E EARLY CHUl^CH

prof. JAMES ORR.D.D.

951. S 0r7

itt tftc ©its of giCMJ '^lorfe

1901
©ttictt auougmottslg
CHRISTIAN STUDY MANUALS

Edited by the Rev.

R. E. WELSH, M.A.

I?FA\ PROFESSOR JAMES ORR'S

THE EARLY CHURCH

NEW YORK
A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON
3 AND 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET
 hPVLElA
CRYSOPOUS
QV'AEVIXirAMWlS^VJI ::icToceKnic

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS FROxM THE CATACOMBS (Key, p. viii.).

(Photographed from casts of the originals, in the possession qfthe Bev. Archd. Paterson, B.D.]
THE EARLY CHURCH
ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE

JAMES ORR, M.A., DA).

Fro/essor 0/ Apologetics and Systematic Theology,
United Free Church College, Glasgow

NEW YORK
C. ARMSTRONG AND SON
3 AND 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.

PAOE
The Jewish and Gentile Preparations ... 1

'-^ The Old Testament Preparation— The Post-Exilian

Preparation : Synagogue Worship, Jewish Sects,
—The Greek Preparation—The Roman
etc. Pre-

paration — Christianity and Roman Law.

CHAPTER II.

The Apostolic Age and Later Jewish Christianity . 14

The Church of the Apostles— Paul and the Judaisiug

Party— Constitution and Worship of the Apostolic
Churches — Transition to Later Jewish Christi-
anity— Nazarenes and Ebionites — The " Clemen-
tines ".
%
CHAPTER III.

Gentile Christianity: Nero to Domitian (a.d. G4-96) 30

First Contact with the Empire— Persecution under

Nero— Martyrdom of St. Paul and St. Peter-
Persecution under Domitian — Last Days of St.

John —The Catacombs.

327924
 —

vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV.
PAGE
The Age of the Apostolic Fathers (a.d. 96-117) . 39

gjThe Persecution in Bithynia: Pliny and Trajan-

—
Martyrdom of Ignatius Literature of the Period :

Clement, Barnabas, Hermas, etc, Theology of —

"The Apostolic Fathers" — The Ignatian Episco-
pacy.

CHAPTER V.

The Age of the Apologists (a.d. 117-180) ... 53

Hadrian and Antoninus Pius—Martyrdom of Poly-

carp—Age of the Antonines — Persecutions under

Marcus Aurelius — Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons
—The Earlier Apologists Justin Martyr— Later
:

Apologists— The Literary Attack on Christianity :

Celsus and Lucian.

CHAPTER VI.

The Age of the Apologists {continued) : Gnosticism

AND Montanism (a.d. 117-180) 69

The Apologists as Theologians— The Gnostic Systems

— Montanism — Apocryphal Writings.

CHAPTER VII.

The Age of the Old Catholic Fathers (a.d. 180-250) . 81

From Commodus to Severus — Persecution under

Maximin —
Progress of Christianity — Develop-
ment of the Idea of the Old Catholic Church
New Testament Canon— Rule of Faith— Apos-
tolic Succession.
 —
CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER VIII.
I'AciK

The Age of the Old Catholic Fathers {contiiiiicd)

(A.D. 180-250) 93

Irciifcus of Gaul — Tertullian of Cartliagc — The

Alexandrian School : Clement, Origen — The
Church of Rome — Hippolytus and Callistus
Cyprian of Carthage.

CHAPTER IX.

The Age of the Great Persecutions : Victory of

Christianity (a.d. 250-324) Ill

—
Decian and Valerian Persecutions Effects of Perse-
cutions —
Schisms —
Empire and Church till
Diocletian — Neo-Platonism — Career and Char-
acter of Constantine —Victory of Christianity
Donatist Schism.

CHAPTER X.

The Age of the Great Persecutions : Victory of

Christianity {continued) (a.d. 250-324) . . . 126

Establishment of Christianity — Constantine's Later

Years — The Church Outside the Roman Empire

— Manichaeism — The Monarchian Heresies —
Church Teachers and Literature — Church Build-
ings, Ofl&ces, Services, — Councils — Rank in
etc.

the Episcopate — Conclusion.

 EXPLANATION OF FRONTISPIECE.
{Fur the Illustration and the Exjdanation the author is indebted to
the Rev. Archd. Paterson, B.D.)

1. The Good Shepherd (John x. 11). In Early Christian Art, the G. S. is

always represented as bearing the sheep nn his shoulders (Luke xv. 5).
" Apuleia Crysopolis who lived seven years, 2 months The Parents placed :

this to (the memory of) their very dear daughter." Of very early date
(first half of second century ?).

2. The Anchor, symbol of hope (Heb. vi. 19), set within the name
DOMNA.
3. The Anchor. The Fish or IX0YC, i.e. lr)crov^ Xpto-To?, &eov Ytoy,
CwTi7p: Jesus Christ, So7i of God, Saviour. "The faithful {i.e. baptised)
child of faithful (i.e. baptised) parents, Zosimus, here I lie: having lived 2
years, 1 month, 25 days."
4. The Anchor Dove (symbol of the Holy Spirit, Matt. tii. 16). URBICA,
:

a design (like a ship) set within a circle (eternity?). Of very early date
(first half of 2nd. cent.?): so, probably, the central design has no such
highly developed symbolical intention.
Orante, i.e. a figure (female generally) in the attitude of prayer (1 Tim.
5.
ii. on other side a shepherd holding a (?) mulctrum (milking paM) and
8):
leaning on a staff a sheep, or goat (?) beside him. " Moses in his lifetime
;

had this monument prepared for himself and his wife."

6. Anchor, Fish, Bread (Eucharistic Bread?). " Aegrilius Bottus Phila-
despotus, most sweet and dutiful (son). His parents erected this to his
memory. He lived 9 years, 40 days." M.S. (?) memoriae sacrum, i.e.
" sacred to his memory ". This monument is not a slab but an upright
stele or pillar of square section.

7. Our Lord raising Lazarus. Our Lord is touching the head of Lazarus
with the virga potestatis, or rod of power,
8. Sheep : Peacock (symbol of immortality ?). " Aelia Victorina placed
(this slab) to (the memory of) Aurelia Proba."
9. A Chirurgeon's outfit : forceps, etc. Part of a very long slab.

10. Dove perched on Olive Branch Lamb Anchor. In the stock or

: :
' '

transverse beam of the anchor it may be that we are to find a furtive

representation of the Cross. " Faustinianus." Of very early date (first
half of 2nd. century ?).
11. A modius or corn measure filled with wheat: (also a sheaf of
'
'

wheat on either side): a figure standing by, holding, not the 'rod of
power' as in nos. 7 and 13, but a roller for pressing along the rim of the
modius, and so giving just measure. " Maximinus, who lived 23 years :

the friend of all." This, like no. 9 and in part no. 12, is a trade symbol,
not a religious symbol. The amiable Maximinus was probably a corn
merchant.
12. Chi-Rho (first two letters of XPICTOC, Christ), commonly called
"the Constantino monogram," with Alpha and Omega (Rev. i. 8); the
whole set in a chaplet. The barrel denotes that SEVERUS was a vintner.
13. Raising of Lazarus (as in no. 7). Our Lord's head is encircled by a
nimbus or halo. The inscription, in bad Latin, probably means, " Datus
and Bonosa, the parents, placed this to the memory of their son Datus,
who lived 20 years. In peace,"
 CHAPTER I.

THE JEWISH AND GENTILE PKEPAKATIONS.

The Iiistory of the Church may be said in strictness to

begin with the Day of Pentecost. The Day of Pente-
cost, however —
the conception of the Church alto-
gether —
had its antecedents. The New Jerusalem
did not come dosm from heaven quite as it is pictured
in the Apocalypse, without manifold links of connec-
tion with the past. St. Paul has this in view when
he sa3^s that it was in " the fulness of the time " that
God sent forth His Son (Gal. iv. 4).

1. The Old Testament Preparation. — Mani-

festly, the Christian Church has a peculiar and genetic
relation to the Old Testament. For the Old Testament
community was way a Theocracy a Church
also in its —
(c/. Acts vii. 38; Heb. ii. 12). The word ecdesia,
used in the New Testament to designate the Christian
society, is that chiefly used in the LXX as the equi-
valent of theHebrew word qahal, assembly or congre-
gation. ^ Though bound up with national forms,
that theocracy ever cherished in its bosom the con-
sciousness of a UNivERSALLSTic DESTINY. Older than
the national form in its existence was the patriarchal
— the covenants with the Fathers —and here already we
have the clear enunciation of the idea that Israel was
a people called with a view to the ultimate blessing
of the race (Gen. xii. 3, xviii. 18, etc.). That idea

^ On terms cf. Hort's Christian Ecdesia, Lect. I.

1
 —
2 THE EARLY CHURCH
reaches its fullest expression in the glowing predic-
tions of the Prophets and the Psalms (e.g., Is. Ix. ; Ps.

Ixxxvii., R.V.). With the prophets, too, we see the

rise of —
a new idea the thought of a Church within a
Church, a true and spiritiial Israel within the natural
Israel —
which is the birtli of the Church idea proper
((/. Is. viii. 16-18). A further important step in the
formation of the Church consciousness was taken in
the Babylonian Exile, when the people, driven from
their land, and deprived of holy city, temple and
sacrifices, became a Church in the full meaning of the
word. Their return to Palestine did not annul this
feature of their religious life. On the contrary, their
return was marked by a new development of religious

—priestly government, the formation a

institutions of

canon Scripture, the

of scribism, the reading
rise of

and teaching the law — which prepared the

of all

way for the liberation of the Church idea from its

national and political form.

'
2. The Post-Exilian Preparation. — Of special

V importance in this connection are the four following

series of facts :

(1) The and spread of Synagogue Worship.

rise —
The synagogue may go back to the days of Ezra in any ;

case it was a prominent institution after the return,

both in Judea and in the lands of the dispersion (Acts
XV. 21). We note about it, in contrast with the
temple, its local character, giving it practical uni-
versality ; its simple and spiritual worship —reading
of law and prophets, reciting of prayers, singing or
rather chanting of psalms, a discourse or exhortation,
in which the passage read was expounded and applied,
a concluding blessing and the absence of all priestly
;

or sacerdotal offices. The officials were the ** elders^

(probably identical in towns with the civic elders), the
 JEWISH AND GENTILE PREPARATIONS 3

archisynagogos or " ruler " (one or more )J who had the

charge of the public worship, the "minister" or
servant (Luke iv. 20), corresponding to the modern
sacristan or beadle, " collectors of alms," with an
" interpreter " (Targumist) to give the sense of the
lessons in the current Aramaic.^ ;^
There was consider-
able freedom in the service. The Scriptures were
read, the prayers recited, the exhortations given, not
by officials, but by persons selected from the congrega-
tion (Luke iv. 16-20 ; Acts xiii. 15). The resemblance
to a simple Christian service is obvious.
(2) The rise of the Jewish Sects. The greater —
part of the period after the exile is an absolute blank

in our knowledge. The one thing certain is that from

the time of Ezra the nation set before it as its ideal
the strict observance of the law of Moses. Hence the
rise of an order of men whose special business it was
to guard, develop and expound the law — the order of
the Scribes. When the curtain lifts again in the time
of Antiochus Epiphanes we find ourselves
(b.c. 175),

and the three parties of his-

in a different atmosphere,
torical note among the Jews are already in existence.
The Pharisees first appear as a party of protest,
against the lax Hellenising tendencies of the period.
—
The name they bore "Assidseans" (Heb. Chasidim)
— denotes them as the strictly '* pious " or " Puritans
"

of their day. Parties of this kind, how^ever, are

peculiarly liable to degeneration, and in their exag-
gerated scrupulosity and excessive literalism, the "Assi-
dseans" soon sank into the "Pharisees" (separated)
as w^e know them in the Gospels. The Sadducees
(from Zadok), on the other hand, were not a religious

^ The " ten men of leisure," said to be retained to form a

quorum, are subject of controversy.
4 THE EARLY CHURCH
party at all,but simply a political or aristocratic
clique, into whose possession the honours of the high
priesthood and other influential offices hereditarily
passed. They represent the worldly-wise, diplomatic,
time-serving party in the state, men of sceptical,

rationalistic temper, and epicurean in their view of

life. Of much greater importance for the history of

the Church, though not mentioned in the Gospels, is

the third of these parties —the Essenes. These had

their chief settlement in the desert of Engedi, on the
north-west shore of the Dead Sea, but were found also
in thetowns and villages throughout Palestine. Their
total number was about 4,000. At Engedi they lived

as a sort of brotherhood with customs of their own.

They offered no animal sacrifices, contenting them-
selves with sending to the temple gifts of incense.

They abounded in lustrations, and wore white gar-

ments. They rejected marriage, and practised com-
munity of goods. Their employments were chiefly
agricultural, but in the towns they exercised trades.
They had the peculiar custom (perhaps Oriental) of
greeting the sunrise with prayers. They forbade
slavery, war, and oaths, were given to occult studies,
had secret doctrines and books, etc. The superficial
resemblances have led some to trace Christianity itself
to Essene sources, but in fundamental ideas no systems
could be more opposed. We shall see that Essenism
probably became ultimately merged in a form of
Christianity.
(3) The Judaism Dispersion.— The dispersion
of the
had its was more due to
origin in the captivities, but
voluntary settlements for trade. The Greek rulers
did everything they could to attract settlers to their
newly-founded cities, and the troubles in Palestine
made multitudes willing to leave their native country.
 — —
JEWISH AND GENTILE PREPARATIONS 5

Thus it came about that there was hardly a land or

citywhere Jews were not to be found. They some-

times had rights of citizenship, and in many places,
as in Alexandria, enjoyed special privileges. The
effecton the Jew himself was profoundly and insensibly
to modify his whole manner of thought. A freer
spirit was necessarily introduced. From being a
citizen of Zion, he became a citizen of the world.
The dispersion provided points of contact for Christi-
anity through the spread of the synagogues {cf. Acts,
passim), the circulation of the Jewish Scriptures in
the Greek tongue, above all through the creation of
a large body of proselytes. But outside the circle of
proselytes proper there was in most communities a
following of converts —the *'
devout persons " of the

New Testament (Acts 22; xiii. 16, 26, etc.)

x. 2,

who, while attending the synagogues, only observed

the Mosaic law in certain leading points e.g., the Sab-
bath. Many of the first converts of the Gospel were
drawn from this class. It is noteworthy that the
admission of proselytes was not only by circumcision
and sacrifice, but by baptism, and, if Talmudic state-
ments are to be trusted, the children of proselytes were
baptised with their parents.
(4) The contact Jewish thought — particularly at
of
Alexandria — with Hellenic Culture and Philosophy.
—The classical name here is Philo, though the elements
of Philo's doctrine are already met with in the Apocry-
phal Book of Wisdom. Philo was born about B.C. 20,
and lived till near the middle of the first century.
He was therefore a contemporary of both Christ and
St. Paul. Profoundly versed in Greek philosophy and
literature, he sought to bring about an amalgamation
of Jewish and Greek modes of thought. His character-
istic doctrine is that of the Logos or " Word " of God,
 —
6 THE EARLY CHURCH
whom he conceives of partly in Platonic and Stoical
fashion, but whom, at the same time, following hints
of the Old Testament and of the Jewish schools, he
tends to hypostatise, or interpose as a distinct person-
ality between God and His creation. His doctrine has
often been compared with that of the Apostle John.
There are, however, radical contrasts. The Apostle
has his feet on historic facts (John i. 14 1 John i.
;

1-3). Philo's theory would have repelled an incar-

nation.
3. Providential Mission of Greece and Rome.
The splendour of Athens in the age of Pericles should
not blind us to the fact that for Greece as a whole the
fifthcentury B.C. was an age of decline. ^ The great
colonising energy of Greece was in the previous century.
The mission of the Greeks was not to be the rulers,

but the INTELLECTUAL EDUCATORS of mankind. The

rule passed to Macedonia, and for a brief moment it

seemed as if Alexander's dream of a Greek empire of

the world was to be realised. His empire fell to pieces

at his death, but his great design was fulfilled of

diffusing Greek and culture wherever his arms

letters
had gone. Rome gradually gathered up the fragments
of the Macedonian empire, but Rome herself yielded
to the intellectual supremacy of Greece. It cannot

be too firmly grasped how profoundly Greek influences

had taken possession of the Roman empire at the be-
ginning of the Christian era. Greek language, Greek
philosophy, Greek literature, Greek culture were every-
where. Rome itself was at this time in great measure,
what Juvenal calls it,a Greek city. It is a fact which
may not always strike us that the Epistle to the Romans
was written in Greek.

1
Cf. Freeman,
 JEWISH AND GENTILE PREPARATIONS 7

While, however, profoundly influenced by Greece,

Rome's i)rovidential mission was different from hers.
It was the task of Greece to show what the human
mind can do at its highest and best in the way of
natural development to teach the world the elements
;

of her own culture and civilisation to give it a

;

language fitted for every noble purpose of thought and

life. It was the function of Rome to bind the nations
together into a great political unity —
to weld them
by strong bonds of law and government into a vast, uni-
versal commonwealth. The practical instinct of the
Roman people and their genius for government enabled
them to accomplish this as no other people of the world
could have done. It is no chance coincidence that
the hour of the completion of this great political fabric
was also that of the birth of Christianity that the —
two events almost completely synchronised. The
world-empire and the world-religion came into being
together.
i. The Greek Preparation. —The very intensity
of the intellectual development Athens tended to
in
hasten a moral dissolution. The Greek religion was
not one which would bear looking at critically. The
POPULAR theology iu Greece was simply that of the
poems of Homer. When this is said, it is easy to see
that its foundations must have been swept away the
moment men began to incjuire rationally into the causes
of things, and to entertain more elevated moral concep-
tions. Morality in the older period had rested largely
—
on tradition on custom. Now a spirit of inquiry had
set in which would allow nothing to custom. A class
of popular educators had arisen who had no difficulty
in dissolving the most cherished beliefs in the play of
their sceptical dialectic. Other causes aided the col-
lapse. Even the enervation of morals by the refine-
8 THE EARLY CHURCH
merit and luxury of the prosperous period was not so
fatal to moral life as the long-continued and exhaust-
ing wars of states, with their woeful lack of principle
in public men, the constant breach of faith in treaties,
the strife of factions, and like evils.

But Greece had a more important service to do for

Christianity than simply to reveal the depths of her
own moral impotence. The preparation had a positive
SIDE as well. With the overthrow of the old religion
there was going on, on the jmrt of the nobler spirits,
a search for a more rational and abiding foundation
for religion with the overthrow of the old morality
;

there began with Socrates the search for a deeper

ground of morality in man's own nature with the
;

breaking up of the old states there was seen in

Stoicism the rise of the conception of a state or
commonwealth based on reason, wide as the world,
and embracing man in a new brotherhood. In these
THREE DIRECTIONS therefore, (1) a more inward view of
morality, (2) the recognition of a common nature in
man, and the reaching out to a universal form of
society, and (3) a tendency to Monotheism, clearly
discernible in all the nobler minds, we are to look
for the positive preparation for Christianity in the
ancient world. But all these advances of the human
spirit could not avert the dissolution of belief and
morals. The note of uncertainty in later Greek
philosophyis very marked (Sceptical Schools). The
most earnest minds were those who felt it most
deeply. Dissatisfied with human opinion they felt,
as Plato phrases it, the need of some " word of
God," which would more surely carry them (Pheedo).
5. The Roman Preparation. —
If the philosophy

of Greece could not save Greece itself, it was not to

be expected that it would be able to save Rome. The
 JEWISH AND GENTILE PREPARATIONS 9

Romans were a people of graver, more serious dis-

position than tl)c Greeks. They liad not tlie (piick,

versatile imagination of the Greeks. Their gods were

mostly personifications of abstract ideas (Justice, Pity,
Clemency, Pleasure, and the like). Religion was to
them a very serious part of the business of life, to
be engaged in with strict formality, and punctilious
observance of prescribed rites. Their gods were viewed,
too, as more and virtue
really the guardians of fidelity
in household and state than among the Greeks. All
testimonies accordingly bear witness to the severe
virtue and simple manners of the early Romans.
This simplicity did not endure. With the growth
of —
power especially after the fall of Carthage
—
and Corinth there was a great inrush of foreign
customs. The Greek gods came with the Greek
culture, and a change took place in Roman reli-
gion for the worse. Altered conditions in the state
co-operated to bring about deterioration of morals.
The old distinction of patrician and plebeian was
supplanted by that of rich and poor. The wars
destroyed agricultural industry, and threw the land
into the hands of wealthy men, who farmed their
estates by gangs of slaves. Slavery became the basis
of the social structure, and labour was despised as
beneath the dignity of citizens. The populace were
supported by doles from the state, or largesses from
nobles, and lived only to be fed and amused ("bread
and games," Juvenal). The sanguinary spectacles of
the amphitheatre fostered in them a cruel and blood-
thirsty spirit. Marriage lost its sacredness, and licen-
tiousness flooded society.
What this meant for religion it is not difficult to
all

foresee. The chief features, in a religious respect,

are: (1) The wide prevalence of scepticism, or total
10 THE EARLY CHURCH
unbelief among the cultured or educated classes ; and
(2), the vast growth of superstition and a great influx
of foreign cults among the people in general. The
cults chiefly in favour were the Oriental, and this
again shows that the religious consciousness had en-
tered on a deeper phase. For, whatever the defects
of the Oriental religion, there was expressed in most
of them a deeper feeling of the discord, the pain, the
mystery of life, and many of their rites showed a long-
ing for redemption.
Special importance attaches to the rise of an en-
tirely new cult —the worship of the emperor. In
CiESAR WORSHIP the religion of paganism may be said
to have culminated. The Roman people had long
been familiar with the idea of a Genius of the Republic.
Now, when all powers and offices were gathered up
in the emperor, he became to ordinary eyes an almost
godlike being. From this the step was easy to formal
apotheosis. The Senate took this step when they
decreed divine honours to the emperors —many of them

the basest and vilest of mankind. Yet this worship

of the emperor took root, and, in the provinces especi-
ally, gained amazing popularity. A special class of

guilds [Augustales) sprang up to attend to it. The

peculiarity of it was the one worship
was that it

which was common to the whole empire. In it also

the Roman Empire expressed its inmost spirit. As
the deification of brute power, it was the strongest
possible antithesis to the worship of the Christ. It

was THE WORSHIP OF THE BEAST.

Luxurious, frivolous, sceptical and corrupt as the
age was, however, there is not to be overlooked in it
the presence of certain better elements. As in Greece,
so here, the preparation was not \vholly negative.
Stoicism and Platonism had received a religious tinge
 JEWISH AND GENTILE PREPARATIONS 11

(Seneca, Plutarch), and exercised an elevating influence

on the purer minds. There were, doubtleHs, numerous
individual examples The Collegia (organ-
of virtue.

ised associations or guilds) of the empire, and the

MYSTERIES havc intimate and curious relations with
the history of the Church in the first centuries. Dr.
Hatch would explain from the former several of the
offices of the early Church. ^ The mysteries of Mithras,

Professor Harnack says, were in the third century the

strongest rival of Christianity.- The burial societies
were legal, and the Christians took advantage of this

for their protection. When all is said, the verdict of

history on that old world must be that itwas as
corrupt as it could well be to exist at all, and what
was worse, had not within itself any principle of

regeneration.
6. Christianity and Roman Law. — What is some-
times said of the tolerance of the Romans requires to
be taken with considerable modification. The Romans
had laws enough against foreign rites ; even where
the practice of a foreign religion was permitted, this
permission did not extend to Romans. Christianity,
under the ban of the laws in a double
therefore, fell
respect. It was unsanctioned (religio illicita), and

it drew away Romans from the established religion.

Even with this disadvantage, however, it might have

escaped, for the authorities found it impracticable
rigidly to enforce the laws.
But there were special features about Christianity
which, from a Roman standpoint, made tolerance im-
possible. Christianity was not a national religion.

1
Cf. Hort, pp. 128-210.
2 Their strange caricatures of Christian rites wore a source
of perplexity to the Fathers,
12 THE EARLY CHURCH
The sentiment of antiquity respected the gods of other
nations but Christianity appeared rather in the Hght
;

of a revolt against the ancient faith from which it

sprang, and had no national character of its own.
It had no visible deity or temple, and to the popular
mind seemed a species of atheism. Specially, it could
not fail to be seen that, with its exclusive claims, it

struck at the very existence of the Roman state re-

ligion. If its precepts were admitted, the state
religion would be overthrown. The more earnest men
were, therefore, to maintain or revive the prestige of
the established system, the more determinedly must
they oppose this new superstition. The iiTcconcil-

ability of Christianity with the established religion

came naturally to its sharpest point in the refusal
of Christians to offer at the shrine of the emperor.
This was an act of disobedience in a vital point, which
could not be passed over.
Add to this the manner in which Christianity came
into conflict with the laws prohibiting secret and
nocturnal gatherings ; the powerful material interests
affected by its spread (c/. Acts xix. 24-27) ; the odium
in which Christians were held on account of the crimes
imputed to them by their enemies the outbursts of ;

popular fury to which they were opposed in times of

public calamity, and it will readily be understood
how, even when there was no general persecution,
they lived in a constant state of insecurity, and how
the very " name " of Christian should be held sufficient
to condemn them.

Points for inquiry and study. —

Compare Synagogue and
Church (services, ofl&ces, etc.) Compare Essenism and Chris-
tianity. Give a fuller account of Philo, and compare his
doctrine with St. John's Prologue. Show how with Socrates
and after him moral thinking in Greece took an inward turn.
 ";

JEWISH AND GENTILE PREPARATIONS 13

Illustrate Monotheism among Greeks and Romans. Read

Tertullian's contrast of Christian meetings with heathen
Collegia {ApoL, oh. 39). Find out more about the Mysteries
and their relation to the Church. Illustrate the position of
Christians in the Roman Empire from Pliny's letter to
Trajan, and the Apologies of Justin Martyr and Tertullian.
The following books may be consulted on the subjects of
this chapter Besides the Church Histories (Neander, etc.),
:

Edersheim's Jesus tlie Messiah; Bollinger's Jew and Gentile,

Uhlhorn's Conflict of Christianity ; Pressens^'s ^rtcif-n^ World
and Christianity ; Fisher's Beginnings of Christianity
Schiirer's Jeivish People, etc. Lightfoot on •' Essenes
;

{Commentary on Colossians) ;Freeman's Chief Periods of

European History; Loring Bruce's Gesta Christi and The
Unknown God; Schmidt's Social Results of Early Christi-
anity; Hatch's Organisation of Early Christian Churches
and Infliience of Greek Ideas ; Ramsay's Church in Roman
Empire.
 —

CHAPTER II.

THE APOSTOLIC AGE AND LATER JEWISH

CHRISTIANITY.

Into the pagan world such as we have described it

Christ's religion came as the breath of a new life.

"The time is fulfilled," said Jesus, "and the King-

dom of God is at hand" (Mark 15). In Christ's i.

life, deeds, preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom,

death and resurrection, the moveless foundations of
the Church were laid.

Christ's last injunction to His apostles was to abide

at Jerusalem till they should receive " the promise of
the Father " (Luke xxiv. 49 ; Acts i. 4, 5). In the
outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts ii.) the
New Testament Church was born.
1. The Church of the Apostles.— Obvious reasons

compel a glance at the phenomena of the Apostolic

Age. Three main stages in the development may be
distinguished :

(1) The first takes us to the martyrdom of Stephen,

and may be called the period of unbroken unity with
Jewish institutions. The Church in this stage was
composed wholly of Jewish believers, and w^as presided
over by the apostles as a body. The first disciples
stood in unbroken unity with temple and synagogue
(Acts ii. 46 ; iii. 1).^ Their specifically Christian

^ Much later Saul sought the Christians in the synagogues

(Acts ix. 2).

(14)
 THE APOSTOLIC AGE 15

fellowship expressed itself in domestic gatheriugs (ch. ii.

46). Even the apostles did not dream of parting with

their national usages {cf. Peter's scruples, Acts x.), but
probably thought of the Gentile mission to which they
knew themselves called (Matt, xxviii. 19; Acts i. 8;
ii. 2l, 39), as an incorporation into Jewish privilege.
How long this naive stage lasted is uncertain, but the
need must early have been more independent
felt for

assemblies. Tiiis became imperative when, under the

new impulse of love, the so-called " community of
goods " was introduced (ch. ii. 44, 45). It is in connec-
tion with thejudgment on Ananias and Sapjjhira that
the word " Church " first occurs (ch. v. 11).^ Even yet
we must beware of attributing to these gatherings of
the disciples too formal an organisation. Everything
is as yet fluent, growing, unconstrained. The first

mention of "elders" is in Acts xi. 30, and, doubtless,

the analogy followed there was that of the Jewish
synagogue.
The oldest definite step in organisation we read of
was the appointment of The Seven (Acts vi.), called
for by the disputes between Hebrews and Hellenists
(Greek-speaking Jews) about the daily distribution.
It is customary to see in these " Seven " the proto-
types of the " deacons " ; but it may be questioned
whether the design went farther than to meet a parti-
cular emergency. Naturally, as believers multiplied,
similar associations tended to spring up in the sur-
rounding districts (Acts ix. 31 Gal. i. 22). These
;

appear to have stood in a certain relation of depend-

ence on the mother Church in Jerusalem.'^ But the

Not in Acts ii. 47 cf. R.V.

1
;

Even when so important a Church as that of Antioch was

"^

formed, it seemed the natural thing to send delegates to it

from Jerusalem to look after its welfare (Acts xi. 22).
 ;

16 THE EARLY CHURCH

distinction of Hellenist and Hebrew had a further
influence, and one of greater importance. It lay in

the nature of the case that the Hellenistic Jews were

men of a freer, more cosmopolitan spirit than their
Hebrew compatriots. From their circle came Stephen,
the forerunner of St. Paul. It seems plain that Stephen
had clearly grasped the principle that salvation by faith,
and the spirituality and inwardness of Christ's religion
generally, rendered obsolete the prescriptions of the law
(Acts vi. 13, 14). His address in his defence turns
throughout on this idea, that God's revelations are
not tied to times and places, and that His worship is
not necessarily bound up with these (ch. vii.). It

was this that led to his martyrdom for blasphemy.

It did not occur to anyone that he had left a suc-
cessor in the young man at whose feet his clothes
were laid, and who was the most clamorous for his
destruction.
The second stage extends from the martyrdom
(2)
ofStephen to the Council of Jerusalem, and may be
termed the period of the founding op the Gentile
Churches. The birth of Gentile Christianity was not
an event which took place all at once, or without being
prepared for within the Church itself. The first
barrier broken down was that between Jews and
Samaritans (Acts viii. 5-8) ; a second was broken
down when Philip sought and baptised the Ethiopian
eunuch (ch. viii. 2640) a third and greater one was
;

removed when Peter was sent to Cornelius (ch. x.)

the last was broken down when some men of Cyprus
and Cyrene, likewise Hellenes, boldly struck into a
new line, and began to preach the Gospel to the
Greeks at Antioch (ch. xi. 20, 21). This was quite
A new departure. Previously, it is said, the Word had
been preached to none but Jews only (ver. 19) ; now
 THE APOSTOLIC AGE 17

it was preached to Gentiles, and a purely Gentile

Church was founded. The special thing to notice is
how the Church at Jerusalem received the tidings of
these advances. It did so in a way worthy of it. It

saw itself being led into new paths, but it was not
disobedient to the heavenly vision (cf. viii. 14; xi.

18, 22, 23).

Meanwhile God had been preparing His own instru-
ment for this work. The conversion of Saul is one
of the most remarkable facts in history one also ;

the most far-reaching in its effects. " Pharisaism ht\s

fulfilled its historical mission when it has brought

forth this man" (Harnack). It is not an unlikely
conjecture that the reason why Saul opposed the
Christians with so unrelenting a hostility was that,
with his powerful, consistent intellect, he saw more
clearly than others that the logical consequence of
this system was the utter overthrow of Judaism.^
When, therefore, it pleased God to reveal His Son in
him (Gal. 15), this was to him one and the same
i.

thing as the call to preach the Gospel to the

Gentiles. A prolonged retirement to Arabia was
followed by a fifteen days' visit to St. Peter at

Jerusalem ; were spent in his

the next few years
native district (Gal. Thence he was brought
i. 17-21).
by Barnabas to help him at Antioch, where a power-
ful Church had been established, and the disciples
had received the name by which they have since
been known — "Christians" (Acts xi. 26).

From this point begins a new development. St.

Paul and Barnabas are separated for a mission to the

Gentiles (ch. xiii. 2). We need not follow the Apostle
in his MISSIONARY JOURNEYS. His progress is marked

^Thus Baur.
2
 ;

18 THE EARLY CHURCH

by light points, for was a principle with hira, neg-
it

lecting outposts, to aim at the great centres. This

enables us to trace him as he goes along at Antioch—
in Pisidia, at Philippi, at Thessalonica, at Athens, at
Corinth, at Ephesus — till finally his desire was gratified

in away he had not looked for, and he saw Rome also

(Rom. i. 15 xv. 32). The conditions under which these
;

Churches planted by St. Paul had their origin caused

them to present certain peculiarities, (a) They were
/ree to a greater extent than the Palestinian Churches
from the Imv and synagogue; (b) they were mostly
—
mixed Churches composed in varying proportions of
Jews and Gentiles and (c) they were more completely
;

independent than the Palestinian and Syrian Churches.

The latter, it was noted, stood in a certain relation of
dependence on the mother Church at Jerusalem.
The only bond of union among the Pauline Churches
was their consciousness of a common faith, and the
personality of their great apostle, whose letters and
travelsfrom Church to Church kept them in touch
with him and in connection with one another.
(3) The third stage extends from the Council of
Jerusalem (inclusive) to the end of the apostolic age,
and is marked as the period of the great contro-
versy BETWEEN Jew and Gentile. The Church in
Jerusalem appears to have been considerably rein-
forced by the more conservative section (Acts vi. 7
XV. 5 ; These had been content to be silent
xxi. 20).
when was only the case of one individual (the
it

eunuch), or one family (Cornelius), or one Church

(Antioch), directly under the eyes of their own
delegates. Now (close of first missionary journey),
the Gentile mission had been pushed far and wide,
and there seemed a danger that their distinctive
Jewish privilege would be altogether swamped. A
 —
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 19

REACTIOXART PARTY accordingly emerged, whose

watchword was " Except ye be circumcised, ye cannot
be saved" (ch. xv. 1, 5, 24). Their machinations at
Antioch led to Paul and Barnabas being sent up to
the apostles and elders at Jerusalem for a settlement
of this question, and to the calling of the Grkat
Council of Acts xv. The chief points to be noted are
the entire agreement of the Jerusalem leaders with
Paul on the main issue (thus also Gal. ii.),^ and the
broad basis on which the decision was amved at
" The apostles and elders, with the whole Church "
(ch. XV. 23).
The decision itself was of the nature of a compro-
mise, but it left untouched a point of great importance
for the future peace of the Church. The Jews were
not to insist on circumcision ; the Gentiles were to
observe precepts (vers. 28, 29). But
it was not settled

whether Jews were at liberty to dispense with the

customs of their nation. On this point real difference
of opinion still existed.^ St. Paul was probably the
only one perfectly clear in principle the majority of;

the Jewish believers took the other view. The differ-

ence was one which was bound to emerge in mixed

Churches — especially in eating. Hence the collision
OF St. Paul and St. Peter at Antioch (Gal. ii. 11-14),
which turned on this point. The question of principle,
however, once raised, could only be settled in one way
in the interests of the liberty and unity of the Church
(r/. the Epistles of St. Peter and St. James, which lay

not the slightest stress on the observance of the law

of Moses — this though both are directly writing to
the Diaspcn-a). Still, as a matter of usage, the Jewish
Christians continued to walk faithfully in the customs

^ Some do not identify these visits. ^ Thus Ritschl.

 ;

20 THE EARLY CHURCH

of their fathers (thus even St. Paul, Acts xxi. 24
xxviii. 17).i

It will be seen from this that the Judaising party

which opposed St. Paul with so much bitterness in the
Churches did not consist entirely of those who insisted
on circumcision. This was the nature of the opposi-
tion in Galatia (Gal. v. 1-4 ; vi. 13, 14). But it would
include also those who, without insisting on the cir-

cumcision of the Gentiles, resented the abrogation of

the law for Jews. This was probably the nature of
the opposition at Corinth, where we do not read of any
attempt to raise the question of circumcision, but of
attacks on St. Paul's apostleship, and the attempt to
form a Petrine in opposition to the Pauline party
(1 Cor. i. 12 ix. 1). After this the controversy seems
;

to have died down (a last trace in Phil. iii. 2). From

this time St. Paul had to contend with mixed forms
of error, in which legality had a place, but in associa-
tion with Essenian and other heretical elements (c/.
Colossians). By the time we reach the Gospel and
Epistles of St. John we are moving in an atmosphere
far above these oppositions, and find all antitheses
resolved in the calm assurance of the possession of
" eternal life."

Constitution and Worship of the Apostolic

2.

—
Cliurches. Fresh light has been thrown on these
subjects b}'- the recently discovered BidachP. —probably
a work of the end of the first century. ^ With respect
knowledge is the
to constitution, the chief gain in our
distinction we are enabled to make between ordinary
and extraordinary office-bearers.

1
Gf. the description of St. James (from Hegesippus) in
Eusebius, Hist., ii., 23.
2 See Chap. iv.
 THE APOSTOLIC AGE 21

The cn-dinary office-bearers are the elders (or bishops)

and DEACONS. The facts may bo thus exhibited (1) :

Each congregation was presided over by a number of

elders or bishops (Acts xi. 30 xiv. 23 Titus i. T), etc.).
; ;

With these were joined the deacons, who seem to have

served or assisted tlie elders in temporal matters. (2)
Elders and bishops were identical. The names are inter-
changeable (Acts XX. 17, 28 Phil. i. 1 1 Tim. iii. 1, ; ;

8 Titus i. 5, 7).
; There is no reason for supposing
that the persons described more generally in 1 Cor.
xii. 28; i Thess. v. 12; Heb. xiii. 8, etc., are other
than the elders. (3) The elders had spiritual, and
not merely administrative, functions.^ They have
oversight of the flock, watch for souls, speak the
Word, pray with the sick, etc. (Acts xx. 28 ; Heb.
xiii. 17 ; 1 Pet. v. 2 ; James v. 15). (4) As in the
case of "the Seven," election was popular (thus also
Didache)y with subsequent ordination (Acts vi. 5 ; 1

Tim. iv. 14; v. 22; Titus i. 5).

While this was so, there was a class of extramdinary
office-bearers, to whom the work of teaching and ex-
horting more especially belonged. These were the
APOSTLES and evangelists, prophets and teachers
(Acts 1; 1 Cor. xii. 28; Eph. iv. 11).
xiii. They
differed from the others in that their ministry was
itinerant. The Didache gives minute directions re-
garding the apostles, prophets and teachers (ch.
xi.-xiii.). Their support is to be voluntary. The
apostle is not to tarry more than two days in one
place. If any asks for money, he is a false prophet.

The prophet may settle in a congregation and become

This against Hatch. His conjecture that the designa-

^

tion " bishops " in Gentile churches was suggested by the

guilds connects itself with his idea that their functions were
mainly financial or administrative.
 ^

22 THE EAKLY CHURCH

what we would call its pastor. If prophets or

teachers are absent, the bishops and deacons perform

their service.
Besides this special and general ministry in the
Church, there were cases in which the ordering of
the affairs of the Church was put into the hands of
specially appointed apostolic delegates men like —
Timothy and Titus. Their position is probably to be
looked on as deputed and exceptional, and adapted to
the circumstances of a transition period (c/. 1 Tim.
i. 3 ; Titus i. 5).

The above was the general constitution of the

Gentile churches, and the Jewish churches in the main
agreed with it. In one important respect, however,
a different type was presented by the Church at
Jerusalem. This Church, we saw, was presided over
by the apostles, and took an oversight of the Jewish
churches in its neighbourhood. Afterwards its presi-
dency was in the hands of Jambs, the Lord's brother,
who, from his personal pre-eminence and relationship
to Christ, held practically apostolic rank. From this

circumstance the idea seems to have grown up that

the head of the Church at Jerusalem should be a blood
relation of Christ; and, after St. James's martyrdom
(c, A.D. 70), a cousin of the Lord, Symeon, was elected.
He held this position till his own martyrdom {c. a.d.
107). Soon after, in the reign of Hadrian, the Jewish
Church in Jerusalem came to an end.
In its worship, as in its constitution, the Church was
modelled partly on the usage of the synagogue. In
Jewish-Christian, and even wider circles, the name
" synagogues " was long in use for Christian assemblies

(c/. James ii. 2). What was new came from the freer

1 Hegesippus in Eusebius, Hist., iii., 11.

 THE APOSTOLIC AGE 23

spirit which Christianity introduced, and from the

entrance of specific Christian ideas and observances.
Chief among these new elements may be noted (1) :

The new day of Christian service the first day of —

the week, or Lord's Day (Acts xx. 7 1 Cor. xvi. 2 ; ;

Rev. 10i.thus also Didache).

:
(2) The exercise of
the spiritual gifts —tongues, prophesyings, etc. (1 Cor.

xii.). (3) The singing of Christian hymns (c/. Eph.

V. 19). Fragments of these hymns are believed to be
found in such passages as Eph. v. 14 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16.

(4) The reading of apostolic letters (Col. iv. 16;

1 Thess. v. 27). (5) The observance of Baptism and
the Lord's Supper (breaking of bread, eucharist).
Baptism, after Oriental custom, was administered
generally, though not exclusively, by immersion.
Another method was pouring, for which directions are
given in the Didarke (vii.).^ {Cf. the baptism of the
Spirit by outpouring, Acts ii. 33 x. 46, etc.). The ;

rite was administered on profession of faith hence —

primarily to adults —
and was frequently accompanied
with spiritual gifts {e.g., Acts xix. 16). Opinions
differ as to the baptism of the children of believers.
A class of cases may indicate that the Jewish analogy
was followed of receiving the household with its head
(Acts xvi. 15, 33 ; 1 Cor. i. 16; cf. 1 Cor. vii. 14).

The crowning act of the New Testament religious

servicewas the Lord's Supper, with which in this age
was always combined the Agape, or *' love-feast." The
two formed, indeed, one sacred meal, in the course of
which, after blessing, bread was broken and wine
drunk after the example of the Lord (1 Cor. xi. 23-
34). Different types of observance may, however,
be distinguished. In Gentile churches the service

^ Illustrated also iu Catacomb pictures.

 — —
;

24 THE EARLY CHURCH

tended to be adapted to the freer model of the Greek
feast (hence the abuses at Corinth, 1 Cor. xi.) ; m
Jewish churches there was closer adherence to the
ritual of the Passover. The eucharistic prayers in the
Didache are on the latter model (chs. ix.-x.). The
directions do not include the words of institution
but these may be presumed to be presupposed.
3. Transition to later Jewish Christianity.
We have found two parties in Jewish Christianity — one
our extreme Pharisaic party, who not only observed
the law themselves, but would have imposed it on the
Gentiles ; the other, more tolerant and liberal, and
friendly to the mission of St. Paul. A series of events
now took place which had the twofold effect of (1)
finally separating the Jewish Christian Church from
the older Judaism ; (2) finally separating the two
Jewish parties —the stricter and more tolerant —from
each other. Such events were :

(1) The catastrophe of the destruction of Jeru-

salem (a.d. 70). Warned, it is said, by a divine
revelation (more probably mindful of the predictions
of the Lord), the Christianshad withdrawn to Pella,
in the Decapolis,and there beheld the storm sweep
over their doomed nation which wrought its over-
throw. So awful a providence could not but lead
them to ponder anew their relation to a system which
had thus perished, as it were, under the visible curse

of God.
The REVIVAL OF Rabbinism, and increasing
(2)
hostility of the Jews. The political fall, far from
destroying Rabbinism, became the occasion of a great
increase in its power (new centre at Jamnia, schools
opened, court of justice established, etc). This stiffen-

ing and concentration of Judaism was accompanied

by a bitterly intensified hostility to the Christians
 THE APOSTOLIC A(;K 25

(Minim), who, repelled, cursed, persecuted by their

brethren according to the Hesh, were naturally in-

fluenced to ally themselves more closely with (ientile

believers.

(3) Matters were brought to a crisis by the great

REBELLION UNDEii Rarcocuba (" Sou of a Star"), in
the reign of Hadrian (a.d. 132), when the refusal of
Christians to enlist under the banner of the false
Messiah exposed them to the worst cruelties. The
revolt was followed by the erection on the site of
Jerusalem (a.d. 135) of a new heathen city, jElia
Capitolina, from which by express decree all circiim-
cised persons were excluded. The old Jerusalem
Church was thus finally dispossessed, and a (ientile
Church took its place, which served itself heir to its
traditions and prestige.
4. Nazarenes and Ebionites. —
The same causes
which led to the separation of Jewish Christianity
from Judaism proper led also to the separation of its
two sections from each other. It is evident that the
narrower of these sections, the old opponents of St.
Paul, had never really grasped the essential nature
of Christianity, and were bound to become more re-
actionary as time went on. Even the more liberal
section, who recognised the legitimacy of the (ientile
mission, were necessarily hindered by their environ-
ment from attaining any large and worthy conception
of the religion they professed ; and, cut off from the
great developing body of Gentile Christianity, tended
likewise to become a historical anachronism. This is
what actually happened. Justin Martyr {c. a.d. 150)
describes two kinds of Jewish Christians, one of whom
did not \vish, while the other did, to impose the law
upon the Gentiles. The latter he already treats as
heretical. Jerome (beginning of fifth century) knows
 —
26 THE EARLY CHURCH
of two classes distinguished by like peculiarities,
whom he names respectively Nazarenes and Ebionites.
Supplementing his statements by those of others, we
gain the following points :

The Nazarenes (oldest Jewish name for Christians,

Acts xxiv. 5) were a sect small in numbers. Their
chief seats were in Syria, about Pella, in Bashan, etc.,
where they lived among the Jews quite apart from the
Gentile community. They held themselves, as Jews,
under obligation to observe the law, but did not
extend this obligation to the Gentiles, and recognised
the mission of St. Paul. They used an Aramaic
Gospel called the Goapel of the Hehrew8, corresponding,
with considerable changes and interpolations, to our
Gospel of Matthew. They regarded Jesus as born of
the Virgin Mary, and in a special way filled with the
Divine Spirit, who came upon Him at His baptism.
The Ebionites (" poor"), on the contrary, held the law
to be binding on all, and refused to have any fel-
lowship with uncircumcised Gentiles. They bitterly
calumniated St. Paul. Jesus they regarded as a mere
man, chosen to be the Messiah for His legal piety.
Their version of the Gospel omitted the story of the
supernatural birth. The identity of the two parties
with those formerly described seems as clear as it can
be, and is not set aside by the fact that other Fathers
(e.(/., Trenseus, Origen, Eusebius), to whom the Nazar-
enes were not well known, ^ group all under the common
designation of Ebionites, attributing to them the views
of the law proper only to the narrower section, while
aware of the distinction in their views of Christ.
Neither party had a future. The Ebionites were still

^ Epiphauius and Jerome had first-hand knowledge of them.

Augustine, like Jerome, looks kindly on the Nazarenes.
 —
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 27

numerous in the fourth century, but, as a sect formally

rejected, seem to have melted away in the first half
of the fifth century. The Nazarenes are not hoard of
after tlie time of Jerome.
5. Essenian Ebionitism— the " Clementines."
— The Ebionites above described are of the ordinary
Pharisaic type. But Epiphanius (end of fourth century)
is o\u' authority for another type of Ebionitism, whose
peculiarities are best explained by supposing a fusion,
some time after the fall of Jerusalem, of Jewish Chris-
tianity with Essenism.i
An interesting monument of this party appears to
remain in the so-called Clementine writings [Jie-

cognitions and Homilies), originating in the latter

part of the second century (possibly in the beginning
of the third). ^ The titles do not designate distinct
works, but denote divergent recensions or forms
of the same work, which again embody older docu-
ments. In character the Clementines are a story or
romance — an early instance of the religious novel
one, too, wrought out with no slight literary art.
Clement, to whom the writings are attributed, is

represented as the son of a noble Roman, whose wife

and twin children had become lost,and who himself
disappeared in seeking for them. The youthful Cle-
ment's mind is consumed with an ardent passion for
truth. He meets with Barnabas at Rome (Horn.,
Alexandria), and ultimately attaches himself to Peter
at Ca3sarea. Peter's great mission appears to be to
follow Simon Magus (a supposed mask for St. Paul)

^ Thus Neander, Ritschl, etc.

"^
The first to mention tliem is Origen. The Recognitions
Latin translation the complete Greek text of
exist only in a ;

the Homilies was first published in 1853. There is also an

Epitome of the Homilies.
28 THE EARLY CHURCH
about from place to place and counteract his influence.
Clement is instructed by Peter, acts as his amanuensis,
and sends accounts of his discourses, debates with the
Magus, etc., to St. James at Jerusalem. In the course
of their travels reunions are effected of all the members
of Clement's family (mother, twin brothers, father)
— hence This romance is the frame-
Recognitions.
work in which the theological ideas are skilfully set.
The Ebionitism of the Homilies is the more pro-
nounced, but the type of doctrine in both forms is
similar. The key-thought is that of the one "true
prophet," who, changing form and name, goes down
through the ages, appearing now as Adam, now as
Moses, now as Christ. Christianity is thus the re-
promulgation of the eternal law. Over against Adam,
as the true prophet, stands Eve as the bringer in of
false or " female " prophecy, to which is attributed
everything in the Old Testament false or unworthy
of God. Sacrifice is rejected (in the Recognitions
viewed as a provisional expedient ; in the Homilies
as a work of false prophecy). A remarkable feature
in theseworks is that the point of circumcision is con-
ceded (only baptism), and the Gentile mission itself is
taken over from St. Paul, and claimed for St. Peter.
The ecclesiastical system is that of second century
episcopacy. In these circles the Lord's Supper was
observed with water (Epiphanius).
Intimately connected with the Ebionites of the
Clementines were the Elkesaites, who take their
name from a supposed leader, Elkesai, in the reign
of Trajan. It has been plausibly conjectured, however,
that "Elkesai" ("hidden power") is rather the name
of a revelation hooh} with which this sect is always

^ It was actively circulated in the third century.

 ;

THE APOSTOLIC AGE 29

associated. This book, of wliose orip;in mythical

accounts are given, aimed at an amelioration of discip-
line by teaching a second forgiveness of sins through
baptism. Unlike the Clementines, it insisted on
circumcision. The whole movement appears to show
a bold attempt to popularise a type of Ebionitism
on Gentile soil, and within the Catholic episcopate.
It met, however, with no permanent success.

—
Points for inquiry ami study. Read relevant sections of
the Didachc. On early constitution, read Lightfoot, Hort,
and Hatch (see below). On gift of tongues, see Stanley's
"Excursus" in Commentary on Corinthians.
Books. — Conybeare and Howson, Lewin, and Farrar on St.
Paul; Ramsay's St. Paul the Traveller ; Bartlet's Apostolic
Age ; Lightfoot on " Christian Ministry " (in Philippians)
Hort's Christian Ecclesia ; Hatch's Organisation; Lechler's
Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Age ; Gore's Ministry of Christian
Church.
 CHAPTER III.

GENTILE CHRISTIANITY NERO TO DOMITIAN :

(A.D. 64-96.)

The indications in the New Testament of a rapid pro-

gress of the Gospel are filled out by traditions of the
labours of the apostles after their dispersion fiom
Jerusalem (Thomas in Parthia, Thaddaeus in Edessa,
Andrew in Scythia, etc.), often untrustworthy, but in
their main features bearing out an early extensive
diffusion of Christianity throughout the countries of
the known world. Corroboration will be found in the
facts now to be recited.
1. First Contact with the Empire. The world —
has rarely seen more perfect specimens of human
wickedness than in the series of emperors who suc-
ceeded Augustus. "The dark, unrelenting Tiberius "
(Gibbon) was followed by the mad Caligula, and he by
the dull, sottish Claudius (a.d. 41), to whose reign
belongs the first distinct notice we have of the pre-
sence of Christianity in the empire. The historian
Suetonius relates that Claudius " banished from
Rome all Jews, who were continually making disturb-
ances at the instigation of one Chrestus." This is the
banishment referred to in Acts xviii. 2 (a.d. 52).
There is little doubt that "Chrestus" is a misspelt
name of "Christ," and that what Suetonius alludes
to is tumults in the Jewish quarters which had arisen
through the preaching of Christ. This is six years
(30)
 NERO TO DOMITIAN 31

before the Epistle to the Romans (a.d. 58), and shows

how remarkably Christianity had already spread in
the capital {cf. Rom. i. 8, and Tacitus below). In
A.D. 54 Claudius was poisoned to make way for his
step-son, Nero, in whom every vice that tongue can
name seemed concentrated. Under Nero happened
what is usually reckoned as the first persecution,
though this mode of enumerating persecutions is in
mciny ways misleading.
2. The Persecution under Nero. One night —
(a.d. 6-4) Rome was discovered to have been set on fire
by an unseen hand. The fire spread with terrible
rapidity till ten out of fourteen quarters of the city
were destroyed. Popular suspicion fastened this
crime on Nero, and he, to avert odium from himself,
turned it on the Christians. A frightful persecution
ensued. An "immense multitude" were convicted,
not so much, as Tacitus confesses, on evidence of
having set the city on fire, as on account of their
"hatred of the human
race." To the most exquisite
tortures w^ere added mockery and derision. Some
were covered with the skins of wild beasts, and thrown
to be devoured by dogs others were crucified
; num- ;

bers were burnt alive and many, covered with pitch,

;

were lighted up when the day declined, to serve as

torches during the night. ^ The emperor lent his own
gardens for the spectacle, and heightened the gaity of
the occasion by games. The persecution was local,
but so terrible an event occurring in the capital could
not but have the most serious consequences affecting
the status and treatment of Christians in the pro-
vinces (cf. 1 Peter and Apocalypse).

^ " At the stake they shine,

Who stand with throat transfixed, and smoke and burn."

—Juvenal.
32 THE EARLY CHUKCH
Apart from its inherent pathos, the persecution
yields instructive light on the rapidly growing num-
bers of the new sect, and on the estimate in which
they were held by the pagans. When even an intel-
ligent writer like Tacitus can speak of them as uni-
versally detested, and deserved^ punished for their
crimes, and of their religion as a " pernicious super-
stition," it is easy to imagine how the ignorant and
unreasoning crowd must have thought and felt regard-
ing them ! was not only into the lower strata of
It
society, however, that Christianity had penetrated.
We have at least one interesting case in this reign to
show that it had found its way into higher circles
as well. Tacitus relates that in a.d. 57 a very dis-
tinguished lady, PoMPONiA Gr.ecina, wife of Aulus
Plautius, commander of the army in Britain, was
accused before her relatives of having adopted a
"foreign superstition," which led her into habits of
seclusion and melancholy. This " foreign supersti-
tion " has been generally understood to be Christianity ;

and the discovery of a crypt in the catacombs con-

nected with the Pomponian gens (one descendant bear-
ing this very name, Pomponius Graecinus), puts the
matter beyond doubt.
3. Martyrdom of St. Paul and St. Peter.— To
this reign of Nero, according to the concurrent testi-
mony of antiquity, belong the martyrdoms of the two
great apostles — St. Paul and St. Peter.
That St. Paul suffered at Rome, having carried the
Gospel "to the extreme limit of the west," is attested
by Clement (a.d. 96) ; and is indeed evidenced by his
ow^n latest epistle (2 Tim.), which anticipates a speedy
death by the sword of the executioner. Clement's
language favours the supposition that he did not meet
this fate at the end of the imprisonment recorded in
 —
NERO TO DOMITIAN 33

Acts xxviii. 30, 31, but had a new period of activity,

journeying perhaps as far as Spain (t/. Rom. xv. 28).
His second imprisonment is probably to be regarded
as an after effect of the terrible persecution already
described. His
seems to have had two stages.
trial

He himself writes pathetically that at his

first answer

or defence he could get no one to act as his patron

or advocate (2 Tim. iv. 16) —
a testimony to the general
terror Nero's recent acts had inspired. He suffered,
tradition says, on the Ostian Road, probably a.d. 67
or 68.
To the same period must be assigned the martyrdom
of his brother apostle St. Peter. The fiction of St.
Peter's seven years' episcopate at Antioch and twenty-
five years' e[)iscopate at Rome (source in the Clernen-
tines ^ and in apocryphal Acts) may be disregarded.
On the other hand there is a consensus of testi-

mony to the fact that St. Peter came to Rome in the

end of and suffered martyrdom about the
his life,

same time This we may accept as the

as St. Paul.
historical nucleus round which embellishments of
legend subsequently gathered. The story of St. Peter
desiring to be crucified with his head downwards is
first found in Origen (beginning of third century).
Most beautiful of the legends about St. Peter is the
well-known Quo Va/Iis story (fourth or fifth century).
Peter was fleeing from the city when he met the Lord
carrying His Cross. "Lord," he asked, "whither
goest Thou?" " 1 go to Rome," said Jesus, " to be

crucified again." Smitten with the rebuke, St. Peter

turned back to prison and to death.

4. The Empire till Domitian.— From Nero to Do-

^ In an epistle prefixed to the Homilies Peter is represented

as transferring his episcopate to Clement.
3
34 THE EARLY CHURCH
mitian, the next emperor who concerns us, is thirteen
years (a.d. 68-81). In this short interval no fewer
than five emperors were raised to the purple. The
reigns of three of them (Galba, Otho, Vitellius) were
compressed in the brief space of eighteen months.
Vespasian and Titus were good rulers. Their names
war and the destruction
are connected with the Jewish
of Jerusalem. On the death of Titus (a.d. 81), not
without suspicion of poison, the empire was taken by
Domitian, Vespasian's younger son. Historians say
he took Tiberius for his model. His moroseness,
dissimulation, cruelty of disposition, are dwelt on by
all who speak of him. Under him took place what
it is customary to call the second persecution.
6. The Persecution under Bomitian.— Domitian
began as a precisian, but ere long developed qualities
which made him what Pliny calls " the enemy of all
good men." His rapacity and lust of blood found
a fitting prey in the Christians. Clement (a.d. 96) ^
speaks of " a vast multitude of the elect " who suffered
for Christ, and gives vivid glimpses of the indignities
they endured. An is told by Hege-
interesting story
sippus,^ of TWO grandchildren of Jude, the brother
of the Lord, whom Domitian caused to be brought
before him, but dismissed as simpletons on finding
that they had no money, and expected only a celestial
kingdom. A more remarkable instance in every way
is that of Flavius Clemens, the consul, and his wife,
DoMiTiLLA, who, the heathen historian Dion Cassius
informs us, were in this reign (a.d. 96) accused of
" atheism,"and " going after the customs of the
Jews." These two persons were of the highest rank.
Clemens was the cousin, Domitilla the niece, of the

^ See Chap. iv. ^In Eusebius, iii., 20.

 ^

NERO TO DOMITIAN 35

emperor, and their two sons hud been adopted by

Doraitian as his heirs. Yet Clemens was put to death,
and his wife was banished to an island in the .Egean.
The peculiarity of the charge implies Christianity,
and this is now confirmed by the discovery of the

cemetery of Domitilla in the catacombs. So near

even in that early age had Christianity come to the
throne of the Ca3sars Dion further relates that
!

" many others " were put to death or had their goods
confiscated on the same charge, and instances Acilius
Glabrio, who had been consul with Trajan, and whose
family was one of the most illustrious in the state.
In 1888 the crypt of the Olabrioncs, in the catacombs,
was likewise laid bare by De Rossi. Other discoveries
show that Christianity had penetrated deeply into the
family of the Flavians.
6. Last Days of St. John. — To this reign also, if

the oldest witnesses are to be trusted, is to be referred

the banishment of the apostle John to Patmos,^ and
the composition of the Apocalypse. It is in any case
to the period after Nero we must assign St. John's
removal to Asia Minor, and his labours and teaching
in Ephesus, of which there is ample attestation.
Here, surrounded by a circle of friends and disciples,
he continued to an extreme old age, his residence
broken only by the banishment above mentioned.
Among those about him in his later days we have
notices of the apostles Philip and Andrew, of Polycarp,
of a second John (the " Elder"), and of other ** elders,"
who continued his tradition. Ephesus, in short, in the
closing years of the century, became the new centre

^
On this family see Lanciani (note at end).
2 Tacitus with evident reference to this reign, that
tells us,

the islands were filled with exiles, and the rocks stained with
murder {Hist., i., 2).
36 THE EARLY CHURCH
of the Church, as Jerusalem had been earlier, and
Rome was to be later.
As John grew old, tradition relates, his friends
St.

gathered round him and besought him to write down

what he had taught about Christ. Thus his gospel
originated. There seem to have been two editions of
it, if -^-e may judge from the supplementary chapter

xxi., itself attested by a note from the elders (vers.

24, 25). Many beautiful stories remain to us of St.

John's later days, how, for instance, when too weak
to repair to church, he caused the young men to
carry him thither, and, being unable to speak much,
contented himself with saying, " Little children, love
one another " (Jerome) or the fine story told by
;

Clement of Alexandria of his reclaiming the young

man who had become a robber. ^ St. John's life is
said tohave extended into the reign of Trajan, i.e.,
beyond a.d. 98. His tomb was shown in Ephesus.
7. The Catacombs. —
Reference has been made to
the catacombs. These singular excavations are immense
SUBTERRANEAN BURIAL-PLACES of the early Christians,
in the fields around Rome, near the great roads,
within a circle of three miles from the city. They
began in the first century, probably as private burial
places in the vineyards or gardens of the wealthier
converts. The older cemeteries, which formed the
nucleus of the catacombs, can in this way in several

instances be These smaller burial-

distinguished.
places, as the excavations proceeded, ran into each
other, and formed the larger areas.
The EXTENT of the catacombs is enormous. They
consist of a vast maze or labyrinth of passages, often

1 See the story in full in Godet's Introduction to St John's

Gospel.
 NERO TO DOMITIAN 37

in descending levels, intersecting each other in all

directions, with little rooms or vaults on cither side.

The total length of the passages is reckoned at some

587 geographical miles. These corridors with the
accompanying chambers are literally packed with
graves. The number of the dead interred in them
has been variously estimated, but can hardly be less
than 2,000,000. This fact speaks volumes for the
extent to which Christianity had spread in and around
Rome during the three centuries or thereabouts that
the catacombs were in use. The oldest cemeteries,
as those of Lucina (Pomponian), of Domitilla, of

Priscilla, etc., are distinguished by their architectural

elegance and classical style of decoration.
Special interest attaches to the art-features, sym-
bols and inscriptions of the catacombs. They make
large use of painting. The oldest tombs exhibit this
art in its highest perfection. Afterwards painting
becomes conventional, and often, as iu the pictures
which stand for Xoah in the Ark, Jonah and the fish,
etc., sinks well-nigh to the ridiculous. The Biblical

representations embrace scenes from both Old and

New Testaments. The figure of the Good Shepherd
appears from the very first, and there are early repre-
sentations of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. The
SYMBOLS of the catacombs bear striking testimony
to the circle of ideas in which the Christian mind
moved, and by which it was sustained.
to the hopes
They are of all kinds, from rudest scrawls to care-
fully-executed designs. Most were Biblical, a few
pagan (Orpheus, etc.). Favourite symbols were the
anchor, the dove, the lamb, the ship, the palm, the
crown. The cross is not early. Chief among em-
blems, on account of its mystical significance, was the
fish. It finds its explanation in the fact that the
38 THE EARLY CHURCH
letters of the Greek name ichthus stand for the first
letters of the names of Christ — " Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, Saviour." Like the symbols, the inscrip-
tions are often rude in style, but show also how
differently death,and everything connected with it,
was looked upon in Christian, as compared with
pagan circles. The inscriptions are marked by a
rare simplicity —
often no more than " in peace " but —
breathe always the spirit of hope, trust, and charity
towards others. There is about them nothing horrible
or revengeful. The tools of labour are portrayed,
but not the instruments of torture. They speak to
the power that overcomes death. The catacombs
were long lost to knowledge were rediscovered by
:

Bosio in 1578 and have been carefully explored in

;

the present century by De Rossi and his coadjutors.

Points for inquiry and study. — Read Suetonius and

Tacitus on Nero and Domitian (Tacitus on Domitian in Life
of Agricola). Test the grounds of St. Peter's alleged Roman
Episcopate {cf. Barrow's Supremacy). from the Illustrate
New Testament the penetration by the Gospel upper of the
ranks. Collect the legends of the later life of St. John (cf.
Godet). Read Browning's Death in the Desert. Study further
the testimony of the catacombs.
—
Books. On the history, Merivale's Romans under the
Empij-e Farrar's Early Days of Christianity and story
;

Darkness and Dawn; Lightfoot's "Later School of St.

John" in Essays; Lanciani's Pagan and Christian Rome;
Northcote & Brownlow's Roma Sotterranea
; Withrow's
Catacombs ; Qrr's Neglected Fa^tcrrs in Study of the Early
Progress of Christianity (deals with numerical progress,
spread of Christianity in higher circles, etc.).
 CHAPTER IV.

THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS

(a.d. 9G-117).

With the mild Xerva, after the murder of Domitian

(a.d. 96), begins the series of what are sometimes
known as "The Five Good Emperors." Nerva was suc-
ceeded (a.d. 98) by the frank and soldier-like Trajan,
under whom we reach, as ordinarily reckoned, the
THIRD PERSECUTIOX.
1. The Persecution in Bithynia—Pliny and

—
Trajan. A correspondence preserved to us between
Pliny and the emperor serves as a flashlight to reveal
ihe EXTRAORDINARY PROGRESS made by Christianity in
certain parts of Asia Minor in the beginning of the
second century.
Pliny at the time (a.d. 112) was proconsul of the
extensive province of Bithynia-Pontus. So widely
spread was Christianity in this province that the
temples were almost deserted, the sacred rites had
long been suspended, and sacrificial victims could
scarcely find purchasers. Persons of all ages and
ranks, and of both sexes, had embraced the new
" superstition." Informations had been laid before the
proconsul, and numbers of Christians had already
been put to death. The test applied was to offer
wine and incense before the images of the gods and
emperor, and to revile Christ. The multitude of the

(39)
40 THE EARLY CHURCH
persecutions involved Pliny in doubt as to how he
should and he referred to the emperor for direction.
act,

Trajan's reply in effect was that he was not to look

for cases, or receive anonymous informations, but if
Christians were brought before him and proved ob-
stinate, he was to punish them. If this letter of
Trajan afforded Christians a measure of protection,
in other respects it was a distinct worsening of their
position. Hitherto Christians had fallen only under
the general laws of the empire ; now they were, so to
speak, singled out as a party definitely proscribed.
Their illegal standing was directly affirmed. Hence-
forth the very name of Christian sufficed to condemn
them. On the other hand, Pliny's letter is a powerful
VINDICATION of the Christians. Investigation, even
under torture, had demonstrated that their proceed-
ings were perfectly innocent, and that all that could
be charged against them was (as Pliny judged of it)
an absurd and extravagant superstition.
The letter throws valuable light also on the worship
of the time. The Christians met, it is told, on a
**
stated day " (Sunday) before daybreak, sang a hymn
to Christ as God, and bound themselves by an oath
(the pledge of the Supper T) to abstain from every kind
of crime in the evening they reassembled to eat a
;

harmless meal (the Agape, now separated from the

Supper). This latter meeting they discontinued after
Pliny's prohibition. Not without reason has this re-
markable epistle been called " the first apology for
Christianity."
2. Martyrdom of Ignatius — The Ignatian Epis-
tles. — Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, is the first martyr-
hero of whom we have a definite account. The often-
told story of his condemnation by Trajan, his dialogue
with the emperor, his play upon the word Theophoros
 THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS 41

(God-bearer), etc., is derived from old "Acts," and is

imaginary. All we really know of the martyr is drawn

from his own much-controverted Epistles. The Middle
Ages were familiar with an enlarged and interpolated
edition of twelve epistles. In 1G44 Ussher brought
to light a shorter Latin edition of seven epistles, and
the Greek text of these was discovered soon after (six

by Vossius). This corresponds with the number known

to Eusebius. In 1845 a yet shorter Syriac edition of
three epistles, much abbreviated, was discovered by
Cureton but opinion has now
; fairly well settled down
in favour of the seven Vossian epistles as the genuine
Ignatius. From these we glean that Ignatius was
tried and condemned at Antioch (c. a.d. 110), not by
the emperor but by the governor, and was sent across
Asia Minor under the care of ten guards (" leopards,"
he calls them) to Rome, to be thrown to wild beasts.
The road to Smyrna, where a halt was made, divides
into two, a northern and a southern. The martyr was
taken by the upper route, but the Churches along the
lower route were asked to send delegates to meet him
at that city. The Church of Smyrna at the time was
presided over by the holy Poly carp.
This brings us to the origin of the epistles. Before
leaving, Ignatius wrote letters to the Churches along
the lower road (Ephesians, Magnesians, 'frallians) ;

one also to the Romans, breathing an ardent de-

sire for martyrdom. The remaining three letters
(Philadelphianfi, Sinyrnceans, and a personal one to
Polycurp) were written from Troas, the next impor-
tant halting-place. He passes thence to Philippi,
and this is the last glimpse we get of him. The call
at Philippi, however, was the occasion of obtaining for
us another valuable relic of the period in the Epistle
of Polycarp (see below), to whom the Philippians had
42 THE EAKLY CHURCH
written, asking for copies of the martyr's letters.^ In
due time Ignatius would arrive at Rome, would be
delivered into the proper custody, then when the
fete-day came would be led into the blood-stained
arena, to meet his death at the jaws of the beasts,
amidst the roar of thousands of delighted spectators.
His epistles are his legacy —and his photograph. Of
warm Syrian temperament, eager and impetuous, a
born " impeller of men," yet consumed with a pas-
sionate devotion to Christ, which made him not count
his life dear to him if, at any cost, he could " attain"
to union with His Lord, he is to all ages the typical
"Martyr."
The Literature of the Period— The " Apos-
3.

tolic Fathers." —
The name " Apostolic Fathers " is
given to a number of writings whose authors were
believed to be, in the strict sense, apostolic men, i.e.,

either contemporaries {e.g., Clement, Barnabas, Hermas)

or disciples (Polycarp, Ignatius) of the apostles. This
use of the designation is now abandoned. No one
pretends to find in each of the authors of these
writings direct personal relationship with the apostles.
In another respect, however, these writings are fitly

grouped together. They all emanate from the sub-

apostolic age, and represent the thought and feeling
of a period in regard to which they are nearly the
only Christian monuments we possess. Incomparably
inferior to the writings of theNew Testament (a fact
which the authors themselves w^ere fully aware of), they
have yet many beauties and a distinct interest.
Leaves and scraps of a lost literature for such they —
really are —
they are far from lacking in variety of
subject and style.

1 To this is probably due the collection of these letters.

 THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS 43

At the head of the list stands the EnaxLE of

Clement to the Corinthians (a.d. 96).^ The author,
formerly, but mistakenly, identified with the Clement
of Phil. iv. 3, is the same who appears in the early
lists as the third of the Roman bishops (Linus and
Anacletus being the first and second), whose fabulous
history is given in the Clementines.'^ The occasion
was a revolt of the Corinthian Church against certain
of its elders, which had issued in their forcible expid-
sion from office. Clement writes in name of the
Roman Church to urge concord and submission to
authority. The tone is one of " sweet reasonableness,"
yet in parts there is a note of imperiousness, which Dr.
Lightfoot not unfairly regards as prophetic of future
claims to domination. The epistle is an early witness
to St. Paul's (first) letter to the Corinthians, in which
the apostle also dissuades from contentions. Its closing
chapters (59, 60) are a prayer of a distinctly liturgical
character. The so-called second epistle of Clement
is an ancient homily or sermon the first of
really —
the kind we possess.^ Its date may be about a.d.
130-40. It is a simple edifying production, with
here and there a touch of ultra-spiritualising. A
peculiarity in it is the quotation of several sayings
of our Lord from an apocryphal source "*
(chs. 4, 5,

12).

^ The dates The complete Greek

are approximate only.
text of Clement, and second Clement, was
of the so-called
discovered by Bryennios at Constantinople (1873) in the same
volume from which the Didache was afterwards published
(1883).
2 Some scholars would identify him with Flavins Clemens,
but on insufficient grounds.
^ It seems to be a 7-ead exhortation.
•*
Possibly the Gospel of the Egyptians, see Chap. vi.
44 THE EARLY CHURCH
A third writing, the so-called Epistle of Barnabas,
derives its name from the belief that it was the pro-
duction of the companion of St. Paul. Internal
evidence entirely negatives this supposition. The
epistle was written after the destruction of Jerusalem
(to which event it alludes), and bears a strongly
anti-Judaic character. Yet it is of very early date
(a.d. 70-100). Its literary peculiarities suggest that it

emanated from Alexandria. It is marked by excessive

fondness for allegorising, and by a far-fetched, fanciful
style of treatment generally. It aims at imparting
a higher "knowledge" {gnosis) in the mystical inter-
pretation of types {e.g., Abraham's 318 servants, oh.
9 ; clean and unclean beasts, ch. 10.). Both Barnabas
and, in a slighter degree, Hernias (below) incorporate
matter found in the earlier chapters of the Didache
— thus raising an interesting literary problem.
The Shepherd of Hermas is our oldest allegory.
It has been fitly called the Pilgrim's Progress of the
early Church. It was held in the highest repute
in the Church; is spoken of even as "scripture"
(Irenseus, Origen). The author was at one time
identified with the Hermas of Romans, xvi. 14; but
this is now abandoned. An early notice makes him
the brother of Pius I., Bishop of Rome (a.d. 140-155).
He speaks of himself, however, as a contemporary
of Clement of Rome (ch. 4), and the simplicity of
the Church order in the book agrees with this earlier
date 100).
(c. Hermas, according to his own
A.D.
account, was the slave of a Roman lady, named
Rhoda, who set him free and showed him many kind-
nesses. His book consists of three parts —Visions,
Mandates, and Similitudes. The chief figure in the
Visions is the Church, represented by a venerable
lady, who appears younger in each new vision. In
 THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS 45

the last Vision the Saviour appears as a Shepherd

(hence the name), and bids him write down the
commandments and parables He would give him.
The Mandates show acquaintance with the Didache.
The Similitudes remind one of Bunyan's Interpreter's
House. They contain ten parables, and give their
interpretations.
The Epistles of Ignatius (a.d. 110) have already
been described. Their chief interest is in their bear-

ings on the origin of Episcopacy (see below). Allusion

has also been made to the origin of the Epistle of
PoLYCARP to the Philippians (a.d. 110), a beautiful
letter, remarkable in a critical respect for the use it

makes of 1 Peter and 1 John, and for the authen-

tication it gives to St. Paul's epistle to the same
Church. One of the finest of all the post-apostolic
writings is the Epistle to Diogxetus, which, though
it really belongs to the next period (c. a.d. 150),
is best taken here. It found its way into our list

from the belief that its author was a disciple of the

apostles ; then was long attributed to Justin Martyr.
The Diognetus to whom it is addressed may not
improbably have been the tutor of Marcus Aurelius of
that name. It combats idolatry, defends theism, and
gives a strong and clear presentation of evangelical
truths. One thought dwelt on is the cosmopolitan
character of Christianity. " What the soul is in the

body, that Christians are in the world."

The **
Didache," or "Teaching of the Apostles"
(one of the most valuable "finds " of recent years) has
been before us in an earlier connection. It is in part

a book of moral instruction, in part our oldest work

on Church order (baptism, eucharist, offices). The
literary relations with Barnabas and Hermas can best
be explained by supposing that both the Didache and
 a

46 THE EARLY CHURCH

Barnabas work up material from an older source —
moral treatise on " the two ways " (" there are two
ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a
great difference between the two ways "), which, in
that case, must go back to apostolic times. The book
in its present form may be dated about a.d. 100.
There remain certain fragmexts of Papias, Bishop
of Hierapolis. Papias was a man of weak judgment,
but a diligent collector of traditions about the sayings
of our Lord. He wrote a work in five books entitled
An Exposition of Oracles of the Lord, which is alleged
to have been still in existence in 1218 at Nismes. It
may yet possibly be recovered. Eusebius gives from
itwell-known extracts on the authorship of two of the
Gospels (Matthew, Mark). Papias was martyred about
the same time as Poly carp (c. a.d. 155).
4. The Theology of " The Apostolic Fathers."
— The writings above-named have little independent
theological worth, but are valuable as reflecting the
state of mind in the early Churcli ere theological
reflection had yet well begun. The descent from the
full and vigorous presentation of doctrine in the
apostolic epistles is very marked. There is plentiful
use of Scriptural language, but often little real insight
into its meaning. As if to efface past differences, and
emphasise Catholicity, there is a studious linking
together of the names of St. Peter and St. Paul as of
equal honour and authority. But the sharp edges are
taken off the thoughts of both, with the result that
we have what has been called an average type of
doctrine,^ in which common features are retained, and
distinctive features tend to be lost.
The Christology of these writings is in the main

1 Thus Ritschl.
 THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERH 47

strong and clear. It follows the lines of New Testa-

ment teaching on the pre-existence, deity, incarnation,
and true humanity as well as true divinity of the Son.
Hernias has been thought to be an exception, but his
ninth Similitude, in which he compares Christ to a
—
" rock " and a *' gate " a " rock " because it is old
(so the Son of God is older than all creation, and
"
was the Father's adviser in creation), and a " gate

because it is new (soHe was made manifest in the

last days that we may enter the Kingdom of (iod
through Him), should clear him from this imputation.^
On the Doctrine of Salvation there is greater vague-
ness. In some of the writings the evangelical note is

feeble and hardly discernible (Hermas, Didache), in

others it is remarkably pronounced (Polycarp, Epistle
to Dioc/netus). By most stress is laid on the blood-
shedding, the sufferings, the death of Christ, as the
medium of cleansing and redemption, but there is no
attempt at explanation. Pauline phraseology is used,
but the Pauline thought is generally blunted, and,
under the conception of Christianity as a " New Law"
(Barnabas, Hermas, Didache), there is a tendency to
obscure the relation of faith and works, and to lay
a one-sided emphasis on obedience as the condition of
salvation. Forgiveness is connected with Baptism ;

the rule after that is obedience, and good works {e.g.,

alms-giving) aid repentance in the covering of sin.

"Alms-giving removeth the burden of sin" (2 Cle)n. 16).
In EscHATOLOGY, bcsidcs retaining the ordinary ele-
ments of apostolic doctrine (resurrection, return of
Christ to judgment), most of the Fathers seem to have

^ Professor Hamack makes Hermas a representative of an

" adoptionist," in contrast with a " pneumatic," tjrpe of
Christology. There is a tendency in Hermas to confuse
" Son " and " Spirit."
 —
48 THE EARLY CHURCH
been millenarians, i.e., held the doctrine of 1,000
years' reign of Christ upon the earth (Barnabas,
Papias ;
Didanhe speaks of first resurrection). This
when bound up with material and
doctrine, especially
sensuous elements, as in Papias, is named Chiliasm.
The punishment of the wicked is viewed as eternal
(" For after we have departed out of the world, we
can no more make confession there, or repent any
more," 2 Clem. 8).

5. The Ignatian Episcopacy. — We are brought

at this stage face to face with the question of the
origin of Episcopacy. Two meet us
sets of facts :

(1) A large body of evidence exists to show that, in

the sub-apostolic age, in the Churches of the West
at least, the constitution was not essentially different
from that which earlier prevailed. The Churches are
ruled by elders or bishops and deacons, and there is
no hint of any higher office. Thus, in Clement^s
Epistle, elders and bishops are still the same persons,
and these, with deacons, are the only office-bearers
recognised. This is evidence for both Rome and
Corinth. The writer, afterwards called Bishop of
Rome, makes no claim of the kind for himself. The
testimony of Hennas, likewise emanating from Rome,
is to the same effect. Hermas knows only of bishops
who are also elders. The names are interchangeable.
The Didache bears the same witness, " Choose for
yourselves bishops and deacons." A higher order is
unknown. Ignatius, in his Epistle to the Romans,
fails in any reference to a bishop existing in that city

similar to the bishops in Antioch, Smyrna, Ephesus,

etc.i This, in so strenuous an upholder of episcopacy,

^Mr. Gore, therefore, oversteps the evidence when he says,

on the strength of a rhetorical expression of Ignatius, that
Ignatius knows of " no non-episcopal area."
 —
THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS 40

shows that even in his time there was still no

monarchical bishop in Rome. Polycarp's Epistle to
the Philippians bearstestimony of the same kind for
Philippi. There was still in that Church no office
higher than the apostolic bishops and deacons.
(2) When we turn to the remain'ng Epistles of
Igmitius different conditions confront us. It will be
observed that the evidence under this head relates to
the Churches of a defined area Syria and Asia Minor.
We find not only a bishop for each Church distinct
from the presbyters (elders), but the most extravagant
exaltation of the office of the bishop. The bishop is

as God, and the presbytei-s as the council of God. Or

the bishop is as Christ, and the presbyters are as the
council of the apostles. The presbyters are to be
attuned to the bishop, as the strings of a lyre to the
lyre. The great thing is to be united with the bishop.
Without the bishop it is not lawful to baptise or cele-
brate the eucharist. There is here, therefore, as
clearly three grades of office-bearers —bishops, presby-
ters and deacons —as formerly there were two. Other
evidence confirms the testimony of these epistles. We
have Polycai-p, e.g., at Smyrna, Papias at Hierapolis,
etc.

How, now, is this state of things to be accounted

for ? By apostolic authority 1 or by the operation of
natural causes, elevating the episcopate from the pres-
byterate ? It is important, in answering this question,
to look precisely at the nature of the Ignatian Epis-
copate. Distinction must be made between the facts
to which Ignatius witnesses and the theory he holds.
Ignatius was firmly persuaded that in exalting the
power of bishops he was taking the best means of
securing the peace and unity of the Church. But it

/loes not follow that bishops had yet all the power he
4
50 THE EARLY CHURCH
claimed for them. The very vehemence of his advo-

cacy implies that they had not. When facts are

calmly considered, it is surprising to discover how

little affinity, after all, the Ignatian bishop has to the
bishop of the developed episcopal system. (1) He is

a purely congregational, not a diocesan bishop. Each

several Church —
Antioch, Smyrna, Ephesus, Tralles,
etc. —had its own bishop, who, in this respect, differs
littlefrom the modern "pastor." (2) He makes no
claim to apostolical succession. There is no hint of
this in Ignatius. Had the idea existed, so keen a
defender of episcopacy could not have passed it over.
" There is not
(3) He has no sace^^dotal functions.
throughout these letters the slightest tinge of sacer-
dotal language with reference to the Christian ministry"
(Lightfoot). This should be decisive as to the ideas of
the age in question. Such are the facts a govern- —
ment by presbyters Churches of the West a
in the ;

form of congregational episcopacy in Asia Minor and

Syria. By the middle of the second century all the
Churches would seem to have advanced to the Ignatian
stage.
How did the change come about ? The theory of a
DIRECT APPOINTMENT of bisliops, as a third higher order,
by the original apostles is no longer tenable in view
of the above. Canon Gore, accordingly, would supple-
ment the action of the original apostles by that of
" apostolic men " —
such apostles and prophets as we
read of in the Didache. We cannot doubt, he thinks,
that one of these prophets settling down in a Church
would become its bishop (pastor?). Apart, however,
from the objection that the functions of prophets and
bishops were distinct, this, even if admitted, would
cover only a fragment of the facts. We have seen
that even at the beginning of the second century
 THE A(iE OF THE ATOSTULIC FATHERS r,l

leading Apostolic Churclies had no one-man })i.sliop,

and it is pure assumption that the bishops of all other
Churches owed their origin to the " settling down " of
travelling prophets. There is not a word of this in
Ignatius.
There remains the that the system, how-
possiltility
ever introduced, had the sanction of apostles at —
least of the Apostle John (Lightfoot). Clement of
Alexandria has a statement that St. John went about
from place to place establishing bishops and organising
Churches. The
can neither be proved nor dis-
fact
proved, for Clement may
well be reading back into
John's action a meaning from his own times, ^ and we
have no clue to the nature of the bishops (a plurality^
or single). In any case this is hardly an account of

the oy-igin of the system. Of that the simplest ex-

planation is probably the truest. The president of
the Council of Elders {primus inter 2^are.s), as the
officialrepresentative of the Church, having the
ordinary direction of business, the conduct of public
worship (a sort of archisynagogos),^ and generally an
outstanding man, would naturally acquire a position
of prominence in distinction from the other elders.
Times of stress and trial, such as came to the Church
after the death of the apostles, when tendencies to
disintegration and schism were would [jowerfully
rife,

strengthen his authority. The need of the time was

Mr. Gore says about Tertullian that we have to acknow-

1

ledge " a little idealising " in his statements about the apos-

tolic institution of the Episcopates at Corinth and Philippi

(p. 336).

2ThusRitschl.
3 The " angel " of the Book of Revelation (ch. ii. 1, 8, 12,

etc.) might find his analogue here. But it is doubtful if an

individual is meant at all.
52 THE EARLY CHURCH
good leaders, strong and stable government, wise
direction. Under these circumstances, episcopacy,
such as we know it in Ignatius' day, may well have
arisen without the assumption of any apostolic inter-
position.

Points for inqiciry and study.— Follow out the traditions

and traces of the early progress of Christianity. Read the
legend of Ignatius' trial. Read Clement's appeal for concord
drawn from creation (20), also the final prayer (59, 60). Read
the vision of the shepherd in Hermas (v.). Read chapters 5
and 9 in Epistle to Diognetus. Collect the passages on
Christ's passion and its effects in this group of writings.
Show the equivalence of bishops and elders in Clement,
Hermas and Polycarp.
Books. — Pressense's Early Years of Christianity ; Farrar's
Lives of the Fathers ; Ramsay's Church in Roman Empire;
Orr's Neglected Factors ; Lightfoot's (or other) translation of
Apostolic Fathers; Donaldson's Apostolic Fathers; Hatch's
Organisation ; Lightfoot's Essay on " Ministry ".
 CHAPTER V.

THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS (a.d. 117-180).

The period of the Apologists is covered by tlic three

remaining names in our list of the " Good Emperors."
They are Hadrian (a.d. 117-138), Antoninus Pius
(a.d. 138-161), and Marcus Aurelius (a.d. 161-180).
The period marked externally by intermittent, but
is

severe persecution of the Christians, and by the com-

mencement of written attacks on Christianity inter- ;

nally by the rise of apology, and the develoj)ment of

Gnosticism and Montanism. Despite persecution, the
remarkable progress of the Church is continued.
1. Hadrian and Antoninus Pius.— The attitude
of the versatile emperor Hadrian, in whose reign
written apology began (see below), was on the whole
not unfavourable to Christianity. There is, however,
evidence that both in his reign and that of his suc-
cessor,though no formal persecution is reckoned, the
Christians were continually exposed to harassment
and outbreaks of violence. A rescript of the emperor
to Fundanus, the proconsul of Asia, whose predecessor
had written, much as Pliny did, to ask direction, for-
bids him to receive irregular accusations, or to yield
to popular outcry. If Christians are proved to break
the laws,^ they are to be punished, but libellers are
to be punished still more severely.

^It is a moot point whether breaking the laws here means

more than the mere proof that one was a Christian.
(53)
54 THE EARLY CHURCH
Hadrian nominated to succeed him Antoninus, better
known (from his dutifulness in insisting on the deifi-
cation of Hadrian) as Antoninus Pius. With him was
associated during his reign of twenty-three years his
nephew, Marcus Aurelius. Antoninus was, however,
the acting and responsible emperor. His clemency,
uprightness, and aflfableness of disposition are the
praise of all historians. His reign has commonly
been regarded as free from the stain of persecution.
This is a mistake, though probably the emperor him-
self was not to blame. It is doubtful whether he is

the Antoninus who, when proconsul of Asia, after

some Christians had been condemned, and when the
rest in great numbers presented themselves at his
tribiuial, said " ^Miserable men, if ye desire to die,
:

have ye not ropes and precipices?" (Tertullian). But

the two Apologies of Justin Martyr, and his Dialogue
luiih Trypho —
all of this reign are indubitable —
evidence that Christians were everywhere objects of
hatred and persecution, and had to endure losses,

tortures, and death for their religion (e.g.^ Dial., 110 ;

specific cases in 2 ApoL, i. 2). Melito of Sardis,

another apologist, speaks of numerous edicts issued
by Antoninus (e.g., to the Larisspeans, Thessalonians,
Athenians, forbidding the cities to take new measures
against the Christians. This shows that the emperor
both knew of these persecutions, and, in accordance
with his humane character, took steps to check their
violence.
2. The Martyrdom of Polycarp. —We have, how-
ever, one undoubted instance of martyrdom in this
reign, the details of which, preserved in a contem-
porary narrative, throw light upon the whole. Poly-
carp OF Smyrna has already been before us in con-
nection with Ignatius. Of his earlier life we know
 THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS 55

little. He was eighty-six years old at the time of his

martyrdom (a.d. 155) : so may have been born a.d.
69 or 70. He was a disciple of St. John, in Asia
Minor, and often repeated to the youthful Irenseus
(who was kin disciple) the things he had heard from
the apostle.^
The account of his martyrdom is given in a beautiful
and affecting letter of the Church of which he was
bishop. The great festival of Asia was being held at
Smyrna. Some cause had aroused the fury of the
populace against the Christians. The Jews are
specially mentioned as active in the persecution.
Several Christians had already perished amidst dread-
ful torments, when the cry went up, "Let search be
made for Polycarp." Polycarp at first concealed him-
self, then, on his retreat being discovered, surrendered
himself to the will of God. On the way to the city
he was taken up into the chariot of the captain of
police, who, with his father, urged him to recant.
Failing in their object, they thrust him out with
violence. Arrived at the stadium, he was interro-
gated by the proconsul, "Swear by the genius of
Caesar; say, Away with the Atheists!" Polycarp,
looking to heaven, said, "Away with the Atheists!"
"Revile Christ," urged the proconsul. "Fourscore
and six years have I served Him," was the memokablb
REPLY, "and He hath done me no wrong. How can
I blaspheme my King who saved me ? " The herald
proclainied, " Polycarp hath confessed himself a
Christian," and the cry rose to have a lion let loose
on him. But the games were ended. The shout
then was that he should be burned alive. Polycarp,

^ On his visit to Anicetus, the Roman bishop, see below,

Chap. viii.
56 THE EARLY CHURCH
at his own
request, was only bound, not nailed to the
stake. seemed for a time to the wondering by-
It
standers as though the fire refused to touch him. To
end the scene, an executioner was ordered to stab
him.i The poor malice of the Jews frustrated even
the desire of the brethren for possession of his body,
which was consumed. The bishop's death stopped
the persecution, and probably sent many home to
think, with the consequence that they became
Christians too. Such, at least, we know to have been
a frequent outcome of these martyrdoms (Justin, Dial.,
110; 2 Apol., ii. 12).
3. The Age of the Antonines— Marcus Aure-
lius. — Marcus Aurelius is the classic representative of
his age. Vespasian, in the previous century, had in-
stituted a salaried hierarchy of teachers — rhetoricians,
grammarians, philosophers — by whom the Roman
people was to be lectured into wisdom and virtue.
The result was a species of ethical, philosophical, and
even religious revival in the empire. Paganism had
its itinerant preachers {e.g., Dion Chrysostom, Maxi-

mus of Tyre), whose orations or harangues were

the counterparts of the Christian sermons. These
tendencies came to a head in the reign of Marcus
Aurelius. For once in the world's history, Plato's
dream which had a philosopher for its
of a state
ruler, and was governed by philosophic maxims,
seemed about to be realised.
Personally, Marcus is justly reckoned one of the
"
noblest characters of heathenism. His " Meditations
embody the highest ideal of stoical morality, in union
with a firm confidence in a rational ordering of the

1 The legendary feature of a " dove " issuing from his side

isnot in the oldest version (Eusebius), and is probably a cor-

ruption or interpolation.
 THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS 57

world, characteristic of the later Stoicism. Yet it is

the STOICAL, not the Christian ideal, it lacks the

tenderness, humility, dependence, benignity, hopeful-
ness of the (v'hristian temper. Between Christianity,
with its confession of sin and moral weakness, and
Aurelius, with his philosophic self-sufficiency, passive
resignation, stern suppression of passion, and cheer-
less fatalism, there could be nothing but antagon-
ism. but one allusion to Christianity in
There is

the Meditations (xi. 3), and it breathes the iciest

contempt. Marcus, too, if a Stoic, was a devoted
Roman, fixed in his determination to maintain the
established institutions. His character was not with-
out its strain of superstition,^ and it is noted of him
that in his latter years his melancholy disposition grew
upon him, and he became peculiarly zealous in heathen
rites. It is scarcely wonderful, therefore, that, even
under this paragon of emperors, "Christian blood
flowed more freely than it had flowed any time during
the previous half century "
—that " in fact the wound
was never staunched during his reign " (Lightfoot).

To him is ascribed what we are accustomed to reckon

the FOURTH PERSECUTION.

4. Persecutions under Marcus— The Martyrs
—
of Yienne and Lyons. There is one story told of
Marcus which, if it could be believed, would clear his
memory in part of the stain of persecution. It is the
story of the Thundering Legion. TertuUiau and
others relate that in one of his campaigns the army
was in extreme distress from thirst. The Christian
soldiers of the twelfth legion prayed, and, in answer
to their prayers, copious showers of rain and a
fell,

violent storm drove away the enemy. Appended to

1 See Froude, Renan, Uhlhorn, etc. (note at end).

58 THE EARLY CHURCH
Justin's first Apologyis an alleged epistle from the

emperor to the senate, ascribing his deliverance to

the prayers of the Christians, and commanding that
they be no more molested. Unhappily the epistle is
not genuine. It seems certain that the deliverance

took place, only the heathen attributed it, not to the

prayers of the Christians, but to the interposition of
their own gods. In the pagan account Marcus is

represented as stretching his hands to heaven, and

invoking Jupiter.
The positive evidences of persecution in this reign,
and of the emperor's implication in it, are not few.
At Rome itself there is the case of Justin Martyr
AND HIS SIX COMPANIONS, who Suffered under the
prefect Rusticus (a tutor of Aurehus) about a.d. 163-66
(see below). The emperor could hardly have been
ignorant of this case. There is the testimony of
Melito of Sardis (c. a.d. 170) to a very severe persecu-

tion in Asia Minor. He speaks of God's servants

being persecuted as they never were before by " new
edicts " which gave the property of Christians to their
accusers. Melito professes to doubt w^hether these
edicts emanated from the emperor, but the doubt can
only be assumed for the purposes of his appeal. A
proconsul would not issue such "edicts "on his own
responsibility. Even the heathen Celsus, who wrote
in this reign (see below), speaks of Christ as banished
from EVERY land and sea, and of His servants as bound
and led to punishment, and put upon the stake
(Origen, viii. 39).
But the chief persecution we know of, which stands
out with the distinctness of a limelight picture in its

blending of the horrible and the sublime, is that of

the Churches of Vienne and Lyons in Gaul. It was

a case in which Marcus Aurelius was expressly con-

 THE AGE OF THE APOr^OfJTRTS no

suited, and gave his sanction to what was done. The

account of it is contained in a circular epistle ad-
dressed by the Churches '
to their brethren in Asia
and Phrygia— "the pearl of the Christian literature
of the second century," calls it.Renan
Lyons and
Vienne were two Gaul where the Rhone and
cities of
the Saone join. Lyons was a great seat of Ciesar-
worship, and the place of the aiuiual meeting of the
Gallic deputies in council. The jiersecution was in
A.D. 177, in the midst of the closing troubles of
Marcus's reign. It began with acts of mob-violence ;

then the prominent pei*sons of the two Churches were

arrested, and dragged with clamour and insult before
the tribunals. Tortiu-es beyond description w^ere ap-
plied to the Christians to make them confess t(^ secret
crimes, but without effect.
Four names stand out conspicuous for heroism and
constancy —Sanctus, a deacon from Vienne Maturus, ;

a recent convert; Attains, from Pergamos above all, ;

Blandina, a slave girl, whose mistress was also one of

the martyrs. Blandina was torn and mangled almost
beyond recognition without extorting from her more
than the words, " I am a Christian there is nothing ;

vile done among us." The aged bishop Pothinus

(ninety years old) was dragged before the judgment
seat, and there so cruelly maltreated that, when cast
into prison, he lingered only two days. Irenajus
succeeded him. A new round of torments was devised
for the others —
mangling by wild beasts, roasting in
an iron chair, etc. Blandina was suspended on a stake
and exposed to the attacks of wild animals. But they
refused at this time to touch her. Attains, a Roman
citizen, was reserved till Cicsar's i)leasure should be
known.
^ Possibly written by Irenaeus.
60 THE EARLY CHURCH
The FINAL SCENE of the martyrdom was on the day
of the great festival. The emperor's reply had come,
ordering that such as confessed themselves Christians
should be put to death. All who proved steadfast
were brought forth to punishment. The Romans were
beheaded the rest were taken to the amphitheatre.
;

Again the round of frightful torture was gone through.

Attalus, as a specially notable Christian, was, despite
his Roman citizenship, roasted in the chair. Blandina
herself, renewed manglings and burnings, was
after
enclosed in a net and given to be tossed by a bull.
Thus, last of all her company, she perished. The
knell of slavery was surely rung when scenes like
these could be enacted The rage of the people wreaked
!

itself even on the lifeless remains of the victims. To

prevent resurrection they burned them, and scattered
the ashes in the Rhone. What strikes one in the
pathetic narrative of these sufferings is its tone of
calm sobriety — its utter absence of boasting, or
spiritual pride, or over-eager desire for martyrdom.
Other religions have their martyrs — but have they
martyrs like these ?

5. The Rise of Apology. — The rise of a written

apology for Christianity in this age is a fact of great

significance. shows that Christianity had entered
It

LITERARY CIRCLES; showS alsO the GROWING BOLDNESS

of the Christians,and their confidence in their ability
to calumny and vanquish prejudice by an
refute
openly-reasoned statement of their case. They had
the world against them but their invincible reliance
;

was on the power of truth. They were ready to lay

down their lives as heretofore bat they would not ;

let the world remain in blindness as to the nature

of the religion it assailed. They set themselves to
VINDICATE Christianity ; to expose also the folly
 THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS 61

and IMMORALITY of the pagan idolatry by which it

was opposed.
The apologetic literature of the second century,
therefore, is both voluminous and rich. It covers a
wide area in space. Its authors are men of culture

AND LEARNING, skilled reasoncrs, many of them philo-

sophers by profession, who, at the cost of their worldly
prospects, put their talent and eloquence at the ser-
vice of the religion they had espoused. It breathes
throughout a tone of dignity and lofty conviction,
and must have been a powerful factor in aiding the
progress of Christianity it so strikingly describes.

Such an apology was demanded, if by nothing else,

by the slanders in circulation about the Christians,
and almost universally believed (cannibalism, promis-
cuous immorality, worship of ass's head, etc.). The
refutation of these charges is complete. Scarcely
less effective is the reply to the charges of impiety
and disloyalty ; while the exhibition of the truth and
reasonableness of Christian doctrine, and of the purity
and simplicity of Christian worship and morality, is
heightened by the dark background of heathen irreli-
gion and vice against which it is cast. The apologists
may be grouped as those belonging to the reign of
Hadrian (Quadvatus, Aristides), those of the reign of
Antoninus (Justin, Tatian), and those of the time of
Marcus Aurelius (Athenagoras, Theophilus, Melito,
Minucius Felix, etc.). Tertullian and Ori.Ljcn belong
to the next period.
6. The Earlier Apologists— Justin Martyr.—
The oldest apologist, Quadratus, is little more than
a name to us.^ He addressed an apology to the

1 Possibly he is identical with Quadratus, an evangelist

mentioned by Eusebius (iii. 37).
62 THE EARLY CHURCH
Emperor Hadrian (Athens, a.d. 125-26?), of which
only a single extract is preserved. He lays stress
upon the Saviour's miracles. The other apologist
of this reign, Aristides, was, till lately, even more
completely unknown. It was only know^n that he

was a philosopher of Athens, and had also presented

an apology to Hadrian (a.d. 125-26). In 1889, how-
ever, a complete Syriac version of this apology was
brought to light 1 (tw^o Armenian fragments earlier).
Then the remarkable discovery was made that scholars
had this apology all the while, and were not aware of
the fact. In a famous mediaeval romance, Barlaam
and Joscqjhat, an apology for Christianity is put into
the mouth of one of the characters. This turns out
to be substantially the apology of Aristides, of which
the Greek text has thus been obtained. The apology
is mainly a defence of theism against the errors of

paganism, and a powerful vindication of Christian

morality. It testifies to the existence of a written
Gospel. A third writer, Aristo of Pella, reputed
author of a lost dialogue betw^een a Christian (Jason)
and a Jew (Papiscus), may belong to the end of this
reign. The work is before or about the middle of the
century.
Greatest of all the apologists of this period whose
works have come down to us is Justin the Martyr.
From him we have two Ajyologies, addressed to Anto-
ninus Pius and the Roman Senate (c. a.d. 150), and
a Dialogue ivith Trypho, a Jew^, a little later in date.
Other w^ritings attributed to him are of doubtful

iThe discovery was made by Dr. Kendel Harris, in the

Convent of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai. An inscription in
the Syriac version puts the apology under Antoninus, but
the ordinary date seems preferable. The author knows the
Didache, or the work on which it is based.
 THE AGE OF THE APOLOCISTS 63

genuineness or s})urious. Justin was a native of

Flavia Neapolis (Sychem) in Samaria. In tlie intro-

duction to his Dialogiie he narrates the manner of his

CONVERSION. He had gone from one jjhilosophical
school to another in searcli of truth. A conversation
with an old man whom he met on the seashore directed
him to the Scriptures and to Christ. He became
persuaded that here was the only sure and worthy
PHiLOSorHY, and, still wearing Ids philosopher's cloak,
thenceforth set himself to impart to others the light
he had obtained. We find him at Ephesus and Rome
teaching and disputing in his double capacity of
philosopher and Christian. His disputes brought
him into collision with one Crescens, a cynic, who
plotted his death and that of his disciples. Through
the machinations of this man, or in some other way,
he and six companions were apprehended. Brought
before the prefect Rusticus, they were condemned to
DEATH by decapitation 1 (a.d. 163-66). .
Justin's FIRST APOLOGY is in the main a nobly con-
ceived and admirably sustained piece of argument.
It consists of three parts— the first refuting the charges
against the Christians, the second proving the truth
of the Christian religion, chieflyfrom prophecy,^ the
third explaining the nature of the Cliristian worship.
The second apology was evoked by a specially shame-
ful instance of persecution under Urbicus the prefect.

The Dialogue with Trypho is the account of a long

disputation at Ephesus with a liberal-minded Jew, and
meets his objections to Christianity.

^
The "Acts" of this martyrdom are accepted as rehable.
2The apologetic argument from prophecy would need to be
wholly recast in the light of modern knowledge; yet the
Scriptures chiefly relied on are those which the Church has
always accepted as in a true sense Messianic.
64 THE EARLY CHURCH
Incidentally, Justin's writings throw valuable light
on many matters of importance, as, e.g., on the
existence and use of the canonical Gospels, called by
him the "Memoirs of the Apostles" (1 AjooL, 66-7;
Dial., 10, 100, 103), on the victorious spread of

Christianity {Dial., llTy and on the details of the

Christian weekly service (1 AjjoL, 65-7). The picture
of the last is singularly life-like and minute. The
day of worship, as in Pliny, is Sunday, the service
is under the direction of a " president " (not even yet

by Justin called a bishop), the reading of the Prophets

and the Gospels is an established part of the service,

the president delivers a "homily" or discourse, the

congregation and respond to the prayer
rise at prayer,

of the president with an " Amen," the eucharist is

celebrated at the close of the prayer after sermon
(the agajye probably in the evening), the distribution
is made by the deacons, who take portions to the
absent, after the eucharist offerings are made for the

poor, the sick, prisoners, etc.

The other apologist of the reign of Antoninus is

Tatian, an Assyrian b}^ birth, and disciple of Justin's.

He afterwards fell into gnostic heresy.^ Tatian's

apologetic work an Address to the Greeks (a.d. 150),
is

learned, but bitter, biting, and contemptuous in spirit.

He is better known through his famous Diatessaron,
or " Harmon}^ of the Four Gospels," the discovery
of which in its complete form in an Arabic translation
is one of the sensations of recent years. ^ This finally

1 The catacombs too attest this, and show that Christianity

had entered the highest ranks {e.g., cemeteries of Prsetextatus

and Ceecilia). See Neglected Factors, p. 132 &.
2 See Chap. vi.

2 Latin of an Armenian translation of a

Published in 1888.
Syriac commentary on the Harmony was published in 1876.
 THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS 05

establishes the character of the " Gospels " described

by Justin as in use in the Churches.
7. Later Apologists. —
The apoloj^ists of the reign
of Marcus Aurelius can be more rapidly enumerated.
The first, Athenagoras, was, like Aristides, a philo-
sopher of Athens. He is the most polished and classical
in style of all the apologists. His apology, entitled an
Intercession for the Christians (a.d. 177), is chiefly
devoted to the refutation of the charges against the
Christians (atheism, eating human flesh, immorality),
and is a piece of calm, reasonable, effective pleading.
He wrote also a work on the Resurrection. Theo-
PHILUS, Bishop of Antioch, belongs to the severe school
of apologists. He wrote an apology in three books
addressed to his friend Autolychus (c. a.d. 180). He
can see no good in the philosophei-s and poets, whose
errors and contradictions he shows up in detail. The
few grains of truth he finds in them were stolen, he
thinks, from the Hebrew prophets. He has some
forcible chapters on the purity and beauty of the
Christian morality. Theophilus is the first to men-
tion the Gospel of St. John by name. The Gospel
itself, of course, was in use long before. It was in-

cluded, e.g., in the Diatessaron of Tatian. Melito,

Bishop of Sardis (c. a.d. 170),has been quoted on the
edicts of emperors. His apology to Marcus Aurelius
is known only from extracts. It is characteristic of
the age that, in addressing the emperor, he speaks
of the new religion as "our philosophy." Melito
wrote numerous other works. To him we owe also
the first C^hristian list of the Hebrew Scriptures, i.e.,

of the Old Testament canon. Hermias, date uncertain,

wrote A Mockery of Heathen Philosophers, still extant.

The title explains the character of the work.

Other writers, whose apologetic works are lost,

5
 —
;

66 THE EARLY CHURCH

were Apolinarius, Bishop of Hierapolis (c. a.d. 174),

and MiLTiADES, the former the author of Five Books

against the Greeks, addressed to the emperor, the
latter of an apology addressed To the Rulers of this
World, with other treatises. Finally, there is the
beautiful and able book of the Latin apologist Mmu-
cius Felix. There is a doubt, indeed, whether this
work should be placed here, or later, after Tertullian
but the presumption is strong in favour of the earlier
date. Fronto, e.g., who wrote against the Christians
in this reign (see below), is spoken of as a contem-
porary. The piece itself is in the form of a dialogue
between Octavius and a heathen Csecilius (friends of
—
Minucius, a Roman advocate) hence its title Octavius.
Caecilius states the case for the old faith and Octavius
replies. The intrinsic worth of the book is enhanced
by its high artistic and literary merit.
8. Other Writers. — A passing allusion should be
made to two other writers of note in this age
Hegesippus, who wrote five books of Memoirs some
time between a.d. 175 and a.d. 189 and Dionysius, ;

Bishop of Corinth (c. 170), whose fame

rests chiefly on
his pastoral epistles, of w^hich he wrote a great many.
The works of both are lost, but Eusebius has pre-
served valuable extracts. The Memoirs of Hegesippus
were not history in the strict sense, but appear to
have been a collection of reminiscences of the apos-
tolic and post-apostolic ages, drawn partly from
written, partly from oral sources, in part also from the
writer's own
observation. The author was extensively
travelled, and the information he had to convey
would, if we possessed it, be extremely useful.
9. The Literary Attack on Christianity.— No
sketch of the literature of this period would be com-
plete which, besides a survey of the apologists, did not
 THE AGE OF THE APOLOrnsrs ^7

include some reference to the litehauy opposition to

Christianity. It is another testimony to the growing
importance of Christianity that the age which saw the
rise of a formal Christian apology saw also the begin-
nings of a formal literary attack of exceptional skill

and keenness. Tlie earliest of the literary assailants

we know of was Fronto, tutor of Marcus Aurelius,
who published an oration in which he reiterated the
scandalous charges brought against the Christians.
His argument is conjectured by Kenan to be nearly
textually embodied in the discourse of Csecilius in

the Octavius of Minucius Felix.

A more formidable assailant was Celsus, whose
T7m€ Discourse (c. a.d. 180) was the subject of
Origen's later classical refutation in his Euikt Books
against Celsus (a.d. 249). Celsus is probably to be
identified with an (alleged) Epicurean of that name,
an able literary man, and friend of Lucian, who wrote
also against magic. Of wide reading and undeni-
able acuteness, he spares no pains to damage and
DISCREDIT the Christians, while acquitting them of

the graver calumnies that were current. He first

introduces a Jew to gather up the slanders of

the synagogue ; then in his own name subjects the

Gospel history and beliefs of the Christians to criticism
and ridicule from the standpoint of the true philo-
sophy. Everything in Christianity —particularly its

doctrine of redemption —is an offence to him. It is

not too much to say of his work that, relatively to its

age, was as trenchant an assault as any that has
it

since come from the artillery of unbelief. Yet, as far

as can be seen, its influence was nil in stopping the
triumphant march of Christianity. Its obvious un-

fairness and utter insensibility to the holy love and

power of the Christian religion, deprived it of all effect
68 THE EARLY CHURCH
on minds that knew from experience what Christianity-
was.
Another typical opponent of Christianity in this
age was the sceptical and witty Lucian of Samosata,
a born hater of shams, but withal cynical and heart-
less in his judgments on men and things. In his
Peregrinus Proteus he describes how a cynic charlatan
succeeded in imposing on the Christians, and was
made the object of their lavish kindness when in
prison for his faith. Yet the picture he draws of the
attentions of Christians to their unfortunate brethren,
intended to cover them with ridicule, in reality re-
dounds to their highest honour. Only Lucian was
not the man to see this !

Points for inquiry and study. —

Read the original narra-
tives of the martyrdom of Polycarp and of the martyrs of
Vienne and Lyons (Eusebius, Lightfoot). Note indications
in the latter of the social rank of the victims, and compare
catacomb testimony (Orr). Compare more fully the ethics of
the Meditations with the morality of the Gospel. Study the
character of Marcus on its Roman side. Read Justin's
account of his conversion and of the Christian worship.
Analyse the True Discourse of Celsus (Pressense), and account
for its failure. Classify the principal branches of second
century apology.
Books. — Merivale, Pressense, Uhlhorn, Farrar, Orr, etc.,
as before Cape's Age of the Anto7iines, in " Epochs " series
;
;

Fronde's " Origen and Celsus," "A Cagliostro of the Second

Century," "Lucian," in Short Studies; Renan's Marcus
Aureli^is Jjong's Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius ; Diatessaron,
:

etc., in additional volume of " Ante-Nicene Library."

 CHAPTER VI.

THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS (Continued)—

GNOSTICISM AND MONTANISM (a.d. 117-180).

The external conflict of the Church in this period was

with paganism. Its internal conflicts were with Gnos-
ticism and MoNTANisM. The conflict with Gnosticism
reacted powerfully on the development of theology ;

the conflict with Montanism did much to strengthen

the bands of ecclesiastical authority. But the apolo-
gists also, from the nature of their task, had to state
and defend Christian doctrines, i.e., to theologise.
They are our first theologians. They form the link
between the Apostolic Fathers, whose theology is as
yet naive and unreflective, and the later Church
teachers, with whom the construction of a system of
Christian truth has become a distinct and conscious
aim {e.g., Origen).
1. The Apologists as Theologians. — It is usual

in recent years to speak of the apologists as teachers

of a RATIONAL THEOLOGY (a doctriue of God, virtue,
immortality), which misses the distinctive essence of
Christianity — to which Christianity is related only as
revelation and supernatural attestation. There is
colour for this judgment, but it is one-sided and
defective. From the necessity of their position, the
apologists dealt chiefly with the truths of what we
may call "natural religion" — the imity and moral
government of God, the creation of the world,

(69)
70 THE EARLY CHURCH
judgment to come, a future state of rewards and
—
punishments, etc. and sought to emphasise these in
opposition to pagan idolatry, stoical pantheism, epi-
curean indifFerentism, and belief in fate. If they gave
these doctrines a rational dress, this is explained by
their training and habits as philosophers, and by
accommodation to the spirit of the age. It would
have been out of place in reasoning with pagans to
have discussed the interior doctrines of the Christian
religion about which the pagans knew and cared
nothing (c/. St. Paul, Acts xvii. 23-31 xxiv. 25). ;

But the doctrines taught are Christian doctrines

(in contrast with Greek and other speculations), and
are treated in their Christian aspects and relations.
The morality also is the spiritual morality of the
Gospel. The apologists, one and all, held strongly to
the doctrine of the Trinity, and in this connection gave
prominence to the doctrine of the Logos (" Word "),
the Father's insti'ument in the creation of the world,
who became incarnate in Jesus Christ. This too is

Scriptural doctrine. It is to be noted, however, that,

while holding Son and Spirit to be truly of the nature
of God, they fell short in one important respect of the
doctrine of the later creeds.Assuming in some sense
an eternal distinction between the Logos and the
Father, they yet seem to have believed that the
coming forth of the Son (Spirit also) into distinct
PERSONAL existence (as second " Person " of the
Trinity) was not eternal, but was immediately prior
to creation, and with a view to it. The Logos
("Word") was held to be the source of all rational
intelligence and wisdom in men (c/. John i. 4, 9), and
what portions of truth heathen sages possessed w^ere
due to His presence in their minds. In Christ the
whole Word was incarnate hence in ; Him Christians
 —
THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS 71

have the full truth (Justin). The apologists are

witnesses to Gospel facts and hopes— Justin especi-
ally. From the writings of Justin a great part of the
Gospel history can be reproduced.
Further, while most of the apologists confine them-
selves to the general ("rational") truths indicated
above, Justin has something to say of the specific
Christian doctrines. Man through disobedience is

become the and ignorance, and has

child of necessity
fallen under the tyranny of the demons (1 ApoL, 10,
54-61, etc. The heathen world generally is viewed as
ruled by the demons). Jesus by His sufferings and
death has redeemed us from the curse, and obtained
remission of sins for those w^ho repent, believe, and
keep His commandments {e.g., Dial., 94-6). Forgive-
ness is Ijestowed in Baptism, which is spoken of as
"regeneration" (1 ApoL, 61, 66, etc.). The sacra-
mentarian idea is thus already well established. A
mystical virtue, in like manner, attaches to the bread
and wine of the eucharist, which are no longer " com-
mon food and drink," but the flesh and blood of Jesus
Christ, through which our own flesh and blood are
nourished (1 Apol., 66). Still it is true that Justin
regards Christianity, in accordance with the temper
of the time, too much as " a new philosophy " and " a
new law\"
2. Gnosticism — Its General Character. — Gnos-
ticism is the peculiar heresy of the second century. It

is one of the most remarkable appearances of any age.

It may be described generally as the fantastic pro-
duct of the blending of certain Christian ideas
particularly that of redemption through Christ — with
speculations and imaginings derived from a medley of
sources (Greek, Jewish, Parsic, Oriental ;
philosophies,
religions, theosophies, mysteries) in a period when
72 THE EARLY CHUKCH
the human mind was in a kind of ferment, and when
opinions of every sort were jumbled together in an
unimaginable welter. It involves, as the name de-
notes, a claim to " —
knowi.bdge" knowledge of a kind
of which the ordinary believer was incapable, and in
the possession of which " salvation " in the full sense
consisted. This knowledge of which the Gnostic
boasted related to the subjects ordinarily treated of
in religious philosophy ; Gnosticism was a species of
RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. Such qucstious wcrc the
relation of infinite and finite, the origin of the world
and of evil, the cause, meaning, purpose and destiny
of things, the reason of the difference in men's capa-
cities and lots, the way of salvation, etc. Imagination
ran riot in inventing solutions of these problems, and
as the answers which would had no
satisfy the Gnostic
real and could not by any
relation to Christianity,
rational process of interpretation be educed from
Scripture, they had to be drawn from it by appljang
to the sacred text the method of allegory.
It is difficult to give an intelligible account of
systems so multiform and continually changing ;

and hardly any features can be named common to all

systems. The following may serve as a general in-
dication. At the head is the ultimate, nameless, un-
knowable Being, spoken of as the " Abyss." Forming
a connecting chain between Him and the finite crea-
tion are the "^ons" (or "powers," "angels," etc.)
proceeding from the highest Being by "emanation."
These "aeons," taken together, form the "pleroma,"
or fulness of the Divine (His self-unfoldings). The
origin of the world is generally explained by a fall or
RUPTURE " pleroma," or the descent of some
in the
lower or inferior " seon." Matter is conceived of as
inherently evil — sometimes as independently exist-
 "

THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS 73

ing. In all Gnostic systems a distinction is made'

between the Supreme God and the "Demiurge" or

author of this lower world. The latter is regarded as
an inferior, limited, imperfect Being, and is identified
with THE God of the Gi.n Testament and of the Jews.
The God of the Gospel revealed by Jesus Christ is
thus invariably contrasted with the God of creation
and of the Old Testament. This might almost be said
to be the hinge on which Gnosticism turns. Jesus
"
Himself is conceived of either as a heavenly " a^on
who descends to earth, clothed with the appearance of

a body —a phantasmal body (doketism), or as an

earthly Messiah, on whom the heavenly " seon

descends at the Baptism, but leaves Him again at

the Crucifixion. Redemption is through knowledge,
"
and possible in the full sense only to the "spiritual
is

part of mankind (the " Gnostics "). The rest are

either " carnal," wholly incapable of salvation, or
belong to an intermediate class (" psychical," soulish)
who have a modified benefit. In practical operation
Gnosticism was sometimes ascetic (mortifying the body,
forbidding marriage, etc.) sometimes, as an assertion
;

of the superiority of the spirit to the flesh, it passed

over into unrestrained licentiousness.
3. The Gnostic Systems.— The beginnings of

Gnosticism are already iiianifest in the New Testa-

ment (Colossian heresy ; 1 Tim. i. vi. 20, " gnosis

falsely so called " ; Rev. ii. 24 ; St. John's epistles).

As known in Church history, we may distinguish the
early gnostic systems, the semi-developed systems
(Ophite, etc.), and finally the developed systems
(Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion). At the head of

^
An exception such as that of Bardesenes (Syria) is hardly
worth noting.
74 THE EARLY CHURCH
gnostic the Fathers always place Simon
teachers
Magus. Claiming to be "the Power of God which
is called Great " (first and chief of the emanations,
Acts viii. 10), Simon had associated with him a female
companion of low character (Helena), represented as
the "power" next in rank to himself, from whom
proceeded the makers of the world. The angels
detained this " seon " in the lower world, and Simon
descended to redeem her. His disciple was Menander.
A sect of Simonians lingered on till the third century.
Among early Christian Gnostics a prominent place is

given to Cerinthus, the contemporary of St. John.

It is he of whom the storyis told that St. John,

seeing him one day in abath at Ephesus, exclaimed :

" Let us fly, lest the bath should fall while Cerinthus,
the enemy of the truth, is in it." He distinguishes
between the lower, earthly Christ born of Joseph and
Mary, and the higher, heavenly Christ who descended
on Jesus at the Baptism, but left Him again before His
death. 1 Carpocrates is the first of the openly licentious
Gnostics. Christ in his system has no essential pre-
eminence over others. Hence, in the Carpocratian
worship, the image of Christ was placed alongside
those of other philosophers (first notice of images).
The duty of the Gnostic is to show his contempt for
the rulers of the world by unbridled indulgence of the
passions. The sectwas continued by Epiphanes (son
of Carpocrates) and Prodicus.
The isemi- developed Gnosis is chiefly represented by
the remarkable group of systems known as Ophite
(from opMn, serpent). They derive this name from
the honour paid to the " serpent " as the symbol of
intelligence. The Creator of this world is an ignorant,

^ St. John's epistles may have this system in view.

 THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS 75

imperfect Being (faldabaoth = " Son of Chaos "), who

thinks Himself the Supreme God. It is therefore a
merit when the serpent (Gen. iii.) persuades the first
pair into disobedience of Him. The most characteristic
of the multitude of sects bearing this name (Naasenes,
Peratsc, Sethites, etc.) is the Cainites, who reversed
all the ordinary standards of moral judgment, choosing
as their heroes the personswhom the l>ible condemned
(Cain, men Sodom, Esau, Korah, etc.). The Syrian
of
Gnosis was represented by Saturninus, said to be a
disciple of Menander, whose system is marked by
strong chinlism and gloomy asceticism. He is reputed
one of the founders of the Encratite heresy (condemn-
ing marriage, etc.). To this party Tatian fell away
after the death of Justin, holding, it is said, with the
other Gnostics, a series of " tneons," and a distinction
between the Supreme God and the Demiurge.
It is, however, in the developed Gnostic systems that
we naturally see the movement in its perfection. The
first great name here is Basilides, of Alexandria (reign
of Hadrian, a.d. 117-38), who, with his son Isidore,
taught a system (c/. Hippolytus), afterwards con-
siderably modified in a popular direction. Basilides
was a man of powerful speculative intellect. His first

principle is a Being so abstract that thought cannot

give Him a name. The world is continuously evolved
from a pansperma or " seed of the world," in which
all things were originally potentially contained. It is
ruled by two great Archons, who yet subserve the
designs of the Supreme. There are no " seons," but
the highest *'
light " descends through the successive
spheres till it rests on Jesus of Nazareth. The process
is complete when the Divine element (" sonship ") is
all drawn out and restored to God ; oblivion then falls
on lower intelligences. Many fine sayings are attri-
76 THE EARLY CHURCH
biited to Basilides, e.g., "I will say anything rather
than doubt the goodness of Providence."
Valentinus, likewise an Alexandrian, taught in
Rome (reign of Antoninus, a.d. 138-61). His system
is as imaginative and poetical as that of Basilides is
speculative. It is a sort of poem of the exile of the
soul. Sophia, the lowest of the "a3ons," burns with
desire for the knowledge of the Father, and nearly
loses her existence in seeking to obtain it. Harmony
is only restored in the Pleroma through the creation
oftwo new "seons" (Christ and the Holy Spirit).
The expulsion of the product of this disturbance
(Achamoth) leads to a repetition of the tragedy in a
lower world and ; this, in turn, to the formation of
our own world, in which, a third time, the drama of
fall and redemption is enacted. The Redeemer here
is *'
Jesus the Saviour" — an " seon
" produced by the

Pleroma as a thank-offering to the Father for the

restoration of their own harmony. He descends on
the earthly Jesus, whose own body, however, is
wrought The disciples of Valen-
of higher substance.
tinus (refuted by Irenseus) are PtoleMzEUs, Marcus,
(a charlatan), Heracleon, who wrote a commentary
on St. John, etc.

Lastly we have the system of Marcion, of Pontus

(disciple of Cerdo), w^ho taught in Rome (c. a.d. 140-

55). He was later vigorously refuted by Tertullian.

Marcion is properly classed among Gnostics, inasmuch
as he makes an absolute distinction between the God
of Old Testament and the God of the New
the
Testament, is dualistic, and ascribes to Christ only
a seeming body. Otherwise his system is wholly
unlike those of other Gnostics. He lays, like St.

Paul, the stress, not on knowledge, but on faith. His

system may be described as an overstrained Paulinism.
 THE A(4f] OF THE APOLOCHSTS 77

The Pauline law and Gospel, sin and

contrasts of
grace, works and faith, are strained till they break
asunder, and become irreconcilable antagonisms. The
God of the Old Testament (and of creation) is opposed
to the God of the New Testament as the "just"
God (ignorant, harsh, rigorous) to the " good " God,
whose nature is wholly love. Marcion wrote a book
on the Antitheses between the Old Testament and the
New Testament, and drew up also a Canon of Scrip-
ture (Marcion's "Canon"), which had but one Gospel,
viz., a mutilated Luke, and ten epistles of St. Paul.
In practice he was rigorously ascetic. Only water,
e.g., was used in the Lord's Supper. Marcion founded
a "Church," which endured for some centuries. Of
gnostic literature from apocryphal Gospels,
(apart
etc.) the only complete work that remains to us is

the book Pistis Sophia (Ophite or Valentinian Gnosis).

Some Ophite MSS. have recently been discovered.
For the rest w^e are dependent on the descriptions and
quotations in the Fathers.
4. Montanism. —
Montanism is another influence
that wrought powerfully in the Church from the
middle of the second centur3^ It is best explained as
a REACTION against the growing rigidity of Church
forms, the increasing laxity in Church morals and dis-
cipline, and the dying out of the spontaneous element
in Church life and worship. It had its origin in
Phrygia, the population of which had naturally a
strong tendency to excitement and extravagance
(hence the name Kataphryyimis). The essence of the
movement lay in its claim to be a new prophecy.^
Montanus gave himself out as a new organ of the
Spirit. The Paraclete promised by the Saviour had
^ The singular resemblance to the modem Irvingism will be
noticed throughout.
 —
78 THE EARLY CHURCH
come in him. He was the founder of the new age
or dispensation of the Spirit. With Montanus were
associated two prophetesses Prisca, or Priscilla, and
Maximilla. It is of the Montanist
characteristic
prophecy that was delivered in trance or ecstasy.
it

One of the oracles of Montanus says " Behold, the :

man is as a lyre, and I (the Spirit) sweep over him

like a plectrum. The man sleeps and I wake." The
content of the prophecy did not affect doctrine, but
chiefly practice. The tendency of the sect was
severely ascetic, and its view of Church discipline
was of the strictest (no forgiveness of mortal sin,
etc.). Like most movements of the kind, it was
strongly millenarian. The place was even named
where the New
Jerusalem was to descend the small —
village of Pepuza, in Phrygia.
In its later form Montanism aimed more at being
a simple movement of reform in the direction of
stricter life and discipline. The antagonism between
the Montanists and the Church party grew naturally
very bitter. The Montanists called themselves
" spirituals," and spoke of the Catholics as " psychi-
cals " the latter denounced the new prophecy
; as
Satanic delusion. Local synods
which were held
condemned the movement and excommunicated its
adherents. Notwithstanding the opposition of the
Church authorities, however, Montanism spread, and
attracted a good deal of sympathy from earnest
minds. In North Africa must have obtained a
it

strong hold. Tertullian of Carthage was its most

distinguished convert (a.d. 202) — indeed, its onl}'-

great man. When, Iconium (c. a.d.

at a council in
233), it was decided not to recognise Montanist
baptism, the separation from the Church was com-
plete. By Cyprian's time (a.d. 250) Montanism must
 ^

THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS 79

have nearly died out in Carthage — at least he never

refers to it.

6. Apocryphal Writings. —
The second century
was marked by the production, chiefly in Ebionitic and
Gnostic circles, of a profusion of Apocryphal Gospels,
"
Apocalypses, and similar works (" Acts of Apostles
generally later). Such were the Gospel of thk
Hebrews, 1 the Gospel of the Egyptians, the first

form of the Protevangelism of James, the Gospel

OF Thomas, the Apocalypse, preaching, and Gospel
of Peter, etc. A fragment of the Apocalypse of Peter
which stood in high repute in the early Church, was
discovered in 1892. The Gnostics had gospels of
their own, the Cainites had a Gospel of Jude.
e.g.^

Of the above-named, the Gospel of the Egyptians and

Gospel of Thomas originated and were in wide use in
Gnostic circles. A special interest attaches to the
Gospel of Peter, the use of which was forbidden in
church in the end of the second century by Serapion,
Bishop of Antioch, on account of its dohetic character.
An important fragment of this gospel was discovered
in 1886 (at Akhmin, Upper Egypt). It begins in the
middle of the history of the Passion and breaks off
in the narrative of the The gospel
Resurrection.
implies the canonical accounts, but greatly alters and
adds to them. It bears out the charge of doketism.

Jesus when crucified " held His peace as though hav-

ing no pain." His exclamation on the cross was,
" My Power, My Power, Thou hast forsaken Me," etc.
The Gnostic trail is apparent.

Points for inq^uiry and sticdy. —Comp&re the doctrines of

the Logos in the Apologists with that of the Nicene Creed.
Show that Justin's writings presuppose our Gospels. Study

^ See Chap. ii.

80 THE EARLY CHURCH
the system of Valentinus as a type of Gnosticism (Pressense).
Illustrate the gravity of the crisis of Gnosticism from the
place Gnosticism holds in the works of the early Catholic
Fathers. Note the lines of Tertullian's refutation of Marcion.
Show the evidence which Gnosticism affords to the growing
influence of Christianity (Orr). Cf. Montanism and Irving-
ism. Contrast the apocryphal and canonical Gospels.
—
Books. Lightfoot on " Colossian Heresy" in Commentary
on Colossians ; Mansel's Gnostic Heresies ; Pressense's Early
Years ; Orr's Neglected Factors ; Sanday's Gospels in Second
Century ; Westcott's Canon ; Apocryphal Gospels and addi-
tional volume in " Ante-Nicene Library ".
 .

CHAPTER VII

THE AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS

(A.D. 180-250).

The death of Marcus Aurelius proved liow superficial

was the ethical revival associated with his reign. The
accession of his son, Comniodus (a.d. 180), reopened
the floodgates to the worst evils and vices. The
})eriod that followed was one of frequent changes of
emperors, of rampant military licence, of much dis-
order and disorganisation in the state. This was to
the advantage of the Christians, in so far as it drew
away attention from them, and left the emperors no
time to concert measures to their hurt. But it told
also to their disadvantage, in placing them more at the
mercy of popular tumult and of governors unfavour-

ably disposed. The very calamities of the empire

were made a ground of accusation against them. " If

the Tiber overflows the walls," says Tertullian, " if

the Nile does not irrigate the fields, if the skies are
shut, if the earth quakes, if there is a famine or
a pestilence, immediately the cry is raised, 'The
" (A/>ol., 40). Nevertheless,
Christians to the
'
lion

the Church during this period made unprecedented

progress, and, under the guidance of the great anti-
Gnostic Fathers (Irenaius, Tertullian, Clement, Origen,
assumed definitely the character
etc.), of a Church

Catholic and Apostolic.

(81) 6
82 THE EAKLY CHURCH
1. From Commodus to Severus— The Severian
Persecution. —
Daring the evil reign of Commodus
no systematic attempt was made to molest the
Christians. Marcia, the emperor's mistress, was even
friendly to the Church, and interested herself on its
behalf, e.g.^ in procuring the release of certain con-
fessors from the Sardinian mines. Yet, as illustrating
the general insecurity above referred to, Clement,
writing shortly after the close of this reign, could
say, " Many martyrs are daily burned, crucified or
beheaded before our eyes " {Strom.^ ii. 20). Apol-
lonius, a distinguished senator, suffered in this reign.^
The murder of Commodus was succeeded by a season
of confusion, calamity, and bloodshed. Pertinax was
killed after a reign of Then followed
a few months.
a scene of degradation such as the empire had never
yet witnessed. The imperial office was put up to
public auction on the ramparts of Rome, and unblush-
ingly sold to the highest bidder. The purchaser,
JuLiANUs, did not keep his dearly-bought honours long.
The legions rejected him, and out of the anarchy that
ensued Septimius Severus, the Pannonian general,
emerged as the strongest man.
The eighteen years' reign of this emperor (a.d. 193-
211) proved him to be an able and vigorous, if also a
stern ruler. He was at first favourably affected to
the Christians ; his Syrian wife, Julia Domna, a lady
of literary and eclectic disposition, was also friendly.
It is not clear what led to his change of policy. He
may have been influenced by his growing dislike of
illegal associations, or by cases of insubordination like
that related by TertuUian (On the Soldier'' s Crown),

^ His Acts have recently been recovered. The Scillitan

martyrs in North Africa (c/. Neander) are now also referred
to the reign of Commodus.
 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 83

where a soldier refused to wear the ordinary laurel

garland in going up to receive his donative from the
emperor. In any case, in a.d. 202, he issued an edict,^
forbidding under severe penalties conversion to either
Judaism or Christianity. Thus was initiated what is

reckoned as the fifth persecution, though we have

interesting proof from a tract of Tertullian, To the
Mart [ITS (before a.d. 202), that even prior to the
publication of this edict martyrdom was far from
unknown. The severity of this persecution seems to
have fallen chiefly on Egypt and North Africa, and
some noble martyr incidents are recorded from these
regions. A chief seat of the persecution was Alex-
andria. Leonidas, the father of Origen, was put to
death at this time by beheading Origen himself, ;

then a youth of seventeen, would have perished also

had not his mother forcibly prevented him from
giving himself up. Another conspicuous instance
was that of the maiden PoTAMiiENA, who, with her
mother, Marcella, was, after many tortures, burned
to death with boiling pitch. Her constancy was the
occasion of the conversion of others, among them of
Basilides, the officer in charge.
To North Africa —Carthage or Tuburbium be- —
long the famous martyrdoms of Perpetua and her
COMPANIONS, of which an account is preserved written
partly by Perpetua herself. Perpetua was a young
married lady, of noble rank, recently a mother, who,
for her faith, was thrown into a loathsome prison with
four companions. One was a slave girl, Felicitas ; the
three others were youths — Revocatus, Saturninus, and
Secundulus. All were catechumens, and were baptised
in prison. Perpetua's father was a pagan, and sought

^ Or rescript : thus Neumann.

84 THE EARLY CHURCH
by the most heartrending entreaties to induce her to
recant. She and her companions stood firm, and were
condemned to die at an approaching festival. In
prison Felicitas was overtaken by the pangs of mater-
nity. When asked how she would bear the keener
pain of being torn by the wild beasts, she answered,
"It is I who bear my present sufferings, but then
there will be One within me to suffer for me, because
I too shall suffer for Him." The men were torn to
pieces in the amphitheatre by wild beasts the women ;

were exposed in a net to be tossed by a cow, and

ultimately killed by the swords of the gladiators. The
document which tells the pathetic story has in it a
tinge of Montanistic enthusiasm, and contains the first

traces of prayers for the dead.^

2. Succeeding Emperors — The Persecution
under Maximin. —The persecution went on through
the whole reign of Severus ; in the later stages of it some
of Origen's disciples suffered. That it continued into
the reign of his son, Caracalla (a.d. 211-17), is evident
from Tertullian's address To Scapula, in which Severus
is spoken of as already dead. But that " common
enemy of mankind" was too much absorbed in his
vices to trouble about the Christians, and persecution
gradually stopped. Under the wicked and effeminate
Syrian emperor Elagabalus, nephew of Severus (a.d.
218-22), the Christians were also allowed peace. Ela-
gabalus had been high-priest of the Sun at Emesa,
in Syria, and now imported into Rome the lewdest
excesses of the Syrian Sun and Astarte worship. He
had a settled design of blending all worships with his
own, and, as a step to this, every foreign religion,

^ There is a trace as early as Hernias of purgatorial,

suffering.
 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 85

including Christianity, was tolerated. Other influences

may have been at work, for we find Hii>polytus
addressing a treatise to Julia Aquila, tlie second wife
of the emperor. She may therefore be presumed not
to have been unfriendly to Christianity. Elagabalus
was cut off before the full effect of his plans could
be seen, and the Church for the first time enjoyed a
season of real favour and protection under his gentle
and virtuous cousin, Alexander Severus (a.d. 222-35).
Alexander profitably divided the hours of his day
between private devotion, assiduous attention to
public business, the cultivation of his mind through
literature and philosophy, manly exercises and rational
and refined intercourse in the evenings. In religion
he was an eclectic. The bust of ('hrist was placed in
his private chapel alongside of those of other persons
held in special reverence— Abraham, Orpheus, Apol-
and he had inscribed on the walls of his
lonius, etc.;
palace and publicmonuments the maxim, " What ye
would not have others do to you, do ye not to them."
This maxim, it is said, he was constantly repeating.
Under the reign of such an emperor the position of
Christianity was practically that of a rrligio licita.

The mother of Alexander, Julia Mammeea, who

exercised a considerable influence on the government,
was also deeply interested in Christianity, and invited
Origen to confer with her at Antioch. A reign like
Alexander's, however, was naturally displeasing to the
rude military, and an unfortunate Persian war led to
his murder, and to the accession of the Thracian
savage, Maximin (a.d. 235-38). Under this tyrant
occuiTed what is known as the sixth persecution.
Maximin seems to have been moved in his rage

against the Church chiefly by hatred of his prede-

cessor. His acts were directed at first only against
86 THE EARLY CHURCH
the heads of the Churches. Origen, as a friend of
JuHa Mammaea, was marked as a victim, and had to
flee from Caesarea. Anti-Christian fury, however,
once let loose, did not readily confine itself within
limits, and the Church suffered severely in different
places, especially in Cappadocia and Pontus, where
destructive earthquakes had awakened the passions
of the populace. A beautiful work of Origen on
Martyrdom relates to this persecution.
The times of confusion that followed the reigns of —
the TWO GoRDiANs, of Balbinus and Maximus, of
GoRDiAN TIL (a.d. 238-44), yield nothing for our
purpose. During this period the Christians enjoyed
a respite, which was continued and even confirmed by
the next emperor, Philip the Arabian (a.d. 244-49).
Philip was the son of a Bedouin robber-chief — called,
Robber "
therefore, " Philip the —but he has the dis-
tinction of figuring with some ecclesiastical writers as
the first Christian emperor. Both he and his wife
Severa had correspondence with Origen. It is cer-
tain that he looked with very favourable eyes on
Christianity, without, however, showing any trace of
its influence in his public conduct. At the great
secular games, e.g., in celebration of the completion of
the thousandth year of Rome's existence — which was
the great feature of his reign — the ceremonies were
entirely pagan. Philip was slain in conflict with
Decius (a.d. 249).
3. Progress of Christianity in this Period.
—The astonishingly rapid spread of Christianity in
this age is one of the most remarkable facts about it.^

The apologetic writers, e.f/., Tertullian and Origen, give

the strongest expression to their consciousness of com-

1 For fuller details, see Neglected Factors, etc.

 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATIIKRS 87

ing victory. " Men cry out," says Tertiillian, "tliat

the state is besieged ; the (.'hristiaiis are in the fiel<ls,

in the ports, in the islands. They mourn, as for a

loss, that every sex, age, condition and even rank is

going over to this sect " (ApoL, i.). Origen, in the

reign of Philip, writes, " Every form of religion will
be destroyed except the religion of Christ, which will
alone prevail. And indeed it will one day triumph,
as its principles take possession of the minds of men
more and more every day " (Against Celsus, viii. 68).
With every allowance for rhetorical exaggeration, it is
impossible to doubt that Christianity was taking root
throughout the empire with a rapidity and vigour
that astonished both friends and foes. The Church
had spread, in greater or less measure, from Britain in
the west to the Tigris in the east, from the Rhine in
the north to the Libyan desert in the south. It had
extended itself in Gaul and Spain and North Africa,
in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia, in Arabia. It had
penetrated across the Danube into the tribes of the
barbarians. It included not onl}^ great numbers of
the population, but persons of all ranks in society.
There were Christians of high standing in the house-
holds of the emperors ; the rebukes administered by
Tertullian and Clement to the wealthy and luxurious
in the Churches prove, what other testimonies bear
out, that many in these classes had received the
Gospel.
The very suddenness with which the existence of
large and influential Churches like those of Carthage,
Alexandria and Lyons bursts upon us in this period

is evidence of the marvellous energy of propagation

Christianity was displaying. It is not, therefore, to

be wondered at that the writers of the period point

exultantly to this astonishing progress and draw from
88 THE EARLY CHURCH
itan argument for the divineness of their faith. The
BOAST OF Tertullian in his Ajwlogy is, it should be
remembered, that of a contemporary :
" We are but of
yesterday, and yet we have filled every place belong-
ing to you —
cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies,

your very camps, your tribes, companies, palace,

senate, forum we leave you your temples only.
; . . .

All your ingenious cruelties can accomplish nothing.

Our number increases the more you destroy us. The
blood of the martyrs is their seed " {37, 50). How-
ever rhetorically coloured, there must have been a
strong basis of truth in such representations to pro-
cure for them any acceptance.
^. Development of the Idea of the Old Catholic
Church. — In its conflicts with Gnosticism and Mon-
tanism — especially the former — the Church was mean-
while undergoing an internal development which
more than paralleled its marvellous outward extension.
In combating Gnosticism the Fathers were not waging
war with an ordinary foe. They had, as we have
already seen, to deal with a system which spurned the
literal acceptance of the Gospel facts, and, under
pretence of a higher wisdom, transformed them into a
phantasmagoria of its own creation which attacked ;

the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith the —

identity of the God of Creation and the God of Re-
demption, of the God of the Old Testament and the
God of the New Testament, the true humanity of the
Redeemer, the reality of sin and atonement, etc. In
waging this conflict, moreover, they laboured under
the very peculiar difhculty that there was as yet no
UNIVERSALLY RECOGNISED STANDARD OF TRUTH tO gO by
— no fixed canon of Scripture, no fixed creed, no fixed
court of appeal in matters of faith such as the council
afterwards became.
 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 89

What bulwark was to be reared against this inno-

vating tide of speculation ? Dr. Hatch has pointed
out that the idea struck out by the Churcli as giving it

firm footing in this sea of contnjversy was that of the

"Apostolic." That was true which was Apostolic;
that was false — at
least not authoritative which —
could not claim apostolic sanction. This thought was
applied by the Fathers of the age specially in three
ways.^ They applied it (1) to an apostolic collection of
Scriptures —
the idea of a New Testament Canon. We
have seen that the Gospels were already read in
Justin's day in the ordinary service of the Church ;

collections of apostolic letters were also very early

formed (2 Pet. iii. 16; c/. free use of epistles in
Poly carp, etc.). Such collections, however, grew up
naturally, informally, with a view to edification, and
not with the idea of forming what mean by a w^e

canon of Scripture for the whole Church. The con-

flict with Gnosticism gave a new turn to this con-

ception. The first attempt at a formal canon of

New Testament Scripture we know of was the muti-
lated canon of Marcion.^ Other Gnostic and Ebionitic
sects were flooding the Church with apocryphal writ-
ings. LTnder these circumstances, as well as to find
a solid basis from w^iich to repel the assaults of oppo-
nents, it was of the first importance for the Church,
not only to gather the true Scriptures together, but
to lay emphasis on that which gave them their claim
to authority. This was their apostolic origin and
character, i.e., their origin either directly from apostles
or from men immediately belonging to the first apos-
tolic circles, and having apostolic sanction for their
work. Thus sprang up in the latter part of the second

^ Thus Harnack. - See above, Chapter VI.

 ;

90 THE EARLY CHURCH

century the conception of a definite canon ^ of New-
—
Testament Scripture of a " New Testament," as it
begins expressly to be called, which takes its place
beside the "Old Testament" as of equal validity
and authority with it. Lists are now drawn up of
the sacred books, e.g., the Canon of Muratori ; and
the Fathers show the clearest consciousness of deal-
ing with a code of writings of inspired character and
authority. TertuUian is the first to use the name
" New Testament," though the designation seems im-
plied earlier in certain expressions of Melito of Sardis
Irenreus usually speaks simply of the " Scriptures."
The category of the apostolic was applied (2) to an
apostolic "Rule of Faith" —the idea of a traditional
CREED. It was soon manifest that in controversy with
Gnostics the appeal to Scripture was not always so
conclusive as it seemed. Even where Scripture was
not rejected the Gnostics had their own way of inter-
preting it. Their use of allegorical methods (to which
the Fathers themselves gave too much countenance)
enabled them to get from the text as much support
for their theories as they pleased. The question was
no longer as to the canon of Scripture, but as to the
sense to be drawn from Scripture when they had it.
It was here that the Fathers stepped back from the
written Word to the constant and steadfast tradition
of the truth which had been maintained in the Church
since apostolic days.From earliest times the Church
had employed a simple baptismal confession. This
had become enlarged till in the second century it
assumed substantially the outline of our present
Apostles' Creed. A form of this kind was certainly
in use in the Church of Rome before the middle of

^ The term itself is later.

 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 91

the second century and the forms in use in other

;

Churches show, with variation and paraplirase, essen-

tial agreement. This form, gradually crystallising
into settled shape, was laid hold of by the Church
and erected into a "rule of faith," which, standing
behind Scripture, could be employed as a check on
the wanton licence of Gnostic interpretation. It was
not intended to supersede Scripture, but to corroborate
it ; still it marks the introduction of that principle of
" tradition," as regulative of faith, which, at a further

remove from the primitive source, became the parent

of so many abuses.
Finally, this thought of the apostolic was applied
(3) an apostolic succession of office-bearers in
to
the Church —
the idea of a continuous historic epis-
copate, viewed as depository and guardian of the
aforesaid tradition. It was not enough that there
should be apostolic tradition ; there must be some
guarantee for the secure transmission and purity of
the tradition. This was presumed to be found in the
continuous succession of bishops from the days of the
apostles. Lists of the Succession of bishops in the
greater Churches are carefully given by the Fathers
in proof that this transmission of apostolic tradition is

a possibility and reality. There is clearly here an

unhistorical element ; for it has already been shown
that bishops, in the sense supposed, do not go back to
apostolic days.^ It is in this form, i.e., as a guarantee
for the purity of tradition, that the doctrine of an
"Apostolic Succession" of bishops first enters. It

has not yet the sacerdotal associations of the next

age. Already, however, there has now distinctly

1
Cf. Mr. Gore's admission, above noted, p. 51. The
bishops in Ignatius are never represented as successors
of the apostles.
92 THE EARLY CHURCH
shaped itself, as the result of the above processes, the
idea of a Catholic Church, i.e.,a Church resting on
the fides catholica et apostolica, and finding its unity
in the episcopate, which is regarded also as the de-
pository and guardian of its sacred tradition. From
"
this time, accordingly, the term " Catholic Church
—already found in Ignatius, but simply in the sense
of"universal " —gets into currency (Tertullian, Cle-
ment, Muratorian fragments, etc.). It needs only the
Cyprianic idea of the priestly character of its clergy
to complete it.

Points far inquiry aiid study. Illustrate the Severian—

persecution from the writings of Tertullian (c/. Neander's
Antignosticus) . Read the full story of Perpetua and her
companions. Collect the evidences of the remarkable spread
of Christianity in this period. Show the extent of the
knowledge of the New Testament implied in the writings
of Irenseus, Tertullian, etc. Compare the different early
versions of the traditional " Rule of Faith " (Schaff, Zahn).
Study the earliest form of the doctrine of " Apostolic Suc-
cession " in Irenseus (iii., 2, 3, 4 iv., 26) and Tertullian {On
;

Prescription, 32, etc.).

Books. — For history, Gibbon, Milman, Neander's Anti-
gnosticus (Bohn) ; Orr's Neglected Factors; Zahn's Tlie
Apostles' Creed (also Schaff, Swete, etc.).
 -

Chapter viii.

'THE AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS

(Continued), (a.d. 180-250).

The whose external history

chief interest of the period
and we have sought to describe
internal development
is connected with the names of its great teachers.

These form a galaxy of rare brilliance. The study of

their works is at the same time the study of the
theology and literature of the age.
1. Irenaeus of Gaul. —
The personal notices of this
great Father are scanty. He was born about a.d. 120,
perhaps a was a native of Asia Minor in
little later ; ;

early life was a disciple of Polycarp, the disciple of

St. John. In an epistle to his fellow-pupil Flornius,
who had lapsed into Gnosticism, he speaks of the
vivid recollection he retained of Polycarp's discourses,
and how they agreed with what was related in the
Scriptures. He was a presbyter in Lyons during
the persecution under Marcus Aurelius in a.d. 177.^
The Montanist controversy was raging, and Irentcus
bore an intercessory letter on behalf of the Montanists
from the martyrs to Eleutherus, the Bishop of Rome
{Eus., V. 4).
After the martyrdom of the aged Pothinus, Irenaeus,
as the fittest man, was chosen bishop in his place. ^

^ See above, page 59.

"^
Lyons would appear at this time to have been the only
bishopric in Gaul.
(93)
 ;

94 THE EARLY CHUECH

The only other occasion on which he comes into view
is a few years later (a.d. 190-94) in connection with
the action of Victor of Rome in the Quarto-Deciman
controversy (see below). The date of his death is un-
certain (a.d. 202-3 ?). All through Irenseus showed
himself a man of peaceful and conciliatory spirit — in
marked agreement, Eusebius says, with his name (
=
peaceful).
His one literary monument (besides fragments) is

his great work, in five books, "Against Heresies,"

directed specially against the Valentinians (a.d. 180-
90). It exists only in an early Latin translation
portions of Greek, however, are preserved by
the
other writers. The author's theological opinions
are developed incidentally, but sufficiently to show
that Irenaeus had a theology of a very definite and
organic character. The central thought in his con-
ception of Christianity is the incarnation. Creation
needs the incarnation for its Only through
perfecting.
the entrance of the Word (Logos) into humanity could
man be led to his destination as a son of God.
Irenseus has no dubiety as to the eternal existence of
the Word. " The Son has always existed with God,
has always revealed the Father, has always revealed
the full Godhead " (Harnack). Redemption is brought
under his favourite idea of a recapitulation of
humanity in Christ. Christ is the compendium of the
race sums up the nature, the experiences, the history
;

of mankind in Himself. His obedience retracts the

disobedience of the Fall. As our Head he wins for us
a complete victory over Satan. He enters into our lot
and doom as sinners, and ransoms us by His death.
A trace only is discernible of the theory afterwards
developed that Satan through the Fall obtained rights
over men which had to be respected. In eschatology
 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 95

Irenrciis is crudely Chiliastic (Antichrist, the first

resurrection, the New Jerusalem, the 1,000 years' reign,

etc.). His SACRAJiENTAL TEACHING conforms to the
now well-established Catholic type. The Eucharistic
elements, e.g., are " antitypes " of tlie Lord's body and
blood; yet there is a real mystical union of these
elements with the body and blood of Christ, so that in
receiving them the communicant is nourished by the
latter.

2. TertuUian of Carthage.— Tertullian is the first

of the great Latin Fathers, and founder of Latin theo-

logy. His general place in the history is about
TWENTY YEARS AFTER Irenjius. He follows Ircnajus
closely in his antignostic polemic and doctrine of the
Church. The two men, however, are as ditferent as
can well be conceived. The calm, temperate spirit
of Iremeus bears no resemblance to the fiery, impetu-
ous NATURE of the North African Father. No impartial
person will doubt his deep or sincere piety; yet the
fire within him burned often with a murky flame.
Tertullian was born at Carthage probably about a.d.
160. His father is said to have been a proconsular
centurion, and he was educated for the law. His life

till manhood was spent in heathenism, but its follies

and pleasures left his soul unsatisfied. His conver-

sion TO Christianity may have been about a.d. 192.
He probably became a presbyter of the Church at
Carthage. We know that he \vas married, and that
his wife also was a Christian.
The decisive event in his career was his conversion
TO Montanism (c. a.d. 202). Thereafter his relations
with the Church were embittered, and he withdrew
from its communion [Against Fraxeas, 1). It is doubt-
ful, however, how far this withdrawal went. It is
certain that Tertullian always regarded himself as
96 THE EARLY CHURCH
belonging in a true sense to the Catholic Church, and
there are evidences that towards the end of his life

the asperities softened. His death is placed a.d. 220-

40. Whatever his faults of temperament, Tertul-
lian's ability as a Christian advocate is second to none.
His LITERARY ACTIVITY was prodigious. His pages
sparkle with brilliant and original thoughts ; are, in-
deed, for vigour, terseness and mastery of literary ex-
pression unsurpassed in ]3atristic literature. Cyprian's
admiration of him was such that it is said a day
never passed without his calling for some of his works,
saying, "Give me the master." His w^ritings are
usually divided into those written hefore and those
written after he became a Montanist, though it is

doubtful to which class some are to be referred.

To the FIRST PERIOD (a.d. 197-202) belong the tract
To the Martyrs (a.d. 197), the Apology (a.d. 198-99),
to which two books. To the Nationu, are related
(possibly as an earlier sketch), the beautiful tract On
the Witness of the Soul (the germ of which lies in " the
soul naturally Christian " of the Apology, 17), with a
number of short treatises — "Tracts for the Times," as
they have been happily called — dealing with
^ questions
arising out of the life of the time, and with practical
subjects on The Spectacles ; on Idolatry ; on 2^he
ie.g.^

Att/re of Women ; two treatises To my Wife, discussing

second marriage on Penitence, Prayer, Patience, etc.).
;

These shorter pieces especially exhibit a mixture of

argument, wdt, sarcasm, raillery, very characteristic
of Tertullian. Though not yet a Montanist, his
standard of judgment is always severe.
The SECOND PERIOD (after a.d. 202) reflects his
changed attitude to the Church, and shows Tertullian
at his best and his worst. The resources of his
rhetoric, his brilliant antitheses, his Christian zeal,
 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 97

his powerful and often convincing reasoning, com-

mand admiration ; on the other hand, his faults of
TEMPER AND ARGUMENT are oftcu glaring. Here, again,
we have to distinguish between his shorter occa-
sional pieces called forth by special circumstances (as,
e.g., on The Soldier s Croicn, on Flight from Persecu-
tion,on The Veiling of Virgins, on Single Marriage^
on Fasting, etc.), and his longer controversial works.
The principal of these are his great work, in five books.
^
Against Marcion, and his treatise Against Praxeas
(other works. Against Hermogenes, Against the Valen-
tinians, etc.). Reference should be made also to his

forcible tractate To Scapula (the proconsul), in which,

A.D. 212, he powerfully champions the cause of the
w^hole of the Christians.
TertuUian's abiding services to the Church are those
which he rendered as apologist and theologian. The
APOLOGY of Tertullian is by universal consent regarded
as his masterpiece. It is addressed to the emperor,

and is a noble piece of pleading. The opening chap-

ters are introductory ; they urge that Christianity
is hated because it is unknown. The body of the
Apology is divided into two parts — ^the first refuting

the charges against the Christians (first the popular

calumnies of killing infants, practising incest in

their assemblies, etc., then the capital charges of

irreligion and disloyalty to the emperor) the second ;

describing in beautiful words the simple, spiritual, and

orderly character of the Christian worship, and the
real nature of the much-maligned love-feast. The
closing portion replies to objectors, and reminds of

coming judgment. As a theologian Tertullian left

his deep stamp on after thinking. He practically

1
See below, Chap. x.

7
98 THE EARLY CHURCH
created the Latin ecclesiastical tongue, and gave to
theology many of the terms which have become its

permanent possession (<?.^., one substance, three

persons, satisfaction, merit, New Testament, rule of
faith, etc.). On the Trinity he followed the views
of the apologists in not attributing to the Son an
eternal personal existence. The Trinity is an internal
Divine " economy " or dispensation, with a view to
creation and redemption. He follows Irenoeus pretty
closely on the doctrines of Man and the Incarnation.
Man was made after the image of the future Incarnate
One (Chrlsti futuri in came). The earlier appear-
ances of the Son to the patriarchs are " rehearsals"
of the Incarnation. Tertullian has a much deeper
view of sin than obtained in the Greek Church ; but
his ideas of penitential satisfaction obscure grace,
and give a gloomy tinge to his theology. The w^ords,
" This is My body " in the Supper are explained,
" This is the Jigiire of My body " but a real presence
;

in the elements is presupposed.

3. The Alexandrian School —
Pantaenus and
—
Clement. Alexandria was, next to Athens, the city
of the Greek world in which intellectual tendencies of
every sort met and commingled. It was to be ex-
pected, therefore, that in this busy centre the attempt
would early be made to unite Christianity with what
was best in the thought and culture of the time. This,
accordingly, is what we see taking place in the famous
Catechetical School at Alexandria. It is charac-
teristic of the Alexandrian School that it takes up
a genial attitude to heathen learning and culture ;

regards Greek philosophy and science as in its w^ay

also a providential preparation for the Gospels ; seeks
to meet an antichristian Gnosis by a better Gnosis,
which grows out of faith and love. It is speculative,
 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 99

LIBERAL, IDEALISTIC ill Spirit; in its Scriptural methods

ALLEGORICAL, though not to the subversion of the
history, as in the heretical Gnosticism.
Of the founder and first teacher of this school,
Pantjexus (c. a.d. 180), we know very little. He was
a Stoic philosopher, well trained in Greek learning,
and the first, Origen says, who applied this learning
in Christian instruction. His school was designed for
CATECHUMENS, i.e., those in training for baptism, but
many heathens who desired instruction attended.
Either before or after his catechetical labours he
travelled widely in the East as an evangelist, pene-
trating as far as India (Arabia Felix 1), and finding
there, it is said, a copy of the Gospel of Matthew (in
Hebrew), which had been Bartholomew.
left by St.
His most distinguished pupil was Clement, who
succeeded him as head of the school in a.d. 189.
Clement of Alexandria was born, probably at Athens,
A.D. 150-60. Brought up in paganism he speaks —
even of his initiation into the mysteries — he under-
took a SERIES OF TRAVELS iu pursuit of truth, but
found no rest till he met with Pant^enus. That
"Sicilian bee," he sa^'s, "gathering the spoil of the
flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow," en-
gendered in his soul a deathless element of knowledge
{Strom., i. 2). His own genius gave new lustre to
the school, over which he presided for thirteen or
fourteen years, till the persecution of Severus (a.d.
202) compelled his withdrawal. From this time
Clement is well-nigh lost sight of. He is supposed
to have died about a.d. 220. Throughout he may be
regarded as contemporary with Tertullian. Clement's
genius is cast in a mould totally different from that
of the other Fathers we have named. He was, like
Tertullian, a man of amazing learning, but he applied
100 THE EARLY CHURCH
his learning in quite another way. He has none of the

austerity of the Carthaginian Father ; but was soaring,

POETIC, IDEALISTIC, large and sympathetic in his views
of truth. On the other hand, his power of reducing
his ideas to logical order and connection is limited.

His thought loves to roam free and unfettered, and

his style in writing is exuberant and discursive.
Of the KNOWN WORKS of Clement we are fortunate
in possessing the three greatest which, yet, in —
their connection form one work. They belong to the

period of his work in Alexandria, and give a good idea

of his instruction. They are entitled respectively
The Adches!^ to the Greeks (aiming at conversion from
paganism). The Pctdagogue or Tutor (a manual of
moral discipline, entering into minute details of con-
duct), and The Stromata or Miscellanies (initiating
into the higher knowdedge). These follow, he tells
us, the method of the all -glorious Word, who first

addresses, then trains, and finally teaches {Poed., i. 1).

The Word is the " P^edagogue ". The Stromata,
while dealing largely with the relations of faith and
knowledge, do not give much help in apprehending
Clement's theology. Had we possessed his Outlines
(a work) we might have been in better case.
lost
The central idea is the Logos (Word) as the enlighten-
ing source of all truth in humanity. The Logos is
eternal, but the Trinitarian distinctions are so idealis-
tically almost to lose their personal
conceived as
character. Even the sacraments are apprehended in
a highly ideal way. Clement prepares for Origen by
teaching a preaching in Hades for those who died
without opportunity of repentance here (second pro-
bation), as well as for the righteous through the law
and philosophy, i.e., just men, both Jews and Gentiles,
who died before the Advent.
 —
AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 101

4. Origen. —
Origen was the favourite pupil of
Clement, as Clement had been the disciple of Pan-
t?enus. We can hardly err in recognising in him the
greatest of the teachers of the early Church one of
THE GREATEST MINDS the Church has seen in any age.
Origen was born at Alexandria in a.d. l^'5. His
parents were both Christians. He showed remark-
able ABILITY as a boy, committing to memory large
portions of Scripture, and often perplexing his father,
Leonidas, by the questions he asked. His father
reproved him, but in secret thanked God for such a
son, and often, while he slej^t, kissed his breast as
a temple of the Holy (ihost. When the persecution
broke out (a.u. 202) his father was one of the first

victims. Origen laboured to support the family, and

managed to collect a small library. His reputation
was such that, on the withdrawal of Clement, he was
induced, though only a youth of eighteen, to take the
oversight of the school and give instruction in it
(a.d. 203). The persecution still raged, and many of
martyrdom.
his early pupils suffered Origen, how-
ever, was nothing daunted, and his labours were
crowned with remarkable success. To procure sub-
sistence, as he would receive no payment, he sold
his valuable collection of classical books. He went
further, and taking literally the injunction in Matthew
xix. 12, he performed an act of self-mutilation, which
he lived bitterly to regret. In order better to qualify
himself for his work, he took lessons in philosophy
from Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the Neo-
Platonic school. He learned Hebrew also to prepare
him for his Biblical studies. His course embraced
arts and letters as well as studies properly theo-
logical.These preparatory studies he subsequently
handed over to a colleague.
102 THE EARLY CHURCH
His PERIOD OF LABOUR IN ALEXANDRIA lasted for
twenty-eight years (a.d. 203-31). It was broken by
visits to Palestine, in the first of which (a.d. 215-18)
he taught in the churches ; in the second (extended
to Achaia), a.d. 228-31, he was ordained presbyter.^
These steps drew down on him the displeasure of the
narrow-minded bishop Demetrius, and compelled his
departure from Alexandria. A council convened by
the bishop excommunicated and deposed him (a.d.
231). The bishops in Palestine and elsewhere treated
this sentence as null. The second period of his
WORK was at C&esarea, where he opened a school on a
still larger scale, and conducted it with even more

brilliant success. His labours at Cfesarea, broken

only by a brief withdrawal during the persecution of
Maximin (a.d. 236), continued for nineteen years (a.d.

231-50). was apj^rehended, imprisoned and

(jrigen
TORTURED iu the persecution of Decius^ (a.d. 250).
He was released in a.d. 251, but died from the effects of
the torture in a.d. 253 C? 254), at the age of sixty-nine.
It is impossible to give more than an indication of
this Father's extraordinary literary labours. Dur-
ing his later residence at Alexandria he wrote many
of his Commentm^ies, and also his book on " First
Principles " — our first work on S3'stematic theology.
A wealthy layman, Ambrose, provided him with the
means of carrying on his labours on the most extended
scale, gave him shorthand waiters, etc. A colossal work,
which occupied him for twenty-eight years, was his
"Hexapla," a collation of the LXX with the Hebrew
text, and three other Greek versions (the Hebrew-
being printed also in Greek letters as a sixth column).

^ Shorter visits were paid in this and the subsequent period

to Rome, Arabia, etc.
2 See Chap. ix.
 —
AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 103

The work, except the LXX part, has perished. To

Caesarea belong Homilies^ treatises on Prayer^ Martyr-
dom, etc. In A.D. 249, in tlie reign of Philip, he
wrote his great work in eight books, "Against
Celsus " ^ the noblest apology of the early Church.
It has already been hinted that his expositions of
Scripture give large scope to the allegorical method.
As a THEOLOGIAN shows a speculative
OrigCD
GENIUS hardly equalled. He
distinguishes between
what belongs to the rule of faith (to which he
adheres) and points which the doctrine of the Church
leaves undetermined and claims for his speculations
;

on these points only tentative and provisional value.

He emphasises in the Trinity the "eternal genera-
tion " of the Son on the other hand, lays such stress
;

on the hypostatic distinction, and subordination of

Son and Spirit to the Father, as almost to dissolve
the Divine unity. He speaks even of the Son in rela-
tion to the Father (absolute deity) as "a second God."
As God, he thinks, must eternally have worlds on
which to display His omnipotence, he teaches eternal
creation. There is a pre-existence of souls, and
sin is explained by a fall of souls in this pre-existent
state. There was one pure soul that did not fall,

but clave in love to the Logos. This is the soul of

Jesus. Thus Origen explains the sinlessness of Christ.
Redemption he regards under many points of view
among them that of a deception of Satan, who cannot
retain the soul of Jesus, given him as ransom price
for men. Origen is the first pronounced restitu-
tionist in the Church. All souls and worlds, he
thinks, will yet be brought back to God. The daring-
ness of some of these speculations involved the Church

^ See above, Chap, v.

104 THE EARLY CHURCH
in much after trouble (Origenistic controversies).
Apart from his theological views, Origen is a valuable
witness to Christian facts. He bears witness, e.g.,
to the usage of the Church in infant baptism, and
traces the custom back to the apostles. Tertullian,
on the other hand, advised delay.
5. The Church of Rome in this Period— Hip-

—
polytus and Callistus. Many circumstances com-
bined to exalt the Church of Rome in the second
century to a position of exceptional pre-eminence
(the political capital, antiquity and apostolic character
of Church, wealth and liberality of members, etc.).
This pre-eminence was, however, solely one of respect
and honour. It did not mean that the Church of
Rome was as yet allowed any real authority or juris-
diction over other Churches. The aim of the bishops of
Rome, on the other hand, was to change this position
of honour into one of actual authority. Every claim
of this kind was, by other bishops, strenuously resisted.
A case which makes this clear, and at the same time
marks a stage in the claims of the Roman bishop, is
that known as the Quarto-Dbciman controversy or
dispute about the time of keeping Easter. In Asia
Minor the Churches began and finished their celebra-
tion on one day —
the fourteenth day of Nisan, or day
of the Jewish Passover, on whatever day of the week
it might fall. They held that this was the custom
handed down to them from the apostle John. Rome
and the Churches of the West, on the other hand,
followed not the day of the month but the day of the
week. They began on Friday of the Passover-week
(Good Friday) and ended on the Easter Sunday
morning. The matter was discussed in a friendly
spirit between Polycarp, of Smyrna, and Anicetus,
Bishop of Rome (c. a.d. 155), without, however, a
 —
AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 105

settlement being arrived at. It was the occasion of

a sharp controversy in Asia Minor itself between

Melito of Sardis and Apollinaris of Hierapolis (c. a.d.

170). Melito defended the Asiatic practice. Rut the

most important stage in the controversy was in a.u.
190-94,when Victor, a haughty and imperious man,
was bishop of Rome. Victor issued a mandate re-
quiring conformity to the Roman practice ; then, when
protest was made, threatened the exconmiunication
of the Asiatics. This assumption of authority was
too much even for many who agreed with Victor in
principle, and immediate remonstrances were made.
The chief of thesewas from Irenseus, who, in a letter
to Victor, earnestly reproves him for his arrogance.

Irenseus was successful in his protest, and the excom-

munication was not carried out. The Roman ciistom
was ultimately affirmed at the Council of Nic£ea (a.d.
325), though not till it had become generally accepted
throughout the Churches.
The bishops next in succession to Victor were
Zephyrlxus (a.d. 200-18) and Callistus (a.d. 218-
23), regarding whom (especially the latter) there is a
curious story to tell which is best connected with the
account of another great Church Father Hippolytus.
Hippolytus has had a most singular fate. A volu-
minous and learned writer, and one of the most con-
spicuous figures in the Roman Church of his day, he
seems afterwards to have dropped almost entirely out
of view. Two modern times
interesting discoveries in
have restored him to our knowledge. First, his

STATUE was dug up in Rome in 1551 (on the back of

the chair his Easter cycle and list of his writings) ;

and second, in 1842, his long-lost w^ork, in ten books,

A Refutation of all Heresies, was recovered (published
in 1851). The first book had long been attributed to
106 THE EARLY CHURCH
Origeii, under the name Philosophoumena ; the second
and third books are wanting in the MSS., but the
rest of the work is nearly entire. A vahiable feature
in the book is the original light it throws on the
system of Basilides. But by far its most interesting
service is its account of the state of the Roman Church
under the two bishops above named, and of Hip-
polytus's own relation to them.
Hippolytus in early life was a hearer of Iren^us
in Gaul or Rome. Later he headed a party of
OPPOSiTiox in Rome to the bishops Zephyrinus and
Callistus, whom he accuses at once of doctrinal heresy
and of scandalous laxity in discipline (Bk. ix.).
Zephyrinus he describes as a weak and illiterate
man, covetous and accessible to bribes, and in the
latter part of his life completely under the influence
of Callistus. The latter used him for his own pur-
poses, and among other things inclined him to the
adoption of the Patripassian heresy, ^ then being
actively disseminated in Rome. The account of Cal-
listus is in the highest degree unfavourable. Origin-
ally the slave of a Christian master, he embezzled the
funds of a banking business ; fled, and, when about
to be captured, tried to commit suicide ; was sent to
the house of correction ; later, for a disturbance in the
Jewish synagogue, was banished to the Sardinian
mines, etc. We next find him in the confidence of
Zephyrinus, who set him over the cemetery ever since
called by his name. On the death of Zephyrinus, he
had influence enough to get himself appointed as
bishop in his place. His scandalous administration
is pictured in the darkest colours by Hippolytus.

The difficulty is to know what position precisely

1 See below, Chap. x.

 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 107

Hippolytus himself occupied. He assumes the office

of bishop and withholds that designation from Cal-
listus speaks of Callistus only as head of a school.
;

A late and worthless tradition makes him bishop of

Portus —the seaport Rome.of He was more probably
reallya rival bishop to Callistus, set up by his own
party — the the long
first of line of anti-popes. Yet, all
unwitting of his real history, the Church later canon-
ised him as a saint The remaining fact of his life
!

of which we can speak with certainty is that he and

v

the bishop Pontianus were transported to Sardinia

in the persecution of Maximin (a.d. 235). Some kind
of reconciliation must have taken place, for the bodies

of both were brought back to Rome about a.d. 236-37,

and deposited in their respective sepulchres on the

same day (13th August). Besides the work on
heresies, we have from Hippolytus a treatise Against
NoetiLSy and minor works and fragments.

6. Cyprian of Carthage —
Completion of Idea
—
of Old Catholic Church. Cyprian is the last of the
old Catholic Fathers, and he marks the transition to
the next period. Cyprian is not great as a theologian,
but he is a great churchman. To him belongs the
distinction having placed the copestone on the
of
edifice of the old Catholic Church which we have
seen being built up by many hands from the days
of Ignatius. His personal history presents us with a
career of splendid self-sacrifice.
Cyprian was born at Carthage, about a.d. 200, of
noble and wealthy parents. Previous to his conversion
he was distinguished as a teacher of rhetoric. He was
WON TO Christ about a.d. 245 through the instru-
mentality of an aged presbyter, Ca^cilius, who directed
him to the study of the Bible. Cyprian gave proof
at once of the thoroughness and decision of his pro-
 —
108 THE EARLY CHURCH
fession by taking Christ's command literally, and
voluntarily selling his fine estate for the benefit of the
poor. Baptism followed rapidly on conversion, and
was signalised by his adoption of the name of his
spiritual father, Ceecilius. In a writing of this period,
To Donatus, Cyprian gives a beautiful description of
the effects of his conversion, and of the contrast
between Christianity and heathenism in a moral
respect. He was shortly after ordained a presbyter,
—
and a little later only two years after his baptism
was compulsorily raised by popular acclamation to
THE DIGNITY OF BISHOP. His elcvation gave deep
offence to the presbyters who had been passed over.
Five presbyters objected to his ordination, and to the
jealousy thus created is to be traced most of his after
troubles. Thus at the very beginning of his Christian
course Cyprian found himself at the head of the clergy
of North Africa.
In A.D. 250 the storm of the Decian persecution
broke on the Church, and Cyprian thought it prudent
to withdraw for a time that he might better direct
the affairs of the Church, and prevent it from being
deprived of its head. Of the troubles which arose out
of this persecution and the difficulties in which they
involved Cyprian, we shall speak in the next chapter.
He returned to Carthage in 251, when the persecu-
a.d.

tion had ended through the death of the emperor. In

A.D. 252 came the great pestilence, which afforded
opportunity for a display of Christian devotion and
charity such as paganism was incapable of. A scheme
was drawn up for the systematic visitation of the city ;

a ministry of help was organised some undertook

;

the work of nursing and burial and through their

;

unremitting efforts a general pestilence was averted.

Under the Valerian persecution, a.d. 257, Cyprian
 AGE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC FATHERS 1()9

WHS banished to a city some forty miles distant. A

year later(a.d. 258) a more severe edict was issued,

and he was sentenced to death by beheading. The

martyrdom took place on a level plain near the city
in presence of a vast concourse of spectators, all of
whom, even the pagans, did him reverence.
Cyprian, as said above, was less a theologian than a
GREAT CHURCH LEADER. The trying circumstances in
which he was placed, and the oppositions he had to
encounter, forced on him the task of strengthening to
the utmost the bonds of church unity, and of seek-
ing, in argument witli his opponents, a dogmatic basis
for that unity. The chief works in which this basis is

set forth are his elghty-onc Eputlm (a few not his), and,
above all, his treatise on The Unity of the Church —
the Magna Charta, as it has been called, of the old
Catholic and High Church conception.
Cyprian's doctrine of the Church may be summed
up in three points. The unity of the Church as
(1)
repreaented by the episcopate. Cyprian gives this a
new grounding in basing it on the promise of Christ
to St. Peter (Matt. xvi. 18, 19). Peter, however,
only represents the unity of the Church in a sym-
bolical way. It is not the bishop of Rome only, but
the whole body of the episcopate, which inherits
Peter's prerogatives. (2) The priesthood of the clergy.
Cyprian is the first to give this conception fixed
and definite shape. The way had long been preparing
in the development of the idea of sacramental grace,
and especially of the eucharist as a sacrifice. The
sacrifice in the eucharist was originally the spiritual
sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving, or the offering
up of the worshipper himself. The idea was extended
to the gifts from which the elements of the Supper
were taken ; then to the elements. Now that the
110 THE EARLY CHURCH
idea was established of a real mystical presence of the
Lord's body and blood in the elements, it was natural
that the conception of the sacrifice should change.
The Sacrament becomes a real offering up of the
body and blood of the Lord a renewal of the —
sacrifice on the Cross. Thus the idea of the sacrifice
as A SIN-OFFERING, and of the priest as an off'erer at
the altar (in the Jewish and pagan sense), becomes
established in the Church.The clergy are a priestly
class,mediating between the people and God, and
conveying grace to the people from God. The
distinction of clergy and laity becomes absolute.
(3) With all this Cyprian held firmly the autonomy

of each bishop in his own Church. He resisted all

arrogant pretensions on the part of the bishop of
Rome. On the question of the re-baptism of heretics,
e.g., he came into violent collision with Stephen of
Rome (a. I). 2.55-56), who wished to impose his own
views on the Churches of North Africa. The Pope's
unqualified primacy gets little help from the Fathers
of this age. From the above positions follows logically
the conclusion which Cyprian now boldly draws, that
out of this visible, episcopally-organised Church there
can be no salvation. Extra ecclesiam nulla solus.
Hence schism is the worst of sins excommunication
;

dooms the soul to perdition.

—
Points for inquirij and study. Study more fully the lives
ofthe Fathers. Contrast the idea of the bishop in Irenseus
and Cyprian. Show more fully the degree of honour allowed
to the bishops of Rome in the second and third centuries,
and contrast with modern claims. Trace the development of
the eucharist as a sacrifice.
—
Books. Lightfoot's "Churches of Gaul" in Essays;
Brown's Apostolical Succession ; Farrar's Lives of Fathers
(also Pressens^, etc.); Barrow's Supremacy of Pope; North
African Church in " Home Library".
 ;

CHAPTER IX.

THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS :

VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY (a.d. 250-324).

It is a curious coincidence that the completion of

Rome's millennium should also mark the beginning of
its downfall. The Gothic invasions had commenced
even in the reign of Philip in that of Decius (a.d.
;

250-51 )thej spread frightful desolation through Rome's

fairest provinces. The turning-point in the history of

the Church is not less marked. Everything seemed

going prosperously. It appeared as if an eas}^ and
peaceful victory were about to be achieved. But
observant eyes, like Origen's, saw that this season of
respite was only the calm before the storm of a
great final struggle. The breaking of that storm was
not long deferred. Hitherto there had been severe
and distressing persecutions, but they had been more
or less local and limited in range. Now the empire
woke up to see that the very existence of paganism
was at stake, and for the first time we have systema-
tically planned and strictly universal persecutions.
1, The Decian and Valerian Persecutions. The —
Emperor Decius was a Roman of the old school. His
two years' reign ended in a defeat by the Goths, in
which he and his army perished miserably in a morass
but they were years fraught with important conse-
quences for the Christians. Decius was a persecutor,
pot from impulse but from settled policy. He
(111)
112 THE EARLY CHURCH
honestly believed that the salvation of Rome lay in
its old institutions, and that Christianity, as a rival
power, could not be too speedily or effectually crushed.
He is credited with the saying that he would rather
have a second emperor at his side than the bishop of
Rome. He was therefore scarcely established in the
empire when he launched the edict which inaugurated
what is deemed the seventh persecution (a.d. 250).
He does not seem at first to have desired the death
of the Christians. His policy was to terrify them by
citing them before the tribunals and requiring them
to recant ; then, if they proved obstinate, to coerce
them by imprisonments, confiscations, tortures, exile.
It was only when these measures failed that the
extremest tortures and death were inflicted on con-
fessors, and specially on the bishops.
The persecuting edict was sent throughout the
empire and rigorously enforced. Christians who did
not appear before the tribunals on an appointed day
were to be sought after, and brought before a com-
mission composed of the magistrate and five of the
principal citizens. The edict fell like a thunderbolt
on the Church. The Ejnstles of Cyprian, his Treatise
on the Laxjsed, and a letter of Dionysius of Alexandria ^
give us vivid pictures of the persecution, but show
also how ill-prepared the Church was to meet it.
Multitudes in time of peace had joined the Church
who had no deep-rooted piety and these, especially ;

the wealthier classes, now fell away in large numbers.

Dionysius pictures them approaching the altar, pale
and trembling, as if they were going to be sacrificed
instead of to sacrifice, w^hile the populace who thronged
aroimd jeered them. Special names had to be m-

'^Eus., vi. 41.

THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 113

vented to designate the classes of the lapskd

(mcrijicati, those who had sacrificed ; thur/'Jirati, those
who offered incense ; lihellatici, those who forpayment
obtained a certificate that they had s icrificed though

they had not done so ;

^ and acta facientes, those who
without certificates pretended they had sacrificed).

Many, however, did not apostatise, but submitted to

be tormented with heat, hunger, and thirst in their
prisons, stretched on the rack, torn with hooks, burnt
with fire, and finally put to death. One of the first

victims of the persecution was the aged Fabian, Bishop

of Rome. For more than a year after this no bishop
of Rome Other distinguished suf-
could be elected.
ferers were Babylus of Antioch and Alexander of
Jerusalem, Origen's friend. Okigex himself, it will
be remembered, was imprisoned and tortured. The
death of the emperor set him free. The persecution
broke out again under his successor, Gallus (a.d.
2.^)1-54).

It is, however, under the more important reign of

the next emperor, Valerian (a.d. 2.54-60), that we
come to what is usually numbered as the eighth
PERSECUTION. Valerian was a man of unblemished
virtue, and for the first four years of his reign was
not unfavourably disposed towards the Christians,
His house is described by Dionysius as " filled with
pious persons, and a house of God" [Eus., vi. 36).
The change seems to have been brought about by
a dark-minded man, Macrianus, who had acquired
great influence over him. The reign of Valerian was
the most calamitous the empire had yet experienced ;

this also had doubtless its effect. The persecution

that ensued exceeded even that of Decius in severity.

^ Specimens of these libelli have been recovered.

8
114 THE EARLY CHURCH
Its first stage was in a.d. 257, and went no farther
than to remove bishops from their churches, and
forbid Christian assemblies on pain of death ; the
second stage (a.d. 258) was far more drastic, decreeing
that office-bearers of churches should immediately be
put to death, persons of rank should be degraded, and,
ifthey persevered, should be put to death, noble women
and persons of lesser rank should suffer confiscation
and banishment.
One of the first to suffer was again the bishop of
Rome, SiXTUS, who was beheaded in his episcopal chair.
We saw that Cyprian suffered in this persecution. In
Spain we read of a bishop and two deacons being burned
alive in the amphitheatre. The persecution came to
an end with the captivity of Valerian in Persia
(a.d. 260). How little all these persecuting edicts
had done to destroy Christianity is shown by the fact
that the first step of his frivolous son and colleague,
Gallienus (a.d. 254-68), was to restore to congrega-
tions their right to worship, and give bishops permission
to return to their charges. Christianity thus became
once more practically a religio licita.

2. Effects of the Persecutions— Schisms of Feli-

cissimus and Novatian.— A delicate and difficult
question for the Church, as soon as the severity of
the persecutions had abated, was the restoration of
THE LAPSED. Thcsc formed a wide class, and among
them were included many shades and degrees of guilt.
Multitudes had little real sense of their sin in apostasy,
and were indisposed to brook delay in restoration. The
evil was aggravated by faction, and by a practice which
had grown up of allowing confessors a right of inter-
cession for the fallen, and even of granting certificates
OF peace with the Church. In Carthage especially
this privilege was abused beyond all bounds. The
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 115

result was two schisms one — at Ciirthiv^e, the other

at Rome, the latter of which, at least, had important
historical consecjuences.
Cyprian's viewson the restoration of the lapsed tended
to strictness ; he wns at any rate opposed to action till

a council could be called to settle deliberately terms

of re-admission. It will be remembered that a party
of opposition toCyprian existed in Carthage — the result
of jealousy at his ordination. The head of this party
was a presbyter, No vat us, who had already shown his
disregard for Cyprian by ordaining one Felicissimus
as his deacon. These threw in their influence with
the advocates of lenity, and received back all and
simdry to Church fellowship. Novatus shortly after
went to Rome, where we find him assuming the
opposite 7-6le of a leader of the strict party. Cyprian
gradually softened in his views, but without effect on
the opposition. Felicissimus openly revolted against
his authority, and refused to receive a delegation
which Cyprian had sent to inquire into the neces-
sities of sufferers by the persecution. At a council
held A.D. 251 Felicissimus was condemned, and at a
second council (a.d. 252) milder rules were adopted.
The party of Felicissimus now set up a bishop of their
own, named Fortunatus, and the schism was complete.
It seems to have had no permanent success.^
At Rome a much graver contest was being waged.
Cornelius, the bishop-elect, was opposed by Nova-
TiAN, a man of sombre temper and rigorous principles,
who resisted all re-admission of the lapsed to Church
communion. He did not deny that the penitent
might receive mercy from God, but held that the
Church had no power to grant it. Novatus, from

^ A third (Novatian) bishop was afterwards set up.

116 THE EARLY CHURCH
Carthage, threw himself into this new strife, and, on
the rejection of Novatian, persuaded his party not to
accept Cornelius as their bishop, but to elect a bishop
for themselves. Novatian was chosen opposition
bishop, and a rival Church was formed which deve-
loped into a great organisation, spread into many
countries (Gaul, Africa, Asia Minor, etc.), and con-
tinued for centuries, with a great reputation for piety.
Epiphanius, e.g., mentions that in Thyatira there were
no Catholics for a hundred and twelve years. Novatian
was a genuinely able and learned man, as his work
on The Trinity shows.
Following on the schisms, embittered disputes arose
on the RE-BAPTISM OF HERETICS. Thesc, as formerly
mentioned, brought Cyprian into collision with
Stephen, Bishop of Rome (a.d. 255-56). Cyprian,
with the North African Church, took the stricter
view (insisting on re-baptism) ; Stephen took the
milder. The more charitable view ultimately pre-
vailed.
3. Empire and Church till Diocletian — Neo-
Platonism. — The death of Gallienus in a.d. 268 left

the empire in a state bordering on ruin. From this

period a rapid succession of emperors held sway whose
main task it was to clear the provinces from the bar-
barians that infested them. They were mostly men
of obscure rank, of Illyrian extraction (hence known
as the Illyrian Emperors), and of great bravery and
skill. The only one that need be mentioned here was
Aurelian (a.d. 270-75), who achieved a series of
brillianttriumphs in east and west, but made himself
odious by his pride and severity. He was zealous for
the maintenance of pagan rites (was himself a devoted
worshipper of the sun), and was on the point of sub-
scribing an edict for the persecution of the Christians
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 117

when he was cut off by conspirators. Some allege

that the edict was actually issued. It is this, never-

theless, which is reckoned as the ninth persecution

—a persecution, be seen, only on paper.
it will The
murder of the Emperor Numerian in a.d. 284 opened
the way for Diocletian, with whom a new era in the
empire begins.
During all this period (apart from the danger under
Aurelian), as well as during the first nineteen years of
the reign of Diocletian (till a.d. 303), the Church
enjoyed peace. This is known as the forty years'
PEACE, and, while it lasted, the Church continued to

grow in numbers, wealth and influence, but also in

worldliness and corruption. Large and magnificent
churches began to be erected, greater splendour was
introduced into the services, church offices were multi-
plied, etc.^ Christians were found in the highest
positions in the palace. In the same proportion
Church discipline was relaxed, and the old evils from
which the Decian persecution had done much to
purify the Church returned in full tide.
Reference may be made here to a new form of
opposition which had sprung up on the philosophical and
literary side, viz., Neo-Platonism. This philosophical
form of faith, while bitterly hostile to Christianity, is

the strongest testimony to its influence. It no longer

poured unqualified ridicule on Christianity, as Celsus
had done, but dealt with it in an eclectic spirit, con-
demning only its exclusive claims. " We must not,"
said Porphyry, " calumniate Christ, but only pity
those who worship Him as God." The founder of
thi^ school, Ammonius Saccas of Alexandria (died
a.d. 243), was born of Christian parents, and, indeed,

^ See Chap. x.
 ;

118 THE EARLY CHURCH

for a time himself professed Christianity. A trace of
Christian influence may be seen in the Neo- Platonic
doctrine of the Trinity, which, however, has little in
common wrought up from
with the Christian, but is

Platonic elements. The problem which Neo-Platonism

set itself to solve was the union of the finite and in-
finite and its means of bridging the opposition of
;

the two was " ecstasy."

The most illustrious teachers of the school after
Ammonius were Plotinus (died c. a.d, 270) and
Porphyry (died a.d. 304). Porphyry wrote a book
entitled Discourses against the Christians, of which
fragments are preserved in the Fathers who replied
to it. Some of his objections to the books of Scripture
(e.g., to the book of Daniel) anticipate modern critical

attacks. A literary opponent of a coarser stamp,

generally reckoned to this school, was Hierocles,
prefect of Bithynia (afterwards of Alexandria), a
cruel persecutor of the Christians. His book, Truth-
loving Words to the Christians (!), attempts to disparage
the character and miracles of Jesus by comparison with
those of Aristseus, Pythagoras, and the pagan miracle-
worker, Apollonius of Tyana. Eusebius wrote a reply
to it. The school afterwards degenerated into theurgy
and magic Jamblichus of Chalcis, who died c.
{e.g.,

A.D. 330). Its last famous teacher was Proclus of

Constantinople, the commentator on Plato (died a.d.
485).
4. The Diocletian Persecution. The last and —
most violent of all the persecutions that overtook the
Christians (the tenth persecution) was that in the
reign of Diocletian (a.d. 303-13). Diocletian, the
son of a slave, introduced changes into the organisa-
tion OP THE EMPIRE of far- reaching importance. He
assumed personally the style of an Oriental despot
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 119

divided the empire into two parts

( West and East), with

an "Augustus " for each chan«2:ed the seat of empire

;

from Rome to the new capitals, Milan (W.) and

Nicomedia (E.) further, subdivided the empire by
;

associating with each "Augustus" a " C«esar," who

was in due course to succeed to the higher dignity.
In pursuance of these arrangements, Diocletian (E.)
associated with himself, in a.d. 286, Maximian, a
rude but able soldier (W.), and 292 added, as
in a.d.
the two " Caesars,'"' Galerius, originally a herdsman,
and CoNSTANTius Chlorus, father of Constantine the
Great. To consolidate the relations Constantius was
required to put awayhis wife Helena (mother of
Constantine) and become son-in-law^ of Maximian,
while Galerius became the son-in-law of Diocletian.
Constantius received the rule of Gaul and Britain, and
Galerius had lUyria.
If Diocletian did not molest the Christians during
the FIRST NiNETEEX YEARS of his reign (his own wife,
Prisca, and daughter, Valeria, were reputed Chris-
tians) it was not from any love of their religion. But
Diocletian was a wary, politic man, and knew^ better
than most what a conflict with Christianity which
was to end in its suppression would mean. The
REAL INSTIGATOR of the persecution was the low-bred,
ferocious Galerius. Diocletian long held back, but,
plied with arguments by Galerius and the pagan
nobles, he at length gave way, and a persecution was
agreed on, to takeeffect on 23rd February, a.d. 303.
There was to be no halting or turning back, but
measures were to be taken for the entire suppression
of Christianity. Proceedings began at daybreak on
the day named by the demolition of the magnificent
CHURCH at Nicomedia (one of the architectural orna-
ments of the city), and the burning of all copies of
120 THE EARLY CHURCH
the Scriptures found in it. Next day an edict was
issued giving the signal for a general persecution. All
churches were to be demolished ; all copies of the
Scriptures were to be burned ; Christians holding
official positions were to be degraded and deprived
of civil rights ; others were to be reduced to the
condition of slaves ; slaves were made incapable of
receiving their freedom.
This first was aimed, it will be ob-
edict (a.d. 303)
served, rather at the churches and the Scriptures
(a new policy) than the persons of the Christians ;

disobedience was punished by degradation, not by

death. A second edict (a.d. 303) ordered all clergy,
without option of sacrifice, to be thrown into prison.
Some time after a third edict was issued, yet more
severe. The clergy in prison were required to sacri-
fice ; if they did not, they were to be compelled by
every means of torture. Finally, in a.d. 304, a fourth
EDICT extended this law to the whole body of the
Christians. The most fearful tortures were inflicted
on the Christians to compel them to submit, and
though death was not mentioned in the edict, it was,
as we see from Eusebius, freely inflicted. The sweep-
ing severity of this persecution is apparent from the
rehearsal of these edicts alone. Their publication, as
in the Decian persecution, caused indescribable con-
sternation. Immediately on the publication of the
first, a soldier rashly tore it down with opprobrious
words ; was roasted over a slow fire.
for this act he
Fires that broke out in the palace wereblamed on the
Christians, and led to many being burned, beheaded
and drowned. Formerly trusted chamberlains of the
palace were put to death. Diocletian's own wife and
daughter had to clear themselves by sacrifice.
Special panic was created by the order for the
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 121

SURRENDER and DESTRUCTION of the Sacred Scriptures.

The scenes of the Dccian persecution were repeated
in new forms. Multitudes hastened at once to give
up their copies of the Scrijjtures some pahned off on
;

the officers worthless and heretical writings others, ;

more enthusiastic, not only retained their Scriptures,

but boasted of their possession, and challenged the
magistrates to do their worst. Those who for any
reason gave up their Scriptures were branded with
the name traditors, and the antagonism to these
afterwards gave rise to a new schism —that of the
DoNATiSTS (see below). The later edicts still further
tried the faith and patience of the Christians. In
Gaul and Britain, first under Constantius, then under
Constantine, the Christians enjoyed comparative peace.
But throughout the rest of the empire the persecu-
tion raged with dreadful cruelty. Egypt and Pales-
tine were specially afflicted.

In a.d. 305 Diocletian abdicated, but this rather

made matters worse for the Christians. Galcrius, the
chief promoter of the persecution, was now emperor,
and Severus
his creatures, and Maximin, in West and

East respectively, were entirely devoted to his in-

terests. The revolt of Maxentius in Italy (a.d. 306)
was favourable to the Christians in so far as it was

his interest to attach them to his side ; and with the

defeat of Maxentius by Constantine at the Milvian
Bridge, a.d. 312 (see below), persecution in the West
may be said to have ended. In the East, under the
savage Maximin, it went on with intensified severity
till a.d. 311, when a welcome relief came. In that
year the arch-persecutor, Galerius, smitten with a
dreadful internal disease, was moved to make peace
with the Christians, and issued an edict of tolera-
tion, granting full liberty of opinion and worship.
122 THE EARLY CHURCH
This was followed in a.d. 313 (after a provisional
edict in a.d. 312) by the famous Edict of Milan of
Constantine and Licinius (see below). Maximin him-
self, defeated by Licinius, likewise issued an epistle

in which he granted full liberty of worship. One

reason he gives for the persecution is that the
emperors " had seen that almost all men were aban-
doning the worship of the gods, and attaching them-
selves to the party of the Christians" (Eus., ix. 9).
Thus on every hand the persecution was admitted to
have failed, and Christianity emerged triumphant.
5. Career and Character of Constantine Vic- —
tory of Christianity.— To judge fairly of Constantine,
distinction should be made between the period b'^fore
he arrived at supreme power and the period that suc-
ceeded. In the EARLY PERIOD his character and conduct
stand before us in a most favourable light. The son
of Constantius Chlorus and Helena (said to be the
daughter of an innkeeper), he was born at Naissus,
in Dacia, probably in a.d. 274. After his mother's
divorce he continued to reside at Nicomedia as a
hostage for his father's loyalty. He joined his father
in Gaul in a.d. 305, and was proclaimed emperor by
the troops in Britain on the death of Constantius in
A.D. 306. him the
Galerius, however, only granted
rank of "Caesar." At the courts of Diocletian and
Galerius he seems to have been a general favourite.
His high reputation was maintained in Britain and in
Gaul. He was tall and commanding in appearance,
affable in manners, just and tolerant in his rule, pure
in his personal morals. He was a man undoubtedly
of large ambitions, but these rested on a conscious
ability to rule.
From the first he was a protector of the Christians,
and, as he sped on from victory to victory in their
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 123

interests, it is perhaps not wonderful tliat in their

eyes, and in his own, he should come to he regarded
as a sort of second Cyrus — a special instrument raised
up by God of His Church.
for the deliverance In
A.D. 305 Maxentius, the son of Maximian, had (with
his father) usurped the supreme power in Italy. His
reign was one of intolerable oppression. A historical
battle was fought between Constantine and Maxentius
at THE MiLviAN Bridge, about nine miles from Rome,
A.D. 312, which issued in the defeat and drowning of
the latter.
It was on the march to this battle that Constantine
had hisfamous Vision of the Cross, which some speak
of as his " Conversion." He saw, or believed he saw,
a cross in the sky, above the brightness of the sun,
bearing on it the words "By this Conquer." The
same night Christ appeared to him in sleep, and
directed him to make a standard of like pattern, which
should be to him a token of victory. ^ There is nothing
improbable in the supposition that the emperor may
have seen an appearance in the heavens which his
excited imagination construed into a cross ; or that
in the agitation of his mind, on the eve of so critical

a contest, he may have had such a dream as he

describes. If his mind was already pondering the
question of the acceptance of Christianity, this becomes
the more probable. The sacred standard — the
Labauum — was at made, and the monogram of
least
Christ was displayed on shields and helmets of
soldiers, and on gems and coins. Even yet, however,
Constantine was vei-y dimly instructed in the real
nature of Christianity. Christianity, indeed, was never

^ The incident was narrated on oath by Constantine to

Eusebius,
124 THE EARLY CHURCH
much more to him than a system of Monotheism and
providence.
The Roman world was now divided between Con-
STANTiNE AND LiciNius (an " Augustus " of Galcrius),
and the final struggle could not be long delayed. In
A.D. 313 the two emperors issued jointly the Edict of
Milan, already mentioned. In a.d. 314 two battles
were fought, in which Licinius was worsted. A truce
of eight years followed. In this interval the mind of
Constantine was clearing, and not a few of his laws
show a Christian impress. Licinius, on the other
hand, took the side of paganism, and the last war,
in A.D. 323, was avowedly waged in the interests
of the old religionand the old gods. ''The issue of
this war," said Licinius, " must settle the question
between his god and our gods." The decisive victory
at Hadrianople (a.d. 323), therefore, was well under-
stood to be a victory for Christianity. In the following
year (a.d. 324) the Christian religion was established.
The nature of this settlement, and some of the later
events of Constan tine's reign, on which dark shadows
rest, are touched on in the next chapter.
6. The Donatist Schism. — Even before arriving at
fullpower Constantine had been asked to adjudicate
in an ecclesiastical dispute arising out of the perse-
cution in Carthage. Mexsurius, Bishop of Carthage,
had given offence to the stricter party by evasive con-
duct when called on to surrender his Scriptures and
in other ways. They could accomplish nothing in his
lifetime, but when his successor, C^ecilian, was elected,
in A.D. 311, they broke out in revolt under the leader-
ship of one Donatus, accused Ctecilian of having been
ordained by a traditor Felix, and, at a synod attended
by seventy bishops, set up a rival bishop in the
person of Majorinus. Appeal was made (by the
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 125

Donatists) to Constaiitine to have the question deter-

mined whether Felix was really a traditor ; and a
SERIES OF INVESTIGATIONS were held (a.d. 313-16), in-
cluding one by the Council of Arles (ad. 314), and
a final inquiry by the emperor himself (a.u. 316) all —
with the same result of clearing Felix and upholding
Ciecilian. Majorinus died in a.d. 315, and was
succeeded as bishop by a second and greater Donatus,
from whom the sect specially takes its name. Donatus
proved utterly irreconcilable, and Constantine was pro-
voked to order the party into banishment. This edict
he recalled next year (a.d. 317). Donatism continued
to spread, and, by the end of Constan tine's reign, was
able to summon a synod of 270 bishops. It became a
rallying point for all the forces of discontent in the
district, and gave rise to outrageous manifestations in
the roaming bodies of Cfrcumcellions (= round the
cottages), whose violence spread terror through the
country. The better Donatists, of course, repudiated
these abases. The party was still powerful in the
days of Augustine (fifth century).

—
Points for inquiry and study. Make a picture of the state
of the Church in the Decian persecution from Cyprian's
letters. Read the letter of Dionysius of Alexandria. Study
the evidences of the large numbers and social rank of the
Christians in this period (Orr). Compare the different esti-
mates of the character of Constantine. lUustraie the Dio-
cletian persecution from Eusebius.
Books. —
For history, see Gibbon Stanley's Eastern
;

Church; Bigg's Platonists of Alexandria ; Constantine the

Great in " Home Library."
 CHAPTER X.

THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS VICTORY :

OF CHRISTIANITY (Continued) (a.d. 250-324).

1. Establishment of Christianity— Constantine's

later Years. —
The Christians not unnaturally were
as men that dreamed at the great revolution which
had taken place in the state of their affairs. By one
turn of the wheel they saw themselves raised from
the lowest depths of abasement and suffering, and
their religion placed on the throne of the empire.
When, however, we speak of the establishment of
Christianity by Constantine, we must beware of
importing into that phrase the associations of modern
alliances of Church and State. On the one hand, the
position of the Church in its relation to the empire
was very different from that by the pagan
held
religion. The old Roman religion was part of the
state ; it had no independent existence, no rights, no
jurisdiction of its own. Its officers were state officials,

and the emperor himself was Pontifex Maximus. In

fact the Roman state establishment was not abolished
till the reign of the emperor Gratian, near the end of

the century (a.d. 382). The Christian Church was

in quite a different position. It had grown up inde-
pendently of the state, and possessed a vast organisa-
tion of its own. It had its own office-bearers, its own
laws, its own canons of discipline, its own councils, etc.
It was an imperium in imperio which the state did not
(126)
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 127

create, but could only recognise. On the other hand,

NO FORMAL ALLIANCE was entered into between Church
and State such as we are familiar with in modern
times. The establishment of Christianity was not an
act done at once, but grew up from a series of proclama-
tions, letters, edicts, enactments, gifts, appeals in dis-
putes, meetings of councils, etc., and only gradually
took shape as time went on.
The following are some of the chief heads: (1)
There were proclamations of the emperor, publicly
announcing himself a Christian, restoring their liberty
to the Christians, ordering restitution of property, and
recommending the Christian religion to his subjects.
(2) The emperor encouraged everywhere the huilding
and repairing of churches, contributing liberally from
his own funds to the expenses. (3) He extended his
and increased the privileges of the
Christian legislation
clergy. One important measure was the legalising of
the decisions of the Church in civil disputes where
parties preferred to take their case before the bishops.
Another was the conferring on the Church the right
to receive bequests. (4) The puhlic acts of the state

were purified from pagan associations, and conformed

to Christian principles. A law had already been
passed in a.d. 321 enforcing the civil observance of
Sunday (dies solis) to the extent of suspending all

legal business and military exercises on that day.

(5) The emperor exercised the authority which the
Church conceded to him of f^umnioning rouncils for
the settlement of doctrinal disputes, and otherwise
took part in ecclesiastical affairs. The chief example
of this was the summoning of the great Council of
Nicea, in A.D. 325, to decide the Arian controversy.
(6) While Christianity was thus protected and privi-
leged, paganism was tolerated, or suffered to dwindle
 a
;

128 THE EARLY CHURCH

away under the shadow of royal disfavour, except in
special instances, where rites of a licentious character

were forcibly suppressed.The above were no doubt

substantial advantages to theChurch yet through ;

them the Church was drawn into the sphere of earthly

politics,and the ill-defined boundaries between civil
and ecclesiastical jurisdiction led to the gravest evils.
The victory of the Church in the state marks at the
same time the beginning of an era of secularisation
and declension, from which Moxasticism was a species
of reaction.
It does not fall within the limits of this sketch to

recount the later events of Constantine's reign. Even

in this later period it is just to acknowledge that
Constantine is distinguished by many great and
STRIKING QUALITIES. His life remains unstained by
private vices; he maintained, with slight exception,
the policy of toleration with which he set out
he took a sincere interest in the progress of the
Christian cause, and laboured to the best of his
knowledge and ability for the peace and unity of the
Church. Even the dark domestic tragedies of his
life much wrapped in mystery to
in a.d. 326 are too
enable us to apportion fairly what measure of blame
attaches to him.
On the other hand, it is not difficult to see in him a
GROWING elation AND COMPLACENCY in himsclf as an
instrument chosen by God to fulfil His purposes —
consciousness not sufficiently tempered by the feeling
of personal unworthiness. With this tendency to self-

elationwent a strong dash of personal vanity and

growing love of splendour, seen not only in the adorn-
ment of his person in robes of Oriental sumptuousness,
but in the gratification of expensive tastes in building.
The most conspicuous example of this was the rear-
 —
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 129

ing of his new and splendid capital Constantinople

(dedicated a.d. 330). The lavish expenditure on this
city and on the gorgeous establishment of his court
involved him in the necessity of imposing heavy
taxation on his subjects, so that his reign came to be
regarded as despotic and oppressive. Even on the
subject of his blameworthy self-exaltation account
should be taken of the trmptations to which he was
exposed, and of the extravagant adulation he received
from the Christians around him. One of the most
remarkable facts in his career is that while the patron
of Christianity, the friend of bishops, judge of their
controversies, president in their councils, a preacher
and exhorter to Christian living, he himself did not
RECEIVE BAPTISM till the last days of his life (a.d. 337).
We may, despite it all, find much in Constantine not
unworthy of the great repute he has always had in
the Church.
2. The Church Outside the Empire — Mani-
chseism. —
The Gospel by the time now reached had
penetrated into many countries outside the bounds of
the Roman Empire. There had long been Christians
in Arabia ; a Gothic bishop was present at the Council
of Nica^a ; Armenia, under Tiridates, at first a violent
persecutor, had been persuaded to receive the Gospel
from Gregory the Illuminator about a.d. 302 ; Georgia
received Christianity about a.d. 326. Persia, too,
had large numbers of Christians, who were soon to
undergo a fierce persecution. The Gospel found its
way into Ethiopia (Abyssinia) through two captive
youths, Edesius and Frumentius, one of whom after-
wards (under Athanasius) became the bishop of the
Church.
In connection with Persia, notice must be taken of
the rise in the latter part of the third century of the
9
130 THE EARLY CHURCH
form of heresy known as Manich.eism. In general,
Manichseism is a mixture of Persian dualism with
ideas borrowed from Christianity and Gnosticism. Its
fantastic ideas might seem to put it beyond serious
consideration but it is to be remembered that it had
;

fascination enough to enslave for nine years even such

an intellect as Augustine's, and that, despite persecu-
tion, it went on propagating itself for centiu'ies, giving

rise to sects in the Middle Ages, which were no small

trouble to the ruling powers (Paulicians, Cathari, etc.).
The rise of Manichaeism was coincident with the acces-
sion of a NEW Persian dynasty (the Sassanidse), and
of a great revival of Zoroastrianism.
The founder of the sect, Mani, was a young and
talented Persian, who, under Sapor I. (a.d. 240-72),^
conceived the idea of bringing about a fusion of the
Zoroastrian and Christian religions. He had to flee,

and in the course of extensive travels (India, etc.)

evolved his religious scheme into definite form. Re-
turning to Persia on the death of Sapor, he met at first

with a flattering reception, but finally was denounced

as a heretic and flayed alive (a.d. 277 ?). The system
is a piece of extravagant mythology from first to last.
It starts with the dualistic conception of a Kingdom
ofGood (Light) and a Kingdom of Evil (Darkness).
The Kingdom of Evil invades the Kingdom of Good,
and bears off" from it a portion of its light substance.
It is these particles of light imprisoned in the chaotic
elements of this lower world which give to the latter
its mingled character. They suffer acutely, it is

supposed, in being thus held in material bonds. The

Manichaeans spoke of this as the crucifixion of the
Eternal Christ throughout creation. Creation (organi-

^ The dates ia Mani's life are quite uncertain.

 :

THP: age of the great persecutions 131

sation) is an expedient for their liberation. Man is

created by the evil j)owers that tlie higlier elements

might be more securely bound ; but the concentration

aids, instead of retarding, the process of evolution.
RedempiK'N is through a higher power (the " Primeval
Man "), identified with tlie Sjnrit of the Sun, or
Mithras. The end of the development is the total
separation of the light from the darkness. Mani
formed a Chukch, with two grades of members
(1) the auditors, or outer circle and (2) the elect, ;

or sacerdotal caste, the " perfect" of the Manichseaa

sect. These did no work, but were maintained by
the auditors. Augustine wrote elaborate refutations
of the system.
3. Theology — The Monarchian Heresies. As —
the second centur}- was the period of the Gnostic
heresies, so the third century is pre-eminently the
period of what are known as the Monarchian heresies.
We have reserved a brief connected account of these
to the present point. They arose partly as a reaction
against the doctrine of the Trinity, developed by the
Apologists and old Catholic Fathers, w^hich seemed
to put in jeopardy the unity {inonarchia) of God ;

and partly as a protest against the subordinationist

doctrines of certain of the Fathers, which seemed to
imperii the Christian interest of the true divinity of
the Son.
The simplest form of reaction against Trinitarian
views an Ebionitic, humanitarian, or purely Uni-
is

tarian VIEW of Christ, and this we find developing

itself in the end of the second century and begin-

ning of the third. Of Jewish Ebionitism we spoke in

the second chapter. In the Gentile Church we have
an early form of Monarchianism in the Alogi (deniers

of the Logos), an obscure sect of Asia Minor, about

 "

132 THE EARLY CHURCH

A.D. 170, who rejected the Gospel of St. John. At
Rome pure Unitarianism was represented in the
Theodotians, under Victor and Zephyriniis (a.d. 190-
218), and the Artemonites, a few years later. Christ,
in this view, was ''mere man." The Artemonites
were replied to in a book called The Little Labyrinth,
by Cains, a Roman presbyter, who adduces against
them the testimony of ancient hymns.
More remarkable was the type of Monarchianism
produced by the Christological interest. Here the
aim was to make sure that in Christ men had no
secondary or derived being, but the absolute God ;

and this thought to be secured only by the

w^as

assertion that in Christ the Father Himself had

iDecome incarnate and suffered. Hence the name
Patripassians given to this party. The oldest re-
presentative of it we know of was Praxeas, at Rome
(about A.D. 177-90), against whom Tertullian wrote
a treatise. Praxeas tried to explain that Christ,
according to the flesh, was "Son," but the divine

element in Him
was the " Father." He stayed him-
self upon the words, " I and My Father are one

(John X. 30). A more subtle form of the same

doctrine was taught under succeeding episcopates by
Noetus (about a.d. 200) and his disciple Cleomenes.
Noetus affirmed the capacity in God of existing in
different modes. As ingenerate, God was Father as ;

generate, He was Son. Hippolytus wrote against

Noetus. Both Tertullian and Hippolytus accuse the
Roman bishops of the period of sympathy with this
error. Origen, at a synod in Arabia (a.d. 244), had
the satisfaction of recovering Beryllus, of Bostra, from
a similar heresy.
The defect of these theories was their failure to do
justice to the Trinitarian distinction plainly involved
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS VS^

in the New Testament doctrine of (Jod. Tliis fault was

met in the Modalistk; Trinitariamsm of Sahellius —
the most completely evolved and longest enduring of
these Monarchian heresies. Sabellius (a Libyan ?) is

first met with in Rome under the episcopate of

Zephyrinus (a.d. 202-18) as an adherent of Cleomenes.
He was excommunicated by Callistus (himself a Patri-
passian). His heresy had a powerfid revival in North
Africa about a.d. 260, and reappeared in the fourth
century as a reaction against Arianism (Marcellus).
In principle its solution is the substitution of a
Trinity of revelation for a Trinity of essence ; a Trinity
OF MODES OR ASPECTS of the One Divine Being for a
Trinity of Persons. The one God {Monas) expands
and contracts in successive revelations, as the arm
may be outstretched and di-awn back again, (iod
revealed in the Law is the Father, in Jesus Christ
is the Son, in the indw^elling in believers is the Sjnrit.
The incarnation is thus a passing mode of God's mani-
festation. Pushed to its issue, it means nothing
more than a dynamical presence of God in the soul
of Christ.
This yields the transition to the last phase of
Monarchian doctrine, viz., the dynamical Unitarla.nism
of Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch, a.d. 260-70.
Paul was a vain, ostentatious, theatrical man, of whom
many discreditable things are related. He held, like
the earlier Unitarians, that Christ was mere man, but
affirmed a union of the Divine Logos (or reason) with
Christ in a degree predicable of no other. Through
this interpenetration by the Divine power Christ ad-
vances by " progressive development " till He be-
comes God, or is raised to Divine rank. Deity here
only means that Christ was deemed worthy for His
peculiar excellence of Divine honours -not that He
 —
134 THE EARLY CHURCH
became God in nature. It was apotheosis deifica- ;

tion by favour. Two influential synods were held at

Antioch on the subject of Paul's heresy (a.d. 264 and
269), at the second of which he was condemned. He
held, however, by his palace and dignities till forcibly
expelled three years later (a.d. 272).
4. Church Teachers and Literature of the
Period. - The Church teachers of this period are not
men of the mental stature of the great Fathers of the
previous age, but they are interesting characters, and
took an active part in the Church life of their day.
Among theGreek writers, the chief interest centres
in the school of Origen —
the Alexandrian school —
graced by such names as Dionysius of Alexandria,
Gregory Thaumaturgus, Firmilian of Cappadocia, and
Pamphilus of Ctesarea.
Dionysius of Alexandria has already been before
us as a witness to the facts of the Decian persecution.
He was a man of the utmost mildness and concilia-
toriness of disposition, and on this account his advice
and mediation were much sought after in the various
disputes of the Church. He was born about
a.d. 190
of wealthy parents, and was brought to
in early life
faith in Christ. He attached himself to Origen was ;

made presbyter in a.d. 233 became head of the

;

catechetical school in Alexandria; in a.d. 247 or 248

was elected bishop. He suffered loss and exile in the
Decian and Valerian persecutions, but returned at the
peace under Gallienus. He died a.d. 265. A good
many fragments of his works and some of his letters
remain to us.
Not unlike Dionysius in some respects was a second
great pupil of Origen Gregoky Thaumaturgus (the
wonder-worker). name was Theo-
Gregory's original
dorus, and his surname was given him on account of
 —
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERRECUTIONS 135

the repute he ciiiiie to have as a iniracle-worker. The

accounts cf these miracles, however, are late. In
a Panegyric on Or'njen^ delivered when leaving the
school at Ciesarea, he gives a full account of his life up
to that time. He was born at Neo-Ceesarea, in Pontus,
about A.D. 210, of nobleand wealthy parents. Led
accidentally to Ctcsarea in Palestine, he was arrested
by the genius of Origen, and became his most devoted
disciple. His soul became knit to Origen, as he says,
like the soul of Jonathan to David. He remained
with Origen five years (c. a.d. 233-38). About a.d. 240
he became bishop of his native city, and had such
success that, at his death about a.d. 270, it is said
there were only seventeen pagans remaining. His
evangelising activity was incessant, but he erred in
too great concession to pagan customs. Like all

Origen's pupils, Gregory was a man of liberal, candid,

cultured mind, actuated by a strong love of truth, and
of earnest and glowing piety. Several of his genuine
writings remain to us.
FiRMiLiAN, Bishop of Csesarea in Cappadocia, was
one of the most influential bishops of his time, but
does not seem to have written much. Origen took
refuge with him during the persecution of Maximin in
A.D. 235. A letter to Cyprian denouncing Stephen of
Rome is all we have from his pen.
Mention must be made finally of a member of the
school of Alexandria who did splendid service to the
cause of sacred learning in the end of the third cen-
tury Pamphilus of CiESAREA, foundcr of the famous
library in that city, and friend of Eusebius. Pam-
philus was a native of Phoenicia, and, like the others
named, came from a wealthy family. He studied at
Alexandria under Pierius, and there contracted an
unbounded admiration for Origen. Removing to
 —
136 THE EARLY CHURCH
Cffisarea, he devoted himself to the great task of his
life — the collection and cop3''ing of MSS. of the
Scriptures, of commentaries, and other works of value.
The literary treasures thus amassed were of priceless
worth, and furnished Eusebius with ample material
for his literary undertakings. In the fifth year of the
Diocletian persecution Pamphilus was thrown into
prison, and was finally martyred, with eleven others,
in A.D. 309. He wrote in conjunction with Eusebius
an elaborate work, The Defence of Origen. So intense
was Eusebius's appreciation of this good man " the —
holy and blessed Pamphilus," as he calls him that —
after his martyrdom he adopted his name as part
of his own.
Origen, however, had also his opponents, of whom
the principal was Methodius, Bishop of Olympius, in
Lycia (later of Tyre), who perished under Maximin
about A.D. 311. We have from him a mystical
dialogue in praise of virginity, The Banquet of the Ten
Virgins. Only fragments remain of his attacks on
Origen's views of creation, pre-existence, the resur-
rection, etc.
It was formerly mentioned that the Alexandrian
theologians were speculative, idealising, Platonising,
allegorising in their tendency, liberal in their whole
attitude to culture. ^ Before the century closed, how-
ever, we note the beginnings of another school the
Antiochian —which was to have a long and influential
history as the rival of the Alexandrian. This second
school is marked from the commencement by a sober,
matter-of-fact tendency, a preference of Aristotelianism
to Platonism, and an adherence to a strictly gram-
matical and historical method of exegesis. Its founder

^ See above, Chap. viii.

THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 137

was LuciAN, who, like the heretical bishop Paul, was a

native of Samosata. Lucian himselffell under sus-

picion of unsound views, and was separated from the

Church during three episcopates. He was restored to
the Church, carried on his school with distinguished
success, and finally crowned his career by a heroic
martyrdom in a.d. 311 or 312. His method was
predominatingly exegetical, and his style of exegesis
was grammatical and literal. His school is the
reputed fountain-head of the Arian heresy. Later it

had such distinguished representatives as Chrysostom,

Theodore of Alopsuestia, and Theodoret. A creed
attributed to Lucian was presented to a Council of
Antioch in a.d. 341.
The Latin writers of the period may be more
summarily alluded to. Commodian (about a.d. 250)
wrote Instructions for Christian Living^ and an apo-
logetic poem against Jews and Gentiles, both in rude
Latin hexameters. A little earlier Julius Africanus
(died about a.d. 240), the first Christian chrono-
grapher, had drawn up a work, in five books, setting
forth the course of sacred and profane history till
the reign of Elagabalus. The two Latin writers who
belong properly to our period are Arxobius and Lac-
tantius, both apologists in the time of the Diocletian
persecution. The apology of Arnobius, a teacher of
rhetoric. Against the Nations, is in seven books, and,
as might be expected in a recent convert, is not very
mature in Christian doctrine. It is, however, an able,
learned, and convincing defence of the Christians from
many of the objections brought against them, and
an eflfective enough exposure of the folly of idolatry.
Arnobius lays stress on the unique and well-attested
character of Christ's miracles and the excellence of
the Christian morality. Lactantius is reputed the
138 THE EARLY CHURCH
most classical and elegant of all the Christian writers.
His apologetic work, The Divine Institutes, in seven
books, was, in its finished form, dedicated to Constan-
tine. He On the Death of the
wrote also a work,
Persecutors, narrating the judgments of God on the
persecutors of the Christians from Nero onwards. He
died in old age, about a.d. 330.
A last name to be noticed is that of the Greek writer
and great Church historian, Eusebius of CiESAREA,
who, though he belongs properly to the next age, yet
begins his activity in this. He is indeed the link
between the old and the new order. He was born prob-
ably about A.D. 260. His early associations are with
Caesarea, of which cit}^ he became bishop about a.d.
315. He held this position till his death in a.d. 339
or 340. Eusebius was a man of extraordinary learn-
ing and industry, and his works form a little library

of themselves. They are of all classes — historical,

apologetic, exegetical, critical, doctrine, orations, etc.
Reference need only be made here to his Ecclesiastical
History, extending from the birth of Christ to the
defeat of Licinius in a.d. 323 ; his two apologetic
works, the Evangelical Preparation (fifteen books),
and the Evangelical Demonstration (twenty books, ten
extant) ; his Chronicle (based on Julian Africanus, part
in Jerome's translation)and his Life of Constantine,
;

a panegyric rather than a biography, yet important

for facts. The works of Eusebius are often desultory
and ill-arranged he has little independent merit as a
;

theologian, and inclines to laxity of opinion he plays ;

the courtier with too much success to "our pious

emperor " yet his writings are invaluable as sources
;

of information, and for the extracts they preserve. In

the use of authorities he shows himself most accurate,
painstaking and faithful — a virtue of the first rank.
THE AGE OF THE (4REAT PERSECUTIONS 139

5. Points in Church Constitution and Worship.

—The cliief iiuitters reijuiriiig to bo ^hmced at liere

may be gathered up under a few heads.

(1) CiiUKCH Buildings. —
These became common in
the course of the third century, and were greatly
multiplied after the victory of Constantine. The
model usually followed was that of the liomnn basilica.
The basilica was a building of oblong shape, which
served the double purpose of a hall of justice and
place of concourse. The body of the building con-
sisted of a central portion or nave and side aisles, one
or more, separated off by pillars. At the upper end,
in a semi-circular recess, were the praetor's chair, the
seats of the judges, and in front the altar, where
incense was burned and oaths were taken. This form
of building readily adapted itself to Christian pur-
poses.^ The larger churches stood in a court or atrium,
surrounded by colonnades. The doors opened into a
vestibule or narthex, which was as far as penitents were
permitted to approach. The congregation assembled
in the nave, or broad middle part of the church. At
the upper end a railed-off portion was reserved for the
choir and inferior orders of clergy —
the chancel (fr.,
cancellus, a railing). Here also on one side stood the
pulpit (amho). Finally, the semi-circular part [a2:)se)

formed the special sanctuary. The prtetor's seat

became the bishop's throne ; around him sat the
presbyters and deacons the ; altar in front became
the communion table (now also called altar), etc. In
the more splendid churches all the parts, doors, pillars,

apse and galleries, were finely adorned. In contradic-

tion to later practice the church was sometimes so

^ The description of the Church of Tyre, in Ens., x. 4, may

be compared.
140 THE EARLY CHURCH
placed that the rising sun might strike upon ita front
(so at Tyre),

(2) Development of Church Offices. In the third —

century Church offices became greatly multiplied. The

clergy were now divided into two groups —

the Grkater
Orders {ordiyies major es)^ consisting of bishops, presby-
ters and deacons and the Lesser Orders {ordines
;

minores)f consisting of sub-deacons, readers, acolytes

(attendants on the bishop), exorcists, precentors, door-
keepers, catechists, The distinction between
etc.
clergy and laity was now firmly established.
(3) Development of Church Service. If we may —
trust the oldest liturgies (that, e.f/., in the so-called
Apostolical Const /'tuitions from fourth century), the
Church service had by the end of the third century
become highly liturgical and elaborate. The service
was now divided into two parts— catechumens, peni-
tents, etc., being dismissed before the Eucharistic
celebration began. The Eucharistic siiRVicE itself
w^as highly complex and ornate, including long prayers,
responses, prescribed actions of the priest. The clergy
had distinctive vestments. Festival days were now
—
observed especially Easter and Pentecost. The whole
period between these feasts was apparently observed
as a time of gladness. Music in the Church was more
highly developed. We have met with references to
hymns, and there were now regular choristers and
conductors. 1>aftism was generally connected with
the above feast-days, and certain rites had gradually
become connected with the original ceremony, e.g.,
trine immersion (thrice dipping of head), the sign
of the cross on the forehead and breast, giving the
baptised person milk and honey, unction on the head,
a white robe, etc. The practice of exorcism had also
become part of the ritual. Shortly before baptism the
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 141

creed was imparted to the catechumen as a sort of

password [synihol). Baptism in grave cases of sick-
ness was administered by sprinkling (clinical baptism).
The DISCIPLINE of the Church was also made more
elaborate. This followed from the prominence given
to the idea of penance for the removal of post-
baptismal sin. Penitents were now regularly classi-
fied into weepers (who prostrated themselves at church
doors imploring restoration), hearers (who were allowed
to hear the Scrij)tare lessons and sermon), kneehrs
(who were admitted to the prayers, but in a kneeling
posture), and slanders (who were allowed to take part
in the whole worship standing). ^ The course of pro-
bation was often three or four years.
Development of Church Councils. Meetings
(4) —
of this kind sprangup informally in the latter half of
the second century. They were at first quite local,
one bishop inviting other bishops and clergy to con-
fer with him on matters of common concern, and their
decisions had no binding force on other churches. In
these early councils presbyters and laymen took part
as well as bishops ; latterly only bishops appear to
have voted. As councils assumed a more regular
character they came to be distinguished into dif-
ferent kinds. (1) There was the jjarochial council
of the bishop and the clergy of his city. (2) There
were provincial councils, attended by the clergy of a
whole province. These were generally held in the
metropolitan city,and the bishop of that city pre-
sided. (3) Tertullian speaks of councils of a whole
region (regionis) — national councils. (4) Finally,
when the empire became Christian, and the emperor
himself undertook the summoning of councils, there

1 Thus SchafE.
 —
142 THE EARLY CHURCH
became possible councils of the whole Church
ecumenical councils. The first of these was the Nicene
(a.d. 325). In reality these were almost exclusively
Greek councils. The decrees of the councils were now
compulsorily imposed by the emperors.As examples
of councils may be mentioned those in Asia Minor
about the Montanists and Easter, those in North
Africa on heretical baptism, those in Antioch about
Paul of Samosata, the Council of Aries against the
Donatists, the Council of Elvira in Spain (a.d. 306),
etc.

(5) Gradations of Rank in the Episcopate Itself. —

These sprung from the meetings of councils and other
causes in the state of the Church. The bishops of the
metropolitan cities soon attained from their position
a higher rank than other bishops, and were known
as metropolitans. The sanction of the metropolitan
came ultimately to be necessary to the validity of the
election of another bishop. This was followed in the
fourth century by the elevation of the bishops of cer-
tain Churches deemed worthy honour to the
of special
Such Churches were
wider jurisdiction of patriarchs.
Antioch, Alexandria and Rome, to which Constan-
tinople (as new Rome) and .Jerusalem were subse-
—
quently added five in all. This, however, carries us
beyond our special limits.

Our sketch has brought us to the triumph of Con-

stantine,and formal adoption of Christianity as the
religion of the empire. Ere, however, this consum-
mation was reached, the Arian controversy had broken
out (a.d. 318), and the Church was in flames from
within, to the unconcealed delight of the pagan on-
lookers, and the intense chagrin of the emperor, who
had hoped to find in this monotheistic faith a bond
THE AGE OF THE GREAT PERSECUTIONS 143

of peace in his dominions. The Nicene Council itself

(a.[). 325) did httle more than open new controversies,
with which for half a century the world and Church
were filled. Nan-ow-minded imperial interference
made matters ever worse.Over all the storms looms
the noble figure of Athanasius, who appears already
upon the scene before our period closes. To him the
Church owes nearly all its real guidance in the dis-
tractions of the age that follows. Athanasius contra
mundum. On the verge of this new era we cease our
tale.

—
Points for inquiry and study. Study Constantine's later
career, and contrast him with contemporaries. Read the
Fundamental Epistle Mani and other Manichsean exposi-
of
tions given in Augustine's works. Read the account of Paul
of Samosata in Eus. vii. 30. Study more fully the contrast
of the Alexandrian and Antiochian schools of theology. Read
Gregory's Panegyric on Origen. Read the so-called Liturgy
of Clement in Apostolical Constitutions. Compare different
theories of the origin of Church buildings (see Lanciani,
Pagan and Christian Rome).
—
Books. Gibbon, Neander, and Pressense on Manichaeism ;

Hatch's Organisation of Early Churches ; Farrar's Lives of

Fathers {cf. Pressens6) Lanciani as above Brace's Gesta
; ;

Christi ; Church histories on theology and worship.

TABLE OF ROMAN EMPERORS.
146 THE EARLY CHURCH
A.D. Reigned.
Valerian
( . 254-260 6
\ Gallienus 254-268 14
Claudius II. 268-270 2
Aurelian . 270-275 5
Tacitus 275-276 1
Florianus 276
Probus 276-282 6
Carus 282-283 1

/ Carinus 283-284 1
^ Numerian 283-284 1
[ Diocletian 284-305 21
I Maximian 286-305 19
Constantius Chlorus 305-306 1
Galerius 305-311 6
-A Maxentius .

(Italy) 805-312 7
jLicinius . 307-323 16
\ Constantine the Great 306-337 31

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