And this brings us at once to a question of historical research, which, though far too intricate and extensive to be discussed here, we feel bound to notice, as far as it is affected by the newly discovered work. How long did it take for the Christian faith to assume the leading features of its orthodox and catholic form, and especially to work itself clear of Judaism? It is an acknowledged fact, that the earliest disciples, including at the lowest estimate all the converts of the first seven years from the ascension, not only were born Hebrews, but did not regard their baptism as in any way withdrawing them from the pale of their national religion; that, on the contrary, they claimed to be the only true Jews, differing from others simply by their belief in a personally appointed, instead of a vaguely promised Messiah; that they aimed at no more than to bring over their own race to this conviction, and persuade them that the national destinies were about to be consummated, and, so far from relaxing the obligations of their Law, adhered with peculiar rigor to its ritual and its exclusiveness. So long as none but the twelve Apostles had charge of its diffusion, Christianity was only a particular mode of Judaism, and its whole discussion a ζητησις των Ιουδαιων. It is further admitted, that the first inroad upon this narrowness was made by St. Paul, who insisted on the universality of Christ's function, and the abrogation of the Mosaic Law in favor of inward faith, as the condition of union with God. Nor, again, is it denied that this freer view met with great resistance, and that its conflict with the other, apparent throughout the Pauline Epistles, formed the most animating featureof the Apostolic age. During that period, two distinct parties, and two separate lines of development and growth, may be traced; one following out in morals thelegalidea into asceticism, voluntary poverty, and physical purity, and in faith themonarchianidea into theocratic and millenarian expectations; the other, proceeding from the notion offaithto substitute an ideal Christ for the historical, a new religion for an old law, the free embrace of divine reconciliation for the anxious strain of self-mortifying obedience. But how long did this struggle and separation continue? According to the prevalent belief, it was all over in a few years; and, by the happy harmony and concurrence of the Apostles, was determined in favor of the generous Pauline doctrine; so that St. John lived to see the Hebrew Christians sink into a mere Ebionitish sect outside the pale, and their stiff Unitarian theology disowned in favor of the higher teachings of his Gospel. Against this assumption of so easy a victory over the Jewish tendency, several striking testimonies have often been urged. Tertullian, in a well-known passage of his treatise against Praxeas, describes the dislike with which the unlearned majority of believers regard the Trinitarian distinctions in the Godhead, and the zeal with which they cry out for holding to "the Monarchy."[42]In the time of Pope Zephyrinus, as we learn from Eusebius, a body of Unitarians in Rome, followers of Artemon, defended their doctrine by the conservative plea of antiquity and general consent; affirming that it was no other than the uninterrupted creed of the Roman Church down to the time of Victor, the preceding pope; and that the higher doctrine of the Person of Christ was quite a recent innovation.[43]Nor are we without ecclesiastical literature, of even a later date, that by its theological tone gives witness to the same effect. The "Clementine Recognitions," written somewhere between 212 and 230, occupy a dogmatic position, higher indeed than the disciples of Artemon, but only in the direction of Arius, and, to save the Unity of God, deny theDeity of Christ.[44]Relying on such evidence as this, Priestley, in his "History of Early Opinions," and his controversy with Bishop Horsley, maintained that the creed of the Church for the first two centuries was Unitarian. But this position was attended with many difficulties, so long as the present canonical Scriptures were allowed to have been in the hands of the Christians of that period, and recognized as authorities; for the narratives of the miraculous conception, the writings of Paul, and the Gospel of John, are irreconcilable with the schemes of belief attributed to the early Unitarians. Moreover, if for two centuries the Church had interpreted its authoritative documents in one way, and formed on this its services and expositions, it is not easy to conceive the rapid revolution into another. During a period of free and floating tradition, there is manifest room for the growth of essentially different modes of faith; but after the reception of a definite set of sacred books, the scope for change is much contracted. To treat the doctrine of the Logos as an innovation, yet ascribe the fourth Gospel to the beloved disciple; to suppose that justification by works was the generally received notion among people who guided themselves by the authority of Paul,—involves us in irremediable contradictions. Avoiding these at least, possibly not without the risk of others, the celebrated theologians of Tübingen have maintained a bolder thesis than that of Priestley, including it indeed, but with it also a vast deal more. Their theory runs as follows. The opposition which St. Paul's teaching excited, and of which his letters preserve so many traces, was neither so insignificant nor so short-lived as is commonly supposed; but was encouraged and led by the other Apostles, especially James and John and Peter, who never heartily recognized the volunteer Apostle; and was so completely successful, that he died without having made any considerable impression on the Judaic Christianity sanctioned from Jerusalem. Accordingly, the earliest Christian literature was Ebionitish; and no production was in higheresteem than the "Gospel of the Hebrews," which, after being long current, with several variations of form, at last settled down into our Gospel of Matthew. In almost all the writings known to us, even in Roman circles of the second century,—the Shepherd of Hermas, the Memorials of Hegesippus, the works of Justin,—some character or other of Ebionitism is present,—millenarian doctrine, admiration of celibacy and of abstinence from meat and wine, denunciation of riches, emphatic assertion of theMessiahshipof Jesus, and treatment of the miraculous conception as at least an open question. The labors of Paul, however, had left a seed which had been buried, but not killed; and from the first, a small party had cherished his freer principles, and sought to win acceptance for them; and as the progress of time increased the proportion of provincial and Gentile converts, and the Jewish wars of Titus and Hadrian destroyed the possibility of Mosaic obedience and the reasonableness of Hebrew hopes, the Pauline element rose in magnitude and importance. Thus the two courses of opposite development ran parallel with each other, and gradually found their interest in mutual recognition and concession. Hence, a series of writings proceeding from either side, first of conciliatory approximation only, next of complete neutrality and equipoise, in which sometimes the figures of Peter and Paul themselves are presented with studiously balanced honor, at others their characteristic ideas are adjusted by compromise. The Clementine Homilies, the Apostolic Constitutions, the Epistle of James, the Second Epistle of Clement, the Gospel of Mark, the Recognitions, the Second Epistle of Peter, constitute the series proceeding from the Ebionitish side; while from the Pauline came the First Epistle of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, the writings of Luke, the First Epistle of Clement, the Epistle to the Philippians, the Pastoral Epistles, Polycarp's, and the Ignatians. These productions, however, springing from the practical instinct of the West, deal with the ecclesiastical more than with the doctrinal phase of antagonism between the two directions; and end with establishing in Rome a CatholicChurch, founded on the united sepulchres of Peter and Paul, and combining the sacerdotalism of the Old Testament with the universality of the New Gentile Gospel. Meanwhile, a similar course, with local modifications, was run by the Church of Asia Minor. Rome, with its political aptitude, having taken in hand the questions of discipline and organization, the speculative genius of the Asiatic Greek addressed itself simultaneously to the development and determination of doctrine. Here the Epistle to the Galatians marks, as a starting-point, the same original struggle between the contrasted elements which the Epistle to the Romans betrays in Italy; while the Gospel of John closes the dogmatic strife of development with an accepted Trinity for faith, just as the Ignatian Epistles wind up the contests of the West with a recognized hierarchy for government. And between these extremes the East presents to us, first, the intensely Judaical Apocalypse; next, with increasing reaction in the Pauline direction, the rudiments of the Logos idea in the Epistles to the Hebrews, Colossians, and Ephesians; and as Montanism, in the midst of which these arose, had already made familiar the conception of the Paraclete, all the conditions were present for combination into the Johannine doctrine of the Trinity; and then it was, in the second quarter of the second century, that the fourth Gospel appeared. The speculative theology thus native to Lesser Asia was adopted for shelter and growth by the kindred Hellenism of Egypt, and gave rise to the school of Alexandria. In the whole of this theory great use is made of Montanism: it spans, as it were, the interval between the parallel movements of Italy and Asia; and is the common medium of thought in which they both take place. Singularly uniting in itself the rigor, the narrowness, the ascetic superstitions of its Hebrew basis, with a Phrygian prophetic enthusiasm and an Hellenic theosophy, it imported the latter into the doctrine, the former into the discipline, of the Church. The Roman Catholic system betrays its Jewish or Montanist origin in its legalism, its penances, its celibacy, its monachism, its ecstatic phenomena, its physical supernaturalism, its exaggerated appreciation of martyrdom.
Such, in barest outline, is the theory which M. Bunsen characterizes as the "Tübingen romance." Its leading principle is, that the antagonism between the Petrine and Pauline, the Hebrew and the Hellenic Gospel, which has its origin and authentic expression in the Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, continued into the second century; determined the evolution of doctrine and usage; stamped itself upon the ecclesiastical literature; and ended in the compromise and reconciliation of the Catholic Church. It is evident that, in the working out of this principle, the New Testament canon is made to give way. With the exception of the greater Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse, both of which are held fast as genuine productions of the Apostles whose names they bear, and the first Gospel, which is allowed to have at least the groundwork in the primitive tradition, the received books are all set loose from the dates and names usually assigned to them, and arranged, in common with other products of the time, according to the relation they bear to the Ebionitish or to the Pauline school, and the particular stage they seem to mark in the history of either. This proceeding, however, is not an original violence resorted to for the exigencies of the theory; but, for the most part, a mere appropriation to its use of conclusions reached by antecedent theologians on independent grounds. The Epistle to the Philippians is the only work, if we mistake not, on the authenticity of which doubt has been thrown for the first time,—in our opinion, on very inadequate grounds. In this, as in many other details of the hypothetical history, there is not a little of that straining of real evidence and subtle fabrication of unreal, which German criticism seems unable to avoid. But the acerbity displayed by the North German theologians towards the Tübingen critics appears to us unwarranted and humiliating; and we certainly wish that M. Bunsen, whose prompt admiration of excellence so nobly distinguishes him from Ewald, could have expressed his dissent from Baur and Schwegler in a tone still further removed from the Göttingen pitch. At least, we do not find the positive assertion that the Tübingen theory isfinally demolished by the "Philosophumena" at all borne out by the evidence; and are inclined to think that the case is very little altered by the new elements now contributed to its discussion. The critical offence which he thinks is now detected and exposed, is the ascription of a late origin to the fourth Gospel,[45]and the treatment of it as the perfected product, instead of the misused source, of the Montanist conceptions of the Logos and the Paraclete. It cannot, however, be denied, that, in the previous absence of any external testimony to the existence of this Gospel earlier than the year 170,[46]the internal difficulties are sufficiently serious to redeem the doubt of its authenticity from the character of rashness or perversity. The irreconcilable opposition between its whole mode of thought and that of the Apocalypse is confessed by M. Bunsen himself, when he suggests that the proem on the Logos was directed against Cerinthus,—the very person whose sentiments the Apocalypse was supposed to express, and to whom, accordingly, it was ascribed by those who rejected it.Oneof the two books must resign, then, the name of the beloved disciple; and, of the two, we need hardly say that the Apocalypse is incomparably the better authenticated. Moreover, the traditions which unite the names of James and John, as the authorities followed by the Church of Lesser Asia, render it hard to conceive that their doctrines can have taken precisely opposite directions; and that, while James represented the Judaic Christianity of the deepest dye, Johncan have produced the standard and conclusive work on the other side. In particular, the well-known fact, that the Asiatic Christians justified their Jewish mode of keeping Easter by the double plea, (1.) that James and John always did so, (2.) that Christ himself had done so before he suffered, seems incompatible with any knowledge of the fourth Gospel, which denies that Jesus ate the passover before he suffered, and makes his own death tobethe passover. How could this Quartodeciman controversy live a day among a people possessing and acknowledging John's Gospel, which so bears upon it as to give a distinct contradiction to the view of the other Gospels, and to pronounce in Asia Minor itself an unambiguous verdict in favor of the West? These are grave difficulties, which, after all the ingenuity, even of Bleek, remain, we fear, unrelieved; and in their presence we cannot feel the justice of M. Bunsen's sentence, that Baur's opinion is "the most unhappy of philological conjectures." Everything conjectural, however, must give way before real historical testimony; and, if new evidence is actually contained in the "Philosophumena," every true critic, of Tübingen or elsewhere, will be thankful for light to dissipate the doubt. Now, it is said that our Roman bishop, in treating of the heresy of Basilides, supplies passages from the writings of this heresiarch which include quotations from the fourth Gospel; and thus prove its existence as early as the year 130. This argument, as stated by M. Bunsen, appeared to us quite conclusive, and we hoped, that a decided step had been gained towards the settlement of the question. Great was our disappointment, on reading the account in the original, to find no evidence that any extract from Basilides was before us at all. A general description of the system bearing his name is given; but with no mention of any work of his, no profession that the words are his, and even so little individual reference to him, that the exposition is introduced as being a report of what "Basilides and Isidorus, and the whole troop of these people, falsely say" (καταψευδεται, sing.). Then follows the account of the dogmas of the sect, with the word φησιν inserted from time totime, to indicate that the writer is still reporting the sentiments of others. Thesingularform of this word implies nothing at all; it occurs immediately after the word καταψευδεται, and has the same avowedly plural subject. The statement, therefore, within which are contained the Scripture citations, is a merely general one of the opinions of a sect which continued to subsist till a much later time than the lowest date ever assigned for the composition of the fourth Gospel. If the actual words of any writings current among these heretics are given, they are the words of an author or authors wholly unknown, and to refer them to Basilides in particular is a mere arbitrary act of will. The change from the singular to the plural forms of citation in the midst of one and the same sentence, and the disregard of concord between verb and subject, show that no inference can be drawn from so loose a system of grammatical usage. All that can be affirmed is, that our author had in his handsomeproduction of the Basilidian χορος, in which the fourth Gospel was quoted; but this affords no chronological datum that can be of the smallest use.[47]Thesame remark applies to the use of John's Gospel by the Ophites. That they did use it is evident; that they existed as far back as the time of Peter and Paul is certainly probable; yet it does not follow that the fourth Gospel was then extant. For they continued in existence through two or three centuries, dating, as Baur has shown, from a time anterior not only to the Christian heresies, but to Christianity itself, and extending down to Origen's time; and to what part of this long period the writings belonged which the author of the "Philosophumena" employed, we are absolutely unable to determine. We do not know why M. Bunsen has not appealed also to a quotation from the Gospel which occurs (p. 194) in an account of the Valentinian system. If, as he affirms (I. 63), this account were really in "Valentinus's own words," the citation would be of particular value in the controversy. For it has always been urged by the Tübingen critics as a highly significant fact, that while thefollowersof Valentinus showed an especial eagerness to appeal to the Gospel of John, and one of the earliest, Heracleon, wrote a commentary upon it, no trace could be found of its use by the heresiarch himself. From this circumstance, they have inferred that the Gospel was not available for him, and first appeared after his time. A single clause cited by him from the Gospel would demolish this argument at once. But the assertion that we have here "full eight pages of Valentinus's own words" appears to us quite groundless. No such thing is affirmed by the writer of the eight pages. He promises to tell us how the strict adherents to the original principle of the sect expounded their doctrine (ὡς εκεινοι διδασκουσι); and then passes over, as usual, to the singular φησι, returning, however, from time to time, to the plural forms,—θελουσι, λεγουσι, &c.,—and thus leaving no pretext for the assumption that Valentinus is before us in person. The later Gnostics indisputably resorted to the Gospelof John with especial zeal and preference; and if their predecessors, Basilides and Valentinus, were acquainted with the book, it is surprising that no trace of their familiarity with it has been found; and that the former should have sought to authenticate the secret doctrine he professed to have received by the name of Matthew or Matthias instead of John. It deserves remark, that the citations preserved by our author are made, like those of Justin Martyr, as from an anonymous writing, without mentioning the name of the Evangelist; a circumstance less surprising in reference to the Synoptics alone, which present only varieties of the same fundamental tradition, than when the fourth Gospel, so evidently the independent production of a single mind, is thrown into the group. The Epistles of Paul and the books of the Old Testament are frequently quoted by name; and why this practice should invariably cease whenever the historical work of an Apostle was in the hand, it is not easy to explain. The Apocalypse is mentioned not without his name.[48]
For these reasons we are of opinion that the question about the date and authenticity of the fourth Gospel is wholly unaffected by the newly-discovered work. On this side, no new facilities are gained for confuting the Tübingen theory. The most positive and startling fact against it is presented from another direction. We know that the system of Theodotus, which was Unitarian, was condemned by Victor in the last decade of the second century.[49]Now Victor was the very pope to the end of whose period, according to the followers of Artemon, their monarchian faith was upheld in the Roman Church, and in the time of whose successor was the first importation of the higher doctrine of the Logos. On this complaint of the Artemonites, Baur and Schwegler lay great stress; but is it not refuted by Victor's orthodox act of expelling a Unitarian? Undoubtedly it would be so,ifTheodotus were excommunicated precisely for his belief in the uni-personality of God. But his scheme included many articles; and weknow nothing of the ground taken in the proceedings against him. There was one question, however, which, however indifferent to us, was evidently very near to the feelings of the early Church, and on which Theodotus separated himself from the prevailing conceptions of his time,—viz. At what date did the Christ, the Divine principle, become united with Jesus, the human being? "At his baptism," replied Theodotus.[50]"Before his birth," said the general voice of the Christians. We are disposed to thinkthiswas the obnoxious tenet which Victor construed into heresy; and if so, the strife had no bearing upon the doctrine of the personality of the Logos, which the pope and the heretic might both have rejected. Of the Unitarianism of that time, it was no essential feature to postpone till the baptism the heavenly element in Christ. We remember no reason for supposing that the Artemonites did so, though Theodotus did; and if they knew that the objection which had been fatal to him did not apply to them, their claim of ancient and orthodox sanction for what they held in common with him was not answered by pointing to his condemnation for what was special to himself. But is there, it will be asked, any evidence that the Roman Church attached importance to this particular ingredient of the Theodotian scheme, so that their bishop might feel impelled to visit it with ecclesiastical censure? We believe there is, andthattoo in the "Philosophumena." In the author's confession of faith occurs a passage which produces at first a strange impression upon a modern reader, and appears like a violence done to the Gospel history. It affirms that Christpassed through every stage of human life, that he might serve as the model to all. Nor is this idea a personal whim of the writer; but is borrowed from his master, Irenæus, who gives it in more detail, and winds it up with the assertion, that Christlived to be fifty years old.[51]Irenæus thus falsifies the history to make good the moral; our presbyter, by respecting the history, apparently invalidates the moral: for it can scarcelybe said of a life closed after thirty-one or thirty-two years, that it supplies a rule πασα ἡλικιη; at least it would seem more natural to apologize for its premature termination, than to lay stress on its absolute completeness. The truth is, there was a certain, obnoxious tenet behind, which these writers were anxious to contradict, and which their assertion exactly meets,—viz. the very tenet of Theodotus, that the Divine nature did not unite itself with the Saviour till his baptism. Irenæus and his pupil could not endure this limitation of what was highest in Christ to the interval between his first public preaching and his crucifixion. They thought that in this way it was reduced to a mere official investiture, not integral to his being, but externally superinduced; and that such a conception deprived it of all its moral significance. The union of the Logos with our nature was not a provision for temporary inspiration or a forensic redemption; but was intended to mould a life and shape a personal existence, according to the immaculate ideal of humanity. To accomplish this intention it was necessary that the Logos should never be absent from any part of his earthly being; but should have claimed his person from the first, and by preoccupation have neutralized the action of the natural (or psychic) element, throughout all the years of his continuance among men. The anxiety of Irenæus's school to put this interpretation on the manifestation of the Logos, their determination to distinguish it, on the one hand, from themediatecommunication of prophets as animmediatepresentation (αυτοψει φανερωθηναι), and, on the other, from thetransientoccupancy of a ready-made man, as apermanentand thorough-going incarnation (σαρκωθηναι in opposition to φαντασια or τροπη), is apparent in their whole language on this subject. In the Son, we are carried to the fresh fountain-head of every kind of perfection, and find the unspoiled ideal of heavenly and terrestrial natures. In one of the fragments of Hippolytus, published by Mai, and noticed in M. Bunsen's Appendix, this notion is conveyed by the remark, that He is first-born of God's own essence, that he may have precedence of angels; first-born of a virgin, that he maybe a fresh-created Adam; first-born of death, that he might become the first fruits of our resurrection.[52]This doctrine it is, we apprehend, which amplifies itself into the Irenæan statement, that the divine and ideal function of Christ coalesced with the historical throughout, so that to infants he was a consecrating infant; to little children, a consecrating child; to youth, a consecrating model of youth; and to elders, a still consecrating rule, not only by disclosure of truth, but by exhibiting the true type of their perfection.[53]The teaching of Theodotus, that the heavenly εικων remained at a distance till the baptism, was directly contradictory of this favorite notion; and might well produce hostile excitement, and provoke condemnation, in a church where the Irenæan influence is known to have been powerful. The attitude that Victor assumed towards the Theodotians is thus perfectly compatible with Monarchian opinions, and with an attitude equally hostile, in the opposite direction, towards the advancing Trinitarian claims of a distinct personality for the Logos. Though only the one hostility is recorded of Victor, the other is ascribed, as we have seen, to his immediate successors, Zephyrinus and Callistus, who maintained that it was no other person than the Father that dwelt as the Logos in the Son. The facts taken together, and spreading as they do over the periods of three popes, afford undeniable traces of a struggle at the turn of the second century, between a prevalent but threatened Monarchianism, and a new doctrine of the Divine Personality of the Son.
After all, why is M. Bunsen so anxious to disprove the late appearance of the fourth Gospel? Did he value it chiefly as a biographical sketch, and depend upon it for concretefacts, a first-hand authentication of its contents would be of primary moment. But his interest in it is evidently speculative rather than historical, and centres upon its doctrinal thought, not on its narrative attestation; and especially singles out the proem as a condensed and perfect expression of Christian ontology. The book speaks to him, and finds him, out of its mystic spiritual depths; sanctifies his own philosophy; glorifies with an ideal haze the greatest reality of history; blends with melting tints the tenderness of the human, and the sublimity of the divine life; and presents the Holy Spirit as immanent in the souls of the faithful and the destinies of humanity. But its enunciation of great truths, its penetration to the still sanctuary of devout consciousness, will not cease to be facts, or become doubtful as merits, or be changed in their endearing power, by an alteration in the superscription or the date. These religious and philosophical features converse directly with Reason and Conscience, and have the same significance, whatever their critical history may be; and are not the less rich as inspirations from having passed for interpretation through more minds than one. There is neither common sense nor piety, as M. Bunsen himself, we feel certain, will allow, in the assumption that Revelation is necessarily most perfect at its source, and can only grow earthy and turbid as it flows. Were it something entirely foreign to the mind, capable of holding no thought in solution, but inevitably spoiled by every abrasion it effects of philosophy and feeling, this mechanical view would be correct. But if it be the intenser presence, the quickened perception of a Being absent from none; if it be the infinite original of which philosophy is the finite reflection; if thus it speaks, not in the unknown tongue of isolated ecstasy, but in the expressive music of our common consciousness and secret prayer;—then is it so little unnatural, so related to the constitution of our faculties, that the mind's continuous reaction on it may bring it more clearly out; and, after being detained at first amid sluggish levels and unwholesome growths which mar its divine transparency, it may percolate through finer media, dropits accidental admixtures, and take up in each stratum of thought some elements given it by native affinity, and become more purely the spring of life in its descent than in its source. If, before the fourth Gospel was written, the figure of Christ, less close to the eye, was seen more in its relations to humanity and to God; if his deep hints, working in the experience of more than one generation, had expanded their marvellous contents; if, in a prolonged contact of his religion with Hellenism, elements had disclosed themselves of irresistible sympathy, and the first sharp boundary drawn by Jewish hands had melted away; if his concrete history itself was now subordinate to its ideal interpretation;—the book will present us still with a Christianity, not impoverished, but enriched. In proportion as its thoughts speak for themselves by their depth and beauty, may all anxiety cease about their external legitimation; their credentials become eternal instead of individual; and where the Father himself thus beareth witness, Christ needeth not the testimony of man. It cannot be, therefore, any religious issue that depends on the date of this Christian record; it cannotmaketruth, it can only awaken the mind to discern it; and whether it has this power or not, the mind can only report according to its consciousness of quickening light or stagnant darkness. The interest of this question cannot surely be more than acriticalinterest, to one who can feel and speak in this noble strain:—
"No divine authority is given to any set of men to make truth for mankind. The supreme judge is the Spirit in the Church, that is to say, in the universal body of men professing Christ. The universal conscience is God's highest interpreter. If Christ speaks truth, his words must speak to the human reason and conscience, whenever and wherever they are preached: let them, therefore, be preached. If the Gospels contained inspired wisdom, they must themselves inspire with heavenly thoughts the conscientious inquirer and the serious thinker: let them, therefore, freely be made the object of inquiry and of thought. Scripture, to be believed true with full conviction, must be at one with reason: let it, therefore,be treated rationally. By taking this course, we shall not lose strength; but we shall gain a strength which no church ever had. There is strength in Christian discipline, if freely accepted by those who are to submit to it; there is strength in spiritual authority, if freely acknowledged by those who care for Christ; there is strength unto death in the enthusiasm of an unenlightened people, if sincere, and connected with lofty moral ideas. But there is no strength to be compared with that of a faith which identifies moral and intellectual conviction with religious belief, with that of an authority instituted by such a faith, and of a Christian life based upon it, and striving to Christianize this world of ours, for which Christianity was proclaimed. Let those who are sincere, but timid, look into their conscience, and ask themselves whether their timidity proceeds from faith, or whether it does not rather betray a want of faith. Europe is in a critical state, politically, ecclesiastically, socially. Where is the power able to reclaim a world, which, if it be faithless, is become so under untenable and ineffective ordinances,—which, if it is in a state of confusion, has become confused by those who have spiritually guided it? Armies may subdue liberty; but armies cannot conquer ideas: much less can Jesuits and Jesuitical principles restore religion, or superstition revive faith. I deny the prevalence of a destructive and irreligious spirit in the hearts of the immense majority of the people. I believe that the world wants, not less, but more religion. But however this be, I am firmly convinced that God governs the world, and that he governs it by the eternal ideas of truth and justice engraved on our conscience and reason; and I am sure that nations, who have conquered, or are conquering, civil liberty for themselves, will sooner or later as certainly demand liberty of religious thought, and that those whose fathers have victoriously acquired religious liberty will not fail to demand civil and political liberty also. With these ideas, and with the present irresistible power of communicating ideas, what can save us except religion, and therefore Christianity? But then it must be a Christianity based uponthat which is eternally God's own, and is as indestructible and as invincible as he is himself: it must be based upon Reason and Conscience, I mean reason spontaneously embracing the faith in Christ, and Christian faith feeling itself at one with reason and with the history of the world. Civilized Europe, as it is at present, will fall; or it will be pacified by this liberty, this reason, this faith. To prove that the cause of Protestantism in the nineteenth century is identical with the cause of Christianity, it is only necessary to attend to this fact; that they both must sink and fall, until they stand upon their indestructible ground, which, in my inmost conviction, is the real, genuine, original ground upon which Christ placed it. Let us, then, give up all notions of finding any other basis, all attempts to prop up faith by effete forms and outward things: let us cease to combat reason, whenever it contradicts conventional forms and formularies. We must take the ground pointed out by the Gospel, as well as by the history of Christianity. We may then hope to realize what Christ died for, to see the Church fulfil the high destinies of Christianity, and God's will manifested by Christ to mankind, so as to make the kingdoms of this earth the kingdoms of the Most High."—p. 172.
We have given our readers no conception of the variety and richness of M. Bunsen's work; having scarcely passed beyond the limits of the first volume. It was impossible to pass by, without examination, the recovered monument of early Christianity, whence his materials and suggestions are primarily drawn; and it is equally impossible to pass beyond it, without entering on a field too wide to be surveyed. We can only record that, in the remaining volumes, which are, in fact, a series of separate productions, the early doctrine of the Eucharist is investigated, and the progress of its corruptions strikingly traced; the primitive system of ecclesiastical rules or canons, and the "Church-and-House Book," or manual of instruction and piety in use among the ante-Nicene Christians, are carefully and laboriously restored; and genuine Liturgies of the first centuries are reproduced. In this arduouswork of recovery, there is necessarily much need of critical tact, not to say much room for critical conjecture. But the one our author exercises with great felicity; and the other he takes all possible pains to reduce to its lowest amount by careful comparison of Syrian, Coptic, and Abyssinian texts. The general result is a truly interesting set of sketches for a picture of the early Church; which rises before us with no priestly pretensions, no scholastic creeds, no bibliolatry, dry and dead; but certainly with an aspect of genuine piety and affection, and with an air of mild authority over the whole of life, which are the more winning from the frightful corruption and dissolving civilization of the Old World around. That our author should be fascinated with the image he has re-created, and long to see it brought to life, in place of that body of death on which we hang the pomps and titles of our nominal Christianity, is not astonishing. But a greater change is needed—though a far less will be denied—than a return to the type of faith and worship in the second century. To destroy the fatal chasm between profession and conviction, and bring men to live fresh out of a real reverence instead of against a pretended or a fancied one, a greater latitude and flexibility must be given to the forms of spiritual culture than was needed in the ancient world. The unity of system which was once possible is unseasonable amid our growing varieties of condition and culture; and the methods which were natural among a people closely thrown together and constructing their life around the Church as a centre, would be highly artificial in a state of society in which the family is the real unit, and the congregation a precarious aggregate, of existence. Nothing, however, can be finer or more generous than the spirit of our author's suggestions of reform; and we earnestly thank him for a profusion of pregnant thoughts and faithful warnings, the application of one half of which would change the fate of our churches,—the destiny of our nation,—the courses of the world.
1.The Creed of Christendom; its Foundations and Superstructure.ByWilliam Rathbone Greg. London: Chapman. 1851.2.St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians; an Attempt to convey their Spirit and Significance.ByJohn Hamilton Thom. London: Chapman. 1851.
1.The Creed of Christendom; its Foundations and Superstructure.ByWilliam Rathbone Greg. London: Chapman. 1851.
2.St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians; an Attempt to convey their Spirit and Significance.ByJohn Hamilton Thom. London: Chapman. 1851.
These two books are placed together without the least intention to intimate a resemblance between them, or to represent either author as sharing in the conclusions of the other. They are, indeed, concerned with opposite sides of the same subject; viewed, moreover, from the separate stations of the layman and the divine; and are the expression of strongly contrasted modes of thought. Mr. Greg deals principally with the external vehicle of the primitive Christianity; Mr. Thom with its internal essence. The one seeks in vain for any outward title in the records to suppress the operations of natural reason; the other clears away from the interior every interference with the free action of conscience and affection. The one, in the name of science, demolishes the outworks of ecclesiastical logic with which the shrine of faith has been dangerously guarded: the other, in the name of Christ, expels both priest and dogma from the sanctuary itself. The one, selecting deep truths from the words of Jesus, would construct religion into a philosophy; the other, with eye uponHis person as an image of perfect goodness, would develop it from a sentiment. As all opposites, however, are embraced in the circumference of the same circle, so are these works complements of each other. Mr. Greg, in common with the Catholics and the Unitarians, evidently looks for the strength of Christianity in the Gospels; Mr. Thom, with the majority of Protestants, in the Epistles. For want of some mediating harmony between the two, each perhaps requires some correction: the historical picture of Christ saved by the former is but a pale and meagre outline; while the Pauline ideal presented by the latter is a glow of rich but undefined coloring. Mr. Greg, who, in spite of particular errors, manifests a large knowledge and a masterly judgment in his criticism of the Evangelists, appears to have, in his own sympathies, no way of access to a mind like that of Paul, and to be much at fault in estimating the place of the Apostle both as a witness and a power in the organization of Christian tradition and doctrine. Had the acuteness and severity of his understanding been a little more qualified by such reflective depth and moral tenderness as Mr. Thom brings to the work of interpretation, his religion, we fancy, would have retained a less slender remnant of the primitive Christianity.
Measured by the standard of common Protestantism, there can be no doubt that the second of these books would be condemned for heresy, and the first for unbelief. These ugly words, however, have been too often applied to what is fullest of truth and faith, to express more than a departure, which weak men feel to be irritating, from a favorite type of thought. They have lost their effect on all who are competent to meditate on the great problems of religion, and are fast taking their place in the scandalous vocabulary of professional polemics. It is a thing offensive tojustmen when divines, who have succeeded in smothering, or been too dull to entertain, doubts which rend the soul of genius and faithfulness, and insist on a veracious answer, meet them, not with sympathy, still less with mastery, but with the commonplaces of incompetent pity and holy malediction. And the offence is doubledin the eyes ofinstructedmen, who know the state to which Biblical criticism has brought the theology of the Reformation. It is notorious that, in the revolt from Rome, the Scriptures—like a dictator suddenly created for the perils of a crisis—were forced into a position where it was impossible for them permanently to repose; that they cannot be treated as infallible oracles of either fact or doctrine, and were never meant to bear the weight of such unnatural claims; that the authority once concentrated in them, and held evenagainstthe reason and conscience, must now be distributed, and ask their concurrence. These are not questionable positions, but so irresistibly established, that learning of the highest order would no more listen to an argument against them, than Herschel or Airy to a disquisition against the rotation of the earth. When a clergyman, therefore, treats them with horror, and denounces them as infidelity, he produces no conviction, except that he himself is either ill-informed or insincere. Professional reproaches against a book so manly and modest, so evidently truth-loving, so high-minded and devout, as this of Mr. Greg's, are but a melancholy imbecility. We may hold to many things which he resigns; we may think him wrong in the date of a Gospel or the construction of a miracle; we may even dissent from his estimate of the grounds of immortal hope and the ways of eternal Providence: but we do not envy, and cannot understand, the religion which can feel no thankful communion with thought so elevated, and trust so sound and real. No candid reader of the "Creed of Christendom" can close the book without the secret acknowledgment that it is a model of honest investigation and clear exposition; that it is conceived in the true spirit of serious and faithful research; and that whatever the author wants of being an ecclesiastical Christian is plainly not essential to the noble guidance of life, and the devout earnestness of the affections.
It is highly honorable to an English layman, amid the pressure of affairs, to take up a class of critical inquiries, which the clergy seem to have abandoned for a narrower andmore passionate polemic. It is a remarkable characteristic of the present age, that, when the most startling attacks are made upon the very foundations of existing churches, nobody repels them. Nothing is offered to break their effect, except the inertia of the mass that rests upon the base assailed. For every great sceptical work of the last century there was some score of reputable answers; but half a dozen books of the same tendency have appeared within a few years, all of which have been copiously reviewed, have spread excitement over a wide surface, and set an immense amount of theological hair on end, but not one of which has received any adequate reply. Yet the slightest of these productions would favorably compare, in all the requisites for successful persuasion,—in learning, in temper, in acuteness,—with the best of the last age, excepting only the philosophical disquisitions of Hume and the ecclesiastical chapters of Gibbon. The first in time,—Hennell's "Inquiry into the Origin of Christianity,"—though the most open to refutation, was permitted to pass through an unmolested existence; and its influence, considerable in itself, and increased by the sweet and truthful character of the author, is still traceable in the pages of Mr. Greg. To the effect of Strauss's extraordinary work, the good Neander'sLeben Jesuoffers but a mild resistance, and is itself, through the extent of its concessions, an open proclamation that the problems of theology can never be restored to the state in which all churches assume them to be. Parker was excommunicated by his sect; but his "Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion" has walked the course unchallenged, and displayed the splendor of its gifts, within the entire lines of the English language. Newman, Foxton, and Greg have since entered their names on theindex expurgatoriusof Orthodoxy; but they also will be simply excluded from the sacred circle of readers bound over not to think; and, beyond this, will make their converts undisturbed, and accumulate fresh charges of threatening power in the intellectual atmosphere which surrounds the Church. Whence this pusillanimous apathy? Is it forgotten that creeds always assailed andnever defended are sure to perish? Or is it felt that the defence, to be sound and strong, must be so partial—so limited to points of detail—as to promise a mere diversion, instead of a repulse, and be more dangerous than the attitude of passiveness? Or does the Church resignedly give up her hold on the class of earnest, intellectual men who cannot degrade religion into a second-hand tradition, but must "know what they worship"? Certain it is that her whole activity has long abandoned this class, and addressed itself exclusively to the narrower and lower order of mind, whose vision is bounded by the periphery of a given creed, and whose life is satisfied with the squabbles and the gossip of articles forced into neighborhood, but no longer on speaking terms. If the efficacy of "holy orders" is called in question, streams of sacerdotal refutation flow from the press; but if the inspiration of the twelve Apostles is denied, it is a thing that neither bishop nor priest will care to vindicate. If a word of mistake is uttered about the drops of water on the face of a baptized baby, it conjures up a storm that rolls from diocese to diocese; but if you say that pure religion has no rite or sacrament at all, the ecclesiastic atmosphere remains still as a Quaker's silent meeting. The deepest interest is felt about the origin of liturgies, and the history of articles, but nobody heeds the most staggering evidence that three of the Gospels are second-hand aggregations of hearsay reports, and the fourth of questionable authenticity. You deny the self-consistency of the Church of England and call it a compromise; and the sudden rustle of gowns and sleeves proclaims a great sensation. You analyze the accounts of Christ's resurrection; you ask whether they are not discrepant; you point out that, apparently, the oldest record (Mark's) contained, in its original form, no account of the event at all, and that the others bear seeming traces of distinct and incompatible traditions. You cry aloud for help in this perplexity, and hold yourselves ready to follow any vestiges of truth; and, except that the creeds are still muttered every Sunday, all the oracles are dumb. If you want to find the true magic pass into heaven,scores of rival professors press round you with obtrusive supply: if you ask in your sorrow, Who can tell me whether there be a heaven at all? every soul will keep aloof and leave you alone. All men that bring from God a fresh, deep nature, all in whom religious wants live with eager power, and who yet are too clear of soul to unthink a thought and falsify a truth, receive in these days no help and no response. The Church feels its interest, as aneducatedcorporation, to consist in overlaying and covering up the foundations of faith with huge piles of curious learning, history, and art, which, by affording endless occupation, may detain men from search after the living rock, or notice of the undermining flood. And, as anestablishedcorporation, she relies on the lazy conservatism of mental possession; on the dislike felt by the comfortable classes towards the trouble of thought and the disturbance of feeling, and their usual willingness to hand over these operations to the prayer-book and the priest. We are grateful to Mr. Greg for shaking this ignoble and precarious reliance, which he notices in these admirable sentences.
"A more genuine and important objection to the consequences of our views is felt by indolent minds on their own account. They shrink from the toil of working out truth for themselves out of the materials which Providence has placed before them. They long for the precious metal, but loathe the rude ore out of which it has to be extricated by the laborious alchemy of thought. A ready-made creed is the paradise of their lazy dreams. A string of authoritative, dogmatic propositions comprises the whole mental wealth which they desire. The volume of nature—the volume of history—the volume of life—appall and terrify them. Such men are the materials out of whom good catholics of all sects are made. They form the uninquiring and submissive flocks which rejoice the hearts of all priesthoods. Let such cling to the faith of their forefathers, if they can. But men whose minds are cast in a nobler mould, and are instinct with a diviner life,—who love truth more than rest, and the peace ofHeaven rather than the peace of Eden,—to whom 'a loftier being brings severer cares,'—