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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

SAINT PAUL AND THE
ANTE-NICENE CHURCH

Prof. ADOLF HARNACK'S
THE APOSTLES' CREED

Translated by
The Rev. STEWART MEANS, A.M., B.D.
From an article in the Third Edition of
Herzog's " Realencyclopadie "

Revised and Edited by
THOMAS BAILEY SAUNDERS

Crown 8vo, cloth, price is. 6d. net

SAINT PAUL AND THE
ANTE-NICENE CHURCH
An Unwritten Chapter of Church History

BY

REV. STEWART MEANS, A.M., B.D.
RECTOR OF ST JOHN'S CHURCH, NEW HAVEN, CONN.

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LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1903

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CHARLES McBURNEY, M.D.
OF NEW YORK
THE GREAT SURGEON, THE KIND FRIEND,
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED
IN DEEP AND EVERLASTING GRATITUDE
BY THE AUTHOR

PREFACE
A word to the few readers into whose hands this
volume may come, may not be amiss. It is not a
history of the Christian Church through the first
two centuries, but simply what it purports to be,
a chapter out of that history. Neither does it deal
with the many contrasts between the Christianity
of the New Testament and that of the following
centuries, but only with the type of piety or the
Christian character as set forth by St. Paul, and
as it presents itself in the next centuries.
This contrast in the minds of young and earnest
students of church history excites surprise, and is a
source, oftentimes, of much confusion and perplexity.
It is to bring this problem to the full light, describe
it, and, if possible, give some explanation as to its
causes, that this work was written. The task was
also undertaken with the hope that some one better
qualified than the present writer might engage in
a more thorough and exhaustive investigation of
this most interesting phase in the history of the
Early Church.
No monograph exists in our language on this

viii PREFACE
subject, and so far as I am able to learn, there is
none either in French or German. The subject is
treated in almost every study of any of the Fathers
or writers of the Early Church, but no summary has
been made of the results that lie scattered through
so many volumes. The writer does not claim any
originality for the contents of this work, but has
simply endeavoured to collect and arrange the
material in a way that will bring out its full weight
and value.
The interest which prompted this examination
was neither controversial nor critical, but purely
religious, although the writer has endeavoured to
avail himself of all that the best critical authorities
had to offer, and has striven to write in as dis
passionate a manner as his own temperament will
permit. The work has been carried on amid the exacting
demands of an active parish and the busy life of
a modern clergyman. This is not offered in excuse
for the innumerable defects which every scholar
will recognize at a glance ; the statement is made
in explanation, not extenuation. I was not com
pelled to write.
It was not deemed best to overload the pages
with too many footnotes, but some of the chief
authorities have been referred to, and also those
least accessible to the general reader.
An honest man always feels a special gratification
in paying his debts ; but those of the present writer
are so many and so large, that he can express his

PREFACE ix
obligations only to a few of the many to whom
thanks are due.
It is a peculiar pleasure to me to have an
opportunity to publicly express what I have felt
for nearly twenty years — my debt to the officers of
Yale University Library. Had it not been for the
almost endless kindness and unfailing courtesy with
which I was not only permitted, but assisted, to use
this great collection, neither this work nor any
other which I have undertaken could have been
accomplished. Among the various works which have been of chief
assistance in these studies, the Dogmengeschichte
of the brilliant and acute Professor of Church
History in the Royal University of Berlin comes
first. Almost every student of the present day
recognizes how much he owes to Professor Harnack,
and I among the many. Anyone at all familiar
with this great work will recognize the influence of
his thought and method on many pages where no
acknowledgment is made.
The " Apostolic Fathers " of the late Bishop of
Durham was one of the books most constantly in
use, and always referred to on any matter connected
with the second century of the Church. Almost
everything of value on that period seems to be
included in those five solid volumes. Nowhere, at
least in English, is there anything to compare with
them in thoroughness and completeness in the
scholarship of the last century.
The standard works in English, and many of the

x PREFACE
general histories in German, have been examined,
but most of them were so entirely familiar to the
average student, that it would savour of pedantry
to refer to them, as well as being entirely
unnecessary. While this work was in preparation, I had hoped
on its publication to make acknowledgment of a
debt greater than any words of mine can measure ;
but the ear for which they were intended is now deaf.
It has pleased God to take him to Himself before
these pages shall see the light. To the Rev. Edwin
Harwood, D.D., late Rector of Trinity Church,
New Haven, is due all that is best in this or any
thing else that I have done. He taught me to
study in a scientific spirit, and to strive to think
with a mind open on all sides to the truth. My
mind has been but the sand to take the impress of
his massive intelligence. That glowing intellect is
shining in another life now, and its light has gone
out for me. He dreamed great dreams and high, and
never lost hope, though the drift of life and thought
seemed to run counter to his convictions : he
dreamed of a nobler humanity, of a loftier Christian
character. It is with this dream, this hope, this
faith, that this book was written : when they have
come, both book and writer can well be forgotten.
STEWART MEANS.
St. John's Rectory,
New Haven, Conn., U.S.A.,
Easter, 1903.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
St. Paul  i

CHAPTER II
The Apostolic Fathers and Justin Martyr, .... 64
CHAPTER III
Iren.<eus and the Catholic Church  123
CHAPTER IV
The Alexandrines, Clement, and Origen, .... 203
CHAPTER V
Tertullian and the Foundation of Latin Christianity, . 281

SAINT PAUL AND THE
ANTE-NICENE CHURCH

CHAPTER I
ST. PAUL
Such a title as that adopted for this volume is
likely to recall to the older students of church history
the fierce struggle with the Tubingen School and
the, to some, ill-omened name of Baur. To younger
men it may appear as an unfortunate attempt to
revive controversies long since ended, and which
should no longer occupy the attention of scholars.
Especially might this appear the case, since the most
brilliant scholar in Europe, in the field of church
history, has warned us against the aims and the
methods of the School of Baur.
The present writer has, however, a far less am
bitious and, he trusts, more practical object in view
than to revive old controversies. His aim is to
present, as clearly and as briefly as he can, some of
the main features of St. Paul's conception of the
new life and the new ideal for man revealed in
i

2 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
Christ, and to determine what, if any, relation
exists between these fundamental ideas of the
Apostle and the forms of thought and practical aims
of the later Christian Church.
The peculiar position occupied by St. Paul in the
history of Christian thought and life is such as to
make the attempt worth at least the attention of
serious students of church history.
The prevalent assumption, which gives such
authority to the writings of the early Christian
centuries, that the ideas and practices there set
forth are a natural, logical, and genetic develop
ment of the primary conceptions and original aims
of the first Christian teachers, is one which cannot
be accepted by any careful student of the Apostolic
Age. Moreover, in no way can this fallacy be more
clearly exposed than in the contrast in thought and
purpose of the great Apostle to the Gentiles with
the manifest tendencies of the later writers of the
Church. Among all the preachers of the Gospel of the
Apostolic Age none occupies the same position as
that of St. Paul. He alone has given us the fullest
account of the way the Gospel appealed to him, the
effect it had upon him, and the results which it
produced, not only upon his actual life, but upon that
body of vital thought which directs conduct and
shapes the spiritual energy by which a new ideal of
life can be realized. He stands almost by himself
in his manifestation of intellectual activity. His
position in the Apostolic Church was indeed unique

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 3
in this respect, and we find in him the life of the
past living more actively than even in those whom
we are wont to call the Jewish-Christian Apostles.
As a result of this, or by means of it, he became
the first Christian theologian. For theology is the
result of reflection, the application of human thought
to the problems which the spiritual life of man in
the light of the Revelation of Jesus Christ reveals,
and thought is the one process in which the past in
all its subtle differences and vital energies makes
itself felt. Jesus Christ left no system of dogma or
doctrine unfolded or developed for the mind to
grasp. His Person was the centre of the whole
spiritual activity of His disciples, and so the first
Christian theologian stood on his own feet. He
had to form for himself a conception of the process
by means of which man comes into a right relation
with Christ, while among the older Apostles this
right relation shaped itself gradually and uncon
sciously without especial reflection upon their part.
He had to analyze his own spiritual experience, to
form a foundation upon which he could stand, and
gather out of his own life in contact with Christ
just those particular forms of activity in which the
influence of Christ was revealed, and so point the
way by means of which the object of the Gospel
could be attained. In real life it is one of the
commonest of all experiences that men shall seek
the same ideal, but seek it by such misleading paths
that it never can be attained. More than that, the
ability to see and the power to describe the path by

4 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap i.
which that ideal is attained are given but to few.
These are the spiritual geniuses of the race, and in
the effort to learn the way in the midst of the
confusions and uncertainties of the present, we often
find ourselves looking backwards to discover what
the great leaders of the past can give us for the
practical difficulties of the present.
" What St. Paul, a man so separated from us by
time, training, race, and circumstances, really thought
we cannot make sure of knowing exactly,"1 is a
warning which must always be borne in mind. The
embarrassment also of deciding whether he found
the ideas which he expressed already in existence,
or whether he evolved them through his own
Christian speculation, is one which cannot in every
case be overcome. A great man is not the result
of the influences or intellectual forces of his age
alone, nor, on the other hand, is he independent of
them. As a rule, none are so sensitive to them as
they who seem to rise above and beyond the very
spiritual conditions which surround them, and which,
nevertheless, on closer examination are seen to
move them powerfully. The exceptional position
which St. Paul occupied, and the difficulty of even
incompletely apprehending his character and aim in
their various elements and fulness, can be recognized
in the singular and rather striking external features
of his life.
"A Hebrew of the Hebrews," he was born in
Tarsus, a city of Cilieia, of which Strabo says :
1 Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 23.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 5
"The inhabitants of this city have so great a
zeal for philosophy as well as for the circle of all
science, that they rival indeed Athens and Alexandria,
as well as every other place in which schools of
learning and philosophy are found." 1 It was a strong
hold of Stoicism, and perhaps some traces of this
influence may be found. In all probability he
received his elementary education under these
influences, yet there are scant traces of it — a few
fragmentary references to philosophical terms, and
a quotation or two which might easily have been
the result of his general intercourse with cultivated
Greeks, this is all. In this respect he offers a very
striking contrast to his contemporary Philo, upon
whom the influences of Greek thought and culture
worked most powerfully. A nature which could
resist so successfully the influences of the intellectual
life around him must have had an original inclina
tion, which would have more determination in
affecting his career than any mere circumstances of
education. And so it seems to have been. Drawn
by the passionate instinct of his race to the great
City, his intense national pride was deepened by
the education which he there received. The patriotic
and national tendencies worked in all the higher
channels of Jewish life and thought, and the edu
cation given in the great schools of Jerusalem was
exclusively Jewish and Rabbinical. He sat at the
feet of Gamaliel, one of the teachers who most
fully expressed and embodied the tendencies and
1 Strabo, xiv. 473.

6 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
feelings of the higher Jewish thought of this age.
The wide divergence between the spirit of Paul and
Gamaliel has created doubts as to the relation which
is said to have existed between them, but this
objection has been refuted in the light of other
historical parallels. Alexander was without doubt
a pupil of Aristotle ; yet, however great the influence
of the philosopher on his royal pupil, its traces are
hard to perceive, though their absence throws no
discredit upon the well-authenticated relation.1
The vital energy and vehemence of St. Paul's
nature are sufficient to account for the differences
which existed between him and Gamaliel. Even if
these differences present insuperable difficulties to
criticsjof a somewhat supersensitive disposition, there
are manifest indications of an education which could
be given only by one who was deeply learned in
all the phases of Jewish theological thought as it
existed in Palestine in the first Christian century.
According to St. Paul's own account, he was a most
violent, zealous, and fanatical Jew. He became
the most passionate, self-sacrificing, and devoted of
Christians. And this, not by a gradual develop
ment or easy transition, but by a sudden and violent
revolution. He was changed from an anti-Christian
Jew to an anti-Jewish Christian.2 This also, with-
1 Beyschlag, N. T. Theologie, B. ii. S. 7.
2 " Mit dem Umschlage des Paulus aus einem antichristlichen
Judaismus zu einem antijudaistischen Christenthum hangt ohne
Zweifel der sein ganzes Denken beherrschenden Gegensatz von
Siinde und Gnade zusammen." — A. Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift fiir
Wissenschaftliche Theologie, B. xviii. S. 162.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 7
out eliminating his intense and characteristic
Jewish nature and habits of thought.
These facts must be recognized in order to reach
a clear understanding of St. Paul. The problem is
not simple but complex, and the various elements
which enter into and mould his thought are derived
from the most various sources. His own personal
experience, as in all genuine men, had a profound
effect upon the character and depth of his thinking,
but not primarily upon the form under which or in
which it was presented. No one can doubt that the
peculiar order and development of his thought were
dependent upon his own special experience. But
before and behind his Christian experience lay his
Jewish inheritance of life and learning. H is sensitive
nature was saturated with the feelings and sentiments
of his own generation. He opened a new world, and
believed that the story which he told was the vision
of the new eyes which Christ had given him. The
language, the images, the forms of thought were not
only Jewish : but more, they were those of his own
day and generation, learned in Jewish schools and
the daily intercourse of life. Great men in spite of
superficial differences are much alike, and a recent
critic of St. Paul has instituted a comparison between
him and Luther. The fiery eloquence which roused
Europe found its root and inspiration in Christ and
the Scriptures, but no student of Luther fails to
recognize distinct traces of his scholastic training and
the very marked influence which it exerted upon the
form and fashion of his utterances. So in the

8 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
teaching of St. Paul we find, besides the original
Hebrew and Christian elements of his thought,
another, which did not come from the Law or the
Prophets, but from the Rabbinical Schools of
Palestine.1 This characteristic element needs to be distin
guished as far as possible from the specific Christian
ingredient and carefully analyzed. The latter formed
the content of his life and teaching ; the Jewish
or Rabbinical training supplied the forms under
which it would to a large degree be presented.2 It
is, moreover, the close and thorough union between
the two which constitutes the striking peculiarity of
St. Paul's theology.3 They are so closely related
and dependent upon each other, that one cannot be
fully appreciated unless it can be clearly distinguished
from the other.
The evolution of St. Paul's thought can only be
understood by recognizing its various components in
their proper order and mutual relation. It is from
a study of Jewish theology, in the historical condi
tions amid which the Jewish mind of this age was
moving, that we can obtain some adequate under
standing of the peculiar garb in which St. Paul clothed
his Christian expression, and which gave the special
form to his Christian consciousness. This particular
branch of study is still in a very incomplete stage of
development; yet it already gives many facts of
1 Pfleiderer, Urchristenthutn, S. 153-4.
2 A. Immer, Theologie des Neuen Test., S. 257.
8 Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, 2 Auf., S. 18.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 9
great value, and throws a broader light than has
hitherto been cast upon the great problems of the
Pauline theology.
The changes which had taken place in the history
of the Jewish People since the Restoration, and the
new ideas which had become prevalent subsequent
to that event, make the study of the Rabbinical
theology of the time of Christ dependent upon a
knowledge of those changes in the mode of thought
which had taken place.
The sources from which we draw our knowledge
of what this theology was do not exist in the Jewish
Canon as is popularly supposed, but in the literature
which is extra-canonical or post-canonical and in the
vast and intricate traditions of the Jewish schools.
The great stream which took its rise in the reforms
of Ezra, and which was so widely separated from the
previous history in its religious aims and ideals,
developed after the Greek Conquest — that is, during
the two centuries immediately preceding the age of
Christ — into two distinct streams. Where the Jewish
mind remained under the sway of the more rigid,
narrow, and conservative influences of its Palestinian
surroundings, it developed the Pharisaical theology
of the Palestinian synagogue. Where it came in
contact with the more genial and cultivated influences
of Greek thought, it was expanded and softened into
that peculiar form of syncretism which we call the
Hellenistic theology of Alexandria.1
Alexandrianism and Palestinianism constitute the
1 Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, 2 Auf., S. 201.

io SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
two distinct varieties of Jewish religious speculation
in the age of St. Paul, and in his writings we can see
very clear traces of the influence of both these modes
of thought.1It has been said that it is impossible to prove
whether St. Paul found the ideas which he expresses
already in existence, or whether he evolved them
from his own Christian speculation. If it is con
ceded that it is impossible to prove their derivation,
at least it will be granted that there is something to
be gained by simply placing these ideas side by side
and noting the resemblances which exist between
St. Paul's ideas and the prevailing teachings of the
Jewish schools as we find them either in the literature
of his own or previous generations, or surviving in
the writings of a subsequent period.
The theology of St. Paul, using that term in its
widest sense, is too large a subject to deal with in
this manner, and some definite line must be chosen
to limit the range of examination and confine it to a
territory which will contain that which is recognized
to be of the most essential value and importance.
To any one who thinks seriously over the changes
1 " According to Acts vi. 9, there were synagogues of Syrian and
Alexandrian Jews at Jerusalem who kept themselves separated
from the other synagogues, and it is very possible that Gamaliel,
the teacher of St. Paul, who the Rabbins assert was a lover of
Grecian wisdom, may have sought to spread such learning among
the younger and more eager Jews. Simon Magus and Josephus
are evidences of the influence of Alexandrian ideas in Samaria."
— Daehne, Judisch - Alexandrische Religions Philosophie, B. ii.
S. 229.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH n
in thought in this age, as well as the perpetual change
which seems to mark the whole life of the past, it is
obvious that there is a profound dissatisfaction with
the popular religious ideals and accredited religious
teaching on the great subject of life itself. All
attempts to set up the favourite standards or ideals
of another age are merely efforts, no matter how
described, to substitute something which is thought
better for that which is acknowledged to be defective.
It must be conceded that with the vast majority of
Christians the ideal of the Christian life is still a prob
lem, or, if they do not recognize it as a problem, the
vast unrest which is affecting the whole civilized
world, socially, politically, intellectually, and ecclesi
astically, would offer clear testimony that the highest
and most satisfying ideal of human life had by no
means been fully apprehended or realized even by
the most intelligent guides of this age. St. Paul had
a most clear and definite ideal of life, and all his days
were spent in winning it. It was large and lofty
enough to give room for his noblest ambitions and
free play for all his powers. It is the way this ideal
was attained, the antecedent conditions of thought
which prevailed to give it the special form of ex
pression it found, and the consequences and in
ferences involved, which will define the special
portion of St. Paul's teaching here to be examined.
St. Paul's theology has been looked upon too often
from the abstract or theoretical point of view. Yet
there never was a human being who ever thought
whose ideas were so completely bound up in the

12 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
harness of practical life. St. Paul has never given
an outline of what might be called his system,
although all systematizers have been fond of asserting
the contrary. What he has done has been to give
single doctrinal expositions which have been inspired
by certain motives or called forth by certain occasions,
and these motives and occasions are invariably the
most practical and human.
As a consequence, the particular presentation
varies more or less with each occasion, and these
variations have been the torment of the theoretical
or speculative student.1 Recognizing this fact, we
may still grasp the broad fundamental idea which
underlies each expression of it, which has been set
forth with such variety and force. The power of
St. Paul's thought has been recognized by every
student of the New Testament, and the most various
explanations have been offered as the key to it.
Baur has correctly asserted that " The formation of
the doctrinal conceptions (Lehrbegriffe) of St. Paul
is the most important step in the development of
early Christianity ; " 2 but when later he asserts that
" The antithesis of Judaism and Christianity is the
starting-point of his system of thought," 3 one can
not but feel that here is a fair illustration of that
'vigour and rigour' of German theologians which
excited the late Mr. Matthew Arnold. It must be
admitted, however, that the particular form of St.
1 Weizsacker, Das Apostolische Zeitalter der Christlichen Kirche,
S. 1 20.
2 Neutestamentliche Theologie, S. 128. 8 Ibid., 132.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 13
Paul's theological thought was developed through
his controversies with Judaism, although the ideas
themselves were not due to this cause.
Neander's view ofthe variety of Apostolic teaching
hardly seems more satisfactory, for it is still based
upon a theory, but a theory which has not the full
support of the facts. That the first Christian teachers
"appropriated the doctrine in a living manner, in
accordance with their various constitutional qualities
and their several peculiarities of education and life," x
is undoubtedly true, but the phrase is too vague,
and seems to emphasize the part of the individual
temperament in the exposition of thought in a way
which makes the necessity or value of the historical
antecedents superfluous, and assumes a definite body
of doctrine given as a starting-point.
If we are to believe St. Paul, the beginning, or
at least the conscious beginning, of his Christian
experience was made on the road to Damascus.
What psychological processes antedated this event
we can only discern by noting what ideas from his
past life lie imbedded in the expression of his Christian
consciousness, and how they determine or modify
that expression. The revelation of the will of God
through Jesus Christ to him did not find him in a
state unfitted for its apprehension and reception, and
co-operated with previous trains of thought to make
his submission more perfect and complete. It is
generally stated by writers on this subject that the
starting-point of St. Paul's theology is the Doctrine
1 Training and Planting, etc., p. 380.

14 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
of Sin. This statement is true in this sense only,
that the Doctrine of Sin is the formal, though not
the actual, beginning of his processes of thought.
The sense of sin in the developed form in which it
is expressed in the Epistle to the Romans is the
reflex experience of the sense of righteousness and
holiness which were revealed in Jesus Christ. If
the revelation of Jesus Christ did not antedate his
deepest expression of sin, one would expect to find
in St. Paul's utterances on this subject just those
ideas which were prevalent in the theology of the
Palestinian schools of the first century of the Empire,
and no more. Undoubtedly we do find these
thoughts, but we find also a consciousness and a
passion of feeling which no Jew, be he Pharisee or
Rabbin, ever felt before Paul of Tarsus poured forth
the thoughts of his heart. The form in which the
Doctrine of Sin was expressed came to St. Paul
from his Jewish teachers, but the motive which gave
it such peculiar and special prominence was the
intense and burning consciousness with which he
apprehended the purity and perfection of Christ's
love for him. If we collect the various expressions
on this subject of sin which we find in Jewish litera
ture, and then compare them with what St. Paul
himself has said, we shall see, to some extent at
least, how much he owed to his teachers, and how
much sprang out of his own Christian experience.
We shall thus be able to understand St. Paul much
better, because phrases which have been obscured or
distorted in their meaning by incorrect exegesis will,

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 15
by a comparison with the prevailing thought of the
times, be put in a much stronger and clearer light.
The teaching which the Old Testament contains
on the subject of the nature and constitution of the
first man and the character of his transgression, is of
the briefest and most general nature. The very
simplicity and pictorial character of the language
shows the unreflecting age out of which it sprang.
Under the influence of philosophical ideas or a
growing perception of the consequences which might
be inferred from the poetical phrases of the book of
Genesis, the later Jewish theologians, in the interest
of a speculative transcendentalism, qualified the
simple phrase, " Let us make man in our own
image," by interpolating the explanation that it was
not the image of God, but the image of the angel of
Service.1 This became a dogma of Jewish theology
and prevailed in all their speculations. In his con
stitution man has embodied four attributes or
elements from above and four from below. His
higher or heavenly qualities are, that he stands
upright or moves as an angel ; he speaks as the
angel of Service ; he has knowledge as the angel,
and he sees as the angel.2 This man also consists
of body and soul. The first is made of the lower
elements, taken out of the dust but organized for
the fulfilling of the Thora.3 The moral attitude of
this individual so created is that of indifference
1 Weber, System der Altsynagogalen Paldstinischen Theologie,
S. 150.
2 Weber, S. 202. 3 Ibid., 203.

16 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
towards God.1 Yet, at the same time, in the very
act of creation the Creator imparted a power for
evil, or an impulse or tendency which may bring him
in conflict with his Creator.2 But, according to the
Talmud, the evil impulse, though existing in the
first man from the very beginning, was dormant or
at rest. The man was at first pure and pious.
He was no transgressor as yet, although one might
not assert that he had a definite, positive possession
of original righteousness.3 Whatever impressions
come to him through his senses, he cannot determine
or control ; but whatever acts he undertakes or com
pletes, these he himself decides. In the matter of
choice or selection he is absolutely free, neither
predestinated to good or evil. Yet, on the other hand,
he is more or less limited and influenced by the
sensuous impulse within him which receives nourish
ment or food from the outside. Along with this
impulse for evil is an impulse for good. The first
dwells in the left side of man's breast, and the other
in the right. Thus man is conditioned from the
very beginning by the double impulses which dwell
in his bosom.4 The nature of the Fall or the
original disobedience of Adam is regarded as simply
the transgression or violation of a single command
ment of God, which does not, however, produce
necessarily any separation or antagonism between
man and God if Adam had not added to disobedience
refusal to repent. In this act of disobedience the
1 Weber, S. 203. 2 Ibid., 204.
3 Ibid., 206. * Ibid., 210.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 17
Serpent of Genesis is regarded as the tempter, and
is identified with Satan. This identification is not
found anywhere in the canonical writings of the
Old Testament, but appears first in the literature of
the Greek period,1 where the identification is clearly
implied. That this act of Adam was the original
cause and source of human sin could not be inferred
from the earlier historical books of the Old Testa
ment, and the Prophets and Psalms offer no explana
tion. It is rather regarded as a fact of universal
experience, and accepted without any reflections or
attempts at solution (Hosea vi. 7 ; Job xxxi. 33 ;
Psalm lxxxii. 7). The later Jewish writers, however,
seem to regard the assumption of the derivation
of sin from the first human pair as beyond question ;
and the earliest reference to it is expressed with
such directness, as to leave no doubt that this idea
had passed the tentative stage and was already
familiar to the mind of the writer.2 But there is a
distinction to be noted here which indicates that a
divergence had already begun between the Palestinian
and Alexandrian stream of thought. The difference
is that the Alexandrian school regarded woman as
the instrument by means of which sin entered into
the world,3 while the Palestinian school seemed to
consider Adam as the typical man and the origin
and cause of the introduction of sin into the world.4
1 Wisdom ii. 23, 24.
2 Wisdom ii. 24 ; Sirac. xxv. 24.
s Philo, De Leg. Alleg., ii. 18, 19.
* Immer, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, S. 256. 2

18 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
The immediate results ofthe transgression of Adam,
according to the Jewish theology, were six in number.
i. He lost the reflection of the divine glory which
before the Fall shone in his face.
2. The immortality which God had bestowed
upon him in his original condition. On account of
sin this was taken away, and death for himself and
his successors was thus brought upon them,
3. Through his transgression Adam lost his
original size. He had been at first 100 ells in
height. 4. He also lost the fruit of the field.
5. The fruit of the tree was destroyed, for the
earth was cursed and brought up thorns and briers.
6. The light by which the world was created, and
which was withdrawn on the seventh day, was now
lost. All the splendour and glory of life passed
away through the Fall. Instead, plagues and curses
were laid upon man. The moral consequences also
were that man became subject to a curse and guilty
of death. The right attitude or relation towards
God is rendered extremely difficult of attainment.
The two moral inclinations or impulses which existed
in Adam before the Fall still remain after the Fall,
though their relation is somewhat changed. The
state of righteousness has become much more
difficult, but at the same time much more deserving.
Man's freedom remains still after the Fall as before
it. There is hereditary guilt, but not hereditary sin.
" The Fall of Adam has brought death upon the whole
race of man, but not sin m the sense of a necessity of

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 19
sinning. Sin is the result of the decision of each
individual. It is a matter of universal experience,
but in itself not a necessary and inevitable result of
the Fall."1 It is obvious that we are moving in an
atmosphere far different from that of the age of the
monarchy, and that the imagination is by far the
most active faculty exercised, and furnishes the
greater portion of the material upon which the
speculation and ingenuity of these teachers were
employed. The question naturally arose as to the relation of
the soul and body, and the responsibility in the case
of sin which attaches to each of them. A most
ingenious illustration was offered to demonstrate the
truth. " There was a king who had a garden, and
therein were ripe grapes, figs, and pomegranates.
Then said the king to himself, 'If I place as a
guard one who is able to see, he will go in and eat
my ripe fruit. What shall I do ? I will place two
guards, one blind and the other lame.' These pro
tected the garden. But as they sat and snuffed the
fragrance of the rich ripe fruit, the lame man said to
the blind one, ' I see beautiful ripe fruit in the
garden. Come, let me ride upon your shoulders
and I will guide you, and thus we will get this fruit
and divide it and eat it.' Then the lame man rode
upon the shoulders of the blind one. He brought
the fruit and they both ate it. Some time later the
king came, sought the ripe fruit, and found it not.
Then said he to the lame man, ' Who has given it
1 Weber, S. 217.

20 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
to you ? ' ' Have I feet ? ' said this one. Then said
he to the blind man, ' Who has given it to you ? '
' Have I eyes ? ' said this one. Then the king caused
the lame man to ride upon the shoulders of the blind
man, and said, 'As you have thus together stolen
and eaten the ripe fruit, so will I also judge you
together.' So does God do with man. He brings
the soul and places it in the body, for it is said, "He
calls heaven and earth to judge his people." Heaven
is the soul. Earth is the body. The soul has insight,
but no power to act. The body is without insight,
but it is the instrument by which the act is completed.
So are soul and body. Since they are closely united
in the act of sin, they are both responsible ; but a
higher responsibility attaches to the soul, since only
by its knowledge can the act be prevented." x
It is obvious, from the material which has been
brought before us, that the problem of sin was one
which occupied the most earnest attention of the
serious students of man's history among Jewish
scholars and writers. As the existence of evil and
sin is the great problem of human history from the
point of view of man's experience, it could not
reasonably be expected that the solution reached by
these Jewish theologians would be satisfactory or
meet the highest requirements of the moral con
sciousness of mankind. Their conceptions lacked
not only depth, but breadth. Each individual
relative to sin was, so to speak, creative. Sinfulness
was co-extensive with sinful acts or transgressions,
1 Weber, S. 222-223.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 21
and was measured by the number of these sinful acts
committed. As a consequence, sinlessness was
always regarded as in itself possible, since all acts lie
within the region of human choice. Although the
universal experience of mankind offers no instances
of sinlessness, such experience establishes only the
fact that all men have sinned, but furnishes no a
priori objection to the possible existence of a life
free from sin.1 Since the tendency or inclination to
sin in man was one which existed by virtue of his
constitution, for whose existence he is not responsible,
it naturally resulted that when the question of guilt
and responsibility arose, the problem was capable
of various explanations. Different degrees of limita
tion would most easily, and we may say inevitably,
be placed upon this responsibility. When sin ex
presses itself in act, it by no means follows that this
deed is a personal act in the full sense of the word.
The inherent tendency in man is the cause of it, and
the personal element enters in only so far as the
individual assents to, or co-operates with, his secret
inclination. This assent or co-operation is the
measure of his guilt, for in it alone does his will un
fold its powers. The inclination to sin is the result
of the evil tendency in the heart, or the 'Jezer.'
This tendency to sin is thus a part of the natural
constitution of man ; and God, not man, is responsible
for this. However sinful man may be, his guilt is
reduced in the last analysis to a minimum. The
lusts of the body are the natural expression of his
1 Weber, S. 231.

22 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
physical constitution. They make him miserable
and sinful, but they do not make him guilty. Re
garded thus, the actual condition of man is more
worthy the divine sympathy and compassion than of
judgment and punishment.1 This method of the
Jewish theologians of regarding sin from the point
of view of the single specific act and judgment, not
as a personal condemnation, but rather the punish
ment of individual transgressions, destroyed all
organic connection between character and life, and
left the whole problem of human responsibility in a
fragmentary and chaotic state. How widely this
mode of thought prevailed, and how deeply it had
penetrated into the popular mind, we see from the
Gospel narrative. " And as Jesus passed by, he saw
a man which was blind from his birth. And his
disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin,
this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned nor
his parents : but that the works of God should be
made manifest in him" (John ix. 1-3).
On the further question as to the relation between
sin and death, the opinions of Jewish teachers seem
to have wavered somewhat. Some apparently saw
no necessary connection between them, but, rather,
that death was predestinated to man from his
creation. Another opinion, and the one which
seems to have prevailed most extensively, was that
death was the result of Adam's disobedience and
transgression. It is true man had been created
1 Weber, S. 233-234.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 23
mortal in the sense that he could die, but death
itself was a result or penalty of his own deliberate
act.1 The Jewish conception of the solidarity of the
race was so deep and strong, that no Jew could think
of this act of Adam and its consequences as isolated,
but felt that it inevitably involved all his descendants
in the same fate. It is said that Adam himself
recognized this fact, and when he saw that death had
entered into the world he sat 1 30 years fasting and
sorrowing, separated from his wife.2 This fact of the
transmission of death to Adam's descendants inev
itably suggested certain difficulties which must be
considered and, if possible, explained. Death was
fully recognized as the punishment of Adam's
transgression. The question then arose, In what
light can it be viewed in the case of his descendants ?
If sin and guilt are not hereditary or transmissible,
how then can their punishment be ? Yet it is one
of the primary facts of life, that death — that is, the
punishment of sin — comes to all. One of the funda
mental Jewish axioms was, " There is no death with
out sin ; no chastisement without transgression."
The deep moral sense of man antedates perception of
the ethical problems which surround him, and remains
unchanged in spite of all the subtleties and refine
ments with which he attempts to meet these
difficulties. The perplexity which arose from the
fact that death comes to all, both evil and good, was
met with the ingenious but very inconclusive state-
1 On the other hand, compare Wisdom ii. 23.
2 Weber, S. 238.

24 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
ment that the godless died in order that they might
not wander farther from God, and the righteous that
they might be taken away from the ever-enduring
struggle of life. The real issue is never taken up,
and the two propositions — the Universality of
Death and the Universality of Sin — were never
sounded to their depths and brought with all their
overwhelming force before the mind of man.
When we turn to St. Paul's writings we see in a
general way how much he owed to his Jewish
teachers, and how much he inherited from the past,
and more clearly and definitely what he received
from the revelation of Jesus Christ in him, and what
belongs to the vastly higher state upon which he
entered through his conversion. In considering
St. Paul's ideas on this profound subject, we must,
if possible, free our minds from all the later accre
tions, the theories and interpretations which theo
logians of different schools and periods have attached
to his words. We must also bear in mind how rich
and varied are the metaphors and images which he
uses to denote the relations and effects of sin upon
human life and human destiny. The vividness with
which abstract terms are expressed gives them a
concreteness which oftentimes confuses the sight,
and makes us doubt whether we are in the right
intellectual atmosphere and mood for a correct
apprehension of their meaning.
Before attempting to examine in detail the ideas
of St. Paul on this subject, it will be necessary to
know something about the literary theory and the

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 25
Canons of interpretation which he applied to the
Scriptures of the Old Testament, and which was
one of the links which bound him to the Rabbinical
schools of his time, and which, when understood,
shows that the literal and logical accuracy of later
times would by no means be accepted by him.
The method of Scriptural interpretation which was
generally adopted at this time by both the Palestinian
and Alexandrian schools was that which is so well
known to students of theology and church history
as the Allegorical, and Philo of Alexandria was
undoubtedly its great representative. Although
Philo was a contemporary of St. Paul, there is no
evidence which goes to show that the Apostle was
familiar with the writings of the older man. On
the other hand, there is evidence in abundance to
prove that he was familiar with, and adopted, the
method so generally in use at this time, and that
the common sources of the later Jewish theology
were well known to him.
In 1 Cor. ix. 9, where Deut. xxv. 4 is quoted,
the Canon of interpretation applied is one of the
allegorical rules laid down by Philo — that is, that
the literal meaning of a passage of Scripture is not
to be accepted if in any way it seems to state some
thing which is unsuited to the true thought of God's
character and modes of action.1 In 1 Cor. x. 1-4
St. Paul's method of interpretation is the same as
Philo's. In the Alexandrian teacher the manna is
the ' Divine Word ' (6eio? \6yos), and the rock
1 Siegfried, Philo von Alexandria, S. 305.

26 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
is the ' Wisdom of God ' (2o0«x rov Geou).1
If it is not possible to distinctly affirm that the
writings of Philo were known to St. Paul, there
is sufficient evidence to prove that one of the
books well known to us, not included in the
Canon, was very familiar to him, and exercised a
perceptible influence, if not on his thought, at least
upon the form of it. A comparison of the Epistles
of St. Paul with the book of Wisdom will show how
thoroughly familiar he was with the ideas expressed
in that work. The resemblances are not accidental.
They were the inevitable result of a thorough educa
tion at the hands of one of the leading Rabbins of
Jerusalem in the first century of our era. A com
parison of the passages subjoined may lead on to
the conclusion that the influence of the book of
Wisdom is more apparent than real ; yet the influence
actually exists, and forms no inconsiderable element
in the shaping of St. Paul's thought and expression
on certain definite points.2
1 DeLeg. Alleg., iii. 56 ; Immer, Theol. des Neuen Test, 255-256 ;
Siegfried, 305. Other passages which show the influence of Jewish
tradition and exegesis are 1 Cor. xv. 40 ff; 2 Cor. iii. 7-13;
2 Cor. iv. 4; Gal. iii. 16-19; Gal. iv. 21-31 ; 2 Tim. iii. 8.
2 Der Erhaltniss der paulinischen Schriften zur Sapientia
Salamonis, Eduard Grafe ; Theologische Abhandlungen, Carl von
Weizsacker. Sap. xi. 12, xii. 12 ff., comp. Rom. ix. 19-23; Sap.
xv. 7, comp. Rom. ix. 24; Sap. ix. 15, comp. 2 Cor. v. 14;
Sap. ix. 17, comp. 1 Cor. ii. 8, 10, ir ; Sap. vii. 28, comp. 1 Cor.
ii. 9; Sap. vii. 27, comp. 1 Cor. ii. 10; Sap. ix. 14, comp. 1 Cor.
ii. 14; Sap. ix. n, comp. 1 Cor. ii. 15 ; Sap. ix. 13, comp. 1 Cor.
ii. 16 ; Sap. xi. 23, comp. Rom. xi. 32 ; Sap. v. 17-20, comp. Ephes.
vi. 11, 13, 15, 16, 17; Sap. i. 13, 14, comp. Rom. viii. 19 ff.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 27
It may seem to some as if the influence of St.
Paul's Jewish training had been exaggerated or
overstated, but as it is too often dismissed with a
mere reference, it seems necessary to show, to some
extent at least, how much he was under the influence
of the current theology of the Rabbinical schools.
The material for ascertaining the complete in
debtedness of St. Paul to his Jewish teachers has
not yet been put at the service of students, and it
may be that the amount still remaining will not
be, even when discovered, sufficient to satisfy a
thoroughly sceptical mind ; but enough has been
found to prove that such dependence really did
exist, and modifies to a large degree the way in
which we should study the writings of the great
Apostle. Turning now to a consideration of St. Paul's
expressions on this great subject of Sin, we must
study, in the first place, his conception ofthe original
constitution of man. Any one who reads the 7th
chapter of Romans in the light of the prevailing
pharisaical theology, cannot but feel that the dualism
in the nature of man, which is so distinctly realized
and so emphatically asserted, has ceased to be for
St. Paul a mere dogma of the schools, and has
become of the very essence of his thought of him
self. The tendency or evil impulse has become a
'law' in his members, and the good impulse has
become the ' law ' of his mind, and these two are
waging ceaseless and relentless war against each
other (Rom. vii. 21-23).

28 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
The same division in the person between the
lower and the higher elements, which is a character
istic feature of the Rabbinical theology, still survives,
though in a more intensified form, in the conception
of flesh and spirit. This dualism of St. Paul's
thought, instead of being a semi-philosophical doc
trine, has become a deep and most agonizing disrup
tion of his personal life. The form of statement may
be derived from the schools, and doubtless is ; but
the evidence for its existence is not derived by him
from a general law or an abstract proposition, but
has its ground in his own individual experience, and
its root is in his own consciousness, which is all
alive and writhing under the burning sense of the
realization of this fact. When he comes to define
this lower power which checks and thwarts the
growth of the higher life and exerts such a definite
influence for the worse, he calls it sin. Any one, on
reading St. Paul, will recognize how difficult it is
to determine just what he meant by sin. He no
where gives any precise definition of it, and this
from the nature of the case we could not expect.
He is nowhere writing to develop a theory, but to
appeal to the consciences and consciousness of men.
The intensity with which he apprehends the fact
itself leaves him entirely indifferent to mere defini
tions. A common and universal experience, for so
he regards it, leaves him no room or need for finely
drawn descriptions. We do not know whether he
considered it as having a personal existence or
whether it was an impersonal law, whether it was

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 29
a mere fact of experience or the development and
expression of an original element of man's constitu
tion. There are phrases sufficient, taken simply by
themselves, to justify any one of those inferences.
One thing may be most positively affirmed, and that
is that sin to St. Paul was no mere negation. He
was a Hebrew, not a Greek. He saw life from the
ethical point of view, and not the intellectual. To
him it was a tremendous reality, a most powerful
force operative in the life of man, and easily to be
proved, (1) from universal history; (2) from the
experience of the individual soul ; (3) from the
teachings of Scripture. The value of these arguments
was of unquestionable validity to St. Paul, and no
one can well deny their worth if the evidence still
sustains the conclusions of the Apostle.
When we come to examine the actual constitution
of sin, in what it really consists, it seems to have a
double character or to be composed of two ele
ments : — (1) It is partly moral defilement (Rom.
vi. 19); (2) partly an opposition to the divine will
expressed in the true oriental language of a contrast
between light and darkness (2 Cor. vi. 14).
When we approach the question more closely
and ask in whom sin originated, and by what
channel it made its way into the world, we find
that of the two views prevalent at this time, the
Alexandrian and Palestinian, St. Paul accepts the
latter, and fixes upon man the responsibility for its
existence. When we seek an explanation as to the origin of

30 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
evil and sin, or the means by which they first
entered into the world, we find two suggestions
which appear in St. Paul's writings, both of which
have their parallel in Jewish theology, but which
are quite differently treated by him, and apparently
quite differently regarded. The one which is least
noticed, and which would probably not be noticed
at all had we no Jewish precedent to fall back upon,
is that which occurs in the remarkable passage in
i Cor. xv. 45-50, where the contrast between
Christ and Adam, the present life and the future,
is instituted. The positive assertion that " Flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,"
seems to have in it an echo of the Palestinian teach
ing as to the constitution of man. According to
that view, man had two tendencies within him — one
good, the other evil — and the latter was associated
with his physical constitution. Whether this is so
or not is a matter of comparatively slight
importance, since in the particular passage which
bears most directly upon this subject quite another
point of view is taken, but one which by no means
necessarily involves a contradiction of this inter
pretation. In the much-debated passage, Rom. v.
12-21, the existence of sin as an historical fact is
directly attributed to the transgression of Adam.
Here is the beginning of sin, in and through the
act of the individual man. But it should be
distinctly borne in mind that St. Paul does not
directly, explicitly, or unequivocally assert that sin
passed on, through the transgression of Adam,

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 31
to the race. He nowhere states that it is imputed
to man by virtue of Adam's representative character,
or inherited by him by virtue of the solidarity of
the race, or, in the more technical phrase of
Augustinianism, by Traducianism. What St. Paul
does assert is, " That death passed upon all men "
(Rom. v. 12). This is the first proposition, and
the statement following it, " For that all have
sinned," must not be interpreted in the light of
subsequent theological theorists which have used
this passage to justify themselves, but from the
point of view of the men of his own age. Nor will
laborious exegesis based upon strict grammatical
and philological laws settle the issue, unless, indeed,
their application is so obvious as to preclude any
difference of opinion ; but the true way seems to be
to combine the philological method with the results
attained by a study of the contemporaneous Jewish
theology on this point. The assertion that there is
a ' causal connection ' between the death which had
extended to all and the sin of Adam, on the ground
that the sin of Adam was the sin of all men, is not
necessarily involved in this statement, or in any
of the other passages which refer to this event.
In 1 Cor. xv. 22 the unity of the race in Adam
involves death, but not necessarily sin, or, at least, it
is not so affirmed. The Rabbins of St. Paul's age
declared the same thing, and asserted most
positively that death, but death alone, had passed
over to man through Adam's transgression. " The
Fall of Adam has brought death upon the entire race,

32 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
but not sin. Sin is the result of the decision of
each individual."1 The fact that the thought of St.
Paul had its roots in his previous Rabbinical training
has been generally recognized by the best scholars
in this department of study. Meyer says, " It may
reasonably be assumed that the doctrine of the
Apostle had, in the first instance, its historical roots in
his Jewish and especially his Rabbinical training, and
was held by him even prior to his conversion ; and
that in his Christian enlightenment he saw no reason
for abandoning the proposition, which, on the contrary,
he adopted into the system of his Christian views."2
But when he further says, " From this consequence
which the sin of Adam had for all, it results, in
virtue of the necessary causal connection primarily
ordained by God between sin and death, by reason
ing back, ab effectu ad causam, that the Fall of
Adam was the collective Fall of the entire race,
in so far as, in fact, all forfeited Paradise and
therewith incurred death," 8 he does not stand
squarely on the ground of the Jewish theologians.
These affirmed that the Fall of the entire race in
Adam does not prove the sin of the entire race in
that event ; or, to put it differently, they asserted that
the Fall does not prove the unity of the race in the
sin of Adam, but only in its results. It cannot be
said that in the passages hitherto examined any
thing more has been asserted by the Apostle. The
1 Weber, S. 217.
2 Commentary on Romans, pp. 252-253.
3 Ibid., p. 253.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 33
real difficulty, or, at least, the greatest difficulty, is
found in the phrase 'vavres ^fxaprov' which occurs in
the 1 2th verse of this chapter taken in connection
with the 19th verse. In the former case, the
assertion that " all have sinned " in itself involves no
special difficulty, even if taken for the sin of each
individual. This was the common thought of
Palestinian theology, and St. Paul may well have
inserted it here, without necessarily implying any
direct connection of the sin of Adam with the
sinfulness of each individual. In the 19th verse,
however, he asserts distinctly, " For as by one man's
disobedience many were made sinners, so by the
obedience of one shall many be made righteous."
The difficulty here is that a new idea appears. A
purely spiritual connection, rather than a physical
one, lies at the root of the parallel instituted by the
Apostle. How a moral or spiritual state in one
case can be attributed to another individual who has
no conscious relation with the disposition predicated,
is a difficulty which cannot be overcome. The
word which St. Paul uses, ' Karesradija-av,' does not
imply any organic process by means of which
the condition postulated becomes part of the
character or internal life of Adam's descendants,
but expresses or indicates merely a forensic attitude
or point of view, from which the subject is regarded
as from the outside. The difficulty of reconciling
these forms of expression with the intense and glow
ing consciousness from which all the reflections of
St. Paul begin, is one^wjakiuroost can appreciate, and
3

34 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
few feel satisfied that they can accomplish. The
flood of Christian emotion and conviction swept
away with it much of the past, and bore upon its
bosom much of the logical refuse of the Rabbinical
schools. The difficulties are so great for a satis
factory interpretation of many passages in St. Paul,
that one can only look to the future for a fuller
exposition of that vivid mind and lofty soul, and
feel that the path of light lies not through the various
dogmatic explanations of the Christian schools, but
through the slow and careful examination of the
various ideas which floated in the atmosphere of St.
Paul's early life. We must recognize that in his
mind lay a mass of thought which had been shaped
by influences, very difficult to be distinctly traced
after such a long interval of time, and very
easily to be entirely misunderstood or over
looked. When we examine more in detail the manifesta
tions of sin as described by St. Paul, we find that he
assigns to it a particular organ through which it
reveals itself. This organ or seat of sin is the flesh.
Whether he believes that the flesh is by its original
constitution sinful, as was held by some explicitly
then, and implicitly by many more then and since, or
whether it was that particular side or element of
human nature which offered the freest room for the
action of the sinful power, is a question which cannot
be positively decided from the language of the
Apostle. However sinful the flesh may be, it is not
the whole man, and the doctrine of absolute depravity

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH

35

and corruption finds no support either in Jewish
theology or the writings of St. Paul. His primary
object must always be kept in view. That object
is neither a philosophical system nor a scholastic
theology, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The in
tensity of his abhorrence of sin and his moral con
demnation of mankind proceed from no convictions
of a purely philosophical or abstract nature. The
weakness and helplessness which fill him with such
despair are not connected with the merely legal or
religious requirements which the spiritual nature,
or, as he believes, even God himself, demands. In
Rom. ii. 14, 15, he seems to recognize the ability
of man to fulfil, at least from the legal standpoint,
the requirements of the law. But in the revelation
of Jesus Christ there is an overpowering radiance of
holiness which fills him with an unspeakable sense
of shame and sin. His whole conception of sin is
changed, and changed by this new ideal of life
which has been set forth before him. The unity
and harmony of the nature and character of Christ
with the will of God, and also the revelation of that will
in him, shows St. Paul the abyss which lies between
him and this new standard of life. This slavery of
sin under which he groans is the incapacity to attain,
not relative freedom, but absolute spiritual likeness
to God in Christ Jesus. That cry under the
tyranny of sin is the cry of the soul after God and
His absolute holiness. The Apostle craves for
himself and others that which he sees Jesus Christ
possesses, and which is the very essence of God's

36 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
being — an absolutely holy will. This is the only
ideal good either in heaven or earth.
The whole passion of St. Paul's Christian life, the
very heart of all his song, was not obedience to the
divine commands, but conformity with the divine
nature ; not fulfilment of the law, but inward
identification of his will with the will of God. This
is not the spirit of the dialectician, and dialectics
were but the superficial and unessential elements of
one of the most intense and passionate natures
which through all the long history of the Christian
Church has loved and served its Lord. If we study
St. Paul's language with these facts clearly in mind,
we will easily be able to distinguish the purely
technical form of his thought from the great spiritual
consciousness which lies behind, and which must
be ever present to a man, no matter what he calls
himself, when he stands before the cross of Christ or
feels within him the mystery and majesty of that
love. To some it may seem as if an undue amount
of attention has been devoted to a subject which is
now so often treated in a purely conventional manner.
The importance of St. Paul's reflections on sin
consists not so much in their philosophical value as
in their moral and spiritual worth. No large and
noble ideal of life, none which can give life dignity
and seriousness, can exist without some of that deep
and awful sense of the eternal righteousness which
lies behind the most austere and solemn view which
man can take of his character and destiny. In
feeling so deeply the problem of sin, St. Paul was only

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 37
expressing one of the fundamental characteristics of
his age, and which has also been a characteristic of
all ages which mark the upward progress of the
human race. As one reads the writings of the
nobler and more serious-minded of the Gnostics, and
studies the elements which composed their systems,
one cannot but be deeply impressed with the place
which this subject of sin and evil has in their
thought. It was the problem to them, and they all,
without exception, failed to throw any light upon it
or furnish any solution for it. In St. Paul it
represented the moral side of life, but was not the
root and source of his Christian consciousness. It is
the element of depth in his life, but does not set
forth the full dignity and breadth which belonged to
his conception of his Christian life. This expressed
itself in another form, and one which brought him
not only into conflict with his own age, but, to
a degree at least, has given him an unique and
solitary position in the history of the Christian
Church. In his conception of the law as a Jew, and the
contrast which his subsequent thought of the same
revealed, we have one of the most striking and
original elements of the new Christian ideal as
presented in his consciousness. His sense of sin
was a part of his human consciousness fostered by
his Jewish education, and antedated his conversion,
although it was through the Gospel that it received
such a tremendous development that it became one
of the primary factors of his Christian consciousness.

38 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
His attitude towards the law was a far different one
from his attitude towards this other element of his
life. The one was a revolution, the other, only
a development, although a very radical one. In
ascertaining the position which the law occupied in
the thought and life of the later Jews, we have, as
our starting-point, that great historical event which
shaped, and in a sense transformed, the whole
subsequent history of the Jewish people — that is, the
return from the Captivity. Ezra is a new and, in a
certain sense, a greater Moses, so far, at least, as
influence and importance are concerned. After him,
and through the reforms inaugurated by him, the
Thora gradually excluded all other elements from
the religious life of the Jew. " The law became
through him the exclusive centre of the religious
thought and life of all pious Israelites." x " The
specific character of piety during this period depends
on the acknowledgment of the dignity of the law.
The age of this acknowledgment may be determined
almost to the day and hour. It dates from that im
portant occurrence, whose epoch making importance
is only brought forward in the book of Nehemiah —
the reading of the law by Ezra, and the solemn
engagement of the people to observe it'' (Neh. viii.—
x.).2 This new conception of the religious life grew
more intense and all-absorbing as the centuries
rolled by. No language could be more exclusive,
1 Weber, S. 9.
2 E. Schurer, The Jewish People in the Time 0/ Jesus Christ
(Eng. Trans., Division ii. vol. i. p. 306).

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 39
and certainly none more exaggerated, than that which
was applied to the Thora. It was looked upon as
practically eternal, for it existed before the creation
of the world, and was intended to continue not only
through Time, but also through Eternity. It is the
' Eternal Wisdom ' to whom God addressed
himself in Creation when he said, " We would make
man in our own image" (Gen. i. 16).1 Around the
Thora all the central ideas of man's existence were
grouped. The language is attributed to Simon the
Just that "The world stands on three things — the
Thora, the Temple Service, and Good Works.2
But in the course of time the Thora not only took
precedence of all other elements, but absorbed into
itself everything which pertained to religious feeling
and religious thought. The world itself seemed to
some to have been made for the specific purpose of
furnishing a stage for the Thora, so great was their
devotion to it. Not only was the intellectual and
religious life concentrated upon the study and
observance of the law, but most of the political
history also has relations to the Thora. The great
struggle with the Selucidae, b.c. 164, was not
about political freedom, but a fuller and completer
observance of the law. Under the impulse of this
one dominating influence, the whole previous history
of Israel was re-read. The forty years' wandering
in the desert, it was asserted, was for the purpose of
learning the Thora. So thoroughly was the whole
history of man identified with the Jewish law, that
1 Weber, S. 14- 2 Ibid., S. 7.

40 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
Adam himself was represented as having been
circumcised. The extravagant extent to which the
reverence of the Jew for his law went, is familiar to
all students of Jewish history. It occupied the first
place in Jewish theology, and formed with the
expanded subtleties and refinements of the Scribes
the very heart of Jewish religion. So important
was the law in the eye of the Jew, that the account in
Ex. xxxii. of the defection of the people was to the
history of Israel as significant in its character and
consequences as the Fall of Adam was for collective
humanity. The study of the Thora had, moreover,
in itself a value which was attributed to nothing
else. It was, of course, obligatory on all, and the
highest duty of a parent to a child was to teach it
the law. Forgiveness of sins was to be obtained by
a study of the law, and after the destruction of the
Temple it replaced sacrifice as a means of propitia
tion. " Greater is the law than the building of the
sanctuary," is a speech which testifies to the devotion
to the Thora. Some went so far as to say that even
if one learned in the law fell into sin, God still
esteemed him on account of his knowledge of the
Thora. The wide distinction between the ignorant
and the wise in the law, separated the people into
two classes. To one belonged death, to the other
salvation. This deep-rooted conviction finds its
expression in the language of the Pharisees in the
Gospel. "This multitude which knoweth not the
law is accursed " (John vii. 49). The power of this
system of legalism held every ardent Jew in an

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 41
unrelaxing grasp. Its authority was paramount and
unquestionable. St. Paul, an Hebrew of the
Hebrews, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, touching the
law blameless, had steeped his life in its strong
colours. In considering what he has to say on this subject,
we perceive that there is a distinction in his mind
which has only an imperfect expression in his writ
ings, but which evidently must be recognized in
order fully to appreciate his thought. He recog
nizes a law written on the heart of the Gentiles, as
well as a special legal system which was in operation
among the Jews. But he does not expand the
thought or show the relation, if any, which existed
between the two. Under 6 vo/mos the Apostle gen
erally understands the Mosaic law in its fullest ex
tent. That he excluded, or intended to exclude, the
developments and refinements of the Rabbinical
schools from his conception of the law, we have no
reason for believing. On the other hand, educated,
as he was, we must believe that the term was
equivalent in his writings to the generally accepted
use among the people at this time. The difference
said to exist between the ethical and ritual elements
of the law in St. Paul's mind has a basis in fact, but
not in the literary expressions which he uses. In
2 Cor. iii. 6 he seems to imply that there really
exists a distinction of a certain kind, but it is one
merely between the literary form and the spiritual
contents. This distinction was recognized by all
the teachers of the age who had adopted the

42 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
allegorical method of interpretation. Some critics
have gone beyond this, and asserted that the pres
ence or absence of the Greek article clearly marks
the existence in St. Paul's mind of a distinction
between the Mosaic law and the abstract or ideal
law of morality. This theory, however, has been
taken in directly opposite ways by different scholars,
and yet the exceptions to the use supposed to have
been established are so many that it is evident that
in the great majority of cases the Apostle did not
attach any special significance to the absence or
presence ofthe article.1
The excessive refinements and subtleties, as well
as the hard external form which legalism had given
to the religious life of Judaism, bore heavily upon
all those whose horizon was expanding under the
growth of their moral and spiritual consciousness.
The revolt was already prepared even before the
conversion of the Apostle, and would probably have
taken place in some form or other even had the
Gospel not appeared with a living energy which
left no room for any other force in the spiritual
history of the future. The impatience and sense of
oppression which were felt were not directed against
the law as an ethical standard, but as a system of
casuistry, which it had, in fact, become. This is the
degenerate form in which it appears in the hands of
1 Compare Rom. ii. 13, 15, 18, 20, 23, 26; iv. 15; vii. 1, 5, 14,
21, with Rom. ii. 17, 25, 27; Gal. iii. 17, 18; 1 Cor. ix. 20; Phil.
iii. 5. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der Neutestamentliche Theologie, B. ii.
S. 22, regards the question ofthe article as purely academic.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 43
the Scribes and Pharisees. This result did not
issue from any special moral or intellectual per
versity of the theologians, but is one of the inevitable
effects of all attempts to conceive religion under the
form of law. The Christian teacher is as liable to
this mode of thought or system of ethics as the
Pharisee, the moment he begins to regard the Gospel
from the legal standpoint. The endless entangle
ments and contemptible puerilities of pharisaical
theology are wearisome in the extreme, but they
have their counterpart in a far more repulsive and
hideous form in the teachings of the Spanish Jesuits
of the seventeenth century.
St. Paul, if not seeking, yet felt the want of a
different thought and a higher conception of his
religious life than that which shaped itself under the
standard of the law. He needed a large, free
principle of life that should issue from inward motive
and personal inspiration, and which would break the
bonds of the hard external prescriptions which
claimed to define and regulate his life. If the law
was looked at in its essence, and regarded only from
the point of view of its ethical elements, it could and
did reveal his inward repulsion to its demands. In
other words, it showed him that sin existed in him ;
but it armed him with no power, it furnished him
with no inspiration, by which he might hope to attain
to that lofty life which lay above sin and law. It
might create despair, it could not implant hope.
This conviction bred of experience came into clearer
and stronger light when the revelation of the Gospel

44 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
was made to him. He accepted it, and was willing
to pass on, without any controversy on this point, to
the higher and broader ground of Christ's revelation.
But it is at this point in his spiritual development
that his own practical experience entered in and
formed such an important and influential factor in
shaping his later thought of the law and his attitude
towards the Jewish Church and Jewish Christians.
Christ was the end of the law, but the problem was
not fully met by that statement, for there was really
a further question as to the relation between the
two. How much of the past could legitimately and
naturally go over into the future ? how was the law to
stand to the Gospel ? Was it as the dawn which
was swallowed up and expanded in the coming day
which continued to fulfil its promises, or was the
Gospel as the light which banished the darkness and
did not permit of the existence of this, without by
so much limiting its own sweetness and range ?
The conception of this Gospel of God as the hope
of glory revealed to every man, and in every man
through Jesus Christ, made the moving principle of
the thought and life of the Apostle, and opening all
the paths of the world to those unwearied feet,
brought his fellow-countrymen in his footsteps with
fiercest anger and deadliest hate in their hearts.
This opposition compelled St. Paul to give a more
positive, extreme, and antagonistic form to his state
ment of the true relation of the law to the Christian
than it would otherwise have received. But although
he more sharply defines his thought and states it

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 45
with greater emphasis on account of this struggle,
although he lays open with rigorous and remorseless
clearness the chasm between his new ideal and his
old, the contrast was always there, and already re
vealed itself in the very beginnings of his Christian
life. It is possible that he might not have worked
out this contrast in clear terms had the strife with
the Judaisers not sprung up, yet he realized it as a
practical motive in the life he led. As a matter of
fact, he seems always to have felt the emphasis which
the Jews laid upon the possession of the law, and the
pride which they took in that fact was shared by him.
Intense love and reverence for the law were part of
his birthright, and they never died out of his soul.
And by this law he did not mean only the ethical
contents of the same, but the entire Canon and the
whole traditional interpretation of the same.1 To
him this law was holy, righteous, and spiritual
(Rom. vii. 12, 14). It was also morally good and
beautiful (Rom. vii. 16; 1 Tim. i. 8). In this feel
ing for the law he followed the traditions of his race
and his generation, but it was in the understanding of
the purpose and scope of the law that he diverged
wide as the poles from his fellow-countrymen.2 In this
divergence he followed no previous teacher, and re
vived no theory which any devout Jew had ever set
forth before. His interpretation of the law, and his
1 Rom. ix. 4 shows how widely his conception was extended,
but no more so than was common among the Pharisaical schools
of Palestine.
2 Pfleiderer, 2 Auf., S. 92.

46 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
final rejection of it, was from no disappointment (in
the fullest sense of the word) or disparaging feeling for
it. Nor was this rejection an outcome of any purely
dialectical processes which took place in his own
mind. But he had gradually drifted into a position
which contained a practical challenge to the Jewish
Christians or to those who wished to conceive the
Gospel under the form of law. This attitude he was
not allowed to occupy without controversy, and out
of this controversy came the definition which he gave
of the breadth and freedom of the Gospel and his
position as the Apostle to the Gentiles. To say that
St. Paul deliberately rejected Judaism and broke
away in revolt from his old position, and then was
brought to the freedom of Christ, is to place the effect
before the cause, and invert the real processes of his
own soul. The attraction of the higher life revealed
in Christ, the submission of his life to Him, and the
consequent absorption in and union with Him, in
volved, in his case at least, the complete exclusion of
all other considerations as subordinate and inferior.
That passionate cry, so full, so deep, that it seems as
if in its perfect concentration none like it has ever
come from human lips — " I count all things but loss
for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord ! " — permits no qualifications or limitations.
He gave his life to Christ. He asked only that
Christ might take his life into His keeping. The old
land of his forefathers, however dearly loved, sank
down out of sight behind him as the gale of this
mighty inspiration swept him out on the unknown

chap, i ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 47
sea of the soul's life in Christ. Christ took absolute
possession of him — " I live, yet not I but Christ
liveth in me " — and the new principle of life did not
permit any choice on his part. The past must go,
and out of his Christian experience was wrought the
rejection of the law. This rejection had its justifica
tion and endorsement in his Christian consciousness,
but found its logical statement in the defence which
he put forth under the stress of Jewish opposition.
This defence is the effort made to satisfy the minds
of those who did not and could not understand these
inner movements of life and the mighty impulse
which bore him onward. Only a man already in the
current could get a glimpse of the wide territory
through which the stream passed. The Christian
revelation was the assertion that history was not a
stagnant pool but a mighty river, and St. Paul was
in the very heart of the stream.
When we examine more closely the Apostle's view
of the object of the law, we are impressed by the
radical change which had taken place in his concep
tion of it. This new position of his has well been
called "an inverted or reversed Pharisaism."1 The
Pharisee looked upon the law as the final and ulti
mate end of the whole divine history. It is said,
" The Lord Himself will teach Israel the Thora in
the Temple of the new Jerusalem of the Messianic
Kingdom." " In the world I have indeed given you
the Thora, and you shall occupy yourself with it
alone ; but in the future world I myself will teach all
1 A. Hausrath, Der Apostel Paul, S. 156.

48 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
Israel, and they will learn it and no more forget it." *
St. Paul regarded the law, on the other hand, as a
phase or period in the divine economy which had
already lost its authority. " It was added because of
transgressions, till the seed should come to whom
the promise hath been made." " The law hath been
our tutor to bring us unto Christ, that we might be
justified by faith. But now that faith is come, we
are no longer under a tutor " (Gal. iii. 19, 24). This
view of the history of the past had its roots in his
subjective experience. He could summon no author
ity to sustain his position, nor did he ask any, except
that which could be drawn by each Christian from a
comparison of his previous position and his present
state in Christ.
The condition of the Gentile world was infer-
entially the same as that of the Jew from this point
of view — that is, it was preparatory or educational
and disciplinary. One stage of human history
succeeds another, as in the progressive development
of the individual one period follows another with
its consequent conditions. [What the Apostle says
in Gal. iii. 19 does not conflict with this.] The special
object in view in the Epistle to the Galatians was best
attained by the line of argument there adopted by St.
Paul, but in the Epistle to the Romans he presents
another view of the law which, although not in conflict
with the one just set forth, yet has its ground in a
different though not contradictory conception of its
relations to the soul. The Apostle's attitude towards
1 Weber, S. 360.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 49
the law after he became a Christian being always that
it was abolished, this fact made his interpretation of
the object of the law necessarily different from that
ofthe Jew. The deepest conviction of the Hebrew
teacher was that the law was the way of life. By it
and through it alone could man attain to that state
of righteousness which made him worthy of God's
recognition and favour. This whole conception was
entirely reversed in the mind of St. Paul. To
regard the law in its highest and most spiritual form
as an ideal to be realized by man was impossible.
No one could possibly fulfil the demands of the law.
It was not given for this purpose (Gal. iii. 19).
There was quite another object in view. Not for
righteousness but for sin did God reveal it (Rom. v.
20, vii. 5, 8 ; 1 Cor. xv. 56). The belief that the law
can in any way produce that holiness which the soul
craves is most emphatically denied, and yet this
assertion is in the mind of the Apostle perfectly
consistent with the goodness of God and the holiness
of the law. The law brought sin to light and in
creased its range and power, and since it produced
such results everything which bound the Christian
to it was broken. However difficult it may be to
reconcile such a view of the law with the conception
suggested by its educational purposes, something
better and higher was attained by the Apostle as
the warfare of life rolled on and the contents of his
salvation more fully unfolded themselves. Not by
an argument, but by a burst of thanksgiving, are the
deep problems of sin, the law, death, and sorrow

50 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
wrought out : " Thanks be to God which giveth us
the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (i Cor.
xv. 57). Out of sin, away from the law, up to Christ
and sonship to God, was the path of the saved soul.
In the eyes of his Jewish contemporaries this mighty
sweep above the legalism of religion in any form
branded him as a thorough and radical antinomian.
It is in vain that one seeks for refuge from such
a conclusion. He himself is the author of this view
of him, and the charge was no libel. But the
principle of absolute freedom was no abstract one,
and did not have its source in the individual rights
or individual self-consciousness. The antinomianism
of the Apostle is as different from that of the Gnostic
sects or those of the Reformation period as his life
was different from theirs. Christ was the key to his
whole spiritual history, and in Him was the solution
of all the great problems of his life. Union with
Him was the only condition under which he con
sidered the abrogation of the law, and union with
Him was through faith. Or, rather, faith was union
with Him.
It is in the definition of faith, or, rather, the ex
pression of what it actually was in the mind of the
Apostle, that we find one of the most striking and
distinctive features in the spiritual history of St.
Paul. No other writer of the New Testament ex
pressed himself in just the same way, and no one
offers so marked and individual deviations from the
traditional use. More than that, we find more varied
uses in his writings than in any other, and a gradual

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 51
concentration on one meaning, as his life itself became
more and more focussed on the one fact of his
spiritual history. The legal conception of religion
which had so widely prevailed, and which seemed
to have its roots deep in some primary instinct of
mankind, had given a tone and definition to even
the most common and fundamental religious ideas.
The ideas of law and satisfaction, of debt and pay
ment, ruled the whole circle of Jewish religious
thought in the days when the Rabbins had reached
their highest point of influence. These legal concep
tions necessarily affected their definition or inter
pretation of the idea of faith. The earliest reference
to it is in the case of their great forefather Abraham,
and his faith, as understood by the Rabbins, was
simply a righteous act which was worthy of reward
and was so recognized by God. The proof of this
lay in the fact that Abraham received the present
and the future world as a recognition of the meri
torious character of his act.1 There is, to be sure,
great importance to be attached to the fact that this
faith had a spiritual element in it, inasmuch as it
was unbounded faith and trust in God ; but the
essential viciousness of the conception was not
removed by this concession. Faith in the coming
of the Messiah was also regarded as a work which
would be recognized and properly rewarded in the
day of the establishment of His kingdom. In all
the ideas associated with this word in the popular
Jewish theology there were none which advanced
1 Weber, S. 295-6.

52 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
beyond the strictest legalism, and the spiritual
character of the individual seemed in no way in
volved. In St. Paul's great contemporary there
was an advance made on the Palestinian school, and
the line of thought finds many parallels in later
Christian writers. Nothing is more striking in a
comparison between the teaching of the Palestinian
theology and the Alexandrian as represented by
Philo than the vast superiority of the latter in depth,
breadth, and spirituality of view on this and kindred
subjects. These differences show that the elements
which constitute them were inherited by Philo, not
from his Jewish fathers, but his Greek teachers.
The fusion of thought which he represents, and upon
whose broad stream he was borne along, contained
in it some of the finest seeds of the later Alexandrian
theology. In the manner in which he speaks of
faith, he approaches more nearly the language and
thought of the writers of the New Testament than
any other writer of the pre-Christian period. The
influence of Platonism is so marked in the Alex
andrian Jewish theology, that it is to it that the
peculiar form of Philo's statement on this subject
must be attributed rather than to the Jewish ideas
which he inherited. Before the mind of this Alex
andrian Jew hovered the vision of an invisible, ideal
world, which was far more real to him than that
upon which he looked with such confusion and
perplexity in his soul. Above the ' First and only
Fair' of Plato rose the 'Creator' of his Jewish
faith, the Maker of all things visible and invisible ;

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 53
but these were not two but One, and in Him the
soul of the Jew found his only peace and strength.
From this lofty elevation of spiritual vision, the
language in which he describes faith as the capacity
of the soul to separate itself from all earthly things,
and to trust entirely to the invisible and unseen,
becomes entirely intelligible. It is the mark, he
says, of a great and heavenly understanding to with
draw from the power of sense and the influence of
the world, and trust entirely and only to God who is
truth. Living in this invisible and ideal world,
faith sees the not existing as something visible and
actual. When he speaks of Abraham [De Mig.
Abr., 9), the thought involved is very similar to that
of St. Paul in Rom. iv. 19 ff.1
Any comparison, however, between the teachings
of St. Paul and that of any of his predecessors or
contemporaries in the Jewish Church only reveals
the immense advance in clearness, strength, and
power of apprehension which he has made. In his
use of the word ' Faith ' he evidently attaches quite
a number of distinct meanings to it. They are,
however, for the most part closely related, and in
many ways resemble the uses customary, not only
in the nobler Jewish theology, but also in the later
Christian Church. Their origin is perfectly obvious,
and need not be further examined. But one special
meaning, which, in some respects at least, is the
1 Siegfried, Philo von Alex., S. 307 ; A. F. Daehne, Geschichtliche
Darstellung der Judisch-Alexandrischen Religions - Philosophie,
Erster Abt, S. 393.

54 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap, i.
most striking feature in his conception of the new
Christian life, needs to be clearly brought out and
emphasized. The special causes which led to the
particular use referred to can be distinctly traced in
the historical circumstances of his life — that is, the
controversies with the judaizing Christians — but the
genesis of the thought by which this word came to
be identified with the truth he wished to set forth
cannot be discovered. No previous use, no hint in
the derivation of the word, suggests the association
of it with that truth which St. Paul has joined to it,
but there is no mistaking the fact. The thought
stands out clear and sharp in his letters, and is the
fundamental idea of his Christian consciousness. A
thorough and exhaustive examination of the Apostle's
writings would show how gradually the general and
common uses of this word were superseded by this
special use, and also that this growth in definiteness
of expression kept pace with the development of
his own Christian experience. The evolution of
this higher and more concentrated form of expression
reveals the intensity of his spiritual vision and
spiritual life. While it is impossible to say why
St. Paul uses this particular word to express the
spiritual fact it is intended to state, yet the direct
cause of his setting forth the truth in the particular
form he did, rose out of his controversy with the
Judaisers. The emphasis which he had laid upon
faith as the spirit of the inner life and the power of
freedom for the soul, the indifference which he felt
for the highly prized obligations of the Jewish law,

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 55
and the strong opposition which he displayed to
their enforcement, involved him in strife with his
countrymen. He was consequently compelled to go
deeper into the elements of salvation, or, at least,
work out into clearer and more definite expression
his conception of the salvation which was offered to
man in Christ, and the means by which it might
become the vital force in his living. The ground of
this higher or, at least, more advanced thought of
faith has no dogmatic basis, but is rooted in his
personal experience of Christ and the work wrought
in his soul by him. The two poles of his thought
are Christ and the human soul, and in the unity of
these is salvation for man.
This unity may be looked on from either side —
Christ living and acting in the man, which is
salvation ; the man living and acting in Christ,
which is faith (Rom. viii. 9 ff. ; Gal. ii. 20 ; 2 Cor.
xiii. 5; Col. iii. 11 ; 2 Cor. v. 17; Gal. iii. 27). He
is never willing to separate these two inseparable
factors, but defines the subjective state — the appre
hension of Christ— as the vital principle of the life
within, as faith. The danger which already existed
in the ordinary thought of faith, that it might be re
garded as a substitute for the works of the law, and
to that extent, at least, as an act of righteousness de
serving merit, was, by this extension and elevation
of the idea of faith, completely avoided. This subtle
shifting^f. the old objectionable character of the legal
conception of religion over to the new spiritual life of
the Gospel — a process which has taken place again

56 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
and again, and which has so firmly entrenched itself
in the Christian Church that it is not even recog
nized — could not have occurred, had not the higher
thought of the Apostle failed to be grasped. This
perhaps was inevitable, the result of conditions which
could not be overcome ; but one needs to realize not
only the successes but the failures of the past, and
some of these were vital. The value and superiority
of faith did not lie in it as a human act which was
higher and better than any other act which was
purely external, or even of any other act whatsoever,
but in the fact that by that word was expressed the
union of the soul with Christ which had in it a power
and perfection nowhere else to be found. This
sublime mysticism had its warrant in itself. His
own spiritual experience was the source of all that
he set forth. The fulness of his ideal he never
reached, but the foundations of it were laid in what
had been the awful crisis of his own history, and in
the""deepest passions of his own soul. Out of this
union with Christ rose the stream of a new and
broader life full of the life and freedom of God.
This life is the life of sonship in God through
Christ. This sonship is the highest ideal that the
human soul has ever had held before it, either as an
object of desire or attainment.
"""Without entering into any* further examination of
the Jewish theology in which St. Paul was trained,
it is sufficient only to note the fact that this was
not a new thought to the Jew. His right and title
to this position he grounded, not on any spiritual

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 57
relation, but on heredity and descent. As sons
of Abraham they belonged to the chosen race.
The purely physical conception was doubtless
modified in the minds of the more spiritual by a
perception that the character of Abraham was a
factor in the election, and that the true relationship
had its essence in spiritual resemblance. But the
crude, broad statement of the popular mind was
more fitted to gain assent, because involving less
self-examination and a less spiritual self-conscious
ness than the other. The profound revolution in
St. Paul's soul was so entirely spiritual in its nature
and causes, that it was impossible that the old
formulas by which men expressed their relations to
God should any longer be satisfactory without a
reinterpretation. The new life in Christ led to a
re-reading of all man's spiritual relations, and
emphasized the spiritual aspect of his life to the
almost entire exclusion of the historical elements of
the past. The new thought of sonship was to the
old as the substance is to the shadow or as the soul
to the body. The former was but a mere anticipa
tion or, if you please, misconception which was
correctly interpreted in the life of faith in Christ.
The forensic mode of regarding the spiritual relations
of man, which had such a large place in the legal
mind of the Jew, undoubtedly left very distinct traces
in the language of St. Paul, but that it was more in
language than in thought can be seen in such
passages as 2 Cor. v. 21 and Phil. iii. 9. The
clearest evidence is that the merely legal sonship of

58 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
the Hebrew race is exchanged for a living spiritual
fellowship of all mankind with God through faith
in Christ. In the remarkable 8th chapter of
Romans, in which St. Paul develops the idea of
sonship, he asserts for every Christian soul, or for
every soul that is led by the spirit of God, the
absolute title of a son of God. That he considers
this title anything but the adoption of a previous
phrase or a mere literary circumlocution, he declares
in proclaiming these sons " Heirs of God and joint
heirs with Christ ; if so be that we suffer with him,
that we may be also glorified with him " (Rom. viii.
1 6- 1 8). The spiritual character and spiritual privi
leges of Jesus Christ are claimed as the inheritance
of the children of God through union with Christ.
It may be said that this is the culmination of St. Paul's
thought of the revelation of Jesus Christ as related
to human character and its destiny. Man cannot be
more than this. The Christian cannot be less, or
accept less as his right. Against this spiritual self-
consciousness, which realizes and affirms itself with
such passionate joy and gratitude, nothing shall be
allowed to stand. The Son is in the immediate
presence of the Father. The more this relation
was entered into, the more fully the power of it was
felt, and in the slight change in the language we see
how the Apostle had felt in his soul the full flood of
light and life which came to him in the revelation of
the fatherly love. The full tenderness of God's love,
and the perfect happiness of the human soul, is
shown in the new term which he uses, 'tSkvov,'

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 59
'child.' Protection and obedience, love and trust,
are the reciprocal feelings expressed by this word.
Nestling tenderness and confiding love with the
uplifted eye of trust is the picture which the word
suggests, and it sprang out of his own inner life.
The divinest and most sacred relation of the common
life of man is made a type or image of that higher
life which belongs to the soul in God.
To such a child who had attained to the true
knowledge of the character of God by Christ, nothing
could be of such high promise as the common
inheritance with Christ of what God might give
to him, whatever that inheritance might be. To be
like Christ in all spiritual opportunities and endow
ments was the highest conception of the possible
attainments of the child of God.
" The liberty of the glory of the children of God "
as the final aim and goal of the revelation of God
to man, hung like a vision before the tired eyes of
the Apostle, and brought peace to the heart which
was vexed and torn by the incessant strifes and con
troversies of men who could not grasp the profound
and revolutionary meaning of the religious life which
the revelation of Jesus Christ introduced. Absolute
spiritual freedom, the freedom of Christ himself, was
as much the essence of sonship, as sonship itself was
the realization of the relation of the soul to God in
Christ. To limit it or restrict it by any other laws
than those of the spirit of Christ was to destroy it
and reduce it to a mere phrase. It was the intense
reality and actual correspondence with facts, the

60 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
spiritual facts of man's history, which in St. Paul's
mind constitute the truth of the Gospel. It is this
spiritual character and likeness which the revelation
of Christ meant, and which it realized also. Why
then hesitate ? To qualify it or dilute it in accord
ance with the timidity of human nature or the
traditional prescriptions of men, was a thing St.
Paul would not tolerate for an instant. In the fierce
struggles which the Judaisers brought about in the
Church of Galatia, this same question arose and was
answered in just this way. The law of the life of
Christ is the only law which rules in the Christian
life, and this not by obligation but by inner volition,
for he too, as his Redeemer was, is a son of God.
The fearlessness and the fulness with which St.
Paul claims this title for those redeemed by Christ
must have its ground in no theoretical perceptions or
in abstract considerations, but in the realization in
his own soul of the truth and power of this fact.
The boundless horizontof the life of the soul in God
is defined only by the life of the Son of God Him
self. The energy and moving cause of that life as
seen revealed in the individual is God. Its object
and aim is the fulness and perfection of Christ's life.
When we retrace the path over which we have
passed in search of the elements of St. Paul's ideal
of life, and the means by which it is to be realized,
we find at its very foundation a profound moral
seriousness. The awful sense of God's holiness is
not lessened but deepened by the revelation of Jesus
Christ. This produces a spiritual self-abasement

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 61
and a profound sense of spiritual evil. This deep
consciousness of sin and evil has always stood in the
way of, and barred the path against, any vague
Pantheism which has had such an attraction for so
many spiritually-minded men. Out of and above
this personal insufficiency rose the sense of Christ's
greatness and Christ's sufficiency. The splendour
of his person swept all other things out of the
horizon. The law disappeared. Christ being the
centre of the soul's life through faith, there were no
limitations or restrictions to the spiritual growth and
freedom of man except the ethical laws of Christ's
personality and the spiritual conditions of his
obedience to the will of God, which are all expressed
in Love. This implied — nay, was — Sonship. This
meant a Gospel, not for the Jew, but for Man. This
distinctive feature of the external history of the
Gospel — that is, its Universalism — has seemed to
some to be one of the elements which St. Paul
derived from the Hellenistic influences around him.1
But if the foregoing pages have in any way
approached the path along which St. Paul walked,
it is clear that his universalism was not a result of
his Hellenistic culture, but the outcome of his new
spiritual experience. It sprang from his personal
conviction that in Christ there was neither " Greek
nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian,
Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." 2
1 Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, S. T75.
2 Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der Neutestamentliche Theologie, B. ii,
S. 205.

62 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. i.
Out of his own spiritual experience, and through the
changes wrought in his nature by the living Lord,
came the consciousness of sonship to God. This
ideal of the Christian life, the ideal of a son of God,
had in it the power of an endless life and the promise
of an evolution and development of human history
and human character which could not be prescribed
or defined, but whose goal was the life of God in
Jesus Christ.
It may be, and it has been said, that there never
have been any Christians, either past or present, after
the type and model of St. Paul.1 In all the com
plexity of its elements and the variety of its expres
sion doubtless this is true, but so far as the funda
mental and essential principles are concerned, they
prove their right and establish their claim through
the character which they developed. So far as
regards the practical ideal of the Apostle, we feel
that we know what it was. The question is, Did
the Church follow him, or did it form a practical
ideal of its own ? Was this ideal higher or lower
than that of St. Paul ? In the days that followed we
shall see how far the thoughts of St. Paul moved
the men who came after him ; how they grasped the
problems which human life in the presence of Christ
revealed ; how far they understood and accepted
that spiritual idealism, with its eternal foundation in
the holiness of God, its wide horizon in the liberty
of Christ, and its lofty aim in the sonship of God —
1 " Paulin. Christen im strengen Sinne des Wortes, hat es weder
in alter noch in neuer Zeit gegeben."— Holtzmann, B. ii. S. 205.

chap. i. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 63
an idealism which saw in the primary factors in the
growth of the human soul, aside from its own self-
consciousness, only the life and love of God revealed
in Jesus Christ. These are great questions which
belong to the present, perhaps, as much as to the
past. It is with a view to help somewhat towards
the solution of these questions that the following
pages have been written.

CHAPTER II
THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS AND JUSTIN MARTYR
It is generally recognized that the aim of St. Paul
was to separate Christianity from Judaism and
establish it on an independent foundation. There
seems to have been no other Jewish mind bold
enough to grasp this idea of a religion independent
of law, and consequently the establishment of the
heathen Christianity is due to St. Paul. But the
principles which underlay and prompted this sep
aration and independent establishment were not
understood at that day, and they have been only
partially understood since.1 The great crisis in the
history of the Jewish race, the fall of Jerusalem,
undoubtedly contributed materially to this end. It
scattered the members ofthe young Christian Church,
and broke the power of that spell which was
exercised by those scenes which are among the
most sacred and touching to the Christian heart.
The traditions and teachings of the Church in
Jerusalem, which under other circumstances might
1 J. Draeseke, Der Brief an Diognetos, S. 117.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 65
have exercised a powerful and prevailing influence
upon the fortunes of the Gospel, ceased to be of any
great importance, so far at least as an active in
fluence was concerned, after this critical event.
The history of the Gospel was now to feel the
influence of the two great races which, with the
Jewish, divide the interest of the student of Christian
history — the Greek and the Roman.
We have seen how the education and blood of
the Jew of Tarsus affected the way in which he
apprehended and interpreted the most awful fact of
his experience. We need to understand how other
men of different training, with different blood in
their veins and different thoughts in their brains,
interpreted for themselves and for their fellow-men
this same divine life revealed to them. This inter
pretation was influenced by a thousand causes of
which we must remain in absolute ignorance, but
here and there we can get a glimpse into the heart
and life of a man which tells us something of the
hidden forces which were moving that long-past
world. The story of the first years of the new
history among the races which lay outside the
Jewish world is of deepest interest. Materials for a
satisfactory narrative are almost absolutely lacking.
What we have is so scanty, and the story is broken
by such long pauses, that one hesitates at almost
every step. Silence and darkness hang over many
years, and occasional glimpses only show us how
the changeless and unceasing processes of life and
history are working there, as always, in the life of

66 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
man. Many difficult problems of church history
have their solution buried there in the changes
which came with the years after the death of St.
Paul up to the middle of the second century. The
writings which belong to the intermediate period are
of the greatest value, and yet the conclusions which
they suggest are always subject to revision.
The three most important authors whose writings
have been preserved to us from those early days
have been highly prized, as they should be, and
greatly admired. Yet nothing is more striking than
the contrast between the writings of the Apostles
and those of Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp. The
chasm is enormous, and it is due probably to the
exceedingly scanty material of this period, which
gives a greater value to the little we have, that they
have been ranked so high. These Apostolic Fathers
are unquestionably good men, and have many high
and noble qualities ; but that they are great men in
the sense in which we apply that term to St. Paul
or St. John, no one at all familiar with their writings
would contend.1 It is even questionable, or at least
worthy of discussion, whether they represent the
highest intelligence and character even of those
days. Writers on the early days of Christianity are
fond of showing how the Gospel began with the
lowest and most ignorant, and seem to conclude
1 " Man glaubt es kaum, dass man hier Manner vor sich hat,
die bei jenen grossten Meistern in die Schule gegangen sein sollen,
oder doch der unspriinglichen Quelle so nahe standen." — Thom-
asius, Christlich. Dog., B. i. S. 35.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 67
that it was only gradually that it reached what are
called the upper or cultivated classes. Yet evidence
is not wanting that in some localities even in the
lifetime of St. Paul many earnest and thoughtful
persons, and presumably therefore also cultivated
and intelligent ones, were profoundly influenced by
the Gospel. No one can read the Epistle to the
Romans, for instance, and feel that those to whom the
Apostle wrote were all, or even a large part of them,
ignorant and uncultivated. Many persons calling
themselves intelligent in the present day find con
siderable difficulty in following and grasping the
thought of this great letter. Yet St. Paul wrote to
be understood, and the existence of the letter shows
that it was understood and highly prized. But when
we ask ourselves what is represented by the writings
of the Apostolic Fathers, we find something in every
way inferior to St. Paul. The plainness and sim
plicity of their natures are manifest in the solid,
earnest, and practical manner in which they appre
hend the Gospel. An exception, however, should
be made in the case of Ignatius, who is fairly blazing
with emotion and zeal. But even about this en
thusiasm there is something lacking. The new
enthusiasm for Christ asks no questions and sees no
problems. The attitude of these early believers
towards Christ seems to be one of love, admiration,
and obedience. Towards their fellow-Christians it
is one of frank loving-kindness and genuine un
selfishness. The picture of those early days is very simple,

68 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
sweet, and beautiful. Their thoughts do not seem
to run beyond the simplest application of the duties
which spring out of their love for Christ. We catch
a glimpse here and there of the beginnings of the
struggles that another generation was to be plunged
into, but, for the most part, the little brotherhood was
living in the quiet joy and peace of its new-found
Lord. No world-wide struggles, no far-reaching
contests, no deep speculations, trouble the little
bands which live out their lives, unnoticed by the
world, waiting for the coming of their Lord. There
is no effort, or only the slightest, made to give any
intellectual statement of the problems solved by
Christ's appearing. What He was to them was
something different from what He was to their suc
cessors. Their hearts were touched and softened
by His appeal, and they took up their burdens and
tasks in life content to do them, inspired only by
their love for Him. Their eyes were fixed on Him,
and they sought to follow in His footsteps. It was
but the dawn of the day. The dew of the morning
lay on the grass, and the songs of thanksgiving rose
up over the hills telling of the deep joy of the hearts
of men. The peace of the new day was over their
world. The shepherd, leading his flock on the
mountain side or in the cool shadows of the evening,
mused of the Good Shepherd who had led him out
of darkness into light, and the eternal peace of heaven
fell upon his dreaming soul. The poor toiler in the
city heard a voice telling him of the Father's House,
where the wicked cease from troubling and the

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 69
weary are at rest. His life was full of the new hope
and the new message, and he was content, in silence
and poverty, to wait God's will. Persecutions were
not wanting to these strange dreamers, but persecu
tions were but the prelude of that Great Day of the
Lord which eager hearts expected. The little
brotherhood, from its more or less secret meetings,
looked out upon an hostile world. There was no
great Church with its great questions and profound
struggles and mixed results. All the writings of
this period are, generally speaking, of the simplest
and most practical nature. The ideal is an ethical
one, and not the spiritual or religious one which
moved St. Paul. The teachings of these Fathers
are directed principally to the morality, and not the
theology, of the Gospel. Speculation has only just
appeared on the horizon, and they fear it. Even the
language of St. Paul, though generally used and
apparently quite familiar, is obviously not under
stood.1 It cannot be said that theology and specu
lation found absolutely no place in the life of the
Christian communities of this age, for the writings of
St. Paul show that the germs of many of the later
forms of thought were already planted. What can be
fairly said, however, is that the literature which belongs
to the first decades of the second century is almost
exclusively ethical and practical, and the forms of
thought are of the simplest and most primitive nature.
The absence of the theological or dogmatic note
from the Christian literature of the first half of the
1 Lightfoot, Clement of Rome, vol. i. p. 397.

70 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
second century is perfectly obvious, and is admitted
by all who have been careful students of that period.
Those who have sought to minimize the effect of
this on the judgment of the history call attention to
the fact that the greater part of this literature has a
different object in view from that which was aimed
at by the later writers, and that consequently the
absence of dogmatic language is no evidence that
theological ideas were not as much a part of the
Christian thought of that age as of later ones. Yet
it is very curious that no such trend of thought
appears in this generation, and more curious that if
it did exist it did not find an expression. A man
need not be writing on theology to show the presence
of theological speculation in the atmosphere in which
he lives. The most profoundly practical thought is
based upon intellectual and spiritual conceptions
which are most easily recognized. The scantiness
of material in this instance does not by any means
invalidate the argument ex silentio, and in few
cases does it seem to have firmer grounds than in
the present. The fact is, the more the literature of
this period is studied, the more clear does it become
that a wide intellectual chasm lies between the great
teacher who is justly called the founder of Gentile
Christianity and those who were his spiritual children.
The peculiar form of Christian thought which we
call Paulinism belongs unquestionably to St. Paul
alone. Those who follow in point of time most
closely after him bear very slight traces only of his
influence, and this chiefly or only in the way of the

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 71
survival of certain phrases or echoes of his language,
which are differently understood, and therefore must
be differently interpreted. It is not the isolated
passage which defines the mind of a writer, but its
relation to the context and the whole body of his
thought. This manifest divergence of the later
writers of the early Church from St. Paul has been
most variously explained. It has been contended,
on the one hand, that the Universalism, which is such
a characteristic note of Gentile Christianity, is directly
derived from the Universalism of St. Paul. But the
evidence seems to be lacking, and with our present
knowledge of the life of the Empire at this date, we
may say that Universalism was in the air, and was
the natural and inevitable form under which the
Gospel would be apprehended by an heathen
Christian. On the other hand, it has been claimed
by a very distinguished scholar that the entire
absence of Pauline ideas in the post- Pauline
Christianity is evidence that to the heathen mind
the ideas which were derived from his Jewish train
ing, and which undoubtedly lay behind and beneath
his Christian expression, were foreign to their educa
tion and temperament, and therefore entirely un
intelligible to them. This incapacity naturally made
St. Paul's language and thoughts less effective in
shaping their Christian living and thinking than the
constant recurrence of the Pauline phrases would lead
one to think.1 Not having been trained in Rabbin-
1 A. Ritschl, Entstehung der Altkatolische R~irchel Zweite
Auflage, S. 282.

72 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
ical thought, it was not likely they would fully grasp
the meaning of St. Paul's references to antecedent
ideas. Yet, while this is entirely true, it is not all
the truth, for there are other elements in the problem,
and other causes at work, to explain the fact which
all historians recognize. One of the latest attempts
to substantiate the theory that the Pauline theology,
though in a modified form, had much to do with the
formation of Catholic theology, can only make itself
good by such violent and arbitrary analyses and re
arrangements ofthe early literature, that one wonders
whether this ' Deutero Paulinismus ' is not, after all,
a ' Pseudo Paulinismus.' 1 But to ascertain more
correctly the exact relation of St. Paul to this age,
it is necessary to ascertain upon what basis this
Hellenic Christianity stood, and to study more
closely some questions which, though apparently
somewhat remote from the main current of this
examination, are yet in reality very closely connected
with it, and throw considerable light upon the rather
obscure path we have to follow.
We need to define as carefully as possible the
position of the Pauline literature down to Justin
Martyr, and gather together the evidence of its use
scattered through that period. A further and more
important matter is to ascertain what, if any, influence
was exerted by it. This involves an investigation
into the history of the Canon, which will be made as
brief as possible. In order to understand something
of the relation of that literature, which holds such a
1 O. Pfleiderer, Ur christenthum, S. 647.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 73
prominent place in the Christian world of to-day, to
the age which we are studying, it is necessary to
place oneself, as far as possible, in the mental and
spiritual attitude of the Christians of that remote
past. Two things stand out with peculiar clearness —
first, the vivid expectation which is so constantly
reappearing of the immediate coming of the Lord ;
and secondly, the intense consciousness which the
Christian communities had of their own inspiration.
All the literature proceeding from a Christian source
was considered to be inspired, and established itself
in the regard and use of some of the Christian
communities. Yet the sense in which this inspira
tion was felt can easily be misunderstood. The
literary character of the writings did not have any
influence in their acceptance. This element of
superiority, which is characteristic of what we now
regard as the canonical writings, was something
which did not appeal to them ; and the value of this
literature, as such, seems to play no part in its
preservation. A community standing facing, as it
thought, the end of the world and the great climax
of human history, would not have any very high
literary instincts developed. Rather, as we would
judge from the literature of the early part of the
second century which has survived, there was no
literary instinct or feeling of any apparent strength.
And when it did appear, it proceeded in almost every
case from what was regarded as heretical sources.1
1 H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der Historisch-Kritischen
Einleitung in das Neue Testament, S. 93.

74 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
In addition to this, the early Christians were less
disposed to feel the lack of what might be called a
distinctively Christian literature having its source
and origin in definite Christian authority, from the
fact that there was already a literature at hand which
supplied all their wants. It has been said that " All
religions tend to become religions of a Book," so in
the very beginning of the Christian history the eyes
of the Christians in every locality were directed
with special reverence to the S.S. of the Jewish
Church. The necessary limitation which their
original Hebrew character would have placed upon
their use by unlearned and ignorant men was broken
through by the Greek translation of Alexandria, and
in their Greek form, which for many years was the
only one familiar to any of the Christian writers, the
Christian communities found their ' Sacred Litera
ture.' The method of interpretation, which was the
popular one in use, not only among Palestinian and
Alexandrian Jews, but also the one universally
adopted by all heathen writers in their effort to re
adjust the ancient literature to the new movement in
the spiritual progress ofthe Imperial races, was that
of Allegorism. So interpreted, the Old Testament
became a terrible weapon in the hands of the
Christians against the Jews themselves. It was re
read and reinterpreted. It was no longer a Jewish
but a Christian book, and the Jews were denied all
claim to it. The new and peculiar form in which it
presented itself to the Christian was that the peculiar
and purely Jewish element was now regarded as

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 75
merely episodical, so to speak, and the Christian
element was regarded as the real contents of the
book. N^ot all which the Old Testament contained
was, it is true? regarded as Christian, but all Christian,
truth was contained in it.1 The Christians applied
Jill the promises of the Old Testament to themselves
as the true Israelites.2 As it had been 'The Book'
to the Jew, so it became ' The Book ' to the Christian ;
and all the writers of the first half of the second
century, when they use the phrase ' S.S.' or ' Holy
S.S.,' mean exclusively the Old Testament. The
allegorical system of interpretation, which enabled
them to expel the Jew from his literary birthright
and give a purely Christian interpretation to it, pro
duced a more vehement attachment to it among
heathen Christians than one would suppose. Yet the
use which they made of it shows their almost absolute
ignorance of its true character and relation to the
Gospel. It may be asserted, with almost no qualifica
tion, that there is not a Christian writer of the second
century whose theory of interpretation and exegesis
is not beneath contempt.
Notwithstanding the place which the Old Testa
ment occupied in the minds of the Christians, there
were differences of no slight importance which
gradually emerged into view as certain tendencies
began to develop themselves more fully, and gained
more distinct expression. To the Jewish Christian,
1 L. Diestal, Geschichte des Alten Testaments in der Christliche
Kirche, 28.
2 Dial. Trypho, 12, 125.

76 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
from the point of view of religious literature, the
Old Testament was everything, and standing upon
this ground he looked upon the Gospel itself as
simply a more distinct expression and re-enforcement
of Judaism. Christianity then being merely supple
mental, the natural movement of thought limited
itself to the elaboration and definition of Judaism as
already given in the Old Testament, while the
exclusively Christian element seemed to play a very
subordinate part. The supreme sacredness of their
Scriptures permitted no compromise, and caused all
other literature to sink into insignificance beside it.
c Bu£ ' there were others, perhaps excited _ through
opposition, perhaps following a natural tendency and
bent of their minds, who saw in the two great
religious forces, Judaism and Christianity, not
identity and continuation, but opposition and revolu
tion. And the necessity of a distinctive Christian
literature was most clearly apprehended. But
though these two extremes existed and affected the
Church both for good and evil by their exaggerations,
the main body of Christians through the early part
of this period regarded the Old Testament as the
only S.S., although in each locality there were, as
we know, writings of Christian teachers read in the
meetings for public worship of the brotherhood.
What these writings were, depended very much on
local circumstances. The writings of those teachers
whom they had known and loved, or who had been
associated with them in some special way, would
naturally be highly prized. In the early part of the

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 77
second century this seems about all that can be said.
The evidence which the literature of this age offers
seems to bear out this statement without any qualifi
cations. The first passage which seems to be a
reference to the Gospels as S.S. occurs in the
Epistle to Barnabas, c. 4. The language is that of
Matt. xxii. 14, and would seem to show that already,
in the beginning of the second century, there was a
recognized Christian literature with what we would
now call canonical authority. But the most careful
critics reject this inference, and in this language
discover a quotation common to St. Matthew and
Barnabas, which each had found in general use or
had taken from some earlier authority.1
Clement of Rome, in the Epistle recognized as his,
seems to have no idea of a distinctively Christian
literature with canonical authority. He, as all the
others, uses language which shows its evangelical
origin, and also refers to St. Paul ; but the absence
of the feeling of authority, in the later sense, is
conspicuous. It has been affirmed by the highest
authority in our language on these writers, that
there is no evidence that either Clement, Ignatius,
or Polycarp recognized any Canon of the New
Testament.2 In his great work on the Ignatian
Epistles he says, " The expression, ' It is written,'
{yeypairrai) is employed to introduce quotations from
1 This is the opinion of Bishop Lightfoot, and has also been
urged by J. Weiss, Der Barnabasbrief, S. 109. Conf. A. Hilgenfeld,
Historisch-Kritische Einleitung, S. 38-39.
2 Lightfoot, Clement of Rome, vol. i. p. 9.

78 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
the Old Testament alone." . . . . " There is not so
much as a single reference to written evangelical
records, such as the ' Memoirs of the Apostles,'
which occupy so large a place in Irenseus."1 As the
result of his examination of the Epistle of Polycarp,
he says, " The evangelical quotations are still
introduced as in Clement of Rome, with the formula,
'The Lord said.'"2
One passage in Pol. xii. at first sight suggests a
different conclusion, but Bishop Lightfoot does not
attach much importance to it, and suggests a reference
in it to the Old Testament. In such a primitive
state of things one would not expect to find the
Epistles of St. Paul occupying a higher place than
the evangelical narratives, and there is no evidence
that they did. On the contrary, the material points
in the other direction. In the Ignatian Epistles
there is the fullest proof that the writer was ac
quainted with several of them, although "He never
directly quotes any one."3 And the Epistle of
Polycarp is in the same key. " The passages from
the Apostolic Epistles are still for the most part
indirect and anonymous ; not a single book of the
New Testament is cited by name." i In the 2 Epis,
Clem, there is an evident advance which we should
expect with the later date of the writer.6 He speaks
of " the Bible," which is evidently the Old Testament
1 " Apostolic Fathers," part ii. ; S. Ignatius, vol. i. p. 388.
2 §2; Ibid., p. 577.
3 Ibid., p. 389. * Ibid., p. 577.
5 Lightfoot adopts 120-140 a.d. ; Harnack, 130-150 a.d.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 79
and "The Apostles" (§14), and in chapters vi.
and xiii. he appears to recognize the " Gospels " as
Holy S., but there is no reference to St. Paul in any
way which would establish his writings on the same
basis of authority. He even does not mention him,
although it is possible that he was acquainted with
some of his writings. It is not necessary, however,
to assume that these early writers represent more
than the prevailing opinion in their own localities.
The close union and strong uniformity which is so
characteristic of later ages were not features of
this. In the writings of Justin Martyr we find " Memoirs
of the Apostles " referred to as a class of writings
having high authority. It is possible that these are
the Gospels which we now have, or the documents
from which these were formed, for we know that
there was a large amount of evangelical literature
of the most varied character. St. Luke refers to
existing material in his day which was the basis of
his own work. Yet the authority which these
writings possessed is peculiar and different from
that of any other. There were two reasons which
gave weight to these memoirs of the Apostles —
first, the Apostles were the ' Eye and Ear
Witnesses ' of the things described, and consequently
were a court of last appeal as to matters of fact
concerning the evangelical history ; secondly, their
writings contained the recognized and undisputed
words of our Lord. Consequently it was the nar
rative which gave them weight, and not the personal

80 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
authority of the writers.1 The account we have of
the Diatessarion of Tatian shows that even after the
middle of the second century there was no special
sanctity attached to the words themselves of the
four Gospels, otherwise he would not have attempted
to make one which should, if not supersede, at least
have certain advantages over the existing Gospels.
Its long - continued and wide - spread use in the
Syrian Church shows the absence of any strictly
defined views on the matter. And as late as the
beginning of the fourth century the Syrian Church
used a New Testament which contained, instead of
the four Gospels, the Diatessarion of Tatian, the
Acts of the Apostles, and the Pauline Epistles, in
cluding the Apocryphal Epistles. And it has been
conjectured that originally the Syrian Canon con
sisted only of the Diatessarion and the Old Testa
ment.2 As has been said, the conversion of the Old
Testament into a Christian book naturally weakened
the importance of, or the necessity for, a distinctly
Christian literary authority or court of appeal except
as to matters of fact. The profound consciousness
of the immediate inspiration of the Christian brother
hood led naturally to the acceptance of the idea
that inspiration was a present fact, and also to only
1 "It was not the authority of the Gospels so much as the
authority of the Gospel history which led the Fathers to use them
and defer to them." — Theo. Zahn, Geschichte des Neutestamentliche
Kanons, S. 482.
2 Harnack, Das Neue Test, urn das Jahr 200, S. 105, 108.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 81
one division in the literature of the Church — that is,
the Old Testament and the Christian writings as a
whole, with a preference for the Gospels on the
grounds already stated. It is only in the flood tide
of the Gnostic movement that we see the Church
beginning to recognize the importance of these
subjects, and that they begin to come sharply into
view. And yet the impulse which led to their
discussion is not always plain. The rapid spread
of the Gospel and the decay of the first high
enthusiasm naturally lowered the tone of the
Christian communities, and the first glimpse of the
dazzling vision of world conquest did nothing to
restore it. Historical and philosophical problems
came into view, and the age of reflection followed
the age of emotion as the natural course of history.
The philosophical discussions within the Christian
sphere of influence had much to do with bringing
the subject of the new Canon into the foreground,
and developed the need for a specifically Christian
literary authority. The first impulse, however,
probably came from Marcion, and in a somewhat
less degree from Valentinus and the more sober
school of distinctly Christian Gnostics. So long as
there were survivors of the Apostolic Age, those
who had learned from the lips of the first Christian
teachers themselves, the writings of these teachers
would have only a limited influence, but as time
passed these literary survivals increased greatly in
value in the circle where they first were received.
The widely scattered Christian bodies drew together 6

82 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
according to geographical and national lines, as was
done later on a larger scale when the uniting bond of
the Empire was loosened and shattered, and in these
more closely allied Churches we perceive certain
literary inheritances and traditions spreading their
influence. It is from this point of view that we
draw toward the consideration of the Epistles of St.
Paul. The moment we consider the reasons in
which they had their origin, and those which would
contribute to their preservation, we can readily see
that they occupied a far different position naturally
from the Old Testament and also the Gospels.
This Pauline literature is, in the first place, simply a
series of letters having no unity except authorship
and a common purpose. They are, in a sense,
unique in their position. Letters, under any cir
cumstances, are not regarded as the form in which
Divine Revelation would naturally express itself,
and the occasional nature, the very causes which
inspired them and the purposes which dictated them,
would give them a local and temporary character
not apparently suited to meet the demands for an
absolute authority. They seemed for the present
only, not the future. The process by which they
grew in dignity and importance seems easy to con
jecture in the absence of positive evidence to that
effect. The single congregations which possessed a
letter from the Apostle would naturally cherish it
on account of association, and in the course of time
the Churches which were grouped in a particular
district would exchange such letters as they had,

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 83
and gradually a collection would be formed. Yet
we must not forget how difficult it would be at this
period of history to form a literary collection of any
kind, and how inevitably these collections would
vary, the one from the other, even with the strongest
common impulse behind them. The manuscripts
in which the ancient writings were preserved were
in rolls, and in all probability each Epistle of the
Apostle was in a separate roll in these collections, as
we know it was in the beginning. To have any
thing like a complete collection of the various
documents which were highly prized in the Churches
of different localities would be almost impossible,
not only on account of the labour and expense in
volved, but because such a collection implies a state
of things which did not exist in the second century.
It would, of course, be out of the question for many
of the smaller and more remote communities to have
any but the most fragmentary literary relics of the
earlier days.
To distinguish the various groups of' Pauline
Epistles, as has been attempted, seems rather hazar
dous. There may have been, and probably was, a
collection made in the Churches of Asia Minor and
also a group held in high esteem in the Churches of
Greece, but there is absolutely no evidence of any
value to prove this.1 How early this grouping, if
there was such, took place we have no means of
1 Zahn thinks that the three Epistles — Philippians, 1 and 2
Thess.  formed a group by themselves called " The Macedonian,"
Geschichte des Neutestamentliche Kanons, S. 816.

84 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
ascertaining. Zahn thinks that the first two groups
probably existed before 120 a.d. and not later than
125 a.d., but there are no facts upon which one can
rest a positive conclusion. The fact is, that questions
about the present canonical writings do not come
into view with any prominence until we reach the
Marcionite controversy. A complete and reliable
list of writings which were in use in the Christian
communities of the first half of the second century,
and the exact relation which they sustained to the
common Christian life, cannot now be fixed. There
is evidence which goes to show that in addition to
the writings with which we are familiar, many others
were also held in great esteem. Marcion had his
peculiar Gospel, as also Basilides and the later
Valentinians. Some critics have even gone so far
as to assert that each district, each diocese, and
almost each school or group read a Gospel which had
become familiar to it. Each considered that it had
the right to regard its Gospel as the current and
authoritative one. Marcion and his followers so acted,
and they were not the only ones.1 Out of this un
certainty the Church slowly emerged, and the Canon
of the New Testament was built up, but, as the sub
sequent history shows, it was by a process of sifting
and selection, and not simply of collection and addi
tion. This process was first stimulated by the need
the Church felt to defend itself against the arbitrary
methods of Marcion and others. The growing
1 Usener, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, Erster Theil,
S. 96, 97.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 85
power and the increase in numbers had lowered the
general tone of the Church life and provoked a reac
tion. The legal tendencies of the current religious
interpretations made the Old Testament and the
Gospel practically identical in their teaching, although
not in the details of their contents. Christianity was
the ' New Law,' while Judaism was the ' Old.' The
distinction between the ' Old ' and the ' New ' was
becoming slighter with every new effort to emphasize
the unity of revelation against the antinomians,
until this apparent confusion and identity was vio
lently assailed, and the separation between the two
was so rudely emphasized by Marcion, that the two,
the ' Old' and the ' New,' no longer represented two
stadia in the process of revelation, but the manifesta
tion of opposing and conflicting forces. Marcion was
the protest against the legalizing of Christianity, but
although he realized the truth, he was unable to see
it in its true relations, and he missed the point
through false exaggeration and misinterpretation of
the historical relations between the Old and the New
Dispensations. The motive of his career must not
be found in an intellectual desire to erect a system
which should distinguish the author and solve some
of the great problems which then pressed for solution,
but in the practical object of restoring the Gospel to
its original form and freshness. His position is dis
tinctly that of a reformer rather than that of a theolo
gian, and he was the first one to recognize that the
Christianity of his day was in any way distinguished
from that of the beginning. This appeal of his to

86 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
the past meant inevitably an appeal to something
more than tradition, for as yet there is no evidence
that tradition was a recognized authority. The one
whom Marcion selected as an authority was St.
Paul, the reasons which influenced him in this
choice being probably sympathy with the tone of his
writings and a perception that they contained the
most powerful means of correcting the abuses which
had become prevalent, but most of all from a deep
religious interest. That which moved him most
was the recognition in St. Paul of the same contrast
which he had found in himself between the redeem
ing grace in Christ and the course of nature and
the world's history.1 The response which he found
in St. Paul to his own deepest and most passionate
experiences made the Apostle an authority for him
such as he had probably been to few before. The
Epistles of St. Paul thus became the basis for him
of a sacred literature, for, having rejected with
scorn the writings of the Old Testament, which
the Church at large accepted as its Canon, he
was driven by sheer necessity, as well as inclina
tion, to find a basis in the past in the writings of
the Apostle. It cannot be dogmatically asserted
that this was in the strictest sense of the word the
first definite beginnings of a Canon. It appears,
however, from all the evidence, that it began first
among the Gnostics.2 But one of the keenest of
modern critics expressly declares that it is impossible
1 Zahn, Geschichte des Neut. Kanons, S. 586.
2 Eusebius, E. H., iv. 7, 7.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 87
to decide whether Basilides, Valentinus, or Marcion
first grasped the idea of a Christian Canon, but that
many things point to Marcion.1
Whether it was Basilides, Valentinus, or Marcion
who first developed the idea of a New Testament
1 Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, B. i. S. 187. Prof. Sanday,in his
recent work, Inspiration, The Bampton Lectures for 1 893, takes
the year 200 a.d. as the most suitable date to start from in the
study of the question of the N. T. Canon. Beginning with that
date he moves backward, carrying with him the ideas and assump
tions of that age into the preceding one. In his attack upon the
theory of Prof. Harnack, he finds all his material subsequent to
the period, the ideas of which are in dispute. All the quotations
which he gives in order to prove the status of the N. T. literature
about the year 150 a.d. belong to writers of the next generation —
that is, from 180 a.d. onward. The argument seems to be this.
That the ideas of a N. T. Canon could not have been wrought out
in the Marcionite and Gnostic controversies of the middle of the
second century can be proved from the fact that Irenaeus, Theo
philus, and others hold fully-developed opinions on this matter,
and have a rather clearly wrought-out theory on the subject.
This is regarded as conclusive evidence that just the same opinions
were held in the year 1 50 when these writers were young men.
But there is another explanation of this fact to which Prof. Sanday
seems to have paid no attention. If the idea of a N. T. Canon
received its first great impulse from the Marcionite controversy,
and was wrought out in that stern struggle, two things would be
apparent. The first, that the ideas then taking shape would be
most firmly rooted in the mind of the generation which was then
coming on the stage. The second fact which would strike the
student would be that previous to this struggle these ideas would
appear only in their most rudimentary form. Both of these facts
are beyond dispute, and although it may be said that Prof. Har
nack has not been able to fix the date of the canonical develop
ment beyond controversy, yet his hypothesis will still stand against
attacks which do not bring any heavier weight of argument than
that contained in Prof. Sanday's Bampton Lectures.

88 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
Canon is a matter of minor importance, but it was
undoubtedly the Gnostic movement which forced the
controversy and compelled the Church to make an
effort to solve this question, and one is not likely to
attribute too much importance to Marcion. The
position and influence which St. Paul's writings held
in the most distinguished Gnostic schools show very
clearly that they were the first to recognize his
importance in the formation of Christian ideas.
One great and almost insuperable difficulty in
studying the Gnostic systems is that in no case have
we a complete presentation of their ideas in their
proper order and relation. Their writings have
come down to us only in fragments and quotations,
oftentimes distorted, and always through the medium
of men who are at no pains to disguise their dislike
or distinguish between the object and the methods
of their opponents. The more earnest and powerful
minds, like Valentinus for instance, did not have
any intention of subverting the Gospel in favour of a
pre-existing philosophical system which they had
adopted, but in the shifting and formless state of
Christian thought were endeavouring to give an in
tellectual and systematic shape to the contents of the
Gospel. The impression which their efforts left upon
the Church has, in this respect at least, been indelible.
Regarded from this point of view, the position as
signed to them by a recent critic states the case very
clearly. " They are the first Christian theologians." 1
1 " So sind sie die ersten christlichen Theologen." — Harnack,
Dogmen., B. i. S. 188.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 89
Their attitude towards St. Paul, judged even
by the slight material we have, shows the high
regard they entertained for him, and their position
towards the other Apostles endowed them with
new importance. The dispute which necessarily
arose about the form and contents of their teaching
compelled them to seek some justification in the
past, and they appealed to the Apostles themselves
as the authors and sources of their ideas. According
to some authorities, Basilides and his son Isodorus
traced their doctrine back to a secret tradition of St.
Matthew, although Clement of Alexandria declares
that Basilides had as his teacher Glaukias, an inter
preter of St. Peter.1 Valentinus also claimed to
have received his doctrine from St. Paul himself
through the mediation of Theodas, and the Ophites
derived theirs from St. James through Mariamne.2
The noticeable thing, however, is that all the schools,
apparently without exception, used and quoted St.
Paul's writings, especially in justification of their
theory of a secret tradition coming from Christ Him
self. He is their ' Classic Witness.' 3 Moreover, the
appearance of certain favourite Gnostic terms gave
his writings special importance in their eyes, such as
' whypcD/ua,' ' aiwves,' and others. The Epistles to the
Ephesians and Colossians were cited by all the
schools, and 1 Corinthians was regarded as a com-
1 A. Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthum, S. 202.
2 H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der Historisch-Kritischen Einleitung
in das Neue Testament, S. 132.
* Zahn, S. 756.

90 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
plete justification of their division of men into the
three classes of 'TrvevfiartKol,' 'y^evKiKol,' and 'vXacoY ; and
their theory of determinism was fortified by appeals
to St. Paul, i Cor. xv. 50 in particular seemed to
be a stumbling-block to the orthodox Christians.
The phrase, " Whom He did foreknow He also
did predestinate," has been called the ' Sword of
Gnosticism.' 1 Many of the later problems of church
theology appeared in the Gnostic discussions, and
the questions which the language of St. Paul suggest
with reference to God, Man, Predestination, Sin,
Freewill, and Salvation were all taken up by them,
and so treated as to present great difficulties to
those who wished at once to oppose Gnosticism and
yet save the name and authority of the great Apostle.
Basilides speaks of inherited sin in very much the
same way that Augustine did later in the history,2
and the denial of freewill by the Gnostics un
doubtedly provoked the counter assertion, especially
as this seemed in harmony with morality and common-
sense. Origen, in his Commentary on Romans,
Liber V. i., tell us that Basilides quoted Rom. vii.
9 to prove his doctrine of transmigration. One
may smile oftentimes at the exegesis of the Gnostics,
but it was not much, if any, worse than that of many
of the church writers of this age, and certainly the
opponents of the Gnostics would have looked with
as much disfavour upon the teachings of many of
their successors as they did upon those of the
1 Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria, p. 200.
2 Harnack, B. i. S. 191.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 91
Gnostic schools. The question as to the influence
which this almost universal adoption of the Pauline
literature by the Gnostic schools exercised upon the
position which these writings held in the Church at
this period, cannot, of course, be determined to any
satisfactory degree. We know that the later con
troversy with the Montanists cast a shadow over
the Apocalypse, and it was looked upon with extreme
suspicion by writers whose orthodoxy was not
questioned. Reasoning by analogy, we may assume
that the constant appeals of the Gnostics to the
authority of St. Paul would, together with the
natural difficulties which present themselves in his
writings, cause a slight neglect, and perhaps suspicion,
of him. The evidence, however, is rather negative,
and that drawn from analogy ; yet this by no means
necessarily weakens its value, for the lack of evidence
in favour of an opposing view is sometimes the only,
and therefore the strongest, argument which can be
brought to bear to sustain the point intended.
An examination of the writings of the man who
above all others is regarded as the Christian writer
of the middle of the second century will show exactly
how much or how little we can learn on this subject.
The value of any writer as an index of his times does
not consist in his originality or superiority, but in his
sympathy with, and presentation of, the ideas and
modes of thought most prevalent in his own generation.
If his ideas can be discovered running through
the general course of thought subsequent to his own
age, we are justified in assuming that they are the

92 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
common property of the Church, and not the special
opinions of an individual who has to wait until the
world overtakes him. Such a man who is the
mouthpiece of his generation is not generally a great
man or even a superior one. He may be only an
opportune one, and we are to look upon his thought
as representing the higher level of the thought of
his age. Such a man was Justin the Martyr. His
most ardent admirer would find difficulty in proving
him to be a great man. Yet he was a man of
education and experience. He had travelled far
and seen much of the world. He knew his age, not
as a prophet or poet knows his, but as a man of
affairs with a serious purpose in life. He was born
in Samaria about the last decade of the first century.
He was educated in Greek philosophy, and had seen
the greatest cities of the Empire. He came to
Rome at a crisis in the history of the Church. His
contemporaries there were Valentinus and Marcion.
The former had come from Alexandria, and the
latter from Asia Minor, drawn thither probably, as
Justin was, by the irresistible attraction of the
Imperial city. Both Valentinus and Marcion were
extraordinary men, and Valentinus especially stimu
lated the higher thought of his day in a way that
none of the later writers succeeded in doing until
we reach Origen. He remained in Rome or its
neighbourhood for twenty years.1 Side by side with
1 " He came to Rome 136-140 a.d., and remained there until the
Bishopric of Anicetus, 155-156 a.d."— Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte,
S. 285.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH

93

him was Marcion, who first learned there from
Cerdon those speculative ideas which have been his
conspicuous defects in the eyes of all subsequent
students, but which were in all probability only the
occasion of that antagonism which his stern reforming
spirit stirred up.
Had the Church been willing to adopt the cardinal
truth of Marcion which lay beneath all his exaggera
tions, it would have been saved from the legalism
into which it had already plunged, and the subsequent
sacerdotal development would have been prevented.
The fact also that Valentinus could teach his
peculiar system of thought in the Imperial city for
the best part of a generation without separating
himself from the Church, shows that the elasticity of
belief was considerably greater at this time than at
subsequent periods ; or, what is more probable
perhaps, that definite lines had not yet been drawn
on most of the subjects about which later ages were
more rigid. Even some time later, when the
Valentinians were recognized by that name, they
made no effort to separate themselves from the
Church, nor were they expelled. They lived within
the fold, occupying the same position which has been
occupied by so many since who have remained in
the Church while outside of the popular and prevail
ing currents of thought and life within it. A few
years after Justin came to Rome — that is, about
150 a.d. — Marcion issued his improved text of
his Evangelium and Apostolicum. There is every
reason to believe that in the great controversy then

94 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap, ii,
waging Justin took a deep interest. In fact, we have
preserved to us the title of a work written by him
against Marcion. We know nothing, however, of
the line taken by Justin in this work which would
undoubtedly be a cardinal witness for the attitude of
the mass of intelligent members of the orthodox
party. When we examine the most important and
authentic writings of Justin which we have at our
command, the i and 2 Apologies and the Dia
logue with Trypho with reference to a New Testa
ment Canon, we discover that for him, as for his
predecessors, and presumably for his contemporaries,
the great Christian book of undoubted authority and
inspiration is the Old Testament.
He regards the book as undoubtedly a Christian
book, and denies any claim on the side of the Jews.
He asserts a distinct repudiation of them, and finds
the evidence in the fact of the existence of circum
cision among them. This he regards as an un
doubted indication that these people are not God's
people ; and more than that, that it is a sure sign
of God's anger.1 The Old Testament is for him
the one supreme authority, and a curious light is
thrown upon his position by the fact that he prefers
the Septuagint translation and rejects the Hebrew
version. This he does because he believes the latter
was garbled and corrupted.2
The only need which he seems to feel for specifi
cally Christian books is for those referring to the
1 Dial. Try., c. 16, 18.
2 Ibid., c. 71, 72, 73, and 74.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 95
life of Christ, and he appeals to these under the title
of " Memoirs of the Apostles," but nowhere attri
butes to them more than historical value. When the
controversy with Marcion began, no doubt a new
aspect was put upon the whole question, or, at least,
the strain of the situation was intensified. The path
Justin had to walk was a thorny one. In the early
part of the second century the Gnostic teachers, or
those so classed, were probably superior in intel
lectual power and culture to any the orthodox party
could bring against them. Moreover, in the conflict
with the two chief representatives then in Rome,
Valentinus and Marcion, he was met by two methods
which were exactly opposite, and yet which aimed at
the same result. The end which Valentinus had in
view of recommending his system he attained by the
use of a theory of interpretation, by means of which
all the difficulties which beset his path were explained
away. The whole Gospel was allegorized, and the
standing ground of the simple Christian seemed
oftentimes to melt away into a cloud of abstractions.
Marcion, on the other hand, cut the knot which he
could not loosen, and rejected all the writings which
offered any difficulties towards the establishment of
his theory. Of course, had the present canonical
writings been established upon their later basis of
authority, Justin would have disposed of his adver
saries without any difficulty ; but, in the absence of
his work against Marcion, we can only infer from his
extant writings what his method was.
In relation to the Pauline Epistles, which is the

96 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
special subject of our investigation, a remarkable
fact is to be noted, and that is, that in the writings of
Justin which have survived, the name of St. Paul
nowhere occurs.1 The explanations of this fact have
been various and interesting, if not satisfactory. The
fact that Justin wrote against Marcion would neces
sarily imply, in the case at least of one who possessed
the literary culture which Justin undoubtedly did,
that he had a quite familiar acquaintance with the
material which was the occasion of the strife. Yet
why this singular omission in all his other writings ?
Three views only, with reference to this point, need
occupy our attention.
I. That of Semisch, who thinks that Justin
avoided the name of St. Paul in his Dialogue with
Trypho out of consideration for the Jews among
whom he was working, since to them the name of
the Apostle would be particularly offensive.2
II. That of Weizsacker, who does not regard
the Dialogues as historical. The evidence for this
judgment he finds in the fact that the Jew grants
more in the Dialogue than in reality he thinks he
would have done. In addition, he thinks that the
account of his conversion can hardly be historically
accurate.8 III. A later critic, A. Thoma, offers a more satis-
1 Zahn finds a fragment of Justin, as he thinks, in Methodius,
which has the name of St. Paul in connection with the Resurrec
tion, but I have been unable to verify the reference.
2 Justin des Martyrer, Zweiter Theil, S. 239.
3 "Die Theologie des Martyrers Justinus," Jahrbiicher fiir
Deutsche Theologie, xii. S. 63.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 97
factory argument perhaps than either, and one more
in accordance with the facts as they appear in other
writings of this period, when he says that the Pauline
writings were not regarded as authoritative — that is,
as Holy Scripture par excellence1 — and, as a conse
quence, were not quoted by him in this controversy.
Yet the writings of Justin are full of echoes and
reminiscences of the Pauline Epistles, and if the
assumption that he had studied them previous to his
reply to Marcion seems to have no documentary
evidence, it certainly cannot be denied that one who
had travelled as much as Justin would have heard in
many of the churches, particularly in Asia Minor,
many of these Epistles read in the public worship of
the congregations. That Justin occupied in any
way a distinctly anti- Pauline position, or wished to
disparage him, not only by the exclusion of his name
from his writings or by such passages as where he
speaks of the Twelve,2 is highly improbable. The
most reasonable explanation of the entire situation
seems to be that offered above, and which is cor
roborated by such writings, for instance, as the
Epistle to Diognetus (c. v. and ix.) — that is, that
although the writings of St. Paul were known and
used probably to a greater degree than can ever be
proved, yet that the idea of a New Testament Canon,
as we now understand it, was still but imperfectly
grasped, and consequently its contents are not
definitely known or strictly defined. The Old
1 Zeitschrift fiir Wissenschaftliche Theologie, S. 408, 1875.
2 1 Apol. 39, 45. 7

98 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
Testament and the " Memoirs of the Apostles " are
the authorities which Justin recognizes and uses
exclusively. Yet, as has been already said, the
problem of the Pauline Epistles in their relation to
not only Justin and his contemporaries, but to every
age, includes two questions which must be clearly
distinguished and separately determined.
I. As to the authority of St. Paul's writings — that
is, the extent to which they were regarded as a
source of Christian truth and the authority attributed
to them. This first question may be regarded as
having been answered already, since we find no
classification which places any Christian writings,
save the Evangelical narratives, on anything like
the same level with the Old Testament.
II. The further question, as to the influence of
St. Paul's writings- — that is, the extent to which they
shaped and moulded the life and thought of the
Christian Church of the first half of the second
century — is a far more important and also a far more
difficult question.
The Gospel was first preached to those who had
been prepared by a long history full of vicissitudes
and hopes, inspired by most passionate convictions,
and exalted by the loftiest prophetic dreams. When
it passed outside the land of its birth it came in
contact with quite a different order of thought.
The world which it then entered was the repre
sentative of the most powerful organizing force
which history knows, and also the heir of the most
splendid literature which any race has ever produced.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 99
It was a world which had its accredited traditions,
established beliefs, and long and venerable religious
histories. All that art and reverence could do to
make religion splendid had been done. Amid all
the varieties of heathenism there are some common
ideas everywhere present. If heathenism is in any
way the reflection or expression of human nature, it
must be then that we see in these ideas the natural
mode of regarding religion. One of the character
istic features of all ancient religions is, under various
forms, that of ordinance or law. In the most de
generate forms we see nothing but a prescribed and
often meaningless ritual, but even in the highest
forms there is always present the idea that religion
consists in the fulfilment of specific commands and
the obedience to certain definite requirements — in
other words, that religion is a code of law differing
in contents but not in kind from other codes. The
instinct for so regarding religion is so prevalent that
it is for ever reappearing, and the natural affinity
which the human mind has for this process of
thought always opens the door for its acceptance.
The heathen convert could not escape from the
subtle influence of the long and venerable civilization
of which he was a child, and which pressed upon him
with such silent, ceaseless, unnoticed, and yet over
whelming force through every avenue of life. He
might escape from or antagonize the life around him,
but he could not escape from his inheritance, or
enter with ease into a new world of thought and
hope, without an effort which few could make, be-

ioo SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
cause only the few would have their self- conscious
ness roused to this intellectual need of a new con
ception of the resources and spiritual wealth of the
new life in the Gospel.
In the mind of St. Paul it is undoubtedly true
that the Gospel is differentiated from all other
religions in that it is a life of the spirit — a life of
faith, pure and simple. No one would deny that
this was the distinguishing feature in the Gospel
as contrasted with all other religions in his mind.
Not the only feature, indeed, but as the mode of
appropriation and the source and organ of man's
spiritual elevation, certainly the key to St. Paul's
conception of the Gospel. Perhaps no better
illustration, and certainly no more decisive one, of the
influence of the Pauline Epistles on the Gentile
Church could be found than that offered by the use
of this word 'ILVtV in the writings which have
come down to us. Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and
Polycarp, all use the word again and again, but they
do not mean the same thing as St. Paul, nor does it
occupy in their minds anything like the same place
which it had in the Apostle's. Of the first, it has
been said by his learned editor that, " Though he
emphasizes faith with fond reiteration, he does not
realize its doctrinal significance according to the
teaching of St. Paul as the primary condition of ac
ceptance with God, the mainspring of the Christian
life."1 He speaks of 'faith and hospitality' in the
same category, and clearly does not intend that there
1 Lightfoot, Clement of Rome, vol. i. p. 397.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 101
shall be inferred any such distinction for the former
as all students of St. Paul must inevitably assign to
it.1 In Ignatius and Polycarp the same use of the
word is made which later we find in the Epistle of
Barnabas and the 2 Epistle of Clement, and which
continues to be the customary meaning until the
theological or dogmatic definition of it as an
objective body of doctrine supersedes the earlier
and more indefinite, or at least more subjective, con
ception. Only among the Gnostics do we find any
variation from this common mode of conceiving this
word. Basilides, in his views of faith, seems more
nearly to approach St. Paul than the church writers
of his age, but his language is rather that of a
mediaeval mystic, and means something else than
the spiritual union which St. Paul had in mind. It
is an intellectual intuition which is along the line of,
and in harmony with, the Greek thought of his own
age, and did not have its origin in a clear under
standing and appreciation of St. Paul.2 If this
testimony should be considered to be of too negative
a character and not decisive of the positive con
victions of the mass of Christians of this age, we
1 1 Clem. 10, 7; 12, 1.
2 Passages in " Apostolic Fathers " on the use of ' Pistis ' : —
1 dementis Epistula, 1, 2 ; 3, 4 ; 5, 6 ; 6, 2 ; 10, 7 ; 12, 1 ; 12, 8 ;
31, 2; 58, 2; 60, 4; 62, 2 ; 64. S. Ignatii Epistula et Mar
tyrium, Ad Ephe. 3, 1 ; 7, 2 ; 9, 1 ; 13, 1; 14, 1, 2 : Ad Mag. 6, 1 ;
1, 1 ; 13, 1: Ad Phil. 8, 2; 11, 2: Ad Smyr. 10, 2 ; 6, 1 ;
13, 2 : Ad Trail. 8, 1. Epistula Polyc, 1, 2 ; 3, 2 ; 4, 2, 3 ; 13, 2.
Barnabm Epistula, 1, 5, 6; 2, 2 ; 4, 8, 9; 6, 17 ; 16, 18; 16, 9.
Opera Patrum Apostolicorum, vol. ii., Tubingen, 1881 (Funk).

102 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
have positive statements which go to show that the
minds of men were running in a line directly opposed
to one of the fundamental convictions of the great
Apostle. The legal conception which regards the
Gospel as the ' New Law,' the ' Nova Lex,' was
not a later idea which was introduced under the
stress of certain problems, but the natural outcome
of previous modes of thought and established and
firmly rooted convictions. Both in the Epistle of
Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas we see
very clearly that this seemed to be to them the
natural way of looking at the subject of religion.1
Later, when the Christian writers were compelled
to defend the Gospel against heathen charges of
novelty, they resorted to the argument that the
contents of the Gospel were old and not new, that
in substance it was already included in the religion
of the Old Testament ; but this was an afterthought,
and not the expression of an inherited instinct or
tendency. When we examine the writings of Justin with
reference to his relation to the fundamental ideas of
St. Paul, we find that in this respect he has not
varied in any noticeable degree from the mode of
thought which prevailed in the preceding writers,
and does not attain to any closer understanding of
the Apostle than they did. In this examination the
two main and undisputed sources of our knowledge of
Justin will be used — that is, the two Apologies and
the Dialogue with Trypho — but the two will not be
1 Barnabas, c. 4, 8; 10, 2 ; 14, 7 ; Hermas, Sim. viii. 3, 2 ; v.

chap. n. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 103
separated. The main ideas of both, as they are
related to the leading thoughts of St. Paul's con
ception of the Christian life, will be examined some
what in detail.
When we compare the most important ideas in
the mind of St. Paul with those which seem to rule
the mind of Justin, we are struck with the wide
divergence between them on some most vital points ;
and not only that, but the grouping and arrangement
is entirely different, and the emphasis has been so
shifted that it is hard to detect any resemblance at
many points, even with the best intention. The
difference is so great that critics have been divided,
and those who assert, and those who deny, any
relation between Justin and St. Paul are about
equal in number and importance.1
The contrast is very striking in the sense and
feeling which each has for the consciousness which
we call the sense of sin. That deep moral con
sciousness of St. Paul, which writhed in burning
shame before the purity of God, and which made
his own sinfulness one of the most passionate and
overwhelming convictions of his soul, does not seem
to have reappeared with any great intensity in any
Greek mind which came under the influence of the
1 "Credner, Volkmar, Zeller, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld, Overbeck,
and Thoma deny any traces of Pauline ideas, and assert a hostile
attitude on the part of Justin towards the Apostle. On the other
hand, Semisch, Otto, Ritschl, Weizsacker, and others, assert that
he was influenced by the Apostle, but without any clear under
standing of his ideas." — Engelhardt, Das Christenthum Justins des
Marty rers, S. 352.

104 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
Gospel. There was something which looked like it
in the rigid scrupulosity, in the growing asceticism, and
in the multiplied prohibitions. But this self-loathing
was associated mainly with the material influences
and environment, not with the spiritual nature of
man. All these various expressions and condemna
tions sprang from another root than that from which
the language of St. Paul issued. The sentiment in
the soul of St. Paul was religious ; it was the sense
of God in His nearness to his soul which withered
up all his self-affirmations. In Justin and the
heathen Christians the sentiment is ethical ; it is the
sense of personal disqualification which demands a
new discipline and obedience. The ultimate ground
of the life of man as set forth in the Gospel, as it
presented itself to the heathen Christian, was not the
new divine consciousness which Christ revealed as
a possible thing for every man, but a purely moral
basis, a new law, no less original but more funda
mental and comprehensive than any previously
revealed law. How this mode of thought was
influenced by the Gnostic speculations it would not
be easy to say. They felt that the problem of Evil
was ' The Problem,' and they grasped it with such
intensity that it may have had a reactionary effect
upon the vast majority of plain Christians, and caused
them to take a less stringent view of it. This, of
course, would be a natural tendency, and, more
over, would fall in with the prevailing habits of the
Greek mind, which seems to have had a horror of
those dark and mysterious enigmas that fasci-

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 105
nated the more sombre and passionate mind of the
East. However this may be, the language which Justin
uses on this subject is of the vaguest and most
indefinite character ; yet Justin may fairly be called
a representative of the Christianity of his age — that
is, the Christianity which was to succeed, and did
succeed, in giving the direction for the future. He
assumes, it is true, the universal rule of sin brought
about by the falling away of man from God and the
influence of evil impulses and the power of the
Demons, but this sin does not present itself to him
as the catastrophe in the spiritual life of man which
it does to St. Paul. Of Adamic sin, or original sin
in any sense of the word, he says nothing. The
whole human race is under a curse,1 but not only is
the term not defined, which possibly we have no
reason to expect, but it is evidently not a very
definite thought in his mind, and the relations of sin
to man are conceived in a way external rather than
internal and spiritual. For although death was
introduced by Adam, yet each man sins for himself
and is punished for his sins, and his sinfulness in
no way affects his power of choice. The moral
constitution of man now is the same that it always
has been, and the necessity which Justin speaks of
is not the necessity of a nature which has been per
verted beyond the power of self-restoration, but only
that which arises from the presence of evil impulses
in it. In this conception it is evident that the
1 Dial. Try., c. 95.

io6 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
influence of Plato has been greater than that of St.
Paul. Looking closer, we see that error and sin
have not destroyed the fundamental relations which
exist between man and God in this world, and in
the profoundest view of man's life this is true. If
we mean that the attitude of God in his Fatherly
love for man remains unchanged in spite of man's
transgression, the revelation of Jesus Christ is the
completest confirmation of this assertion which can
be given.
But if, on the other hand, it is meant by this
assertion that the fact of man's sin has in no way
raised spiritual barriers and darkness around him,
and limited and abridged his own higher spiritual
activity, then it is not true that the relations have
remained unchanged. It is this latter view which
seems to represent most correctly the thought which
lies behind the language of Justin. The term
' Debt,' which in the mind of St. Paul stood for the
spiritual orphanage and self-alienation of man and
his antagonism to the will and character of God,
and is thus a synonym, if not for sin, at least for its
results, is quite differently conceived in the mind of
Justin. A far more superficial conception is
associated with it, and one which has of necessity
no spiritual roots. It is the mere accumulation,
addition, and multiplication of specific moral acts
which constitutes the debt or sin of man, and the
measure of it is to be found, not in spiritual dynamics,
but in mathematics. It has been said, " Of hereditary
guilt, the Greek Fathers of the Ante-Nicene Age

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 107
know nothing. " 1 Whether this statement is accepted
in all its breadth, at least it can be affirmed of Justin
Martyr that his conception of sin, whether hereditary
or as the expression of the individual soul and an
element in human consciousness, had only the most
external resemblance to that of St. Paul. Lest we
should be disposed to think that this difference is
after all only a matter of words, we need but to trace
back to the original consciousness, out of which all
thought emerges, these special forms of expression,
and see in what relation these various elements
stand to the spiritual ideal which lies behind them
all, to discover how entirely different are the
demands upon life of the logical dogmas of the
intellect or the intuitions of the moral nature from
those of the religious consciousness. We see in
the heathen Christian world, almost from the very
beginning, the fact set forth that the Gospel had
entered into a new stadium of its history. We
can recognize this from the illustration afforded to
us in the conception of this one element of man's
spiritual history. Justin's conception of sin is
neither that of the contemporaneous Judaism nor
the Pauline Christian ; it is Greek and Pagan,
sharpened, however, and deepened as a result of
his Christian feeling.
More sharply and clearly defined in his divergence
from St. Paul is Justin in his conception of the law
and its relation to the redeemed soul. In con
sidering a subject like this, it is always necessary to
1 Baur, Vorlesungen uber Dogmengeschichte, B. i. S. 585.

108 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
bear in mind that the writers of this age were so
steeped in the language of the Old Testament that
their phraseology oftentimes has a legal cast which
was inevitable, but which did not by any means
always belong to the ideas which they sought to
express. Oftentimes they used " Old Testament
expressions for New Testament thoughts," but, as a
general rule, it may be said that if they did not
mean the strictly Jewish and legal thought which
was associated with the language, they were almost
equally removed from the circle of ideas which
appear in the Pauline Epistles. The term ' New
Law ' as applied to the Gospel, in opposition to the
Old Testament or Jewish law, appears very early
in the Christian literature of the second century.
As has been already said, Barnabas uses it, and also
the Shepherd of Hermas, but the legal conception
in these writers is by no means fully or completely
developed, or at least not emphasized with the same
accuracy and sharpness which characterizes later
writers. Yet the language points in the direction
the minds of Christians were moving, and gives
reliable, though slight, indications of what was
coming. With Justin the uncertain and wavering
thought becomes more fixed and definite. The law
appears as the natural form under which truth should
be revealed, and the Gospel is the ' New Law ' as
marking a further advance in revelation. Yet the
distinction between the old and the new is one
purely of time. The differences are relatively un
important, or at least not affecting this, its primary

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 109
character. The old law was intended for the Jews,
and had no further application ; but the new was an
universal law intended for all mankind, and opposed
to the Jewish law. The opposition, however, was
only in contents. The new revelation fell into the
same category, and had the same essential form and
legal conception behind it.1 That Justin failed to
recognize the connection as well as the distinction
between the old and the new economy, and to com
prehend the difference between the Law and the
Gospel, does not bear hard upon him, for it was the
universal and, we may say, inevitable attitude of
heathen Christianity. Under the circumstances,
the state of culture and the slow progress of the
highest and most powerful ideas involved in the
revelation of Jesus Christ, nothing different can be
demanded of an age so unlearned in the vast signifi
cance of a revelation which filled men with the over
powering splendour and beauty of its perfection. The
historical significance of the election of Israel was
entirely without meaning to them, and while they
converted the Old Testament into a Christian book,
at the same time they interpreted the Gospel in terms
of law.
That Justin understood the distinction in the con
ception of religion which was introduced by the pres
ence of the person of Jesus Christ among men, we
have no reason to think. He felt the influence of
it as all men feel it, but his mind still ran in the
old grooves through which untold generations had
1 Dial. Try., c. n.

no SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. II.
been accustomed to pour their thoughts. All the
evidence goes to sustain this view, and even about
the old law he seems to have had ideas which
are singularly at variance with those of St. Paul.
Christians could and would observe the law, did they
not know that it had been inflicted upon the Jews as
a punishment for their transgressions.1 There was no
inherent difficulty, or at least no insuperable obstacle,
to so doing. As contrasted with the old law, how
ever, Christianity is superior in this respect chiefly —
that is, that it is much simpler than the old, and
limits itself to such essentials as render it possible
for every man to keep it.2 This conception of the
Gospel was undoubtedly strengthened by the
polemical intention already referred to — that is, the
motive which influenced most Christian writers in
their replies to heathen attacks. The criticism
which Celsus makes, that Christianity was a novelty,
was doubtless not of his own creation, but part of
the general attack of the dominant heathenism.
The Christian defenders, in order to justify their
faith, often took positions which in the light of the
present are seen to be entirely untenable, and imply
misconceptions whose effect could not but be injuri
ous to the true development of Christian thought
and life. The endeavour to find in the Gospel only
that which was believed by all good men always,
and which was believed to be the essence of the Old
Testament revelation, may have been in part
directed against Marcion and those who held like
1 Dial. Try., c. 18. 2 Ibid., c. 95, 105.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH in
views with him in regard to the Old Testament ; but
undoubtedly there was another element, and that
was the side which this truth presented to the
attacks upon the Gospel by the heathen. When
Justin asserts that Plato borrowed from Moses, he
does not intend by this to pave the way for a recon
ciliation between Christianity and Heathenism, but
only as a proof that the sum of necessary truths
which all men believe was in existence long before
Plato, and that Christianity is but an extension and
expansion of the revelation of the Old Testament,
and differs from it in no radical respect. It is the
assertion also that the Gospel does not stand on the
basis of any novel or original truths. This can be
confirmed by a further examination of what con
stituted the essence of the new law. To Justin's
mind, the thought seems constantly present that the
divine revelation contained in the Gospel only
increases and completes the moral and religious
knowledge which man had from creation. He
regards the revelation as consisting chiefly in the
promulgation of new doctrines and new moral obli
gations, not as the manifestation of a divine life.
This revelation or law, as he conceived it, opened no
new way for the spiritual life of man, nor did it
create or reveal difference or distinction between the
past or the present, or set forth the possibility of a
new religious consciousness as of the very heart of
it.1 The contents of the new law are repentance,
change of mind, faith in the blood and death of
1 Dial. Try., c. 105.

ii2 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
Jesus, purification of the heart, and a walk in good
works. These phrases do not vary from the
language which has been familiar to men from the
beginning, but it is the relation of these phrases to
the life of man, and the previous interpretation which
always lies back of them, which gives them their
real significance.
There is one phrase which Justin uses whose
meaning is by no means uncertain, and which sweeps
away all ambiguity which hangs over his language,
and fixes clearly the cardinal conception which lies
behind and rules all his Christian terminology. In
more than one place he speaks with clearness and
emphasis of Jesus Christ as the ' New Lawgiver.' 1
As the ' New Lawgiver ' Jesus teaches the essential
elements of the Christian life. Yet this is not to
be understood as if He was the revelation of the
laws of man's spiritual life in sonship to God, but
a far different thing, which is altogether legal in
its form and ethical in its content and purpose.
The doing away of the old law, which is a funda
mental idea of both St. Paul and Justin, means in
each case almost exactly the opposite thing from
what it does in the other.
St. Paul's conception would leave room for the
retention of some legal requirements or customs,
while abolishing the idea of legality entirely from the
domain of the Gospel. Justin, on the other hand,
regarded the doing away of the law as the rejection
of all that was typically Jewish in the ritual or
1 Dial. Try., c. ii, 12, 14, 18.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 113
worship of the Gospel, while retaining the idea of the
external demands of religion and the primary con
ception of it as a law guiding from without, rather
than as a spirit moving from within.1 The apparent
opposition of the old and the new is only apparent
and superficial. All that the law of Christ demands
is, according to its nature, the same which God at
all times demanded from all men, especially from all
sinners, and which they were always in a position to
fulfil.2 This conception of the new law, which has been
attributed to Justin, can readily be proved by noting
the value and significance which he assigns to faith,
which by St. Paul is placed in direct opposition and
contrast to the law and all legal conceptions. A
word which enters so largely into the literature of
Christianity could not well be, and is not, absent from
the writings of Justin. Yet, if resemblance of thought,
and not the mere form and framework of thinking, is
the true evidence of spiritual relationship, it must be
confessed that whatever doubts may intrude them
selves on other points, there can be none on this.
1 "In J. Augen ist das Christenthum das neue Gesetz: die
Abschaffung des alten Gesetzes hat eine ganz andere Bedeutung
ais bei Paulus, und wird auch anders begrundet. J. verwirft das
Essen des Gotzenopferfleisches ; Paulus thut das Gegentheil. J.
gestattet die Gesetzbeobachtung auch im Christenthum; Paulus
verwirft sie. J. kennt eine Gerechtigkeit im Gesetz ; der Apostel
weist nichts davon. J. hat von der Glaubensgerechtigkeit im
Gegensatz zur Gesetzgerechtigkeit keine Ahnung. Uberhaupt
richtet sich J., Kritik nie gegen den Begriff, sondern immer nur
gegen den Inhalt des Gesetzes." — Engelhardt, S. 61.
2 Dial. Try., c. 44; Engelhardt, S. 254.

ir4 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
St. Paul's use of the word Faith, and the meaning he
attaches to it, are by no means the same as those of
Justin. And it will be readily admitted by all who
have given any study whatever to the Pauline
theology, that this word represents a cardinal idea, a
fundamental conception in his mind which dominates
and pervades not only all his thinking, but is the
highest expression of his religious experience. In
Justin Martyr, on the other hand, although it is
constantly in use, its place in his thought is relatively
different, and his conception of it quite foreign to
that of St. Paul. The frequency with which the
word occurs, and the various ways it enters into his
writings, might lead one to think there was consider
able variety of meaning, or that, in a general way, it
had a vague resemblance to the thought of St. Paul
on the same subject. But, generally speaking, its
fundamental significance is always the same. Resting,
as Justin does, so exclusively on the prophecies of
the Old Testament, the most original meaning of the
word Faith to him was simply a belief in prophecy.1
As prophecy was the authentication and verification
of the new Lawgiver and the new law, the faith in
prophecy naturally involved an acceptance of this
new Lawgiver and the new law, whose contents were
the sum of all true knowledge. This ' Holding as
true' was the essential character of faith, and even
in the great historical facts of the Gospel history
nothing more was meant, and nothing more seemed
involved, than the recognition that Jesus Christ is the
1 i Apol. 3, 30, 33, 36, 40.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 115
Son of God, and that His doctrine is true. It is
apparently an intellectual matter throughout, at least
in its origin, although a life of righteousness and
good works is supposed to issue from this original
conviction, and may in the mind of Justin have been
involved in it. Nevertheless, faith never seems to
mean that complete self-surrender to God, and that
personal trust and union with Christ, which is the
very heart of the Apostle's Christian life and thought.
The vivid personality of Jesus Christ which glowed
before the yearning eyes of the Apostle, and was the
very passion of his soul, has given place to a cold
philosophical abstraction borrowed from the Greek
schools. It is but justice, however, to recognize the
fact that in that age in which abstract conceptions
and metaphysical ideas were clothed with a reality
and distinctness we are unable to grasp with our less
philosophical imaginations, such language may have
been more satisfying, and entered more deeply into
the souls of men than we are able to realize. But
after all allowances are made for the different modes
of thought, it must be confessed that while the
language and teaching of Justin might lead men to
an acceptance of the formal truths which were
associated with the Gospel, it is difficult to see how
they could be the means of bringing men into that
spiritual condition in which Christ becomes to them
the spiritual atmosphere of their life, and their
religious natures find their highest expression in
union with God. There is no suggestion in his
writings that would lead one to think that he had

116 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
seen anything beyond this formal and conventional
interpretation which rose out of his dependence upon
established modes of thought and reliance upon Old
Testament authority. That he never seems to have
entered into the higher meaning of faith which
belongs to its most complete development in St.
Paul, or have had any anticipations of it, is clear
from the different point of view in which he regards
it as related to the Christian life. With the Apostle
it stands alone as the final expression of the spiritual
union of the soul with Christ. With Justin it is
classed as a virtue with other virtues. Since virtues
are not the essence and heart of the life, but only
the expression or revelation of it, the absence or
presence of one cannot be vital or regarded as an
infallible index of the spiritual relations of the soul.
The radical opposition of faith and works in St.
Paul, which was at its root the effort to restore
religion to its true place, or, rather, begin with the
beginning, the true beginning, the internal state, has
no place in the mind of Justin. It is a far thinner
and more superficial idea which is present in his
mind. Ultimately it is a confusing and injurious
conception which he appears to hold.
Faith in itself is an 'epyov.'1 It is true St. Paul
might have used the word in this way, but he would
not have meant the same thing. If the conception
of faith and its relations is so different in Justin
from that which possesses the mind of the Apostle,
so also are the results which issue from it, or are
1 Engelhardt, S. 249.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 117
dependent upon it, quite different. With St. Paul
faith is practically the process or condition by and
in which all the highest results of the Gospel are
realized. Or, to use his own language, by faith we
live in Christ, and in this life in the Son of God
realize our own sonship to God. The fulness of our
sonship is the perfection of our spiritual natures and
perpetual communion with God in the boundlessness
and freedom of our divine life. When St. Paul
speaks of being 'saved by faith,' he means some
thing quite different from what Justin does when he
says, " We are saved by repentance." x The spiritual
processes and the religious facts which are correlated
by these phrases are quite different. With Justin,
faith, instead of being that state which is inclusive
of all the higher spiritual life, is but an antecedent
to piety, and not its root. This piety also is attained
or realized by other means and in a different spiritual
order of development than that indicated by St. Paul.2
The thought of that perfect communion with God
and fellowship with Christ, which is the very heart of
St. Paul's conception of man's sonship to God, does
not appear to have been understood by Justin, or, if
recognized as a fact, does not seem to have been
seen in its proper spiritual order as essential to the
full realization of Christ's salvation. Fellowship with
God seems to be always present as a principle of
thought, but, as a matter of fact, it is always reserved
for a later period of man's history before it can be
realized — that is, it is not attained until after death.
1 1 Apol. 28. 2 Engelhardt, S. 191.

118 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
This mode of conceiving the full realization of
Christ's salvation strikes no one to-day with any
sense of novelty or repugnance, for it has been the
conventional and customary point of view ever since
the age of Justin, and, we may say, is a characteristic
inclination of human nature. In Justin's day the
philosophical tendencies were all deepening the
chasm which men believed lay between man and
God, and the sense of this aloofness was the underly
ing presupposition of all man's convictions as well as
speculations. To bridge this abyss was the effort
of both religion and philosophy, and while as a
theoretical proposition it was one of the truths of
the Christian revelation that God had made known
His life to man, yet, as something deeper than a pro
position — that is, the practical union of the soul of
man and God in no pantheistic absorption, but in a
close filial relation of will and feeling — the fellowship
of man with God was referred to the future. The
relationship which was actually supposed to exist,
and which was that set forth by Justin, was almost
purely external and objective. God was the Creator
and Governor of the world. From Him proceeded
rule, authority, judgment, and the administration
of justice. On the other side stood man far off and
separated from God, and from him was expected or
demanded obedience, repentance, and, as a result of
these, he might have hope for the future. The son-
ship, which was the faith of the Apostle, was not in a
future state where it should be bestowed as a reward
or realized as a fulfilment, but in an actual relation

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 119
here and now between the human soul and the
Father who had redeemed it in Christ. With Justin,
death, and not Christ, was the means by which that
sonship was to be realized, and the condition of its
attainment was the immortality which was given as
a reward to those who obeyed and believed God.1
This is a mode of conceiving the religious relations
of the soul which, starting with Christ, can claim for
itself the name of Christian. But it unfolds no lofty
ideal, it furnishes no ground in the present for that
living inspiration which is the very heart of the
highest living. There is no stamp upon it of that
divine supremacy over life which is, in its wide out
look and freedom, the lofty distinction of the sons of
God. A recent critic has defined the intellectual
position of Justin in language which to some may
seem severe and harsh. But to deal justly with a
man and rightly understand him, it is necessary to
bear in mind the broad distinction which exists
between a man's theology and his religion, the
intellectual forms of his thinking and the living
stream of piety which issues from his life in God.
With this distinction in mind, the language of the
German critic does not seem unfair : " Justin was a
Christian, but he was a Christian in this sense that
he believed in God and Christ. But in all he says
about God and the world, about man and his destiny,
about sin and guilt, redemption and forgiveness,
righteousness and blessedness, death and life, he
reveals his dependence upon modes of thought
1 Engelhardt, S. 92.

120 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. ii.
which were established in heathenism as soon as
it rose above coarse idolatry to a reasonable moral
faith in God."1
The confusion which seems always to exist in the
minds of men between religion and morality, the
inspirations of the spiritual life and expression of
the moral will, was helped in this age by the great
wave of asceticism which swept over the Empire in
the second century along with the great religious
awakening which marks this same century. This
yearning for a higher life could not utterly separate
itself from the conditions which surround it, and leap
to a clear knowledge of what the Gospel meant, or a
full realization of its blessing. Had it done so, the
spiritual history of man would have been complete.
The realization of any ideal means centuries of
history. The asceticism, which is such a conspicuous
feature of this period, did not spring from Christian
seed. It has been the boast of the Saints, but it was
also a characteristic of Neoplatonism and Stoicism.
It was foreign to the Gospel, and forced itself upon
the Church with the passion of a great world move
ment. It brought fame and lustre to many a
Christian hero, but it both hardened and lowered
the ideal of life and the conception of religion. It
identified it with a harsh and stern morality and an
external piety. Morality is better than sin, and its
laws are the foundation of human society ; but
obedience to the moral law is not religion, and the
recognition of its divine authority not faith. The
1 Engelhardt, S. 210.

chap. ii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 121
secret springs of life, the finer capacities of the soul,
are not touched by such demands. The ideal of the
Apostle and the Lord he worshipped was of all men
living in loving* brotherhood with each other and in
living commumoiTwith God in Christ. This ideal
cannot be reached by the mere acceptance of some
historical or theological proposition on the one hand,
orj3y__the adoption of a stern asceticism on the other.
This incapacity to distinguish between morality and
religion — an incapacity which still remains largely
strengthened by ecclesiastical traditions and customs
— weakened the power of the Gospel as the appeal of
the life of God to the heart of man. The Apostolic
Christianity, and above all others that of St. Paul,
laid the emphasis upon the religious relations or the
spiritual side of life. Justin Martyr, and with him
his contemporaries and the succeeding Catholic
Christianity, placed the emphasis upon the moral
side of life and developed it in their ethical and legal
ideal, which is the ideal of all legal religion.1 It is
often said that men's lives, rather than their words,
are to be taken as a real ground of estimate of their
characters. It is perfectly true that oftentimes the
motives and influences which are working on their
spiritual natures do not find a full and adequate
expression in their speech. More frequently, on the
other hand, do the logical systems and the intellectual
traditions which they have inherited work outward
in the theories which they promulgate and the
arguments which they advance. Yet, however
1 Ritschl, Entstehung des Altkatolische Kirche, S. 331.

122 SAINT PAUL chap. ii.
possible it may be for such differences to exist in
any given case, an age which cannot think its life
into full and clear expression, and note and distinguish
the forces at work upon it in their real character,
will tend to lose sight of the primary inspirations
which have guided it, and the paths into which it has
been directed. It was so with this past with which
we are dealing.
Justin died a martyr to his faith in the reign of
Marcus Aurelius, the wisest, tenderest, and purest
man that ever sat upon the Imperial throne. If
the words which have been reported were really
those of Justin, we know that in this supreme hour
of trial he was raised above the limitations of his
age, above the traditions of his generation, the
confusions and folly of controversies, the dim at
mosphere of conjecture and speculation, the weak
nesses of his own mortal nature, into the very
presence of that Eternal Love whose fellowship and
strength are the life of the sons of God.

CHAPTER III
IRENAEUS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
"The form of Christianity which the great Catholic
teachers, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement, and Origen,
reveal, is an essentially different one from that of
the New Testament. The Catholic Church, as it
issued from the mighty spiritual movement of the
second century, bears, in organization, doctrine, and
moral ideal, a characteristically different stamp from
that of the Messianic community of the Apostolic
Age."1 These words of the distinguished German
scholar bring before us the great change which was
taking place in the history of the Church, and also
the important part which it was beginning to play
in the life of the world. Perhaps there has been
no one period or stage in the history of the Church
which has been so differently regarded as that which
comes before us in the latter half of the second
century. In the literature which has survived to
1 R. A. Lipsius, Die Zeit des Irecenus von Lyon u. d. Entstehung
d. Altkatoliscke Kirche; Von Sybel, Hist. Zeitschrift, B. xxviii.
S. 244, 1872.

124 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
us from this period we see new ideas and new
institutions, new motives and forces, coming into
view, and in the current and movement which they
create, changing the tone and character of Christian
thought and motive most significantly. At first
glance one sees that Irenseus occupies a different
point of view from Justin Martyr. If this statement
appears too emphatic or exaggerated, it will, at least,
be admitted that an immense change has taken place
— -a change which cannot easily be overestimated.
The period bears upon it the stamp of an age of
transition — that is, new forces are developing
beside the old ones, and different outlooks and modes
of regarding the life of the Church, together with new
paths for energy and enterprise, are opening up.
During the first half of the second century the
Church had spread slowly and steadily, but towards
the end of that period the rate of increase had been
accelerated and the growth had been relatively
enormous. Long before the close of the century it
was recognized as one of the most powerful factors
in the shaping of the destiny of the Empire.1 The
Church had now passed out of the seclusion and
obscurity of its beginning, and was, with its larger
growth, drawn into the general life of the Empire
and the wide stream of universal history which it
was to influence so deeply, and by which, in turn, it
was to be so profoundly affected. This more
1 "By the middle of the third century Rome is supposed to have
had as many as 50,000 Christians."— Gibbon, Decline andFall of the
Roman Empire, vol. i. p. 579.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 125
prominent position and closer contact with the
world involved a reflex action of that world upon its
history, by touching it at every point, and pouring
the great stream of its life around the vigorous
roots of the young Church.1
To see what influences were at work in society,
and thus to be in a position to recognize the presence
of these forces as they affect the life of the Church,
it is advisable to take a brief survey of the life of
the Empire in the second century, the ideas and
habits of thought, the prevailing sentiments and
spiritual forces, and the common mood. The material
is so vast, and the evidence often so conflicting,
because coming from such various sources, that one
leaves the study of this period with a partial sense
of confusion, and a very large one of uncertainty,
about many important details. Yet the impression,
though lacking oftentimes sharpness of definition,
is still clear in outline. The immense variety and
richness of life, the endless change, the ceaseless
ebb and flow of feelings whose depth and tenacity
we are unable to measure, the subtle reserve, the
passionate endeavour, all call forth a large restraint
of judgment and the profoundest charity. The
farther we go, the more certain are we to modify
1 "From its first appearance in the world, the Christian Church
could not escape the influence of ruling ideas begotten in the
great cycles of human thought. Beneath every age there flows a
stream of tendency modifying the currents of human existence,
creating also counter currents, so that opposite and contrasted
movements may have a common source." — A. V. G. Allen,
Christian Institutions, p. 442.

126 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
our criticism and change our estimate of the various
kinds of evidence. Standing at such a remote
distance from the scenes we are studying, we do not
realize the immense importance of time, or understand
to its full extent how far removed one generation
or age may be from another which seems to us very
close to it. We do not at first glance appreciate
the subtle change in temper, in moral purpose or
spiritual aspiration and endeavour, which often takes
place while the political conditions and the external
life remain apparently unchanged. We think too
often of the Empire and its moral atmosphere as
we see it reflected in the pages of the historians of
the early Caesars. The frightful condition of things
under the rule of these Emperors seems too often to
represent to people the state of society permanently
under the influence of Paganism. But the wild
extravagance, the hideous debauchery, the coarse
and brutal excesses, brought a reaction, and the
second century saw a great change in the world.
It is the testimony of the highest living authority,
the historian Mommsen, that "The Imperial Age
of Rome has been more abused than we know."
It was bad enough undoubtedly, but it is very
doubtful whether we gain a more correct view of
the society of the Imperial Age from the satirists
and the Christian Fathers, than we do of the present
age from the critics of modern society. The silent
life of the world cannot be measured, and attracts
but little the censors and critics of society. It
should always be borne in mind that the Court was

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 127
not Rome, and Rome was not the Empire, and the
first century was not the second. It is from the
side of the common life that we learn what the true
meaning of an age is, and what spiritual forces
are at work in it. Looking at the second century
in this manner, the thing which is the most impressive
feature in the large life of the Empire is the rise
and spread of a great religious revival, which left its
stamp upon all classes and gave a different tone to
the whole life of society. The leading philosophical
systems were in entire harmony with this movement,
and became a great force in the development and
extension of it. The aim of ancient philosophy, so
far, at least, as it was the expression of the Greek
mind, was to achieve redemption for man through
investigation and knowledge. The faith in this
means of salvation never quite disappeared from it,
and the failure to realize it only led to a different
method, from the objective to the subjective ; but
the end was, in fact, reached by the same means —
the intellectual. At the time in which the revival
in religion was the most widespread, there was also
apparently of necessity a most significant growth of
interest in philosophy as a means of social culture in
the highest sense, and spiritual elevation and re
demption. All men were impressed by the decay
in energy and social virtue, and the more serious
made an effort to restore the nobleness of the past
by means of the religious inheritance which they
possessed, and which had never been entirely dis
credited. It was an age of the fusion of many races

128 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
and ideas, and also of many religions. The grosser
forms of Polytheism did not represent either the
intellectual elevation or the moral tone of the higher
and more serious convictions of Pagans in the
second century. These strove to readjust the old
religion to the new conditions by reinterpreting
and re-enforcing it with different forms of worship
and new ideas drawn from the religious life of the
different nations within the limits of the Empire.
Polytheism, in its endless manifestations, belonged
to the universal life of the age. The art, literature,
poetry, the customs, the schools, the very life itself —
in fact, the entire culture of the period — was satu
rated with it, and its roots lay back in the primitive
consciousness of mankind. The tendency of the
Paganism of this age, so characteristic especially of
that of Greece and Rome, to see under the guise
and names of the foreign gods those belonging to
their own religion, made the spread of foreign
worships throughout the Empire extraordinarily
easy. So in all parts of it — in Britain, Spain, Gaul,
Africa, and the farthest East — were worshippers of
Isis and Osiris, of Baal and Astarte, of Mithras, as
well as of the chief deities of Greece and Rome ; and
the worship of the Emperor was the common bond
for this huge mass of dissimilar and conflicting ideas
and religions, so complete was the diffusion of ideas
and worships through the vast limits of the Empire.1
1 Friedlander, Sittengeschichte, iii. S. 446. " The soldiers carried
the strange religions to all parts of the Empire." — Renan, Marc-
Aurele, p. 575.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 129
The higher and more cultivated classes en
couraged this popular religious revival, because
they felt that it was the only force which could
permanently or deeply influence the mass of
ignorant and vicious, which seemed to be sinking
into the dullest and grossest barbarism. Another
reason was that they were able to see, under the
forms of the popular religions, truths which, as
religious men as well as philosophers, they regarded
as of the supremest importance. In their com
promising efforts they went to the extreme limits
of the grossest superstition, and the vulgarest
forms of the popular worship were accepted and
justified, as they had been by Plutarch, by men
whose theoretical postulates demanded the most
rigid scepticism. But the profound instincts upon
which religion rested, and to which it appealed,
swept away all merely theoretical considerations,
and in the final manifestations of Neoplatonism
we see the last tragic effort of the Greek mind to
find a solution of the great problems of life through
philosophy. But this pathetic struggle had not
yet reached its climax in the second century. On
the contrary, the seriousness and earnestness which
are manifest, show clearly that a hope still lay
down behind this new development of the religious
interests of men. As has been already noted, the
characteristic feature of ancient philosophy was that
it conceived redemption as a matter of the human
will primarily and alone, and the way to it was
through intellectual enlightenment. The forms of
9

130 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
the popular religion were tolerated, but the real
achievement of salvation was through philosophical
culture, which was represented by so many schools,
and which had gained for itself in the past such
unenviable distinction among the common people.
For philosophy in its essence, and especially ancient
philosophy, was primarily aristocratic. Like the
gods on Olympus, these speculators and dreamers
looked down upon the hopeless crowd which
struggled along amid the trials, temptations, igno
rance, and weakness of common mortality. It was
reminiscent too, and this, at one period at least, was
a cause of its great unpopularity at Rome. In the
early days of the Empire it still dreamed of the
Republic, and scorned the men who accepted the
new situation. So great was the political disfavour
which it excited, that in the year 93 a.d. Domitian
expelled the philosophers from Rome. As a rule,
the old Caesarism, like the modern Caesarism,
recognized in philosophy an 'Ideology' which
was dangerous to the State. It seemed also to
draw men away from the daily duties of citizen
ship, and was for this reason disliked by the
practical Roman. The condemnation of the coarse
life of the masses aroused a natural antagonism
probably, but, in reality, was less likely to create
hostility than the pride and contempt with which
the philosophers were accustomed to present their
higher morality in contrast with the customs of
society. In the second century, however, the
philosophers were much less repugnant to the

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 131
government, and gradually rose in Imperial favour.
But this patronage hurt philosophy and the phil
osophers in popular esteem, as well as lowered
their tone and independence, as later the same
favour injured the Church and weakened the moral
tone and purity of the Christian life. In the period
which we are studying, the Ancient World had
called all its forces together, and was determined to
make one more effort at a higher life, and appealed
to all to unite in this one common purpose. It was
seriously undertaken, and accomplished much. The
slight touch of unreality which belongs to philosophic
speculations, and the academic air which repels the
ignorant, were banished or concealed by the real
sincerity of motive, and the unselfish zeal with
which the effort was made. The movement began
on the basis of the established Polytheism, and the
acceptance of the gods as real beings intermediate
between the Ultimate Being and man, which seems
to us like a weak compromise. To the philosopher,
however, the gods were no more than the angels
and saints are to the Christian theologian, and to
the people in many Christian countries to-day the
saints and angels are no less than the gods were
to the popular mind of Paganism. In this regard
Celsus could see no difference between the common
Christian and the ignorant Pagan of his day.
This new movement neither contemplated nor
accomplished any break with the ancient culture or
the established philosophical traditions. It was
simply a reanimation of the older thought of the

i32 SAINT PAUL AND THE CHAPf in.
past, with such modifications as were inevitable in
all such cases where a new path in intellectual
progress is not discovered, and the originality and
energy of life and thought have no creative principle
to inspire them. The three great schools which
controlled the forms in which this new awakening
was to express itself were the Stoic, Epicurean,
and Cynic.
Rome, the ' Holy City ' of Paganism, was the
centre of the largest philosophical activity at this
period, and decidedly the most conspicuous one.
The Roman, by instinct and disposition, naturally
was attracted towards Stoicism, and especially was
this the case among the more intelligent and serious-
minded. This not only because it appealed to the
sober and earnest mind of the Roman, but because
it was practical and not speculative, and laid the
emphasis on ethics and not metaphysics. This in
itself shows that men were unwilling to lose them
selves in speculations of what seemed to them a
vague and abstract kind, but were thinking of and
appreciating the enormous value of life as opposed
to what they considered mere abstractions. The
open-mindedness of the Roman to all serious
thought is witnessed by the fact that when, in
the previous century, Plutarch the Platonist lectured
in Rome, all the world of serious and intelligent
Romans flocked to hear him. The widespread
interest in philosophy was further increased by the
new tone which Stoicism and Epicureanism alike
adopted in opposition to the earlier schools of that

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 133
name. There was a new spiritual passion manifest
which exerted more influence than the mere teaching
itself, and had in it the thrill of life and a subtle
persuasiveness which doubled the power of the
truth which they set forth. Moreover, they felt
they had a mission for all men, and this touch of
Universalism marks a distinct break with the spirit
which dominated ancient philosophy. The intense
seriousness with which the philosophers accepted
their vocation is shown in the language of Seneca,
who speaks of the study of philosophy much in the
way a later Christian would have spoken of entering
upon a religious life or joining a religious order.
This new spirit affected even their appearance and
manner of dress. The Stoics, with their long
beards, bare feet, and coarse cloaks, were more like
members of a religious order than teachers of
philosophy.1 The more earnest of them looked
upon themselves much in the light of ' Spiritual
Directors,' and their influence was so wide, and
the importance attached to their teaching so great,
that we find them in the families of the rich acting
in the capacity of private chaplains, consoling the
sick, comforting the bereaved, and exhorting and
sustaining in the hour of death those who were
about to pass away. They dwelt upon the vanity
of earthly power and wealth, and bade men turn
to the inner life as the only source of peace. There
1 " It was said of one of these philosophers that his beard was
worth to him more than 6000 sesterces." — Renan, Marc-Aurele,
P-35-

i34 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
was a dignity also about the nobler ones which was
absent from the earlier teachers of this school, and
also from most of the contemporary philosophical
teachers. They regarded their calling as a solemn
responsibility, and Epictetus bade none join the
ranks of philosophy without the sense of a divine
call. Men fled to philosophy for consolation and spiritual
strength, as later they retired to the cloister to escape
the spiritual dangers of the world about them. The
great influence of philosophy, and the high regard in
which it was held, is shown from the fact that it
spread through all classes and became the common
bond of union for those who were socially the most
widely separated. It is something of more than
passing note that in a world which denied to some
not only the rights of freedom, but all other rights
which we believe belong to our common humanity,
a slave was regarded as one of the most distin
guished and honoured members of society simply
on the ground of his character and learning, and
an Emperor sought his friendship. The relation
between Hadrian and Epictetus shows, more dis
tinctly perhaps than anything else, how profoundly
this new movement was influencing the lives of men
and modifying the older habits and instincts of the
Roman World.
But the most popular form of philosophy among the
masses was represented by the Cynics. The older
Cynicism, which sprang from Antisthenes, a pupil of
Socrates, had not retained its influence for any great

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 135
length of time, and had fallen into contempt and
disfavour ; but in the first century of the Christian
era there was a great revival of Cynicism, which
accompanied and resulted from the new moral and
religious movement which reached its height before
the close of the second century. The members of
this school were the true mediators between
philosophy and the people, and had all the defects
of that popular office. They renounced all the
ordinary ties and obligations which bound them to
society, except the one of guiding and saving it.
They gave up their occupations, property, and
friends, and lived for the people and by the people.
They were missionaries of a true popular kind, with
all the mixed results of good and evil. They
mingled with the busy life of the town, and delivered
their message from the street corners with all the
vehemence and power which close contact with, and
knowledge of, the life of the world around them
would endow them.
These ' Beggar Monks ' of Antiquity, as they have
justly been called, added to the general unrest of
the age, and fed on the interest and excitement
which they produced. Their popularity only
increased their numbers, and all the wide margins
of the popular life were touched by their active
propaganda. It was the old, old story so often
repeated. All the idle, lazy, and vicious turned
Cynic and crowded the streets like the bands of
monks in the later centuries filling the streets of
Alexandria, and seeking alms from all in the name

136 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
of philosophy.1 The vulgarity, shamelessness, and
insolence of these Capuchins of the Ancient World are
a common subject of remark by the writers of this
period. Lucian tells us that in Greece the number
of Cynics was so great, that they crowded the streets
and daily added to their numbers from the cobblers,
carpenters, and other craftsmen who deserted their
trades to become philosophers. This huge mass of
imposition, fraud, and indolence became a perfect
plague in all the cities where it was able to establish
itself.2 When philosophy sat on the throne in the person of
the great Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the popularity
of the calling was increased tenfold, and a swarm
of greedy, scheming sycophants, in the garb of
philosophers, crowded round the throne upon which
this, the saddest and gentlest of all the philosophers,
sat. Hypocrisy follows reality as a shadow, and the
pseudo-philosophers are the best evidence of the
extent to which the Empire was under the influence
of this new moral purpose. The vast majority of
those who professed to teach philosophy were, as
would be supposed, Greeks, and often or generally
degenerate ones, but the serious temper of the age
enabled it to get some inspiration even when the
teachers themselves were insincere and mercenary.
The mere debaters wrangled over points of doctrine,
1 " Like the later ecclesiastics they exhorted to almsgiving." —
Renan, Marc-Aurlle, p. 44.
2 Friedlander, S. 572.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 137
the most minute details of their systems were fought
for with the most intense eagerness, and the
necessity of a strict orthodoxy was insisted upon by
them with as much rigidity as by the most exacting
theologian. Within certain wide limits the forms or types of
expression, in which the popular life or deeper social
movements express themselves, are repeated with
such persistence as to convince one that they
represent the permanent and invariable modes in
which great movements in human society manifest
themselves. In the customs and manners, the
methods and organizations, in which the spiritual
aspirations and social forces of the Paganism of the
second century found expression, we see a prelude or
foreshadowing of the Christian centuries which were
to follow.
For the most part, the practical aim of philosophy
was what commended it to the earnest soul, and by
it a man was able to learn something of the meaning
of life. It reanimated the popular religion, and
gave it a nobler and a purer tone. How much of
this general improvement was due to the silent
influence of the growing Church is not easy to
decide. One of the most influential cults of this
period was that of ^Esculapius, the god of healing,
and dim glimpses of the higher spiritual possibilities
of man and of the Divine Nature haunted the minds
of men.
This great revival gave Paganism new life and
added years to its history. The Polytheism, which in

138 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
the days of Cicero and Caesar was tottering to its
ruin, revived and lasted until the fifth century.
More than two hundred years of struggle after
Constantine were required before the Empire was
even nominally Christian. Heathenism was at last
subdued, but with what weapons was it too often
overcome ! Theodosius persecuted it with fire and
sword. Finally, in 529 the last of the philosophers
were banished by Justinian from Athens, and a
mournful little group wandered away into the far
East, seeking for that charity and peace which the
soldiers of the Prince of Peace refused to give them.
As late as the year 538 a Pagan suffered martyrdom
for his faith in Constantinople, and the victory
seemed complete. This long struggle would seem
to indicate a really formidable power in Paganism,
but the power was not of an aggressive, or even of
a strongly defensive, character. Its strength was
simply traditional and conservative, the survival of a
habit of mind and an attitude of soul which had
existed for centuries. The Pagans had no Church
with its strong and vigorous organization. They had
no Creed which might be made the centre of unity,
nor did they have that profound faith and passionate
enthusiasm which were the characteristics of the
real fighting Christianity of these centuries. Not
withstanding the influence and prestige of Paganism,
resting as it did on immemorial custom and tradition,
it lacked the vigour and deep conviction which become
the fountain of a new national life and the basis of
a new national history, and so was doomed if the

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 139
Empire was to live. It was complex, elaborate,
philosophic, and subtle — but these elements are not
incompatible with real weakness — and it entirely
lacked, or seemed to lack, that passion, vehemence,
and rich vitality which are characteristic of a large
and expanding spiritual life. The consciousness of
this is shown in the writings of the Christian
teachers of this period, especially of those of Irenaeus.
The foe he has in mind is not Paganism but Gnosticism,
and there is the same feeling on the part of Clement
of Alexandria. There is a tone in the attitude of
those who deal with Paganism of assurance and
victory, which is conspicuously absent from the Pagan
writers themselves — like Celsus, for instance.
The height of the great Pagan Revival was
reached in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. If the
Empire could live on the traditions and inspirations
which it had inherited from the past, no fairer
opportunity, it would seem, could be offered than
that which was set before the world at this time.
But the hour of its triumph was touched with the
prophecy of defeat. The golden days, not only of
Paganism, but of the Empire, closed with the reign
of Marcus Aurelius. The atmosphere was filled
with the golden haze of Autumn. A rich and
melancholy beauty hangs around the memories of
the past, and touches the gleaming pillars and lofty
temples with a light which was soon to fade away.
The sun of the Ancient World blazed forth from
the horizon with a radiance which recalled the
splendour of its dawn. But the night was at hand.

140 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
The early days of Aurelius were the ' Indian
summer' of Paganism, but the winter was near.
The hand of Death was stretched forth even then,
and about the later years of his reign there is some
thing of the melancholy and pathos of approaching
age. The mood of the Emperor himself was, as
has been said, that of the Neoplatonist rather than
that of the Stoic. Sad and resigned, longing for
relief from the weary burden of life, he walked
already amid the gloom of the future, and over his
noble and thoughtful features fell the shadows of a
dying religion and a crumbling civilization. The
ancient vigour of the race seemed to have passed
away. The social unrest, the prevalence of disease,
the outbreak of wars, created a panic in the popular
mind and filled the world with sad forebodings.
More than a century before a voice had been wafted
to the sailors on board a ship in the JEgea.n that
" Great Pan was dead," and the echoes of that
solemn voice began now to break more clearly upon
the ears of men. The dreadful plague of the year
1 66, the outbreak of wars on the frontier, earth
quakes, and strange rumours of impending disasters,
filled the minds of men with strange and nameless
terrors. It seemed as if the Hand of God was
stretched out against the Empire. It smote again
and again — plague, famine, and the sword — and the
wailing people turned in sudden fury upon the help
less Christians. It is the turning-point in the history
of Italy. The villages were deserted or depopulated,
the farms abandoned, and everywhere the signs of

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 141
approaching collapse. It was at this period that the
Campania took upon it that strange tone of melan
choly which still impresses the traveller so power
fully. A mental depression, not found in the earlier
ages of the Roman race, begins to appear as an
almost characteristic mood. There are also many
indications pointing to a slow but steady deteriora
tion of the race throughout the whole of the second
century. With all its culture and intellectual re
finement, there was a dimness of vision and a moral
despair, the results of the tension of a life without
any clearly recognized ideal — a life which had
strained itself in many experiments, and now, with
its ancient vigour gone, lay exhausted and hopeless.
The race seemed to have reached its limit. The
primitive vigour having been expended and the
vitality exhausted, there was nothing left but
religious bankruptcy and spiritual sterility. This
condition had but one hope before it, and that was
in the new inspirations and new spiritual ideal of
the Gospel. And yet, in watching the spread and
development of the Gospel through the Roman
World, and noting the profound changes wrought by
it, one must not accept these results as the highest
attainable ones. For the new life was struggling
with a decadent civilization and decadent races,
and it is not possible that great ideas and great
religious truths or impulses shall find their highest
expression or fullest development in a race whose
spiritual imagination has been debauched by un-
spiritual ideals, or its moral energies wasted by

142 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
sensual indulgence.1 A new historic condition must
be evolved through the providence of God before
the splendid possibilities of the Gospel shall be
manifest in the creation of a new and nobler civiliza
tion.2 The resistance which the Empire offered to
the Gospel, and the modifications which it demanded,
show the weakness and the failure of the old races.
This opposition too often took the shape of violent
hostility against the growing Church. These per
secutions had a thousand sources in men's fears,
uneasiness, and despondency, but they reveal only
too clearly the despair which lurked behind the
ancient and majestic civilization of Rome.
The tremendous spiritual ferment which charac
terized the second century, while not entirely due
to the Gospel, was enormously increased by it. The
higher and more imaginative minds, as well as the
more ignorant and passionate, which had been
1 " Seine wirkliche Realisirung konnte das Christenthum nur in
einer Menscheit finden, der es bei seinem Eintritt in die Welt
unmittelbar nicht tradirt werden konnte. Denn diese konnte es
sich nur in einer Menscheit erarbeiten, die bei ihrer ersten
Beriihrung mit ihm noch nicht civilisirt war, — die folglich weder
schon ihre natiirliche Lebenskraft theilweise verbraucht und
erschopft hatte, noch schon durch ein andres Princip irgend-wie
auf eine dem Christenthum fremdartige Weise entwickelt war." —
Rothe, Vorlesungen uber Kirchengeschichte, B. ii. S. 8.
2 "The old Pagan mind into which history first came could not
possibly be the best interpreter of Christianity, and the more the
mind is cleansed of the Pagan, the more qualified it becomes to
interpret the religion. It is therefore reasonable to expect that
the later forms of faith should be the truer and the purer." — Fair-
bairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 187.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 143
touched by the new spiritual life, were thrown into
a state which seemed to many to be the harbinger
of revolution and anarchy. Old ties were broken ;
old bonds flung away. To these eyes inflamed
with the burning vision, and their imaginations fired
with new hopes, the old order seemed about to pass
away. Noble traditions and a splendid past were
flung aside under the spell of the wonderful future
which the Gospel revealed. These violent convul
sions of the spiritual life, which were manifest in so
many strange forms both within and without the
Church, moved with sympathy the restless minds
of many who were unable to understand their
deeper meaning or see their ultimate issue. The
general spiritual uneasiness was thus vastly in
creased. The situation reacted upon the Church.
It stood no longer, as at the beginning, facing only
the outcast and the slave, the prodigal and the
harlot, the lonely and the broken-hearted. A mighty
world was before it, filled with all the greatness and
charm of a splendid past, and the mystery and
wonder of an unknown future. The wonder, the
mystery, the splendour of this vision sent a thrill of
awe and passionate courage through the ranks of
the growing army. The thin stream of life, with
its half-spent emotions and latent energies, flowing
silently through the unknown and despised regions
of the world, had, in the passing of the years, grown
into a vast and swollen torrent, in which all the fierce
passions, wild hopes, ambitious dreams, and sad long
ings of men were borne along on the stormy flood.

144 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
It was under such conditions as these that the
Christian Church entered upon the new period which
is marked by the culmination of the Gnostic Con
troversy, and the development of a more highly or
ganized ecclesiastical constitution and more clearly
defined theological ideas.
Gnosticism, which appears in the days of Justin
Martyr only as an uneasy, restless struggle within
the Church of elements which the Church did not
recognize or fully appreciate, had reached in the
time of Irenaeus its most acute stage, and resulted
in a clearly and well-defined battle between two
forces which thoroughly understood themselves and
were struggling for definite aims. Gnosticism
wished to shape the Gospel into a system of
philosophy, and the Church was fighting for the
Christian life. It is not difficult to get a general
view of the Gnostic movement and recognize the
primary elements in it, but to gain a clear apprehen
sion of all the details involved in it is not at present
possible. If it was actually what the Fathers too
often represent it to be, it is singular how it could
have gained the influence which they attribute to it,
and which it undoubtedly exercised. The material
which we possess upon which to base an estimate is
in most cases the statements of enemies, and these
not always either perfectly just, generous, or intelli
gent ones. It is from the greatest of the Christian
Fathers that we get the most adequate statements on
this movement, which exercised such a profound
influence upon the destinies of the Gospel. It is a

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 145
matter of note that the two great cities where
intellectual culture survived longest and accomplished
most, Antioch and Alexandria, were also the centres
of Gnosticism and the homes of its most powerful
teachers. These two cities were also the fountains
of the highest and finest theological teaching of the
Ancient Church. Another noticeable feature with
reference to Gnosticism is that most of the distinc
tive theological ideas which differentiate the highly
developed Church of the third and fourth cen
turies from the simplicity of the Apostolic Age, are
first found coming into prominence among the
Gnostics. We are not able now, and probably
never will be able, to state all the contributions
which Gnosticism directly and indirectly made to
the thought and life of the Church, for the orthodox
teachers appropriated much of the thought to their
own use, or, rather, breathed it in as part of the
intellectual atmosphere of their age. Again, they
snatched the weapon from the hands of the enemies,
and claimed as their own what were really trophies
of their foes, on the ground " That to the victors
belong the spoils." As the hostile and dominant
Paganism had made organized and systematic
attempts to suppress and destroy Christianity, so the
Church, when it became strong enough, waged a
relentless war upon all those enemies which had
wrought for it so much mingled good and evil.
The genuine religious zealot, no matter what his
Creed, seems to have the same instinct. The
captured territory is always burned over, ploughed 10

146 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
up, and sown with salt. The destruction is as com
plete as human ingenuity coupled with theological
rancour can make it. One stone is not left upon
another, but the broken fragments tell to the eye of
the scientific investigator the story of the past in no
uncertain language. The efforts of the Church to
destroy all vestiges of this struggle are perfectly
apparent, and are rather remarkable as showing
how deeply incensed it was against its opponents.
Though we have no evidence of any systematic
attempts to accomplish this result during this period,
the reason lay not in the different feelings which
actuated the Church, but in its lack of power. The
Church herself was on trial, and Christians were in
the minority and could take no formal or legal steps
to this end. But the means adopted later, traces of
which are to be found in the Imperial Decrees,
show a disposition which cannot have been absent
in this period. The Church Fathers, with few
exceptions, show the same feeling towards their
heathen and Gnostic assailants, and it is not one
which fills one with any pleasure. In some cases it
borders upon ferocity. One of the first steps which
Constantine took after the declarations of the
Nicene Council was to issue a decree against Arius,
and by implication against Porphyry, in which all
the writings of the Arians are condemned to be
burned, and sentence of death was pronounced
against all who read them.1
1 " Under Constantius and Constans a fierce attack was made
on the controversial writings of the heathen. In the fifth century

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 147
As a consequence of this attitude, all which
survives to us of the Gnostic writings is imbedded
in the literature of these Church Fathers who were
directly impelled to attack in a systematic and
formal manner this subtle enemy of the Gospel.
Yet the influence and effects of Gnosticism, or the
struggle with it, are apparent on every page of the
history of this period. The natural and spontaneous
movement of thought in the Christian Church took
a more scientific and philosophical form, and the
outlines of those deep foundations were drawn
which the succeeding generations were to lay. The
opposition against the Gnostics strengthened itself
by every means which lay within its reach, and the
loose and disorganized mass of religious communities
developed under the stress of battle into a solid and
well-disciplined army under skilful and ardent
leaders. This Graeco- Roman civilization, which on its
Hellenic side so powerfully influenced the course
there was a fiery process against the writings of Nestorius, and
hand in hand with it, a condemnation of the heathen writings,
especially those of Porphyry. On Feb. 16, 448 a.d., the law was
promulgated through the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinus :
'That all copies of Porphyry the Mad, likewise of the other
opponents of Christianity, should be burned, for the turning away
of the anger of God and the saving of their souls.' The complete
ness with which these efforts were crowned has left us only a
few fragments of the Neoplatonic enemies of Christianity.
Porphyry, Hierocles, and Julian are preserved to us only in the
writings of the Christian Fathers, and their dates, like those of
Celsus, cannot be precisely determined." — Theo. Keim, Celsus's
Wahres Wort, S. 172-173.

148 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
and development of Christian thought and Christian
institutions, on its Roman side also impressed itself
most deeply upon the growing Church, and influenced
most profoundly the interpretation of the Gospel,
which was presented thus under new conditions to
the life of the Empire.
A recent writer has emphasized the influence
which the Roman administrative forms and ideas
exercised upon the Christians in an entirely un
conscious manner,1 but has referred only indirectly
to the effect which the dominant conceptions of the
Roman mind had upon the shaping and expression
of Christian thought.
That fundamental idea of the Gospel as the ' Nova
Lex,' which, we have seen, appears in such an unmis
takable yet indefinite form in the Epistle to Barnabas
and almost all the other writers of the first half of
this century, gradually extended and developed itself,
until it controlled, not only the thought and life of
the Church, but also naturally and inevitably shaped
its expression and organization. In this new ideal,
so comprehensively expressed, reaching so high and
so far, touching the springs of human thought and
ruling the most minute act of the life, extending
itself, moreover,to every detail in the great organism —
in this we have the ideal of the Graeco- Roman world,
the ideal ofthe Empire itself, the ideal ofthe Catholic
Church, the ideal of Law. Lofty as this conception
is, and no one will refuse it admiration, the real
question is, whether it was greater than, or as great as,
1 Ramsey, The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 362.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 149
the one it displaced or anticipated. To settle this
question there is no need of abstract discussion. All
that is necessary is to trace the effect of this concep
tion upon the minds and hearts of men, and see its
shaping influence in the practical ideal which was
moulded in the stern struggle of years, and which
shaped itself amid the strife of the centuries. Law
and order, system and discipline, are undoubtedly the
highest achievements which man can reach, but we
must ask ourselves whether these external features
of life cannot sometimes be bought at too high a
price — at the price, namely, of that inward spiritual
life which is the very essence and soul of man. Is
not the highest form of spiritual liberty, in accordance
with the highest law, the life of God Himself? and
will not one who starts with the ideal of law rather
than liberty, lean inevitably towards an external and
mechanical conception of religion which ultimately
ends in Legalism and Casuistry ?
Law, in the sense of statute and ordinance, is not
within the region and atmosphere of the highest
expression of the life of man in the Gospel. The
struggles in which the Church was engaged for so
long a period strengthened this tendency, and in its
ultimate expression we may say that, even more
perfectly than the Empire itself, it set forth the
Roman ideal of law. All the forces of the existing
civilization which work for the preservation of the
social order, were enlisted in the interests of the
Church when its capacity was fairly appreciated.
The conservative instincts of men, which are always

150 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
on the side of the past, brought out and re-enforced
the old religious conception, and drew the new religion
more into line with the past. Stamping upon it the
prevalent ideal, that of law, it raised by this means
a check against the spiritual anarchy which seemed
to threaten all things men care for.
It is not a matter which admits of much debate,
whether it would have been better that the Church
should have clung to the ideal of life which the
great Apostle to the Gentiles followed, or adopt the
one which realized itself under the form of Catholi
cism. Such a discussion is altogether too academic.
The fact is, she did accept, consciously or uncon
sciously, the latter mode of conceiving herself, her
relations, her aims, and her duties ; and we have
simply to ask ourselves whether this ideal reveals
itself as capable of meeting the issues and satisfying
the needs of the spiritual life of man, not only in that
distant past, but in this strange and momentous
present. It is in the age of Irenaeus that we meet with the
fully developed outlines of this new ideal. Law
stamps itself over the whole broad surface of the
Church's intellectual and spiritual domain. In the
region of Christian thought the ' Regulae Fidei '
assume a position from which they were never
removed during the whole period in which the
Roman idea influenced the form of Christian
teaching. The bold, fresh thought of the Church was being
slowly hemmed in, or, at least, boundaries were sought

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 151
for it ; but it is of the immortal glory of man that
he must think, whether his thinking is recognized
or rejected. The test of his being is, as the great
philosopher says, in this power to think. No age
of tie Church has ever passed without some ac
credited or unaccredited contributions of the mind
of nan to the sum of human thought, in spite of
the restrictions under which intellectual activity has
been placed by the legal idea of religion.
The ' Regulae Fidei,' moreover, find their counter
part and natural accompaniment in the conception of
practical life or the practical ideal, in which the spon
taneous expression of religious feeling is, to a greater
or less degree, superseded by a theory of duty and
conduct which reduces the Gospel to a legal code or
a religious ritual. Everywhere we find this coming
more distinctly into view in the thought which con
tains the formative principles ofthe future. In the
threefold aspect of life, thought, and organization we
find the Church of the last half of the second century
expressing most clearly and definitely the dominance
of a certain conception and ideal which are legal, nbt
spiritual — of law, not of liberty.
The relations which exist between men and their
environment, or between the intellectual and spiritual
resources of one age and the demands and activities
of another, are not plain and simple, but complex and
oftentimes obscure. To define precisely the scope
of any particular influence, or to analyze the effect of
any particular force, it is necessary to ascertain the
conditions under which that influence or force was

1 52 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
i
operating. And it is only by its effects thkt we
learn to distinguish between what may be called the
abstract existence of a truth and the existence of
that truth in the life and mind of a man. Therefore,
in tracing out the relation between the theology of
St. Paul as expressed in the practical ideal ol the
Christian life, and the age of Irenaeus as reflected in
the pages of that writer, it will be necessary to repeat,
in part at least, the process adopted in the previou?
chapter — that is, we must ascertain, if possible, whal
relation this special line of thought bore to the
recognized mode of thought at this time, or, at least,
to that set forth in the writings of Irenaeus.
The immense change which took place in the
position of the literature which ultimately became
what we call the New Testament, was emphasized,
in the case of St. Paul's writings, by the special
battle which was waged over them with Marcion.
Yet, however great the change which we notice in
one generation, and however relatively marked the
advance over the past, as a matter of fact the settle
ment of the New Testament Canon was a slow
process, and it advanced with very unequal speed in
different localities, and was rather a result of the
completer organization and consolidation of the
Church, than of a recognition or full appreciation of
the various portions which ultimately formed its
contents. It is easy to be seen that when ideas on
this subject were vague and fluid, it would be in
evitable that the emphasis would be shifting since
the meaning itself was uncertain. It is only when

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 153
the term itself, as well as the documents which it
described, had become fixed and rigid, that we find
that lack of colour and feeling in the use of this
literature which is the clear mark of canonicity.
Only when all the literature of the New Testament
was to a large degree fixed and of equal value with
the Old Testament, is it that we find that use of it
as inspired and authoritative in every word, which
is the true test of canonicity ; and when Irenaeus
wrote, this age was still distant. In the most im
portant centres of Church life there was still that
absence of uniformity of expression on this subject,
which shows the idea had not fully realized itself, even
if it had been fully grasped by any. The idea of in
spiration was already at hand in the Old Testament,
and the growing sense of Apostolic authority was
soon to be the distinguishing mark of a special
literature, and, joined with the idea of inspiration,
gave the dogmatic basis for a New Testament
Canon. In the earlier part of this period we have the
current thought of the great Antiochian Church on
this subject set before us in the writings of its
Bishop, Theophilus. He, however, does not know
any literature of the Christian Church which is of
equal value and regarded in the same light as the Old
Testament, unless it is the Four Gospels,1 and any
evidence that the Pauline literature was in the same
rank with these is entirely wanting.
If we turn now to the African Church, leaving
1 Harnack, Das Neue Test, um dasjahr 200, S. 41-42.

154 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
the great Alexandrians to be treated of in another
place, we find a curious illustration of the develop
ment of the New Testament Canon, and how, in a
remote and distant place, the literature which has
held its position in the esteem of Christians for so
many ages was slowly building itself into the rever
ence and regard of the Church. In the records ofthe
trial of the Scillitan Martyrs there is apparently a
sharp distinction between the ' Scriptures ' or ' Holy
Books ' and the letters of St. Paul. The efforts of
Zahn and Sanday to invalidate the argument for
the slow development of the Canon, drawn from this
fact by a reinterpretation of it, do not by any means
appear to be satisfactory.1
In the Church at Rome, which at this time had
risen to a place in the Western World from which it
never has been displaced, the most important docu
ment which we have for this period is without much
dispute the Muratorian Fragment or Canon. The
date has been much disputed, but it is admitted by
all to belong to the latter half of the second
century, and was without much doubt written at
Rome — whether originally in Latin or Greek seems
still open to debate.2 While the writer does not
1 Acta Martyrum Scilanorum Graci:
Al Kaff rj/jiai /3i/3\oi Kal at irpbs
Em tovtois iiruTToXal IlavAou
Toi oa-iov dvSpos. — 6a, 7. A.D. 180.
2 Date of Muratorian Fragment: — Tischendorf, 160-170;
Wieseler and Westcott, 170; Credner and Harnack, 170-190;
Holtzmann, 190; Volkmar, 199-200; Hilgenfeld, time of
Irenaeus; Keim, time of Tertullian.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 155
apply the title Scriptures to the Epistles of St. Paul,
he evidently wishes them to be regarded as of high
authority, although he feels that it is necessary for
him to justify the position he assigns to them. In
consequence, he dwells upon the fact that the Apostle
wrote to Seven Churches, and as seven is a sacred
number, it must be mystically interpreted. He finds
in this number the guarantee of the Catholicity of
the Epistles which is necessary to commend them
to a canonical position. The Canon of the New
Testament is manifestly here, however many limita
tions it is necessary to make, and they are not few.1
Although the Muratorian author does not use
the term ' Canon of the New Testament ' or ' Holy
Scriptures ' as applied to these writings, yet at this
time, and possibly earlier, the latter term had been
applied to writings which were of high antiquity or
Apostolic origin. As, for instance, Irenaeus speaks
of the Shepherd of Hermas as ' Scripture.' The
very term, however, of ' Holy Apostle,' indicating a
special honour and reverence, was not used as a
distinctive title for the individuals of what is
commonly called the Apostolic College until the
third century.2 From this, one might reasonably
infer that the personal authority of the writers of
the New Testament literature was not at this period
a fully developed idea. We see the growth of the
1 Dr. Harnack thinks, however, that there was no Canon of
the New Testament at Rome before 200 a.d., Theolog. Literatur-
zeitung, 188, S. 643.
2 Eusebius, H. E., iii. 32.

156 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
canonical idea in the gradual change which is taking
place in the estimate which is being put upon the
various books of the New Testament, and also of
the earlier Christian literature, aside from that which
is now regarded as canonical. Many of the books
which were highly regarded at an earlier period are
now being neglected or rejected, and the local attach
ment for particular books, which held but an inferior
position in other places, became a means of lifting
them, by the growing sense of unity throughout the
Church, into a prominence which they had occupied
only in the narrow territory of their earlier field.
The Church of the East, possibly Jerusalem,
offered as its contribution to the new Canon the
Epistle of St. James. Alexandria had preserved
the Epistle to the Hebrews, and now handed it into
the larger keeping of the Church Catholic. The
Apocalypse, that strangest of all the books in the
New Testament Canon, was saved by the stubborn
feeling of the West, which was probably feeling
more than anything else, for the West was not
strong in scholarship or learning.1 By this gradual
process a collection of books was formed, the several
parts of which enjoyed special consideration in
different localities ; but the whole collection did not
universally attain the distinction which belonged in
different degrees to the different members of it for
nearly a century more. For a long time books
which are now called extracanonical were used with
great freedom at Alexandria, which shows how weak
1 Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 24-25.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 157
the canonical sentiment was, with respect at least
to the Christian literature, in this, the birthplace of
the Septuagint, the home of Philo, and the fountain
of all Biblical learning for centuries.
When we turn to Asia Minor and Gaul, we may
accept Irenaeus as representative of the current
thought in these so widely separated localities, for
his attachment to the East must be accepted as a
guarantee that he clings closely to the traditions
which prevail in the East. In examining his
writings on this point, we discover that he recognizes
not only the existence, but the authority, of the
writings at present included in our Canon of the
New Testament. The old language, however,
which appeared in Justin and Papias about the
' Eye and Ear Witnesses ' is no longer found, but
the authority of the Apostolic literature is based
upon the same ground as that of the Old
Testament.1 He uses the term ' Scriptures ' without strictly
defining what is included in it, but he applies it to
Evangelical and Apostolic writings, and evidently
regards them as co-ordinate authority with the Old
Testament.2 What books are included, however,
in these Scriptures can be ascertained from the
different references which he makes to them. He
accepts the Four Gospels on the ground of their
historical character, but justifies this acceptance for
1 Iren., Ad. Her., iii. 16, 2 ; H. J, Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der
Historisch-Kritischen Einleitung in das Neue Testament, S. 149.
2 Ad. Her., B. iii. 1.

158 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
mystical reasons, upon which he dwells at some
length.1 It is noticeable that while Irenaeus uses the Epistles
of St. Paul with great frequency, there seems to be
a distinction in his own mind which affects the
manner in which he regards them. Yet nowhere
does he dwell upon the difference which he seems
to feel rather than consciously recognize. While
he seems to make a constant use of the Epistles,
at the same time he does not make any reference
to a collection of Pauline Epistles standing side
by side with the Four Gospels, and of equal value
and authority with them. The process, however,
by which they became canonical has already
begun in Irenaeus, but it is not by any means com
plete or advanced to such a stage that positive
statements, except those of the most general kind,
can be made. It has been conjectured that the
necessity which Irenaeus felt of reclaiming St. Paul
from the Gnostics compelled him to use the Epistles
as canonical or authoritative Scriptures, although
previously they had only been highly regarded as
literary relics of the great Apostle. The fact also
that the Epistles were of local character would, in
the days of the growing Catholic idea of the Church,
be unfavourable to their full reception as authorita
tive for the Church Universal. The attempt which
Irenaeus made to avoid this difficulty or to meet it
is clearly an indication that he felt il to be such.
In addition to this is the fact that the Pauline
1 Ad. Her., B. iii. n, 8.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 159
literature was in the form of letters, which was a
very common mode of literary expression among
the Pagans, and would therefore necessitate their
being recognized and appreciated, partially at least,
on their real merits before they would be accepted
on other grounds, or their authority recognized as
Apostolic and canonical. The particular mode of
introduction which all Jewish and Christian writers
used when quoting the Old Testament, and which
the majority of Christian writers at this period also
used with regard to the Four Gospels — that is,
' Scriptures ' or ' Holy Scriptures ' — is nowhere used
by Irenaeus in quoting St. Paul. This is more
important, since the number of citations which he
made from the Apostle has been estimated as high
as 324.1
These distinctions can undoubtedly be pressed too
far if one forgets that this was a transition period,
and the sentiment and feeling which go before and
create the practice or shape the expression were
already present. While the future of the Canon
was clearly foreshadowed by the present practice,
the conditions which surround the beginning of
1 Wahrend also die A. Tliche Citate solenn mit ' Scriptura
ait' eingefiihrt werden, auch solche aus Schriften des neues
Bundes mit diesen und ahnlichen Formeln, bei den Evangelien
dieselben bereits durch den gleich solennen Titel Evangelium
verdrangt sind, findet sich nicht ein einziges Paulus Citat in
solenner einfiihrungs Form. Keines dieser 206 Citate ist ais
' Scriptura ait,' oder ahnlich eingeleitet. — J. Werner, Der Paulinis
mus der Irenaus, S. 28 ; Harnack, Gebhard t, und Zahn, Altchrist-
liche Literatur, B. vi., 1889.

160 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
this, and which to a very considerable extent still
survived, would make their influence felt.
That the position of the Epistles of St. Paul as
canonical was still far from universally conceded, can
be seen from the attitude which one party or element
in the Church still maintained towards him. The
Clementines indicate the presence in the Church of
the original Jewish element which was of necessity
hostile to St. Paul. The Homilies belong to the
second half of the second century, and the Recogni
tions probably to the last quarter. The bitter feeling
displayed in them against Marcionism has its origin,
not simply in the growing legalism of the Church,
but springs from a distinctly Jewish source — that is,
the author is a member of the early Jewish-Christian
party which had not yet been rejected by the Church.
If, as Baur thinks, the Clementines proceeded from
Rome, they show that in the Church of the chief city
of the Empire there was, in the last half of the second
century, a strongly Jewish and legalistic party which
looked with undisguised dislike upon St. Paul. The
term '6 ey&pos' unquestionably refers to St. Paul, and
it is not asserting too much to claim that in these
writings there is a covert attack upon him. If there
did exist such a feeling at Rome, Irenaeus may have
known of it, and, as a consequence, had his attitude
towards St. Paul in some degree affected by it.
However, in the absence of all positive evidence in
favour of such an opinion, it must be regarded as
simply a conjecture which has no indisputable ground
for its basis.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 161
An undoubted influence, however, was exerted upon
the position of the Pauline literature and the develop
ment of the New Testament Canon as a whole, at
one period retarding and at another advancing it, by
an authority which was originally of paramount
importance — that is, Catholic Tradition. At first it
preceded the New Testament literature in importance,
but later was placed side by side with it as a basis of
authority and doctrine, yet in reality retaining its
earlier authority as a principle of interpretation and
guidance. It seems to be assumed by many that the idea and
authority of tradition are original with the Christian
Church, but a slight examination of the facts will
reveal how erroneous this view is. In the writings
of Irenaeus and the Christian literature of this age
tradition is mentioned with much frequency and
emphasis, and may be said to have been first asserted
as an established and unquestioned authority in the
Christian Church in this period. The root of its
influence undoubtedly lay in the human sympathy
which is its underlying basis, and by which each age
and each individual is bound in the living unity of
the race. What tradition was to the man of the
Ancient World we cannot fully understand unless
we see it from his standpoint. To the man of the
Modern World it still exists, but in a very different
form, and he regards it as always open to criticism.
It embodies itself in the mass of history, theory,
speculation, practice, faith, and fact, which form the
total of what we call Christianity. The distinction 11

1 62 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
between the original Gospel and Christianity as it
now is, is, to a degree at least, the distinction between
the primary and original facts and the body of
interpretation which has accumulated around them,
and which with some qualifications corresponds, in
the position which it now holds, to the original sense
of the word Tradition. Another element of differ
ence between the Modern World and the Ancient
World in this respect is the degree to which these
traditions have embodied themselves in written
documents, and become the basis of theological
systems and living communities. In the Ancient
World the unwritten tradition was the foundation of
all the schools and parties. In the earliest history
oral tradition supplied the place of literature, and was
the living expression of a people's consciousness,
especially of its religious consciousness, whose
continuity forms the noblest life of the race.
The more this tradition was developed and ex
pressed, the more it was appealed to, the greater
became its influence. The result naturally was that
the body of tradition would grow as the living thought
and experience of each generation was embodied in it,
until the original and primitive basis, be it oral or
documentary, was completely overlaid. The import
ance attached to tradition was consequently not
confined to any one subject or any one nation.
Every reader or student of the Gospels knows the
part which the Jewish schools, which were the
conservators of the sacred tradition, played in the
interpretation of the law. The hair-splitting casuistry

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 163
of the Scribes and Pharisees, which seems to us so
puerile and revolting, rested for its authority upon
the traditions of the school, which were received, not
only without hesitation, but with the profoundest
reverence. But the extent to which tradition was
elaborated, and the authority which was attributed to
it among the Jews, is not fully realized even by a
study of the New Testament. It is only when the
Talmud, which is the embodiment of Jewish tradition,
has been examined, that we see to what extent the
mind of the devout Jew was brought in bondage to
this influence. As is well known, Judaism after the
Restoration became a ' Religion of a Book,' but
even this does not fully describe the situation, for
the natural tendency of a legally conceived religion
is to extend the code to the most minute detail of
life and worship. As the book by no means covered
all these points by positive enactment, it was in this
respect supplemented by traditions or comments,
which were supposed to be merely an extension or
expansion of that which was implicitly involved in
the ' Thora.' This ' Oral Law ' took its place
beside the ' Written Law,' and was regarded as of
equal authority.1
The belief as to its origin was that it had been
taught to Moses by Jehovah in the Mount, and this
belief was undoubtedly re-enforced and guaranteed
by the value attached to the traditions or ' Lex
Oralis,' and its special adaptation to solve some of
the most pressing problems of Jewish life. When
1 Weber, Die Lehren des Talmud, S. 88.

1 64 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
Jehovah gave Moses the Thora, He also gave him
the interpretation of it — that is, the 'Lex Oralis.'1
Fundamentally there is no real distinction between
the Scriptures and Tradition. The principle at
the root in both cases is the same, for the one is
contained essentially in the other. Tradition is, in
reality, Revelation — the continuation and extension
of the original revelation of the Law.2 While
abstractly and theoretically the Scriptures had a
higher value than Tradition, yet in practice the
Oral Law was all-important, as it invariably is, and it
was by this men's conduct was governed and their
standing defined.3 Not only were transgressions of
tradition visited by the punishment on the part of
the religious authorities, but were also supposed to
involve the heaviest divine condemnation. More
than this, by a strange perversion opposition to the
oral tradition was regarded as a heavier trans
gression than disobedience to the decrees of the
Thora.4 In fact, the Jewish saint would rather die
than violate the traditional law, for this was regarded
as, in reality, higher and holier than the simple words
of Scripture.6 The Jewish Christians naturally were
influenced by the temper and mental predisposition
of the people to which they belonged. The litera
ture of the Christian Church in the second century
1 Weber, Die Lehren des Talmud, S. 89.
2 Ibid., S. 96. s Ibid., S. 192.
4 Schurer, The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, ii.
div. 1, p. 334 (Eng. Trans.).
» Weber, S. 105.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 165
is full of illustrations of how powerfully the old
impulse was working under the new conditions. A
striking example is furnished by the Clementines,
which undoubtedly sprang from a Jewish-Christian
source. That the Jewish party in the Church was
responsible for the survival of the influence of the
idea of tradition and the source of its renewed
strength; would, however, be a false assumption.
Any such idea is due to a misunderstanding of the
extent and depth of the habit of mind out of which
tradition sprung, and from which it derived its
strength and authority. The Christian Church
rejected any intentional acceptance of Jewish tra
dition ; yet the naive repudiation of Rabbinical tra
dition, and the blind acceptance of patristic authority
by Christian teachers, has been one of the paradoxes
of ecclesiastical history.
Science and philosophy in the Pagan World paid
the same respect to Tradition as was given in the
Jewish World. Oral tradition, in the absence of
printed books and the scarcity of manuscripts, would
naturally be of extraordinary value, and the various
schools of philosophy and science transmitted their
doctrines by this means. It was likewise the case
with religious teaching, and led in many cases to a
secret doctrine, which was transmitted by the initi
ated from one class to another. Among the philo
sophical schools the Pythagoreans in particular laid
the greatest emphasis upon their secret doctrine.
The mysteries of the Greek religions were character
ized by the same feature, and the Ancient World in

1 66 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
all its various sections was thoroughly familiar with
the conception of exoteric and esoteric traditions.
The influence of this idea upon the modes of thought
of the more learned and intelligent Christians
appears in the writings of the greatest teachers of
this age, and pre-eminently in Clement of Alex
andria and Origen. The mention of these suggests
the most probable solution of the way the theory
of tradition passed into, and was domesticated in, the
Christian Church, although it is hard to see how
under the circumstances it could have been excluded.
As a practice or habit of mind it was perfectly
natural, but to give it a dogmatic shape is something
different, and implies a self-consciousness and a pur
pose whose origin is suggestive of the way the mind
of the Church was working, and throws a great deal
of light upon some of the phases of the intellectual
history of the Church of this age. We cannot
attribute this introduction to the influence of the
Jewish party in the Church, for after the fall of
Jerusalem this was of less and less account, and the
great streams of thought and habit were not likely
to be profoundly affected, in their details at least,
by such a remote influence as this. In the living
centre, where the largest and swiftest currents of the
higher intellectual life of the age met and combined
— that is, in Alexandria — we find the first hints of the
emphasis which was afterwards laid upon Christian
tradition as an authority beside and above the docu
mentary evidence or teaching of the Christian
Church. The Gnostics, since they were men for

chap. hi. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 167
the most part of superior cultivation and learning,
adopted the methods used in both Jewish and Pagan
schools, and based their systems upon teachings
which they claimed had been transmitted to them by
tradition. It was by this tradition they justified
their position. They claimed to have received it
from different Apostles and Apostolic teachers, and
great stress was laid upon St. Paul. When they
were confronted by the opposition between their
views and the public teaching of the Church, they took
refuge in the theory of a secret tradition by which
they endeavoured to defend themselves, and also
appealed to the Epistles of St. Paul. By this appeal
they undoubtedly gave greater publicity, and created
a demand for the writings which were to be in the end
one of the instruments of their own destruction.1
When a Christian teacher, trained in the methods
which prevailed to such a high degree in the Gnostic
schools, went out in defence of the Church, he fought
with these arms ; and where Gnosticism reached its
highest development, there also it left, in this respect
at least, the most distinct traces of its influence.
The most distinguished teachers of Alexandria
accepted and asserted the theory of a secret
tradition.2 It is to Irenaeus, however, more probably than to
any other Church writer of this period, that it is due
1 Rothe, Vorlesungen uber Kirchengeschichte, B. i. S. 135.
2 Vid. Origen on Ezek. ii. 9, and the experience of St. Paul to
which he refers in 2 Cor. xii. 4; Baur, Vorlesungen uber Dog-
mengeschichte, B. i. S. 374-375-

1 68 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
that tradition was erected into a great, if not the
greatest, authority in the Church. He appeals to it
as a long-recognized and long-established authority,
and we can accept his position as representative of
the opinions current on this subject in this period.
Tradition, as the original form of the teaching of
the Church, was regarded as of undisputed authority.
It was practically independent and above the
Scriptures, for while they were regarded as of
co-ordinate authority, yet, in fact, since they could
only be interpreted in the light of tradition, they
really occupied an inferior position as norms of
influence. Tradition itself was the actual principle
of knowledge.1 The real principle of interpretation,
therefore, was tradition which has its basis, not in
the common historical and grammatical principles
which lie at the foundation of all literary inter
pretation, but in what is supposed to be the
common, ancient, and universal belief of the Christian
communities. But if tradition is necessary to the
proper understanding of Scriptures, who shall in
terpret the tradition ? Quis custodiat custodes ?
The whole process is but arguing in a vicious
circle, from which there is no escape except by
the path of science and reason, or through some
authority which supersedes all intellectual and
spiritual functions except obedience. To Irenaeus,
however, the authority of tradition was paramount
and final, and he saw in the Church, to whom this
1 Dr. Martin Winkler, Der Traditionsbegriff des Urchristenthum,
S. 63.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 169
tradition had been entrusted, the ultimate ground/
source, and fountain of all religious knowledge.1
As a consequence, the Canon of the New Testa
ment, which was still in almost an embryonic form,
was, on account of its later origin and less decisive
influence, placed in a subordinate position. This
was not done deliberately or for the purpose of
minimizing the Apostolic writings, but unconsciously,
for they were interpreted in the light of the present
and under the influence of the traditions already in
authority. This Apostolic tradition, for such it was supposed
to be, had, on the other hand, its unchangeable
accuracy guaranteed by the Holy Scriptures, and
consequently took precedence of all other authori
ties. The assumption which lay beneath this posi
tion was one which would not be credited for a
moment in the light of historical methods and
historical criticism, but which then passed unques
tioned, and has impressed itself so deeply upon the
mind and history of the Church, that it is not even
stated by many writers, and yet is of enormous
importance from any point of view. This assumption
is, that the oral form of teaching by which the
Gospel was first spread, and which for a long time
1 "Die Tradition ist also dem Irenaeus das an und fiir sich
vollkommen zureichende, alles Wesentliche in sich begreifende,
allgemein bekannte die Schrift erganzende und ihre Auslegung
regelnde Prinzip der christlichen Heilserkenntnis, welches eben
wegen dieser Eigenschaften unbedingte Autoritat in Anspruch
nehmen must." — Ziegler, Iren., S. 27, quoted by Winkler,
S. 80.

170 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
was the only means by which it was disseminated,
was necessarily exempt from all the injurious and
foreign elements which mingle with the stream
of ordinary historical development. This silent
assumption, which was a postulate of the writers
of this period, is, as has well been said, without
any justification.1 To dispute or criticize this theory
has always been regarded by its advocates as the
impudence of rationalism or the arrogance of un
belief. It was asserted that the value of tradition
and its actual superiority over Scripture was attested
by the fact that while the Gnostics might, and
undoubtedly did, use the latter, yet the true tradition
which was the key to the interpretation of it was
only known to those who belonged to the Catholic
Church, to which had been given this inheritance.2
The Apostolic writings were referred to, not for the
purpose of correcting any changes which might have
taken place in men's thoughts of the Gospel, or
even for the purpose of ascertaining what the
original teachings of the first preachers of the Gospel
were, but simply to show that the Apostles were in
entire agreement with the Church. The assumption
was, not that the Church should guide itself by the
teachings of the Apostles, but that the Apostles
must have taught as the Church then taught. It
is an assumption which still prevails in many
quarters, and covers up a vast multitude of historical
difficulties. The effect of it was, in the period we
1 Herzog, Real-Encyk., I. Aus., B. xvi. S. 283.
2 Iren., Ad. Her., B. iii. 4, 1.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 171
are studying, that the orthodox teachers in a mass
recognized no real distinction as existing between
Scripture and tradition, and assumed that their
contents were identical. More than that, since
tradition expressed the ideas with which they were
most familiar, they inevitably laid the stress upon
it, and the Scriptures consequently were lessened
in value because inevitably lessened in influence.
This was unavoidable when such a guide was at
hand to point the way and settle all disputes.
Moreover, the growing strength of the organization
would furnish a living and powerful authority to
extend and strengthen the influence of tradition,
and which led, not to an actual disregard of the
Scriptures, but lessened the sense of its supreme
importance for a basis from which to verify the
data of the Christian consciousness. Ultimately,
when there was a tendency to oppose Scripture to
tradition, the vast majority of the Church teachers,
with the exception of the Antiochan school, held
that the Scriptures could only be interpreted by
means of tradition. They thus took a subordinate
place, and their proper claims could not be established
until tradition was recognized, not as co-ordinate
authority with them, but merely as the expression
of certain theological or historical opinions which
need not be accepted without thorough investigation.
A cardinal instance is offered by Irenaeus, both as
to the value of tradition in its most attractive and
reliable form, and also of the way men regarded
and used it in this age. Irenaeus states that Jesus

172 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
lived to be near the age of fifty years. He asserts
that this information was given by St. John to those
who were intimate with him in Asia. Some of
these " Disciples of the Lord saw not only John
but the other Apostles also, and heard the very
same account from them." Here is a direct and
positive statement made by one who was but one
generation removed from the last of the Apostles,
and was a friend and pupil of Polycarp, the friend
of St. John. Yet this testimony, so direct, so
positive, so clear, is practically of no value in the
face of other evidence. It would be difficult to
find a scholar who would accept this tradition as
decisive on this point. The use Irenaeus makes of
Scripture in this case shows plainly that his mind
had been preoccupied by another authority and
influence than Scripture. He states the tradition,
and then introduces the passage John vii. 56, 57,
as proof. He does not examine the Evangelical
history, but simply assumes the authority of the
tradition. In his mind, in this instance at least,
tradition is the leading idea and Scripture the
subordinate. While this mode of regarding it is
not in every instance sharply defined, nor perhaps
the universal method or attitude, and while Irenaeus
attaches the greatest importance to Scripture, yet
the way in which the two are related in his thought
is set forth again and again. It may be overstating
it to assert that he set it forth as a theological
proposition, yet practically he stood upon the
ground of the authority of the traditions of the

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 173
Catholic Church as the basis of all Scripture inter
pretation. The material of the later affirmations
of the Catholic Church are plainly in sight, and
the development has begun. The method of the
future is here, and the method of Irenaeus is the
Dogma of Trent.1
It is perfectly obvious that under such conditions
as these the development of the New Testament
Canon would be affected in many ways, and the
estimate of these writings would also be modified in
many respects.
Other factors contributed to change the estimate
of the Apostles' writings by changing the historical
perspective. The idea of the solidarity of the
Apostolate was fast becoming one of the historical
tenets of the Church, and, swayed by this idea,
Irenaeus regards St. Paul and the other Apostles as
occupying the same point of view and being in
entire harmony with each other.2 Such a concep
tion is obviously not the result of historical insight
or criticism, but of dogmatic preconceptions which
have their origin in the ideas which were shaping
the organization of the Church. The interest which
Irenaeus has in him seems not to indicate any
appreciation of his thought or any recognition of
his historical position. The great Missionary of the
Gentile world does not appeal to him. He regards
him chiefly as a member of the Apostolate, which is
1 Cone. Trid., Sess. 4; Cat. Rom. Prafi, 12; Belarmini de
Ver bo Dei, iv. 3.
2 Ad. Her., iii. 13, 1.

174 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
endowed with special authority. His feelings are
purely formal, conventional, and, if you will, ecclesi
astical, inspired by certain dogmatic and anti-Gnostic
motives.1 If, now turning from the study of the social con
ditions and the ecclesiastical movement which was
then in progress, and the intellectual atmosphere
which surrounded Irenaeus, we examine his writings
with reference to the points of St. Paul's theology
upon which his whole ideal of life rested, we find
some very wide differences in the way these funda
mental conceptions were regarded. The lines of
thought on this most vital point of life are by no
means so deeply thought out or so clearly expressed
in Irenaeus as in St. Paul. His was not a profound
nature nor an intellect of wide grasp or intense
activity. Nor was his mind either systematic or
analytic in any large degree. In some of his intel
lectual features he appears inferior to Justin Martyr.
He does not state the primary truths of his Christian
consciousness with any definiteness, except the initial
one of the revelation of Jesus Christ. The emphasis
which he lays upon the articles of the Regulae Fidei
would seem to controvert this statement, but these
are set forth rather as the objective truths of the
Church than the living affirmations of his own
spiritual life.
It remains now to examine somewhat in detail the
circle of thought within which the mind of Irenaeus
moved, and the particular interpretation which he
1 Werner, S. 105.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 175
gave to some of the most profoundly practical ideas
of the Gospel. To do this, moreover, in particular
with reference to those great truths which shaped
the thought of life, which stirred the soul of St. Paul
and gave such originality and power to his teaching.
Irenaeus was born in the East and reared upon
the traditions which are associated with the name of
St. John. When a very young man, he tells us, he
was a pupil of Polycarp, the disciple of that Apostle.
For what reasons he came to the West we do not
know, but at last he found his home and his work
in the Christian community of the Greek city of
Lyons in Gaul. The situation, together with his
own experience, contributed, no doubt, to foster that
spirit of conciliation and that desire for harmony
which are characteristic features of his disposition.
No more than of Justin Martyr can we say that he
was a man of striking intellectual gifts or that in
sight which rises to genius. He represents a type
whose virtues have gone far to justify their limita
tions or defects in the mind of the average man, for
his virtues are such as all can appreciate, and his
limitations those which are not immediately obvious.
He received and retained the stamp of his age, and
gave back only what he had received. The mastery
of the age and of his environment were complete,
for, as has been said of him, " Although he wrote in
the language of the Greek, he thought in the spirit
ofthe Roman."
The character of the man is revealed in a work
which is evidently representative of his strongest

176 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
and most careful thought — his great treatise
Against the Heresies. It is directed more
particularly against Valentinus and the Valentinians,
although other heretical sects are referred to. To
day some of the most critical and profound students
of church history regard Valentinus as one of the
most powerful minds of the second century, and,
with all his blunders and misconceptions, in much of
what he said, and more in what he aimed at, he bears
out this estimate of him. Yet, as seen in the work
of Irenaeus, the system of Valentinus seems but a
mass of puerilities and absurdities woven in with
wild, grotesque speculations. The vast majority of
men see things as they wish to see them or as they
are disposed to see them, not as they actually are ;
and the excess of intellectual activity and speculation
in this age, clothed, as it was, in such obscure sym
bolism, created a profound antipathy in the minds
of the vast majority of simple, earnest, Christian
teachers. The instinct of the Church, its loyalty to
Christ, led inevitably to a dislike of speculation on
the part of practical men, and hence some of the.
feeling with which Irenaeus attacked the Gnostics
was the result of the resentment which he felt to
wards the habits of thought as represented by them,
as well as the perception of the danger contained in
this vague and unbalanced theorizing.
Towards those elements of his Christian conscious
ness, which formed the working force by which his
practical ideal was to be attained in the mind of the
Apostle, we find Irenaeus standing in quite a differ-

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 177
ent relation. The passionate language of St. Paul
on the subject of sin has disappeared. Irenaeus
occupies quite a different attitude. Sin is not, or
does not seem to be to him, that feeling of personal
guilt which estranges the human heart from the love
of God and separates the soul from the centre of its
being. It consists mainly in a general sense of
oppression and weakness, which are a result of a loss
of that original knowledge and power of freedom by
which man was enabled to gain the divine rewards.
The sense of bondage, however, does not seem to
be inherent in this consciousness. The primary and
absolute freedom of the will never seems to be in
the slightest degree doubted, although this problem
was not probed to its depths by Irenaeus or any other
of the Greek Fathers. More than that, this side of
their Christian consciousness was not, and perhaps
could not be, developed with any fulness in the face
of inherited misconceptions. This acute conscious
ness of sin which in St. Paul had not only a moral
but primarily a religious character, seems vague and
unsatisfactory in Irenaeus. The language is conven
tional rather than personal. He does not even view
the problem from the deep ethical ground of the
Hebrew. In saying, however, that he was defective
in his ethical sense is by no means to make him a
conspicuous exception. This deficiency is charac
teristic of most of the Greek theologians. Not that
the moral element was absent from their natures, or
that it was slurred over in their thinking ; but the
subject of sin was looked at and treated too much
12

178 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
from the intellectual, rather than the moral and re
ligious or Christian, point of view. It was considered
too exclusivelyas privative in its character — that is, the
loss of one of the elements necessary to man's con
stitution as a son of God, the absence of that perfect
knowledge of the good which they believed was the
essence and aim of Christ's Revelation. This point
of view was characteristically Greek, and the greatest
names among the teachers of the past could be used
in justification of it. It was the profound belief of
the Greek thinker that sin was a result of ignorance,
and this intellectual optimism lay at the base of all
their failures to give an adequate expression to the
fact which the Gospel alone was able to truly inter
pret. As a result, the highest demands of the
redeemed nature of man could not be recognized
until the inherited thought of the past with all its
imperfections was subordinated to the higher passion
and truth of the Christian consciousness.
Those among the Greeks who seemed to have the
deepest appreciation of the ethical problems of life
and felt them most keenly were the Gnostics, and
especially Basilides and Valentinus ; yet in these
very instances were revealed the defects of their
qualities. The conclusions reached by them were
practically the same as those reached by Augustine
nearly three centuries later. Both the Gnostics and
Augustine took liberties with some of the fundamen
tal truths involved in the Incarnation, and destroyed
the wide and universal character of Christ's redemp
tion. The Gnostics had identified sin and matter,

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 179
and asserted most vehemently the spirituality of God.
In order to preserve Him from any contact with this
dark, gross substance, they separated Him so com
pletely from the world, that there was no actual
salvation for man through Christ possible for any
save the few who had risen above, and escaped from,
the world. Augustine, on the other hand, in his deep
consciousness of sin, separated man so completely
from God that no point of contact between the two
was left. Both the Gnostic and Augustine had to
introduce an arbitrary doctrine of election in order
that salvation might be realized by any.
That Irenaeus did not feel about sin as St. Paul
had felt is also shown by the way in which he under
stood the divine forgiveness. In the mind of St.
Paul forgiveness is the revelation to him, not only of
his own sin, but of the redeeming love and the power
it has to banish the element or elements in his nature
which alienate him from God. The sense of forgive
ness includes in it the consciousness of a change of
heart and a reconciliation with God. The depth of
this conception or consciousness was such that St.
Paul, resting on his own inner experience, found the
full satisfaction of all his spiritual hopes and the per
fect blessedness of life in the fulness of the divine
forgiveness. In Irenaeus the thought is far more
superficial and meagre. In the first place, it simply
means the taking away of the sense of oppression
which has rested so heavily upon the human soul, and
the restoration of the original fulness of choice which
is the note of man's primitive state. Forgiveness is

180 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iu.
not a state which is an end in itself and contains the
full satisfaction of the spiritual nature. This is an
idea which does not seem to have had any history, in
this connection at least, if at all, in the early Church.
Rather is it only a position of vantage from which a
future blessedness may be attained, and even that has
all the problematic qualities which belong to a future
event, for it was chiefly as a temporal event that
the results of the forgiveness of sins were regarded.
Its contents seem to have been exhausted in this
estimate of it as a purely historical fact. The idea
of St. Paul that we are dead and buried with Christ
in baptism, which is the representative or historical
act subsequent to, and testifying of, a spiritual experi
ence, from which we rise as new creatures in Christ,
in Irenaeus takes a different form. Baptism is the
washing away of sin and the restoration of the soul
to its original freedom of choice. Thus, forgiveness
is an historical event in the life of man which can be
referred to a special act in time ; and more than that,
it is limited by this condition of time. It is not a
religious fact or factor primarily in man's spiritual life.
It has reference rather to his external condition than
to his internal state.1
The radical difference between St. Paul and
Irenaeus on this fundamental idea of the Gospel is
1 " Die Siinde vergebung ist bei Iren. aus einer religiosen Tat-
sache zu einem historischen Ereigniss im Leben des Menschen
geworden. Sie ist ein maliger Act den der Mensch erleidet, nicht
eine stete Gottestat die er immer von neuem in ihrer beseligen-
den Kraft wieder erfahrt." — Werner, S. 144.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 181
revealed in a striking light in those details of the
practical Church life of this period which came into
prominence on account of this underlying difference.
In the attitude of the Church towards sins committed
after baptism, we see not only a new conception of
the Sacrament and the outlines of the later doctrine
of this subject, but also a side light, although a very
powerful one, on the subject of sin and forgiveness,
which is widely divergent from the Apostolic Age.
Sins were considered as single acts, and those which
were committed after baptism remained unforgiven,
for Christ had not died for them. His forgiveness,
so it was conceived, did not extend to the post-
baptismal territory of man's life.1 For the baptized
Christian who sins there is no forgiveness, only
punishment— not grace, but judgment with all its
terrors.2 What hideous fears this thought inspired,
and how much more terrible the Gospel of the Son
of God became to men than ever the stern denuncia
tions of the Law had been, the later ages of Christian
history only too plainly show. The root of this
mode of thought lay, not in a deeper conception of
sin as has sometimes been asserted, but in a more
superficial idea not only of man's guilt but, what is
of far more importance, of Christ's love and God's
forgiveness. It was sins, not sin, which men were
taught to fear ; and the formal act, not the inward and
spiritual renunciation, which they were led to em
phasize. Sin was a new idea to the heathen world.
Misery, unhappiness, and wrongdoing were all
1 Ad. Her., iv. 27, 2. 2 Ibid., ix. 27, 2.

i82 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
familiar, but the depths of spiritual opposition and
the inner repulsion to the holiness of God and the
perfection of Christ were not realized by the men
of this generation. Depths of sorrow and long and
passionate struggles were passed through before the
soul of man stood again on the height from which
that passionate cry of self-loathing and adoration
went up from the lips of the Apostle to Him who
had died for him.
Turning now to the next idea which lay at the
foundation of the Apostle's conception of the spiritual
life — that of law and the relation of the Christian
soul to it — we find no change in the point of view
which Irenaeus takes from that of the preceding
generation. The conception of the Gospel as the
' Nova Lex,' which appears on the very threshold
of this century, is not challenged by him and his age,
but rather accepted and even enlarged. In the post-
Apostolic Age the legalism was limited to the moral
life of the Christian, but in this age it was applied
to organization and dogma as well, and became the
dominant note of the period.1 The Church was
fighting against the Gnostics, who denied not only
the value of the old covenant, but also any relation
whatever between it and the new. They introduced
a dualism into history which the Church teachers
felt compelled to combat. These latter insisted
upon a truth which the Gnostics had failed to
appreciate, and that was the historical continuity
existing between the old and the new covenants,
1 R. A. Lipsius, Die Zeit des Irenceus, S. 281.

chap. hi. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 183
and the relation between them. The Church
teachers, on the other hand, failed to see in what
this continuity precisely consisted, and interpreted
the historical unity as a religious one. By so doing,
they lost sight of the essential originality of the new
covenant in its spiritual interpretation of life and its
religious significance.
There is at times an apparent resemblance be
tween the point of view which Irenaeus occupied
towards the law or legal idea and that of St. Paul,
but it is more apparent than real. " The hands are
the hands of Esau, but the voice is the voice of
Jacob." St. Paul regards the law as superseded as
an element in the religious development of man
kind. Irenaeus seems to adopt the same point of
view, but in reality he regards the law as represented
not by the idea, but by the ceremonial regulations of
the Mosaic Code. The moral law is not involved
in this historical supersession, and the moral law is
the essence of the Gospel, as it was of the Mosaic
Dispensation. On the other hand, Irenaeus insists
upon the novelty of the Gospel ; but when we seek
to discover in what this novelty consists, we do not
find that it is the abrogation of the law and the estab
lishment of a religious, spiritual, and filial relation,
but in some purely historical and external phenomena
which of themselves do not contain any principle of
spiritual life. The new is only an enlargement of
the old — an enlargement which, from the Gentile
point of view, was absolutely necessary, and which
was an underlying assumption throughout the whole

1 84 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
Gentile Church. The three chief points in which
Irenaeus finds that Christ has made additions to the
old law are these: — (i) the Universalism of the
Gospel, which, as before stated, was a necessary
Gentile postulate; (2) Faith in the Coming of
Christ ; (3) in the Sharpening and Emphasizing of
the Demands of the Moral Life.1 In this method
of interpreting the Gospel lay not only the secret of,
the power of the Church's organization, but it shaped
also the special development ofthe Church life, which
was practically reduced to a code of law with its
rewards and punishments. Religion became more
and more objective in conformity with the tendency
of thought and life, and the growing asceticism found
a home and support under the roof of the Church.
The identification of asceticism with the religious
life did not take place in this age, but the seed was
planted. The distinction was growing up between
an universal and special morality, between holiness
and virtue — a distinction which has no ground either
in reason or revelation, and which opened the way
for the ethical theories of the Mediaeval Church,
which finally shaped themselves into the doctrine of
the ' Opera Supererogationis.'
When we consider the position of Irenaeus more
closely, we see that the new law is supposed to confer
liberty ; but it is only in this sense that it demands a
larger and fuller obedience. The legal idea is only
slightly elevated or spiritualized ; or the proposition
may be reversed, and it can be asserted that the
1 Ad. Her., iv. 13; Werner, S. 198.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 185
spiritual idea of the Gospel has been legalized. As
has been said, the old law in its essence was not
abrogated, only enlarged.1 When we examine the
contents of this new law, we find they are the same
as the original primitive law which man possessed
before the introduction of the Mosaic law, and its
ethical contents are those of the primitive law and
of the spiritually interpreted Decalogue. The
Jewish law is merely an episode which is intruded
into the course of history, and the Gospel is the
restoration and extension of the primitive and
universal law of mankind. There is a strange
confused echo of St. Paul's language here, but how
utterly misunderstood when we see the theoretical
conclusions involved. If the Gospel marks no
radical step in advance in the spiritual progress of
mankind, and if the position of Irenaeus is correct,
then the movement is in a circle back to the earlier
religious ideas of the race. That the deep spiritual
significance of the Gospel is lost sight of by this
identification cannot be denied, and all the modi
fications and practical concessions are of little real
value so long as the essential distinction is not
recognized and emphasized. No doubt his inheri
tance from the preceding generations of Gentile
Christians, as well as his anti-Gnostic attitude, led
Irenaeus into this confusion and lack of clearness ;
and it may be that this tendency to identify the old
and the new, which the prevailing and dominant
legal conception of the Gospel indicates, was re-
1 Ad. Her., iv. 13.

186 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
enforced and intensified by the application of the
doctrine in which so many of the Church Fathers
were finding their defence of truth and their vindi
cation of history. Irenaeus was only asserting what
seemed to be the unanimous opinion of the great
writers of this generation, in contending that the old
law as well as the new was given by the \6yos.
This view is quite in opposition to St. Paul and also
the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews,1 but helps
to show how little influence the writings of the New
Testament contributed to form the details of the
philosophy of history which was being forged in the
hot furnace of heathen and Gnostic controversy.
This practical agreement in all essentials between
the old law and the Gospel was undoubtedly also
largely assisted by the christianizing of the Old
Testament. This process had begun very early
in the history of the Church, and while we cannot
clearly trace the legalizing of the Gospel to this
source, yet it undoubtedly contributed largely to the
strengthening of the legal conception, and in the end
facilitated the importation of many elements of the
Jewish religious life and ceremony into the stream of
Christian history. To what extent this was done
is quite another question, and would involve a
special line of investigation. The moralistic, instead
of the specifically religious, character which is given
to the Christian life of this age by the concentrated
and converging action of all these influences is most
1 Gal. iii. 18; Heb. ii. 2; Ritschl, Entstehung Altkat. Kirche,
S. 318.

chap. in. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 187
noticeable to a student of the period. To see how
thoroughly the whole life was being systematized on
the basis of an ethical conception of the Gospel and
the legal administration of the same, it is only
necessary to study the Church life of this age and
note its most salient features. But the practical
ideal which is the real test of the religious sweep
and vitality of an age, is not dependent alone upon
the conceptions which we have been examining,
fundamental as they are.
The living source of the inner life of the Apostle
to the Gentiles was set forth and emphasized by his
conception of Faith, and here too the widest
divergence existed between him and Irenaeus, as it
was shown to have existed also in the case of Justin
and his generation. With St. Paul, as has been
already shown, faith was an organic relation of the
soul of the believer with God through spiritual
identification with Christ. The life of man in all
its spiritual energy is taken possession of by Christ,
and becomes a living expression in the world of the
energy and spiritual beauty of the Redeemer. The
union is such that it is dependent, not primarily upon
the act of the man, but is the issue of the seeking
love of Christ, who wins entrance into the soul by
the power and tenderness of His love. With Irenaeus,
however, faith has none of this mystic beauty, nor is
it in its source the guarantee of its own perfection.
It is in its essence, viewed subjectively, the self-
originating act of the individual. It is the intel
lectual assent which he gives to certain declarations

188 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
or promises which God has publicly made. The
most important of these are the promises of rewards
and punishments. Those who do good shall receive
recompense, and those who do evil shall be punished.
Faith is thus confounded with obedience, and a
moral turn is given to the religious life which strips
it of the essentially spiritual character with which
it was endowed, as St. Paul saw it in the union of
the life with Christ.1 It may be that in this moral
interpretation which the Christians of this age gave
the Gospel we are to recognize the intensely practical
interest which men saw in religion, and their inability
to see any reason in its existence unless it contributed
immediately and directly to life itself. But, on the
other hand, we must recognize the fact that St. Paul,
too, felt its enormous value for life as the practical
justification of his preaching and the real significance
of the revelation of Christ. But he saw this moral
or practical life flowing down from Christ, the centre
and source of his spiritual living ; and he regarded
his life on this side as the natural expression of the
hidden divine life of the Son of God in the soul.
With Irenaeus, on the other hand, the practical life
seems to have its source, at least according to the
form in which he expresses it, in the man himself,
and the impulse is furnished by the certainty that
each individual act is to be rewarded or punished by
God in accordance with its nature. Such a morality
as this is external and superficial, and will in time
wear thin. It has no living source outside the life of
1 Ad. Her., iv. 6, 5.

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 189
the soul which is self-centred and self-nourished.
There is an element of confusion here which cannot
be escaped. If a man can do good independently of
God, there is neither room for nor need of salvation.
Each man is ultimately his own salvation. If he
does good he is saved. If he does evil he is
punished, and all that God can do is to furnish light
and guidance. The shallow misconception of sin
haunts and weakens the idea of faith. What man,
as a sinner, really needs is not the peace of the soul
with God, but a ' Donum Superadditum ' which
takes away the burden and oppression of the past,
permitting him to realize the freedom of his man
hood. As has been well said, " The consciousness of
sin does not express itself in the cry of the soul for
peace with God through union with Christ, but in
the moan for a lost Paradise." This lack of spiritual
depth and insight cannot be ignored in an estimate
of this period. In this connection it has been
suggested that it is a matter of note that Irenaeus
nowhere speaks of prayer, while it is the burden of all
St. Paul's writings. It is not to be supposed, nor
is it even to be suggested, that this great Father in
his own inner life did not feel the full measure and
weight of the new intercourse of the soul with God
which was opened through prayer, for his own life
is the clearest proof to the contrary. But the firm
necessity for an inner and religious basis for the
Christian life does not seem to have impressed itself
upon him, or been realized by him as by the Apostle
Paul.

igo SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
In another aspect of faith which is presented to
us in his writings, we see that the inner or personal
and subjective character of faith, as a communion of
the soul with God and a union with Christ as the
very heart and root of this word, is not recognized
by him The unique interpretation which is the
note of the Apostle's Christian definition of faith
is out of his view. It is with him by far too much
an intellectual matter. This intellectual form, which
was the ultimate expression of this Christian truth,
was becoming consolidated in this period, and it
took such deep hold upon the Christian Church, that
it has never been possible to entirely restore the
word to its purest and most perfect expression as
found in the teachings of St. Paul. The intellectual
element in the Christian consciousness only has its
perfect expression when it stands in its proper
relations. With Irenaeus faith in God is only a
knowledge of God and the doing of His will. The
religious phenomena which St. Paul finds in the
new Christian interpretation of the word are wholly
set aside, and the word is understood intellectually and
morally. By so doing, the essential religious signifi
cance of the word is destroyed, and it sinks at once
to the level of the commonplace and conventional
use which has made it the puzzle and confusion of
unbelievers, who cannot see any organic relation
between it as so understood and the life of the soul.
At the root of this misconception lies the old antique
misinterpretation of life, and the profound error
from which alone only a clear apprehension of the

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 191
Gospel of Christ could release men — that is, that
virtue can be taught, that an intellectual knowledge
of the truth and the good are sufficient, and will in
time become the motive for their appropriation and
doing. Because the Gospel was so interpreted,
because it struggled along for years and centuries
with the burden of this misreading upon it, there
fore it has seemed to many as if it was of its essence,
and the fiercest controversies have sprung up about
a matter which has no organic relation with the
thought of the most reflective and lofty mind of the
Apostolic Age.
But, assigning to this meaning of faith the greatest
fulness possible, we do not pass within the sphere
of the deep spirituality of St. Paul ; nor does this
faith, which is knowledge, rise to the mystical sense
which haunted the minds of the Neoplatonists,
although its roots lay in the same region of the spirit
from which this, the last expression of the Hellenic
mind, issued. This faith which is knowledge, or
holding as true, is of the simplest and almost a
superficial kind : it is that God is the Creator of the
world and Father of men, and that what He has
taught us in Jesus Christ He will surely do. He
has set forth this new law in Jesus Christ, and if
one fulfils the demands of this law, this is evidence
of one's faith.1 In this trust in the divine promises
faith finds its fullest expression.2 This knowledge
of the good becomes in turn the motive for doing it.3
1 Ad. Her., iv. 6, 5. 2 Ibid., iv. 21, 1.
3 Ibid., v. 12, 4; iv. 39, 2.

192 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
This intellectual optimism has not been vindi
cated by the centuries which have since passed
away. This faith is a far colder and feebler force
than that upon which the Apostle's life rested, and
rose out of those superficial apprehensions which
the mind, and the mind alone, is capable of grasping.
This was, in part perhaps, a consequence of the
prevailing intellectualism of the Greek mind. For
this mind, in a way and to an extent never surpassed
in the history of man, sought out the path of life by
pure speculation and investigation, and was for ever
analyzing and defining the results of its own search.
It was perhaps also inevitable that these same pro
cesses should be applied, and too exclusively applied,
to the Gospel. But the profound mistake was to
forget that a personal relation is not a subject which
can be exhausted by definition, nor can its character
be expressed in purely intellectual terms. The
peculiar difficulties of the Church, and the charac
teristic features of the spiritual life of the world in
that day, undoubtedly ministered to this movement.
The Church, having taken its place in the world,
became a part of its history, and subject to the grand
currents which were working within the great move
ment of life represented by the ancient civilization.
The gradual deterioration of spiritual vigour, and the
growing tendency to a more complete secularizing
of the Church, made it easier to assert and retain
certain intellectual propositions which could become
the standard and rallying-point for Christians, than
it was to retain the high level of spiritual life and

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 193
the simple and living personal devotion to Jesus
Christ, which was the characteristic feature of the
Apostolic Age. On the other hand, the long battle
with the Gnostics had, together with the natural
tendencies of the age and the intellectual activity of
the Greek mind, brought the subject of definition
sharply into view. If the Gospel was the ' Nova
Lex,' not only the practice, but the principles which
are involved in the Gospel, should be clearly ex
pressed. It was an easy transition in the use of
words to give to these formulas the title of ' the
Faith.' When the subjective state had for the
great mass changed its character, and its earlier
form, to some extent at least, disappeared, it pro
duced no violent change in the current of the
Church life when the intellectual affirmations of the
mind were substituted for the state of the soul itself
and called faith. It is quite another and an im
possible thing to give a definition of the soul's
relations to Christ which can be accepted as an
adequate expression of this higher Christian con
sciousness. But the objective and dogmatic defini
tion of faith was firmly established in this age, at
least in some localities ; and we have in Irenaeus a
full statement of what were the essentials of the
faith as held by the Universal Church.
There is no disposition on the part of the present
writer to minimize the value of the Creeds of the
Christian Church. They may be, and often are, a
bulwark against the intellectual novelties which are
offered as a substitute for the historical facts affirmed 13

194 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
by these Creeds ; but, on the other hand, they have
been made by some a substitute for, or a check upon,
the spiritual ardour and passion of the Christian
soul. No period of history furnishes a clearer
illustration of the effect which the change in the
conception of faith wrought than this period. The
Regula Fidei became the supreme test of a man's
Christianity. A dreary age of theological contro
versy, with all its wearisome and painful circum
stances, followed fast upon the effort to give
intellectual expression to the most vital element of
the Gospel. This effort was thrust upon the
Church by the necessities of the case, but, on the
other hand, the prevailing spirit within the Church
was in entire sympathy with this intellectual
tendency. The Person of Christ was vindicated,
but the spirit and character seemed often of but
little moment.
It was inevitable that from this point of view
orthodoxy should in the end supersede, in the minds
of most, the claims of character, and life and a con
fession of faith become the final test and measure
of a man's discipleship to Christ, not a spiritual life
or the personal relation of the soul to God in Christ.
The vast current of Christian history was slowly
and silently deflected from the deep channel of the
original stream, and the future stands before us in
the new forces which are making themselves felt.
The danger which has again and again threatened
the Gospel, that it should be secularized and reduced
to the mere outward life of an organization, and that

chap. in. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 195
the spiritual life in Christ should be lost in theology,
and religion become a mere intellectualism on the
one hand or a morality on the other, is now breaking
into view.
The supreme antinomianism of St. Paul has been
succeeded by a legalism of a more or less spiritualized
form, but essentially legal in its essence. The great
organism which, in accordance with the historic laws
of its environment, had been slowly developing and
strengthening itself, rose to such supreme importance
in the eyes of men, that the individual life was to
a large degree overlooked or deliberately neglected.
For one of the striking differences between the
ancient and modern civilization is to be found in the
estimate of the individual life in relation to the larger
organism of society and the institutions in which the
social life expresses itself. In the Ancient World the
State came first, and society at large was the unit, the
individual being but a mere portion or element of
the greater life for which he was created. Chris
tianity contained in it a denial of the absolute
omnipotence of the State and an assertion of the
value of the individual soul, which could not, however,
find its full and complete expression amid the hostile
forces ofthe Ancient World. In modern society, how
ever, the order of thought has been reversed, and the
lost emphasis has been gradually restored. Society,
institutions, and all the distinctive expressions of
organized and civilized life have their ground and
justification in their ability to minister to and develop
the life of the individual members of society. Their

1 96 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
value and sacredness lie not in any abstract essence
or theory of their origin^ but in the power which
they possess of enlarging the character and per
sonality of the individual. In the Roman World
the individual existed for the sake of the State ; in
the Modern World the State for the sake of the
individual. In the ecclesiastical theory of the
Christian Church we have the old Roman idea of
the State transferred to the Christian territory, and
it still survives, and is likely to survive, until the full
measure of the Christian idea has been realized.
The contrast between ancient society and modern
society lies more largely in this difference of point
of view than we fully appreciate, and it is the reversal
of the old order which has given such a richer, fuller,
and more diversified development of the life of the
man of the present in contrast with the single virtues
and less expansive forces of character in the ancient
civilization. Thus this age was seeing the gradual
transference of the dominant ideas of society into the
organization and thought of the Church, and the
individual life became of less and less significance,
while the great organization of the Church claimed
for itself the place of importance in the spiritual life
of man as the State rose supreme and alone above the
struggle of individual aspirations which were hardly
as yet more than suspected, and the larger field of
the future was certainly not even a dream to the
most reflective.
The early primitive brotherhood of Christians had
disappeared. In this early brotherhood the personal

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 197
character of the believer and his union with Christ
were the common ties which united the different
members and societies together. This union with
Christ, of course, still existed, but it was not
the special note of the new history. In the new
Catholic Church the holiness of the individual is only
an ideal to be striven after and not to be hoped for
except under certain conditions which the vast
majority could not possibly attain, for it was a moral
ideal and not a spiritual relation which was sought.
But the organism into which men were brought was
holy, inasmuch as the Church was asserted to be
the divine kingdom on earth endowed with certain
spiritual powers. As a divine organism it was con
stantly manifesting and dispensing these powers
through its Sacramental Institutions and various
means of Grace. Through the power of the Church
miracles are wrought, and it is the institution, through
its divinely authorized representatives, which offers
pure and holy sacrifices unto God. The predicates
of purity and holiness, which were once the charac
teristics and requisites of the individual Christian,
are now transferred to the institution which has its
external organization and representatives.1
As a consequence of these profound changes, and
the radical difference in the conditions and atmos
phere in which the soul found itself, there was
necessarily also a wide difference in the way in
1 Ad. Her., ii. 3, 4, 5 ; Ibid., iii. 4, iv. 18, 4; R. A. Lipsius,
Die Zeitd. Iren. v. Lyon u. d. Entsteh. d. Altkatol. Kirche ; Von
Sybel, Hislorische Zeitschrift, B. xxviii., 1872.

198 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iii.
which the Christian spirit interpreted that other
element of the practical ideal of the Christian life —
that is, the new divine sonship into which fellowship
with Christ had brought the soul, which was the
ultimate outcome and highest manifestation of the
Gospel. The sonship of man to God or in God is, as we know,
the highest conception which St. Paul had of the full
fruit of redemption. This filial relation is established
in, and guaranteed by, the forgiveness of sins on the
part of God, and the reception and participation of
man in the divine disposition through faith in Christ.
The filial relation is the essential thing, and involves
all the greatest blessings which are included in
redemption. Beyond this present fact there is
nothing higher. The full expansion of it is a
matter of experience, but its essence is now and
here in this new consciousness of sonship with its
spiritual freedom and its spiritual delight. With
Irenaeus, however, a different mode of regard
ing this sonship is apparent, and one which in
a great degree changes its entire character. The
organic relation which exists between forgiveness
and sonship through faith in Christ, which is the
profound thought of St. Paul, has a time or logical
character given it by Irenaeus, and sonship is regarded
as the sequence of which forgiveness is the antecedent.
Moreover, sonship is linked with immortality as its
condition and expression. It is not the filial relation
which is the thing emphasized, but an existence like
God's — a kind of Godlike immortality. Hence, from

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 199
the standpoint of Irenaeus, there were stages in sal
vation and a progress which was dependent upon
man's works. From this resulted an uncertainty of
the future, which left the reality of Christ's salva
tion a matter of doubt for the individual soul. The
spiritual union of the soul with Christ, which is of the
essence of the Pauline faith, is practically denied ; and
the spiritual intercourse ofthe child with the Father,
which is the very heart of the Christian sonship, is
changed or ignored, and sonship means a kind of
new creation which, although it seems to preserve
the language of the Apostle, really means something
different. It means a kind of supernatural re
creation after the measure of the divine existence.
The phrase which was so often on the lips of the
Fathers, that the Son of God became man in order
that man might become a son of God, had its origin
in the doctrine of the Incarnation as they interpreted
it, and not in the spiritual experience of the soul
through the forgiveness of sins set forth in Christ.
More than that, this conception of sonship had its
roots in a metaphysical or substantial view of the
divine nature and its relation to man and his redemp
tion on this side of his being, not in the moral and
spiritual side — that is, not in the love and righteous
ness of God as the only possible ground of our
sonship in Him. The whole idea of sonship has
this metaphysical rather than the spiritual point of
view behind it. The process of transformation by
which man becomes a son of God seems to concern
itself too much with the mere matter of existence and

200 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. hi.
the immortality of those functions by which our per
sonality seems preserved, or, at least, is involved.
Even if we admit the most spiritualized interpretation
possible, the change implied is in the substance of
human nature or the fundamental being of man,
rather than in the heart and soul and the spiritual
elements of man. In this idea of a semi-divine life
in the future as the real meaning and essence of
sonship, we see traces of the ancient Hellenic spirit,
and the tone of the spiritual mood of the age in
which the writer lived. But this, however true in
itself, is not the idea of St. Paul, and the way in
which the Gospel idea of sonship has been rein
terpreted shows clearly how profoundly the spirit of
the ancient civilization had penetrated into the
interpretation of those truths which lie at the very
heart of the Gospel. That this is by no means a
forced or far-fetched reading of the past age with
which we are engaged, is clear from the light which
is thrown out by the practical interpretation of the
idea which lay beneath. The position of good works
as an element in the attainment of salvation was
such that sonship, as the full realization of this truth,
must inevitably be relegated to the future. If son-
ship is not an immediate possession but a future
contingency dependent upon certain definite moral
acts, then, to all intents and purposes, salvation itself
is so largely conditioned by man that it may be said
to have its origin in him, and the certitude which is
the heart of the Apostle's joy is left to an indefinite
and unknown future. Salvation itself as a present

chap. iii. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 201
fact loses its high meaning. Whatever it now is, it
must be regarded but as an opportunity to assure the
future and larger salvation, the perfect salvation of
the immortality of the future. The element of
certitude which is to be found in the sonship to
God as a result or necessary expression of the faith
in Christ, which is set forth with such passionate
emphasis by St. Paul, is now relegated to the future,
and guarded by restrictions which are unspiritual
and external. Ecclesiastical authority now super
sedes this inner conviction, and must guarantee the
salvation of the individual soul. It is perfectly
evident that we are now far away from the atmos
phere of the Apostolic Age and the standpoint of
the great Apostle. It is beside the point to say that
there was a noble and simple Christian life untouched
by theories and living deep in the secret fellowship
of Christ in that age. It is perfectly true, and it is
the one thing for which we may be profoundly
grateful, that this has been the case, to a greater or
less degree, in every age of the Christian Church.
Irenaeus himself was of a warm religious nature, bent
upon doing the will of God. Devoid of that real
profundity which marks the great religious genius,
he was perhaps so much the better adapted to set
forth the best side of the Church of his age. And
in him we see one of the best types of the Catholic
Christianity which was to be the ruling force through
so many centuries of history. Setting forth also the
true value of the Catholic Church to this age as
lying, not in the lofty idealism of its dreams or the

202 SAINT PAUL chap. hi.
passionate reaffirmation of the Apostolic aims, but
in a severe and practical morality which is one of the
perpetual needs of the human race.
And yet the fact remains that it is not by individual
lives that an age or an institution must be measured,
but by the ideals which are held up before the world,
by the clearness with which they are grasped, and
by the aggregate life which issues from that age
or institution which represents to posterity the force
of the tendencies and ideals which then prevailed.
It is the type of character which is cultivated, the
modes of thought which are the most powerful, and
the paths which are sought out by men which are
the true standards of judgment. The Christianity
of the age of Irenaeus was not aiming at the same
ideal of personal life, or seeking it by the same direct
paths in which the Apostle walked. Each age must
struggle on in the path before it, and its failures or
successes are for us to study, not to imitate. The
life this age of Irenaeus sought was a Christian
life, but it did not give the same interpretation to the
central facts which St. Paul had given. Whether
this life is larger and more satisfying is a matter
which each individual must decide for himself, but
this very decision will itself be determined by certain
a priori considerations, one of which, at least, will
be : When all is said, which is the higher, finer con
ception, that of St. Paul or that of Irenaeus ? which is
the supremest authority in the field of the Christian
life, the Apostle to the Gentiles or the Ancient
Catholic Church of the second century ?

CHAPTER IV
THE ALEXANDRINES, CLEMENT, AND ORIGEN
Plutarch tells us that when Alexander was about
to set out on his expedition against the Persians he
had many signs from the Divine Powers : among
others that a statue of Orpheus was in a profuse
sweat for several days. This, he says, was under
stood to signify that Alexander would perform
actions so worthy to be celebrated that they would
cost the poets and musicians much labour and sweat.
The momentous issues involved in this wonderful
expedition not even the keen eye of his great teacher
Aristotle could seize, and the mighty genius and
vast renown of this, his greatest pupil, has indeed
kept the world wondering ever since. The two
results of his career, which, in addition to their
enormous importance in relation to the world's
history, bear most directly upon Christian history,
are the Hellenizing of the East and the Founding
of Alexandria. The destruction of the Jewish state,
which was one of the most important events of the
Alexandrian conquest, broke down the isolation which

204 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
had surrounded the Jewish race ; and then began the
great movement of the Jewish people, which has con
tinued through centuries and reached to the farthest
limits of civilization. After the founding of Alex
andria it was the one city where the Jews crowded
in greatest numbers, and the rapid growth in popula
tion and wealth of this city, and the centuries through
which it has endured, are striking evidences of the
genius of its great founder. Situated almost on the
dividing line between three continents, it became the
centre of all the most powerful and characteristic
intellectual elements in each.
The East and the West met here under entirely new
conditions. The Alexandrian Jew here came in
contact with Greek culture in its most attractive and
sympathetic forms. Here, too, the keen subtle
intellect of the Greek was touched with the passion
and mystery of the East, with its spiritual longing
and its spiritual pathos.
The relatively sudden growth of the city tends to
make one lose sight of the significance of the various
elements which combined to form its unique and
most impressive life. But the true value of its
history is found in the special conditions which en
abled it to become one of the prevailing forces of
the future, and made it the representative of certain
tendencies which never have been manifested with
the same energy and the same originality in any
other city, ancient or modern. The consolidation
of the civilized world under the Empire had broken
down, or at least largely reduced, the animosities and

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 205
antagonisms of the various races under its rule, thus
opening the way for a free interchange of ideas, and
allowing the currents of thought to spread more
widely. Alexandria in many respects may be called
the representative city of the Empire. Here the
most venerable and the most brilliant civilizations of
the past mingled in one glittering and imposing life,
and found the highest expression of its intellectual
aspirations in the most perfect literature the world
has ever seen. Mankind lost something, which has
never been replaced, in the decay of that ancient and
splendid civilization.
In Alexandria during the second and third
centuries of the Christian era the intellectual history
of the Empire found its centre and its fullest expres
sion. Not only was the busiest mercantile life of
the age found here, but here was also the most
splendid library the world had ever known. Here
the schools were the broadest, and their activity the
greatest. The University of Alexandria was the
most progressive and enthusiastic one in the Empire,
while Athens represented the conservative and, in
many respects, the reactionary elements of the
ancient culture. Here, amid the heat and ferment of
this new life, new forces were generated and new
paths opened for the human mind.
Alexandria was at the same time the wealthiest,
wittiest, most vivacious, and material of all the cities
of the Empire. Its scurrilous wit was proverbial,
and its materialism also. One of the most acute
observers of its life says of Egyptian society that

206 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
it worshipped but one God — Gain. And yet this
city, so Greek in its tastes and habits, so cosmopolitan
in its sympathies, felt the touch of the past upon it,
and the brooding spirit of the Nile filled the soul
with the depth and mystery of human life, and under
that blazing southern sky the profound darkness,
amid which the soul of the Oriental felt itself
struggling, haunted the minds of all, giving a bitter
ness to the wildest jests, taking the joy out of the
most passionate delight, veiling the grinning skull
at the richest feasts, and brooding like a hidden and
mysterious anguish over the minds of all.
In this atmosphere, so strange, so remote, so
brilliant, so sad, combining all the beautiful,
grotesque, conflicting, appealing, and inspiring ele
ments of that wonderful past, developed ideas,
moods, hopes, theories, and systems which represent
a new stage in the history of the human soul, and
mark a real advance in spiritual culture. Here the
various religions of the East, the spiritual aspirations
of the Oriental World, met the clear, clean-cut, yet
subtle speculations of the most fearless intellects the
world has ever known. As a result of this contact,
and in particular by the mutual action and reaction
of the two most vital forces of the past, Judaism and
Hellenism, sprang forth that fusion or reconciliation
of the two, that religious philosophy which we call
Alexandrianism, and whose first exponent and
perhaps most perfect representative was Philo the
Jew. The influence of this writer upon the subsequent

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 207
course of thought in Alexandria was not the
supremacy of a powerful mind winning adherents to
a clearly articulated system by the sheer force and
weight it possessed, but rather of one who most fully
represents the transition by which the human mind
was passing into a new intellectual and spiritual
atmosphere, and entering upon or creating new
modes of thought, and enlarging on all sides the
horizon of man's spirit.
Yet this new mode of thought, so inseparably
associated with Alexandria and Philo, had its ante
cedent causes, as is the case in every great movement,
and the springs which fed the new stream lay far
back in the past. When we approach this move
ment from the side of the Jewish element in it, it is
easy to see how cultivated men of that race would
feel at once the breath of a new life and the air of a
new history blowing about them when they had
entered the busy and restless life of Alexandria.
For a greater contrast than that between the ancient
and solitary city of Jerusalem with its narrow religious
traditions and hard dogmatic atmosphere, and the
new and splendid city of the Ptolemies with the
infinite sea before it and Egypt for its background,
can hardly be imagined. The whole literary activity
of the Jews of Alexandria shows how powerfully
these new conditions and new influences affected
them, and the books in the extant sacred literature
of the Jew which are generally assigned to Alexandria
bear most unmistakable signs of the new contact.
The effect is also manifest in the revision which

208 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
was made of the older literature. The harsh
simplicity and archaic anthropomorphism of the
earlier books were distinctly modified, and as the
Jew became more and more a citizen of Alexandria,
and less and less a citizen of Jerusalem, he consciously
or unconsciously changed his point of view and re
read his ancient books in the light of the flood of
new ideas which poured in on him from every side.
The wide sea of Greek speculation seized him and
bore him far away from the crude and simple ideas,
as they seemed, of the ancient life of his race. Yet
the passion of his race would not allow him to forget
the history which was to him far more glorious than
that of Greece or Rome, and gave a solemnity to life
which the gigantic achievements of Egypt and
Babylon could not bestow. He read into the old
language of his Hebrew Scriptures— so simple, so
direct, so solemn — new meanings, and tried to recon
cile it with the vast intellectual life whose currents
seemed bearing him on into a future of thought
never contemplated or even suggested by any of his
ancient books.
The Jew in Alexandria met something more than
the lifeless traditions of Hellenic culture and the
empty boasts of a literary school. He came in
contact with a living force, and that force was the
ancient Greek spirit which had revived again, and
once more was struggling with the old problems in
a different mood and with less of hope than in the
past, but with an intensity and passion which gave
it new value and a new power. The beginnings

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 209
of the revival of Hellenism in the first century in
Alexandria were marked by those literary efforts
which always seem to precede any great movement
in the intellectual life of the world. The old writings
are re-read, the old passages studied anew, comment
and criticism pour their darkness or illumination
over the old pages, opposing schools of interpretation
spring up and wrangle over the real meaning of the
old ideas, and the old teachers are clothed again in
their ancient authority, and it seems at last as if
man's salvation lay in the past, and his real life only
the dream of the glories which have faded away
for ever. So it was at Alexandria. The followers
of Plato and Aristotle quarrelled and fought over
the supremacy of their teachers, and the struggle
seemed about to end in the death of the ancient
Greek spirit. This intense mental and spiritual
activity, and the various results which issued from it,
became not only the common property of all scholars,
but stimulated various tendencies which led to an
attempt, not merely to reproduce the old, but to
gather into one large and universal system all the
heritage ofthe past, both Hebrew and Greek. Philo
was the representative of this new movement, and
although it cannot be said, strictly speaking, that he
was the founder of a system, he yet tried to include
so much in his range of vision, that the suggestiveness
of his efforts and the deep seriousness of his temper
gave him an influence which was most stimulating
to the future. Two of the most important elements
in the new movement represented by Philo are the
H

210 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
Jewish faith in revelation which is of the very essence
of Judaism, and the Greek freedom of speculation
by which the ancient revelation of the Hebrew was
reinterpreted through the medium of the prevailing
theory of Allegorism which was characteristic both
of the Hebrew and Greek scholars of this age. The
new factor of Revelation, which was imported into
the general stream of Alexandrian life through the
influence of the Jew, found a ready reception on the
part of the Greek, because, as a result of past ex
perience, his mind was prepared for a new and radical
departure from the previous philosophical methods
of his race. The sceptical despair, which resulted
from the failure to achieve a full knowledge of divine
things through the exercise of the pure reason, led
the mind of the age to seek for satisfaction through
other than purely scientific channels. That intense
desire, which is never absent from the most serious
and vivid life of men, to ' leap beyond the flaming
ramparts of the world,' exercised in this age an
influence which made it one of the chief forces in
human life. Any ladder by which the soul could
scale the unseen heights was grasped with eager
hands, and the old systems of philosophy, especially
those which had a religious colouring, as well as the
traditional religious systems, began again under new
interpretations to renew their former influence.1
But the objective methods of the past had in reality
long since exhausted themselves. Knowledge by
1 Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen, Dritter Theil, Zweite
Abtheilung, S. 70.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 211
that path had ended in an universal scepticism and
bankruptcy. The human spirit was now forced to
turn inward upon itself, and the knowledge of its
own weakness and poverty weighed heavily upon it.
A deeper self-consciousness was the result of this
new introversion. The moral and spiritual imper
fections of mankind stood out in glaring and hideous
distinctness. The emptiness of earthly life with
its intense and unsatisfied desires, the wide and
apparently hopeless chasm which lay between man
and God, destroyed for ever the buoyant spirit and
the free exulting hope of the past. A new tone ran
through human thought, and a new hue spread itself
over human life — a tone of passion and anguish,
a hue sombre and melancholy. Great spiritual
needs revealed themselves, and the worthlessness of
all previous attainments seemed to add to man's
poverty. The revival of Paganism, which began in this
century, filled men's minds with more vivid religious
emotions, and superstition grew rank in this hot
and fertile soil. The spiritual atmosphere of
Alexandria was saturated with faith in revelations
and miracles, and the Greek thinker who was stirred
to speculation by the new religious interest in the
air found the way prepared for him, not only by the
influence of the Hebrew element in the intellectual
life around him, but also through the working of his
own history and the expansion and development of
certain tendencies which were not only characteristic
of this age, but which were also inherent, we may

212 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
say, in the line of philosophical development. The
new religious element or motive which entered into
speculation in Alexandria as at no other place,
stamps the movement with an originality and sig
nificance not to be over-estimated. Like the river
whose life-giving currents supplied all the wealth
of this splendid city, and which, before it lost itself
in the great sea towards which it had been so long
journeying, divided itself into many yet practically
parallel streams, so the great current of intellectual
life in Alexandria divided itself into two main
streams before it lost itself in the general life of the
world and made its great contribution to the general
history of the human spirit. These two streams
were the Jewish-Grecian philosophy or religio-
philosophy of Philo which influenced so profoundly
the Greek thinkers as well as the Christian theo
logians, and the purely Greek current which, although
it was affected by the influence of Philonic speculation,
yet included in it mainly those elements which came
from the Neopythagoreans, the Platonists, and the
later Stoics, and which culminated finally in Neo-
platonism. Some, however, have classed the
characteristic Christian expression of thought in
Alexandria as an independent movement, and divide
the peculiar product of the intellectual forces here
at work into three instead of two distinct streams —
the Christian, the Gnostic, and the Neoplatonic —
yet recognizing in all these many common elements.
Gnosticism, it has been said, " was the new birth of
the old Oriental thought, Neoplatonism of the

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 213
ancient Occidental thought, and Christianity was
between and above them both." 1 It can fairly be
disputed, however, whether Gnosticism can be
called an original movement, and not rather an
eclecticism which expressed the agitation caused by
the strength and volume of the great currents which
were sweeping through the history. Here and
there, by the little eddies in the great stream, little
groups gathered about some one idea, and the
endless combinations and arrangements which the
wealth of the material permitted produced those
various schools, all classified under the one generic
name of Gnosticism, which have been the puzzle
and despair of the student. Yet their very number
is the clearest witness to the powerful forces which
were swaying the minds of men towards new
thoughts, and inspiring new emotions which give
a reality and intensity to the life of Alexandria,
which all the ignorance and confusion in which we
are now left cannot wholly obscure. In the specula
tions of Philo there lay the seeds of many new
systems, and the subsequent speculations of the
various schools of Alexandria were so closely related
to each other and the ideas which he had suggested,
that it has been asserted by so great a critic as Baur
that the resemblance running through them is so
pronounced that they appear to be but an expansion
of the original and characteristic form of thought
which found expression in his writings.2
1 Zeller, Phil. d. Griechen, T. ii. Ab. ii. S. 200.
2 "Aus den Schriften der Neoplatoniker, so wie aus den

2i4 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
Our knowledge, however, of the life of Alexandria
through the first and second centuries is so frag
mentary, that the exact relation of the various schools
cannot be arbitrarily determined. As the religious
expression of this great agitation finds its clearest
exponents in the writings of the great Church
Fathers of Alexandria, so we may say that the
philosophical culmination of this new movement
was represented by Neoplatonism. And yet such
a division would apparently ignore the influence or
reaction which each exerted on the other. Neo
platonism as a system cannot be said to have had
a thoroughly defined system before Plotinus in the
third century, yet the elements out of which it grew
were clearly apparent long before. Although its
descent from Philo seems to be so strongly affirmed
by many critics, yet the various ideas which give it
such singular and striking originality can, in many
instances at least, be seen to have descended to it
through its classical antecedents, which contained
many clearly defined tendencies which led to the
same mental attitude, and predisposed to the same
conclusions, as those suggested by the Philonic
thought. Philo started from the firm insistence of
what seemed to him as a Jew a necessary assumption
Schriften Philo's, lasst sich ein ganz gleiches System von Dogmen
construiren, wie aus den Schriften der Kirchenvater, und das
Philonische System ins besondere steht zu dem System der Christ
lichen Theologie der ersten Jahrhunderte in einen so engen
Verwandtschaftverhaltniss, dass man beinahe versucht sein konnte,
das letztere nur fiir eine Fortbildung und Erweiterung des erstern
zu halten." — Baur, Vorlesungen ii. d. Dogmeng., B. i. S. 90.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 215
— a principle of Revelation antecedent to all specula
tion. This Revelation of the Divine was mediated
through Powers or Principles, the Logoi of the
Stoic philosophy, and which he most probably
derived immediately from the Stoics. This position
of Philo was also the underlying assumption of Neo-
platonism which it inherited not only from Philo,
but also as a movement in Greek thought from its
Stoic, Platonic, and Neopythagorean predecessors.
The results of the earlier philosophical speculations
of the Greeks had led to a wide separation, in many
of the schools at least, between man and God. The
theory of the few had in turn become the mood of
the many. To most thoughtful men an awful and
impassible chasm seemed to separate them from
God, and there were no means at hand by which
the space could be bridged. However heavy the
problem weighed upon them, there seemed but two
ways open for its solution, and neither of these
seemed possible. Either God must cross the gulf
and find man in his helplessness, or He must show
man some means by which he could reach God.
To the Pagan philosopher with his view of the
Divine Nature the first was absurd. It demanded
too much. No grounds could be found anywhere
to justify such an expectation. Moreover, it was not
possible for God to come in such immediate contact
with matter, that He could rescue man from the
misery and hopelessness which were the necessary
and inevitable result of this earthly life. On the
other hand, how could man rise to God, and what

2i6 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
mediating agencies were at hand by which this
access to the Divine Life might be attained or, at
least, assisted ? The old religions which had been
so long discredited, and which had now renewed
their influence under the sway of the great religious
revival in Paganism which marks this period, were
to furnish the desired means for a realization of the
philosophical attempt to guarantee and justify faith
in the Divine. The existing religious traditions
were spiritualized by means of the Allegorical system,
and so sublimated that they lost all their grossness.
Thus regarded, their existence was vindicated and
the popular faiths justified, and even from the
philosopher's standpoint these religions were the
necessary and indispensable means by which alone
the mass of men could have any conception of God
or rise to a higher life. These religions were
adopted as instruments in spiritual progress, and
thus adopted and incorporated in the philosophical
systems, we find religion and philosophy united, and
the philosopher becomes the true prophet and
servant of God. It is true the mediating agencies
of the Divine Activity which were part of the Stoic
philosophy had in their origin no relation with the
popular religions, but the mystical tendencies of
the Neopythagoreans made themselves felt, and gave
a religious and traditional interpretation to ideas
which were in many ways closely related to Stoicism.
Philosophical conceptions were identified with
divine beings, and natural forces were transformed
into the spiritual agencies of the popular religion.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 217
When we find a man like Plutarch, without the
severity and clearness of the true philosopher, yet
with large culture and wide human sympathies,
seeing in the doctrine of Demons a clearer explana
tion of the real problem of life and an advance upon
the theory of matter suggested by Plato for the
solution of the enigma, we are prepared for a great
change in the course of human thought. This
attitude of Plutarch shows the revival of religious
interest and the renewal of the ancient sway of
Polytheism. The Neoplatonic speculation, which
was the outcome of this revival of religious interest
and intellectual activity, was marked not only by the
enlistment of philosophy in the cause of religion, but
a fusion of the two. In this respect, at least as the
union of the two primary forces of human life,
Religion and Philosophy, we have a striking parallel
to the later Christian development of Mediaeval
Scholasticism.1 Looked at from the point of view
of the earlier systems, Neoplatonism indicates the
decadence of the scientific spirit which marks the
classic schools of antiquity. And this, not only on
account ofthe fact that it had a religious note which
was often, if not always, absent from them, and a
religious purpose, but because it was also a fusion of
many elements ; and however original might be the
development, as in Plotinus, yet the ideas them
selves were not original, nor were they regarded as
pure intellectual conceptions or intuitions, but were
touched with sentiment and feeling, and had their
1 Zeller, Phil. d. Griechen, T. ii. Ab. ii. S. 430.

218 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
origin in mysticism rather than the pure act of the
reason. It has been much disputed whether this
new element in philosophic speculation, which is so
manifest in Philo and his spiritual heirs, particularly
the Neoplatonists, is of Oriental or Greek origin.1
Mysticism has always been the prevailing note of all
Oriental speculation, and it is but a natural inference
to conclude, from the growing influence of the East
upon the course of Western life and thought, that
this is one of the signs of its intrusion. But, on the
other hand, there is not wanting evidence which
shows an increase in the mystical tendencies within
the circle of Greek thought which was in no way
due to the encroachments of the East. The pre
vailing scepticism, which was the outcome of the
earlier speculations, and which had brought man to
such a state of intellectual despair, produced a re
action. This reaction stamped itself upon every
effort which characterized the renewal of the struggle
for a solid and satisfactory foundation for human life.
As scepticism was the end of all the previous
speculation, so mysticism, which is the reaction from
it, became the root of the new spiritual history. We
need therefore not of necessity look beyond the
movement of thought which was unfolding itself
within the realm of the Greek mind for the origin
of the most striking features of the new philosophy.
The underlying principles of Neoplatonism, which
were gradually developed into clearness and ex
pressed in the most logical and philosophical of its
1 C. H. Kirchner, Die Philosophie des Plotin, S. ii.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 219
teachers, were in existence and operative long
antecedent to their systematic expression. The
moment we examine them and see how characteristic
and how fundamental they were, we feel that this
must be true, although the material for confirming
the judgment may be, as it is, very scanty.
The Neoplatonic doctrine of God was the
scientific foundation and objective principle upon
which the system was reared. Over against this,
and springing not from the cold intellectual life of
the man, but from his deepest soul, came a passionate
desire after perfection and spiritual union with
Divinity in a world above the finite and limited, and
even above consciousness itself. This mystic passion,
which from one point of view seems the most
distinctive note of Neoplatonism, was the subjective
principle of the system, and the one which allied it
to the wide and hungry spiritual life of man. The
development of the objective principle, the doctrine
of God, is of exceptional interest, not only because
it was so profoundly influential over Christian thought
in the same field, but because the same course has been
run again and again in the long sweep of the
centuries. By the pure processes of reason and logic the
philosophic mind had attained to a conception of
God free from all qualities : pure abstract Being,
absolute, unknown, and unknowable. This funda
mental Unity, the original essence from which all
is derived, the primary Being, which is neither
reason nor an object of rational cognition, since it

220 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
is separated from all the approaches of the mind of
man because it is the Unknowable, and exalted
above the finite and limited, left the mind of man
staring into the hopeless blank of a bottomless
abyss, from which no knowledge or light could be
attained by any of the intellectual theories which
Greek thought had made familiar. From this dreary
speculative Agnosticism man could not derive any
help so long as he clung to the old classic axiom of
philosophy that man can reach the goal of his
deepest cravings, God, only by means of pure
thought. Yet the traditions of philosophy were so
firmly established, the conviction of the Divine
Transcendence was so deeply rooted in the mind,
that to the thinker trained in the methods of the
Greek schools there seems to be no tendency or
disposition to question the definition which the long
struggle had brought forth.
Yet, in saying this, it must not be forgotten that
Neoplatonism had attempted to gain an universal
view of life, and embody in one comprehensive
system all the ideas of previously existing philo
sophical theories. Over against the transcendental
Monotheism which it inherited from its Platonic
predecessors, was laid the Stoical doctrine of the
Divine Nature which was purely Pantheistic. This
philosophical motive or principle appealed to the
practical tendencies of the Neoplatonic teachers,
and found its justification in the effort to discover
a firm ground for the existing Polytheism. Through
the incorporation of the Stoical element into the

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 221
system, room was made for the existing worships
of the various gods. Thus, it may be said that at
times Neoplatonism seemed to hover or oscillate
between Theism or Pantheism, as the Stoic or
Platonic point of view predominated. When
theoretical considerations prevailed, and speculative
consistency was demanded, it appeared as purely
Monotheistic ; but when practical demands and
popular tendencies were supreme, it became grossly
Polytheistic.1 The syncretistic nature of Neo
platonism is the explanation of this apparent
conflict of fundamental principles, and it is the
theoretical inconsistencies which gave it the pre
vailing influence, and made it the great intellectual
phenomenon of the last struggle of the classic
spirit. For the great passion of the age was the
Infinite God. The soul of the world was seeking
Him and would not be refused, and the primary
conception of His moral perfection, which led to
the theoretical separation of Him from all contact
with the world, also saved man from the practical
results of the speculative elements of Pantheism,
which were the heritage from the past rather than
the organic evolution of the ideas from which the
Neoplatonic thinkers started.
In a way, and to an extent entirely unknown to
the Modern World, the chain of the senses bound
the spirit of the Greek, and lay so heavily upon
the souls of the men of the past, that escape from
it constituted, to them at least, the great object of
1 Tschirner, Der Fall des Heidenthum, B. ii. S. 426.

222 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
existence. Unless we can realize this in a measure
at least, we are not able to calculate the force which
the subjective or mystical element in Neoplatonism
exerted. Amid the brilliant pageant of the world,
and under the stress of the stormy passions which
swept over the soul, the moaning spirit sought
peace and silence in the eternal calm of that Life
so far away from and above the troubled ocean of
man's brief existence. In the mystic twilight of
their speculations, and out of their own inward
struggles, rose the vision of another way than the
path of abstract thought by which the soul may
find God. A new element was thus introduced
into the solution of the problem — a new spiritual
function which was to solve the hitherto insoluble
riddle of man's life in God. This new element
which entered into and coloured the thought was
extra-rational or supra-rational, and the new function
was purely spiritual in opposition to the intellectual,
and its essence was that of inward vision and
spiritual ecstasy. It is true it was the reason of
man which was still the appointed instrument of
his salvation, and knowledge the path of redemption,
but the old definitions of these no longer supplied
the meaning which was now attached to them.
The old language so long current and so tenacious
of life still prevailed, but changed indeed in its
meaning. The reason grasps the intellectual or
supersensible world, not by means of the deductions
which are based upon the perceptions which the
senses furnish, or which spring from the analysis

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 223
of human self- consciousness, but by instant and
immediate intuition, by a contemplation which is
direct and free from all the categories of thought.
The soul penetrates into the very presence of the
ideal and eternal truth through contemplation of
the Divine, the First and only Fair.
It did not rise from a consideration of nature
and matter to the knowledge of the Spirit, it did
not attain a conviction of the Absolute through
dialectic processes, but it assumed the Absolute as
the immediate truth, and sought to solve the
problem of existence by a repudiation of all the
processes of thought, and, in bold and sheer con
tempt of the past, by a desperate leap flung itself
beyond the ladder of reason and of thought into
the very presence of the Eternal and Infinite Source
of all. The certainty of conviction which upheld
the Neoplatonist was not the objective reality from
which he drew logical conclusions, but the mystic
vision of God which superseded all thought and
all consciousness. No bolder system of Idealism
has ever been conceived by the mind of man, and
the profound religious impulse out of which it
sprang endowed it with a power which has made
it one of the primary influences of all subsequent
religious aspiration which has sought to escape
from the troublesome problems and practical or
speculative limitations which hold the soul of man
within the bounds of finite existence.1
1 Redepenning, Origines, B. i. S. 21; Tschirner, Der Fall des
Heidenthum, B. ii. S. 421.

234 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
The possibility of this Vision of God, which was
the aim and dream of Neoplatonism, was based
upon two ideas which in part resemble at least the
teaching of the Gospel although they were not
derived from it, and no doubt paved the way for
many a devout Greek to pass into the Church.
The first idea was, as has been said, that of a
Divine Revelation and the need of it, and this is
undoubtedly the expression of the religious mood
of the age, and helped enormously in the spread
of the Gospel. But Neoplatonism clung to the
past, and found the doctrine of Revelation to be of
no working value if its primary teaching of a
transcendent and absolute Deity was to be retained.
It is true the difficulty was met by the introduction
of mediating agencies between God and man in
the shape of the gods and demons of Paganism,
but it was only modified, not obviated, by this
intervention. From one point of view the old
religions were vindicated, but man himself was
not brought into immediate contact with God even
by these on account of his own imperfection, im
purity, and blindness. The prison house of the
soul, which Plato had spoken of, had become the
most oppressive consciousness of the serious man
seeking salvation. From this he must be freed.
Above its weaknesses and limitations he must rise.
It is here on the side of man, not in his conjectures
or speculations, but in his sacrifices and struggles,
that we see how intensely in earnest the men of
this age were. The way had been walked in by

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 225
many an Eastern sage, and that way was Purifica
tion. This was the second and the most significant
element in the Neoplatonic system. This ascetic
side cannot be directly or distinctly traced to Oriental
influences, but there was something about the
brooding East with its passion for renunciation
which drew the men of this age as by a subtle
charm. The Neoplatonists seem all to have turned
their eyes that way. Plotinus set out for Persia
with the unfortunate expedition of the ill-fated
Gordion, and Jamblichus was a thorough Oriental
in his spirit, although his mental equipment was
furnished by Greece. It is on this subjective and
personal side of Neoplatonism that we see how
closely in contact the Christianity and Heathenism
of this age were, for the asceticism which was the
very essence of Neoplatonic salvation became the
glory and ideal of the Christian saint. The effort
was to free the soul from this burden of flesh, and
ascend, not only beyond the region of sense, but
even of thought, into the thin air of absolute
existence, and there in this highest flight of the
spirit come in contact and communion with Deity.
This state of vision or ecstasy, as it was called, was
the aim of all the Neoplatonists, and was but a
foregleam of that time when the soul should return
to God and lose all traces of the struggles, passions,
and thoughts of this present life in Him, where there
was neither movement, emotion, nor thought, but the
complete and absolute Being which is described
only in negations. This state of passive contempla- 15

226 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
tion, this divine vision, was not, and could not be,
continuous in this life, and to the vast majority of
men was for ever absolutely impossible. Hence in
this touch of aristocratic exclusiveness lay one fatal
weakness. To the few even this state of ecstasy
was something to be sought for, but hardly to be
expected. Plotinus, the greatest man of genius
which the school ever possessed, and one of the
noblest men of his age, attained to the vision but
four times in six years according to his disciple
Porphyry. Yet, in spite of the failure of N eoplatonism
to realize the aim it held before it, the very great
ness of the thought, the awfulness of this possibility,
have never since lost their grasp upon the spiritual
imaginations of men ; and mystics in all ages, in
their hours of hope, have dreamed of the time
when they too should rise above the dark bondage
of the sense and flesh into the absolute light and
freedom of the Eternal mind.
Neoplatonism has well been called the setting
sun of Paganism,1 and the last expiring rays which
flooded the world before it sank for ever filled the
earth with " a light which never was on sea or land "
—a light in whose mystic glory the failure itself was
transfigured. Plotinus, the perfect flower of Neoplatonism, did
not appear until the third century, but the air was
saturated with the thought which crystallized in his
system, and Ammonius Saccas, the teacher whom he
most honoured, was also the teacher of his most
1 Huber, Die Philosophie d. Kirchen Vaters, S. 28.

chap, iv ANTE-NICENE CHURCH

227

distinguished Christian contemporary, Origen. Thus
that speculative mode of thought which ultimately took
the form of Neoplatonism was the prevailing intel
lectual influence of the age, especially in Alexandria.
The thinking of Christian men in such an atmos
phere would naturally have a freedom, depth, earnest
ness, and passion which we do not find elsewhere.
The intense intellectual preoccupation brought every
subject into debate, and the Christian Church here
not only felt called upon to present its truth to the
intelligence of men, but gladly welcomed the
opportunity. The beginnings of the great Christian
school of Alexandria are hidden in the past, but, with
the splendid university organization and magnificent
library, it was inevitable that a school of Christian
teachers and thinkers should grow up under these
walls. The struggle on the part of the greatest of
these teachers to vindicate the Gospel for the reason
and the sympathies of mankind was conducted with
a large-hearted generosity and intelligence which
is generally absent from theological controversies.
The ferocity of a Tertullian and the narrow in
telligence of an Irenaeus would have found but little
to sympathize with in the leading minds of Alex
andria in the second half of the second century.
Men like Clement and Origen stood for an intelligent
Christianity. They were unwilling to consent to
the divorce of reason and faith, which meant in
reality the destruction of both and the substitution
for them of a mere consent or adherence to a Creed.
The knowledge which was beyond the reach of the

228 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
vulgar and the faith which was beneath the contempt
of the wise as standards of Christian character, found
no place in the minds of these, the noblest spirits in
the Christian Church of that age.
According to Baur, the Alexandrian school was
the point of reconciliation between the bare, bald
dogmatism of orthodoxy as represented by Irenaeus
and Tertullian on the one hand, and the extremes
of Gnosticism which insisted on the absolute in
dependence of any historical basis on the other. In
other words, the opposition of faith and knowledge
which these extremes represented was absorbed in
an higher unity, and Alexandria represented this
advance.1 Without accepting Hegelianism as the
true philosophy of history, one can at least recognize
that the school of Alexandria stood for something
higher and more hopeful than did any other body of
Christian teachers, or than was developed by any
other movement of Church life elsewhere.
The first of these writers with whom we have to
do is Clement, or, to give his full name, Titus
Flavius Clemens. He was probably born in Athens,
and was a Greek in every fibre. His placid dis
position, his sweet and sunny temper, a certain
intellectual absorption, an apparent absence of what
may be called practical interests, show the student
and the thinker. He was steeped in the literature
of his native land, and Homer rises to his lips so
instinctively that we see the spell of the past had not
been broken by his conversion to Christianity.
1 Baur, Vor. ii. Dogmen., B. i. S. 217.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 229
But the old classic joys had lost their power to
bring delight and soothe the restless soul. A new
and deeper self-consciousness had been aroused, and
far and wide men with the old classic training were
wandering in search of a new inspiration which
should go deeper and lift them higher than the old
had done. Clement tells us he had many teachers,
but all were found wanting until he came to Alex
andria and felt the power of Pantaenus, the head of
the Christian Catechetical School. Here he estab
lished himself, and after the departure of Pantaenus
to the far East succeeded him as the head of the
school. How long Clement remained in Alexandria,
and when and where he died, are uncertain and to a
large degree immaterial. His history has few events
in it. It is the story of a student's life — the history
of a mind. He is to a large degree outside the
current of Church life, and seems to have had but
little interest in most things which are the life of the
busy man of the world. His writings show that
quiet mind and easy thinking which prove the re
moteness from the outside world which are the
characteristics of the retired scholar. In that busy,
restless, struggling age he is dreaming of the beauty
of the past and the tranquil pleasures of a well-stored
mind. His religion itself has something of the
unreflecting beauty of its earliest days. The sunny
childhood of man in Christ is the thought which
Clement loves to dwell upon again and again — •" The
youth which knows no old age, always young, always
growing." The Gospel brought peace to his uneasy

230 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
mind and met the needs of his craving spirit, but the
deeper questions which are roused when the soul is
writhing in anguish or burning with the heat of
inward struggle he never knew. A serene, beautiful,
and gentle nature, his soul lies spread out like a
placid mountain lake in whose unruffled bosom the
glories of earth and sky are all reflected, and whose
depths are never torn by the hurricane or the volcano.
The Christian spirit is here, but it speaks in the
language of antiquity. Clement is neither an
ecclesiastic nor a theologian in any sense which
would at the present day be generally accepted.
He had been an educated Pagan, and the only way
which seemed open for him to justify his learning
and save the credit of his teachers was to claim that
their light, too, was from above, and that this know
ledge which was the glory of the Greek had been
borrowed from the Hebrew Prophets. The truth
in whose interest this proposition was set forth, was
that God was the Author of all truth. But Revela
tion being looked at from too purely an intellectual
point of view, it was quite easy and, one may say,
natural to reconcile the intellectual theories of the
school with the truths of Revelation by a system of
interpretation which had the approval of all the
scholars of the age. So the Gospel was presented
to the intelligent and thoughtful, in Alexandria at
least, too much under the guise of philosophy and
according to the speculative definitions of the schools.
The resemblance between much of the philosophy
and theology of the age is so close that it is difficult

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 231
to define the true relations which exist between them.
But the fact of the relationship between the con
temporaneous philosophy and this Christian Gnosis
in their fundamental principles and methods, as well
as in their most important conceptions and definitions,
is so close that it is impossible to say whether the
Church teachers have borrowed from the philosophers,
or whether the latter have appropriated these ideas
by means of the prevailing religious syncretism
which embraced so many Christian elements.1
When Clement tells us that " The Greek philosophy,
as it were, purges the soul and prepares it before
hand for the reception of faith, on which the Truth
builds up the edifice of knowledge," 2 we see a rela
tion implied between the two which will cause all
the philosophical speculations with which his mind
is filled to have a Christian colour and a Christian
bearing, and the Gospel will undergo a reinterpreta-
tion which will not make it more simple, universal,
and intelligible. But at no time perhaps in the
world's history was speculation more general or more
free. A man could think as far as he was able with
out any danger from either religious or political
authorities. The Christians alone seem to have
been charged by thoughtful men with hostility to
human thought and intellectual freedom. " There
never was an age in which cultivated men thought
and spoke so much about reason. ' It is necessary,'
Celsus says, ' for one to accept reason and teachers
1 Redepenning, Origines, B. i. S. 91.
2 Strom., B. vii. c. 3.

232 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
having reasonable doctrines, inasmuch as deception
is sure to come to those who do not attach them
selves to some such. Such a man is like those who
without any reason believe the beggars of Cybele,
the seers and priests of Mithras and Sabbadios, and
to such an one happens the appearances of Hecate or
other demonesses and demons. Evil men depending
upon the ignorance of the easily-led bring them
where they wish. So also it happens with the
Christians. Some of these will neither accept nor
give an account of that which they believe. They
use the phrase, " Prove not, only believe," and " Thy
Faith will save thee." "The wisdom of the world
is a bad thing; foolishness, however, is good."
" Examine not." ....'' Why is it,' Celsus asks again,
'why is it a bad thing to be cultivated and to be
anxious about the best kind of talk ? To be prudent
and appear so, how does this interfere with know
ledge of God ?'" 1
The questions which cultivated men in the ancient
world were asking, were the questions which the
great teachers of Alexandria were attempting in all
sincerity and truth to answer.
The questions above all others about God and
His nature, about Revelation and the possibility of
it, the questions which have worn the soul of this
last century of ours, were the questions which lay
heaviest on the minds of the serious men, both
Pagan and Christian, in the second century.
Clement was determined that his Christian faith
1 Theodore Keim, Celsus Wahres Wort, S. 6, 7, 40.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 233
should have a philosophical justification, and so he
presents the doctrine of God in the speculative form
in which he had received it, and approaches the
whole subject from the side of the philosopher
searching for the origin of things, and not of a man
seeking his father. Like Philo before him, and
the Neoplatonists after him, he defines God as that
which remains after every definition and quality is
abstracted. This utter negation, into which neither
the mind nor heart of man can penetrate, seems to
leave little of the Fatherhood of God which was the
very foundation of the Christian life and faith.
" God was utterly impassible, inaccessible to any
movement of feeling, either pleasure or pain." x " He
is unknown, unknowable, and unnamable."2 "He
is not in darkness or in place, but above both space
and time, and qualities of objects." 3
From the hopeless abyss of abstract speculation
into which such logic led them, the Neoplatonist
endeavoured to escape by his theory of ' Apathy '
1 Strom., B. vi. c. 9. 2 Ibid., B. v. c. 12.
3 Ibid., B. ii. c. 2. Dr. Bigg, in his very careful study of
Clement, sums up his doctrine as follows : — "We know not what
He is, only what He is not. He has absolutely no predicates, no
genus, no differentia, no species. He is neither unit nor number.
He bas neither accident nor substance. Names denote either quali
ties or relations. God has neither. He is formless and nameless,
though we sometimes give Him titles, which are not to be taken
in their proper sense — The One, The Good, Intelligence or
Existence, or Father, or God, or Creator, or Lord. These are
but honourable phrases, which we use, not because they really
describe the Eternal, but that our understanding may have some
thing to lean upon." — Christian Platonists of Alexandria, p. 63.

234 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
or ' Vision,' which, however, left him practically at
the mercy of all the religious impostors of the age,
who promised by means of magic to bring about
that union with Divinity, which had, however, as
its results neither a higher intelligence, a nobler
will, nor a purer spirit, but was in effect the death
of self-consciousness itself, and the ultimate destruc
tion of all sense of personality. It was this very
self-consciousness which was the plague of this age,
and for whose extinction men in their despair of
redemption were most passionately seeking. From
this Clement was saved by the teaching of the
Revelation of the Son of God. Amid the wreck of
all personality, human and divine, which seemed
to result from the course of speculation in the
various branches of the Alexandrian philosophy, the
person of Christ rose supreme, and gave that
assurance for man's personality as well as God's s
which man needed, and deepened the self-conscious
ness of the individual to a degree which it had
never known before. To all souls thus burdened
with this new problem, and who were struggling
against loss, the Gospel was the reaffirmation of
their uncertain faith, and gave a value to the indi
vidual life and thought by what it did for both,
which made the new faith a deep delight. How far
these speculations had eaten into the soul we see
at every point in our study of the master-minds
of this generation in Alexandria. And so long as
this city preserved her intellectual vitality and pre
eminence, the tone of thought was tinged with that

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 235
peculiar cast which has long been known as Neo
platonism. Clement's Christian faith, strong as it was, did not
save him from the influences at work in the intel
lectual atmosphere in which he lived. That
mystical contemplation and spiritual isolation from
the world about one, which is the characteristic
result of the philosophical movement of the times,
and which is such a distinctive feature of Alexandrian
life, was ancient, not modern — Pagan, not Christian
— and had that aristocratic taint which separates it
widely from the simplicity of the Gospel. This
mood drew a broad line of distinction between the
Gnostic Christian or the True Gnostic, and the
humble souls hungering and thirsting after righteous
ness. It looked with some contempt upon those
who, amid the storm and stress of the world, lived
a life full of battles they would not fly and of duties
they would not shun.
The strength of the Gospel lay in the first cen
turies, as in all other centuries, not in the light
which it might throw on the dark problems of
speculation or the abstract difficulties of the
philosopher, but in its power for life and in the
ideal which it presented. The Gospel does not fear
speculation, but it was, and is, on the side of life.
The interest in scholarship and literary matters
was so great in Alexandria, that the attention of
Christian teachers was necessarily very early fixed
upon the literary inheritance of the Christian
Church. Here, sooner than in other localities, the

236 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
mind was drawn towards the literary questions
raised by the Evangelical and Apostolic writings.
Here one of the most influential and cultivated of
the Gnostic schools arose, and the evidence seems
to point to it as the circle in which we are to look
for the beginnings of the study of the New Testa
ment literature. It was in Alexandria that the
Hebrew Scriptures had been translated into Greek,
and it was here that the mind of the Church seems
first to have appreciated the extensive literature
which it had inherited from the earlier generations.
Yet even in Alexandria in the time of Clement
there does not seem to have been any clearly defined
body of Christian literature side by side with, and
of the same authority as, the Septuagint. Clement
apparently recognized all the Gospels and most of
the Epistles as canonical in a sense, but the idea of
canonicity, as applied to them, does not seem to be
clearly defined in his mind. The way, also, in
which he uses writings other than those included in
our present Canon, indicates that either there was
no clearly defined body of Christian literature in his
day in Alexandria which had canonical authority
attributed to it, or that Clement had not felt the
necessity of arriving at any definition on this point.
Both statements are most probably correct, for
Barnabas and Clement of Rome are cited as
Apostolic. Hermas is regarded as prophetic and
of divine revelation. The Apocalypse of Peter,
the Sibylline Writings, the Preaching of Peter, and
the Didache are quoted as ypa<ph, and Clement

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 237
makes no distinction between the Canonical Gospels
and the Gospels kcit' Alyvn-Tiows and /ca0' ''EfipatSos.1
In considering the writings of St. Paul, all the evi
dence goes to show that the Gnostics of Alexandria
were among the first, if not the very first, to study
these writings with a scientific interest, and to have
most clearly recognized their importance, even
although we admit that the first collection of them
is to be attributed to Marcion. The admiration of
the Gnostics emphasized the necessity of a closer
study of the great Apostle, and some critics have
found in the Alexandrian school what they call the
first Revival of Paulinism. It is difficult to see the
grounds upon which this statement rests, after one
compares the practical ideal of the Apostle with the
thought of life which is expressed by both Clement
and Origen. It is true that a wider horizon and a
nobler spirit is found in them than in any other
portion of the Christian Church, and while these
may be due, in part at least, to St. Paul, yet the
hopeless differences between them would indicate
no real depth of influence. St. Paul's writings
seem to be perfectly familiar to Clement, but he
interprets them, not according to St. Paul, but
according to the prevailing ideas of his own age
and school. He even seems to apologize for giving
St. Paul such a high place.2 The loftier tone and
more spiritual insight of Clement are partly due to
his own nature, and partly to the influences of the
1 Holtzmann, Einleitung, S. 152.
2 Vid. Bigg, p. 53.

238 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
philosophical inheritance from the school of Philo,
whom Clement quotes with approval. That this
spirit was encouraged and deepened by a study of
St. Paul one can hardly question, but that the
initiative did not spring from the Apostle seems to
be evident from the whole current and trend of his
thought. The moral and spiritual tone of the
Church had been lowered by the increase in numbers
and wealth. The gain, from the worldly point of
view, had been enormous in the last half century,
and the instinct which works so silently and so
surely led men to see the ultimate victory of
Christianity, or at least to feel it and follow it as the
strongest force in society. The religion which was
presented to these Pagans was often of the harshest
and narrowest type, and they, in turn, vulgarized it
still more.1 A great task lay before the Church.
In Alexandria in particular was the gravity of the
crisis felt, and such as Clement felt the need of
presenting the life of the Christian in all its fulness,
freedom, and spirituality to this generation, so gross,
so frivolous, so impulsive, and so ignorant. In the
way in which this was done we will see both the
strength and the weakness of Clement. It was the
first great attempt, of which Christian history has
1 " Crowds were pressing into the Church, mostly ignorant and
undisciplined, some rich and wilful. They brought with them the
moral taint, the ingrained prejudices of their old life. We learn
from many sources that the same incongruous blending of the
Gospel with Pagan superstitions, which recurred during the
conversion of the Northern Barbarians, existed in some degree in
the second and third centuries." — Bigg, p. 84.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 239
had so many, and yet none have been more sincere
or possibly better adapted to win the attention of
the particular age, than the writings in which
Clement tried to set before the Pagan World the
breadth and richness of the Christian Revelation as
the manifestation of the will and mind of God. A
recent critic has called this effort of Clement " the
boldest literary undertaking in the history of the
Church."1 He endeavoured to place the Christian
religion before the eyes of man on a plain so high
that he would see at once the energy, freedom, and
greatness of the life which issued from it ; but the
imperfection which is stamped upon his work exists,
not in the mere lack of arrangement and style, but
in the greater and more important defects of a lack
of the full appreciation of that Gospel which he was
so anxious to set forth in a larger spirit than the
men of his age had attempted. There were radical
misconceptions lying at the root of some of his
interpretations of the Christian truth, and there
were also some which were due to the limitation of
that Gospel which had appealed to him so strongly.
If we contrast the thinking of Clement on the
great subject of the Christian life and the Christian
ideal with that of St. Paul, we will see a wide
difference between them — a difference, however,
which will not tempt us to despise him, but will show
us how then as now the forces of an age, even the
most powerful and elevated, are not always working
for the highest character, but need that Life which
1 Harnack, Dogmengesch., B. i. S. 505.

240 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
was given for the life of the world to be their centre
and aim.
An examination of those cardinal features which
form his ideal of the Christian life, contrasting them
with those of St. Paul, will make more clear what
has been here suggested.
"God's greatest gift is self-restraint," Clement
says,1 and in this phrase shows the strong antique
spirit which still controls his thought of life. This
ancient ideal presents life as the result of that calm
and happy judgment which wisely decides between
the too much and the too little. Reason is the
guide, and reason also is the power, which brings its
own judgment to a perfect fruition. When reason
loses the control of the life, then follows moral
disaster and ruin. The great enemy of life is the
irrational. If one fails to follow reason, that one
falls into sin, for sin is contrary to right reason.
Moreover, disobedience to this reason is the gen
erating cause of sin.2 It is easy to interpret such
language according to the purely classical idea,
but Clement's Christianity stood him for more than
that, and he undoubtedly meant by reason and the
guidance which the soul received something more
than the purely scientific culture which the earlier
philosophical schools had emphasized. Yet the
radical defect of the Greek mind was as clearly
manifest in Clement as in any classical writer of
antiquity. This genial, urbane, cultivated Athenian
gentleman had seen much and read more, but the
1 Strom., B. ii. c. 20. 2 Paid., B. i. c. 2, c. 13.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 241
strange story of human passion, of wild outburst, of
frenzied despair which shows the primitive elements
of human nature at work, and which forms the
background for the most polished and cultivated
Paganism, does not lead him into any deeper or
more exhausted psychology than that all which is
needed is light, all which is required is to follow
reason. Clement, and the Greek Fathers were
more sincere and thoughtful than their Pagan
contemporaries, but the way in which they talk of
sin and reason suggests the way Rousseau and the
philosophers of the eighteenth century talked of
nature. The men of the field interpreted Rousseau
in a way he did not anticipate, and the monks in the
Lybian Desert show us how superficial was the
accredited mode of thought on this subject, which
the philosophers might pass by with a few phrases,
but which was driving many a plain man to the
verge of madness with its incessant intrusion into
the commonest affairs of life. Paganism had never
been in the way of understanding sin.
Its conception of the Divine Nature, however
lofty, was lacking in purity and spirituality, and, as a
consequence, the moral and spiritual sense of the
individual partook of the same defect. The old
natural religions of Heathenism appealed to the
instincts of human nature, because they were but a
reflection of it and a justification of all its impulses.
But there was nothing in these religions to satisfy
the higher cravings of the spirit as it began to
realize itself, and the coarse opposition which was
16

242 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
manifest in almost all of them brought one face to
face with their weaknesses. The dualism of man's
nature seemed to be only intensified and made more
puzzling by the variety of appeals which the religions
of Paganism made to the many sides of his being.
Without realizing the significance of the situation,
the thoughtful Pagan felt that religion had broken
down without giving him any solution of the great
problem of his own nature. Without seeking any
speculative ground for his thought, or appreciating
the abyss into which he was plunging, many a man
who felt the passion for escape looked upon matter
as the author of all his inward unrest and pain, and
sought a path into the higher life through asceticism.
Sin or the cause of man's unhappiness, whatever it
may be called, is not a moral or spiritual state, or, if
so, only indirectly, but the result of certain material
conditions. Thus, while the problem is not in reality
any nearer a solution than before, it is simplified
apparently, and has lost the spiritual terror which it
possessed, and approach to God seems far easier and
more natural than when the soul was restless with
the uneasy sense of something within, something in
the very nature of man himself, which separates him
from the Divine Being. The Gospel, in its teaching
of a Creator and Father of all and the perfect
goodness of all His works, asserted most emphatically
that it was not in Creation or its laws, not in matter
or the constitution of man, that the principle and
root of his misery lay. Something else was the
source, something far more subtle, tenacious, and

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 243
inflexible in its persistence, and far more difficult of
apprehension — that is, something in the spiritual
disposition of the man, his moral aims, and his
spiritual relations. Inevitably then, so soon as a
man had grasped, even in the slightest degree, the
new situation, he found that the greatest problem of
all was himself. A new spiritual history, and not
the old material discipline of Pagan philosophy, was
the characteristic fact of the Gospel. A most
singular fact is that the old Pagan theory of
asceticism, which is in such entire opposition to the
Christian truth of Creation and the great central
fact ofthe Gospel, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ,
is and has been perpetually returning and finding a
home in the Church, and its most passionate admirers
are those who make the most positive and dogmatic
affirmation of that Creed whose essential principles
are, in fact, denied.
It need not be a matter of surprise, then, if we find,
as we do find, in Clement the old leaven lingering
in the new life. So strong was his instinctive
repugnance to the gross matter which seemed the
source of all that was repulsive and painful to the
higher instincts, that he looked upon sin not as St.
Paul did, but as a true Greek, not of the old classic
period, but after the Greek spirit had been touched
with the ascetic rigorism. More than that, it was
hard for him to feel that the Son of God had in
reality taken our nature upon Him. There was a
latent element of Docetism which undoubtedly had
its origin in this intense feeling of his about matter.

244 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
The conception of evil, as associated in some way
with the environment of the soul, led instinctively
to an asceticism which was soon highly developed
in the Church, and a new tendency in sharp distinc
tion from the sense of personal and spiritual evil
which is associated with sin in the mind of St. Paul.
This new interpretation of the problem has a certain
dramatic value and mystical suggestions which give
it an apparently greater philosophic depth and
profounder religious significance than the spiritual
attitude of the Apostle, but it is in reality a far more
superficial thought and a far easier solution of the
most oppressive consciousness which weighs upon
the Christian man.
To Clement, as to all who take the ascetic view of
evil, sin was not a power or an inclination so much
as a specific act. The man, therefore, must know in
order that he may avoid the doing or the leaving
undone of certain things. That Clement does not
state the matter in this crass and almost childish
way is true, but when he asserts that the sources of
sin are but two, ignorance and inability, and both
dependent upon ourselves, he evidently does not
regard the problem as a difficult one or beyond the
power of the individual to solve.1 All those ques
tions which make the theoretical solution of the
problem of man's redemption almost insoluble — the
influence and extent of heredity, the constant
pressure of the social forces around, the moulding
power of education, the almost iron chain of habit —
1 Strom., vii. 16.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 245
all these and a thousand other elements more subtle
and mysterious, which occur to every thoughtful
man, do not appear to discourage Clement in the
idea of the possibility of human redemption through
the new light which came into the world through
the Son of God.
If ignorance is the origin of evil and sin, and
knowledge of redemption and salvation, then sin
will be a matter of degree keeping pace with know
ledge, and some there will be who by no act of their
own are not within the pale of salvation. In these
inferences which Clement implies rather than draws,
we see the old aristocratic taint of Paganism and
Gnosticism which was latent in so much of the
thought of this period, and which was to work so
deeply into the life of the later ages.
When we compare Clement's interpretation of the
idea of Law with that of St. Paul, we see the same
wide divergence. The same one-sided intellectual
ism led to a misconception of the relation between
the Old and New Testaments or Covenants, and to
a consequent misinterpretation of the latter. The
Old Covenant was the effort to educate the human
race by a discipline suited to its state and develop
ment — a thoroughly philosophical idea. The New
was but the continuation of the process. The
character and method were the same. The differences
were purely external, or in the character of those
who applied the education. The Gospel was the
New Law. This idea of the Law as being of the
very essence of the New Revelation was so

246 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
thoroughly and widely accepted, that we are pre
pared to find the same attitude of mind and the
same point of view among the Alexandrians as else
where. The statement differs in some respects, but
the position taken is the same by Clement as by his
predecessors or contemporaries. The identification
of the two Covenants in principle and object rested
upon the fact of their common source, the Logos,
who inspired the Old as well as the New. The
differences between them consisted only in matters
of detail, but even here a higher stand and a nobler
spirit is manifest than in Irenaeus and the other
writers of this age. They had developed the idea
of the ' New Law ' and applied it in the interest of
the hierarchical tendencies of the growing organiza
tion, but Clement finds the historical parallels, which
by means of the application of the allegorical
interpretation were so abundant, all in the interest
of the higher class of Christians, the true Gnostics.
His theory of the historical relations is not any
truer than the other, but it is a matter well to be
considered, whether, if it had prevailed, it would have
wrought as much injury to the cause of the Gospel
as the development of a sacerdotal caste with its
claims to authority and government which prevailed
through so many centuries of the Christian Church.
In Clement's interpretation of the idea of Faith he
also falls far below the meaning of the great Apostle.
His prevailing thought seems to be that of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, as belief in the fulfilment of
God's promises in the future. If this Epistle is of

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 247
Alexandrian origin, as is held by the majority of the
most competent critics, we find in Clement but a
continuation of the earlier Alexandrian thought on
this subject. But even with this difference of inter
pretation it would still be possible to place faith in
the very forefront of the spiritual life, and see in it
the spiritual expression of the living force which
moved the soul. But with Clement faith was merely
a subordinate element in the Christian life, and
knowledge was the primary factor of the spiritual
development. Knowledge was more than faith.1
Faith was but the imperfect intellectual apprehen
sion of divine truth, and not the personal trust
and fellowship with Christ as in St. Paul.2 In
the order of spiritual development faith was first
and lowest, followed by knowledge and love, which
completed the process by which the soul attained
God. The true position which faith occupied in the
mind of Clement may perhaps be seen in the histori
cal process which he sees in the world's education.
The order is from heathenism to faith, from faith to
knowledge, and from knowledge to love. Now it is
perfectly evident that if the difference between
heathenism and faith is great, one would infer an
equal difference existing between faith and know
ledge. If, on the other hand, the distance between
heathenism and faith is small, as is suggested by
some language of Clement, then the interval between
faith and knowledge would also be diminished.
But Clement was not a systematic thinker, and his
1 Strom., vi. 794. 2 Ibid., vi. 13, 12 ; iv. 18.

248 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
language is often such as to indicate a lack of clear
ness of perception and firmness of grasp in many
particulars.1 It is knowledge, not faith, which leads
man to that everlasting contemplation, where, free
from all imperfection, he is borne on through the
mystic stages of spiritual development to the
Eternal Vision. It is important to understand, if
possible, the reasons which led Clement to take
such a different view on such a significant point as
this, especially since there are evidences that the
breadth and nobility of spirit of the great Apostle
had found an echo in his heart. Some few sugges
tions may be made here, which, without claiming to
be exhaustive, will at least show that there was
an actual difference between Clement and St. Paul,
and that this difference had actual grounds which
are ascertainable by a painstaking student. In the
first place, there were elements of Docetism in
Clement's view of the person of Christ, which pre
vented him feeling towards Him that personal and
passionate devotion which is the very heart of the
Apostle's life. This is no mere question of defini
tion or difference in language, but is radical, funda
mental, and vital. Clement did, no doubt, love Jesus
Christ, and gladly and constantly recognized Him as
his Saviour, but He was to him something less and
something different than He was to St. Paul. The
difference was that of
" Moonlight unto sunshine
As of water unto wine."
1 Strom , vii. 10.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 249
In Clement Jesus Christ approaches too nearly a
mere principle or law of human history to preserve
those immediate personal relations which were vital
with St. Paul. He seems sometimes to represent
only a stage in the divine process. Faith therefore
could never become to Clement that personal relation,
that individual union of the soul with its Saviour,
which it was to St. Paul.
Another element which diminished the value of
faith as St. Paul understood it among the Alex
andrians was the predominant intellectual inheritance
which they received, not only through their Greek
blood, but also through the prevailing influences
around them. The spirit of the Neoplatonist was
pre-eminently that of Clement. The value of intel
lectual effort and the certainty of its perfect fruition
was his guiding impulse. He believed in knowledge,
not in a broad and wise way, but in almost a narrow
and certainly a very absorbing way. It was the
only path by which man might reach God, and it
was knowledge, not in the large sense of the total
apprehension of the man, but only the narrower
range of his purely intellectual faculties. This
knowledge so attained along the path of intellectual
perception was the root of the soul's best life. He
who knows God thus is holy and virtuous. The
Gnostic, therefore, is the only pious man.1 What
Clement meant was, with a slight difference, what
Plotinus meant. His Gnostic was the intellectual
aristocrat who could reach heights of spiritual ex-
1 Strom., vii. 7.

250 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
perience not given to the poor and humble. This
deadly taint was not felt consciously by Clement, but
there seems to have been an uneasy restlessness at
times which suggests an unconscious dissatisfaction.
The actual progress of the history of the Church
also involved him in some uncertainty on this point.
The claims of growing orthodoxy were always
pushing the simply dogmatic definition of faith, as
the objective Creed of the Church, into prominence,
and destroying, if not the validity, at least the
significance and importance, of the subjective and
original meaning of the word. This pressure was
strong upon Clement, and yet, as a student of the
Scriptures of the New Testament, he saw a quite
different and, to his earnest and thoughtful spirit, a
far deeper meaning there.
The character of the mass of Christians was dis
couraging to one who was striving to draw his ideal
from the writings of the Apostles. Yet the gentle
and loving spirit which looked out from its closet
upon this tumultuous and degraded life which sur
rounded it, was unwilling to deny to any the gift or
power of faith if he bore the name of Christian.
He was thus led, perhaps unconsciously, to lower
the meaning of faith, and taking from it its spiritual
character and value, he gave it the popular objective
meaning. Yet there is always the feeling that it is
of very great importance, and he believes that the
Christian life begins with it, but that it runs but a
short distance, and then the true and growing
Christian rises to the loftier heights of Christian

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 251
Gnosticism. Yet the use of Gnosis and Pistis
interchangeably, which sometimes occurs in Clement,
shows a wavering and a lack of precision which
must be recognized.
But it is in the final and ultimate expression or
interpretation of the Christian life that we find the
true import of his language and the key to his
thought. The idea of Spiritual Sonship, which is
the expression of the Christian ideal in St. Paul, is
replaced in Clement by that of the Christian Gnostic.
If we ask ourselves what are the characteristics of
the true Gnostic, we discover that on the subjective
side it is intellectual, culminating in ecstasy and the
vision of the Eternal. On the external or objective
side it is strongly ascetic. This asceticism, as can
be easily shown, is not a necessary or inherent
element in the Christian conception of piety. It
was the dominant note of the moral effort at reform
which was the characteristic of the second century.
The individual life of the Christian was not seen to
be, or asserted to be, based on any thoroughly under
stood and consciously recognized Christian principles
which would lead to a definite and positive concep
tion of piety in opposition to the prevailing asceticism.
This asceticism was, in its origin as well as in its
character, not only essentially contradictory to some
of the most fundamental Christian truths, but it was
also legal, materialistic, and unspiritual. Laying the
emphasis so heavily on asceticism as a primary
object of the life, made that life negative and external
in its character, and destroyed the lofty idealism of

252 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
the Christian spirit. Instead of finding the ideal
in the sonship of man to God through the living
Christ dwelling in the soul and developing the
natural energies and character in a normal and
healthy way, there was placed in its stead a narrow
and legal asceticism which was exclusive and aristo
cratic, and, from the Christian standpoint, unnatural.1
The legalism of Clement, however, did not express
itself in the elaborate, overwrought manner which
was characteristic of some of the writers of his day,
and which was the overwhelming tendency of the
Church at large ; yet the principles were there,
although with noble inconsistency he seems to
refuse his own conclusions. He believed in some
thing far, far better and higher than the life of the
common Christian of his day, but instead of finding
the common foundation for all in the more thorough
and complete identification of each soul with Christ,
he divides the general body into two classes, leaving
the vast mass on a lower and almost hopeless level,
while the few who were the true Gnostics should
rise to the real life of the soul in the contemplation
of that awful vision which was promised to those
who had completed the long and painful struggle
after this spiritual detachment from the world and
the flesh. This is undoubtedly the aim of the
Gnostic, the Mystic, and the Neoplatonist. But
was it the aim of St. Paul ? Can one trace its
fellowship directly to inspiration from the life and
spirit of, and fellowship with, Christ ? If not, then
1 Rothe, Vorlesungen uber Dogmen., B. i. S. 264-274.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 253
the type of piety aimed at is not the best however
beautiful it is, and the world is such that only the
best can save it. Clement believed that the world
would be saved, but his optimism did not always, if
ever, mean that passionate sureness which comes to
the soul that has flung itself completely and for ever
upon the infinite mercy and love of Christ, but rather
in a feeling that man has always the power of
reformation. The long, long struggles, the miserable
failures, the painful sense of incompetency and fruit-
lessness, which wrung the souls of those who were
closest to the actual lives of men, made but an
academic impression upon him — a calm, pure, and
noble soul well balanced and serene, upon whom the
tragedy of human life seemed to rest but lightly.
The tragic is not all of human history ; but take it
out, and what is left ? Clement was a quiet student,
and his influence was exerted probably only over
the few.
A far more imposing figure and a far more
powerful influence is Origen, his great pupil. Unlike
his teacher who was a Greek, Origen was an
Egyptian, a full-blooded Copt. His father, Leonidas,
died in the persecutions of Septimius Severus, and
his fiery son cheered him on. He feared neither
life nor death, and, unlike his great teacher who
was never carried away by the frenzy, he craved a
martyr's crown. He begged his father in prison to
stand fast and fear not. " Take heed not to charge
your mind on our account," his heroic son told him.1
1 Eusebius, H E., vii. 2.

254 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
The fierce fires which surrounded his early manhood
entered still more deeply into his blood. The calm
and pleasant optimism which characterizes his
teacher has given place to a more sombre tone.
Tossed out at an early age into the great stream of
life, compelled to struggle with the most adverse
circumstances, he soon made it manifest that one
of those beings who change the course of events and
cut deep into the life of the world had appeared.
With an iron constitution, an indomitable will, and
an enormous capacity for work, he soon began that
marvellous career, the first of its kind in the history
of the Christian Church. There was about him
that charm which genius, and genius alone, exercises.
All men felt it, and few have been so loved and
hated as he in his long warfare. The invincible
sincerity of his mind, the intense ardour of his
nature, the passionate longing of his soul for men,
made him, although a layman for the larger part of
his career, the most striking figure in the history of
the Church up to this time. The conditions under
which he worked were for the most part favourable.
He was in an atmosphere where scientific and
philosophical studies were more prized than in any
other city of the Empire. Two generations had been
preparing the way for the presentation of Christianity
under the forms of the science and philosophy of
Alexandria. When we touch Origen we seem to
come in contact with a life whose pulse is almost
modern in its eager, intellectual activity and spiritual
passion. His system stands alone in his age, and

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 255
was not equalled in intellectual grasp and influence
until it was superseded in the West by Augustine's
Civitas Dei two centuries later. Unlike Augustine,
however, Origen was not far in advance of his age.
He summed up in himself all the past, and thus
laid the foundation for the advances which were
to be made in the future.1 With the insight which
is the gift of the great discoverer, he saw the lines
within which Christian thought would for ever move,
and strange to say, as one of his most appreciative
critics has well remarked, " Beyond the circle which
Origen's thought described, the orthodox teachers
of all confessions have refused to pass." He was
indeed one of those whom Plato calls "A chief of
the golden race," for his name and memory have been
an inspiration for all the noblest and most earnest
souls who have loved truth with a quenchless
passion and sought it with unfaltering faith. Before
him there had been none like him, and since his
day but few who had the same wide range and the
same stimulating energy. Among the moderns,
Schleiermacher has been called the Origen of the
nineteenth century, and the points of resemblance
between the most remarkable man in the Christian
Church in the second century and the greatest
theological genius of the nineteenth are many and
striking. Origen had been placed in charge of the cate
chetical school, probably immediately after the flight
of Clement, and the work of his life began. In
1 Harnack, D. G. M., B. i. S. 525.

256 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
order to teach, one must study. The pressure of
the endless stream of questions from persons of all
ages, classes, and stages of intellectual development
acted like fire on his eager mind. He flung him
self into such an intense course of study, and pursued
it with such a tireless passion, that it is difficult to
understand how he lived through it. His work was
carried on under the shadow of the University, then
the freest and most active in the Empire. Specula
tion, which was so congenial to the Greek, was now
tinged with the new and powerful element which
characterizes that later development called Neo
platonism. Ammonius Saccas was teaching in
Alexandria at this time, and hither came Plotinus
who, when he had heard him, declared, " At last I
have found a man." Here he remained, steeping
himself in the thought of this great teacher. Origen
also, although hardly at the same time, is said to
have listened to this same teacher, and one cannot
doubt that he who was so sensitive to all earnest
and noble living or thinking could not have remained
unaffected by such a strong and original influence
as that of Ammonius Saccas. Eusebius, in his
history, gives a long list of the philosophical writers
whom Origen is said to have studied.
Yet, however abstract his speculations are, how
ever philosophical the language in which he clothes
his thought, there is an air of sincerity and reality
about all he said which sprang from his own wide
experience and his contact with life at almost every
point in the vast circle. He had travelled not

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 257
only in the East, but in the West. He had seen the
greatest cities of the Empire. He had moved in
the society of the learned and the great as well as
associated with the ignorant and the obscure. The
man who knew how to live like a monk of the
Thebaid had also been the guest of an Empress.
He concentrated in himself more intellectual force,
spiritual energy, wide learning, and deep experience
than any man of his age, and this whole vast
accumulation was inspired with one overwhelming
and persistent motive, the presentation of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ to the heathen world in which he
lived.1 In this cause his life was one long, unwearied
struggle. As a child he had longed for martyrdom,
and as an old man he found it ; and the same heroic
note runs through all the intervening years.
When we come to consider Origen in his relation
to the life of the Church, we discover that there are
few subjects of thought which did not engage his
eager intellect. But the one subject which was the
most continuous object, not only of his thought but
of his labours, was the Holy Scriptures. He is the
first great Biblical scholar, and did more perhaps
than any man that ever lived to establish and fix
the nature and limits of this study. He seemed to
realize the importance of his task, and the energy
with which he carried on his labours is witnessed in
the fragments which remain. These, like the ruins
of some gigantic temple, fill one with amazement
and awe. As an interpreter of Scripture, he estab-
1 Redepenning, Origines, B. i. 336. 17

258 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
lished a method which ruled for centuries, and which,
although in some respects an enormous advance on
the crude methods then existing for the most part
in the Church, yet left an heritage of confusion and
unreality in the field of Biblical exegesis which
belongs to no other branch of philological investi
gation. The influence of his method can be seen
in all that Origen ever wrote, as well in his strictly
theological speculations as in his commentaries. It
engaged so much of his thought, that he systematized
it and handed down a theory which was adopted by
all the orthodox teachers who followed him with
few exceptions ; and in turn it became the method
which prevailed most generally in the Eastern and
Western Churches until the day of the Reformation.
This method is called the Allegorical. It was not
an invention of Origen, but was the universal method
of all interpreters, both Classical and Hebrew, at this
time. More than that, we can find the beginnings
of it far back in Hebrew history and also among
the Greeks. Plato allegorizes, and the Stoics devote
much thought to the subject. The causes of its
growth are very easy of discovery. A vigorous
and progressive people in the course of time drifts
away from the position of its earlier years. The
intellectual attitude and the religious language of
the past have about them a touch of unreality,
viewed from the standpoint of the present. Yet
men cling to the past with a greater tenacity, the
farther removed they are from it.
In the absence of all scientific methods of historical

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 259
investigation, that ancient past will be filled with
the ideas and sentiments of the present. The
language, the literary forms are different, but this
difference is the result of intention, and he who has
the secret can easily, naturally, and unconsciously
reconcile the past with the present. It is not a
deliberate violation of philological laws, but all
sacred literature is supposed to be free from the
same rigid subjection to these principles which
govern the common speech of men. Moreover,
speech was a mysterious thing to the men of the
past. Words seemed to have such an indefinite,
almost infinite power. They might mean so much,
and when one age endeavoured to reunite its life
with that of a more remote one, language became
one of the mysterious channels through which this
unseen life had been constantly flowing. As a
German writer has said, " The simplest means of
harmonizing an old, traditional, and sacred literature
with the new culture and modern spirit which comes
to a progressive people, is the allegorical. Allegory
meets us in the case of all ancient literary collections,
especially those of a sacred character. There is an
allegorical interpretation ofthe Indian Vedas as well
as of the Koran."1 In Alexandria the first great
representative of the movement in the spiritual life
of the higher intelligence of his age was Philo, and
he also gave the first systematic expression to this
theory of interpretation, uniting in himself the two
currents of Greek and Hebrew thought on this
1 Siegfried, Philo von Alexandria, S. 9.

260 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
subject. In him also the prevailing tendency was
re-enforced by the necessity of his position. His
Greek culture and his Hebrew traditions seemed in
direct antagonism to each other. By the path of
Allegory he rose to a reconciliation which was real,
however arbitrary and unsatisfactory the process of
readjustment was.
This system of interpretation having become the
generally recognized method of all the most in
fluential writers of the age, it was inevitable that
when the Christian Church had brought under its
influence the cultivated and intelligent, these should
bring with them the intellectual habits in which
they had been trained. The Christian Gnostics of
Alexandria may be regarded as the first repre
sentatives of the influence of Christianity upon the
cultivated classes, and the allegorism of Philo and
the Stoics was extended by them to the writings
which are pre-eminently Christian — that is, to the
Gospels themselves. It would seem, if it is per
missible to evaporate the historical element from
the ancient Hebrew writings, and find in them
cosmical and esoteric truths which can be known
only to those initiated into the correct method, that
this same method could be applied to the historical
narratives of the Gospel. This was done, and the
facts of the Gospel history disappeared behind a
cloudy and fantastic system of speculation. The
original and inherent vice of allegorism lay in the
fact that it taught one to substitute imaginary
spiritual truth for hard fact, or change some spiritual

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 261
principle into a real event. History was allegorized,
and allegory was crystallized into history. The
hard barrier between fact and fancy melted away,
and the ease with which any speculation might be
defended or proved made allegorism fatal to all
intellectual veracity or clearness of vision. Objective
and subjective mingled in one ever-shifting cloud,
where poetry, reason, imagination, history, fact, and
conjecture were hopelessly confused. The motive
which prompted and justified the allegorical method
was the great Platonic principle, " That nothing is
to be believed which is unworthy of God." 1 In the
hands of a man like Origen, allegorism was used to
reconcile science and faith — to prove that the
difficulties which the intellect of the age found in
many of the statements of the Old Testament, in
reality offered no obstacle to a belief in the great
truths of the Gospel. As all men of culture at this
period accepted the allegorical method, it was there
fore no ingenious or suspicious discovery of the
great Christian teacher. He only systematized and
laid down a few general principles and laws for its
application, these in fact being, generally speaking,
only a re'sume' of Philo with the keynote in the
words of St. Paul. One sees the best side of
allegorism in Origen, and although the dangers are
apparent, and the gross error of it is perfectly clear,
yet the genius of the man saves it from appearing
in all its feebleness and absurdity. The greatest
weakness of it, which, strange to say, was also its
1 Bigg, p. 51.

262 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
greatest strength, lay in the fact that the truth of
the Gospel was stripped of the defence which a
strict and historical interpretation of the documents
offered, and was laid open to the arbitrary fancy
of every theorizer. Each speculation, however
strange or foreign its origin, could be justified by
allegory; and all the excrescences, misunderstandings,
foreign intrusions, and historical developments find
their justification and explanation in the allegorical
method. How utterly unreliable, weak, and fan
tastic the theory is when applied to history, can best
be seen, not in Origen, but in a book of the nine
teenth century, Newman's Essay on Development.
Yet the effect of this system is clearly seen in the
writings and thought of Origen. We do not find
in him, although a most faithful and devout student
of the Scriptures, what we may call a really Biblical
theology. His thought has been profoundly in
fluenced, if not shaped, by the powerful currents of
his age, and he finds in Scripture simply the
evidence and proof of the definitions and ideas
which he uses, and whose expression is so largely,
at least in form, Neoplatonic.
Origen accepted, in addition to what we would
call the Canonical Writings, although the word
itself does not occur in his writings, a large number
which have now only an historical value.1 He not
only accepted the Septuagint edition of the Old
Testament, but regarded it as inspired, and the
Hebrew version as incorrect. This, not because
1 Redepenning, Origines, B. i. S. 239.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 263
of any historical reasons, but because the Hebrew
did not justify so well as the Greek the theories he
had formed and the interpretations he had set forth.
The way in which Origen quotes Ignatius, Clement
of Rome, Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas
as inspired, goes to show that age, and not origin,
had most to do with his selection, and that the idea
of canonicity was still indefinite. It has been said
that he was much under the influence of St. Paul,
and that he marks one of those attempts which
seem to occur at intervals in the Church, to recover
it from the low and secular spirit which degrades
and robs it not only of its power, but of its truth
and beauty. It may be in the larger spirit and the
more intense earnestness with which Origen set
forth the essentially spiritual and religious character
of the Gospel he was influenced by St. Paul. But
it must also be borne in mind that Neoplatonism was
an assertion of the spirituality of God and of the
high and mysterious quality of those relations which
united men with Him. The language which Origen
uses is generally more philosophical than Scriptural
in its form, yet this in truth would not be decisive.
The more closely one studies the thought of this
great writer on the most fundamental ideas of the
Christian life, and notes the language which is used,
the more apparent it is that there are differences of
no minor importance between him and the great
Apostle. Yet his life was perhaps one of the most
truly Apostolic in its characteristic modes of ex
pression of any man of the age. Although a stern

264 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
ascetic himself, he attached no importance to asceti
cism, and gave the most spiritual and evangelical
interpretation to the idea of abstinence. The larger
and more fully his life developed, the more he dis
regarded the legal ideas of religion, and thereby
ran counter to the strong legal and ascetic tendencies
of his age.
The material for a knowledge of the life and
work of Origen is so abundant that it will not be
necessary to dwell further upon the biographical or
purely historical aspects of his career, but rather to
consider more closely and critically some of the
elements which are characteristic of his system of
thought, and how these were related to his environ
ment, and also what, if any, correspondence exists
between his ideal of the Christian life and character
and that of St. Paul, which is the immediate object
of this investigation.
When we turn to an examination of Origen's
discussion of the problem of sin, we see more clearly
than in any writings since St. Paul how profoundly
the whole subject, under its new presentation, was
affecting the thoughts of men. In shifting the origin
of sin and evil from matter, where it had been placed
by the vast majority of the schools, and which was
the prevailing conception of Paganism, to man, the
interest in the problem was intensified. The sig
nificance of life became more dramatic, and the tragic
features of history stood out with a sharpness and
boldness which we miss in most of the men of these
earlier centuries. How keenly Origen felt the

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 265
difficulties of the problem, and how little he under
stood St. Paul, can be seen in the theory of a pre
existing state in which sin had its origin. It may
be said that this does not show any disposition to
weaken the significance of the fact or lessen its
importance because the mysterious and ghastly
tragedy is only pushed back, but it is pushed back
out of sight as well as out of knowledge. Feeling
the oppression and weight of it, as he did, it was a
relief to have this more remote origin assigned
to it, and the motive was probably not so much
philosophical consistency as spiritual relief. It is
true a philosophical motive was there, and in seeking
for the origin of sin he needed no justification. But
the way in which he explains this beginning shows
a certain lack of spiritual clearness and moral
certainty which led to confusion and weakness or
originated in them. He thinks of some timeless
existence in which the created spirit, dwelling in
the presence of God, is lulled into security by this
perfect contemplation. Then pride and self-will
present themselves, and the soul falls into sin. But
this assumption loses sight of the fact that the very
heart of the blessedness of the life in God is in the
profound sense of security and peace which life in
Him bestows upon the spirit.
The pleasant optimism of Clement has disappeared
in Origen, and a sterner and more sombre feeling
prevails. Yet, like all under the influence of the
Greek or Classical spirit, he does not treat the
problem in a way which is at all satisfactory.

266 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
Instead of regarding life, the world, and matter as
simply the means in and through which the spirit
might manifest its character, the philosophical view,
as well as the popular feeling, was that matter in
itself was evil and the source of evil ; and by this
means was justified the thin, superficial psychology
and the shallow ethical conceptions of the age.
Approaching the subject from the religious point
of view, Origen asserted that sin was the loss of the
divine life or image. The moment we examine
this statement, we see that he has confused the true
relation of cause and effect, and that this definition
has behind it no conception of sin as a positive and
efficient agency which profoundly conditions the
spiritual life of man. Rather is the negative and
intellectual definition the source of this language.
It is emptiness, want, a miserable accident of human
nature which has no existence in itself. The idea
of a moral bias, a spiritual attitude in which the
whole energy of the nature may be concentrated, is
not suggested by these words — that is, sin is not
the expression of a positive moral and spiritual
state. A certain light is thrown upon Origen's estimate
of sin by the fact that while he was perfectly willing
to regard it as a matter of inheritance, he did not
by any means believe in the inheritance of its
correlative guilt — the implication being justified that
sin was not of such an abhorrent nature as to con
stitute in and of itself a state of spiritual guiltiness
before God. That he was deeply impressed by the

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 267
awful problem which presented itself is perfectly
apparent, but that he could deal with it in a way to
satisfy the higher needs of the Christian character
does not seem so apparent. He had forced the
origin of it back into a state of pre-existence, and
this theory compelled him, in the face of certain
historical references in the Scriptures, to fall back
upon another theory to explain them away — that is,
upon his Allegorism. One wishes that he had dealt
more earnestly with the actual facts of his own
experience ; but he was a child of his age, and that
an age which had much to learn of the higher
meaning of life and the Gospel.
In his unsatisfactory definition of the will as a
mere power of choice, he had not penetrated deep
enough to realize its true moral nature. He asserted,
in opposition to the harsh determinism of the
Gnostics, the absolute freedom of the human will ;
but his idea of freedom was simply the perpetual
ability to make new choices without reference to the
organic relation between the life itself and the moral
nature, which is constantly realizing itself in and
through the will viewed as its manifestation. This
conception of freedom, and the will as the power of
choice in each particular case, is obviously unsatis
factory. The will is something more than the mere power
of choice, and freedom is of little value when it
leaves a man absolutely and eternally within the
possibility of reversing his whole moral character
at will. The sense of moral development and the

268 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
growth in higher spiritual strength have their safe
guards and sources of confidence destroyed when
all the results of spiritual culture are left at the
mercy of a purely arbitrary choice. These defects
in Origen's thought were the results of the shallow
thinking of his age on the moral nature of man.
The strong pressure also of the classic definitions
prevented him discovering in his own spiritual
history the lines of a nobler and truer conception
of the great moral problem. Wherever the antique
spirit has prevailed, there we see the absence of deep
appreciation of the tragic nature of the individual
character viewed on its moral side. The desperate
language of Augustine may repel many, but the
element in him which creates this repulsion has its
source in the Ancient World, and is not the direct or
immediate issue of the new Christian inspiration
which moved him so deeply. The intense moral
earnestness, the awful sense of man's tremendous
destiny, these are Christian, and these are present
in Augustine as they were not in Origen or in any
other writer of the Early Church since the last of the
Apostles had closed his eyes in death.
In his conception of the Law and its relation to
the Gospel, we see the same wide diversity in Origen
from the Pauline idea which we find running through
the entire period. The great changes which take
place in the world advance slowly. The individuals
who represent the new forces are almost invariably
men of their own age — that is, they are not
suddenly emptied of their inherited beliefs, habits of

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 269
mind, and forms of thought which characterize their
generation, but rather are transferred with all these
into a new world of ideas, a new spiritual atmosphere,
and are brought under the influence of new motives.
Universal modes of thought are not easily discredited,
and they are the less likely to be so when all parties
start from the same fundamental ideas. The con
troversies within the Church had resulted in the
assertion of the unity of Revelation as against the
various Gnostic theories which had been set forth
in criticism of the Old Testament. This principle
of unity practically covered every question which
might arise, and very early in the Christian history
the identity between the Old and the New Covenants
had been established. The differences which existed,
and there were some, were not, as has been seen,
differences in principle, but only differences of degree.
The New Covenant was a legal one like the Old.
This conception seems never to have been questioned.
It was often and largely modified, but it was never
rejected except by heretical sects whose antinomian
ism excited the horror of all earnest and sincere
Christians. Origen accepted this principle without
apparently questioning it. Christ was the New
Lawgiver, and the Gospel was the New Law.1
There were differences between them undoubtedly,
but they were purely formal, and it was easy, fatally
easy, to find the whole Gospel in the Old Testament
by means of the allegorical method of interpretation.
The facility with which this principle was applied,
1 Origen, Contra Celsus, iv. 22, vii. 7; De Prin., iv. 24.

270 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
and the wonderful range which the Old Testament
permitted to the allegorizing fancy, made it a favourite
field of interpretation, and in one place it seems as if
Origen was inclined to prefer the Old Testament to
the New. This attitude may have been assumed,
however, as has been conjectured by one of his most
careful critics, in order to weaken or oppose the
attacks of Gnosticism.1 But it was from no really
legal turn of mind that this seeming preference on
the part of Origen sprang. He belonged to what
would now be called the radical liberal wing of the
Church in Alexandria. The two parties who are
clearly to be distinguished are those of the allegorists
and the literalists, or of orthodoxy pure and simple
and the party of science and culture. The higher
spiritual element in the Church was represented by
the allegorists. It was by means of the allegory
that they avoided the difficulties of a hard, uncritical
interpretation based upon the crudest literalism.
The other side, that of strict conservative orthodoxy,
held to the narrowest verbalism, and reduced the
Gospel often to something not much higher than
the Paganism about them. This was also the party
of the monks who seem to have been then, as so
generally in the history of the Church, leaders in
stupidity and ignorance. So dull and unspiritual
were the tendencies at work in this element in the
Church, that it is asserted that they went so far as
to attribute a body to God. This was also the
ecclesiastical party which, re-enforced by the tend-
1 Redepenning, B. i. S. 279.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 271
encies at work in other portions of the Church, was
fighting against the larger and nobler spirit which
feared the transformation of the spiritual brotherhood
into a mere organization with a hard and legally
defined code of faith and morals. The ' Rule of
Faith' in Alexandria was at this time not what it
was elsewhere, or what it afterwards became here —
that is, a strictly defined Creed — but rather was it only
the common and essential elements of salvation as
then generally understood, and with a large and
generous inclination not to push the matter of
definition too closely. Origen's experience of the
legalistic interpretation of the Gospel in his own
person, and his conflict with the hierarchical element
in his own age, were bitter and harsh enough, and
led him to a larger and nobler feeling for the essential
freedom ofthe Gospel. The way in which Demetrius
ordered Origen to return from Palestine because he
had, at the request of the Bishops there, lectured
before the clergy, shows how arrogant the ecclesi
astical power was becoming even in Alexandria.1
The references also which he makes to the ecclesi
astics of his age show that they were more like some
of the later representatives of that class, than the
idealizing admiration for them which is so often felt
justifies. With all these forces Origen was at war.
The parting of the ways was at hand. The Church
must choose between the inner and spiritual in
Christianity, or the merely outward and external.
The West was already making her choice. She
1 Eusebius, H. E., B. vi. 19.

272 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
chose the outer and emphasized it as a bond of
union, fearing the influences which were at work in
the development of local and national sentiment.
With Origen, on the other hand, the invisible
Church was emphasized more than by Clement or any
of his predecessors. 1 This idea is not, as has sometimes
been supposed, a conception of Modern Protestantism
which is to be regarded as an absurd makeshift, but
was a truth which was seized upon by the wisest
and best man of the Ancient Church, in order to
solve the awful problem which was presented to
him in the actual state of the Church before him.
He saw the danger which threatened the Church
as by instinct, and tried to lead it to a higher and
truer thought of the Gospel than that which was to
be derived from a merely legalistic conception of it.
But the initial mistake lay in the definition of the
Gospel as a law, no matter how this statement might
be refined and softened in application. A principle
has its strength in itself, and not in any rigid or lax
application of it. The issue is direct, immediate,
and inevitable, though perhaps misunderstood
through the inability of men to see the order and
relation in which the phenomena of history stand to
its laws.
The allegorism which saved the Alexandrians
from the unspiritual and anti-Christian elements
of the Church life of their day was, however, only a
makeshift. It did not deal directly with the under
lying principles, and later it became one of the most
1 Contra Celsus, iv., vi.

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 273
powerful weapons in establishing all ecclesiastical
assumptions and theological decrees.
In the way, then, of a true statement of the relation
between the Law and the Gospel, it cannot be said
that Origen made any advance on the commonly
accepted thought of his age. The distinction be
tween the two, which was vital and essential, escaped
the eyes of all except a few, and they saw it only in
a dim and distorted way.
Since Origen shared in the common misconception
of antiquity, that the reason, and not the will, was
the effective and prevailing source of conduct, it
was inevitable that he should regard sin in the
light in which he did. When the generally received
assumption of the practically identical nature of the
Old and New Covenants was added to this, it was
impossible that he should grasp the order and
strength of St. Paul's thought, or see the relation
of those great living convictions of the life and its
ideal which issued out of his Christian consciousness.
In Origen's treatment of Faith the old Greek
idea maintains itself almost with the same strength
which is manifest in the other writers of this age,
but his loftier spirituality and his larger freedom
from the bondage of organization and the ecclesi
astical theories which were pushing rapidly to the
foreground, kept him from going so far astray as
others. The Greek mind never felt the claim of
the outward organization as the Latin or Western
mind did, and the interpretation of faith, even if not
Pauline, had an element in it which was not manifest 18

274 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
to the same extent in the Western branch of the
Church. Faith as mere dead orthodoxy Origen
would not recognize. The confusion and uncertainty
into which Clement was plunged by the spectacle
of great numbers who had no real conception of the
Gospel and stood to it only as members of the
organized Church, did not disturb Origen to the
same extent. He deliberately rejected this external
relation as having any meaning. He recognized
not different stages in the same process in these
various kinds of Christians, but two kinds of faith —
the mere acceptance or holding as true on the
one hand, and the spiritual apprehension or conse
cration on the other — and rejects the former as
worthless. Origen rejects as unhesitatingly as Clement the
naturalism of the Gnostics, but, like Clement, he does
not escape the influence which they exercised in the
order and definition of the Christian truth. Faith
is subordinate to knowledge, or Pistis to Gnosis.
Like Clement and his Gnostic contemporaries,
Origen made Gnosis the principle of the religious
life. In the interpretation of faith itself we see
the influence of this intellectual tone. The influence
of the Alexandrian type, as represented in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, seems to have been permanent and
the inheritance which every Alexandrian writer
claimed. As this, in turn, had its origin undoubtedly
in the Greek spirit at work there, we find it continued
through all the centuries during which the Church
at Alexandria was a powerful element in the general

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 275
life of the Church. When faith is regarded as the
affirmation of the credibility of some truth or the
intellectual judgment upon evidence, we at once
perceive that we are in a different atmosphere from
that in which the Apostle moved, and that this
conception of faith is intellectual and philosophical
rather than religious and spiritual.1
Another change had taken place, which widened
the chasm and introduced such confusion into the
meaning of the word that it seems almost impossible
for the Church to recognize or estimate the various
steps by which this change was brought about.
The definition of Faith as an objective fact rather
than a subjective condition was changing Christianity
from a spiritual state into an intellectual statement.
It is true that in the case of Origen his interpretation
of faith is subjective rather than objective, yet it is,
on the other hand, intellectual rather than personal
and religious. Over against the two conceptions of
objective and subjective faith, or rather side by side
with the latter, another distinction was introduced
or adopted by Origen, namely, that between a fleshly
and a spiritual faith. This he sees set forth or, at
least, suggested by St. Paul's language in 1 Cor. xii.
9. This development of the Christian truth which
he thinks he sees in the words of the Apostle was
manifestly suggested by the Gnostic theories and
interpretations with which he was so familiar, and
which exerted such an influence over some of the
greatest minds in the Alexandrian Church. Even
1 Contra Celsus, B. i. c. 9, 10.

276 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
recognizing to the fullest extent the high elevation
to which Origen assigns faith, it is obvious that he
did not attain to the same conception as St. Paul.
One or two considerations which suggest them
selves will confirm this conclusion. It is true he
insists upon a genuine Christian life as the only
evidence of faith, but he also thinks the controlling
force in human life is the reason and not the will,
and so the religious life is the result of an intellectual
apprehension rather than a moral inclination and a
spiritual consecration. This in itself would show
the different conceptions which underlay the Christian
life as he defined it to himself. We see the psycho
logical ideas which governed his thinking on the
subject of the Christian life, and here at least these
ideas were of importance and had a determining
influence. In his idea of forgiveness we see that the theories
which were working so disastrously upon the thought
and life of the Church did not leave him untouched,
or perhaps it might be better to say that oftentimes
he himself did not see clearly enough to understand
the full significance of his own language. At times
he appears to think that sins committed after
baptism can be wiped out by some other means
than the Divine Forgiveness. In one place he
enumerates seven different ways in which this can
be accomplished : — (i) by Baptism; (2) by Martyr
dom; (3) by Almsgiving; (4) by the Forgiveness
of the Transgressions of a Friend ; (5) by the
Conversion of a Sinner; (6) by the Abundantia

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 277
Charitatis ; (7) by Repentance or Penance.1 And
yet his own idea of baptism was so entirely different
from the material and magical theory which was
becoming prevalent, that one cannot see any necessary
relation between forgiveness and baptism as he
appears to have understood them. Contrary to
the prevailing view, he asserts at times a forgiveness
of sins after baptism, and apparently freely and
independently on the part of God.2 But forgiveness
as the appreciation and appropriation of the tender
love of God through faith in Jesus Christ is not
recognized on this spiritual side. The life in the
soul of the Son of God, which to the Apostle was
the highest definition or expression of faith, and its
immediate and vital relation to forgiveness, is not
set forth by Origen as his interpretation of the
deepest facts of man's Christian consciousness.
Redemption was not the higher life of the soul in
Christ, but rather the restoration of the man to his
original condition before he had sinned. This
conception had its origin in theological speculation
rather than in Christian experience.
Again, the attitude which Origen assumed towards
the historical facts of the Gospel shows the pre
dominance of the intellectual and speculative
tendencies rather than of the spiritual and religious.
He is not averse to allegorizing many of the minor
events of the Gospel narrative, and he does not
emphasize or even seem to fully realize the signifi-
1 Rothe, Vorlesungen ii. Kirchengeschichte, B. i. S. 440.
2 Redepenning, Origines, B. ii. S. 411, 415.

278 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. iv.
cance ofthe person of Christ. The reality of Christ's
Incarnation as an historic fact, while never slighted,
yields in importance to the idealizing tendency
which sees in this fact only a point of manifesta
tion of the Universal Logos. History is obscure,
imperfect, unsatisfactory. The historical Gospel was
of less importance than the knowledge of the
Eternal Logos freed from all the imperfections and
limitations of the historical Revelation. The
earthly life of the Redeemer was merely a symbol
to lead man away from the present and visible up
to the Eternal and Unseen. To Origen the Logos
was the one important thought, and the historical
element in the life of Christ was but the drapery
which surrounded the inner essence and, to an
extent at least, concealed from the ignorant and
unappreciative the higher and more esoteric truths,
the most important of which is the Logos. While
one cannot assert the same Docetic modes of thought
in Origen as in Clement, and while the former
regarded Christ as his Lord and Saviour, He is not
to Origen what He was to St. Paul, and the personal
and spiritual relation is less in the foreground and
less completely fills the horizon.
As Origen did not recognize St. Paul's idea of
the law and its abrogation ; as, moreover, he did not
rise to his supreme conception of faith as the
source and centre of the soul's life, no more did he
recognize the organic relation between faith and
that sonship which is its issue and expression. It
was not union with God through fellowship with

chap. iv. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 279
Christ which was the realization of the filial relation
and after which he strove, but a certain spiritual
identification with the Divine Nature by which man
attains to a new being.1 The perfect Christian was
one who was free from all earthly desire, and,
through devotion to a rigid asceticism, was able to
pass beyond all the demands of the Christian law.
Among other characteristics of this perfect or
Gnostic Christian was a state of vision which was
the result of the immediate union of the Gnostic
with the Logos, and which was impossible to the
lower and common type of Christian. In this we
have a touch of Neoplatonism. The Christian
character which was the ideal of St. Paul, and which
was the spontaneous issue of the vital union of the
soul with Christ, and which was the ultimate fact
and living hope of the great Apostle's life, is here
subordinated to speculative knowledge and mystical
aspirations as the means of attaining the highest end
of Christian living.
Yet so sure and high was the soul of this great
teacher, and so wide and deep his own experience,
that the practical value of a life like that of Christ
was to him everything. And it was through the
following of Christ that he, in fact, thought we
became sons of God. His own life was filled with
bitter experiences of human ignorance and human
meanness. Few have ever been loved as he was
loved, and few have ever been hated as he was
hated. Long struggles and arduous labours filled
1 Rothe, Vorlesungen, B. i. S. 431.

280 SAINT PAUL chap. iv.
all his days. Driven by ecclesiastical bigotry and
jealousy to end his life in a foreign land, we yet see
the one abiding and passionate desire of all his life
becoming more and more the strength and joy of
his every act. The new note of a higher freedom
and a nobler spirituality which we find in the
Alexandrians was in the case of Origen accompanied
by a simplicity and reality of his Christian life, which
make one feel that so far as life and thought are
concerned, in Origen, we have reached, if not the
supreme ideal, at least the high water-mark, of the
Ancient Church.

CHAPTER V
TERTULLIAN AND THE FOUNDATION OF LATIN
CHRISTIANITY
In passing from Alexandria to North Africa the
change is greater than almost any other which
presents itself in the period with which we are
dealing. Alexandria was Eastern and Greek in its
culture. All its traditions, language, and literature
were Greek or at least Oriental. With Carthage
and North Africa the situation was entirely different.
The Roman instinct and the Latin spirit here
reigned supreme, and found an intensity of expres
sion more concentrated and passionate than in
Rome itself. The wide surging currents of the
great cosmopolitan life of the Empire, which swept
through the Imperial city, scarcely touched these
shores. Greek was little understood outside the
educated classes, if at all ; and the contact with the
Church of the East was so slight, that the greatest
Father of the Latin Church, Augustine, had little,
if any, knowledge of his great predecessor in the
Church of Alexandria, Origen. Syria was the

282 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
cradle of Christianity, but, as the great historian of
Rome has said, "In the development of Christianity
Africa plays the very first part : if it arose in Syria,
it was in Africa that it became the religion of the
world."1 It is not possible to have any conception
of Latin Christianity at all accurate, unless one is
able to see what is meant by the Roman spirit, and
to see it actually expressing itself, not in institutions,
laws, theories, or speculations only, but in that which
underlies and creates all these — in life.
In the great representatives of the Christian
Church of this century we see all the forces which
were stirring the Empire and the Church exerting
their powerful influence. In the wide experience
and practical mind of Irenaeus, the conciliating
Bishop, we see the expression of the growing instinct
for order and institutional life, the Imperial idea of
the Church, which was slowly unfolding itself.
In the Alexandrians we meet the great philosophical
ideas of the age at work, and finding clear and
powerful expression in the shaping of Christian
thought and speculation. But in the wide diversity
of the Christian Church and the vast Empire
through which it had extended, other and equally
potent but less permanent influences were at work,
affecting the life of the Church and leaving their
stamp deep upon its history. In a great period of
transition, the struggle between the old and the
new, the progressive and the conservative forces of
society often centre about the mere practical details
1 Mommsen, Roman Provinces, vol. ii. p. 373.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 283
of life, which must eventually change as the wave
of history rolls on into later ages. But these very
struggles often give a turn to the subsequent life
and thought, which shows how passionate the
emotions, and how fierce the contest was in times
which are now to us so dim and remote. The last
half of the second century was a crisis in the history
of the Christian Church equal in importance to the
great struggles of the fourth century, and for the
actual form and spirit of the Church even more
significant. Much had changed since those early days when
wandering disciples or travellers who had been to
Jerusalem told in awe-struck tones to little groups
of anxious or curious listeners in country villages,
in the outskirts of the cities, in the humble cottages
of the poor or the quarters of the slaves, the story
of that infinite patience, that wonderful love, that
awful Death. Then, too, when eyes were strained
and dim with the pathos and mystery of that Figure,
came words more bewildering and overwhelming,
of how He had burst the bars of Death and filled
with joy the broken hearts, and made of His few
discouraged friends a band of heroes, who cheerfully
and sweetly faced all the sorrows of life, that men
might know Him and the power of His Resurrec
tion. When these first listeners had reluctantly and
silently separated, homeward they had walked under
the shining Eastern stars with this strange story in
their ears and stranger and more mysterious hopes
in their hearts. Together they had whispered over

284 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
the wonderful tidings which were sweeping so fast
from land to land in ways almost unseen as the
night wind. Alone they had sat brooding in the
darkness by the banks of the Nile, their dim, half-
seeing eyes filled with a vision which rose far above
the yellow sands of the desert which swept away
into the dark infinity of the night.
The tender pathos, the wonderful mystery, the
strange surprise of the early dawn of Christianity
was fading away into the light of common day.
The morning which had dawned so bright and
strong, full of peace and joy, blazing with the
revelation of God's love, had changed as the day
advanced, and now a dark pall was slowly creeping
over the sky. The earth was filled with the terrible
strife of men, and the sky was torn with the swift-
flying storms of God's judgment. The primitive
and elementary forces of human nature, which had
been frozen by despair or held in bondage by the
iron fetters of tradition and dead religious conven
tions, were roused into new expression by the new
movement in human history. At no time in the
past were men more torn by the conflicting energies
of human life, its passionate hopes, its terrible fears,
its wild despairs, than in this period. To many
Christians the joy and gladness of the early days
had passed away for ever. A new page was turned
in the history of man's life, and, as we read it, we
read a story of stern repression, of fierce struggle,
of deep, deep sorrow, of awful anguish, of pitiless
renunciation. The first indication of a struggle

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 285
between conflicting views about the duties and
responsibilities of the Christian life came from the
East, from Asia Minor. This we may say was for
many reasons the most natural locality from which
to expect it. Here the Apostle of European
Christianity had been born, and for years had
carried on his missionary work. Here, too, the last
of the Apostles had spent the most fruitful years of
his life. Here also the Apostolic traditions were
strongest and the fruits of their activity the greatest.
More names of distinction are associated with the
Christian Church in this part of the Empire during
the early part of the second century than in any
other. Antioch, the gateway of the East, in almost
immediate contact with it, had sent forth Ignatius
like a fiery cross to rouse the Church. Polycarp of
Smyrna had sealed his faith with his blood, and from
his home in the East Irenaeus had carried to the
far West the lessons and the devotion which he
had learned on Asiatic shores. The list is too long
to enumerate, but it shows how wide-spread and how
active was the Christian propaganda in these mixed
races which filled the cities along the ^Egean and
dwelt among the upper highlands of the interior.
The more extensive the Church became, the more
inevitable it was that new questions touching on the
actual life of the Christian communities should press
upon the minds of the more earnest, because these
questions were of such an immediate and practical
character. What could be expected of the members
of a Church which included not only rich and poor,

286 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
but also persons from every calling and trade in a
busy city? Some were drawn in by the powerful
influence of the eager and vivid convictions of the
first members, some attracted by lower motives.
Some were members by mere inheritance, and all
differently situated from the few despised and forlorn
members of the first obscure and unnoticed congrega
tions. The world was all about them, pressing in
on every side. What was their mission ? What
could be demanded of those who wished to join?
Not easy questions to settle now after eighteen
centuries. Far harder ones then when the way of
history was all unknown and the trackless sea of
the future spread itself out before them. The
members of the Church in the great cities were, or
at least many of them were, men of affairs. Their
activity took a larger range, and to many, doubtless,
it seemed as if the Church was drawing into closer
and closer contact with the world. This seculariz
ing of the Church created alarm, which was not
allayed by the wider development which was keep
ing pace with it. Worldly culture was also entering
in a greater degree into the Church. The literary
methods of the schools were making themselves a
place within its life. From all sides it seemed to
be absorbing elements which were not only foreign
but hostile to it. Philosophy, instead of simple faith
and sacrifice, had become a weapon in the hands of
the defenders of the Church. The use of it was
necessarily confined to the few, and those who were
ignorant, and could remember the days when life and

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 287
not words was the arm by which the faith had been
set forth, looked with great suspicion on the change.
All the old instincts, traditions, and motives of the
earlier age, which had not yet died out, were roused
to full vigour by the new departure which seemed
at hand. There is always a latent suspicion and
a slumbering hostility in the minds of ignorant and
uncultivated Christians against what seems to be
secular or worldly agencies.
What had these things to do with the kingdom of
Christ? Could art, learning, philosophy, or science
redeem a world sunk in selfishness and sin ? Christ
had snatched them as brands from the burning, and
they, too, had lifted up their voices against the old
corrupt heathenism and destroyed its power again
and again, not with fine words or clever arguments,
but by steadfast endurance, by perfect trust in Him.
Besides, the day of the Lord was at hand. The
Apocalyptic visions which expressed the most in
tense faith in His coming had their origin in Asia
Minor. Shepherds on the lonely hills had looked
up at night to see His fiery sign in the sky, and
sailors by the never-silent sea had seen His sword
in the lightning and heard His voice in the sound
of many waters. The intense religious enthusiasm,
the passionate hopes which would not be dis
appointed, swept before them in a storm of contempt
the new adjustment, the wretched compromise, which
was to bind the Church and the world in one, and
destroy for ever the life of holiness which was now
first finding full expression. The appalling vision

288 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
of the Church sinking down into the moral and
spiritual indifference of the world about it stirred
the souls of men in whom the old primitive faith
and simplicity were still alive. No doubt their own
fears and the traditions of the past caused an ex
aggeration of the significance of the change, and
they were unable to see the other side of this revolu
tion. But men of fiery faith and a martyr's courage
seldom take a wide, dispassionate, or just view of
any great crisis. That there were sufficient grounds
for their anxiety can hardly be disputed. Years
count for a great deal when things were moving as
fast as they were in the second century, and it is not
fair to attribute a condition of things which is found
at the end of this period also to the middle. But
Tertullian tells us that in his day makers of idols
had been chosen officers of the Christian Church,
and that astrologers continued to carry on their
business after they had been admitted to the Church.1
Both Tertullian and Hippolytus charge the Church
of Rome with the grossest indifference to all moral
demands and a pronounced secularizing of the
Church in the interest of the clergy. Hippolytus,
a bitter enemy of Calixtus, yet an honest man and
his contemporary, declares that the Bishop asserted
that a bishop could not be removed or deposed
from his office even for the commission of a deadly
sin. When we consider what this means, we may
well ask ourselves what grounds could be urged for
a deposition. It is true this is in the third century,
1 De Idol, 7, 9.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 289
but that this change was neither sudden nor un
noticed we have clear indications in the writing
called the Shepherd of Hermas, which was probably
written in Rome before the middle of the second
century. Here is a strong protest again the world
liness of the Church, and a clear sign that the spirit
was rising.
It was in Asia Minor that this protest first found
full expression, and led to an outburst of feeling which
spread thence to all parts of the Empire. There
was, as always, mingled with the more serious
elements a huge mass of very questionable ones,
which it is not easy now in every instance to detect.
Montanus, a man of whom we know little, appeared
in the small town of Ardaban in Phrygia and
started the conflagration. The spark with which
he kindled the fire was his prophecies of the ' Spirit'
With him were two women, Maximilla and Prisca
or Priscilla. The date is uncertain, but it is gen
erally assumed by the most competent critics to be
about 150-160 a.d. For a time the movement
seemed to be a purely local one, but the course of
events favoured its spread. It owed its origin doubt
less, in part at least, to the temperament of the
people among whom it first sprang up. It was also
assisted by certain Apostolic language which was
interpreted in its interest, and was also immensely
strengthened by the course of the world's history.
On all sides great and malign events were taking
place. Earthquakes visited various portions of the
East all through this century. In the year 166 a.d.
19

290 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
a great plague spread over the Empire, having been
introduced from the East by the army of Verus.
Famine followed plague in many places, and the year
was well described as 'Annus Calamitosus.' All
these events tended to work upon the religious
feelings of the more intense and sombre, and a
state almost of frenzy took possession of many.
The persecutions under Marcus Aurelius unques
tionably added fuel to the flame. The battle fever
still lived in the blood of the older generation, and
wherever a blow was struck it rang like a call to
arms, and many flung themselves into the conflict,
hating like soldiers to die in their beds. There
were to be no more compromises, no more yielding
to the soft allurements of the world, but a stern and
bitter struggle for a nobler and loftier life, and the
battle must be won at whatever cost of suffering and
blood. The world without seemed but a dramatic
expression of their own inward experiences. War,
war, never ending and bitter as death, was what many
had found in the new faith, and the fierce struggles
with their own passions made them despise and
rejoice in those outer struggles which seemed but a
shadow of their inner life.
The day of the Lord also was at hand. This
had been the universal faith of the first Christians.
Wherever the earlier spirit survived, this hope also
lived. The kingdoms of the world represented only
{hat which should perish and pass away. The more
terrible the blows which the world aimed at the
followers of Christ, the fiercer their contempt the

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 291
more reckless their challenge, and the greater their
joy in the battle. Not all, it is true, were of this
stern and passionate spirit ; but all everywhere who
were hoping for better things, and found their
highest joy in the near coming of the Lord, dared
everything. His coming was their dream day and
night, and in the thought of it the shame of self-
indulgence and weakness burned like a flame. Ex
hortation, appeal, and protest against all contact
with the world, against all lowering of the Christian
standard, against all compromises with the spiritual
stringency of the soul's high destiny, were scattered
like sparks over a dry prairie, and soon the whole
Church was in flames. The very character of the
movement shows that it must appeal to the very
best element in the Church. This new voice found
an echo in many breasts, and these were the most
earnest, devoted, and self-sacrificing. The message
was so clear, so simple, and yet so appalling. The
end of the world was near. The earth was vile and
the Church was becoming corrupt. The first pro
position was the common faith of by far the larger
part of the Church. The second has been the
common form of expression for all souls wrought
upon by the passion for spiritual perfection. The
last assertion, which was the conviction of many
serious and earnest men, was not the mere exag
geration of fanatics. If one takes the trouble to
study the legislation of the early synods, he will
discover what men found in the life of the Church
of this century. To tell what they found is not

292 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
necessary, and perhaps it would not seem to some to
justify Montanism, but it would at least explain it.
The sympathy with the essential elements of
Montanism was so great and so wide-spread, that
it is not possible to draw hard and fast lines as to
its extent and influence. In its simpler forms there
is something very appealing if not intellectually con
vincing. A devout historian of our own century has
said of it that " There is a peculiar freshness about
the Montanistic piety, and something of the colour
of the original Apostolic Christianity, which attracts
us." x How much there was in it to appeal to the
nobler and loftier side of life we see in the way the
story of Perpetua and Felicitas still stirs the soul
with dreams of heroism.
Another element in the development of Montanism
needs to be emphasized, and that was a literary
influence and the Scriptural ground to which it
appealed. It is a profound saying of Goethe that
" Nature reveals herself in monstrosities." History
also shows the presence of some particular influence
or force, not in a natural or normal fashion, but in
some exaggeration, which reveals how profoundly
men were moved by it, and how helpless they are
when the appeal touches some deep emotional
conviction. The Gospel of St. John and the
Apocalypse were the two books to which the
Montanists appealed and upon which they rested
their claims. In the one they found their authority
for the inspiration which they claimed as the dis-
1 Rothe, Vor. uber Kirch., B. i. S. 166.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 293
tinguishing phenomenon of the movement, and in
the strange language of the Book of Revelation
that vindication which they needed for their over
strained and highly excited imaginations. The
apparent harmony between their own feelings and
the language of the Apostolic literature to which
they appealed, gave, no doubt, an increase of convic
tion and a more positive and vigorous character to
their language. Yet how differently are they now
understood ! A recent critic, in commenting upon
this fact, has well said, " Montanism shows us the
first, and in the second century the only, impression
which the Gospel of John has made upon the heathen
Christians. But what an impression! The only
parallel to it is Marcion's interpretation of Paulinism
in the same period." 1 The few facts which remain to
us of the external history of the movement only go
to sustain what the fragments of the teaching would
suggest as to its spirit and character. Of Montanus
himself we know but little, and that little by no means
explains the influence of the movement with which
his name was associated. There was in his teach
ing and in that of his followers nothing original or
speculative as in that of the Gnostics. In fact, the
Montanists were the bitter enemies of all forms of
Gnosticism, as representing that intellectualism which
was in their eyes the chief enemy of the Supernatural.
They claimed to be orthodox, and in this period were
so for the most part. Irenaeus, as a firm believer in
the Chiliastic views which were so wide-spread, was
1 Harnack, Dogmen., B. i. S. 325.

294 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
in sympathy with them, at least to the extent that he
opposed efforts which were made for their suppres
sion. The Roman Bishop at the same time showed
no antagonism to them. When the movement
reached North Africa, the most distinguished theo
logian which the Western Church had up to this
time produced became a Montanist, and was held in
great repute by the most orthodox.
This new phase in the Church's history has been
regarded by some scholars as a reaction pure and
simple ; by others as an advance upon the existing
stage of the historic development. Looked at from
all sides, it is easy to see how in some respects it is
the one and in some the other. A more detailed
examination of its chief features will make this clearly
appreciated. The main points of the movement, for
they can hardly be said to form a system, were : —
(i) the Order of Prophets ; (2) the strong Chiliasm ;
(3) the Moral Reformation which it endeavoured to
establish. The ground upon which the prophetic claims
were based was found in the Gospel of St. John.
It was asserted that the Paraclete which our Lord
had promised in that Gospel had now come. The
old order of things was to pass away, and a new one
under the direct guidance of the Spirit was to take
its place. The very fact that certain individuals
were under the direct and immediate inspiration of
God — were in fact, in a sense which they asserted
but did not define, a new incarnation of God — made
the past order of Christian thought and life at once

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 295
obsolete. As the Revelation of Christ had super
seded the Old Dispensation, so the Christian history
was to be supplemented by new Revelations. This
new stage of history was to be under the immediate
direction of the Paraclete through the Prophets
until the coming of Christ. In order to justify the
prophetic claim, they appealed to the fact that
prophecy had never departed from the Church.
Apostolic and post-Apostolic writers had recognized
the existence of prophecy in the Church, and a long
list could be furnished of those who had possessed
this gift, even down to that age. This appeal to
the past, and the continuity of prophetic powers,
represents certainly a reactionary tendency. It is
the endeavour to establish anew a view of certain
phases of the Christian life, which was swiftly passing
away, if it had not already disappeared. From
another point of view, that of organization, it was a
protest against the growing hierarchical assump
tions of the Episcopate in the interests of the
ancient congregational life of the Church.1 The
Montanist asserted that the Prophet, inasmuch as
prophecy had been continuous in the Church, was
the true successor of the Apostles, and strove by
this guidance to lead the Church back to its more
spiritual and primitive life. Montanism did not
reject the Episcopate, but wished to retain it in
entirely different relations with the Church than
those which it was beginning to assume. The
evidence that there was much sympathy with the
1 Bonwetch, Geschichte d. Montanismust S. 117.

296 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
movement in spite of this apparent antagonism to
the Episcopate, is shown in the fact that some of
the bishops themselves with entire congregations
joined the ranks of the new movement. On this
side one can see only conservative and reactionary
tendencies at work, but even this phase has been
sometimes differently interpreted. These very facts
are claimed as indications of a progressive and
radical spirit, inasmuch as by asserting the claim of
a new element in the life of the Church — that is, the
immediate inspiration of the Paraclete — Montanism
was introducing a principle of indefinite advance
and development in opposition to the mechanical
and statutory principle of mere tradition and rigid
orthodoxy. This progressive aspect is more
apparent than real. For, in the first place, the
New Prophecy was to do away with all personal
intellectual activity. All that it permitted was that
the waiting soul was to listen for the divine message.
The individual was deprived of all initiative, and
the supremacy of the Prophet was asserted over
the whole spiritual life. The protest which was
made in the interests of the people against
hierarchical encroachments ended in establishing
a prophetic hierarchy more exclusive and arbitrary
than the one against which the protest was made.
Thus, while in theory it might seem to be pro
gressive, in fact it was destructive of all spiritual
advance. In the field of doctrine, while expressly disclaiming
any intention of departing from the established

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 297
doctrinal position of the Church, yet from the very
fact that the revelation of the Paraclete through the
Prophets was made the cardinal doctrine of the
movement, a new order of relations was intimated
than that upon which the Church stood, and a
subordination different from that set forth in the
New Testament or in the doctrinal teaching of the
Church was made prominent. The revelation of
the Father through the Son thus inevitably became
of less importance than the revelation of the Spirit.
This point of contrast or opposition, however, from
the undeveloped condition of theological thought
proper, does not, so far as the present writer's know
ledge extends, seem to have been in the least
emphasized or even set forth.
The Chiliasm, on the other hand, which was one
of the distinguishing elements in Montanism, was
in no way a distinct departure from the general
sentiment of the Church, nor did it rest for its
strength upon any purely local feeling. No one
thought seems to have been more widely diffused
throughout the Church both East and West than
this vivid expectation of the Lord's coming. No
one particular class was affected by it. Justin
Martyr, Irenaeus, and later Cyprian in the West
were influenced by it, as well as the more ignorant
and excitable members of the Church in Phrygia.
It is true that Montanism organized this sentiment
and gave it greater prominence and clearer expres
sion, but the fountains of this feeling lay deep down
in the primitive Christian expectation. The end

298 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
of the world was at hand, and the faithful were
bidden flee from the wrath to come. The new
Jerusalem was to descend out of Heaven, and the
capitol of the Messianic Kingdom was to be fixed
at Pepuza in Phrygia. Every effort was made to
give emphasis and distinctness to this hope. At
the great Montanistic feast, maidens bearing lamps
walked in procession, evidently intended to repre
sent the virgins of our Lord's parable, and setting
forth thus the expectation of the Parousia.1 These
features, however, were merely the external
and accidental expression of the essential life of
the movement. Its real power lay in something
deeper than these trappings. The vital element
in it lay not so much in its claim to prophecy or
its Chiliastic enthusiasm, as in its moral protest,
in its effort at reform in the field of the practical
Christian life. It is this side of the movement
which must be regarded as of chief importance, for
it was from this side that its influence passed over
into and directly affected the Church, and it was
this aspect of it which roused the enthusiasm of
many who would naturally feel some reluctance in
departing from existing customs and traditions.
One of those profound yet subtle changes which
mean so much was coming over the Church, and
men felt it rather than saw it or understood it.
The Church was slowly turning its eyes from the
past to the future. For the Church, with the loss
of its primitive character and with its greater
1 Bonwetch, S. 76.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 299
extension, had also lost much of its earlier feeling
towards the world. Its gradual development into
a powerful organization led unconsciously to a new
view of its history. It did not intend to reject the
past, but it felt the impulse for the future stirring
its young blood. It was now in much closer
contact with society than ever before, and was
instinctively looking towards the recognition of the
State and a long and intimate alliance with it which
was ultimately to come. There was no conscious
and deliberate compromise or accommodation on the
part of the Church, but an unconscious- interpre
tation and adaptation of the Gospel to the new
situation, brought about by the influence of long-
established customs and ideas, of hereditary instincts,
and of subtle but most powerful tendencies, deeply
planted in human nature and strengthened by
centuries of recognition. The great forces of this
massive civilization of the Empire surrounded the
Church the moment it emerged from its seclusion,
and the instinct for conquest, which is of the very
essence of its life, led it, with its growing life, to
think differently of its destiny, especially as its
earlier consciousness was so profoundly modified
by the new situation. That such a change as this
was actually taking place seems to be contrad/icted
by the most important literature of this period.
The hostility of the Empire is more savage and
systematic than before. The hatred of the Church
for the order of life around it seems to be asserted
in all its great writers. Yet, running through all

300 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
this literature is the evidence, contained in the very
protests themselves, that men needed warnings and
exhortations which they had not needed before. A
most resolute attempt was made to check the drift
of the general life of the Church, and the more
sober and earnest had their fears aroused, their
conservative feelings excited, by the closer contact
with society which was manifest in the moral
deterioration which was visible to all. A process
of readjustment or rearrangement of the spiritual
forces seemed to be required to meet the new
situation. The issue which was forced upon the
Church called forth two efforts to meet it — the
one conscious and deliberate, the other indirect and
perhaps unconscious, but which operated in a way
that was of far greater significance to the future than
the other. As the inner spirituality decayed, and
the moral integrity became less and less distinctive,
the consciousness of unity and solidarity became
more and more obscured. Then was heard the
clash of warring factions, bent upon establishing
certain speculative systems which would be a
substitute for the harmonious and powerful ex
pression of the Christian life which was the strength
and life of the Church in the beginning. To meet
this internal deterioration and quicken the funda
mental consciousness of Christian brotherhood, an
external expression of the unity so tenaciously
insisted upon and so instinctively demanded was
set forth. The organization as an expression of
this unity became of more and more importance, as

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 301
the inner ground of it became less and less the
personal consciousness of each individual Christian.
The unity which was thus imperilled by the lack of
spiritual foundation was thus based upon organiza
tion and historical tradition. The wide diversity
in character and morals of the members of the
Church made the old demand for personal holiness
as the key to the Church's existence no longer
possible if the Church was to maintain its relations
with the world. As a consequence, the attribute of
holiness was transferred from the members to the
organization, from the individual to the Church.
Against this change, which opened up so entirely
different prospects, the older traditions and inherited
moral attitude and standards made a most powerful
protest. From this side of the situation Montanism
is the expression of the unwillingness to see the
individual lost in the merely external organization
of the religious consciousness. Moreover, in the
passing of the years and the extension of the
Church, together with this new view of its relation
to the members, the emphasis had been shifted from
one side of life to the other.
The Church insisted that the predicate of holiness,
or at least the root of it, lay in purity of doctrine.
It asserted, moreover, that the individual who was
in union with that body, which was the appointed
guardian of the truth, was, by virtue of this union
and the consequent acceptance of the doctrine,
guaranteed salvation. The Montanists, on the other
hand, show the survival of the ancient spirit, in that

302 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
they claimed that the true holiness of the Church
consisted in the moral and spiritual perfection of
its members. The intense energy with which they
asserted this was a strong appeal to all who were
in earnest about life. The Montanist protested
against a conception of holiness which identified it
with an office, an organization, or a theory, and
insisted that it must be manifest in the individual
or it had no actual existence in human life. In
other words, that it is in life, not dogma, that the
truth is revealed. This, no doubt, was set forth
with considerable confusion, but the spiritual instinct
was right when it rebelled against a mere official
Christianity which justified or, at least, condoned a
moral leniency, if not laxity, which had its origin not
in the immense pity and forgiveness of God, but
in a theory which was absolutely external to the
inner life of the soul. It was this instinct which
lay behind the assertion of Montanism of the priest
hood of all believers over against the growing
sacerdotalism and the limitation of the spiritual
inheritance of believers. But this very protest was
to a degree confused and ineffective, owing to the
presence of certain influences in the life of the age,
and also to the lack of real spiritual insight and
Christian sensitiveness. The holiness which the
Montanist insisted upon so passionately was not to
be found in inward character but in specific acts.
Holiness was identified with the prevailing moral
conception of life, and that was ascetic. Asceticism
may be the result, and often is, of a serious religious

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 303
disposition, but it never can be the cause of it. This
identification of holiness with asceticism, which is
one of the notes of the age, issued from a spiritual
confusion, which shows the presence of other and
alien elements than those which sprang from the
pure influence of Christ. The motive of Montanism
was undoubtedly pure, and no doubt also there was
need of a restoring influence ; but the form and the
ideal which ruled this reaction were not drawn from
Apostolic fountains, but from the reactionary tend
encies of human nature and from the austere and
legal ideal of the prevailing Stoic morality. As
a result the emphasis was again shifted, and it
was not inward and spiritual purity, but outward
and physical purity, which was set forth as the
ideal. That this was the case can be readily
seen when the means which were used to produce
and regulate it are considered. By no possible
stretch of the imagination can one conceive of the
holiness of Christ as a result of legislative enactment
of any character whatever. It must issue from the
inner consecration and fellowship of the soul with
God. But external legislation was a demand which
was in the air, showing the failure of a true know
ledge of the springs of the Christian life, or at least
a confusion on a matter about which all confusion
means disaster to the highest interests of the soul
and of mankind.
The sympathy which the Montanistic protest
aroused shows how deep the sources of it were in
the better life of the Church. It was an honest

304 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
endeavour to lead the blind and groping ambitions
of the Church into the path they were seeking,
for the highest needs and instincts of an age do
not always, and sometimes never, find clear and
conscious expression. Oftentimes they lead to
confusion, permanent or temporary ; and it is only
long after that they are clearly understood. This
age was striving after a definite ideal, and while
we may recognize the fact that it was not the
highest expression of the Christian consciousness,
yet the strength of Montanism lay in the fact that
it was bold and resolute enough to completely grasp,
appreciate, and sympathize with this endeavour, and
laid down the broad and general demand that every
Christian should aim at becoming that which was
so much admired in the individual saints.1 In
Montanism we have the paradox of an old and
true instinct moving along a new path, and ex
pressing itself in a manner which was the direct
opposite in almost every respect of its original
form. The beginnings of the Christian conscious
ness lay in the new sense of freedom and redemption
through Christ. The stern Puritanism of Montanism
legislated this freedom and the springs whence it
issued out of existence. It claimed to be a protest
against the merely ecclesiastical and statutory
Christianity which permitted such great moral laxity,
and insisted that the remedy was a more complete
development of the prevailing ideal. This ideal
in its largest theoretical aspect, as has been seen,
1 Belck, Geschichte, S. 25.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 305
was legal. Christianity had been recognized as
the ' Nova Lex,' and this conception was gradually
evolving its large application to the whole domain
of life. As yet it had been applied only to the
doctrinal statements and the undeveloped but ex
panding organization of the Church. The vast
field of life and conduct was still untouched by a
systematic and authorized expression of the legal
idea. There was no law in the statutory sense
here, and the Scriptures were used to support both
a lax and a severe conception of the Christian life.
But the tide was running swift and strong, and
swept on over the whole territory of man's life.
We recognize at once that in relation to the Gospel
the legal conception is a secular idea. It has its
origin elsewhere than in the Christian consciousness.
In its various manifestations and expressions it
must necessarily embody itself in forms which are
essentially secular. The curious inconsistency of
Montanism, which was in intention a protest
against the secular spirit, is, that while protesting
most vigorously against the secular tendencies of
the Church, the Montanistic Prophets proceeded
to extend the secular ideal, which had shaped the
growing life of the Church so decisively, to the
larger field of life and conduct, and determined to
give a statutory expression to that which from the
very nature of the case must ever be determined
by the spirit within.1 That Montanism was on this
side only an extension and a confirmation of the
1 Harnack, Dogmen., B. i. S. 325. 20

306 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
prevailing moral ideal and a codification so to speak,
and a legalizing of the more ascetic tendencies of
the period, can be readily seen, not only in the forms
of life which it insisted upon, but in the immense
impulse which it gave to this conception of
Christianity. It was in this aspect, at least, only an
acceleration of the legal development which was
taking place. The three particulars in which it
emphasized its protest against what it considered
the worldly laxity of the Church, and yet shows its
entire correspondence with the real spiritual temper
which formed the more vital and intense life of
the Church, are: — (i) Fasts; (2) Marriage; (3)
Martyrdom. 1. The value of Fasting was universally accepted
in the Church at this time, but there was no law on
the subject, and the fasts rested for their authority
simply upon the traditions of the Church. This
sentiment and custom were hardened into a law of
universal obligation. The spirit in which the fasts
were to be regarded was entirely altered, and what
had been largely a matter of choice and custom
was raised to a legal requirement. The divine
authority which authenticated this new law was
found in the Paraclete, which spoke through the
Prophets. 2. The subject of Marriage likewise received a
new treatment. The general sentiment in regard to
marriage was, except in the case of a few noble
exceptions, tainted with a feeling of reluctance and
suspicion. Virginity was regarded as a higher state,

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 307
and this latent discrimination against the divine
order had its source not in any Christian truth, but
in the prevalent asceticism and in the value which
abstinence and self-restraint, even when they are
injurious, almost always possess. The manifestation
of this self-deprivation has always excited the ad
miration of men, especially in an age of general
self-indulgence ; and it is an easy step to assume that
the virtue which resides in the act of will belongs
also to the special act in which this disposition
expresses itself. The Montanists were either unable
or unwilling to deny entirely the validity of marriage
in itself, but they so interpreted the permission, that
no second marriage could be looked upon with any
thing but abhorrence. While not always disposed,
in the case of the first marriage, to assert that it
was a weak concession to the flesh, they had no
hesitation in asserting this of the second, and fiercely
reprobated any disposition of the kind. This attitude
met with general approval, and in their determination
to raise the standard of Christian morality they forced
the question to a legal enactment, and permitted only
one marriage to a member, no matter what the cir
cumstances were ; and even this was regarded as a
relaxation of the highest demands.
3. As to the question of Martyrdom, this also was
regarded by them as self-evident. No Christian
could under any circumstances prefer his life to the
opportunity to witness his faith before the world
even unto death. No compromise, no hesitation,
no considerations of prudence or the welfare of

308 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
others, released him from the obligation to meet
the issue whenever presented. To these stern
soldiers there had been enough shifting and trim
ming. No evasions were to be any longer
permitted. The Church had lost its heroic spirit,
and it needed again to be fired with the old fearless
courage of the past which had won such victories
against the world. This very demand, however,
created a false enthusiasm and paved the way to
most unhealthy exaggerations. The martyrs became
the Christian heroes, and the heart which did not
flinch at the sight of the lions was filled oftentimes
with the unhealthy fumes of popular admiration.
Few have been more arrogant than the saints and
martyrs who have become public property and
live ever with the voices of the world, whether they
be religious or secular, in their ears. What could,
if genuine, only spring out of the inspiration of the
soul was made a matter of legislation, and courage
and consecration were authorized by act of law.
In other and related matters the attitude of the
Montanistic party was no less exaggerated, intolerant,
and false. It rejected a second repentance in the
case of a fall, and left the soul outside the communion
of the Church and apart from human fellowship and
sympathy, and refused it the sure consolation of God's
infinite pity. From every one alike, weak and strong,
young and old, wise and ignorant, struggling and
sure, Montanism demanded a stern inflexible morality
which was in no ways the natural expression of a
soul filled with the perfection of Christ, but a purely

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 309
external life which revealed only the intensity of the
reaction against the deterioration which was sapping
the simplicity and beauty of the Christian character.
In their anxiety about the purity of the Church the
Montanists opposed the baptism of children, for the
magical view of baptism which was establishing itself
made forgiveness of mortal sins, at least after baptism,
impossible. In this respect the Montanists took a
much narrower view than the Church ultimately
adopted. With them the sacramental system was
not very far extended, and the sacramental idea
exhausted itself in baptism. The Church, on the
other hand, from the necessity of its position, and
by a natural law of development, gradually extended
the sacramental idea beyond baptism, and created
various channels through which the sacramental
functions of the Church could find and repair the
spiritual injuries of the members of its fold. Ulti
mately the sacramental efficacy of the Church
extended itself over the whole life of man from the
beginning to the end, and the holiness which it was
able to impart, and which it dispensed through its
various agencies, was able to anticipate every moral
and spiritual necessity.1
Thus Montanism, while it claimed to be a protest
in the interests of a more serious and more spiritual
life, in reality gave a legal value to every act, and the
most insignificant detail of conduct was fixed by the
decision of the Prophets. Nothing was or could be
indifferent, and nothing was left to the individual
1 Ritschl, Entstehung, S. 335.

310 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
conscience. An iron law reached wide and deep
over the entire contents of life, and all personal
initiative was destroyed. It was an outburst of
pietism which stirred the Church to its depths, but it
ended in a harsh, unspiritual, and trivial rigorism
which denuded the life of all real strength and
beauty. Yet it claimed to be but an attempt to
revive the past and to restore the lost Atlantis
which was buried in the rolling years. As Ter
tullian said, " Paracletus resti tutor potius quam
institutor disciplinae." 1
The attitude of the Church towards Montanism
was by no means the same in every locality ; and
more than that, it was only gradually that the
struggle became general. The wide-spread dis
satisfaction with the inner decay, the deepening
chasm between the past and the present, the oppos
ing tendencies which were manifesting themselves,
led to a profound unrest. Anything which appeals
to the really serious element of society exerts a
greater effect than that which touches only the
superficial emotions. The rise of Montanism or
something analogous to it was inevitable at this
crisis in the Church's history. The rapid spread
and the wide territory it covered shows it was no
merely local phenomenon. It swept like a wave of
fire from the mountains of Phrygia to the far-off
plains of North Africa, and everywhere seems to
have sent a thrill through the hearts of the most
eager and lofty. Stripped of all the merely super-
1 De Monog., 4.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 311
ficial characteristics, the struggle was between the
old and the new, the primitive ideas and sentiments
of a simple enthusiastic life and the deep instincts of
a world-wide movement which was marching on to
victory. The most passionate hostility was excited
by the struggle in some localities, yet Montanism
survived for centuries, because with all its grotesque
and impossible features, which, it should be observed,
play but a small part in the influence which religious
feeling exerts over the mass of men, it still repre
sented the last lingering glance backward to an
age which in all its essential points was soon to be
forgotten. The triumphant Church with remorseless rigour
determined to destroy all opposition whether heathen
or Christian, and this latter especially when it was
but the echo of a past which no man knew. Yet the
intense bitterness shown towards the Montanists
reveals the strength ofthe movement. More than two
centuries after it had begun — that is, in the year 398
a.d. — an edict was issued by Arcadius and Honorius
against them, ordering the destruction of all Montan
istic books, and made their concealment punishable
with death.1 Yet this does not seem to have proved
satisfactory, for more than an hundred years later it
was thought necessary to take still more stringent
measures against them, and in the year 407 a.d.
they were proceeded against and their wills declared
invalid, and their slaves given freedom on condition
of their becoming Catholics. This was even harsher
1 Bonwetch, Geschichte, S. 172.

312 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
treatment than that used to the Pagans, but a stubborn
minority seldom receives justice in religious contro
versies. Yet still later, in 530 and 532 a.d., Justinian
issued another law against them.1 When they finally
disappeared is not known, but for good and for evil
their work was done long before they passed from
the stage of history.
More important even than their own history is
the attitude of the Church towards them, and the
influence which in turn they exerted upon the
Church. When the controversy assumed an acute
stage, and it became necessary to define the position
of the Church towards the new movement, con
siderable embarrassment was felt on account of the
difficulty of drawing a sharp line of distinction and
laying down a definite plan of attack. The claims
of the Prophets were as well the weakness as the
strength of Montanism. The Church could not
well deny the existence of prophecy within it, as
that had been the common faith from the beginning.
Yet the view of prophecy which one would derive
not only from the Old Testament but from the
writers of the Apostolic Age, was quite different
from that held by the Montanists. Unconsciously
the Church had admitted or accepted without any
reflection certain theories as to the nature of the
prophetic state which had been set forth by Philo,
and these in turn had not been drawn so much from
the Hebrew prophecy as from the heathen mantic.
A condition bordering upon hypnotism mingled
1 Rothe, Vorlesungen u. Kirchengeschichte, B. i. S. 181.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 313
with intense religious excitement, which was char
acteristic of certain phases of heathenism which
found such frequent and full expression especially
in Phrygia, was now identified with Christian
prophecy. The moment, however, this claim was
made and the situation was fully realized, the
Church was aroused, and the assumption as to the
character of prophecy which had become so wide
spread was rejected as soon as it was seen what a
strange and unknown future it opened up. This
fact throws considerable light on the state of the
New Testament Canon at this time. It has been
strongly urged that if there had been a Canon of
the New Testament with definite shape and recog
nized authority, it would have been impossible for
Montanism to have set forth such claims as it did,
or that it should have obtained such wide-spread
influence. Not only did the Church reject the
Montanistic prophecy on the ground of its heathen
character, but the necessity of finding a counter
weight to this position gave a great impulse to the
canonical development. The Apostolic writings
gained new power as against Montanistic prophecy.
The more passionately the Montanists insisted upon
their prophecy and the consequent extension of
the sacred literature of Christianity, the more
vehemently the Church insisted upon the definition
and limitation of the authoritative writings.
In the field of organization also the development
was accelerated and the Church took a more
positive and dogmatic position. As the Prophets

314 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
of the Old Dispensation stood in opposition to the
Law, so the Montanists asserted did their Prophets
stand over against and above the New Law, the
Gospel, and the organization which had now
become associated with it. This claim that the
Church was under the divine guidance of the
Paraclete speaking through the Prophets was a
challenge to the growing order of things. The
Church rejected not only the expression but the
theory upon which it was based, and yet in reality
adopted the principle, and later set it forth in a new
guise in the claim that the guidance of the Church
was, doctrinally at least, to be found in the Episco
pacy which was the organ of the Holy Spirit.
The Montanists had not departed from any of
the doctrines of the Church, and had confined their
claim to legislate and direct to the field of morals.
The Church had been driven by the stress of the
controversy with the Gnostics to make this claim
for doctrinal truth, but after the force of Montanism
seemed to have spent itself, we see that the Church
shifted the ground somewhat, or extended it rather
to include the field of morals also ; but this was
treated with far less stringency than by the
Montanists. Against the position of the Montan
ist, which laid such emphasis upon individual
character, the value of the organization was insisted
upon, and made of much greater prominence as
against the danger which threatened it. The less
pressure the individual character was able to bear, the
greater became the importance of the organization.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 315
There was before the world at this period an
illustration of the value of organization to maintain
the coherence and order of a vast mass of the most
diverse elements, which has been the marvel of
mankind ever since. The Imperial system of laws,
and the Imperial organization which had been built
up by the genius of one people through centuries
of most unflinching endeavour, was now showing its
inherent power. Rulers of the most opposite
character, some the very basest of mankind, had
sat upon the Imperial throne, but its foundations
were sunk so deep that all the depravity of its
occupants could not overthrow it. The passion for
organization was in the Roman blood, and this
great instinct became one of the most vital forces
in days of trial to shape the fortunes of the Church.
To what an extent this Roman instinct worked we
can see best only in the later ages, when the rivalry
of the Empire had disappeared and the Church
stood majestic and alone towering over the ruins
of the civilization of the past and the chaos of
barbarism, out of which it was to be one of the
foremost agencies in bringing the new order and
the lofty ideals of the times to come.1
1 " Papal infallibility is but Imperial supremacy transfigured and
spiritualized. The Catholic Church could not have been without
Christianity, but still less could it have been without Roman
Imperialism. It owes its life to the one, but its distinctive
organization to the other  Apart from Rome, and Rome
decadent, with the Imperial idea and organization, but without the
Imperial spirit, Catholicism could never have come into being." —
Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, pp. 107, 108.

316 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
How powerfully the disturbance which Montan
ism introduced worked towards a stronger and more
complete organization is witnessed by the fact that
the first of those gatherings, the Synods and
Councils, which grew to such authority and dignity,
were inspired by the desire to controvert the new
Prophets.1 In the field of Christian morals the influence of
Montanism upon the Church was very great. The
Church resisted the harsh demands of that party
in the interests of a larger liberty, but it was not
the liberty of a large spiritual or intellectual freedom
which was the characteristic of the great Alex
andrian teachers, and thus an approximation at
least to the Gospel liberty, but only a greater
moral freedom, a larger room of conduct and action.
The field of things indifferent, to which the Mon
tanists had refused existence, was recognized, and
concessions were made to the nature of man as he
existed in society, which in some respects were
very questionable concessions. The rigidity of
Montanism was partially adopted, but it was limited
in its application. The Church advanced in time
the rigoristic conception of life, but it denied its
universal obligation which was the very essence of
Montanism. It assented to the legal theory of
conduct, but resisted its extension to all the
members of the Church. It drew a distinction
between the clergy and laity, and made the sterner
demands applicable to the former only. In so
1 Hefele, Hist, of Councils, vol. i. p. 77 (Eng. Trans.).

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 317
doing the Church established a mode and standard
of judgment which has remained in force ever
since. The ideal which Montanism had set up made
demands which recognized no distinctions what
ever, and as such, and in this sense, it was a
healthier and a truer claim than the twofold piety
which became prevalent through the adoption of
one portion of the theory, which ultimately pre
vailed with such disastrous results to the integrity
and genuineness of the Christian character. This
brief and incomplete review of Montanism will
assist, at least, in understanding some of the changes
which were taking place in the Church life, and
also the influence which it was calculated to exert
upon a certain type of character. It is not, how
ever, in the East but in the West that the great
representative figure meets us, who has been
associated in the minds of all students of church
history with Montanism, and recognized as its
most powerful exponent. He is the first of that
line in which are included Cyprian, Lactantius,
Minucius Felix, and Augustine, and is second to
none save the last. These are the real founders
of Latin theology, although they all belong to
North Africa. In studying the character of
Tertullian, we are brought in contact with one
wholly unlike any that we have before met, and
are face to face with the new type in its most
vigorous and powerful expression. Quintus Sep-
timius Florens Tertullianus was the son of a

318 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
centurion, and was born in Carthage about the
year 160 a.d. according to the best calculations.
At this time Carthage was, Rome excepted, perhaps
the most corrupt city in the West. Here, too, was
a larger measure of culture combined with luxury
than in any other city of the West save Rome. He
inherited the dark passionate Punic temper with
the warrior soul of his martial descent. Tertullian
was not of Christian parentage, and the fierce fever
of his African blood swept him down into the vast
whirlpool of vice in which the society of his native
city was plunged. It is a far cry from the serene
spirit of Clement to the sombre, violent nature of
Tertullian. In him we pass from " the cloud-
capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn
temples " of Gnostic speculation and Neoplatonic
dreams which haunted the minds of the Alexan
drians, to the hot and passionate atmosphere in which
the coarsest and grossest forms of vice obtruded
themselves into the very blaze of day. TertuUian's
eye was not fixed upon the abstractions of an
imagination haunted by Platonic aspirations, but
upon the drama — we may indeed call it the tragedy —
of actual life. His difficulties and struggles are
not mental but personal. He fought not with the
intellectual doubts, but with the fierceness and
violence of his own nature. He was educated in
the way a man of Roman blood or of Roman
traditions would be educated. He had no taste
for philosophy, although a wide acquaintance with
it and something of a hard practical contempt for

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 319
much of its ineffectiveness. He spent many years
at Rome, and then returned to his native city
apparently with the purpose of becoming a lawyer
or advocate. Some time, we know not when, that
hour came to him which the modern poet has so
well described, when
" On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell.
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell."
This awful secret, this mysterious experience, he
never reveals to human eye. Perhaps on some
dark night, with the silent stars above him, the
sense of his lonely orphanage sank into his soul.
He turned from that foul past with passionate
repulsion, and found in Christ the hope for himself
which he found nowhere else. Yet he never forgot
those years that were gone, and so intensely human
is he, and so swept by the fiery blast of temptation,
that he never thought of that past without a shudder.
He turned his eyes away with a moan from that
which he loathed, and yet he always felt the power
of it over his wild and stormy heart. Few men,
probably, have ever lived a sadder life than he.
Afflicted with that terrible imagination which brings
such immeasurable pain to its possessor, he was
plunged again and again into that immense ocean
of pain which the dramatic instinct of the soul
always realizes about it. There were brute instincts
in him which would not sleep, haunting memories
which filled every waking hour with the unforgotten

320 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
past. Such an one Nature has destined for many
things, but not for happiness. No hours of peace
came often to that soldier. He is for ever fighting
with an almost awful intensity for that which he
never felt he had attained. The world around him
pressed in upon his inner life. All the appeals
which it makes to a sensuous, passionate nature, it
made to his. Like a great bell from which, though
silent and motionless, every vibration in the air calls
forth a responsive voice, so this strange and sensi
tive soul was thrilled by sights and sounds it would
not know, and hated the mysterious relation which
every aspect of life and all the varied emotions of
the human soul were continually implying. From
all these distracting influences, which seemed to
pursue him everywhere, and from which he could
find no escape, the dungeon of the martyr even
appeared a welcome retreat. So, in writing to the
martyrs, there is a tone almost of envy, and certainly
of sincere bitterness, in the way in which he bids
them welcome the captivity which called forth so
much sympathy from others. They, at least, in the
darkness and silence of their cells, could find that
hour of calm in which they could turn their souls to
God, for there they had escaped from the ever-
present world and the voices which were for ever
calling to the soul. "You," he said, "have no
occasion to look on strange gods ; you do not run
against their images ; you have no part in heathen
holidays, even by mere bodily mingling in them ;
you are not annoyed by the foul fumes of idolatrous

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 321
solemnities ; you are not pained by the atrocities
or madness or immodesty of their celebrants ; your
eyes do not fall on stews and brothels ; you are free
from causes of offence, from temptations, from un
holy reminiscences.1
His was a wild soul, which the commonplace life
of men could neither satisfy nor check. The beauty
of the world seemed to torment him, and his fiery
African blood was heated to a fever by the common
graces of life. His ardent spirit was ever in an
intense glow, and however irrational, exaggerated,
absurd, grotesque, and repulsive he at times may
seem, there is always the sense of immense power
coming forth like a manifestation of a natural force.
He is always at a white heat. His sentences leap
from his lips like sabre strokes. They flash and
shatter like forked lightning. Fiercely, wildly, reck
lessly, brutally at times he strikes, without pity and
without love. Yet, in spite of his ferocity, contempt,
and hatred, one cannot read him without the feeling
that he was struggling desperately all the time, and
that these expressions are but the explosions of a
nature that was volcanic in its wild energy and
passion. Storm-tossed and striving as he always
was, there comes a cry again and again from that
much-tried soul of piercing sweetness, of infinite
pathos — the lyrical cry of one to whom the best was
revealed, if only in glimpses. When one thinks of
that restless spirit, his pride and arrogance, there is
something of plaintive beauty and tenderness in the
1 Ad Mar., c. ii. 21

322 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
touching words with which he begins his Tract upon
Patience : " I fully confess unto the Lord God that
it has been rash enough, if not even impudent, in
me to have dared compose a treatise on Patience,
for practising which I am all unfit, being a man of
no goodness. . . . And so to discuss about that
which it is not given one to enjoy, will be, as it were,
a solace ; after the manner of invalids who, since
they are without health, know not how to be silent
about its blessings. So I, most miserable, ever
sick with the heats of impatience, must of necessity
sigh after, and invoke, and persistently plead for,
that health of Patience which I possess not. . . .
Perish the whole world if I might gain Patience ! "
It was the intense and dramatic reality of his life
to him which is the striking thing about him. He
felt that the task of the Gospel was to deal with the
actual life of man and not solve the problems of the
philosopher. This was what made it of supreme
importance in his eyes. He deliberately and wil
fully, and, one may add, with a brutal disregard of
the whole intellectual side of life, flung himself into
the struggle to find a standing ground where the
soul could find not only peace, but what to him was
of far greater importance, strength and purity. For
him a new world order had begun in the Gospel.
He flung the door shut against the past, fiercely and
disdainfully. The star of Christ was shining in the
sky above him — the star of peace ; but for such as he
that peace does not come until after the long warfare
is ended in the eternal silence. The whole man is

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 323
pictured in his works. They are, as has been said,
not classical even in form, and are filled with the
modern spirit. They are subjective to a degree no
classic writer would admit.1 The style is charac
teristic of the thought. It is lurid and vehement,
full of gloom and fire, burning like a smoking torch.
His education had been careful and extensive ; and
this, joined with the vigour of his own intellectual
nature, made him master of all the resources of the
past which he seems to so despise. He is always
at war with the established order, and all his
writings are the battles he wages against what he
considers the foes of the higher life. Yet his
method is that of an advocate. He is again and
again disingenuous, sophistical, and unconvincing.
Full of hatred and scorn, he overwhelms his ad
versaries with a perfect storm of fire. The immense
vitality of the man is the most amazing thing about
him, and like a stormy sea the wild waves send
back every flash of lightning from their pallid crests.
To such a nature as this Montanism would be an
almost irresistible attraction. It set forth that
view of the religious life which was alone tolerable
to him — that is, an absolute sincerity, a scornful
contempt of the mere things of life, and the daring
ambition to reach an absolute standard. At what
period of his life he became a Montanist is not
known, but his instincts and sympathies led him by
an inevitable gravitation into their ranks. The
chief points of Montanism appealed to him most
1 Hauck, S. 409.

324 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
profoundly. His deep faith in spiritual realities
led him to insist most earnestly upon the veracity
of those prophecies which claimed to be but a
continuation of the manifestation of that Spirit which
he believed had always guided the Church. The
peculiar form which these prophecies took did not
of necessity preclude their being reliable and
authentic messages from God. The dogmatic
prejudices which worked so strongly against them
in others did not affect him, because the ecclesiastical
influences which exerted such an overwhelming
force in their rejection took but a very slight hold,
if any, upon his mind. It was simply as the con
tinuous spiritual manifestation that these prophecies
appealed to him, and the point of view from which
they wrought upon him — that is, their moral
stringency and ethical demands — overweighed all
the merely superficial characteristics which were
used as grounds for their repudiation.
The other elements of Montanism were those
upon which the real emphasis was laid, and in these
Tertullian found a solid ground for the veracity of
the movement. It seemed to make for a higher,
stronger life. It was also firm against the growing
laxity which filled him with scorn and anger.
Christianity was to him essentially a life and not a
theory, and while Montanism might be, and was,
untrue to the higher Christian ideal, it was at least
real and genuine in its demands, and could not be
charged with paltering with the highest interests
of life and morality. The Puritanical force which

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 325
was of its essence has always appealed to the highest
instinct for conduct, and Tertullian was neither the
first, last, nor the best man who has felt the strength
of this motive.
The Chiliasm, to which Montanism gave such a
complete expression, found in Tertullian one who
responded to it without a question. The belief in
the end of the world and the establishment of the
Kingdom of God on earth, visible to all men, was
not a dogmatic inference which he drew from
Scriptures or from a misunderstanding of the past
order of history, but had its roots in a deep
emotional conviction of his own which, in turn,
sprang from his actual experience of life and society.
The awful drama of life unrolled its dark pages
before his sombre imagination. His mind was
haunted by the hopeless infamy of society. The
facts, as he saw them in their hideous reality, forbade
any gleam of hope. The whole world was mysteri
ous, with its unseen and unknown burden of anguish
and woe. His own soul was quivering with a
nameless fear. It was to him not only intolerable
but impossible that God should not sweep all this
unspeakable vileness into the pit. As to Tertullian,
so it has been to others. The more one sees of
human sin, the more difficult the problem becomes.
The prospect for the future of the world looked
so ominous in his eyes, that he took refuge in the
belief in the new kingdom not only with resignation
but with hope. The Empire was the natural enemy
of the Gospel, and the order of the world was too

326 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
strong in its iniquity for the Church, unless God
should destroy it and build anew the walls of
Jerusalem. The reasons which he had for feeling
as he did were sown broadcast before his eyes.
The old simplicity which Clement admires and
advocates so strongly among Christians seemed to
Tertullian about to disappear. The luxury of the
age was excessive, and no place was more given to
its full display than Carthage. The influence of
the theatre and the arena was very great and very
debasing. This testimony comes from all the
writers of the period, both Heathen and Christian.
The general laxity of life and the love of display
were extending themselves to the members of the
Christian Church, and Tertullian complains that
there seemed to be no real distinction either in
dress or manners between Christian and Heathen
women. This fact, however distorted or ex
aggerated by his feverish ambition for a high and
stern morality, shows that the old self-restraint was
giving away, and a deterioration had set in whose
end was not in sight.
The striking differences between the Eastern and
Western characters come to light in no way more
clearly than in the subjects which engross their
thought, and also in their method of treatment.
The East was subtle, speculative, transcendental
throughout. The metaphysical facts were the ones
it was in search of, so that it might place the
individual in a correct theoretical relation to the
original reason which was behind and beneath all

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 327
the phenomena of life. The West, on the other
hand, had none of this profound intellectual eagerness,
and was weighed down by the burden of life. The
Divine Nature was the point of concentration for
human thought in the East. The Western mind
bent over the problem of human nature, and as the
ugly facts stared it in the face, a sense of hopeless
ness swept over the soul, of which we find little in
the East. This difference, however, is not primarily
due to a larger optimism begotten of deeper faith,
but rather that the mind of the East was averted
from the problems which plunged the Western mind
into such distress. Perhaps it would state the case
better if we said that the East looked at evil from
the point of view of the Divine Existence, and the
West from that of human nature and human
conduct. In no man of the Western Church do we find
this intense concentration upon the actual facts of
life and the constitution of human nature greater
than in Tertullian. Living was to him of immensely
more importance than thinking, for however close
the relation between life and thought may be in
each individual, yet it is oftentimes a matter of
far greater difficulty for a man to control his life,
including in that term, of course, the fountain and
well-spring of it all, his inner nature with its ceaseless
stream of emotions, appetites, ambitions, doubts, and
spiritual longings, than for one who simply desires
a clear and coherent intellectual conception of the
order and processes of life. To be something rather

328 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
than to think something reveals the inner secret of
the soul as no other experience through which man
can pass possibly does. Tertullian wished with all
the energy of his soul to be something for which
he need not be ashamed. All things were mere
instruments in his hand for this purpose. He used
them as a man uses an axe, to hew his way through
a forest overgrown with underbush. The inevitable
renunciations which held men back, as they still do,
from the higher path, he was willing to make. Not
only so, but he made out of them, without reference
to individual character or spiritual need, an universal
demand. The ideal so developed was to a great
degree negative and unprogressive. It was not a
great creative force which would lift life to its
highest plane, but for all best and noblest fruits
was ineffective and sterile. In order more fully
to understand the aim of Tertullian and also to
appreciate the reasons why, in spite of one's
sympathy with his sincerity and genuine strength
of soul, his ideal does not seem large enough for
the wider horizon of the later centuries, it is necessary
to examine his interpretation of the thought of his
time, and also his understanding of the ideas which
were fundamental with St. Paul.
The authoritative character of those writings
which are now included in the New Testament are
everywhere recognized by Tertullian, although there
had been no concerted action as yet placing these
in a canonical class along with the Hebrew Scriptures.
The anti- Gnostic writings of Tertullian show how

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 329
much this controversy had done towards fixing the
attention of the Church upon the Pauline writings,
but unfortunately this familiarity which is so copiously
displayed does not imply any clear understanding of
the largest and most fundamental ideas which ruled
the Pauline conception of the Christian life.
Taking them in their order and contrasting them
with the corresponding interpretation of Tertullian,
we find, in spite of the latter's moral earnestness,
a profound difference in the conception of Sin.
There is undoubtedly a keener and more pas
sionate sense of sin in him than in his predecessors,
but whether it has its roots in a deeper Christian
consciousness, or is only a matter of temperament
and the reaction from a life which opened up abysses
which made the moral nature recoil, are not questions
easy to answer. The awful wrath of the outraged
moral instincts, which had deeper roots in the man
of the West apparently than in him of the East,
roused sombre and painful thoughts. The dark
terror of God was spreading itself over the whole
life of the Church. The deeper sense of sin was
evidently not the result of a higher and fuller
appreciation of the fulness and freedom of salva
tion, for a vast uncertainty prevailed on this very
point. This uncertainty extended to the whole
circumference of life, and the consciousness of it is
present in the most minute details of life. " How
can one," says Tertullian, " who is not sure of his
salvation desire children?" He is haunted by the
hopelessness of man's moral nature which is not

330 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
relieved by the greatness of God's mercy. The
dark stain was so deep that no assurance seemed
able to wipe it out. When we look more closely
into his conception of sin, in spite of an apparent
resemblance we see a very clear distinction between
it and that of the Apostle. The enormous influence
of the sensuous nature in men constituted as Ter
tullian — and these were also the inheritors of the
traditions and the habits of life and thought of the
Pagan World — the fiery pressure which this nature
was for ever bringing to bear upon his life, led him
to attach a weight and importance to these physical
impulses which raised them to a level with the inner
and more spiritual nature, and, iri effect, reduced the
latter to an equality with them. Now, however
strong these brute instincts are, and however closely
united in the life with the intelligible elements of
character, they are still regarded as material and
inferior, and therefore subordinate in the interpreta
tion of human character, if the spiritual factor is of
the very essence of human nature. Oppressed by
the physical aspect of life and torn by its dark
appeals, Tertullian so materialized sin — because,
starting from his premises, human nature had
become materialized — that it was easy to account
for its origin, or at least for its derivation, simply
by the law of heredity. Therefore Traducianism
became the most natural and apparently easy
solution of a problem which has even now been
by no means exhausted of its difficulties. His
consciousness of sin had its origin not, as with St.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 331
Paul, in his Christian consciousness primarily, but
rather in the sensuous impulses which were heaving
with such volcanic energy in his troubled and warring
spirit. This materialistic tendency led easily to a
mode of thought which reduced sin to the category
of conduct, and then, in turn, the sins which were
viewed in such an external and detailed way were
classified. By this classification they were supposed
to gain their real value, but in reality the whole
problem was made so thin and unsatisfactory by
this proceeding, that no real assistance was ob
tained for the inner difficulties of the spiritual life.
The Peccata Mortalia and the Peccata Venalia, what
were they ? However they are emphasized, and
however great the energy with which they are
insisted upon, we recognize that they are simply
phenomena and details ; the essential spiritual root
from which all conduct derives its character has not
been touched. The advocate has created a code,
while man asks and needs a principle of life. It is
the external manifestation of sin which is emphasized,
and the acts of the body in their glaring hideous-
ness are able to dwarf the mysterious and more awful
inner rebellion of the soul from God.
The Peccata Mortalia were unforgivable in spite
of the life of Christ, and the sense of Divine Forgive
ness was so abridged that one does not wonder at
the increasing gloom which spread so far and so
wide, and which for so many centuries darkened the
hopes of mankind and plunged so many souls into
subtle attempts to win the one thing which man

332 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
needed, and which could not be reached unless at
the same time the sense of forgiveness was also
attained — that is, the certainty of God's love. This
doubt is manifest in the prevailing conception of
baptism, which reduced it to an ' opus operatum,'
and which by means of some magical qualities
inherent in it washed away all the sins which man
had already committed. The later sins were not
affected by it, and some provision must be made for
them. This view omits, as is evident, any recog
nition of the permanent fact which lay behind the
sacrament — that is, the forgiving disposition of God.
While baptism was so exalted in the imaginations of
men, and appeared to be endowed with such awful
powers, it was in reality lessened by the new character
bestowed upon it. In its origin it had been the
assurance of the Father's love and the seal of man's
filial relationship, in which fellowship and communion
with God were the essence of the new history. It
now became only a declaration of immunity from
past offences, for which the great Judge would
otherwise call man to account. The spiritual nature
out of which it issued was evidently not affected by
this sacrament, for the sins committed subsequent to
its reception had still their legal aspect. The diffi
culty pressed hard upon them, but in the increasing
enthusiasm for martyrdom was found a solution of
this vital question. The qualities which inhered to
the first baptism were now transferred to it as a
second or blood baptism. In real value then, as
coming last, martyrdom was logically and actually

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 333
greater than the original sacrament. The real
problem was not met, for it is perfectly conceivable
that in the sheer energy of despair a man may give
his body to be burned and still cherish within the
spirit which is not that of a child of God. The
moral cowardice of the Gnostics, who asserted that
the inner disposition was everything, and therefore
that any concealments or subterfuges were per
missible, undoubtedly excited an almost fanatical
reaction. Even the most ignorant, while perhaps
incapable of exposing the miserable sophism, could
still feel the contemptible insincerity of the life out
of which it sprang. The Gnostics, on their part, had
undoubtedly in many cases a perfectly sane intention
when they criticized the prevalent martyrolatry, but
they were also carried away by the reaction until
they became cravens. Thus the two extremes
plunged into an abyss, from which they saw no
means of escape.
This feeling for martyrdom was raised to a still
greater height by the influence of Montanism, and
the superficial value, as it may be called, was increased
by the fact that the ethical significance of life was no
longer to be ascertained by spiritual tests, nor did it
flow out of an inner Christian consciousness, but was
imposed by an external authority, the Paraclete,
speaking through the Prophets. Thus all the forces
at work tended to diminish the spiritual values and
give a definite and concrete appreciation to that
which cannot be reduced to quantitative measure
ment. The farther we go in an examination of this

334 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
subject, the more clearly are we convinced that we
are moving in a far different atmosphere from that
in which St. Paul developed his intense spiritual
consciousness ; and we can see furthermore that the
same difference characterizes the other conceptions
or spiritual emotions which lay at the root of Ter
tuUian's ideal.
The legal, interpretation of Christianity was
growing stronger and stronger with each succeeding
generation, and was also widening its scope until it
included the whole territory of man's life. The
earlier and contemporary writers had applied this
conception to the intellectual statement of Christianity.
Montanism, however, extended it to the daily conduct.
The New Law is not less wide in its sweep than
the Old, but more so. Between the Old and the
New there is, in fact, no essential difference. It is
true there is a distinction, but it is simply this : the
New Law involves the mind and the disposition as
well as the act. To this extent also it is more rigid
and exacting than the Old Law.1 The ceremonial
law indeed is done away with, but the moral law
remains, and this is the natural and original law by
which the patriarchs were saved. Jesus Himself
preached the New Law, and Tertullian, in his reply
to Marcion, makes St. Paul the representative of
this New Law. How entirely he misunderstood
the Apostle, notwithstanding the great familiarity he
shows with his writings, is clearly manifest in this
particular point alone. It is true he uses St. Paul's
1 Ritschl, Entstehung der Altkat., S. 324.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 335
expression of the Gospel freedom in opposition to
the slavery of the Law, but the freedom which he
means is not that of St. Paul, but rather freedom
from the world — that is, abstinence, which is the result
of a rigid obedience to the ascetic theory of a legally
conceived religion.1 The Law and the Gospel form
no opposition, rather are they related to each other
as the root to the plant, as the seed to the fruit, as
childhood to youth : the later is only the earlier in
another form, hence the Gospel, in distinction from
the ' Prima lex Dei,' 2 from the ' Vetus lex,' 3 the
' Pristina lex,' i the ' Judaica lex,' 6 the ' Lex Moysi,' 6
is called the New Law or Our Law, Nova Lex or
Nostra Lex.7 TertuUian's whole conception of the
relation between St. Paul and the other Apostles is
singularly at variance with the explicit and positive
statements of the Apostle himself. In regard to
the fundamental question whence the Apostle re
ceived his doctrine, Tertullian boldly asserts that he
received it from the other Apostles.8 It is true he
applies this only to the omission of the law from the
Apostle's teaching, but an authority which was de
rivative in that respect could hardly be regarded as
independent in other cases. In his explanation of
St. Paul's journey to Jerusalem, Tertullian also gives
1 Barth, "TertuUian's Auffassung des Apostels Paulus und
seines Verhaltnisses zu den Uraposteln," Jahrbucher fiir Protest.
Theologie, 1882, B. viii. S. 709.
2 De Pud., 5. 3 Ibid., 13.
4 De Monog., 7. s De Praes., 40.
6 Ibid., 42. 7 Ibid., 714.
8 Ad Mar., v. 2.

336 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
quite a different interpretation of the reasons which
led him there, than that , which the Apostle does.
He says St. Paul went up because he wished to
support his faith and preaching by the authority of
his predecessors. His attitude towards the other
Apostles was, according to Tertullian, one of de
pendence. He went up "ad patrocinium Petri
ceterorumque Apostolorum."1 With such a view
of the relation of the Apostle, it is impossible that
he should grasp the central idea of his conception
of the relation of the Law to the Gospel.
It is hardly necessary to multiply quotations to
show that in his conception of faith Tertullian had
not gone any deeper than his predecessors, for the
elements of the Pauline ideal form an organic whole,
and a misconception of one leads on to a displace
ment or misinterpretation of the others. It is true
that it is not just to attribute to the common use of
language a scientific precision or intention, but
underlying the most ordinary use of words always
is found, only half concealed, the real meaning which
is attached to them. Looked at in this way, it is no
injustice to say that Tertullian does not seem to
have entered into the circle of Christian ideas and
experiences which are represented by the writings
of St. Paul so far as they relate to life.
In his ideal of the perfect Christian, or of what
constitutes Christian sonship, we have most complete
statements, and the type presented is a most austere
and mechanical one. Holiness, which we think of
1 Ad Mar., v. 3.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 337
in connection with, or as the expression of, Christ's
inner nature, was conventionalized and measured by
certain ascetic practices. The highest ideal to
which the follower of Christ could aspire was that
of Virginity. This was also graded and classified,
and to each stage a different value was attached.
The first, and of course the highest, was Virginity
from birth. The second was Virginity from baptism,
the Christian motive being here first introduced.
The third was the Virginity which followed the
termination of a marriage which had been contracted
before. It is easy to see that Tertullian misunderstood
the highest meaning of the Gospel, inasmuch as he
regarded the perfect revelation of righteousness,
which was originally made in Jesus Christ, to consist
not in a more spiritual disposition, but in a sterner
asceticism — not in an inward state, but an outward
condition. The Scriptures were regarded as con
taining the legal code by which the life was to be
governed, and what was not commanded or distinctly
permitted was prohibited. Thus in the final elabora
tion and expansion of this principle a positive law
was expected and demanded for the determination of
every detail of life.
This codification of the Gospel led also to a
distinct and clearly marked division in the ethical
demands of the Church, and we find a morality of
the common mass of Christians, and over and above
that a higher standard which was accessible only to
the few, and to seek which was a counsel of perfection. 22

338 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
This lower or secular life, so widely separated from
the higher or religious life, divided the members of
the Church into two unequal parts. More than
that, this division left a distinctly false and injurious
impression on the mind as to the end and aim of
Christ's revelation. It introduced the idea that
over and above the legal demands of the Gospel
there was that which, if reached, would gain special
favour from God — an idea which was to have a
long history and lead to vast results. This was to
Tertullian a most significant truth, and influenced
most distinctly his interpretation of the Christian
ideal. This appeal to personal achievement, the
false emphasis laid on the individual act, gave an
impulse to ascetic and legal theories of Christianity
which were strengthened and expanded as the
centuries rolled by, and in the end both religion and
morality suffered from this fatal misconception. No
man probably had more to do with shaping the
subsequent development of the practical ideal of
the Christian Church, at least in the West, than
Tertullian. The later history rests upon the founda
tion which was laid in the period which we have
been examining. All that followed, so far as it is
characteristic or vital, is only the development of the
conceptions already formed and the principles already
stated. It is true that amid all the diversity, dissen
sion, and confusion which were the result of an
incomplete apprehension or misapprehension of
the highest Christian ideal, there was still much
which appeals to us yet, and much which points to

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 339
Christ as its origin. The explanation is that the
Gospel is in the Person of Christ, and His presence
is conditioned by nothing save the openness and
willingness of the soul to receive Him.1
Tertullian himself is a striking illustration of this.
In spite of all his exaggerations and wild and violent
outbursts, all that is best in him points to Christ as
its source : all that is harsh, unlovely, and bitter
sprang out of his strong and abounding nature.
His terrible earnestness, his burning indignation,
had all their grace and value from the higher motive
which mingled with them, but unfortunately did not
subdue them.
Tertullian is one of those strange paradoxes of
which life and not art furnish the most striking
examples. No dramatic figure was ever so strangely
impressive as he. He was the representative of
ideas which were fast becoming forgotten, and yet
he was the founder of the theology of the future.
He was the chief figure of a narrow sect which was
doomed to die, and yet he laid the foundations of
a mode of thought which ruled the Western World
for more than a thousand years. He was a schis
matic, whose school was looked upon as the most
dangerous to the integrity of the Catholic Church
and Catholic institutions in his own age, and yet
he became the great influence in the theological
thought of North Africa until Augustine, and was
1 " Das Evangelium trat ais Geschichte in die Welt, nicht ais
Dogma — wurde ais Geschichte in der christliche Kirche deponirt,"
— Rothe, Vor. ii. Kirchen, B. ii. S. x.

340 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
the teacher whom the greatest ecclesiastic of his
age read daily as his guide. He heaped scorn
upon the weak and timid Christianity of the Church
of his generation, and yet contributed more to shape
the ideal and living influences of practical life for
the future than any man in the Western Church.
He was the most uncompromising of men, not
because he was a logical theorist, but because of
the passion and vehemence of his nature which
scorned less than the highest. His insight was
keen as that of a poet, and his sympathies as
intense. A powerful, many-sided spirit constantly
dwelling upon the actual facts of life, the real
struggles of man simply as he stands, fronting the
world. The awful pain of life itself, which is so
silent and inarticulate in most, swept into expression
like fiery waves which scorch and wither all the
makeshifts and conventionalities behind which men
try to conceal the hard and brutal face of the world.
He has been called the Christian Rousseau, but
there was less of vanity and egotism, and an
immense amount more of vital masculine power, in
Tertullian than in Rousseau.
When and where he died we know not. Perhaps
in some lonely hour when the fierce battles of the
past seemed like confused and futile shadows, when
the storm of that long warfare had swept by, and
all had sunk to silence like a tavern brawl ; perhaps
at the fiery stake or on the white sands of the arena,
where, fearless and free, he stood hurling bitter
taunts at the enemies who mocked at his calamity.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 341
But however and when, we must feel that the
truest expression of that dauntless soul, the fullest
utterance of that mighty spirit, were the sad words
with which he closes his Tract on Prayer, and
which make him one with every erring child of
God : " Only I pray that when you are asking, you
be mindful likewise of Tertullian the sinner."
The long centuries rolled by, and on the wide
arena of European history the ecclesiastical and legal
definition of Christianity played its part, and un
folded all its elements both of good and evil. In
the sixteenth century the Christian laymen of
Europe called for a Gospel which should recognize
the spiritual dignity, the moral earnestness, and
the wide freedom of the first teachers of the Gospel.
The result was the Protestant Revolution. In the
nineteenth century this, although an enormous
advance upon the preceding period, is seen to be
inadequate. Not because the aim and the principles
were so inadequately stated as that the reactionary
forces and the fierce play of new elements which
were asserting themselves with irresistible power
checked the evolution of the new spirit and made
Protestantism a case of Arrested Development.
The century just ended has been characterized by
the advance of one side of the Protestant move
ment — that is, the development of criticism both
Biblical and Historical. The far vaster work of
re-establishing the highest and most clearly defined
Christian ideal for the actual man, and not the
scholar or the theologian, remains still to be done.

342 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
It only remains now to bring this essay to a
conclusion, and, in doing so, mention should be
made of two of the theories which have been set
forth with most energy and learning, to explain the
mixed character of Christian history and the wide
diversity of life and thought which appear in the
long march of the centuries. Two men of remark
able genius in the first half of the nineteenth century
felt the attraction of the problem and essayed to
solve it. One was a German, the other an
Englishman. The theory of Baur, which was
based primarily not upon historical investigation
and rigid scientific deduction, but upon a philo
sophical principle which was the keystone of the
Hegelian philosophy of history, has been torn to
tatters in his own land. The Tubingen school is
a thing of the past, although the vast learning and
splendid genius of its founder are still sources of
knowledge and inspiration to every student of
church history. His contention that history was
but the reconciliation of two opposing antinomies
in a higher unity, which again begets opposite
principles, which are again reconciled, and thus
gradually a higher stage of life and knowledge
evolved, may be true, and no one questions the
value of the principle as an aid in some difficult
historical problems. But when he asserted that
Catholic Christianity was the result and the resolu
tion of the two opposing types of Pauline and
Petrine Christianity, the contention could not be
made good without such a violent distortion of

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 343
many facts, and a deliberate ignoring of many
others, that in the end the theory fell to pieces the
moment the material of which the structure was
composed was more closely examined. The facts
of history are always stronger than the theories of
critics, but even facts are unintelligible unless a
truly scientific principle of interpretation is applied
to them. For a generation Baur and the Tubingen
school were the storm centre of a movement which
carried the knowledge and science of church history
farther than they had ever advanced before in the
same period of time. It produced a revolution in
the spirit, no less than in the methods and principles
which are recognized as legitimate in this field.
At the same time and in a different country was
set forth a theory which was in its results in every
respect the opposite of that of the German school,
except intellectual acuteness and subtle and eloquent
language. The theory which Newman held, and
which he set forth with such amazing audacity in
his Essay on Development, was neither scientific
in its conception nor in its application. Yet to him
might be applied the words which Baur applied to
Mohler :—
" Si Perga dextra
Defendi possent, etiam hoc defensa fuissent."
Stripped of the glow and charm with which it was
clothed in his fascinating pages, it seems, to the
present writer at least, to amount to this only. That
all the special and characteristic features which dis
tinguish the Church of the second, third, fourth,

344 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
or the fifth, from the first century ; all those which
differentiate the Church of the twelfth, thirteenth,
or fourteenth centuries from the Apostolic Age,
were implicitly involved in the first. This is an
easy, simple, and fascinating theory. But it is both
too easy and too simple. It was a mere nose of
wax in the dextrous fingers of the Oxford dreamer,
which he twisted in whatever direction was necessary
to justify the usages and theories of the Latin
Church. The Gospel to him was not a living person
or a vital principle, but a sacred deposit and a
mechanical tradition, like the Hebrew Torah which
Scribes and Rabbins were to unfold to a dull but
obedient people. Whatever the authorized con
servators of this tradition said it meant, it must
mean. The Church as an institution was surrounded
with such an hedge, that neither mistakes, errors, nor
corruptions could enter without being immediately
recognized, condemned, and expelled. But a theory
of historical development which excludes the pos
sibility of error not only in the practical scheme of
life but within the circle of dogmatic orthodoxy,
reduces that development to a blind evolution of
hidden and unknown forces, by which man is swept
along unconsciously and irresistibly. The mind and
heart of man, which are the human elements which
condition all development of history, find their chief
and only function in obedience to a sacred and in
fallible authority which they can neither examine
nor challenge.
But the scientists tell us that any theory of develop-

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 345
ment which does not recognize the part which en
vironment, with its various elements and the
incessant action and reaction of the forces within
it, plays in the question of development, is fatally
defective as a theory, however attractive as a specula
tion. To Newman the Church seemed like a cloud
floating far above all contact with, or influence by,
merely earthly conditions. Its appearance and
movements are the result of hidden forces working
from within. Its ever-changing form, the gleaming
masses rising like snow-capped mountains, the
threatening brow of the thunderstorm hanging like
an avalanche above the heads of men, are but the
result of the boundless living energy working on the
formless masses of vapour creating and destroying
moving forms of beauty and of awe.
Science, however, knows no such separate, in
dividual self-development in the institutions of
human society. The tree springs from the living
germ, and is a development from the seed which no
man has seen. But the tree is what it is as the
result of the operation of a thousand different in
fluences shaping its life and growth — the wind and
the rain, the seasons and the soil, the configuration
of the land, the altitude and latitude. These, it is
true, do not create the living germ, but they modify
most profoundly the growth and development of
the tree. The final result is the combined effect of
almost all the physical laws known to man, and as
science advances it will undoubtedly reveal the
operation of many others now unknown.

346 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
The inspiration of Christ's spirit is the living germ
of the Church. All else is the result of causes whose
origin, influence, and operation can be more or less
distinctly traced without the Church as well as
within, the general laws underlying all social evolu
tion whether they are manifest in thought or in
institutions. To try and explain Imperial or Latin
Christianity without any regard for the historical
conditions, without any basis in the ideas, tendencies,
customs, and habits of the civilization of the past,
is to leave the whole subject of historical science in
the air. What the Church was in the age of
Irenaeus and Tertullian, what it became in the next
generation and the next century, was the result of
general historical laws, and not the explicating of
truths implicit in the original revelation of the
Gospel. To assert that this varied expression, the different
types of thought and life, the different ecclesi
astical institutions, the forms and practices as well
as the theories and habits of the Christian Church,
were the evolution pure and simple of what was
necessarily involved in the life and character of
Jesus Christ, is simply inconceivable. The power
of easy assimilation, which is the characteristic note
of a powerful and growing organism, is one of the
most striking features of these earliest centuries
of Christian history, and the marvellous flexibility
with which the Church adapted or rather absorbed
the most vital and characteristic tendencies and in
tellectual habits of the times cannot be mistaken.

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 347
The theory of Development, which was set forth
in Newman's Essay, was neither scientifically correct
nor historically accurate in its application. The
whole method of treatment is based upon an as
sumption ; an a priori theory and a priori history
has not been convincing since the Middle Ages.
On the other hand, to speak of these changes and
additions as an apostacy is as incorrect as to assert
that they are of divine origin and the notes of the
perfect Church. In the actual life of the Church,
in the character aimed at and the ideal set forth,
and the means adopted for its realization — in these
only can be found the true key for interpreting the
life and meaning of an age or institution, and these
form the only standard which the Christian student
of history can regard as absolute.1
The traveller of to-day as he approaches Rome,
filled with the memories of its great and awful past,
sees rising before him, dim and misty, in the soft
Italian air the mighty dome of St. Peter's. What
ever his Creed, whatever his prejudices, this silver
cloud floating there high above the ancient city with
its splendid traditions, its dark tragedies, and its
world-wide sway, represents to him the history of
the Christian Church for more than a thousand
1 " When Churchmanship assumes this degenerate form,
Christianity is not indeed destroyed, nor does it cease to bring
forth fruit ; but the fruit is of an inferior and less characteristic
quality, it is not the spirit and temper of sonship." — Gore,
Incarnation, p. 2.

348 SAINT PAUL AND THE chap. v.
years. The spell of that great name has curbed
the power of kings, and mighty nations have paid
their homage and worship to him who held the
keys of Peter and bade the world obey.
Far to the south, on the edge of the melancholy and
desolate Campania, stands the lonely Church of ' St.
Paul's without the Walls.' It would seem as if
something stronger than ordinary historical motives
had led to this choice of location. By an instinct
deeper far than can be measured, the Apostle, whose
power and fame cannot be denied, has been recognized
'without the Walls.' Which things, as he would
say, are an allegory. Never in the vast structure
of ecclesiastical Christianity has there been a full
and free recognition of his great place. His ideal
has not been the power which has shaped the
organized expressions and efforts of the Christian
Church. And yet from him all the great reformers
of piety have drawn their inspiration. From him
all the rebels against the stifling and narrow
theories which have held the human soul in bondage
and checked its eager aspirations, have gathered
courage to fight the battles which have won the
larger freedom and the wonderful hope which lifts
the weakest up to mighty dreams and splendid
daring. To him it is due more than to any other
Christian teacher, that men have had glimpses into
the heights and depths of Christian character.
Standing there on the Asiatic shore, looking with
burning eyes out over the unknown future, with his
profound earnestness, his broad free spirit, his

chap. v. ANTE-NICENE CHURCH 349
boundless devotion to Christ, and the spiritual
greatness of his ideal, he seems, in his solitude, the
saddest, loneliest, and greatest figure, save One, in
the long history of the Christian Church. A dim
consciousness of the wide difference seems to lie
in those pathetic words, " One born out of due
time." Mankind seems striving for other aims than
his. The organized Christianity seems confused
and far away from him, with his clear vision and
unfaltering heart. Will it ever see clearly, seek
earnestly, and realize fully the ideal before him ?
God knows.

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