The notion of local deities, national gods, &c., implied the doctrine of incarnation, and was no doubt suggested by the Theophanies of the patriarchal history and the Theocracy of the Mosaic, administered by the Messenger Jehovah, locally present in the tabernacle in a cloud-like form, where he was inquired of in respect to things future, and held converse with Moses, Joshua, and their successors. In imitation, the devotees of Baal conceived of him as present in their temples, inhabiting the forms of their idols, and hearing their statements and requests.
Thus Moses returned to Jehovah as present in the burning bush, and said, “O Adonai! wherefore,” &c. Exod. v. 22. “And David the king came and sat before Jehovah, [i. e., in the tabernacle,] and said,” &c. 1 Chron. xvii. 16.
So, on the other hand, “The Philistines took Saul’s head and his armor, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to carry tidings unto their idols and to the people. And they put his armor in the house of their gods, and fastened his head in the temple of Dagon.” 1 Chron. x. 9, 10.
Mr. Layard, in his recent account of “Nineveh and its Remains,” observes, that the sculptured walls which he explored continually exhibited forms corresponding to the description of the living creatures seen in vision by Ezekiel, (chap. i.;) and also what he supposes may have represented the wheel spoken of in that description—the former showing the face of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle; and the latter, a winged circle or globe, hovering above the head of the king, as an emblem of the supreme deity of the Assyrian nation;with a winged figure in the middle, representing the sun. The king, he adds, may, as in Egypt, have been regarded as the representative on earth of the deity, of whom the emblem is exhibited as above his head in battle, during his triumphs, and when he celebrates the sacred ceremonies. The author, who supposes the station of Ezekiel by the river of Chebar to have been in the immediate vicinity of Nineveh, absurdly indicates that, “As the prophet had beheld the Assyrian palaces, with their mysterious images and gorgeous decorations, it is highly probable that, when seeking to typify certain Divine attributes and to describe the Divine glory, he chose forms that were not only familiar to him, but to the people whom he addressed, captives like himself in the land of Assyria. He chose the four living creatures, with four faces, four wings,” &c. The forms which the prophetsawin vision assuredly did not depend upon his choice; and if they had, he would not have represented the true God by forms borrowed from idolatry. Nor is it likely that the captives were admitted to the palaces of their Assyrian conquerors. These forms, on the contrary, having been familiar in the patriarchal system of revealed religion, had been simulated by the earliest idolaters.
But the most comprehensive and striking illustrations of idolatry, as a studied, rival, antagonistic counterfeit of the revealed system and true worship, are to be derived from those symbols of the Apocalypse which relate to Antichrist; to the two-horned wild beast and the image—the great Antagonist, and his Papal agents under that character; to his arrogation of the attributes, prerogatives, rights, throne, dominion and homage of God the Mediator, assumption of his titles andoffice, and exercise of authority as lawgiver over his people; and from those symbols which relate to the fall and destruction of Great Babylon, and the imprisonment of “the ancient Serpent, who is the Devil and Satan;” as those symbols are explained and rendered intelligible in “An Exposition of the Apocalypse, by David N. Lord;” a work distinguished by its discovery of and adherence to scriptural interpretations of symbols, and by its originality in every respect.[See note A.]
The great fabric of pagan idolatry, as a rival system to the true religion, and a counterfeit Theocracy, combining the civil with the religious administration, was the organism through which the Arch-usurper carried on his rivalship in all the heathen nations down to the age of Constantine. Then, to meet the exigences of his case, in opposition to Christianity in the Roman Empire, he made the ecclesiastical hierarchies in union with the civil government the medium of his rule. When the empire was divided, the eastern from the western portion, leaving the eastern under the dragon sway of preceding ages, he assumed for the western that of the wild beast and false prophet—the civil rulers of the ten kingdoms and the Papal hierarchy. Under these organizations he has, in both divisions of that empire, continued to exhibit more boldly and arrogantly even than in the regions of ancient paganism, his usurpations of the Divine prerogatives; warring against the Lamb, corrupting and opposing the propagation of the gospel, persecuting and slaughtering the saints; and will continue that career till finally vanquished and imprisoned. The issue at the advent of the incarnate Word with the armies of heaven, the incarceration of the great Usurper, and the dejection of his followersinto the lake of fire, strikingly indicate the nature and purpose of his previous antagonism and rivalship. Prolonged and desperate as his rebellion and usurpation had been, extended and arrogant as were his pretensions and sway as god of this world, the mystery of his iniquity is at length terminated by the exercise, through visible agencies, of Divine power over his person.[See note B.]
On the question, How it has happened, since the origin of the Nicene Creed, that the Old Testament has been understood to ascribe the Creation, not to the Christ, but to the Father.
Since the New Testament distinctly ascribes the work of creation to the official Person called the Logos and the Christ, and, in harmony with the Old, demonstrates his identity with Jehovah, Elohim, and the Messenger Jehovah, it may justly occasion surprise and deserve inquiry, how it has happened that the Old Testament has, both by Jews and Christians, so long and so generally been construed, as in our own and other modern translations, to ascribe those works, not to Him, personally or officially, but to the Father, or to the Deity irrespective of any personal distinctions or official relations.
As preliminary to this inquiry, it may be observed, that the office which belonged to him in his delegated character was constituted before the creation of theworld. That office included the redemption of his people, who were chosen in him before the creation. His relation to them, therefore, did not commence after the fall, nor after the creation. For his official work includes the work of redemption; and since those to be redeemed were before the creation chosen in him, whatever in his mediatorial person, office and character belongs to him as their Redeemer, must have been constituted prior to the work of creation. And since the works of creation and providence had, and continue to have, an intimate connection with the work of redemption, and are in some things identical with that work, we must conclude that whatever belongs officially to his person and character was constituted prior to the creation; and that the covenant transaction, in which the second person of the Trinity was appointed and undertook to be the Redeemer, comprised all that appertains to the constitution of his person and office as Mediator; so that thenceforth he was in a capacity to act officially in his delegated character as Mediator, as truly and perfectly as at any subsequent period. The connection and consistency of the entire plan of creation, providence, and redemption, in its relations to him in the progress of its execution, require this conclusion; and hence the particularity and emphasis with which the apostles, in setting forth his prerogatives as Mediator and Redeemer, for the conviction of those who saw him only as man, assert that he was in the beginning—i. e., in the delegated official character which they then ascribed to him; that he was before all things; that by him all things consist; that in the beginning he laid the foundation of the earth, created the heavens and the earth, brought into existence all creatures visible and invisible; that he was in respect to the entire system the Alpha andOmega, First and Last. Their object required that all this should be believed of him in the official person and character in which for the suffering of death he appeared incarnate.It was in no respect to their purposeto assert of him thatas Divine, or in hisDivine nature, he existed prior to the creation, and exercised creative power. The whole question was as to the complex, delegated official person and character of him who visibly appeared, wrought miracles, and was called Jesus, the Christ. It is with reference to this that they assert his preëxistence, ascribe to him the works of creation and providence, and declare him to be the only Mediator between God and man—the only medium of relations and intercourse between the invisible Deity and creatures.
This is what the apostate, idolatrous and infidel world, in subserviency to the great Adversary and his followers, have over opposed. This is the question to be decided to the full and final conviction of the whole universe, in the battles described in Rev. xix. and xx.; in the first of which the Mediator, in the person of Jesus,clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and calledThe Word of God, appears in his glory, and vanquishes the Arch-enemy and all his adherents; and in the second, fire from heaven devours his enemies of the human race, and the Devil that deceived them is cast into the lake of fire, to be tormented for ever and ever. Then, every tongue will acknowledge the true character of this Personage. Then will be solved the mystery concerning the creation of all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent that unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church—i. e., by the redemption of the Church, as comprising substantially all the works of providence—the manifold wisdom of God,according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Ephes. iii.
The great purpose of the works of creation, providence and redemption is, to manifest the Divine perfections to intelligent creatures; so to instruct them in the knowledge of God, and so to display his righteousness and the nature and evil of sin, that they might discern the glorious excellency, holiness, loveliness, amiableness and beauty of the character revealed, and cordially love, obey and enjoy him for ever. This purpose is from the beginning executed by the Mediator, in the delegated character in which he appears at its consummation.
His office, accordingly, placed him as the medium of all relations and communications between the invisible Deity and creatures; and his official undertaking comprised the works of creation, providence, and redemption; the manifestation of the Divine perfections; the vindication of the Divine prerogatives, laws, and government; the redemption of lost men; the union, confirmation and blessedness of all holy creatures under him as King, and the subjection and punishment of Satan, the fallen angels and wicked men.
From the nature of intelligent creatures, and their relations to one another and to material objects, the execution of this undertaking required a course of external and visible facts connected both with his and their agency. They were to be instructed both in respect to themselves and to him; and as the visibility of their persons and acts was necessary to their instruction concerning one another, the visibility of his person and acts was necessary on the same account.
It is evident that the Mediator has, officially, relations to the holy angels, not only as their Creator, but in other respects. They are required to worship him inthat character,i. e., in the character in which he came into the world. Heb. i. 6. They are employed in executing the measures of his mediatorial administration. Heb. i. 14. They attended his person on the occasion of his advent, his temptation, his sufferings and resurrection, and join his people in their songs and praises, in view of his final triumph and exaltation.
As Mediator, he is invested with all power in heaven and earth. All judgment is committed to him in that capacity, “because he is the Son of man,” the official Person; and we must conclude that his official work comprises all Divine operations relating to creatures.
In the phraseology both of the Old and New Testaments, where God is represented as acting or speaking, the expression in most cases is such as would occur were there no distinction of persons in the Godhead, unless we understand, wherever the text does not in terms or in the nature of the subject indicate another reference, that the appellations, Elohim, Jehovah, Messenger Jehovah, &c., are employed to designate the Mediator, personally and officially. But so understood, he stands forth the external representative, the visible image, the outward manifestation, the official agent, the messenger of the Father, and as such reveals Him; and by the mission and coöperation of the Holy Spirit in the work of redemption, that Divine Person is made known. The entire scheme respecting the creation and government of creatures being in the counsels of eternity assigned to the second Person, as the official agent and messenger delegated and sent of the Father, it appertained to him to make known to creatures all that they are to know of the being and perfections of the One God and the distinction of persons in the Godhead.
Accordingly the Deity, without any special indicationof personal or official relations, is often referred to under the terms Jehovah and Elohim, where the object required only a distinction of divine from creature attributes or agency. In this way, in one class of passages, God is said to do the same things which in another class are expressly ascribed to the Messenger Jehovah, the Christ, the Word.
But where a reference is made to any thing in the economy of redemption, or any thing involving official acts or relations, official titles are introduced, or a phraseology is employed, by which the intended meaning is expressed. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are clearly distinguished, or their personality, relations and agency are indicated by the nature of the things recorded, or by the connections in which they occur.
It is in this view that we understand all those passages in which the divine names and the official titles of the Mediator are interchangeably applied to the same Person. In all such cases the things affirmed are in other passages affirmed of the Messiah, under titles which exclusively belong to him. He is in this manner announced in the Old Testament as Jehovah, the Elohe of Abraham, the Creator, &c. The patriarchs and prophets knew God, as manifested in him in his delegated, official, personal character. That they were enlightened in respect to the invisible Deity absolutely considered, and in respect to the distinction of Persons, is no more to be doubted than that they were enlightened as to the great Revealer. The sublime conceptions proper to this subject were undoubtedly so imparted, received, and cherished as to render the doctrine of mediation and of the delegated personal character of the Mediator an intelligible and practical doctrine. This may be inferred, not only from all that is recorded concerning the religion of the patriarchs, the sacrifices, prayers, types and symbols connected with their worship, but also from the theory of the earliest idolatry, which was a rival system, and was based upon the idea of mediation between a supreme invisible Deity and creatures, and consisted in regarding as mediators created intelligences, supposed to reside in the planetary orbs, and in images or idols as their representatives. It is obvious, indeed, from the nature of the case, that where any notion of mediation and a Mediator prevailed, and was indicated in the rites and institutions of worship, there, and, above all, under a system of revealed religion and acceptable worship, an apprehension more or less distinct, enlarged and just of the invisible Deity, of the concealed as well as of the revealed God, must have been entertained.
Nevertheless, concerning this subject much was reserved to be taught by the Mediator in his incarnate state, when the distinction of Persons in the Godhead and their official designations could be rendered plain by his visible personal acts, his verbal explanations, and the agency and gifts ascribed to the Holy Spirit. This was in accordance with the progress and analogy of revelation in other respects. Besides, we may well believe that there was originally, and during the Mosaic period, extreme difficulty in instructing men on those high themes concerning the invisible and spiritual, as may be inferred from the rooted and lasting propensity of the Israelites to visible symbols and material images, and from the limited prevalence of the clearer inculcations of the gospel down to the present day. Men did not and do not like to retain God in their knowledge.
Hence the language of our Saviour in teaching the Divine unity and spirituality, and the distinction, offices and relations of the Persons of the Godhead. He taught that God is a Spirit, invisible, infinite, eternal, unchangeable; of himself, that he came out from God; came forth from the invisible to the visible world; that he should withdraw from the visible to the invisible, so as not to be seen; that he should afterwards visibly reäppear; that God the Father sent him; that the power which he exercised in his miracles was a divine attribute, and proved his divinity; that those who witnessed his miracles, witnessed the exercise of the power of the invisible Deity, which was the power of the Father who had sent him, as well as his own; and therefore they saw the Father in the same works in which they saw him; for in respect to their nature as divine, He and the Father were one.
But even his disciples did not at first understand his meaning. “Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not knownme, Philip? He that hath seenmehath seen the Father.” That is, I act officially, exercising the power of the Deity, which is delegated to me by the Father. He who sees in my works a demonstration of my personality and divinity, sees at the same time in those works the only outward and visible demonstration that can be made to men of the personality and divinity of the Father. The power which I exercise is possessed by me in common with the Father, though personally and officially exercised by me. That power is a divine attribute, and in respect to it as an attribute, I and the Father are one.
To confirm this instruction, he promises to do forhis disciples what they should ask of the Father in his name; and informs them that he should leave them, as to his visible presence, and go the Father, and that he would manifest himself to them by the official personal agency of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father would send in his name, to dwell with them, be in them, show them the things which respected himself, teach them all things, and bring all things to their remembrance. John xiv.
Continuing to instruct them on this subject, in the two next chapters, he says, “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world and go to the Father. A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again a little while, and ye shall see me.” Such was his mode of teaching the distinction of Persons in the Godhead—the doctrine of the Trinity.
The apostles were slow to learn these truths concerning the divine Persons respectively, and their offices and relations. They expected in the Messiah a temporal deliverer, who should assume the government of their nation, and continue personally and visibly among them. In certain respects they appear not to have understood his character till after his ascension, nor till after the Spirit had enlightened and convinced them that the Christ who had been crucified was indeed the Lord of glory, Jehovah, the Elohe of Abraham, in whom Abraham and David believed unto justification. Being at length fully satisfied of this, they testified it to the Jews on the day of Pentecost, and subsequently, with overwhelming effect; for the people being also convinced and cut to the heart, cried, Men and brethren, what shall we do? In their testimony to this end they declared to the Jews that Jesus whom they had crucified was both the Lord (Jehovah) and the Christ; and quoted David as saying concerning him, “I foresaw Jehovah always before me.”
Subsequently the apostles, more fully instructed in “the mystery ofGod, and of theFather, and ofthe Christ,” Col. ii., more clearly distinguished the Persons of the Trinity in all that concerned their relations to the work of redemption; though, conformably to the Hebrew usage, they often, as the context shows, designated the Mediator under the name ofGod, while they also by that name referred to the Father and to the one invisible Deity. Thus, speaking of the Christ, Paul says, “Who is over all, God blessed for ever.” Rom. ix. 5. Again: “There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 1 Tim. ii. 5. And, treating of the economy of grace, and the gifts bestowed on the Church by the Redeemer, he says: “There is one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.” Eph. iv. 4-6. See also the doxologies, and the formulas of grace and peace introductory to the Epistles.
These observations and references may, perhaps, sufficiently show the occasion there was for the reiterated statements, at the opening of the New Dispensation,that no man had seen the Father, and that he was declared and made known only by the Son. The Jews, to whom these things were said, were familiar with the Scriptures which record the visible appearances ofJehovah, the Elohe of Abraham. The first thing, as has been observed, that was necessary, on his appearance in human nature, was to convince those who had seen and heard him that he was the same personally and officially as He who appeared to and conversed and covenanted with the patriarchs, and dwelt with the Church in the wilderness and in the first temple. He was accordingly from the first, by inspired direction, designated by names of the same import as the Jehovah and Immanuel of the earlier dispensation; and he himself appealed to the ancient Scriptures, as testifying of him. The apostles referred to him as the Jehovah of the Old Testament; and Stephen says, that Moses “was in the Church in the wilderness, withThe Messengerwho spoke to him in mount Sinai.” Acts vii.
The Shekina, and all visible Divine appearances, having long been discontinued, the Jews seem not to have expected any recurrence of the like, or of analogous interpositions. Their religion consisted in a formal observance of rites and traditions, and a blind reliance on their being descendants of Abraham; and in the Messiah, whom they desired and expected, they looked only for a human chieftain, a temporal deliverer from the Roman yoke. Their notions of the Divine Being, the invisible Deity, do not appear to have differed essentially from those common to their descendants ever since. They appear, indeed, to have degenerated so far from the ancients, as to have retained no ideas of a distinction of Persons in the Godhead. When they spoke of God as their Father, they had reference only to the invisible Deity as their Creator. They were alike destitute of the faith of Abraham and of all correct knowledge of Jehovah, the promisedSeed, the Messenger, the personal Word. The common people were as sheep without a shepherd, and their teachers as blind leaders of the blind. “We all, says Trypho, expect a Messiah to be born, that will be manof man.” Brown’s Justin Martyr, section 49.
Evidences to almost any extent might be easily adduced to show that the Jews of our Saviour’s time had generally, as a people, lost or perverted by their traditions the knowledge which their ancient predecessors possessed, were blind to the meaning of their own Scriptures, and were plunged in gross and inveterate errors.
Their errors soon began to be widely propagated by Judaizing teachers of Christianity, and by Gentile heretics; and with respect to the teachings of the Old Testament concerning the Creator, the Messiah, mediation, the Unity, Trinity, and other subjects, became at an early period extensively prevalent. The Gnosticism which, under Cerinthus and others, assailed the Jewish converts in the apostles’ days, and was propagated during that and several succeeding ages, under many leaders, and with various modifications, was a compound of Oriental philosophy and Judaizing infidelity. To that, in its original form, succeeded, in the second century, the modifications of the Asiatic and Egyptian sects, and the heresies of the Monarchins, or Patripassians; the sects of Theodotus, Artemon, Hermogenes and others; in the third, the Manichæans, the Sabellians, and the followers of Paul of Samosata; and in the fourth, the Arians, Semiarians, Pelagians, and others, which, with an occasional change of name, have come down to the present day, and constitute, in relation to the leading doctrines and object of the Holy Scriptures, one comprehensive heresy, of which thecardinal feature is a denial or derogation of what belongs to the official Person, character, and works of the Mediator. In the controversies to which those heresies gave occasion, owing to the nature of the questions which were discussed, the character and objects of the parties brought into conflict, the want of familiarity with the theology of the Hebrew Scriptures on the part of the orthodox, Gentile controvertists; owing to these and the like causes, the ascription, common in the patriarchal, Mosaic, and prophetic history, and in the first period of Christianity, of all the works of creation and providence to the official mediatorial Person, was gradually discontinued, and at length wholly dropped, even by those who believed in his divinity.
Continuation of the subject of the foregoing Chapter—Reference to the Heresies, respecting the Creator, of the three first and ensuing centuries.
The heresy of the Gnostic philosophers, like that of the geologists of the present day, had to do with the question of a creator and creation as its starting theme. “They boasted,” says Mosheim, “of being able to restore mankind to the knowledge of the true and supreme Being, [i. e., the Deity, as superior to the evil being, regarded by them as creator,] which had been lost in the world, and foretold the approaching defeat of theevil principle,i. e., the Devil, to whom they attributedthe creationof this globe.” Their Unitarianism, like that of later times, could tolerate the notion ofdivine creatures, acreated creator; but they could not allow that such a world as this was or could have been created by the true Supreme Being.
“The Gnostic doctrine,” adds the author above quoted, “concerning the creation of the world by one or more inferior beings of an evil, or at least an imperfect nature, led that sect to deny the divine authority of the books of the Old Testament, whose accounts of the origin of things so palpably contradicted this idle fiction. Through a frantic aversion to those books, they lavished their encomiums upon theSerpent, the first author of sin, and held in veneration some of the most impious and profligate persons of whom mention is made in sacred history.”
Those boasters furnished a notable example for all pretenders to philosophy and rationalism in religion, who take reason for their guide, and deem it competent to determine what it is proper for the Supreme Being to do; who or what kind of being it is most proper should be the creator of such a world as this; at what time, in what manner, of what materials, and for what ends the world should be created; and whether the Mosaic record should be wholly rejected, or only so far as this subject, that of miracles, inspiration, the universality of the Deluge, the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and a few others, are concerned.
The controlling influence to which the heretics and theorists of the first centuries were manifestly subject, was that of their philosophy. Assuming that their philosophical dogmas were true and founded in the nature of things, they argued, as do our modern geologists, from their assumptions, that the Scriptures must be consistent with them; and since they were not taught in Scripture, nor consistent with the apparent import of the language of Scripture, they found it necessary to imagine an occult, allegorical, tropical, or spiritual meaning, couched under the forms of the natural language. Thus Origen held “that, under cover of the words, phrases, images, and narratives of the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit had concealed the internal reasons and grounds of things; that in the body of Holy Writ [so he denominates theproper senseof the words] there was asoul, [a recondite sense,] and that this soul exhibits, to careful contemplators of it, as it were in a mirror, the causes, connections, and dependences of both human and Divine wisdom.” Murdock’s Commentaries of Mosheim, II. 156, 165. He took up “the ancient doctrine of the Pharisees andEssenees, that of a double sense in Holy Scripture;” and to confirm his philosophical notions by the authority of the sacred oracles, by “bending the sense of Scripture to suit his purpose, eliminated from the Bible whatever was repugnant to his favorite opinions.” Ibid. 165.
“It is very certain that the Jews, and among them the Pharisees especially, and Essenees, before the birth of our Saviour, believed that in the language of the Bible, besides the sense which is obvious to the reader, there is another more remote and recondite, concealed under the words of Scripture.” Murdock’s Commentaries of Mosheim, II. 166.
Essene es account of the doctrines of Cerinthus, a Gnostic Jew, who, about the close of the first century, appeared as the leader of those who sought to merge Christianity in Judaism, indicates the confusion and uncertainty which then, probably to a great extent, perplexed the minds of the Jewish and Gentile proselytes to the Christian faith. “He taught that the Creator of this world, whom he considered also as the sovereign and lawgiver of the Jewish people, wasa beingendowed with the greatest virtues, and derivedhis birthfrom theSupreme God;[thus conceding that the Jehovah of the Old Testament was the same as the Christ;] that this being fell, by degrees, from his native virtue, and his primitive dignity; [referring, no doubt, to the withdrawment of the Messenger Jehovah, the Creator, with the visible Shekina, from the temple, and his apparent abandonment of the Jewish people, as they themselves considered;] that the Supreme God, in consequence of this, determined to destroy his empire, [meaning, probably, that as he no longer appeared as the protector of the Jews, but rather as their enemy,he was to be superseded,] and sent upon earth for this purpose one of the ever-happy and gloriousæons, whose name was Christ; that this Christ chose for his habitation [alluding to the doctrine, then extensively prevalent, of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of one being into another] the person of Jesus, a man of the most illustrious sanctity and justice, the son of Joseph and Mary, and descending in the form of adove, entered into him while he was receiving the baptism of John in the waters of Jordan; that Jesus, after his union with Christ, opposed himself with vigor to theGod of the Jews, [i. e., He whom the Jews originally worshipped as their Creator and Lawgiver, the Angel Jehovah, now fallen,] and was, by his instigation, seized and crucified by the Hebrew chiefs; that when Jesus was taken captive, [i. e., by the instigation of Jehovah the Creator,] Christ ascended upon high, so that the man Jesus alone was subjected to the pains of an ignominious death. Cerinthus required of his followers that they should worship the Father of Christ, even theSupreme God, in conjunction with the Son; [i. e., theæonwhom he calls Christ;] that they should abandon the Lawgiver of the Jews, whom he [from his knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, or of the Chaldee paraphrases] looked uponas the Creator of the world; that they should retain a part of the law given by Moses, but should, nevertheless, employ their principal attention and care to regulate their lives by the precepts of Christ,” [i. e., the gloriousæon.] To encourage them to this, “he promised the resurrection of the body;” [i. e., though he denied the death, and therefore the resurrection of Christ, he held to that of man at the second coming;] and held “that Christ will one day return upon earth, and, renewing hisformer union with the man Jesus, [i. e., by then raising him from the dead,] will reign with his people in the land of Palestine during a thousand years.” Cent. I. part 2, chap. 5, sec. 16. There can be no mistake as to the source of what is correct in this creed, nor as to the state of mind in which its stupendous errors were conceived and propagated.
Marcion, Basilides, and others among the Gnostic leaders of theAsiaticandEgyptiansects in the second century, held, in respect to a creator and creation, sentiments very similar to those of Cerinthus. The Valentinians, a very numerous sect, were taught by Valentine their chief, as is recorded in Mosheim, “That the Creator of this world,” whom, in common with most of the heretics of that period, he took to be a creature, “came by degrees to imagine himself to be God alone, or, at least, to desire that mankind should consider him as such.” He therefore “sent forth prophets to the Jewish nation, to declare his claim to the honor that is due to the Supreme Being.” The Patripassians asserted the unity of God in such a manner as to exclude all distinction of Persons; and in this respect they were imitated by the Sabellians of the ensuing century.
The leading features of nearly all the heresies of the first three centuries, especially those which were widely diffused and long perpetuated, whether invented by minds imbued by the Oriental philosophy or with hereditary Jewish opinions and prejudices related to the Creator and the works of creation. The best of them were in that particular, for substance, like the heresy of Arius in the fourth century, who taught “that the Son was thefirstandnoblestof these beings, whom God theFatherhad created out of nothing, and was the instrument by whose subordinate operationthe universe was made.” The Council of Nice, convened in 325 to suppress this heresy, appears scarcely to have checked its progress; and during the protracted discussions and contests which ensued, and which agitated both the eastern and western divisions of the Church, there is probably no single instance of a simple scriptural statement respecting the Trinity, and the Person and work of the Mediator, except in the case of such as dissented and seceded from the Established Church, and were persecuted by all parties in that Church. The attention of those whom the Councils called orthodox, in distinction from heretics, was absorbed by attempts to explain the inexplicable questions in controversy. They sought in this way to answer and confound their opponents. The heretics nowhere in these controversies bring into view anything scriptural, anything better than Paganism, with respect to a Mediator; nor could they, consistently with the nature of the dogmas and opinions which they contended for.
The disciples of the reformed Magianism of Zoroaster ascribed the creation to the one supreme, invisible Deity, who was to be worshipped directly, not through images, nor through a Mediator, nor any intermediate agencies.
The Gentile Gnostics, in distinction from Cerinthus and other Judaizers, in their attempts to subordinate Christianity to their system—which taught that all evil resided in and proceeded from matter, and therefore that the world could not have been created by a good being—ascribed the creation to a created evil being, the evil principle, Satan. They therefore rejected the Old Testament as irreconcilable with this system. Prior to the Advent, they worshipped Satan as creator, and as having chief control in the whole course ofthings in the world, and being an over-match for the antagonist, good principle: and honoring him in this way, they held Cain, and his other most conspicuous followers and supporters, in the highest veneration. Yearning for some relief from the unmitigated and intolerable miseries which they suffered in their warfare with their bodies, which, as matter, they deemed the seat of corruption, they hailed the appearance of the good principle in Christianity, supported as it was by demonstrations of resistless power, as likely to defeat the antagonist evil principle, the Devil, to whom they still ascribed the creation of the world. Instead of longer worshipping him, therefore, they now taughtthat the Supreme Deity, the Creator of the Devil, was to be worshipped. This was the doctrine which undoubtedly had been lost to all idolaters, and which they now promised to restore.
Cerinthus, in his attempts to combine Gnosticism and Christianity with Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures, as he understood them, maintains, not that the world was created by the supreme, invisible Deity, for he did not so understand those writings, but that the Being to whom Moses ascribes the creation and government of the world (and whom he calls Jehovah) was a derived, begotten, created being, and therefore liable to degenerate; that though originally endowed with the greatest virtues, he fell; (he had forsaken the Jews, and they had renounced him;) that his Creator, the Supreme Deity, had therefore determined to destroy his empire, (the dominion and rule which he exercised, prior to his quitting the temple, and also after becoming, in their opinion, the enemy of the Jews;) that the Christ, so far from being the same person, Son of the Supreme Deity, and Creator, was a wholly differentbeing in all respects, a created being, sent expressly to supersede and destroy the Creator and Jewish lawgiver; that, taking possession of the person of Jesus, he set himself vigorously to oppose Jehovah the Creator, who, in self-defense, contrived to induce the Jews to crucify the man Jesus, the Christ in the mean time having forsaken him. Accordingly, he taught his followers that they “should abandon the Lawgiver of the Jews, whom he looked upon as the Creator of the world,”i. e., the Jehovah of the Old Testament; and that they should worship the Supreme Deity as the Father of the Æon whom he called Christ, in conjunction with that Christ, or Æon, assuming him to be the same with him whom the Christians called the Christ and the Son; conformably to his notion that Christ, having entered the man Jesus at his baptism, withdrew from him before his death. He denied his resurrection, and was, very probably, a disciple of the false teacher referred to and refuted in Paul’s argument, 1 Cor. xv.
To show that the Oriental philosophy, which comprehended the leading principles of the false, in opposition to the revealed system of religion, and that the early heresies, which, being founded on the Oriental philosophy, passed under the imposing title of Gnosticism, ascribed the creation and government of the world to Satan, the following quotations are made from Mosheim’s Commentaries, Cent. I., sec. 60, 61:
“By none of its adversaries or corrupters was Christianity, from its first rise, more seriously injured; by none was the Church more grievously lacerated, and rendered less attractive to the people, than by those who were for making the religion of Christ accommodate itself to the principles of the Oriental philosophy respecting the Deity, the origin of the world, the nature of matter and the human soul. We allude to those who, from their pretending that they were able to communicate to mankind, at present held in bondage by the Architect of the world, a correct knowledge (gnosis) of the true and ever-living God, were commonly styled Gnostics. Intoxicated with a fondness for these opinions, not a few of the Christians were induced to secede from all association with the advocates for the sound doctrine, and to form themselves into various sects, which, as time advanced, became daily more extensive and numerous, and were for several ages productive of very serious inconveniences and evils to the Christian commonwealth.... It is by no means difficult to point out the way in which these people contrived to make the religion of Christ appear to be altogether in unison with their favorite system of discipline. All the philosophers of the East, whose tenets, as we have seen, were, that the Deity had nothing at all to do with matter, the nature and qualities of which they considered to be malignant and poisonous; that the body was held in subjection by a being entirely distinct from Him to whom the dominion over the rational soul belonged; that the world, and all terrestrial bodies, were not the work of the Supreme Being, the Author of all good, but were formed out of matter by a nature either evil in its origin, or that had fallen into a state of depravity; and lastly, that the knowledge of the true Deity had become extinct, and that the whole race of mankind, instead of worshipping the Father of Light and Life, and source of every thing good, universally paid their homage to the Founder and Prince of this nether world, or to his substitutes and agents: I say all these looked forward with earnest expectation for the arrival of an extraordinary andeminently powerful Messenger of the Most High, who, they imagined, would deliver the captive souls of men from the bondage of the flesh, and rescue them from the dominion of those genii by whom they supposed the world and all matter to be governed; at the same time communicating to them a correct knowledge of their everlasting Parent, so as to enable them, upon the dissolution of the body, once more to regain their long-lost liberty and happiness. An expectation of this kind even continues to be cherished by their descendants of the present day. Some of these philosophers, then, being struck with astonishment at the magnitude and splendor of the miracles wrought by Christ and his apostles, and perceiving that it was the object of our Lord’s ministry both to abrogate the Jewish law—a law which they conceived to have been promulgated by the Architect or Founder of the world himself, or by the chief of his agents—and also to overthrow those gods of the nations whom they regarded as genii, placed over mankind by the same evil spirit; hearing him, moreover, invite the whole world to join in the worship of the one Omnipotent and only true God, and profess that he came down from heaven for the purpose of redeeming the souls of men, and restoring them to liberty, were induced to believe that he was that very Messenger for whom they looked, the Person ordained by the Everlasting Father, to destroy the dominion of the founder of this world as well as of the genii who presided over it; to separate light from darkness, and to deliver the souls of men from that bondage to which they were subjected, in consequence of their connection with material bodies. To various articles propounded in the Christian code as essential points of belief, they utterly refused their assent: such, for instance, as thatwhich attributes the creation of the world to the Supreme Being, and those respecting the divine origin of the Mosaic law, the authority of the Old Testament, the character of human nature, and the like: for it would have amounted to nothing short of an absolute surrender of the leading maxims of the system to which they were devoted, had they not persisted in maintaining that the creator of this world was a being of a nature vastly inferior to the Supreme Deity, the Father of our Lord, and that the law of Moses was not dictated by the Almighty, but by this same inferior being, by whom also the bodies of men were formed and united to souls of ethereal mould, and under whose influence the various penmen of the Old Testament composed whatever they have left us on record.” Again, “according to the Gnostic scheme, an absolute and entire dominion over the human race, and the globe we inhabit, is exercised by the founder of the material world, a being of unbounded pride and ambition, who makes use of every means in his power to prevent mankind from attaining to any knowledge of the true God.”
It is too plain to require a comment, that the fallen creature to whom, in this religious system, the creation of the world is ascribed, and to whom the nations universally paid their homage, was Satan; and that the genii, his subordinates, were the angels who fell with him. On the other hand, the Divine Messenger expected as the antagonist and conqueror of Satan, could be no other than the Messenger Jehovah, appointed and sent by the Everlasting Father.
Mosheim, in his Commentaries, Introduction, chap. 2, observes, that the Jewish religion, at the time of our Saviour’s appearance, “was contaminated by errors ofthe most flagrant kind; even in the service of the temple itself, numerous ceremonies and observances, drawn from the religious worship of heathen nations, had been introduced and blended with those of Divine institution; and in addition to superstitions like these of a public nature, many erroneous principles, probably either brought from Babylon and Chaldea by the ancestors of the people at their return from captivity, or adopted by the thoughtless multitude in conformity to the example of their neighbors the Greeks, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, were cherished and acted upon in private.”
Again, “To the prince of darkness, with his associates and agents, they attributed an influence over the world and mankind of the most extensive nature; so predominant, indeed, as scarcely to leave a superior degree of power even with the Deity himself.”
“At the time of Christ’s appearance, many of the Jews had imbibed the principles of the Oriental philosophy respecting the origin of the world, and were much addicted to the study of a recondite sort of learning derived from thence, to which they gave the name ofCabbala. The founders of several of the Gnostic sects, all of whom, we know, were studious to make the Christian religion accommodate itself to the principles of the ancient Oriental philosophy,had been originally Jews, and exhibited in their tenets a strange mixture of the doctrines of Moses, Christ, and Zoroaster. This is of itself sufficient to prove that many of the Jews were in no small degree attached to the opinions of the ancient Persians and Chaldeans. Such of them as had adopted these irrational principles would not admit that the world was created by God, but substituted, in the place of the Deity,a celestial geniusendowed with vast powers; from whom, also, they maintained that Moses had his commission, and the Jewish law its origin. To the coming of the Messiah, or deliverer, promised by God to their fathers, they looked forward with hope, expecting that he would put an end to the dominion of the being whom they thus regarded as the maker and ruler of the world.” Mosheim, Int., Com., chap. 2.
It would be alike tedious and useless much further to multiply citations from the history of Gnostic and other Oriental writers, to show that the nations represented by those writers regarded Satan as the creator of the world and god of their idolatry.
“Beyond that vast expanse, refulgent with everlasting light, which was considered as the immediate habitation of the Deity and those natures which had been generated from him, these philosophers placed the seat of matter, where, according to them, it had lain from all eternity, a rude, undigested, opaque mass, agitated by turbulent, irregular motions of its own provoking, and nurturing, as in a seed-bed, the rudiments of vice and every species of evil. In this state it was found by a genius or celestial spirit of the higher order, who had been either driven from the abode of the Deity for some offense, or commissioned by him for the purpose,and who reduced it into order, and gave it that arrangement and fashion which the universe now wears. Those who spoke the Greek tongue were accustomed to refer to thiscreator of the worldby the name ofDemiurgus. Matter received its inhabitants, both men and other animals, from the same hand that had given to it disposition and symmetry.... When all things were thus completed, Demiurgus,revoltingagainst the great First Cause of every thing, the all-wise and omnipotent God,assumed tohimself the exclusive government of this new state, which he apportioned out into provinces or districts; bestowing the administration and command over them on a number of genii or spirits of inferior degree, who had been his associates and assistants.” Mosheim, Intro., sec. 34.
“In the following respects, they [the Gnostic sects] appear to have been all of one mind; namely, that in addition to the Deity,matter, the root and cause of every thing evil and depraved, had existed from all eternity, that this corrupt matter had not been reduced into order by the Supreme and all-benevolent Deity, but by a nature of a far inferior rank; that the founder of the world, therefore, and the Deity, were beings between whom no sort of relationship whatever existed.” Ibid., 1., sec. 65.
These representations of the sentiments of the Orientals may suffice to show that the Arch-apostate claimed to be the creator and prince of this world, and led his followers to adopt that usurped and impious claim as a primary article of their faith, and to worship and serve him accordingly. Nor does it otherwise seem possible to account for the origin and adoption, at a very early period, of the doctrine of two antagonist principles or powers, one as the creator of the world and author of all evil, the other as an ineffectually counteracting agent of good.
Divested of Eastern figure, and of bias from Western notions of mythology and polytheism, the Oriental doctrine plainly exhibits Satan as the creator and ruler of this world, and, on that ground, as exacting the homage of its population. This primary arrogation on his part is the ground of all idolatry, and of the great heresies of Gnostic and Popish origin. Accordingly, the great antagonism which, since the fall, has been in progressin the view of the whole universe, and of which the termination is to fill the hosts of heaven with adoring and rapturous ecstacy, and the ransomed Church with ceaseless exultation and praise, exhibits the great Adversary as chief of a rebel faction of his own species, instigating the original revolt, and ruling as his vassals the race of man, arrogating the titles and prerogatives of the Creator and Sovereign of the world, and persisting in his rebellion, usurpation, and rivalship, till finally vanquished and imprisoned, his purposes defeated, and his works destroyed; and at length displays, on the other hand, the majesty and power, the titles, prerogatives, and rights, the supremacy, rectitude and glory of the self-existent Creator, Proprietor and rightful Sovereign, effectually reässerted, vindicated, and universally acknowledged.
In these earliest and most prevalent systems of heresy are contained the perversions and false doctrines against which the contemporaries and the immediate and later orthodox successors of the apostles were called to contend; and they present in bold relief the points brought into controversy, as they are indicated in the creeds and decrees of Councils specially convened to condemn and suppress them.
To meet the doctrine advanced by the earliest and adopted by the later heretics, that the creation and government of the world was the work of a creature, supposed by some to be the Evil One; by others, a being originally good, but afterwards degenerate; by some, to be one of two rival creatures; by others, to have derived his birth from the Supreme God; they, rejecting with abhorrence such ideas of the Creator, and all the notions associated with them, and impelled by their philosophy, as well as by their knowledge andregard for the Scriptures, to assert in the plainest manner that the Creator of all things is himself uncreated—God, in distinction from creatures—planted themselves upon that as an impregnable position.
But they had at the same time to maintain the doctrines of the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. They were to assert the Deity of Christ, whom the heretics held to be a creature, and yet ascribed to him the works of creation. It is at least natural to suppose that, to avoid giving the heretics any advantage in popular argument, and to use expressions importing the broadest contrast to theirs, they at first ascribed the creation to God, without any reference to the distinction of Persons in the Godhead; or, to maintain that doctrine at the same time, and to meet the point in question as to the Deity of the Creator, they ascribed the works of creation and providence to God the Father. Whatever may have been the process, this was the result. It is not unlikely that, at the date of the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds, there were many who at length joined in adopting them, who from ignorance, or from the sway of heretical influences, were greatly confused upon these subjects; many, more or less perverted by Gnostic and Judaizing dogmas; many who saw no possibility of maintaining the doctrines which they held concerning the Father, as the Father of Christ the Son byeternal generation, and as the fountain of all authority and power, without specifically ascribing to him the works of creation and providence; many who, relying on the doctrine of theeternalgeneration of the Son, as the most conclusive and unanswerable proof of his Divinity, confined their attention to that, and saw no possibility of meeting and counteracting the dogmas ofCerinthus, or of other heretics, if they ascribed the creation to the Son.
It must be considered that the terms which they employed were adopted expressly to meet the growing and fatal errors which infested the Church; and that they had, at the date of the Nicene Creed, a most powerful motive to concession and accommodation for the sake of unity, in the notion already prevalent concerning schism—defection from the faith of the dominant or Catholic Church, or separation from that body on that account—as a mortal sin.
It was pointedly to their purpose to maintain, in opposition to Cerinthus, that the Christ was the Son of God, and the only being designated by that title; and equally to their purpose, in opposition to Arius, to maintain that he was not created. They were to meet these points somehow, or accomplish nothing against the most formidable heresies. They hit upon a phraseology which, if it be not wholly unintelligible to mortals, was probably then deemed to be unanswerable, in the assertion that he was the Son byeternal generation; begotten, not made, &c.
The language of the creeds, hereafter more particularly referred to, is presumed to have become gradually familiar to the opposers of heresy before it was embodied in those formularies. They express in a condensed form the sentiments and terms by which the leading controvertists repelled the dominant heresies of the time.
It is worthy of a passing notice, that from the origin of the Assyrian empire down to the Christian era, the sway, over the whole Pagan world, of the Oriental doctrines, embodied in the Sabian, Magian, Brahminical, Lamaist, Boodhist, and other systems, laid thefoundation and prepared the way for the rise and spread of the Mohammedan imposture, after those doctrines had, by the propagation of Christianity, been in some degree intercepted and modified within, and in some directions beyond, the limits of the Roman empire. The theory of the system of Mohammed, like that ascribed to Zoroaster, which aimed to unite the Sabians, who worshipped images, and the Magians, who refused them, with the Jews of Babylon and its provinces after they had renounced idolatry and the doctrine of mediation, involved a union of the same school of Jews in the seventh century, with the nominal but already apostate churches (churches characterized by Gnostic heresies and Pagan corruptions) of Babylonia, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Northern Africa, Spain, &c.
Hence the first and, with respect to the Divine Being, the only article of the Mohammedan faith is that ofthe Unity. For this, the Jews, the judaizing professors of Christianity, the Cerinthians, Arians, &c., were prepared; and in like manner for the exclusion of the doctrine of mediation and the consequent proscription of images and sacrificial offerings.
Who that considers the character and mission of Mohammed, as depicted Rev. ix. 1-12, and illustrated by the histories of his time, can fail to regard him as, in the hands of the great Adversary, one of the most extraordinary visible agents of his antagonism. With no preliminary indications, like a meteor fallen to the earth, he suddenly appears on the scene. He receives the key and opens the abyss of darkness. The blinding smoke of the pit ascends, and generates a locust army with the power of scorpions, led on by Satan as their king, “whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, the Destroyer.” As visible head of the apostatefaction, he subdues, and with enduring chains of mental darkness manacles and holds fast the Eastern empire: while, in the Western, essentially the like results, under the same leadership, are accomplished by the head of the Papal hierarchy.
These great systems of influence and control, by which, in the Eastern world, the Arch-deceiver held the human mind in bondage, required and depended on implicit, unquestioning faith. Thus, throughout the Roman empire prior to the Advent, and subsequently in the eastern division, under the Mohammedan, and in the western, under the Popish faith.
The shock of the Reformation awaked and roused up the mind of western Europe, and brought new antagonist influences into operation, which, by recalling attention to the Scriptures as the only rule of faith, by giving prominence to the cardinal doctrines of redemption, and by a revival of learning, threatened wholly to subvert the dominion of Popish superstition and imposture.
This aspect of his affairs required a new course of tactics on the part of the great Adversary, by which the tendencies, intellectual, speculative, philosophical, scientific, which were rising and spreading, might be so perverted as to counteract the objects of the Reformation, and, in place of the former outward and vulgar superstition, to give sway to infidelity; a course of tactics adapted to the intellects of men, stimulated to inquiry and earnest in the pursuit of knowledge; a course by which the peculiar doctrines of the Scriptures and of the Reformation, and the reality of inspiration and of miracles, might be explained away, and by which, in effect, the arrogations of the Arch-deceiver and the Pope, of lordship over men’s minds, and overthe province of theological dogma, together with an ascendency of influence in the seats of intellectual and physical science, might be imputed and transferred toHuman Reason.
Reason, thus deified and installed as in a pontifical chair,progressively developedits hierarchs and suffragans in the seats of learning, secular and sacred, in every part of the Protestant world. Witness the rise, progress and results of this course of tactics in Germany itself. Witness the infidel and atheistic fruits of this homage of reason, in the departments of German metaphysics, theology, criticism, physical science, &c. Witness the stealthy, insidious, infectious inculcation and progress of this infidelity, in the same departments, on this side of the Atlantic,—in some universities and colleges under cover of the principles and discoveries of natural science; in some theological schools, in the name of the science of criticism, interpretation, &c. in lyceums and halls of popular resort, by scientific lectures; and at the doors and in the face of all, by the ceaseless issues of the press.
Can any observer within the precincts of Protestantism account, upon any other view of the subject, for the progress and effects of this infection, with its intuitional, conceptional, subjective and transcendental cant; for its fascinating and transforming power over men previously trained in schools of an opposite character; for its leavenous working in scientific and ecclesiastical fraternities, or its popular effects as administered orally and by the press? Must we not suppose a subtle and powerful agency behind the scenes, as truly as in the case of Gnosticism, Mohammedanism, Romanism, Mormonism? Has not experience shown that a teacher from the pulpit or from a theological or literary chair,who, notwithstanding his knowledge of the Scriptures and of their peculiar doctrines, begins to exhibit signs of his conversion to German rationalism in any respect; to pantheism, idealism, neology, infidelity under any of its designations; soon becomes confident, pertinacious, progressive, and at length is recognized as having ceased to be restrained either by his former principles and professions, or by the authority of the sacred oracles? In short, if the Evil One is still abroad, seeking whom he may devour; if he is what the Scriptures represent him to be; and if, through the great organisms and mediums of domination above referred to, he still carries on his warfare, we must needs conclude, from its nature and results, that he is equally the prime mover and the actuating power of this rationalistic system, deceiver of the educated through their idolatry of reason; as of the ignorant through the imposing forms of superstition and the arts of priestcraft.
Subject of the last Chapter continued—Results of the earliest and most prevalent Heresies.
During the first age after the apostles, the Scripture doctrines respecting the Trinity, and the Person and work of the Mediator, appear to have prevailed in the Church generally; afterwards a change of phraseology among the leaders and teachers of the Church took place, and the work of creation came to be ascribed, not to the Son, but to the Father.
Tertullian, about the close of the second century, in his answer to Praxeas, who founded the sect of Monarchians, expressed himself in scriptural terms respecting the Trinity and the Person of Christ; and describes the faith which he held in that respect, as that which had obtained from the beginning of the gospel;i. e., among those admitted to be orthodox. He soon after separated from the Catholic Church. About fifty years later, the Bishop of Carthage procured the excommunication of the Reformer Novatian, founder of the Cathari, or Puritans of that day, who, following his example, formed numerous seceding churches all over the empire, which flourished during the two succeeding centuries, and a succession of them down to the Reformation. “He was,” says Mosheim, “a man of uncommon learning and eloquence.” He wrote a work upon the subject of the Trinity, of which the first eight sections relate to the Father; the next twenty to Christ: the Old Testament prophecies concerning him—their actual accomplishment—his nature—how the Scriptures prove his divinity—confutes the Sabellians—shows that it was Christ who appeared to the patriarchs, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, &c.
From the character ascribed to Novatian by ecclesiastical historians; from the censures cast upon him by the Popish writers, who represent him as the first antipope, author of the heresy of Puritanism, and parent of an innumerable multitude of seceding Puritan congregations all over the empire; from his work above alluded to, written in 257, six years after his separation from the dominant Church; and from the known character of the Cathari, he is doubtless to be regarded as an eminent example of primitive scriptural faith, and a distinguished leader of those who, driven into the wilderness by persecution, perpetuated that faith essentially and in most particulars down to the era of Luther.
The Paulicians, whose rise is dated in the seventh century, appear to have been of similar character. To these succeeded the Waldenses, Albigenses, and other true worshippers in the valleys of Piedmont.
The Waldenses, in their creed of 1120, adopt all the articles of the so-called Apostles’ Creed. They distinctly express their faith in the Trinity and in the canonical books of Scripture, which, they say, “teach us that there is one God, almighty, unbounded in wisdom and infinite in goodness, and who in his goodness has made all things.” In another Confession, dated 1544, they say: “We believe that there is but one God, who is a spirit—the Creator of all things—the Father of all, who is above all,” &c.
The Confessions of the Waldenses were approved by Luther and the other Reformers. Luther published them in 1533, with a preface.
But the Creed called the Apostles’, which the Waldenses in their first article adopt, expressly ascribes the work of creation to the Father: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord.” Probably this formula should not be dated so early as the first, or even the second century. The Creed called the Nicene, which was in 325 adopted by the Council of Nice in opposition to the Gnostics, the Judaizers, and the heresy of Arius, comprises various terms explanatory of the views then held concerning the Son, while it speaks of the Father as the maker of all things. “We believe in one God,the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten: begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father. God of God; Light of Light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; consubstantial with the Father,” &c.
The Second General Council, which was held at Constantinople in 383, determined that the Nicene Creed should be the standard of orthodoxy.
This creed continued to be held by the Roman Catholic Church, and was adopted and still continues in use by the Protestant Episcopal Churches both of Great Britain and this country.
Probably the phraseology both of the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creed, in respect to the ascription of the works of creationto God the Father, having been adopted and followed by all succeeding writers of authority, was received and acquiesced in by all the Reformers and the different Protestant denominations, and thus, coinciding essentially with the Talmudists and Rabbinical Doctors, was in every way sanctioned and commended as an example to our translators.
In the Confession of Faith and Catechism of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and that of this country, there is indeed, in respect to the subject under consideration, a less exact copy than in earlier Confessions of the phraseology of the Nicene formula. The work of creation is, however, in no respect ascribed to the Mediator personally. The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son is very distinctly avowed; and the works of creation are ascribed to God, though not with any restricted reference to the Father, as distinguished from the other Persons.
These brief references may serve to show that the ascription of the work of creation by some to the Father, in such a manner as to indicate that it is his personally, and by others to the Deity, in distinction from the delegated official Person and work of the Mediator, owed its origin primarily to the nature of the heresies and controversies by which the Church was agitated, and the methods of the orthodox in defending the doctrines of the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, against the Judaizers, the Gnostics, the Arians, and others; and was handed down in their treatises and creeds from one age to another. In the same way the doctrine ofeternalgeneration, and all the phraseology in the Nicene Creed, for example, respecting the Son, which is not to be found in like terms in the Holy Scriptures, appears to have arisen. And it is to be observed that, in close connection with these opinions as adopted by Protestants, is the doctrine that the personal and official work of the Mediator had respect only to the redemption of man, and commenced in personal acts not till his appearance incarnate.
In view of the origin, nature, and tendency of the heresies above referred to, their extended influence, andthe manner in which they were controverted, one can hardly avoid the conclusion, that the order of Divine instruction in the most essential particulars was inverted, by the assumption of some and the acquiescence therein of others, that the Old Testament revealed only the one invisible Deity absolutely considered, as the Creator and Governor of the world, whose oneness or unity was so regarded by one class as to preclude the idea of any personal distinction in the Godhead; and so regarded by many others, who held both the unity and the distinction of Persons, as to lead them, irrespective of that distinction, to ascribe the works of creation and providence to the one Supreme Deity, or to the Father.
Of the class first above mentioned were the Jews at the period of the Incarnation. They therefore opposed and rejected the Messiah, on account of his Divine pretensions, making himself a distinct Person of the Godhead, equal with God. They looked not for a Messiah of such a character, nor for deliverance from sin through faith in his vicarious sufferings, nor for a salvation which was to be extended to the Gentiles. They held to justification by their ritual services and obedience to the law of Moses, and desired only a Messiah or leader who should deliver them from temporal evils.
There were, at that period, considerable numbers of Jews resident in the several provinces of the Roman empire, who, following the early examples of their kindred in Judea, opposed and persecuted those who believed in the Divinity of Jesus the crucified, as the true Messiah. At the same time they professed the utmost zeal for the doctrine of the Unity, and for the exclusive worship of the one Supreme Deity, and associated their rejection of the gospel and its Authorwith their vehement opposition to idolatry. As the preaching of the gospel was extended from Jerusalem to the provinces, many Jews professed to receive it, who, retaining their former religious opinions and prejudices, and setting up to be preachers, endeavored to subvert the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, and to subject the converts, real and nominal, to their notions of Judaism and of the ritual of Moses. These Judaizing teachers still insisted on justification by the works of the law, held firmly to their national prejudices, exclusive privileges, and hatred of the Gentiles, and to fortify themselves, joined with those Gentile heretics whose errors were consistent with their own.
The Jews themselves far exceeded all others in opposing the doctrines of the gospel, and persecuting those who embraced them. “Other nations,” says Justin Martyr to Trypho, [A. D. 115 or 120,] “are not so culpable for the injury that is done to us and to Christ himself, as you, who first caused them to entertain so great a prejudice against that Just One, and us his disciples and followers. For after you had crucified him who alone was unblamable and just, by whose stripes they are healed who come unto the Father by him; after ye knew that he was risen from the dead and ascended up into heaven, as the ancient prophecies foretold concerning him; ye were so far from repenting of those evil deeds which ye have committed, that even thenye dispatched from Jerusalem, into all countries, select missionaries, to inform them that the impious sect of Christians, lately sprung up, worshipped no God; and to spread abroad those false and scandalous reproaches which all that are unacquainted with us and our religion do even to this day lay to our charge.” Brown’s Version, sec. 17. The Jews denounced the Christians as atheists, becausethey worshipped the Christ as God, instead of restricting their homage to Him whom they regarded as the one Supreme, invisible Creator.