(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

PROGRESS OF THE APOSTACY.

NOTES.

The Rise of False Teachers: I cannot, of course, here enter into even a brief history of false teachers in the early Christian centuries. That of itself would be matter for a volume. I shall therefore content myself with making quotations from reliable authorities that will directly establish the fact of the rapid increase in the number of false teachers, and the pernicious effect of their doctrines upon the Christian religion.

Position of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches, Respectively, on the Question of Early Christian Apostasy: It should be said before making these quotations, however, that Protestant writers are interested in maintaining that the Christian religion was perpetuated, even through the ages of apostasy, and given back to mankind by the agency of the so-called "Reformation" of the' sixteenth century. Hence in their writings, when stating the corruptions of the early Church, they are especially guarded lest too strong a statement would lead to the belief that the Christian religion had been utterly subverted. Indeed, it is well known that Milner wrote his Church History—which should be regarded not so much as the history of the Church as the history of piety—to counteract the influence of Mosheim's "Institutes of Ecclesiastical History," which work Milner considered too frank in its statements of perversions and abuses of religion. The Protestant writers must need set forth the theory that the Christian religion survived all the abuses and corruptions of it through ages of apostasy, else they would have no logical ground for the sixteenth century "Reformation" to stand upon. They seem not oblivious to the fact, though never mentioning it, that if the Christian religion was displaced by a paganized religion—a false religion—as is fully predicted, as we shall see later, in the New Testament prophecies, and of which the works of Protestant writers go far toward proving—then the only possible way in which the true Christian religion and the Church of Christ could be restored would be by a reopening of the heavens and the giving forth of a new dispensation of the Gospel, together with a renewal of divine authority to preach it, and administer its ordinances of salvation. Catholics hold that there has been no great apostasy in the Church. Their theory is that there has been a constant, unbroken perpetuation of the Christian Church from the days of the Messiah and His Apostles until now; and that the Roman Catholic Church is that very Church so perpetuated through the ages. Catholic writers admit that there have been very corrupt periods in the Church, and many wicked prelates, and some vile popes; yet they hold that the Church has persisted, that the Christian religion has been preserved in the earth.

Declension of Excellence in Early Christian Writers: With these remarks on the position of the Protestant and Catholic churches respecting their attitude on the subject of the perpetuation of the Christian religion, I proceed with the quotations promised; and, first, a passage from Neander's History of the Christian Religion and Church, on the very great difference between the writings of the Apostles and the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers; and the suddenness of that transition, to the disparagement of the productions of the Fathers:

"A phenomenon, singular in its kind, is the striking difference between the writings of the Apostles and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, who were so nearly their contemporaries. In other cases, transitions are wont to be gradual; but in this instance we observe a sudden change. There are here no gentle gradations, but all at once an abrupt transition from one style of language to another; a phenomenon which should lead us to acknowledge the fact of a special agency of the Divine Spirit in the souls of the Apostles. After the time of the first extraordinary operations of the Holy Ghost followed the period of the free development of human nature in Christianity; and here, as in all other cases, the beginning must be small and feeble before the effects of Christianity could penetrate more widely, and bring fully under their influence the great powers of the human mind. It was to be shown, first, what the divine power could effect by the foolishness of preaching. The writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers have unhappily, for the most part, come down to us in a condition very little worthy of confidence, partly because under the name of these men, so highly venerated in the Church, writings were early forged for the purpose of giving authority to particular opinions or principles; and partly because their own writings which were extant became interpolated in subservience to a Jewish hierarchical interest which aimed to crush the free spirit of the Gospel."^[A]

[Footnote A: Vol. i, pp. 656, 657.]

There is no authority of Scripture for the supposition made here by Dr. Neander that the extraordinary operations of the Holy Ghost were to be confined to the Apostles; the whole tenor of Scripture authority is to the contrary. It is the theory of the Gospel itself that all who receive it, and particularly its ministers, shall have the divine Spirit as a special agency working in their souls, through all time, and there is no warrant for the belief that its operations were to be confined to those who first received it and became its first ministers. Therefore, this sudden transition in the matter of excellence and truthworthiness between the writings of the Apostles and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers indicates not only a deterioration in the character of the teachers in the Church and what is taught, but more specially indicates the progress of the "mystery of iniquity" which was at work subverting the Christian religion and destroying the Church of Christ.

On the question of forged books and writings mentioned in the passage from Neander, Dr. Nathaniel Lardner refers to a dissertation written by Dr. Mosheim, which shows the reasons and causes for the many forged writings produced in the first and second centuries, and then adds: "All own that Christians of all sorts were guilty of this fraud. Indeed, we may say it was one great fault of the times; for truth needs no such defenses, and would blush at the sight of them."^[A]

[Footnote A: Lardner's Works, vol. viii. p. 330.]

Eusebius, quoting Hegesippus on the subject of false teachers and referring to the condition of the Church about the close of the first century, says:

"The Church continued until then (close of the first century) as a pure and uncorrupted virgin, whilst if there were any at all at that attempted to pervert the sound doctrine of the saving Gospel, they were yet skulking in dark retreats; but when the sacred choir of Apostles became extinct, and the generation of those who had been privileged to hear their inspired wisdom had passed away, then also the combinations of impious errors arose by the fraud and delusions of false teachers. These also, as there were none of the Apostles left, henceforth attempted without shame to preach their false doctrine against the Gospel of truth."^[A]

[Footnote A: Eus. Ec. Hist., bk. iii. ch. 32.]

Dr. Mosheim has the following on the same subject:

"Not long after the Savior's ascension, various histories of His life and doctrines, full of impositions and fables, were composed by persons of no bad intentions, perhaps, but who were superstitious, simple and piously fraudulent; and afterwards various other spurious writings were palmed upon the world, falsely inscribed with the names of the holy Apostles."^[A]

[Footnote A: Institutes, bk. i, cent. 1, part ii, ch. ii.]

This condition of things with reference to the writers in the centuries under consideration, naturally leads one to the reflection that if there was so much of fraud, and so many forged writings, what must have been the state of the Church at this time with reference to oral teaching? We are justified in believing, I think, that bad as was the state of things with reference to the writings of these early teachers of the Church, the discourses of such as preached may be depended upon as being much worse. In this view of the case, one can readily understand that the "authority of antiquity" so generally urged as a reason for accepting the testimonies of the Fathers, that "handmaid to Scripture," as "antiquity" is sometimes called, the whole body of it, written and oral, may indeed "be regarded," as Dr. Jortin remarks, "as Briarean, for she has a hundred hands, and these hands often clash and beat one another."^[A]

[Footnote A: Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 248.]

Moreover, it often happens that those who are condemned by some of these Fathers as heretics were not only censured for their heresies, but sometimes for the truths which they held. For example: Papias, a Bishop and Christian Father in the second century, is condemned by Eusebius for saying that he received from Apostolic men—meaning thereby men who were associated with the Apostles—the fact that there would be a corporeal reign of Christ on earth with the saints, after the resurrection, which would continue through a thousand years.^[A]

[Footnote A: Eusebius, bk. iii, ch. 39.]

Prodicus is censured by Clement of Alexandria for holding that men are of nature the children of Deity.^[A]

[Footnote A: Lardner Works, vol. viii, p. 418.]

Controversy Over Baptism for the Dead: Marcion, besides being condemned for his many errors, is also censured by Irenaeus for believing in salvation for the dead, concerning which, it must be acknowledged, Marcion did bold peculiar views; but that is no reason why the general principle should be condemned.^[A] He taught that Jesus Christ went to Hades and preached there, and brought hence all that believed on him. "The ancients," continues Irenaeus, as quoted by Lardner, "being of opinion that eternal life is not to be obtained but through faith in Jesus Christ, and that God is too merciful to let men perish for not hearing the Gospel, supposed that the Lord preached also to the dead, that they might have the same advantage with the living." He further adds, "In the language of Marcion and the fathers, hell does not necessarily mean the place of the damned; in that place is Tartarus, the place of torment, and Paradise, or the bosom of Abraham, a place of rest and refreshment. In that part of Hades, Jesus found the just men of the Old Testament. They were not miserable, but were in a place of comfort and pleasure." "For Christ," he continues, "promiseth the Jews after this life, rest in Hades, even in the bosom of Abraham." This far the doctrine of Marcion is in strict agreement with the New Testament, though denounced as blasphemy by his opponent. The unfortunate part of Marcion's doctrine on this head is that he taught that Cain and the wicked of Sodom and the Egyptians, and in fact all the nations in general, though they had lived in all manner of wickedness, were saved by the Lord; but that Abel, Enoch, Noah, and the patriarchs and prophets and other righteous men who walked with God and pleased Him in their earth-life, did not obtain salvation, because they suspected that in the preaching of Christ in the spirit world there was some scheme of deception to lead them away from their present qualified believe in Him, for which reason, as he says, "their souls remained in Hell."^[B]

[Footnote A: Lardner Works, vol. viii, 449; also I Peter iii:18-21; Ibid, iv:6; I Cor. xv:29.]

[Footnote B: Ibid, p. 460.]

Marcion is also condemned for believing in the eternity of matter.^[A] So, too, Hermogenes is censured by Tertullian for the same cause, and for arguing that God made the world out of matter and could not have made it out of nothing.^[B]

[Footnote A: Ibid. p. 581-2.]

[Footnote B: Lardner, vol. viii, p. 345.]

And so throughout there is censure and counter censure between the orthodox and the heretics, and it is difficult at times to determine which are the orthodox and which the heretics, so frequently do they change places. Nor was there any improvement in the ages that succeeded these that have been briefly considered. The editor of Dr. Jortin's learned work on Ecclesiastical History, William Trollope, on a passage of Jortin's on the early fathers, says of the fathers of the fourth century:

"After the council of Nice,^[A] a class of writers sprung up, greatly inferior to their predecessors, in whatever light their pretensions are viewed. Sadly deficient in learning, prejudiced in opinion, and inelegant in style, they cannot be admitted for a moment into competition with those who were contemporary with the Apostles and their immediate successors."^[B]

[Footnote A: Held in 325 A. D.]

[Footnote B: Jortin, vol. i, p. 166, note.]

The whole tenor of his remarks is to the effect that while the fathers of the second and third centuries are not to be relied upon in their interpretations of Scripture, were frequently deceived in opinions, and not always to be depended upon in matters of tradition, yet they were greatly to be preferred in all respects to the fathers of succeeding centuries.

II. The Development of False Doctrines After the Death of the Apostles: Here, too, I shall rely very largely upon the conclusions of the learned Dr. Lardner, referring to the development of the heresies, the seeds of which were sown in the days of the Apostles, says:

"Eusebius relates that Ignatius, on his way from Antioch to Rome, exhorted the churches to beware of heresies which were then springing up, and which would increase; and that he afterwards wrote his epistles in order to guard them against these corruptions, and to confirm them in the faith. This opinion that the seeds of these heresies were sown in the time of the Apostles, and sprang up immediately after is an opinion probably in itself, and is embraced by several learned moderns, particularly by Vitringa, and by the late Rev. Mr. Brekel of Liverpool."^[A]

[Footnote A: Lardner, vol. viii, p. 344.]

Conditions of the Church in the First Three Centuries: A certain Mr. Deacon attempted to refute the Mr. Brekel referred to by Dr. Lardner, and to maintain the purity of the Church of the first three centuries. On this Mr. Brekel observed that "If this point were thoroughly examined, it would appear that the Christian Church preserved her virgin purity no longer than the Apostolic age, at least if we may give credit to Hegesippus." Relying upon the support of the ecclesiastical history of Socrates, a writer of the first half of the fifth century, Mr. Brekel also says: "To mention the corruptions and innovations in religion of the four first centuries, is wholly superfluous; when it is so very notorious that, even before the reign of Constantine, there sprang up a kind of heathenish Christianity which mingled itself with the true Christian religion."^[A]

[Footnote A: Lardner, vol. viii, p. 345.]

Of the impending departure from the Christian religion immediately succeeding the days of the Apostles, Dr. Neander says:

"Already, in the latter part of the age of St. Paul, we shall see many things different from what they had been originally; and so it cannot appear strange if other changes came to be introduced into the constitution of the (Christian) communities, by the altered circumstances of the times immediately succeeding those of St. Paul or St. John. Then ensued those strongly marked oppositions and schisms, those dangers with which the corruptions engendered by manifold foreign elements threatened primitive Christianity."^[A]

[Footnote A: Neander's History of the Christian Religion and Church vol i p. 191.]

Dr. Phillip Smith, the author of the "Students' Ecclesiastical History," in speaking of the early corruptions of the Christian religion, says:

"The sad truth is that as soon as Christianity was generally diffused, it began to absorb corruptions from all the lands in which it was planted, and to reflect the complexion of all their systems of religion and philosophy."^[A]

[Footnote A: Eccles. Hist., vol. i, p. 49.]

Dean Milman, in his preface to his annotated edition of Edward Gibbon's great work, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and commenting upon that great author's attitude respecting the Christian religion, says:

"If, after all, the view of the early progress of Christianity be melancholy and humiliating, we must beware lest we charge the whole of this on the infidelity of the historian. It is idle, it is disingenuous, to deny or dissemble the early depravations of Christianity, its gradual but rapid departure from its primitive simplicity and purity, still more from its spirit of universal love. It may be no unsalutary lesson to the Christian world, that this silent, this unavoidable perhaps, yet fatal change, shall have been drawn by an impartial, or even an hostile hand."^[A]

[Footnote A: Gibbon's Roman Empire, Preface by Dean Milman, p. 15.]

Dr. Mosheim, in his "Institutes," deals at length with the abuses which arose in the Church in the second and third centuries, which I abridge to the following, and first as to the second century: Many rites were added without necessity to both public and private religious worship, to the great offense of good men; and principally because of the perversity of mankind, who are more delighted with the pomp and splendor of external forms and pageantry than with the true devotion of the heart. There is good reason to believe that the Christian bishops purposely multiplied sacred rites for the sake of rendering the Jews and pagans more friendly to them. For both these classes had always been accustomed to numerous and splendid ceremonies, and believed them an essential part of religion. In pursuance of this policy, and to silence the calumnies of the pagans and the Jews against them—to the effect that the Christians were pronounced atheists, because destitute of temples, altars, victims, priests, and all that pomp in which the vulgar suppose the essence of religion to consist—the Christian leaders introduced many rites, that they might be able to maintain that they really had those things which the pagans had, only they subsisted under different forms. Some of these rites—justified, as was supposed, by a comparison of the Christian oblations with Jewish victims and sacrifices—in time corrupted essentially the doctrine of the Lord's supper, and converted it into a sacrifice. To add further to the dignity of the Christian religion, the churches of the east feigned mysteries similar to those of the pagan religions; and, as with the pagans, the holy rites of the mysteries were concealed from the vulgar:—"And they not only applied the terms used in the pagan mysteries to the Christian institutions, particularly baptism and the Lord's Supper, but they gradually introduced also the rites which were designed by those terms." This practice originated in the eastern provinces of the empire, and thence, after the times of Adrian (who first introduced the Grecian mysteries among the Latins), it spread among the Christians of the west. "A large part therefore, of Christian observances and institutions, even in this century, had the aspect of the pagan mysteries." In like manner many ceremonies and customs of the Egyptians were adopted.^[A]

[Footnote A: Institutes, vol. i, cent, ii, part ii, ch. iv.]

Speaking of the third century, the Doctor says that all the monuments of this century show that there was a great increase of ceremonies in the Church, owing to the prevailing passion for the Platonic philosophy. Hence arose the public exorcisms, the multiplication of fasts, the aversion to matrimony, and the painful austerities and penances which were enjoined upon offenders.^[A]

[Footnote A: Ibid. cen. iii, part ii, ch. iv.]