CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL SURVEY. |
  The second century of the existence of Gentile-Christian communities was characterised by the victorious conflict with Gnosticism and the Marcionite Church, by the gradual development of an ecclesiastical doctrine, and by the decay of the early Christian enthusiasm. The general result was the establishment of a great ecclesiastical association, which, forming at one and the same time a political commonwealth, school and union for worship, was based on the firm foundation of an "apostolic" law of faith, a collection of "apostolic" writings, and finally, an "apostolic" organisation. This institution was the Catholic Church.1 In opposition to Gnosticism and Marcionitism, the main articles forming the estate and possession of orthodox Christianity were raised to the rank of apostolic regulations and laws, and thereby placed beyond all discussion and assault. At first the innovations introduced by this were not of a material, but of a formal, character. Hence they were not noticed by any of those who had never, or only in a vague fashion, been elevated to the feeling and idea of freedom and independence in religion. How great the innovations actually were, however, may be measured by the fact that they signified a scholastic tutelage of the faith of the individual Christian, and restricted the immediateness of religious feelings and ideas to the narrowest limits. But the conflict with the so-called Montanism showed that there were still a considerable number of Christians who valued that immediateness and freedom; these were, however, defeated. The fixing of the tradition under the title of apostolic necessarily led to the assumption that whoever held the apostolic doctrine was also essentially a Christian in the apostolic sense. This assumption, quite apart from the innovations which were legitimised by tracing them to the Apostles, meant the separation of doctrine and conduct, the preference of the former to the latter, and the transformation of a fellowship of faith, hope, and discipline into a communion "eiusdem sacramenti," that is, into a union which, like the philosophical schools, rested on a doctrinal law, and which was subject to a legal code of divine institution.2 The movement which resulted in the Catholic Church owes its right to a place in the history of Christianity to the victory over Gnosticism and to the preservation of an important part of early Christian tradition. If Gnosticism in all its phases was the violent attempt to drag Christianity down to the level of the Greek world, and to rob it of its dearest possession, belief in the Almighty God of creation and redemption, then Catholicism, inasmuch as it secured this belief for the Greeks, preserved the Old Testament, and supplemented it with early Christian writings, thereby saving—as far as documents, at least, were concerned—and proclaiming the authority of an important part of primitive Christianity, must in one respect be acknowledged as a conservative force born from the vigour of Christianity. If we put aside abstract considerations and merely look at the facts of the given situation, we cannot but admire a creation which first broke up the various outside forces assailing Christianity, and in which the highest blessings of this faith have always continued to be accessible. If the founder of the Christian religion had deemed belief in the Gospel and a life in accordance with it to be compatible with membership of the Synagogue and observance of the Jewish law, there could at least be no impossibility of adhering to the Gospel within the Catholic Church. Still, that is only one side of the case. The older Catholicism never clearly put the question, "What is Christian?" Instead of answering that question it rather laid down rules, the recognition of which was to be the guarantee of Christianism. This solution of the problem seems to be on the one hand too narrow and on the other too broad. Too narrow, because it bound Christianity to rules under which it necessarily languished; too broad, because it did not in any way exclude the introduction of new and foreign conceptions. In throwing a protective covering round the Gospel, Catholicism also obscured it. It preserved Christianity from being hellenised to the most extreme extent, but, as time went on, it was forced to admit into this religion an ever greater measure of secularisation. In the interests of its world-wide mission it did not indeed directly disguise the terrible seriousness of religion, but, by tolerating a less strict ideal of life, it made it possible for those less in earnest to be considered Christians, and to regard themselves as such. It permitted the genesis of a Church, which was no longer a communion of faith, hope, and discipline, but a political commonwealth in which the Gospel merely had a place beside other things.3 In ever increasing measure it invested all the forms which this secular commonwealth required with apostolic, that is, indirectly, with divine authority. This course disfigured Christianity and made a knowledge of what is Christian an obscure and difficult matter. But, in Catholicism, religion for the first time obtained a formal dogmatic system. Catholic Christianity discovered the formula which reconciled faith and knowledge. This formula satisfied humanity for centuries, and the blessed effects which it accomplished continued to operate even after it had itself already become a fetter. Catholic Christianity grew out of two converging series of developments. In the one were set up fixed outer standards for determining what is Christian, and these standards were proclaimed to be apostolic institutions. The baptismal confession was exalted to an apostolic rule of faith, that is, to an apostolic law of faith. A collection of apostolic writings was formed from those read in the Churches, and this compilation was placed on an equal footing with the Old Testament. The episcopal and monarchical constitution was declared to be apostolic, and the attribute of successor of the Apostles was conferred on the bishop. Finally, the religious ceremonial developed into a celebration of mysteries, which was in like manner traced back to the Apostles. The result of these institutions was a strictly exclusive Church in the form of a communion of doctrine, ceremonial, and law, a confederation which more and more gathered the various communities within its pale, and brought about the decline of all nonconforming sects. The confederation was primarily based on a common confession, which, however, was not only conceived as "law," but was also very soon supplemented by new standards. One of the most important problems to be investigated in the history of dogma, and one which unfortunately cannot be completely solved, is to show what necessities led to the setting up of a new canon of Scripture, what circumstances required the appearance of living authorities in the communities, and what relation was established between the apostolic rule of faith, the apostolic canon of Scripture, and the apostolic office. The development ended with the formation of a clerical class, at whose head stood the bishop, who united in himself all conceivable powers, as teacher, priest, and judge. He disposed of the powers of Christianity, guaranteed its purity, and therefore in every respect held the Christian laity in tutelage. But even apart from the content which Christianity here received, this process in itself represents a progressive secularising of the Church, This would be self-evident enough, even if it were not confirmed by noting the fact that the process had already been to some extent anticipated in the so-called Gnosticism (See vol. I. p. 253 and Tertullian, de prÆscr. 35). But the element which the latter lacked, namely, a firmly welded, suitably regulated constitution, must by no means be regarded as one originally belonging and essential to Christianity. The depotentiation to which Christianity was here subjected appears still more plainly in the facts, that the Christian hopes were deadened, that the secularising of the Christian life was tolerated and even legitimised, and that the manifestations of an unconditional devotion to the heavenly excited suspicion or were compelled to confine themselves to very narrow limits. But these considerations are scarcely needed as soon as we turn our attention to the second series of developments that make up the history of this period. The Church did not merely set up dykes and walls against Gnosticism in order to ward it off externally, nor was she satisfied with defending against it the facts which were the objects of her belief and hope; but, taking the creed for granted, she began to follow this heresy into its own special territory and to combat it with a scientific theology. That was a necessity which did not first spring from Christianity's own internal struggles. It was already involved in the fact that the Christian Church had been joined by cultured Greeks, who felt the need of justifying their Christianity to themselves and the world, and of presenting it as the desired and certain answer to all the pressing questions which then occupied men's minds. The beginning of a development which a century later reached its provisional completion in the theology of Origen, that is, in the transformation of the Gospel into a scientific system of ecclesiastical doctrine, appears in the Christian Apologetic, as we already find it before the middle of the second century. As regards its content, this system of doctrine meant the legitimising of Greek philosophy within the sphere of the rule of faith. The theology of Origen bears the same relation to the New Testament as that of Philo does to the Old. What is here presented as Christianity is in fact the idealistic religious philosophy of the age, attested by divine revelation, made accessible to all by the incarnation of the Logos, and purified from any connection with Greek mythology and gross polytheism.4 A motley multitude of primitive Christian ideas and hopes, derived from both Testaments, and too brittle to be completely recast, as yet enclosed the kernel. But the majority of these were successfully manipulated by theological art, and the traditional rule of faith was transformed into a system of doctrine, in which, to some extent, the old articles found only a nominal place.5 This hellenising of ecclesiastical Christianity, by which we do not mean the Gospel, was not a gradual process; for the truth rather is that it was already accomplished the moment that the reflective Greek confronted the new religion which he had accepted. The Christianity of men like Justin, Athenagoras, and Minucius is not a whit less Hellenistic than that of Origen. But yet an important distinction obtains here. It is twofold. In the first place, those Apologists did not yet find themselves face to face with a fixed collection of writings having a title to be reverenced as Christian; they have to do with the Old Testament and the "Teachings of Christ" (διδαγματα Χριστου). In the second place, they do not yet regard the scientific presentation of Christianity as the main task and as one which this religion itself demands. As they really never enquired what was meant by "Christian," or at least never put the question clearly to themselves, they never claimed that their scientific presentation of Christianity was the first proper expression of it that had been given. Justin and his contemporaries make it perfectly clear that they consider the traditional faith existing in the churches to be complete and pure and in itself requiring no scientific revision. In a word, the gulf which existed between the religious thought of philosophers and the sum of Christian tradition is still altogether unperceived, because that tradition was not yet fixed in rigid forms, because no religious utterance testifying to monotheism, virtue, and reward was as yet threatened by any control, and finally, because the speech of philosophy was only understood by a small minority in the Church, though its interests and aims were not unknown to most. Christian thinkers were therefore still free to divest of their direct religious value all realistic and historical elements of the tradition, while still retaining them as parts of a huge apparatus of proof, which accomplished what was really the only thing that many sought in Christianity, viz., the assurance that the theory of the world obtained from other sources was the truth. The danger which here threatened Christianity as a religion was scarcely less serious than that which had been caused to it by the Gnostics. These remodelled tradition, the Apologists made it to some extent inoperative without attacking it. The latter were not disowned, but rather laid the foundation of Church theology, and determined the circle of interests within which it was to move in the future.6 But the problem which the Apologists solved almost offhand, namely, the task of showing that Christianity was the perfect and certain philosophy, because it rested on revelation, and that it was the highest scientific knowledge of God and the world, was to be rendered more difficult. To these difficulties all that primitive Christianity has up to the present transmitted to the Church of succeeding times contributes its share. The conflict with Gnosticism made it necessary to find some sort of solution to the question, "What is Christian?" and to fix this answer. But indeed the Fathers were not able to answer the question confidently and definitely. They therefore made a selection from tradition and contented themselves with making it binding on Christians. Whatever was to lay claim to authority in the Church had henceforth to be in harmony with the rule of faith and the canon of New Testament Scriptures. That created an entirely new situation for Christian thinkers, that is, for those trying to solve the problem of subordinating Christianity to the Hellenic spirit. That spirit never became quite master of the situation; it was obliged to accommodate itself to it.7 The work first began with the scientific treatment of individual articles contained in the rule of faith, partly with the view of disproving Gnostic conceptions, partly for the purpose of satisfying the Church's own needs. The framework in which these articles were placed virtually continued to be the apologetic theology, for this maintained a doctrine of God and the world, which seemed to correspond to the earliest tradition as much as it ran counter to the Gnostic theses. (Melito), IrenÆus, Tertullian and Hippolytus, aided more or less by tradition on the one hand and by philosophy on the other, opposed to the Gnostic dogmas about Christianity the articles of the baptismal confession interpreted as a rule of faith, these articles being developed into doctrines. Here they undoubtedly learned very much from the Gnostics and Marcion. If we define ecclesiastical dogmas as propositions handed down in the creed of the Church, shown to exist in the Holy Scriptures of both Testaments, and rationally reproduced and formulated, then the men we have just mentioned were the first to set up dogmas8—dogmas but no system of dogmatics. As yet the difficulty of the problem was by no means perceived by these men either. Their peculiar capacity for sympathising with and understanding the traditional and the old still left them in a happy blindness. So far as they had a theology they supposed it to be nothing more than the explanation of the faith of the Christian multitude (yet Tertullian already noted the difference in one point, certainly a very characteristic one, viz., the Logos doctrine). They still lived in the belief that the Christianity which filled their minds required no scientific remodelling in order to be an expression of the highest knowledge, and that it was in all respects identical with the Christianity which even the most uncultivated could grasp. That this was an illusion is proved by many considerations, but most convincingly by the fact that Tertullian and Hippolytus had the main share in introducing into the doctrine of faith a philosophically formulated dogma, viz., that the Son of God is the Logos, and in having it made the articulus constitutivus ecclesiÆ. The effects of this undertaking can never be too highly estimated, for the Logos doctrine is Greek philosophy in nuce, though primitive Christian views may have been subsequently incorporated with it. Its introduction into the creed of Christendom, which was, strictly speaking, the setting up of the first dogma in the Church, meant the future conversion of the rule of faith into a philosophic system. But in yet another respect IrenÆus and Hippolytus denote an immense advance beyond the Apologists, which, paradoxically enough, results both from the progress of Christian Hellenism and from a deeper study of the Pauline theology, that is, emanates from the controversy with Gnosticism. In them a religious and realistic idea takes the place of the moralism of the Apologists, namely, the deifying of the human race through the incarnation of the Son of God. The apotheosis of mortal man through his acquisition of immortality (divine life) is the idea of salvation which was taught in the ancient mysteries. It is here adopted as a Christian one, supported by the Pauline theology (especially as contained in the Epistle to the Ephesians), and brought into the closest connection with the historical Christ, the Son of God and Son of man (filius dei et filius hominis). What the heathen faintly hoped for as a possibility was here announced as certain, and indeed as having already taken place. What a message! This conception was to become the central Christian idea of the future. A long time, however, elapsed before it made its way into the dogmatic system of the Church.9 But meanwhile the huge gulf which existed between both Testaments and the rule of faith on the one hand, and the current ideas of the time on the other, had been recognized in Alexandria. It was not indeed felt as a gulf, for then either the one or the other would have had to be given up, but as a problem. If the Church tradition contained the assurance, not to be obtained elsewhere, of all that Greek culture knew, hoped for, and prized, and if for that very reason it was regarded as in every respect inviolable, then the absolutely indissoluble union of Christian tradition with the Greek philosophy of religion was placed beyond all doubt. But an immense number of problems were at the same time raised, especially when, as in the case of the Alexandrians, heathen syncretism in the entire breadth of its development was united with the doctrine of the Church. The task, which had been begun by Philo and carried on by Valentinus and his school, was now undertaken in the Church. Clement led the way in attempting a solution of the problem, but the huge task proved too much for him. Origen took it up under more difficult circumstances, and in a certain fashion brought it to a conclusion. He, the rival of the Neoplatonic philosophers, the Christian Philo, wrote the first Christian dogmatic, which competed with the philosophic systems of the time, and which, founded on the Scriptures of both Testaments, presents a peculiar union of the apologetic theology of a Justin and the Gnostic theology of a Valentinus, while keeping steadily in view a simple and highly practical aim. In this dogmatic the rule of faith is recast and that quite consciously. Origen did not conceal his conviction that Christianity finds its correct expression only in scientific knowledge, and that every form of Christianity that lacks theology is but a meagre kind with no clear consciousness of its own content. This conviction plainly shows that Origen was dealing with a different kind of Christianity, though his view that a mere relative distinction existed here may have its justification in the fact, that the untheological Christianity of the age with which he compared his own was already permeated by Hellenic elements and in a very great measure secularised.10 But Origen, as well as Clement before him, had really a right to the conviction that the true essence of Christianity, or, in other words, the Gospel, is only arrived at by the aid of critical speculation; for was not the Gospel veiled and hidden in the canon of both Testaments, was it not displaced by the rule of faith, was it not crushed down, depotentiated, and disfigured in the Church which identified itself with the people of Christ? Clement and Origen found freedom and independence in what they recognized to be the essence of the matter and what they contrived with masterly skill to determine as its proper aim, after an examination of the huge apparatus of tradition. But was not that the ideal of Greek sages and philosophers? This question can by no means be flatly answered in the negative, and still less decidedly in the affirmative, for a new significance was here given to the ideal by representing it as assured beyond all doubt, already realised in the person of Christ and incompatible with polytheism. If, as is manifestly the case, they found joy and peace in their faith and in the theory of the universe connected with it, if they prepared themselves for an eternal life and expected it with certainty, if they felt themselves to be perfect only through dependence on God, then, in spite of their Hellenism, they unquestionably came nearer to the Gospel than IrenÆus with his slavish dependence on authority. The setting up of a scientific system of Christian dogmatics, which was still something different from the rule of faith, interpreted in an Antignostic sense, philosophically wrought out, and in some parts proved from the Bible, was a private undertaking of Origen, and at first only approved in limited circles. As yet, not only were certain bold changes of interpretation disputed in the Church, but the undertaking itself, as a whole, was disapproved.11 The circumstances of the several provincial churches in the first half of the third century were still very diverse. Many communities had yet to adopt the basis that made them into Catholic ones; and in most, if not in all, the education of the clergy—not to speak of the laity—was not high enough to enable them to appreciate systematic theology. But the schools in which Origen taught carried on his work, similar ones were established, and these produced a number of the bishops and presbyters of the East in the last half of the third century. They had in their hands the means of culture afforded by the age, and this was all the more a guarantee of victory because the laity no longer took any part in deciding the form of religion. Wherever the Logos Christology had been adopted the future of Christian Hellenism was certain. At the beginning of the fourth century there was no community in Christendom which, apart from the Logos doctrine, possessed a purely philosophical theory that was regarded as an ecclesiastical dogma, to say nothing of an official scientific theology. But the system of Origen was a prophecy of the future. The Logos doctrine started the crystallising process which resulted in further deposits. Symbols of faith were already drawn up which contained a peculiar mixture of Origen's theology with the inflexible Antignostic regula fidei. One celebrated theologian, Methodius, endeavoured to unite the theology of IrenÆus and Origen, ecclesiastical realism and philosophic spiritualism, under the badge of monastic mysticism. The developments of the following period therefore no longer appear surprising in any respect. As Catholicism, from every point of view, is the result of the blending of Christianity with the ideas of antiquity,12 so the Catholic dogmatic, as it was developed after the second or third century on the basis of the Logos doctrine, is Christianity conceived and formulated from the standpoint of the Greek philosophy of religion.13 This Christianity conquered the old world, and became the foundation of a new phase of history in the Middle Ages. The union of the Christian religion with a definite historical phase of human knowledge and culture may be lamented in the interest of the Christian religion, which was thereby secularised, and in the interest of the development of culture which was thereby retarded(?). But lamentations become here ill-founded assumptions, as absolutely everything that we have and value is due to the alliance that Christianity and antiquity concluded in such a way that neither was able to prevail over the other. Our inward and spiritual life, which owes the least part of its content to the empiric knowledge which we have acquired, is based up to the present moment on the discords resulting from that union. These hints are meant among other things to explain and justify14 the arrangement chosen for the following presentation, which embraces the fundamental section of the history of Christian dogma.15 A few more remarks are, however, necessary. 1. One special difficulty in ascertaining the genesis of the Catholic rules is that the churches, though on terms of close connection and mutual intercourse, had no real forum publicum, though indeed, in a certain sense, each bishop was in foro publico. As a rule, therefore, we can only see the advance in the establishment of fixed forms in the shape of results, without being able to state precisely the ways and means which led to them. We do indeed know the factors, and can therefore theoretically construct the development; but the real course of things is frequently hidden from us. The genesis of a harmonious Church, firmly welded together in doctrine and constitution, can no more have been the natural unpremeditated product of the conditions of the time than were the genesis and adoption of the New Testament canon of Scripture. But we have no direct evidence as to what communities had a special share in the development, although we know that the Roman Church played a leading part. Moreover, we can only conjecture that conferences, common measures, and synodical decisions were not wanting. It is certain that, beginning with the last quarter of the second century, there were held in the different provinces, mostly in the East, but later also in the West, Synods in which an understanding was arrived at on all questions of importance to Christianity, including, e.g., the extent of the canon.16 2. The degree of influence exercised by particular ecclesiastics on the development of the Church and its doctrines is also obscure and difficult to determine. As they were compelled to claim the sanction of tradition for every innovation they introduced, and did in fact do so, and as every fresh step they took appeared to themselves necessary only as an explanation, it is in many cases quite impossible to distinguish between what they received from tradition and what they added to it of their own. Yet an investigation from the point of view of the historian of literature shows that Tertullian and Hippolytus were to a great extent dependent on IrenÆus. What amount of innovation these men independently contributed can therefore still be ascertained. Both are men of the second generation. Tertullian is related to IrenÆus pretty much as Calvin to Luther. This parallel holds good in more than one respect. First, Tertullian drew up a series of plain dogmatic formulÆ which are not found in IrenÆus and which proved of the greatest importance in succeeding times. Secondly, he did not attain the power, vividness, and unity of religious intuition which distinguish IrenÆus. The truth rather is that, just because of his forms, he partly destroyed the unity of the matter and partly led it into a false path of development. Thirdly, he everywhere endeavoured to give a conception of Christianity which represented it as the divine law, whereas in IrenÆus this idea is overshadowed by the conception of the Gospel as real redemption. The main problem therefore resolves itself into the question as to the position of IrenÆus in the history of the Church. To what extent were his expositions new, to what extent were the standards he formulated already employed in the Churches, and in which of them? We cannot form to ourselves a sufficiently vivid picture of the interchange of Christian writings in the Church after the last quarter of the second century.17 Every important work speedily found its way into the churches of the chief cities in the Empire. The diffusion was not merely from East to West, though this was the general rule. At the beginning of the fourth century there was in CÆsarea a Greek translation of Tertullian's Apology and a collection of Cyprian's epistles.18 The influence of the Roman Church extended over the greater part of Christendom. Up till about the year 260 the Churches in East and West had still in some degree a common history. 3. The developments in the history of dogma within the period extending from about 150 to about 300 were by no means brought about in the different communities at the same time and in a completely analogous fashion. This fact is in great measure concealed from us, because our authorities are almost completely derived from those leading Churches that were connected with each other by constant intercourse. Yet the difference can still be clearly proved by the ratio of development in Rome, Lyons, and Carthage on the one hand, and in Alexandria on the other. Besides, we have several valuable accounts showing that in more remote provinces and communities the development was slower, and a primitive and freer condition of things much longer preserved.19 4. From the time that the clergy acquired complete sway over the Churches, that is, from the beginning of the second third of the third century, the development of the history of dogma practically took place within the ranks of that class, and was carried on by its learned men. Every mystery they set up therefore became doubly mysterious to the laity, for these did not even understand the terms, and hence it formed another new fetter.
and inconvenient monitors; 213 and they could only do so by reproaching the latter with heresy and unchristian assumptions. Moreover, the followers of the new prophets could not permanently recognise the Churches of the "Psychical," 214 which rejected the "Spirit" and extended their toleration so far as to retain even whoremongers and adulterers within their pale. In the East, that is, in Asia Minor, the breach between the Montanists and the Church had in all probability broken out before the question of Church discipline and the right of the bishops had yet been clearly raised. In Rome and Carthage this question completed the rupture that had already taken place between the conventicles and the Church (de pudic. 1. 21). Here, by a peremptory edict, the bishop of Rome claimed the right of forgiving sins as successor of the Apostles; and declared that he would henceforth exercise this right in favour of repentant adulterers. Among the Montanists this claim was violently contested both in an abstract sense and in this application of it. The Spirit the Apostles had received, they said, could not be transmitted; the Spirit is given to the Church; he works in the prophets, but lastly and in the highest measure in the new prophets. The latter, however, expressly refused to readmit gross sinners, though recommending them to the grace of God (see the saying of the Paraclete, de pud. 21; "potest ecclesia donare delictum, sed non faciam"). Thus agreement was no longer possible. The bishops were determined to assert the existing claims of the Church, even at the cost of her Christian character, or to represent the constitution of the Catholic Church as the guarantee of that character. At the risk of their own claim to be Catholic, the Montanist sects resisted in order to preserve the minimum legal requirements for a Christian life. Thus the opposition culminated in an attack on the new powers claimed by the bishops, and in consequence awakened old memories as to the original state of things, when the clergy had possessed no importance.215 But the ultimate motive was the effort to stop the continuous secularising of the Christian life and to preserve the virginity of the Church as a holy community.216 In his latest writings Tertullian vigorously defended a position already lost, and carried with him to the grave the old strictness of conduct insisted on by the Church. Had victory remained with the stricter party, which, though not invariably, appealed to the injunctions of the Paraclete,217 the Church would have been rent asunder and decimated. The great opportunist party, however, was in a very difficult position, since their opponents merely seemed to be acting up to a conception that, in many respects, could not be theoretically disputed. The problem was how to carry on with caution the work of naturalising Christianity in the world, and at the same time avoid all appearance of innovation which, as such, was opposed to the principle of Catholicism. The bishops therefore assailed the form of the new prophecy on the ground of innovation;218 they sought to throw suspicion on its content; in some cases even Chiliasm, as represented by the Montanists, was declared to have a Jewish and fleshly character.219 They tried to show that the moral demands of their opponents were extravagant, that they savoured of the ceremonial law (of the Jews), were opposed to Scripture, and were derived from the worship of Apis, Isis, and the mother of the Gods.220 To the claim of furnishing the Church with authentic oracles of God, set up by their antagonists, the bishops opposed the newly formed canon; and declared that everything binding on Christians was contained in the utterances of the Old Testament prophets and the Apostles. Finally, they began to distinguish between the standard of morality incumbent on the clergy and a different one applying to the laity,221 as, for instance, in the question of a single marriage; and they dwelt with increased emphasis on the glory of the heroic Christians, belonging to the great Church, who had distinguished themselves by asceticism and joyful submission to martyrdom. By these methods they brought into disrepute that which had once been dear to the whole Church, but was now of no further service. In repudiating supposed abuses they more and more weakened the regard felt for the thing itself, as, for example, in the case of the so-called Chiliasm,222 congregational prophecy and the spiritual independence of the laity. But none of these things could be absolutely rejected; hence, for example, Chiliasm remained virtually unweakened (though subject to limitations223) in the West and certain districts of the East; whereas prophecy lost its force so much that it appeared harmless and therefore died away.224 However, the most effective means of legitimising the present state of things in the Church was a circumstance closely connected with the formation of a canon of early Christian writings, viz., the distinction of an epoch of revelation, along with a corresponding classical period of Christianity unattainable by later generations. This period was connected with the present by means of the New Testament and the apostolic office of the bishops. This later time was to regard the older period as an ideal, but might not dream of really attaining the same perfection, except at least through the medium of the Holy Scriptures and the apostolic office, that is, the Church. The place of the holy Christendom that had the Spirit in its midst was taken by the ecclesiastic institution possessing the "instrument of divine literature" ("instrumentum divinÆ litteraturÆ") and the spiritual office. Finally, we must mention another factor that hastened the various changes; this was the theology of the Christian philosophers, which attained importance in the Church as soon as she based her claim on and satisfied her conscience with an objective possession. 3. But there was one rule which specially impeded the naturalisation of the Church in the world and the transformation of a communion of the saved into an institution for obtaining salvation, viz., the regulation that excluded gross sinners from Christian membership. Down to the beginning of the third century, in so far as the backslider did not atone for his guilt225 by public confession before the authorities (see Ep. Lugd. in Euseb., H. E. V. 1 ff.), final exclusion from the Church was still the penalty of relapse into idolatry, adultery, whoredom, and murder; though at the same time the forgiveness of God in the next world was reserved for the fallen provided they remained penitent to the end. In theory indeed this rule was not very old. For the oldest period possessed no theories; and in those days Christians frequently broke through what might have been counted as one by appealing to the Spirit, who, by special announcements—particularly by the mouth of martyrs and prophets—commanded or sanctioned the readmission of lapsed members of the community (see Hermas).226 Still, the rule corresponded to the ancient notions that Christendom is a communion of saints, that there is no ceremony invariably capable of replacing baptism, that is, possessing the same value, and that God alone can forgive sins. The practice must on the whole have agreed with this rule; but in the course of the latter half of the second century it became an established custom, in the case of a first relapse, to allow atonement to be made once for most sins and perhaps indeed for all, on condition of public confession.227 For this, appeal was probably made to Hermas, who very likely owed his prestige to the service he here unwittingly rendered. We say "unwittingly," for he could scarcely have intended such an application of his precepts, though at bottom it was not directly opposed to his attitude. In point of fact, however, this practice introduced something closely approximating to a second baptism. Tertullian indeed (de pÆnit. 12) speaks unhesitatingly of two planks of salvation.228 Moreover, if we consider that in any particular case the decision as to the deadly nature of the sin in question was frequently attended with great difficulty, and certainly, as a rule, was not arrived at with rigorous exactness, we cannot fail to see that, in conceding a second expiation, the Church was beginning to abandon the old idea that Christendom was a community of saints. Nevertheless the fixed practice of refusing whoremongers, adulterers, murderers, and idolaters readmission to the Church, in ordinary cases, prevented men from forgetting that there was a boundary line dividing her from the world. This state of matters continued till about 220.229 In reality the rule was first infringed by the peremptory edict of bishop Calixtus, who, in order to avoid breaking up his community, granted readmission to those who had fallen into sins of the flesh. Moreover, he claimed this power of readmission as a right appertaining to the bishops as successors of the Apostles, that is, as possessors of the Spirit and the power of the keys.230 At Rome this rescript led to the secession headed by Hippolytus. But, between 220 and 250, the milder practice with regard to the sins of the flesh became prevalent, though it was not yet universally accepted. This, however, resulted in no further schism (Cyp., ep. 55. 21). But up to the year 250 no concessions were allowed in the case of relapse into idolatry.231 These were first occasioned by the Decian persecution, since in many towns those who had abjured Christianity were more numerous than those who adhered to it.232 The majority of the bishops, part of them with hesitation, agreed on new principles.233 To begin with, permission was given to absolve repentant apostates on their deathbed. Next, a distinction was made between sacrificati and libellatici, the latter being more mildly treated. Finally, the possibility of readmission was conceded under certain severe conditions to all the lapsed, a casuistic proceeding was adopted in regard to the laity, and strict measures—though this was not the universal rule—were only adopted towards the clergy. In consequence of this innovation, which logically resulted in the gradual cessation of the belief that there can be only one repentance after baptism—an assumption that was untenable in principle—Novatian's schism took place and speedily rent the Church in twain. But, even in cases where unity was maintained, many communities observed the stricter practice down to the fifth century.234 What made it difficult to introduce this change by regular legislation was the authority to forgive sins in God's stead, ascribed in primitive times to the inspired, and at a later period to the confessors in virtue of their special relation to Christ or the Spirit (see Ep. Lugd. in Euseb., H. E. V. 1 ff.; Cypr. epp.; Tertull. de pudic. 22). The confusion occasioned by the confessors after the Decian persecution led to the non-recognition of any rights of "spiritual" persons other than the bishops. These confessors had frequently abetted laxity of conduct, whereas, if we consider the measure of secularisation found among the great mass of Christians, the penitential discipline insisted on by the bishops is remarkable for its comparative severity. The complete adoption of the episcopal constitution coincided with the introduction of the unlimited right to forgive sins.235 4. The original conception of the relation of the Church to salvation or eternal bliss was altered by this development. According to the older notion the Church was the sure communion of salvation and of saints, which rested on the forgiveness of sins mediated by baptism, and excluded everything unholy. It is not the Church, but God alone, that forgives sins, and, as a rule, indeed, this is only done through baptism, though, in virtue of his unfathomable grace, also now and then by special proclamations, the pardon coming into effect for repentant sinners, after death, in heaven. If Christendom readmitted gross sinners, it would anticipate the judgment of God, as it would thereby assure them of salvation. Hence it can only take back those who have been excluded in cases where their offences have not been committed against God himself, but have consisted in transgressing the commandments of the Church, that is, in venial sins.236 But in course of time it was just in lay circles that faith in God's grace became weaker and trust in the Church stronger. He whom the Church abandoned was lost to the world; therefore she must not abandon him. This state of things was expressed in the new interpretation of the proposition, "no salvation outside the Church" ("extra ecclesiam nulla salus"), viz., the Church alone saves from damnation which is otherwise certain. In this conception the nature of the Church is depotentiated, but her powers are extended. If she is the institution which, according to Cyprian, is the indispensable preliminary condition of salvation, she can no longer be a sure communion of the saved; in other words, she becomes an institution from which proceeds the communion of saints; she includes both saved and unsaved. Thus her religious character consists in her being the indispensable medium, in so far as she alone guarantees to the individual the possibility of redemption. From this, however, it immediately follows that the Church would anticipate the judgment of God if she finally excluded anyone from her membership who did not give her up of his own accord; whereas she could never prejudge the ultimate destiny of a man by readmission.237 But it also follows that the Church must possess a means of repairing any injury upon earth, a means of equal value with baptism, namely, a sacrament of the forgiveness of sins. With this she acts in God's name and stead, but—and herein lies the inconsistency—she cannot by this means establish any final condition of salvation. In bestowing forgiveness on the sinner she in reality only reconciles him with herself, and thereby, in fact, merely removes the certainty of damnation. In accordance with this theory the holiness of the Church can merely consist in her possession of the means of salvation: the Church is a holy institution in virtue of the gifts with which she is endowed. She is the moral seminary that trains for salvation and the institution that exercises divine powers in Christ's room. Both of these conceptions presuppose political forms; both necessarily require priests and more especially an episcopate. (In de pudic. 21 Tertullian already defines the position of his adversary by the saying, "ecclesia est numerus episcoporum.") This episcopate by its unity guarantees the unity of the Church and has received the power to forgive sins (Cyp., ep. 69. 11). The new conception of the Church, which was a necessary outcome of existing circumstances and which, we may remark, was not formulated in contradictory terms by Cyprian, but by Roman bishops,238 was the first thing that gave a fundamental religious significance to the separation of clergy and laity. The powers exercised by bishops and priests were thereby fixed and hallowed. No doubt the old order of things, which gave laymen a share in the administration of moral discipline, still continued in the third century, but it became more and more a mere form. The bishop became the practical vicegerent of Christ; he disposed of the power to bind and to loose. But the recollection of the older form of Christianity continued to exert an influence on the Catholic Church of the third century. It is true that, if we can trust Hippolytus' account, Calixtus had by this time firmly set his face against the older idea, inasmuch as he not only defined the Church as essentially a mixed body (corpus permixtum), but also asserted the unlawfulness of deposing the bishop even in case of mortal sin.239 But we do not find that definition in Cyprian, and, what is of more importance, he still required a definite degree of active Christianity as a sine qu non in the case of bishops; and assumed it as a self-evident necessity. He who does not give evidence of this forfeits his episcopal office ipso facto.240 Now if we consider that Cyprian makes the Church, as the body of believers (plebs credentium), so dependent on the bishops, that the latter are the only Christians not under tutelage, the demand in question denotes a great deal. It carries out the old idea of the Church in a certain fashion, as far as the bishops are concerned. But for this very reason it endangers the new conception in a point of capital importance; for the spiritual acts of a sinful bishop are invalid;241 and if the latter, as a notorious sinner, is no longer bishop, the whole certainty of the ecclesiastical system ceases. Moreover, an appeal to the certainty of God's installing the bishops and always appointing the right ones242 is of no avail, if false ones manifestly find their way in. Hence Cyprian's idea of the Church—and this is no dishonour to him—still involved an inconsistency which, in the fourth century, was destined to produce a very serious crisis in the Donatist struggle.243 The view, however—which Cyprian never openly expressed, and which was merely the natural inference from his theory—that the Catholic Church, though the "one dove" ("una columba"), is in truth not coincident with the number of the elect, was clearly recognised and frankly expressed by Origen before him. Origen plainly distinguished between spiritual and fleshly members of the Church; and spoke of such as only belong to her outwardly, but are not Christians. As these are finally overpowered by the gates of hell, Origen does not hesitate to class them as merely seeming members of the Church. Conversely, he contemplates the possibility of a person being expelled from her fellowship and yet remaining a member in the eyes of God.244 Nevertheless he by no means attained to clearness on the point, in which case, moreover, he would have been the first to do so; nor did he give an impulse to further reflection on the problem. Besides, speculations were of no use here. The Church with her priests, her holy books, and gifts of grace, that is, the moderate secularisation of Christendom corrected by the means of grace, was absolutely needed in order to prevent a complete lapse into immorality.245 But a minority struggled against this Church, not with speculations, but by demanding adherence to the old practice with regard to lapsed members. Under the leadership of the Roman presbyter, Novatian, this section formed a coalition in the Empire that opposed the Catholic confederation.246 Their adherence to the old system of Church discipline involved a reaction against the secularising process, which did not seem to be tempered by the spiritual powers of the bishops. Novatian's conception of the Church, of ecclesiastical absolution and the rights of the priests, and in short, his notion of the power of the keys is different from that of his opponents. This is clear from a variety of considerations. For he (with his followers) assigned to the Church the right and duty of expelling gross sinners once for all;247 he denied her the authority to absolve idolaters, but left these to the forgiveness of God who alone has the power of pardoning sins committed against himself; and he asserted: "non est pax illi ab episcopo necessaria habituro gloriÆ suÆ (scil. martyrii) pacem et accepturo maiorem de domini dignatione mercedem,"—"the absolution of the bishop is not needed by him who will receive the peace of his glory (i.e., martyrdom) and will obtain a greater reward from the approbation of the Lord" (Cypr. ep. 57. 4), and on the other hand taught: "peccato alterius inquinari alterum et idololatriam delinquentis ad non delinquentem transire,"—"the one is defiled by the sin of the other and the idolatry of the transgressor passes over to him who does not transgress." His proposition that none but God can forgive sins does not depotentiate the idea of the Church; but secures both her proper religious significance and the full sense of her dispensations of grace: it limits her powers and extent in favour of her content. Refusal of her forgiveness under certain circumstances—though this does not exclude the confident hope of God's mercy—can only mean that in Novatian's view this forgiveness is the foundation of salvation and does not merely avert the certainty of perdition. To the Novatians, then, membership of the Church is not the sine qu non of salvation, but it really secures it in some measure. In certain cases nevertheless the Church may not anticipate the judgment of God. Now it is never by exclusion, but by readmission, that she does so. As the assembly of the baptised, who have received God's forgiveness, the Church must be a real communion of salvation and of saints; hence she cannot endure unholy persons in her midst without losing her essence. Each gross sinner that is tolerated within her calls her legitimacy in question. But, from this point of view, the constitution of the Church, i.e., the distinction of lay and spiritual and the authority of the bishops, likewise retained nothing but the secondary importance it had in earlier times. For, according to those principles, the primary question as regards Church membership is not connection with the clergy (the bishop). It is rather connection with the community, fellowship with which secures the salvation that may indeed be found outside its pale, but not with certainty. But other causes contributed to lessen the importance of the bishops: the art of casuistry, so far-reaching in its results, was unable to find a fruitful soil here, and the laity were treated in exactly the same way as the clergy. The ultimate difference between Novatian and Cyprian as to the idea of the Church and the power to bind and loose did not become clear to the latter himself. This was because, in regard to the idea of the Church, he partly overlooked the inferences from his own view and to some extent even directly repudiated them. An attempt to lay down a principle for judging the case is found in ep. 69. 7: "We and the schismatics have neither the same law of the creed nor the same interrogation, for when they say: 'you believe in the remission of sins and eternal life through the holy Church,' they speak falsely" ("non est una nobis et schismaticis symboli lex neque eadem interrogatio; nam cum dicunt, credis in remissionem peccatorum et vitam Æternam per sanctam ecclesiam, mentiuntur"). Nor did Dionysius of Alexandria, who endeavoured to accumulate reproaches against Novatian, succeed in forming any effective accusation (Euseb., H. E. VII. 8). Pseudo-Cyprian had just as little success (ad Novatianum). It was not till the subsequent period, when the Catholic Church had resolutely pursued the path she had entered, that the difference in principle manifested itself with unmistakable plainness. The historical estimate of the contrast must vary in proportion as one contemplates the demands of primitive Christianity or the requirements of the time. The Novatian confederation undoubtedly preserved a valuable remnant of the old tradition. The idea that the Church, as a fellowship of salvation, must also be the fellowship of saints (Καθαροι) corresponds to the ideas of the earliest period. The followers of Novatian did not entirely identify the political and religious attributes of the Church; they neither transformed the gifts of salvation into means of education, nor confused the reality with the possibility of redemption; and they did not completely lower the requirements for a holy life. But on the other hand, in view of the minimum insisted upon, the claim that they were the really evangelical party and that they fulfilled the law of Christ248 was a presumption. The one step taken to avert the secularising of the Church, exclusion of the lapsed, was certainly, considering the actual circumstances immediately following a great apostasy, a measure of radical importance; but, estimated by the Gospel and in fact simply by the demands of the Montanists fifty years before, it was remarkably insignificant. These Catharists did indeed go the length of expelling all so-called mortal sinners, because it was too crying an injustice to treat libellatici more severely than unabashed transgressors;249 but, even then, it was still a gross self-deception to style themselves the "pure ones," since the Novatian Churches speedily ceased to be any stricter than the Catholic in their renunciation of the world. At least we do not hear that asceticism and devotion to religious faith were very much more prominent in the Catharist Church than in the Catholic. On the contrary, judging from the sources that have come down to us, we may confidently say that the picture presented by the two Churches in the subsequent period was practically identical.250 As Novatian's adherents did not differ from the opposite party in doctrine and constitution, their discipline of penance appears an archaic fragment which it was a doubtful advantage to preserve; and their rejection of the Catholic dispensations of grace (practice of rebaptism) a revolutionary measure, because it had insufficient justification. But the distinction between venial and mortal sins, a theory they held in common with the Catholic Church, could not but prove especially fatal to them; whereas their opponents, through their new regulations as to penance, softened this distinction, and that not to the detriment of morality. For an entirely different treatment of so-called gross and venial transgressions must in every case deaden the conscience towards the latter. 5. If we glance at the Catholic Church and leave the melancholy recriminations out of account, we cannot fail to see the wisdom, foresight, and comparative strictness251 with which the bishops carried out the great revolution that so depotentiated the Church as to make her capable of becoming a prop of civic society and of the state, without forcing any great changes upon them.252 In learning to look upon the Church as a training school for salvation, provided with penalties and gifts of grace, and in giving up its religious independence in deference to her authority, Christendom as it existed in the latter half of the third century,253 submitted to an arrangement that was really best adapted to its own interests. In the great Church every distinction between her political and religious conditions necessarily led to fatal disintegrations, to laxities, such as arose in Carthage owing to the enthusiastic behaviour of the confessors; or to the breaking up of communities. The last was a danger incurred in all cases where the attempt was made to exercise unsparing severity. A casuistic proceeding was necessary as well as a firm union of the bishops as pillars of the Church. Not the least important result of the crises produced by the great persecutions was the fact that the bishops in West and East were thereby forced into closer connection and at the same time acquired full jurisdiction ("per episcopos solos peccata posse dimitti"). If we consider that the archiepiscopal constitution had not only been simultaneously adopted, but had also attained the chief significance in the ecclesiastical organisation,254 we may say that the Empire Church was completed the moment that Diocletian undertook the great reorganisation of his dominions.255 No doubt the old Christianity had found its place in the new Church, but it was covered over and concealed. In spite of all that, little alteration had been made in the expression of faith, in religious language; people spoke of the universal holy Church, just as they did a hundred years before. Here the development in the history of dogma was in a very special sense a development in the history of the Church. Catholicism was now complete; the Church had suppressed all utterances of individual piety, in the sense of their being binding on Christians, and freed herself from every feature of exclusiveness. In order to be a Christian a man no longer required in any sense to be a saint. "What made the Christian a Christian was no longer the possession of charisms, but obedience to ecclesiastical authority," share in the gifts of the Church, and the performance of penance and good works. The Church by her edicts legitimised average morality, after average morality had created the authority of the Church. ("La mÉdiocritÉ fonda l'autoritÉ".) The dispensations of grace, that is, absolution and the Lord's Supper, abolished the charismatic gifts. The Holy Scriptures, the apostolic episcopate, the priests, the sacraments, average morality in accordance with which the whole world could live, were mutually conditioned. The consoling words: "Jesus receives sinners," were subjected to an interpretation that threatened to make them detrimental to morality.256 And with all that the self-righteousness of proud ascetics was not excluded—quite the contrary. Alongside of a code of morals, to which any one in case of need could adapt himself, the Church began to legitimise a morality of self-chosen, refined sanctity, which really required no Redeemer. It was as in possession of this constitution that the great statesman found and admired her, and recognised in her the strongest support of the Empire.257 A comparison of the aims of primitive Christendom with those of ecclesiastical society at the end of the third century—a comparison of the actual state of things at the different periods is hardly possible—will always lead to a disheartening result; but the parallel is in itself unjust. The truth rather is that the correct standpoint from which to judge the matter was already indicated by Origen in the comparison he drew (c. Cels. III. 29. 30) between the Christian society of the third century and the non-Christian, between the Church and the Empire, the clergy and the magistrates.258 Amidst the general disorganisation of all relationships, and from amongst the ruins of a shattered fabric, a new structure, founded on the belief in one God, in a sure revelation, and in eternal life, was being laboriously raised. It gathered within it more and more all the elements still capable of continued existence; it readmitted the old world, cleansed of its grossest impurities, and raised holy barriers to secure its conquests against all attacks. Within this edifice justice and civic virtue shone with no greater brightness than they did upon the earth generally, but within it burned two mighty flames—the assurance of eternal life, guaranteed by Christ, and the practice of mercy. He who knows history is aware that the influence of epoch-making personages is not to be sought in its direct consequences alone, as these speedily disappear: that structure which prolonged the life of a dying world, and brought strength from the Holy One to another struggling into existence, was also partly founded on the Gospel, and but for this would neither have arisen nor attained solidity. Moreover, a Church had been created within which the pious layman could find a holy place of peace and edification. With priestly strife he had nothing to do, nor had he any concern in the profound and subtle dogmatic system whose foundation was now being laid. We may say that the religion of the laity attained freedom in proportion as it became impossible for them to take part in the establishment and guardianship of the official Church system. It is the professional guardians of this ecclesiastical edifice who are the real martyrs of religion, and it is they who have to bear the consequences of the worldliness and lack of genuineness pertaining to the system. But to the layman who seeks from the Church nothing more than aid in raising himself to God, this worldliness and unveracity do not exist. During the Greek period, however, laymen were only able to recognise this advantage to a limited extent. The Church dogmatic and the ecclesiastical system were still too closely connected with their own interests. It was in the Middle Ages, that the Church first became a Holy Mother and her house a house of prayer—for the Germanic peoples; for these races were really the children of the Church, and they themselves had not helped to rear the house in which they worshipped. ADDENDA. I. THE PRIESTHOOD. The completion of the old Catholic conception of the Church, as this idea was developed in the latter half of the third century, is perhaps most clearly shown in the attribute of priesthood, with which the clergy were invested and which conferred on them the greatest importance.259 The development of this conception, whose adoption is a proof that the Church had assumed a heathen complexion, cannot be more particularly treated of here.260 What meaning it has is shown by its application in Cyprian and the original of the first six books of the Apostolic Constitutions (see Book II.). The bishops (and also the presbyters) are priests, in so far as they alone are empowered to present the sacrifice as representatives of the congregation before God261 and in so far as they dispense or refuse the divine grace as representatives of God in relation to the congregation. In this sense they are also judges in God's stead.262 The position here conceded to the higher clergy corresponds to that of the mystagogue in heathen religions, and is acknowledged to be borrowed from the latter.263 Divine grace already appears as a sacramental consecration of an objective nature, the bestowal of which is confined to spiritual personages chosen by God. This fact is no way affected by the perception that an ever increasing reference is made to the Old Testament priests as well as to the whole Jewish ceremonial and ecclesiastical regulations.264 It is true that there is no other respect in which Old Testament commandments were incorporated with Christianity to such an extent as they were in this.265 But it can be proved that this formal adoption everywhere took place at a subsequent date, that is, it had practically no influence on the development itself, which was not legitimised by the commandments till a later period, and that often in a somewhat lame fashion. We may perhaps say that the development which made the bishops and elders priests altered the inward form of the Church in a more radical fashion than any other. "Gnosticism," which the Church had repudiated in the second century, became part of her own system in the third. As her integrity had been made dependent on inalienable objective standards, the adoption even of this greatest innovation, which indeed was in complete harmony with the secular element within her, was an elementary necessity. In regard to every sphere of Church life, and hence also in respect to the development of dogma266 and the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, the priesthood proved of the highest significance. The clerical exposition of the sacred books, with its frightful ideas, found its earliest advocate in Cyprian and had thus a most skilful champion at the very first.267 II. SACRIFICE. In Book I., chap. III., § 7, we have already shown what a wide field the idea of sacrifice occupied in primitive Christendom, and how it was specially connected with the celebration of the Lord's Supper. The latter was regarded as the pure (i.e., to be presented with a pure heart), bloodless thank offering of which Malachi had prophesied in I. 11. Priesthood and sacrifice, however, are mutually conditioned. The alteration of the concept "priest" necessarily led to a simultaneous and corresponding change in the idea of sacrifice, just as, conversely, the latter reacted on the former.268 In IrenÆus and Tertullian the old conception of sacrifice, viz., that prayers are the Christian sacrifice and that the disposition of the believer hallows his whole life even as it does his offering, and forms a well-pleasing sacrifice to God, remains essentially unchanged. In particular, there is no evidence of any alteration in the notion of sacrifice connected with the Lord's Supper.269 But nevertheless we can already trace a certain degree of modification in Tertullian. Not only does he give fasting, voluntary celibacy, martyrdom, etc., special prominence among the sacrificial acts of a Christian life, and extol their religious value—as had already been done before; but he also attributes a God-propitiating significance to these performances, and plainly designates them as "merita" ("promereri deum"). To the best of my belief Tertullian was the first who definitely regarded ascetic performances as propitiatory offerings and ascribed to them the "potestas reconciliandi iratum deum."270 But he himself was far from using this fatal theory, so often found in his works, to support a lax Church practice that made Christianity consist in outward forms. This result did not come about till the eventful decades, prolific in new developments, that elapsed between the persecutions of Septimius and Decius; and in the West it is again Cyprian who is our earliest witness as to the new view and practice.271 In the first place, Cyprian was quite familiar with the idea of ascetic propitiations and utilised it in the interest of the Catholicity of the Church; secondly, he propounded a new theory of the offering in the cultus. As far as the first point is concerned, Cyprian's injunctions with regard to it are everywhere based on the understanding that even after baptism no one can be without sin (de op. et cleemos. 3); and also on the firm conviction that this sacrament can only have a retrospective virtue. Hence he concludes that we must appease God, whose wrath has been aroused by sin, through performances of our own, that is, through offerings that bear the character of "satisfactions." In other words we must blot out transgressions by specially meritorious deeds in order thus to escape eternal punishment. These deeds Cyprian terms "merita," which either possess the character of atonements, or, in case there are no sins to be expiated, entitle the Christian to a special reward (merces).272 But, along with lamentationes and acts of penance, it is principally alms-giving that forms such means of atonement (see de lapsis, 35, 36). In Cyprian's eyes this is already the proper satisfaction; mere prayer, that is, devotional exercises unaccompanied by fasting and alms, being regarded as "bare and unfruitful." In the work "de opere et eleemosynis" which, after a fashion highly characteristic of Cyprian, is made dependent on Sirach and Tobias, he has set forth a detailed theory of what we may call alms-giving as a means of grace in its relation to baptism and salvation.273 However, this practice can only be viewed as a means of grace in Cyprian's sense in so far as God has accepted it, that is, pointed it out. In itself it is a free human act. After the Decian persecution and the rearrangement of ecclesiastical affairs necessitated by it, works and alms (opera et eleemosynÆ) made their way into the absolution system of the Church, and were assigned a permanent place in it. Even the Christian who has forfeited his Church membership by abjuration may ultimately recover it by deeds of sacrifice, of course under the guidance and intercessory coÖperation of the Church. The dogmatic dilemma we find here cannot be more clearly characterised than by simply placing the two doctrines professed by Cyprian side by side. These are:—(1) that the sinfulness common to each individual can only be once extirpated by the power of baptism derived from the work of Christ, and (2) that transgressions committed after baptism, inclusive of mortal sins, can and must be expiated solely by spontaneous acts of sacrifice under the guidance of kind mother Church.274 A Church capable of being permanently satisfied with such doctrines would very soon have lost the last remains of her Christian character. What was wanted was a means of grace, similar to baptism and granted by God through Christ, to which the opera et eleemosynÆ are merely to bear the relation of accompanying acts. But Cyprian was no dogmatist and was not able to form a doctrine of the means of grace. He never got beyond his "propitiate God the judge by sacrifices after baptism" ("promereri deum judicem post baptismum sacrificiis"), and merely hinted, in an obscure way, that the absolution of him who has committed a deadly sin after baptism emanates from the same readiness of God to forgive as is expressed in that rite, and that membership in the Church is a condition of absolution. His whole theory as to the legal nature of man's (the Christian's) relationship to God, and the practice, inaugurated by Tertullian, of designating this connection by terms derived from Roman law continued to prevail in the West down to Augustine's time.275 But, during this whole interval, no book was written by a Western Churchman which made the salvation of the sinful Christian dependent on ascetic offerings of atonement, with so little regard to Christ's grace and the divine factor in the case, as Cyprian's work de opere et eleemosynis. No less significant is Cyprian's advance as regards the idea of the sacrifice in public worship, and that in three respects. To begin with, Cyprian was the first to associate the specific offering, i.e., the Lord's Supper276 with the specific priesthood. Secondly, he was the first to designate the passio dominis, nay, the sanguis Christi and the dominica hostia as the object of the eucharistic offering.277 Thirdly, he expressly represented the celebration of the Lord's Supper as an incorporation of the congregation and its individual members with Christ, and was the first to bear clear testimony as to the special importance attributed to commemoration of the celebrators ("vivi et defuncti"), though no other can be ascertained than a specially strong intercession.278 But this is really the essential effect of the sacrifice of the supper as regards the celebrators; for however much the conceptions about this ceremony might be heightened, and whatever additions might be made to its ritual, forgiveness of sins in the strict sense could not be associated with it. Cyprian's statement that every celebration of the Lord's Supper is a repetition or imitation of Christ's sacrifice of himself, and that the ceremony has therefore an expiatory value remains a mere assertion, though the Romish Church still continues to repeat this doctrine to the present day. For the idea that partaking of the Lord's Supper cleansed from sin like the mysteries of the Great Mother (magna mater) and Mithras, though naturally suggested by the ceremonial practice, was counteracted by the Church principles of penance and by the doctrine of baptism. As a sacrificial rite the Supper never became a ceremony equivalent in effect to baptism. But no doubt, as far as the popular conception was concerned, the solemn ritual copied from the ancient mysteries could not but attain an indescribably important significance. It is not possible, within the framework of the history of dogma, to describe the development of religious ceremonial in the third century, and to show what a radical alteration took place in men's conceptions with regard to it (cf. for example, Justin with Cyprian). But, in dealing with the history of dogma within this period, we must clearly keep in view the development of the cultus, the new conceptions of the value of ritual, and the reference of ceremonial usages to apostolic tradition; for there was plainly a remodelling of the ritual in imitation of the ancient mysteries and of the heathen sacrificial system, and this fact is admitted by Protestant scholars of all parties. Ceremonial and doctrine may indeed be at variance, for the latter may lag behind the former and vice versa, but they are never subject to entirely different conditions. III. MEANS OF GRACE, BAPTISM, and EUCHARIST. That which the Western Church of post-Augustinian times calls sacrament in the specific sense of the word (means of grace) was only possessed by the Church of the third century in the form of baptism.279 In strict theory she still held that the grace once bestowed in this rite could be conferred by no holy ceremony of equal virtue, that is, by no fresh sacrament. The baptised Christian has no means of grace, conferred by Christ, at his disposal, but has his law to fulfil (see, e.g., Iren. IV. 27. 2). But, as soon as the Church began to absolve mortal sinners, she practically possessed in absolution a real means of grace that was equally effective with baptism from the moment that this remission became unlimited in its application.280 The notions as to this means of grace, however, continued quite uncertain in so far as the thought of God's absolving the sinner through the priest was qualified by the other theory (see above) which asserted that forgiveness was obtained through the penitential acts of transgressors (especially baptism with blood, and next in importance lamentationes, ieiunia, eleemosynÆ). In the third century there were manifold holy dispensations of grace by the hands of priests; but there was still no theory which traced the means of grace to the historical work of Christ in the same way that the grace bestowed in baptism was derived from it. From Cyprian's epistles and the anti-Novatian sections in the first six books of the Apostolic Constitutions we indeed see that appeal was not unfrequently made to the power of forgiving sins bestowed on the Apostles and to Christ's declaration that he received sinners; but, as the Church had not made up her mind to repeat baptism, so also she had yet no theory that expressly and clearly supplemented this rite by a sacramentum absolutionis. In this respect, as well as in regard to the sacramentum ordinis, first instituted by Augustine, theory remained far behind practice. This was by no means an advantage, for, as a matter of fact, the whole religious ceremonial was already regarded as a system of means of grace. The consciousness of a personal, living connection of the individual with God through Christ had already disappeared, and the hesitation in setting up new means of grace had only the doubtful result of increasing the significance of human acts, such as offerings and satisfactions, to a dangerous extent. Since the middle of the second century the notions of baptism281 in the Church have not essentially altered (see Vol. I. p. 206 ff.). The result of baptism was universally considered to be forgiveness of sins, and this pardon was supposed to effect an actual sinlessness which now required to be maintained.282 We frequently find "deliverance from death," "regeneration of man," "restoration to the image of God," and "obtaining of the Holy Spirit." ("Absolutio mortes," "regeneratio hominis," "restitutio ad similitudinem dei" and "consecutio spiritus sancti") named along with the "remission of sins" and "obtaining of eternal life" ("remissio delictorum" and "consecutio Æternitatis"). Examples are to be found in Tertullian283 adv. Marc. I. 28 and elsewhere; and Cyprian speaks of the "bath of regeneration and sanctification" ("lavacrum regenerationis et sanctificationis"). Moreover, we pretty frequently find rhetorical passages where, on the strength of New Testament texts, all possible blessings are associated with baptism.284 The constant additions to the baptismal ritual, a process which had begun at a very early period, are partly due to the intention of symbolising these supposedly manifold virtues of baptism,285 and partly owe their origin to the endeavour to provide the great mystery with fit accompaniments.286 As yet the separate acts can hardly be proved to have an independent signification.287 The water was regarded both as the symbol of the purification of the soul and as an efficacious, holy medium of the Spirit (in accordance with Gen. I. 2; water and Spirit are associated with each other, especially in Cyprian's epistles on baptism). He who asserted the latter did not thereby repudiate the former (see Orig. in Joann. Tom. VI. 17, Opp. IV. p. 133).288 Complete obscurity prevails as to the Church's adoption of the practice of child baptism, which, though it owes its origin to the idea of this ceremony being indispensable to salvation, is nevertheless a proof that the superstitious view of baptism had increased.289 In the time of IrenÆus (II. 22. 4) and Tertullian (de bapt. 18) child baptism had already become very general and was founded on Matt. XIX. 14. We have no testimony regarding it from earlier times; Clement of Alexandria does not yet assume it. Tertullian argued against it not only because he regarded conscious faith as a needful preliminary condition, but also because he thought it advisable to delay baptism (cunctatio baptismi) on account of the responsibility involved in it (pondus baptismi). He says: "It is more advantageous to delay baptism, especially in the case of little children. For why is it necessary for the sponsors" (this is the first mention of "godparents") "also to be thrust into danger?... let the little ones therefore come when they are growing up; let them come when they are learning, when they are taught where they are coming to; let them become Christians when they are able to know Christ. Why does an age of innocence hasten to the remission of sins? People will act more cautiously in worldly affairs, so that one who is not trusted with earthly things is trusted with divine. Whoever understands the responsibility of baptism will fear its attainment more than its delay."290 To all appearance the practice of immediately baptising the children of Christian families was universally adopted in the Church in the course of the third century. (Origen, Comment, in ep. ad Rom. V. 9, Opp. IV. p. 565, declared child baptism to be a custom handed down by the Apostles.) Grown up people, on the other hand, frequently postponed baptism, but this habit was disapproved.291 The Lord's Supper was not only regarded as a sacrifice, but also as a divine gift.292 The effects of this gift were not theoretically fixed, because these were excluded by the strict scheme293 of baptismal grace and baptismal obligation. But in practice Christians more and more assumed a real bestowal of heavenly gifts in the holy food, and gave themselves over to superstitious theories. This bestowal was sometimes regarded as a spiritual and sometimes as a bodily self-communication of Christ, that is, as a miraculous implanting of divine life. Here ethical and physical, and again ethical and theoretical features were intermixed with each other. The utterances of the Fathers to which we have access do not allow us to classify these elements here; for to all appearance not a single one clearly distinguished between spiritual and bodily, or ethical and intellectual effects unless he was in principle a spiritualist. But even a writer of this kind had quite as superstitious an idea of the holy elements as the rest. Thus the holy meal was extolled as the communication of incorruption, as a pledge of resurrection, as a medium of the union of the flesh with the Holy Spirit; and again as food of the soul, as the bearer of the Spirit of Christ (the Logos), as the means of strengthening faith and knowledge, as a sanctifying of the whole personality. The thought of the forgiveness of sins fell quite into the background. This ever changing conception, as it seems to us, of the effects of partaking of the Lord's Supper had also a parallel in the notions as to the relation between the visible elements and the body of Christ. So far as we are able to judge no one felt that there was a problem here, no one enquired whether this relation was realistic or symbolical. The symbol is the mystery and the mystery was not conceivable without a symbol. What we now-a-days understand by "symbol" is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time "symbol" denoted a thing which, in some kind of way, really is what it signifies; but, on the other hand, according to the ideas of that period, the really heavenly element lay either in or behind the visible form without being identical with it. Accordingly the distinction of a symbolic and realistic conception of the Supper is altogether to be rejected; we could more rightly distinguish between materialistic, dyophysite, and docetic conceptions which, however, are not to be regarded as severally exclusive in the strict sense. In the popular idea the consecrated elements were heavenly fragments of magical virtue (see Cypr., de laps. 25; Euseb., H. E. VI. 44). With these the rank and file of third-century Christians already connected many superstitious notions which the priests tolerated or shared.294 The antignostic Fathers acknowledged that the consecrated food consisted of two things, an earthly (the elements) and a heavenly (the real body of Christ). They thus saw in the sacrament a guarantee of the union between spirit and flesh, which the Gnostics denied; and a pledge of the resurrection of the flesh nourished by the blood of the Lord (Justin; Iren. IV. 18. 4, 5; V. 2. 2, 3; likewise Tertullian who is erroneously credited with a "symbolical" doctrine295). Clement and Origen "spiritualise," because, like Ignatius, they assign a spiritual significance to the flesh and blood of Christ himself (summary of wisdom). To judge from the exceedingly confused passage in PÆd. II. 2, Clement distinguishes a spiritual and a material blood of Christ. Finally, however, he sees in the Eucharist the union of the divine Logos with the human spirit, recognises, like Cyprian at a later period, that the mixture of wine with water in the symbol represents the spiritual process, and lastly does not fail to attribute to the holy food a relationship to the body.296 It is true that Origen, the great mysteriosophist and theologian of sacrifice, expressed himself in plainly "spiritualistic" fashion; but in his eyes religious mysteries and the whole person of Christ lay in the province of the spirit, and therefore his theory of the Supper is not "symbolical," but conformable to his doctrine of Christ. Besides, Origen was only able to recognise spiritual aids in the sphere of the intellect and the disposition, and in the assistance given to these by man's own free and spontaneous efforts. Eating and drinking and, in general, participation in a ceremonial are from Origen's standpoint completely indifferent matters. The intelligent Christian feeds at all times on the body of Christ, that is, on the Word of God, and thus celebrates a never ending Supper (c. Cels. VIII. 22). Origen, however, was not blind to the fact that his doctrine of the Lord's Supper was just as far removed from the faith of the simple Christian as his doctrinal system generally. Here also, therefore, he accommodated himself to that faith in points where it seemed necessary. This, however, he did not find difficult; for, though with him everything is at bottom "spiritual," he was unwilling to dispense with symbols and mysteries, because he knew that one must be initiated into the spiritual, since one cannot learn it as one learns the lower sciences.297 But, whether we consider simple believers, the antignostic Fathers or Origen, and, moreover, whether we view the Supper as offering or sacrament, we everywhere observe that the holy ordinance had been entirely diverted from its original purpose and pressed into the service of the spirit of antiquity. In no other point perhaps is the hellenisation of the Gospel so evident as in this. To mention only one other example, this is also shown in the practice of child communion, which, though we first hear of it in Cyprian (Testim. III. 25; de laps. 25), can hardly be of later origin than child baptism. Partaking of the Supper seemed quite as indispensable as baptism, and the child had no less claim than the adult to a magical food from heaven.298 In the course of the third century a crass superstition became developed in respect to the conceptions of the Church and the mysteries connected with her. According to this notion we must subject ourselves to the Church and must have ourselves filled with holy consecrations as we are filled with food. But the following chapters will show that this superstition and mystery magic were counterbalanced by a most lively conception of the freedom and responsibility of the individual. Fettered by the bonds of authority and superstition in the sphere of religion, free and self-dependent in the province of morality, this Christianity is characterised by passive submission in the first respect and by complete activity in the second. It may be that exegetical theology can never advance beyond an alternation between these two aspects of the case, and a recognition of their equal claim to consideration; for the religious phenomenon in which they are combined defies any explanation. But religion is in danger of being destroyed when the insufficiency of the understanding is elevated into a convenient principle of theory and life, and when the real mystery of the faith, viz., how one becomes a new man, must accordingly give place to the injunction that we must obediently accept the religious as a consecration, and add to this the zealous endeavour after ascetic virtue. Such, however, has been the character of Catholicism since the third century, and even after Augustine's time it has still remained the same in its practice. EXCURSUS TO CHAPTERS II. AND III. CATHOLIC AND ROMAN.299 In investigating the development of Christianity up till about the year 270 the following facts must be specially kept in mind: In the regions subject to Rome, apart from the JudÆo-Christian districts and passing disturbances, Christianity had yet an undivided history in vital questions;300 the independence of individual congregations and of the provincial groups of Churches was very great; and every advance in the development of the communities at the same time denoted a forward step in their adaptation to the existing conditions of the Empire. The first two facts we have mentioned have their limitations. The further apart the different Churches lay, the more various were the conditions under which they arose and flourished; the looser the relations between the towns in which they had their home the looser also was the connection between them. Still, it is evident that towards the end of the third century the development in the Church had well-nigh attained the same point everywhere—except in outlying communities. Catholicism, essentially as we conceive it now, was what most of the Churches had arrived at. Now it is an a priori probability that this transformation of Christianity, which was simply the adaptation of the Gospel to the then existing Empire, came about under the guidance of the metropolitan Church,301 the Church of Rome; and that "Roman" and "Catholic" had therefore a special relation from the beginning. It might a limine be objected to this proposition that there is no direct testimony in support of it, and that, apart from this consideration, it is also improbable, in so far as, in view of the then existing condition of society, Catholicism appears as the natural and only possible form in which Christianity could be adapted to the world. But this is not the case; for in the first place very strong proofs can be adduced, and besides, as is shown by the development in the second century, very different kinds of secularisation were possible. In fact, if all appearances are not deceptive, the Alexandrian Church, for example, was up to the time of Septimius Severus pursuing a path of development which, left to itself, would not have led to Catholicism, but, in the most favourable circumstances, to a parallel form.302 It can, however, be proved that it was in the Roman Church, which up to about the year 190 was closely connected with that of Asia Minor, that all the elements on which Catholicism is based first assumed a definite form.303 (1) We know that the Roman Church possessed a precisely formulated baptismal confession, and that as early as the year 180 she declared this to be the apostolic rule by which everything is to be measured. It is only in her case that we are really certain of this, for we can merely guess at it as regards the Church of Smyrna, that is, of Asia Minor. It was accordingly admitted that the Roman Church was able to distinguish true from false with special exactness;304 and IrenÆus and Tertullian appealed to her to decide the practice in Gaul and Africa. This practice, in its precisely developed form, cannot be shown to have existed in Alexandria till a later period; but Origen, who testifies to it, also bears witness to the special reverence for and connection with the Roman Church. (2) The New Testament canon, with its claim to be accounted catholic and apostolic and to possess exclusive authority is first traceable in her; in the other communities it can only be proved to exist at a later period. In the great Antiochian diocese there was, for instance, a Church some of whose members wished the Gospel of Peter read; in the Pentapolis group of congregations the Gospel of the Egyptians was still used in the 3rd century; Syrian Churches of the same epoch used Tatian's Diatessaron; and the original of the first six books of the Apostolic Constitutions still makes no mention of a New Testament canon. Though Clement of Alexandria no doubt testifies that, in consequence of the common history of Christianity, the group of Scriptures read in the Roman congregations was also the same as that employed in public worship at Alexandria, he had as yet no New Testament canon before him in the sense of IrenÆus and Tertullian. It was not till Origen's time that Alexandria reached the stage already attained in Rome about forty years earlier. It must, however, be pointed out that a series of New Testament books, in the form now found in the canon and universally recognised, show marks of revision that can be traced back to the Roman Church.305 Finally, the later investigations, which show that after the third century the Western readings, that is, the Roman text, of the New Testament were adopted in the Oriental MSS. of the Bible,306 are of the utmost value here; for the most natural explanation of these facts is that the Eastern Churches then received their New Testament from Rome and used it to correct their copies of books read in public worship.307 (3) Rome is the first place which we can prove to have constructed a list of bishops reaching back to the Apostles (see IrenÆus).308 We know that in the time of Heliogabalus such lists also existed in other communities; but it cannot be proved that these had already been drawn up by the time of Marcus Aurelius or Commodus, as was certainly the case at Rome. (4) The notion of the apostolic succession of the episcopate309 was first turned to account by the Roman bishops, and they were the first who definitely formulated the political idea of the Church in connection with this. The utterances and corresponding practical measures of Victor,310 Calixtus (Hippolytus), and Stephen are the earliest of their kind; whilst the precision and assurance with which they substituted the political and clerical for the ideal conception of the Church, or amalgamated the two notions, as well as the decided way in which they proclaimed the sovereignty of the bishops, were not surpassed in the third century by Cyprian himself. (5) Rome was the first place, and that at a very early period, to date occurrences according to her bishops; and, even outside that city, churches reckoned, not according to their own, but according to the Roman episcopate.311 (6) The Oriental Churches say that two bishops of Rome compiled the chief apostolic regulations for the organisation of the Church; and this is only partially wrong.312 (7) The three great theologians of the age, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen, opposed the pretensions of the Roman bishop Calixtus; and this very attitude of theirs testified that the advance in the political organisation of the Church, denoted by the measures of Calixtus, was still an unheard-of novelty, but immediately exercised a very important influence on the attitude of other Churches. We know that the other communities imitated this advance in the succeeding decades. (8) The institution of lower orders of clergy with the corresponding distinction of clerici maiores and minores first took place in Rome; but we know that this momentous arrangement gradually spread from that city to the rest of Christendom.313 (9) The different Churches communicated with one another through the medium of Rome.314 From these considerations we can scarcely doubt that the fundamental apostolic institutions and laws of Catholicism were framed in the same city that in other respects imposed its authority on the whole earth; and that it was the centre from which they spread, because the world had become accustomed to receive law and justice from Rome.315 But it may be objected that the parallel development in other provinces and towns was spontaneous, though it everywhere came about at a somewhat later date. Nor do we intend to contest the assumption in this general sense; but, as I think, it can be proved that the Roman community had a direct and important share in the process and that, even in the second century, she was reckoned the first and most influential Church.316 We shall give a bird's-eye view of the most important facts bearing on the question, in order to prove this. No other community made a more brilliant entrance into Church history than did that of Rome by the so called First Epistle of Clement—Paul having already testified (Rom. I. 8) that the faith of this Church was spoken of throughout the whole world. That letter to the Corinthians proves that, by the end of the first century, the Roman Church had already drawn up fixed rules for her own guidance, that she watched with motherly care over outlying communities, and that she then knew how to use language that was at once an expression of duty, love, and authority.317 As yet she pretends to no legal title of any kind, but she knows the "commandments and ordinances" (προσταγματα and δοκαιωματα) of God, whereas the conduct of the sister Church evinces her uncertainty on the matter; she is in an orderly condition, whereas the sister community is threatened with dissolution; she adheres to the κανων της παραδοσεως, whilst the other body stands in need of exhortation;318 and in these facts her claim to authority consists. The Shepherd of Hermas also proves that even in the circles of the laity the Roman Church is impressed with the consciousness that she must care for the whole of Christendom. The first testimony of an outsider as to this community is afforded us by Ignatius. Soften as we may all the extravagant expressions in his Epistle to the Romans, it is at least clear that Ignatius conceded to them a precedence in the circle of sister Churches; and that he was well acquainted with the energy and activity displayed by them in aiding and instructing other communities.319 Dionysius of Corinth, in his letter to bishop Soter, affords us a glimpse of the vast activity manifested by the Christian Church of the world's metropolis on behalf of all Christendom and of all brethren far and near; and reveals to us the feelings of filial affection and veneration with which she was regarded in all Greece as well as in Antioch. This author has specially emphasised the fact that the Roman Christians are Romans, that is, are conscious of the particular duties incumbent on them as members of the metropolitan Church.320 After this evidence we cannot wonder that IrenÆus expressly assigned to the Church of Rome the highest rank among those founded by the Apostles.321 His famous testimony has been quite as often under as over-estimated. Doubtless his reference to the Roman Church is introduced in such a way that she is merely mentioned by way of example, just as he also adds the allusion to Smyrna and Ephesus; but there is quite as little doubt that this example was no arbitrary selection. The truth rather is that the Roman community must have been named, because its decision was already the most authoritative and impressive in Christendom.322 Whilst giving a formal scheme of proof that assigned the same theoretical value to each Church founded by the Apostles, IrenÆus added a reference to particular circumstance, viz., that in his time many communities turned to Rome in order to testify their orthodoxy.323 As soon as we cease to obscure our vision with theories and keep in view the actual circumstances, we have no cause for astonishment. Considering the active intercourse between the various Churches and the metropolis, it was of the utmost importance to all, especially so long as they required financial aid, to be in connection with that of Rome, to receive support from her, to know she would entertain travelling brethren, and to have the power of recommending prisoners and those pining in the mines to her influential intervention. The evidence of Ignatius and Dionysius as well as the Marcia-Victor episode place this beyond doubt (see above). The efforts of Marcion and Valentinus in Rome have also a bearing on this question, and the venerable bishop, Polycarp, did not shrink from the toil of a long journey to secure the valuable fellowship of the Roman Church;324 it was not Anicetus who came to Polycarp, but Polycarp to Anicetus. At the time when the controversy with Gnosticism ensued, the Roman Church showed all the rest an example of resolution; it was naturally to be expected that, as a necessary condition of mutual fellowship, she should require other communities to recognise the law by which she had regulated her own circumstances. No community in the Empire could regard with indifference its relationship to the great Roman Church; almost everyone had connections with her; she contained believers from all the rest. As early as 180 this Church could point to a series of bishops reaching in uninterrupted succession from the glorious apostles Paul and Peter325 down to the present time; and she alone maintained a brief but definitely formulated lex, which she entitled the summary of apostolic tradition, and by reference to which she decided all questions of faith with admirable certainty. Theories were incapable of overcoming the elementary differences that could not but appear as soon as Christianity became naturalised in the various provinces and towns of the Empire. Nor was it theories that created the empiric unity of the Churches, but the unity which the Empire possessed in Rome; the extent and composition of the GrÆco-Latin community there; the security—and this was not the least powerful element—that accompanied the development of this great society, well provided as it was with wealth and possessed of an influence in high quarters already dating from the first century;326 as well as the care which it displayed on behalf of all Christendom. All these causes combined to convert the Christian communities into a real confederation under the primacy of the Roman Church (and subsequently under the leadership of her bishops). This primacy cannot of course be further defined, for it was merely a de facto one. But, from the nature of the case, it was immediately shaken, when it was claimed as a legal right associated with the person of the Roman bishop. That this theory is more than a hypothesis is shown by several facts which prove the unique authority as well as the interference of the Roman Church (that is, of her bishop). First, in the Montanist controversy—and that too at the stage when it was still almost exclusively confined to Asia Minor—the already sobered adherents of the new prophecy petitioned Rome (bishop Eleutherus) to recognise their Church, and it was at Rome that the Gallic confessors cautiously interfered in their behalf; after which a native of Asia Minor induced the Roman bishop to withdraw the letters of toleration already issued.327 In view of the facts that it was not Roman Montanists who were concerned, that Rome was the place where the Asiatic members of this sect sought for recognition, and that it was in Rome that the Gauls interfered in their behalf, the significance of this proceeding cannot be readily minimised. We cannot of course dogmatise on the matter; but the fact can be proved that the decision of the Roman Church must have settled the position of that sect of enthusiasts in Christendom. Secondly, what is reported to us of Victor, the successor of Eleutherus, is still plainer testimony. He ventured to issue an edict, which we may already style a peremptory one, proclaiming the Roman practice with regard to the regulation of ecclesiastical festivals to be the universal rule in the Church, and declaring that every congregation, that failed to adopt the Roman arrangement,328 was excluded from the union of the one Church on the ground of heresy. How would Victor have ventured on such an edict—though indeed he had not the power of enforcing it in every case—unless the special prerogative of Rome to determine the conditions of the "common unity" (κοινη 'ενωσις) in the vital questions of the faith had been an acknowledged and well-established fact? How could Victor have addressed such a demand to the independent Churches, if he had not been recognised, in his capacity of bishop of Rome, as the special guardian of the κοινη 'ενωσισ?329 Thirdly, it was Victor who formally excluded Theodotus from Church fellowship. This is the first really well-attested case of a Christian taking his stand on the rule of faith being excommunicated because a definite interpretation of it was already insisted on. In this instance the expression 'υιος μονογενης (only begotten Son) was required to be understood in the sense of Φυσει Θεος (God by nature). It was in Rome that this first took place. Fourthly, under Zephyrinus, Victor's successor, the Roman ecclesiastics interfered in the Carthaginian veil dispute, making common cause with the local clergy against Tertullian; and both appealed to the authority of predecessors, that is, above all, of the Roman bishops.330 Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, and Cyprian were obliged to resist the pretensions of these ecclesiastics to authority outside their own Church, the first having to contend with Calixtus, and the three others with Stephen.331 It was the Roman Church that first displayed this activity and care; the Roman bishop sprang from the community in exactly the same way as the corresponding official did in other places.332 In IrenÆus' proof from prescription, however, it is already the Roman bishops that are specially mentioned.333 Praxeas reminded the bishop of Rome of the authority of his predecessors ("auctoritates prÆcessorum eius") and it was in the character of bishop that Victor acted. The assumption that Paul and Peter laboured in Rome, that is, founded the Church of that city (Dionysius, IrenÆus, Tertullian, Caius), must have conferred a high degree of prestige on her bishops, as soon as the latter officials were elevated to the position of more or less sovereign lords of the communities and were regarded as successors of the Apostles. The first who acted up to this idea was Calixtus. The sarcastic titles of "pontifex maximus," "episcopus episcoporum," "benedictus papa" and "apostolicus," applied to him by Tertullian in "de pudicitia" I. 13, are so many references to the fact that Calixtus already claimed for himself a position of primacy, in other words, that he associated with his own personal position as bishop the primacy possessed by the Roman Church, which pre-eminence, however, must have been gradually vanishing in proportion to the progress of the Catholic form of organisation among the other communities. Moreover, that is evident from the form of the edict he issued (Tert. I. c., I: "I hear that an edict has been issued and that a decisive one," "audio edictum esse prÆpositum et quidem peremptorium"), from the grounds it assigned and from the opposition to it on the part of Tertullian. From the form, in so far as Calixtus acted here quite independently and, without previous consultation, issued a peremptory edict, that is, one settling the matter and immediately taking effect; from the grounds it assigned, in so far as he appealed in justification of his action to Matt. XVI. 18 ff.334—the first instance of the kind recorded in history; from Tertullian's opposition to it, because the latter treats it not as local, Roman, but as pregnant in consequences for all Christendom. But, as soon as the question took the form of enquiring whether the Roman bishop was elevated above the rest, a totally new situation arose. Even in the third century, as already shown, the Roman community, led by its bishops, still showed the rest an example in the process of giving a political constitution to the Church. It can also be proved that even far distant congregations were still being bound to the Roman Church through financial support,335 and that she was appealed to in questions of faith, just as the law of the city of Rome was invoked as the standard in civil questions.336 It is further manifest from Cyprian's epistles that the Roman Church was regarded as the ecclesia principalis, as the guardian par excellence of the unity of the Church. We may explain from Cyprian's own particular situation all else that he said in praise of the Roman Church (see above p. 88, note 2) and specially of the cathedra Petri; but the general view that she is the "matrix et radix ecclesiÆ catholicÆ" is not peculiar to him, and the statement that the "unitas sacerdotalis" originated in Rome is merely the modified expression, necessitated by the altered circumstances of the Church, for the acknowledged fact that the Roman community was the most distinguished among the sister groups, and as such had had and still possessed the right and duty of watching over the unity of the whole. Cyprian himself no doubt took a further step at the time of his correspondence with Cornelius, and proclaimed the special reference of Matt. XVI. to the cathedra Petri; but he confined his theory to the abstractions "ecclesia," "cathedra." In him the importance of this cathedra oscillates between the significance of a once existent fact that continues to live on as a symbol, and that of a real and permanent court of appeal. Moreover, he did not go the length of declaring that any special authority within the collective Church attached to the temporary occupant of the cathedra Petri. If we remove from Cyprian's abstractions everything to which he himself thinks there is nothing concrete corresponding, then we must above all eliminate every prerogative of the Roman bishop for the time being. What remains behind is the special position of the Roman Church, which indeed is represented by her bishop. Cyprian can say quite frankly: "owing to her magnitude Rome ought to have precedence over Carthage" ("pro magnitudine sua debet Carthaginem Roma prÆcedere") and his theory: "the episcopate is one, and a part of it is held by each bishop for the whole" ("episcopatus unus est, cuius a singulis in solidum pars tenetur"), virtually excludes any special prerogative belonging to a particular bishop (see also "de unit." 4). Here we have reached the point that has already been briefly referred to above, viz., that the consolidation of the Churches in the Empire after the Roman pattern could not but endanger the prestige and peculiar position of Rome, and did in fact do so. If we consider that each bishop was the acknowledged sovereign of his own diocese—now Catholic, that all bishops, as such, were recognised to be successors of the Apostles, that, moreover, the attribute of priesthood occupied a prominent position in the conception of the episcopal office, and that, the metropolitan unions with their presidents and synods had become completely naturalised—in short, that the rigid episcopal and provincial constitution of the Church had become an accomplished fact, so that, ultimately, it was no longer communities, but merely bishops that had dealings with each other, then we shall see that a new situation was thereby created for Rome, that is, for her bishop. In the West it was perhaps chiefly through the coÖperation of Cyprian that Rome found herself face to face with a completely organised Church system. His behaviour in the controversy about heretical baptism proves that in cases of dispute he was resolved to elevate his theory of the sovereign authority of each bishop above his theory of the necessary connection with the cathedra Petri. But, when that levelling of the episcopate came about, Rome had already acquired rights that could no longer be cancelled.337 Besides, there was one thing that could not be taken from the Roman Church, nor therefore from her bishop, even if she were denied the special right to Matt. XVI., viz., the possession of Rome. The site of the world's metropolis might be shifted, but Rome could not be removed. In the long run, however, the shifting of the capital proved advantageous to ecclesiastical Rome. At the beginning of the great epoch when the alienation of East from West became pronounced and permanent, an emperor, from political grounds, decided in favour of that party in Antioch "with whom the bishops in Italy and the city of the Romans held intercourse" ('οις αν 'οι κατα την Ιταλιαν και την Ρωμαιων πολιν επισκοποι του δογματος επιστελλοιεν338). In this instance the interest of the Roman Church and the interest of the emperor coincided. But the Churches in the various provinces, being now completely organised and therefore seldom in need of any more help from outside, were henceforth in a position to pursue their own interest. So the bishop of Rome had step by step to fight for the new authority, which, being now based on a purely dogmatic theory and being forced to repudiate any empirical foundation, was inconsistent with the Church system that the Roman community more than any other had helped to build up. The proposition "the Roman Church always had the primacy" ("ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum") and the statement that "Catholic" virtually means "Roman Catholic" are gross fictions, when devised in honour of the temporary occupant of the Roman see and detached from the significance of the Eternal City in profane history; but, applied to the Church of the imperial capital, they contain a truth the denial of which is equivalent to renouncing the attempt to explain the process by which the Church was unified and catholicised.339 The title of the evangelical life (evangelical perfection, imitation of Christ) in contrast to that of ordinary Catholic Christians, a designation which we first find among the Encratites (see Vol. I. p. 237, note 3) and Marcionites (see Tertull., adv. Marc. IV. 14: "Venio nunc ad ordinarias sententias Marcionis, per quas proprietatem doctrinÆ suÆ inducit ad edictum, ut ita dixerim, Christi, Beati mendici etc."), and then in Tertullian (in his pre-Montanist period, see ad mart., de patient., de pÆnit., de idolol.; in his later career, see de coron. 8, 9, 13, 14; de fuga 8, 13; de ieiun. 6, 8, 15; de monog. 3, 5, 11; see AubÉ, Les ChrÉtiens dans l'empire Romain de la fin des Antonins, 1881, p. 237 ff.: "ChrÉtiens intransigeants et ChrÉtiens opportunistes") was expressly claimed by Novatian (Cypr., ep. 44. 3: "si Novatiani se adsertores evangelii et Christi esse confitentur"; 46. 2: "nec putetis, sic vos evangelium Christi adserere"). Cornelius in Eusebius, H. E. VI. 43. II calls Novatian: 'ο εκδικητης του ευαγγελιου. This is exceedingly instructive, and all the more so when we note that, even as far back as the end of the second century, it was not the "evangelical," but the lax, who declared the claims of the Gospel to be satisfied if they kept God in their hearts, but otherwise lived in entire conformity with the world. See Tertullian, de spec. 1; de pÆnit. 5: "Sed aiunt quidam, satis deum habere, si corde et animo suspiciatur, licet actu minus fiat; itaque se salvo metu et fide peccare, hoc est salva castitate matrimonia violare etc.": de ieiun. 2: "Et scimus, quales sint carnalium commodorum suasoriÆ, quam facile dicatur: Opus est de totis prÆcordiis credam, diligam deum et proximum tanquam me. In his enim duobus prÆceptis tota lex pendet et prophetÆ, non in pulmonum et intestinorum meorum inanitate." The Valentinian Heracleon was similarly understood, see above Vol. I. p. 262. Euseb., H. E. VII. 30. 19. The Church of Antioch sought to enter upon an independent line of development under Paul of Samosata. Paul's fall was the victory of Rome. We may suppose it to be highly probable, though to the best of my belief there is for the present no sure proof, that it was not till then that the Roman standards and sacraments, catholic and apostolic collection of Scriptures (see, on the contrary, the use of Scripture in the Didaskalia), apostolic rule of faith, and apostolic episcopacy attained supremacy in Antioch; but that they began to be introduced into that city about the time of Serapion's bishopric (that is, during the Easter controversy). The old records of the Church of Edessa have an important bearing on this point; and from these it is evident that her constitution did not begin to assume a Catholic form till the beginning of the 3rd century, and that as the result of connection with Rome. See the Doctrine of Addai by Phillips, p. 50: "Palut himself went to Antioch and received the hand of the priesthood from Serapion, bishop of Antioch. Serapion, bishop of Antioch, himself also received the hand from Zephyrinus, bishop of the city of Rome, from the succession of the hand of the priesthood of Simon Cephas, which he received from our Lord, who was there bishop of Rome 25 years, (sic) in the days of the CÆsar, who reigned there 13 years." (See also Tixeront, Edesse, pp. 149, 152.) Cf. with this the prominence given in the Acts of Scharbil and Barsamya to the fact that they were contemporaries of Fabian, bishop of Rome. We read there (see Rubens Duval, Les Actes de Scharbil et les Actes de Barsamya, Paris, 1889, and Histoire d'Eclesse, p. 130): "Barsamya (he was bishop of Edessa at the time of Decius) lived at the time of Fabian, bishop of Rome. He had received the laying on of hands from Abschelama, who had received it from Palut. Palut had been consecrated by Serapion, bishop of Antioch, and the latter had been consecrated by Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome." As regards the relation of the State of Rome to the Roman Church, that is, to the Roman bishop, who by the year 250 had already become a sort of prÆfectus urbis, with his district superintendents, the deacons, and in fact a sort of princeps Æmulus, cf. (1) the recorded comments of Alexander Severus on the Christians, and especially those on their organisation; (2) the edict of Maximinus Thrax and the banishment of the bishops Pontian and Hippolytus; (3) the attitude of Philip the Arabian; (4) the remarks of Decius in Cyp. ep. 55 (see above p. 124) and his proceedings against the Roman bishops, and (5) the attitude of Aurelian in Antioch. On the extent and organisation of the Roman Church about 250 see Euseb., H. E. VI. 43.
teness that I was embarrassed and apologetic. And if I was aware of Nikitin's remoteness I was equally conscious of Andrey Vassilievitch's proximity. He was a little man of a round plump figure; he wore a little imperial and sharp, inquisitive moustaches; his hair was light brown and he was immensely proud of it. In Petrograd he was always very smartly dressed. He bought his clothes in London and his plump hands had a movement familiar to all his friends, a flicker of his hands to his coat, his waistcoat, his trousers, to brush off some imaginary speck of dust. It was obvious now that he had given very much thought to his uniform. It fitted him perfectly, his epaulettes glittered, his boots shone, his sword was magnificent, but he looked, in spite of all his efforts, exactly what he was, a rich successful merchant; never was there any one less military. He had dressed up, one might suppose, for some fancy-dress ball. I could see at once that he was ill at ease, anxious as ever to please every one, to like every one, to be liked in return, but unable, because of some thought that troubled him, to give his whole attention to this business of pleasing. He greeted me with a warmth that was really genuine although he bestowed it upon his merest acquaintances. His great dream in life was a universal popularity—that every one should love him. At any rate at that time I thought that to be his dream—I know now that there was something else. "But Ivan Petrovitch!... This is delightful! Here we all are! What pleasure! Thank God, we're all here, no delays, nothing unfortunate. An Englishman?... Indeed, I am very glad! Your friend speaks Russian? Not very much, but enough?... You know Vladimir Stepanovitch? Dr. Nikitin ... my friend Meester Durward. Also Meester?... ah, I beg your pardon, Tronsart. Two Englishmen in our Otriad ... the alliance, yes, delightful!" Nikitin slowly opened his eyes, shook hands with me and with Trenchard, said that he was glad to see us and was silent again. Trenchard stammered and blushed, said something in very bad Russian, then glanced anxiously, with an eager light in his mild blue eyes, in the direction of the excited crowd that chattered and stirred about the train. There was something, in that look of his, that both touched and irritated me. "What does he come for?" I thought to myself. "With his bad Russian and his English prejudices. Of course he'll be lonely and then he'll be in every one's way." I could remember, readily enough, some of the loneliness of those first months of my own, when both war and the Russians had differed so from my expectations. This fellow looked just the figure for high romantic pictures. He had, doubtless, seen Russia in the colours of the pleasant superficial books of travel that have of late, in England, been so popular, books that see in the Russian a blessed sort of Idiot unable to read or write but vitally conscious of God, and in Russia a land of snow, ikons, mushrooms and pilgrims. Yes, he would be disappointed, unhappy, and tiresome. Upon myself would fall the chief burden of his trouble—I should have enough upon my shoulders without him. The golden fan had vanished from the station walls. A dim pale glow, with sparkles as of gold dust shining here and there upon that grimy world, faltered and trembled before the rattle and roar that threatened it. Nevertheless, Spring was with us at our departure. As the bells rang, as the ladies of our Committee screamed and laughed, as Anna Mihailovna showered directions and advice upon us, as we crowded backwards into our compartment before the first jolt of the departing train, Spring was with us ... but of course we were all of us too busy to be aware of it. Nikitin, I remember, reduced us very quickly, for all practical purposes, to a company of three. He lowered one of the upper beds, climbed into it, stretched himself out and lay in silence staring at the carriage-roof. His body was a shadow in the half-light, touched once and again by the gesture of the swinging lamp, that swept him out of darkness and back into it again. The remaining three of us did not during either that evening or the next day make much progress. At times there would of course be tea, and then the two Sisters who were in a compartment close at hand joined us. Marie Ivanovna, Trenchard's lady, was quieter than she had been before. Her face, which now seemed younger than ever, wore a look of important seriousness as though she were conscious of the indecency of her earlier excitement. She spoke very little, but no one could be in her presence without feeling the force of her vitality like some hammer, silent but of immense power, beating relentlessly upon the atmosphere. Its effect was the stronger in that one realised how utterly at present she was unable to deal with it. Her very helplessness was half of her power—half of her danger too. She was most certainly not beautiful; her nose was too short, her mouth too large, her forehead, from which her black hair was brushed straight back, too high. Her complexion was pale and when she was confused, excited, or pleased, the colour came into her face in a faint flush that ebbed and flowed but never reached its full glow. Her hands were thin and pale. It was her eyes that made her so young; they were so large and round and credulous, scornful sometimes with the scorn of the very young for all the things in the world that they have not experienced—but young especially in all their urgent capacity for life, in their confidence of carrying through all the demands that the High Gods might make upon them. I knew as I looked at her that at present her eagerness for experience was stronger, by far, than her eagerness for any single human being. I wondered whether Trenchard knew that. He was, beyond discussion, most desperately in love; the love of a shy man who has for so many years wondered and dreamed and finds, when the reality comes to him, that it is more, far more, than he had expected. When she came in to us he sat very quietly by her side and talked, if he talked at all, to the other Sister, a stout comfortable woman with no illusions, no expectations, immense capacity and an intensely serious attitude to food and drink. Trenchard let his eyes rest upon his lady's face whenever she was unaware, but I could see that he was desperately anxious not to offend her. His attitude to all women, even to Anna Petrovna, the motherly Sister, was that of a man who has always blundered in their company, who has been mocked, perhaps, for his mistakes. I could see, however, that his pride in his new possession, his pride and his happiness, carried with it an absolute assurance of his security. He had no doubts at all. He seemed, in this, even younger than she. Through all that long Spring day we wandered on—wandering it seemed as the train picked its way through the fields under a sky of blue thin and fine like glass; through a world so quiet and still that birds and children sang and called as though to reassure themselves that they were not alone. Nothing of the war in all this. At the stations there were officers eating "Ztchee" soup and veal and drinking glasses of weak tea, there were endless mountains of hot meat pies; the ikons in the restaurants looked down with benignancy and indifference upon the food and the soldiers and beyond the station the light green trees blowing in the little wind; the choruses of the soldiers came from their trains as though it were the very voice of Spring itself. It sounded in the distance like— Barinisha Barinisha—Pop. Barinisha—Pop. So—la, la—la ... Bar ... inisha la.
The bell rang, officers with meat pies in their hands came running across the platform. We swung on again through the green golden day. Andrey Vassilievitch of course chattered to us all. It was his way, and after a very brief experience of it one trained oneself to regard it as an inevitable background, like the jerking and smoke of the train, the dust, the shrill Russian voices in the next compartment, the blowing of paper to and fro in the corridor. I very quickly discovered that he was intensely conscious of Nikitin, who scarcely throughout the day moved from his upper bunk. Andrey Vassilievitch handed him his tea, brought his meat pies and sandwiches from the station, and offered him newspapers. He did not, however, speak to him and I was aware that throughout that long day he was never once unconscious of him. His chatter, which was always the most irrepressible thing in the world, had, perhaps, to-day some direction behind it. For the first time in my long acquaintance with Andrey Vassilievitch he interested me. The little man was distressed by the heat and dirt; his fingers were always flickering about his clothes. He was intensely polite to every one, especially to Trenchard, paying him many compliments about England and the English. The English were the only "sportsmen" in the world. He had been once in London for a week; it had rained very much, but one afternoon it had been fine, and then what clothes he had seen! But the City! He had been down into the City and was lost in admiration; he had also been lost in practical earnest and had appealed to one of the splendid policemen as to the way to Holborn Viaduct, a name that he was quite unable to pronounce. This incident he told us several times. Meanwhile ... he hoped he might ask without offence ... what was our Navy doing? Why weren't our submarines as active as the German submarines? And in France ... how many soldiers had we now? He did hope that he was not offending.... He spoke rapidly and indistinctly and much of his conversation Trenchard did not understand; he made some rather stupid replies and Marie Ivanovna laughed. She spoke English very well, with an accent that was charming. She had had, she said, an English nurse, and then an English governess. Of course they asked me many questions about the future. Would we be close to the Front? How many versts? Would there be plenty of work, and would we really see things? We wanted to be useful, no use going if we were not to be useful. How many Sisters were there then already? Were they "sympathetic"? Was Molozov, the head of the Otriad, an agreeable man? Was he kind, or would he be angry about simply nothing? Who would bandage and who would feed the villagers and who would bathe the soldiers? Were the officers of the Ninth Army pleasant to us? Where? Who? When? The day slipped away, the colours were drawn from the sky, the fields, the hills, the stars came out in their myriads, thickly clustered in ropes, and lakes and coils of light; the air was scented with flowers. The second night passed. The greater part of the next day was spent in H——, a snug town with a little park like a clean handkerchief, streets with coloured shops, neat and fresh-painted like toys from a toy-shop, little blue trains, statues of bewigged eighteenth-century kings and dukes, and a restaurant, painted Watteau-fashion with bright green groves, ladies in hoops and powder, and long-legged sheep. Here we wandered, five of us. Nikitin told us that he would meet us at the station that evening. He had his own business in the place. The little town was delivered over to the Russian army but seemed happy enough in its deliverance. I have never realised in any place more completely the spirit of bright cheerfulness, and the soldiers who thronged the little streets were as far from alarm and thunder as the painted sheep in the restaurant. Marie Ivanovna was as excited as though she had never been in a town before. She bought a number of things in the little expensive shops—eau-de-Cologne, sweets, an electric lamp, a wrist-watch, and some preserved fruit. Trenchard made her presents; she thanked him with a gratitude that made him so happy that he stumbled over his sword more than ever, blushing and pushing his cap back from his head. There are some who might have laughed at him, carrying her parcels, his face flushed, his legs knocking against one another, but it was here, at H——, that, for the first time, I positively began to like him. By the evening when we were assembled in the station again as I looked at him standing, waiting for directions, smiling, hot, untidy and awkward, I knew that I liked him very much indeed.... Our new train overflowed: with the greatest difficulty we secured a small wooden compartment with seats sharp and narrow and a smell of cabbage, bad tobacco, and dirty clothes. The floor was littered with sunflower seeds and the paper wrappings of cheap sweets. The air came in hot stale gusts down the corridor, met the yet closer air of our carriage, battled with it and retired defeated. We flung open the windows and a cloud of dust rose gaily to meet us. The whole of the Russian army seemed to be surging upon the platform; orderlies were searching for their masters, officers shouting for their orderlies, soldiers staggering along under bundles of clothes and rugs and pillows; here a group standing patiently, each man with his blue-painted kettle and on his face that expression of happy, half-amused, half-inquisitive, wholly amiable tolerance which reveals the Russian soldier's favourite attitude to the world. Two priests with wide dirty black hats, long hair, and soiled grey gowns slowly found their way through the crowd. A bunch of Austrian prisoners in their blue-grey uniform made a strange splash of colour in a corner of the platform, where, very contentedly, they were drinking their tea; some one in the invisible distance was playing the balalaÏka and every now and then some church bell in the town rang clearly and sharply above the tumult. The thin films of dust, yellow in the evening sun, hovered like golden smoke under the station roof. At last with a reluctant jerk and shiver the train was slowly persuaded to totter into the evening air; the evening scents were again around us, the balalaÏka, now upon the train, hummed behind us, as we pushed out upon her last night's journey. The two Sisters had the seats by the windows; Nikitin curled up his great length in another corner and Andrey Vassilievitch settled himself with much grunting and many exclamations beside him. I and Trenchard sat stiffly on the other side. I had, long ago, accustomed myself to sleep in any position on any occasion, however sudden it might be, and I fancied that I should now, in a moment, be asleep, although I had never, in my long travelling experience, known greater discomfort. I looked at the dim lamp, at the square patch beyond the windows, at Nikitin's long body, which seemed nevertheless so perfectly comfortable, and at Andrey Vassilievitch's short fat one, which was so obviously miserably uncomfortable; I smelt the cabbage, the dust, the sunflower seeds; first one bone then another ached, in the centre of my back there was an intolerable irritation; above all, there was in my brain some strange insistent compulsion, as though some one were forcing me to remember something that I had forgotten, or as though again some one were fore-warning me of some peril or complication. I had, very distinctly, that impression, so familiar to all of us, of passing through some experience already known: I had seen already the dim lamp, the square patch of evening sky, Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch.... I knew that in a moment Trenchard.... He did.... He touched my arm. "Can you sleep?" he whispered. "No," I answered. "It's terribly hot, close—smell.... Are you going to sleep?" "No," I whispered back again. "Let us move into the corridor. It will be cooler there." There seemed to me quite a new sound of determination and resolve in his voice. His nervousness had left him with the daylight. He led the way out of the carriage, turned down the little seats in the corridor, provided cigarettes. "It isn't much better here, but we'll have the window open. It'll get better. This is really war, isn't it, being so uncomfortable as this? I feel as though things were really beginning." "Well, we shall be there to-morrow night," I answered him. "I hope you're not going to be disappointed." "Disappointed in what?" His voice was quite sharp as he spoke to me, "You don't know what I want." "I suppose you're like the rest of us. You want to see what war really is. You want to do some good if you can. You want to be seriously occupied in it to prevent your thinking too much about it. Then, because you're English, you want to see what the Russians are really like. You're curious and sympathetic, inquisitive and, perhaps, a little sentimental about it.... Am I right?" "No, not quite—there are other things. I'd like to tell you. Do you mind," he said suddenly looking up straight into my face with a confiding smile that was especially his own, "if I talk, if I tell you why I've come? I've no right, I don't know you—but I'm so happy to-night that I must talk—I'm so happy that I feel as though I shall never get through the night alive." Of our conversation after this, or rather of his talk, excited, eager, intimate and shy, old and wise and very, very young, I remember now, I think, every word with especial vividness. After events were to fix it all in my brain with peculiar accuracy, but his narration had that night of itself its own individual quality. His was no ordinary personality, or, at any rate, the especial circumstances of the time drove it into no ordinary shape, and I believe that never before in all his days had he spoken freely and eagerly to any one. It was simply to-night his exultation and happiness that impelled him, perhaps also some sense of high adventure that his romantic character would, most inevitably, extract from our expedition and its purposes. At any rate, I listened, saying a word now and then, whilst the hour grew dark, lit only by the stars, then trembled into a pale dawn overladen with grey dense clouds, which again broke, rolled away, before another shining, glittering morning. I remember that it was broad daylight when we, at last, left the corridor. "I'm thirty-three," he said. "I don't feel it, of course; I seem to be now only just beginning life. I'm a very unpractical person and in that way, perhaps, I'm younger than my age." I remember that I said something to him about his, most certainly, appearing younger. "Most certainly I do. I'm just the same as when I went up to Cambridge and I was then as when I first went to Rugby. Nothing seems to have had any effect upon me—except, perhaps, these last two days. Do you know Glebeshire?" he asked me abruptly. I said that I had spent one summer there with a reading party. "Ah," he answered, smiling, "I can tell, by the way you say that, that you don't really know it at all. To us Glebeshire people it's impossible to speak of it so easily. There are Trenchards all over Glebeshire, you know, lots of them. In Polchester, our cathedral town, where I was born, there are at least four Trenchard families. Then in Truxe, at Garth, at Rasselas, at Clinton—but why should I bother you with all this? It's only to tell you that the Trenchards are simply Glebeshire for ever and ever. To a Trenchard, anywhere in the world, Glebeshire is hearth and home." "I believe I've met," I said, "your Trenchards of Garth. George Trenchard.... She was a Faunder. They have a house in Westminster. There's a charming Miss Trenchard with whom I danced." "Yes, those are the George Trenchards," he answered with eagerness and delight, as though I had formed a new link with him. "Fancy your knowing them! How small the world is! My father was a cousin, a first cousin, of George Trenchard's. The girl—you must mean Millie—is delightful. Katherine, the elder sister, is married now. She too is charming, but in a different, graver way." He spoke of them all with a serious lingering pleasure, as though he were summoning them all into the dusty, stuffy corridor, carrying them with him into these strange countries and perilous adventures. "They always laughed at me—Millie especially; I've stayed sometimes with them at Garth. But I didn't mean really to talk about them—I only wanted to show you how deeply Glebeshire matters to the Trenchards, and whatever happens, wherever a Trenchard goes, he always really takes Glebeshire with him. I was born in Polchester, as I said. My father had a little property there, but we always lived in a little round bow-windowed house in the Cathedral Close. I was simply brought up on the Cathedral. From my bedroom windows I looked on the whole of it. In our drawing-room you could hear the booming of the organ. I was always watching the canons crossing the cathedral green, counting the strokes of the cathedral bell, listening to the cawing of the cathedral rooks, smelling the cathedral smell of cold stone, wet umbrellas and dusty hassocks, looking up at the high tower and wondering whether anywhere in the world there was anything so grand and fine. My moral world, too, was built on the cathedral—on the cathedral 'don'ts' and 'musts,' on the cathedral hours and the cathedral prayers, and the cathedral ambitions and disappointments. My father's great passion was golf. He was not a religious man. But my mother believed in the cathedral with a passion that was almost a disease. She died looking at it. Her spirit is somewhere round it now, I do believe." He paused, then went on: "It was the cathedral that made me so unpractical, I suppose. I who am an only child—I believed implicitly in what I was told and it always was my mother who told me everything." He was, I thought, the very simplest person to whom I had ever listened. The irritation that I had already felt on several occasions in his company again returned. "My father's great passion was golf" would surely in the mouth of another have had some tinge of irony. In Trenchard's mild blue eyes irony was an incredible element. I could fancy what he would have to say to the very gentlest of cynics; some of the sympathy I had felt for him during the afternoon had left me. "He's very little short of an idiot," I thought. "He's going to be dreadfully in the way." "I was the only child, you see," he continued. "Of course I was a great deal to my mother and she to me. We were always together. I don't think that even when I was very young I believed all that she told me. She seemed to me always to take everything for granted. Heaven to me was so mysterious and she had such definite knowledge. I always liked things to be indefinite ... I do still." He laughed, paused for a moment, but was plainly now off on his fine white horse, charging the air, to be stopped by no mortal challenge. I had for a moment the thought that I would slip from my seat and leave him; I didn't believe that he would have noticed my absence; but the thought of that small stuffy carriage held me. But he was conscious of me; like the Ancient Mariner he fixed upon my arm his hand and stared into my eyes: "There were other things that puzzled me. There was, for instance, the chief doctor in our town. He was a large, fat, jolly red-faced man, clean-shaven, with white hair. He was considered the best doctor in the place—all the old maids went to him. He was immensely jolly, you could hear his laugh from one end of the street to the other. He was married, had a delightful little house, where his wife gave charming dinners. He was stupid and self-satisfied. Even at his own work he was stupid, reading nothing, careless and forgetful, thinking about golf and food only all his days. He was a snob too and would give up any one for the people at the Castle. Even when I was a small boy I somehow knew all this about him. My father thought the world of him and loved to play golf with him.... He was completely happy and successful and popular. Then there was another man, an old canon who taught me Latin before I went to Rugby, an old, untidy, dirty man, whose sermons were dull and his manners bad. He was a failure in life—and he was a failure to himself; dissatisfied with what he used to call his 'bundle of rotten twigs,' his life and habits and thoughts. But he thought that somewhere there was something he would find that would save him—somewhere, sometime ... not God merely—'like a key that will open all the doors in the house.' To me he was fascinating. He knew so much, he was so humble, so kind, so amusing. Nobody liked him, of course. They tried to turn him out of the place, gave him a little living at last, and he married his cook. Was she his key? She may have been ... I never saw him again. But I used to wonder. Why was the doctor so happy and the little canon so unhappy, the doctor so successful, the canon so unsuccessful? I decided that the great thing was to be satisfied with oneself. I determined that I would be satisfied with myself. Well, of course I never was—never have been. Something wouldn't let me alone. The key to the door, perhaps ... everything was shut up inside me, and at last I began to wonder whether there was anything there at all. When at nineteen I went to Cambridge I was very unhappy. Whilst I was there my mother died. I came back to the little bow-windowed house and lived with my father. I was quite alone in the world." In spite of myself I had a little movement of impatience. "How self-centred the man is! As though his case were at all peculiar! Wants shaking up and knocking about." He seemed to know my thought. "You must think me self-centred! I was. For thirteen whole years I thought of nothing but myself, my miserable self, all shut up in that little town. I talked to no one. I did not even read—I used to sit in the dark of the cathedral nave and listen to the organ. I'd walk in the orchards and the woods. I would wonder, wonder, wonder about people and I grew more and more frightened of talking, of meeting people, of little local dinner-parties. It was as though I were on one side of the river and they were all on the other. I would think sometimes how splendid it would be if I could cross—but I couldn't cross. Every year it became more impossible!" "You wanted some one to take you out of yourself," I said, and then shuddered at my own banality. But he took me very seriously. "I did. Of course," he answered. "But who would bother? They all thought me impossible. The girls all laughed at me—my own cousins. Sometimes people tried to help me. They never went far enough. They gave me up too soon." "He evidently thinks he was worth a lot of trouble," I thought irritably. But suddenly he laughed. "That same doctor one day spoke of me, not knowing that I was near him; or perhaps he knew and thought it would be good for me. 'Oh, Trenchard,' he said. 'He ought to be in a nunnery ... and he'd be quite safe, too. He'd never cause a scandal!' They thought of me as something not quite human. My father was very old now. Just before he died, he said: 'I'd like to have had a son!' He never noticed me at his bedside when he died. I was a great disappointment to him." "Well," I said at last to break a long pause that followed his last words, "what did you think about all that time you were alone?" "I used to think always about two things," he said very solemnly. "One was love. I used to think how splendid it would be if only there would be some one to whom I could dedicate my devotion. I didn't care if I got much in return or no, but they must be willing to have it ready for me to devote myself altogether. I used to watch the ladies in our town and select them, one after another. Of course they never knew and they would only have laughed had they known. But I felt quite desperate sometimes. I had so much in me to give to some one and the years were all slipping by and it became, every day, more difficult. There was a girl ... something seemed to begin between us. She was the daughter of one of the canons, dark-haired, and she used to wear a lilac-coloured dress. She was very kind; once when we were walking through the town I began to talk to her. I believe she understood, because she was very, very young—only about eighteen—and hadn't begun to laugh at me yet. She had a dimple in one cheek, very charming—but some man from London came to stay at the Castle and she was engaged to him. Then there were Katherine and Millie Trenchard, of whom we were talking. Katherine never laughed at me; she was serious and helped her mother about all the household things and the village where they lived. Afterwards she ran away with a young man and was married in London—very strange because she was so serious. There was a great deal of talk about it at the time. Millie too was charming. She laughed at me, of course, but she laughed at every one. At any rate she was only cousinly to me; she would not have cared for my devotion." As he spoke I had a picture in my mind of poor Trenchard searching the countryside for some one to whom he might be devoted, tongue-tied, clumsy, stumbling and stuttering, a village Don Quixote with a stammer and without a Dulcinea. "They must have been difficult years," I said, and again cursed myself for my banality. "They were," he answered very gravely, "Very difficult." "And your other thoughts?" I asked him. "They were about death," he replied. "I had, from my very earliest years, a great terror of death. You might think that my life was not so pleasant that I should mind, very greatly, leaving it. But I was always thinking—hoping that I should live to be very old, even though I lost all my limbs and faculties. I believed that there was life of some sort after death, but just as I would hesitate outside a house a quarter of an hour from terror of meeting new faces so I felt about another life—I couldn't bear all the introductions and the clumsy mistakes that I should be sure to make. But it was more personal than that. I had a horrible old uncle who died when I was a boy. He was a very ugly old man, bent and whitened and gnarled, a face and hands twisted with rheumatism. I used to call him Quilp to myself. He always wore, I remember, an old-fashioned dress. Velvet knee-breeches, a white stock, black shoes with buckles. I remember that his hands were damp and hair grew in bushes out of his ears. Well, I saw him once or twice and he filled me with terror like a figure out of the tapestry up at the Castle. Then he died. "Our house was small and badly shaped, full of dark corners, and after his death he seemed to me to haunt the place. He figured Death to me and until I was quite old, until I went to Rugby, I fancied that he was sitting in a dark corner, on a chair, waiting, with his hands on his lap, until the time came for him to take me. Sometimes I would fancy that I heard him moving from one room to another, bringing his chair with him. Then I began to have a dream, a dream that frequently recurred all the time that I was growing up. It was a dream about a huge dark house in a huge dark forest. It was early morning, the light just glimmering between the thick damp trees. A large party of people gathered together in a high empty room prepared for an expedition. I was one of them and I was filled with sharp agonising terror. Sometimes in my dream I drank to give myself courage and the glass clattered against my lips. Sometimes I talked with one of the company; the room was very dark and I could see no faces. Then we would start trooping out into the bitterly cold morning air. There would be many horses and dogs. We would lead off into the forest and soon (it always happened) I would find myself alone—alone with the dripping trees high around me and the light that seemed to grow no lighter and the intense cold. Then suddenly it would be that I was the hunted, not the hunter. It was Death whom we were hunting—Death, for me my uncle—and I would fancy him waiting in the darkness, watching me, smiling, hearing his hunters draw off the scent, knowing that they would not find him, but that he had found me. Then my knees would fail me, I would sink down in a sweat of terror, and—wake!... Brrr!... I can see it now!" He shook himself, turning round to me as though he were suddenly ashamed of himself, with a laugh half-shy, half-retrospective. "We all have our dreams," he continued. "But this came too often—again and again. The question of death became my constant preoccupation as I grew to think I would never see it, nor hear men speak of it, nor—" "And you have come," I could not but interrupt him, "here, to the very fortress—Why, man!—" "I know," he answered, smiling at me. "It must seem to you ridiculous. But I am a different person now—very different. Now I am ready, eager for anything. Death can be nothing to me now, or if that is too bold, at least I may say that I am prepared to meet him—anywhere—at any time. I want to meet him—I want to show—" "We have all," I said, "in our hearts, perhaps, come like that—come to prove that our secret picture of ourselves, that picture so different from our friends' opinion of us, is really the true one. We can fancy them saying afterwards: 'Well, I never knew that so-and-so had so much in him!' We always knew." "No, you see," Trenchard said eagerly, "there can be only one person now about whose opinion I care. If she thinks well of me—" "You are very much in love," I said, and loosed, as I had expected, the torrents of his happiness upon me. "I was in Polchester when the war broke out. The town received it rather as though a first-class company had come from London to act in the Assembly Rooms for a fortnight. It was dramatic and picturesque and pleasantly patriotic. They see it otherwise now, I fancy. I seemed at once to think of Russia. For one thing I wanted desperately to help, and I thought that in England they would only laugh at me as they had always done. I am short-sighted. I knew that I should never be a soldier. I fancied that in Russia they would not say: 'Oh, John Trenchard of Polchester.... He's no good!' before they'd seen whether I could do anything. Then of course I had read about the country—Tolstoi and Turgeniev, and a little Dostoevsky and even Gorki and Tchekov. I went quite suddenly, making up my mind one evening. I seemed to begin to be a new man out of England. The journey delighted me.... I was in Moscow before I knew. I was there three months trying to learn Russian. Then I came to Petrograd and through the English Embassy found a place in one of the hospitals, where I worked as a sanitar for three months. I did not leave England until November, so that I have been in Russia now just six months. It was in this hospital that I met Miss Krassovsky—Marie Ivanovna. From the first moment I loved her, of course. And she liked me. She was the first woman, since my mother, who had really liked me. She quickly saw my devotion and she laughed a little, but she was always kind. I could talk to her and she liked to listen. She had—she has, great ideals, great hopes and ambitions. We worked together there and then, afterwards, in those beautiful spring evenings in Petrograd when the canals shone all night and the houses were purple, we walked.... The night before last night I begged her to marry me ... and she accepted. She said that we would go together to the war, that I should be her knight and she my lady and that we would care for the wounds of the whole world. Ah! what a night that was—shall I ever forget it? After she had left me, I walked all night and sang.... I was mad.... I am mad now. That she should love me! She, so beautiful, so pure, so wonderful. I at whom women have always laughed. Ah! God forgive me, my heart will break—" As he spoke the heavy grey clouds of the first dawn were parting and a faint very liquid blue, almost white and very cold, hovered above dim shapeless trees and fields. I flung open the corridor window and a sound of running water and the first notes of some sleepy bird met me. "And her family?" I said. "Who are they, and will they not mind her marrying an Englishman?" "She has only a mother," he answered. "I fancy that Marie has always had her own way." "Yes," I thought to myself. "I also fancy that that is so." A sense of almost fatherly protection had developed in myself towards him. How could he, who knew nothing at all of women, hope to manage that self-willed, eager, independent girl? Why, why, why had she engaged herself to him? I fancied that very possibly there were qualities in him—his very childishness and helplessness—which, if they only irritated an Englishman, would attract a Russian. Lame dogs find a warm home in Russia. But did she know anything about him? Would she not, in a week, be irritated by his incapacity? And he—he—bless his innocence!—was so confident as though he had been married to her for years! "Look here!" I said, moved by a sudden impulse. "Will you mind if, sometimes, I tell you things? I've been to the war before. It's a strange life, unlike anything you've ever known—and Russians too are strange—especially at first. You won't take it badly, if—" He touched my arm with his hand while his whole face was lighted with his smile. "Why, my dear fellow, I shall be proud. No one has ever thought me worth the bother. I want to be—to be—at my best here. Practical, you know—like others. I don't want her to think me—" "No, exactly," I said hurriedly, "I understand." Gold was creeping into the sky. A lark rose, triumphant. A pool amongst the reeds blazed like a brazen shield. The Spring day had flung back her doors. I saw that suddenly fatigue had leapt upon my friend. He tottered on his little seat, then his face, grey in the light, fell forward. I caught him in my arms, half carried, half led him into our little carriage, arranged him in the empty corner, and left him, fast, utterly fast, asleep.
the worldliness and lack of genuineness pertaining to the system. But to the layman who seeks from the Church nothing more than aid in raising himself to God, this worldliness and unveracity do not exist. During the Greek period, however, laymen were only able to recognise this advantage to a limited extent. The Church dogmatic and the ecclesiastical system were still too closely connected with their own interests. It was in the Middle Ages, that the Church first became a Holy Mother and her house a house of prayer—for the Germanic peoples; for these races were really the children of the Church, and they themselves had not helped to rear the house in which they worshipped. ADDENDA. I. THE PRIESTHOOD. The completion of the old Catholic conception of the Church, as this idea was developed in the latter half of the third century, is perhaps most clearly shown in the attribute of priesthood, with which the clergy were invested and which conferred on them the greatest importance.259 The development of this conception, whose adoption is a proof that the Church had assumed a heathen complexion, cannot be more particularly treated of here.260 What meaning it has is shown by its application in Cyprian and the original of the first six books of the Apostolic Constitutions (see Book II.). The bishops (and also the presbyters) are priests, in so far as they alone are empowered to present the sacrifice as representatives of the congregation before God261 and in so far as they dispense or refuse the divine grace as representatives of God in relation to the congregation. In this sense they are also judges in God's stead.262 The position here conceded to the higher clergy corresponds to that of the mystagogue in heathen religions, and is acknowledged to be borrowed from the latter.263 Divine grace already appears as a sacramental consecration of an objective nature, the bestowal of which is confined to spiritual personages chosen by God. This fact is no way affected by the perception that an ever increasing reference is made to the Old Testament priests as well as to the whole Jewish ceremonial and ecclesiastical regulations.264 It is true that there is no other respect in which Old Testament commandments were incorporated with Christianity to such an extent as they were in this.265 But it can be proved that this formal adoption everywhere took place at a subsequent date, that is, it had practically no influence on the development itself, which was not legitimised by the commandments till a later period, and that often in a somewhat lame fashion. We may perhaps say that the development which made the bishops and elders priests altered the inward form of the Church in a more radical fashion than any other. "Gnosticism," which the Church had repudiated in the second century, became part of her own system in the third. As her integrity had been made dependent on inalienable objective standards, the adoption even of this greatest innovation, which indeed was in complete harmony with the secular element within her, was an elementary necessity. In regard to every sphere of Church life, and hence also in respect to the development of dogma266 and the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, the priesthood proved of the highest significance. The clerical exposition of the sacred books, with its frightful ideas, found its earliest advocate in Cyprian and had thus a most skilful champion at the very first.267 II. SACRIFICE. In Book I., chap. III., § 7, we have already shown what a wide field the idea of sacrifice occupied in primitive Christendom, and how it was specially connected with the celebration of the Lord's Supper. The latter was regarded as the pure (i.e., to be presented with a pure heart), bloodless thank offering of which Malachi had prophesied in I. 11. Priesthood and sacrifice, however, are mutually conditioned. The alteration of the concept "priest" necessarily led to a simultaneous and corresponding change in the idea of sacrifice, just as, conversely, the latter reacted on the former.268 In IrenÆus and Tertullian the old conception of sacrifice, viz., that prayers are the Christian sacrifice and that the disposition of the believer hallows his whole life even as it does his offering, and forms a well-pleasing sacrifice to God, remains essentially unchanged. In particular, there is no evidence of any alteration in the notion of sacrifice connected with the Lord's Supper.269 But nevertheless we can already trace a certain degree of modification in Tertullian. Not only does he give fasting, voluntary celibacy, martyrdom, etc., special prominence among the sacrificial acts of a Christian life, and extol their religious value—as had already been done before; but he also attributes a God-propitiating significance to these performances, and plainly designates them as "merita" ("promereri deum"). To the best of my belief Tertullian was the first who definitely regarded ascetic performances as propitiatory offerings and ascribed to them the "potestas reconciliandi iratum deum."270 But he himself was far from using this fatal theory, so often found in his works, to support a lax Church practice that made Christianity consist in outward forms. This result did not come about till the eventful decades, prolific in new developments, that elapsed between the persecutions of Septimius and Decius; and in the West it is again Cyprian who is our earliest witness as to the new view and practice.271 In the first place, Cyprian was quite familiar with the idea of ascetic propitiations and utilised it in the interest of the Catholicity of the Church; secondly, he propounded a new theory of the offering in the cultus. As far as the first point is concerned, Cyprian's injunctions with regard to it are everywhere based on the understanding that even after baptism no one can be without sin (de op. et cleemos. 3); and also on the firm conviction that this sacrament can only have a retrospective virtue. Hence he concludes that we must appease God, whose wrath has been aroused by sin, through performances of our own, that is, through offerings that bear the character of "satisfactions." In other words we must blot out transgressions by specially meritorious deeds in order thus to escape eternal punishment. These deeds Cyprian terms "merita," which either possess the character of atonements, or, in case there are no sins to be expiated, entitle the Christian to a special reward (merces).272 But, along with lamentationes and acts of penance, it is principally alms-giving that forms such means of atonement (see de lapsis, 35, 36). In Cyprian's eyes this is already the proper satisfaction; mere prayer, that is, devotional exercises unaccompanied by fasting and alms, being regarded as "bare and unfruitful." In the work "de opere et eleemosynis" which, after a fashion highly characteristic of Cyprian, is made dependent on Sirach and Tobias, he has set forth a detailed theory of what we may call alms-giving as a means of grace in its relation to baptism and salvation.273 However, this practice can only be viewed as a means of grace in Cyprian's sense in so far as God has accepted it, that is, pointed it out. In itself it is a free human act. After the Decian persecution and the rearrangement of ecclesiastical affairs necessitated by it, works and alms (opera et eleemosynÆ) made their way into the absolution system of the Church, and were assigned a permanent place in it. Even the Christian who has forfeited his Church membership by abjuration may ultimately recover it by deeds of sacrifice, of course under the guidance and intercessory coÖperation of the Church. The dogmatic dilemma we find here cannot be more clearly characterised than by simply placing the two doctrines professed by Cyprian side by side. These are:—(1) that the sinfulness common to each individual can only be once extirpated by the power of baptism derived from the work of Christ, and (2) that transgressions committed after baptism, inclusive of mortal sins, can and must be expiated solely by spontaneous acts of sacrifice under the guidance of kind mother Church.274 A Church capable of being permanently satisfied with such doctrines would very soon have lost the last remains of her Christian character. What was wanted was a means of grace, similar to baptism and granted by God through Christ, to which the opera et eleemosynÆ are merely to bear the relation of accompanying acts. But Cyprian was no dogmatist and was not able to form a doctrine of the means of grace. He never got beyond his "propitiate God the judge by sacrifices after baptism" ("promereri deum judicem post baptismum sacrificiis"), and merely hinted, in an obscure way, that the absolution of him who has committed a deadly sin after baptism emanates from the same readiness of God to forgive as is expressed in that rite, and that membership in the Church is a condition of absolution. His whole theory as to the legal nature of man's (the Christian's) relationship to God, and the practice, inaugurated by Tertullian, of designating this connection by terms derived from Roman law continued to prevail in the West down to Augustine's time.275 But, during this whole interval, no book was written by a Western Churchman which made the salvation of the sinful Christian dependent on ascetic offerings of atonement, with so little regard to Christ's grace and the divine factor in the case, as Cyprian's work de opere et eleemosynis. No less significant is Cyprian's advance as regards the idea of the sacrifice in public worship, and that in three respects. To begin with, Cyprian was the first to associate the specific offering, i.e., the Lord's Supper276 with the specific priesthood. Secondly, he was the first to designate the passio dominis, nay, the sanguis Christi and the dominica hostia as the object of the eucharistic offering.277 Thirdly, he expressly represented the celebration of the Lord's Supper as an incorporation of the congregation and its individual members with Christ, and was the first to bear clear testimony as to the special importance attributed to commemoration of the celebrators ("vivi et defuncti"), though no other can be ascertained than a specially strong intercession.278 But this is really the essential effect of the sacrifice of the supper as regards the celebrators; for however much the conceptions about this ceremony might be heightened, and whatever additions might be made to its ritual, forgiveness of sins in the strict sense could not be associated with it. Cyprian's statement that every celebration of the Lord's Supper is a repetition or imitation of Christ's sacrifice of himself, and that the ceremony has therefore an expiatory value remains a mere assertion, though the Romish Church still continues to repeat this doctrine to the present day. For the idea that partaking of the Lord's Supper cleansed from sin like the mysteries of the Great Mother (magna mater) and Mithras, though naturally suggested by the ceremonial practice, was counteracted by the Church principles of penance and by the doctrine of baptism. As a sacrificial rite the Supper never became a ceremony equivalent in effect to baptism. But no doubt, as far as the popular conception was concerned, the solemn ritual copied from the ancient mysteries could not but attain an indescribably important significance. It is not possible, within the framework of the history of dogma, to describe the development of religious ceremonial in the third century, and to show what a radical alteration took place in men's conceptions with regard to it (cf. for example, Justin with Cyprian). But, in dealing with the history of dogma within this period, we must clearly keep in view the development of the cultus, the new conceptions of the value of ritual, and the reference of ceremonial usages to apostolic tradition; for there was plainly a remodelling of the ritual in imitation of the ancient mysteries and of the heathen sacrificial system, and this fact is admitted by Protestant scholars of all parties. Ceremonial and doctrine may indeed be at variance, for the latter may lag behind the former and vice versa, but they are never subject to entirely different conditions. III. MEANS OF GRACE, BAPTISM, and EUCHARIST. That which the Western Church of post-Augustinian times calls sacrament in the specific sense of the word (means of grace) was only possessed by the Church of the third century in the form of baptism.279 In strict theory she still held that the grace once bestowed in this rite could be conferred by no holy ceremony of equal virtue, that is, by no fresh sacrament. The baptised Christian has no means of grace, conferred by Christ, at his disposal, but has his law to fulfil (see, e.g., Iren. IV. 27. 2). But, as soon as the Church began to absolve mortal sinners, she practically possessed in absolution a real means of grace that was equally effective with baptism from the moment that this remission became unlimited in its application.280 The notions as to this means of grace, however, continued quite uncertain in so far as the thought of God's absolving the sinner through the priest was qualified by the other theory (see above) which asserted that forgiveness was obtained through the penitential acts of transgressors (especially baptism with blood, and next in importance lamentationes, ieiunia, eleemosynÆ). In the third century there were manifold holy dispensations of grace by the hands of priests; but there was still no theory which traced the means of grace to the historical work of Christ in the same way that the grace bestowed in baptism was derived from it. From Cyprian's epistles and the anti-Novatian sections in the first six books of the Apostolic Constitutions we indeed see that appeal was not unfrequently made to the power of forgiving sins bestowed on the Apostles and to Christ's declaration that he received sinners; but, as the Church had not made up her mind to repeat baptism, so also she had yet no theory that expressly and clearly supplemented this rite by a sacramentum absolutionis. In this respect, as well as in regard to the sacramentum ordinis, first instituted by Augustine, theory remained far behind practice. This was by no means an advantage, for, as a matter of fact, the whole religious ceremonial was already regarded as a system of means of grace. The consciousness of a personal, living connection of the individual with God through Christ had already disappeared, and the hesitation in setting up new means of grace had only the doubtful result of increasing the significance of human acts, such as offerings and satisfactions, to a dangerous extent. Since the middle of the second century the notions of baptism281 in the Church have not essentially altered (see Vol. I. p. 206 ff.). The result of baptism was universally considered to be forgiveness of sins, and this pardon was supposed to effect an actual sinlessness which now required to be maintained.282 We frequently find "deliverance from death," "regeneration of man," "restoration to the image of God," and "obtaining of the Holy Spirit." ("Absolutio mortes," "regeneratio hominis," "restitutio ad similitudinem dei" and "consecutio spiritus sancti") named along with the "remission of sins" and "obtaining of eternal life" ("remissio delictorum" and "consecutio Æternitatis"). Examples are to be found in Tertullian283 adv. Marc. I. 28 and elsewhere; and Cyprian speaks of the "bath of regeneration and sanctification" ("lavacrum regenerationis et sanctificationis"). Moreover, we pretty frequently find rhetorical passages where, on the strength of New Testament texts, all possible blessings are associated with baptism.284 The constant additions to the baptismal ritual, a process which had begun at a very early period, are partly due to the intention of symbolising these supposedly manifold virtues of baptism,285 and partly owe their origin to the endeavour to provide the great mystery with fit accompaniments.286 As yet the separate acts can hardly be proved to have an independent signification.287 The water was regarded both as the symbol of the purification of the soul and as an efficacious, holy medium of the Spirit (in accordance with Gen. I. 2; water and Spirit are associated with each other, especially in Cyprian's epistles on baptism). He who asserted the latter did not thereby repudiate the former (see Orig. in Joann. Tom. VI. 17, Opp. IV. p. 133).288 Complete obscurity prevails as to the Church's adoption of the practice of child baptism, which, though it owes its origin to the idea of this ceremony being indispensable to salvation, is nevertheless a proof that the superstitious view of baptism had increased.289 In the time of IrenÆus (II. 22. 4) and Tertullian (de bapt. 18) child baptism had already become very general and was founded on Matt. XIX. 14. We have no testimony regarding it from earlier times; Clement of Alexandria does not yet assume it. Tertullian argued against it not only because he regarded conscious faith as a needful preliminary condition, but also because he thought it advisable to delay baptism (cunctatio baptismi) on account of the responsibility involved in it (pondus baptismi). He says: "It is more advantageous to delay baptism, especially in the case of little children. For why is it necessary for the sponsors" (this is the first mention of "godparents") "also to be thrust into danger?... let the little ones therefore come when they are growing up; let them come when they are learning, when they are taught where they are coming to; let them become Christians when they are able to know Christ. Why does an age of innocence hasten to the remission of sins? People will act more cautiously in worldly affairs, so that one who is not trusted with earthly things is trusted with divine. Whoever understands the responsibility of baptism will fear its attainment more than its delay."290 To all appearance the practice of immediately baptising the children of Christian families was universally adopted in the Church in the course of the third century. (Origen, Comment, in ep. ad Rom. V. 9, Opp. IV. p. 565, declared child baptism to be a custom handed down by the Apostles.) Grown up people, on the other hand, frequently postponed baptism, but this habit was disapproved.291 The Lord's Supper was not only regarded as a sacrifice, but also as a divine gift.292 The effects of this gift were not theoretically fixed, because these were excluded by the strict scheme293 of baptismal grace and baptismal obligation. But in practice Christians more and more assumed a real bestowal of heavenly gifts in the holy food, and gave themselves over to superstitious theories. This bestowal was sometimes regarded as a spiritual and sometimes as a bodily self-communication of Christ, that is, as a miraculous implanting of divine life. Here ethical and physical, and again ethical and theoretical features were intermixed with each other. The utterances of the Fathers to which we have access do not allow us to classify these elements here; for to all appearance not a single one clearly distinguished between spiritual and bodily, or ethical and intellectual effects unless he was in principle a spiritualist. But even a writer of this kind had quite as superstitious an idea of the holy elements as the rest. Thus the holy meal was extolled as the communication of incorruption, as a pledge of resurrection, as a medium of the union of the flesh with the Holy Spirit; and again as food of the soul, as the bearer of the Spirit of Christ (the Logos), as the means of strengthening faith and knowledge, as a sanctifying of the whole personality. The thought of the forgiveness of sins fell quite into the background. This ever changing conception, as it seems to us, of the effects of partaking of the Lord's Supper had also a parallel in the notions as to the relation between the visible elements and the body of Christ. So far as we are able to judge no one felt that there was a problem here, no one enquired whether this relation was realistic or symbolical. The symbol is the mystery and the mystery was not conceivable without a symbol. What we now-a-days understand by "symbol" is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time "symbol" denoted a thing which, in some kind of way, really is what it signifies; but, on the other hand, according to the ideas of that period, the really heavenly element lay either in or behind the visible form without being identical with it. Accordingly the distinction of a symbolic and realistic conception of the Supper is altogether to be rejected; we could more rightly distinguish between materialistic, dyophysite, and docetic conceptions which, however, are not to be regarded as severally exclusive in the strict sense. In the popular idea the consecrated elements were heavenly fragments of magical virtue (see Cypr., de laps. 25; Euseb., H. E. VI. 44). With these the rank and file of third-century Christians already connected many superstitious notions which the priests tolerated or shared.294 The antignostic Fathers acknowledged that the consecrated food consisted of two things, an earthly (the elements) and a heavenly (the real body of Christ). They thus saw in the sacrament a guarantee of the union between spirit and flesh, which the Gnostics denied; and a pledge of the resurrection of the flesh nourished by the blood of the Lord (Justin; Iren. IV. 18. 4, 5; V. 2. 2, 3; likewise Tertullian who is erroneously credited with a "symbolical" doctrine295). Clement and Origen "spiritualise," because, like Ignatius, they assign a spiritual significance to the flesh and blood of Christ himself (summary of wisdom). To judge from the exceedingly confused passage in PÆd. II. 2, Clement distinguishes a spiritual and a material blood of Christ. Finally, however, he sees in the Eucharist the union of the divine Logos with the human spirit, recognises, like Cyprian at a later period, that the mixture of wine with water in the symbol represents the spiritual process, and lastly does not fail to attribute to the holy food a relationship to the body.296 It is true that Origen, the great mysteriosophist and theologian of sacrifice, expressed himself in plainly "spiritualistic" fashion; but in his eyes religious mysteries and the whole person of Christ lay in the province of the spirit, and therefore his theory of the Supper is not "symbolical," but conformable to his doctrine of Christ. Besides, Origen was only able to recognise spiritual aids in the sphere of the intellect and the disposition, and in the assistance given to these by man's own free and spontaneous efforts. Eating and drinking and, in general, participation in a ceremonial are from Origen's standpoint completely indifferent matters. The intelligent Christian feeds at all times on the body of Christ, that is, on the Word of God, and thus celebrates a never ending Supper (c. Cels. VIII. 22). Origen, however, was not blind to the fact that his doctrine of the Lord's Supper was just as far removed from the faith of the simple Christian as his doctrinal system generally. Here also, therefore, he accommodated himself to that faith in points where it seemed necessary. This, however, he did not find difficult; for, though with him everything is at bottom "spiritual," he was unwilling to dispense with symbols and mysteries, because he knew that one must be initiated into the spiritual, since one cannot learn it as one learns the lower sciences.297 But, whether we consider simple believers, the antignostic Fathers or Origen, and, moreover, whether we view the Supper as offering or sacrament, we everywhere observe that the holy ordinance had been entirely diverted from its original purpose and pressed into the service of the spirit of antiquity. In no other point perhaps is the hellenisation of the Gospel so evident as in this. To mention only one other example, this is also shown in the practice of child communion, which, though we first hear of it in Cyprian (Testim. III. 25; de laps. 25), can hardly be of later origin than child baptism. Partaking of the Supper seemed quite as indispensable as baptism, and the child had no less claim than the adult to a magical food from heaven.298 In the course of the third century a crass superstition became developed in respect to the conceptions of the Church and the mysteries connected with her. According to this notion we must subject ourselves to the Church and must have ourselves filled with holy consecrations as we are filled with food. But the following chapters will show that this superstition and mystery magic were counterbalanced by a most lively conception of the freedom and responsibility of the individual. Fettered by the bonds of authority and superstition in the sphere of religion, free and self-dependent in the province of morality, this Christianity is characterised by passive submission in the first respect and by complete activity in the second. It may be that exegetical theology can never advance beyond an alternation between these two aspects of the case, and a recognition of their equal claim to consideration; for the religious phenomenon in which they are combined defies any explanation. But religion is in danger of being destroyed when the insufficiency of the understanding is elevated into a convenient principle of theory and life, and when the real mystery of the faith, viz., how one becomes a new man, must accordingly give place to the injunction that we must obediently accept the religious as a consecration, and add to this the zealous endeavour after ascetic virtue. Such, however, has been the character of Catholicism since the third century, and even after Augustine's time it has still remained the same in its practice. EXCURSUS TO CHAPTERS II. AND III. CATHOLIC AND ROMAN.299 In investigating the development of Christianity up till about the year 270 the following facts must be specially kept in mind: In the regions subject to Rome, apart from the JudÆo-Christian districts and passing disturbances, Christianity had yet an undivided history in vital questions;300 the independence of individual congregations and of the provincial groups of Churches was very great; and every advance in the development of the communities at the same time denoted a forward step in their adaptation to the existing conditions of the Empire. The first two facts we have mentioned have their limitations. The further apart the different Churches lay, the more various were the conditions under which they arose and flourished; the looser the relations between the towns in which they had their home the looser also was the connection between them. Still, it is evident that towards the end of the third century the development in the Church had well-nigh attained the same point everywhere—except in outlying communities. Catholicism, essentially as we conceive it now, was what most of the Churches had arrived at. Now it is an a priori probability that this transformation of Christianity, which was simply the adaptation of the Gospel to the then existing Empire, came about under the guidance of the metropolitan Church,301 the Church of Rome; and that "Roman" and "Catholic" had therefore a special relation from the beginning. It might a limine be objected to this proposition that there is no direct testimony in support of it, and that, apart from this consideration, it is also improbable, in so far as, in view of the then existing condition of society, Catholicism appears as the natural and only possible form in which Christianity could be adapted to the world. But this is not the case; for in the first place very strong proofs can be adduced, and besides, as is shown by the development in the second century, very different kinds of secularisation were possible. In fact, if all appearances are not deceptive, the Alexandrian Church, for example, was up to the time of Septimius Severus pursuing a path of development which, left to itself, would not have led to Catholicism, but, in the most favourable circumstances, to a parallel form.302 It can, however, be proved that it was in the Roman Church, which up to about the year 190 was closely connected with that of Asia Minor, that all the elements on which Catholicism is based first assumed a definite form.303 (1) We know that the Roman Church possessed a precisely formulated baptismal confession, and that as early as the year 180 she declared this to be the apostolic rule by which everything is to be measured. It is only in her case that we are really certain of this, for we can merely guess at it as regards the Church of Smyrna, that is, of Asia Minor. It was accordingly admitted that the Roman Church was able to distinguish true from false with special exactness;304 and IrenÆus and Tertullian appealed to her to decide the practice in Gaul and Africa. This practice, in its precisely developed form, cannot be shown to have existed in Alexandria till a later period; but Origen, who testifies to it, also bears witness to the special reverence for and connection with the Roman Church. (2) The New Testament canon, with its claim to be accounted catholic and apostolic and to possess exclusive authority is first traceable in her; in the other communities it can only be proved to exist at a later period. In the great Antiochian diocese there was, for instance, a Church some of whose members wished the Gospel of Peter read; in the Pentapolis group of congregations the Gospel of the Egyptians was still used in the 3rd century; Syrian Churches of the same epoch used Tatian's Diatessaron; and the original of the first six books of the Apostolic Constitutions still makes no mention of a New Testament canon. Though Clement of Alexandria no doubt testifies that, in consequence of the common history of Christianity, the group of Scriptures read in the Roman congregations was also the same as that employed in public worship at Alexandria, he had as yet no New Testament canon before him in the sense of IrenÆus and Tertullian. It was not till Origen's time that Alexandria reached the stage already attained in Rome about forty years earlier. It must, however, be pointed out that a series of New Testament books, in the form now found in the canon and universally recognised, show marks of revision that can be traced back to the Roman Church.305 Finally, the later investigations, which show that after the third century the Western readings, that is, the Roman text, of the New Testament were adopted in the Oriental MSS. of the Bible,306 are of the utmost value here; for the most natural explanation of these facts is that the Eastern Churches then received their New Testament from Rome and used it to correct their copies of books read in public worship.307 (3) Rome is the first place which we can prove to have constructed a list of bishops reaching back to the Apostles (see IrenÆus).308 We know that in the time of Heliogabalus such lists also existed in other communities; but it cannot be proved that these had already been drawn up by the time of Marcus Aurelius or Commodus, as was certainly the case at Rome. (4) The notion of the apostolic succession of the episcopate309 was first turned to account by the Roman bishops, and they were the first who definitely formulated the political idea of the Church in connection with this. The utterances and corresponding practical measures of Victor,310 Calixtus (Hippolytus), and Stephen are the earliest of their kind; whilst the precision and assurance with which they substituted the political and clerical for the ideal conception of the Church, or amalgamated the two notions, as well as the decided way in which they proclaimed the sovereignty of the bishops, were not surpassed in the third century by Cyprian himself. (5) Rome was the first place, and that at a very early period, to date occurrences according to her bishops; and, even outside that city, churches reckoned, not according to their own, but according to the Roman episcopate.311 (6) The Oriental Churches say that two bishops of Rome compiled the chief apostolic regulations for the organisation of the Church; and this is only partially wrong.312 (7) The three great theologians of the age, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen, opposed the pretensions of the Roman bishop Calixtus; and this very attitude of theirs testified that the advance in the political organisation of the Church, denoted by the measures of Calixtus, was still an unheard-of novelty, but immediately exercised a very important influence on the attitude of other Churches. We know that the other communities imitated this advance in the succeeding decades. (8) The institution of lower orders of clergy with the corresponding distinction of clerici maiores and minores first took place in Rome; but we know that this momentous arrangement gradually spread from that city to the rest of Christendom.313 (9) The different Churches communicated with one another through the medium of Rome.314 From these considerations we can scarcely doubt that the fundamental apostolic institutions and laws of Catholicism were framed in the same city that in other respects imposed its authority on the whole earth; and that it was the centre from which they spread, because the world had become accustomed to receive law and justice from Rome.315 But it may be objected that the parallel development in other provinces and towns was spontaneous, though it everywhere came about at a somewhat later date. Nor do we intend to contest the assumption in this general sense; but, as I think, it can be proved that the Roman community had a direct and important share in the process and that, even in the second century, she was reckoned the first and most influential Church.316 We shall give a bird's-eye view of the most important facts bearing on the question, in order to prove this. No other community made a more brilliant entrance into Church history than did that of Rome by the so called First Epistle of Clement—Paul having already testified (Rom. I. 8) that the faith of this Church was spoken of throughout the whole world. That letter to the Corinthians proves that, by the end of the first century, the Roman Church had already drawn up fixed rules for her own guidance, that she watched with motherly care over outlying communities, and that she then knew how to use language that was at once an expression of duty, love, and authority.317 As yet she pretends to no legal title of any kind, but she knows the "commandments and ordinances" (προσταγματα and δοκαιωματα) of God, whereas the conduct of the sister Church evinces her uncertainty on the matter; she is in an orderly condition, whereas the sister community is threatened with dissolution; she adheres to the κανων της παραδοσεως, whilst the other body stands in need of exhortation;318 and in these facts her claim to authority consists. The Shepherd of Hermas also proves that even in the circles of the laity the Roman Church is impressed with the consciousness that she must care for the whole of Christendom. The first testimony of an outsider as to this community is afforded us by Ignatius. Soften as we may all the extravagant expressions in his Epistle to the Romans, it is at least clear that Ignatius conceded to them a precedence in the circle of sister Churches; and that he was well acquainted with the energy and activity displayed by them in aiding and instructing other communities.319 Dionysius of Corinth, in his letter to bishop Soter, affords us a glimpse of the vast activity manifested by the Christian Church of the world's metropolis on behalf of all Christendom and of all brethren far and near; and reveals to us the feelings of filial affection and veneration with which she was regarded in all Greece as well as in Antioch. This author has specially emphasised the fact that the Roman Christians are Romans, that is, are conscious of the particular duties incumbent on them as members of the metropolitan Church.320 After this evidence we cannot wonder that IrenÆus expressly assigned to the Church of Rome the highest rank among those founded by the Apostles.321 His famous testimony has been quite as often under as over-estimated. Doubtless his reference to the Roman Church is introduced in such a way that she is merely mentioned by way of example, just as he also adds the allusion to Smyrna and Ephesus; but there is quite as little doubt that this example was no arbitrary selection. The truth rather is that the Roman community must have been named, because its decision was already the most authoritative and impressive in Christendom.322 Whilst giving a formal scheme of proof that assigned the same theoretical value to each Church founded by the Apostles, IrenÆus added a reference to particular circumstance, viz., that in his time many communities turned to Rome in order to testify their orthodoxy.323 As soon as we cease to obscure our vision with theories and keep in view the actual circumstances, we have no cause for astonishment. Considering the active intercourse between the various Churches and the metropolis, it was of the utmost importance to all, especially so long as they required financial aid, to be in connection with that of Rome, to receive support from her, to know she would entertain travelling brethren, and to have the power of recommending prisoners and those pining in the mines to her influential intervention. The evidence of Ignatius and Dionysius as well as the Marcia-Victor episode place this beyond doubt (see above). The efforts of Marcion and Valentinus in Rome have also a bearing on this question, and the venerable bishop, Polycarp, did not shrink from the toil of a long journey to secure the valuable fellowship of the Roman Church;324 it was not Anicetus who came to Polycarp, but Polycarp to Anicetus. At the time when the controversy with Gnosticism ensued, the Roman Church showed all the rest an example of resolution; it was naturally to be expected that, as a necessary condition of mutual fellowship, she should require other communities to recognise the law by which she had regulated her own circumstances. No community in the Empire could regard with indifference its relationship to the great Roman Church; almost everyone had connections with her; she contained believers from all the rest. As early as 180 this Church could point to a series of bishops reaching in uninterrupted succession from the glorious apostles Paul and Peter325 down to the present time; and she alone maintained a brief but definitely formulated lex, which she entitled the summary of apostolic tradition, and by reference to which she decided all questions of faith with admirable certainty. Theories were incapable of overcoming the elementary differences that could not but appear as soon as Christianity became naturalised in the various provinces and towns of the Empire. Nor was it theories that created the empiric unity of the Churches, but the unity which the Empire possessed in Rome; the extent and composition of the GrÆco-Latin community there; the security—and this was not the least powerful element—that accompanied the development of this great society, well provided as it was with wealth and possessed of an influence in high quarters already dating from the first century;326 as well as the care which it displayed on behalf of all Christendom. All these causes combined to convert the Christian communities into a real confederation under the primacy of the Roman Church (and subsequently under the leadership of her bishops). This primacy cannot of course be further defined, for it was merely a de facto one. But, from the nature of the case, it was immediately shaken, when it was claimed as a legal right associated with the person of the Roman bishop. That this theory is more than a hypothesis is shown by several facts which prove the unique authority as well as the interference of the Roman Church (that is, of her bishop). First, in the Montanist controversy—and that too at the stage when it was still almost exclusively confined to Asia Minor—the already sobered adherents of the new prophecy petitioned Rome (bishop Eleutherus) to recognise their Church, and it was at Rome that the Gallic confessors cautiously interfered in their behalf; after which a native of Asia Minor induced the Roman bishop to withdraw the letters of toleration already issued.327 In view of the facts that it was not Roman Montanists who were concerned, that Rome was the place where the Asiatic members of this sect sought for recognition, and that it was in Rome that the Gauls interfered in their behalf, the significance of this proceeding cannot be readily minimised. We cannot of course dogmatise on the matter; but the fact can be proved that the decision of the Roman Church must have settled the position of that sect of enthusiasts in Christendom. Secondly, what is reported to us of Victor, the successor of Eleutherus, is still plainer testimony. He ventured to issue an edict, which we may already style a peremptory one, proclaiming the Roman practice with regard to the regulation of ecclesiastical festivals to be the universal rule in the Church, and declaring that every congregation, that failed to adopt the Roman arrangement,328 was excluded from the union of the one Church on the ground of heresy. How would Victor have ventured on such an edict—though indeed he had not the power of enforcing it in every case—unless the special prerogative of Rome to determine the conditions of the "common unity" (κοινη 'ενωσις) in the vital questions of the faith had been an acknowledged and well-established fact? How could Victor have addressed such a demand to the independent Churches, if he had not been recognised, in his capacity of bishop of Rome, as the special guardian of the κοινη 'ενωσισ?329 Thirdly, it was Victor who formally excluded Theodotus from Church fellowship. This is the first really well-attested case of a Christian taking his stand on the rule of faith being excommunicated because a definite interpretation of it was already insisted on. In this instance the expression 'υιος μονογενης (only begotten Son) was required to be understood in the sense of Φυσει Θεος (God by nature). It was in Rome that this first took place. Fourthly, under Zephyrinus, Victor's successor, the Roman ecclesiastics interfered in the Carthaginian veil dispute, making common cause with the local clergy against Tertullian; and both appealed to the authority of predecessors, that is, above all, of the Roman bishops.330 Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, and Cyprian were obliged to resist the pretensions of these ecclesiastics to authority outside their own Church, the first having to contend with Calixtus, and the three others with Stephen.331 It was the Roman Church that first displayed this activity and care; the Roman bishop sprang from the community in exactly the same way as the corresponding official did in other places.332 In IrenÆus' proof from prescription, however, it is already the Roman bishops that are specially mentioned.333 Praxeas reminded the bishop of Rome of the authority of his predecessors ("auctoritates prÆcessorum eius") and it was in the character of bishop that Victor acted. The assumption that Paul and Peter laboured in Rome, that is, founded the Church of that city (Dionysius, IrenÆus, Tertullian, Caius), must have conferred a high degree of prestige on her bishops, as soon as the latter officials were elevated to the position of more or less sovereign lords of the communities and were regarded as successors of the Apostles. The first who acted up to this idea was Calixtus. The sarcastic titles of "pontifex maximus," "episcopus episcoporum," "benedictus papa" and "apostolicus," applied to him by Tertullian in "de pudicitia" I. 13, are so many references to the fact that Calixtus already claimed for himself a position of primacy, in other words, that he associated with his own personal position as bishop the primacy possessed by the Roman Church, which pre-eminence, however, must have been gradually vanishing in proportion to the progress of the Catholic form of organisation among the other communities. Moreover, that is evident from the form of the edict he issued (Tert. I. c., I: "I hear that an edict has been issued and that a decisive one," "audio edictum esse prÆpositum et quidem peremptorium"), from the grounds it assigned and from the opposition to it on the part of Tertullian. From the form, in so far as Calixtus acted here quite independently and, without previous consultation, issued a peremptory edict, that is, one settling the matter and immediately taking effect; from the grounds it assigned, in so far as he appealed in justification of his action to Matt. XVI. 18 ff.334—the first instance of the kind recorded in history; from Tertullian's opposition to it, because the latter treats it not as local, Roman, but as pregnant in consequences for all Christendom. But, as soon as the question took the form of enquiring whether the Roman bishop was elevated above the rest, a totally new situation arose. Even in the third century, as already shown, the Roman community, led by its bishops, still showed the rest an example in the process of giving a political constitution to the Church. It can also be proved that even far distant congregations were still being bound to the Roman Church through financial support,335 and that she was appealed to in questions of faith, just as the law of the city of Rome was invoked as the standard in civil questions.336 It is further manifest from Cyprian's epistles that the Roman Church was regarded as the ecclesia principalis, as the guardian par excellence of the unity of the Church. We may explain from Cyprian's own particular situation all else that he said in praise of the Roman Church (see above p. 88, note 2) and specially of the cathedra Petri; but the general view that she is the "matrix et radix ecclesiÆ catholicÆ" is not peculiar to him, and the statement that the "unitas sacerdotalis" originated in Rome is merely the modified expression, necessitated by the altered circumstances of the Church, for the acknowledged fact that the Roman community was the most distinguished among the sister groups, and as such had had and still possessed the right and duty of watching over the unity of the whole. Cyprian himself no doubt took a further step at the time of his correspondence with Cornelius, and proclaimed the special reference of Matt. XVI. to the cathedra Petri; but he confined his theory to the abstractions "ecclesia," "cathedra." In him the importance of this cathedra oscillates between the significance of a once existent fact that continues to live on as a symbol, and that of a real and permanent court of appeal. Moreover, he did not go the length of declaring that any special authority within the collective Church attached to the temporary occupant of the cathedra Petri. If we remove from Cyprian's abstractions everything to which he himself thinks there is nothing concrete corresponding, then we must above all eliminate every prerogative of the Roman bishop for the time being. What remains behind is the special position of the Roman Church, which indeed is represented by her bishop. Cyprian can say quite frankly: "owing to her magnitude Rome ought to have precedence over Carthage" ("pro magnitudine sua debet Carthaginem Roma prÆcedere") and his theory: "the episcopate is one, and a part of it is held by each bishop for the whole" ("episcopatus unus est, cuius a singulis in solidum pars tenetur"), virtually excludes any special prerogative belonging to a particular bishop (see also "de unit." 4). Here we have reached the point that has already been briefly referred to above, viz., that the consolidation of the Churches in the Empire after the Roman pattern could not but endanger the prestige and peculiar position of Rome, and did in fact do so. If we consider that each bishop was the acknowledged sovereign of his own diocese—now Catholic, that all bishops, as such, were recognised to be successors of the Apostles, that, moreover, the attribute of priesthood occupied a prominent position in the conception of the episcopal office, and that, the metropolitan unions with their presidents and synods had become completely naturalised—in short, that the rigid episcopal and provincial constitution of the Church had become an accomplished fact, so that, ultimately, it was no longer communities, but merely bishops that had dealings with each other, then we shall see that a new situation was thereby created for Rome, that is, for her bishop. In the West it was perhaps chiefly through the coÖperation of Cyprian that Rome found herself face to face with a completely organised Church system. His behaviour in the controversy about heretical baptism proves that in cases of dispute he was resolved to elevate his theory of the sovereign authority of each bishop above his theory of the necessary connection with the cathedra Petri. But, when that levelling of the episcopate came about, Rome had already acquired rights that could no longer be cancelled.337 Besides, there was one thing that could not be taken from the Roman Church, nor therefore from her bishop, even if she were denied the special right to Matt. XVI., viz., the possession of Rome. The site of the world's metropolis might be shifted, but Rome could not be removed. In the long run, however, the shifting of the capital proved advantageous to ecclesiastical Rome. At the beginning of the great epoch when the alienation of East from West became pronounced and permanent, an emperor, from political grounds, decided in favour of that party in Antioch "with whom the bishops in Italy and the city of the Romans held intercourse" ('οις αν 'οι κατα την Ιταλιαν και την Ρωμαιων πολιν επισκοποι του δογματος επιστελλοιεν338). In this instance the interest of the Roman Church and the interest of the emperor coincided. But the Churches in the various provinces, being now completely organised and therefore seldom in need of any more help from outside, were henceforth in a position to pursue their own interest. So the bishop of Rome had step by step to fight for the new authority, which, being now based on a purely dogmatic theory and being forced to repudiate any empirical foundation, was inconsistent with the Church system that the Roman community more than any other had helped to build up. The proposition "the Roman Church always had the primacy" ("ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum") and the statement that "Catholic" virtually means "Roman Catholic" are gross fictions, when devised in honour of the temporary occupant of the Roman see and detached from the significance of the Eternal City in profane history; but, applied to the Church of the imperial capital, they contain a truth the denial of which is equivalent to renouncing the attempt to explain the process by which the Church was unified and catholicised.339 The title of the evangelical life (evangelical perfection, imitation of Christ) in contrast to that of ordinary Catholic Christians, a designation which we first find among the Encratites (see Vol. I. p. 237, note 3) and Marcionites (see Tertull., adv. Marc. IV. 14: "Venio nunc ad ordinarias sententias Marcionis, per quas proprietatem doctrinÆ suÆ inducit ad edictum, ut ita dixerim, Christi, Beati mendici etc."), and then in Tertullian (in his pre-Montanist period, see ad mart., de patient., de pÆnit., de idolol.; in his later career, see de coron. 8, 9, 13, 14; de fuga 8, 13; de ieiun. 6, 8, 15; de monog. 3, 5, 11; see AubÉ, Les ChrÉtiens dans l'empire Romain de la fin des Antonins, 1881, p. 237 ff.: "ChrÉtiens intransigeants et ChrÉtiens opportunistes") was expressly claimed by Novatian (Cypr., ep. 44. 3: "si Novatiani se adsertores evangelii et Christi esse confitentur"; 46. 2: "nec putetis, sic vos evangelium Christi adserere"). Cornelius in Eusebius, H. E. VI. 43. II calls Novatian: 'ο εκδικητης του ευαγγελιου. This is exceedingly instructive, and all the more so when we note that, even as far back as the end of the second century, it was not the "evangelical," but the lax, who declared the claims of the Gospel to be satisfied if they kept God in their hearts, but otherwise lived in entire conformity with the world. See Tertullian, de spec. 1; de pÆnit. 5: "Sed aiunt quidam, satis deum habere, si corde et animo suspiciatur, licet actu minus fiat; itaque se salvo metu et fide peccare, hoc est salva castitate matrimonia violare etc.": de ieiun. 2: "Et scimus, quales sint carnalium commodorum suasoriÆ, quam facile dicatur: Opus est de totis prÆcordiis credam, diligam deum et proximum tanquam me. In his enim duobus prÆceptis tota lex pendet et prophetÆ, non in pulmonum et intestinorum meorum inanitate." The Valentinian Heracleon was similarly understood, see above Vol. I. p. 262. |
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