is a deeply interesting and suggestive circum
stance — that it was, in some instances at least, accompanied by copies
of the Gospel to which it is closely related in its tone of thought, and
to which it served as a practical commentary.8
i Euseb. H. E. iii. 24, 25.
2 Jer. De Virr. Hlustr. 9. It is quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus {Strom, ii. 66 ; iii.
32, etc.), Tertullian (c. Marc. v. 16; c. Prax. 15, etc.), Cyprian (Ep. 28, etc.), and
pseudo-Chrysostom {in Matt. XXI. 23) says, amwres eu'ai 'lujariot' ovpfavats a.TT€^TjVaVTO.
3 Marcion either did not know or rejected the writings of St. John.
* rdxa be Kal Ta? 'E7riaTo\as, awafioucn yap a$Tai Tut EiiayyeAiw KaX ttJ 'AirOKaAvi/rei (Epiphan.
c. Haer. Ii. 34).
5 The isolated exception of Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth century is hardly worth
mentioning, for his remark is evidently made in great ignorance of the subject. He
foolishly observes that ' ' the majority " regarded the CathoHc Epistles as not being the
Writings of the Apostles ; dhX irepiav Tivmv irpeo-fivTepttiv afeKetrrepuiv.
6 Hilgenfeld, Das Evang. und die Briefe Johannis, 1849.
1 Thus ypafyui occurs seven times, iypatya six times,' ip.lv, vpeU, etc., thirty-six times,
rocvtu, mutt* six times, oTamjTol six times, etc. The unconstrained style, the hortatory
tendency, the informal transitions, all point to its epistolary character.
3 This is the view of Michaelis, Augusti, Hug, Thiersch, Ebrard, Haupt, etc

THE PROLOGUE. 531
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.
"Ubi Amor, ibi Trinitas." — S. Auo.
"Locuturus est multa, et prope omnia de caritate." — S. Auo. Expos, in Ep.
Johann. " The main substance of this Epistle relates to love." — Luther.
" Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest ia
holy ground." — Ex. iii. 5. SECTION I.
ETERNAL LIFE.
" That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen
with our eyes, which we gazed upon, and our hands handled,' concerning the Word
of Life ; and the Life was manifested,2 and we have seen it, and are witnessing and
announcing to you3 that Life — even that Eternal Life which was with the Father,
and was manifested to us. That whioh we have seen and have heard we announce
to you also, that ye also may have communion with us ; and indeed our communion
is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ.4 And these things we write,6
that your joy may be fulfilled " (i. 1 — 4).
We have here the introductory theme of the whole Epistle. It
should be compared with the golden prologue of the Gospel to which it
is so closely analogous, and the knowledge of which it assumes.6
Though St. John seems to be labouring with the desire to express
a truth too great for the power of his language to utter, the clause, so
1 Lute xxiv. 39 : i/rrjAa^o-aTe pe ical ISeTe. The word would be the strongest possible refuta
tion of Docetic error. In Ignat. ad Smyrn. 4, 5, our Lord says to Peter after His Resurrection,
" Take, handle nie, and see that I am not a bodiless spirit " (oaipaviov avupaTov) ; " and imme
diately they took hold of Him ;md believed, convinced by His flesh and His Spirit."
2 By " the life " is here meant the Absolute Life, 17 avTo^wij, iq irrrydgovo-a to £ijv (SchoL,
John i. 4).
3 The reading of ^ is Kai an-ayye'AXojuiei' Kai iplv.
* The Holy Spirit is not mentioned, because He is iu us, rather than with us (2 Cor. xii. 13).
s "Thee are two species of testimony— announcement and writing. Announcement lays
the foundation : writing builds the superstructure" (Bengel).
8 John i. 1. 1 John L 1, 2.
'Ey apxji fy o Adyos koX 6 Adyos fy Trpos rbv o fy air dpxijs ' » • (v &»)) ^Tis fy irpos
®eov. Toe HaTepa.
Ver. 4.
kv avTw <|ii»fl fy koX fi fwij fy to <pfis runt irepl tou \6yov Trjs $<or{s . ¦ • 7/ (Jut/ e<po>
^vBptairiav, Kai TO <£wp ep -rjj a-KOTia <£cuVei. vepta&rt . . . Kai tyavepeMh] iip.lv.
Ver. 14.
Kai edeao-aueda tt)v $6£av avrov. o cBeatrdpcBa.
Others of -the ideas found in the prologue of the Gospel occur elsewhere in the Epistle.
Thus compare —
i. 1, " The Word was God." v. 20, " This is the true God."
i. 9, " There was the true light." p ii. 8, " The true light already shineth."
i. 12, " To become children of God." iii. 1, " That we should be called children of
God."
i. IS, '¦ Born .... of God." v. 1, " Begotten of God."
i. 14, " 'I he Word became flesh." iv. 2, " Jesus Christ is come in the flesh."
i. 18, " No man hath seen God at any time." iv. 12, " No man hath beheld God at any
time."
This opening clause of the Epistle resembles that of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the
absence of name and greeting, but the majestic beginning of that Epistle is more rhetorical and
less emotional.

532 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
far from being,. as Calvin said, "abrupt and confused," is to the highest
degree pregnant with clear and majestic thought. It compresses into a
few lines a world of meaning, while at the same time it is steeped in the
deep emotion of the writer.
What he has to announce — for he only uses the plural as one of the
Apostolic witnesses — is not the Word, but something respecting Him —
namely, that He is the source from which all life streams. In hearing
and seeing Him, the Apostles had heard and seen this inward
significance of His Person and of His acts by the immediate perceptions
of sense ; and in gazing on and handling Him, as they all did, and
Thomas especially, after His resurrection, they had learnt, by yet fuller
investigation, that He is indeed the Conqueror of Death and the Source
of Life. And this Life of His was "from the beginning," so that the
announcement of it is as though he were now inspired to write a new
Book of Genesis, but one which dated backwards to a yet earlier — nay,
to an absolute eternity. Thus the " from the beginning " of the last
book of the Bible repeats, but in even deeper tones, the "in the
beginning " of the first book. The one speaks of the Incarnation, the
other testifies to the Eternity, of Him by whom the worlds were
made. The procem of the Gospel declared that " the Word became flesh,"
because in the Gospel St. John is treating of Christ's person ; but
in the Epistle he says, " the Life was manifested," because he is about
to deal, not directly with His Person, but with the influence which
flowed from it — namely, life. And the quality of that life is that it is
eternal, i.e., spiritual, supratemporal, Divine, seeing that (%ris) it stands
in immediate relation to (wpbs) the Father, and was only manifested
to man, in its priority and fulness, when Christ appeared. This was
the Life which the Apostles had seen, to which they bore witness as
true, which they were communicating to the world, and of which the
assurance could be derived from their testimony. And the aim of the
announcement is to establish a fellowship between the witnesses and
those who received their witness ; for indeed this fellowship is, in
reality, a fellowship with God and with Christ. If it be asked how it
could be St. John's object to establish a fellowship which they possessed
already, the simple answer is one which applies to all the writings
of the Apostles. They wrote to Christians, who were indeed, as
Christians, ideally perfect, but in whom the ideal was as yet very far
from having become the real. Ideally they were saints and perfect;
in reality they were struggling with daily imperfections, and had not by
any means attained the measure of the fulness of the stature of Christ.
They were, therefore, far from that fulness of joy which was their
proper heritage.1 The Eternal Life which they possessed was as yet
but in the germ.
1 Comp. John xv. 11 ; xvii. 3 ; Phil. ii. 2. " Quorum gaudium tu ipse es. Et ipsa est beata
vita gaudere ad te, de te, propter te " (Aug. Coi\f. x. 22). " The peace of reconciliation, the

GOD IS LIGHT. 533
" And this is the message1 which we have heard from Him, and are announcing
to you, that G-od is Light, and there is not in Him any darkness of any kind. If
we say that we have fellowship with Him, and are walking in the darkness, we lie,
and do not the truth. But if we walk in the Light, and He is in the Light,2 we
have fellowship with one another,3 as the blood of Jesus, His Son, oleanseth us
from all sin"4 (i. 5 — 7).
Into those words, God is Light, St. John compresses the substance
of his message, and utters one of those great final truths, which, since
they cannot be transcended, mark the close of revelation. It is not
introduced abruptly or disconnectedly, but it requires a knowledge
of the Gospel to see its force. , There, too, and in the same order, we
have — First, the Word (i 1), then Life (i 4), then Light (i. 5) ; and
there we see that the Light is the highest manifestation of th,e Life in
relation to men ; so that the epitome of the Gospel and the epitome of
the Life of Christ, as regards the world, is this— that the Light shineth
in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. But, when man
receives the Life as Light, he also reflects it, and so becomes a child of
Light.5 In these words, therefore, as in " God is Love," St. John sums
up all the meaning of his Gospel, although in the Gospel itself neither
of the two expressions occurs. Yet Christ is there called Light,
because He is' one with the Father, and because He manifested the
Father as Light. " I," He said, " am the Light of the world."6
But what is the meaning of this final revelation that God is Light 1
The only answer which we can give is that, of all existing things, not
one is so pure, so abstract, so glorious, so beneficent, so incapable
of stain or admixture, as earthly light ; and earthly light is but an
analogue of the Light which is immaterial and Divine.
' ' Hail, Holy Light ! offspring of heaven firstborn,
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam.
May I express thee unblamed ? since God is Light,
And never but in unapproached Light
Dwelt from eternity : dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence uncreaie ;
Or, hear'st thou rather, pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell ? Before the sun,
Before the heavens, thou wast."
blessed consciousness of sonship, the happy growtb in holiness, the bright prospect of future
completion and glory, all these are but details of that which is embraced by one word, Eternal
Life ' (Dusterdieck).
1 'Ayye^i'a (nut eir.), A, B, K, L, etc.
* One uf the many passages in which there is close affinity between tbe thoughts of St. John
and St. Paul (see Efjh. iv. 25 ; v. 8, 9, 11 — 14). We can only walk in the light (Isa. ii 5), coming
into it out of darkness ; but the essence and element of God's Being.is in the Light (<£«s o'ikHiv
airpotriTOv) .
3 per aAA^Xioy («, B, etc.), and not per avTov (A), is the better reading. " Christian fellow
ship is then only real when it is in fellowship with God " (De Wette). '• Nisi in bonis amicitia
esse non p -test " (Cie).
4 Col. i. 20 ; Eph. i. 7 ; Heb. ix. 14. Christ's blood, applied by Faith, becomes our Justifica
tion, and is also the purifying medium of our sanctification. The verse, as Bp. Wordsworth
points out, refutes many heresies— e g., tbat of Cerinthus, that Jesus was not the Christ
(reading Xpio-TotJ) ; that of the Ebionites, that He was not the Son of God ; that of the Docetce,
that the Christ did not really die ; that of the Novatians, wbo denied pardon to deadly sin after
baptism ; that of the Antinomians, who denied the necessity of moral obedience.
• John viii. 12. e John i. 4 ; iii. 19 ; viii. 12.

534 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
St. John, as is usual with him, follows the positive statement by a
negative one, which strengthens and adds to it — " in Him is no darkness
whatever." The words furnished an answer, if such were needed, to
Manichean dreams ; and they introduce the truth that it must be the
duty of the Christian to walk in Light, which is the same thing as
to live in God. We are surrounded with elements of darkness ; but
we are not to love it, nor to love the world, which is the sphere of its
extension ; we are to pass from it, by heart-repentance, into the region
of Light, which is the kingdom of God. If we have not done so, and
yet profess fellowship with God, our life is a lie. In that case " we
lie ;" and to this positive he adds the negative, "and we do not the
truth." The clause illustrates his manner. It is not a mere antithesis
-of positive and negative, but the addition of a stronger and partially
new clause, after the fashion of Hebrew parallelism. For the word
"truth" means something much more than that purely relative con
ception which we ordinarily attach to the word. We must seek the
meaning of it in such expressions as St. Paul's "obeying the truth,"1
and the words of Jesus, " I am the Truth."2 It means absolute reality.
The Gnostic dreamer — the professing Christian who talks about union
with God and yet is walking in darkness, who wilfully deceives himself,
who shrinks in hatred from -the revealing light — not only says that
which is false, but leads a life which is entirely false and hollow and
unreal — a life of semblance and of death. But if we walk in the
light, then our fellowship in light is perfected, and we are cleansed
from all sin. In other words, we are sanctified by the blood of Jesus.
His blood has won our justification — the forgiveness of our actual sins ;
His blood — that is, " His power of life working its effects and ruling
within us" — is our sanctification from all sin. And to be forgiven, and
cleansed, is to have fellowship with one another and with God.
" If we say that we have lio sin, we mislead ourselves, and the Truth is not in
us.a If we confess our sins,4 faithful5 is He and Righteous, that He should forgive
us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.6 If we say that we have not
sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us" (i. 8 — 10).
The denial of sin, the assertion of our independence and perfection,
is a, radical abandonment of honesty. There can be no reality, and,
therefore, nothing akin to the Divine,7 in the man who makes such an
1 Rom. ii, 8 ; 2 Thess. i. 8. s John xiv. 6.
• The connexion is that we all need to be thus cleansed by the Blood of Christ (Iren. c.
Haer. i., vi. 20). It is at least doubtful whether there is any special allusion to Gnostic Anti-
nomian Perfectionists.
1 Of course St. John means confession springing frnm true contrition (James v. 16).
5 True to His Nature and Promise (1 Cor. i. 9 ; x. 13 ; 1 Thess. v. 24, etc.).
« " In the background lie all tbe details of the Redemption " (Alford). " All sin, original
and aotual " ( bengal). " Si te coufessus fueris peccatorum est in te Veritas, nam ipsa Veritas
lux est. NoDdum perfects splenduit vita tua, quia insunt peccata : sed tamen jam illuminari
caepisti quia inest confessio' (Aug.).
> In the tract Sanhedrin (f. 64, a), there is a story that for three days the Israelites wrestled
with the Evil Impulse (Jetser-hard), and said that God had permitted this Evil Impulse that

CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN. 535
assertion, whether it be dictated by haughty self-sufficiency as to our
own virtues, or by Antinomian denial that sin is exceedingly sinful.
But with consciousness of sin begins the hope and possibility of
amendment. When sin is confessed with real contrition to God, and,
if needful, to men, then — because God is God, and is, therefore, faithful
to His own nature, and because, as a Righteous Judge, He judges
uprightly — it is the very object of His righteousness that He should
remit our past sins,1 and renew our whole nature. A denial on our part
of past sin gives the lie to all His revelation, and proves that His
Word is not in us.
Having thus illustrated the truth that to have fellowship with God
is to walk in the Light, and that this involves our deliverance, alike
from the principle of sin by redemption, and from the guilt of sin by
forgiveness, he sums up in these words : —
"My little children,2 these things I write to you that ye may not sin : and if
any one have sinned,3 we have an Advocate 4 to the Father, Jesus Christ, as
Righteous. And He is a propitiation for our sins, hut not for ours alone, but also
for the whole world" 5 (ii. 1, 2).
The personal address, "my little children," shows the warmth and
earnestness of this recapitulation. The aim of all that he has said is
that the Christian should not sin ; but if that deliverance be impossible
in its ideal fulness, if we do fall into sins of infirmity, still, even then
— if only we are on our guard that such sins never so master and
possess our lives that we walk in darkness — we need not despair.6 The
best of- all is not to sin ¦ but if we cannot attain to this, there is a
propitiation for sin, by which— an Advocate for us to the Father, by
whom — -we may gain the blessedness of the unrighteousness forgiven,
men might gain a reward by overcoming it. Thereupon a letter dropped from heaven, on which
was th« word " Truth." Rabbi Chanina said, " From this we may see that the Seal ofthe Holy
One is Truth."
1 ii>a a<£jj k.t.X. " In this one particle (IVa) lies tbe most comprehensive and the highest
witness of God's love that it is possible to conceive" (Haupt, p. 50).
a Tradition has olso preserved this expression as a favourite one of St. John in his old age.
s'eav tis atxapTQ. Si quis peccaverit (Vulg.).
4 Tbe word is used in this sense in the letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne (Euseb.
H. E. v. 1), where a young Christian — Vettius Epagathus — after begging to be heard in defence
of the martyrs, himself received the martyr's crown — TrapaKXTjTos Xpiariaiw xpTfjuariVas, *Xtov $e
ibv napttKA.ijToi' ei/ eauTt3 — " being called the Advocate of the Christians, but having the Advocate
in himself." On this word Canon Westeott (on St. John xiv. 16) has one of those exhaustive
notes, which are so valuable as tending to a final settlement of uncertain questions. The word
is only found in the New Testament here, and in John xiv. 16, 26 ; xv. 23 ; xvi. 7, where it is
rendered Comforter. The double rendering dates from Wiclif, followed by Tyndale and other
versions, except that the Rhemish, following tbe Vulgate, uses Paraclete in the Gospel (Luther
has in the Gospel "Trbster," and here " Fursprei-her "). The Latin Fathers use the words
Paracletus, Advo&ihts, Consopitor; and Tertullian (once), Exorat'yr, The English word means
not " Comforter" in the modern sense, but " Strengthener." ("Comfort is that by which in
the midst of all our sorrows we are comfortati — i.e., strengthened," Bp. Andrewes.) The form
of the word is passive ; in Classical Greek it means Advocate. It is used in this sense by Philo
and the Rabbis and early Christian writers. The meaning in this passage is clear, and the use
of the word in the fense "Consoler"' by the Greek Fathers seems only to be a secondary
applicatiou (Westeott, I. c. ). It whs necessary for St. John to dwell on the truth that Christ
was oar only Advocate in churches given to Angel worship (Col. ii. 18 ; 1 Tim. ii. 5).
5 " Thou, too, art a part of the whole world : so that thine heart cannot deceive itself, and
think the Lord died for Peter and 'aul, but not for me " (Luther).
8 " Sed forte surrepit de vita humana peccatum. Quid ergo fiet? Jam desperatio erit?
Audi : — si quis, inquit peccaverit," etc. (Aug.).

536 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of the sin covered. That Advocate1 is righteous in His nature and a
propitiation by His office, so that, in and through Him, we can be
acceptable to God.2 The word " a propitiation " (hilasmos) is peculiar
to St. John, occurring only here and at iv. 10. It is therefore in the
Septuagint that we must look for its meaning, and there it is used as
the translation of Kippurim, " the Day of Atonement,"3 just as the
corresponding verb to " propitiate," or " make a propitiation for,"4 is
the' standing version of kippftr. It is therefore a sacrificial metaphor,
and points to the same series df thoughts which we have already
examined in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The word itself stands in
close relation to the word hilasterion,5 or ' mercy-seat, which — sprinkled
with the blood of atonement, and dimly seen in the darkness through
the clouds of incense — was a type of the means whereby man may
stand redeemed and accepted in the presence of God. The emblem and
the expression belonged to the Jewish ritual ; but, as St. John here adds,
Christ's atonement was not only for Jews, not only for believers, but for
the whole world. " Wide as was the sin, so wide was the propitiation."
With the third verse of the second chapter, begins a second section
in illustration of the fundamental theme — the manner, namely, whereby
" walking in the light," as a proof that we have eternal life, is evi
denced. It is evidenced, as we have hitherto seen, by sinlessness — that
is, by forgiveness from the past guilt of sin (i. 8 — 10), and deliverance
from its present power (i. 5 — 7). But this is a proof that we are
walking in the light with reference to God. The Apostle now proceeds
to illustrate how such a walk is evidenced towards men, and this
occupied the section ii. 3 — 14. In the first paragraph of this section
he. tells us that it is thus evidenced by keeping God's commandments
(3 — 5) ; in the second, he proceeds to define all God's commandments
as being summed up essentially in one, namely in walking as Christ
walked, which (as the whole accompanying Gospel would have already
made clear to his readers) was to walk in love, since love is the epitome
of this life.6 This section, then, is an illustration of our " fellowship
with one another," as the last was of our " fellowship with the Father, and
the Son Jesus Christ ; " and thus the two together are meant, directly
and consecutively, to promote the object which he has already placed in
the forefront of his Epistle — union with one another and with God.7
And since critics have ventured to talk so superficially and ir
reverently of St. John's tautology and senility, and the loose, incon
sequential structure of his Epistle, as though it were (as Caligula said
1 Advocate (as we have seen), not Comforter, is perhaps always the right rendering of
nmpaKAijrd!. The word has heen adopted hy the Talmudists hy simple trjnsliteration (o^n-ye).
and onlv in this sense. This is the only passage in which the title is dirertly given to the Son ;
but it is indircotli given to Him in John xiv. 16, " I will send you another Comforter." Further,
St. John generally regards and speaks of the Paraclete as the Spirit of Christ.
2 " The righteousness of Christ stands ou our side, for God's righteousness is in Jesus
Christ, ours " (Luther). a CG3- * iAaovceo-Sai.
» Rom. iii. 25 (see Life and, Work of St. Pant, ii. 209), and see supra on Heh. ix. 5.
• John xiii. 34,, 35. 1 John iii. 1. 7 See i. 3.

SYMMETRY OF STYLE.

537

of the style of Seneca)1 a mere "rope of sand," it may be well to
set visibly before the reader a proof of the extreme coherence and
symmetry which mark its structure. It may serve to show that when
these rude critics fancied that they " understood his ignorance," they
were, as critics so often are, merely "ignorant of his understanding."
If the reader will open his Bible and refer to the paragraphs i. 5 — 10
and ii. 3 — 11, he will find that they present the close and symmetrical
parallelism which is indicated below.
Chapter, i. 5.
Subseetion a —
General statement.
Ver. 6—
Negative supposition, and two condem
natory conclusions. ' >
Ver. 7—
Positive supposition, and two declara
tions.
Subsection $ —
Three opposed sentences, ver. 8, 9, 10.

Chapter ii. 3.
Subsection a—
General statement.
Ver. 4—
Negative supposition, and two condem
natory conclusions.
Ver. 5—
Positive supposition, and two declara
tions.
General statement, ver. 6 — 8.
Three opposed sentences, ver. 9, 10, 11.

The symmetry is not slavishly artificial, but it is a very marked
characteristic of a careful and meditative style.
" And in this we recognise that we have learnt to know Him, if we keep
His commandments. He that saith, I have learnt to know Him, and keepeth
not His commandments, is a liar, and in him the Truth is not. But whosoever
keepeth His Word, of very truth in him the love of God has been perfected. By
this we learn to know that we are in Him " (ii. 3 — 5) .
" To know God " is not merely to know that He is. In St. John's
sense it is to have full knowledge of Him" — that is, to receive Him into
the heart. And thus to know Him is to walk in the light, which
we cannot be doing if we are not keeping His commandments. Here,
-then, is a test for us as to whether we know Him or not, a test as to
our Fellowship with Him. St. John has already told us (i. 6) that
If we say that we have fellowship with Him,
And walk in darkness,
(a) We lie, and
(/8) Do not the truth :
and here, in closest parallel, but in stronger form, he tells us
He that saith, I have learnt to know Him,
And keepeth not His commandments,
(o) He is a liar, and
((8) The truth is not in him.
1 The shrewd, though more than half-insane Emperor, said that Seneca's style was " com.
missioues meros " (" mere disp ay "), and " arena sine calce " " sand without lime."
2 The word eiuyptums, however, so common in St. Paul and in 2 Peter, is not used by St.
John.

538 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
But he who keepeth God's word — the words of Him who was the
Word, and whose words are spirit and life : — is truly Christ's disciple.
That word, whether as the personal Logos or as His announcement,
is essentially "Love;" and, therefore, in him who keeps God's word the
" love of God " has been perfected. Such a man has in himself, as the
pervading influence of his life, the love which is in God — for " God
is love."2 The thought is exactly the same as that expressed by St.
Paul, in the Ephesians, where, in the only passage in which he bids
us be imitators of God,3 he tells us to "walk in love, even as Christ
loved us." But though the fundamental thought is the same, it is
set forth by St. John in a more developed, a more penetrative, and
a more final manner. The words, " herein we learn to know that we
are in Him," are a recapitulation, but one which adds to the emphasis
with which a truth so important Ls announced, and serves to perfect the
symmetry between this section and the corresponding one in the last
chapter. In the next paragraph St. John gives the central thought, to which
he has been drawing nearer and nearer — namely, that the ideal unity of
God's commandments is found in brotherly love ; and that this, there
fore, is the true manifestation of " walking in the light," as expressed
towards our brethren in the world.
" He that saith that he abideth in Him, ought himself also to walk even
as He walked. Beloved, I write not a new commandment to you, but an old
commandment which ye had from the beginning. That old commandment
is the word which ye heard. Again a new commandment I write to you ; 4 a thing
which is a living reality in Him and in you ; because the darkness is passing away,
and the real Light is already shining. He that saith that he is in the Light,
and hateth his brother,6 is in the darkness even still. He that loveth his brother
abideth in the Light, and there is no stumbling-block in him.6 But he who hateth
his brother is in the darkness, and in the darkness he walketh, and knoweth
not where he goeth,7 because darkness blinded his eyes" (ii. 6 — 11).
The verb nsed in the first verse of the clause expresses yet another
stage of fellowship with God — not only knowing Him (verse 3), or being
in Him (verse 5), but abiding in Him. But the stronger word is
only used to express a development in the conception of obedience —
i John viii. 31. * 1 John iv. 16. 3 Eph. v. 1, 2.
4 The whole passage is explained in the accompanying comment. It will be seen that I re
ject the explanation of the commandment as new, (1) becmse continually r newed (Calv.); or
(2) " given as though it were new '' (Neauder) ; or (3) as unknown before Christ came. The com
mandment is " old " as dating from the beginning of Christianity ; new if we look back to all
previous ages. See Dusterdieck and Haupt.
5 By " brother-! " St. John means iu the first instance " Christians," but obviously he means
to include those wider senses which Christ gave to the word " neighbour." In his method of
regurding all conceptions in their irieal and absolute nature, he only contemplates " love " and
" hatred," and nothing intermediate. " Ubi non est amor, odium est : cor enim non est
vacuum " (Bengel).
6 " He, sa\ s Bengel, " who hates his brother is a stumbling-block to himself, aud runs
against himself and against everything withiu and without : be who loves has a smooth
journey." See John xi. 9, 10. " If any man walk in the night he stumbletb, because the light
is not in him." Tho mau who walks in the light does not " set up the stumbling-block of hia
iniquity before his own faoe ' (Ezek. xiv. 3).
* " It uescius in Geheunam, ignarus et caecus praecipitatur in poenam " (Cyprian).

"a new commandment." 539
the walking as Christ walked. To do this is a moral obligation following
necessarily from the profession of constant union with God. The
earnest address, " Beloved," prepares us for some emphatic announce
ment. St. John has to explain the identity of " walking as Christ
walked " with a commandment which is at once old and new. The new
and the old commandments are not two different commandments, but
one and the same — namely, the commandment which they received from
the beginning of their Christian life. It is an old commandment, not
only (though that is true) because it is found even in the Old Testa
ment — for the letter is addressed to the Gentiles ; but because it is as
old as the whole message of the Gospel to them — " the entire word
about the personal Word " which they received in the Apostolic preach
ing. But if Love was thus, even to these Gentile Christians, an
old commandment, seeing that they had heard it all along, in what sense
was it new 1 We might be left — as St. John's readers would have been
—merely to conjecture the answer, if the Epistle had not depended
upon a knowledge of the Gospel. But turning to the Gospel we
find the new commandment there, and also the occasion on which our
Lord delivered it. In that sweet and solemn discourse which He
uttered after He had washed His disciples' feet, and which was intended
to explain that act of sovereign condescension, He said, " A new com
mandment I am giving to you, that ye love one another ; as I loved you
that ye also love one another. In this shall all recognise that ye are my
disciples, if ye have love for one another."1 All readers of the Epistle
in reading the phrase, "a new commandment," would be at once
reminded of the passage which, in all probability, they had just read in
the Gospel, and would see the analogy between "walking as Christ
walked," and "loving as Christ loved." Again and again, both in
parables and in direct exhortation, Christ had bidden them love one
another, and yet the commandment became a new commandment with
reference to the time and the manner in which it was then delivered.
For, on the one hand, He had never before bidden them to love as
He loved, and, on the other, His act in washing their feet had set
brotherly love in a light entirely new. It was an act of love, altogether
exceptional and transcendent, as St. John in the Gospel had emphati
cally pointed out.3 For the Lord Himself had called attention to
its import in the question, " Do ye recognise the meaning of what I
have done to you? I gave you an example, that as / did to you,
so ye also should ever do."3 I was an act of love in its supremest
energy — an instantia elucescens of love which could not be surpassed.
All His previous acts of love had been the loving acts of One infinitely
above them — of one whom they called, and who was, their Teacher and
Lord. This was an act done as though He were their minister and
slave. All other acts had been acts which as it were, He must have
1 John xiii 34, 35. ' xiii. i »xffi.l2,15.

540 ' THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
done in accordance with His nature ; which if he had not done,
He would not have reflected the perfectness of His own nature. But
this was not an act which could have been expected ; it was an act
supremely astonishing; it arose, not as it were from the law of any
moral obligation, but from love acting as an immeasurable impulse.
This, then, is the love which furnishes the essence of the new com
mandment : not that love only which must ever be the first rule
of Christian exhortation, but the love which ever advances to per-
fectionment,1 and so works out the perfect joy into which it was one of
the Apostle's objects to lead his readers.
When he proceeds to say that this new commandment is — is already
— a " true thing," as being alive in them, as it was in Christ, we might
perhaps be once more driven to ask, " What, then, is the necessity for
impressing it upon them ? "2 The answer, as before, is one which
applies to every one of the Epistles. It is a question which meets us at
every turn in the Epistles of St. Paul, where there is so often so glaring
a contrast between what Christians ought to be, and are asserted ideally
to be, and what they really, are. Christians can only be addressed as
Christians, as having entered into the hopes of Christians, as enjoying
the privileges of Christians, as being Christians not only in name but in
deed and in truth. If then they were Christians they were " in Christ";
and if they were in Christ they were walking as He walked, and there
fore walking in love. The love which was a real thing in Him was
necessarily also a real thing in them. St. John could not address them
as though they were not that which, as the very meaning of their whole
lives, they were professing to be. And, indeed, that is the reason
which he gives. The Love, he says, which is the new commandment, is
a verity in Him and in you, because ye are children of the Light, and
therefore the darkness is passing away. For all who were truly in
Christ, that darkness must soon have passed away altogether ; for not
only was " the night far spent, and the day at hand,"3 but the night
was actually over, and the day had dawned. The very Light — Christ
who is the Light — was shining already ; shining not only in them but
in the world. For the world is the universal realm of darkness,
but in Him the Light is concentrated in its very essence and ful
ness.4 And then very plainly the Apostle furnishes them with a test of
their professions. Love, he tells them, is the sign whether or not
the Truth is in them, whether or not they are in the Light, whether
or not they are walking as Christ walked. And the energetic
severity of his moral nature appears here also in his stern antithesis
of love to hatred, as though there were no possible intermediate
between them. When we consider all that is involved in the word
" brother," the idea of mere indifference in such a relationship becomes
i Heb. vi. 1. » See supra, p. 532
¦ Rom. xiii. 12. • John i. 4—9.

A SIXFOLD APPEAL. 541
impossible. If there be not the essence of love, there can only be
the essence of hatred. He, therefore, that professes to be in the
light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness — belongs to the world
and not to the Kingdom of Heaven — however long he may have called
himself a Christian. But he who loves will never cause another to
stumble, can never therefore incur that grievous sentence which Christ
pronounced on those who wilfully lead others into sin. The man who
hates his brother has the permanent sphere of his life in the darkness.
The light of the body is the eye ; and since the eye of such a man is
evil, his whole body is full of darkness. He stumbles through life
along a road of which he does not know the goal.
These two illustrative paragraphs are closed, as is the case in the
first section of the Epistle (ii. 1, 2), by a hortatory conclusion,2 which
falls into the rhythm so natural to St. John —
" I write to you, my little children,3 because4 your sins have been forgiven you
for His name's sake :
" I write to you, fathers, because ye have learnt to know Him who is from the
beginning : 6
" I write to you, young men, because ye have conquered the evil one :
" I wrote6 to you, little children,7 because ye have learnt to know the Father :
" I wrote to you, fathers, because ye have learnt to know Him who is from the
beginning :
" I wrote to you, young men, because ye are strong,8 and the Word of God
abideth in you, and ye have conquered the wicked one" 9 (ii. 12 — 14).
In these words we have a six-fold appeal, of which the first three
clauses are introduced by the present, " I write," and the last three by .
the aorist, " I wrote," "This aorist might be rendered in English by the
perfect, " / have written," since it was the tense used by epistolary idiom
to represent a letter regarded as a whole. The first question to be settled
is whether the Apostle has in. view three different ages of life. If so,
it is certainly strange that he should place " fathers " between " little
children" and "young men." From his use of "little children" in
other parts of the Epistle,10 to express the whole body of Christians,
1 Matt, xviii. 6. 2 See analysis, supra, p. 527.
8 TeKvia, addressed to all Christians, as in ver. 1; iii. 18; iv. 4; v. 21; John xiii. 33. It is
only found in Sr. John.
* That Sti here means " because," and not *' that," is proved by ver. 21.
6 " Alii juvenes corpore, vos fide" (Bengel).
6 eypafa (n, A, B, C, L, Syriac, Coptic, ^Itbiopic, Arabic), not ypa$io, seems to he the true
reading in this verse. It is very difficult to say why the tense is altered ; possibly only for
emphasis, like the formula " we decree and have decreed." The attempt to refer it only to the
part of the Epistle already written, while ypacjiui points to what follows, is untenable and against
usage. Both words refer to the whole Epistle. It is, however, curious that up to this point
ypdxjiio has occurred seven times, whereas eypaipa is used six times in the rest of the letter.
7 iraiSla seems to differ in no sense from reKvia. See ver. 18 ; John xxi. 5. Perhaps the
change is merely for the sake of literary form and variety. TeKvia may be ' a little more
personal and affectionate, and so be represented, as Bishop Wordsworth says, by " my little
children." 8 "Fitque valens juvenis neque enim robustior aetas Ulla" (Ov. Met. xv. 208). lo-xvpoi
(Luke xi. 21 ; Heb. xi. 31).
» In all these appeals the strongest warning is involved in the loftiness of the assumed
ideal. » ii 1, 28.

542 THE EARLY DATS OF CHRISTIANITY.
there can be little doubt that this is his meaning here. If so, in the
first of each three clauses he is exhorting Christians as a body, and in
the latter two he is specially speaking to the two classes into which
Christians of that day might most generally be divided, namely,
" fathers " and " young men." Indeed, to address " little children " as
such would have been alien to the habits of that age, nor would little
children have understood the language here addressed to them. He
says to the Christians generally that their sins have been forgiven them,
because, as we have had repeated occasion to see, every address to
Christians " must presuppose Christianity in the hearers, and yet teach
it." Hence he addresses the fathers of the Churches, whether in a
literal or an ideal sense, as having attained to the true knowledge of
the Eternal Father ; and the young men as having won a secure and
tranquil mastery over temptation. After due time the young man's
conquest will lead to the father's knowledge. The general identity in
meaning of the second three with the first three clauses makes it some
what difficult to account for the change of tense. Both phrases, " I
write " and " I wrote," refer to this letter ; the first as expressing the
writer's present purpose, the other mentally glancing at it as a com
pleted whole. The two together give a greater emphasis to his exhorta
tions,1 and are, perhaps, meant, by way of introduction to the following
section of the Epistle : —
" Love not the world,2 nor yet the things in the world.3 If any man love the
world, the love of the Father is not in him;4 because everything that is in the
world, the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes,5 and the braggart vaunt of
life, 6 is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away,
and the desire of it. But he who doeth the will of God abideth for ever. Little
children, it is the last hour,7 and as ye heard that Antichrist8 is coming,- even now
antichrists in numbers have come into being, whence we recognise that it is the
last hour.9 From us they went forth, but they were not of us, for had they been of
1 " A scribo transit ad scripsi : non temere ; scilicet verbo scribendi ex praesenti in praeteri .
turn transposito immisit commonitionem formossimam " (Bengel).
2 " God loved the world " (John iii. 16) with Divine compassion, as its Creator ; we are not
to love it with base desire. We are not to set our affections either on its material seductions,
or on those human corruptions which mark its ruined condition.
3 All kinds of sinful living, thinking, and demeanour (Ebrard). "Vulgata consuetndo homi
num, res corporeas unice appetentium" (Sender).
* " Contraria non sunt simul " (Bengel).
5 "Desire" {e-mBvpia) is coupled (always subjectively, i.e., the desire of, not for) with "the
heart" (Rom. i. 24), "the body" (Rom. vi. 12), and "mankind" (1 Pet iv. 2, etc.). Desires
are called " worldly " (Tit ii. 12) and "fleshly " (1 Pet. ii. 11). By the " desire of theflesh"is
meant every form of wrong or excessive lust. By the " desire of the eyes " is meant the sphere
of selfishness, envy, covetousness, hatred, and revenge (Ebrard). Thus iu the Testament of
the Twelve Patriarchs, one of the seven " spirits of deceit " is the " spirit of seeing, with
which desire is produced."
6 Similarly, while speaking of luxurious extravagance, Polybius (vi. 5, 7) says — rj irepl rods
pious a\a£aveLa icai woXvTeyeia. Chrysostom calls it " the inflation (rvibos) and outward splendour
((pavTotria) of worldlv life." " Libido sentieudi, soiendi, dominandi " (Pascal).
' All Christians felt that the fall of Jerusalem was the close of an eeon. It was a coming of
Christ. They all felt that after that He might finally come to judgment at any time. " Ulti-
mum tempus, in quo sic complentur omnia ut nihil supersit praeter ultimam Christi revela-
tionem " (Calvin ; 1 Cor. xv. 22 ; 2 Cor. v. 1, sq. ; 1 Thess. iv. 15, scj.).
8 " Antichrist " is a word peculiar to St. John in the N. T. (ii. 18, 22 ; iv. 3 ; 2 John 7).
These are the only passages in which the word occurs. Strange to say, it is not once used in
the Apocalypse.
» 2 Tim. iii. 1, sq.

WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 543
us they would have abode with us ; but (they went out) in order that they may be
manifested that all are not of us" : (ii. 15, 19).
With this clause begins the third section of St. John's illustrations
as to the nature and meaning of "walking in the light." As the very
name of the Light reminds us of the darkness, which is its opposite;
and as God's kingdom is the sphere of Light, so'the world is the realm
of darkness. He, then, who would walk in the Light must enter into
the meaning of this severance. He must not love the world, nor
the things which enter into the ideas of the world. Those things are
defined under their ethical aspect. They are the objects of sensual
desire in all its forms. They are the things which tend to the
gratification of the flesh — that is, of our whole lower and animal nature
— everything which tends to foster and stimulate the sins of gluttony,
drunkenness, and impurity in all their many forms and gradations.
They are the things which gratify the desire of the eyes — all that tends
to the sins of intellectual selfishness and slothful sestheticism.2 They
are the braggart vaunt of outward life — all that tends to the sins
of vulgar ostentation, egotistic pride, intellectual contempt, which
spring from regarding life, not in its divine and spiritual (£»?)), but in
its earthly and external aspect (&ios).s In St. John's language, there
fore, the world (kosmos) does not mean the physical universe, which
does indeed deserve the name of " order," by which it is described,4
but the world regarded in its ethical sense, that is, a world disordered
by the unrestrained prevalence of sinful forces, the world fettered in
the bondage of corruption.6 He bids us not to love this world — to have
no esteem and affection for it — for two reasons. First, because such
love cannot proceed from God, but from that evil principle which is the
source of all vain and vile desires ; and next, because the world is but
a fleeting show, and the desires which it inflames can have but an
instant's gratification. On the other hand, he who makes the will of
God the law of all his actions, abides for ever. And it is the property
df love to bind us closely to that which we love ; if we love the earth
we are earthly ; the love of God makes us divine.8
Then from the general warning against the world he descends to
its special manifestation in the form of anti-Christian error, which
he introduces with the address of fatherly tenderness, " Little children,
it is the last hour." The world and its desire is passing away now, it
has not long to last. The final dispensation has begun. There will not
be, there cannot be, any new dispensation. How long this aeon is
-1 The ov Travres might mean " none," as ov irao-a o-o.pt- means " no flesh " in Rom. iii. 20, but it
is simpler to explain the passage as a mixture of two constructions, " that they may be mani
fested as not belonging to us," and " that it may be manifested tliat all {i.e. all who nominally
belong to us) are not of us." 2 Matt. vi. 22.
3 /Si'os, mere " living " — the psychic, animal, sensuous life, as in iii. 17. iv o-apKi BiSio-a*.
1 Pet. iv. 2.
* " Quern Koo-pov Graeci nomine ornamenti appellaverunt '' (Plin. JI. N. ii. 3) .
» Rom. viii. 19. 20.
• ¦ ' Amor habet vim uniendi ; si terram amas terrenus es, si Deum divinus " (Gerson).

544 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
to last neither St. John knew nor any man, not even the angels in
heaven. With reference to all previous seons this is the final ason. At
its close there will be the new heaven and the new earth. And
potentially this seon is already complete. With the manifestation of
the Word in flesh its whole development was condensed into its first
moment. It may linger on for a thousand years, for a thousand years
is with' the Lord as one day ; but " it has already advanced to the top
of its development, and therefore hastens to its end." And one sign of
that ever-approaching end — ever approaching however long delayed — is
the existence already of many Antichrists. Whether the many were
yet to be concentrated into one monstrous development of intense
personal wickedness, St. John does not say. The word Antichrist,
which St. John alone uses, may mean either " rivals of Christ," i.e.,
pseudo-Christs (Matt. xxiv. 5, 11), or "enemies of Christ;"1 — either
those who try to pass themselves off as Christs, or those who set them
selves in open array against Him. An Antichrist may take the
semblance of a Nero or of a Simon Magus, of a Priest or of a Voltaire.
St. John enters into no details because his readers had already heard
that Antichrist cometh. This must refer to his own oral teachings, or
those of other Apostles, for he tells us afterwards that by " Anti
christs " he means those who deny the Incarnation (iv. 3), or who deny
the Father and the Son (ii. 22). This form of Antichrist is not
described either by Daniel, or by St. Paul in his Man of S^n. If,
in 2 Thess. iii. 4, the expression of St. Paul may admit of some sort of
analogous interpretation, it certainly could not have been assumed by
St. John that tbe brief letter to a Macedonian Church would already
have pervaded the whole of Asia.2
Nevertheless, the prevalence of these Antichrists, of whom St. John
had orally spoken, was the direct fulfilment of the weeping prophecy of
St. Paul, in his farewell to the Ephesian Elders, " that after his
departure grievous wolves would enter among them, not sparing the
flock, and that from among their own selves men would arise, speaking
perverted things to drag away disciples after them." The very danger
to the Church lay in the fact that this anti-Christian teaching arose out
of her own bosom. The Antichrists did not openly apostatise from the
Christian body ; they corrupted it from within. They still called
themselves Christians ; had they really been so, they would have
continued to be so. But their present apostasy was a manifestation of
the fact that they never had been true Christians, and that not all who
called themselves Christians are such in reality.
1 The preposition ivri is used in both senses in compounds — either (1) "instead of" or (2)
"opposed to." Thus we have((l) avTifiao-i\4vs, "a viceroy;" avriBeos, "ademi-god;" avBiwaros,
" a proconsul," etc. ; and (2) arn$tX6Vo<f>os, "an enemy to philosophers;" afnu.avT)T»js, "an
opponent;" avTLKaTiav, a hook " against Cato." Had St. John meant "a rival of Christ," he
would have used pseadochristos, us he "uses pseudo^prophetes. The Fathers, both Greek and
Latin, understood the word normally to mean "'contrarius Christo" (Aug.), "Christi rebelles"
(Tert.) See Trench, Sf/nonyras of the New Testament, p. 145. See Hurd s Sermons on Prophecies
respecting' Antichrist, and Prejudices against the Voctrme. » Aots xxi. 29, 30.

THE spirit's unction. 545
But if there be these dangers from within — if the Christianity of
the lips is consistent with anti-Christianity of life — if walking in the
light is nevertheless wholly incompatible with any fellowship with the
world, as manifested in this or any other- form of anti-Christianity —
how is the Christian to be secured 1 That is the question which, in the
next section, St. John proceeds to answer.
" But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.1 He
that confesseth the Son bath also the Father. I have not written unto ye because
ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and because no lie is of the truth.
Who is the linr but he that denieth Jesus is the Christ ? This is the Antichrist ;
even he that denieth the Father and the Son ; whosoever denieth the Son the same
hath not the Father ; he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also. Ye — what
ye heard from the beginning, let it abide in you. If that abide in you which ye
heard from the beginning, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father. And
this is the promise which He promises to us— Elernal Life.
" These things wrote I to you concerning thos'e who mislead you. And ye — the
unction2 which ye received from Him, abideth in you, and ye have not need that
any man teach you, but as the unction itself teacheth you concerning all things,8
and is a true thing and not a lie ; and even as it taught you, abide in it "
(ii. 20—27). Here then is the Christian's security — an unction from the Holy
Spirit, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit by which we are anointed to
be Kings, and Priests, and Prophets,4 even as Prophets,5 Priests, and
Kings were anointed of old. We are anointed by the same chrism as
was Christ Himself, and therefore can discern between Christ and
Antichrist. This was the Lord's promise that His Holy Spirit should
lead us into all truth, and therefore separate us, by His consecration,
from the region of darkness, from the world, its errors, and its lusts.
And this is why St. John need not dwell on a multitude of particulars,
or track the various ramifications of deceit. For he is not writing to
Jews or to Gentiles, but to Christian men, whom he needs only to
remind that they belong to the sphere, not of lying semblances, but of
the Eternal and the Beal. They are already " in the light ; " he does
but need to remind them to abide therein. Now, for a Christian to
deny that Jesus is the Christ, stamps him as radically untrue. He
must have ceased to be " in Christ " by that denial ; he must have left
the kingdom of heaven for the world, the light for the darkness, the
Real for the illusory. And to deny the Son is to deny the Father, since
only by the Son has the Father been made known. These stern, dis
connected sentences, falling like hammer strokes on the heart of the-
1 " Si Christum i**me scis, satis est si caetera nescis ;
Si Christum oescis, nihil est, si caetera discis."
Motto of Johann Bugenhagen.
3 The word chrisma, not used in t»'o Gospel, may be suggested by the word ontic/tristos. All
Christians are christoi, " anointed ot God." Comp. Acts x. 38, " God anointed Him with the-
Holy Spirit."
3 That is all things essential ; all that we need.
* Is. lxi. 1 Kings aud priests, Rav i. 6; "a royal priesthood, a holy nation," 1 Pet. ii. 0j
prophets, Joel ii. 28 ; Acts ii 17, 18.
6 1 Kings xix. 16 only,
J J

546 THE EARLY DAYS - OF CHRISTIANITY.
listener, mark that holy and uncompromising severity of St. John's
ideal, which resulted from his living in the atmosphere of contemplation,
and regarding all things in their inmost nature and essence. Yet we
should judge, from the affectionate title of " little children " by which
they are introduced, and we know from the precious traditions of the
Apostle's later days, that this stern theological inflexibility cannot be
perverted, as it so often has been, into an excuse for theological hatred
and party spirit, since it was combined with the tenderest charity
towards erring souls.
But to save them from all this terrible defection, they had but to
abide in the truth which they heard from the first, and to suffer it to
abide in them. The exhortation resembles that of our Lord in the
Gospel, " Abide in Me and I in you.1 If ye abide in Me and My words
abide in you, ye shall ask for yourselves whatever ye will and it shall be
granted to you." Their active endeavours after constancy would be
followed by a passive growth in grace. The abiding is secured by the
constancy. The constancy is secured by the abiding. "It is a per
manent and continuous reciprocation ; the abiding of Christ in men
furthers their abiding in Him ; this again facilitates the former ; and so
it goes on."
This abiding is what He promised to us, and it is Eternal Life. For
Eternal Life is fellowship with the Father and the Son. " This is
Life Eternal, that they should learn to know Thee the Only the Very
God. and Him whom Thou sendest, Jesus Christ."2
Then, in the last two verses (28, 29) comes the recapitulation and
closing exhortation, before he passes to a new topic. " You have heard
your danger. You are aware of that Unction which will secure you
against it. I have told you what is the meaning of the Eternal Life,
and of the fellowship on which I touched at the beginning of my letter.
Abide in the Unction. It is a thing absolutely real, incommunicably
dissevered from all that is false. Thus it is a source of all true
teaching to you. That is the one command which is needful for you."
SECTION II.
THE CONFIDENCE OP SONSHIP.
Having thus shown at length that fellowship with God involves a
walk in the Light, and a confession of sin, and that our fellowship with
the brethren consists in general obedience to the commands of God,
and special imitation of Christ in His love for all ; and having shown
that this common fellowship with God and with our brethren necessi
tates an absolute severance from the world in general, and from all
antichristian teaching in particular, he enters on another topic — namely,
on the confidence inspired by Sonship as a sign of our possession of
Uternal Life. 1 John xv. 4, 5, 7. * John xvii. 2, 3.

THE MANIFESTATION OF CHRIST. 547
" And now little children abide in Him, that if He be manifested we may have
confidence, and may not be shamed away from Him in His appearing 1 If ye know
that He is righteous, ye recognise that every one also who doeth righteousness has
been born of Him.
" See what love the Father hath given to us 2 that we should be called children
of God.3 [And such we are.4] For this cause the world recogniseth not us,
because it did not recognise Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and not
yet is it manifested what we shall be. We know that if He be manifested we
shall be like Him, because wo shall see Him even as He is. And every one who
hath this hope in Him, purifieth himself even as He is pure" 5 (ii. 28 — iii. 3).
The " and now," and the address, " little children,'' of ii. 28,
together with the introduction of the four new thoughts — of Christ's
" manifestation," of our having " confidence," of " doing righteousness,"
and of having been " born of God " — all indicate the beginning of a
new section. And every one of these new thoughts is referred to and
developed in the next great division of the Epistle.6
i. As regards the " manifestation " of Christ, that term, as expressive
of His return to judgment, is peculiar to St. John, and marks his
invariable point of view that all things in the Divine economy advance,
not by sudden catastrophes, but by germinant developments in accord
ance with eternal laws. Christ is present now ; His return will be but
a manifestation of His Presence ; and it is, perhaps, the consciousness
that Christ is always present which has prevented St. John from else
where using the word Parousia for His second return, though that term
is so common in the other sacred writers. Only by abiding in God can
we meet that manifested Presence without shame, and answer with
confidence at His judgment seat. Now, as St. John has already said
that " every one who abideth in Him sinneth not," so now he expresses
the same thought in a more developed form, by saying that the doing
righteousness — as He is righteous — is the test of having been born of
Him. He who does not sin has fellowship with God. He whose
innocence is manifested in righteousness may know with confidence
that he has been born of God. Here the Evangelist's point of view
nearly resembles that of St. Paul, when he says that " the foundation
of God standeth sure, having this seal, — ' The Lord knoweth them that
1 " Ne pudefiamus ab ejus praesentia " (Calvin). Matt. xxv. 41. iropeveo-Be air' epov.
3 yip-Iv* " iudignis, inimicis, peccatoribus " (Corn, a Lapide).
3 The missionary Ziegebalg tells an interesting story that in translating this passage with
the aid of a Hindoo youth, the youth rendered it, "that we should be allowed to kiss his feet."
"When aslcedwhy be thus diverged from tne text, he replied, "A Child! tbat is too much — too
high ! " (Brauue, ad loc.t.
* These wurds are found in n, A, B, C, Theophylact (yeveo-Bai -re Kat \oyta-0fyat), Augustine,
etc. They i»re omitted in K, L, and by (Eeumenius. They may he genuine, but read like an
awkward gloss. The Vulg. renders it wrongly " et simus.''
5 Comp. 2 Cor. vii. 1. The Apostles do not deem it necessary at every turn to introduce all
the qualifications which would express the whole truth as t > the Divine and human elements in
the work of salvation ; but of course the " purifieth himself " must be understood side by side
with John xv. 5, " without Me ye can do nothing." " Castificas te, non de le, sed de illo qui
venit ut inhabitet te " (Aug.).- There seems to be no fundamental distinction between the uses of
ayi-tfoj and KoBapC^ui. The adjectives ayvbs, KaBapbs are used indifferently for "rimo in the LXX.
both of material (Num. viii. 21, etc.) and spiritual things (Ps. xi. 7, etc.).
« "Manifestation of Christ" (iii. 3—8); "Confidence" (iii. 21; iv. 17; v. 14); "Doing
righteousness " (iii. 1—10) ; being " born of God " (iii 24, 8eo.).

548 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
are His,' and ' Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart
from iniquity.' " l
The righteous man, then, is the son of God ; and what love has the
Father given us with this very object — that we may be called His
children ! St. John does not call us " sons " of God, as St. Paul does,2
but " children," because he regards the sonship less as adoptive and
more as natural. If the world does not recognise the sonship we are
not to be surprised, since neither did it recognise the Sonship of Him
from whom our sonship is derived. But there is another reason why
St. John calls us " children " rather than " sons." It is because the
word "childhood" involves in it the necessary idea of future growth,
and this is true of our relation to God. Children we are, and some
thing more than this we shall be hereafter, because we shall see God,
and, therefore, become more and more like Him, though that new, and
as yet unknown, relationship to Him will be but the, full evolution of
the old. And it is the constant aim of every one who really holds this
hope to begin that ever-increasing resemblance, by even now purifying
himself even as Christ is pure.
Our sonship of God is, therefore, tested at the Last Day by our
lives ; and to us it can only become a matter of present assurance by
doing righteousness. He proceeds to illustrate this truth in four
sentences, of which each consists of two clauses. First, he shows that
sin is opposed to God and opposed to Christ (vs. 4, 5) ; then that to
abide in Him is to be sinless, and that to be sinful is never to have
seen Him (v. 6) ; nay more, he shows that to do righteousness is to be
of God, and to do sin is to be of the devil (vs. 7, 8) ; then, in the last
two verses of the clause (9, 10), he recapitulates the proof, and states
the final result.
The section then is as follows : —
" Every one that committeth sin committeth also lawlessness, and sin is lawless
ness. And ye know that He was manifested that He may take away sins,3 and sin
is not in Him " (iii. 4, 5).
" Every one who abideth in Him sinneth not. Every one who sinneth hath not
seen Him nor even known Him"4 (ver. 6).
1 2 Tim. ii. 19:
2 " According to St. Paul we receive for Christ's sake the rights of children. According to
St. John we receive through Christ the children's nature. According to St. Paul the old
nature of man io transformed into a new. According to St. John an altogether new principle of
nature takes the place of the former. It is most evident that the two views are substantially
one, and true, but they depend on the respective general systems of the two Apostles " (Haupt,
3 " Tollit peccata et dimittendo quae facta sunt, et adjuvando ne fiant, et perducendo ad
vitam ubi fieri omnino uon possunt " ( Bede).
* " In ipso peccati momento talis fit, ac si Eum nullo viderit modo " (Bengel). This verse,
as Theophylact tells us, was regarded by Antmomian (mostics as proving the indef eeti i ility of
grace, and so was turned into an excuse for lasciviousness. But that certain practical modi
fications roust be admitted is clear, from previous passages in the Epistle itself. The older
expositors generally adopted the method of toning down the Apostle's language. Modern
expositors accept the language as meaning what it says, but regard it as only applying to the
ideal. The two methods come to much the same thing in the end. Thus, in verse 9, some
explain " he cannot sin," by —
He cannot commit mortal sin (Romanists).
He oannot sin deliberately and intentionally (Ebrard).

SINFULNESS OF SIN. 549
" Little children, let no one mislead you. He that doeth righteousness is
righteous, as He is righteous. He that doeth sin is of the devil,1 "because the devil
sinneth from the "beginning.2 For this purpose was the Son of God manifested
that He may destroy the works of the devil" (ver. 7, 8).
" Every one that hath heen born of God doth not commit sin, because his seed
abideth in him ; and He cannot sin, because He has been born of God'* (ver. 9).
"In this are manifest the children of God and the children of the devil"
(ver. 10ff).
To careless and superficial readers many of these clauses might look
like mere mysticism clothed in antithetic tautologies. To one who has
tried to study the mind and manner of St. John, they are full of the
deepest meaning. Take the very first clause. How deep and awful a
conception of sin ought we to derive from the fact that all sin, however
slight it may seem to us, is not a matter of indifference, but a trans
gression of the divine law 1 How does such a conception tend to
silence our petty excuses, or our weak talk about pardonable human
imperfections ! How different will be our tone — how little shall we be
inclined "to say before the angel 'It was an error'" — when once we
have realised this " universal and exceptionless fact ! " And still more
when we remember that not only is every sin, in God's sight, the viola
tion of the eternal law, but also a violation of the whole purpose of
Christ's manifestation, which was expressly meant to take all sins
away. And when St. John proceeds to say that he who sinneth hath
never seen or known God, however much we may be inclined to intro
duce limitations into this language, both by the daily facts of Christian
He cannot pin in the way of hating his brother (Augustine, Bede).
It is alien fro n his nature to sin (Grotius).
His nature and habit resist sin (Panlus).
He does not wish to sin, or ought not to sin (various Commentators).
He cannot be a sinner (ajxap-raceii') (Wordsworth, a*>d so Didymus).
He does not sin, he only surfers sin ('esstr; c^mp. Pom. vii. 17).
So fiir a-, he remains true to himself, he does not sia (Augustine).
So long as he is a child of God he cannot sin (others).
The only possible escape from some such modification, is by asserting the possibility of sinless
ness iu this life (which contradicts i. 8), or else by asserting that none of us have seen God, and
nona of us are children of God (which contradicts the whole Epistle). Hopkins says, ** The in
terpretation which I judge to be most natural and unforced is this-: — He tbat is boin of God
doth not, commie sin— that is, he doth not sin in that maliguant manner in which the children'
of the devil do ; he doth not make a trade of sin, nor live in the constant and allowed practice
of it. . . . There is a great difference between regenerate and unreg>nerate persons in the very
sins tlat they commit. ' Their spot is not the spot of his children' (Deut. xxxii. 5). And as
they differ in the committing of sin, so much more in the opposing of it." And it' the Stoic was
allowed to >-et before himself Ms ideal, why may not the Christian do the same? Seneca said
that the wise man was not only able to do right, but even could not do otherwise. " Vir bonus
non potest non face i e quod facit ; in omni actu par sibi, jam non consilio bonus, sed moreeo
perd> ctus; uf non tantum. revte facere possit, sed nisi recle facere non possit." And VelleiuB
Paterculu* said of the younger Cato, "Homo virtuti simillimus, et per omnia ingenio Diis
quam hominibus propior, qui nunquam recte fecit ut facere videretur, sui quia <liter facere non
poUrat" (Hist. ii. a4) ; and he spok*' of him as " exempt from all human vices." And Tacitus
said that when Nero wished to kill Paetus Thrasea, it was as if he wished "to kill virtue
herself. * The Chri-tiau ideal is infinitely higher than the Stoic, and that is why the Christian
knows tbat not even a saint can be absolutely ftinltss ; yet he hates sin, and moie and more wins
the victory over it.
1 He does not say, " born of the devil." " Neminem fecit diabolus, neminem genuit nemi-
nem creavit " (Aug.). His work is " corruptio non geiieratio " (Bengel).
2 Not "ex quo diabolus est diabolus (Bengel), but since sin began: "ab initio tov
peccare."

550 THE EARLY DATS OP CHRISTIANITY.
experience, and the recognition in this very Epistle that even the most
advanced believer does not here attain to absolute sinlessness (i. 8 — 10),
yet the awfulness of the stern, unbending language tends to convince
us, more than anything else could, of the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
seeing that every act of it is a proof, as far as it goes, of alienation
from God; of affiliation, in some sense, to him from whom all sin
began. It is a nullifying of all that Christ died to achieve. The sum
ming up, then, of what he has said, is that in every one who has been
born of God there is a principle of divine life which renders sin impos
sible. Sin, on the other hand, shows, by ethical likeness, its Satanic
parentage. St. John divides all men simply into children of God and
children of the devil, and recognises no intermediate classes. We do
not see it to be so in the ordinary mixture and confusion of human life,
but in the abstract and in the essence of things, so it is. To God,
though not to men, it is possible to write the epitaph of each life in the
brief words, " He did that which was good," or " he did that which was
evil " in the sight of the Lord.
On the dread severity of this language, on the only possible expla
nation arid alleviation of it, I have already dwelt.1 The ideal truth
must ever, so to speak, float above its actual realisation. But the
warning force of St. John's high words lies in this : — We are children
of God by birth and by gift, but unless we also approve ourselves as His
children by act and life, we sink out of that sonship into Satanic depths.
Every sin we commit is a proof that we are not yet children of light,
children of God ; but that darkness still has power over us. For each
such defection we must find forgiveness, and against each such defection
we must strive more and more. A child of God, as Luther says, may
receive daily wounds in the conflict, but he never throws away his
arms. If once we have fully and freely dedicated ourselves to God,
sin may sometimes invade us, but it can never have dominion over us.
Of the two seals on the one foundation — " God's knowledge of us as
His own," and " Departure from iniquity " — where the one is found, the
other will be never wanting.
The demonstration of sonship, then, in relation to God, is " to do
righteousness " ; and in relation to man this righteousness is manifested
by loving our brethren, which he illustrates first negatively (106 — 15)
and then positively (16 — 18).
" Every one who doeth not righteousness is not from God, nor he who loveth not
his hrother. Because this is the message (ay-)e\la, A, B, etc.,) which ye heard from
the heginning, in ordor that (Im) we should lore one another ; not as Cain was from
the wicked one,2 and brutally slew his hrother. And why did he brutally slay him ?
Because his deeds were evil, but those of his brother righteous. Wonder not,
brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death unto
1 See supra, pp. 522 — 524. '
2 I.e., "Lei us not be of the wicked one as Cain wns, who," etc. The construction is
condensed, as in 1 Cor. x. 8. Some of the Rabbis said that " Cain was a son ol Eve and the
serpent " (Zohor).

HATRED IS DEATH. 551
life, because we love the brethren.1 He who loveth not abideth in death. Every
one who hateth his brother is a murderer,2 and ye know that no murderer hath
eternal life abiding in him " (iii. 104 — 15).
Our duty to man follows as an immediate corollary from our duty to
God, just as the sffeond table of the Decalogue follows naturally as an
inference from the first. No doubt in thus exhorting to brotherly love,
St. John is thinking in the first place of the Churches which he is
addressing, and therefore by " brother " he primarily means Christian.
But to confine his meaning to Christian brethren would be to wrong the
majesty of his teaching. It would also dwarf all that our Lord taught
on the same subject — as, for instance, in the parable of the Good
Samaritan ; and the force of Christ's own example, who loved us and
died for us while we were yet sinners. And to miss the truth that love
is the very central command of Christianity — though that truth has
been missed for centuries — though Church parties in their narrow and
envenomed controversies daily prove how utterly they have missed it —
though all kinds of glozing self-deceptions are practised to persuade the
conscience that violations of it are not violations of it, but are " uncom
promising faithfulness " and " burning zeal " — yet to miss that truth is
inexcusable, for it was delivered from the first, and is repeated con
tinually. It .was, as the Apostle tells us, at once the matter ("this is
the message") and the purpose ("in order that ye may iove one
another ") of the Christian revelation.
In his usual manner of illustrating by opposites, St. John impresses
the duty by showing the frightfulness of hatred, of which he selects
Cain as an example, because it is the earliest and one of the worst.
The word which he uses for the murder — (eo-<pa^ev " he butchered ") —
perhaps refers to some Jewish legend as to the manner in which the
murder had been accomplished. The instance was peculiarly apposite,
because the murder was but the ripened fruit of a secret envy caused
by God's approval of good works in another. It was, therefore, well
adapted to show the nature of the world's hatred to the Church, and to
illustrate the fact that hatred belongs to the world — that is, to the realm of
Satan and of darkness — and should therefore be utterly excluded from
the Kingdom of Light and of Christ. Let not the Church be as
Cain-like as the world. For hatred means death, and we have passed
from, death into life, as our love to the brethren shows.3 On the
other hand, if — though we call ourselves Christians — we still hate,
we are still in death. For all hatred is potential murder ; it is murder
in the undeveloped germ ; and it is impossible to conceive a murderer as
having in him that divine, that spiritual life which alone corresponds to
St. John's use of the word "eternal."
1 " Bona opera non prnecedunt justiticandtmi sed sequuntur justificatum " (Aug.).
a Comp. Seneca's " Latro es antequam inquines manum."
8 Here aga.n we have the double fact of a warning accompanied by the assertion that [ideally )
it is quite needless.

552 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Passing from the negative to the positive illustration he con
tinues : —
" Hereby we have learnt to know what love is— because He, on our behalf,
pledged His life ; and we ought to pledge our lives for the brethren. But whoever
hath this world's sustenance, and contemplates (Beoipii) his lrffcther suffering want,
and locks up from him his pity,1 how doth the love of God abide in him ?
Let us not love with word nor yet with tongue,2 but in deed and in truth " 3
(iii. 16—18). Cain has furnished the most awful warning against hatred. There
can be but one example, which is the most emphatic exhortation to love
• — namely, He who loved even His enemies, and proved His love for
them by His death. Cain slew his brother because he hated him
for his goodness ; Christ died for sinners because He loved them in their
iniquity. The phrase rendered in the English version, " He laid down
His life," is found in St. John only, but it is one of which he is specially
fond.4 He borrows it from the discourses of our Lord, and it is
therefore coloured in all probability by Hebrew analogies. If the
reference be to Isaiah liii. 10, it involves the conception of laying down
life as a pledge, a stake, a compensation. We ought to do the same
according to the measure of need. But how can any man do this who
grudges, or coldly ignores, the simplest, most initial, most instinctive
acts of kindness to his suffering brethren? — who, like the fastidious
Priest and the icy-hearted Levite of the parable, can coldly stare at his
brother's need, and bolt against him the treasure-house of natural pity 1
HoW can the man who thus shows that he has no love in him, love God
who is all love 1 Thus we see that with St. John, as with St. Paul, the
loftiest principles lead to the humblest duties, and even as it takes
the whole law of gravitation to mould a tear no less than to shape
a planet, so the element or obligation of kindness to the suffering is
made to rest on the infinite basis that God is Love. The man who
is capable of such unnatural hardness as St. John describes, is quite
capable of the hypocrisy of profession. Like the vain talker in St.
James (ii. 16), he will doubtless tell the sufferer how much he pities
him ; he will say to him, with a fervour of compassion, "Be warmed,"
" Be clothed," bat he has ten thousand cogent and ready excuses to
show why he cannot personally render him any assistance. For such
lip-charity, such mere pleasantly-emotional pity, such eloquent babble of
hard-heartedness, wearing the cloak of compassion, he warns them,
substitute the activity and reality of love.
The recapitulation which follows is extremely difficult, and all the
more so because the punctuation is uncertain, the construction unusual,
1 a-nXdyxva rachamtm, Prov. xii. 10 (tender mercies).
B " Sermone otioso, lingua simulante" (Bengel).
8 Mij poi avrjp y\ti,o-oyi arj <f>i'Aos dAAa Kai epya) Xepo-i'i' Te 0-jreliSot xwp-aai T* ap(p6Tepa (Theognis) ;
> •* Ye knot of rt.ouMi-friends " (Shaksp., Ti mon of Athens).
* John x. 11, 15, 17, 18; xiii. 37, 38 ; xv. 13.

RECAPITULATION. 553
the readings unsettled. I give the rendering which, on the whole, ap
proves itself to my mind, but I am far from certain that it is correct.
Other versions and other interpretations are almost equally tenable, and
I incline to the view that there is either some corruption in the text,
or that some confusion may have arisen, in the dictation of the Epistle.
The difficulty in interpreting the words of St. John is almost always the
difficulty of fathoming the true depth of his phrases — the difficulty of
understanding the full spiritual meaning of his words. His style is, for
the most part, incomparable in its lucidity, and there must be some dis
turbing element which renders it impossible in the next two verses to be
at all sure that we have ascertained what he meant, or even what he said.
" And hereby shall we recognise that we are of the truth, and we shall in His
sight assure our hearts t1 because if our heart condemn us, [because] God is greater
than our heart, and recngniseth all things " 2 (iii. 19, 20).
" Beloved, if our heart condemn us not we have confidence towards God ; and
whatsoever we ask we receive from Him, because we are keeping His com
mandments, and are doing the things which are acceptable before Him. And
this is His commandment, that we should believe in the name of His Son,
Jesus Christ,, and love one another evrn as He gave us commandment. And he who
keepeth His commandments abideth in Him, and he in him" (iii. 21 — 24a).
Assuming that the reading which I have followed in the first two
verses of this passage is correct, and the grammatical construction ad
missible, the meaning will be simple. It is that Brotherly Love is
a proof that we belong to the kingdom of Eternal Reality, and that by
this assurance we shall ever be able to still the misgivings of our hearts.
For even if the individual heart of each one of us knoweth its own
bitterness and condemns itself, still, since we are sincere, and have given
proof of our sincerity by love to the brethren, we may fall back on the
love and mercy of One who is greater, and therefore more tender, than
our self-condemning hearts. He will " count the long Yes of life "
against its one No, or its guilty moment. Because He recogniseth all
things — because, knowing all things, He recognises that we do love
1 ireio-opev seems to mean we shsll still the questionings of our hearts ; persuade them that
the view which ti.ey take of our frailties is too despairing. Haupt's rendering, " we shall
soothe," onlv lies in the c ntext, not in the " ord (comp. Acts xii. 2i>, 7reio-aire? BAttOTw ; E. V.,
" having „ ade Blastus their friend ; " (Gal. i. 10).
2 I cannot at all -ecept The version of Haupt, or his explanation of this extremelv difficult
passage. He takes it to mea'i, " In this love rests our consciousness that we are of the truth,
and hy it may we soothe our hearts, in all cases in which (cm eav) ¦ ur heart condemns us, for God
is greater tban our hearts and knoweth a 1 things." The difficulty lies partly in the repeated
oti. If the first oVt means " because," the st-eond must also mean "hecause," and this gives a
very awkward clause, and mukes no good sense. I therefore take the view of the o^ scholiast,
who says " the second on is supeifluous " (to Sevrepov cm 7rape'AKet). "We find a similar instance
of oti repeated in Eph. ii. 11, 12, and in classic writers (Xen. Anab. v. 16. § 19, " They say that if
not . . . that he will run a risk ' ). If if he thoughr an insuperable objection 1hat in these
instances bri always means " that " and not " hecause," I can only suppose that the second oti
is reallv a confusion dun to dotation. I take ihe consolatory, net th~ dark view of the pascage.
I think that St. John meant us to regard it as a subject of hrpe, not of ctVpiir, that God is
greater than our hearts. 'Ibis certain y is most in accordance wi' h John xxi 17 — " Lord, Thou
knowest all things : Thou knowest. that I love Thee." It would he useless to repeat the
tediously voluroinous variet'es of exposition which have been applied to th*- passage. £The
Eevised Version readers it, " and shall assure our heart before Him, whereinsoever our heart
condemn us."]

554 THE EARLY DAYS OP CHRISTIANITY.
Him1 — because, where sin abounded there grace much more abounded2
— because, as Luther said, the conscience is but a waterdrop, whereas
God is a deep sea of compassion — therefore He will look upon us
" With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance' for us all."
But if our heart condemn us not of wilful failure in general
obedience or in brotherly love — if we can, by God's grace, say with
St. Paul, " I am not conscious of any wrong-doing " — then, when faith
has triumphed over a self condemning despair — we have that confidence
towards God of which St. John spoke at the beginning of this section
(ii. 28), and are also sure that God will grant our prayers, both
personal — that we may ever more and more do the thing that is right —
and intercessory — that His love may be poured forth on our brethren
also. And thus shall we fulfil the commandments to believe and
to love. These two commandments form the summary of all God's
commandments : for the one is the inward spirit of obedience, the other
its outward form. He who thus keeps God's commandments, abides in
God and God in him.
The thoughts of the writer in these verses are evidently filled with
the last discourses of the Lord, which he has just recorded in the
Gospel, and which he may assume to be fresh in the minds of his
readers. In these verses he dwells on the same topics — faith, love,
prayer, union with God, the Holy Spirit. In this clause he concludes
the section, which has besn devoted to the proof that doing Righteous
ness and Love of the brethren are the practical signs that we are sons
of God. In the second clause of verse 24 — which would better have
been placed at the head of the next chapter — he passes to two new
thoughts, which form the basis of his proof that the source of our
sonship is the reception of the Holy Spirit of God, and therefore that
our confidence towards God (irap/Sr/o-ia, ii. 28; iii. 21 ; iv. 17, 18) may be
absolute, even to the end. SECTION III.
THE SOURCE OF SONSHIP.
" And hereby we recognise that He abideth in us, from the Spirit which He
gave us. Beloved, believe not every spirit, hut test the spirits whether they are
from God, because many false prophets have gone forth into the world. Hereby
ye recognise the Spirit of God ; every spirit which confesseth Jesus as Christ come
in the flesh is from God, and every spirit which severeth Jesus is not from God,
and this is the spirit of Antichrist of which ye have heard that it cometh, and now
is it in the world already. Ye are from God, little children ; and ye have overcome
them because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the "world. They are
from tho world; for this cause they speak from the world, and the world heareth
them. Wo arc from God ; he who learns to know God heareth us ; he who is not
1 John xxi. 17, KVpie crii n-dvTa otfias, cru yiyvtiifTKeis ort t/uAw ere. 2 Rom. v . 20.

THE SOURCE OP SONSHIP. 555
from God heareth not us.1 From this we recognise the spirit of truth and the
spirit of error" (iii. 244— iv. 6).
The change of phrase from "abide in Him " (ii. 28) to " He abideth
in us," and the ' introduction of the new thought involved in the
mention of the Spirit, mark the beginning of a new clause. The
subject of this clause is at once stated in the words " we recognise that
He abideth in us." We are passing from the tests of sonship to the
source of sonship. Following the same method of division which we
have already found in the previous sections of the Epistle, the Apostle
treats of this subject first in relation to God in Christ (iv. 1 — 6), and
then in relation to our brother-man (7 — 12). He who rightly confesses
God in Christ, and who proves the sincerity of that faith by love to the
brethren, does so by the sole aid of the Holy Spirit of God, and it is
thus proved that he is born of God.
This possession of the Holy Spirit, this abiding of God in us, is first
illustrated by its opposite. The denial of Christ is a sign that we are
under the sway of spirits which are not from God, even the spirits
of false prophecy and of Antichrist. The characteristic of the men
whom these spirits deceive is to deny the Lord that bought them,2 and
to apostatise from the worship of Christ to the worship of the Beast.3
That such spirits were at work even thus early we have already seen in
the warnings of St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude. And the peril
which they caused was enhanced by this ; they were at work in the
bosom of the Church itself. When St. John says that they have gone
forth into the world, he does not mean that they are severed from
the Church, for if this had been the case there would have been no
need to test them, or to be on guard against them, since, as regards the
Christian community, they would have stood self-condemned. But'
while still nominally belonging to the visible Church, the nature of
their teaching stamped them as belonging really to the world. Every
Christian, therefore, had need to "test the spirits ;" he was required to
exercise that grace of "the discernment of spirits" to which St. Paul
had called the attention of his Corinthian converts.4 In Corinth the
terrible abuses of glossolaly had led to outbreaks which entirely ruined
and degraded the order of worship. Amid the- hubbub of fanatical
utterances voices had even been heard to exclaim " Anathema is Jesus."
Those hideous blasphemies, due to secret hatred and heresy, had
sheltered themselves under the plea of uncontrollable spiritual impulse,
and St. Paul had laid down as distinctly as St. John, and almost in the
same terms, that the confession of Jesus as Lord could only come from
the workings of the Holy Spirit of God, and that any one who spoke
against Jesus, however proud his claims, could not be speaking by the
Spirit of God. It is interesting to find the two Apostles so exactly
1 " Por this have I heen born, and for this have I come into the world, that I should testify
to (he Truth. Every one who is of the Truth heareth my voice " (John xviii. 37)
2 2 Pet. ii. 2. 3 Rev. xiii. 8. * 1 Cor. xii. 10.

556 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
in accord with one another. It is even difficult to imagine that
St. John could have written this passage without having in mind what
St. Paul had said to the Corinthians.2 But even if not, we have another
proof how absurd is the theory which places the two Apostles in deadly
antagonism, whereas again and again there is a close resemblance
between them, not only in the expressions which they use, but also
in the entire systems which they maintain.
Here, then, was to be the test which each Christian could apply.
Every spirit was of God who confessed "Jesus Christ come in ihe flesh."
There were even in those early days professing Christians who said that
Jesus was indeed the Christ, but that the Christ had not come in the
flesh. They maintained that during the public ministry of Jesus, the
spirit of the Divine Christ had bevn with Him, but only till the
crucifixion ; so that the Incarnation of the Divine in the human nature
was nothing but a semblance. These were the forerunners of the sect
of Docetists. There were others, again, who regarded the life of Jesus
as homogeneous throughout, but denied that he was the Christ in any
other sense than that He was the Jewish Messiah ; denied that He was
Christ in the sense of being the Son of God. These were the early
Ebionites. Against them both St. John had erected his eternal barrier
of sacred testimony when he wrote " The Word became flesh," a
testimony which he here repeats, and which he expresses no less
plainly in verse 14, when he says, "We have seen and do testify that
the Father has sent His Son as Saviour of the World." Every spirit
was from God which, speaking in the mouths of Christian prophets,
confessed that Jesus who was a man was also the Incarnate Son of
God. The next verse (3) begins in the Authorised Version, " And every
spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is
not of God." The first correction which must be made to bring back
this verse to the, true reading is to omit the words " Christ is come in
the flesh." Not only are they omitted by the Sinaitic, Alexandrian, and
Vatican MSS., and absent from the Vulgate, Coptic, and ^Ethiopic
versions, but also it is more accordant with St. John's manner to vary
the form of his antithetic clauses. The meaning, however, remains the
same, for by " confessing Jesus " nothing can be meant but confessing
that He is the Incarnate Son of God. But in my version I have
ventured to follow the other reading, " Every spirit which severs
Jj'sus (d Kiei). It is a reading of deep interest, and one which, if it be
genuine, proves very decidedly the working of those Gnostic specula
tions — at least in their germs — which is also presupposed in the later
Epistles of St. Paul. The authenticity of those Epistles has often been
denied, ou the ground that they are devoted to the refutation of
heresies which, it is asserted, had no existence till at least the second
1 1 Cor. xii. S.

"SEVERING JESUS." 557
century. I have already endeavoured to show that there is no weight
in this argument;1 but if the reading "which severs Jesus" be indeed
the original one, it furnishes the clearest indication of the direction
taken from the first by Gnostic error.2 The Docetse and Ebionites had
already begun to " sever Jesus " — to say that He was a man to whom
for a time only the Spirit of God had been united, or that He was a
man only and not the Son of God at all.
It need, however, be hardly said that the interesting character of a
reading furnishes no ground for accepting it. But we are under no
temptation to introduce it on dogmatic grounds, seeing that even
without it we have sufficient indication of the existence of these sects.
At first sight it might seem to be fatal to_ the reading that it is not
found in any existing manuscript. This fact must perhaps suffice to
exclude it from any accepted text of the Greek Testament, yet this
seems to me to be exactly one of those cages in which the reading of
the existing MSS. is outweighed by other authorities and other conside
rations.8 In the first place, the reading is found in the Vulgate. Then,
Socrates, the ecclesiastical historian, tells us that Nestorius "was
ignorant that in the ancient manuscripts of the Catholic Epistle of John
it had been written that, ' Every spirit which severs Jesus is not from
God.' "'' He adds, that those who wished to sever the Divinity of
Jesus from His Humanity, " took away this sense (rairnv tV SUvotav 4k
r&v TrahaAoiv hvTiypatyav -irepieTKov) from the ancient manuscripts." How
Dusterdieck and others can here maintain that Socrates does not mean
to assert that the reading " severs Jesus " was actually found in these
old manuscripts is more than I can understand. There is no other
reason for mentioning the manuscripts at all. Socrates clearly means to
charge the Nestorians with the falsification of the text. Irenseus also,
in denying all claims of Christian orthodoxy to those who, under pre
tence of gnosis, drew distinctions between Jesus and Christ, between
the Only Begotten and the Saviour, refers to this passage and quotes it,
" Et omnis spiritus qui solvit Jesum non est ex Deo."5 Origen, again,
on Matt. xxv. 14, quotes the verse in the same way, and adds, "we
thus reserve for each substance its own proper attributes."6 Again,
Tertullian, in referring to the first, second, and third verses of this
chapter, sums them up in the words " Joannes Apostolus ....
antichristos dicit processisse in mundum (verse 1) . . . . negantes
Christum in came venisse (verse 2), et solventes Jesum " (verse 3).7
Once more, St. Augustine has the expression, " He severs Jesus, and denies
1 See my Life of St. Paul, ii. 620. ' See supra, p. 501.
3 To express the same thing technically, the diplomatic is outweighed by the paradiplomatic
evidence. 4 riyvavjo-ev oti iv 77) /cafloAiKfl 'luiavvov iyeypairTO iv rots 7raAacots oiTiypdc^ois oti ttolv irvevpa
0 Avet tcW '\nvovv k.t.\. (Socrates, H. E. vii. 32).
6 Iren. c. Haer. iii. 8.
6 " Haec autem dicentes non soi.vtmus suscepti corporis hominem, cum sit scriptum
apud Joannem, ' Omnis Spiritus qui solvit Jesum non est ex Deo,' sed unicuique suh-
stant'ae vroprietatem servamus " (0 igen, I.e.).
7 Tert. adv. Marc. v. 16, and adc. Psych., '* quod Jesum Christum soluant."

558 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
that He has come in the flesh." Against these testimonies — unniistak-
able as they are — it is usual to urge the supposed silence of Polycarp,
who in his letter to the Philippians, says, "but every one who does not
confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is Antichrist. Clearly,
however, this may be a general reference to the second verse, and
furnishes no proof that the reading " severs " may not have occurred in
this third verse even in Polycarp's time. That he should not quote it is
sufficiently accounted for by its difficulty. There is a compression in it
which requires explanation. It involved a profound and prescient
allusion to heresies which as yet were vague and undeveloped. It
needed for its full understanding the light which was to be thrown upon
it by subsequent history, when heresy after heresy was occupied in
" severing " the One Person, or isolating one or other of the Two
Natures. When we consider the proofs that the reading did really
exist in early texts ; that there was every temptation to add explanatory
glosses to explain its difficulty ; that it was easy for such an explanatory
gloss as " does not confess" to creep in from the previous text ; that the
explanatory gloss " Christ come in tlie flesh " has actually so crept in ;
that the later addition is easily accounted for by the need of explaining
the words " who does not confess Jesus," words which by themselves
gave no adequate meaning ; that, lastly, it is St. John's almost invariable
manner — a manner founded on the laws of the Hebrew parallelism in
which he had been trained — to introduce into the second clause of his
antitheses some weighty additional element of thought ; — when we
remember, lastly, what force there is in this old reading — what a flash
of insight it involves — then we may be reasonably confident that it
represents what St. John really wrote. Nothing but its difficulty led to
its early obliteration from the common texts. We have, then, this
result : — that the disintegration of the divine and tlie human in the
nature of Jesus was the distinguishing characteristic of the spirit of
Antichrist. It is, he adds, the spirit which speaks out of worldly
inspiration, and meets with worldly approval ; but they who are of God
have prevailed over the Antichrists by holding fast — unshaken, un-
seduced, unterrified — their good confession.
The power to make this good confession comes from the Spirit of
God ; and so also does the power to love our brethren.
" Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God, and every one that
loveth hath been horn of God, and recogniseth God. He that loveth not never
recognised God, because Ood is Love.1 Herein was the love of God manifested in
us, that God hath sent His Son, His only begotten, into the world, that we may
live by Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and
sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins. Be'oved, if thus God loved us, we also
ought to love one another. God no one has ever seen. If we love one another God
abideth in us, and His love has been perfected in us" (iv. 7 — 12).
1 See Aug. de Trinitate, ix. 2. " God is Love," a sentence which is the summary and
most simple expression of what the Scripture— the whole Scripture— teaches us through
out" (Hofmann).

KNOWING GOD. 559
In the deep language of St. John, the recognition of God — the
learning to know Him (yiyvtio-iceiv) — is a much greater attainment than
merely knowing about Him, and having heard of Him. " The know
ledge of the Divine involves a spiritual likeness to the Divine, and
rests upon a possession of the Divine." And this possession of the
Divine emanates in love ; love must of necessity radiate from its central
light. The hatred which wells from a fountain of inward darkness
proves at once that the knowledge and love of God does not exist in the
heart of him who hates. His hatred is the more, not the less, guilty if
it tries to hide itself under a cloak of religiousness. For God is Love.
If Light be His metaphysical essence, Love is His ethical nature. The
unfathomable and inconceivable fulness of life which is named Light is,
from eternity to eternity, existent only under the form of Love. If,
then, God is Love, everything which He does must have love for its
sole aim, and must, therefore, be a communication of Himself. Every
one who knows Him is born of Him, for " Him truly to know is life
eternal ; " and every one who is born of Him is a child of Light, and
reflects His Light in the form of love. For He has sent His Son into
the world to give us life ; and this life manifests itself in us as love,
which is thus of its very nature Divine. The love we are enabled to
show is not earthly, not human, not animal — it is Divine. It is an
effluence of the Love of God poured into our hearts, and streaming
forth from them upon others. St. John is not here speaking of the
mere slightly expanded egotism of family affections, or personal likings ;
he is speaking of Christian love, of the love of man as man. That love
is a flame from the Divine flame. Christ rendered it possible when He
died as a propitiation for us ; it becomes actual when He is Christ in
us. When we possess the Light it will certainly shine before men. No
one has ever seen God ; our fellowship with Him is not visible. But it
is much nearer, for it is spiritual. He is not only with us, He is in us ;
and, therefore, His Love, in all its perfection, dwells within us, proving
its existence by continuous love to all our brethren, whether in the
Church or in the world.

Then follows the summary of the last two sections : —
" Hereby we recognise that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He hath
given to us of His Spirit. And we have beheld, and bear witness that the Father
hath sent the Son as a Saviour of the world. He who has confessed that Jesus is
the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God. And we have learnt to know
and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is Love, and he who
abideth in love abideth in God, and God iu him " (iv. 13 — 16).
These verses state the conclusion to which the Apostle has led us —
namely, that neither confession of Christ nor love to the brethren are
possible without the aid of the Holy Spirit of God. If, then, we have
so confessed Christ, and if we love the brethren, we have received the

560 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Spirit of God, and, therefore, have fellowship with God and are His
sons. We abide in Him, and He in us. It only remains to show that
this gives us the confidence (irap'p-nala) of which he had spoken in ii. 28,
at the very beginning of the entire section.
"By this " (i.e. by all that I have now urged1), "love hath been perfected with
us,2 in order that we may have confidence in the day of j udgment, because as He
(Christ) is, we also are in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love
casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment, but he that feareth hath not been
perfected in love" 3 (iv. 17, 18).
The best comment on the first of these verses will be found in the
discourses of our Lord in John xvii. 14 — 26. If we have the fellowship
with God of which he has spoken, then, though the Church is still in
the world, we have become like Christ, and may answer with boldness
on the Judgment Day. For, just as we are condemned already if, by
not believing, we have rejected the Light for the darkness — so, if we
have believed, we anticipate the sentence of acquittal. Fear is insepar- -
able from the self-condemnation which results from being separated
from God ; it is an anticipated punishment ; it cannot co-exist with love ;
where it exists, there the love is not real love, for it is still imperfect
and impure.
Thus, then, St. John has completed one great part of his announced
design. He has written in order that Christians may have fellowship
with God, and fellowship with one another, and that so their joy may
be fulL It will and must be full if they have perfect confidence ; if,
being at one with God — they in Him, and He in them — they look
forward with perfect confidence even to that hour when they shall stand
at the judgment-seat of God. Here he might have closed this part of
his subject; but in one last retrospect (iv. 19 ; v. 5) he shows that,
though hitherto he has treated of our relation to God and our relation
to our brethren in separate sections, the two relations are, in reality,
indissolubly one. And for this purpose he gathers together all the
leading conceptions on which he has been dwelling — namely, " believing
on Christ" (v. 5) as the principle (positively) of " keeping God's com
mandments (v. 2), and (negatively) of " conquering the world " (v. 4, 5),
and shows that they find their unity in " loving our brother." From
love (iv. 19 — 21), and from faith (v. 1 — 5), spring alike our duty to
God our Father, and our duty to our brother man.
1 ev totJtw, as in ii. 6, refers to what precedes, as in John iv. 37, xvi. 30.
2 "With us"— i.e., iu the midst of the Church. "God magnified His mercy with her (per'
av-riis) " (Luke i. 58).
3 .. -yye received not the spirit of slavery again to fear, but ye received the spirit of adop
tion " (Rom. viii. 15). There is, of course, a righteous fear (Ps. xix. ), hut it h >s in it no alarm
or terror. The highest state of all is to he without fear, and with love ; the lowest to he " with
fear, but without love ; " or, without either fear or love (see Bengel, ad locj. " Timor est
custos et paedagogus legis, donee veuiat caritas " (Aug.).

EXHORTATION TO LOVE. 561
" Let ns love, because He first loved us. If any one say I love God, and hate his
hrother, he is a liar ; for any one who loveth not his brother whom he hath Seen,
in what way can he love God whom he hath not seen ? And this command we have
from Him, that he who loveth God love also his brother " (iv. 19—21).
" Every one who believeth that Jesus is the Christ,1 has been born of God, and
every one who loveth Him that begat loveth also Him who hath been begotten of
Him. Hereby we recognise that we love the children of God, when we love God
and do His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His com
mandments. And His commandments are not heavy,2 because everything that has
heen born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory whioh conquered the
world— our faith.3 Who is he who conquereth the world, except he who believeth
that Jesus is the Son of God ? " (v. 1 — 5).
In the first of these two sections he exhorts to universal love, and
shows that, since God is Invisible, there are no possible means by which
we can manifest our love to Him except by love to man, in whom God
is made visible for us. If we neglect these means, our self-asserted love
to God, since it fails to meet the test of action, can be nothing but a
lie. For though God is Unseen, yet His Presence is represented to
us by man ; and again, though God is Unseen, He has revealed to us
His will. And the will which He has revealed, the obedience which
He requh-es, is, that we love one another. Not to do so is to violate
His commandment, and to insult His image ; and He who acts thus
cannot love Him.4
In the second clause his summary consists in telling us that faith in
Jesus as the Christ is a proof of our sonship, and therefore, can only
issue in love to all God's other children. If we are loving God, and
obeying Him, we cannot fail to recognise in this very love and obedience
that they are being manifested by the spirit of Christian brotherhood.
It is faith which won the victory over the world ; and faith is manifested
in love. Thus all the elements of thought are gathered into one. Son-
ship, Faith, Obedience, conquest of the world are all essentially blended
into an organic unity ; and Love is at once the result of their existence
and the proof that they exist.
SECTION IV.
ASSURANCE.
At this point, then, the Apostle concludes that great main section
of his Epistle, which consisted in setting forth the Word as the Word
1 "In this part of his treatment," says Bengel, "the Apostle skilfuUy so arranges his
menti. >n of Love, that Faith may be observed at the close, as the prow and stern of the whole
treatment." 2 " My yofce is easy, and my burden light" (Matt. xi. 36). "Da quod jubes, et jube quod
vis " (Auir.). " His commandments are not grievous, because love makes them light ; they are
not gcievous because Christ gives strength to bear them. Wings are no weight to the bird
whicn they lift up in the air until it is lost in the sky above us, and we see it no more, and
hear only its note of thanks. God's commands are no weight to the soul, which, through
His Spirit, He upbears to Himself, ; nay, rather the soul through them the more soars aloft,
and loses itself in the Son of God" (Pusey).
3 Because by faith in Christ we become one with Him, and share in His conquest over the
world. " Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John xvi. 23).
* John xiv. 15, " If ye love me, keep my commandments ; " xiii. 34, " A new commandment
I give you, that ye love one another."
K K

562 THE EARLY DATS OP CHRISTIANITY.
of Life, in order that we may have fellowship with one another, and
with the. Father and the Son, and that our joy may be full. But this
resulted from the historic revelation of' which the Apostles were
appointed witnesses. Life springs from the Word ; but the Church
could only be taught respecting that Word — the Logos who became
flesh — by the testimony of the Apostles to His life on earth. Of that
testimony in general his readers were well aware. It only remained to
say something as to its cogency and its results. This he does in v. 6 — 9
and 10—12.
The witnesses are these : —
" This is He who came by means of water and blood, Jesus Christ ; ' not by
the water only, but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is that which
witnesseth because the Spirit is the truth. Because there are three who bear
witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and the three tend to the one
thing (viz., the possession of Eternal Life in Jesus Christ ) " 2 (v. 6 — 8).
I have, of course, omitted the words " on earth " and the verse
about the three heavenly witnesses.3 The spuriousness of that verse is
as absolutely demonstrable as any critical conclusion can be. It
is omitted in all Greek manuscripts before the sixteenth century ;
it was unknown to any one of the Greek Fathers before the thirteenth
century ; it is not found (except by later interpolation) in a single
ancient version ; it does not occur in any one of some fifty lectionaries
which contain the rest of the passage ; in the East it was never
once used in the Arian controversy. The only traces of it are in
some of the Latin Fathers, and even then in a manner which
seems to show that, though the verse may have been a marginal
annotation, it did not occur in the actual text.4 Had it ever been
in the original, its disappearance is simply inconceivable, for it contains
a clearer statement of the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity than
any other in the whole Bible. This, perhaps, is the reason why it
1 This (see infra, p. 565) can only refer primarily to historic facts in the life of Christ.
" He came by Water — which is our laver (Xovrpov) — and by Blood- which is our ransom
(XvTpov)." 3 Comp. John xvii. 23. " I in them, and Thou in me," iW Sto-t TereXeitopevoi eU ev (consum
mated into one); "brought to a final unity, in which they attain their completeness'*
(Westeott); see xi. 52. But the meaning he re is not so certain. I have supposed the words
eio-iv els ev to mean, " are for " — i.e., make for "one thing," viz., the truth in question, "in
unum. consentiunt.'' But the " one thing ' may be " that Jesus is the Christ." Wordsworth
renders it, "are joined into one substance," which suits John xvii. 23, but hardly this passage.
Reuss's " , es trois sont d' accord," is a mere untenable paraphrase.
3 They were first translated in the Zurich Bible, 1529, aud in Luther's edition of 1534. First
they were printt din smaller type, or in brackets, but after 1596 without any distinction. In
Greek they were first printed in the Complntensian edition of 1514, and the 3rd edition of
Erasmus. In his editions of 1516 and 1518 he omitted them, but having pledged himself to in
troduce them if found in a single Greek manuscript, he did so, though believing the MS. to be
corrupt — " Ne cui sit ansa calumniandi." On therr appearance in a lectionary in 1549, Bergen-
hagen said, " Obsecro chalcographos et eruditos viros ut illam additionem omittant et
restituant Graeca suae priori integritati et puritati propter veritatem."
4 The first distinct quotation < f the words is by Vigilius Thapsensis, at tbe end of the fifth
century. " If the fourth century knew that text, let it come in, in God's name; but if that
age did not know it, then Ariauism in its height was b^at down without the aid of that verse;
and let the fact prove as it will, the doctrine is unshakeu " (Bentley). It is not impossible that
some transcribers may have taken them from St. Cyprian, and written them as a gloss on the
margin of his MS. (Wordsworth refers to Valcknaer, de Glossis m N. T.)

"BY WATER AND BLOOD." 563
has been so vigorously defended. But not to dwell on the gross
immorality of defending a passage manifestly spurious because of
its doctrinal usefulness, the passage is not in the least needed as a proof
of the doctrine of the Trinity, which, even without it, is in this
very paragraph distinctly indicated (vss. 6, 9). The demonstrable
spuriousness of the verse renders it, then, unnecessary to show that it
breaks and disfigures the reasoning of the passage, because it belongs to
a totally different order of ideas. There can be little doubt that it will
disappear, as it ought to disappear, from the text of any revised version
of the English Bible.1
But, omitting the spurious words, what does the passage mean? It
has a very deep and true meaning, for which, if Renan had sought more
patiently and more reverently, he would not have called it an " Elcha-
saite fantasticality."2
He says that Jesus Christ came by means of water and blood, and
that the water and the blood are, with the Spirit, three witnesses, which
give one converging testimony. As to what they testify, he himself
tells us — it is, that God gave us Eternal Life, and that this life is
in His Son. And such being the high truth to which they bear witness,
it is most important for us to understand in what way their testimony
is valid — nay, in what sense it can be called a testimony at all. In what
sense, then, did Jesus, as Christ — that is, Jesus as Son of God — come by
water and blood? And how do this water and blood constitute two
separate witnesses 1
It would be simply impossible for any one to answer this question
who had not the Gospel before him. The notion of " Witness " is one
that plays a very prominent part in the writings of St. John. To him
Christianity is emphatically "the Truth" — i.e., the eternal, all-com
prehensive Reality, which must pervade alike the thoughts and the
actions of men.3 But the Truth, so far as it rests on outward facts,
must be brought home to men's hearts by "witness." This, of course,
was necessary from the first ; but it was more than ever necessary in the
days when but few could bear the testimony first-hand, and when many
had begun to cavil and to doubt.
Now, in the Gospel, St. John has adduced and elaborated a sevenfold
witness j4 1, that of the Father (v. 31—37 ; viii. 18); 2, that of Christ
Himself (viii. 14 ; xviii. 37) ; 3, that of His works (v. 36 ; x. 25) ; 4,
that of Scripture (i. 45 ; v. 39, 40, 45) ; 5, that of John the Baptist
(i. 7 ; v. 33) ; 6, that of the Disciples (xv. 27 ; xix. 35 ; xxi 24) ; and,
7, that ofthe Spirit (xv. 26; xvi. 14). These seven include every
possible form of witness. The first two are inwards and Divine ; the
next two are outward and historical ; the fifth and sixth are personal
1 This anticipation was written before the Revised "Version was published in June, 188]
* In Contemporary Review, Sept. 1877.
3 John i. 14, 17 ; viii. 32, 40 ; xiv. 17 ; xv. 26 ; xvi. 13 ; xvii. 11, 17 ; xviii. 37.
* See Westcott's St. John, pp. xiv.— xlvii.

564 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and experiential, depending on the capacity and truthfulness of
righteous men ; the last is continuous and irrefragable.
Again, in this Epistle, though St. John alludes to the witness
of God (v. 9), and of Christ (v. fi), and to the witness of the Apostles
(i. 2 ; iv. 14), and to the witness of the Spirit (v. 6), he does not allude
to the four other forms of witness, though he adds to them the witness
of absolute inward assurance (v. 10) to which they give rise. And
he lays special stress on the water and blood as the two separate and
powerful testimonies of the Christ to His own Divinity. Now, in what
way did He manifest Himself to be, the Divine Saviour by water and
by blood 1
Clearly not by the Baptism of John, where the water played a most
subordinate part, seeing that it was not by the water, but by the Spirit
descending as a dove, that He was consecrated to His work.
Nor, again, by the Sacrament of Baptism, because in no conceivable
sense of the words could it be said that " Christ came " by means
of Christian baptism ; nor is the institution of Baptism mentioned,
though the symbolic significance of water — which, in that Sacrament,
reaches its highest point- — is indeed alluded to. Water, in the Gospel,
is the symbol of new and saving life,1 as it also is in Isa. xii. 3. More
generally and simply, it is the symbol of purification. When our Lord
speaks of "being born of water, and of the Spirit," the two things
symbolised are seen in their unity- — the water is the sacramental instru
ment of spiritual regeneration into a holy life.
Yet, since even thus the expression that Christ came " by the medium
of water " would be strange, and by no means easy of interpretation, we
must wait to see what light may be thrown upon it by the following
expression, that Christ also came " by means of blood."
Here, again, it is obvious that the primary allusion cannot be to the
Lord's Supper. The word " came " has, in St. John, a special and
emphatic meaning. It implies the manifestation of Christ as the
Redeemer. It cannot, then, be said, on any ordinary principle of inter
pretation, that Christ " came " by instituting the Lord's Supper. And
that St. John, at least, would not have used a term so vague is clear,
because there would be no explanation of it in tlje Gospel. There
he has not so much as mentioned the institution of the Lord's Supper,
though — in a manner which we have already seen to be characteristic of
him — he has indicated its deepest meaning. Further than this, in all
direct allusions to the Lord's Supper, the wine is never severed from the
bread, the blood from the flesh. Indeed, for the interpretation of what
St. John means by "blood," we need go no further than this Epistle,2
1 John iii. 5 ; iv. 10 ; vii. 88.
' John vi. This discourse, interpreted by the known rules of Hebrew symbolism, is a most
important protection against the superstitions with which literalism, and materialism, and
ecclesiasticism, have surrounded the subject of the Lord's Supper. It shows, as plainly as
language can show, that by "eating His flesh, and drinking His blood," our Lord meant the
living appropriation of Himself by Faith.

"BY WATER AND BLOOD." 565
where he mentions the blood of Christ as that which cleanses us
from all sin.1
So far, then, we have seen that by "water" and "blood " St. John
means the symbols respectively of purification and of redemption — of
regeneration ,and of atonement;2 and so far it may also be truly said
that there may be an indirect and secondary allusion to the Sacraments,
just as there is in the third and sixth chapters of the Gospel, because in
the Sacraments the symbolism of the water and the blood finds its
culminating application.
But even yet we have not seen how it can be said that " Christ
came by means of water and blood," as the means through which, and
" in the water and the blood " as the element in which He came. And
it is no small corroboration of the suggestion that the Epistle was
meant to accompany the Gospel as a kind of practical commentary upon
it, that it would be impossible to find any simple or adequate explana
tion unless we had the Gospel in our hands. We find it there in a fact
recorded by St. John alone, but placed by him in such marked
prominence, and corroborated by such solemn testimony, that the
allusion in this passage to the fact so emphasized cannot be mistaken.
For in these two passages alone, of all Scripture, are blood and water
placed together, and, as if to show yet farther the connexion between
them, they are in both places prominently associated with the notion of
witness. The fact is, that the soldier, coming to break the legs of
the crucified, in order that their bodies might be removed before the
sabbath, finding that Christ was dead, did not break His legs, " but one
of the soldiers, with a lancehead, gashed His side, and forthwith came
thereout blood AND water."3 Now if this were simply a physical
fact, arising from the death of Jesus by rupture of the heart, and
the natural separation of the blood into placenta and serum, both of
which flowed forth when the pericardium was pierced,4 even then
(though in this case there can only have been, at most, a drop or two
of water, visible, perhaps, to St. John6 only, as he stood close by the
cross), the symbols would not lose their divine significance. This'
circumstance in the death of Christ — which, if natural, is still to the
last degree abnormal and unusual — would, even in that case, most
powerfully suggest the symbolism which St. John attaches to it. It
would have suggested to St. John the thought that Christ came — that
is, manifested Himself as the Divine Redeemer — by virtue of the
regenerating and atoning power of which the water and the blood
were symbolic.6 But it is doubtful whether the alleged fact ever
naturally occurs ; nor is it probable that St. John had enough scientific
knowledge to be aware that if it occurs it must be a sign of death ; nor
1 i 7. 3 ii. 2 ; iv. 10. 3 John xix. 34.
* See Dr. Stroud, The Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, and my Life of Christ, ii. 424. In
my view of this passage I entirely follow Haupt.
5 It is nattiral to suppose that, after conducting the Virgin to his home, St. John returned.
6 " Why water ? why blood ? Water to cleanse, blood to redeem " — Ain br. (De Sacr. v. 1).

566 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
is it his object to show that the death was real, since at that early
period — and, indeed, till long afterwards — the reality of the death was
never for a moment questioned.1 In the Gospel, as here, the fact
is appealed to " that we may believe ; " it is adduced as a witness that
Jesus is the Son of God. Consequently, there as well as here, we must
suppose that in St. John's view ' there was something supernatural
in the circumstance ; and that there was an obvious mystery — that is,
the obvious revelation of a truth previously unknown — in that which
it signified. The water and the blood are witnesses, because, in the
culminating incident of Christ's redemptive work, their flowing from
His side set the seal to His manifestation as a Saviour, and because
they are the symbols of a living continuance of that work in the
world. The Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood, are three witnesses ;
but it is more especially and emphatically the Spirit that heareth
witness, because it is through the Spirit that the witness of the
Water and the Blood — that is, of Christ's regenerative and atoning
power — is brought home to the human heart. Thus " the trinity
of witnesses furnish one testimony." Their threefold testimony is,
as he proceeds to tell us, the testimony of God —
" If we accept the witness of men, the witness of G-od is greater ; for this is the
witness of God, because2 5Ce hath witnessed concerning His Son. He who
believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in Himself : any one who believeth
not on God hath made Him a liar, because he hath not believed in the witness
which God had witnessed about His Son. And this is the witness that God gave
to us Eternal Life, and this life is in His Son. He who hath the Son hath the life ;
any one who hath not the Son of God hath not the life " (vs. 9 — 12).
In these verses the witness is further analysed. It is not mere
human witness. It is human in so far as the facts alluded to are
established by Apostolic testimony ; but it is infinitely more. It is
divine testimony, and it is divine testimony echoed and confirmed
by inward witness. If it be objected that the Purification, and the
Redemption, and the quickening Spirit, are only in any case witnesses
to the believer — that they are subjective, not objective, the answer is
twofold. First, that St. John is writing to believers, and thinking
of believers only ; and, secondly, that both the perfected witness of God
(ue^apTuprjKe) — perfected in the death of Christ and the results which
sprang therefrom ; and the continuous witness of the Spirit — con
tinuous in every conversion and every sacrament — are indeed primarily
witnesses to believers, but, through believers, they are witnesses to all
the world. Believers alone possessed Eternal Life, and it was their
unanimous witness that they had received it solely through Jesus Christ
1 It will be seen that subsequent study has a little modified the view which I took Of this
circumstance in the Life of Christ, ii. 424. »
2 on (A, B, Vulg., Copt., Armenian, etc), not fy, is he true reading. The repeated Sri is no
no doubt harsh and slightly ambiguous, for the seco,. jT6 might mean " that." For these
reasons, or perhaps by a mere slip, it was altered into the easier -qv. But the meaning is, " we
ought to believe (1) because this is God's witness ; and (2) because He has borne witness con
cerning His Son."

INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 567
the Son of God. The echo of the divine witnesses in the lives of
Christians reverberated the divine testimony in thousand of echoes
through all the world. The " Nos soli innocentes " of Tertullian,1 — We
alone, amid the deep and gross and universal corruption of a Pagan world,
live innocent and holy lives — was the one argument which the heathen
found it most impossible to resist or overthrow. It was the threefold
witness of the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood, multiplied in the life
of every Christian, and it became ultimately strong enough for the
regeneration of the world. Thus was it that the Word manifested
Himself to be that which St. John called Him — " the Word of Eternal
Life."
SECTION V.
CONCLUSION.
The remaining verses of the Epistle have an interest more special.
St. John has developed his main thesis ; he has spoken of the witness
by which the truths on which it rested were established. The rest
is mainly recapitulatory. It touches again on faith in Christ, on
Eternal Life, and on Confidence : and it applies that confidence to
the special topic of trust in the efficacy of prayer (vs. 13 — 17). Then,
with three repetitions of the words " we know," he once more alludes to
Sonship and Innocence, and severance from the world, and union with
God and with Christ, and Eternal Life. And he concludes with a most
weighty and pregnant injunction. But so rich was the mind of the
Evangelist that, as we shall see, he cannot even recapitulate without
the introduction of new and most important thoughts.
"These things have I written to you that ye may know that ye have Eternal
Life — to you who believe on the name of the Son of God.
" And this is the confidence which we have towards Him, that, if we ask any
thing according to His will, He heareth us. And if we know that He heareth us,
whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked from
Him. If any man see his brother sinning a sin which is not unto death, he shall
ask and shall give' him life 2 — to those who are sinning a sin not unto death. There
is a sin unto death. For that I do not say that he should make request. All un
righteousness is sin, and there is a sin not unto death" (vs. 13 — 17).
The first verse of this passage sums up once more the aim of the
Epistle — to give assurance to all true believers that they have eternal
life. Such a belief makes us bold towards God in filial confidence,3
and like beloved sons we can ask for what we need from our Heavenly
Father. But if our minds are filled, if our lives are actuated by
Brotherly love, — if our fellowship with God be of necessity fellowship
1 Tert. Apol 45.
2 He, the petitioner, shall give life to his brother. St. James exactly in the same sense says
tl<at he who converts a brother, " shall save a soul from death " (James v. 20). Nor does tbis
in the least contradict the truth that no man can save lis brother, and make atonement unto
God for him. Man is but the instrument of tbis deliverance; the real deliverer is God.
(Comp. Jude 23, " And others save, pulling them out of the fire.")
3 The irappijo-ta here does not refer to the Day of Judgment, as in iv. 17, but to trustful
prayer, as in iii. 21, 22 ; and as in Eph. iii. 12 ; Heb. iv. 16.

568 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
with one another, — our prayers will constantly be occupied with our
brethren ; they will to a large extent be intercessory prayers : —
" For what are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those that call them friend ;
For so the whole round world is every nay
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
The importance attached to such prayers by the early Christians, who,
in passages like these, are not even thinking of personal prayers for any
earthly blessing, may be shown by the fact that there is an allusion to
exactly the same kind of intercessory prayer at the very close of the
Epistle of St. James. Many a prayer for earthly blessings may be by
no means in accordance with the will of God ; and St. John finds it
here necessary to touch on a prayer which is concerning spiritual things,
and which yet he cannot bid a Christian offer. But as regards prayer
in general, when a Christian prays he knows that God listens,1 and he
therefore has what he asks for. He has it even if the prayer be denied,
for his prayer is not absolutely that something which is contingent may
happen, but that God will give him the true and the best answer by
making the will of the petitioner to be one with His.2 Now St. John
assumes that the Christian will pray for the salvation of his brethren,
but he tells us that there is one instance in which such a prayer will be
unavailing. It is when we see our brethren sinning a sin which is unto
death. In other 'cases the Christian by prayer shall give his brother
life ; in the case of a sin which is unto death St. John cannot bid any
Christian to offer up his filial, his familiar prayer.3
What, then, is this sin unto death t Is it a single act 1 is it a
settled condition 1 Does it give any countenance to the distinction
between mortal and venial sins 1 Is it the same thing as the blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost 1 To enter fully into all these questions here
would be to break the continuity of our endeavour to understand the
general scope of the Epistle. I will therefore treat of them as briefly
as possible. 1. St. John cannot be thinking of any one definite act of sin (as is
indeed sufficiently proved by his use of the present and not the aorist
participle), because it would be simply impossible for any man, apart
from inspired supernatural eyesight, to declare that any particular sin
was a sin unto death. Saul, under strong temptation, broke a ceremonial
commandment of the Prophet Samuel ; David committed adultery and
1 aKou'ei (John ix. 31; xi. 41, 42). 2 "We ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harms, which the wise I'o\\ c •-,
Deny us for our good. So gnin we profit
By losing of our prayers."— (Shakspere).
3 epwnjoi). It is remarkable that this word should be used (see infra, p. 570).

THE "SIN UNTO DEATH." 569
murder under conditions which made those crimes peculiarly heinous.
Who would not have said ct priori that the sin of David was infinitely
the more deadly of the two 1 Yet " the Spirit of the Lord departed
from Saul," whereas David was still able to pray that God would give
him a new heart and create a right spirit within him — and his prayer
was heard. Again, the Pharisees attributed Christ's miracles to Beel
zebub, and in so doing we are told that they came perilously near, if
they did not actually commit, the sin against the Holy Ghost. The
Sadducees and the Romans, on the other hand, crucified Him. Who
would not have said that the Sadducees were the worse offenders t Yet
Christ prayed unconditionally for His murderers, " Father, forgive
them ; " and if He gave the unconditional promise to His disciples that
" whatsoever they asked in His name, believing, they should receive,"
must we not regard it as certain that His own prayer was heard?
Clearly, then, a sin becomes a sin unto death not by its external charac
teristics, but by its interior quality, and that interior quality is for the
most part undiscernible by the eye of man. The nature of the con
summating act, the nature of the continuous state which constitutes the
sin unto death, may be completely disguised, while the offender still
walks among men in the odour of sanctity.
" So spake the false dissembler unperceived ;
For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By His permissive will, through Heaven and earth ;
And oft, though wisdom wakes, suspicion sleeps
At wisdom's gate,' and to simplicity
Besigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems : which now for once beguiled
Uriel, though regent of the sun, and held
The sharpest sighted spirit of all in Heaven ,
Who, to the fraudulent impostor foul,
In his uprightness, antwer thus returned." Paradise Lost, iii. 681 — 694.
2. There is such a thing — as we have already seen in the Epistle to
the Hebrews — as absolute and desperate apostasy, where a man cuts
himself utterly loose from all the means of grace, and effectually closes
their influence upon him. There is such a thing not only as wilful, but
even as willing sin. There can be such a thing as a deliberate putting
of evil for good and good for evil, of bitter for sweet and sweet for
bitter ; such a thing as a man selling himself to do evil, and trampling
under foot the Spirit of God. This, in the view of the Apostles, is
connected with Antichrist ; the man who does it is a " man of sin " ; it
is a deliberate abandonment of Christ for Satan, of light for darkness,
of life for death. When such a blaspheming apostasy occurred in the
very bosom of the Church, he who was aware that it had occurred could

570 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
only feel that so far as mere human foresight or human prayers on his
behalf could go, such a man would die in his sin.1
3. For such a man a Christian could hardly offer the prayer which is
inspired with the divine conviction that it is heard ; for it is impossible,
humanly speaking, to renew such a man unto repentance.2 St. John
feels that he must refrain from exhorting Christians to offer the highest
kind of prayer3 — such prayers as Christ offered, and which are scarcely
ever predicated of any other — for the most consummate form of sin.4
4. Yet it does not seem that he forbids even such prayers.5 He
could not do so, for he gives no criterion by which his readers could
discern what was. and what was not, a sin unto death. He only says,
" when you see your brother sinning a sin which you know may be
forgiven " — and they would learn from the entire history of the Old
Testament, as well as from the Gospels, that this might be any sin how
ever apparently heinous, were it even such a sin as that which had
stained the Church of Corinth, and against which the very heathen had
exclaimed — " you may pray for it with the conviction that God will
hear your prayer." But, he adds, "you must not expect that, in
every possible case, every prayer you offer for the sin of a brother will
be heard. For there is a sin unto death. Not respecting that sin am I
saying that a sinner should make filial request." His prayers must in
such cases take a humbler form (alnlv) • they must inevitably be offered
up with a less implicit confidence that they will be heard ; they must
rather consist of a committal of the sinner to God's mercy than an assured
petition that that mercy will be extended in the form which we desire.
5. We may perhaps derive some insight into the meaning of the
sin unto death from the language of the Old Testament, with the
meanings which the Jews inferred from it, and from those passages in
the New Testament which seem to offer the nearest parallel.
a. As regards the Old Testament, we find the phrase " a sin unto
death " (LXX. hamartia thana.tephoros) in Num. xviii. 22,6 Lev. xxii. 9,7
but this does not greatly help us, because there the reference merely is
to sins which were punished with death, whereas St. John is, of course,
refen-ing to spiritual death, as in iii. 14.
1 John viii. 21—24.
2 Heb. vi. 4 — 6, and ou that passage see Riehm, Lehrbegr. d. Hebraerbriefs, ii. 763, fg.
3 epwnj(r[7. The word cutui (pcto), is used of the petition of an inferior; epunia (rogo), of the
more familiar entreaties of a friend. Hence our Lord never uses cut<I> of H:s own prayers ; and
never uses epwri of the prayers of the disciples (John xiv. 16 ; xvi. 26 ; xvii, 9, 15, 20; which
show tbat St. John felt and observed the distinction). We may humbly alrelv the forgiveness
of pins not unlo death ; we may not even epmav those of sins unto death.
* By a " sin unto dearh," St. John meant absolute and wilful apostasy from, and abnegation
of, Christ, both theoretically and practically.
fl " Ora, si velis, sed sub dubio imuetran ii " (Calvin).
6 " Sin with high band," Num. xv. 30 ; Matt. xii. 31 (Schottgen, ad loc).
7 rrob NEn, The references are to the approach of non Levitical persons to the sanctuary,
and neglect of Levitical purifications. The Rabbis divided sins into Nrrrj1? Hi-ran and N^HNIOn
nn'D1;, "a sin unto death," and " not unto death." In the Talmud we find '• Five have no for
giveness of sin*— (1) He who keeps on sinning and repenting alternately ; (2) he who sins in a
sinless age ; (3) he who sins on purpose to repent ; (4) he who causeth the name of God to be.
blasphemed. The fifth is left unexpressed (Avoth d' Rab. Nathan, 39).

"DELIVERING TO SATAN." 571
j3. Nor, again, is much light thrown on the passage by the crimes to
which excision — " cutting off from the people " is assigned as a penalty
under the Mosaic law. Whatever interpretation be attached to these
words — whether death by divine interposition, as the Rabbis thought,
or by the hand of the civil power, as others think, or exile, or excom
munication1 — it is quite clear that the sins upon which this excision
(careth) is denounced are not unpardonable, not beyond the reach of
repentance and forgiveness.
y. Again, in no less than three places, Jeremiah is forbidden to
pray" for the Jews (Jer. vii. 16; xi. 14; xiv. 11); yet we certainly
may not infer that the case of all these Jews was eternally hopeless,
or that, though they were put beyond the range of the prayers of
men, they were therefore for ever excluded from the tender mercies
of God. S. In the New Testament we find St. Paul twice using the expres
sion " delivering to Satan." The offenders to whom he applies it are
the Corinthian sensualist (1 Cor. v. 5), and Hymenaeus, and Alexander
(I Tim. i. 20). Again, for Alexander the Coppersmith, in 2 Tim. iv. 14,
St. Paul offers no prayer but this, " May the Lord reward him according
to his works." Now it is a reasonable inference that while a man was
under the sentence of the Church's excommunication — while he was
thus deliberately cut off by their act from the means of grace — he
would not have been included in their prayers ; not, at any rate, in
such prayers as they were wont to offer up for one another. We see
the character of the sins of these men. The sins of Hymenarus and
Alexander consisted in deliberately rejecting (awoiadixepoi " pushing away
from themselves ") faith and a good conscience, and, in consequence,
making shipwreck of their faith. St. Paul delivered them to Satan.
Why 1 In order that they might perish everlastingly 1 Far from it ;
but for a merciful and hopeful purpose — " that they may be trained not
to blaspheme." A worse case cannot be imagined than that of the
Corinthian offender. He was a Church-member, admitted into full
fellowship, even supported by public sanction, and yet he was living in
the open practice of a sin so shameful that, as St. Paul says, " it is not
so much as named among the heathen." No conduct could be more
infamous, not only in itself, but also because it caused the name of
Christ to be blasphemed in that vile heathen world. With intense and
burning indignation, St. Paul imagines himself present in spirit in
the assembly of the Christian Church, and there solemnly, in the name
of Christ he " hands over the offender to Satan." If any sin could be
regarded as a sin unto death, must not this have been such a sin, seeing
that it was shameless, continuous, against light and knowledge, the sin
of a Christian which was not even tolerated by heathens 1 It was
natural that the victorious prayer of triumphant confidence should be
1 See Gesen. Thes. s. v. rrO, p. 719.

572 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
suspended in the case of such a man. Yet what is St. Paul's object in
handing him to Satan 1 Not by any means his everlasting damnation,
but " the destruction of his carnal impulses, in order that his spirit may
be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."1 The man was handed to Satan
by the now-aroused conscience of the startled community. And what
was the result 1 In his next letter, a few months afterwards, St. Paul
is once more urging them to show mercy towards this very offender.
The " handing to Satan " has done its work. The fleshly temptation
has been annihilated. The man has repented. St. Paul is now afraid
lest he should be injured by over-severity. He bids them restore and
ratify their love towards the now penitent transgressor, " lest by any
means he should be swallowed up by his superabundant sorrow."2
Similarly, in the case of Alexander, St. Paul's avoidance of a prayer for
him is practically a prayer for him. It is not equivalent, as is some
times supposed, to a sort of curse, "May God do him evil as he has
done to me ; " for such a prayer — though a David or a Hebrew exile may
have offered it in ignorance, in days before the new commandment had
been uttered — in days when it had been said to them of old time,
" Thou shalt hate thine enemy " — could not have been offered without
sin by a Christian Apostle. St. Paul's ejaculation is only another way
of saying "It is not for me to judge him ; I leave him in the hands of
God." From this examination then we may infer that St. John's limitation
belongs, like so many of his thoughts, to the region of the ideal,
the theoretical, the absolute ; that it is only introduced as a passing, but
very solemn, reminder of the truth that there is a sin which is past the
possibility of being benefited by the Christian's prayer — a sin which
can be only left to God, because it is discernible by Him alone. Practi
cally it is most unlikely that we shall ever become cognisant of any sin
in a brother so heinous, so desperate, so darkly deliberate in the apostate
condition of heart which it implies, so obviously beyond the possibility
of repentance, that we dare not pray for it. On the analogy of the
language used, both in the Old and New Testaments, we must infer that
even though there be a sin unto death, it is not beyond the mercy
of Him who died " that He might destroy him who hath the power of
death, that is the devil." To God we may leave it, if we find that
we are unable to offer up on its behalf the prayer of faith. How little
we are ever likely to realise the existence of such a sin we may infer
from this — that there are only two or three in all the long generations
of Christian history about whose salvation the Church has ever ventured
to express an open doubt.
We are told in the Talmud that Beruriah, the wife of the great
Rabbi Meier, once heard him ardently praying to God against some
ignorant people — am haratsim — who annoyed him. She came to him
1 1 Cor. v. 5. * 2 Cor. ii. 6—8.

THE "SIN UNTO DEATH.'' 573
and said, " Do you do this because it is written (in Ps. civ. 35) ' Let the
sinners be consumed'? But there it is not written chotaim, 'sinners,"
but chittaim, 'sins.' Besides, the Psalm adds, 'And let the wicked
be no more,' that is to say, ' Let sins cease, and the wicked will cease
too.' Pray, therefore, on their behalf, that they may be led to re
pentance, and these wicked will be no more." This he therefore did,
and they repented, and ceased to vex him.1
The whole tenor of Scripture show that, as a rule, we must herein
follow the example of the brilliant Rabbi. But the New Testament
teaches the lesson far more fully than the Old. The Church herself
teaches us to pray —
" That it may please Thee, to have mercy upon All men,
We beseech Thee to hear us, Good Lord."
And accordingly St. John instantly leaves the subject of the sin unto
death to which he has made this unique and passing allusion, and adds
"All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not unto death." There
fore you will ever have the amplest scope for your intercessory sup
plications. Practically, that scope is the whole range of unrighteous
ness, the whole range of human sin. If the sin for which we are
interceding is a sin which God knows, and which we may fear to be unto
death, St. John does not forbid such prayers ; for he says, "I do not
say that you should " (oi \4ya 5W), not " I say that you should not "
(\iya "tva ut;). Clearly it can never be in our power to decide what sins
are unto death. If we unwittingly pray for such a sin, the Apostle
can give us no promise that the intercession is of any avail. But if
there be any sin for which we feel the genuine impulse to pray, we may
rest assured that that impulse is an inspiration, and therefore +.hat
the prayer may be offered, and will be heard.
Then the Epistle concludes with these words : —
" We know that every one who has been born of God sinneth not ; but he who
is born of God keepeth himself,2 and the wicked one graspeth him not."3
' ' We ksow that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one.
" But we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us understandmg,
that we recognise Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, in His Son,
Jesus Christ. This4 is the true God, and Life Eternal.6
" Little children, keep yourselves from idols" (ver. 18 — 21).
1 Avodah Zarah, f . 18, o.
' It is astonishing that Alford, following the Vulgate, should render this "but he that hath
been born of G-od, it {i.e. his divine birth) keepeth him" ("sed generatio Dei conservateum").
There is not the smallest theological difficulty involved in saying that "he keepeth himself"
(see on iii. 3). It means that effort is always necessary even for the saint— ov <bvaet. eis
avapaprrjo-lav npo^aivei (Ojlcumen.).
3 " The Evil one approaches him, as a fly approaches a lamp, but does not injure,- does not
even touch him " (Bengel). But aitTOjaat with a genitive properly means "to lay hold of."
Thus pn pov amov is not Noii me tangere, but " Cling not to me " (see my Life of Christ, ii. 434).
* Namely, the Father as seen in His Son (Jer. xl.).
6 Thus the Epistle ends as it began, with Eternal Life (Bengel). Comp. John xvii. 3.

574 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Here, as before, St. John is beholding all things in their idea.
Here, and now, neither are we absolutely sinless, nor is the whole
world absolutely absorbed in sin. But in idea, in the ultimate truth of
things, it is so, and, in the final severance of things, it will be so.
Our knowledge that it is and will be so rests deep among the bases of
all Christian faith. We know it because Christ has come, and has
given us discernment to recognise Him who is the only Reality. We
are in Him, and in His Son; He, God the Father, is the Very God,
and Eternal Life.1 For St. John has already said in his Gospel
(xvii. 3), "This is the Life Eternal, that they should learn to know
Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou didst send."
The last verse is a most pregnant warning, introduced by the
Apostle's most affectionate title of address — Little children ! — " keep
yourselves from idols." He is not, of course, thinking of the gods
of the heathen. He is writing to Christians who had long abandoned
these, who had not the smallest temptation to apostatise to their
worship. He is speaking of "subjective idolism." He is putting
them on their guard against seductive notions of false prophets
subtle suggestions of Antichrists. He is warning them not
against gross idols of gold and jewels, representing deities of lust
and blood, but against false, fleeting, dangerous images — idols of
the forum, of the theatre, of the cave ; systematising inferences of
scholastic theology ; theories of self- vaunting orthodoxy ; semblances
under which we represent God which in no wise resemble Him ; ever-
widening deductions from Scripture grossly misinterpreted ; earthly
passions and earthly desires which we put in the place of Him ; ideas
of Him which loom upon us through the lurid mists of earthly fear and
earthly hatred ; notions of Him which we make for ourselves, which
are not He ; conceptions of Him which we have derived only from our
party-organ or our personal conceit. It is the most pregnant of
all warnings against every form of unfaithfulness to God — against
violations whether of the First or of the Second Commandment ;
against devotion to anything which is not eternally and absolutely
true ; against perversions due to religionism quite as much as against
open rejection of God ; against the tyrannous shibboleths of aggressive
systems no less than against the worship of Belial and of Mammon.
These are the idols which in these days also are more perilous to faith
and holiness than any which the heathen worshipped. They are
dominant in sects and Churches and schools of thought. They are the
work, not of men's hands, but of their imaginations. They have
mouths, but do not utter words of truth ; they have eyes, but not
such as can gaze on the true light ; they have hands, but they do not
1 That the Father is referred to seems to be decided by John xvii. 3. There is
nothing abnormal in the change of subject. The Father is the principal subject of the
whole clause, though the Son is last named. For a similar change of subject see verse
16, and ii. 22, and 2 John 7.

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 575
the deeds of righteousness ; feet have they, but only such as hurry
them into error. " They that make them are like unto them ; and so
are all such as put their trust in them." Little children — all who love
the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth — all who know that hatred
is of the devil — all who have recognised that " Love is the fulfillinc of
the law " — little children, keep yourselves from idols !

CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.
"Amor non modo verus amor est, sed veritate evangelic^, nititur." — Bengei.
Apart from the truths inculcated in such private Epistles as the Second
and Third of St. John and that of St. Paul to Philemon, it is a happy
Providence which, in spite of their brevity, has preserved them for us
during so many hundred years. They show us what grace and
geniality reigned in Christian intercourse, and how much there was
in this sweet communion of saints which compensated, even on earthly
grounds, for the loss of the world's selfish friendships and seductive
approbation. The love of the brethren more than counterbalanced the
hatred of the enemies of Christ. .
That these little letters are genuine there is good reason to believe.
They may be treated together, because there can be no question that if
either of them is genuine both of them are, since they may well be
described as "twin-sisters."1 Their close resemblance in style,
phraseology, and tone of thought, shows that they were written about
the same time, and by the same person. Further than this, they agree
so closely with the First Epistle that if they were written by another
the resemblance could only be accounted for by deliberate imitation.
But what possible ground could there be for " forging " letters so slight
as these, — letters which, though full of value, do not add a single
essential thought to those which are already fully expressed and
elaborated in the other writings of St. John 1 Their very "unimportance
for any doctrinal purpose, apart from the Gospel, the Apocalypse, and
the First Epistle, is one of the proofs that no falsarius would have
thought it worth his while to palm them off upon the Church. Con
taining no conception which is not found elsewhere, they have little
independent dogmatic value ; their chief interest lies in the glimpse
which they give us of Christian epistolary intercourse in the earliest days.
The external evidence in their favour is even stronger than we
could have expected in the case of compositions so short, so casual, and
i Jer. Ep. 85.

576 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
so unmarked by special features. There is but one passage (vss. 10, 11)
in the Second Epistle which can be quoted as distinctive, and for that
very reason it is the one to which most frequent reference is made ;
nor is there anything which specifically characterises the Third except
the allusions to Diotrephes and Demetrius. There is scarcely a single
expression in either of these letters with which previous writings have
not already made us familiar. Indeed, no less than eight out of
thirteen verses in the Second Epistle are also to be found in the First.
It is not, therefore, surprising that they only became known gradually
to the Church, and that they were regarded as comparatively un
important, being written "out' of feelings of private affection, though
to the honour of the Catholic Church."1 Yet the first of them is twice
quoted by Irena^us,2 and twice referred to by Clemens of Alexandria.3
Cyprian mentions that the Epistle to the Elect Lady (of course the
passage about " heretics "), was quoted by one of the bishops at the
Council of Carthage. The testimony of the Muratorian Canon is
ambiguous, owing to the corruption of the text, but it seems to tell
in favour of the Epistles.4 The Syrian Church, according to Cosmas
Indicopleustes, did not acknowledge these Epistles, but, on the other
hand, the Second Epistle is quoted by Ephraim the Syrian. Eusebius
and Origen seem to have regarded the Epistles as genuine, though
they rank them among the disputed books of the canon — the antir
legomena; as also does Dionysius of Alexandria, the pseudo-Chrysostom,
and Theodore of Mopsuestia.5 St. Jerome says that there were many
who assigned them to the authorship of " John the Presbyter ; " but he
seems himself to have accepted them.6 The notion that they were
written by " John the Presbyter " was revived by Erasmus and Grotius,
and has since been maintained by some modern scholars.7 But, as
1 The Muratorian Canon says of the Epistle to Philemon and the two to Timothy,
that they were written "pro affectu et dilectione in honorem tamen ecclesiae catholicae."
2 Iren. Haer. iii. 16, 8 ; i. 16, 3.
3 Strom, ii. 15, and Fragm. p. 1011, ed. Potter (but comp. Euseb. H. E. vi. 14) ;
Tert. De Praescr. Haer. 33.
4 See Wieseler, Studien und Kritiken, 1847, p. 846. The true reading and punctua
tion of the passage seems to be '" Epistolae sano Judae et superscripti Johannes duae (or
duas = Suis, " a pair ") in Catholica habentur." The words which follow, "ut Sapientia
ab amicis Salomonis iu honorem ipsius scripta," must then be referred to the Apocalypse,
as though it was written by friends of John, as Wisdom by friends of Solomon.
6 ov irarTes <f>airi vi'rjo-ia! Aval raiiras (Orig. ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 25 ; Dem. Evang. iii. 5) ;
eiTe too EuayyeXKTTOu ivyxavovcrai, et're Kai erepov 6p.wvup.ov eKeieaj (Euseb. hi. 25) ; <pepop4vas
'lioavvov (Dionys. Alex. ap. Euseb. vii. 25) ; avriXeyovrai Si al Xotiral Svo (Euseb. iii. 24).
The pseudo-Chrysostom exaggerates when he says {Horn, in Matt. xxi. 23), "the Fathers
reject the Second and Third Epistles from the Canon. "
6 " Opinio quam a vlrrisque retulimus traditam " (Jer. De Virr. Hlustr. 9 ; but see
Ep. 85). Cosmas Indicopleustes rejects all the Catholic Epistles, but his remarks about ,
them (De Mundo, vii. p. 292) are so full of errors as to deserve no notice. Gregory of
Nazianzus, in his Iambics, says— "Of the Catholic Epistles, some say that we ought to
receive semi, and some only three— one of James, one of Peter, and one of John — but
some say the three (of John)."
1 Dodwell, Beck, Fritzsche, Ebrard, etc. The latter says (1) that all resemblances to
the First Epistle vanish if 2 John 6 — 6, 7, and 3 John 11 are regarded as quotations ; and

JOHN THE ELDER. 577
I have shown in the Excursus, there never was such a person as John
the Presbyter in contradistinction from John the Apostle. The two
were one.1
We see, then, that, taken in connexion with the internal evidence,
there is sufficient ground for accepting these little Epistles. There is
no difficulty in the fact that St. John should call himself " the Elder "
and not "the Apostle." The dispute as to who was and who was not
to be regarded as an Apostle had long since died away. St. Paul
himself does not always care to use the title. He drops it, for instance,
in addressing those who, like the Philippians and Philemon, had never
disputed his apostolic authority. The other Apostles were all dead.
The whole Church knew that St. John was the last survivor of the
Twelve. He may have called himself "the Elder" out of humility;
just as Peter, in addressing the elders, calls himself their " fellow-
elder."2 Or he may have used the designation because he belonged to
that class of aged Christians to whom, at this time, the younger
generation which was springing up around them often appealed under
the name of "the Elders."3 Or, again, he may have called himself
" the Elder " because he desired to claim no higher authority than that
which accrued to him from his great age and long experience.4 And it
must be observed that he calls himself "the Elder," not "an Elder."
There were hundreds of elders, and, therefore, by calling himself " the
Elder" in a pre-eminent and peculiar sense, he at once marks his
age and authority. The phraseology, the style, the tone of thought,
the method of treatment in every sentence, points directly to the
authorship of the Apostle. The few. trivial deviations from his
ordinary expressions only show that we are not dealing with the work
of an elaborate imitator.5
1. There has always been great doubt as to the destination of
the Second Epistle of St. John. Even yet the question whether it was
addressed to a lady or to a Church cannot be regarded as settled. It
begins with the words, " The Elder unto the Elect Lady and her
children, whom I love in the truth ; and not only I, but also all who

(2) that it-is inconceivable that the authority of an Apostle should have been disputed in
such a way as is described in 3 John 9.
1 See Excursus XIV., " John the Apostle and John the Presbyter."
2 1 Pet. V. 1, crup.7rpe<r/3vTepos ; Philem. 9, 6 7rpe<rj3vr»js.
3 Euseb. S. E. iii. 39. The word occurs in Irenseus and other Johannine writers in
quotations from the Fathers of that earlier age.
4 It is in exact accordance with his modest self-withdrawal. In the Gospel he
entirely suppresses his own name, as in the First Epistle. In the Apocalypse he only
calls himself " John." So far, therefore, the absence of any lofty title, such as a forger
might have given him, is a mark of genuineness. There is nothing to support Ewald's
notion that it was due to the dangers of the time.
® Such are et tis for iav Tis (2 John 10), SiSaxrjV ipepeiv, Trepnrarelv Kara, KOiviaveiv, pel£orepav,
as pointed out by De "Wette. To dwell on the occurrence of a few phrases which he had
no occasion to use elsewhere (such as vyiaivetv, </K/WpwTevwv, <pXvapeiv, irpoW/Mretp d£tus rov
e£oC), is idle.

578 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
have learnt to know the truth."1 Certainly the primal facie impression
created by the words would be that they refer to a lady. In that case
the omission of the article seems to show that her name is not
mentioned. For if either Electa or Kyria had been her name, then,
just as we have " To Gaius, the beloved," in the address of the Third
Epistle, we should naturally have expected here, " To Electa, the lady,"
or " To Kyria, the elect." ' Nor is this objection adequately answered
by saying that if Kyria was the lady's name, the article might have
been omitted by an unconscious analogy of the use of the word Kurios,
"the Lord," without an article.
a. That her name was Electa2 is asserted in the ' Latin translation of
the fragments of Clemens of Alexandria, where he says, " The Second
Epistle of John, which was written to virgins, is very simple ; it was,
however, written to a Babylonian lady, by name Electa." It may,
however, be regarded as certain that this is a mistake. For although
Electa may have been a proper name in the Christian Church, yet in
that case the meaning of verse 13 must be, "The children of thy sister
Electa greet thee ; " and it is highly improbable that both sisters bore
this very unusual name.
/3. But may it be addressed to a lady named Kyria Is Kyria was
a female name, for it is found in one of the inscriptions recorded in
Gruter ;4 and from an expression of Athanasius, " he is writing to
Kyria and her children," it has been inferred that this was his view.
It is a possible view in itself; and since Kyria may be the Greek
equivalent of the Hebrew name Martha, the lady may have been a
Jewess. This view also gets over the difficulty of a title so lofty as
Kyria, which, according to Bengel, was rarely used, even to Queens.5
But the objection still remains that we should then have expected, not
"To elect Kyria," but "To Kyria the elect;" just as in the next
Epistle we do not find " To beloved Gaius," but " To Gaius, the beloved."
y. But if we must render the words, " To an elect Lady," are we
to understand by them a person or a Church 1
In either case, the person or the Church is left unnamed. The
modern view seems to incline in favour of a Church.6 All sorts of
1 2 John 8 ; 'O 7rpe(rJ3vT€pos iK\€KTjj KVpia Kai rot? renvois ai/Trjs, oils iybi ayairS} iv akifleiq, jc.T.A,
The possible renderings are (in order of their possibility) —
1. To an elect lady.
2. To the elect lady.
3. To the elect Kyria.
4. To the lady Electa,
2 This is the view of Lyra, Grotius, Wetstein.
8 This is the view of Bengel, Heumann, Liioke, De Wette, and Dusterdieck.
* Gruter, Inscript. p. 1127, " Phenippus and his wife Kyria."
6 See, however, the following note.
6 So Hofinann, Hilgenfeld, Huther, Ewald, Wordsworth. On the other hand,
Bengel, Fritzsche, De Wette, Lange, Heumann, Alford, Dusterdieck, understand a
person to be addressed. Epictetus says that "women from the age of fourteen are
called ' ladies ' (mipiat) by men."

"to the parthians.' 579
conjectures have been made as to the Church intended, and the most
far-fetched and arbitrary reasons have been assigned for supposing that
it was addressed to the Church of Corinth,1 or of Philadelphia,2 or of
Jerusalem,3 or of Patmos, or of Ephesus, or of Babylon.4
2. The latter is the view of Bishop Wordsworth. Starting from
the ambiguous expression of 1 Pet. v. 13, " the co-elect ($ <rweK\eKTr))
with you that is at Babylon saluteth you," and interpreting it to mean
the Church in Babylon, he says that it is a greeting of the Babylonian
Church sent through St. Peter to the Churches of Asia ; and he supposes
that the verse, " the children of thy sister, the elect one, greet thee,"
is a return salutation of the Churches of Asia, through St. John, to the
Church of Babylon. He thinks that this is rendered more probable
by the close relations between St. Peter and St. John ; and he finds a
confirmation of it in the remark of Clemens of Alexandria, that the
letter is addressed " to a Babylonian lady," and in the curious incidental
expression in the title of St. Augustine's tractate on the Epistle,
" Tractatus in Epistolam Johannis ad Parthos." At this time, he says,
Babylon was under the rule of the Parthians, and, therefore, a letter to
the Babylonian Church might have been called "a letter to the
Parthians." Further, when Clemens says that the letter was written
" to Virgins," he thinks that the Greek word " parthenous " was only
a corruption of " Parthous." Lastly, he adds that " there would be a
peculiar interest and beauty in such an address as this from St. John
to a Church at Babylon, which, in the days of her heathen pride, had
been called ' the Lady of Kingdoms,' and had said, ' I shall be a Lady for
ever.' "5 Babylon had fallen ; but St. Peter had preached to Parthians,
among others, on the Day of Pentecost,6 and so Babylon had arisen again
in Christ, and become an elect Lady in Him, and could be addressed as
such by the Apostolic brother of St. Peter, the beloved disciple St. John.
(i.) I must confess that to me the whole theory looks like an inverted
pyramid of inference tottering about upon its extremely narrow apex.
The phrase of St. Peter is of most uncertain interpretation. It is not
certain that by " the Co-elect " he means a Church. It is still more
uncertain that by Babylon he means Babylon and not Rome. We may
say of the very basis on which the theory rests, —
" Nil agit exemplum quod litem lite resolyit."
(ii.) Then the theory seems to imply the supposition that St. John
had at some time left Asia and travelled as far as Babylon — a journey
1 Serrarius. 2 Whiston. 3 Whitby and Augusti.
4 The notion of St. Jerome (Ep. xi. ad Ageruehia-m) that it was addressed to the
Church in general (though adopted by Hilgenfeld), may be at once dismissed. Quoting
Cant. vi. 9 as referring to the Church, he adds, " to which John writes his Epistle, ' St.
John to an Elect Lady.'" The opinion that the Lady is a Church is mentioned by
(Ecumenius, Theophylact, and Cassiodorus, as well as by an. ancient scholion.
'vIs. xlvii. 5, 7 ; njjs gevereth, rendered Kvpi'a by the LXX., as in Gen. xvi. 4, eto.
6 Acts ii. 9.

580 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
intrinsically improbable, and which has left no trace in any tradition of
the Apostle. In ecclesiastical legends it is St. Thomas and not St,
John who is said to have been the Apostle of the Parthians.
(iii.) Next, the vague tradition that the Epistle was addressed to
the Parthians, is devoid of even the slightest value, for it is more than,
doubtful whether the words " ad Partlws " ever stood in the original
edition of St. Augustine's Tractates ; and when Bede says that it was
the opinion of St. Athanasius that the First Epistle was addressed " to
the Parthians,"1 he is almost certainly mistaken. No such statement is
found in any Greek Father. It is only found, according to Griesbach,
in some late and unimportant Latin Fathers, and in the passage of St.
Augustine.2 Now nothing can be more improbable than that the First
Epistle was addressed to the Parthians,3 and we should require much
stronger evidence than this isolated allusion of St. Augustine to
establish the fact. We are driven to suppose that " ad Parthos " must
be a misreading. Serrarius conjectures that it should be "ad Pathmios,"
to the people of Patmos, but these and many other conjectural emenda
tions have nothing to support them.4 On the other hand, the word
Parthos may have arisen from some confusion with Parthenous,*' and
not, as Bishop Wordsworth supposes, the latter from the former. The
sweet and lofty simplicity of the First Epistle may have led some one
to suggest that it was written to Virgins — using the word in the sense
in which it occurs in the Rev. xiv. 4 — namely, to youthful and uncor-
rupted Christians. And this suggestion may have derived fresh force
from the ancient belief that St. John himself was in this sense " a
Virgin " (parthenos)," a title which is actually given to him in some
superscriptions of the Apocalypse, and elsewhere.7
3. But if Bishop Wordsworth's suggestion comes to nothing, what
are we to say of the theories of German critics 1 The remarks of Baur
respecting this Epistle exhibit, almost in their culmination, the arbitrary
1 Bede, Prol. ad Ep. Cathol. (Cave, Bist. Litt. i. 289).
2 Aug. Quaest. Evang. ii. 39. " Secundum sententiam hanc etiam illud est quod
dictum est a Joanne (1 John iii 2) in epistola ad Parthos." He is followed by the
Spaniard, Idacius Clarus. npbs nipflous is found in superscriptions of the Second Epistle
in some late cursive manuscripts.
3 Grotius, Hammond, and others accepted this view ; and Paulus pressed it into his
theories about the Epistle.
4 Semler guesses " adapertius ; " Paulus "ad Pantos;" and Wegscheider irpre nv<t
fieo-wapo-apivovt, ad Sparsos I (see Tholuck, Introd. p. 32, et seq. ).
6 So Whiston oonjectures. For Clemens Alexandrinus, in his Adumbrationes, says
(in a very confused passage) that the Second Epistle was written " to Virgins," which is
manifestly erroneous. His words are — "Secunda Joannis epistola quae ad Virgines
scripta est, simplioissima est ; " then, after saying that it is written to a certain Baby
lonian lady named Electa, he adds, " it signifies, however, the election of the Holy
Churoh." 6 Gieseler, Kirchengesch, i. p. 189.
7 Tert. de Monogam. c. 17 ; Ps.-Ignat. ad Philad. 4 ; Clem. Alex. Orat. de Maria.
Virg. p. 380. In a cursive manuscript of the twelfth century (30) the superscription of
the Apocalypse runs thus — "Of the holy, most glorious apostle and evangelist, the
Virgin, the beloved, the bosom Apostle (bmmflmi) John the Theologian."

VAGUE THEORIES. 581
recklessness of conjecture which has defaced the usefulness and oblite
rated the existence of the school of Tubingen. His combinations are
briefly these : — Electa is a Church ; she is called a Babylonian by St.
Clemens to indicate the Church of Rome ; the Epistle expresses the
views of the Montanists ; Diotrephes, the leader of the anti-Montanist
section of the Church, had refused to hold communion with them ; by
Diotrephes is meant, not "Victor," as Schwegler (by. a demonstrable
anachronism1) supposed, but perhaps Anicetus, Soter, or Eleutheros.
The writer is so strong a partisan as to describe the faction of Dio
trephes as "heathens "2 (3 John 7) !
4. Not much more reasonable is the notion of Hilgenfeld that the
Second Epistle was sent to a Church as a letter of excommunication
against Gnostic teachers, and the Third as a letter of commendation
(imo-ToKii avarariKh) to Gaius, issued to vindicate against Judaising
Christians the right of St. John as well as of St. James to furnish such
authorisations to travelling missionaries.
5. Nor less arbitrary is the suggestion of Ewald that both the Second
and Third Epistles were addressed to one Church ; that it must have
been an important Church, because three of its Elders — Diotrephes,
Demetrius, and Gaius — are mentioned ; that the name of the Church is
omitted because it would have been dangerous to mention it ; and that
the Third Epistle was addressed to Gaius from a misgiving that Diotre
phes might suppress the first letter, and prevent it from being publicly
read in the Church.
Such theories are not worth refuting. They might be constructed in
any numbers. They are mere ropes of sand, which fall to pieces at a
touch. It can only be regarded as a misfortune that such multitudes of
them should cumber, with their useless accumulations, the whole field
of exegesis. They do but block up the way to any real advance in our
knowledge of the history of the early Church. I would say of them
what Baur says of certain theories of apologists : " It is not worth while
to discuss vague hypotheses which have no support in history and no
cohesion in themselves'."3
While I do not deny that the Elect Lady addressed may have been
a Church, it does not seem to me probable. To say that the Church is
symbolised as a woman and a bride in the Apocalypse, is to adduce an
argument which bears very little on the matter.4 The question is not
whether a Church might not be allegorically called "a Lady," which
everyone admits, but whether it is natural that, in a short and simple
letter, St. John should, from first to last, keep up, in this one particular,
an elaborate allegory, and, unlike the other Apostles, address a Church
1 For this Epistle is quoted long before Victor's day by Irenseus and Clemens of
Alexandria. 2 Baur, Montanismus.
3 Baur, Ch. Hist. i. 131.
4 Kev. xii. 1 — 17; xxi. 9. To say that 'EkXektij means "a Church" in Cant. vi. 8,
t'h outtj eK\exri) in b ;jA«>s, is to pass off exegetical fancies as settled truths.

582 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
as if he were writing to a lady. If the letter were playful or mystic,
such a supposition might be tolerable. As it is, unless there be some
unknown factors in the history of the circumstances which called forth
the letter, it would seem to savour of a euphuism unworthy of the great
Apostle, and alien from Apostolic simplicity. So far as I am aware,
there is not another instance in Christian literature, whether Greek or
Latin, whether in apostolic or post-apostolic times, in which a Church is
called Kyria, or addressed throughout as a lady.
5. I. take the letter, then, in its natural sense, as having been
addressed to a Christian lady and her children. Some of those children
the Apostle seems to have met in one of his visits of supervision to
the Churches of Asia. They may have been on a visit to some of
their cousins in a neighbouring city, and St. John — always attracted
by sympathy towards the young — finding that they were living as
faithful Christian lives, writes news of them to their mother, whom
he held in high esteem ; and in writing seizes the opportunity to
add some words of Christian teaching. That St. John should write
to a Christian lady has in it nothing extraordinary. Women like
Priscilla, Lydia, and Phcebe played no small part in the early spread
of Christian truth. They represented that ennoblement of Christian
womanhood which was one of the great results of Christian preaching ;
and they inspired the Apostles with a warm sentiment of affection
and esteem.1 That the lady should be left unnamed is in accordance
with the feelings of the day. It was against the common feelings
both of Jews and Greeks that virtuous matrons should be thrust into
needless prominence. St. Paul indeed names them when occasion de
mands. In writing to the Philippians, among whom women occupied a
more recognised position than among other Roman communities, he
makes a personal appeal to the two ladies Euodias and Syntyche ;2 and
he sends salutations to and from women among others. Yet he never
wrote a letter, so far as we know, even to Lydia or to Priscilla, to whom
he was so much indebted ; and if he had written such a letter — in
tended (as this letter of St. John's may well have been) for perusal by
all the members of the Church, and even meant to be read aloud to them
in their congregation — it is probable that he would have left' the name
unmentioned. Much more would this have been the natural feeling of
St. John, who had lived most of his life in Jerusalem. He would have
been less inclined to infringe on the seclusion which was the ordinary
position of Eastern womanhood, because his experiences had been less
cosmopolitan than those of his brother Apostles. Who the Elect Lady
was we do not know, and never shall know. To suggest, as some have
done, that she may have been Martha the sister of Lazarus,3 or the

1 See Aots xvi. 14 ; xviii. 2, etc. ; and St. Paul's salutation to nine Christian women,
in Rom. xvi.
2 Phil. iv. 2. a Carpzov. Martha = Kvpta.

THE SECOND EPISTLE. 583
Mother of our Lord,1 is to be guilty of the idle and reprehensible practice
of suggesting theories which rest on the air, and are not even worth the
trouble of a serious refutation.
Nor is there anything to indicate where these letters were written.
They may have been sent from either Patmos or Ephesus. Eusebius
says that they were 'written at Ephesus before a tour of pastoral
visitation.2 The analysis of the letier is extremely simple. After a kindly
greeting (1 — 3), he tells this Christian matron of his joy in finding that
some of her children (whom he had chanced to encounter) were walking
in the truth (4). He enforces on her the commandment of Christian
love, which is both new and old (5 — 6) ; warns her against dangerous
antichristian teachers (7 — 9), to whose errors she is not to lend the
sanction of her hospitality or countenance (10 — 11), and concludes with
the expression of a hope that he may soon visit her and her family, and
with a greeting from the children of her Christian sister (12 — 13). The
keynotes of the Epistle, as indicated by its most prominent words, are
Truth and Love. Truth occurs five times and Love four times in these
few verses.
" The Elder to the elect Lady3 and her children whom I love in Truth,4 and not
I alone, but also all who have learnt to know the Truth,5 because of the Truth
which abideth in us, and shall be with us for ever.6 Grace, mercy, peace,7 shall be
with us s from God our Father, and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, in
Truth and Love.
"I rejoice9 greatly because I have found some of thy, children10 walking in
Truth, even as we received commandment from the Father.
" And now11 I entreat thee, Lady, not as writing to thee a new commandment,
but that which we had from the beginning,12 that we love one another. And this is
love, that we should walk according to His commandments.13 This is the command
ment, even as ye heard from the beginning, that ye should walk in it. Because
many deceivers went forth14 into the world, such as confess not Jesus Christ coming
1 Knauer, Stud.u. Krit. 1833. * Euseb. H. E. iii. 23.
3 Comp. exAeKTOts -ttape-m&ripois, 1 Pet. i. 1.
* Truth is here used in the Johannine sense — the realm of eternal reality. " Whom I love
in the truth of the Gospel."
5 It has been thought that this expression is too wide to apply to a single person, hut it
merely means that all Christians who know the character of the lady and her children love her.
6 Comp. John xiv. 16, 17.
7 "Votum cum affirmatione" (Bengel). A wish, with the assurance that it will he ful
filled. 8 Por the full meaning of this triple greeting, see my Life and Work of St. Paid, ii. 516.
11 Grace " refers to man's sin ; " mercy " to his misery ; " peace " is the total result to both ; and
all three work in the region of truth and love. " QraUa tollit cnlpam misericordia miseriam, pax
dicit permansionem in gratia ex misericordia" (Bengel).
9 Lit. " I rejoiced," but it is the epistolary aorist. " Avete, filii et filiae, in nomine Domini
nostri Christi in pace; supra modum exhilaror beatis et praeclaris spiritibus vestris" (Ps.-
Barcab. Ep. i.).
10 kiav, 3 John 3. This does not of course necessarily imply that some were not so walking.
Probably St. John had only met some of them.
11 The words mark a transition, as in 1 John ii. 28, epuTw. See on 1 John v. 16. " Blandior
quaedara admonendi ratio " (Schlichting,).
" See on 1 John ii. 7, 8 ; iii. 11.
13 The same identification of love with obedience which we have founa hi 1 John ii. 6—10, etc.
Praxis, not gnosis, is the true test of faithful discipleship.
14 l%i\\Bov, u, A, B, Syriac, Vulgate, Irenseus. Not " came m" the reading Adopted by out
E. Y. Comp. 1 John ii. 18, 22 ; iv. 1-3.

584 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
in the fleBh.1 This is the deceiver and the Antichrist. Take heed to yourselves
that ye lose not what we have wrought,2 but that ye receive a full reward. Every
one who goeth forward3 and abideth not in the teaching of the Christ, hath not
God. He who abideth in the teaching, he hath both the Father and the Son. If
any one cometh to you,4 and bringeth not this doctrine, receive him not into your
house, and bid him not 'good speed.' For he who biddeth him ' good speed' par
takes in his evil deeds.5
" Having many things to write to you, I prefer9 not to do so by paper and ink,7
but I hope to come to you,8 and to speak mouth to mouth,9 that your joy may be
fulfilled.10 The children of thy elect sister greet thee."11
It will be seen, then, at a glance, that Truth and Love are keynotes
of" the Epistle, and that the conceptions which prevail throughout it are
those with which we have been made familiar by the previous Epistle.
And yet one passage of the Epistle has again and again been belauded,
and is again and again adduced as a stronghold of intolerance, an
excuse for pitiless hostility against all who differ from ourselves.12 There
is something distressing in the swift instinct with which an unchristian
egotism has first assumed its own infallibility on subjects which are
often no part of Christian faith, and then has spread as on vulture's
wings to this passage as a consecration of the feelings with which
the odium theologicum disgraces and ruins the Divinest interests of
the cause of Christ. It must be said — though I say it with the deepest
sorrow — that the cold exclusiveness of the Pharisee, the bitter ignorance
of the self-styled theologian, the usurped infallibility of the half-
educated religionist, have ever been the curse of Christianity. They
1 The present participle is used to mate the expression as general as possible. They denied
the possibility of the Incarnation. Bee 1 John ii. 18, 22 ; it. 2 j v. 6. They seem to have been
Docetic Gnostics.
a The readings vary greatly between the first and second persons. Matt. ix. 37 ; 2 Tim. ii.
15 ; John vi. 29. The lo*$ which takes off from the full reward is explained, in the next verse,
to be separation from God.
3 The true reading is not "who transgresseth " (irapafiaivoiv) , but irpoaymv, #, A, B. Vulg.
Not, as some commentators here hint, as though all progress in Christian thought was a crime,
and incapacity to advance beyond stereotyped prejudice a virtue, but referring either (1) to
advance iu wmag directions, or (2) to Christian teachers who go before their flocks (John x. 4 ;
Markx. 32).
4 The indicative following ei, implies that such wilt come. He is not of course thinking of
heathens, but of Christian false prophets.
5 See below. The meaning of course is that we are not to give to- fundamental heresy an
appearance of approval by pronouncing the deeper fraternal greeting. In some versions are
here interpolated the words, " Ecce praedixi vobis ne in diem domini condemnemini."
fi Epistolary aorist.
7 I£ the letter was written at Patmos, these materials might not readily be procurable. The
word x<i.pTY}<; means Egyptian papyrus. For the manner in which it was prepared, see Pliny,
H. N. xiii, 21. The ink was made of soot and water, mixed with gum.
8 yeveo-Bat irpbs vfiay. The same Greek construction as in John vi. 25.
- A Hebraism, ng^St n§ (Jer. xxxii. 4 ; 3 John 14).
w 1 John i. 4.
11 " Suavissima commuuitas I comitas Apostoli minorum verbis salutem mmciantis " (Bengel).
It is impossible to say why tbe sister herself sends no greetings. We cau hardly suppose that
she was dead, because she is called "thy elect sister." But we may suggest a score of hypo
theses which would suffice to explain the circumstance. Beogel says, " Hos liberos (ver. 4) in
do mo materteroe eorum invenerat."
13 Thus on tne strength of this text Johu h Lasco having been expelled from England during
tbe reun of Mary in 1553, was, with his congregation, refused admission into Denmark (Salig.
Hi at. Conf. Aug. ii. 1090 ; quoted by Braune ad loo. in Lange's Bibelwerk), Thus by the manipu
lation of a few phrases Hate is made to wear the guise of Love, and Fury to pose as Christian
meekness.

RELIGIOUS HATRED 585
have imposed " the senses of men upon the -words of God, the special
senses of men on the general words of God," and have tried to enforce
them on all men's consciences with all kinds of burnings and anathemas,
under equal threats of death and damnation.1 And thus they have
incurred the terrible responsibility of presenting religion to mankind in
a false and repellent guise. Is theological hatred still to be a proverb
for the world's just contempt? Is such hatred — hatred in its bitterest
and most ruthless form — to be regarded as the legitimate and normal
outcome of the religion of love? Is the spirit of peace never to be
brought to bear on religious opinions? Are such questions always
to excite the most intense animosities and the most terrible divisions 1
Is the Diotrephes of each little religious clique to be the ideal of
a Christian character? Is it in religious discussions alone that im
partiality is to be set down as weakness, and courtesy as treason 1 Is it
among those only who pride themselves on being "orthodox'' that
there is to be the completest absence of humility and of justice ? Is the
world to be for ever confirmed in its opinion that theological partisans
are less truthful, less candid, less high-minded, less honourable even
than the partisans of political and social causes who make no profession
as to the duty of love? Are the so-called "religious" champions
to be for ever, as they now are, in many instances, the most unscru
pulously bitter and the most conspicuously unfair ? Alas ! they might
be so with far less danger to the cause of religion if they would forego
the luxury of "quoting Scripture for their purpose." The harm which
has thus been done is incredible : —
" Crime was ne'er so black
As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to lack.
Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he' lays
His evil offspring, and in Scriptural phrase
And saintly posture gives to God the praise
And honour of his monstrous progeny."
If this passage of St. John had indeed authorised such errors
and excesses — if it had indeed been a proof, as has been said, of
" the deplorable growth of dogmatic intolerance"2 — it would have been
hard to separate it from the old spirit of rigorism and passion which led
the Apostle, in his most undeveloped days, to incur his Lord's rebuke,
by proclaiming his jealousy of those who worked on different lines from
his own, and by wishing to call down fire to consume the rude villagers
of Samaria. It would have required some ingenuity not to see in
it the same sort of impatient and unworthy intolerance which once
marked his impetuous outbursts, but which is (I trust falsely) attributed
to him in the silly story of Cerinthus and the bath. In that case
also the spirit of his advice would have been widely different from
1 Chillingworth.
2 So Kenan, in his article on the Fourth Gospel in the Contemp. Sev. Sept. 1877.

586 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the spirit which actuated the merciful tolerance of the Lord to Heathens,
to Samaritans, to Sadducees, and even to Pharisees. It would have
been in direct antagonism to our Lord's command to the Twelve to
salute with their blessing every house to which they came, because
if it were not worthy their peace would return to them again.1 It
would have been alien from many of the noblest lessons of the New
Testament. It would practically have excluded from the bosom of
Christianity, and of Christianity alone, the highest workings of the
universal law of love. It would have been in glaring disaccord with
the gentleness and moderation which is now shown, even towards
absolute unbelievers, by the wisest, gentlest, and most Christlike of
God's saints. If it really bore the sense which has been assigned
to it, it would be a grave reason for sharing the ancient doubts respect
ing the genuineness of the little letter in which it occurs, and for
coming to the conclusion that, while its general sentiments were
borrowed from the authentic works of St. John, they had only been
thrown together for the purpose of introducing, under the sanction
of his name, a precept of unchristian harshness and religious in
tolerance. But there is too much reason to fear that to the end of time the
conceit of orthodoxism will claim inspired authority for its own
conclusions, even when they are most antichristian, and will build
up systems of exclusive hatred out of inferences purely uriwarrantable.
It is certain, too, that each sect is always tempted to be proudest
of its most sectarian peculiarities ; that each form of dissent, whether
in or out of the body of the Established Churches, most idolises its own
dissidence. The aim of religious opinionativeness always lias been, and
always will be, to regard its narrowest conclusions as matters of faith,
and to exclude or excommunicate all those who reject or modify tkcm.
The sort of syllogisms used by these enemies of the love of Christ
are much as follows —
" My opinions are founded on interpretations of Scripture. Scripture
is infallible. My views of its meaning are infallible too. Tour
opinions and inferences differ from mine, therefore you must be in

1 It is said that Polycarp was once accosted by Marcion, and asked by him, "Dost
thou not know me?" "Yes," he answered, "I know thee, the firstborn of Satan"
(Iren. c. Haer. iii. 3 ; Euseb. S. E. iv. 14). " So cautious," adds Irenaeus, " were the
Apostles and their followers to have no communication — no, not so much as in discourse
— with those who adulterated the truth." The story, as might have been expected, is
told by other ecclesiastical writers with intense gusto, down to modern days. But even
if it be true, it by no means follows that the example was estimable. St. Polycarp was
just as liable to sin and error as other saints have been. We have no right to treat any
man with rude discourtesy. If to be a Christian is to act as Christ acted, then Poly
carp's discourtesy was unchristian. Pharisees openly rejected our Lord, yet He even
accepted their invitations, and told His Disciples to show them honour. Is a heretic so
much worse than a heathen, that a Christian wife might live with a heathen husband
(1 Cor. vii. 12, 13), while yet a Christian might not even speak without the grossest rude
ness to a Gnostic teacher '!

RELIGIOUS HATRED. 587
the wrong. All wrong opinions are capable of so many ramifications
that any one who differs from me in minor points must be unsound
in vital matters also. Therefore, all who differ from me and my clique
are 'heretics.' All heresy is wicked. All heretics are necessarily
wicked men. It is my religious duty to hate, calumniate, and abuse you."
Those who have gone thus far in elevating Hatred into a Christian
virtue ought logically to go a little farther. They generally do so when
they have the power. They do not openly say, " Let us venerate
the examples of Arnold of Citeaux, and of Torquemada. Let us
glorify the Crusaders at Beziers. Let us revive the racks and
thumbscrews of the Inquisitiqn. Let us, with the Pope; strike
medals in honour of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Let us re
establish the Star Chamber, and entrust those ecclesiastics who
hold our opinions with powers of torture." But, since they are
robbed of these means of securing unanimity — since they can no longer
even imprison " dissenting tinkers " like Bunyan, and " regicide
Arians " like Milton — they are too apt to indulge in the party spirit
which can employ slander though it is robbed of the thumbscrew,
and revel in depreciation though it may no longer avail itself of the
fagot and the rack.
The tender mercies of contending religionists are exceptionally
cruel. The men who, in the Corinthian party-sense, boast " I am
of Christ," do not often, in these days, formulate the defence of their
lack of charity so clearly as this. But they continually act and write
in this spirit. Long experience has made mankind familiar with, the
base ingenuity which frames charges of constructive heresy out of
the most innocent opinions ; which insinuates that variations from the
vulgar exegesis furnish a sufficient excuse for banding anathemas, under
the plea that they are an implicit denial of Christ ! Had there been in
Scripture any sanction for this execrable spirit of heresy-hunting
Pharisaism, Christian theology would only become another name for
the collisions of wrangling sects, all cordially hating each other, and
only kept together by common repulsion against external enmity. But,
to me at least, it seems that the world has never developed a more
unchristian and antichristian phenomenon than the conduct of those
who encourage the bitterest excesses of hatred under the profession
of Christian love.1 I know nothing so profoundly irreligious as the
narrow intolerance of an ignorant dogmatism. Had there been
anything in this passage which sanctioned so odious a spirit, I
could not have believed that it emanated from St. John. A
good tree does not bring forth corrupt fruit. The sweet fountain
of Christianity cannot send forth the salt and bitter water of
fierceness and hate. The Apostle of love would have belied all that
is best in his own teaching if he had consciously given an absolution,
1 1 John iii. 10, IL

588 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
nay, an incentive, to furious intolerance. The last words of Christian
revelation could never have meant what these words have been
interpreted to mean — namely, "Hate, exclude, anathematise, persecute,
treat as enemies and opponents to be crushed and insulted, those who
differ from you in religious opinions." Those who have pretended
a Scriptural sanction for such Cain-like religionism have generally put
their theories into practice against men who have been infinitely more in
the right, and transcendently nearer God, than those who, in killing or
injuring them, ignorantly thought that they were doing God service.
Meanwhile this incidental expression of St. John's brief letter will
not lend itself to these gross perversions. What St. John really says,
and really means, is something wholly different. False teachers were
rife, who, professing to be Christians, robbed the nature of Christ of all
which gave its efficacy to the Atonement, and its significance to the
Incarnation. These teachers, like other Christian missionaries, travelled
from city to city, and, in the absence of public inns, were received into
the houses of Christian converts. The Christian lady to whom
St. John writes is warned that, if she offers her hospitality to' these
dangerous emissaries who were subverting the central truth of
Christianity, she is expressing a public sanction of them ; and, by
doing this and offering them her best wishes she is taking a direct
share in the harm they do. This is common sense ; nor is there
anything uncharitable in it. No one is bound to help forward the
dissemination of teaching what he regards as erroneous respecting the
most essential doctrines of his own faith. Still less would it have been
right to do this in the days when Christian communities were so small
and weak. But to interpret this as it has in all ages been practically
interpreted — to pervert it into a sort of command to exaggerate the
minor ariations 'between religious opinions, and to persecute those
whose views differ from our own — to make our own opinions the
exclusive test of heresy, and to say, with Cornelius a Lapide, that this
verse reprobates "all conversation, all intercourse, all dealings with
heretics" — is to interpret Scripture by the glare of partisanship and
spiritual self-satisfaction, not to read it under the light of holy love.
Alas ! churchmen and theologians have found it a far more easy
and agreeable matter to obey their distortion of this supposed command,
and even to push its stringency to the very farthest limits, than to obey
the command that we should love one another ! Prom the Tree of
delusive knowledge they pluck the poisonous and inflating fruits of
pride and hatred, while they suffer the fruits of love and meekness to
fall neglected from the Tree of Life. The popularity which these verses
still enjoy, and the exaggerated misinterpretation still attached to them,
are due to the fact that they are so acceptable to the arrogance and
selfishness, the dishonesty and tyranny, the sloth and obstinacy, of that
bitter spirit of religious discord which has been the disgrace of the
Church and the scandal of the world.

THE THIRD EPISTLE. 589
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE THIRD EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.
"Ex operibus cognoscitur valetudo animae, et hanc prosequuntur vota
Sanctorum." — Bengel.
Nothing can be ascertained respecting the Gaius to whom this letter is
addressed, beyond what the letter itself inVplies — that he was a faithful
and kind-hearted Christian. I have already explained that, from the
circumstances of the time, hospitality to Christian teachers was a
necessary duty, without which the preaching of Christianity could
hardly have been carried on.1 Gaius, like his namesake at Corinth,2
and like Philemon,3 distinguished himself by the cheerfulness with
which he performed this duty. It could not always have been an easy
or an agreeable duty, for some of the Christian emissaries, and
especially those from Jerusalem, seem, according to the testimony
of St. Paul, to have behaved with an insolence and rapacity truly
outrageous.4 But those to whom Gaius opened his hospitable house
were not of this character. They were men who had followed the
noble initiative of St. Paul, and who refused to receive anything from
the Gentiles to whom they preached.
Some, from the identity of name and character, have assumed that
the Gaius here addressed must have been the Gaius of Corinth. Such
an inference is most precarious. Gaius was, perhaps, the commonest of
all names current throughout the Roman Empire. So common was
it that it was selected in the Roman law-books to serve the
familiar purpose of John Doe and Richard Roe in our own legal
formularies. It no more serves to identify the bearer of ihe name
than if it had been addressed " To the well-beloved  ," for Gaius
was colloquially used for "so-and-so1."5 There are at least three
Gaiuses in the New Testament — Gaius of Macedonia (Acts xix. 29),
Gaius of Corinth (Rom. xvi. 23), and Gaius of Derbe (Acts xx. 4). A
Gaius is mentioned in the Apostolic Constitutions (vii. 40), as Bishop of
Pergamum, and it is not impossible that this may be the person here
addressed. The main object of the letter was to encourage him in his course of
Christian faithfulness and to contrast his conduct with that of the
domineering Diotrephes. Diotrephes, in his ambition, his arbitrariness,
his arrogance, his tendency to the idle babble of controversy, and his
fondness for excommunicating hia opponents, furnishes us with a
1 Hence the importance attached to it (Bom. xii. 13 ; 1 Tim. iii. 2 ; Tit. i. 8 ; Heb.
rin. 2 ; 1 Pet. iv. 9).
1 Eom. xvi. 23 ; 1 Cor. i. 14. 3 Philem. 7.
4 2 Cor. xi. 20. * Kenan, in Contemp. Sev. Sept. 1877.

590 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
very ancient specimen of a character extremely familiar in the annals
of ecclesiasticism.1 There is something astonishing in the notion that
the prominent Christian Presbyter of an Asiatic Church should not
only repudiate the authority of St. John, and not only refuse to
receive his travelling missionary, and to prevent others from doing
so, but should even excommunicate or try to excommunicate those who
did so ! But we must leave the difficulty where it is, since we are
unable to throw any light upon it. The condition of the Church of
Corinth, as St. Paul described it, leave us prepared for the existence of
almost any irregularities. The history of the Church of Christ, from
the earliest down to the latest days, teems with subjects for perplexity
and surprise.
"The Elder, to Gaius the beloved, whom I love in Truth.2
"Beloved, I pray that in all respects3 thou mayest prosper,4 and be in health,5
even as thy soul prospereth. For I rejoice exceedingly at the arrival of brethren
who bear witness to thy Truth, even as thou walkest in Truth. I have no greater 6
joy than this, that I hear of my children walking in the Truth.7
" Beloved, thou playest a faithful part in all thy work towards the brethren, and
even to strangers,8 who bear witness to thy love before the Church, whom by
forwarding on their journey9 worthily of God thou10 wilt do well. For. on the
Name's behalf11 they went forth, accepting nothing from the Gentiles.12 We then
ought to support such, that we may become fellow- workers with the Truth.13
" I wrote somewhat to the Church,14 but their domineering Diotrephes receiveth
us not.15 On this account, if I come, I will bring to mind16 his deeds which he doeth,
1 Hymenaeus, Alexander (1 Tim. i. 20), Philetus (2 Tim. ii. 17), Hermogenes, and Phygellus
(2 Tim. i. 18) are similarly mentioned as opponents of St. Paul.
2 1 John iii. 18 ; 2 John i. To love " in Truth," is the same as to love " in the Lord."
3 Not " above all things," as in E. V. That meaning of irepl iravriav is only found in classical
poetry. 4 eiioSoiia-Bai (Rom. i. 10 ; 1 Cor. xii. 2) ; literally, to be "guided on a journey." Philo uses
the word as here, both of body and soul, Qais Rer. Div. Haer. § 58.
5 vytaiveiv was not among Christians as it was among Stoics, a common form of address.
Hence we must assume that Gaius suffered from ill- health.
6 The doubled comparative pei^oripav may be intentionally emphatic, like eAaxioroYepos,
in Eph. iii. 8, "Est ad ihtendendam signincationem comparativus e comparative f actus "
(Grotius). 7 'iva. St. John's use of ii/a is far wider than that of classical writers. It often loses its
telic sense ("in order that"), and becomes simply elcbatic, or explanatory, as in Luke i. 43,
John xv. 13.
8 «at tovto, H, A, B, C. The hospitality of Gaius was not only QtXaSelvpLa, hut </uAo£<:i/ia.
9 7rpo7r^Li^as. Tit. iii. 13.
10 a£i'a>5 tou ©eou. That is, giving them the mtmmum of help, as their sacred cause deserves.
(Comp. 1 Thess. ii. 12: Col. l. 10.)
11 Acts v. 41 ; ix. 16, etc. ; Phil. ii. 9. " I have heen hound in the Name " (Ignat. ad Eplws. 3).
" Some are wont with evil guile to carry about the Name, while they are doing deeds unworthy
of God" (id. ib. 7). Similarly Christians, among themselves, spoke of Christianity as "the
way " (Aots ix. 2 ; xix. 9).
12 St. Paul's rule (1 Thess. ii. 9 ; 1 Cor. ix. 18 ; 2 Cor. xi. 7 ; xii. 16). Gentiles must of course
mean, " Gentile converts." They could not expect the heathens to support them. This is per
haps implied bv the adjective iBviK&v, n, A, B, C.
« Comp. 1 Thess. iii. 2 ; Col. iv. 11.
14 EvkUntly a brief letter, from the expression ti, », A, B, C (Luke vii. 40; Acts xxviii. 17).
It is now lost, like many other of these minor communications (1 Cor. v. 9). Diotrephes seems
to have suppressed this letter, whatever it was. If he could behave so outrageously as he is
said to do m the next clause, he would have thought but little of making away with a brief
letter. 18 That is, " rejects my authority." Perhaps it means that this turbulent intriguer refused
to acknowledge St. John's " commendatory letter."
10 John xiv. 26. St. John means that he will draw the attention of the Church to the pro
ceedings of Diotrephes.

THE THIRD EPISTLE. 591
with wicked words battling against us ; 1 and not content with that, he neither him
self receives the brethren, and he hinders those who wish to do eo, and expels them
from the Church. 2
"Beloved, do not imitate the evil but the good.3 He that doeth good is from
God : he that doeth evil hath not seen God. 4 Witness has been borne to Demetrius
by all,5 and by the Truth itself ; aye, and we too6 bear witness, and thou knowest
that our witness is true.7
"I had many things to write to thee, but I do not wish by ink and reed8 to
write to thee, but I hope immediately to see thee, and we will speak mouth to
mouth. Peace to thee.9 The friends salute thee. Salute the friends by name."10
"Salute the friends by name." Salute each of our Christian friends
as warmly and as individually as though I had here written down their
names. So fitly ends the last of the writings of St. John. The close of
his messages to the Church of God is as calm and gentle as the close of
his life. God cares for individuals, and therefore the Church of God cares
for them also. They may be obscure, humble, faulty ; but if they be
true disciples they need fear nothing which the world can threaten, and
desire nothing which it can offer, for " their names are written in the
Book of Life." The aged Apostle speaks of them as "friends." The
name, as applied to Christians, is peculiar to him, for Christians
regarded each other as " brethren," and therefore as bound together by a
tie even closer than that of friendship. But if he uses this word as
well as " brethren " and " beloved," it doubtless is from the remembrance
of what he alone among the Evangelists has recorded, that the Lord
Jesus had called Lazarus " His friend," and that He had said, " Ye are
my friends, if ye do the things which I command you. No longer do I
call you servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth ;
but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from my
Father I have made known unto you."
He ends, therefore, fitly with this kind message to individual friends.
And after this we know nothing more with certainty respecting him. He
was not taken to Heaven in the fiery chariot of glory or of martyrdom,
1 Qkvapol (1 Tim. v. 13) ; tpXvapeiv, the French deHlaterer. "Apposite, calumnias Diotrephis
vocat garritum. " (Corn, a Lapide).
2 These proceedings seem so very high-handed, that we might take the words to mean merely
that he excluded them from the congregation which possibly met at his house ; or we might
suppose the meanings of the presents to be " tries to hinder them, and wants to excommunicate
them." Certninly the present often implies the unsuccessful conaius ret perficiendae (see my
Brief Greek Syntax, § 136), but we know too little of Diotrephes, and of the Church in which he
had so much influence, to be able to say that he might not have actually excommunicated (as
unauthorised interlopers into his parish — schismatic intruders on his own authority) those who
gave hospitality to Evangelists or who brought " letters of commendation" from St. John., If
he was capable of prating against St. John, he might have been capable of this also.
s Heb. xiii. 7 ; 1 Pet. iii. 13. "to kokov in Diotrephe ; to ayaBbv in Demetrio " (Bengel).
* 1 John iii. 6—10 ; iv 8.
5 *' DemetriuB was possibly the bearer of the letter " (Liicke).
6 koX ^fiets Se (1 John iii. 6).
7 John v. 32 ; xxi. 24.
8 The «aAo/Aos is a split reed. St. John seems to have disliked the physical toil of writing,
to which it is quite possible that he had not been accustomed. He probably dictated his longer
and more important works.
9 John xix. 28. " The inward peace of conscience, the fraternal peace of friendship, the
heavenly peace of glory " (Lyra).
io The allusion is to personal private friends, not/the brethren in general.

592 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
but in all probability he died at Ephesus, in a peaceful and honoured age,
among many friends who deeply loved and greatly honoured him. And
the last murmur of tradition which reaches us respecting him is that
which tells us of his last exhortation. When he was no longer a " Son
of Thunder," no longer even an " Eagle of Christ " — when he was a
weak and worn old man, with scarcely anything left him but a feeble
voice and trembling hands, he still uplifted those trembling hands to
bless, and still strove to sum up all that he had taught, in words easy
to utter, but of which, after so many centuries, we have yet so imper
fectly learnt the meaning —
" Filioli, diligite alterutrum."
" Little children, love one another."
And this he did, as he himself explained, " because such was the
Lord's command ; and if this only be done, it is enough."

APPENDIX. EXCURSUS I.
THE ASSERTED PRIMACY OF ST. PETER.
That St. Peter was a leading Apostle — in some respects the leading
Apostle — none will dispute ; but that he never exercised the supremacy
which is assigned to him by Roman Catholic writers is demonstrable
even from the New Testament. Anyone who will examine the list of
twenty- eight Petrine prerogatives detailed by Baronius1 will see in
their extreme futility the best disproof of the claims of Roman primacy.
St. Peter had, as Cave says, a primacy of order, but not a supremacy
of power. Such a supremacy our Lord emphatically discountenanced.2
In his Epistle St. Peter does not assume the title of Apostle, but only
calls himself a fellow-presbyter, and rebukes all attempts "to play the
lord over the heritage of God." The other Apostles send him to
Samaria. The Church at Jerusalem indignantly calls him to account
for the bold step which he had taken in the case of Cornelius. Paul,
at Antioch, withstands him to the face, and claims to be no whit
inferior to the very chiefest Apostle, assuming the Apostolate of the
Uncircumcision — that is, of the whole Gentile world — as predominantly
his own. St. Peter was not specially "the disciple whom Jesus loved ; "
and though he received from his Lord some of the highest eulogiums,
he also incurred the severest rebukes. Even when we turn to the
Fathers, we find St. Cyprian saying that " the rest of the Apostles
were that which St. Peter was ; endowed with equal participation both
of honour and of power."3 The Presbyter Hesychius calls, not St.
Peter, but St. James, " the prince of priests, the leader of the Apostles,
the crown among the heads, the brightest among the stars."4 He calls
St. Andrew "the Peter before Peter." St. Cyril says that Peter and
John had equivalent honour. The Promise of the Keys was given to
all the Apostles alike ;5 and in the Apocalypse no distinction is made
i De Rom. Pontif. i. 17, seqq.
2 Matt. xx. 25—27 ; Luke xxii. 24—26.
3 De'Unitat. Eccles. p. 180.
4 Ap. Phot. Cod. 275. n<?Tpos b-gpnyopel ahX 'IdicujSos vopoQeret.
6 Matt, xviii. 17, 18 ; John xx. 21—23.
M M

594 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
between Kephas and the rest of the Twelve.1 Origen says that all who
make Peter's confession with Peter's faithfulness shall have Peter's
blessing.2 He was eminent among the Apostles j — supreme he never
was.3

EXCURSUS II.
PATRISTIC EVIDENCE ON ST. PETER'S VISIT TO ROME.
St. Clemens of Rome (t 101) says that " he bore witness," using the
term which implies his martyrdom ; 4 but he does not say that this took
place at Bome. Ignatius (f 114),5 and Papia"s6 (referred to by Eusebius
(t 340), use language which may be inferentially pressed into the impli
cation that he had been at Rome. St. Clemens of Alexandria (t 220),
who tells the story about St. Peter's wife, does not mention Rome.7 St.
Dionysius of Corinth (f 165) says that St. Peter and St. Paul both
taught in Italy ;8 but the weight of even this slight allusion is neutralised
by its being found in the same sentence with the erroneous suggestion
that Peter had a share in the founding ((pvreiav) of the Church of Corinth.
St. Irenseus (f 202) makes the dubious statement that both Apostles took
part in the appointment of Linus to be Bishop of Rome.9 Gaius (t 200),
as quoted by Eusebius, says that the " trophies " of the Apostles were
shown at Rome in his days.10 Tertullian (f 218) makes a similar re
mark in a passage where he also accepts the legend of St. John's escape
from death when he was plunged into a caldron of boiling oil at the Latin
gate.11 Lastly, Origen (t 254) is the first who says that Peter was
" crucified head downwards ; "12 and St. Ambrose — or a pseudo-Ambrose
— tells the story of the Vision on the Appian road. Later allusions to
the Apostle's connexion with Rome, which grow more definite as time
advances, are found in Arnobius,13 in Lactantius,14 in the Apostolical
Constitutions,™ and in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies.™
St. Peter's visit to Rome is of course testified by multitudes of later
writers ; but their assertions have no independent or evidential value.17
1 Eev. xxi. 14. 2 In Matt. xvi.
3 See the question examined in Shepherd's Hist, ofthe Ch. of Rome, pp. 494, ff.
4 Ep. ad Cor. v.
5 Ignat. Ep. ad Rom. iv. ; oux ciij Herpes Kai TiaHKos Siarao-o-opai vp.lv.
6 Papias, ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. ad Jin. But the inference is of the remotest kind. It
supposes that St. Peter needed Mark as his " interpreter " in Latin.
' Clem. Alex. ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 8 Dion. ap. Euseb. H. E. ii. 25.
9 Iren. c. Haer. iii. 1 and 3, and ap. Euseb. H. E. v. 6.
10 Gaius, ap. Euseb. H. E. ii. 25.
11 Tert. de Praesc. Haer. 32, 36. See too Scorpiace, 15.
12 Orig. ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 1 J aveo-KoKoiriaBn Kara. icetf»aA7js otmo? ai)Tos a£iw<ras noBelv.
13 Arnob. c. Cent. ii. 12. 14 Lactant. de Mort. Persec. ii.
15 Const. Apost. vii. 45. 16 Ps.-Clem. Horn. Ep. ad Jac. 1.
17 The denial, that St. Peter was ever at Eome, by the Waldenses, Marsilius of Padua,

APPENDIX, 595

EXCURSUS III.
USE OF THE NAME BABYLON FOR ROME IN 1 PET. V. 13
It has been asserted that St. Peter could not be writing from the
real Babylon, because that city was at this period ruined and deserted.
Strabo and Pausanias say that it was a mere ruin ; Pliny calls it a
solitude.1 But, although we learn from Josephus that the Jews in the
city had terribly suffered, first by a persecution in the reign of Caligula,
and then by a plague,2 we have no reason to believe that many of them
may not have returned during the twenty years which had subsequently
elapsed. Again, it is not proved that St. Peter may not have used the
word " Babylon " to describe the country or district, as is done by Philo,3
so that he may have actually written from Seleucia or Ctesiphon, in
which cities the Jews were numerous f or even from Nehardea or
Nisibis, in which they had taken refuge.6 Parthians, Medes, ' Elamites,
and dwellers in Mesopotamia, had been among his hearers on the day
of Pentecost, and there is nothing intrinsically improbable in the notion
of his having gone to visit these crowded communities of the Dispersion.
They were so numerous and so important, that Josephus originally wrote
his History of the Jewish War for their benefit, and wrote it in Aramaic,
without any doubt that it would find countless readers.
It has been argued that the geographical order observable in the
names "Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia " — the
Churches to which his Epistle is addressed — is more natural to one
writing from Babylon than to one who was writing from Rome ; but
this is an argument which will not stand a moment's consideration.
On the other hand, against the literal acceptance of the word
Salmasius, etc., was elaborately supported by Fr. Spannheim (De ficta profectione, etc.,
1679). De Wette, Baur, Winer, Holtzmann, and Schwegler are led to a similar view by
their belief in the virulent jealousies between Jewish and Gentile Christians, and Nean-
der was shaken by the arguments of Baur. But the mass of learned Protestants, Scaliger,
Casubon, Grotius, Usher, Bramhall, Pearson, Cave, Schrbckh, Gieseler, Bleek, Olshausen,
"Wieseler, Hilgenfeld, etc., to a greater or less degree, admit his martyrdom or residence
at Bome. To enter into a discussion of the Papal claims is here wholly beyond my
scope. If the reader has any doubt on the subject, he may read with advantage the
articles on the "Petrine Claims," in the Church Quarterly Review for April, 1878, April,
1879, and January, 1880, and he will find some brief hints on the subject in Dr. Little-
dale's Plain Reasons. He will find all that can be urged on the other side in Mr. All-
natt's Cathedra Petri and Father Ryder's Catholic Controversy.
1 See Is. xiii. ; xiv. 4, 12 ; xlvi. , etc. That the Babylon alluded to is the obscure Egyp
tian fort of that name (Strabo, xvii. 1, p. 807) — a place utterly unknown to Christian
history and tradition — is a conjecture which maybe set aside without further notice. No
human being in the Asiatic Churches to which St. Peter was writing could ever have
heard of such a place.
2 Jos. Antt. xviii. 9, § 8. 3 Philo, Leg. ad Qaium, 36.
* Jos. Antt. xv. 3, 1. 5 Jos. Antt. xviii. 9, § 9.

596 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" Babylon '' there are four powerful arguments. (1). There is not the
faintest tradition in those regions of any visit from St. Peter. (2). If
St. Peter was in Babylon at the time when his Epistle was written,
there is great difficulty in accounting for his familiarity with the Epistle
to the Ephesians, which was not written till ad. 63. (3). It becomes
difficult to imagine circumstances which could have brought him from
the far East into the very crisis of the Neronian persecution in the
Babylon of the West. (4). If " Marcus " be the Evangelist, he was
with St. Paul between ad. 61 — 63,1 and probably rejoined him just
before his martyrdom in ad. 68.2 We should not, therefore, expect to
find him so far away as Babylon in ad. 67.
I strongly incline to the belief that by Babylon the Apostle in
tended to 'indicate Rome,3 and we find this interpretation current in
the Church in very early days.4 The Apocalypse was written about
the same time as — or not long after — the First Epistle of St. Peter;
and in the Apocalypse5 and in the Sibylline Verses6 we see that a
Western, and even an Asiatic, Christian, when he heard the name
" Babylon " in a religious writing, would be likely at once to think of
Rome. Throughout the Talmud we find the same practice of applying
symbolic names. There Rome figures under the designations of
Nineveh, Edom, and Babylon, and almost every allusion to Christ, even
in the unexpurgated passages of the Amsterdam edition, is veiled under
the names of "Absalom," "That Man," "So-and-so," and "The Hung."
The reference to Rome as Babylon may have originated in a mystic
application of the Old Testament prophecies, but it had its advantage
afterwards as a secret symbol. It is therefore a mistake to suppose that
the use of Babylon for Rome would be the sudden obtrusion of " alle
gory " into matter-of-fact, or that by using it the Apostle would be
" going out of his way to make an enigma for all future readers." There
is, in fact, a marked accordance between such an expression and the
conception which St. Peter indicates throughout his letter, that all
Christians are exiles scattered from the heavenly Jerusalem, living, some
of them, in the earthly- Babylon.7 An early Christian would have seen
nothing either allegorical or enigmatical in the matter. He would at
once have understood the meaning, and have known the reasons, alike
mystic and political, for avoiding the name of Rome.
1 Col. iv. 10 ; Philem. 24. 2 2 Tim. iv. 11.
3 So the Fathers unanimously ; and Grotius, Lardner, Cave, Semler, Hitzig, and the
Tubingen school ; as against De Wette and Wieseler. See too Lipsius, Chron. der Rom.
Bisch. (1869) ; Hilgenfeld, Petrus in Rom. (Zeitschr. f. woss. Theol. 1872) ; Zeller, Zur
Petrusfrage (ib. 1876).
4 Papias, ap. Euseb. H. E. ii. 15, iii. 25 ; Iren. c. Haer. iii. 1, etc.
6 Eev. xiv. 8 ; xvi. 19 ; xvii. 9, 18 ; xviii. 2, etc. 6 Sibyll. v. 143, 159.
7 1 Pet. i. 1, mjpein8ij|u.o« ; v. 13, iv Ba/SuXwi. See Godet's New Testament Studies,

APPENDIX. 597
EXCURSUS IV.
THE BOOK OF ENOCH.
The quotation from the Book of Enoch by St. Jude, and the traces
which it contains of the reciprocal influences of Jewish and Christian
speculation, have always attracted the attention of the Church to that
singular Apocalypse.
From the end of the 16th century till recent times nothing was
known of it except by the quotations in the Fathers and the Greek
fragments preserved in the Chronographia of Georgius Syncellus, and
the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. In the 1 7th century it became
known that the entire book existed in an Ethiopic translation. Three
manuscripts of this translation were brought to England by Bruce, the
Abyssinian explorer, in 1773. It was first translated into English by
Archbishop Lawrence in 1821, and retranslated into German by Hof-
mann in 1833, and into Latin by A. F. Gfrorer in 1840.
It consists of an Introduction, i. — vi. 12, containing a Prophecy of
Judgment. vii — x. Legends about the two hundred fallen angels who went
astray with the daughters of men, and taught mankind the Arts, the
Sciences, and many forms of luxury.
xi. — xvi. Enoch is sent on a mission to these fallen angels.
xvii. — xxxv. Visions, sometimes (as in the Apocalypse) in Heaven
and sometimes on earth, in which Enoch is taught the origin of the
elements and the general elements of Natural Science, and is shown
the prison of the fallen angels, and the dwelling of the good, where the
voice of the murdered Abel sounds.
xxxvii. — lxx.1 A second " Vision of Wisdom," which (as in the
Apocalypse) repeats — though with many variations — all the essential
elements contained in i. — xxxv., which are treated as one vision. This
section falls into three Parables or Maschals ; these are xxxviii. — xliv.,
chiefly dwelling on the future abode and condition of sinners ; xiv. —
lv., on those who deny Heaven and God, and the Messianic Judgment
which they incur; Ivi. — lxx., chiefly on the blessings of the elect.
The section lxxi. — lxxxi. is entitled the Book of the Lights of
Heaven. Enoch, orally and in writing, teaches his son Methuselah
about the sun, moon, and stars.
The section lxxxii. — lxxxix. contains two dreams. In the first
Enoch sees the vision of the Flood, and prays God not to destroy all
mankind ; in the second he sees an apocalyptic foreshadowing of future
history down to the time of Herod the Great (?) with a picture of the
days of the Messiah 1 Chapter xxxvi. is missing.

598 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY,
Chapters xc, xci. contain Enoch's words of consolation and exhorta
tion to his children.
Chapter xcii to verse 18 is a sketch of history in ten weeks or periods,
of which the first is signalised by the birth of Enoch ; the second by
the Flood; the third by the life of Noah ; the fourth by Moses; the
fifth by the building of Solomon's Temple ; the sixth by Ezra ; the
seventh by the encroachments of heathenism ; the eighth by rewards,
punishments, and the building of a new Temple ; the ninth by the
Messianic kingdom ; the tenth by the judgment of men and angels, and
the renovation of the world.
From xcii. 19 — civ. the book is mainly didactic, being full of
promises and threatenings. In the last chapter (cv.) Enoch relates the
birth of Noah, and prophesies that he shall be the founder of a new race.
The Ethiopic text is undoubtedly translated from the Greek, of
which we find fragments in St. Jude, in Justin Martyr, and- other
Fathers, and in the Testament of tlie Twelve Patriarchs.1 Whether the
Greek is itself a translation from an original Hebrew book is uncertain.
Origen seems to imply that this was the case, for he says that the
Books (libelli) were not regarded as authoritative " among the
Hebrews." That the book in its present form is not by one author,
and that the Noachian parts of it are by another hand, is clear. From
internal evidence it appears that part at least of the book (chapters i. —
xxxv., lxxi. — cv.) was written in the days of the Maccabees ; and that
chapters xxxvii. — lxx. are not earlier than the days of Herod the Great,
and are full of still more recent interpolations. Volkmar has endea
voured to prove that, as a whole, it is not earlier than the reign of
Hadrian, and that it expresses the views of R. Akiva.2
One reason for the slighting estimate of the book by the Jews may
be that the writer shows no interest in the Ritual and Ceremonial Law,
and makes no special mention either of circumcision or of the Sabbath.

EXCURSUS V.
RABBINIC ALLUSIONS IN ST. JUDE.

The direct citation of St. Jude (verses 14, 15) from the Book of Enoch
is taken from the second chapter, but it is by no means the only trace
of a similarity between the two writers.
i. Jude 6 dwells on the fall of the angels which " kept not their
1 Orig. Horn. 28 ; in Num. xxxiv.
2 For further information, see Abp. Lawrence's Prelim. Dissert, and Translation
(1821) ; Hofmann, Das Buch Henoch (1833) ; and in Ersch and Griiber, Encyl. s. v. ;
Lilcke, Einleit. in d. Offenb. i. 89 — 144 ; Gfrorer, Jahrh. d. Heils, i. 93 fg. ; and espe
cially A. Dillmann, Das Buch Henoch (1853).

APPENDIX. 599
own dominion," but " left their own habitation, and are reserved in
everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the Great Day "
(comp. 2 Pet. ii. 4, 5). This, as we have seen, is a topic which occupies
a large part of the Book of Enoch. In vii. 2 we are told of two
hundred angels who descended on Ardis, the top of Mount Armon.
In xii. 5 — 7-, we are told that they " have deserted the lofty sky and
their holy everlasting habitation, . . . and have been greatly
corrupted on the earth," and in xiv: 4, that they are " to be bound on
earth as long as the world endures," and (xvi. 5) that they are "never
to obtain peace." Their prison-house, where they are to be " kept for
ever " (xxi. 6), is " a terrific place," and they are " confined in a net
work of iron and brass " (liv. 6), which nevertheless consists of
" fetters of iron without weight." The last expression is an antiphrasis
like the " clankless chains" of Shelley, and the "fetters, yet not of
brass," of ^schylus. The author of the Second Epistle of Peter, with
lyric boldness, speaks of these fetters as " chains of darkness," and
$ie author of the Book of Wisdom (xvii. 2, 16, 17) evidently had a
similar picture in his mind when he speaks of the Egyptians as
" fettered with the bonds of a long night," " shut up in a prison without
iron bars," and bound " with one chain of darkness." These fallen
angels are shut up in a " burning- valley," and yet its fires give no light,
or only " teach light to counterfeit a gloom," for they are " covered
with darkness," and they " see no light " (Enoch x. 1 — 9).
ii. Again, in v. 13 St. Jude compares the corrupted Antinomians
whom he is denouncing as " wandering stars to whom is reserved the
blackness of darkness for ever." We might have supposed that the
metaphor was derived from meteors disappearing into the night, or comets
rushing off into the illimitable void. But from the Book of Enoch
(xviii. 14, 16), we are led to infer that, by the "wandering stars" are
meant quite literally planets- (aarepes ir\avr)Tcu), not, as Bengel supposed,
because they are opaque, but because they are regarded (with the sun
and moon) as " seven stars .... which transgressed the com
mandment of God . . . for they came not in their proper season."
What was the exact conception in the writer's mind is impossible to
say, but he may have identified the planets with evil spirits because
they were objects of idolatrous worship, and were named after heathen
deities.1 iii. Once more, in verse 7 St. Jude seems distinctly to imply that the
sin of the Fallen Angels was analogous to that of the cities of the
Plain, in that they, by unions with mortal women, went after strange
flesh. This is exactly the view of the pseudo-Enoch. He makes Enoch
reproach them (xv. 1 — 7), because being by nature spiritual, they
"have done as those who are flesh and blood do," and have thereby
transgressed the very law of their nature.
1 For two remarkable parallels between the Book of Enoch and the Apocalypse, see
the Notes on Eev. vi. 10, 11, and xiv. 20.

600 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
iv. Nor are these the only references to Rabbinic and other legends
by St. Jude. In verse 5 it is said that "Jesus" led the people out
of Egypt, and in the second instance destroyed them. The use of
the name " Jesus " for " Christ " shows perhaps the somewhat late date
of the Epistle. When St. Paul alludes to the legendary wanderings of
the Rock in the desert (1 Cor. x. 4), he adds the allegory " and that Rock
was Christ." In saying that "Jesus" saved the people out of the land
of Egypt, St. Jude seems to be identifying Him with the Pillar of Fire,
which is one of the many divine manifestations to which Philo com
pares the Logos.1
v. The strange reference to a dispute between Michael and Satan
about the body of Moses has not yet been traced to any source what
ever. Origen says that it was taken from an Apocryphal book called
The Assumption of Moses ; and OScumenius says that Satan claimed the
body of Moses because he had killed the Egyptian. The words " The
Lord rebuke thee," are addressed to Satan by the Lord (who is perhaps
meant to be the same as the Angel of the Lord in the previous verse),
in Zech. iii. 2. The nearest approach to this legend is in the Targum
of Jonathan on Deut. xxxiv 6, where we are told, with obvious reference
to some similar story, that the grave of Moses was entrusted to the
charge of Michael.
vi. Again, when it is said that these false and polluted Christians
" went in the way of Cain," the reference cannot be to anything recorded
in the book of Genesis. There the only crime laid to the charge of Cain
is murder. The reference here seems to be mainly to presumption and
blasphemy, and to that insolent atheism with which Cain is charged in
the Jerusalem Targum on Gen. iv. 7, where he is made to deny that
there is such a thing as a Judge or a judgment. The allusion cannot be
to the blaspheming Gnostics who called themselves Cainites, for we do
not hear of them till much later.2 It is, however, remarkable that they
chose Cain, the Sodomites, and Korah (who are all here mentioned), as
their heroes, and as the representatives of the stronger and better
spiritual powers, who were opposed to the Demiurge of the Mosaic
Dispensation and the material world.

EXCURSUS VI.
SPECIMENS OF PHILONIAN ALLEGORY.
1. Commenting on Gen. xvii. 16, "I will give thee a son from her,"
and explaining it of the joy of heart which God promises to the
virtuous, Philo adds that some explain "from her " to mean " apart
1 Quis Rer. Div. Haer. , and De Vit. Mos. 2. )
2 Iren. c. Haer. i. 31 ; Epiphan. Haer. 38.

APPENDIX. 601
from her," because Virtue does not spring from the soul, but from
without, even from God. Others explain the Greek words as though
they were a single word (exautes), meaning " immediately," because all
divine gifts are speedy and spontaneous. Others, again, make " from
her " mean "from Virtue," which is the mother of all good.1 The
simultaneous existence of three such strange devices of exegesis at least
shows that Philo might take his premises for granted among the readers
whom alone he wished to address.
2. On Gen. xv. 15 he says that in " Thou shalt go to thy fathers"
some understood by " fathers," not " thy Chald*an forefathers," but
"the sun, moon, and stars;" others explained "father" to mean
"archetypal ideas, and the things unseen;" others, the four elements
and powers of which the universe is composed — earth, air, fire and
water !2
3. Each of the Patriarchs represents a condition of the soul. Abra
ham represents acquired virtue ; Isaac, natural virtue ; Jacob, virtue
acquired by training ; Joseph, political virtue. Sarah represents generic
virtue, virtue in the abstract ; Rebecca represents endurance ; Leah is
persecuted virtue ; Pharaoh is the mind set against God ; Moses is the
prophetic word. Everything and every person stands for something
else. Egypt represents the body ; Canaan symbolises piety. A kingdom
is an emblem of Divine wisdom ; a pigeon, of human wisdom ; a sheep,
of the pure soul.
4. Writing on Gen. xviii. 6, he idealises the appearance of the three
angels into the fact that the seeking soul recognises God, His love, and
His might. The three measures of meal indicate that the soul must
embrace and treasure up this threefold manifestation of God. The word
for cakes (enhruphias) means that the Sacred word about God and His
power must be concealed in the initiated soul.3
5. On Gen xxxii. 10, " With my staff1 1 passed over this Jordan,"
he says it would be a poor thing (ra-weivlv) to understand it literally.
Jordan means all that is base, the staff means discipline : Jacob in
tended to imply that by discipline he had risen above baseness.
Only by such means could Philo get rid of the representation of God
as having human parts and human passions. But with this method he
can boldly set aside, as literally false and only allegorically true, what
ever offends his philosophic convictions. Thus, on Gen. ii. 21, after
saying that the letter of the narrative is mythical, he argues that other
wise it would be absurd. By "ribs" are meant merely the powers of
life,4 and the notion that Eve was formed out of a material rib seems to
him degrading.
1 De nomin. mutat. § xxv. (Mangey, i. 599).
2 Quis Rer. Div. Haer. (Mang. i. 513). De Migr. Abraham., ad i/nit.
3 iyKpv<f>ia.s means "cakes baked by being hidden in ashes " (De Sacr. Abel et Cain,
Mang. i 173).
4 Leg. aUegg. i. 18 (Mang. i. 70).

602 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
6. He aften accepts the general fact, but allegorises all the details.
The tree of Paradise, the serpent, and the expulsion, are merely sym
bols ; and he confidently addresses his explanation of them to " the
initiated." The heart of his system is seen in his comments on "Let us
make man in our image." The plural shows, he says, that the angels as
well as God had a share in the making of man, and since man is of
mixed nature, we must suppose that the good side of his nature came
from God, the weak side from the angels. But he goes on to explain
that the verse applies to the creation of man in the idea, not in the
concrete.

EXCURSUS VII.
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF PHILO'S VIEWS ABOUT THE LOGOS.
In God, no less than in man, Philo distinguishes between the speech
and the reason. The Divine reason embraces the whole intelligible
world, the world of ideas, what he sometimes calls "the idea of ideas."
The Divine speech includes the whole world of active agents and Divine
forces. (i.) Hence it is that, in a phrase borrowed by Apollos (Heb. iv. 12),
he calls the Word "the cutter of all things." The phrase is founded on
an allegorical explanation of Gen. xv. 9. Philo says that in the sacrifice
there described the she-goat symbolises the sense, the calf the soul, the
dove Divine wisdom, the pigeon human wisdom. The wise man sees all
these as gifts from above. The text says that "he" divided these sacri
fices, and since the name of Abraham is not repeated, " lie " must mean
the Logos, and the truth indicated is that the Logos, " whetted to
sharpest edge," divides all perceptible things to their inmost depths — the
soul into the reasonable and the unreasonable ; speech into true and false ;
the world of sense into distinct and indistinct phenomena. These di
vided parts are, by way of contrast, placed opposite ±o each other. The
doves alone are not divided, because Divine wisdom is simple, and cannot
be cleft into opposing contrarieties.1 Thus God, whetting His Word,
which cutteth all things, divides the formless and abstract essence of all
things, and the four elements of the universe, and the animals and
plants compounded from them. Hence the phrase, " the cutter Word,"
seems to be based on the distinction between the Logos as the primeval
Idea, and the Logos as a creative Force.
(ii.) The world of Ideas, to which the existing world corresponds as
a copy to its archetype, lies in the Divine Logos. Philo illustrates this
by saying that, when God bade Moses to lift up a serpent in the
1 Quia rer. div. Haer. § xlviii. (Mang. i. 491) ; see Gfrbrer, Philo, i. 184 — 187.

APPENDIX 603
wilderness, He did not say of what metal it was to be made, because
the ideas of God are abstract and immaterial ; Moses, in carrying out
the concrete realisation, is obliged to use some substance, and therefore
makes the serpent of brass.1 Similarly he holds that God is not to be
grasped by human knowledge, but that the Word is. Hence, writing
on Gen. xxii. 16, he says, " God is the God of wise and perfect beings,
but the Logos is the God of us who are imperfect."
(iii.) Philo uses so many analogies to express his notion of the
Logos that he falls into contradictions, and leaves his readers in
confusion. The Logos, in various passages of his voluminous writings,
is the creator of species, although He is Himself the Idea of Ideas ; He
is the seal of God ; He is the Divine force which dwells in the
universe ; He is the chain or band which keeps the world together ; He
is the law and ordinance of all things ; He is the giver of wisdom, the
warden of virtue ; He is the manna which nourishes the soul ; He
is the fatherland of wise souls, the pilot of the wise ; He is their
controlling conscience, their Paraclete ; He is the Divine wisdom which
is the daughter of God.2

EXCURSUS VIII.

PATRISTIC EVIDENCE AS TO THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE EPISTLE TO THE
HEBREWS.
The canonicity of the Epistle to the Hebrews, its right to be
accepted as a part of Holy Scripture, the perfect truthfulness of the
contemporary character which it assumes, its greatness, importance, and
authority, and the fact that it was written before the fall of Jerusalem,
are not in question. These points have never been seriously disputed.
Some have seen allusions to the Epistle in St. James and the Second of
St. Peter.3 Setting these aside as improbable, it was certainly known
to St. Clemens of Rome, and largely used by him in his letter to
the Corinthians;4 and it is possible — though no more — that it was the
source of some of the parallels adduced from the writings of Ignatius,
Polycarp, Justin Martyr, and the Pseudo-Barnabas. But in the
Western Church no single writer of the first, second, or even third
1 Leg. allegg. ii. § 20 (Mang. i. 80).
2 See various passages quoted in Gfroror, Philo, i. 176—243.
3 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16 ; Ja. ii. 24, 25.
4 'El* p Trjs Trpos 'EjSpalovs iroAAa vorjpara irapaBeis t}8t) Se Kai airroXe^el pvjTols TKTlv it- auTTjs
Xprprap-evos o-atpio-iara Trapio-rn<riv oti pri vebv inrapxei TO (rvyypappa (Euseb. H. E. hi. 38).
" Omnino grandis in utraque similitudo est " (Jer. De Virr. Must.). " Der Hebraerbrief
. ist ganz und gar in sein Denken iibergegangen " (Tholuck, Einleit. 2). Yet, strange to
say, Clemens never mentions it by name. This alone seems almost fatal to the Pauline
authorship.

604 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
century quoted'it as St. Paul's. Not only did Basilides (cwVAD. 125)
exclude it, though he acknowledged the other Paulinic Epistles,1 but we
are expressly told that St. Hippolytus (t 235 T) denied that it _ was
written by St. Paul. The authority for this fact is late and heretical,2
yet there seems no reason to reject so positive a statement. And this
remark of St. Hippolytus, together with the place assigned to the
Epistle in the Peshito, indicates the opinion of the Syrian Church
in the first half of the third century, if, as seems probable, the learned
and eloquent Bishop of Portus came originally from Antioch.3 We
have the same assurance about St. Irehasus (t a.d. 202). We find from
Eusebius that in a work attributed to Irenseus (but which Eusebius had
never seen)4 he quoted from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and from the
Wisdom of Solomon. But no such quotation was to be found in any
of his best-known works, and in any case he did not assign the Epistle
to St. Paul.5 Indeed, the mention of the Epistle with the Wisdom of
Solomon seems to imply that he regarded the two works as standing on
the same footing. The Presbyter Gaius only recognised thirteen
Epistles of St. Paul, and did not number this Epistle among them.6
The Canon of Muratori (cir. ad. 170) either does not allude to it, or
only under the damaging description of a letter to the Alexandrians,
current under the name of Paul, but forged in the interests of
Marcion's heresy (" ad haeresim Marcionis ").7 It is remarkable that
Marcion, in the middle of the second century, rejected it, though many
passages might have been used to support his views. Novatian, useful
as it would have been to him, and frequently as he quotes Scripture,
1 Jer. Procem. in Ep. ad Tit. Basilides was a Gnostic, but he seems to have adopted
the ordinary Canon of his day ; this, therefore, would seem to show that at that time
the Alexandrians did not recognise the Epistle as St. Paul's.
2 Steph. Gobar, ap. Phot. Bibl. Cod. iii. 291 (Migne); and also Photius himself
(Wieseler, Untersuch. i. 12).
3 Gieseler, i. § 341. On Hippolytus, see Kurtz, K. G. i. 106. Mommsen, Abhandl.
d. Sachs. Cesellsch. i. 595.
4 The BljEJAtoi' 8iab.e£etav ,:.,„,',ofiwr.
5 The fragment in which he is supposed to quote Heb. xiii. 14 (Stieren's Irenozus,
i. 854, seq. ; ii. 361, seq. ) is of very doubtful genuineness, and even if genuine proves
nothing. 6 Gaius, ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 20. As he makes this remark in immediate connexion
with severe animadversions on the precipitance (irpo-reTeiav) and audacity of those who ad
mitted the authenticity of spurious writings, it would appear that he even regarded the
Pauline hypothesis with some indignation ; and as he was a A-oyiamu-os avrjp, his opinion is
important. Nothing, however, is known of Gaius, and Bp. Lightfoot (Journ. of Philo
logy, i. 98) has conjectured that he is none other than Hippolytus using his own pra3-
nomen as an interlocutor in the dialogue against Montanism.
7 If " Gaius " was, as Muratori thought, the author of the celebrated Canon, the next
remark, " fel enim cum melle misceri non congruit,'' would harmonise with the severe
sentiments alluded to in the previous note, and there would be an additional sting in this
if we accept the suggested allusion to Heb. xii. 15, and the reading, iv x°*fi for ivoxkp.
The writer of the Canon says that St. Paul only wrote (like St. John) to seven Churches.
Dolitzsch and Lunemann say that the Epistle to the Hebrews cannot be meant by the
"Epistle to the Alexandrians," because it is anonymous; but the writer of the Canon
does not say that it was ' ' inscribed " with the name of Paul. (See Wieseler, i. 27, and
Hesse, Das Murat. Frag. p. 201 ff.)

APPENDIX. 605
never even alludes to it. Tertullian (t A.D. 240) ascribes it to
St. Barnabas,1 and did not regard it as a work of St. Paul, for he
taunts Marcion with falsifying the number of St. Paul's Epistles
by omitting (only) the Pastoral Epistles. St. Cyprian (f ad. 258), in
his voluminous treatises, neither quotes nor mentions it. Victorinus
(t ad. 303) ignores it. It is separated or omitted in some of the oldest
MSS. of the Vetus Itala.J The first writer of the Western Church
who ascribes it to St. Paul (and probably because he found it so
ascribed in Greek writers) is Hilary of Poictiers, who died a.d. 368.3
It was not till quite the close of the fourth century that in the
Western Church it began to be popularly accepted as St. Paul's. As
this popular acceptance at that late epoch does not possess any critical
importance, it is needless to enumerate the names of writers who
merely run in the ordinary groove. Among those writers who really
thought about the matter doubts as to the Pauline authorship were
expressed — as, for instance, by Isidore of Seville — as late as the
seventh century.4- Now, even if this fact stood alone — that the
Western Church for nearly four centuries refused to admit the Pauline
authorship — we should regard it as fatal to that hypothesis. And for
this reason. If it had been written by St. Paul, it is inconceivable that
St. Clemens of Rome, his contemporary and friend, should not have
known that it was so. St. Paul was not thus in the habit of concealing
an identity which, on the contrary, he habitually placed in the fore
ground. But if St. Clemens had been aware that it was really a work
of St. Paul, nothing can be more certain than that he would have
mentioned so precious a truth to the Church of which he was bishop.
If he said anything at all about the authorship, it must have been that
whoever wrote it Paul did not. Thus, and thus only, can we account
for the conviction of the Roman Church for nearly four centuries that
1 Tert. c. Marc. v. 20. '
2 No name is attached to it in the Peshito, and the fact that in that version it is
placed after all the thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, in spite of its size and importance,
seems to show decisively that the Syriac translators did not regard it as the work of the
Apostle"(Wieseler, Eine Untersuchwng iiber d. Hebraerbrief (1861), i. 9). It is only in
later Syriac versions that it is called "The Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews."
3 In the fourth century neither Phcebadius, nor Zeno, nor Hilary the Deacon, nor
Optatus once quote it, though they frequently quote St. Paul ; nor, in the fifth century,
Siricius, Caelestine I., Leo the Great, Orosius, Evagrius, or Sedulius. St. Ambrose
(t 397), a student of Greek writers, quotes it as St. Paul's, and so does his friend Philas-
trius ; but the latter tells that it was not read to the people in church, or only " some
times," and (in another passage) that it had been ordained by the Apostles and their
successors that only thirteen Epistles of St. Paul (and therefore not the Epistle to the
Hebrews) should be read in the Catholic Church. Latin writers misunderstood, and
therefore found it difficult to accept, the phrase "To Him that made Him," w jim^c-apTi
auToy ( " quia et factum Christum dixit "), in iii. 2 ; and they looked with suspicion on the
rhetorical style (" quia rhetorice scripsit sermone plausibili "), and disliked the use made
by the Novatian schismatics of vi. 4 — 8, which St. Ambrose finds it hard to reconcile with
St. Paul's conduct to the Corinthian offender (De Poenitent. ii. 2). The intrinsic great
ness of the Epistle overcame these hesitations, and, when once accepted, it was
accepted as St. Paul's on the supposed authority and undoubted custom of the Alexan
drian writers. * t AD. 636.

606 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the opinion about it in the Eastern Church was erroneous. To say that
St. Clemens, " in his love for the author, would not do what the author
himself has not done; he would not betray the secret, &c," is to over
look plain facts in the desire to support current traditions. Any
one may see for himself that the author, though he does not mention his
own name, has no wish to conceal his identity from those to whom he
wrote, and, indeed, assumes that they were perfectly aware who it was
who was thus addressing them. The Apostolic letters, it must be
remembered, were always conveyed to their destination by responsible
and accredited messengers. No Apostolic Church would have paid
attention to an unauthenticated epistle.
How very little weight can be attached to the quotation of the
Epistle in a loose and popular way as St. Paul's may be seen in the case
of two great men, St. Jerome (f ad. 420) and St. Augustine (t a.d. 430).
By their time — in the fifth century — the current of irresponsible opinion
ran strongly in favour of the Pauline authorship, and to throw any
doubt upon it was to brave the charge of being arrogant or unorthodox.
It is not, therefore, surprising that both these remarkable men in an
ordinary way speak of the Epistle as St. Paul's in passages where they
merely wish to make an allusion without exciting a controversy. They
were justified in doing this, because, they saw that even though it could not
have been written by St. Paul, yet it was Pauline in its main doctrines.
In ordinary treatises it was not desirable to be constantly correcting the
multitude. But when they are writing carefully and accurately they
are too independent not to indicate their real opinion. St. Jerome over
and over again quotes it as St. Paul's, yet often with the addition of
some doubting or deprecatory phrase. When he deals directly with the
question, he treats it as unimportant, but admits that the Epistle was
accepted with some hesitancy,1 and that many considered it to be the
work of Barnabas or Clemens.2 St. Augustine often quotes it as St.
Paul's, and his authority had probably no small share in influencing
the Synods which declared it to be authentic.3 "Yet in his later
1 Even Eufinus, though he supposed it to be by St. Paul, adds, "Si quis tamen eam
receperit. " (Invect. in Hieron. )
2 His opinion seems to have wavered more than once (see Bleek, Introd. ), but he
never felt at all sure that St. Paul wrote it. " Quicunque est ille, qui ad Hebraeos
scripsit epistolam " (Comm. in Amos, 8). " Si quis vult recipere eam epistolam quae sub
nomine Pauli ad Hebraeos scripta est" (Comment, in Tit.). "Eelege ad Hebraeos epis
tolam Pauli, sive cujuscunque alterius earn esse putas, quia jam inter ecclesiasticas est
recepta " (id. ). " Et Paulus apostolus loquitur, si quis tamen ad Hebraeos epistolam
suscipit " (in Ezek. xxviii.). " Omnes Grneci recipiunt et nonnullt Latinorum " (Comm.
in Matt. c. 26). " Licet de ea multi Latinorum dubitent " (Catal. 59). " Apud Eomanos
usque hodie quasi apostoli Pauli non habetur " (m Is. viii. 18). " Pauli quoqne idcirco
ad Hebraeos epistolae contradictur, quod ad Hebraeos scribens utatur testimoniis quae in
Hebraeis voluminibus non habentur ' (in Is. vi. 9). " Et nihil interesse cujus sit, cum
ecclesiastici viii sit, et quotidie ecclesiarum lectione celebretur " (Ep. 129, ad Dard.), etc.
3 Hippo, a.d. 393; Third Council of Carthage, a.d. 398; Fifth Council of Carthage,
A.D. 419. But tho two former Councils only say, " Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, and
one of his to the Hebrews."

APPENDIX. 607
writings he so constantly quotes it merely as " the Epistle to the
Hebrews," that Lardner says, " One would think that he studiously
declines to call it Paul's."1 The "accommodation" to which these
eminent writers condescended in popularly referring to it as being (in a
sense) a work of the Apostle, led to the rigidity of the ordinary accep
tance ; yet even at the close of the sixth century " no Latin commentary
on it was known to Cassiodorus."2
- The opinion of the Eastern Church originated in Alexandria. To
the Alexandrian School, though they did not discover the secret of the
authorship, the Epistle was extremely precious, because it exactly
expressed their own views, and was founded on premises with which
they were familiar. It was, therefore, natural that they should desire to
give it as high an authority as possible ; and in the Epistle itself they
found a general support for the notion that it was written by St. Paul.
(a.) But this assertion cannot be traced farther back than to the
unsupported guess of the venerable Pantsenus. "The blessed Pres
byter," as Clemens of Alexandria (t a.d. 220) calls him in a passage of
his last work, the Hypotyposes,5 assigned two reasons why St. Paul had
not mentioned his own name in the salutation, as he does in every other
Epistle. It was, he said, because the Lord Himself had been sent to
the Hebrews as an Apostle of the Almighty,4 so that St. Paul
suppressed his own name out of modesty ; and it also was because
St. Paul was a herald and Apostle of the Gentiles, so that a letter from
him to the Hebrews was, so to speak, a work of supererogation.5 Both
these attempts to explain a fact so damaging to the Pauline author
ship of the letter are untenable. If St. Peter in writing to the Jews
calls himself an Apostle, there was no reason why St. Paul should
have scrupled to give himself the same title ; nor was the division of
1 The force of truth compels him to insert an occasional caution, such as " Quamquam
nonnullis incerta sit ; " " quoquo modo se habeat ista quaestio ; " " quam plures apostoli
Pauli esse dicunt, quidam vero negant," etc. See the many passages referred to in the
exhaustive catalogue of Bleek, from whom all succeeding commentators have freely bor
rowed. Nothing can show more forcibly the manner in which writer after writer will
snatch at the most futile explanation of something which tells against a current notion
than that we find Augustine repeating the absurdity, which has lasted down to our own
day, that St. Paul concealed his name in order not to offend the Jews ! (" Principium
salutatorium de industria dicitur omisi^se, ne Judaei nomine ejus offensi vel inimico animo
legerent, vel omnino non legerent,'' etc. (Expos. Ep. ad Rom. § 11).
2 Davidson, ii. 227. That the old hesitation continued may be seen from the fact that
it formed originally no part of D (Codex Claromontanus), is omitted in G (Cod. Boerneri-
anus), and is only found in Latin in F (Cod. Augiensis). The two latter MSS. are of the
ninth century. In the Vulgate it is placed after Philemon.
3 Ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 13. It is clear that if Eusebius had found any traces of an
earlier tradition he would have mentioned them, for he brings together all the reasons he
can in favour of the Pauline authorship. His statement, therefore, tends to proVe that
even in the Eastern Church the Epistle, in spite of its obvious phenomena, had not been
assigned to St. Paul by any writer or by any tradition of importance in the first two cen
turies. (Wieseler, i. 15.)
4 The expression was taken by Clemens from Heb. iii. 1.
5 Aid peTptornra • . . Sid Te Tnv 7rpbs tov Kvpiov Tipr/v Sid Te TO €K Trcpiovir/as Kai Tots 'EjSpa-
loij imvTihKeiv. (Hypotyposes ; ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 14.)

608 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
office between him and the other Apostles so rigid as to prevent his
addressing Jews. The " Apostolic compact " did not prevent St. Peter
from addressing Gentiles. If it was thus rigid, it tells against St.
Paul's having written this Epistle at all, but not against his authenti
cating it with his name. He constantly addressed Jews and constantly
maintained against them his independent right to the highest order of
the Apostolate. In writing to them he would have been least inclined
to waive the dignity which he had received directly from his Lord. No
authority can therefore be allowed to the opinion of Pantsenus. It was
a conjecture derived from the references at the close of the letter, and
possibly even from the false reading " my chains " (rots Seo-p.oTs pov)
instead of "prisoners" (5e<rufo«) in x. 34.1 The conjectural suggestions
by which he tried to support his opinion are so weak that they actually
tell against it, and show that the eminence of Pantsenus by no means
consisted in a power of critical discernment.
(6.) If the great St. Clemens of Alexandria accepted the Pauline
authorship, he did so mainly in deference to the opinion of Pantsenus,
and only in a modified form. For although he often quotes the Epistle
as St. Paul's, he was aware of the difficulties of such an opinion. He
supposed that the letter was • originally written in Hebrew, and was
translated into Greek by St. Luke. This notion may have originated in
the resemblance of style between it and the Acts. With this sugges
tion we shall deal later on. But meanwhile St. Clemens, not content
with the explanation offered by Pantsenus of the anonymity of the
letter, relies on another, which is still more groundless. St. Paul
suppressed his name, he says, because he did not wish to divert the
attention of the Jews from his arguments, being well aware that they
had taken a prejudice against him and looked on him with suspicion.2
Thus even St. Clemens contents himself with a reason which will not
stand a single moment's consideration. The tone of the letter through
out, as well as the closing salutations, prove that the writer is known
to his readers ;s and the supposition that he wanted to entrap their
attention before revealing his identity is too singular for serious refu
tation.4 (c.) There is no ancient writer whose opinion on the subject would
1 Euthalius (oir. 460) especially refers to toij Sevaols fiov as one of the arguments for
the Pauline authorship. (Migne, Patr. Graec. lxxxv. 776, ap. Bleek ; Alford, iv. 1, p.
15.) Tois Seo-p-ion is the reading of A, D, the Vulg., Peshito, etc. But even if the
received text be right (with N, E, H, K, etc. ), there is no proof that the writer is St.
Paul, but only that the writer had been in prison — a common case with Christians of the
first century.
2 Clem. Alex. Hypotyp., ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 14. Adumbratt. in 1 Petr., p. 1007.
Clemens was, it must be admitted, somewhat credulous.
3 xiii. 18, 23.
4 See Bp. Wordsworth's surprising remarks on this subject. The unions of great
learning with want of subtle discernment even in the Alexandrian School may be seen
in their acceptance of the Epistle of Barnabas as authentic in spite of its extravagant
allegorising and inoipient Gnosticism.

appendix. 609
carry more weight than that of Origen, whose splendid originality was
not crushed by his immense erudition. Now it is quite true that
Origen frequently quotes the Epistle as St. Paul's,1 but it is no less
evident that he only does so in accordance with common custom, and
that by such casual expressions he as little intends to prejudge the
question of authorship as the authors of the Revised Version, who
still retain the name of St. Paul in the title. A modern writer who
should casually happen to quote the " Second Epistle of St. Peter," or
popularly to refer to Ecclesiastes as a work of King Solomon, would
have a right to feel himself aggrieved if such a general reference was
interpreted as the deliverance of a final and critical opinion. Origen,
like Jerome and Augustine, whenever he wishes to be accurate, intro
duces some phrase of caution which indicates his own opinion. We
know what he thought on the subject, for he wrote Homilies on this
Epistle, which are now unfortunately lost, but of which one or two
fragments have been preserved by, Eusebius. In these we have the
deliberate conclusion of the greatest of the Fathers. " That the
character of the style of the Epistle to the Hebrews," he says, " does
not show the unlearnedness (t6 ISiutikop)2 of the Apostle who confessed
that he was unlearned in word (that is to say, in language), but that the
Epistle is more Hellenic in the structure of its style, everyone would
admit who is capable of judging the differences of language ;3 but, on
the other hand, that the thoughts of the Epistle are wonderful, and not
inferior to the acknowledged apostolic writings, that too is a truth which
everyone would acknowledge who attends to the reading of the apostolic
works." He subsequently attributes the thoughts to the Apostle, and
the composition to some one who made notes of what the Apostle said.4
" If, then," he concludes, "any Church holds this Epistle to be the work.
of St. Paul, let it be congratulated (^iSoKipieiTto) even for this, since it
was not without some grounds that ancient authorities have handed it
down as Paul's. But who actually wrote it God only knows. The
historical tradition that has come down to us is divergent; for some
say that Clemens, who became Bishop of the Romans, wrote the
Epistle, and some that it was Luke, who also wrote the Gospel and the
Acts."6 1 Not unfrequently, however, he uses the phrase «iTi t6x a.Tr6aro\ov. See the passages
in Bleek's Introduction.
- On the exact import of this word, see my Life and Work of St. Paul, i. 106.
3 'Oti . iarlv if 'Ettio-toA^ cmvBio-ei -rijq Aereus 'EAArji/iKWTe'pa, jras 6 iTricrTapevos KpCveiv
tppdo-etav fiiwpopas bpoXoy^crat av. (Ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 25.)
4 ^ 8e 'bpaTis Kai i] avvBeo-is aTTOpvrfpoveva-avTos Tipos to. ajrooroAiKa Kai ajcnrepei o"XoA.ioypa07JO"aiTOS
Ta eiprjpeva vjrb tov SifiaaKaAov. (Ibid.)
5 This limited and hesitating expression implies that the Churches generally rejected
this opinion, and perhaps that it prevailed in the Alexandrian Church alone. Now the
natural tendency would so absolutely be to ascribe the letter to St. Paul, and the
grounds for doing so, if taken apart from the objections, are so reasonable (ovk eiktj) that
the fact that until this view became stereotyped there were many who rejected it, is of
itself a proof how strong were the reasons which compelled them to run counter to the
popular inference. The general ioropia was against the Pauline authorship : the local
N N

610 the early days of Christianity.
The passage is expressed somewhat obscurely, because (as we are
sorry to admit) Origen, with all his courage, accepted the expediency of
concession, in certain cases, to popular ignorance and current prejudice.
It is clear that he did not accept the Pauline authorship in the ordinary
sense of the word. He was too good a scholar, too profound a student,
too familiar with the niceties of Greek expression, and too unbiassed a
critic, not to perceive that the " style " of the Epistle to the Hebrews
is far more 'correct than that of St. Paul. He therefore held that
Clemens of Rome may have written it, or that it might be attributed
to St. Luke. But he also saw that it came from the School of Paul ;
that it expresses his sentiments, and is, so to speak, quite worthy of
him. This is why he does' not care to disturb the opinion of any
Church which accepted it, and says that " the ancient authorities " —
under which term he vaguely refers to Pantsenus and Clemens1 — had
not been guided by arbitrary conjecture in handing down a tradition of
its Pauline origin.
(d.) The opinion of Eusebius of Csesarea is no less hesitating and
wavering. In common parlance he quotes the Epistle as St. Paul's, but
he too was well aware that it did not belong to the homologoumena. He
was induced by the style to conjecture that it was a translation by
St. Clemens of Rome from a Hebrew original.2 He does indeed say in
one place that there were fourteen Epistles of St. Paul, and this Epistle
to the Hebrews had its place as Pauline in the fifty manuscripts of the
Canonical books of the New Testament which he caused to be written
out for the Emperor Constantine, who wished to place them in the
churches of his new capital. The example of Eusebius is therefore very
instructive. Passage after passage might be adduced from his writings
.to show that he accepted the Epistle as genuine ; and yet when he is
writing definitely and accurately he says, " The thirteen Epistles of
St. Paul are manifest and clear. It would not, however, be fair to ignore
that some have regarded the Epistle to the Hebrews as spurious
(¦heiT^Kao-t), saying that it is opposed (avTi\4ye<r6ai) by the Church of Rome
as not being by St. Paul." Popular reference is one thing, and accurate
statement is another. In disputed questions a current allusion possesses
no critical importance. And this statement of Eusebius is remarkable
as showing that, in spite of the general truth of St. Jerome's remark
that "all the Greeks accept," there were some even in the Greek
Church who were in doubt about it.3 Can any honest man read this
review of the early patristic evidence without feeling that it is on the
whole unfavourable to the theory of the Pauline authorship 1
impaSoo-i! was for it ; and even this was probably reducible to the loose opinion of
Pantsenus. 1 Hug (Einleit. ii. 317), Delitzsch (Hebr. § xvii.), and Bleek all exaggerate the mean
ing of these expressions. (See Wieseler, i. 17.)
2 Euseb. H. E. iii. 3, 38 ; vi. 13.
3 We learn this also from the Iambics of Amphiloehius, who says that rivet rejected
it : Tires fi (pao-i ttjv ;rpos 'Ej3pai'ous vaBov oiik efi keyovres.

APPENDIX. 611

EXCURSUS IX.
MINOR RESEMBLANCES BETWEEN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS AND
THE WORKS OF PHILO.
A few separate instances may here be thrown together of minor
points of contact between the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews
and that of Philo : —
(a.) In iii. 7 — 15 the writer lays great stress on the word "to-day."
Philo defines "to-day" as "the infinite and interminable seon," and
says " Till to-day ; that is for ever."1
(b.) In ii. 6 he quotes from a Psalm by saying that " one, somewhere,
testified" (voi tis). He was of course aware that the Psalm is assigned
to David ; but the same vague form of quotation is found frequently in
Philo. (c.) In iii. 2 we find the remark, "He that builded the house hath
more. honour than tlie house." Philo uses the same argument.2
(d.) In iv. 15 he says that Christ shared in all our infirmities,
" except sin." Philo says' that "the High Priest is not man, but the
Divine Word, free from all share not only in willing but even in in
voluntary wrongdoing,"3 and speaks also of the mercy and gentleness of
His nature.4
(e ) The word inrpioTraSsiv — literally, " to suffer moderately " — in v. 2
is found also in Philo, though it does not occur in the Septuagint or
elsewhere in the New Testament.
(/) In vi. 5 he speaks of " tasting the utterance of God." Philo
speaks of the utterance (rhema) as well as the Word (Logos) of God,
and speaks of its nourishing the soul like manna.5
(g.) In vi. 13 we have the distinctions between God's word and His
oath, and the impossibility of His swearing by any but Himself. We find
in Philo the same thought and the same expressions.6
(h.) In vii. 17 the High Priest is said (without rigid accuracy) to
offer sacrifices daily. Philo uses the same expression.7
(i.) In ix. 16, 17 he avails himself of the two senses of diatheke, a
"covenant" and a "will." Philo does the same.8
(j.) In x. 3 he speaks of sacrifices involving "a remembrance of
sin." Philo says that the sacrifices of the godless do not work a re-

,g. iii. 8 ; De profug. § 11. (Mangey, i. 92, 554.)
^ De plant. Noe, § 16 : oo-w 6 KTijo-ciuei/os tov KT»jp.aTos apelwv Kai to 7re7roi>]Kd9 tou yeyovaros.
3 De profug. § 20. (Mang. i. 563.)
* Id. §18. (Mang. i. 559, 561.)
6 De profug. § 25 ; Leg. allegg. iii. 60. (Man?, i. 564, 120.)
6 Leg. allegg. iii. 72; De Abraham. § 46. (Mang. i. 128; cf. 181, ii. 39.)
7 De Spec. leg. § 23. et»xas Kai Bvo-ias Tekbiv KaB' eKaO"n)v rjpepav. (Mang. i. 430.)
8 De nom. mutat. § 6. (Mang. i. 586.) Cf. De Sacr. Abel. (Mang. i. 172.)

612 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
mission, but a remembrance of sin, and that they force us to recall our
ignorances and transgressions.1
(k.) In xiii. 5 he uses the quotation, " I will never leave thee nor for
sake thee." In that form the words are not exactly found in Scripture,
but Philo quotes from Scripture in the same words.

EXCURSUS X.
" SALEM " AND JERUSALEM.

One passage alone Ls adduced from Scripture in proof that Salem
may be used as a shortened poetical form for Jerusalem, namely,
Ps. lxxvi. 2, " In Salem also is his tabernacle and his dwelling-place in
Zion." But not to dwell on the fact that this can only be a poetic
licence, and that we should not expect to find an isolated recurrence of
it in a plain historic narrative, the meaning of that verse cannot be
regarded as indisputable. The Psalmist may be referring to the Salem
of Melchizedek as a different place from Jerusalem. Again, the word
may mean "peace;" and both the LXX. and the Vulgate render it,
"His place has been made in peace."8 Besides this, in the days of
Abraham, and for centuries afterwards, Jerusalem was only known by
the name Jebus.4 But though the Targums render Salem by Jerusalem
in this passage of Genesis,5 it was an old tradition that the Salem
intended is the city, near Shechem which is mentioned in Gen. xxxiii.
18 and John iii. 23.6 There was a town of this name near to -Simon,7
and its site has been traditionally preserved. The former passage is
again doubtful. The verse is rendered by the Targums, by Josephus,
and by many ancient scholars,8 not " Jacob came to Shalem, a city of
Shechem," but " Jacob came in safety to the city of Shechem." The
Samaritans always maintained that it was at Gerizim that Melchizedek
had met Abraham ; and St. Jerome tells us that the most learned Jews
of his day regarded this town as the Salem of Melchizedek, and the
ruins of a large palace were shown there which was called the Palace
1 De plant. Noe, § 25 ; De vit. Mos. iii. § 10. (Mang. i. 345, ii. 246.)
3 De conf. ling. § 33. ou pj o-e aviii ou8* ou py o-e eYKaTaAiTra>. (Mang. i. 430).
8 LXX. iyevriBt) iv eipijvn o tottos auTou. Vulg., " Et factus est in pace locus ejus."
4 Judg. xix.' 10, 11, etc. ; 2 Sam. v. 6.
8 So, too, Jos. Antt. i. 10, § 2 x.
8 It is mentioned also in Judith iv. 4.
" Jerome says, " Salem civitaa Sicimorum quae est Sichem." It would be more accu
rate to say that it was near Shechem. He places it eight miles south of Bethshean
(Onom. s. v. Ep. ad Evang. 1). The ruined well there is now called Sheikh Salim
(Kobinson, Bibl. Res. iii. 333).
8 E.g., KnobeL Tuch, Delitzsch, and Kalisch on Gen. xxxiii. 18.

APPENDIX. 613
of Melchizedek.1 It is therefore doubtful whether Jerusalem is intended,
especially since the writer touches so very slightly on the name. The
word Salem2 means rather "peaceful" than "peace;" and hence some
again have supposed that " peaceful king " was a title of Melchizedek,3
and one which marked him out still more specially as a type of the
Messiah ;4 but this is a late and improbable conjecture. It may, how
ever, be justly maintained that the typical character of Melchizedek
would rather be impaired than enhanced by his being a king of Jeru
salem. For Jerusalem was the holy town of the Aaronic priesthood,
and it might seem more fit that the Royal Prince should have been con
nected with some other sanctuary as a type of Him in Whose day
" neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem should men worship the
Father," but should worship Him in all places acceptably, if they
worshipped in spirit and in truth.

EXCURSUS XI.
THE ALTAR OF INCENSE AND THE HOLIEST PLACE.
The altar of incense (like the altar of burnt-offering) was called
Holy of Holies (Ex. xxx. 10), and in Ex. xxx. 6 ; xl. 5, it is expressly
said to be placed " before the mercy-seat," and " before the ark of the
testimony." From its very close connection with the ceremony of the
Day of Atonement, on which it was (as well as the mercy-seat) sprinkled
with the blood of the sin-offering (Lev. xvi. 18), it is called in 1 Kings
vi. 22, " the altar that is by the oracle," or, rather, " which belongs to
the oracle." It is clear, then, (1) that a peculiar sanctity appertained
to the altar beyond the sanctity of the other things which were in the
Holy Place ;6 and (2) that its position was close to the veil, and in
immediate relation to the position of the Ark, of which it seems to
have been regarded as an appurtenance. Even on these grounds the
Holiest might be generally said " to have " or contain the incense-altar.
But then (3) it must be borne in mind that the writer is thinking
specially of the Day of Atonement, and on that day the inner veil was
lifted by the high priest, so that the Holiest and the Holy Place might
1 Jer. ad Evagr. See, too, the tradition preserved by Eupolemos (ap. Euseb. Praep.
Evang. ix. 17), that Abraham was entertained at Gerizim (Ewald, Gesch. iii. 239;
Stanley, Sin. and Pal., p. 237).
3 In Bereshith Babba it is said that Melcht Salem means "perfect king," and that he
was so called because he was circumcised — referring to Gen. xvii. 1 (vide Schottgen,
ad loc). Philo calls him " king of peace (for that is the meaning of Salem) " (Leg.
legg. iii. 25). 4 Is. ix. 5 ; Col. i. 20, etc.
* Incense was supposed to have an atoning power (Yoma, f. 44, a ; Num. xvi. 47).

614 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
(on that day) be regarded as a single sanctuary,1 which would give still
minuter accuracy to the term used. Nor is this a mere conjecture.
In the vision of Isaiah (vi. 1 — 8) the prophet is supposed to be standing
in the Holy Place, and he sees the Lord uplifted on His Throne above
the six-winged Seraphim, just as the Shechinah was supposed to rest
between the out-stretched wings of the Cherubim above the mercy-seat.
Then one of the Seraphs flies from the throne with a live coal in his
hand, which he had taken "from off the altar." Similarly, in the vision
of the Apocalypse (viii. 1 — 5) the seer sees an angel with a golden
censer, to whom is given much incense, that he may offer it upon " the
golden altar which is before the throne." In these considerations, then,
we may fairly see the solution of the difficulty. The writer is not
speaking with pedantic minuteness, but his expression is justifiable, and
even accurate if we place ourselves in his point of view, and imagine
that we are looking at the Holy and the Holiest as they appeared on
the greatest day of the Jewish year. But though he has made no
mis-statement, he comes very near it, and it is clear that St. Paul
would have written with more familiar accuracy about these ritual
details.

EXCURSUS XII.
CEREMONIES OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT.
At earliest dawn the High Priest chose a young bullock for a
sin-offering and a lamb for a burnt-offering for himself and his house.
After the ordinary2 morning service, he bathed himself, and put on
his, holy linen garments of purest white and of great value.3 Then
he laid his hands on the head of the young bullock, and confessed
the sins of himself and his house. He next took two kids for a sin-
offering and a ram for a burnt-offering for the sins of Israel,4 and cast
lots upon them at the entrance of the Tabernacle. The lots were
drawn from a golden urn called calpi, which stood in the Court of the
Priests, but close to the worshippers. One lot was " for Jehovah," the
other " for Azazel." The goat on which the lot for Jehovah fell was
sacrificed for a sin-offering. He sacrificed the bullock as an atonement
for himself and his house and the priesthood in general. The blood of
the bullock was stirred by an attendant lest it should coagulate. Then
1 See a Paper by Prof. Milligan, in the Bible Educator, iii. 230.
2 All these bathings were done in a special golden laver in a little chamber called
" Happarveh," above the room where they salted the hides of the victims (Middoth, v. 2 •
Surenhusius, Mishnah, v 376 (quoted by McCaul, p. 155).
3 On these see Yoma, iii. 7, and Edersheim, The Temple, p. 266.
4 Altogether he offered fifteen animals, according to Maimonides (see Lev. xvi. ¦
Num. xxix). '

APPENDIX. 615
came the most awful moment of all. Filling a censer with burning
coals from the altar, and his hands with sweet incense beaten small,
he slowly approached the sanctuary, and in his white robes entered into
the presence of God through the veil of the Holiest Place. When he
did so he was accompanied, the Rabbis say, by three acolytes, of whom
one held him by each hand, and the other by the jewels of his robe.
Entering the Holiest, he threw the incense on the burning coals of the
censer, that the thick and fragrant smoke might rise in a cloud between
him and the mercy-seat.1 Through the smoke he sprinkled the blood of
the bullock seven times against the front of the mercy-seat and in front
of it.2 Then, going out and sacrificing the goat for the sins of Israel,
he sprinkled its blood in the same manner on the mercy -seat, thus
making an atonement for the Holy Place because of the uncleanness of
the children of Israel. Going forth with the blood of the bullock and
the kid, he made a similar atonement for the great brazen altar of burnt-
offering, the horns of which he sprinkled with the blood seven times.
Altogether there were forty-three sprinklings of the blood, and the
remainder was poured away at the base of the great altar. When the
whole priesthood and sanctuary were thus cleansed he brought the live
goat to the door of the Tabernacle, and, laying both his hands upon its
head, confessed over it all the iniquities, transgressions, and sins of the
people, and sent the goat to carry those sins away into the wilderness;
into a land not inhabited, and thus to free the consciences of the wor
shippers from the sense of unforgiven guilt. Divesting himself of the
holy linen garments, which he left in the Holy Place, and which were
never to be worn again, he once more bathed, probably in the Court of
the Tabernacle,3 and putting on his glorious apparel of purple and gold
and fine linen, with its bells and pomegranates and rich embroidery, he
came forth and offered the burnt-offerings for himself and the people,
and burnt the fat of the sin-offering.4

EXCURSUS XIII.
IMPRESSIONS LEFT ON THE MINDS OF THE JEWS BY THE CEREMONIES
OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT.
We can trace in Jewish literature how powerful was the impression
which this day and its ritual had made upon the Jewish imagination.
Thus, in the Book of Eoclesiasticus, after more briefly mentioning
1 This somewhat mysterious proceeding arose from the dispute between the Saddu
cees and Pharisees, in which the former maintained that the incense should be kindled
before the High Priest actually entered the Holy Place, whereas the Halachah required
that it should be done after he entered. 2 See Knobel on Lev. xvi. 14.
3 Lev. xvi. 24, which should be rendered " in a " (not the) Holy Place, as in vi. 16.
4 I have omitted some of the less certain minutiae. These may be found in Dr. Eder-
sheim's Temple and its Services, chap. xvi.

616 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the other worthies and heroes of Jewish history, the writer lingers
longest and most lovingly on the glorious figure of the High Priest
Simon, the son of Onias, as he appeared on the great Day of Atone
ment. " How was he honoured in the midst of the people in his coming out of the
sanctuary ! He was as the morning star in the midst of a cloud, and as the moon
at the full ; as the sun shining upon the Temple of the Most High, and as the
rainbow giving light in the bright clouds. ... As fire and incense in the
censer, and as a vessel of beaten gold set with all manner of precious stones.
When he put on the robe of honour, and was clothed with the perfection of glory,
when he went up to the holy altar, he made the garment of holiness honourable.
When he took the portions out of the priests' hands he himself stood by the hearth
of the altar compassed with his brethren round about, as a young cedar in Lebanon,
and as palm-trees compassed they him round about. So were all the sons of Aaron
in their glory, and the oblations of the Lord in their hands, before all the congrega
tions of Israel. And finishing the service at the altar, that he might adorn the
offering of the Most High Almighty, he stretched out his hand to' the cup, and
poured of the blood of the grape, he poured out at the foot of the altar a sweet-
smelling savour unto the Most High King of all. Then shouted the sons df Aaron,
and sounded the silver trumpets, and made a great noise to be heard for a remem
brance before the Most High."1
Five chapters earlier he has dwelt with similar enthusiasm on the
person of Aaron — ¦
" He exalted Aaron, a holy man like unto him (Moses), even his brother of the
tribe of Levi. An everlasting covenant he made with him, and gave him the
priesthood among the people ; he beautified him with comely ornaments, and
clothed him with a robe of' glory. He put upon him perfect glory, and
strengthened him with rich garments, with hosen, with a long robe, and the
ephod. And he compassed him with pomegranates, and with many golden bells
round about, that as he went there might be a sound, and a noise made that might
be heard in the Temple, for a memorial to the children of his people ; with a holy
garment and gold, with blue silk and purple, the work of the embroiderer, with a
breastplate of judgment, and with Urim and Thummim, with twisted scarlet,
the work of the cunning workman, with precious stones graven like seals, and set
in gold. . . . He set a crown of gold upon the mitre, wherein was engraved
Holiness, an ornament of honour, a costly work, the desires of the eyes, goodly
and beautiful. Before him there were none such, neither did any stranger put
¦them on, but only his children, and his children's children perpetually. Their
sacrifices shall be wholly consumed every day, twice continually. Moses con
secrated him, and anointed him with holy oil : this was appointed unto him
by an everlasting covenant, and to his seed so long as the heavens should
remain. . . . He chose him out of all men living to offer sacrifices to the
Lord, incense, and a sweet savour, for a memorial, to make reconciliation for his
people. He gave unto him his commandments, and authority in the statutes of his
judgments, that he should teach Jacob the testimonies, and inform Israel in his
laws."2 Nor did these intense feelings of admiration grow less keen as time
advanced. To the Jew of the days of our Lord, the High Priest —
degraded as was his office by the vice and violence and unspiritual greed
i Ecclus. 1. 5—16. * Ecclus. xiv. 6—22.

APPENDIX 617
of its Sadducean representatives1 — was still the most memorable figure
of all his nation ; and even their princes — a Herod of Chalcis, and
a Herod Agrippa — thought it no small enhancement of their dignities
if they received from the Romans the special prerogative of keeping the
"golden robes " of the great Day of Atonement. Nothing more nearly
precipitated the civil war which ultimately ruined the fortunes of
Judaism than the attempt of the Romans to hold the Jews under entire
subjection by keeping these robes under their own control, and so
having the power to hinder, if they chose, the one ceremony on which
the national well-being was believed most immediately to depend.
Even long centuries after the observances of Judaism had become
impossible, Maimonides, in his Yad Hachazakah, carefully preserves for
us all the traditional precepts of the Day of Atonement — the fifteen
sacrificial victims, the fumigation and cleaning of the lamps by the
High Priests, the seven days' seclusion, the Sprinkling of his person on
the third and seventh day with the ashes of a heifer; the daily
rehearsal of all the rites which he had to perform, the disputes between
the Sadducees and the Pharisees about the minutias of the day ; the five
baths and ten washings of consecration on the day itself ; the utterance
ten times of the full name of God; the reason why the name was
pronounced in an almost inaudible recitative : the sprinkling of the
blood once above and seven times below the mercy-seat, which was
traditionally developed into forty-three sprinklings ; the watch-towers
and signals by which it was indicated that the goat " for Azazel " had
reached the wilderness ; the reading and reciting by memory as he
sat in the Court of the Women in his priestly robes ; the tying of the
scarlet cloth round the goat's horns ;2 the washing of hands and feet in
golden bowls ; and the multitude of the details to which the nation
clung with fond devotion as representing the culminating splendour of
the ritual with which they connected all their hopes of forgiveness.
It may be said that even now the impression of this high-priestly
splendour on the great day (Yoma) is not exhausted. In the festival
prayers still read for that day we read —
"Even as the expanded canopy of heaven was the countenance of the Priest."
"As the splendour which proceedeth from the effulgence of Angels was the
countenance of the Priest."
He is compared to " the appearance of the bow in the midst of the
1 The high-priestly duties were not only severe, but would be most trying, and even
revolting, to any one who was not animated by deep religious feelings. When the tract
Pesachim (f. 113, a) lays down the rule, " flay a carcase, and take thy fee, but say not it
is humiliating, because I am a Priest, I am a great man ; " this is doubtless a reminis
cence of the days when fami.ies like the Boethusim were only anxious to have had the
dignity, and so, like modern aldermen, to "pass the chair." The Rabbis long remem
bered with scorn and indignation the High-priest Issachar Kepbar Barkai, who had silk
gloves made for himself, that he should not soil his hands with the sacrifices ! (Keri-
thoth, f. 28 6) ; and Elazar Ben Charsom, who wore a coat worth 20,000 minas. so thin
that his brother priests forbade its use (Yoma, f. 35 6). 2 Yoma, f. 66 6.

618 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
clouds ; " to " a rose in the midst of a garden ; " to " a garden of roses
in the midst of thorns;" to "a star;" to "the golden bells in the
skirts of the mantle ; " to " the sunrise ; " to " the congregation covered
with blue and purple : " and to " the likeness of Orion and the
Pleiades."1

EXCURSUS XIV.

THE IDENTITY OF "JOHN THE PRESBYTER" WITH "JOHN THE
APOSTLE."
The majority of those who have questioned the authenticity of the
Apocalypse have assigned it to a supposed younger contemporary of the
Apostle, who, they say, was known in the early Church as " John the
Presbyter." If it can be shown that the very existence of "John the
Presbyter7' is in the highest degree problematical, great additional
force will be given to the already strong proofs that the Apocalypse,
the Gospel, and the Epistles are indeed the work of the Evangelist
St. John. In recent times the supposed existence of this " nebulous
Presbyter" has been made an excuse for denying altogether the work
and the residence of St. John in Asia.2
I have long doubted whether there ever was such a person as this
"John the Presbyter," and I had arrived at this conclusion, and
arranged my reasons for holding it, before I saw the paper of Prof.
Milligan in the Journal of Sacred Literature for October, 1868.3 The
papers of Riggenbach (Jahrb. fur deutsclie Theologie, vol. xiii. p. 319),
and of Zahn, in the Studien und Kritiken for 1866, I have not yet seen,
nor Zahn's Acta Johannis (1880).4 I have purposely abstained from
consulting them in order that I might state my argument in my own
way and as it occurred to myself. It will have been useful if it helps in
ever so small a degree to get rid of " a shadow which has been mistaken
for a reality," " a sort of Sosia of the Apostle, who troubles like a
spectre the whole history of the Church of Ephesus."5
The question of the separate existence of a " John the Presbyter "
1 See Hershon, Treasures of the Talmud, p. 200.
2 Vogel, Der Evang. Johannes, 1S00. Liitzelberger, Die kirchl. Tradition uber d. Ap.
Johannes, 1840. Keim, Gesch. Jesu von Nazara, vol. i., p. 160, ff. Scholten, Der Ap.
Johan. in Klein-Azi'e, 1871. Holtzmann, Eph. und-Kolosser-briefe, 1872. On the other
side see W. Grimm, Johannes, in Ersch and Griiber. Baur, Gesch. d. christi. Kirche,
vol. i., pp. 82 — 147, etc. Krenkel, Der Apost. Johannes, pp. 133 — 178. Strauss, Schwe
gler, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, even Volkmar all reject the new theory. Penan (L Antichrist,
pp. 557 — 589) only thinks that Scholten has succeeded in relegating the facts to a sort of
penumbra. 3 I differ from Prof. Milligan in his interpretation of the meaning of Papias.
4 Subsequently to writing this paper I have read Zahn.
6 Kenan, V Antichrist, p. xxiii.

APPENDIX. 619
turns mainly upon the meaning of a passage of Papias, quoted by
Eusebius, and upon the criticism of that passage by Eusebius himself.
Let us first see the passage of Papias.
In his Exposition of Oracles of the Lord (Aoylav Kxiptakuv ithy-nais)
Papias had assigned to himself the task of preserving with his best
diligence and accuracy, and of interweaving in his five books, the
apostolic traditions which were still attainable.
" / shall not scruple," he says, " to place side by side with my inter
pretations all the things that I ever rightly learned jrorn the Elders and
rightly remembered, solemnly affirming their truthfulness." Then, after
telling us that, unlike most men, he was indifferent to idle gossip and
secondhand information, and sought for direct evidence as to the words
of Christ, he adds : ' ' but if at any time any one came who had been
acquainted with the Elders, I used to enquire about the discourses of the
Elders — what Andrew or what Peter said (eTttec), or what Thomas or
James, or what John or Matthew, or any one of the disciples of the
Lord ; and what Aristion and John the Elder, the disciples of the Lord,
say (\eyovo-i). Por I thought that the information derived from books
would not be so profitable to me, as that derived, from a living and
abiding utterance."1
The general meaning of this passage is clear. The good Bishop of
Hierapolis tells us that he wished, in setting forth his " interpretations,"
to derive all the information he could from the fountain head. We
learn from St. Luke himself that, before he wrote his Gospel, many had
already attempted to perform a similar task, and the Evangelist evi
dently implies that he was dissatisfied with the majority of these efforts.
It is a fair inference from the expressions which he uses that some of
these narratives were founded on insufficient knowledge, and were lack
ing in carefulness. It is possible that these tentative sketches of the
Gospel narrative — all of which have now perished — admitted apocryphal
particulars or narrated true circumstances with erroneous details. Such
documents would be sure to contain some contradictions, and would
create much uncertainty in the minds of Christians. The Four Gospels
were written in fulfilment of an imperative need. Now if imperfect
or unauthorised works, such as the sketches to which St. Luke alludes,
had come under the notice of Papias, he would naturally regard them
with suspicion, and would feel that their uncertainties discredited their
authority. He was indeed acquaihted with the Gospels of St. Matthew
and St. Mark, and perhaps, though I do not think that this can be
1 As the question turns on the meaning of this passage, I append the Greek.
ouk OKfTjtrtu 84 <70t Kai ocra ]TOTe Trapa Tiiiv irpeo-fivTeputv KaAais epaBov Kai KaAtos ipvnp-oveva-a (TvyKaTdtjai
Tats epayjveiais 5iaf$e@ai.ovpevos virep aurwi/ akrfBeiav. Ei be nov Kai irapaKO\ovBy)KW Tis tois Trpeo-fivTe-
pots eXBot tous Ttiiv Trpea-fivTepiov aveKpivov Aoyovs' Tt 'Avbpeas r) Tt HeTpos eljrev r) n $i\nriros i) Tt
'Iiiiavvns t) MaTflaios, n Tt's ™v Kvpiov pa8rjTiov, are 'AptartW Kai 6 Trpeafiviepos 'I&Jayir/c ot tou Kvpiov
flxaflrjTat Xeyovcnv. Ou -yap Ta 6K Ttav BifiXioiv ioo-ovtov ae oitbekeiv vireXapliavov , baov Ta Trapa. ^tertnjs
tpwi/TJ? tcai pevovcrqs. — Papias, ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 39.

620 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
regarded as certain, with the Gospel pf St. John.1 But stories were
floating about, such, for instance, as that respecting the death of Judas
Iscariot, and that about "a woman accused before our Lord of many
sins, " which diverged more or less from the accounts in the Gospels.
Papias felt that he would be rendering a service to the Church if he
collected from eye-witnesses all the authentic information which could
still be gathered as to facts. It was even more important to him and to
the Church to learn the accurate truth about asserted doctrines. If
" the books " to which he referred included, as Bishop Lightfoot has
conjectured,2 some of the mystic heresies and absurdities of the early
Gnostics, they fully deserved the tone of depreciation in which he
speaks of them. He was acting wisely in endeavouring to bring to a
focus the last glimmerings of' direct Apostolic tradition.
It seems then that he had long been in the habit — perhaps ever
since his early youth — of gleaning from every available source the testi
mony of the Twelve Apostles. His book was probably written after
the last Apostle was dead, and he considered that it owed much of its
importance to the old traditions which he had gathered while it was yet
possible to do so. In the passage which I have quoted he is not speak
ing of present times, but is referring to what he used to do in the days
of his youth and early manhood.
Now certainly if Papias had been a careful modern writer, we
should have inferred from this passage that the John mentioned in the
first clause was a different person from the John mentioned in the
second. In the first, he says, that it had been his habit to enquire from
any who had known " the Elders " — of whom he especially mentions
seven Apostles — what these " Elders " said; and also " what Aristion
and John the hlder, disciples of the Lord, say."
But although this would be the natural inference, it is by no means
the certain inference. The antithesis may be between the past and
present tense ("said" and "say") and not between two sources of
original information. There is nothing to forbid the explanation that
when Papias met any one who had known the immediate Apostles and
disciples of the Lord — St. John among them — he made notes of what
(according to his informant) these Elders said ; but in writing this
clause he remembers that, at the time when he was making his notes,
two of the immediate disciples of the Lord were not dead but living ;
namely, Aristion — to whom, since he was not an Apostle, he does not
give the direct title of "Elder" — and John, whom he identities with
those whom he has mentioned in the first clause by calling him, as he
had called them, " the Elder."
1 Eusebius does not quote any allusion of Papias to the Gospel of St. John, but in an
argument prefixed to a Vatican MS. of the ninth century, we are told that he testified
to its genuineness ; and a quotation from " the Elders," in Irenseus, may be derived from
Papias. Westeott, On tlie Canon, p. 77. It must be admitted that this evidence is
somewhat shadowy.
2 Contemporary Review, August, 1867, and August, 1875.

APPENDIX. 621
Certainly such a way of- expressing himself would show that Papias
was a man who wrote in a very simple and loose style ; but this is
exactly what we know to have been the case. It is true that, in one
place, if the clause be genuine, Eusebius calls him "a man in all
respects of the greatest erudition and well acquainted with Scripture."1
But the genuineness of this eulogistic clause is very uncertain, since it
is omitted in several manuscripts, as well as by Rufinus, and (which is
important) in an ancient Syriac Version. Three chapters further on
Eusebius tells us that Papias was " a man of exceedingly small intelli
gence, as one may infer from his own writings."2 Such a man might
easily write in a confused style. One at least of the passages which
Eusebius quotes from the Exposition bears out his unfavourable opinion
of the ancient bishop's ability. Nor are we left to form our judgment
of his style solely on the opinion of Eusebius. Another of the
passages which the historian quotes from Papi.is (and to which I have
referred further on) is equally wanting in precision, and is therefore
susceptible of more than one interpretation.
I. Now, first of all, no difficulty can arise as to the title given to
St. John. Papias calls all the other Apostles " the Elders," and it is
only natural to assume that he gives the same title to St. John in the
same sense. The word " Elder," like the word " Apostle," had two
different senses. In its ordinary sense it was applicable to many
hundreds of persons, for it meant any Christian who was member of a
Presbytery. But it had a special sense, in which it meant one who
belonged to the earliest generation of Christians. In this sense it is
constantly used by Irenseus, and is applied to Papias himself, though
he was not a Presbyter, but a Bishop of Hierapolis, and though by the
time of Irenseus the distinction between " Bishop " and " Presbyter,"
which is not found in the writings of the New Testament, had been
gradually introduced. If the Second or, Third Epistles of St. John be,
as the Church has generally inferred, by the same author as the First,
the case is strengthened for identifying "John the Elder" with "John
the Apostle," for in both these Epistles St. John gives himself this
very title. That it was in no sense inappropriate may be seen from the
fact that St. Peter, in addressing Elders, calls himself their "fellow
Elder."3 Besides this, when used with the definite article, it would be
a title of great significance, and yet would accord with the modesty
and reticence which were habitual with St. John. There was no need
for the last survivor of the Apostles to give himself the title of
" Apostle," to which, in its loftiest sense, all men knew that he had an
undisputed claim. He did not wish to assert his own immense autho
rity. But in calling himself "the Elder" he used a term doubly
impressive. , He implies that he was an Elder in a peculiar sense, both
1 avrjp ra -navra art. pdXitrra AoyttoTaTos. Euseb. H. E. iii. 36.
3 a-ipoSpa trpiKpos tiv Tov vovv tus av eK rStv airov Aoytoe TeKpppapevov eWelv. Id. iii 39.
a 1 Pet. v. 1.

622 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
because he1 was entitled from his great age to respect and reverence, and
also because he was raised above the rest of Elders by the dignity of
his position as the last of the Twelve, and the last of those who could
say "I have seen the Lord." So far, then, we see that, whether they
were the same person or not, the John in the first clause and the John
in the second are each characterised by two identical titles. ' Each is
called an " Elder," and each is called " a disciple of the Lord." Surely
if Papias had wished to describe two different persons he would have
given some separate and 'distinctive title to the second and inferior
John. It is a reasonable inference that Papias is only mentioning
the same person twice over in an intelligible, though loose and
inartistic, way, to distinguish between reports of his sayings which
were brought to him when St. John was yet living and after he was
dead. But, besides this, I am far from sure that the sentence is not loosely
constructed in another sense. By the figure of speech called zeugma, or
rather, syllepsis, the same word, even in the most classical writers and
in all languages, is often made to serve two purposes in the same sen
tence. A verb is often used with two clauses which is only appropriate '
to one of them, as in Pope's line — ¦
' ' See Pan with flocks, with fruits Poinona crowned,"
where from the participle " crowned " we must understand the word
" surrounded " to suit the first half of the line. In other instances we
are compelled by the sense to borrow from one verb another which may
be even opposite in meaning, as in St. Paul's —
Ka\v6vT03V yafieiv, airexetrflal Ppw/xaTarv.1
" Forbidding to marry, [commanding] to abstain from meats," where
from KaKvovTuv (forbidding) we must understand K^\eu4vTav (commanding)
to suit the second clause.2 It is then perfectly legitimate to understand
Papias to mean that he used to enquire what Peter, John, etc., said, and
when opportunity occurred used to make personal notes of what Aristion
and John say.3 What he derived from St. John would, if such were his
meaning, have been of two descriptions, namely, (1) Reports of his qon-
versations from others, and (2) Actual notes of his living testimony
taken down in intercourse with the Apostle himself when Papias was
young, An(i that Eusebius is not guilty of mere carelessness in inter
preting him to mean that he actually heard " John the Elder " is, I
think, shown by the words which follow, in which Papias, thinking
mainly of his last clause, speaks of the importance of the " living and
abiding voice." Indeed, he says in his opening sentence that some of
his notes were derived from immediate intercourse with some of these
1 1 Tim. iv. 3, comp. ydka iipds Wono-a ou ppupa, 1 Cor. iii. 2.
3 This is oalled zeugma ; in syllepsis the same word is taken in two different senses.
' 'AvoKpivui means "I examine," " sift," or " question."

APPENDIX. 623 ,
"Elders" as well as (el Si «al k.t.a.) from trustworthy reports of what
they had said to others.
There are, then, two strong arguments for construing the sentences
of Papias as I have here proposed. They are all the stronger because
they are both derived from Eusebius himself, though he may be called
the original inventor of the theory about "John the Presbyter."1 '
(1.) One of these arguments is that Eusebius so construed the sen
tence. He indeed makes "John the Elder" of the first clause a
different person from the " John the Elder '¦' of the second clause ; but
he paraphrases the sentence thus : " Papias testifies that he had received
the sayings of the Apostles from those who had been acquainted with
them, but says that he had been himself a hearer of Aristion and of
John the Elder." He has been accused of error and carelessness in thus
understanding the sentence, but I think that I have shown his con
struction of it to be, so far, perfectly justifiable.
(2.) The other argument is that Eusebius, in an earlier book, the
Chronicon, says without any hesitation, that Papias was a hearer of
St. John the Apostle? Now, that this was the truer and more unbiassed
conclusion, seems clear on other grounds. I shall show later on that
" the Elder " is quoted for statements which could hardly have come
from any but an Apostle. And besides the ancient and frequent testi
mony that Papias had seen and conversed with St. John the Apostle, it
would be inconceivable ct priori that one who was searching for first
hand and authentic testimony should never have taken the trouble to
go from Hierapolis to Ephesus to consult an Apostle of the highest
authority, who was then living at Ephesus as the acknowledged head of
the Asiatic Church.
The argument, therefore, that Eusebius was more likely than we are
to have known whether there was or was not a " John the Presbyter,"
and whether Papias was his hearer or the hearer of St. John the Apostle,
because Eusebius possessed all the writings of Papias,, and we do not,
falls signally to the ground. Indeed, it tells the other way. In his
History he reasons himself into the belief that Papias was only the pupil
of " the Presbyter;" but he-had all the writings of Papias in his hand
when he wrote the Chronicon, and there he says, without any hesitation,
that Papias was a pupil of the Apostle. " John the Presbyter " is the
creature of Eusebius's later criticism. If he could have quoted from
Papias a single other passage which in any way countenanced his exis
tence, there would have been no need to base his existence upon a mere
conjecture. On the other hand, the belief that Papias really had seen and heard
1 Dionysius of Alexandria had given a timid hint that there might have been such a
person, but Eusebius, by a bold criticism, assumes that there was.
2 So, too, Iren. C. Haer. V. 33. 'Iiodwov pev aKOvcmjs, noAvKapTrou 8e eTatpos yeyoviitq. It
is monstrous to suppose that Irensus would use the simple word " John " if he only
meant the Presbyter.

624 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the Apostle St. John, rests not upon conjecture, but upon the distinct
testimony of Irenseus, who says that Papias was " a hearer of John, and
an associate (Iratpos) of Polycarp."1 Justin Martyr lays the scene of
his dialogue with Trypho in Ephesus ; and he quotes the Apocalypse as
the work of the Apostle.2 That the John intended is the Apostle — ¦
the only John of whom Irenseus knew anything — is sufficiently clear,
because Irenseus, in his letters to Victor and to Florinus, distinctly
says so.3 Apollonius, Bishop of Ephesus, says that the Apostle lived at
Ephesus, and wrote the Apocalypse.4 Melito, Bishop of Sardis, must
have held the same opinion, as is clear from the silence of Eusebius.5
Apollinarius, who succeeded Papias as Bishop of Hierapolis, AD. 170,
and was therefore specially likely to be well informed, must have known
that both Polycarp and Papias were hearers of the Apostle.6 Jerome,
in his De Viris lllustribus, says the same.7 Till very recent times no
one ever breathed a doubt that Polycarp had been a hearer of the
Apostle, and had by him been appointed Bishop of Smyrna.8 If, then,
Polycarp was a hearer of the Apostle, there can be no difficulty in
accepting the testimony that Papias, who was a friend and contemporary
of Polycarp, had enjoyed the same peculiar privilege.
II. But now let us examine more closely the criticism of Eusebius9
upon the passage of Papias. He says " that Papias mentions the name
of John twice, and in the first clause places him with Peter and the rest
of the Apostles, clearly indicating the Evangelist ; but that in the second
clause he ranks him with others who were not Apostles, placing Aristion
before him, and he distinctly calls him 'an Elder;' so that even in
this way he indicates the .truth of the statements of those who have
said that there were two who had the same name in Asia, and that there
were two tombs in Ephesus, and that each is still called ' a tomb of John.'
We ought to attend to these facts, for it is probable that it was the second
John who saw the Apocalypse which passes under the name of John,
unless any one wishes to believe that it was the first."
It should be most carefully observed that Eusebius does not here
profess to know anything whatever about this " John the Elder," and
that he is. not quite fair in saying that Papias calls him "an Elder."
Papias did not call him "an Elder," but "the Elder," which may be a
very different thing. Eusebius also fails to notice that the " John " of
the second clause is described by exactly the same two designations as the
John of the first clause, namely, as one of the " Elders," and as a
1 Iren. c. Haer. v. 33. So too (Ecumcnius, on Acts ii. ; Nicephorus, H. E. iii. 20 ;
and Anastasius Sinaita (Hexaem. vii.), who calls him a pupil of the "bosom-disciple"
(6 Birior>j0!o;). See Routh, Itel. Sacr. i. 15.
2 Just. M. Dial. 81.
3 Iren. c. Haer. iii. 1, § 1, and ap. Euseb. H. E. v. 20—24.
4 Ap. Euseb. H. E. v. 18. « See Jer. De Virr. Hlustr. 24.
c Ap. Euseb. HE. iv. 27 ; v. 19. Jer. De Virr. Illustr. 26.
1 Jer. I. c. c. xviii.
8 Tert. De Praescr. Haer. v. 80. 8 H. E. iii. 39.

APPENDIX. 625
" disciple of the Lord." Eusebius is only led to infer that there was a
John who was not the Apostle, (1) by his criticisms of this single
passage ; (2) by the fact that " some " had said so ; and (3) because
these persons stated that there were still two tombs at Ephesus which
were known by the name of John. And yet, after all, Eusebius is so
little convinced by his own reasoning — he is so anxious " to steer be
tween the Scylla and Charybdis of yes and no " — he sees that the
evidence for the Apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse is so strong —
that he is still obliged to leave the authorship of the book a matter of
individual opinion. Whatever may be thought as to the ingenuity of
his reasoning, Eusebius furnishes the most complete refutation of his
own theory by the inability to produce a single grain of testimony
or even of tradition in favour of the view that this separate "Presbyter"
had ever existed.
Two questions then arise : —
a. Why was Eusebius so anxious to believe in the existence of this
" John the Presbyter " 1
0. Who were the "some" on whose testimony he relies1!
a. The answers to both questions are very easy. Eusebius disliked the
Apocalypse. He seldom quotes it. In one passage he refers to it as
possibly (ei ye <pavdri) spurious, and in another as possibly (et ye (pave In)
genuine, leaving the decision very much to the reader himself. He was
extremely opposed to the fanatical and sensuous Ghiliasm, which derived
its sole support from this book ; and on this very ground he was
inclined to look down upon the old Bishop of Hierapolis, with his
credulous stories and Judaic sympathies. If the millennial traditions
which Papias had collected in his Expositions could be dissociated from
the authority of the Apostle, and made to rest on that of an unknown
and sub-apostolic personage, it would be more easy to set them aside.
j8. As to the "some " to whom Eusebius alludes, they probably
reduce themselves to Dionysius of Alexandria, just as the " some " to
whom Dionysius himself alludes as disparaging the Apocalypse probably
reduce themselves to the Alogi. At any rate, the only trace of any
conjecture as to the existence of "John the Presbyter" previous to
Eusebius, is in the famous criticism on the Apocalypse by Dionysius.
In that criticism, preserved , for us only by Eusebius,1 the learned
Patriarch of Alexandria says that it is clear from the testimony of the
book itself that a " John " wrote the Apocalypse, but that instead of
calling himself " the disciple beloved by the Lord " (as in the Gospel),
or, " the brother of James," or " one who has actually seen and heard
the Lord," which would have clearly indicated his individuality, he
only calls himself "your brother and fellow in affliction," and "a witness
of Jesus," and "blessed because he saw and heard these revelations."
" Now 1 think," continues Dionysius, " that there have been many who
1 H. E. vii. 25.
0 o

626 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
bore the same name as John the Apostle, who loved that designation
out of their love and admiration and emulation for him, and because ¦
they wished to be loved of the Lord as he was ; just as many children
are named after Paul and Peter. Nay, there is even another John in
the Acts of the Apostles, who bore the surname of Mark. I cannot
say whether this be the John who wrote the Apocalypse, for it is not
recorded that he went with them (Barnabas and Paul) into Asia ; but
I think that it was some other John of those who were in Asia, since
some even say that there are two tombs in Ephesus, each of which is
called ' the tomb of John.'"
If the " some " to whom Eusebius appeals include any one except
Dionysius of Alexandria and those who had given him his information,
we have at any rate no clue as to who they were. Had they been
persons of special authority, or with special opportunities of knowing
the facts, Eusebius would have told us something about them. And
what does the evidence furnished by Dionysius amount to ? Not (be it
observed) to the statement that there were two Johns, but only that
John was a common name, and that there were two tombs in Ephesus,
each of which was pointed out by the local ciceroni as a tomb of John !
He does not even pretend to imply that they were the tombs of two
Johns. On the contrary, each was asserted to be the tomb of the
Apostle. III. Could any reader of modern German criticisms believe that
beyond this we know absolutely nothing about John the Presbyter, as
distinct from John the Apostle?1 And how utterly baseless a founda
tion is this for such a superstructure ! Dionysius wrote about the
middle of the third century,2 when John had been laid in his grave for
at least a century and a half. There is no tradition worth the name as
to the place and manner of the Apostle's death, and in the absence of
authentic information it was believed or assumed that he died at
Ephesus. Since this was the common belief, it was quite natural that
the Christians who visited Ephesus should ask to be shown the grave of
John.3 Now the duplicate sites of many other "holy places" in
Palestine and elsewhere show that if, in a case where there was no
certainty, one supposed grave was pointed out, it was a very likely
result that there would be two. The two graves were merely rival sites
for a spot which, if either of them were genuine, would be full of
interest. Yet, on grounds so slight as these, Dionysius — who, though
he speaks reverently of the Apocalypse, could not persuade himself that
it was the work of the Apostle — first infers that there were two Johns ;
1 No importance can be attached by any one to the guess or invention of the
Apostolical Constitutions (vii. 46), that the Presbyter succeeded the Apostle as Bishop of
Ephesus. 2 He succeeded to the Presidency of the Catechetical School at Alexandria in
A.D. 231.
3 Similarly the " trophies " of Peter and Paul were pointed out at Rome as early as
the days of the Presbyter Gaius (A.D. 213).

APPENDIX. 627
and, secondly, that one of them may have been sufficiently famous to
be the author of the Revelation.
That Dionysius is merely clutching at a theory is proved by his half
suggestion that the author may have been John Mark the Evangelist ;
a suggestion in which, so far as I am aware, he has had scarcely a single
follower for 1,500 years.1
But, further than this, his suggestion proves a great deal more than
he intended by it. This second John, if he existed at all, must have
been an exile in Patmos, and a person of such immense and acknow
ledged influence as to be able to address the Seven Churches of Asia
with almost more than Apostolic authority. But, as we can now prove,
the Apocalypse was written about A.D. 68 ; and if John the Presbyter
at that time exercised so powerful a sway over Asia, then there is little
or no room left for the work of John the Apostle. Polycrates, Bishop
of Ephesus (a.d. 196), spoke of John the Apostle and Philip2 as the
two great lights of Asia;3 but if John the Presbyter is the exile of
Patmos and the author of the second and third Epistles, he must have
been, on the evidence of these writings, a "light of Asia" whose
splendour was much more powerful than that of Philip, and so bright
as to make the name even of the Apostle grow somewhat pale.
If the Presbyter wrote the A pocalypse, a large part of the evidence
for the Asiatic residence of St. John falls to the ground. This is the
actual result arrived at by Scholten, Lipsius, Keim, and other Dutch
and German theologians, who fall back on an unauthorised and dubious
quotation from Papias by Georgius Hamartolos, to the effect that John
the Apostle was martyred by the Jews. Dionysius shows no trace of
such wild conclusions, though they would naturally spring from his own
conjecture ; and, as for Georgius Hamartolos, we have the less scruple
in setting aside his supposed quotation, because none of his predecessors
for eight centuries know anything about it, and because in the very
same sentence he has flagrantly mis-stated the known opinion of Origen.4
IV. Keim dwells much on the fact that little or no mention
is made of the Asiatic work of St. John till the close of the second
century. It is not mentioned, he says, in the Acts of the Apostles,
nor in the Ignatian Epistles, nor in Polycarp's letter to the Philippians,
nor in the letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne. The answer to
this difficulty, if it be one, is twofold. It is that, in the first place,
there was no special reason why it should have been mentioned in any
1 The only exceptions are Beza and Hitzig. Beza, Prolegom. in Apoc. p. 744. "Quod
si quid aliud liceret ex stylo conjicere, nemini certe potius quam Marco tribuerim, qui et
ipse Joannes dictus est " (Liicke, Einleit. in d. Offenbar. p. 780). Hitzig, Veber. Joh.
•Markus, 1843.
2 The Apostle, not the Deacon (Euseb. H. E. iii. 39).
3 Polycr. ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 31 ; v. 24. See Routh, Set. Sacr. p. 369.
4 Georgius Hamartolos not only quotes Papias for the assertion that St. John had
been martyred by the Jews, but says that Origen thought so-to, which is the reverse of
the fact (Orig. in Matt.).

628 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
one of these documents ; and that, in the second place, the " argument
from silence" is always a most untrustworthy way of attempting
to throw doubts on facts for which there is positive evidence. Are we
to doubt the existence of Milton or of Jeremy Taylor — of Bacon or of
Shakspeare — because these contemporaries make no allusion to each
other in their voluminous writings'? Humboldt points out that in the
archives of Barcelona there is no trace of an event so important as the
triumphal entry of Columbus ; in Marco Polo's travels no mention
of the wall of China; in the archives of Portugal no allusion to
the travels of Amerigo Vespucci.1 Michelet, in his History of France,
states that the two chief historians of the Sicilian Vespers make no
mention whatever of Procida, though he was undoubtedly the chief
mover in that terrible event.2 The argumentum ex silentio may be set
aside as wholly unimportant. Moreover, in this instance it is
singularly inappropriate, since it tells with redoubled force against
the very existence of any separate "John the Presbyter," who is passed
over in still profounder silence by all sources of information alike.
It is quite certain that such an hypothesis as the denial of John's
work in Asia would have appeared absurd to Dionysius. He was
probably in possession of a stronger and more detailed tradition on the
subject than we are. At any rate, he would not have listened for
a moment to the supposition on which this recent theory depends. It
requires us to believe that Irenseus (ad. 180) actually confounded John
the Apostle with John the Presbyter ! Such a supposition ¦ is — I fear it
must be said — utterly absurd. Irenseus repeatedly refers to "John,"
and "John the Lord's disciple," and fortunately it cannot be asserted
that he is referring to this second John, because in one passage he
expressly calls him " John the disciple of the Lord who leaned upon
his breast, and himself published the Gospel while living in Ephesus of
Asia."3 There is in Irenseus no trace of any other John ; nor was
there any such trace in the writings of Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus,
or Apollinarius, Bishop of Hierapolis — two persons who were eminently
likely to be well informed about the history of the Christian Church in
those two cities. Irenseus tells us that Polycarp had been the disciple
of St. John, and had always referred to him about disputed questions,
and had felt for him an unbounded reverence. Now Irenseus too was
of Asiatic origin, and knew the traditions of Ephesus. He had himself
been a hearer of Polycarp, and has left a most graphic description of the
manner in which the old man used to demean himself. And yet we
are asked to believe that when he calls Polycarp " a hearer of John " he
mistook John the Apostle for John the Presbyter, though of this John
1 Gesch. d. Geogr., vol. iv., p. 160.
2 Varnhagen von Ense, Tagebilcher, vol. i., p. 123. These two instances are quoted
by Krenkel, Der Ap. Jolum. p. 139.
3 See Iren. c. Haer. ii. 22, § 5 ; iii. 1, § 1; iii. 3, § 4 ; v. 30, §1; 33, §§3, 4; and ap.
Euseb. H. E. v. 24.

APPENDIX. 629
the Presbyter there is not so much as a tradition, however faint, until
we come to the middle of the third century ; and no trace even then
except a vague report that there were at Ephesus two graves known as
graves of John ! But St. Jerome furnishes us with conclusive evidence
of the extremely valueless character of this grain of supposed fact in
the ever- widening ocean of theory. He says (De Viris Hlustr.) that
" another tomb is shown at Ephesus as the tomb of John the Presbyter,
ALTHOUGH SOME THINK THAT THEY ARE BOTH TOMBS OF JOHN THE
Evangelist " ! Had it not been for dogmatic reasons, it is probable
that no one would have thought anything else.
There is overwhelming evidence that John the Apostle spent many
of his last years in Asia. It is one of the most unanimous and best
supported of Church traditions, and it can be traced in a continuous
sequence of evidence from the days of those who were his contem
poraries, and had enjoyed his personal intercourse. That there was
any John the Presbyter distinct from the Apostle, there is no evidence
whatever. For to say that a second-hand report about two graves
in Ephesus is any evidence, is idle. We should never have heard a
word about these two graves, or at any rate, this is not the inference
which would have been drawn from them, if Dionysius had not disliked
to attribute the Apocalypse to St. John, and if Eusebius, in common
with many others, had not felt a scarcely concealed desire to get rid of
the book altogether. But if this imaginary " Presbyter " wrote the
Apocalypse he must, on the showing of the book itself, have been a
very great man indeed, and one whose position enabled him to adopt a
tone more authoritative than was adopted even by St. Paul. Is it
conceivable that of such a man there would not be so much as a single
other trace except the report of a dubious grave conjecturally assigned
to him a century and a half after he was dead 1
The ancient Fathers, both Greek and Latin, were not to be misled
either by the specious suggestion of Dionysius, or by the bold assertion
of1 Eusebius more than seventy years afterwards. Neither of these
great writers found any one to follow them in their theoretic inferences
from the loose clause of Papias. The Fathers had the works of Papias
in their hands, and knew that he had nowhere disintegrated the
individuality of the one and only "John," whom the Church would
understand to be referred to when that name was mentioned. They
also had in their hands the Acts of Leucius, which are probably the
chief source of Johannine traditions ; and it is clear from the silence of
Eusebius and Dionysius that there the Presbyter had no existence.
Accordingly, Apollinarius, Anastasius Sinaita, Maximus, and many
others, go on repeating that Papias was a hearer of John the Apostle,
without so much as noticing that there was anything doubtful in the
passage out of which Eusebius has conjured his shadowy Presbyter.
V. But some will say, have we not two Epistles which profess to
emanate from " John the Presbyter " % Undoubtedly we have, and

630 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
this is one of the strongest evidences that " John the Presbyter "
was no other than " John the Apostle," for as St. John nowhere claims
his Apostolic authority, he would least of all be likely to do so in two
private notes to otherwise unknown individuals ; notes which do not
contain a single item of importance except where they exactly coincide
with the thoughts, and indeed the actual words, of the First Epistle ;
notes which no separate "John the Presbyter" could possibly have
written unless his mind were an echo of the Apostle's as well as his
name. The Apostle calls himself "the Presbyter" in these little
private letters, because the title sufficiently indicated his personality as
the aged Head of the Asiatic Churches, and as one who belonged to a
past epoch.1 No other designation would have been so simple, so
dignified, and so suitable. And most certainly Papias was not
influenced by this circumstance ; for while he was acquainted with the
First Epistle of St. John, he does not seem to have known of the
existence of the Second or Third.
VI. But the use of this designation, " the Elder," is further
illustrated by Papias himself. He prefaces one of his oral traditions
with the words, "These things the Elder used to say." We. have seen
that he used the word " Elders " in its narrower sense as synonymous
with " Apostles." He meant by the term those who were the oldest
and most venerated sources of tradition. He certainly would not have
given this specific title to any one who belonged only to the second
generation, and who would therefore have been a contemporary of
his own. By "the Elder" he has been always and rightly understood
to mean John, who, as the last survivor of the Apostolic band, was
" the Elder " hot' e|oxV- He does not give this title to Aristion,
though he too was a living witness of facts connected with the life and
ministry of Christ.
Again, the remarks ascribed to this intensely venerated " Elder "
are such as we can hardly imagine that any one short of an Apostle,
and such an Apostle as St. John, would have had authority to make.
For instance, the Gospel of St. Mark is universally believed to have
been written under the guidance of St. Peter. The numerous graphic
and vivid touches in which it abounds, as well as many other circum
stances, lend probability to this tradition. Now who is the original
authority for this belief 1 None other than " the Elder " himself. He
informs Papias that " Mark having become the interpreter of Peter,
wrote accurately all that he (Peter) related."3 But, such being the
case, what ordinary disciple, even of the first generation, would have
1 I do not refer to the parallel case of St. Paul calling himself " the aged " in Phile
mon 9, because the word Tfpeo-/3uTT)9 may there mean "an ambassador."
2 Euseb. H. E. iii. 39. Ma'pKOs pev epp.T)fevTTjs ne'Tpou yevopevos baa ipvr)p6veva-ev aKpiBSis
Sypaijiev. The words may mean, "Wrote accurately all that he (Mark) remembered ; " or,
"all that he (Peter) related" (Westeott, On the Canon, p. 74). Here, again, we notice
the ambiguity of the style of Papias.

APPENDIX. 631
ventured to criticise ex cathedra — to criticise as though from the stand
point of wider and more intimate knowledge — a gospel which rested on the
authority of the Chief of the Apostles'! Surely there was no living
man who would have ventured to do this, unless he were one whose
opportunities of information were greater even than those of St.
Peter 1 Yet " the Elder " does so. He informed Papias that though
St. Mark wrote truthfully, to the best of his remembrance, he did not
write the events of Christ s life and teaching in " chronological order "
(oi p.4vToi ra^ei). Now this we should have thought, apart from the
Fourth Gospel, is exactly what St. Paul does. But yet "the Elder" is
right, because the Elder is none other than the Apostle and the Evan
gelist. He can speak even of St. Mark in a tone of superiority,
as of one who "neither heard the Lord nor followed Him." He
knew, as perhaps no other man knew, that the Synoptic Evangelists
were but imperfectly informed as to the events and discourses of that
ministry in Judaea, as apart from Galilee, which it was his own special
privilege to make known to the world. Hence he can even venture to
say of St. Peter himself, that " he used to frame his teachings with
reference to the present needs of his hearers, and not as making a
connected narrative of the Lord's discourses." What mere secondary
Presbyter would have spoken in terms of such familiarity and even
equality of " the Pilot of the Galilean Lake " 1 In such criticisms do
we not hear unmistakably the accents of an Apostle 1
VII. There is, so far as I can see, but one slight objection to the
arguments which I have here stated. It is that, if our conclusion be
coiTect, Papias mentions Aristion in the same breath with St. John the
Apostle, and even puts Aristion's name first.
I fully admit that this mention of Aristion is perplexing. Of this
Aristion we know absolutely nothing.1 It is startling, and it is a little
painful, to find Papias referring to him as an eminent contemporary
witness to the truth of the Gospel narrative, when we can give no infor
mation whatever respecting him. He is a nominis umbra and nothing
more. So strongly has this been felt that some — and among them Renan —
suppose, that instead of " the disciples of the Lord " in the second
clause of the passage of Papias, we ought to read " the disciples of
disciples (liadriral piaB-nTwv) of the Lord," and that the word pxS-n-rav —
which would relegate Aristion and " John the Presbyter " to the second
generation of disciples — has dropped out by the clerical error known as
homceoteletiton. Another suggestion is, that the name of John in the
first clause is simply interpolated. But since neither Eusebius nor any
one else knew or dreamt of such readings, the conjectures merely rest
on foregone conclusions. If we may thus tamper with ancient authors,
1 There is no authority for tbe assertion of the Apostolical Constitutions (vii. 46),
which speaks of his martyrdom, and connects him with the Church of Smyrna.

632 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
we may make them say anything that we please. Moreover, a person who
belonged to the second generation of disciples would not have furnished
the sort of authority which Papias required. To that second genera
tion he himself may be said to have belonged, for he was a contem
porary of the daughters of Philip, and (as we have seen reason to
believe) had talked in his youth with John the Apostle. What he
wanted for the purposes of his Expositions was oral testimony derived
at first hand from the original sources.
I have sometimes thought, and still think, that Aristion is a name
which conceals some well-known person.1 The Jewish Apostles com
monly bore two names ; one among their own countrymen, and one
for use among the Gentiles. ' There is nothing to forbid the supposi
tion that the otherwise unknown designation may in reality refer to
some Apostle or Apostolic man who, like St. John and St. Philip, had
taken refuge in Asia from the storm of persecution and calamity which
had burst over Judsea, and who was known at Hierapolis by the Greek
name Aristion. If this very reasonable and moderate supposition
be allowed, all difficulty vanishes. What Papias then means to say is,
that long before he wrote his book it had been his habit to gather all
he could about the statements of the Apostles, whom he calls " Elders "
— and among them about the statements of John — from those who
had seen them ; and that he also took notes of the living "oracles"
furnished to him directly by Aristion (who was evidently well-known to
Papias's readers) and even — which is the reason why he keeps the name
to the last as being the fact which he most wished to emphasize — by
' " John the Elder ; " — the same John — 5 waw — the only John of whom
any one knew anything — who so long survived his brother Apostles,
and to whose indirect testimony Papias has just referred.
VIII. We have then sifted to the bottom the whole of the so-called
evidence for the existence of a " John the Presbyter " who was not
John the Apostle.
It is—
1. A passage of Papias, capable of a quite different interpretation,
and which seems to have received a quite different interpretation, not
only for a full century after he was dead, but also (in spite of Eusebius)
in subsequent times.
2. A hesitating and tentative guess of Dionysius, rising solely from
his avowed inability to regard the Apostle as the author of the Apocalypse.
3. Some dubious gossip (<paalv) about two tombs at Ephesus, which,
if trustworthy at all, was believed by some to be due to an attempt to
reconcile the inventions of rival guides.
1 When I wrote this I was entirely unaware that Krenkel, in his Der Apostel Johannes,
p. 117, had been led to make exactly the same conjecture. Pereant qui ante nos nostra
dixerunt I Polycrates tells us that John and Philip were at this time the " two great
lights of Asia." If " Philip " were not a Greek name, one might have suspected that
Aristion was a local name borne by Philip.

APPENDIX. 633
4. Eagerness on the part of Eusebius to support this inverted
pyramid of conjectures, out of positive dislike to the Apocalypse caused
by the abuses of Millenarians.1
" Only this, and nothing more " ! And these are the grounds on
which we are now asked to set aside the direct or indirect testimony of
Papias,2 of Justin Martyr,3 of Polycarp,4 of Polycrates,5 of Irenseus,"
of Apollonius,7 of Clemens of Alexandria, of Origen, of Melito,8 of
Andreas, of Arethas, and, in fact, of unbroken Church tradition, and
to assign the works of the last and one of the greatest Apostles to an
obscure and dubious Presbyter ! It is on this evidence — so late and so
tottering — evidence based on an awkwardly expressed but perfectly
explicable passage of Papias, a simple writer who had no pretence to
subtlety of intellect or grace of style — and on a professed quotation
from Papias in the ninth century by Georgius Hamartolos, who, in the
very same sentence, attributes to Origen an opinion which his own
writings show to be false — that some critics have ventured to rewrite
the history of the first century ; to assert, in spite of overwhelming
evidence, that the Apostle St. John never was in Asia at all ; that
Polycarp never saw him ; that the John for whom Polycarp expressed
so profound a reverence was only a " Presbyter " who, like himself,
belonged to the second generation of Christians ; that Irenseus was
mistaken in supposing that Polycarp meant the Apostle when he only
meant the Presbyter ; that, if this be thought impossible, the letter of
Irenseus to Florinus must be regarded as a forgery ;9 that this " Pres
byter," whose very existence was only conjectured a century later, is
quoted as an oracle by Papias ; that Polycrates, himself Bishop of
Ephesus less than a century after John's dey-th, made the same prepos
terous mistake which is attributed to Irenseus ;10 and that nebulous as he
is, unknown as he is to early writers, utterly as every fact about him
has perished, the " Presbyter " was still the author either of the Gospel
and Epistle, or of the Apocalypse, or of the Second and Third Epistles,
or of all these writings alike. Credat Judceus Apella — non ego !
1 Speaking of the "certain strange parables and teachings of the Saviour, and certain
other somewhat mystical things," which Papias recorded, "from unwritten tradition,"
Eusebius specially mentions " some millennium of years after the resurrection from the
dead, during which the kingdom of Christ shall be established bodily upon this earth.
2 Ap. Anastas. Sinaita, Hexaem. i. (Routh, i. 15). 3 Dial. c. Tryph. 81.
4 Ap. Iren. etc. , and Euseb. Chrom. ad Olymp. 220.
5 See Jer. de Virr. Hlustr. xiv. ; Euseb. H. E. v. 26 (Routh, i. 372).
6 Ap. Euseb. v. 20, etc.
1 Euseb. H. E. v. 18. 8 Euseb. H. E. iv. 26.
9 This entirely baseless suggestion of Scholten does not at all help his cause, for,
apart from the letter to Florinus, the testimony of Irenseus, in his great work, Contra
Haereses, is quite distinct.
10 Scholten sets aside the testimony of Polycrates, because he calls John " a priest
wearing the petalon." But (1) It is by no means impossible that St. John, who, at one
period, was so fond of symbols, may have adopted this symbol to express the truth
which he so prominently states (Rev. i. 6 ; v. 10). (2) It is not clear that Polycrates, in
this highly rhetorical passage, meant his words to be taken literally. (3) Even if he
did, he may have been misled by giving a literal meaning to some metaphor of St. John.

634 THE EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY.
But the impugners of St. John's Asiatic work raise one or two
chronological difficulties. They say that if Irenseus knew Polycarp,
who , knew St. John, all three must have attained to extraordinary
longevity. The longevity need not have been very unusual. Tradition
has always supposed that St. John reached extreme old age. Supposing
that he died as early as a.d. 90, and that Irenseus wrote about a.d. 180,
then, as M. Renan remarks, the difference which separated the two
would be the same as that which separates us from the last years of
Voltaire. Yet, without any miracle of longevity, M. de Remusat had
often conversed about Voltaire with l'Abbe Morellet, who had actually
known him. If the martyrdom of Polycarp took place, as Mr. Wad-
dington seems to have proved, about ad. 155, ' Polycarp was then 86
years old. Consequently he must have been born in a.d. 69, and would
have been at least 21 years old when St. -John died, and there is no
difficulty in the supposition that Irenaeus, as a boy, had seen and known
a man who had conversed with the Apostle who had laid his head on
Jesus' breast.
A credulous spirit of innovation is welcome to believe and to
proclaim that any or all of St. John's writings were written by " John
the Presbyter." They were : but " John the Presbyter " is none other
than John the Apostle.2
1 Mim. de Vlnstitut, xxvi. 235.
2 This argument has already been printed in the Expositor, because I wished to
subject it to the test of criticism. Some of my arguments about the " Beast " and the
" False Prophet " have, for the same reason, appeared in the same admirable journal
I am allowed, by the kindness of Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, to use the same
material here.

INDEX

Aaron tbe first High. Priest, as described by
tbe son of Sirach, 616.
Abel — an example of faith, 253 ; subject of his
dispute with. Cain, 257 ; murdered by his
brother, 550; referred to in the Book of
Enoch, 597.
Aben Ezra respecting the identity of Mel
chizedek, 217-
Abgar, king of Edessa, 48.
Abarbauel and otliers respecting tbe tables in
the Ark, 231.
Abraham — the test of his faith, 328 et seq.;
kiiown throughout the East as " The
Fviend of God," 336 ; his example as
adduced hy SS. Paul and James, ibid,;
Talmudic leg, nd as to his integrity, 357.
Absalom — a scurrilous epithet of the Talmud,
215.
Acesius (Bp.) — bis views on mortal sin, 186.
Adam — a Kabbalistic inference drawn from
the name, 197.
Adelphotheos, 270—278, §00, 324.
Advent, the Second, certain vagaries respect
ing, 432.
Aeiparthenia denned and discussed, 274, 275.
JElia Capitolina and the abrogation of
Judaism, 297, 491.
Agaj>ffi or Love-feasts, 111.
Agrapha dogmata, or sailings of Christ un
recorded in Holy Writ, 397.
Agrippa I. — his antipathy to the Christians,
292, 311 ; the patron of Ishmael ben Phabi,
344.
Agrippina— daughter of Germanicus, 14 ; born
at Cologne, ibid. ; married (1) to Cn. Dom.
Ahenobarbus, hy whom she became the
mother of Nero, 15 ; banished to Pontia,
ibid. ; married. (2) to Crispus Passienus, 16,
and (3) afterwards to her uncle the
Emperor Clanriius, ibid. ; she procures tbe
Imperial adoption of Nero her son to the
prejudice of Britannicus the heir-apparent,
17 i she poisons her husband, 19, and
claims the Imperial purple for Nero, 20,
¦who dignifies her as " the best of mothers,"
ibtd.; her life unsuccessfully attempted,
25; her eventual assassination, 27.
Akhiva— a noted Jewish Rabbi, his martyrdom
by the Romans, 336, 352.
Alexander the Great— his patronage of the
Jews, 139.
Alexandria — its geographical advantages, 139 ;
its synagogue, the Diapleuston, ibid. ; its
Sanhedrin, 140; its artificers and the

Temple at Jerusalem, ibid.; its epoch-
making literature, 140, 141 ; the Septuagint
141 — 144 ; the writings of Aristobulus,
144 et seq. ; the so-called " Wisdom of
Solomon," 145 ; and Philonic literature,
146 et seq. ; its part in paving the way for
Christianity, 153; its Catechetical School,
154; its antidote to Gnostic mysteries,
155; its theopophy, 155 et seq.; its views
on Inspiration, 158 ; its influence on the
Pauline Epistles, 159, 160 ; other contri
butions to Christianity, 169 ; .its indebted
ness to Plato, 174 ; Barnabas regarded as
the founder of the Church at, 181 ; Apollos
a native of, 187 ; certain Jews of, burned
alive, 253 : Heb. xi. 37, a possible allusion
thereto, ibid.
Alexandrianism, indications of, in the writings
of SS. John aud Paul, 51.
Aliturus, the court-jester of Nero, a proselyte
to Judaism, 36, 477.
Allegory and its developments, 156 et seq.
AlpbEeus identified with St. James in the
Church of England Scripture lessons, 270 ;
but contra-distinguished by the Greek
Church, ibid.
Altar of Incense and the Holiest Place, 613
et seq.
Amalthea's horn (the cornucopia) mentioned
in the Septuagint, 143.
Amhaareiz — its definition, application, &c.f 365,
572.
Anagram of malediction upon the name Jesus,
215.
Andreas (Bp.)— his Comment on the Apo
calypse, referred to, 468.
Andrew, St. — his missionary travels and
martyrdom, 47.
Aneling — a practice of the early Church, pro
vided for in the first Prayer Book of King
Edward VI., 3±7.
Angel of Death— his inability to take tbe life
of Moses, 129 ; his place in Rabbinic
angelology, 199; his adventure with R.
Simeon ben Chelpatha, 343; and with R.
bar Nachman, 497.
Angels— the Fallen, Enoch's mission to them,
130 ; their sin as traditionally recorded,
133, 599 ; the Ministering, their service at
Sinai, 257 ; the angelic heptarchy, 132.
Annas the younger, and his martyrdom of
James, 302 ; himself massacred by his
own co-religionists, 306 ; and his remains
dishonoured, 306, 422.

636

INDEX.

Antur, an Arabic pfvm, quoted, 199.
Antichrist— the rise of, 10 ; identified with
Nero, 11, 411; of Old Testament Apo
calypse, 33, 411 ; a term peculiar to
St. John, 514 •'t seq.
Antileyomena, or disputed books of Scripture,
122, 576. (See also Komologoumena.)
Antinomianism— a travesty ot St. Pauls
teaching, 50.
Antioch, and the origination of the term
Christian, 82.
AntiochusEpiphanes the Antichrist of Daniel,
33, 411.
Apocalypse of St. John the Divine — not the
latest bi'ok of the New Testament Scrip
tures, -105 ; dates next in order to he
Synoptic Gosp Is, 407; its originating
circumstances, 410; Nero depicted, 411;
persecution of the Christians, 411. 412;
outbreak of the Jewish war, 412 et seq. ;
( siege of Jerusalem, 413; other historical
'surroundings, 414—428; its reception,
429 et seq. ; the various schools of inter
pretation, 431 et seq. ; their Theories
discussed in detail, 432 — 437 ; the letters
to the seven Churches, 438— -440 ; the
Apostolic Twelve, 440; invectives against
heretics, 441, 442 ; misapplied by the
Rationalists, 443 ; the seals, ibid.; the first
seal. 444 ; the second and third, 445 ; the
fourth, 446,; tbe fifth and sixth, 447 ; the
sealing, 448, 449; the seventh seal, 449;
the seven trumpets, 450; detailed with
historic illustrations, 451—460 ; forecast
of the doom of Jerusalem, ibid. ; the wild
beast from the sea, 461—467 ; identified
with Nero, 467 et seq. ; the mystic number
X&, 468—474; the False Prophet, &c,
474 et seq. ; illustrations from Roman
history, 479—4*3; the vials, 481 et seq.;
fall of Jerusalem, 486—489 ; end of the old
dispensation, 490 ; abrogation of Judaism
491 et seq.
Apocalyptic literature — Apocalypse of Barucli,
397, 428; of Esdrup, 402, 428; of Peter,
100. (See also s.v. Ennch.)
Apocryphal gospels —the Protevangelion. 278;
gospel to the Hebrews, 291 : gospel of the
Infancy, 278; gospel of Joseph, 278;
gospel <<f Nicodemus, 458; gospel of Peter,
501; gospel of Thomas, 279. (See also
s.v. Epistles.)
Apocryphal writings attributed to St. John,
4d ; Ascensiou of Isaiah, 436, 467, 4fc!0 ;
Ascension ot James, 297 ; Ascension of
Mo-es, 129, 132; the Assumption of
Moses, 600.
Apollonius, Bishop of Ephesus, 624.
Apollos— the probable author of Hebrews, 51 ;
acquainted with Philouan philosophy,
154, 168 ; hs method of interpretation,
169: conn ares favourably with that of
Philo, 109—171 ; contrasted with that of
Paul, 172—182 ; ten qualifications for
writing such un Euistle, 183 tt seq. ; all
exemplified in Apollos 186 ; sketch of his
character, ibid. ; notices of him aud his
work in New Tosram.-nt, 186 ef seq.; his
native place and curly home, lh7 ; no hint
that lie ever visited Rome, 190; lost
Scrip! ural mention of his name, 191.
(See s.v. Hebrews.)
Apostasy as regarded by the compiler of the
MiBhnuh, 238.

Apotheosis of Claudius Caesar, 21 ; of Caligula
and. Nero, 466 ; of the Roman Emperors
, gene i ally, 479.
Aquila and Priscilla, their departure from
Rome, 12.
Aquila — his Greek version of the Old Testa
ment, 119 ; accredited with the authorship
of Hebrews, 184.
Aratus quoted by Paul, 134.
Archangels— Jude ami John the only New
Testament writers who mention them,
13,2; the seven according to Apocryphal
books and the Talmud, ibid, (note); the
hierarchy according to IV. (II.) Esdras,
194.
Aretas, king of Arabia, his adventure with
the High Priest Ishmael, 226.
Aristeas and the origin of the Septuagint,
141.
Aristion, as mentioned in the writings of
P<ipias, 619 et seq.
Ark nnd tables of the Covenant, 229 et seq.
Armini m perversions of Scripture, 212.
Arthur and King John, a parallel from Roman
hi -story, 23.
Asinarii — a hath-i^al term applied to the early
Christians, 38, 82; the Jews similarly
slandered, 3-, 230.
Atonement, Day of — as regarded by Barnabas,
59 its paramount place in Judaism, 181;
Rabbinic ceremonies, 614 et seq. ; impres
sions on Jewish minds, 615 et seq. ; its
connexion with thu overthrowof Judaism,
617; traditional rer> tniscences, ibid.
Augurs aud auguries, iheir prevalence, 476.
Augustus — his part in the play of life, 10;
import of his nim--, 46i ; his aversion to
dedication, 466; his edicts against sor
cerers, 476.
Aulus PUuiius and Christianity in Britain,
33.
Aureum Quinquennium of Rome, 22.
Autos da Fe and Te Deums, 338.
Avodath Hakkodesh — a Kabbalistic work,
quoted, 2^0.
Azazel and the scapegoat of Jewry, 239, 614,
617

B.
Babylon— covertly referred to by Jeremiah,
472; rguratively applied in 1st Epistle
Peter, 595, 596.
Balaam — legend of. alluded to in the Septua
gint and the Torguni, 63; his apostasy,
102 ; compared with the impious and false,
110; with evildoers generally, 111; how
slain by Phinehas, 143.
Bammidbar Rabba— a Rabbinic commentary
ou Nuinhers. 422.
Barcochha— a false Messiah of the Jews, his
aversion to Christians, 36; shares in their
persecution and massacre, 491.
Barnabas — Ms Epistle, its drift and tone, 53;
pul'iiolyread in the church, 56; its marked
inferiority to the canonical scriptures, 58 ;
Alexandrian proclivities, 58 et seq. ; its
Kabbalistic vagaries an'l heretical ten
dencies, 59 ; quoted or referred to, 58, 59,
86, 188.
Bartholomew — his mission-work and martyr*
dom. 47.

INDEX.

637

Basilical Synagogue at Alexandria, 139; said
to have been the grandest in the world,
the glory of Israel, 140.
Bath Kol, or voice fr> m heaven, 295.
Berenice, Queen— her intercession for the
Jews, 48.
Bereshith Rabba— a Rabbinic commentary on
Genesis, quoted or referred to, 142, 217,
218, 221, 489, 513, 613.
Beruriah — the wife of Kabbi Meier, her praise*
worthy advice, 572, 573.
Blood — no remission without, parallel from
the Talmud, 236.
Brethren of tbe Lord, 124 et seq.
Burning of Rome — possible reminiscences in
Peter's Epistle, 37.
Burrus (Afranins)— a partisan of Agrippina,
18; by her made Prtetorian Prefect and
guardian of the youthful Nero, 20; his
influence for good over his ward, 21 ; bis
reprehensible laxity in certain matters,
22 ; bis compromise, 26 ; poisoned by order
of the Emperor, 28.

C.
CEesar. (See distinctive names.)
Csesarian race — its premature mortality, 11,
13.
Cain— his parentage according to the Rabbis,
550.
Caligula, or Nero, covertly alluded to by Paul,
435.
Calvin's perversions of Holy Writ, 211, 212.
Camel and needle's eve explained, 213.
Carthage, Councils of, 100^ 307.
Catacombs at Rome, 10, 59, 92.
Catholic — deh'nition of the term, 51.
Catholic Epistles — Gregory of Nazianzus
upon, 576.
Cato tt-e Younger — his character described,
549.
Centie of the earth from a Rabbinic point of
view, 230, 298.
Cerinthus — a J udseo -Christian heresiarch,
114; the immni*ality of his system, 135;
taught in Asia, 391 : accredited by Diony
sius of Alexandria with 'the wriing of the
Apocalypse, ibid, ; the earliest of the
Christian Gnostics, 395 ; the story of his
death at Ephesus, 396 ; his heretical views
and legendary associations, 500—503.
Charlemagne and the pirate N orsemen, 116.
Chihasts, or Millenarians, 50.
Xfs, the mystic symbol for 666, 470.
Chrestos and Christo?, an interesting parono
masia, 88.
Chrestusr— a perverted form of Christus, 12 ;
notion that Chrestus was a seditious
Roman Jew, ibid. ; Chrestian, a parody u<>on
the term Christian, 95 ; possibly alluded
to by Peter, ibid.
Christ — name ironically turned to Chre<tus,
12 ; styled Christus by Tacitus, 34 ; his
life and work objectively treated in the
Syuoptic Gospels, 49 ; but subjectively
treated by John, ibid. ; scarcely alluded to
by James, 73 ; his example, sufferings,
death, resurrection, and ascension dwelt
upon by Peter ibid. ; his mission to the
spirits in prison, 77—80, 94, 95 ; the Des-
posyni descendants of the family at Naza

reth, 123—125 ; the redompMve scheme,
178, 179; the atonement, ISO; Christ
superior to angels, 194—196; pre-eminent
to Moses, 200; his high priesthood, 203,
201 ; above that of the Levites, 205 ; and
of Melchizedek, 225; various points of
supremacy, 240 — 242 ; his atoning blood,
243 ; bis perfect obedience, 24S, 244 ; re
capitulation of the phases of superiority,
244 et seq. ; the Second Advent, 489 ; end
of the Mosaic dispensation, 490; abroga
tion of Judaism, 491 ; a denier of Jesus is
Antichrist, 503; knowledge of Christ is
life eternal, 511; doctrine of the Logos
(the Divine Word) considered, 512. Dis
guised references to Christ in tbe Talmud
and Rabbinic writings, 596.
Christendom and heathendom contrasted, 59,
60.
Christians not brought into collision with the
Imperial government until Nero's time,
11 j the Neronian persecution, 33 et seq.,
brought on through jealousy, 36, Jewish
malice its primary cause, 37; regarded
by the world as a debased Jewish peet, 82 ;
the name Christian originated at Antioch,
ibid. ; spoken against everywhere, ibid. ;
taunted as renegades and apostates, 192 ;
took refuge at Pella in }:>rospect of the
fall of Jerusalem, 388, 412, 461 ; persecuted
by the pseudo-messiah Barcochba, 491.
Christianitv — a religio illicita at Rome, 67 ;
how regarded bv Pliny and Tacitus, 82 ;
its relations to Judaism, 167 ; its supe
riority to Philonian philosophy, 169;
more ancient than Judaism, 173 ; referred
to Abiabam by Paul, ibid.; and to Mel
chizedek by Apollos ibid.; a reversion to
Judaism tlie worst kind of apostasy, 174;
in what its pre-eminence consists, 175 —
178 ; Judaic Christianity pre-disposed to
Pharisaism, 303 ; the S idducees its most
pronounced opponents, ibid.
Christology of Paul, of Apollos, and of John,
178.
Chrysostom, his nohle resolution in prospect
of exile or martyrdom, 93.
Cities of the Plain— their overthrow, 129, 131.
Claudius— his edict for the expulsion of the
Jews from Rome, 12.
Cleanthes, the Stoic philosopher, his death by
suicide, 9.
Clemens of Alexandria — his account of Peter's
family, 73 ; in favour of 1st E pistle Peter,
67 ; his literary labours referred to, 79, 93,
100, 121, 135, 154. 156; on the Pnuline
authorship of Hebrews, 160 ; unacquainted
with the Epistle of James, 307; his story
bf John aud The robber, 399—401; the
martyrdom of the Apostles, 403.
Clemens of Rome— h>s epistle publicly read in
the church, 56 ; syncretism of the writer,
57; his catholicity, theology, and mis
taken notions ibid. ,* the evidential value
of his writings, 58; bi-hop of Rome, 65;
speaks more of Paul than of Peter, ibid. ;
though said to have been ordained by the
latter, 66; his definition of Faith, 76;
makes no reference to 2nd Epistle Peter,
99 ; his various writings mentioned, 118 —
121 ; the Book of Wisdom and Hebrews
known to him, 178 ; accredited by some
with the authorship of the latter, 185;
made use of Epistle of James, 307 ; quota-

638

INDEX.

tion from his writings, 342 ; bis record of
Peter's martyrdom, 594.
Clementine Homilies and Recognitions — the
product of Ebionites, 53 ; their disfavour
of visions, 118 ; their polemic character,
322 ; their animus against Paul, 350 ;
allusions to Peter's connections with
Rome, 594.
, Cleopas an abbreviation of Cleopater, 269.
Cleopatra, tbe wife of the Procurator Florus,
a friend of the Empress Poppsea, 417.
Clopas, Chalpai or Alpheeus, 269.
Coincidences (undesigned) between the narra
tive of Acts and tbe writings of James,
326.
Comforter— true meaning of word so rendered,
536; Talmudic adoption and use of the
original Greek word, ibid.
Commandments, the Ten— Philo's idea of their
utterance by God, and the rest of the
Law by angels, 194 ; Talmudic notion tbat
the first Commandment only was spoken
by God, and that the others were uttered
by angels, 198.
Compassion deprecated by the Romans, 9.
Confession in sickness a Jewish as well as
a Christian ordinance, 347.
Cornelius a Lapide— his summary dealing
with heretics, 588.
Cremation — the Empress Poppsea's objection
to, 36.
Crispus Passienus, the father-in-law of Nero,
16.
Cromwell and the doctrine of final persever
ance, 211.
Orwrifragium— a Roman custom .described, 379.
Crusades, referred to, 372.
Cryptographs— Jewish and Christian, 46, 215,
468, 596.
Custom— its force in Rabbinic Judaism, 160.

Daniel— Book of, known to Peter, 85 ; his pre
diction of th e fate of Rome, how treated in
Josephus, 437.
Days— the ten penitential days of modern
Judaism, 238.
Debarim Rabba— a Rabbinic commentary on
Deuteronomy, 343.
Deification of Poppeea, the murdered wife of
Nero, 9.
Descent into Hades, 93—95.
Desposyni, The, or relations of the Holy
Family, 123 et seq., 278.
Diaspora— the Hellenistic designation of the
dispersed Jews, 84, 325. (See also Galootha.)
Diatlieke — classical sense of tbe word, its use
in a twofold sense in the Hebrews, 234,
235 ; Rabbinic adoption and use of the
word, 235.
Dikaisune— in judicial and scriptural nomen
clature, 177.
Dionysius of Alexandria, 625 — 627.
Divorce— tbe first on record in the annals of
Re me, 5.
DOMIHE, QUO VADIS? 63.
Domitia— aunt and guardian of Nero, 15 ; her
neglect of her charge, ibid. ; incurs tbe
jealousy of Agrippina, 19; accused of
sorcery and doomed to death, ibid.

Domitian— his adventure with the Desposyni,
the grandsons of Jude, 123 et seq. ; his
banishment of John to Patmos, 407 et
seq.
Domitius Ahenobarbus, father of Nero, his
character, his ominous saying at the birth.
of his son, bis impeachment, and the con
fiscation of his property, 15.

E.
Ebionites— an early heretical sect, 50; claimed
the authority of James, 52; attempt to
calumniate Paul, 64; their views and
practices, 498 et seq.
Emperors of Rome— their autocratic position,
4 ; their moral characteristics, 11; prema
ture death, 453 ; their deification, 466, 479.
Encaenia— the Feast of Dedication, 235.
Enoch, Book of— referred to by Peter and
Jude, 111 ct seq. (See also Excursus IV.,
597, 598 ; and Index of Quotations and
References.)
Ephesian robber — a legend of the early-
Church, 399.
Ephesians, Epistle to — its style, 104 j its
infiuence upon 1st Peter, 105.
Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, saying
quoted, 247.
Epimenides, Aratus and Menander, Paul's
quotation of, 134.
Epiphany at Sinai— how represented in the
Septuagint. 144.
Epistles, the Catholic, 51. (See also under
respective names.)
Epistles, Un canonical— of Barnabas, 58, 59,
86, 188; of Clemens, 57, 58; of Ignatius,
216, 498, 531, 590 ; of Polycarp, 440, 529.
(See also s.v. Hermas.)
Ethnic inspiration exemplified in Socrates,
Plato, &c, 158 et seq.; in heathen litera
ture generally, 174.
'Euripides — Nero's significant comment upon
a verse of, 30.
Eusebius' quotation of a non-extant passage of
Josephus, 304.
Eutropius concerning the burning of Rome,
29.
Exodus— a term used for death in Josephus,
the Book of "Wisdom, and by Peter, 114.

Faith— as defined by Feter, 75 ; by Clemens,
76 ; by Paul, ibid. ; by the Author of
Hebrews, 176; by Philo Judteus, 177;
Patristic views of, 328; Abraham's faith
as described in Rabbinic history, 357.
Famine at Rome, temp. Claudius, 445 ; another
in time of Otho, ibid, ; at Jerusalem during
the final siege, ibid.
Fast — the consummate, of the Jewish Calen
dar, 237; the bi-weekly fast of New
Testament times, ibid.
Felix — Roman Procurator of Judeea, 16.
Festup, the Procurator, befriends Paul, 12 ;
his official character relatively considered,
302.
Filioli diligite alterutrum^-favourite words of
John, 403, 592.

INDEX.

639

Final perseverance, 211, 212, 248.
Forbidden books of Jewry, 284.
Foundation-stone of the world, %

G.
Gaius (Caligula) — his animosity to the Jews,12.
Gaius of Corinth, and others of same name,
discriminated, 589.
Galatians, Epistle to — its style relatively con?
sidered, 104 ; its date, 311.
Galho, the Proconsul — his refusal to convict
Paul, 12.
Gralooift-", Tfce— the Aramaic designation of
1 the dispersed Jews, 84.
Gamaliel I. counteracts the avarice of the
priests, 314 ; interferes on behalf of the
Apostles, 3*2.
Gamaliel II. — his characteristic compromise
at the baths of Ptolemnis, 396.
Ghetto or Jewry — of Ancient Rome, 12 ; of
Alexandria, 139.
Gematria — the term explained, 468; various
exemplifications, 58, 238, 468-472. *
Gerizim — its place iu the Samaritan cult, 183.
Germanicus, grandfather of Nero, 13; his
tragic end, 14.
Gladiatorial shows at Rome, 6 ; of Nero's time
with Christian victims, 39 et seq.
Gospels, the Synoptic — mainly present the
historical aspect of Christ's life, 49 ; their
fragmentary nature, ibid. ; John's Gospel
deals with sui g'ective aspects mainly, ibid. ;
James never mentions the Gospel, 52 ; the
Gospel preached to the dead, 77—79.
Gospels, the Uncanonical. (See Ajao&ryphal
Gospels. )
Gracchi, the mother of — referred to, 147.
Graffiti, or caricatures, at Pompeii, 82.
Greek proverb addressed from Heaven to Paul,
158.
Greek versions of the Old Testament. (See
Aquila and Seytuagmt.)
Greek wisdom and the Palestinian rabbis,
141; how regnrded by the Babylonian
Jews, 142 ; its effect on Judaism generally,
174.
Gregory of Nazianzus alone among Christian
writers after St. John worthily styled
"The Divine," 437; his views as to the
Catholic Epistles, 576.

H.
Habakhuk — his summary of the precepts, 248.
Hades — Christ's descent into, 93—95.
Hagadah and Halachah, their occurrence in
the Septuagint, 143; both alike familiar
to the writer of the Hebrews, 237 ; com
piled by Rabbi JuHah, forming the Mish-
nah, 281 ; how regarded by the labbis, 295.
Hagadistic traces in Jude, 52, 129 et seq., 132 —
134, 283, 598—600 ; in Paul, 159 ; in He
brews, 171 et seq. ; not any to be found in
James, 284.
Hiijwxa: legomena in 1 Peter, 73 ; in 2 Peter, 103
et seq.; in Jude, 131; in Hebrews, 193 j in
James, 319.

Heathendom, its salient features, 9; con
trasted with Christianity, 59, 60.
Hebrew unknown to Philo Judeeus, 146.
Hebrews, Epistle to— the work of Apollos, 51 ;
an expression of Alexandrian Christianity,
ihid; a link binding us to the Church of
the Jewish Fathers, 157 ; not written by
Paul, 159—162 ; attributed to him in the
superscription in the English Bible, ibid.;
and twice so referred to in the Prayer
Book, ibid.; its resemblance to Pauline
writings considered, 163 ; its dissimilarity
thereto, 164—166 ; its theological scope,
166, 167 ; its dealings with the relations of
Christianity and Judaism, 167; its marked
Alexandrianism, 168, 169; coincidences to
Philonian liteiature, 169—171; topical
detail, 172—182; account of the author,
187 et seq.; to whom addressed, 189, 190;
where written, 191; outline, 191, 192;
analysis, with literal version and com-!
mentary, 193—264 ; subjects embraced :
Christ's supremacy, 194—197 ; man's posi
tion, 198; mission of Christ, 199; Christ
above Moses, 200 et .seq.; exhortation to
prompt acceptance, 202 ; priesthood of
Christ and Melchizedek compared and
contrasted, 203—225; the Levitic priest
hood and its service superseded, 226, 227;
the new covenant, 228; the Tabernacle
and its symbolic furniture, 229—232 ;
Christ their antitype, 233, 234 ; the Day of
Atonement, 237—240 ; Christ the true
high priest, 240—242 ; summing up, 243—
246; danger of apostasy, 2*7, 248; faith
defined and exemplified, 248—253; final
admonitions, 254 — 264.
Herculaneum and its relics, 2, 4.
Heresy defined, misconceptions considered,
494.
Hermas, a post-apostolic writer — his works,
" The Pastor," &c., quoted or referred to,
86, 99, 327, 338, 342, 398, 454.
Herod Agrippa and the murder of James, 292,
383.
Hesiod — bis story of the imprisoned Titans,
129.
Hexameter verse in the New Testament, 255,
328.
High. Priests under the first and second
Temples compared, 181 et seq.; degrada
tion of the office, 206 ; mere nominees of
the rulers, ibid. (See also Ishmael ben
Phabi, Joshua ben Gamala, Simon son of
Onias, &c.)
Hillel and Shammai, the accredited leaders of
Jewish thought in the time of our Lord,
281, 282, 288.
Hippo, Ecclesiastical Council of, 100.
Holy of Holies— Caligula's attempt to profane,
12; POmpey's surprise thereat, 239 ; how
often entered by the high priest on the
Day of Atonement, 240.
Homologoumerw, or admitted books of Holy
Writ, 530.
Hymn, early Christian, quoted, 45.

Icarus— his alleged attempt to fly, 40; drama
tized on the Roman stage, ibid. ; Balaam

640

INDEX.

and'Simon Magus paid to have perished in
a similar manner, 63.
Idolatry — St. John's warning against the
latest written words of the New Testament,
406.
I.H.T. in JudEeo-Christian symbolism, 58,
469.
Incarnation, The, as restricted by Apollos,
167.
Infanticide— its prevalence in Imperial Rome,
7 ; contrary to contemporary Christian
usages, 59.
Insula, or lodying-houses of ancient Rome, 3.
Irenseus— his strange assertion as to tbe age
of our Lord, 398.
Isaac and his substitute— a Rabbinic legend,
132.
Isaiah— his martyrdom under Manasseh, 253.
Ishmael the High Priest — his decade of office,
311 ; stigmatised as taking after Phinehas
(son of Eli) ibid. ; raised to the pontificate
by Agrippa, 344; his disqualifying adven
ture on the Day of Atonement, 2z6.
Isidore, Bishop of Seville, respecting the
Epistle to Hebrews. 161 ; anecdote of the
poisoned chalice, 388 et seq. ; his statement
as to the age of John the Divine, 403.
Isopsephia, or eqin-numeral interpretation, 468.
(See also Gematria and Kabbalah )

Jacob's blessing — circumstances of, strangely
perverted in the Vulgate, 252.
Jaddua — the last historic personage of the
Old Testament narrative, 139.
James— bis relationship, 265—279 ; the home
at Nazareth, 280 et seq. ; his training, 281 —
283 ; his acquaintance with the Scriptures,
283»; with uncanonical literature, 284 ; his
religious status, 285, 286; his early
opinions of Jesus aud His mission, 287—
289 ; his conversion to Christianity, 290 ;
Bishop of Jerusalem, 292 ; presides at the
Synod, 294 et >eq,; his part in the Gentile
controversy, 295 ; decision respecting pro
selytes, 296; his martyrdom, 302, 301;
Rabbinic legends, 305 et seq. ; and tradi
tional details from Apocryphal Gospels,
ibid., note.
James, Epistle of— "the Gospel" never men
tioned, 52 ; his indebtedness to Sermon
on the Mount, 284, and to post-biblicn.1
literature, ibid. ; authenticity of the
Epistle, 307 ; date, 310, 311 ; historic sur
rounding, 312—314 ; genius, 315 et sctj. ;
style, 319 et seq. ; topi, al analysis, 320, 321 ;
aim, 322 et seq. ; character, 323 ; the vale
dictory expression of Hebrew prophecy,
323,324; literal version with explanatory
notes, 324—349 ; faith and works, 350 355
— 357 ; Abraham's example, 358 ; i-oiu-
parison with other Apostolic writings,
360, 361.
Jeremiah — his death by stoning, referred to,
253.
Jerusalem— "the centre of the earth," a
Rabbinic conceit, 230, 298 ; fall of tho city,
487—490; iElia Capitolina built upon its
ruins, 491; its fall an epoch in history,
542.

Jerusalem, the New, 486 ; legendary detail,
ibid., note.
Jesus Christ. (See Christ).
Jesus son of Ananus — his warning cry and
tragic f .te, 306.
Jesu^ son of Gamala— same as Joshua ben
Gamala (q.v.).
Jesus son or Pandera. — a disguised reference
to J*- sus Christ in the Talmud, 305.
Jesus son of Sirach — author of ''Eoclesias
ticus, "a work well-known to James, 284;
prohibited by the Rabbis, ibid.
Jews detested by Gaius (Caligula), 12 ; Claudius
orders their expulsion from Rome, ibid. ;
futility of the edict, 34; not involved in
the Neronian persecutions and massacres,
35; i-worn enemies of the Christians, 36;
proselytes in the Imperial palace, ibid. ;
promise Nero the kingdom of Jerusalem,
ibid. ; their religion priviU< ed at Rome,
37 ; their malice, the secret of the first
Christian persecution, ibid. ; patronized
by Alexander the Great, 1 39 ; befriended
by the Ptolemies, 140 ; certain of Alex
andria burned alive, 253 ; revolt in Judaea,
415 e, seq., and its spread throughout
Palestine, 418 ; epidemic of massacre, 419
et seq. ,- Josephus' opinion that the Jews
were ripe for destruction, 426, 454; fall of
Jerusalem, 486— 490 ; iE'ia Capitolina built
upon its ruins, 491 ; Jews denied admission,
ibid. ; th- ir religion abrogated, ibid.
Jochanan ben Napuchah — his temporising
compromise, 142.
Jochanan ben Zaccai foretells the destruction
ofthe Temple, 239.
John — one of the three Pillar- Apostles, 363;
his leligious majority synchronous with
the insurrection in Galilee, 363 ; a key to
bis impetuous spirit, ibid. ,¦ and patriotic
bias, 367 ; a disciple of John the Baptist,
ibid. ; his call by Jesus, 369 ; his charac
teristics, 370 ; ambitious request of his
mother, 374, 375 ; his intimacy with
Jesus, 376; at the cross, 378; entrusted
with care of the mother of Jesus, ibid. ;
at the sepulchre, 379 et seq.; with "the
eleven," 380; revisits Galilee, ibid.; in
the Temple at Jerusalem, 38l ; before the
Sanhedrin, 382 ; saved by the interference
of Gamaliel I., ibid. ; scourged, jet per
sisting in preaching " the Word," 383 ;
once only mentioned in tbe Pauline
Epistles, 384 ; hi* Judaic sympathies, 3S4,
385 ; ab-ence of further mention in Scrip
ture, till at Patmos, 386 ; his exile, ibid. ;
his work, 387,391; the Apoculypsa (q.v.)
of prior date to his Gospel and Epistles
(q.v.), 392 ; legendary anecdotes, 394—404;
death of John, 592 ; his extreme old age,
634.
John, Epistles of — tbe last utterances of
Divine Revelation, 53.
John, First Epistle of— its object and outline,
525 ; contents, 527, 528 ; structural pecu
liarities, 529 ; authenticity, 530 ; topical
anali sis, literal version, and comment,
531—574.
John, Second Epistle of — its authenticity
discussed, 575 et seq.; Kyr>a to whom
addressed, whether an appellative or a
proper name, considered, 577—579, 581 —
583; topical analysis, literal version, and
notes, 583—588.

INDEX.

641

John, Third Epistle of— Gaius to whom ad
dressed, 589-; object and aim, 589, 590;
literal .translation and notes, 590, 591 ;
salutation, 591 et seq.
Josephus — inimical to the Christians, 36 ; a
renegade Pharisee, 37; his eulogy of the
abandoned Poppsea, ibid.; date of his
writings, 106 ; verbal resemblances to
Peter's second Epistle, 107; bis. use of
Rabbinic hagadoth (anecdotes, &c), ibid. ;
re-writes Jewish history for Roman
readers, 145 ; his " Jewish War," origin
ally in Aramaic, 189 ; the untrust-
worthiness of his writings, 306 ; his
impeachment of the priesthood, 344 ; acts
as Governor of Gamala, 420 ; his military-
services, 421 ; his character, 422 ; his
treatment of Daniel's prophecy affecting
Rome, 437.
Joshua hen Gamala acquires the High Priest
hood by purchase, 303, 314 ; massacred by
bis co-religionists, 422, 459.
Judah the Holy, the compiler of the Mishnah,
281; biographical anecdotes from the
Talmud, 215, 401 et seq.
Judaism a rcligio licita at Rome, 35 ; friends
at court, 36 ; inimical to Christianity, 37 ;
as understood by Philo Judaeus, 168 et
seq. ; its spirit re- animated by secular in
spiration, 174 ; its quasi-deification of the
priesthood, 181 et seq.; abrogated, 491;
its developments, 496.
Judas of Galilee, his insurrection, 366.
Jude, Epistle of — work of a non-apostolic
writer, 51 (and 124) ; freely utilises Jewish
hagadoth and Apocryphal literature, ibid. ;
compared with Peter's second Epistle, 110
— 112; its evident priority thereto, 113,
120 ; story of the Desposyni, his grand
sons, 123 ; their adventure with Domitian,
ibid. ; family connexions of Jude, 124,
125; compared with Paul, 127 et seq. ;
literal version and commentary, 128 — 131 ;
style considered, 131 ; structural pecu
liarity, 132 ; allusions to secular literature,
132—134 ; its aim, 135 et seq.
Justin Martyr — his mistake about Simon
Magus, 64, 499 ; charge against the Jews
for tampering with the Septuagint, 142 ;
his statement as to contemporary Jewish
opinions, 352 ; his views respecting Anti
christ, 443.

Kabbalah— a species of Rabbinic exegesis, 155,
427, 500. (See also Gematria and Isopsephia.)
Kapparah, the substitutionary sacrifice of
modern Jews, 240 et seq.
Kedar, tents of, and the scattered nation,
85.
Kenites, their part in the temple services,
286, 304.
Kep7ias-party at Corinth, 49. (See also s.v,
Peter. )
Keren Happuk quaintly represented by Amal-
thea's Horn in the Septuagint, 143.
King, a provincial title of the Emperors of
Rome, 90; disfavoured by the Romans
generally, 431.
Kitzur Sh'lh, a Kabbalistic epitome of the
P P

(Two Tables of the) Law, quoted 172, 200,
395.
Knowledge and Wisdom, compared and con
trasted, 338.
Koheleth (Midrash) and the story of Moses'
terror at Sinai, 256.
Korah — the Way of, 131 ; reproached by
Moses, 206.
Kyria, in Second Epistle of John— whether an
appellative or a proper name, considered,
577—579, 581—583.

LaodicaBa, Ecclesiastical Council of, 100, 405.
La Scala — the traditional retreat of John at
Patmos, 393.
Last words, The (chronologically), ofthe New
Testament, 406.
Latest historic name of the Old Testament
narrative, 139.
Law of Moses— as regarded by Peter and by
James, 52; its delivery on Sinai,, 256;
Rabbinic legends concerning, alluded to
in the Acts and Hebrews, ibid. ; further
detail from the Talmud, 257; its super
session, ibid.
Legendary traces in the Septuagint Version,
143.
Lex Papia Poppaea, and its connexion with
Roman morals, 5.
Liturgy — Scriptural use of the word, 288 ; its
classic meaning, ibid.
Locusta the poisoner, a paid agent of Nero,
14 ; her part in the murder of Claudius,
19.
Luther — on the authenticity of the Epistles,
55 ; as to the authorship of Hebrews, 161,
187 ; endorses the Jewish opinion con
cerning Melchizedek, 220 ; respecting
James, 309 ; on justification by works,
355 et seq.; misquotes Romans (iii. 28),
361 ; on the Apocalypse, 430.
Lysias— his timely interference on behalf of
Paul, 12.

M.
Maccabees, Books of, referred to in Hebrews,
342.
Maimonides — his "MorehNevochim," quoted,
294; the "Tad Hachazakah, quoted,
617.
Maranatha,, 108, 429.
Marcion the Gnostic and Polycarp, 396, 586.
Marcionism, a perversion of Paul's teaching,
50.
Marcus, the first Gentile Bishop of Jerusa
lem, 297.
Marcus Aurelius— his view of Christianity,
89 ; his writings referred to, 315.
Maria del Popolo, The Church of, its super-
1 stitious connexion with Nero, 41.
Maries, The three, at the cross, 378.
Mark the Evangelist — referred to by Peter,
62; bis indebtedness to Peter, 70; inti
mate with Paul, 73 ; interpreter to Peter
at Rome, 318 ; accredited with authorship

642

INDEX.

of Apocalypse, 390 ; and with the founding
of the school of Alexandria, 154.
Marriage — regarded with disfavour at Rome,
5; extreme views, 7 ; honoured and con
secrated by Christianity, 60, 162 ; dis
paraged by tbe Essenes (a Jewish sent),
258; the Apostles not celibates, 368, 402.
Martineau's "Hours of Thought," quoted,
10.
Martyrdom, Era of, marked hy the Apoca
lypse, 410.
Mary, the hostess of tbe Apostles at Jeru
salem, 292.
Matthew — his mission and martyrdom, 47.
Melancthon, concerning Hebrews and Paul,
162.
Melchizedek— his priesthood, 205 ; historical
account contined to two verses of Genesis,
217 ; traditional details from the Midrash,
218; as regarded by Philo Judasus, 219;
of unknown parentage, ibid. ; attempted
identifications, 219 et t-eq. ; his relative
greatness, 223; his priesthood superior to
that of the Levites, 225; but inferior to
that of Christ, ibid.
Menander, the Greek poet, 134.
Messalina, wife of Claudius, 14; mother of
Britannicus and Octavia, 16 ; her attempt
upon Nero's life, and her wretched end,
ibid.
Messiah greater than the patriarchs, &c,
192.
Messiahs, The false, 415, 491.
Metatron, a Rabbinic anticipation of Messiah,
219, 221, 305.
Michael the Archaugel and the body of
Moses, 111, 119, 120, 129, 132.
Midrash Koheleth, a Rabbinic commentary
on Ecclesiastes, 256, 305.
Milton's "Paradise Lost," quoted, 569.
Mintm, the appellative of Christians in the
Talmud and Rabbinic writings, 305.
Ministering Angels — their office at Sinai, 256,
257.
Mpntanists and post-baptismal sins, 256.
Monotheism and Jewish thought, 836, 352.
Montanus, the nominal founder of an early
Christian sect, 158.
" Moreh Nevochim " (Guide of the Perplexed),
a work of Maimonides, 294.
Moses — legend of his death, 129 (see also 111,
119, 120, 132) ; the Ascension of Moses, an
apocryphal work, quoted by Jude, 137 ;
Moses the Good Shepherd, an anecdote
from the Midrash Shemoth, 401.
Motto of the Alexandrian School, 155,

N.
Nazarenes, a Judmo-Christian sect, 497.
Nero— son of Agrippina and Ahenobarbus, 14 ;
his parents banished, 15, and he con
signed to the care of his aunt Domitia,
ibid. ; his had training, ibid.; his life un
successfully attempted by the Empress
Messalina, 16, who shortly afterwards is
assassinated, ibid.; his mother then
marries the Emperor, her uncle, ibid.;
betrothed to the princess Octavia, 17 ;
his mother's ambitious intrigues, 18 ; she
poisons the Emperor, 20, and places Nero

upon the throne, ibid., under the tutelage
of Burrus and Seneca, ibid.; the early
years of his reign are favourable, 21 eb seq.;
his Kason with Acte, a Grecian odalisque,
22; he quarrels with Agrippina, 23; poisons
his brother-in-law, the rightful heir to the
throne, 24 ; contracts a mesalliance with
Poppasa Sabina, the wife of a boon com
panion, 25, who prompted his worst
crimes, in eluding the murder of his
mother, 25, 27, and eventually meets her
death from a kick by Nero, 28 ; suspected
of the burning of Rome, 29, but he
charges the incendiarism upon the
Christians, 33, 34, and mercilessly perse
cutes them, 38, with cruel sestheticism
making them, act as the iableaiue vivants
of his realistic plays, 39, 40; justly
regarded as the Antichrist, 41 ; saluted as
the Saviour of the World, ibid.; tbe
Romans revolt, 42, 43 ; he ignominiously
flees the city, 43, and commits suicide,
44.
Neropolis— its connexion with the rebuilding
of Rome, 30.
New Tear's Day and its solemnities, as ob
served by the Jews, 238.
Nicene Creed mis-read in the churches, 194.
Nicodemus, Gospel of, [quoted or alluded to,
77, 458.
Nicolas the Deacon, 398.
Nicolait<ns incur the indignation of John,
135 ; their origin and development, ibid.;
the error of Irenseus as to their founder,
398, 441.
Nishmath Chayim quoted for a remarkable
Messianic inference, 197.

O.
Octavia— daughter of Claudius, 16 ; married
to Nero, 17 ; present when Nero poisoned
her brother, 24 ; banished to Pandataria,
28 ; assassinated by order of her husband,
ibid.
Onias' Temple at Leontopolis, thought by
some to be " the Temple " referred to in
Hebrews, 183, 225.
Origen— the greatest of the Christian Fathers,
155 ; his peculiar exegesis, 156 ; his opinion
concerning Hebrews, 160 ; also respecting
Ep. James, 307 ; his account of the banish
ment of John, 409, and Peter's crucifixion,
594.

P.
Paetus Thrasea a noble Stoic, 9 : put to death
by order of Nero, 28 ; his character
sketched by Tacitus, 549.
Paganism — its decadence, 8.
Pantheon at Rome, 12.
Papyrus, the paper of John's Epistle, 584.
Paraclete — its adoption in Rabbinic writings,
325; its classic sense and patristic use,
535.
Paradise, its symbolic application hy the
Rabbis, 155.

INDEX

643

Parashah and Haphtarah, as read in apostolic
times, identified. 141.
Parousia, The, of early Christian anticipation,
108.
Pascal, noteworthy saying, quoted, 331.
Patmos, the exile home of John, 394 et seq.
Patristic views as to the authorship of He
brews, 603, 610.
Paul — humanely treated by the politarchs of
Thessalonica, 12 ; protected from the
Jews at Corinth by Gallio, brother of
Seneca, ibid.; delivered from the plots of
the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem by Lysias
and Festus, ibid.; his appeal to Cassar,
and his residence in Rome, ibid.; indi
cations of Alexandrianism in his epistles,
51.
Pella— the refuge of the early Christians, 388 ;
its geographical position, 412 ; massacre
of Jews at, 419 ; present identification,
461.
Penates, or household gods, 17.
Peregrinus, Death of, a tract by Lucian
illustrative of the Neronian persecutions,
258.
Peter^short sketch of his history, 60, 61 ;
autobiographic touches in his Epistles, 62 ;
his daughter Petronilla, ibid.; his wife's
martyrdom, 63 ; further details from tra
dition, 64, 65 ; his connexion with Rome,
*>5 (and 594), his crucifixion, 66 ; his
primacy considered, 593.
Peter, First Epistle of — approximate date,
67; characteristic features, 68; Gospel
reminiscences, 69, 70 ; influence of Paul
and James, 71—73 ; originality of the
author, 73; subject-matter, 74 — 76; Gospel
to the dead, 77 — 80 ; conciliatory tone of
the Epistle, SO, 81; historical circum
stances, 82 ; keynote of its teaching, 83 ;
to whom addressed, 83, 84; acquaintance
with Book of Daniel, 85 ; topical analysis,
86 — 95 ; acquaintance with Book of Pro
verbs, 95 ; closing admonitions, 96 ; salu
tation, 97.
Peter, Second Epistle of — its distinguishing
peculiarities, 97; canonicity, 98; external
evidence as to authenticity, 99; patristic
testimony, 100, 101 ; outline of contents,
102 ; singularities of style and expression,
103—106 ; points of similarity to Josephus,
107 et seq. ; contrasts, 108 ; coincidences to
Jude, 110—113; authenticity discussed,
114; internal evidence, ibid.; date, 115;
superiority to other contemporary writ
ings, &c, ibid.; summing up of evidence,
116 ; new translation, with running com
ment, 117—122.
Petronilla, a daughter of Peter, 62.
Philemon, Probable date of Epistle to, 7.
Philo Judaeus — the most celebrated of the
Alexandrian writers, 145 ; his ignorance
of the Hebrew scriptures, 146 ; his views
and opinions, ibid. ; his priestly origin,
ibid. ; and family connexions, 147 ; his wife
and her noteworthy saying, ibid. ; his visit
to Jerusalem, and his political services,
ibid. ; not a Christian, as traditionally re
ported, ibid. ; but helped to pave the way
for Christianity by his literary labours,
148 ; his peculiar exegesis of Holy Writ,
ibid. ; his influence on Apostolic writings,
160 et seq. ; his philosophy embodied in
the Alexandrian School (see s.v. Alexan

dria), 153 ; its part in the development of
Revelation, 153, 154 et seq. ; his influence
on the writer of Hebrews, 170 et seq.
specimens of Philonian allegory, 600—602
Philo's views about the Logos, 602, 603 _
coincidences between the works of Philo
and the Epistle to the Hebrews, 611
et seq.
Phinehas, " the seventh from Jacob," 130.
Phinehas, the son of Eli, referred to repre- ,
sentatively, 314.
Phoenix — accredited by Tacitus, the Roman
historian, 57; used illustratively by Cle
mens, ibid, .
Phylacteries, their exalted sanction, 497.
Pilate — the story of his letter to Tiberius con
cerning the Crucifixion, 11.
Pilgrimage feasts of Judaism — Hillel' s deci
sion respecting, 282 ; taken occasion of for
re- visiting Jerusalem, 293.
Pirke Rabbi Eliezer on the death of Isaac,
252.
Plato — a notable example of ethnic inspira
tion, 158 ; his influence on Philo JudEeus,
ibid. ; and indirectly on Christianity, ibid. ;
his works quoted or alluded to, 104, 174,
349.
Plautus* "Epedicus," quoted, 335.
Pliny — his letter to Trajan, 67 ; his views as
to Christianity, 85, 89.
Pompeii — its relics, 2 ; its sarcastic graffiti,
82.
Pompey's desecration of the Temple of Jeru
salem, 229.
Pomponia Grsecina: — her possible connexion
with Christianity, '33.
Poppaea Sabina — wife of Marcus Otho, trans
ferred to Nero, 25 ; her baneful influence,
28 ; a proselyte to Judaism, 36 ; possibly
connected with the persecutions of the
Christians, 37 ; eulogised by Josephus, ,
though Tacitus and Suetonius are unable
to praise her, ibid. ; premature death from
a kick by Nero, 28.
Post-baptismal sins, 211.
Prayer, Efficacy of, 347.
Prayer Book — its acknowledgment of Paul as
the writer of Hebrews, 162, 163.
Primacy of Peter considered, 593.
Prodigality of Imperial Rome, 3, 4, 92.
Proselytes at the court of Nero, 36 ; inimical
to Christianity, 37; injurious to Israel,
46.
Proverbs, Book of, familiar to Peter, 92, 95.
Ptolemy Philadelphus and the Septuagint,
140.
Pudens, a senator of Rome, 63.
Punishment, its disciplinary aim, 95.
Pythagorean Mysteries, 147, 150.

Q.
Quadratus and his reminiscences of John the
Divine, 403.
Quartodecimans — observers of the 14th Nisan
as Easter, 391.
Quirinus (Cyrenius) and the insurrection in
Galilee, 366.
Quotations from Greek poets in the New
Testament, 134 ; from Rabbinical writings,
see b.v, Talmud, and respective names.

644

INDEX.

R.
Rabbinic account of the pattern of the Taber
nacle, 175.
Rabbinism defined and estimated, 365.
Baca, its interpretation and use, 336, 350.
Ransom — mistaken notion of the early Church,
180, 233.
Rechabites in the Temple service, 286, 304.
Redemption — the views of Peter and Paul
compared, 73 — 75.
Renan — on the burning of Rome, 29 ; on the
authenticity of First Epistle of Peter, 67 ;
oh the Second Epi3tle, 97.
Repentance, the primary lesson of the Gospel,
207 ; its importance, 349.
Besh GaUtha, " Head of the Captivity," 312.
Rich and Poor providentially tested, 330.
Righteousness defined by Paul, 177 ; by
Apollos, ibid.
Robespierre's housekeeper, a Neronian par
allel to, 44.
Romans, Epistle to, its date, &c, 311.
Rome — its abnormal depravity, 1 et seq. ; its
wealth, prodigality,' &c, ibid. ; preponder
ance of its slave population, 2 ; its family
life, 5 ; literature and art, 5, 6 ; public
amusements, 6; its senate, &c, 7; its
moribund religion, 7, 8 ; its contact with
Christianity, 11, 12 ; its golden quinquen
nium, 21, 22 ; the burning of the city, 29—
32; St. Peter's connexion with Rome,
65 ; forecasts of its downfall, 427 ; famine
at, 445 ; pestilence, 446 ; Rabbinic legend
of its founding, 463 ; burning of the
Temple of Jupiter, 485 ; its overthrow, as
regarded by Esdras, ibid, ; Patristic evi
dence respecting St. Peter's visit, 594.
Rubellius Plautus, his assassination by Nero,
13.

S
Sabbath of Sabbatism, 237.
Sakya Mourn (Buddha)— his mission, 158.
Salem and. Jerusalem, 612, 613.
Salome— her ambitious request, 374
Sammael, the Ansel of Death, 199.
Sanhedrin of Jerusalem — its conspiracy
against Paul, 12; its libel of the Chris
tians, 36.
Satan — once regarded as the recipient of the
world's ransom, 180, 223 ; Rabbinic conceit
as to the abeyance of his adverse prero
gative on Day of Atonement, 238.
Saturnalia of Rome, 23.
Sectarianism and its developments, 371.
Seneca — co-tutor with Burrus of the youthful
Nero, 17 ; his benign influence over his
pupil, 21 ; his untimely end, 28 ; his
opinions quoted, 549.
Sepher-ha- Chayim— a Rabbinical treatise on
eschatology, 347-
Septuagint version of Old Testament under
taken at instance of Ptolemy Phila-
delphus, 140 ; its bearing upon the Gentile
world, ibid. ; upon Jews and Judaism, 141 ;
the anniversary of its publication kept as
& festival by the Alexandrians, ibid.; and
as a fast by the Palestinian Jews, 142 ;
Justin Martyr's complaint respecting,
ibid, ; its mistranslations, 142 et seq. ; its

local* bias, 144; regarded by some 'as an
inspired translation, 398.
Sermon on the Mount compared with Epistle
of James. 284, 317, 329.
S7tabbat7i shahbathon— an appellation of the Day
of Atonement, 237.
Shakespere — Timon of Athens (iii. 6) quoted,
552 ; Antony and Cleopatra (ii. 1), 568.
Shechinah— tbe sole prerogative of Israel, 200 ;
a Jewish name for the Messiah, 334.
Shema Israel— its daily repetition, 336 ; the
keynote of Judaism, 336, 352.
Shemoth Rabba — a Jewish commentary,
quoted, 330, 401.
Sheshach — a scriptural pseudonym for Babel,
472.
Sibylline Oracles — their use at Rome, 35 ;
their forecast of the downfall of Rome,
427 et seq.; their illustration of the
Apo?alypse, 456, 496.
Silauian law, 7.
Silas, or Silvanus as a New Testament author,
his claims, 184.
Simeon of Mizpeh — one of the earliest writers
in the Talmud, 238.
Simon Magus — the legend of his contest with
Peter, 64.
Simon son of Giora — a renowned leader in the
Jewish war, 418, 422, 424.
Simon son of Onias, the model high-priest,
616.
Simon Zelotes— his death by crucifixion, 48.
Simony of the priesthood, 314.
Sirach — the son of, his literary influence on
the Epistle of James, 318.
Slavery— its prevalence at Rome, 2j Jews
rarely enslaved, and why, 91.
Socrates, the Athenian philosopher, his
inspiration 158.
Socrates, the historian, and the Nestorian
sect, 557.
Solfatara — its suggestive connexion with
Hebrews, vi. 8, 215, 454.
Solomon, the Wisdom of, 145.
Stoicism — its prevalence in Apostolic times,
9 ; its premium on suicide, ibid. ; its
decadence, 10 ; compared with Chris
tianity, ibid. (See also Cato, - Cleanthes,
&c.)
Stoning of Jeremiah, 253.
Suetonius— his idea of Christianity, 89, 416.
Suicide, the panacea of Stoicism, 9 ; its
frequency, and its varied nomenclature,
ibid.

T.
Tabernacle— its divine original, 175 ; reference
thereto (aud not to the Temple), hy the
author of Hebrews, 230.
Tableaux vivants of Roman plays, 40.
Tables of the Law, their traditional Bize and
weight, 230.
Tacitvis — his aocount of the Roman Senate, 7 ;
of Nero, 28 ; his view of Christianity, 82,
89; his description of the Jews -oi his
time, 416.
Talmud of Babylon — a compend of the tra
ditions of the elders (Matt. xv. 2), its
maUrid, 281 ; its compiler, &c, ibid.
Tanchuma (Midrash), a Jewish, comment,
quoted, 202, 327, 489.

INDEX.

645

Targums, or Chaldee paraphrases of the Old t
Testament Scriptures, cited or alluded to,
63, 129, 144, 195, 198, 206, 209, 217, 220, 230,
247, 253, 256, 443, 449, 600, 612.
Tartarus, a classic term, made use of by Peter,
103, 119.
Te Denms strangely associated with autos da
fe,338.
Temple of Onias at Leontopolis, built in
imitation of the Temple at Jerusalem,
183,225.
Ten tribes of Israel never to he restored to
Palestine, 325.
Tertullian — concerning Nero and the persecu
tion of the Christians, S8, 67, 82 ; his
mention of Jude the earliest on record,
122 ; accredits Barnabas with writing
Hebrews, 184 ; bis pronounced views on
celibacy, 368, 402.
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, quoted
or referred to, 178, 328, 342, 391, 497, 542,
597, 598.
Tetragrammaton, the ineffable name JeHovaH,
240.
Theodore of Mopsuestia — his rejection of the
Petrine Epistles, 67, 100; ignores the
Apocalypse, 405 ; unfavourable to John's
Epistles, 576. '
Thomas, the Apostle of India, 48.
Tiberius Cassar — his character sketched by
Suetonius, 12 ; the tragic end of his family,
13.
Tiberius, Procurator of Palestine— his relation
to Philo, 36 ; made Prefect of Alexandria,
419 ; his temporising character, ibid.
Tillin, Midrash, a Rabbinic commentary on
Psalms, 197, 199.
Titus— his acquaintance with Nero, 24; the
conqueror of Judsea, 479 ; his grant of
land to Josephus the historian, 487 ;
blockades Jerusalem, 488; anxious to pre
serve the Temple, ibid.; his purpose to
-destroy Christianity with. Judaism, ibid.;
the destruction of the city of Jerusalem,
489 ; eulogised by Josephus, but branded
with infamy by the rabbis, ibid., note.

Unity of God— its pre-eminence in the creed
of Judaism, 336, 352 ; unity not uniformity,
137.
Unpardonable sins from a Rabbinic point of
view, 570.
Unstrung bow, a forceful metaphor, 401.
Uxoriousness of the Roman Emperors, 13.

V.
Vehmgericht, The (a mediaeval tribunal of
punishment), referred to, 415.

Veil of the Temple— its material, dimensions,
&c, 228; its symbolic teaching, 246.
Vespasian — his miracles, 480; his history
elucidative of revelation, 481, 482.
Victorinus of Pettau— his interpretation of
the Apocalypse, 405, 450.
Virgin Mary— her tomb at Ephesus, 379.
Vine, The, an early ecclesiastical legend, 397.
Visitation of the Sick (Church Service), re
ferred to, 162, 347.
Vulgate Version — one of its perversions, 252.

W.
Wills— unknown to the Jews, borrowed from
Roman usage, 235.
Wisdom, Book of — its Alexandrian origin,
145; coincidences with the Pauline
Epistles, 159. For various references,
&c, see Index of Quotations.
World — condition of in Apostolic times, 1/efc
seq. ; compared with the Church, 59 ;
state of when Jerusalem was destroyed,
425.

Xenophon, the physician of Claudius, 19.
Xenophon's Memorabilia, 328.

"Tad Hachazakah," a comprehensive digest
of the Talmud, quoted, 617.
"Yalkut Chadash," a Rabbinic miscellany,
quoted, 192, 241.
"Yal knt Shimoni,'' a Rabbinic miscellany,
quoted, 192, 347, 485

Zabdia, or Zebedee — his social status, 365;
his death, 369.
Zachariah, the son of Baruch — his massacre,
422.
Zealots, a political faction, the Horns-Rulers
Of Jewry, 340, 346, 415, 418, 446.
Zechariah, the son of Berachiah— the refer
ence in Matthew probably an erroneous
gloss, 422 ; his murder, 458.
Zeno, the Stoic philosopher, referred to, 9,
Zerubbabel, Temple of, 229.
" Zohar," a noted Kabbalistic work, referred
to, 256, 368, 550.
Zuk, the destination of the scape-goat, 239.

PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE
QUOTED OE EEFEREED TO.

G

ENEE

IS.

Genesis (continued).

i. 1

P

.152

xli. 12

p

. 119

2

250

15,
16
119
6
121
xlvii. 9
81, 252
14
328
31
252
ii. 17
207
xlviii. 2
252
21
601
14,
17-20 25
iii. 5
120
xlix. 1
87
18
214
10
143
iv. 4
US,
251
19
. 2
7
600
1.24
89
8-
-10
251
26
252
10
251,257,343,
v. 24
447
251
ExODDS.
vi. 2
119,
133
ii. 1
p
. 143
3
342
14
253
3-5
341
iii. 1
144
6
144
5
118, 531
8
91
6
256
9
251
14
333
vii. 11
121
iv. 6
143
24
455
16
144 ,
xiv. 18,
19
217
22
256
22
218
24
144
XT. 6
249,336,357
v. 2
151
9
602
Ti. 12,
15
143
9,
10
284
¦vii. 3
201
15
601
ix. 22
451
xvi. 4
579
x. 21
256
xvii. 1
613
xii.
233
7
252
22
237
16
6i '0
36
87
xviii. 6
601
xiii. 18
143
12
92
19
252
xix. 3
328
xiv. 19
128
21
130
xvi. 16,
32
230
xxii. 12
357
33
2::0
16
603
33,
34
230
17
209
xvii. 1-
-7
2.i2
xxiii. 4
252
16
144
xxv. 9
336
xix. 1-
-6
256
23-
-30
228
3
144
xxvi. 24
252
4
462
xxvii. 35
255
5,
6
71, 80
39
252
6
88
xxviii. 8
255
10
236
13
252
10,
11
233
xxxi. 42
207
16
256
xxxii. 10
252,
601
18
256, 257
24,
&c.
152
xx. 5
89
xxxiii. 18
612
12
256
xxxiv. 49
333
22
235
xxxvii. 9
453
xxi. 6
243
xl. 8
119
xxii. 22— 24
329
V
Exodus (continued).
xxiii. 7 p. 357
20
128
33
235
xxiv. 3—7
235
5
236
6—8
85
7
237
8
85,262
9—11
144
10
144
xxv. 8
144
16-21
230
31—37
228
40
227
xxvi. 6
2 13
31—35
209, 228
36,37
228
xxviii. 1
206
36
391
xxix. 4
233
9
22.5
16
236
21
246
36
193
38-42
225
xxx. 6
613
10
613
20
246
xxxi. 8
231
xxxiii. 13
236
xxxiv. 7
232
xl.
236
5
613
9,10
237
20
230
Leviticus.
iv. 3 p
.206
12
259
v. 3
329
11—13
236
vi. 13-16, 20 225
16
615
19—22
225
30
259
vii. 12
260, 261
viii. 6
246
30
237,246
ix. 7
206
x. 9
233
10
228
xi.
233
xiv. 4, 5
417
648

PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE

Leviticus (continued).
xiv. 4—6 p. 236

xv. 5

236

8

233

16,

17

112

xvi.

233, 614

2,

13

240

4

246, 286
6,
11
232
8—10
239
12,
16
232
14
85,615
17
240
18
613
19
85
24
615
26-
-28
236
27
259
30
238
31
237
xvii. 5
233
11
236
11,
12
225
xxi.
246
7, 13, 14
221
i 10
225
17
225
xxii. 2
225
5
283
6
236
9
570
xxiii. 10
883
xxiv. 5,
9
228
xxvi. 29
343
Numbers.
t. 15
P
.243
Ti.
233
2
238
3
233
26
334
viii. 21
547
xi. 29
3U
38
371
xii. 7
201
8
141
xiT. 14
144
28—30
202
XT. SO
570
xTi. — xTiii.
2i '6
xvi. 22
255
47
013
xvii. 10
230
12
225
xviii. 7
23 J
22
570
22, 23, 26 222
xix. 6
237
9
233
XX. 1-
-13
2112
13
130
xxix.
614
12—36
240
xxxi. 6
63
22—24
2311
xxxii. 12
143
Deuteronomy.
i. 13
p
338
iv. 6
838
12
256
2-1
257
DEUTEROI'
Ol
t (continued).
I. Samuel (continued)
v. 9
p. 341
xv. 12
p. 143
vi. 4
336,
352
22
243, 329
ix. 19
256
xviii. 11
253
x. 2
280
xix. 10, 12
253
2,
5
230
xx. 30
143
12
329
xxviii. 6
193
16
201
xi. 14
344
H. Samuel.
xiv. 1
104
v. 6
p. 612
xv. 17
246
vii. 14
194, 195
xvii. 2,
7
247
viii. 2
458
xviii. 15
201
xii. 14
335
xx. 5
235
xiii. 23
217
16
235
xvii. 34
253
22,
23
260
xxiii. 20
253
23
91
xxiii. 14
143
I. Kings.
19
xxiv. 14,
xxv. 4
26
xxvi. 2
5
17
29
15
305 343 91
233 888
265 327
343
iii. 11, 12
vi. 22
vii. 49
viii. 9
63
xiii. 7
22
p. 327 232, 613
228 230 235253
458
xxviii. 10
25
335325
xvii. 1
22,23
348 243
35 36
xxix. 1823
325230 255
214
xviii. 4,13
21
42
347 2.54
327348
xxxi. 6,
21
xxxii. 5
8
259
227548
xix. 8, 13
10
16
2.54253545
8
143,
198
XX. 11
143
10,
11
341
xxiii. 26
253
11
342,
462
H. Ktnits.
3540
183,190,247
247
i. 9—14
p. 372
43
195
10
457
xxxiii.
448
iii. 22
444
1-
-3
256
iv. 14
253
2
198
35—37
2.53
36
247
ix. 20
328
xxxiv. 6
600
x. 15— 23
xi. 7
286 77
Joshua.
xii. 2
211
xv. 9
335
i. 5
p. 259
xvi. 15
236
8
142
xvii. 14
201
v. 15
118
xxi. 12, 13
458
x. 3
217
xxiii. 29
484
20
214
xiii. 2223
xxi. 45
63, 81
253
143
I. Chronicles.
ii. 55 p. 286
xxiv. 30
143
iv.
448
32
252
xxi. 13
xxiii. 13
247225
Judges.
xxviii. 2022
259
448
v. 4
p. 257
xxix. 15
252
19
484
23
195
vi. 2
254
ix. 4
224
IT. Chronicles.
xiii. 8
xiv. 6
xviii. 6
211253335
iv. 8, 19
17
v. 10
xxiv. 20, 22
p. 228214
xix. 10,
11
612
230253
I.
Samuel.
xxvi. 16—21
19
206231
ii. 8
p. 344
xxix. 22
236
xii. 6
201
xxxv. 3
230
QUOTED OE EEFEBEED TO.

649

Ezra.

Psalms (continued).

ii. 61,

62 p

.221

Iii. 2—5
lTii. 5

p. 338 203

Nehemiah.

Ux. 15

346

iv. 5
vii. 63,
x. 38
xi. 22

64P

349
221222139

lxviii. 1728
lxix. 2
lxxi.
lxxii. 13

198, 256
238249286
344

Esther.

lxxiv. 19
lxxvi. 2

447 612

ix. 19,

22 p

.458

lxxviii. 2
lxxix. 5

156 217

Job

lxxxiii. 5

221

i. 6
iv. 18
vii. 7
xiv. 2
xv. 30
xvi. xix. 26,

P
27

194236,333
343 327
327447447 144

lxxxv. 2
Ixxxvii. 1
lxxxviii. 8
lxxxix. 50, 51
xc. 4
xcv.' 6
10
xcvi. 10

3-192.51375 253
204201202142

xxviii. 12
xxix. 1825
xxxi. 10
xxxv. 14

338343144143144
xcvii. 7
cii. 3
15
25
civ. 14
35
ox.
195
343327 195196105
573 196,218,225, 244
xxxviii. 28
33
xiii. 14
328
328 143
Psalms.
14
195, 218
206,209,214
ii.
P
225
' cxiv. 7
257
7
194, 204, 209
cxvi. 17
260
vii. 13
444
cxviii. 22
88
viii. 6
195
CX1Y.
282, 285, 308
x. 6
343
20
841
27
313
cxx. 3, 4
338
xi. 7
P
547
5
84
xii. 2
327
cxxii. 3
485
xv. 1-
-5
248
cxxxvi. 6
121
xvi. 10
225
7
328
xvii. 15
144
cxxxviii. 19
201
xix.
560
cxxxix. 11
328
8-
-11
329
. 16
•244
xxi. 3
327
cxl. 13
338
6
197
exlvi. 2
325
17
329
xxii.
198, 199
Proverbs.
xxiv. 2
121
iii. 5,6
p. 318
xxix. 1
194
11
318
xxxii. 1,
2
349
11,12
2.54
6
250
21
198
xxxiii. 12-
-16
93
25
92
xxxiv. 8
88
34
318, 339
10
255
iv. 26
255
sxxviii. 7
202
vii. 16—23
328
xxxix. 12
252
Tiii. 22
152
13
84
ix. 5
21s
14
81
31
96
xl. 6,
7
241,243
x. 12
95,318,349
7
329
xii. 10
552
12
243
xiii. 3
328
xiii. 3
144
xri. 27
318
4
120
XTii. 9
95
xliv. 23
260
15
357
xiv.
195
xix. 3
:;::^
6
444
xxi. 10
341
6,
7
195
xxiii. 27
143
xlvi. 5
251
84
318
1. 5
234
XXT. 14
130
16—20
338
XXTi. 11
120
Proverbs (continued).
27
p
.338
xxrii. 21
95
xxviii. 21
255
xxx. 12
318
13
328
Ecclesiastes.
v. 2
r
. 318, 328
x. 8
299, 305
xii. 6
338
Canticles.
iv. 5
p
.103
vi. 8
581
9
579
viii. 6
341
Isaiah.
i. 6
p
.347
10
457
10-
-17
236
11-
-17
243
18
239
21
217, 425
22
343
ii. 2
486
5
533
12
327
12-
-19
447
iii. 4
130
9
457
10
304
17
143
v. 1-
-30
323
23
357
vi. 1-
-8
614
vii. 6
472
9
1.55
viii.
198
14
SS
18
199
21
214
ix. 5
613
6
144, 217
8
118
x. 3
89
xii. 3
564
xiii.
595 ,
6
343
9, 10, 17 453
10
447
xiii., xxiii.,
xxiv
485
xiv. 4-
-12
595
12
452
18
458
31
343
xv. 3
343
xvii. 5
483
xxiv. 22
249
xxv. 7—9
230
xxvi. 11
247
21
447
xxvii. 13
109
xxviii. 16
88
xxix. 13-
-21
260
xxx. 4
2.54
xxxi. 9
486
xxxii. 1
217
16
121
xxxiii.
343
15
248
650

PASSAGES OF SCRIPTUEE

Isaiah {continued),
xxxiv. 3, 4 p. 447

4

121

11

458

xxxvii. 3

414

xxxviii. 11

144
xl. 6
331
6,
7
327
xli. 8
336
19
448
xliii. 20
89
xliv. 4
223
xlvi.
595
xlvii. 5 -
-7
579
xlviii. 8
213
9
89
22
326
xlix. 2
448
1. 3
447
5
243
Iii. 5
91
liii. 7
313
9
01
10
552
11
357
11,
12
91
12
91, 236
liv. 4
485
5
88!)
11
327
12
485
lvi. 1
248
7-lvii. 5 111
10
129
lvii. 19
260
20
130, 327
21
326
lix. 16
225
lx. 1
223
8
254
21
8,52
bri. 1
545
lxii. 4
227
lxiii. 1—6
458
3
483
4
447
9
257
11
282
17
201
lxiv. 10
448
10,
11
489
Ixv. 25
121
" lxvi. 7,
8
461
Jeremiah.
ii. 12
I
.339
17
831
iii. 3
314
8
453
14
227
iv. 3
214
23
328, 453
23-
-26
447
v. 14
457
24
344
vi. 20
213
vii. 4
3,2
16
571
21-
-23
243
viii. 7-
-12
23:',
xi. 14
571
xiv. 9
335
11
571
Jeremiah (continued)
xv. 16 p
.456
xvi., xxv.
485
xvii. 26
200
xviii. 7—101
xxii. 13 |
343
xxiii. 5
223 '
14
457
26
119"
xxv. 29
96
xxvi. 23
253
xxxi. 22
227
31—34
227, 234
33,34
242
xxxii. 4
584
23
253
xxxv.
286
xxxviii. 33, 34
244
xl.
574
Ii. 1
472
27
456
41
472
Lamentations.
ii. 7, 8 p
458
iv. 7
280, 286
Ezekiel.
ii- 91 „
iii. 3/ P
456
viii. 11
231
ix. 4,6
448
xiv. 3
58S
21
446
xvi. 32
339
48,49
457
xvii. 6
223
10
327
xviii. 23
121
xix. 1—9
-103
12
327
xxi. 26
181
xxii. 31
483
xxiii. 25
341
xxTi., xxvii.
485
xxxii. 7, 8
447,453
xxxiii. 11
121
21
260
xxxiv. 1
130
1—10
343
11
91
xxxvi. 5
247
25
246
2=,  27
227
27
341, 342
xxxTii.
343
10
458
xxxviii., xxxix.
485
xl.
457, 573
xliii. 2
448
xliv. 2
271
17
2S6
Daniel.
i. 1-3 p
86
iii.
253
25
196
31
86
iv. 1
so
14
77
vi.23
253
25
86
Daniel (continued).
vii. 8—20
p. 466
9
448
10
256,444
13
448
24
463
25
457
viii. 10
318, 461
13
457
17
193
26
457
ix.24, 25
236
27
425
x. 5
448
6, 11, 12 448
13
129,449
13, 20, 21 198
20, 21
439
xi. 31
425
36
480
xii. 1
159,439,456
4—9 7—11
]¦ 457
11
425
13
193
31
357
HOSEA.
ii. 16
p. 227
23
89
iv. 17
343
vi. 6
236,243,329
viii. 1
453
x. 7
44
8
447
xii. 6
329
xiii. 14
414
15
327
xiv. 3
260
4
349
Joel.
ii. 3
p. 451 i
10—31
447
23
344
28
545
iii. 4,15
447
iv. 2,11,14 483
Amos.
ii. 6
p. 344
7
283
. 11,12
301
iv. 1
131
v. 4
248
12
283,346
21—24
243
vi. 5—7
485
vii. 6—9
458
ix. 1
144
12
283,335
Jonah.
iii. 10
p. 343
iv. 8
327
MlCAH.
i. 4
p. 121
iv. 9
414
IS
483'
v. a
414
QUOTED OE EEPEREED TO.

651

lIlCAH (continued).

Ti.

6—8 p

243

6-9

329

8
248
vii.
8
199
Hahum.
i.
6 p
417
iii.
5
143
ECabakkok.
ii.
3 p
121
3,4
248
4
177,178,
iii
12
483
Zephaniah.
iii.
8 p
483
Haggai.
ii.
6, 7 p
257
7—9
229
Zechariah.
iii.
1, 2 p
120,223
1—3
130
2
131,
600
3,4
334
iv.
457
2
448
3,11
457
4,5
448
10
449
14
206
vi.
11—13
246
12
2015,
223
13
214,
218
ix.
9
217
11
262
XL
1
240
xii.
10
493
11
484
Triii
1
233
9
449
xiv.
11
486
Malachi.
ii
17 p
.120
iii
1
257
2
447
5
343
6
259,
333
iv
2
217,
223
II. Esdras.
V
3 p
.449
xi
1
463
1,36
464
30 )
32, 35 J
479
42—46
485
45
285
xii
42
105
viii
39-^7
325
XV
8
447
TOBIT.
i.16 i- i
.334
17
453
Tobit (continued).
viii. 3 p. 455
xii. 15
xiii. 6
198,449193
Judith.
iv. 4 p. 612
v. 18 84
ix. 20 333
Wisdom.
ii. 1—24 p.
6—20 8
1217
24
iii. 27
iv. 11
v. 89—14
16
vi. 1 — 4
1212,23
vii. 17—19 17—20
25,26 26
ix. 15
x. 5 7
xi. 6,7
15,1617
xii. 10 16 1 1,9
vm xvi
xvii.
2,16,17
17
xviii. 15, 16
22
318346318, 327
327 259 199
114 89
199
318 318,343327159 86
341
328 318 158, 178
193, 329
145, 159
318, 336
129
452 484 145
256, 333
318 159, 251
484 484 599 119
203 178
Eoclesiasticus.
i. 1-
28
ii. 1318
iii. 3
30
iv. 14
v. 11 14
vii. 10
xii. 11 12
xiv. 1923
XT. 9
1111-
xx. 7
1528
xxii. 24
xxriii. 10, ]
15,!
xxix. 15
xxxiv. 2
¦11 p. 339318, 327
346 2472' 10
200338, 341
318, 328
338327318,343 329343318, 329
-17
318332318 318, 327
200 338318337221343
Eoclesiasticus (continued).
xxxiv.
19
P
200
22
343
xxxv.
2,
14
329
22
121
xli.
23
318, 327
xliv.
14,
15
404
xiv.
6—22
616
11
225
xlviii.
1
457
1.
5—16
616
Baruch.
iv.
35
P
485
I. Maccabees.
i
21
P
228
ii
28,
29
254
38
253
iii
45,
51
457
49
301
iv.
49
228
60
457
ix.
26
253
xii.
12
253
II. Maccabees.
i
27
P
84
ii
7
227
iii
39
118
iv
48
129
V
26
253
27
254
vi
11
253,254
18,
30"!
vii
7-
-10
253
9— 36J
28
250
ix
19
326
X
6
254
xiii
14
190
ni.
Maccabees.
(Extr
i Apocryphal Book.)
ii
5
I
.129
Matthew.
i. 5 p. 253, 351
19 282
ii. 11—15 461
12, 22 227
23 342
iii. 8—12 267
9 352, 358
iv. 1—11 342
21 265
V. 3 , 318,331,3
4 318
9 339
10—12 318
10—14 259
11 96
12 88
20 336
22 318
24 318
25 70. 99
83 318
652

PASSAGES OF SCRIPTUEE

Matthew (continued)

Matthew (continued). '

Mare (continued).

v. 33— 37 p

318

xxi. 21 p

.120,327,334

xi21

p. 275

35—36

347

22

327

xiii. 7

318,445

44

282'

xxii. 23

179

7,8

446

48,

318, 326

44

218

8

414

vi. 14")

xxiii.

343

9

318

15 [

318

6

834

14

425

19 j

8—10

337

29

318

22

543

12

331

32

318

24

318, 327

16-22, 25 281

xiv. 70

285

25

251

25—37

253

xv. 7

340

26

156

35

251, 422

40

266

' 30

331

36

202

xvi. 18

207

vii. 1

335, 346

xxiv. ''

246

1-5 \
7-12 j
318
2
3
259
236
Luke.
16, 17
338
4,7
444
21,23
318
5,11
544
i. 6
p. 282
viii. 29
336
6,8
446
11
231
ix. 34
193
7
445,446
36
273
37
584
8
414
43
590
i. 3
265, 269
13
326
50
275
23
489
14
483
52,53
344
xi. 19
830
15
425
58
560
36
560
16
462
68
89
xii. 28
233
22
96, 259
ii. 26
227
31
570
28
434
29
129
31,32
208
29
121,432,453
44
273
37
337, 357
29—34
448
iii. 11
267
39
339
31
449
iv. 5,6
252
43-45
208,455
34
202,489
24
287
45
120
37
69
25
347
46
275
51
253
35
71
49,50
289
xxv. 5
119
v. 10
265
50
124
14
557
39
88,265
55
273
21
86
vi. 15
366
xiii. 17
254
35
258
16
124
23
333
_ 35—46
335
20
334,344
26
331
xxvi. 64
304
22
259
39, 40, 49 236
69
285
22,23
326
55
266
xxvii. 32
259
32
91
57
287
46
199
35
88
xiv. 10
254
51
246,459
36
346
31
199
56
266
vii. 40
590
XV. 1
263
xxviii. 2
459
42
118
1—9
260
19
347
50
335
16
370
20
236
viii. 19
275
22
454
24
327
xvi.
594 •
31
454
4
339
Mark.
48
335
6—12
370
ix.25
247
18,23
69, 88
i.15 i
.207
31
259
28
246, 489
19
265
35
118
xvii. 3
458
20
365
49
370,371
4
114
iii. 14
201
54
268
9—13
458
17
366
54 55
373
21
282
18
265
j.. 18
454,462
24—27
69
31
275
30
256, 326
xviii. 6
541
iv. 34
119
34
347
6, 8, 9
441
vi. 3
266,278,287
55
373
17,18
593
4
287
xi. 13
327
22
69
IS
347
20
233
xix. 12
368
vii 1—15
233
21
541
21
826
5—13
281
26
213
26
213
20—23
329
28
124, 275
28
69, 326
viii. 12
202
31
259
xx. 2
445
ix. 2
91
40
329
12
327
20—26
336
xii. 25
87
23
375
33,38
370
35
71
24
376
43-47
441
54
223
25—27
593
X.27
213
55
327
28
233
32'
374, 584
58
70
xxi. 13
340
42
376
siv.ll
331
QUOTED OE EEFEREED TO.

653

Luke

(continued).

xiv. 12

P

.273

xvi. 31

458

xvii.

246

9,

10

357

xviii. 3

70

7,

8

447

12

282
14
185,331
27
213
xix. 3
207, 266
44
89
xx. 17, 18
88
21
304
xxi. 9"
327
19
247
20
388, 412
21
462
24
457
25
449
25,
26
4S4
26
257
28
233
xxii. 20
236
24
370
24—26
593
28
326
31
70
32
83
43
207
vn'ii 84
304
36
448
46
91
xxiv. 12
71, 87, 329
18
269
21
233
'
370
27
244
31
380
39
531
41
207
51
91
John.
i 1
p
531
2
510
3
148
3-
-10
193
4
531, 533
4-9
540
5
533
6
391
7
563
9
227, 531
11
510
12
531
13
331, 531
14
233,493,531
14,
17
563
18
531
45
563
ii. 2
565
4
124, 275
13
493
17
391
19
233
iii. 3,
7,31
328
5
564
16
542
19
533
23
612
36
516
John (continued).
iv. 6 p
493
10
564
14, 36-)
22 j
510
35—38
383
37
560
44
287
v. 24
510
31—37
563
32
591
33
563
35
328
36
563
39, 40, 45 563
vi.
564
6, 61, 64 370
25
584
27
510
29
584
40, 47, 54 510
45
365
51—56
259
vii. 1—10
276, 289
4
289
5
271, 289
7
124, 329
33,42
342
35
324
38
564
viii. 12
533
14-)18/
563
21—24
570
31
538
32
329
32—10 33
563352
34
120
44
199
51
493
56
252 '
58
333
ix. 5
328
31
568
x. 4
584
7—9
303, 346
11,15,-)17, 18 j
552
16
91
22 '
235
25
563
36
201
xi. 9,10
538
33
370
41,42
568
48-50
422
52
84,562
64
373
55
88
xii — xvii.
516
xii. 16
370
25
510
30
118
31
462
xiii. 1
539
1—6
69
1, 3.)
11, 21 f
370
12,15
539
14
347
18
347,365
John (continued).
.23 25
34,35
37-
xiv. 6
101516
16,1716-261726
xv. 4,5,',
5
11132627
xvi. 7
1213)
14; 23
17
23
xviii. 4
14152628
37
xix. 11 252627
. 2,33
5 9, 15, 20 570
11 128
11,17 14—26
15
376541560536, 539
552 246,493,534233
560523, 570
583 535
563590 546
547531552, 590
535, 563
563 563
493563 560570
560 510, 546
531,573,574
560
3537
:. 2
5—116
121421—232930 31
.. 45 6
7,208
15161717,18192124
3:33562370
422 377273
329 555, 563
90, 328, 443
260,269,270275, 369
367,387,510
370, 591
379, 565
379, 563
87,329
380,391493
379 525380541206
96,381
381,553,554118 66
381 563, 591
654

PASSAGES OF SCRIPTUEE

13

124, 381

14

276, 290

16

88

17

117

ii. 2

112, 118

9

85,579

9—12

312

15

114

16—20

480

17,18

,545

17,31

87

20

109

22

87

27

225

32 I
32—36)

71

36

201

38

347

40

71,489

47

244

iii 6

87

12

109,114,117

13

91, 262

15

71,185,199,

254

16

326, 347

17

87

18

71

19—21

489

19—26

71

19,31

90

24

87

iv. 1

381

1-6

335

10

71, 347

11

71

13

365

13,19

404

21

262

24

114

v. 17

335, 494

28—32

90

30

71

31

185, 199

32

71

40—42

90

41

326, 590

vi. 1

189

6

207

9

263

vii. 2

208

6, 29

84

12

334

16,43

222

20

252

12

256

38

203

52

345

53

198

viii.

499

1

38 1

11

477

14

388

17

207

20

87

88

203

ix.

500

iS)

590

84

347

x. 2

71

Acts (continued). . 131, 334
227 91

x. 2022 2834

3940 41 4243
xi. 19 2630
xii. 2
14 1720
25
xiii. 3
15

87
545

71

44
xiv. 15
xv. 257 9
10 11
13 13-21 14—21171920 23
24
xvi. 14
xvii. 6
1213 29
30
xviii. 25
1824 24-282526
xix. 1
9
26

1920,27

294266, 403
207292553 62, 294
194262185, 358
37
236 347
128, 295
494 65,87 88, 296
233,281,329, 335
52
266, 296
351321 283
296 258, 262
326 64, 321
37,582
517 90

10 17-20 21
2-125 27

25

Acts (continued).
xxi. 29, SO p. 544
38 340
xxii. 1112
xxiii. 1

206

XXIV.

XXVL

12 22
26 5,
16 5 7
101119 2628
xxvii. 14
xxviii. 17
22 2831

117 87
582
334 184, 301
187186, 187
190 186186201, 596
236 589
331 262589326248 80,89
130, 259
266118
851 125, 293
354 88

179
340

77,262
329, 494
325345 253201262 8297
590491 82
222

Romans.

i. 1 P

. 324, 325

4

194

10

590

16

328

17

178,248

18

87

20

159

24

542

28

105

ii. 4

105, 121

6—10

360

8

534

13

357, 359

17

327

17—20

352

18

207

22

37

24

335

29

92

iii 8

121, 127

20

357

21—24

56

22

176

24

249

25

176,179,200,

536

27

829

28

350, 361

iv. 2

350

3

859

3, 9, 22 357

4

308

8

251

11

92

13

251

17—19

252

18

356

20

327, 333

25

76, 236

v. 1

350

2

74

16

328

20

121,554

vi. 1
1—15

} 75

2

91

QUOTED OR EEFEEEED TO.

655

Romans (coi

itinued).

vi. 4 p

. 75,308

6

72

7

75

12

542

12—14

7.5

vii. 14

224

17

519

22

92

23

72,89

viii. 2

329

3

75, 200

4

103

13

75

15

76, 87, 333,

560

18

72

19,20

5)3

19—22

333

21

120

24

175

24,25

249

34

72

ix. 2

121

5

121

15

180

16

201

19

332, 336

25

89

25—32

72

29

343

32

1. 07

32, 33

88

X. 7

28;.:

9

356

32

2U7

xi. 22

92

33

442

36

163

xii. 1

88,241

1-21

190 247

2

72,87

5

356

6

72

8

327

l!}

258

13

258, 589

18

163

19

163,183,190, 247
359

xii. — xvi.

xiii. 1 — 4

li

1-7

13,33,159,

443

5

34

10

3.35

11,12

4s9

12

540

13

260

xiv.

259

7

190

21

441

xv. 14

118

25

268

33

163,190,262
582 184, 186

3

7

267 "~

11

33

17

72

20

262

23

589

Romans (continued).

xvi. 25

p

.131

27

131

L Corinthians.

i. 7

P

.489

9

24'6, 534
13-
-15
347
14
589
26
313, 344
30
217
ii. 6
156
10
442
14
338
. 14,
15
850
iii. 1
224
1,
2
207, 210 '
1,
10
88
2
6i2
4-
6
186, 187
10
121
13
246, 360
16
201
19
345
23
335
iv. 4
262
9
217
19
843
V. 1-
-11
126
2
129
5
571, 572
0
590
10
258, 395
vi. 1
189
9
25S
9-
-18
128
12—20
121
17
35S
20
324
vii. 1
547
5
92, 277
12,
13
586
19
380
22
258
23
324
viii. 13
-141
ix. 1
162
2
120
5
65,110,126, 402
13
259, 260
18
590
x. 4
128, 134, 600
7,
8
441
8
120
11
489
13
259, 534
20
465
32
441
xi. 19
119, 494
21
130
23
162, 362
25
234
30
130
31,
32
95
xii. 2
590
3
129, 556
8
327
9
348
10
xiii,
118, 555
339
5,
6
95
I. Corinthians (continued).
xiii. 9
P
.193
12
242, 329
13
246
xiv. 5
96
26-
-31
337
33
327
XV.
176
1
74
3
362
7
268, 290
21
489
22
333, 542
27
199
62
247, 463
35
336
52
449
xvi.
359
1
208
12
187
15
333
22
489
II. Corinthians.
i. 1
P
189
5
253
ii. 6-
-8
572
7,
10
211
9
339
14
258
iii.
186
1
301
3
224
6
224
iv. 2
28, 88, 163
4
178,211,242
16
92
V. 1
118,159,542
7
249
10
360
14
75, 308
21
179, 236
vi. 2
180
16,
17
180
vii. 1
547
10
2, 7, 256
12
211
viii. 4
189
ix.
359
4
249
8
359
13
260
xi. 2
339, 368
7
590
13,
14
439
17
249
20
128,589
22
189
24
183
29
441
xii. 12
183
13
531
16
590
21
126
Galatians.
i. 1
P
. 198, 362
1-
-12
183
1,
12
161
5
262
9
128
656

PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE

Galatians (continued).

i. 10

p. 553

11-ii. 21 362

11—15

102

13

262

18,19

292

19

266,268,385

ii. 2

362

4

128

0

162, 301

7,9

65

9

84, 266, 293

351, 362

10

208

12

128, 248 ,

14

259

16

249

19,20

74

20

176, 308

iii. 1

222

7

92

11

218

13

91, 179

16

180

19

173, 198

19,20

227

26

249, 333

iv. 3

207

10,24

335

19

92

24

52

V. 1

329

6

359, 360

10

262128

12

13

80, 120, '126

13—26

121

16

308

20

119, 494

24

75

vi. 7

208

12

128

12,13

250

15

360

Ephesians.

i- I

.175

3

72

4-7

72

7

533

8

338

13

883

14

89

15

176

17

268

20

72

ii. 2

129

3

87

8

72

8,9

350, 355

10

86,200,359

11,12

553

18

190

18

74, 203

20

88

iii. 2

102

2,3

183

4—8

167

8

590

12

203,246.567

16

92

T. 14

259, 327

Ephesians

(continued).

iv. 19

P- 7

22

254

25

533

32

346

v. 1,2

538

2

236

3

126

3,5

258

5

328

7

395

8

87

8,9,11—14 533

14

132, 342

21)
22)

72

26

246

v. — vi.

359

vi. 5

72

10

193

12

129,199,409

14

87

23

128

Philippians.

i. 7

p. 247

8

339

21

356

2.5

262

27

87

28—30

82

ii. 2

531

5—11

199

6

209

7

243

8

190

9

199, 590

9,11

79

10

444

13

262

15

328

24

262

iii. 2

34,517

5

189

7

356

7—11

253

12

337

19

331, 338

20

81,489

iv.

359

2

582

3

256

5

489

7

86

8

107

9

262

22

33

Colossians.

i. p. 130

4

176, 246

51

193

9

338

10

118, 859, 590

15

178

17

193

20

533, 613

24

253, 326

ii

130

3

327

4

329

9

233

Colossians (continued).

ii. 10-1514, 15
1616—23
17 18
18-23
iii. 5 9
12
23
iii. — iv.
iv. 3
10
1111—1518

p. 93
180
333259212
129,329,537
277258254 96, 178
91

273, 596
590

247

I. Thessalonians.

i 3 p.
4
1014—16
ii. 1
ll]14
14—161518
iii. 2
4
iv. 36 9
13—1713-v. 11
15
16
v. 1—16
9
202324
25

163, 208, 246
85
2.54
517 246
590

82, 517
262590 82,544
244126, 258
258
486121
120,542129, 236
489 89
118
262246,534
262347
326

H. Thessalonians.

i 4 p.
7—10

37,236,534

ii. 8

41 

3—12

436

10

120

17

359

iii. 2

82

I. Timothy.

i. 4 p

.118

6

255

17

193

18

118

20

439, 571, 590

ii 4

121

5
9

227,233,535 91
359

10

iii. 2

258,589

QUOTED OE REFERRED TO.

657

I. Timothy (continued).

Hebrews (continued).

Hebrews (continued).

iii. 6

p. 326

ii. l^t p. 198

v. 11 p. 189, 328

15

201

1-5

200,201

11—14

189,204,207

16

93

2

173

y. 11— vi. 20

245

lv. 1

193,338,489

3

161,162,173,

12

71

3

258

183, 190,

14

236

7

, 118

256

vi. 1

172,176,189,

16

213

3,4

189

2S3, 540

V. 10

359

5

175

1-3

204

13

591

5—8

165

1-8

208

15

255

5—18

198-200

2

179,186,207,

17

344

6

180, 611

262
22
329
6-16
200, 201
4
162, 247
vi. 3
203
7
164
4,5
175, 176
14
329
8
165
4—6
570
18
260, 359
9
179
4-3
170,181,185,
9,10
180
204, 246,
II. Timothy.
10
163,179,185,
256
i. 7
18
ii. 15
16 1719
p. 87
590333,584254439,590548
1113
207, 225,
277
177,179,244 195
589,109-12
' 175,198,611208204247
16
87, 164, 167
9—20
208 et seq.
17
167,179,201,
10
163,189,258
24
343
203, 204,
11
208
iii. 1s
489,542134
17,18
206
200, 201
11—18 204
11, 18, 19 246
17
iv. 499,21
11 14
17
359255
18
245
13
246, 611
iii.
203,245,607
14
164, 165
299188
1—6
200, 201
15
254
2
181, 605, 611
17
200
596571
463
3
227, 251
19
176
6
186
19,20
204
7
178,180,201
20
179,180,246
19
187
7-15
164, 611
vii. 1—3
204, 216
7—19
200, 201,202
1—17
168
m

9
173
1—28
245
10
202
2—10
179 •
i. 8
p. 258, 589
12
201,208,247
3, 10, 5
164
ii. 7—14 359
14
249
4,10
204, 222 et
12
542
15
202
seq.
13
117
16
164
5,6,9
225
14
233
17
128
5, 11, 27 167
iii. 1
33
iv. 1
173
6
216
5
86,246
1—10
168
6-8
228
8
259
1—13
200, 201
11
228, 242
9
254,340
3,4
164
11,12
204
10
119
4
202
11-19
224
13
187, 590
5
195
11-25
244
7
253
12
173, 224
Philemon.
8
202
13,14
204
ver. 7 9
2224
p. 589577,630262596
9
1111—13
167, 227
236203
14,2115—1917
164
204180, 611
12
88,173,178,
18
227
250, 602
170, 178
189,233,246
18—19
259, 260
Hebrews.
12,1314
1919,22
165 174
i.
p. 179
14—16
201, 203
20,21
224
1
165, 173
15
179,226,611
20,22
205
1—4
178, 193
16
245,567
22
165,227
2
250, 489
v. 1—3
204, 206
22,25
225
3
164,165,166,
1—10
245
23; 24
165
249, 268
2
165,247,611
23,25
205
4
227
2,3
232
25
203, 224
5
195,245
3
164,243
26
179, 236, 242
5,6
164
4-10
204, 206 et
26—28
225
5—14
194,195,200,
seq.
27
161,243,244
201
5
164
39
165
8,9
164
6
511
viii. 1
164,166,224,
13
244
8
165, 179
244
ii.
179
9
180
1-6
205
1
208
10
216
1-7
226 et seq.
QQ
PASSAGES OF SCRIPTUEE

Hebrews (continued).
viii. 1-ix. 28p.245
2 175, 233
3 201
5 175,236,242, 259
5—8 164
7, 8 165
7—13 205
8—12 242
8—13 227
9 199
10 167
10, 12 244, 458
ix. 1 175, 228
1—5 228 et seq.
1—10 168
1—14 205
3 246, 247
3, 4 161
4 225
5 268, 536
6—10 232, 333
7 258
7, 19 167
8 165, 253
8, 12 226, 246
9 175
10 207, 259
11 174, 242
11, 12 165
11—14 232
12 246
12—28 261
13 78, 85, 257
13, 14 179
14 174,207,227,
, 244, 246,
533
15 ¦ 165,179,233, 234, 252,
254
15—17 224, 232
15—18 262
15—22 179, 205
16, 17 234, 611
17 234
18—28 85, 235 et

20

23—28

25
25—28

x. 1—31—101-181,2222,22
3 5-7 9
10,1410, 14,
11
11,1211-14

179
174, 175
205 175, 227, 236
225 261193, 236
91, 165, 236
225168,205,242, 244
245203188179611 1648. ,8,
170
29 177161226242,244

Hebrews (continued).

x. 11— 18 p

.205

12

166

14)15;

180

15—18

242,244

16

244

18

226

19

74,189,226

19—25

245,246

19—31

247

20

180

21

175

22

227,246,257

22,29

177

23

40

24

246

25

328

25,37

489

26

162,185,211

26—29

170

26, 29

208

26-31

181,208,245,

256

27

37,236

27, 28, 30 258'

28

253

29

169,174,213,

259

29,341
38,39|

165

SO

163,164,167,

183,190

32

190

32, S3

258

32,39

247 et seq.

34

177,183,331, 608

35

186

35—39

177

37

121

37,38

164

38

178

39

247

xi.

245

1

76,176,177

1—3

175

1,2,4

176

3

175, 193

4

250, 257

4,5

177

5

251

6

203

7

177

8

57 .

9

165, 242

10

175, 177 '

11

246

13

81. 84, 253

14

175

16

335

17

253,336

19

252

21

164

25

167

31

57

32,33

326

33

177,254,463

33-40

253 et seg.

34

541

35

179, 233, 262

87,38

842

39

253

Hebrews (continued). ,^
xi. 40 p. 177
xii 1 165,177,244, 356
1, 2 165
1—7 254 et seq.
1-xiii. 19 245
2 179,185,199
6—11 180
9 164
IS 162, 255
14 163, 328
14—17 255 et seq.
15 255, 604
15—17 208
15—28 259
16 258
16, 17 170, 181
17 162, 328
18 175, 256
18—21 173
18—22 203
18—24 164
18, 27 175
18—29 256 et seq.
19 173
22 175, 251
22, 28 177
24 85,177,223, 246
25 256
26 246
27 W5, 185
28 175, 176, 207
29 247
xiii. 1—6 190
2 166, 589
8 247
i 257
5 164,611
7 591
8 184, 256
8—16 259, 260
9 164, 190
10 91
11 226
12 167, 177
13 253, 255
14 165,251,262
14, 15 255
15 88,255
18 163
18, 23 608
20 163,176,190
20-25 262
23 184, 188
24 190
26 255

James.

i. 1 p

815, 326

1-4

320, 321

2

326

2-4

72,326,330

2—15

321

2—18

S20

3

321,326,359

S, 4,1
17, 35 ;

326

3,25

321

4

321, 326

QUOTED OR REFERRED TO.

659

James (continued).

James (continued).

I. Peter (continued).

i. 5 p

. 282,318,321,

iii. 6 p

. 317, 318

i. 3, 7, 13 p. 73

326, 327,

8

327

3,12

83

330, 356

13

308

3,13

76

5-8

283, 320

13—17

283,321

4,12,13 73

6

131,312,318,

13—18

320,339,350

5

69, 76, 86,

326, 334,

15

320

193
359
15—17
327
6
73
6-8
327, 330
16
327
6,7
72
8—12
318, 329
17
320
6,8
73
9
330
iv.
285
6—9
86
9-11
320, 327
1 •
89
7
37, 76, 81,
10
72,318,331
1-6
339
88, 105,
11
318, 331
1-10
320, 321
326
12
318,321,327
1—12
320
8
70, 71, 76,
12—15
320,332
2,3,8
282, 321
86
13
318
4
308
9
76, 103
13—15
328
4,5
321
10
71
14
105, 120
5
338
10,11
254
16—18
320,328,333
6
318, 338
10—12
86, 87, 119
17
259,318,333
6, 7, 10
72
11
86, 118
18
76,86
8
88,327
11— v. 14
83
19
317, 318
11,12
319, 320
12
71, 77, 329
19—21
320
13
312,317,319,
12,25
74
19—25
328etseg.
327
13
71, 118
19—27
320
13— v. 11 32(i
13—16
73
20
318
13,14
321
13, 16, 22
73
21
318, 321
13,17
320,343
13,17
83
22
307,308,321
14
318
13—21
87
22—25
320
16
342
14
72
22,27
267
17
321
14,' 18
81
23
318
24
318
15
81,309
25
52, 87, 318,
v. 1
308
15,16
87
321, 356
1—6
267,313,318,
15, 18
103
26,27
281,320,328
321,343
16
81
fi. 1
315,324,359
2
343
17
71, 76, 87
1—4
321
3
193
18
74,233
1—7
321
3—6
319
18,19
74
1—13
319,320,335
3,8,9
489
18-20
71
2
316
4
283, 321
18—21
83
5
296, 359
5
308
19
73,103,105,
5—13
317
6
315
225,233
6
313, 315
7
315, 321
20
87
6,7
315
7,8
310,344
21
86
7
34,310
7,11
321
22
117, 258
8
329
8
321
22,23
76
10
118
9-11
346
22—25
85, 88,346
10,26
321
10
321
23
333
12
52,356,360
11
321
23—25
81
14
350
12
316,317,320,
24
72,327 331
14—18
336
321, 329
ii. 1
88
14—26
320, 321
13,15
321
1-10
84,89
15, 16, 1
19, 20 ;
267
13,18
282,320,321, 347
1.2, )
11, 12 j
73
17
350
14
315, 316
2
70, 71, 88
17-26
360
15
327, 356
3
103
19
316, 320
16
321
4—8
69
19,26
336 et seq.
16—20
321
5
80,260
21
57.91,318,
17
457
6
81
350
19,20
320, 348
6—10
72
21—26
310
20
72, 95, 318
7
71,489
22,26
359
8
69
23
357, 359
T "Pet1010
9
71, 80, 107,
24
350,355,361
117, 256,
24,25
603
i. i p
. 62, 72, 81,
545
25 '
57,253
325, 583,
9,10
71,81
iii. 1-12
320,338
596
11
72, 84, 542
- 1-18
320, 321
1,2
11,12
84,89
2
118,321,326
1— ii.lOf00
12,15
82
2,3
329
2
71,177,246
13
33,72
3
86
3
72, 87, 333
13, I
14-17)
443
4
312
3, 4, 21
71
5
318
3—5
86
13—16
69
660

PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE

I. Peter (continued).
ii. 13—17 p. 84, 91
13—2!: 73
13— iii. 7 84
14, 15, 20 76

1617
18
18—2018—25 1919,22
202121-252222—252324

3,120,126
105 71,72
849181
717075,7784727370, 82
70, 71, 74,

25 70, 83, 114
1 72, 112, 114
1—6 84
1-7 92
1,9-121 j,
17, 18 |/d
2 103
6 80, 81
6,11,13,1,™ lei ij J76
7 84,117,340

8— iv.
8—128—178—2299,14,
101113
13—1713,18 13, 15>
1516
181919,2019—22 2021

19 84

22
iv. 1

1—4
1, 4, 6,
10,111-6
233,44 55-76 6,7
7—10 7—19
88,9

9372,82
17 8281
255 93, 591
33 84
21 7376, 93, 117
827476 77
84 (9, 93
70, 71, 76,
103, 236,
246
72,73
72, 75, 103,
340
73,75

j- 73
84
542,543 94, 103
8170,9471 8669, 78, 79
738196
69, 72, 349
258

I. Peter (continued).

8,18 I

.105

9

589

10

72

11,13

73

11—16

84

12

37,81

12—17

96

12—19

33

13

75,86

13,14

73

14

34,82

15

70, 73, 96,

337

15,19

82

16

82

17

37, 87, 96,

447

17—19

84

18

81

19

76

1

71, 72, 86

114, 577,

621
1-4
84
1—11
96
2
70
4
69, 77, 86,
103
5
70, 72, 81,
339
5-7
84
5,9
72
6
73
8
70
9
76,81
9,10
84
10,11
73,84
12
70, 73, 81,
84, 97,
118, 262
13
436,579,595,
596
13,14
84
14
347
II. Peter.
1 P
. 103,114,128,
324, 325
1,2
102
1-11
117 et seg.
2
86,105
3
103
3-5
107
3—11
102
4
106, 107
5
103,106,259
9
103, 106
11
103
12
103, 107
12-15
102
12—21
118 et seg.
13
107
14
108
15
107
16
103,106,107
16—18
102
17
107
17,21
114
19
106,107,223
19—21
102
20
107
II. Peter (continued).
p
128
1
128, 494
1—3
106, 110
1—9
102
1—13
114
1—22
119 et seg.
2
555
3
103, 106
4
93
4,5
134, 599 .
5,7,9
102
5,8
108
6
106
7
103
10
103, 107
10—12
102
10, 12, -)
13, 15,
106
17 J
12
103,112,114,
116, 129
13
103,117,130
13,14
102
14
87,103,105,
339
14,15
110
14,18
328
15-16
102
16
116
17
102, 103
18
110
18,19
102
20
99, 213
20,22
102
22
105, 117
1
103
1,2
102, 130
1—13
108
1—18
120—122
2
106
3
106,107,110
3,4
104
3,16,17 117
5
106
5-7
102, 121
7
103
8
105
8,9
102
8—10
121
9
106
10
103,109,110
10—12
37
10,16
102
11
103
12
110,489
14
103
14,15
110
15
105,127,266
15,16
108, 603
16
116
17
103
17,18
102
I. John.
1 P
. 531, 533
1,2
531
1-4
526,527,531,
584
2
564
3
536
4
584
QUOTED OE REFERRED TO.

661

I. John (continued) .

I. John (continued).

I. John (continued).

i. 5 p

328,531,537

iii. 9 p

.549

v. 21

518, 541

5-T.5

526

9,10

548

5— v. 12 526

10

549

TT. Joww.

5-7

527,533,536

10,11

587

5—10
537
10—15
550
verse 1 p
. 590
6
360,493,521,
11
309, 583
1,2
541
537
11—18
528
1-3)
4, \
5, 6 1
6— ii. 2
527
12
251
583
7
71,537,565
14
515; 670
8
337
16
524, 542
5,6,7
576
8—10
522,527,534,
16—18
550, 552
7
503,542,574
536
17
543
7—9
583
9
523
18
541, 590
i}
577
ii. 1
523,541
19,20
553
1,2
527,535,541
19-23
528
10,11
323,395,576,
1,28
541
19,24
524
583
2
508, 565
21
547, 554
12,13
583
3
537, 538
21,22
567
13
577
3-5
536,537
21—24
553
3—11
537
24
547
III. John.
3—13 3,14
528536
24— iv. 6 565
iv. 1 524
verse 2 p
3 7
9
1114
128583
581 577
576 581
4
504, 537
1—3
583
5
493,537,538
1-6
518,528,555
5,18
524
2
524,531,584
6
6—8
560
'537
2,33
503542,544
6—10
583
3,15
503
6—11
528,538
4
641
Jude.
7,8
583
6,13
524
P
. 128—131,
8
521, 531
7—12
528,555,568
324
9—11
521,537 ¦
8
504
verse 1
131, 266
10,11
395
9
56, 560
2
86, 131
12
523
10
523, 565
4
110
12—14
520,528,541
11
71
5
118, 600
13,14
524
12
531
5—7
137
15—17
321
13—16
559
6
93,134,598
103, 599
15-19
528, 542 et
14
564
7
seq.
14—16
528
8
110, 131
16
342
16
524,538
8, 23
112
18
193,201,489,
17
567
10
110, 112
541
17,18
528,554,560
11
110, 132
18,22
503,542,583,
18
76,87
13
599
584
19
560
14
133, 342
20
493,515,524
19—21
528, 560
14,15
134, 598
20,26
518, 528
v. 1
531
16
132
20—27
523,545
1—3
528
16—18
110
20,27
520
1—5
560, 561
17,18
124
21
541
1,10
503
18
86
21,22
567
2
524, 560
19
132, 338
22
544, 574
5
560
20 1
22,23 1
23
27
524, 528
6
564, 584
132
28
554,555,583
6—8
562
567
28,29
546
6—9
528, 562
25
132
28— iii.
3 546 et seg.
7
163
28— v. 5
29
528524
99—12
564566
Revelation.
iii. 1
522,531,536
10
564
i. 1-8 p
.438
1—10
528, 547
10—12
528, 562
4.
439, 471
2
369, 580
13
520, 525
5,6
246
2-5
509
13,14
510
6
71, 89, 260,
2,14
424 >
13—17
528, 567
545, 633
3
71, 88, 573
13-21
526
9
82
3—8
547
14
547
9— iii. 22 438
4,5
548
15
515
12—17
448
4-10
522
15, 18, 1
19,20 J
524
15
456
5,15
524
16
203
6
548,591
16
208,213,574,
ii. 21
3;
493
6—10
591
583
7,8
548,549
18-20
528
5,16
432
7,10
128
18—21
573
6, 14, 1
15/
498
8
462
20
496,508,531
662

TALMUDICAL PASSAGES

Revelation (continued).

Revelation (continued).

Revelation (continued).

ii. 9

p. 344

xi. 2

p. 466

xvii. 9, 10

p. 439, 463

9,

10

I 82

3

456,458

9,18

596

13

7

41
10
433
10
327
8
425
10,11
413
13
82
13
457
11
44
14
\
120
14
432
12
465
20
xii. 1-
-17
581
12, 13,
!• 481
24
28,442
3
41,439
16,17
iii. 4
131
6
449,466
14
491
5
256
7
129
15
463
7
j- 493
7-
-11
457
18
465
8,
16
9
470
xviii.
343
11
432
10
199
2
454,596
14
491
14
412,435,466
4
395
17
344
xii. — xiv.
438
8
37
18
496
xiii.
443
9,18
95
19
254
1,
6
41
13
243
iv. 3
1.56
3
44,413
14
82,493
5
439
5
466
xix. 1
444
. — vii.
438
8
256,555
1,6
38
v. 10
633
9,
10
466
11
444,493
13
444,491
10
467
131
16 J
491
vi. 4
424
il
-17
474
9
447
ls
468
20
475, 476
9,
10
82
xiv. 4
333,580
^ xx. 2
470
10
190
8
596
4
82,409,447
10,
11
599
14
368
6
260
11
456
19,
20
423
9
451
12
433
20
451,483,599
10
476
vii. 1
439,448
XV. 1
439
15
256
5—8
326
xv., xvi.
438
xx., xxi.
7,438
9
38,491
xvi. 5
82
xxi. 3, 4
254
13
447
13
41,454,476
5
486
viii. 1-
-5
614
16
471
9
581
2
439
19
596
10
251
13
434,453
21
451
14
594
ii. — xi.
438
xvii.
443
16
486
ix. 1
434
xvii., xviii.
485
xxii. 7, 9
493
4
448
xvii. — xx.
438
8,21
438
• 11
471
6
447
11
334
18
449
8,
11
41
15
496
27
457
8,10,11464
18,19
121
x. 3
439
9
468
20
432
TALMUDIOAL PASSAGES QUOTED OR REFERRED TO.
fol.
Berachoth.
Peah.
5, a
p. 352
oh. ii. 6 p. 238
6, o
497
7, a
200,497
Shabbath.
8, a
246
fol. 21, a p. 181
8,1.
230
32, a 347
13, b
352
55, b 200
20, b
334
56, b 463
29, a
181
S:Z} 352
32, a
209
61, b
352
88, b 256
63, b
258
89, a 172
fol.
P'SACHIM.
54, a p. 172
57, a 225,313,314
113, a 617
113, b 277, 416
Chagigah.
ch. ii. 4 p. 225
Moed Katon.
fol. 26, u p. 489
QUOTED OR REFERRED TO.

663

Rosh Hashanah.

fol.

16, a p

237

16, b

238

21, b

200

23, a

416,448

Toma.
ch. iii. 7 p
614
iv
.4
231
7
240
v.2
231,232
vii. 2
232
viii. 9
243
fol.
2, a
226,239
5,b
236
9, a
181, 313
9, b
486
14, b
238
18, a, b
239
19, a
181
19, b
239
20, a
238
20, b
240
23, a
353
28,6
358
29, b
240
35, b
314, 617
38, a
140
44, a
225, 613
52, b
230
66, a
239
66, b
617
85, bl
86,0.1
238
86, bl
87, a f
349
Tosafoth, ch. i.
303
SUCCAH.
fol.
29, b j
.343
51, b
140
55, b
237,238,242
Taanith.
fol.
3, b p. 352
5,0,
485
Megillah.
fol.
6, a p. 417
9, a
144
14, b
358
23, a
238
Tevamoth.
foi
16, b p. 325
49, b
200, 253
62,63
277
63, b
284
86, b
222
Ketsdboth.
fol. 103, o p. 238
104, a 230
KlDDUSHIK.
fol.
29, b p. 277
70, b 181, 314
82, a 352, 358
GlTTIN.
fol.
7, a p. 181
57, a 423
Nedaium.
fol.
31, b p. 352
32, b 220
38, a 230
40, a 347
64, b 277
SOTAH.
fol.
47, b p.. 353
Bava Kama.
fol.
113, b p. 416
Bava Metzia.
fol
59, b p. 295
85, b 215, 402
86, a 497
Bava Bathra.
fol
14, a p. 230
25, a 485
75, a 200
75, b 486
116, a 277
121, a 238
AVODAH ZARAH.
fol
3, a p. 172
18, b 573
27, b 279
44, b 396
Sanhedrin.
fol
37, a p. 349
59, a 416
64, a 534
81, b 181, 23'
89,6 357
Sanhedrin (continued).
fol. 90, a p. 352
99, a 202
100, b 284
103, b 253
110, b 325
Shevuoth.
fol. 13, a p. 238
MU.CC0TH.
fol. 23, bl ^
24, a p- ^
Avoth.
oh. i. 10 p. 337
17 336
iv. 15 335
V. 21 280
Avoth d'Rab. Nathan.
ch. xxxix. p. 570
Sophrim.
ch. xv. p. 416
Gerim.
ch. i. p. 352
Zevachim.
fol. 88, b p. 181
Menachoth.
fol. 29, a p. 175
99, b 142313
Bechoroth.
fol. 4, a p. 222
Chtjlin,
fol. 90, b p. 229
Kerithoth.
fol. 7, a p. 238
28, a 314
28, b 617
Middoth.
ch. v. 2 p. 614
664

PASSAGES FROM ENOCH QUOTED OR REFERRED TO.

PASSAGES FROM THE BOOK OF ENOCH QUOTED
OR REFERRED TO.

Enoch.

Enoch (continued).

Enoch (continued)

P-

129,133,449

xiv. 5 p

.129

xiv.— lv. p. 597

i.

— xxxv.

597,

598

xv. 1—7

599

liii. 8 134

i.

— vi.

597

3
129
liv. 6 599
i.
6
121
xvi 5
599
lvi— lxx. 597
2}
129
xvii. — xxxv.
597
lxxi. — cv. 598
vi.
xviii 13
454
Ixxi. — 1 xxxi. 1 -q«
lxxxii. — lynnf, |
vii.
— X
597
14,16
134, 599
vii.
u
599
xxi. 3
134,454
xc, xci. )
X.
6
599
xcii 1—18 V598
xi.
— XVI.
591
10
129
xcii. 19 — civ. j
xii.
—xvi.
180
xxxTii. — lxx.
597, 598
xciii. 3 483
xii.
4
129
xxxviii. — xliv.
597
civ. 1—3 447
5-7
134,
599
xl. 81
129
cv. 598
xiv.
4
599
xli 1/
YALE UNIVERSITY LIBHAHY

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