Have you not sometimes seen, in a village, Pierre Aoudri and his wife Peronelle striving to go before their neighbors in a procession? "Our grandfathers," say they, "rung the bells before those who elbow us now had so much as a stable of their own."
The vanity of Pierre Aoudri, his wife, and his neighbors knows no better. They grow warm. The quarrel is an important one, for honor is in question. Proofs must now be found. Some learned churchsinger discovers an old rusty iron pot, marked with an A, the initial of the brazier's name who made the pot. Pierre Aoudri persuades himself that it was the helmet of one of his ancestors. So Cæsar descended from a hero and from the goddess Venus. Such is the history of nations; such is, very nearly, the knowledge of early antiquity.
The learned of Armenia demonstrate that the terrestrial paradise was in their country. Some profound Swedes demonstrate that it was somewhere about Lake Wenner, which exhibits visible remains of it. Some Spaniards, too, demonstrate that it was in Castile. While the Japanese, the Chinese, the Tartars, the Indians, the Africans, and the Americans, are so unfortunate as not even to know that a terrestrial paradise once existed at the sources of the Pison, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates, or, which is the same thing, at the sources of the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana, the Douro, and the Ebro. For of Pison we easily make Phæris, and of Phæris we easily make the Bætis, which is the Guadalquivir. The Gihon, it is plain, is the Guadiana, for they both begin with a G. And the Ebro, which is in Catalonia, is unquestionably the Euphrates, both beginning with an E.
But a Scotchman comes, and in his turn demonstrates that the garden of Eden was at Edinburgh, which has retained its name; and it is not unlikely that, in a few centuries, this opinion will prevail.
The whole globe was once burned, says a man conversant with ancient and modern history; for I have read in a journal that charcoal quite black has been found a hundred feet deep, among mountains covered with wood. And it is also suspected that there were charcoal-burners in this place.
Phaeton's adventure sufficiently shows that everything has been boiled, even to the bottom of the sea. The sulphur of Mount Vesuvius incontrovertibly proves that the banks of the Rhine, the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile, and the Great Yellow River, are nothing but sulphur, nitre, and oil of guiacum, which only wait for the moment of explosion to reduce the earth to ashes, as it has already once been. The sand on which we walk is an evident proof that the universe has vitrified, and that our globe is nothing but a ball of glass—like our ideas.
But if fire has changed our globe, water has produced still more wonderful revolutions. For it is plain that the sea, the tides of which in our latitudes rise eight feet, has produced the mountains, which are sixteen to seventeen thousand feet high. This is so true that some learned men, who never were in Switzerland, found a large vessel there, with all its rigging, petrified, either on Mount St. Gothard or at the bottom of a precipice—it is not positively known which; but it is quite certain that it was there. Therefore, men were originally fishes—Q.E.D.
Coming down to antiquity less ancient let us speak of the times when most barbarous nations quitted their own countries to seek others which were not much better. It is true, if there be anything true in ancient history, that there were Gaulish robbers who went to plunder Rome in the time of Camillus. Other robbers from Gaul had, it is said, passed through Illyria to sell their services as murderers to other murderers in the neighborhood of Thrace: they bartered their blood for bread, and at length settled in Galatia. But who were these Gauls? Were they natives of Berry and Anjou? They were, doubtless, some of those Gauls whom the Romans called Cisalpine, and whom we call Transalpine—famishing mountaineers, inhabiting the Alps and the Apennines. The Gauls of the Seine and the Marne did not then know that Rome existed, and could not resolve to cross Mont Cenis, as was afterwards done by Hannibal, to steal the wardrobes of the Roman senators, whose only movables were a gown of bad grey cloth, decorated with a band, the color of bull's blood, two small knobs of ivory, or rather dog's bone, fixed to the arms of a wooden chair, and a piece of rancid bacon in their kitchens.
The Gauls, who were dying of hunger, finding nothing to eat at home, went to try their fortune farther off; as the Romans afterwards did when they ravaged so many countries, and as the people of the North did at a later period when they destroyed the Roman Empire.
And whence have we received our vague information respecting these emigrations? From some lines written at a venture by the Romans; for, as for the Celts, Welsh, or Gauls, whom some would have us believe to have been eloquent, neither they nor their bards could at that time read or write.
But, to infer from these that the Gauls or Celts, afterwards conquered by a few of Cæsar's legions, then by a horde of Goths, then by a horde of Burgundians, and lastly by a horde of Sicambri, under one Clodovic, had before subjugated the whole earth, and given their names and their laws to Asia, seems to me to be inferring a great deal. The thing, however, is not mathematically impossible; and if it be demonstrated, I assent: it would be very uncivil to refuse to the Welsh what is granted to the Tartars.
Who have been the greatest fools, and who the most ancient fools? Ourselves or the Egyptians, or the Syrians or some other people? What was signified by our mistletoe? Who first consecrated a cat? It must have been he who was the most troubled with mice. In what nation did they first dance under the boughs of trees in honor of the gods? Who first made processions, and placed fools, with caps and bells, at the head of them? Who first carried a priapus through the streets, and fixed one like a knocker at the door? What Arab first took it into his head to hang his wife's drawers out at the window, the day after his marriage?
All nations have formerly danced at the time of the new moon. Did they then give one another the word? No; no more than they did to rejoice at the birth of a son, or to mourn, or seem to mourn, at the death of a father. Every one is very glad to see the moon again, after having lost her for several nights. There are a hundred usages so natural to all men, that it cannot be said the Biscayans taught them to the Phrygians, or the Phrygians to the Biscayans.
Fire and water have been used in temples. This custom needed no introduction. A priest did not choose always to have his hands dirty. Fire was necessary to cook the immolated carcasses, and to burn slips of resinous wood and spices, in order to combat the odor of the sacerdotal shambles.
But the mysterious ceremonies which it is so difficult to understand, the usages which nature does not teach—in what place, when, where, how, why, were they invented? Who communicated them to other nations? It is not likely that it should, at the same time, have entered the head of an Arab and of an Egyptian to cut off one end of his son's prepuce; nor that a Chinese and a Persian should, both at once, have resolved to castrate little boys.
It can never have been that two fathers, in different countries, have, at the same moment, formed the idea of cutting their sons' throats to please God. Some nations must have communicated to others their follies, serious, ridiculous, or barbarous. In this antiquity men love to search, to discover, if possible, the first madman and the first scoundrel who perverted human nature.
But how are we to know whether Jehu, in Phœnicia, by immolating his son, was the inventor of sacrifices of human blood? How can we be assured that Lycaon was the first who ate human flesh, when we do not know who first began to eat fowls?
We seek to know the origin of ancient feasts. The most ancient and the finest is that of the emperors of China tilling and sowing the ground, together with their first mandarins. The second is that of the Thesmophoria at Athens. To celebrate at once agriculture and justice, to show men how necessary they both are, to unite the curb of law with the art which is the source of all wealth—nothing is more wise, more pious, or more useful.
There are old allegorical feasts to be found everywhere, as those of the return of the seasons. It was not necessary that one nation should come from afar off to teach another that marks of joy and friendship for one's neighbors may be given on the first day of the year. This custom has been that of every people. The Saturnalia of the Romans are better known than those of the Allobroges and the Picts; because there are many Roman writings and monuments remaining, but there are none of the other nations of western Europe.
The feast of Saturn was the feast of Time. He had four wings; time flies quickly—his two faces evidently signifying the concluded and the commencing year. The Greeks said that he had devoured his father and that he devoured his children. No allegory is more reasonable. Time devours the past and the present, and will devour the future.
Why seek for vain and gloomy explanations of a feast so universal, so gay, and so well known? When I look well into antiquity, I do not find a single annual festival of a melancholy character; or, at least, if they begin with lamentations, they end in dancing and revelry. If tears are shed for Adoni or Adonai, whom we call Adonis, he is soon resuscitated, and rejoicing takes place. It is the same with the feasts of Isis, Osiris, and Horus. The Greeks, too, did as much for Ceres as for Prosperine. The death of the serpent Python was celebrated with gayety. A feast day and a day of joy were one and the same thing. At the feasts of Bacchus this joy was only carried too far.
I do not find one general commemoration of an unfortunate event. The institutors of the feasts would have shown themselves to be devoid of common sense if they had established at Athens a celebration of the battle lost at Chæronea, and at Rome another of the battle of Cannae.
They perpetuated the remembrance of what might encourage men, and not of that which might fill them with cowardice or despair. This is so true that fables were invented for the purpose of instituting feasts. Castor and Pollux did not fight for the Romans near Lake Regillus; but, at the end of three or four hundred years, some priests said so, and all the people danced. Hercules did not deliver Greece from a hydra with seven heads; but Hercules and his hydra were sung.
I do not know that there was, in all antiquity, a single festival founded on an established fact. It has been elsewhere remarked how extremely ridiculous those schoolmen appear who say to you, with a magisterial air: "Here is an ancient hymn in honor of Apollo, who visited Claros; therefore Apollo went to Claros; a chapel was erected to Perseus; therefore he delivered Andromeda." Poor men! You should rather say, therefore there was no Andromeda.
But what, then, will become of that learned antiquity which preceded the olympiads? It will become what it is—an unknown time, a time lost, a time of allegories and lies, a time regarded with contempt by the wise, and profoundly discussed by blockheads, who like to float in avoid, like Epicurus' atoms.
There were everywhere days of penance, days of expiation in the temples; but these days were never called by a name answering to that offeasts. Every feast-day was sacred to diversion; so true is this that the Egyptian priests fasted on the eve in order to eat the more on the morrow—a custom which our monks have preserved. There were, no doubt, mournful ceremonies. It was not customary to dance the Greek brawl while interring or carrying to the funeral pile a son or a daughter; this was a public ceremony, but certainly not a feast.
Men of ingenuity, profound searchers into antiquity, who would know how the earth was made a hundred thousand years ago, if genius could discover it, have asserted that mankind, reduced to a very small number in both continents, and still terrified at the innumerable revolutions which this sad globe had undergone, perpetuated the remembrance of their calamities by dismal and mournful commemorations.
"Every feast," say they, "was a day of horror, instituted to remind men that their fathers had been destroyed by the fires of the volcanoes, by rocks falling from the mountains, by eruptions of the sea, by the teeth and claws of wild beasts, by war, pestilence and famine."
Then we are not made as men were then. There was never so much rejoicing in London as after the plague and the burning of the whole city in the reign of Charles II. We made songs while the massacres of Bartholomew were still going on. Some pasquinades have been preserved which were made the day after the assassination of Coligni; there was printed in Paris,Passio Domini nostri Gaspardi Colignii secundum Bartholomæum.
It has a thousand times happened that the sultan who reigns in Constantinople has made his eunuchs and odalisks dance in apartments stained with the blood of his brothers and his viziers. What do the people of Paris do on the very day that they are apprised of the loss of a battle and the death of a hundred brave officers? They run to the play and the opera.
What did they when the wife of Marshal d'Ancre was given up in the Grève to the barbarity of her persecutors? When Marshal de Marillac was dragged to execution in a wagon, by virtue of a paper signed by robed lackeys in Cardinal de Richelieu's ante-chamber? When a lieutenant-general of the army, a foreigner, who had shed his blood for the state, condemned by the cries of his infuriated enemies, was led to the scaffold in a dung-cart, with a gag in his mouth? When a young man of nineteen, full of candor, courage and modesty, but very imprudent, was carried to the most dreadful of punishments? They sang vaudevilles. Such is man, at least man on the banks of the Seine. Such has he been at all times, for the same reason that rabbits have always had hair, and larks feathers.
What! we would know the precise theology—of Thoth, Zerdusht, or Sanchoniathon, although we know not who invented the shuttle. The first weaver, the first mason, the first smith were undoubtedly great geniuses; yet no account has been made of them. And why? Because not one of them invented a perfect art. He who first hollowed the trunk of an oak for the purpose of crossing a river did not build galleys; nor did they who piled up unhewn stones, and laid pieces of wood across them, dream of the pyramids. Everything is done by degrees, and the glory belongs to no one.
All was done in the dark, until philosophers, aided by geometry, taught men to proceed with accuracy and safety.
It was left for Pythagoras, on his return from his travels, to show workmen the way to make an exact square. He took three rules: one three, one four, and one five feet long, and with these he made a right-angled triangle. Moreover, it was found that the side 5 furnished a square just equal to the two squares produced by the sides 4 and 3; a method of importance in all regular works.
This is the famous theorem which he had brought from India, and which we have elsewhere said was known in China long before, according to the relation of the Emperor Cam-hi. Long before Plato, the Greeks made use of a single geometrical figure to double the square.
Archytas and Erastothenes invented a method of doubling the cube, which was impracticable by ordinary geometry, and which would have done honor to Archimedes.
This Archimedes found the method of calculating exactly the quantity of alloy mixed with gold; for gold had been worked for ages before the fraud of the workers could be discovered. Knavery existed long before mathematics. The pyramids, built with the square, and corresponding exactly with the four cardinal points, sufficiently show that geometry was known in Egypt from time immemorial; and yet it is proved that Egypt is quite a new country.
Without philosophy we should be little above the animals that dig or erect their habitations, prepare their food in them, take care of their little ones in their dwellings, and have besides the good fortune, which we have not, of being born ready clothed. Vitruvius, who had travelled in Gaul and Spain, tells us that in his time the houses were built of a sort of mortar, covered with thatch or oak shingles, and that the people did not make use of tiles. What was the time of Vitruvius? It was that of Augustus. The arts had scarcely yet reached the Spaniards, who had mines of gold and silver; or the Gauls, who had fought for ten years against Cæsar.
The same Vitruvius informs us that in the opulent and ingenious town of Marseilles, which traded with so many nations, the roofs were only of a kind of clay mixed with straw.
He says that the Phrygians dug themselves habitations in the ground; they stuck poles round the hollow, brought them together at the top, and laid earth over them. The Hurons and the Algonquins are better lodged. This gives us no very lofty idea of Troy, built by the gods, and the palace of Priam:
Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt;Apparent Priami et veterum penetralia regum.A mighty breach is made; the rooms concealedAppear, and all the palace is revealed—The halls of audience, and of public state.—DRYDEN.
To be sure, the people are not lodged like kings; huts are to be seen near the Vatican and near Versailles. Besides, industry rises and falls among nations by a thousand revolutions:
Et campus ubi Troja fuit.....the plain where Troy once stood.
We have our arts, the ancients had theirs. We could not make a galley with three benches of oars, but we can build ships with a hundred pieces of cannon. We cannot raise obelisks a hundred feet high in a single piece, but our meridians are more exact. The byssus is unknown to us, but the stuffs of Lyons are more valuable. The Capitol was worthy of admiration, the church of St. Peter is larger and more beautiful. The Louvre is a masterpiece when compared with the palace of Persepolis, the situation and ruins of which do but tell of a vast monument to barbaric wealth. Rameau's music is probably better than that of Timotheus; and there is not a picture presented at Paris in the Hall of Apollo (salon d'Apollon) which does not excel the paintings dug out of Herculaneum.
Was the ox Apis worshipped at Memphis as a god, as a symbol, or as an ox? It is likely that the fanatics regarded him as a god, the wise as merely a symbol, and that the more stupid part of the people worshipped the ox. Did Cambyses do right in killing this ox with his own hand? Why not? He showed to the imbecile that their god might be put on the spit without nature's arming herself to avenge the sacrilege. The Egyptians have been much extolled. I have not heard of a more miserable people. There must always have been in their character, and in their government, some radical vice which has constantly made vile slaves of them. Let it be granted that in times almost unknown they conquered the earth; but in historical times they have been subjugated by all who have chosen to take the trouble—by the Assyrians, by the Greeks, by the Romans, by the Arabs, by the Mamelukes, by the Turks, by all, in short, but our crusaders, who were even more ill-advised than the Egyptians were cowardly. It was the Mameluke militia that beat the French under St. Louis. There are, perhaps, but two things tolerable in this nation; the first is, that those who worshipped an ox never sought to compel those who adored an ape to change their religion; the second, that they have always hatched chickens in ovens.
A vast monument to barbaric wealth.A vast monument to barbaric wealth.
We are told of their pyramids; but they are monuments of an enslaved people. The whole nation must have been set to work on them, or those unsightly masses could never have been raised. And for what use were they? To preserve in a small chamber the mummy of some prince, or governor, or intendant, which his soul was to reanimate at the end of a thousand years. But if they looked forward to this resurrection of the body, why did they take out the brains before embalming them? Were the Egyptians to be resuscitated without brains?
Justin the Martyr, who wrote about the year 270 of the Christian era, was the first who spoke of the Apocalypse; he attributes it to the apostle John the Evangelist. In his dialogue with Tryphon, that Jew asks him if he does not believe that Jerusalem is one day to be re-established? Justin answers that he believes it, as all Christians do who think aright. "There was among us," says he, "a certain person named John, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus; he foretold that the faithful shall pass a thousand years in Jerusalem."
The belief in this reign of a thousand years was long prevalent among the Christians. This period was also in great credit among the Gentiles. The souls of the Egyptians returned to their bodies at the end of a thousand years; and, according to Virgil, the souls in purgatory were exorcised for the same space of time—et mille per annos. The New Jerusalem of a thousand years was to have twelve gates, in memory of the twelve apostles; its form was to be square; its length, breadth, and height were each to be a thousand stadii—i.e., five hundred leagues; so that the houses were to be five hundred leagues high. It would be rather disagreeable to live in the upper story; but we find all this in the twenty-first chapter of the Apocalypse.
If Justin was the first who attributed the Apocalypse to St. John, some persons have rejected his testimony; because in the same dialogue with the Jew Tryphon he says that, according to the relation of the apostles, Jesus Christ, when he went into the Jordan, made the water boil, which, however, is not to be found in any writing of the apostles.
The same St. Justin confidently cites the oracles of Sibyls; he moreover pretends to have seen the remains of the places in which the seventy-two interpreters were confined in the Egyptian pharos, in Herod's time. The testimony of a man who had had the misfortune to see these places seems to indicate that he might possibly have been confined there himself.
St. Irenæus, who comes afterwards, and who also believed in the reign of a thousand years, tells us that he learned from an old man that St. John wrote the Apocalypse. But St. Irenæus is reproached with having written that there should be but four gospels, because there are but four quarters of the world, and four cardinal points, and Ezekiel saw but four animals. He calls this reasoning a demonstration. It must be confessed that Irenæus's method of demonstrating is quite worthy of Justin's power of sight.
Clement of Alexandria, in his"Electa"mentions only an Apocalypse of St. Peter, to which great importance was attached. Tertullian, a great partisan of the thousand years' reign, not only assures us that St. John foretold this resurrection and reign of a thousand years in the city of Jerusalem, but also asserts that this Jerusalem was already beginning to form itself in the air, where it had been seen by all the Christians of Palestine, and even by the Pagans, at the latter end of the night, for forty nights successively; but, unfortunately, the city always disappeared as soon as it was daylight.
Origen, in his preface to St. John's Gospel, and in his homilies, quotes the oracles of the Apocalypse, but he likewise quotes the oracles of Sibyls. And St. Dionysius of Alexandria, who wrote about the middle of the third century, says, in one of his fragments preserved by Eusebius, that nearly all the doctors rejected the Apocalypse as a book devoid of reason, and that this book was composed, not by St. John, but by one Cerinthus, who made use of a great name to give more weight to his reveries.
The Council of Laodicea, held in 360, did not reckon the Apocalypse among the canonical books. It is very singular that Laodicea, one of the churches to which the Apocalypse was addressed, should have rejected a treasure designed for itself, and that the bishop of Ephesus, who attended the council, should also have rejected this book of St. John, who was buried at Ephesus.
It was visible to all eyes that St. John was continually turning about in his grave, causing a constant rising and falling of the earth. Yet the same persons who were sure that St. John was not quite dead were also sure that he had not written the Apocalypse. But those who were for the thousand years' reign were unshaken in their opinion. Sulpicius Severus, in his "Sacred History," book xi., treats as mad and impious those who did not receive the Apocalypse. At length, after numerous oppositions of council to council, the opinion of Sulpicius Severus prevailed. The matter having been thus cleared up, the Church came to the decision, from which there is no appeal, that the Apocalypse is incontestably St. John's.
Every Christian communion has applied to itself the prophecies contained in this book. The English have found in it the revolutions of Great Britain; the Lutherans, the troubles of Germany; the French reformers, the reign of Charles IX., and the regency of Catherine de Medici, and they are all equally right. Bossuet and Newton have both commented on the Apocalypse, yet, after all, the eloquent declamations of the one, and the sublime discoveries of the other, have done them greater honor than their commentaries.
Two great men, but very different in their greatness, have commented on the Apocalypse in the seventeenth century: Newton, to whom such a study was very ill suited, and Bossuet, who was better fitted for the undertaking. Both gave additional weapons to their enemies, by their commentaries, and, as has elsewhere been said, the former consoled mankind for his superiority over them, while the latter made his enemies rejoice.
The Catholics and the Protestants have both explained the Apocalypse in their favor, and have each found in it exactly what has accorded with their interests. They have made wonderful commentaries on the great beast with seven heads and ten horns, with the hair of a leopard, the feet of a bear, the throat of a lion, the strength of a dragon, and to buy and sell it was necessary to have the character and number of the beast, which number was 666.
Bossuet finds that this beast was evidently the Emperor Diocletian, by making an acrostic of his name. Grotius believed that it was Trajan. A curate of St. Sulpice, named La Chétardie, known from some strange adventures, proves that the beast was Julian. Jurieu proves that the beast is the pope. One preacher has demonstrated that it was Louis XIV. A good Catholic has demonstrated that it was William, king of England. It is not easy to make them all agree.
There have been warm disputes concerning the stars which fell from heaven to earth, and the sun and moon, which were struck with darkness in their third parts.
There are several opinions respecting the book that the angel made the author of the Apocalypse eat, which book was sweet to the mouth and bitter to the stomach. Jurieu asserted that the books of his adversary were designated thereby, and his argument was retorted upon himself.
There have been disputes about this verse: "And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder; and I heard the voice of harpers harping on their harps."
It is quite clear that it would have been better to have respected the Apocalypse than to have commented upon it.
Camus, bishop of Bellay, printed in the last century a large book against the monks, which an unfrocked monk abridged. It was entitled "Apocalypse," because in it he exposed the dangers and defects of the monastic life; and "Melito's Apocalypse" ("Apocalypse de Méliton?"), because Melito, bishop of Sardis, in the second century, had passed for a prophet. This bishop's work has none of the obscurities of St. John's Apocalypse. Nothing was ever clearer. The bishop is like a magistrate saying to an attorney, "You are a forger and a cheat—do you comprehend me?"
The bishop of Bellay computes, in his Apocalypse or Revelations, that there were in his time ninety-eight orders of monks endowed or mendicant, living at the expense of the people, without employing themselves in the smallest labor. He reckoned six hundred thousand monks in Europe. The calculation was a little strained; but it is certain that the real number of the monks was rather too large.
He assures us that the monks are enemies to the bishops, curates, and magistrates; that, among the privileges granted to the Cordeliers, the sixth privilege is the certainty of being saved, whatever horrible crime you may have committed, provided you belong to the Order of St. Francis; that the monks are like apes; the higher they climb, the plainer you see their posteriors; that the name ofmonkhas become so infamous and execrable that it is regarded by the monks themselves as a foul reproach and the most violent insult that can be offered them.
My dear reader, whoever you are, minister or magistrate, consider attentively the following short extract from our bishop's book:
"Figure to yourself the convent of the Escorial or of Monte Cassino, where the cœnobites have everything necessary, useful, delightful, superfluous and superabundant—since they have their yearly revenue of a hundred and fifty thousand, four hundred thousand, or five hundred thousand crowns; and judge whether Monsieur l'Abbé has wherewithal to allow himself and those under him to sleep after dinner.
"Then imagine an artisan or laborer, with no dependence except on the work of his hands, and burdened with a large family, toiling like a slave every day and at all seasons, to feed them with the bread of sorrow and the water of tears; and say, which of the two conditions is pre-eminent in poverty."
This is a passage from the "Episcopal Apocalypse" which needs no commentary. All that is wanted is an angel to come and fill his cup with the wine of the monks, to slake the thirst of the laborers who plow, sow, and reap, for the monasteries.
But this prelate, instead of writing a useful book, only composed a satire. Consistently with his dignity, he should have stated the good as well as evil. He should have acknowledged that the Benedictines have produced many good works, and that the Jesuits have rendered great services to literature. He might have blessed the brethren of La Charité, and those of the Redemption of the Captives. Our first duty is to be just. Camus gave too much scope to his imagination. St. François de Sales advised him to write moral romances; but he abused the advice.
These are heretics who might pass for other than Christians. However, they acknowledge Jesus as Saviour and Mediator; but they dare to maintain that nothing is more contrary to right reason than what is taught among Christians concerning the Trinity of persons in one only divine essence, of whom the second is begotten by the first, and the third proceeds from the other two; that this unintelligible doctrine is not to be found in any part of Scripture; that no passage can be produced which authorizes it; or to which, without in any wise departing from the spirit of the text, a sense cannot be given more clear, more natural, or more conformable to common notions, and to primitive and immutable truths; that to maintain, as the orthodox do, that in the divine essence there are several distinct persons, and that the Eternal is not the only true God, but that the Son and the Holy Ghost must be joined with Him, is to introduce into the Church of Christ an error the most gross and dangerous, since it is openly to favor polytheism; that it implies a contradiction, to say that there is but one God, and that, nevertheless, there are threepersons, each of which is truly God; that this distinction, ofoneinessence, andthreeinperson, was never in Scripture; that it is manifestly false, since it is certain that there are no fewer essences than persons, nor persons than essences; that the three persons of the Trinity are either three different substances, or accidents of the divine essence, or that essence itself without distinction; that, in the first place, you make three Gods; that, in the second, God is composed of accidents; you adore accidents, and metamorphose accidents into persons; that, in the third, you unfoundedly and to no purpose divide an indivisible subject, and distinguish intothreethat which within itself has no distinction; that if it be said that the three personalities are neither different substances in the divine essence, nor accidents of that essence, it will be difficult to persuade ourselves that they are anything at all; that it must not be believed that the most rigid and decided Trinitarians have themselves any clear idea of the way in which the threehypostasessubsist in God, without dividing His substance, and consequently without multiplying it; that St. Augustine himself, after advancing on this subject a thousand reasonings alike dark and false, was forced to confess that nothing intelligible could be said about the matter; they then repeat the passage by this father, which is, indeed, a very singular one: "When," says he, "it is asked what arethe three, the language of man fails and terms are wanting to express them." "Three persons, has, however, been said—not for the purpose of expressing anything, but in order to say something and not remain mute.""Dictum est tres personæ, non ut aliquid diceretur, sed ne taceretur".—De Trinit. lib. v. cap. 9; that modern theologians have cleared up this matter no better; that, when they are asked what they understand by the wordperson, they explain themselves only by saying that it is a certain incomprehensible distinction by which are distinguished in one nature only, a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost; that the explanation which they give of the termsbegettingandproceeding, is no more satisfactory, since it reduces itself to saying that these terms indicate certain incomprehensible relations existing among the three persons of the Trinity; that it may be hence gathered that the state of the question between them and the orthodox is to know whether there are in God three distinctions, of which no one has any definite idea, and among which there are certain relations of which no one has any more idea.
From all this they conclude that it would be wiser to abide by the testimony of the apostles, who never spoke of the Trinity, and to banish from religion forever all terms which are not in the scriptures—astrinity,person,essence,hypostasis,hypostaticandpersonal union,incarnation,generation,proceeding, and many others of the same kind; which being absolutely devoid of meaning, since they are represented by no real existence in nature, can excite in the understanding none but false, vague, obscure, and undefinable notions.
To this article let us add what Calmet says in his dissertation on the following passage of the Epistle of John the Evangelist: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, the water and the blood; and these three are one." Calmet acknowledges that these two verses are not in any ancient bible; indeed, it would be very strange if St. John had spoken of the Trinity in a letter, and said not a word about it in his Gospel. We find no trace of this dogma, either in the canonical or in the apocryphal gospels. All these reasons and many others might excuse the anti-trinitarians, if the councils had not decided. But as the heretics pay no regard to councils, we know not what measures to take to confound them. Let us content ourselves with believing and wishing them to believe.
(FROM THE GREEK WORD SIGNIFYINGHIDDEN.)
It has been very well remarked that the divine writings might, at one and the same time, be sacred and apocryphal; sacred, because they had undoubtedly been dictated by God Himself; apocryphal, because they were hidden from the nations, and even from the Jewish people.
That they were hidden from the nations before the translation executed at Alexandria, under the Ptolemies, is an acknowledged truth. Josephus declares it in the answer to Appian, which he wrote after Appian's death; and his declaration has not less strength because he seeks to strengthen it by a fable. He says in his history that the Jewish books being all-divine, no foreign historian or poet had ever dared to speak of them. And, immediately after assuring us that no one had ever dared to mention the Jewish laws, he adds that the historian Theopompus, having only intended to insert something concerning them in his history, God struck him with madness for thirty days; but that, having been informed in a dream that he was mad only because he had wished to know divine things and make them known to the profane, he asked pardon of God, who restored him to his senses.
Josephus in the same passage also relates that a poet named Theodectes, having said a few words about the Jews in his tragedies, became blind, and that God did not restore his sight until he had done penance.
As for the Jewish people, it is certain that there was a time when they could not read the divine writings; for it is said in the Second Book of Kings (chap, xxii., ver. 8), and in the Second Book of Chronicles (chap, xxxiv., ver. 14), that in the reign of Josias they were unknown, and that a single copy was accidentally found in the house of the high priest Hilkiah.
The twelve tribes which were dispersed by Shalmaneser have never re-appeared; and their books, if they had any, have been lost with them. The two tribes which were in slavery at Babylon and allowed to return at the end of seventy years, returned without their books, or at least they were very scarce and very defective, since Esdras was obliged to restore them. But although during the Babylonian captivity these books were apocryphal, that is, hidden or unknown to the people, they were constantly sacred—they bore the stamp of divinity—they were, as all the world agrees, the only monument of truth upon earth.
We now give the name of apocrypha to those books which are not worthy of belief; so subject are languages to change! Catholics and Protestants agree in regarding as apocryphal in this sense, and in rejecting, the prayer of Manasseh, king of Judah, contained in the Second Book of Kings; the Third and Fourth Books of Maccabees; the Fourth Book of Esdras; although these books were incontestably written by Jews. But it is denied that the authors were inspired by God, like the Jews.
The other books, rejected by the Protestants only, and consequently considered by them as not inspired by God Himself, are the Book of Wisdom, though it is written in the same style as the Proverbs; Ecclesiasticus, though the style is still the same; the first two books of Maccabees, though written by a Jew, But they do not believe this Jew to have been inspired by God—Tobit—although the story is edifying. The judicious and profound Calmet affirms that a part of this book was written by Tobit the father, and a part by Tobit the son; and that a third author added the conclusion of the last chapter, which says that Tobit the younger expired at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven years, and that he died rejoicing over the destruction of Nineveh.
The same Calmet, at the end of his preface, has these words: "Neither the story itself, nor the manner in which it is told, bears any fabulous or fictitious character. If all Scripture histories, containing anything of the marvellous or extraordinary, were to be rejected, where is the sacred book which is to be preserved?"
Judith is another book rejected by the Protestants, although Luther himself declares that "this book is beautiful, good, holy, useful, the language of a holy poet and a prophet animated by the Holy Spirit, that had been his instructor," etc.
It is indeed hard to discover at what time Judith's adventure happened, or where the town of Bethulia was. The degree of sanctity in Judith's action has also been disputed; but the book having been declared canonical by the Council of Trent, all disputes are at an end.
Other books are Baruch, although it is written in the style of all the other prophets; Esther, of which the Protestants reject only some additions after the tenth chapter. They admit all the rest of the book; yet no one knows who King Ahasuerus was, although he is the principal person in the story; Daniel, in which the Protestants retrench Susannah's adventure and that of the children in the furnace; but they retain Nebuchadnezzar's dream and his grazing with the beasts.
On the Life of Moses, an Apocryphal Book of the Highest Antiquity.
The ancient book which contains the life and death of Moses seems to have been written at the time of the Babylonian captivity. It was then that the Jews began to know the names given to the angels by the Chaldæans and Persians.
Here we see the names of Zinguiel, Samael, Tsakon, Lakah, and many others of which the Jews had made no mention.
The book of the death of Moses seems to have been written later. It is known that the Jews had several very ancient lives of Moses and other books, independently of the Pentateuch. In them he was called Moni, not Moses; and it is asserted thatmosignifiedwater, andnithe particleof. He was called by the general name of Melk. He received those of Joakim, Adamosi, Thetmosi; and it has been thought that he was the same person whom Mane then calls Ozarziph.
Some of these old Hebrew manuscripts were withdrawn from their covering of dust in the cabinets of the Jews about the year 1517. The learned Gilbert Gaumin, who was a perfect master of their language, translated them into Latin about the year 1535. They were afterwards printed and dedicated to Cardinal Bérule. The copies have become extremely scarce.
Never were rabbinism, the taste for the marvellous and the imagination of the orientals displayed to greater excess.
Fragment of the Life of Moses.
A hundred and thirty years after the settling of the Jews in Egypt, and sixty years after the death of the patriarch Joseph, Pharaoh, while sleeping, had a dream. He saw an old man holding a balance; in one scale were all the inhabitants of Egypt; in the other was an infant, and this infant weighed more than all the Egyptians together. Pharaoh forthwith called together hisshotim, or sages. One of the wise men said: "O king, this infant is a Jew who will one day do great evil to your kingdom. Cause all the children of the Jews to be slain; thus shalt thou save thy empire, if, indeed, the decrees of fate can be opposed."
Pharaoh was pleased with this advice. He sent for the midwives and ordered them to strangle all the male children of which the Jewesses were delivered. There was in Egypt a man named Abraham, son of Keath, husband to Jocabed, sister to his brother. This Jocabed bore him a daughter named Mary, signifying "persecuted," because the Egyptians, being descended from Ham, persecuted the Israelites, who were evidently descended from Shem. Jocabed afterwards brought forth Aaron, signifying "condemned to death," because Pharaoh had condemned all the Jewish infants to death. Aaron and Mary were preserved by the angels of the Lord, who nursed them in the fields and restored them to their parents when they had reached the period of adolescence.
At length Jocabed had a third child; this was Moses, who, consequently, was fifteen years younger than his brother. He was exposed on the Nile. Pharaoh's daughter found him while bathing, had him nursed and adopted him as her son, although she was not married.
Three years after, her father, Pharaoh, took a fresh wife, on which occasion he held a great feast. His wife was at his right hand, and at his left was his daughter, with little Moses. The child, in sport, took the crown and put it on his head. Balaam, the magician, the king's eunuch, then recalled his majesty's dream. "Behold," said he, "the child who is one day to do so much mischief! The spirit of God is in him. What he has just now done is a proof that he has already formed the design of dethroning you. He must instantly be put to death." This idea pleased Pharaoh much.
They were about to kill little Moses when the Lord sent his angel Gabriel, disguised as one of Pharaoh's officers, to say to him: "My lord, we should not put to death an innocent child, which is not yet come to years of discretion; he put on your crown only because he wants judgment. You have only to let a ruby and a burning coal be presented to him; if he choose the coal, it is clear that he is a blockhead who will never do any harm; but if he take the ruby it will be a sign that he has too much sense to burn his fingers; then let him be slain."
A ruby and a coal were immediately brought. Moses did not fail to take the ruby; but the angel Gabriel, by a sort of legerdemain, slipped the coal into the place of the precious stone. Moses put the coal into his mouth and burned his tongue so horribly that he stammered ever after; and this was the reason that the Jewish lawgiver could never articulate.
Moses was fifteen years old and a favorite with Pharaoh. A Hebrew came to complain to him that an Egyptian had beaten him after lying with his wife. Moses killed the Egyptian. Pharaoh ordered Moses' head to be cut off. The executioner struck him, but God instantly changed Moses' neck into a marble column, and sent the angel Michael, who in three days conducted Moses beyond the frontiers.
The young Hebrew fled to Mecano, king of Ethiopia, who was at war with the Arabs. Mecano made him his general-in-chief; and, after Mecano's death, Moses was chosen king and married the widow. But Moses, ashamed to have married the wife of his lord, dared not to enjoy her, but placed a sword in the bed between himself and the queen. He lived with her forty years without touching her. The angry queen at length called together the states of the kingdom of Ethiopia, complained that Moses was of no service to her, and concluded by driving him away and placing on the throne the son of the late king.
Moses fled into the country of Midian, to the priest Jethro. This priest thought his fortune would be made if he could put Moses into the hands of Pharaoh of Egypt, and began by confining him in a low cell and allowing him only bread and water. Moses grew fat in his dungeon, at which Jethro was quite astonished. He was not aware that his daughter Sephora had fallen in love with the prisoner, and every day, with her own hands, carried him partridges and quails, with excellent wine. He concluded that Moses was protected by God and did not give him up to Pharaoh.
However, Jethro the priest wished to have his daughter married. He had in his garden a tree of sapphire, on which was engraven the wordJahoorJehovah. He caused it to be published throughout the country that he would give his daughter to him who could tear up the sapphire tree. Sephora's lovers presented themselves, but none of them could so much as bend the tree. Moses, who was only seventy-seven years old, tore it up at once without an effort. He married Sephora, by whom he soon had a fine boy named Gerson.
As he was one day walking in a small wood, he met God (who had formerly called Himself Sadai, and then called Himself Jehovah), and God ordered him to go and work miracles at Pharaoh's court. He set out with his wife and son. On the way they met an angel (to whom no name is given), who ordered Sephora to circumcise little Gerson with a knife made of stone. God sent Aaron on the same errand, but Aaron thought his brother had done wrong in marrying a Midianite; he called her a very coarse name, and little Gerson a bastard, and sent them the shortest way back to their own country.
Aaron and Moses then went to Pharaoh's palace by themselves. The gate of the palace was guarded by two lions of an enormous size. Balaam, one of the king's magicians, seeing the two brothers come, set the lions upon them; but Moses touched them with his rod, and the lions, humbly prostrating themselves, licked the feet of Aaron and Moses. The king, in astonishment, had the two pilgrims brought into the presence of all his magicians, that they might strive which could work the most miracles.
The author here relates the ten plagues of Egypt, nearly as they are related in Exodus. He only adds that Moses covered all Egypt with lice, to the depth of a cubit; and that he sent among all the Egyptians lions, wolves, bears, and tigers, which ran into all the houses, notwithstanding that the doors were bolted, and devoured all the little children.
According to this writer, it was not the Jews who fled through the Red Sea; it was Pharaoh, who fled that way with his army: the Jews ran after him; the waters separated right and left to see them fight; and all the Egyptians, except the king, were slain upon the sand. Then the king, finding that his own was the weaker side, asked pardon of God. Michael and Gabriel were sent to him and conveyed him to the city of Nineveh, where he reigned four hundred years.
The Death of Moses.
God had declared to the people of Israel that they should not go out of Egypt until they had once more found the tomb of Joseph. Moses found it and carried it on his shoulders through the Red Sea. God told him that He would bear in mind this good action and would assist him at the time of his death. When Moses had lived six score years, God came to announce to him that he must die and had but three hours more to live. The bad angel Samael was present at the conversation. As soon as the first hour had passed he began to laugh for joy that he should so soon carry off the soul of Moses; and Michael began to weep. "Be not rejoiced, thou wicked beast," said the good to the bad angel; "Moses is going to die, but we have Joshua in his stead."
When the three hours had elapsed God commanded Gabriel to take the dying man's soul. Gabriel begged to be excused. Michael did the same. These two angels having refused, God addressed Himself to Zinguiel. But this angel was no more willing to obey than the others. "I," said he, "was formerly his preceptor, and I will not kill my disciple." Then God, being angry, said to the bad angel Samael, "Well, then, wicked one, thou must take his soul." Samael joyfully drew his sword and ran up to Moses. The dying man rose up in wrath, his eyes sparkling with fire. "What! thou villain," said Moses, "wouldst thou dare to kill me?—me, who when a child, put on my head the crown of a Pharaoh; who have worked miracles at the age of eighty years; who have led sixty millions of men out of Egypt; who have cut the Red Sea in two; who have conquered two kings so tall that at the time of the flood they were not knee-deep in water? Begone, you rascal; leave my presence instantly."
This altercation lasted a few moments longer, during which time Gabriel prepared a litter to convey the soul of Moses, Michael a purple mantle, and Zinguiel a cassock. God then laid His hands on Moses' breast and took away his soul.
It is to this history that St. Jude the apostle alludes in his epistle when he says that the archangel Michael contended with the devil for the body of Moses. As this fact is to be found only in the book which I have just quoted, it is evident that St. Jude had read it, and that he considered it as a canonical book.
The second history of the death of Moses is likewise a conversation with God. It is no less pleasant and curious than the first. A part of this dialogue is as follows:
Moses.—I pray Thee, O Lord, let me enter the land of promise, at least for two or three years.
God.—No; My decree expressly saith that thou shalt not enter it.
Moses.—Grant, at least, that I may be carried thither after my death.
God.—No; neither dead nor alive.
Moses.—Alas! but, good Lord, thou showest such clemency to Thy creatures; Thou pardonest them twice or three times; I have sinned but once, and am not to be forgiven!
God.—Thou knowest not what thou sayest; thou hast committed six sins. I remember to have sworn thy death, or the destruction of Israel; one of the two must be accomplished. If thou wilt live Israel must perish.
Moses.—O Lord, be not so hasty. All is in Thy hands. Let Moses perish, rather than one soul in Israel.
After several discourses of this sort, the echo of the mountain says to Moses, "Thou hast but five hours to live." At the end of five hours God sends for Gabriel, Zinguiel and Samael. He promises Moses that he shall be buried and carries away his soul.
When we reflect that nearly the whole earth has been infatuated by similar stories, and that they have formed the education of mankind, the fables of Pilpay, Lokman, or Æsop appear quite reasonable.
Apocryphal Books of the New Law.
There were fifty gospels, all very different from one another, of which there remain only four entire—that of James, that of Nicodemus, that of the infancy of Jesus, and that of the birth of Mary. Of the rest we have nothing more than fragments and slight notices.
The traveller Tournefort, sent into Asia by Louis XIV., informs us that the Georgians have preserved the gospel of the Infancy, which was probably communicated to them by the Azmenians.
In the beginning, several of these gospels, now regarded as apocryphal, were cited as authentic, and were even the only gospels that were cited. In the Acts of the Apostles we find these words uttered by St. Paul (chap. xx., ver. 35), "And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, it is more blessed to give than to receive."
St. Barnabas, in his Catholic Epistle (Nos. 4 and 7), makes Jesus Christ speak thus: "Let us resist all iniquity; let us hate it. Such as would see Me enter into My kingdom must follow Me through pain and sorrow."
St. Clement, in his second Epistle to the Corinthians, puts these words into the mouth of Jesus Christ: "If you are assembled in My bosom and do not follow My commandments, I shall reject you and say to you, 'Depart from Me; I know you not; depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity.'"
He afterwards attributes to Jesus Christ these words: "Keep your flesh chaste and the seal unspotted, in order that you may receive eternal life."
In the Apostolical Constitutions, composed in the second century, we find these words: "Jesus Christ has said, 'Be ye honest exchange brokers.'"
We find many similar quotations, not one of which is taken from the four gospels recognized by the Church as the only canonical ones. They are, for the most part, taken from the gospel according to the Hebrews, a gospel which was translated by St. Jerome, and is now considered as apocryphal.
St. Clement the Roman says, in his second Epistle: "The Lord, being asked when his reign should come, answered: 'When two shall make one, when that which is without shall be within, when the male shall be female, and when there shall be neither female nor male.'"
These words are taken from the gospel according to the Egyptians; and the text is repeated entire by St. Clement of Alexandria. But what could the author of the Egyptian gospels, and what could St. Clement himself be thinking of? The words which he quotes are injurious to Jesus Christ; they give us to understand that He did not believe that His reign would come at all. To say that a thing will take place when two shall make one, when the male shall be female, is to say that it will never take place. A passage like this is rabbinical, much rather than evangelical.
There were also two apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. They are quoted by St. Epiphanius. In these Acts it is related that St. Paul was the son of an idolatrous father and mother, and turned Jew in order to marry the daughter of Gamaliel; and that either being refused, or not finding her a virgin, he took part with the disciples of Jesus. This is nothing less than blasphemy against St. Paul.
The Other Apocryphal Books of the First and Second Centuries.
I.
The Book of Enoch, the seventh man after Adam, which mentions the war of the rebellious angels, under their captain, Samasia, against the faithful angels led by Michael. The object of the war was to enjoy the daughters of men, as has been said in the article on "Angel."
II.
The Acts of St. Thecla and St. Paul, written by a disciple named John, attached to St. Paul. In this history Thecla escapes from her persecutors to go to St. Paul, disguised as a man. She also baptizes a lion; but this adventure was afterwards suppressed. Here, too, we have the portrait of Paul:Statura brevi, calvastrum, cruribus curvis, sorosum, superciliis junctis, naso aquilino, plenum gratia Dei.
Although this story was recommended by St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom, and others, it had no reputation among the other doctors of the Church.
III.
The Preaching of Peter. This writing is also called the Gospel or Revelation of Peter. St. Clement of Alexandria speaks of it with great praise; but it is easy to perceive that some impostor had taken that apostle's name.
IV.
The Acts of Peter, a work equally supposititious.
V.
The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. It is doubted whether this book is by a Jew or a Christian of the primitive ages; for it is said in the Testament of Levi that at the end of the seventh week there shall come priests given to idolatry—bellatores,avari,scribæ iniqui,impudici,puerorum corrupt ores et pecorum; that there shall then be a new priesthood; that the heavens shall be opened; and that the glory of the Most High, and the spirit of intelligence and sanctification, shall descend upon this new priest; which seems to foretell Jesus Christ.
VI.
The Letter of Abgarus, a pretended king of Edessa, to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ's answer to King Abgarus. It is, indeed, believed that, in the time of Tiberius, there was a toparch of Edessa who had passed from the service of the Persians into that of the Romans, but his epistolary correspondence has been considered by all good critics as a chimera.
VII.
The Acts of Pilate. Pilate's letter to Tiberius on the death of Jesus Christ The life of Procula, Pilate's wife.
VIII.
The Acts of Peter and Paul, in which is the history of St. Peter's quarrel with Simon the magician. Abdias, Marcellus, and Hegesippus have all three written this story. St. Peter first disputed with Simon which should resuscitate one of the Emperor Nero's relatives, who had just died; Simon half restored him, and St. Peter finished the resurrection. Simon next flew up in the air, but Peter brought him down again, and the magician broke his legs. The Emperor Nero, incensed at the death of his magician, had St. Peter crucified with his head downwards, and St. Paul decapitated, as one of St. Peter's party.
IX.
The Acts of Blessed Paul the Apostle and Teacher of the Nations. In this book St. Paul is made to live at Rome for two years after St. Peter's death. The author says that when St. Paul's head was cut off there issued forth milk instead of blood, and that Lucina, a devout woman, had him buried twenty miles from Rome, on the way to Ostia, at her country house.
X.
The Acts of the Blessed Apostle Andrew. The author relates that St. Andrew went to the city of the Myrmidons and that he baptized all the citizens. A young man named Sostratus, of the town of Amarea, which is at least better known than that of the Myrmidons, came and said to the blessed Andrew: "I am so handsome that my mother has conceived a passion for me. I abhorred so execrable a crime, and have fled. My mother, in her fury, accuses me to the proconsul of the province of having attempted to violate her. I can make no answer, for I would rather die than accuse my mother." While he was yet speaking, the guards of the proconsul came and seized him. St Andrew accompanied the son before the judge, and pleaded his cause. The mother, not at all disconcerted, accused St. Andrew himself of having instigated her son to the crime. The proconsul immediately ordered St. Andrew to be thrown into the river; but, the apostle having prayed to God, there came a great earthquake, and the mother was struck by a thunderbolt.
After several adventures of the same sort the author has St. Andrew crucified at Patras.
XI.
The Acts of St. James the Greater. The author has him condemned to death at Jerusalem by the pontiff, and, before his crucifixion, he baptizes the registrar.
XII.
The Acts of St. John the Evangelist. The author relates that, at Ephesus—of which place St. John wast bishop—Drusilla, being converted by him, desired no more of her husband Andronicus's company, but retired into a tomb. A young man named Callimachus, in love with her, repeatedly pressed her, even in her tomb, to consent to the gratification of his passion. Brasilia, being urged both by her husband and her lover, wished for death, and obtained it. Callimachus, when informed of her loss, was still more furious with love; he bribed one of Andronicus's domestics, who had the keys of the tomb; he ran to it, stripped his mistress of her shroud, and exclaimed, "What thou wouldst not grant me living, thou shalt grant me dead," A serpent instantly issued from the tomb; the young man fainted; the serpent killed him, as also the domestic who was his accomplice, and coiled itself round his body. St. John arrives with the husband, and, to their astonishment, they find Callimachus alive. St. John orders the serpent to depart, and the serpent obeys. He asks the young man how he has been resuscitated. Callimachus answered that an angel had appeared to him, saying, "It was necessary that thou shouldst die in order to revive a Christian." He immediately asked to be baptized, and begged that John would resuscitate Drusilla. The apostle having instantly worked this miracle, Callimachus and Drusilla prayed that he would also be so good as to resuscitate the domestic. The latter, who was an obstinate pagan, being restored to life, declared that he would rather die than be a Christian, and, accordingly, he incontinently died again; on which St. John said that a bad tree always bears bad fruit.
Aristodemus, high-priest of Ephesus, though struck by such a prodigy, would not be converted; he said to St. John: "Permit me to poison you; and, if you do not die, I will be converted." The apostle accepted the proposal; but he chose that Aristodemus should first poison two Ephesians condemned to death. Aristodemus immediately presented to them the poison, and they instantly expired. St. John took the same poison, which did him no harm. He resuscitated the two dead men, and the high-priest was converted.
St. John having attained the age of ninety-seven years, Jesus Christ appeared to him, and said, "It is time for thee to come to My table, and feast with thy brethren"; and soon after the apostle slept in peace.
XIII.
The History of the Blessed James the Less, and the brothers Simon and Jude. These apostles went into Persia, and performed things as incredible as those related of St. Andrew.
XIV.
The Acts of St. Matthew, apostle and evangelist. St. Matthew goes into Ethiopia, to the great town of Nadaver, where he restores to life the son of Queen Candace, and founds Christian churches.
XV.
The Acts of the Blessed Bartholomew in India. Bartholomew went first to the temple of Astaroth. This goddess delivered oracles, and cured all diseases. Bartholomew silenced her, and made sick all those whom she had cured. King Polimius disputed with him; the devil declared, before the king, that he was conquered, and St. Bartholomew consecrated King Polimius bishop of the Indies.
XVI.
The Acts of the Blessed Thomas, apostle of India. St. Thomas entered India by another road, and worked more miracles than St. Bartholomew. He at last suffered martyrdom, and appeared to Xiphoro and Susani.
XVII.
The Acts of the Blessed Philip. He went to preach in Scythia. They wished to make him a sacrifice to Mars, but he caused a dragon to issue from the altar and devour the children of the priests. He died at Hierapolis, at the age of eighty-seven. It is not known what town this was, for there were several of the name.
All these histories are supposed to have been written by Abdias, bishop of Babylon, and were translated by Julius Africanus.
XVIII.
To these abuses of the Holy Scriptures was added one less revolting—one which did not fail in respect for Christianity, like those which have just been laid before the reader, viz., the Liturgies attributed to St James, St. Peter, and St. Mark, the falsehood of which has been shown by the learned Tillemont.
XIX.
Fabricius places among the apocryphal writings the Homily (attributed to St. Augustine) on the manner in which the Symbol was formed. But he certainly does not mean to insinuate that this Symbol or Creed, which we call the Apostles', is the less true and sacred. It is said in this Homily, in Rufinus, and afterwards in Isidorus, that ten days after the ascension, the apostles, being shut up together for fear of the Jews, Peter said, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty;" Andrew, "and in Jesus Christ, His only son;" James, "who was conceived by the Holy Ghost;" and that thus, each apostle having repeated an article, the Creed was completed.
This story not being in the Acts of the Apostles, our belief in it is dispensed with—but not our belief in the Creed, of which the apostles taught the substance. Truth must not suffer from the false ornaments in which it has been sought to array her.
XX.
The Apostolical Constitutions. The Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, which were formerly supposed to have been digested by St. Clement the Roman, are now ranked among the apocryphal writings. The reading of a few chapters is sufficient to show that the apostles had no share in this work. In the eleventh chapter, women are ordered not to rise before the ninth hour. In the first chapter of the second book it is desired that bishops should be learned, but in the time of the apostles there was no hierarchy—no bishop attached to a single church. They went about teaching from town to town, from village to village; they were calledapostles, notbishops; and, above all things, they did not pride themselves on being learned.
In the second chapter of the second book it is said that a bishop should have but one wife, to take great care of his household; which only goes to prove that at the close of the first and the commencement of the second century, when the hierarchy was beginning to be established, the priests were married.
Through almost the whole book the bishops are regarded as the judges of the faithful; but it is well known that the apostles had no jurisdiction.
It is said, in chapter xxi., that both parties must be heard; which supposes an established jurisdiction. In chapter xxvi. it is said, "The bishop is your prince, your king, your emperor, your God upon earth." These expressions are somewhat at variance with the humility of the apostles.
In chapter xxviii., "At the feasts of the Agapae, there must be given to the deacon double that which is given to an old woman, and to the priest double the gift to the deacon, because the priests are the counsellors of the bishops and the crown of the Church. The reader shall have a portion, in honor of the prophets, as also the chanter and the door-keeper. Such of the laity as wish to receive anything shall apply to the bishop through the deacon." The apostles never used any term answering tolaity, or marking the difference between the profane and the priesthood.
In chapter xxxiv., "You must reverence the bishop as a king, honor him as a master, and give him your fruits, the works of your hands, your first fruits, your tenths, your savings, the presents that are made to you, your corn, your wine, your oil, your wool," etc. This is a strong article.
In chapter lvii., "Let the church be long; let it look towards the East; let it resemble a ship; let the bishop's throne be in the middle; let the reader read the books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Kings, Chronicles, Job," etc.
In chapter xvii. of the third book, "Baptism is administered for the death of Jesus; oil for the Holy Ghost. When we are plunged into the water, we die; when we come out of it, we revive. The Father is the God of all. Christ is the only Son of God, his beloved Son, and the Lord of glory. The Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, sent by Christ the teacher, preaching Christ Jesus." This doctrine would now be explained in more canonical terms.
In chapter vii. of the fifth book are quoted some verses of the Sibyls on the coming of Jesus and the resurrection. This was the first time that the Christians admitted the verses of the Sibyls, which they continued to do for more than three hundred years. In chapter v. of the eighth book are these words: "O God Almighty, give to the bishop, through Christ, the participation of the Holy Spirit." In chapter iv., "Commend yourself to God alone, through Jesus Christ"; which does not sufficiently express the divinity of our Lord. In chapter xii. is the Constitution of James, the brother of Zebedee.
In chapter xv. the deacon is to say aloud, "Incline yourselves before God through Christ." At the present day these expressions are not very correct.
XXI.
The Apostolical Canons. The sixth canon ordains that no bishop or priest shall separate himself from his wife on pretence of religion; if he do so, he is to be excommunicated, and if he persist he is to be driven away. The seventh—that no priest shall ever meddle with secular affairs. The nineteenth—that he who has married two sisters shall not be admitted into the clergy. The twenty-first and twenty-second—that eunuchs shall be admitted into the priesthood excepting such as have castrated themselves. Yet Origen was a priest, notwithstanding this law. The fifty-fifth—that if a bishop, a priest, a deacon, or a clerk eat flesh which is not clear of blood, he shall be displaced. It is quite evident that these canons could not be promulgated by the apostles.
XXII.
The Confessions of St. Clement to James, brother of the Lord, in ten books, translated from Greek into Latin by Rufinus. This book commences with a doubt respecting the immortality of the soul:"Utrumne sit mihi aliqua vita post mortem, an nihil omnino postea sim futurus". St. Clement, disturbed by this doubt and wishing to know whether the world was eternal or had been created—-whether there were a Tartarus and a Phlegethon, an Ixion and a Tantalus, etc., resolved to go into Egypt to learn necromancy, but having heard of St. Bartholomew, who was preaching Christianity, he went to him in the East, at the time when Barnabas was celebrating a Jewish feast. He afterwards met St. Peter at Cæsarea, with Simon the magician and Zacchæus. They disputed together, and St. Peter related to them all that had passed since the death of Jesus. Clement turned Christian, but Simon remained a magician.